UNCIVIL SPEECH, a.k.a., THE ANTI-POLITICAL WEASEL PAGE: 5/27/12

Prologue

While channel surfing through the TV universe, one finds that there's very little or nothing to watch, even if you have cable plus. Most Latina females don't have that problem unless they don't have access to Spanish language TV and the never-ending parade of telenovelas. I refer to these soap opera-like programs as brain rot. One acquaintance of mine had his marriage end because his wife was obsessed with telenovelas and neglected the marriage. I've heard similar stories of "telenovela neglect" from men married to Latinas. While I don't have the problems of my acquaintances; I do long for a good TV show that doesn't involve reality subjects, cops, lawyers, or doctors.

Reality TV is for People Who Can't Live Real Life.

I don't know about you but I'm getting really sick and tired of reality TV programming. I've had enough of singing competition shows, cooking competition shows, dancing competition shows, fashion model competition shows, weight loss competition shows, and dating competition shows. And then there are the reality shows that involve intramural treachery like Big Brother or Survivor.

America's Got Talent (AGT) is a Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour meets the Gong Show while on crack cocaine. This past week on AGT, we were treated to the sight of man having his crotch assaulted with a kendo stick, a steel toe boot, and a cinder block crushed with a sledge hammer. Unless the man signed a hold harmless/waiver of liability agreement or wore a Kevlar® cup, I'm surprised that the NBC lawyers gave the green-light for the act to proceed. I have never thought that crotch busting videos were funny, even America's Funniest Home Videos. But only a baseball catcher or a serial bar brawler can really appreciate a good crotch busting.

They Want Nothing but Cops and Robbers; and When They Get Bored It's Robbers and Cops!

Typical TV cop shows involve rule benders, i.e., the type of tough guys that during an interrogation can rough up a criminal suspect without leaving a mark. Louie the Leg Breaker and SEIU union thugs need not apply. These guys could solve Rubik's Cube if there were only a blood splatter or a bloody fingerprint on it. These cop shows run the gamut from the simple minded Hawaii 5-0 to the cleverly written Castle, which relies less on chop busting and more on brain storming. Then there are the "black and white" shows like Blue Bloods in which there are definite good and bad guys much like the old CBS Walker Texas Ranger TV series, which was loved by my late Grandmother. Right now the copycat trend seems to be rookie cop shows like NYC 22 or Rookie Blue. Zzz.

Odor in the Court! Odor in the Court!

Old school lawyer TV shows generally were bogus. They were to the law as Woodpeckers are to carpentry, For example, in Perry Mason all the witnesses are in the courtroom and privy to the testimony of the other witnesses. The dramatic license taken in writing Perry Mason allowed for everyone involved in the case to be present in the courtroom when the guilty party is exposed. The scene often resembles just about any episode of Poirot in which detective Poirot exposes the guilty party in front of the assembled dramatis personae. Generally, under Federal and state law; on the motion of any party or sua sponte, (i.e., the judge does it), that the court may order witnesses excluded so that they cannot hear the testimony of other witnesses. Good trial lawyers and good judges exclude non-testifying witnesses.

Judd for the Defense attempted to present contemporary legal issues such as those involving anti-war protesters. What bothered me way back then was that Attorney Judd's tactics bordered on the unethical, which contributed to image that the only good lawyers are slicksters.

Contemporary legal dramas like The Good Wife are generally well written and fairly accurate as to what goes on in a legal practice. The episodes generally capture the cavalcade of legal assholes that one will meet in the day-to-day practice of law. My major problem with The Good Wife is the recurring appearance of that insufferable liberal, Michael J. Fox. I refuse to watch any episode in which he appears.

Law and Order, is an amalgam of a cop and a lawyer show. The shows are based on crime beat news stories, although any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. The scripts are the rough equivalent of a "rip and read" newscast except that it's a rip and write a teleplay. But at least the news stories are changed somewhat by the writers for dramatic purposes. Oh wait, the news media writers change news stories for dramatic purposes also, i.e., except that their reporting also result in works of fiction.

As an aside, in over 32 years of on and off lawyering, I've never seen an administrative or courtroom judge use a gavel. But it is a good attention getting device. Unfortunately, that ditz Nancy (a.k.a., "Nazi") Pelosi turned the gavel into a clown prop by arrogantly carrying an oversized gavel prior to the vote on ObamaCare. Liberals have all the class of a cracked toilet seat.

TV Physician Heal Thyself

What can I say about TV doctors? If you believe the TV stereotype, they are horny SOBs. They always seem to be having sex in the linen closet or behind the bed curtains in an empty ward. With the exception of House, M.D., I generally avoid medical shows like the plague. In comparison with House, Grey's Anatomy is a soap opera set in a hospital. But I've stopped watching House, because it became too formulaic, and thus boring. What attracted me to House initially was the chance to learn about diseases, but over the last three seasons it has devolved into a typical medical soap opera. Otherwise, I don't waste my time with doctor shows.

With One Exception, TV Sitcoms Are Lame

I like The Big Bang Theory, a show about four super smart nerds working at Cal Tech, although their employer is not specified, the show is set in Pasadena,California. Jim Parsons is superb as the egotistical and eccentric Dr. Sheldon Cooper. But the show is getting a little long in the tooth and except for one of the nerds, all the nerd geniuses are beginning to pair off with females and evolve as couples. Unfortunately, that may be the death knell of the show. TV viewers are persnickety when it comes to characters changing and moving forward, i.e., developing as maturing adults.

My big fear is that the Indian character, Dr. Rajesh Koothrappali will be "outed" as gay. The running gag has been that he exhibits "gay" traits such as liking Bridget Jones's Diary. If they do "jump the shark" like that, it might piss me off, as well as the Indian community. I really don't care what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. But it will piss me off because men that like stuff other than blood-sports or, are interested in things most people associate with females, are tagged as gay. Yes, I like World Cup soccer, the NFL, UFC, MLB and (Gasp!) the WWE. But I also like to cook, like Impressionist and Fauvist art, like ballet, and I am a damn good amateur interior decorator. After seeing what I had done with the living room of the house I was renting with a female roommate, I took it as a high compliment when my gay neighbor said I'd make a great gay guy, except that I like women too much. Let Rajesh have a girlfriend and leave nanny state social engineering to Liberal-Fascists like New York Mayor Bloomberg.

The best example of TV audiences resisting change was the classic Leave It to Beaver (LIB) sitcom. Unfortunately, viewers were expecting a cute 8-year old to entertain them for eternity, but tuned out when Beaver Cleaver grew up to become a typical obnoxious adolescent. The show ended in June 1963. The party line was that the LIB actors wanted to move on to new opportunities. But I lived through those times and know that people were angered that Beaver wasn't "cute" anymore. But the later episodes of the series were probably the best written scripts of the show and reflected in its own naïve way, the changing times in the 1960s.

Memo to NBC: you suck at comedy. You haven't had a really funny and clever show since Frazier left the air. The Office (boring), Community (dumb), Parks and Recreation (not funny and a silly portrayal of public employees), and Saturday Night Live (dated and should have been cancelled 20 years ago) are simply NOT funny and are a waste of time. Watching these shows represent hours of your life that you'll never get back. Moreover, the so-called "carbon footprint," caused by the electricity used to broadcast these shows--if you believe in pseudo-science--is destroying Mother Earth.

But my burning contempt is reserved for the NBC show, Whitney, which is an outdated feminist polemic, disguised as a sitcom. The NBC brass keeps moving it around the weekday schedule trying to find a niche for it. Yet it's going to return in the fall. Somebody really big wants this piece of crap show to succeed. My guess is that that person has links to the DNC or NOW.

The back story for women like the Whitney character is that they are paleolithic women's libbers, i.e., "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." They demand that sex with "their" men be solely on their terms, including the unilateral right to see other men, while the "main man" waits at home sitting by the phone. Incidentally, I dated two women that are doppelgängers to the female lead of this show. But we've all had lapses of judgment.

Women like Whitney manifest their poor self-esteem through their predatory sexual attitudes and social ineptitude, i.e., they often assume the worst traits of the men that they allegedly despise. They lack manners and laugh off any social faux pas to their quirky and unconventional personality, i.e., "I'm just being me."

These women are also not above embarrassing "their men" in front of friends and strangers; or in private at the worst possible moment, e.g., before, during, or after sex. I was at a Cinco de Mayo event and listened to the wife of a really good guy bad mouth him in front of their friends and strangers. Too often, a woman like Whitney thinks that she is the smartest person in the room. She's not.