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Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Tuesday Thrashings
1. ...So What Have You Done With Your Life?
In just under 120 hours of televised adventure, Jack Bauer of FoxTV's 24 has saved millions of innocent lives and extinguished quite a number of bad guys. He's also "died" twice -- it doesn't seem to slow him down much -- and has been accused of every capital crime on the books. After last night's derring-do, it appears that the climax of this fifth season's show will be a crusade to bring credible treason charges against the president of the United States.
Not a bad few lines with which to pad out a resume, eh?
But the big news is, of course, that Kiefer Sutherland, who plays Bauer, has just signed a deal for three more seasons of the hit TV thriller. It's arguably the hottest thing on the airwaves, so the incentives make good sense, but...just what crisis could Jack Bauer face next that would compare with what he's had to handle to date?
Your Curmudgeon doesn't envy the scriptwriters of 24. They must be about the weariest men in the media. Imagine having to come up with still more dramatic, still more action-packed political fantasies for at least three more years. The idea probably makes them wish their scripts for the earliest seasons had been a bit more modest, so they wouldn't have to compete with their own best ideas. Plainly, season six would pose less of a challenge if season one had been about the hunt for a missing button.
So what do you say we give them a hand?
- C.T.U. is informed that the entire North American continent will be sunk by a barrage of nuclear torpedoes that burrow unstoppably through the Earth's core unless Jack Bauer is apprehended and surrendered to the Chinese authorities for 1) having killed a Chinese consul during season four, and 2) publicly proclaiming that real men don't eat moo goo gai pan.
- Conspirators in the European pharmaceuticals industry threaten to contaminate America's drinking water with a chemical that permanently chaps the lips unless we abandon the dollar for the euro. There's an antidote, but only one man knows it, he's hiding in a private submarine at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and his price is that Jack Bauer become his bodyguard, valet, and love-slave.
- Just as Australia prepares to launch the first kangaroo-powered spacecraft, it's hijacked by Islamists who use it to take control of our network of broadcast satellites. They'll replace all our TV fare with continuous prayers in Arabic...unless Jack Bauer can stop them.
- A super-secret Hollywood alliance floods the market with movies...very special movies laced with subliminal messages that cause mass conversions to Scientology. Only one man seems to be immune...and you know who that is, don't you?
- Having finally realized that the one and only barrier to their schemes is Jack Bauer -- well, you knew they had to be dimbulbs -- the world's major terrorist organizations join forces in their search for a way to neutralize him. Their master stroke: the terrorist coalition will release naughty home videos of Kim Bauer and her beau Chase from season three onto the Internet, unless Jack Bauer agrees to shoot himself in the head on live broadcast TV.
Got any other ideas, Gentle Readers?
2. While We're On The Subject Of Television...
American broadcast television was predicated on a sponsorship mechanism. It had to be; when it emerged, there was no way to extract payment from the audience, so some other interested party had to be induced to fund it. But broadcast TV has been teetering on the edge of the chasm for some time now. The mass availability of super-smart video recorders that make it possible to skip commercials with ease has cut deeply into advertisers' willingness to spend on TV exposure. Should present trends continue, broadcasters dependent on advertising revenue must expect to go out of business in the foreseeable future.
Disney, which owns ABC, has decided to test another mode of distribution for its broadcast wares:
ABC will offer four prime-time shows including "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" on its Web site for free for two months beginning in May as it continues to expand the ways consumers can watch TV online.The shows will include advertising that cannot be skipped over during viewing. ABC, which is owned by The Walt Disney Co., already offers ad-free episodes for $1.99 each on Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes store.
The offerings on the ABC.com Web site will also include current episodes of "Commander in Chief," as well as the entire season of "Alias," and will be available through June. New episodes will be available online the day after they run on ABC.
The shows will be supported by advertisers, including AT&T Inc., Ford Motor Co., Procter & Gamble Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Unilever PLC, among others.
The experiment comes as networks try to reach viewers who watch less TV in prime-time and are embracing technology that lets them watch shows on computers and portable devices, such as an iPod.
"It's an opportunity for us to learn more about a different model," Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group, said in a panel discussion Monday at the cable industry's annual convention in Atlanta.
"None of us can live in a world of just one business model. This is about the consumer, and how the consumers use all this new technology. It's consumer first, business model second."
Your Curmudgeon can't see this as a promising route. The personal computer of today makes switching among sources of entertainment or information quick and easy. When a commercial begins, what will prevent the viewer from pulling up another browser window, or doing something else with his inherently multitasking machine? Will advertisers view this as the likeliest path, and withhold their sponsorship, or will they bet against the flexibility of the most flexible technology of our time?
At least it's unlikely that they'll agitate for the British model of consumer payment through taxation. That way lies madness.
3. The Demise Of The Democrats.
In recent years, each of our major political parties has seemed to your Curmudgeon to be its own worst enemy. The Republicans have abandoned limited-government principles, while the Democrats have surrendered to the maddest and most vitriolic of their fringes:
I got a few angry e-mails about putting on a "Blue on Blue" debate on Friday.That's where I put two Democrats on to debate the differences and the arguments among the lefties.
So Friday it was our own Bob Beckel, a Democratic strategist, and Maryscott O'Connor, who runs a far-left blog called myleftwing.com....
I asked Maryscott, "You think Bush should be impeached?" She said yes without any hesitation.
Then I turned to Beckel: "So you think that's bad for Democrats?" Oh no, this is good for the party. And if my ears did not deceive me, I think I heard sensible, moderate Beckel say he'd impeach Bush, too.
So what happens to the Democrat middle when it comes in contact with the far left? With a sincere pardon me to my friend Beckel, they cave, they give in, they join up. It's the moderate middle el foldo.
Your Curmudgeon would not have chosen Bob Beckel, who in 2000 sought to suborn one or more Republican electors to get Al Gore into the Oval Office, as a representative of moderate Democrats, but let that pass for now. Mr. Gibson is correct in his assessment of mid-liberal Democrats' tendencies when confronted by the loony Left fringe: they fold. In part this is because the fringies display impressive energy; indeed, that alone makes them appear more potent than they really are. But in at least as great a measure, it's because the Democratic rank and file have lost the courage of their convictions, without which no position can long be maintained.
Democrat-dominated administrations and Congresses have witnessed the complete failure of their domestic programs, their foreign policies, and their ideology. Except for the significant area of foreign policy / national security, the Republicans haven't done much better, but their reverses have concentrated in those areas where they've abandoned their limited government / free market principles. The choice for the voter is truly between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, but for the moment, given the dynamics of a two-party system, that's all we can expect.
Our problem for the immediate future is how to avoid endangering our national security while simultaneously giving the Republicans compelling reasons to return to Constitutional fidelity. The one bright spot in recent events is the elevation of two admirable Supreme Court Justices: John Roberts and Samuel Alito. One more might just embolden the Court to take a stand against the regulate-everything-and-beggar-the-future attitudes that reign on Capitol Hill.
Comments
America sure seems to love Jack Bauer. Just let one concerned alphabet agency agent do any of that stuff and the stuff hits the fan though. Sheesh.
Posted by og on 04/11/2006 at 05:43 PMA group of evil corporations launches a spacecraft into the core of the Sun and announces that it will slow the nucyuler fusion process unless the whole world, especially American consumers, pays a ransom. All but one of Jack’s colleagues call in sick from Tahiti. A somewhat loopy scientist pounds on the bureau door and tells Jack he can put another spacecraft into the solar core which will destroy the corporations’ spacecraft, but it must be manned.
A hive mind of creatures looking much like the skinnies in the movie version of “Starship Troopers” announce their presence by hacking into a computer involved in an international computer-chess match, and causing the computer, which had been losing the match, to win the championship. They then challenge Jack Bauer to a game for the fate of the Earth.
Satan appears in the Capitol rotunda and challenges Jack Bauer to a run for the Presidency, no holds barred.
Posted by on 04/11/2006 at 07:04 PM
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