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One Day at a Time: “The Politics Episode”

Every time I'm ready to give up on this series, it surprises me. But not always in a good way.

For example, the most recent episode was the first effort by a major TV series to find a way around the rules of social distancing by using animation to alleviate the need for having cast members stand so close to each other. And while the animation was nothing to make a fuss about, it worked well enough that I looked forward to seeing future episodes filmed in a similar fashion.

Unfortunately, the script was another matter. Granted, one could expect only so much from a thirty-minute sitcom episode but I still found it hard to put up with the constant parade of political cheap shots masquerading as jokes.

Yes, I get it. Nowadays is a very frustrating time to be a liberal. On the other hand, it is also frustrating to be a conservative -- especially one who does not automatically agree with the current occupant of the Oval Office. Moreover, there used to be a time when Norman Lear shows found time to focus on nuances that most sitcoms avoided. However, if the current version of One Day at a Time is any indication, those days are long gone.

Anyway, I could have lived with a sitcom whose political beliefs were different from mine if the jokes were actually funny. But like the conservative show Last Man Standing, the writers often assumed that their political humor was a lot more clever than it actually was.

It was not until toward the end of the show when the show showed a hypothetical dialogue between lead character Penelope and her conservative cousin Estrellita that the show showed any sign of genuine wit. Ironically, the one thing that won me over was the way the show managed to evoke the specter of Fidel Castro in order to explain the political viewpoints of Estrellita and Penelope without turning it into a cliché. A lesser show would have either ignored Castro or else exploited him for a number of political cheap shots. But the show managed to find a way around all that that evoked genuine sympathy from me for both Penelope and her cousin -- and for that, I am grateful.

Liberals and Conservatives

For every person who conforms to the conventional stereotype of conservative or liberal, there are many more who fall somewhere in-between. Some people are liberal on some issues like abortion and conservative on others like gun control while others are just the other way around. Indeed, even some conventional conservatives are more complicated than they appear at first glance which might explain why the one female co-worker I knew who fought hardest against a male co-worker who was a sexist jackass was also the same woman who listened to Rush Limbaugh on a daily basis. (I'm not going to pretend that all Limbaugh fans are like her but she was definitely different than what I had expected.)

That said, liberals historically tended to be more pro-active at fighting against racism, sexism and the like while conservatives rarely participated in such fights. Granted, there were exceptions like Lincoln and Eisenhower but even these were more often than not reacting against a situation. For example, Truman took it upon himself to order the racial integration of the military while Eisenhower's decision to support the integration of Little Rock was more a reaction to events than a pro-active decision.

As for Woodrow Wilson, I would like to believe that he too was an exception since he chose to expand the limits of Jim Crow during his time in office despite his reputation as a very liberal president and not many presidents on either side of the aisle did that. Then again it was not unusual to find many Democrats -- especially in the South but also in the North as well -- who were not exactly in favor of integration.

Indeed, many of the "moderate" civil rights views that some conservatives like P.J. O'Rourke take such pride in today were once considered very radical as recently as the 1960s. For that matter, I can say the same thing about certain "moderate" views concerning feminism.

Random Thoughts

You know it has rained a lot when part of the route you take to work has become a lake. As well as the park a few miles away and the golf course next to that same park.

It's a lot harder to be a philosopher when your life experiences start getting in the way. And once you get over a certain age, life experiences are always going to get in the way.

The best way to keep one's illusions about any particular group of people is to have as little experience with them as possible.

If Donald Trump did not exist, some liberals would have found it necessary to invent him.

"Don't blame me; I didn't vote for Trump" is the new "me no Alamo."

The Big Bang Theory is the new Friends.

Quote of the Week

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
--Robert Anton Wilson

Quote of the Week

The conservatives love their cheap labor; the liberals love their cheap cause. (Neither group, you will notice, ever invites the immigrants to move into their homes. Not into their homes!)
--Edward Abbey, “Immigration and Liberal Taboos”

Quote of the Week

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Random Thoughts

Isn't it funny how often those same Christians who kvetch about Cafeteria Catholics who pick and choose which part of the Bible they choose to obey routinely pass over that part of the Bible that says "Judge not lest ye be judged"?

Would Jesus Christ really care that much about some poor schnook of a store clerk who dares use the words "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"? Wouldn't he care far more about the poor and the homeless?

Aren't good Christians supposed to celebrate Jesus' death and resurrection far more than his birth?

Isn't it strange that our main response to the AIDS epidemic involved finding a new way of selling something? No one ever needed a separate store for condoms before the mid-1980s and one has to wonder about the imaginative powers of someone who is not only incapable of buying a box of condoms in an average drug store but who insists that they come in more than one color and glow in the dark to boot.

When cultural conservatives object to something, cultural liberals routinely tell them to ignore it. But when cultural liberals object to something, they can't resist making the same foolish gestures as cultural conservatives. And of course, they never just sit back and ignore what they hate but insist on giving the item they allegedly hate more and more free publicity. Witness, for example, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. If these books were really as bad as their detractors say, one would think that the last thing that people who hated the series would want to do is give the series more publicity but instead they find it more satisfying to go on and on about how bad they think the books are than, say, talking about how much they like some other author.

So What's Up with All the Old Movies, Tonio?

And why are you always asking yourself all these questions on your blog?

Okay, seriously, I am quite aware of the irony of being a young -- okay, not-so-young -- Hispanic half and half who spends so much time writing about and praising movies that were made at least a decade or more before I was born. And yet every time I try to write about more recent films, I have difficulty finding the same enthusiasm that comes when I write about some of my favorite old movies.

Perhaps it's because I'm burnt out on recent movies and no longer find them capable of surprising me in the manner I have become accustomed to. Perhaps it's because I'm genuinely interested in old movies and welcome the chance to give some of my favorites the same publicity that the newest releases get. Perhaps it's because certain old movies remind me of the type of old movies I used to watch with my late father.

I don't kid myself that the filmmakers of yesteryear were more politically correct than today's filmmakers. After all, it was a time when Jim Crow was the law in many states and even a liberal northern city like Detroit was not above passing a law in my paternal grandmother's youth restricting Mexicans from sitting outside the balcony at a local theatre. However, I'm not convinced that today's filmmakers are all that liberal, either -- especially when it comes to people like me -- and I weary of the endless combinations of bad storytelling and stereotypes that pass for filmmaking today.

Perhaps the last straw came a few years ago when I had bought a ticket to see a much-praised movie called Sideways, only to realize that the movie wasn't all that entertaining and, in fact, quite dull. Halfway through the movie, a female character starts giving a speech about her wine and how it makes her think of where it came from and all the people who worked on it. It's a very inspirational speech -- but unfortunately, it's also an unwelcome reminder that movies like that were never going to concentrate on the type of people the woman was talking about, especially the migrant workers.

And when -- like me -- you're the grandson of a migrant worker and you're watching a highly praised movie that seems to have no problem dismissing migrant workers except when they're needed to provide material for the so-called "important" people -- who, surprise, surprise, are never Hispanic -- and no critic who reviews it seems to have a problem with that, you start to realize how unlikely it is that so-called "liberal" Hollywood is ever going to make movies about people like your grandfather -- well, there was La Bamba but nobody seems in a hurry to imitate that flick -- and it's hard to avoid losing all faith in the modern movie business.

Not going to bother with people like me? Then fine. Perhaps I'll find more entertainment among movies that don't even pretend to depict the modern world. Most of the modern movies I see get life all wrong anyway.

And yes, I realize movies are fiction and they're not supposed to be 100% percent accurate at depicting reality. But it would be nice if so many of them didn't automatically exclude people like me and my late grandfather. And even nicer if so many people didn't act as if they had no problem with such exclusion.

I don't expect all movies to be about people like me but it would be nice if movies that were weren't as rare as unicorns.

All Politics Is Loco, Parte VI

I should have said this last week but I didn't. So I'm saying it now.

When I think about fighting liberals, I think about the type of muckrakers who courageously stand up to corrupt politicos and abusive lawmen. What I don't associate with the term is the type of back fence gossip defined by this post.

The funny thing about that post is that I usually admire Jill and Melina and the political stances they take. I just don't agree with their approach. After all there are a lot of more important issues involved with the candidacy of Governor Sarah Palin than whether or not she gives her kids strange names. (What? Democratic voters don't ever give their kids strange names? Or get ridiculed for it?) Or worse yet, whether she's actually the grandmother of her own child. (What? Democratic voters wouldn't mind the implication that one of their children isn't really their child? And have no problem with self-appointed muckrakers butting into their personal life?) I'd expect such tactics from the likes of Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh but from a liberal blogger? Shesh.

Aren't liberals supposed to be better than that? I realize Sarah Palin is hardly the ideal candidate as far as the average liberal is concerned -- understatement of the year -- but I used to have the notion that certain things just weren't done if you were a liberal. Apparently I was wrong.

And apparently I'm not the only one who's having issues with the way Sarah Palin has been treated. (I'm just the only one who has issues with that Brilliant at Breakfast post.)

Granted, Sarah Palin is a hard person to feel sorry for. But I had the impression that the mentality that said it was okay to do such things because the cause we're fighting for is so important was the very mentality we're fighting against. Apparently not.

I thought the various rumors spread about Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama -- he's not black enough, he's too black, he's a Muslim, he hangs out with terrorists -- were bad enough. But to hear similar garbage coming from the liberal side is just too depressing.

It's going to be a long time until Election Day.

Thoughts About Sex

1. Is America really a puritanical country or are we a hedonist country in a state of denial?

2. When it comes to one's sexual past, men tend to exaggerate, women tend to downplay.

3. Conservatives always exaggerate the amount of sex in popular culture. Liberals always downplay the amount of sex in popular culture. And yet conservatives tend to produce more children than liberals, either because liberals are more adept in their knowledge of contraceptives or else because conservatives, when dealing with sex, tend to prefer practice over theory while liberals tend to be the exact opposite.

4. No matter how liberal or conservative our culture becomes, the popular culture will never be liberal enough for liberals nor conservative enough for conservatives. At best it will reach a happy medium.

5. Pornography is that which sexually arouses the weirdo down the block. Erotica is what arouses people like you or me.

6. Men find a naked woman to be far sexier than a woman clad in lingerie yet women prefer lingerie over nudity when they have a choice.

Movie Quote of the Week

And take care, cousin. The liberals you encourage for your own ends... may destroy you for theirs. Good morning.
--John Barrymore, Marie Antoinette (1938)