There’s a type of television program that achieves high levels of fandom that I don’t have any interest in watching, but I want to know about anyway – as a cultural study to understand its appeal to its audience and what makes it a cultural touchstone.  I have come to see any number of clips from the show “Glee”, heard some fans talk about it, read various articles about it, and I have come to a conclusion.

The Superbowl promotions demonstrate that the show has “Jumped the Shark” in a rather classic motif of the phrase.  At some point, the show found its “Bad Guy” — an annoying character of cartoonish supervillian motives the viewer is meant to love to hate, someone whose values are the opposite of all the Glee fan holds dear.  What the Superbowl promos show is that she has become the show, and with it the dynamic of the show, Glee, narrows considerably.  Which is a little odd to suggest, as the show itself has always been broad with little room for subtleties.  But if we understand a basic dimension of the show has the heroes of the misfits in the Glee Club pitted in ways overly familiar with the “in” crowd of jocks and cheerleaders, marking the bad guy as the coach of the cheer squad motivated to undermine the Glee Club at every turn just — just ’cause — brings the show to eat at itself.  There are any number of ways the show can promote itself on this broad audience — it has become a vehicle that has pushed a lot of itune purchases, and has its well orchestrated routines of popular music classics to lean on — but she was omnipresent.

Take this clip, which travelled well on the Internet when aired, a rather blunt as a boulder item of preachy moralizing with its obvious appeal — but, organic to the show.  Compare it to this explanation for the post-Superbowl time slot plot line:

HOW DO YOU get many tens of millions of football fans to watch a show about a high school show choir?
If you’re Fox’s “Glee,” you kick off your post-Super Bowl episode this Sunday with a Katy Perry dance number involving acrobatics, pyrotechnics and – wait for it – scantily clad cheerleaders.

A defining notion in “Jump the Shark” dom, tricks for ratings grabs, somewhere outside the nature of organic production.  Also a sign of things: self-directed dialouge ala “I’m bored.”

But I don’t know.  The person who suggested she watches less than she did because of the centralizing of the “bad guy” may be out of step with the audience writ large.  Also, the show did wind its way to the Thriller production, after all.  I can think of three other shows where a character took over and became its face, and two of them probably really didn’t have any identify before that happened.  (Without any regard to taste, levels of deriviativeness to the program, and etc: Family Matters and Melrose Place).  The third is where Glee seems to fit into place, and its the origin of the “Jump the Shark” phrase in the first place.

For the life of me, I don’t know if my position as basically un-concerned outsider, non-viewer, makes me less qualified in making these observations — I’m largely relaying something someone else has expressed with a glean off of how annoying her presence in the Superbowl ads were — or if not really watching it but having a passing interest in the nature of these things makes me apt to see the forest from the trees.

Did Elmo overtake Sesame Street?

Hm.  The man was visibly angry and said that the Internet is not a good place for people to exchange ideas and conversations.  Maybe?

This comment leads itself to an open-ended discussion and dialouge, no?

Back to the youtube comments in Russia Today:  LaRouche is a living legend. He would make an outstanding leader. He’s the type of guy the world needs.

Therein lies a dilemma in meeting the Thousand Year Challenge.  The Larouche ideology is that HE IS a “Leader”, right there in the fight.  It’s just that nobody knows it because he is the square root of two.   (What?  You want me to find the exact quote from the old Twentieth Century Science and Technology?)  So goes the contradiction.  The only salvo for the members might be the GLORY that comes with being on the ground floor, before the UPSURGE of Mass Genius Adulation — which will come as the British Empire is at last slained, and with it the pesky Second Law of Thermodymics.  The problem, one I am not sure the org has thought through when formulating its Thousand Year Challenge, is that once this happens the Laws of Calculus will be destroyed as well.

Unfortunately they don’t any of them have a campaign website up yet.  Well, it’s early in the process.  Early in the 2012 candidacy, and early in teh 2020 presidential candidacy.

Bottom line:
Just like I have seen the Larouchies here (at the health care public meeting, with a big photo of Hitler!) and in other cities. They are not prohibited, but again, that’s not part of the real political landscape, it’s just background.
Sort of unnoticable unless I make a point to look.  But they sell anytime a Catholic bishop warns about slipping into Eugenics as a sign for themselves.

An Interview with Aljosa Durnik!!!   No, really.  ALJOSA DURNIK!  Who can resist?

Okay.  Wikipedia Update!  I did not get the new HK “experiment” quite right.  Angel’s Flight is flying in to make the references to the various supposed Validators amongst old Soviet functionaries and Italian parlimentarians.  Fun stuff.   Meantime, unidentified commenters are levelling taunts at Will Beback to “ban everyone”.   That’s the experiment.

And meanwhile, at the Administrator’s Board… Everyone knows where this is going… and it’ll repeat itself with .:

FWIW, user:Angel’s flight has also been involved in Lyndon LaRouche-related articles, in a manner consistent with past sock puppets of a banned user. See WP:LTA/HK. So-called “Death panels” and “Obamacare” are key issues for the LaRouche movement, which has become known for its posters of Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache (because they believe the plan is similar to, and inspired by, Hitler’s T4 euthanasia program). I have not gathered specific evidence on Angel’s flight, and am not explicitly accusing that user of being a sock puppet. While we should make a practice of assuming good faith, there are times when it is not warranted.   Will Beback  talk  22:55, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, every time an editor on the LaRouche talk page disagrees with Will, Will insinuates that the editor is a sock. It seems to be SOP. Angel’s flight (talk) 16:36, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

If your suspicion is right, it would make sense of my concern, as the POV I see being advocated from Angel’s flight is definitely LaRouchian. Hauskalainen has his own POV pushing problems,[12][13][14] IMO. At worst, he seems to know “the truth” about things and can’t control his urge to opine in article space or remove things he doesn’t like with dubious edit summaries. He also can assume bad faith easily.[15][16] He can be a productive editor at other times. Jesanj (talk) 02:29, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I’ve also been concerned that Angel’s flight is a sockpuppet of a banned LaRouche editor who edits from the Los Angeles area. Angel’s flight arrived recently at Talk:Lyndon LaRouche to support reverting to parts of an old version favoured by the LaRouche account(s). I don’t know anything about the healthcare edits he has been making, but if they’re consistent with LaRouche’s “Obama is Hitler” position, that would increase the concern. SlimVirgin 16:46, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the funnier laugh-line lies here:
But I also see a long-standing problem of article ownership. I posted a request at the incident noticeboard but it drew little notice. Is there no other avenue to request some intervention from the management of Wikipedia?
I saw the notice it received.  It received the notice due to it.

We passed a couple of milestones in American Presidential Memorials.  The 50th Anniversary of John F Kennedy’s inaugural and the 100th Anniversary of Ronald W Reagaon’s birth.  Two men who are revered beyond the point they deserve, and two models for our polar partisan shaped Cult of the Presidency.

A question was asked by a political magazine blog at the time of Kennedy’s milestone — I think it was the American Prospect — Why is it someone whose presidency was so thin in accomplishments gets so haloed?  The answer lies in part with his marketing.  Consider, for instance, that one of the attributes the public always gae him in polls was that of “Good Family Man” — which may or may not be the case, but I’m guessing had there been less television coverage of his endless touch football games and more for his endless philandering, the public’s attitude would have shifted somewhat.  Then again, perhaps some hintings of the latter did him some good — the better to focus on his “Vigor”.

His Inaugural Address was delivered on a frigid cold day.  His predecessor was all bundled up, sensibly you can say, with long overcoats.  Kennedy welcomed a contrast by wearing just his suit and jacket.  He got away with it where William Henry Harrison didn’t — partially because he really was young and vigorous and partially because his speech was shorter and more succint — oriented as it is to the key soundbytes about “Torch” passed to “born in this century” and all that.

Kennedy also preceded before the Great Unravelling, before suspicion of the government exploded and was shown to be justified.  He never had to face the music, as did Johnson and Nixon, and so the cynical state machinery was not yet laid bare.  Thus, Johnson’s accomplishments can be conveniently shoved in to the public mind as Kennedy’s — because Kennedy is not holding the baggage that Johnson had to hold.

The answer to the question of Reagan, as I have suggested a time or two here, lies in answering “Who else have you got?”  Every generation of partisan has the need to revamp their reverred president — the Democrats managed to sneak away from the Jackson — Wilson axis and get to the Roosevelt — Kennedy axis.  Carter got the problem of the Republicans correct in his nomination acceptance speech — to paraphrase, Reagan is quoting a bunch of Democratic Presidents, because otherwise he’s left quoting Nixon and Hoover. 

I do slide a bit with the conspiracy theory / Left axis who charge that, for instance, the Tri-Lateral Commission was set up to curb the booming Democracy that was coming out of the 1960s protests and floodlights on State Secrecy.  Under this strageum, of course, one of America’s Greatest of Presidents was… Gerald Ford.  For no other reason than he was under a tight perimeter against public opinion forged against public distaste of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate.  It was also here that America hit its largest vault of permissive attitudes in “lifestyles”, and if this tended toward a sleazy construct like the suburban key-swapping party, at least it’s better than the government being mobilized in a Virtue Campaign.  Reagan came in to restore State Perogatives in matters of State Secrecy (nobody since Kennedy could quite get away with) and Virtue Policing, and the Republicans revere him for it.

From wikipedia:

Among other things, the Natural Law Party proposed to:

Establish a team of 1,000 yogic flyers. According to the party, such a group “dissolves collective stress, as indicated by significant reductions in crime, unemployment, sickness, and accidents, and improved economic indicators and quality of life”. They would also would provide an “invincible defence”.

Introduce daily Transcendental Meditation for all school students

Lower taxes, as yogic flyers will supposedly increase prosperity, allowing the government to collect the same amount of money with a lower tax rate

Ban genetic engineering, and encourage organic farming
The NLP proposed that a government subsidized group of 7,000 advanced meditators known as Yogic Flyers would lower nationwide stress, reduce unemployment, raise the gross national product, improve health, reduce crime, and make the country invincible to foreign attack. Hagelin called it a “practical, field-tested, scientifically proven” solution. TM would be taught to the military, to students, in prisons, and to ordinary citizens.
Hagelin predicted that implementation of the program would result in $1 trillion in savings from reduced costs for medical care, criminal prosecutions and prisons, national defense, and other government expenses. It recommended adoption of The Grace Commission reforms.^[7] The party supported a flat tax.
Election-related proposals included replacing the Electoral College with popular vote, automatic voter registration, public funding of campaigns, reducing the campaign season, and the elimination of political action committees.
Civil right planks included equal rights for women and gays, replacing bans on abortion with prevention programs, and a national referendum on capital punishment. It opposed the legalization of drugs. In 1992, it suggested the appointment of former Secretary of State George Schultz as drug czar.
It endorsed organic, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, and conservation.

Hagelin proposed that all candidates should have their brain waves recorded by EEG and the resulting “mental profiles” should be publicly disclosed, so that the voters could see which candidates had the best “brain-wave stability”. He said that the test would “allow us to avoid the possibility of a brain-dead candidate”. The proposal was dropped due to a poor reception.Like a lot of third parties, America — and the World — will never know if we would have been in better shape had we followed this platform.  Well, they continue — elected or not — and they write letters to let everyone in every corner of the Earth know what they are up to.

I once posited an idea for a book — finding the final member of the Federalist and Whig Party to win or run anything as a member of the Federalist and Whig Parties.  The truth is the two parties each dissolved into a hybrid of things — into an “Opposition” Party — and the ballot laws of the time also offered an ending to parties themselves.  In the twentieth and twentieth-century, things are not so cut and dry.  The party lines continue to exist — there are still remnants of the “Reform Party” of Ross Perot laying around — snatched up by anyone interested in using them, sometimes maintained by a party hierarchy who endorses other party candidates just to keep the party line there.  (Such that in the last presidential elections, as you see at wikipedia, individual state parties endorsed Ralph Nader or Brian Moore.)  Just as well, individual state parties just up chunked and moved into Green and whatever other parties — if the Transcental Meditators have left the building, why stay with them?

Meantime, I am fascinated that in 2010, there appears to be one candidate in the United States who ran on the “Natural Law Party”.  Alan Jacquemotte ran the very last Natural Law Party candidacy.  Maybe.   His platform does appear to be an off-shoot of the Party line, though there aren’t any yogic workers to the number of one percent of one percent of the population of stress areas — and even if he’s vying for the Ron Paul supporters.

To be honest, I don’t really care about Alan Jacquemotte.  What I want to know is … will the NLP line still be available for his use in the next election, and if not what line will he use?

I am fascinated by the manner in which opinion splits regarding Egypt, not least of which it becomes highly politicized in the nation.  Really, the only people who I peg as reasonably consistent are that type of neo-isolationist / dreary realist axis which is the order de jour at the “American Conservative”. 

The criticism of Mike Huckabee being the voice in defense of Mubarak need only turn to Dick Cheney.  Which is interesting, because I can’t quite tell if Cheney (not a neo-con, mind you) undercuts my thought that the charges from the various Fox News corner of the political discourse, and on to your John Boltons and Sarah Palins (groan… no, I don’t quite know what she wants Obama to do — Speak out for Democracy but question the protesters?  I guess we are onto something of honest policy disputes even if it’s in this narrow sphere of questions — if President Bush were doing what Palin is requesting, I’d object), that if Bush were the president right now, they would have no problem thumping everything going on in Egypt as part of the Big rush of Arab Democracy launched off of the missiles blown over in Iraq.

Which some are doing.  If they can just corner off Obama out of the picture.  Obama, you remember, who delivered this speech — which I remember with Jon Stewart mocking Republican criticism with a rendition of his words delivered out of his mouth in the way they would like it delivered — as bomb blasts.  I recall too some liberal criticism — the center of the Islamic world is shading off toward Africa, and he should have delivered the speech there.

Meantime, the Conspiracy corners are both predictable and a bit chaotic.  On one hand, they need to stand with the Egyptian protesters and can’t side toward Murbarak.  So we can trumpet this up — clandestine American involvement in Egyptian pro-democracy groups.  (Of course, wikileaks is mutli-sided — pick and choose when it’s good and when it’s part of the vast Gate-Keeping unit.)

The obvious and easy place for Liberals to go is to point to the various authoratarians the US supports.  Policy repercussions are always tricky — and we’re round the corner of the contradictions for what you do with policies.

More practical interests lie about here… the “lifestyles” section of International Politics.

The anti-abortion activist group Live Action has released its second undercover video in as many days purporting to reveal an “endemic problem” at the nation’s Planned Parenthood clinics, which Live Action accuses of facilitating the sex trafficking of minors.

The latest video, shot in Richmond, Va., follows Tuesday’s release of footage from inside a New Jersey clinic, where an employee is seen coaching a pimp and underage prostitute on how to cover up their illicit business.

Yes, this is just a reprise of the Andrew Brietbart “Pimp and Ho” deal with ACORN (legally exonerated but politically killed in the process).   But this gets me thinking… what other organizations can they go after with this particular idea?

The Sierra Club!  You have to plug in a storyline with an environmental angle to it, though.  The Pimp is coming in to ask how he can lower the carbon footprint of his Underage Prostitution Ring business.

The Southern Poverty Law Center!  We need an anti-hate group angle to go with this one.  Hm.  The pimp wants to figure out how to bring a more diverse balance to his line-up of underaged prostitutes.

I know the new “Ambush Congress-critters” genre which is taking off in our youtube age.  Nobody’s tried the “pimp and ho genre” with a member of congress yet.  They really should.  Mind you, edit it to just showing the discomfort on the congress-critter’s face, and that will suffice in inflicting the political damage sought.

Going outside the bounds of politics,  here’s how they can bring down Starbucks…

“Moreover, Planned Parenthood’s national office notified federal authorities upon learning of these and additional visits to Planned Parenthood health centers in five other states in which persons claiming to be involved in sex trafficking with minors asked for services for young women. The FBI has been collecting evidence from Planned Parenthood employees and health centers, and, as of late yesterday, was reviewing photos of at least one of the persons making these claims. The photo image was caught on security videotape by Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood brought this potential criminal activity to the attention of the highest legal authority in the United States.

Kind of like how it went down with ACORN, actually.

I walk in, bladder full.  Normal enough looking fellow standing in front of the toilet stall, says gruffly, “I’m next” as I turn to the urinal and say “Works well for me.”

As I take a leak, a woman startles me by opening and peering in.  A brief four line argument ensues which seems to resolve around grocery spending or something — instantly forgetable, but a little uncomfortable.

As I wash my hand, the guy grunts.  I did not see this comment coming.

“God I hate Heroin.”

I float my hand over the electronic air dryer, but walk out with wet hands.  I do not know what to ascribe the Heroin comment to.  Himself, the man in the stall, the girlfriend, or society in general?

All right.  As the protests ensue on the streets in Egypt…

Here’s the question… how do the events in Egypt correlate with blogger references to the Bangles’ 1986 / 1987 hit song “Walk Like an Egyptian”?

Well.  Inevitably you’ll find that sign somewhere.