Notes on Pop Culture: Keaton's Memoir, 'The Descendants,' 'Boss' Rules & Meeting 'Morning Joe'

Diane Keaton’s Charming Memoir

Perhaps Diane Keaton’s Then Again, should be called a “mom-ior” instead of a memoir as Keaton decided that instead of simply writing about her life and loves (Allen, Beatty, Pacino among them), she’d write an autobiography in which she parallels her story with that of her housewife mother Dorothy Hall, someone whom Keaton called the most influential person in her life.

After I finished reading the moving and endearing book -- I was especially fond of Keaton’s honesty and self-effacement -- I wrote a column about it and Keaton's attachment to her mom.

One little nugget of trivia which I found cool: Keaton's parents nicknamed her "Di-Annie." Her given surname was Hall. Di-Annie Hall. Yes, Woody Allen based the flighty lead character of his Oscar winning film Annie Hall on Keaton, whom he’d dated, and some of the characters, including Grammy Hall (which is what Keaton called her father’s loan shark of a mother), were loosely based on Keaton’s family members.

After spending several hours languishing in Keaton's world -- and learning that she drives her kids to very early swimming practices while she sits in her car and waits for them -- I've developed a hankering to see Annie Hall again. I’m also curious about Reds, which I’ve never seen, as Keaton said she thoroughly despised her character when the film was shooting and only emotionally opened up to it during the “train station” scene.


Image credit: Fox Searchlight

The Descendants Asks How Well We Know Our Parents

In the same week in which I finished Aimee Bender’s quirky, cool novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake -- where the protagonist discovers she can discern the feelings of the person who made or harvested her food by tasting it – I also laughed and sniffled my way through the new George Clooney film, The Descendants. When I exited the theater, I was surprised to discover similar themes in both the movie and the book I’d just read, hence my column which asked the question of whether we ever really know our parents, or our children for that matter.

In The Descendants, Clooney plays a distant husband with two kids, who learned, after his wife was critically injured and in a coma, that she’d been cheating on him. The film explores what happens when we open our eyes and really see what’s right in front of you and the fallout when you hide parts of yourself from the ones you love.

In the book, the lead character Rose, who is a child when the book begins, is horrified to discover by tasting the food they made that her mother is severely depressed, her father is dissatisfyingly withdrawn and her older brother is plagued with all manner of unhappy problems. This was knowledge Rose really wished she didn't have.

I didn’t wind up happening upon any unique answers to the question of whether you can really know anybody all that well, but I was thoroughly entertained and moved by both.

Boss Rules

Over on the TV blog to which I contribute – CliqueClack TV -- they recently had a poll asking readers to vote for their favorite new fall show. While I really like some of the top vote-getters like Homeland and Once Upon a Time (which I cover for CliqueClack TV), I made the argument that, despite the fact that Boss is on Starz, which artificially limits the number of viewers it has, it is the shining dark freshman show of the fall season.

After comparing Kelsey Grammer’s fictional Chicago Mayor Tom Kane to Tony Soprano, I wrote: "For a news and political junkie like myself, Boss has everything. It’s like The West Wing, only meaner, more sinister, more profane, violent and set in the gritty underbelly of Chicago politics. And if Grammer doesn’t win an Emmy for best actor in a drama, that’ll be a crime.”

Its first season has been stellar. If you have the chance to check it out, do.

Meeting Morning Joe

I’ve written here numerous times about my love of the MSNBC morning chat show Morning Joe. It’s on my TV every weekday morning, entertaining me, challenging me, angering me and informing me. I’m a fan of the fundamental organizing conceit of the show: To have rational, intellectual discussion about the important issues of the day without chopping everything down to soundbites and without demonizing one political side or the other. Both sides get a voice.

Thus when I attended the Massachusetts Conference for Women in Boston this week, where Morning Joe’s hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski gave the keynote address, and learned that they’d be meeting and greeting folks and signing books, I had to get in line.

They were very gracious and Joe Scarborough was incredulous when I told him that my kids watch Morning Joe along with me as they get ready for school and that my fifth grader has actually gone to school and had arguments with his classmates over tax policy. True story.

The photo quality is pretty cruddy – what do you want from a BlackBerry camera? – but the smiles were genuine.

Image credits: Amazon, Fox Searchlight, Amazon.

'Occupying' Our Sense of Right & Wrong: Calls for Modifying the U.S. Economic System

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The ugly scene in Oakland this week -- where police broke up an Occupy Oakland protest that resulted in the serious injury of an Iraq War vet -- I fear, is just the beginning. Is this scene – where officials violently cracked down on protesters (some of whom, a minority of the protesters, were inciting the police with their own violence) – going to replicate itself all over the nation in other disgruntled, makeshift tent cities?

As more and more Occupy Wall Street protests spring up -- newly emboldened by recent Congressional Budget Office numbers showing that over the past 30 years the top 1 percent of U.S. wage owners have seen their incomes rise by 275 percent as compared to 40 percent for middle income wage earners – and you consider that a recent with a New York Times/CBS poll found that 74 percent of Americans believe our country is on the wrong track, and you find that there’s an overall unsettled feeling out there, like the way the air feels right before a big storm, electric, with an edge of unpredictable danger and the meteorologists can only speculate about what's going to happen next.

While I was watching the new footage of the Oakland protests, I read Nicholas Kristof’s column in today’s New York Times about the merits of some of the Occupy Wall Street group’s arguments. And damn, was that piece powerful and persuasive. Some excerpts from the writer who billed himself “as passionate a believer in capitalism as anyone:”

“Capitalism is so successful an economic system partly because of an internal discipline that allows for loss and even bankruptcy. It’s the possibility of failure that creates the opportunity for triumph. Yet many of the major banks are too big to fail so they can privatize profits while socializing risk.”

Privatizing the profits while socializing the risk . . . I haven't heard anyone put the current economic situation that succinctly and that well.

Kristof also quoted the CEO of “one of the world’s largest money managers” as suggesting that what we need is to modify the nation’s economy, practice “'inclusive capitalism’ and embrace broad-based job creation while curbing excessive inequality.”

“You cannot be a good house in a rapidly deteriorating neighborhood,” the CEO told Kristof. “The credibility and the fair functioning of the neighborhood matter a great deal. Without that, the integrity of the capitalist system will weaken further.”

Then you listen to conservative Republican Joe Scarborough in the video above from today's Morning Joe, where he’s talking about a guy in his late 20s who worked for a hedge fund a half dozen years ago who complained to Scarborough that he was only making $2-3 million a year and was thinking of leaving his company so he could go to a boutique hedge fund where he’d get an even more lucrative salary. Noting that even CEOs who run their companies into the ground now receive multi-million-dollar golden parachutes, he said, “It is so skewed that it is perverse.”

Why yes, yes it is.

No Labels: A Moderate Movement Which Really Scares, Irritates Partisans

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What does it mean when people on the political left and the political right absolutely freak out and take aim at you and call you names because you want to change the way of doing business in American politics? Perhaps it means that you’re onto something.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a new non-partisan, middle-of-the-road political group No Labels which extols the high-minded ideals of putting aside hyper-partisanship and ditching the Democrat/Republican/liberal/conservative labels in favor of making commonsense decisions about issues and finding ways to work together in the arena of ideas, all while refusing to demonize those with whom you disagree. At the time, I wrote that while I love the group’s premise, I wondered if they had a snowball’s chance in hell of ever seeing anything they stand for come to fruition, questioned whether this was just a quaint Mr. Smith Goes to Washington notion or a workable blueprint for ethical, civic discourse in the future.

I routinely watch the MSNBC talk show Morning Joe each morning because of the fact that it embodies the No Labels notion: People from all points of the political spectrum INCLUDING those in the middle -- who usually get ignored because it’s not as “exciting” to interview someone who refuses to throw rhetorical darts at others -- are featured and they all engage in vigorous, intellectual debate. I like that. It compels me to think, prompts me to assess the various political positions and tease out the areas in my own head where people, should they be willing to do so, could carve out a workable policy. Joe Scarborough, one of the hosts, a former Republican congressman and has appeared at No Labels events, has famously criticized and praised both Republicans and Democrats and he doesn’t shy away from staking out his positions without making it personal. The guests on the show reflect that.

And yet the likes of left-leaning columnist Frank Rich from the New York Times have taken on Morning Joe (which he called a “clubby and chipper . . . gabfest”) and No Labels which he derided as having a patronizing raison d’etre while likening it to “a progressive high school’s Model U.N.” (Pot, here’s the kettle . . .) Then he added this: “The notion that civility and nominal bipartisanship would accomplish any of the heavy lifting required to rebuild American is childish magical thinking, and, worse, a mindless distraction from the real work before the nation.”

Childish. It’s “childish” to say that when elected officials disagree that perhaps it would be wise to seek areas of common ground and try to work from there instead of retreating to opposing corners and hurling spitballs? It’s “childish” to suggest that it’s unproductive to demonize people because of their political labels because that’s not how the hard world of politics operates?

I teach my kids to behave in the way that No Labels is advocating that those in the political arena embrace: I ask my children to build consensus, to listen to one another and to ignore the urge to pillory someone personally because he or she doesn’t agree with you on everything. (This approach works in a good marriage as well.)

Over on the left-leaning Salon, Alex Pareene dismissed No Labels' organizers as “the idle rich” who are “fantasizing that they’re smarter than everyone else.” Really? It’s smug and elitist to ask that people find ways to work together despite the fact that the leaders of the two political parties do not want bipartisan cooperation because it could hurt their chances of gaining political power? Asking for folks to stop acting like mindless, lockstep political automatons is a fantasy and smacks of sanctimony?

The right-leaning National Review likened No Labels to “a giant, self-parodying prank.” Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh also attacked No Labels by calling the notion of organizing around the “moderate center” as “fraudulent.”

I could list pundit after pundit – who makes his or her living off of stoking the embers on the conservative or liberal ends of politics – who has similarly attacked the No Labels people as wimps for not firmly planting their political flag in red territory or blue territory because, to these pundits’ way of thinking, you’ve got to be in one side OR the other or else you’re a spaghetti-spined idiot . . . never mind the fact that, according to the Gallup organization, as of their December 10 poll, 34 percent of the American electorate define themselves as Independents, as compared to 33 percent who identify themselves as Republicans and 32 percent as Democrats. Apparently the American public is comprised of fence-sitting, fraudulent “magical thinking” morons too. (The Gallup data says 48 percent of those polled “leaned Republican” while 44 percent “leaned Democrat.”)

What puzzles me is this: It’d be much easier to just accept the political institutions as they are, to just fall in line in one of two major political parties and do what the leaders tell you to do. (Failure to tow the party line could result in leaders taking away your office or funding for your staff, eliminating projects in your district, threatening to run other people against you in a primary, etc.) How hard is it to just say, “That’s my party’s agenda and I’m following it . . . This is what the party leaders want, so I’m sticking with my party,” as opposed to evaluating an issue on a case-by-case basis, having a spine, making your own evaluation and deciding what's not only is best for your constituents, but for the nation as a whole, putting your country AHEAD of your political party? To run for office without the support of the Democratic or Republican parties, to vote independently of what your political party leaders want, is clearly the more difficult road to travel.

The more these folks protest and name call, the more I think No Ideas is onto something, perhaps something big.

Image credit: No Labels.

Centrist Political Group Trying to Promote Civil Bipartisanship, But Will It Work?

Okay, so it’s got a pretty lame name, this new bipartisan group, No Labels, which is calling for D.C. politicians to stop insisting that every issue be seen strictly through a partisan lens and demands that lawmakers put aside their fierce political cynicism in order to seek consensus, all the while trying to be a tad civil to one another, as opposed to demonizing and screaming at one another.

All of these goals sound so eminently reasonable, in the way that Jon Stewart’s Rally for Sanity sounded reasonable. Who WOULDN’T want to seek out the middle ground of issues, where most Americans find themselves, as opposed to the noisy political edges which suck up all the oxygen and media coverage. (It’s a lot more fun for the media to cover nastiness and sniping from either side of the political aisle -- particularly when they hurl insults at one another, throw up roadblocks and offer poison pill amendments to bills -- than it is to cover the moderates in either party ‘cause they're not turning red and calling the people who don't think like them soulless monsters.) The way things operate nowadays, there’s nothing to be gained by staking out a moderate position on anything, not when the parties are currently doing business with a “you’re either with us or against us” mentality.

Which is why something like this “No Labels” group (seriously wish they’d come up with a better, snappier name) -- comprised of people who don’t lambaste a Republican who works with Democrats or who doesn’t tow the party line as a RINO (and the same for a Dem who works with Republicans) -- seems so promising, at least to those of us who aren’t on the political extremes and who don’t see it is as a mortal sin to agree with (or seek out agreement) with someone from another political party.

Here’s an excerpt from this organization’s “declaration:”

“We are not labels – we are people.

We care deeply about our country.

We are frustrated and concerned about the tone of politics.

We are passionate about addressing America’s challenges.

We are Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

Most importantly, we are Americans.

We believe hyper-partisanship is destroying our politics and paralyzing our ability to govern.

We may disagree on issues, but we do so with civility and mutual respect.

We believe in the vital civil center — a place where ideas are judged on their merits.

. . . And yet, we have a crisis of governance – A crisis that compels us to work together to move America forward.

We must put our labels aside, and put the issues and what’s best for the nation first.”

Hmm. What to make of this? Idealistic for sure, Frank Capra/Mr. Smith Goes to Washington idealistic. But will it, can it become a bona fide “movement” with real clout with lawmakers? Can it make a difference?

The Huffington Post reported that No Labels will have its first, splashy launch event on Dec. 13 at Columbia University where several prominent current and former pols will discuss the virtues of political civility and moderation, including Joe Scarborough, the Republican former congressman and current host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. His co-host, Mika Brzezinski, who leans toward the Democratic side of things, will moderate the panel.

Among the other scheduled launch party participants Huffington Post named included: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, Independent (formerly Democratic) Senator Joe Lieberman, former Republican Rep. Tom Davis, Republican Rep. Chris Shays, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Republican Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.

Think something like this has a shot of altering the dialogue in D.C., of promoting bipartisanship and actually getting stuff done or is it, to quote another Capra film, just “sentimental hogwash?”

Image credit: No Labels.

Notes on Politics: The Would-Be Book-Burning Pastor & 'Morning Joe'

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I usually have the tiny TV in my kitchen tuned to MSNBC’s Morning Joe as I read the morning newspapers, guzzle down cups of coffee and help the kids get off to school on time on weekday mornings. I love the thoughtful, honest back-and-forth, the appreciation for varying viewpoints and for the fact that people aren’t stock characters right out of Hollywood’s Central Casting, that if you’re a Republican, you always think X or if you’re a Democrat, you always think Y and neither the twain shall meet.

Which is why this morning when I heard that they were going to interview the Florida clergyman who made international headlines by saying he was going to burn Korans on September 11, I was surprised.

Then my surprise morphed into something else after I watched the segment.

Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski introduced Pastor Terry Jones on live TV, then told him that journalist and former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham had a “message” for him. Meacham then proceeded to lecture Jones on the teachings of Jesus and about forgiveness and asked him, one Christian to another, to not burn the Korans. “The course you suggested is going to be incredibly dangerous and [I] would ask you to desist in the name of New Testament theology,” Meacham said.

At which point, Brzezinski replied, “Pastor Terry Jones, we appeal to you to listen to that, and we don’t really need to hear anything else, so thanks.” Then the satellite feed to Jones was taken off screen and the panelists discussed the matter without him.

Some people think this was a good way to “marginalize a media whore,” but I don’t.

Morning Joe's raison d'être is providing analysis on news, politics and culture, conducting interviews and asserting learned, sometimes passionate opinions while trying to fight their way through a thicket of ideas and ideologies to get to some semblance of truth. But inviting a person on your program under the guise of interviewing him, lecturing him then shutting off the camera was too far over the line for me. It felt wrong. It felt unfair and if there’s one thing that Morning Joe usually isn’t is unfair.

If you think the nutty pastor with a flock of a few dozen is damaging the country, is threatening to do something vile and is getting a disproportionate level of international media attention (far too much if you ask me), then you have two choices from an ethical standpoint: Either refuse to give him airtime and attention or give him airtime but pummel him with pointed, yet fair questions and allow him to do the damage to himself.

I don’t like what this pastor wanted to do – or what the Drudge Report is saying other unhinged so-called pastors and other people are planning to do tomorrow at various locations – and don’t see how it’s an answer or solution to anything. It certainly isn’t an apt memoriam for those who were killed by terrorists on September 11.

But what I saw on Morning Joe this morning really bothered me, as a journalist and as a Morning Joe fan.

Morning Joe coverage this morning notwithstanding, what do you think of the way the media has handled this story?

Notes on Politics: Jenny Sanford Goes Public and Gets Critiqued

Jenny Sanford -- the soon-to-be-ex-wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" Sanford -- has been all over the media promoting her memoir, Staying True, about her life with the man who humiliated her by going on national television and tearfully declaring that his mistress was his "soul mate."

Sanford's the anti-Good Wife, the lead character of a CBS drama about a wife who has remained married to her philandering politician husband (who slept with prostitutes) who's incarcerated on charges of political corruption. Jenny Sanford decided she wasn't going to put up with her husband's insane behavior any longer, after several attempts to reconcile with him. So she's divorcing Mark Sanford and wrote a book about their experiences together. Jenny Sanford, who took time off from her career to raise the Sanfords' four boys and provide political advice to her husband, says she wants to return to work soon, but in the meantime, she's promoting Staying True and fielding criticism for doing so.

When she appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning, co-host Mika Brzezinski said that Jenny Sanford "chose a public route with this book" and asked how her four children are handling all of this publicity. Sanford responded, rightfully so, by pointing out that it was her husband who made this all public in the first place, whose e-mails to and from his lover were read from coast-to-coast. "It would not have been my choice to bring this scandal out in the light," Sanford said. (She also appeared on The Daily Show where she was asked a similar question.)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Going ahead and writing this book has made Jenny Sanford the target of criticism and public debate about her own level of responsibility for her predicament and whether she's hurting her children by speaking out publicly:

On Huffington Post, there was an entry debating whether she should've stayed with her cheating husband.

The Washington Post pinned the blame on Sanford for putting up with mistreatment, with writer Ruth Marcus commenting, ". . . [T]he most disappointing part of Staying True is that, consciously or not, Jenny Sanford reveals her own complicity -- not in facilitating her husband's affair, but in allowing herself to be treated so badly for so long."

PunditMom was likewise disappointed in Jenny Sanford after reading excerpts from her memoir, saying, "By marrying [Mark Sanford] and allowing her sons to see her treated in such a casually neglectful way, it sure doesn’t seem like she stayed true to herself or to her obligation as a parent to give her children an example of what a healthy marriage should look like . . . Clearly, their marriage was lacking. One could say, well that’s just between them, but it isn’t — they have four sons who’ve watched and learned about what a woman is willing to put up with for the sake of keeping her man, even a louse who acts like he couldn’t care less."

The same criticism could and has been lobbed at Hillary Clinton -- who also wrote a book mentioning her husband's mistreatment -- as well as at other wives of male politicians who've not only publicly discussed their husband's infidelity but remained married to the men who have treated them poorly, and in full view of their children. I'm of the mind that it's really, really difficult to say what you, personally, would do if you were Jenny Sanford or Hillary Clinton. It makes me uncomfortable to judge women as strong (or good role models) based on whether they stay or leave their cheating husbands, or whether they put their own story out into the public sphere or suffer in silence (like Silda Spitzer).

I keep thinking of Elizabeth Edwards who wrote her own memoir detailing her response to learning that her husband John had cheated on her, and decided that she'd stay married to him. A year later, after all manner of scandal and searingly awful personal details have come out about Elizabeth and John Edwards and John's mistress (and his love child), and the couple has announced their separation. Am I going to judge Elizabeth Edwards for writing her book, talking publicly about the pain John caused her and her decision to stay with him in 2009, and now, a year later, she's changed her mind? Nope. I'm not Elizabeth Edwards. And I'm not Jenny Sanford nor am I Hillary Clinton. I feel for all of these women and hope that they, and their children, can somehow find some peace amid the wreckage caused by their cheating husbands.

Image credit: Jenny Sanford's web site.

Notes on Politics: Mass. Senate Election Ends Obama's Freshman Year with a Whimper

I don't totally buy into the notion that a major reason Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race was because Bay State voters are ticked off at President Barack Obama. Other than Brown's declaration that he doesn't like the current health care reform legislation -- being negotiated in secret as pricey goodies are doled out -- and wants to start fresh with a new reform bill, I think this Senate race was about Massachusetts politics more than it was about the president, but the president's going to pay the price, perception-wise.

With a state mired in political scandal after political scandal, Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi said if Coakley lost, Democrats could point fingers at their own performance in the State House. Look at what's happened in Massachusetts state government in the past few years: Democratic House speakers have resigned their post in disgrace including one who's facing federal corruption charges and another who was stripped of his law license last week after he'd pleading guilty to obstruction of justice charges, a Democratic state legislator is awaiting trial on charges that she allegedly stuffed bribe money into a bra and the first-term Democratic governor has an anemic 39 percent approval rating. Vennochi wrote:

"The epic battle between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha Coakley is drawing national attention as a referendum on President Obama. But Brown is also tapping into that special brand of anger that helps Republicans beat Democrats in otherwise solidly blue Massachusetts.

When the party in power gets too arrogant -- as often, it does -- the people get mad. Over the past two decades, they sent their message by electing three successive Republican governors."

However when President Obama made a last-minute trip to Boston on Sunday to try to revive the Coakley campaign, he unwisely injected himself into the Senate race. The Brown victory will now add to the perception that Obama is not only weakening, as he suffers from plunging approval numbers nationwide -- went from a high of 61 percent to the current 47, according to the Chicago Tribune -- but is also being dissed by one of the bluest state's in the country, one that gave him a 26-point margin of victory in 2008.

While watching MSNBC's review of Obama's freshman year on Morning Joe, it's clear that what started off on such a triumphant and positive note on a cold inauguration day in Washington, D.C. in 2009 has gone downhill quickly for the president. Hopefully year two will prove to be a better one.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CBS has a comprehensive, number-crunching summary of Obama's first year including how many foreign trips he made, how many bills signed, pardons issued and rounds of golf.

Noteworthy People/Things/Events of 2009

The Notes from the Asylum list of noteworthy people, things and events of 2009, in no particular order . . .

Barack Obama inaugurated. That moment of national pride upon seeing the first African-American president sworn into office seems like a very long time ago. Since that cold January day in Washington, D.C. we’ve seen the president highlighted in the news for:

• The First Family’s search for a dog
• The Professor Gates imbroglio
• The question of whether Obama and the French president actually checked out a teenager’s booty in full view of the media
• A congressman shouting, “You lie” at the president during his address to Congress about the health insurance reform legislation
• The swine flu vaccine debacle (not enough vaccines despite government promises) and nationwide H1N1 scare (aided and abetted by Vice President Joe Biden’s I-wouldn’t-put-my-family-on-an-airplane-right-now comment on the Today Show)
• The contentious debates and town hall meetings about the health care legislation
• A controversial stimulus bill, with federal money being spent on some, um, controversial items
• The likes of AIG honchos getting mega-bonuses while unemployment numbers climb into the double-digits
• The federal government’s attempts to help revive the ailing U.S. automotive industry inspiring the nickname “Government Motors”
• The massacre at Fort Hood
• Tens of thousands of US troops being sent to Afghanistan
• The president killing a fly on camera.

Yes, it’s been a very long, weird freshman year for President Obama.

Sarah Palin, the former VP nominee who resigned the Alaska governorship this year. Hey, who says books are dead? Palin’s autobiography and well attended book tour events says books aren’t quite dead yet. At least all the attention paid to her book and her Oprah interview took the immature daddy of her grandson off out of the news, for a little while.

The season finale of Mad Men. Coupled with “The Gypsy and the Hobo” episode -- where Don finally confessed almost all of his dirty little secrets to his wife Betty -- these two episodes set the bar impossibly high for what it means to deliver intelligent, riveting, quality television. Completely. Besotted.

Morning Joe. The MSNBC talk show, which is always on in the kitchen as I get the kids ready for school on weekday mornings, boasts a lively mix of liberal and conservative ideologies, smart discussion and bar room humor all in one. It has had a great year and has earned my viewer loyalty.

Jon Hamm on SNL. Take note other celeb would-be Saturday Night Live hosts: Jon Hamm may have made being funny in the unevenly written sketch show LOOK easy when he hosted, but it’s not. Just ask his Mad Men co-star, January Jones. Oh, and those two actors being photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair earlier this year . . . those images constituted my favorite photo shoot of the year.

The Gosselin saga. Eight is enough apparently . . . especially when you throw some girlfriends into the mix. This was a sad, sad chapter in American pop culture lore where parents put their eight cute children in front of TV cameras for TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8 and were then dismayed when those cameras wound up capturing the disintegration of their marriage. One might’ve hoped that this private-moment-made-public would’ve caused other parents to reconsider putting their kids on reality show programs. Alas, it didn’t.
 

Watched MSNBC's 9/11 Footage This Morning, Couldn't Help Myself

I didn't want to watch it, the footage from 9/11. I sort of happened into watching it.

Morning Joe was on the TV in the kitchen and, while I was reading the newspapers and nursing my third cup of coffee, I was surprised to see MSNBC re-broadcast the original footage from Sept. 11, 2001 as it unfolded on live TV. And I couldn't bring myself to turn it off.

I gasped at the same places at which I originally gasped when I watched the Today Show eight years ago, especially the moment when my then-3-year-old son and I saw the second airplane crash into the twin towers. I got the chills and a sickening feeling in my gut as the towers collapsed and eyewitnesses told Katie Couric and Matt Lauer about the horrors they'd seen on the streets of New York.

I recalled the intense feelings of uncertainty and fear when, at one point on that fall morning in 2001, people weren't sure if there'd been bombs planted in buildings around New York and Washington, D.C., whether there'd been a bomb at the State Department and exactly how many airplanes had been hijacked. I flinched when I heard the voice of the late Tim Russert, providing updates from Washington.

I kept MSNBC on all morning while I worked and felt as though I was peeking inside of a time capsule, one we open once each year.

Above you'll see an AP photo of the location where the towers once stood. Ground Zero. Still reminds me of an open wound.

Image credit: Matt Lennihan AP via MSNBC.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: 'Buy American' Stimulus $ Controversy, Mass. Senate Seat Contest & Sawyer Gets ABC Anchor Desk

'Buy American' Stimulus Money Controversy

The Boston Globe ran a disturbing page one story about how some of the $787 billion in federal stimulus money, which was supposed to be used to put Americans back to work and help keep American companies stay afloat, is being spent on products made in other countries. The Globe reported:

"As local governments race to spend stimulus money, many are seeking exemptions from the law's 'Buy American' restrictions, which were intended to prevent taxpayer money from ending up on foreign pockets. The administration has granted waivers for goods as varied as steel for public housing projects, high-speed Internet equipment, and Auburn's (Maine) manhole covers, which have heavy-duty hinges to help withstand the town's heavy truck traffic.

The Obama administration could not provide a list or amount of waivers granted -- which potentially could total billions of dollars -- and Vice President Joe Biden's office, which has responsibility for overseeing the stimulus, did not respond to requests for comment."

However when I read this line, "the EPA issued a blanket exemption for foreign-made components last month as long as they do not amount to more than 5 percent of a stimulus project's cost," I had to wonder exactly how much money we're talking about being spent on foreign made goods. Granted, President Obama and Congress sold this stimulus package as a Put-America-Back-to-Work program, but have apparently, when it comes to the nitty-gritty of distributing the funds, administration officials have quietly decided to alter the program's dictates after the fact, making it a Put-America-Back-to-Work-Except-If-Some-Entities-Using-Federal-Money-Really-Want-Foreign-Products.

In order to figure out just how big of a deal this really is, we need to know exactly how much is being spent on non-American goods and whether there's any truth to what "critics" of the "Buy American" clause in the stimulus plan say, that "the waivers reflect the reality that the United States no longer makes many basic goods, and that in a global economy many products are assembled in several countries, rendering the rules unenforceable."

Mass. Senate Seat Contest Gains At Least One Contender

Now that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy has been laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, candidates to serve out the remaining couple of years of his term are starting to come out of the woodwork. Kennedy's nephew, former U.S. Congressman Joe Kennedy is expected to announce within the next day or two whether he'll pick up the political baton on behalf of his family and run.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has said she's in, regardless of whether any Kennedy family member enters the race. (If she won, she'd be the first female senator from Massachusetts.) Others who are toying with running include former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling (who, if Politico is right might have trouble running on the GOP ticket), former Mass. Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey and former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andy Card.

This has the makings of an exciting Senate race, something Massachusetts hasn't had in some time.

Sawyer Gets ABC Anchor Desk

To learn that, come January, two out of three of the anchors for the Big Three network newscasts will be women was very heartening to me. I'm so looking forward to the day when seeing and regarding a woman as an authoritative network news anchor is no longer a question to be debated or discussed, but simply a given. Women anchor the cable network newscasts all the time, all day long, so why should a woman anchoring a network newscast be any different (other than the small fact that the network news audience skews older than for the cable news networks and may be more uncomfortable with a female anchor)?

When Katie Couric assumed the helm of the CBS Evening News, her initial reviews were mired in sexist language and were sometimes patronizing, as people mused and mocked her clothing, her body and her make-up. She was skewered and verbally flogged. Before Couric, Elizabeth Vargas had been chosen to be the co-anchor of the ABC World News along with Bob Woodruff. That lasted about six months or so before Woodruff was seriously injured while covering the Iraq War and Vargas decided to move over to ABC's weekly news magazine 20/20 after learning she was pregnant with her second child and that the World News schedule wouldn't work for her. Decades ago, Barbara Walters and Connie Chung struggled as co-anchors on network broadcasts, gigs that didn't last long. Will the anchoring experience be different for Sawyer?

Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather joined the crew of Morning Joe to discuss women as network news anchors. See the first part of their chat here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

However my glee over Sawyer's ascension was tempered once I started to read some of the details and reactions to Sawyer's selection, details like the quote from ABC president David Westin who told the New York Times, "This was not a result I wanted." Details like the rumors that outgoing ABC anchor Charlie Gibson is "livid" that Sawyer was tapped as his replacement.

Then there are the photos people have been running of Sawyer when she was a young beauty queen, long before she was hired to work in the Nixon White House and before she became a household name. Where, I ask you, are the high school and teenaged photos of male news anchors so that we can see "how far" they've come? Did we see photos of a young, awkward Brian Williams when he became the anchor of the NBC Nightly News? Or of Gibson when he took over from Vargas and Woodruff? Or is this kind of hey-don't-take-her-so-seriously shtick just reserved for female anchors like Couric and Sawyer?

And what was with U.S. News & World Report's Bonnie Erbe who, instead of celebrating, derided the whole development, calling network newscasts a "pink collar ghetto" because now women are the majority of anchors? Erbe wrote:

"That Charlie Gibson is leaving his post as anchor of World News Tonight and Diane Sawyer is replacing him may be emblematic of the declining power of the network evening newscasts . . . First Katie, now Diane. It should be an historic moment for female newscasters, who now outnumber men by 2 to 1 on the three major commercial broadcast networks. Instead, it feels like an after-thought. Funny, I never thought I'd live to see the day when the network newscasts became a pink collar ghetto. But with Rachel Maddow now almost as prominent than Katie Couric and Bill O'Reilly much more frequently in the news than Charlie Gibson, it's fair to say that day has arrived."

Sometimes it seems like women just can't win.

'Mad Men' Reviews, 'Morning Joe' Cast as 'Mad Men,' Plus Hamm's Early Acting Gigs

Mad Men season three premiere reviews are starting to roll in -- for those lucky folks who got advanced media screeners -- and the reviews appear to be really good, as good as I expected they'd be. Which only means my expectations for Sunday night's episode are now, oh, I don't know . . . sky high?

From the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley: "Even more than in the first two years, this new season, which begins on Sunday on AMC, stresses the less amusing side of that innocence, leading viewers to look back, aghast at, and enthralled by, a world so familiar and so primitive. Characters on Mad Men struggle in shame and secrecy with the very things that today are openly, incessantly boasted and blogged about: humble roots, broken homes, homosexuality, unwed motherhood, caring for senile parents."

Boston Globe, Matthew Gilbert: "Sunday's hour is, like many episodes of Mad Men, quiet on the surface. There are pauses in conversation, and almost no soundtrack music fills the silences and emotional vacancies. And yet the subject matter of this show shouts at you the more you think about it, the more the characters don't say what you know they are feeling. In even the smallest details -- watch how a stick pin travels through the episode -- Mad Men remains TV at its most artful. Like Don Draper, it's beautiful, stealthy, trouble, and, above all, addictive."

Entertainment Weekly, Ken Tucker (who gave the episode an A-): "The third-season premiere of Mad Men is chock-full of revelations about familiar characters and fresh details about newly introduced ones, as well as the sort of specifics and symbolism that creator Matthew Weiner layers into every episode like a top Top Chef. As with so much about Mad Men, some of it is overheated but never half-baked, and the opening hour rises like a nearly flawless souffle of sex and salesmanship." (I'm in love with that phrase, "flawless souffle of sex and salesmanship." Wish I'd come up with it.)

Los Angeles Times, Robert Lloyd: "That nothing much seems to be happening -- and happening slowly at that, to the frustration of some viewers -- means that small moments play large; it's television as Japanese tea ceremony. Characters are built gradually through action, not declaration, and that action might stray far from what is eventually revealed as the main point. There are those who find this all precious beyond belief -- with an average of only 1.8 million viewers an episode last season, this is a series that would not survive at all on broadcast television -- but I find it quite beautiful more often than not."

Meanwhile, people are having a bit of fun with all of this Mad Men mania leading up to the season three premiere, in particular, the folks at Mediaite who took the crew from MSNBC's Morning Joe and assigned them roles on Mad Men, casting the show's namesake, Joe Scarborough as Don Draper, Mika Brzezinski as Joan Holloway and Willie Geist as the slimy Pete Campbell. Of Scarborough, writers Rachel Sklar and Glynnis MacNicol observed:

"Scarborough, a former Congressman, is certainly no stranger to selling, nor does he lack for Draper-esque confidence. We've noticed he's traded in his zipper sweatshirts for dark suits of late, but that's not all it is -- of any character on Morning Joe, he's the one we can most easily see sitting in a darkened bar with a glass of something amber at his side. Besides, couldn't his book [The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise] on the GOP just as easily have been called Meditations on an Emergency?"

Over on BuzzFeed, they must've taken a little visit to IMDB to look up Jon Hamm's acting roles and listed his top six acting gigs, including the time he was Lorelai Gilmore's most boring date ever on the Gilmore Girls and when he was a firefighter on Providence before the days of Denis Leary as an alcoholic firefighter with a death wish.

Image credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Is It Sexist to Question Sotomayor's Judicial Temperament?

That was the question raised on MSNBC's Morning Joe this AM: Whether South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham would've asked a male Supreme Court nominee about his reputed tough demeanor in the courtroom and then inquire if the nominee had "a temperament problem."

Co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough asked author and former Clinton spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers -- she wrote Why Women Should Rule the World -- about whether a double-standard was at work with Sotomayor's questioning. After noting that of the 111 Supreme Court judges ever to hold office, only two have been female, Myers discussed the importance of getting more women to serve on the highest court in the land:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Below you'll find the video of Graham's confirmation hearing questioning so you can make your own call on the matter. Citing the comments of anonymous lawyers who called Sotomayor "a terror on the bench," "abuses lawyers" and is "a bit of a bully," Graham said, "I never liked appearing before a judge that I thought was a bully . . . Do you think you have a temperament problem?"



Is this a case of holding strong, tough women -- who insist that those around them exhibit the same level of excellence as they do -- to a different standard than we do to men? The classic "she's a b*&%$" while he's a striving, high-powered executive with smarts?

UPDATE: Salon's Broadsheet blog puts an interesting twist on the "temperament" question, pointing out two examples -- questions about John McCain and John Bolton's temperaments -- which say that simply raising the issue of a hot temper doesn't necessarily make the questioning sexist.

The web site Feministing quoted a former Yale Law School dean who looked into rumors about Sotomayor being "overly aggressive" on the Court of Appeals and said he didn't find any substantial difference between her questioning of attorneys and male judges' inquiries.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: All Media Smackdown Edition, NYT/Daily Show, Stewart/Scarborough, Letterman/Palin

NYT Gets Slammed on Daily Show

Did the New York Times staffers who agreed to participate in a recent Daily Show segment about the future of the dying newspaper industry realize that the Daily Show is all about SATIRE? Did they not expect wacky questions? Sharp hey-dude-you're-so-toast darts to be thrown their way?

It doesn't appear as though those thoughts crossed their minds when they decided to partake in the piece. Judge for yourself by watching the segment below, a scathing portrait of out-of-touch editors, though Executive Editor Bill Keller's comment about how the Huffington Post can't and doesn't have bureaus in far-flung and dangerous locales because it doesn't have the money to do so was interesting, but only to a limited degree because you know what, the NYT shouldn't be bragging about having more money than anyone else right now, particularly when they're threatening to shutter the Boston Globe (which already eliminated a lot of its foreign bureaus because of costs) because of red ink. That last joke, about what's black and white and red all over: Killer. (Link to the video here):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Stewart and Scarborough Go Mano-a-Mano . . . Through Their TV Shows

I've been monitoring this (manufactured?) controversy between the Daily Show's Jon Stewart and Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough. (For the record, I'm a fan of both guys and their shows.) In a nutshell, Morning Joe recently decided to team up with Starbucks as a sponsor, seeing as though the anchors, Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are conspicuous consumers of Starbucks products during their news casts. This made them big, fat, irresistible targets for spoofing. Cue: Stewart. This resulted in the anchors going back and forth was various and sundry sniping.

Yesterday, in discussing Stewart, Scarborough called him an angry man and suggested he had a Napoleon complex. Stewart responded last night by calling Scarborough "watered down and stupid" and then did a skit which I'd venture to say was funnier in the writers' room than in its execution. Stewart brought out all manner of faux-branded coffee products -- like a box of "Taster's Choice" tissues -- had mascara running down his face while he pretended to cry, fled the stage, asking for his Napoleon hat and coat as he climbed on top of a small horse. When he was "talked back" into returning to the stage, he did so shouting, "Rage on! Rage on!" (Link to the video here.)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jon's Napoleonic Complex
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Did Letterman Go Too Far?

That's the question du jour regarding Letterman's jokes about Sarah Palin's recent appearance at a New York Yankees game, where she brought her 14-year-old daughter along with her. Letterman made jokes about a Palin daughter, including about A-Rod knocking up a Palin daughter during the game, and about keeping a Palin daughter away from disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Why do I keep saying, "a Palin daughter?" Because the 14-year-old daughter was the one in New York at the game with her mom but, apparently, Letterman thought it was the 18-year-old daughter who recently had a baby, the one who was on the cover of People Magazine with her infant. Last night, Letterman explicitly said that he wasn't talking about the 14-year-old. He said he was talking about the 18-year-old. But that's not exactly how it came across when he told the jokes.

Palin got ticked. Told him off indirectly by spouting off to journalists and issuing a statement, which resulted in Letterman issuing a caustic clarification last night which, I guess in a comedian's world, constitutes an apology of some sort. During Morning Joe this morning and later on The View, the question was raised by Brzezinski and by Elisabeth Hasselbeck as to whether Letterman would've gone after Palin's teenaged kids if she were a Democrat instead of a very conservative Republican. Barbara Walters added during The View's discussion that politicians' children should be off the table as far as lampooning goes, unlike panelist Joy Behar who said that because the Palins "traipsed" her pregnant daughter out in public, the family deserves what it gets. (See The View debate here.)



UPDATE: While listening to various folks discuss the Letterman/Palin situation this afternoon, I heard a local radio commentator make an interesting analogy: Invoking the suspension of MSNBC's David Shuster in 2008 after he suggested that twentysomething Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out" by her mother as she went out on the campaign trail talking up Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, the commentator asked why Shuster was suspended for making a comment about an adult and used the words "I apologize," while some folks are brushing off Letterman's comments about a 14-year-old daughter of a Republican vice presidential nominee.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Colbert, a Pitchfork and AIG Outrage

The more I think about the latest round of AIG bonuses -- of which, according to U.S. Rep. Cummings who was on MSNBC this morning, there are likely to be more -- the angrier I become.

The latest news from Bloomberg -- which reported, "American International Group Inc. . . . budgeted $57 million in 'retention' pay for employees who will be dismissed" -- was just icing on the cake.

Reading this New York Times piece this morning while watching Morning Joe, I could literally feel my blood pressure rising. Here are the main arguments for the AIG bonuses:

-- A contract is a contract. (Tell that to the auto makers whose employees have changed terms of their contracts in light of dire economic circumstances. Try to hand that line to the people who had contracts one day, then their companies went out of business, whose companies didn't receive federal bailout money, and those contracts became just worthless pieces of paper.)

-- We should support the bonuses for the smart people still working at AIG, so they won't go to another firm, because they might be able to get the company out of the mess it's in. (You mean the people who got AIG, and by extension, the taxpayers, into this quagmire in the first place?)

-- The government shouldn't be interfering with private contracts at a private company. (You mean the company that's now 80 percent owned by the federal government? The one that's received billions in taxpayer bailout money? The one that wouldn't exist without federal money?)

Bah humbug to all the naysayers who pooh-pooh this justified taxpayer outrage, label it simple-minded populism, and say that the bonus money only represents a tiny fraction of the AIG bailout money so we shouldn't be angry about the bonuses, but instead we should be steamed about the overall mega-bailout. (Me, I'm steamed about it all.)

That being said, Stephen Colbert's spoof on The Colbert Report about the angry, anti-AIG mob was very funny. (Link to the video here.)

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Stephen's Angry Mob Will Crush AIG

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
NASA Name Contest

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: 'Tis Gettin' Ugly in Cable TV Newsland, NBC vs Stewart

Let me first say this: I'm a big fan of Morning Joe. Love the camaraderie between Joe and Mika. Love the in-depth political conversations in which they engage that sometimes sound like discussions you might overhear in a bar at 12:20 in the morning. I'm a bigggg fan.

Last week, I laughed my fanny off at Jon Stewart's lambasting of CNBC -- Rick Santelli in particular -- for what Stewart saw as aggressive market cheerleading, urging people to buy stocks from companies that, not too long after the buy recommendations were made, collapsed.

When I heard Joe Scarborough yesterday morning talking about Stewart with CNBC's Jim Cramer (Joe felt Stewart was unfairly targeting his CNBC colleagues and cherry-picking prognostications just to make them look foolish), I knew it would get ugly. Cramer, who also appeared on the Today Show that morning, wasn't pleased with Stewart either.

Which, of course, only prodded Stewart to attack anew, and brilliantly, I might add, particularly the part at the end of the segment below (link here) where he had Dora the Explorer weighed in on the war between cable network personalities while Dora's pet monkey Boots offered to throw feces at Joe and Cramer.

Tangential question: Why is Jon Stewart doing the job that the news media should be doing?

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Basic Cable Personality Clash Skirmish '09

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Economic Crisis

The Baby, the TV Anchor and the Senator

When I first saw a still image of MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the AM political chat show Morning Joe, interviewing Virginia Senator Jim Webb about the stimulus package while holding a baby on her lap (the executive producer's infant NOT hers), I thought:

"That's what I looked like when I interviewed people on the phone for articles from my home office when my kids were babies, only the interviewees couldn't see that I was holding a baby. And I made liberal use of the 'mute' button."

However it's extremely unusual -- outside of lifestyle shows, like The View -- to see a news/commentary anchorperson hold an infant on the air, especially while interviewing someone like a U.S. senator. Luckily, the baby never cried. Brzezinski and the other MSNBC panelists asked intelligent questions. The senator didn't appear bothered, distracted or off message. So as long as the baby didn't fuss, I didn't necessarily see the problem with the baby being there, even though it was an odd sight. (For the record, none of my babies would've EVER sat so quietly for as long as that baby did.)

Meanwhile a slew of commenters over on the Huffington Post are eviscerating Brzeznski for being unprofessional and for insulting the senator by having the baby on her lap, despite the fact that Morning Joe has always been a very loose and informal program. Just look at how its namesake, Joe Scarborough, is dressed; he isn't wearing a tie or a jacket and you can see he's wearing a white T beneath his shirt. The program often reminds me of being at a bar and having a couple of drinks with really smart friends and robustly talking politics at length, with a little bit of Red Sox baseball tossed in for good measure. Only Morning Joe takes place in the morning, around cups of coffee and in front of national television cameras.

See for yourself. What do you think of this interview? Weird? Unprofessional? Much ado about nothing?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy