Home // 2010 // November

We miss you, Frank Drebin

I didn’t know this until very recently, but the late Leslie Nielsen’s breakthrough comic movie, Airplane!, made laugh-riot history through spoofing 1970s air disaster films by effectively making a twisted version of 1950s cinematic disaster dud, Zero Hour.

(Hat tip to S.M. Oliva)

Update: Err … To clarify: I knew about Airplane!. I didn’t know it was a spoofy remake of a ’50s flick.

Beat the crap out of him, Danno

Am I the only one who tuned into the the new Hawaii Five-0 to see Grace Park in a bikini, only to be creeped out by the Gestapo-ish, thuggish, statist undertone to the whole cops-under-the-sun enterprise?

The tone was set in the first episode when the elite police unit headed by former Navy SEAL Steve McGarrett was essentially handed carte blanche by the governor of Hawaii (played by Jean Smart) to solve crimes. How could that go wrong? Since then, McGarrett, Danno and the crew have engaged in such interesting means of inducing cooperation in suspects as dumping a man in a cage surrounded by sharks far out in the ocean. In the same episode, McGarrett helps Danno prevail in a custody fight by getting the governor to lean on the new husband of Danno’s ex-wife.

Yeah. Using political connections to intervene in courtroom family disputes is just so cool.

And I just watched an episode (on DVR) in which McGarrett and company sidelined a team of kidnapping and ransom specialists hired by an American diplomat whose daughter had been kidnapped, just because. They then arrested the chief specialist (after rescuing the daughter, of course) because … he’s a competitor? I’m still not really clear on that point.

Grace Park still looks awesome in a bikini, but every time the show theme music cranks up, I find myself bracing to see the team whip out thumbscrews or steal a box of doughnuts — because nothing can stand in the way of suntanned justice!

Yeah, Dirty Harry did it, but there was always a big issue at stake. Not just the intimation that people who tangle with cops in even the pettiest way deserve to get stomped.

No, really. Hawaii Five-0 has turned into an ongoing abuse of power amidst nice scenery. With Grace Park (well, I guess “scenery” could cover her, but she deserves a specific mention). I guess I could just turn off the sound, but isn’t that what Internet porn is for?

TSA pervs get no love

First, let’s acknowledge that the Transportation Security Administration isn’t really the problem. Or rather, it’s not the source of the problem. The TSA goons are just good Germans, following orders issued from up above by politicians and high-level bureaucrats who get hard-ons from the very thought of wielding power over the rest of the human race, and who often wield that power as intrusively as possible just to be perceived as “doing something” to protect the sheep from the panic of the moment.

But you have to start somewhere. So I sent the following email to the TSA:

Dear TSA Goons,

Fuck you very much. Yes, I understand that you didn’t set in place the policies that have set us on the road to a police state — that was the un-American, control-freak politicians who have exploited fear to enhance their own power and erode our liberty. But you have happily taken and held jobs that involve incursions into individual rights and privacy. That’s evil. You and the government behind you are worse enemies of America than Osama Bin Laden ever has been. I look forward to the day that the bunch of you are once again unemployed and back to peeking through bathroom windows to satisfy your urges.

Happy Holidays!

I added the “happy holidays” just so there wouldn’t be any hard feelings. They mean well — or so I’m told of the kind folks who threatened John Tyner with a lawsuit and hefty fine for leaving the security folks so unfulfilled with his gropus interruptus. After all, they did back off (sort of) after a wave of international ridicule made them look like petulant thugs.

Anyway, Tyner threatened to have the TSA pervs arrested if they touched his junk, and at least one California DA — Steve Wagstaffe in San Mateo County — appears willing to make good on that threat. Rep. Ron Paul has now introduced a bill intended to insure that all the usual laws against groping, frottage and making lewd images of other people apply to TSA agents to the same extent as to the rest of us, so they couldn’t claim immunity.

Fair is fair!

I’m still waiting to see how this all shakes out. For Christmas, my family will be driving eight hours rather than going anywhere near a TSA checkpoint. Not only am I not looking forward to a scope-or-grope encounter, I’m also not all that eager to find out how my email has been received by a gang of over-powerful bureaucrats with a history of thin skins.

Light ’em up, desert rats

Contrary to early claims that Arizona voters had rejected a medical marijuana initiative, state voters appear poised to approve legal use of the weed yet again (third time is the charm!). As early and provisional ballots finally get tallied, Prop. 203, the latest medical marijuana initiative, is sliding from narrowly defeated to narrowly approved.

The latest count has the measure ahead by about 4,400 votes, with little chance for the antis to make up the difference.

What’s that I smell in the air? It must be victory.

Oh hell no. It’s the sweet smell of weed.

Next stop, sniff, is cocaine.

Election horror! I’m moving to (fill in the blank)

Why is is that, after every disappointing election, libertarians generally just grin and bear it (and tunnel a little deeper into the underground economy and counter-culture), conservatives vow to try harder next time (and win back their country for Jeezis), but lefties are forever vowing to toss their Patagonia gear into their hybrid put-puts and flee to Canada or France or some other mythical social-democratic paradise? My Facebook feed is currently speckled with progressive chums contemplating the good life in Toronto, Paris or Lilliput, about all of which they seem equally well mis-informed. This isn’t the first time, either.

Gawker captured the situation nicely with a round-up of five potential cities to which refugees from the recent dastardly Tea Party coup could consider fleeing. Kudos to Gawker for mentioning the uncomfortable truth that much of the world is a tad less lollipops-and-unicorns social-democraticky than progressives might like — less so than the U.S. in many cases. As Gawker points out of our neighbor to the north, “Well, it’s not that liberal. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a conservative leader, after all,” and even “[t]ax-heavy, expensive Sweden is also moving into a more American style of limited-ish federal government, privatizing many formerly state-owned business to stave off economic woes.”

In fact, deprived of the huge line of credit possessed by the United States, many countries to which trendy lefties might flee have long-since started slashing state spending, freeing their economies (a bit, anyway) and turning toward Tea Party-ish smaller-government solutions.

Canada, for instance, is no longer so much the big-government contrast to the United States. Canadian federal spending topped out at over 50% of GDP back in the ’90s, after which somebody went to tap the piggy bank yet again and found nothing but moths and good wishes. Out of necessity, the old Liberal government began cutting spending well before the Conservatives came to power.

Likewise, Britain is only one of the European countries that have explicitly rejected the Obama administration’s hoary Keynesianism in favor of some sort of fiscal discipline. Sweden really is deregulating and privatizing its economy — to the point that the Christian Science Monitor says, “some believe it should be held up as a bastion of market capitalism.”

On a less-encouraging note, the French have their own problems with nativism and immigration fights. There’s no escaping the border warriors in Paris.

I’m not entirely sure what sort of Erewhon the folks on the losing side of the latest election think they’re going to find once they disembark in the imagined promised land, but it’s probably going to leave them a bit disappointed.

It’s not that the latest crop of elected officials won’t be as bad as everybody fears; the last few batches have certainly lived down to expectations, and why should things change now? But, if progressives insist on fleeing the latest electoral catastrophe (after the previous one, which they themselves brought on us) they might trouble themselves to do a little research to make sure that they won’t be greeted in their new homes by poutine-munching, Gauloises-puffing clones of the scary villains they left behind.

Post-election …

… I just feel … dirty.

Irrational exuberance over the mid-term election

I admit to a certain degree of pre-election, hysterical jackassery.

The things is, while I know that virtually nothing is likely to change for the better in the wake of tomorrow’s mid-term election, I’m compulsively checking the political news sites and the online prognosticators — Nate Silver’s 538 in particular. It’s all Politico to Daily Caller to 538, then a little CNN.com and a taste of MSNBC.com, and back to …

But it’s all bullshit. There may be some tweaks after tomorrow’s results, but I highly doubt that much of substance will change. We’ll still be saddled with an ever-expanding state, shrinking realms of life in which we can make our own decisions, and an economic debacle looming ever-closer as office-holders play hot potato with the job of explaining to the American people that both Social Security and Medicare have always been both incredibly stupid and unsustainable ideas, and Obamacare is just a double-down on idiocy.

It’s not that everybody running for office or participating in the process is a scam artist; in fact, I expect that the Tea Party activists of the moment’s headlines are overwhelmingly sincere (if occasionally unhinged). It’s just that the United States has some of the most astoundingly well-stage-managed elections in “democratic” history. Idealists come and go, but the same political parties, dynasties and even policies endure for decade after decade. Sea changes do come from time to time, but with almost geological slowness compared to the forces that have swept away Canada’s Progressive Conservative Party, every major Italian political party of the post-war period, New Zealand’s old first-past-the-post system and even several French constitutions.

Elections happen in the U.S., but change doesn’t necessarily follow. The same shit just gets done to us by a slightly re-shuffled arrangement of oh-so-concerned faces.

I don’t think it’s all futile, though. No would-be omnipotent puppet-master is half as invulnerable as he or she thinks. But we won’t actually know that the real change is coming until we wake up some morning to find that the White House is in flames and a revolutionary junta of iPad app programmers has seized the airwaves and is locked in a death struggle with Android-powered counter-revolutionaries.

Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing will depend purely on the entertainment value.

If I was completely sane, I’d remember the revelation I first had when I was about … oh crap … five. That’s when I realized that a decent life depends on living the way you wish no matter what the folks in charge say, not on waiting for the rules to change.

But I still find myself getting that irrational thrill, waiting for the early returns …