And we agreed with her take (and applaud it) but we were thinking of other things you can now count on. Like how a certain star will always provide a flop TV show and how certain 'public affairs' programming will always work to misinform you.
Christian Slater shot to fame opposite Winona Ryder in Heathers. Of all the films that followed, he only achieved a real moment onscreen again in Untamed Heart opposite Marisa Tomei. True Romance is a strong film but his performance in it is wooden and unsure in the bulk of the scenes and he only comes alive in his moments with Patricia Arquette.
In other words, America is not begging for another Kuffs, Jimmy Hollywood or Hard Rain. And with over forty films (most of them flops) to his credit, you'd assume when he attempted to transition into lead roles on TV, networks would have some idea what to do with him.
You'd be wrong.
Last week, Fox became the third network in four years to give Slater a chance to carry a show. It was not pretty. Slater runs a security company that convinces other companies to hire them by exposing weaknesses via break ins. Think of it as Grand Theft Corporation and just as dull as you'd expect that to play. Even worse, it's supposed to be a sitcom. While Slater's shown he can be saracastic, there's really nothing in his filmography that argues he can do comedy. And nothing on Breaking In argues it either.
If Breaking In were a film, Slater would be playing computer hacker Cameron (played by Bret Harrison who is also on his third TV flop) and Slater's role (Oz) would be played by Robert Duvall. With the current casting, the TV show only brings to mind what Taxi might have been like if it had instead featured the cast of Young Guns II. There is neither an honest nor a cheap laugh to be found in the entire dull proceedings. Each episode plays out like a workshop production by highly untalented, would-be auteurs.
And, as we noted, this is Slater's third flop. In 2009, ABC launched him in the drama The Forgotten which featured him trying to be sincere but coming off soggy as he headed a team trying to find missing persons. (Too many more TV shows like Breaking In and the gang may have to regroup and go looking for Slater.) 2008 saw NBC giving Slater a shot with the spy thriller My Own Worst Enemy which remains the best TV work he's done thus far.
But none of them worked with audiences. If his filmography argued anything it was that Slater needs a strong actress to bounce off of. That's why he succeeds opposite a Winona, Marisa or Patricia, but falters when paired up with Young Guns, mini-Mobsters or actors you've never heard of (for obvious reasons). You'd think that with three networks backing Slater in three genres, somewhere along the line, someone would have said, "Hey, where's the strong women we're pairing Christian with?" That no one ever thought, for example, "Get me Kim Delaney!" goes a long, long way towards explaining not only the rut Slater's in but also the rut broadcast TV is in.
Nothing -- other than sheer stupidity -- explains the self-delusion "public affairs" programming is suffering from.
Democracy Now! couldn't find Iraq last week, not even to save Amy Goodman's sorry reputation. Though April has just started, already 5 US soldiers have died this month. None of the deaths were ever noted on Goodman's program. In addition, Camp Ashraf was assaulted last Sunday and last Friday. She missed all of that as well as that thousands protested around Iraq on Friday, journalists continued to be targeted (and killed), Nouri continued his efforts at a power-grab and much, much more.
Goodman has an hour of commercial free time to fill Monday through Friday, five days a week. As criticism mounted all last week over her repeatedly ignoring Iraq not only in segments but also even in a brief headline, Goody finally found time, on Friday, to note, in headlines, that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was saying the US might stay in Iraq beyond 2011. Of course, on Wednesday, Gates arrived in Iraq and began making statements about extending the stay (check that day's snapshot). He continued saying it on Thursday and on Friday. It's a real shame that Amy Goodman, one of the Barack Whores who sold the SOFA as "end of the Iraq War," couldn't devote time to the topic, let alone couldn't take accountability on air for her own error. Don't worry, Amy, if we're around January 1, 2012, we'll be helping you and a lot of other whores who derailed the peace movement take the accountability you're too scared to do on your own.
Diane Rehm needs to take some accountability as well. Like Goodman, she kids that she somehow informs her audience but it's also a tired lap dance from the stripper who works the Wednesday brunch. Friday would have been week eleven that Diane ignored Iraq but she was getting called out for that -- and not just from Ann and ourselves, a whole online movement sprouted up last week against Diane and her silence on Iraq -- and Gates was in Iraq, so she decided she better give it a few minutes in her international hour on Friday.
A few? Not even five.
While Jeffrey Goldberg was more honest ("And so the big anticlimax is, well, we're going to be staying for a long time. ") than anything to be found on Democracy Now!, he was also surprising uninformed as is Diane as evidenced by this exchange:
Jeffrey Goldberg: This is what's so fascinating about the moment, is that the salient point is never how many troops do we have in a particular country. It's how many are dying in that particular country. We are -- we still have occupation forces, if you want to call them that, in Germany, in Korea 50, 60 years after those wars ended.
Diane Rehm: But this is different --
Jeffrey Goldberg: This is different but it is -- I mean, to be fair --
Diane Rehm: -- could be.
Jeffrey Goldberg: -- it is remarkably quiet in Iraq, considering what we thought could be happening in Iraq these days.
Last Sunday began with the announcement that 2 US soldiers had died in Iraq. Before Friday arrived, that two would jump to five. Goldberg considers that "quiet"? We'd argue that things are far from quiet in Iraq -- despite the US media silence.
And, no, five minutes out of an hour (really fifty minutes after you take away various announcements) doesn't really combat the silence.
They had other things to address. Like, in the words of Yochi Dreazen, "the war that dare not speak its name." The Libyan War for those scratching their heads. The Libyan War translated, on The Diane Rehm Show, as a discussion -- Well, not a discussion.
More like the verbal equivalent of the slam books you passed around in middle school of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the letter he sent US President Barack Obama. They thought they were comic geniuses as they ridiculed Gaddafi for "mispelling" Barack's name. Jeffrey Goldberg joined in the hilarity by declaring, "I think, according to Gaddafi, his name is Baraka Hussein Obamama, or something like that according to the latest letter. This is, I mean, if we needed proof that Muammar Gaddafi is a completely unhinged characer who lives in his -- obvious -- a world of his own creation, this is it." After the hilarity died down, Nadia Bilbassy would quietly slip in that the name "was not a mispelling or a grammatical mistake" but was "the Arabic translation to his name."
That's The Diane Rehm Show for you, facts never prevent any cheap laughs.
And that's the state of TV today. For truth, you either have to be there in person or go to YouTube because TV struggles to deliver it. Not only that, but it can't even handle the basics like a sitcom which provides laughs or public affairs programming (Democracy Now! airs on radio and TV) that provides needed information. Dumbing down of our culture is something that took place long ago and doesn't begin to describe the intentional misdirection the media now serves up.
