Some time in the distant past, I was flirting with watching "LOST," and I saw an episode with the first "long smokey thing" in it. I decided that I wasn’t up for a television series with a "long smokey thing" as one of the characters and I dropped out. That was years ago, but I felt obligated to watch the summary show and the last episode tonight. While I enjoyed the summary and some of the last episode, the very end with everyone sitting around with knowing smiles trying to look wonderous like the people in "Close Encounters" when the aliens was doing it’s hand signal thing was a bit over the top for me.
I found myself thinking about the people that have watched it week after week, playing chess with the writers as they went from flash backs to flash forwards to something they called flashes sideways. The game was to mess with reality enough to keep their viewers interested, while not going so far out on a limb to lose them. My version has been "Saving Grace." It had fewer characters, a reality based mystery in each episode, and the Angel Earl and the supernatural stuff is a parallel story. It’s ending soon, and I’m ready.
Which brings me to the oil spill. I think we’re all watching like it’s a television drama. We’re waiting for it to end, wondering how it’s going to come out. It’s not a dramatization, and it’s not clear that there even is an ending. They poked a hole in the bottom of the ocean into an oil deposit, and it’s emptying into the ocean. They’ve done something that is probably going to change a lot of things forever in ways we can’t possibly predict – and it’s still going on as if it just happened. We’re watching it waiting for the finale. There’s even a web cam. But there is no finale in sight to this story.
In a movie, some kind of submarine thingee goes down a mile and uses its pinchers to shut it down. But in reality, they apparently don’t have such a vehicle. What’s abundantly clear is that they don’t really know what to do about this. There wasn’t a back-up plan – a contingency plan. I guess they just hoped it didn’t happen. Now they’re getting busy trying to figure out what to do after the fact.
After Explaining a Provocative Remark, Paul Makes Another
The New York Times
By KATE PHILLIPS
May 21, 2010WASHINGTON — Rand Paul, the newly nominated Republican candidate for Senate from Kentucky, touched off more controversy on Friday by calling the Obama administration “un-American” for taking a tough stance with BP over the company’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
A day after he was forced to explain remarks he had made suggesting he was not fully supportive of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, Mr. Paul set off yet another round of Twitter, cable television and e-mail chatter by lambasting President Obama and his aides for insisting that BP be held accountable — and pay — for the oil spill cleanup and damage.
“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’ ” Mr. Paul said, referring to a remark by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about the oil company. “I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen”…
Paul Krugman has a good op-ed today. He starts out saying “They’re as mad as hell, and they’re not going to take this anymore. Am I talking about the Tea Partiers? No, I’m talking about the corporations” Krugman writes about an increase in GOP coffers from corporations and how President Obama is in a similar position FDR found himself in in the 30s” Roosevelt gave a speech in 1936 “the old enemies of peace– business and financial monpoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectional, war profiteering.” Krugman goes on to say “Roosevelt turned corporation opposition into a badge of courage FDR said”I welcome their hatred”, he declared.Paul says at the end ” It’s time for President Obama to find his inner FDR, and do the same.” I hope Obama has read some of the recently written books on Franklin Roosevelt and his secretary of Labor Perkins and I hope he read this Krugman’s column in todays NYTimes.
It’s a new war on terror…