Gotta Be Mad About Something

I’m So Furious

The GOP Outrage Machine is truly something to behold. I’m amazed at the capacity it has to churn up so much anger, especially since a huge chunk of it is directed towards topics that most would have cared little about as recently as a week earlier. “I can’t believe Lizzo has the audacity to play a flute that I didn’t even know existed until just now!”

The constant anger is so Pavlovian that I can’t help but believe much of it is performative art. Outrage over the “cancellation” of Pepe Le Pew? Come on, I watched plenty of Looney Tunes back in the day, and even in the 70s Pepe was close to the bottom of the hierarchy of Looney Tunes characters. You would go weeks, if not months, before one of his shorts would turn up in the rotation. I can’t imagine any viewer getting miffed over not seeing him cameo in the Space Jam sequel. And the Dr. Seuss books that his estate pulled from circulation were largely his more obscure titles. Most people had likely never heard of the titles that they were complaining about.

We’re only given so many trips around the sun. Do we really want to waste precious time worrying about stuff like this? Think about it. One morning Tucker Carlson woke up knowing that he was going to devote valuable minutes on a national cable show venting about the “wokeness” of M&M mascots. Is that really the best use of TV time? I can’t imagine that he went home afterwards and pumped his fist while saying to himself “Nailed it!”

Which brings us to the current stove discourse. A member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission gave an interview concerning a report from last year that pointed out a link connecting gas stoves to increases in childhood asthma and gave his personal opinion that unsafe products should be phased out. In no time at all that morphed into hysteria claiming that Biden’s Avengers were going to come into all of our homes and seize our gas stoves. (Even worse, they’re going to wear tan suits while doing so!)

What makes this even more aggravating is that so much recent discourse - from the backlash against drag time story hour to bans of history teaching on uncomfortable racial topics - comes down to “We must protect the children!” Here we have objective data regarding childhood harm and suddenly people are making from my cold dead hands statements. I suppose protecting kids really isn’t so crucial after all. Owning the libs is more important.

In a superficial way this is reminiscent of the light bulb hysteria from several years ago. Old school incandescent bulbs were getting phased out to make room for CFCs and people went nuts. On one level I get it; one develops an attachment to a product and we’d been using those bulbs since the day that George Santos first invented the electric light bulb, and CFCs were more expensive. But they were also significantly more durable, and the LED bulbs that are the current standard last even longer. I’m being honest here, I can’t remember the last time I’ve needed to change a bulb. I’m sure there are still holdouts somewhere, but you never hear anybody complain about lightbulbs anymore.

Stoves are much different, of course. It’s not as simple as screwing a different lightbulb into a pre-existing fixture. Replacing an appliance as expensive as a stove simply is not feasible for many people, and it also usually entails some costly retrofitting. But there’s nothing wrong with setting requirements for safer products in new construction products. (As an aside, I realize that many people have a strong preference for flame cooking instead of electric coils. I’m not much of a cook, so I don’t have a lot to add to that debate. I have seen a lot of people extol the benefit of induction stoves. Anyone have thoughts on that?)

Ultimately the invective is so pointless. It was one commissioner making a personal observation and expressing his own recommendation. There is no proposal from any government official about a ban and no, the same people who are allegedly coming to take your guns are not going to take your stove away in the same visit. In two months this will likely be forgotten and several new manufactured controversies will have popped up to fill the void.

The Action - Its Fantastic

Every NBA team has played at least 41 games so far, so we are solidly in the second half of the season. Here’s some keen insight - the level of sheer talent in the NBA right now is astonishing. Imagine what someone waking up from a 30 year nap could possibly think when seeing Giannis play. The multi-skilled talents displayed by the average player these days is off the charts.

Go back to just about any past era you can think of. It wasn’t much of a hassle to figure out the top 3, top 5, top 10 etc. players in the game. You could have a fun debate over which specific order someone would fall, but it wasn’t a huge challenge to place players into their respective tiers. Try that now. Who would you rate as the top 5 players in the game today? I’ll bet you’ve already come up with at least 8 names off the top of your head. OK, let’s make it easier and try to think of the top 10. Same issue, you’re now thinking of at least 15 names with no idea of who you can cut off the list to narrow it down to 10.

Which brings us to next month’s All-Star Game. Somehow the league is going to have to narrow down the multitude of outstanding players to rosters consisting of only 24 names. On one hand you have guys such as Kevin Durant or Zion Williamson or Anthony Davis among others who are currently injured and may not be healthy enough to participate this year. That still leaves us with a situation in which there are more deserving players than there are spots available. Even taking the injured players into account, there are conservatively more than 35 players that can legitimately merit All-Star consideration. Expect more than the usual “How could you have left ______ off!” complaints once the full squads are announced. I do not envy the assorted decision makers.

Holding Out For a Hero

I wish there was some Daddy Warbucks out there with extra cash burning a hole in his pocket willing to purchase and rejuvenate the AV Club website. For years it was one of my most visited sites but it’s now a shadow of its former self.

Originally an offshoot of The Onion, it quickly found its own special niche on The Internets. It was filled with a wide array of interesting ongoing features: AV Club Inventory, Run the Series, Power Hour, Random Roles, among others. I also found it to contain the most consistently trustworthy review sections. In short, it was a perfect one-stop shopping destination for all of my pop culture needs.

Gradually, many of the recurring features began to fade away. Additionally, they cut way back on the quantity of TV shows that warranted weekly episode recaps. They never review books anymore, and the most recent album review is of Taylor Swift’s latest; an album that came out months ago. The dip in relevance was already apparent, but the real tipping point came roughly a year ago. The current ownership (G/O Media) demanded that the staff, the majority of whom live in Chicago, move to Los Angeles. Not only did virtually all of them refuse that order and quit, but the bulk of the freelance writers also left in solidarity. It resulted in a skeletal staff and a corresponding deterioration in new material - both quantity and quality.

It’s almost sad to visit the site now. There might be one or two worthwhile posts in an average week, but new content mostly consists of one or two things. They keep up with news items, which is OK but nothing that you can’t find elsewhere. There are also an inordinate number of listicles and/or slideshows. That’s not horrible in and of itself, but they are always so uninteresting. Best 20 movies streaming on Hulu, best comedies streaming on Amazon Prime, best horror movies on Netflix, that kind of stuff. The AV Club used to be so much better than that. Oh how I long for it to once again be a site worth regularly visiting.

Sundry

Speaking of regularly visiting, thanks to all who’ve climbed aboard so far. For the moment I’m trying to go with a thrice weekly schedule. It may eventually be more or less frequent depending on how things go. If you like what you see, please share to all your friends and neighbors and feedback is always welcome.