THE PRISONERS BAIL OUT THE WARDENS

Emmy Schmemmy

What to say about the Emmys this year? Not much...like most of America, it gets increasingly harder to care. The quintuple hosts? A terrible idea--they are all reasonably competent to various degrees on their own shows, but completely unsuited to host a bloated monstrosity like the Emmy Awards. The speeches? Mostly unoffensive and unmemorable except for the ones by Tommy Smothers (still a liberal firebrand and articulate advocate at age 71), Don Rickles (the highlight of the night) and Laura Linney (who slyly and subtly indicated her support for Barack Obama in her acceptance speech for JOHN ADAMS). The dresses? I don't care much although I did notice that even at age 65+, Mary Tyler Moore's ensemble made her look like a stick figure with a big grinning head. The winners? About as expected, although there were minor surprise wins by Bryan Cranston in the Best Dramatic Actor (BREAKING BAD) category and Zelko Ivanek as Best Supporting Drama Actor (DAMAGES). For Cranston, who toiled for five years as the best reason to watch MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, his career has been building to this moment and he is quite good and deserving on an interesting show that hasn't quite found it's footing yet. For Ivanek, one of the most recognizable character actors on television, the Emmys recognized his work in a heartbreaking performance that grounded a clever show that occasionally veered off into unsupportable melodrama. When DAMAGES needed a jolt of reality and humanism, Ivanek was always there.

The rest of it? Who cares. I've probably already said too much.

What's $700 Billion Among Friends?

I understand that eight years of Bush administration mismanagement and bipartisan Congressional ignorance have contributed to the mortgage crisis that threatens to plunge this country into a full-fledged depression. (I will also not ignore the general culture of greed and gotta-have-it-nowism that permeates society today.) But really, is soaking every taxpayer in America with the bill the best way to dig the big investment and banking firms out of this mess? And since neither presidential candidate intends to raise taxes, I'm curious as to where this $700 billion is going to come from? You can't just print more money to cover the losses--unless you want to lower the value of the American dollar to something beneath that of a Mexican peso. Americans deserve a cogent explanation and I get the feeling that neither Obama nor McCain is going to be able to come up with one. God knows, George W. Bush sure hasn't said anything intelligent about this whole mess, especially considering it took him about three years to admit there was a problem in the first place.

Peace.