Jeffrey Donovan stars as Michael, a former secret agent for the United States, who was "burned." When they're done with you -- for whatever reason -- they burn you. Michael now attempts to make a living in the real world and the most unsettling thing there may be how little prepared he is for the private sector. Don't they teach CIA agents marketable skills?
Donovan delivers endless voice overs throughout the show which, no one's supposed to notice, undercuts the notion that Michael is the 'strong silent' type. Playing the weak and bubbly type is Bruce Campbell looking like at least sixty large pizzas exploded inside of him in under ten minutes. Campbell's performance is nothing but a grin, like George Peppard in the original A-Team. The term for it isn't "acting," think of it as "funning.'' Sharon Gless plays Michael's mother Madeline and Gabrielle Anwar plays Michael's business partner and sometime lover Fiona.
Season four finds Coby Bell added to the cast as Jesse. Who is Jesse? Another secret agent who got burned. And he got burned my Michael! It's like the life cycle of plants and secret agents.
The A-Team really is the template for this show. It's instantly forgettable and completely disposable. It's not even a confection -- the way Covert Affairs is -- because it's far too drab. In fact, the only thing memorable about the show is the homo-erotic undercurrent forever threading its way through each episode. Michael's fond of speaking to 'bad guys' on sexual terms. Posing as a drug supplier, he tells a Miami drug dealer that when he's ready to get serious, tap him on the hip and they'll meet up in the champagne room.
When he's delivering one of those lines, undercover, he's often using a very bad southern accent that makes him sound like a New Jersey man hitting the Big Apple and determined to market himself as a Midnight Cowboy. Which only adds to the homo-eroticism.
There's nothing erotic or sexual about FAIR. In an earlier time, they might have been dubbed Salt Peter. Last week, FAIR's Peter Hart lashed out at Chuck Todd (MSNBC). Why?
Roger Simon (Politico) quoted Todd stating of Journolist, "I am sure Ezra [Klein] had good intentions when he created it, but I am offended the right is using this as a sledgehammer against those of us who don't practice activist journalism. Journolist was pretty offensive. Those of us who are mainstream journalists got mixed in with journalists with an agenda. Those folks who thought they were improving journalism are destroying the credibility of journalism. This has kept me up nights. I try to be fair. It's very depressing."
Them's fighting words to neutered tabby Peter Hart. See, no one's supposed to talk about Journolist. If they do, Hart's going to hiss and scratch. Todd explained why he had a problem with the list and Hart begins ridiculing Todd for not saying something similar about the Iraq War. (Note, Rebecca called out Hart in the comment section.)
"I'm all for journalists feeling in some way responsible for the reputation of their profession," smirks Peter. "In that spirit, I wonder if the media's coverage of the Iraq War keeps Chuck Todd up at night, many billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives later? Does Andrew Breitbart's destruction of a community organizing group--aided by credulous media coverage--bother him much?
On the latter, it's really important for Peter to continue lying about ACORN. We don't support falsified voter registration -- whether done by Republicans or Democrats. ACORN got into enough trouble over the years on its own. When Juan Gonzalez attempted to present a balanced picture of the pros and cons of ACORN on Democracy Now! he was cut off and no one on the left has tried it since. ACORN was a group started and run by White people with a few token African-American faces for public consumption. It was a White man, Dale Rathke, in fact, who stole the most money from ACORN (nearly one million dollars from 1999 to 2000) -- a White man whose brother founded the organization. Despite the fact that ACORN depended not only on private donations but also on state and federal monies for funding, this crime -- embezzlement is a crime -- was covered up and not reported to the authorities. Peter covers for ACORN because he's part of the White radical set that tries to manipulate people of color. This is evident by many facts but, keeping it simple, he is a co-host of CounterSpin, this supposed 'modern man,' thereby ensuring that a person of color is kept out. Apparently the need to create opportunities for people of color does not, in Peter Hart's mind, demand that he surrender the microphone to, in fact, a person of color.
FAIR is a lot like ACORN. For example, they love to trot out Janine Jackson as proof of their racial diversity. Janine got into the all-White crowd by marrying in. You don't get much Whiter than FAIR. Remember that the next time they're yammering away about this act of racism or that act of racism. Jeff Cohen, Norman Solomon, Steve Rendall, Peter Hart, Jim Naureckas . . . FAIR's a White world and, yes, it's a man's world.
As for Iraq, Peter Hart's quite the funny man, isn't he? Iraq. FAIR pretending to give a damn about Iraq?
FAIR is supposed to put a spotlight on the stories that need covering. CounterSpin discussed Iraq last when?
You have to drop back months and months to March. And before that you drop back even further. When it is time to supposedly talk Iraq, they tend to go with little Mamas boys -- you know, Iraqis who are 'fighting' the occupation . . . from the safety of the US. Those cowards know who they are. And it's no great surprise that they and FAIR would cling together -- birds of a feather, after all.
So Peter lies about ACORN (again) and wants to toss out Iraq, try to get mileage from a war FAIR's all but forgotten (except, of course, for grandstanding purposes). But he never deals with reality. Like a secret agent, Peter engages in distraction.
"Look the Iraq War!"
As opposed to the reality that Journolist is and was a scandal. That FAIR collaborated their efforts ('action' alerts) with Journolist on many occasions.
Peter Hart hopes the story is buried because there are so many loose ends that right-wingers will allow to dangle. Not knowing the left, they won't make the connections. The Daily Caller appears (at present) to be done with Journolist which is really too bad because a lot more was being exposed than Tucker Carlson & Co. thought. When Peter Hart's slamming Chuck Todd, you better believe Petey has s**t his underoos over Journolist.
Why?
Because continued publication of Journolist e-mails would have created a Burn List. Not a right-winger thing, but something on the left. On the left, we're not fond of liars. Now, granted, a lot of Republicans who grew tired of Bush and decided to call themselves Democrats embrace liars. They lived through the 90s, they were in bed with liars. Or, like Arianna Huffington, they themselves were liars.
But the real left, the left that's left today, left tomorrow and left yesterday? We don't put up with liars. Not even for our side. In fact, we cringe when we discover liars on our side. And that's what had Peter worried. It wasn't just the 400 members. It was also how the talking points were distributed (including on CounterSpin). And it went to the larger point we've been making for years now.
Drop back to our 2008 writing, specifically look at "Panhandle Media." No, it is not normal for all magazines on the left and all radio stations on the left to all agree on one candidate in a primary. That doesn't happen normally or, in fact, naturally. Journolist was only one of the many ways Team Obama conspired to fool the public.
Grasp that independent media gives lip service -- only lip service -- to grassroots and people participation. They decry backroom deals. At least publicly. Privately, they got on board the Barack bus early on and conspired to bully and destroy anyone who would not hop on board. We know independent journalists -- or journalists working for so-called 'independent' publications and programs. We've heard the horror stories. We've heard how the line came down before 2008 that Hillary would be portrayed as a bitch and Barack as a saint, that every bad thing about Barack would be buried.
Knowing inside stories, we watched with fascination as the Journolists were published, noting how X had connections to this radio program, that TV program, this magazine and how the talking points would be amplified at all. The Daily Caller, by contrast, half-the-time didn't have any clue as to what they were publishing.
For example, why did people following every piece on Journolist published by The Daily Caller, end up writing this site last week to ask us if it was true (as we noted in "Serving under Richard Nixon, Chris Hayes (Ava and C.I.") that Chris Hayes' wife serves in the Administration? Yes, it is true and we provided links you could click on to verify that. But that's what we're talking about.
And all sorts of interesting linkages could be made, a network of deception could be charted. But Tucker seemed to have no idea what he had or maybe he just got scared off by the attacks from the likes of Petey Hart.
If you've ever listened to Pacifica Radio for any length of time, you are familiar with the pledge drives. That's when various hosts insist that you are getting real news -- despite the lack of news programs on Pacifica -- and that you are getting unbiased opinions and that you are getting, from Pacifica, something you couldn't get anywhere else. And that pitch would be a lot more laughable if anyone ever stopped to grasp just how much coordination is going on.
Peter Hart has to attack. He can't find employment in the real world.
If he got a burn list, what would he do then?
Probably take part in plodding non-adventures like Michael Westen. Badly written episodes which try to fill gaping holes in the plot by non-stop voice over narration and lots of explosions. Burn Notice is the type of show that's dated about thirty minutes after an episode airs. That's about thirty minutes more of currency than most 'independent' radio programs have.