Monday, December 05, 2022

TV: Where the similarities end

"But you'll will have no problem with SR.," a male friend insisted.


And he's right.  We don't have a problem with SR.


3 JESS

We hadn't planned to write about it because we know Robert Downey Jr. and he's a friend.  SR. is his NETFLIX documentary about his late father, the filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. who passed away last year.  It's a moving story and riveting and we loved everything about it -- including Sean Hayes playing Billy Joel's "My Life" on piano.  


It's everything a documentary about an artist should be.


PELOSI IN THE HOUSE though?


It's not the same thing.  Our friend heard us talking about how HBO should never have commissioned the documentary to begin with.  

Why, he wanted to know, if Robert Jr. could do a documentary about his father and his father's art, what was wrong with Alexandra Pelosi doing the same regarding her mother?


There's so much to unpack there. 


The similarities are that Robert and Alexandra are approximately the same age (she's five years younger).  They are both the children of pioneers.  But Robert Sr. worked in entertainment and Nancy Pelosi, of course, is a politician.


A child of an artist making a documentary about their parent?  We expect less.  We expect the career to be covered and we expect a behind the scenes look at the artist.  


A politician?  If we're watching a documentary on a politician, we want to see them held accountable.  


PELOSI IN THE HOUSE?  We don't see accountability there because Nancy's never been held accountable.  She blackmailed her way into party leadership (with the use of photos of drinking -- underage drinking -- at the campaign headquarters of one of the politicians who wanted to be the Minority Leader in 2002) and, unlike previous Speakers of the House, when she failed, she refused to step aside.  In the 2010 mid-terms, tradition and custom dictated that she step aside.  She refused.  


She was never held accountable.


And now her daughter's going to get to spread further gloss and fluff?


America wanted Medicare For All.  Congress won't deliver.  Is the documentary going to delve into that?


Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House following the 2006 mid-terms.  She was Speaker when then-Senator President Barack Obama, seeking the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, promised that, if elected president, his first act would be to codify ROE V WADE into law to protect abortion rights.  He got elected to one term.  He got elected to a second term.  He never made a move to make ROE law and Nancy, as the head of the House of Representatives, never pushed on it, never introduced legislation on it.


She'll be applauded in her daughter's documentary for being a first -- a woman Speaker of the House -- but she won't be held accountable for ROE being overturned when she was Speaker.


Again, Medicare For All is something she won't support.  And in 2009, she didn't support the public option -- the thing that was supposed to make Barack's gift to the insurance companies palatable. 


Time and again, she's failed.


"She raises money!"


Yes, Nancy's been a good whore.  She's raised a lot of cash, worked a lot of rooms.  


Her daughter has no career except the crumbs people have tossed her because she's Nancy's daughter.  She is a lousy filmmaker.  She lacks a visual sense and nothing she produces makes up for it because all she produces is fluff.


If  a real documentary film maker covered Bully Boy Bush's 2000 campaign, they would have emerged with a riveting film.  Instead, Alexandra produced the puff piece JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE.

 "It won an  Emmy!"

 "It" didn't.  Aaron Lubarsky did.  He won an Emmy for editing JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE.


13 'documentary' 'films' have followed for Alexandra.  Still no Emmy for Alexandra.  


It's because she directs garbage.  And, yes, we do include her omission of the dead Mossad porn actor's affair with one of the subjects of one of her documentaries -- no, we're not confused about the 'poet,' most people knew about the 'poet' having an affair with that man, it was the porn actor that they didn't know about -- two from Mossad on one US politician, that's be an amazing story for a documentary to explore.  Needless to say, Alexandra wasn't up for it.

 

She's never up for anything except recording shallow observations and meaningless moments and insisting that makes a documentary.  

 

"It's true!" she insists.

 

"It's boring," we shrug back with unconcealed yawns.  

 

If Alexandra were doing a documentary entitled MY MOM, we'd quibble with HBO for wasting money on the nonsense but that would be it.  

 

When they present Alexandra's nonsense as a documentary and a statement and political and blah blah blah?

 

It reminds of how useless Alexandra is and how, once upon a time, gals like her pretended to be photographers.  They couldn't work as photographers so they took photos of broken tree limbs and grave sights and tried to pretend these photos were art and they were artists.

 

No.

 

No.

 

They were just spoiled women who were born into money and, trying to find justification for their shallow lives, felt billing themselves as 'photographers' was a good cover.

 

 Alexandra Pelosi is not Robert Downey Jr.  Robert has a career that he created himself.  He has not depended upon his father for favors.  Without nepotism, Alexandra has no career.  And Robert Downey Sr. was an artist.  His art impacted, to be sure.  But he was not Speaker of the House.  His actions did not increase poverty, homelessness, war, etc.  There's a big difference.

 

 
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