NETFLIX earns the honors with MONSTER: THE LIZZIE BORDEN STORY -- worst TV series of the fall. The eight-episode, fourth season of the anthology series MONSTER wants to be so much but musters so damn little.
Among its failures? It wants to talk about women. That's great. Let's look at society in 1892 when Borden's parents were found hacked up. Let's talk about women's roles and societal norms at the time.
But they don't do that. They can't address women. So they go with woman and they offer such topics as Lizzie's menstruation. By staying in a tight shot on Lizzie, they never deal with women and the way society judged women.
But it fails mainly in the watchable category. Like Jon Hamm's AMERICAN HOSTAGE on MGM+, watching it to the end leaves you feeling like time's been wasted and you're never getting it back. Both are rather obvious storylines and are executed in a paint-by-number manner. There's not a genuine moment of surprise that ever flickers across the screen. At least on Hamm's program the dialogue is often strong and the performances are strong. Both shows feel as though their scripts were written by AI. Predictable is the term that applies to both.
Predictable appears to be the results we'll get on Tuesday when the midterm voting ends.
For nearly two years now, Donald Chump, convicted felon, has destroyed the United States in a similar manner to what he did to the White House's East Wing. The moody, hysterical and attention seeking Chump is like an obscenely fat man stomping through a china shop -- not a bull, mind you, a very fat man whose girth may not fit down the aisles. Wiggle those wide hips jut a tad too much and he's knocking everything over.
And that's how he's spent the last two months. Knocking over his own party's attempts to win the midterms. Last week, Matthew Rozsa (ALTERNET) reported:
A pair of journalists who have written inside information-filled accounts about President Donald Trump explained his brazen corruption simply: He does not care if Americans are angry or Republicans are hurt at the polls.
"Where are we?" MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace asked on Thursday to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. "We’re five days out from an election where every single poll I’ve seen that’s become public, whether it’s commissioned by Democrats or Republicans, has Democrats very likely taking over the House, potentially the Senate as well."
Chump scheduled a party convention for Dallas, Texas. It took place over two days in September. Most Republicans skipped it. The few who attended or watched it on screens were left underwhelmed because Chump offered nothing new. It was all about him. That's not at all surprising if you were paying attention in June and July when he turned America's semiquincentennial into a self-celebration.
In their new book WTF AMERICA?!: THE WAY OUT OF THIS HELL AND BACK TO DEMOCRACY, Ben, Brett and Jordy Meiselas chart their own rise via MEIDASTOUCH NEWS as the contrast to Chump's rise to power. They emerged during COVID as Chump was in the White House telling his lies and being ineffectual but not the monster he'd become ahead of January 6, 2021 and later. That's because he had some grown ups in the room who told him "no." The grown ups are gone and Chump has no one left who questions his worst impulses and criminal desires.
The Meiselas brothers saw truth as the power to be used against Chump and knew that they had to hit hard. And they have hit hard. It's an interesting book, well written and involving, with a clever turn of phrase (such as "Just His Department" for the Justice Department) popping up regularly.
Well written and with cleaver turns of phrases describes the two best shows for fall -- both on NBC -- LINE OF FIRE and NEWLYWEDS. The latter is a sitcom starring Tea Leoni and Tim Daly that was created by Gail Lerner and Jamie Lee Curtis with the plan that Jamie Lee would star in it as the newlywed wife. Instead, Tea Leoni is playing that part with real-life husband Tim Daly the newlywed husband and Jamie Lee shows up as Tim's ex-wife. The cast is first-rate and also includes Bill O'Neill, Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, Emma Meisel and Al Madrigal. Tea's doing her just-woke-up character and it fits perfectly with Tim Daly's more caffeinated performance. Best of all is Jamie Lee Curtis who starts off strong in the first episode but grows stronger with each episode. You care about all the characters. We think this could be a long running and popular sitcom. We hope that anyway. After the sixth episode, Gail Lerner was fired. We're hoping this won't mean a crash in quality.
LINE OF FIRE is a drama (soap opera) about a family who works for the government in various department. Peter Krause is Mike Hollingsworth (Secret Service), Hope Davis is his wife Jane (US Marshals Service), Kat Cunning is daughter Clare (FBI), Tommy O'Brien is son Junior (like Mike Sr., Junior is Secret Service), Taylor Bloom is son Russ (Dept of Justice National Security Division) and Charlie Barnett is son Jack (presumed dead by his family but working for the CIA apparently). There are all sorts of secrets and confidences being hidden and broken.
It's got the kind of non-stop drama you expect from a TV series.
Which is also the kind of non-stop drama Chump brings to the Oval Office which, being real life, not only doesn't entertain, it doesn't sustain.
Republicans are bracing themselves for a Democratic blowout in Tuesday’s midterms, with some expecting “a brutal evening” and already expressing resignation about losing their majorities in Congress, according to a report.
President Donald Trump has placed himself front and center of GOP campaigning, attempting to encourage conservative turnout by urging voters to behave as though he himself were on the ballot, rather than zeroing in on specific issues.
The strategy threatens to backfire, however, given his deep unpopularity and historically low approval ratings, currently the lowest of his second term at 30 percent – according to Pew Research – and the worst of any sitting president going into the midterms since Harry Truman in 1946.
“It could be quite a brutal evening,” one senior Republican strategist told Politico. “Once the dominoes start falling it becomes hard to stop them.”
As the saying goes, "From your lips to God's ears."
While they're worrying about losing their seats, Chump's only been concerned with himself. He has held nearly 30 campaign rallies over the past two weeks. However, instead of trying to highlight his candidates and address problems that Americans are facing, Trump is deeply occupied with male physiques, personal vendettas, the renovation of golf courses, and the White House."
I'd say 90% of the reason I took the governor…EUGH…I took the governor and I put her over at the United Nations, because I wanted this guy to become governor.' This is a direct quote from US President Donald Trump, as he gave a speech last week at his rally in South Carolina. Instead of saying former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's name, he made this surreal sound. It wasn't the only time during the speech when he lost his words. He goes on to describe the military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats with the sound effects 'pew, pew, pew' to imitate gunfire. If you're confused, you're not alone. I know it may read as though I've just thumped my fist on my keyboard to create a series of random sentences, but I've not, and that's the point. Donald Trump's verbal blunders are becoming increasingly pronounced and increasingly concerning.
WTF AMERICA?!: THE WAY OUT OF THIS HELL AND BACK TO DEMOCRACY, Ben, Brett and Jordy document how Chump bullies people into silence, how he avoids answering questioning with the promise of two-weeks-from-now but how the two-weeks-from-now never actually arrives (regardless of whether it's Melania providing proof of her immigration process or the Iran War ending or whatever) and how he creates scandals to distract.
No wonder Donald Trump so obviously despises the legal system when it functions how it's supposed to. When claims are tested. When information is vetted. When lies are revealed. Does any of that sound like anything Donald Trump would want? That's why his answer isn't to honor the American legal system. His answer is to abuse it. To destroy it. To exploit the system in a way that’s designed to create injustice.
And it's the kind of honest truth told powerfully that the country needs. It doesn't always get that from the media. Commercial media has its own constraints including those sanctions and directions imposed by owners. The brothers note that there is also the built-in of trying to get 'both sides' but, as when Chump was lying about some huge water spigot that California Governor Gavin Newsom was refusing to turn on that would deliver melted snow from Canada to the fires in California, there's not an other side when the other side -- Chump -- is just lying and making things up.
And there's no excuse for the media when so many refused to note last week's Congressional report from House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee detailing Chump's participation in joining Jeffrey Epstein in assaulting young girls and women (see Tuesday's snapshot). Repeating: There is no excuse for that large media silence.
The brothers do a good job throughout their book. But we should note that they are reinventing the wheel to a degree. That's most obvious when they touch on MSNBC's history and fail to note it was a sewer. There's the cancelling of Phil Donahue's program because Bully Boy Bush was going to war with Iraq, there's the dreaded racist Don Imus who it felt for years that we right here were alone in calling out, there were vile and disgusting jerks like Michael Savage (thank you to the Gates -- but especially Melissa -- for making clear to MSNBC that he couldn't continue on air). The media failings are many and some are built in features. But to know that, you're media awareness has to go beyond 2000. We saw Eric Alterman display his vast ignorance of media critiques in his awful WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA which ignored a huge body of work including Nora Ephron's ground breaking media criticism which she did for ESQUIRE in the 70s. Izzy Stone and so many others have documented the problems with our media and done so accurately in the 20th century. We would do well, as media consumers, to be aware of their work.
Unlike Alterman, the Meiselas brothers don't pretend to be writing the history of the media or of media criticism. They're focused on Chump -- to the point that it may leave loyal viewers of MEIDASTOUCH NEWS (we'd include ourselves in that group) fearful that when Chump leaves the White House, the MEIDASTOUCH will shut down. Their work has been too important for them to pull a United For Peace and Justice move and shut down their organization because someone got elected. (UFPJ shut down days after the November 2008, election -- we covered it here and you can see our exchange with GOOGLE AI that took place today here.)
It seems doubtful that they'd take that move because they clearly find it rewarding to take on the powerful and to uplift We The People. But you're reading this at a site that started as a weekly site in 2005 and is now published only about every six weeks. Things change, life gets in the way.
For now, we've got the Meiselas brothers and we are thankful for that because this country has never needed voices like Ben, Brett and Jordy Meiselas more than it does currently.
