My Problem With Left Wing Candidates Is I'm Not Convinced They Want To Win. And This Year That's Increasingly Becoming A Problem for the Democrats

 

A couple of years I wrote an article arguing two questions that various identity groups always bring up and how it bothers me when it comes to politics. They are: "Are you electable?", followed quickly by: "Would you ask a white man that same question?"

At this point I've thought of a glib but telling response to anyone who in the future puts these two questions together. "Why don't you put that on a bumper sticker: 'You're A Racist If You Don't Vote for Me'."  Now I do realize this is stated so bluntly by members of the Squad that I'm kind of shocked it has yet to appear in the Justice Democrat platform. And it would shock me if in a future Presidential campaign AOC actually puts it on a button. I look forward to her trying to win over New Hampshire voters with it; it's certainly got as good a chance as winning as her policies.

And more directly the race card falls apart when you realize that these people are only asking it in regards to Democrats running for the Presidency. I don't remember any of the same people who said asking Jesse Jackson of his electability was racism saying the same thing for either Allan Keyes or Herman Cain when they ran for President and all the people who used sexism as code for Hilary or Elizabeth Warren didn't use it for Michelle Bachman or Carly Fiorina. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz's runs for the Presidency in 2016 were historic and yet I don't remember seeing any members of the LatinX community being particularly willing to credit them for it. It's even clear in runs for the Senate in the same state; Jamie Harrison was the epitome of black excellence when he challenged Lindsay Graham in 2020 but no one seemed interested in Tim Scott in that same state.

That is one of my problems with identity politics: it only seems to count if Democrats do it far more than Republicans do. But since I've written about that part before, it's time to get to the first question. The one of electability.

A huge part of the reason I take the far left in American politics far less seriously then everybody in the media and both parties do is because the last decade has done much to convince me that to them the one issue that is the only one that counts to both parties – can they win? – is at the bottom of priorities for the overwhelming majority of left-wing voters. Given their attitude has always been that once you become part of 'the establishment' you have sold out and that they view both parties as equally corrupt then you constantly get the feeling that for most of the candidates who've been running under this banner since the 2016 election that policy and governing really don't interest them and most of the time get in the way. To them being an elected representative is a hobby and running for office is a temp job, something they do between posts on social media make their issues and giving loud speeches to the faithful.

This has been borne out by everything I've seen Sanders do in the last decade and the Squad since they took office in 2018. To them governing interests them less then performing before the faithful. The work of making policy interests them far less than making a speech at a college campus where they speak for an hour telling how corrupt the establishment that they are now a part of truly is. It really begs the question as to why they ran for public office since they have little interest in serving the public or their party.

This attitude makes them popular with the young, college educated voters which are, as they've always been, the biggest supporters of progressives. This group think that all problems are a moral issue and can be solve if everyone just does the right thing. What's troubling is that these elected officials have served in Congress or the Senate for years and should at least in theory know that the world is more complicated than it is in a stump speech – and yet they've done nothing to enlighten their supporters on this fact during the last decade.

 They've managed to escape scrutiny from it most of the time because the Democrats were using them against a common enemy. What the Democrats forgot is that most of the people who have been Bernie Bros and love the Squad prefer the kind of chaos Trump has been more than willing to provide. Governing and policy bores them because it's more complicate then their binary world view allows them to see things.

The left has always believed far more in principles as a litmus test for candidates then electability. There's a joke in there about because they've never managed to have any real political power, the principles are all they have. The bigger issue – and the one that over the last year is increasingly becoming clear – is that their increasingly forcing this point of view on an electorate at large who has made it just as clear that they have no use for the left's principles. This would bother me less if they weren't holding the Democrats hostage and more importantly,  potentially costing us seats that are tough enough to win with moderates and impossible to win with the kinds of doctrine the left has been demanding their candidates follow.

This can be problematic when they run under their own field for Congress. But when you're trying to run for statewide office, particularly in territory that on multiple occasions has proven it doesn't want the left is selling; it's almost certainly going to lead you to an electoral defeat. And as someone who realized pretty much when it was grade school you can only put your principles into law if you're elected I find it horrifying that so many supposedly intelligent candidates for office on the Democratic side are, at best, indifferent to the idea this might be a problem.

That was the biggest flaw of the campaign that led to Graham Platner being tapped to run for the Senate in Maine.  It was clear after the 2024 election that the Democratic Party needs to win white working class voters. The far left doesn't like working class voters, in large part because it's overwhelmingly made up college educated white people who by their nature look down on the working class. And the people behind the Platner campaign weren't really trying to run a working class platform or candidate.

In a view of the electorate so cynical the Heritage Foundation would reject it the plan was to basically put working class lipstick on a progressive candidate and call him working class. At no point did anyone even consider the possibility of putting in issues that would appeal to working class voters in Maine, only to come up with someone who could pass for working class in the eyes of the public well enough so that no one would notice his stump speech was almost word for word out of the Squad's playbook. Obviously they did it a horrible job vetting Platner but it's not clear that they were that picky – one of their earliest choices was Troy Jackson, who is now the nominee for Senate after Platner spectacularly imploded.

The sole evidence that Platner was going to be a man of the people was based entirely on crowds at his appearances and how well he was doing in the polls against Janet Mills. No one even seems to have considered at any point during the months leading up to Mills' dropping out that the polls might be painting a picture that was different from reality; as the scandals mounted against Platner, no one connected with his campaign seemed to even consider the possibility they could be a problem in the general election. And no one even seems to have considered that all Platner was really doing was giving the exact kind of stump speech that so many progressive candidates had given before to voters who were going to vote in the Democratic primary.

The fatal flaw in the Platner campaign – and one that I'd argue Jackson is now facing -  is that it's still being taking as a given that voters fundamentally want what progressive candidates are offering; it's just the messenger that's the problem.  Jackson is essentially making the same sales pitch to rural Maine voters that has been made by left-wing Democratic candidates for years and which they've made very clear across the country they don't want.  And because the progressive refuses to accept the problem is not politically sound Jackson will face the same brick wall that every progressive running for statewide office keeps hitting. These views are popular with the far-left primary voters but not the electorate at large.

But say what you will about Jackson or even Platner at least they had a basic understanding of the office they were running for. I'm not sure the same can be said for Abdul Al-Sayid, who on Tuesday became the Democratic nominee for Senate for Michigan and faces a whole different sort of problems.

El-Sayed's first problem is that he is a one-issue candidate and that issue is Gaza. To the average progressive this is the most important issue facing America, if not the world today, if not in all of human history and they can't seem to understand why the average American doesn't feel as strongly as they do about a conflict have a world a way where America doesn't have troops on the ground.

I'm not trying to negate the level of feeling this conflict has inspired in a certain amount of the population but the reality is Gaza is not in America; therefore the average voter doesn't care about it with the intensity that those who feel strongest about it do. Indeed in a poll run by a Michigan pollster it was made clear that Gaza was not in the top ten of issues facing the voters sampled.

But for El-Sayed, this is the only issue that he cares about, regardless of whether he can do anything about it if he is the Senator of Michigan. Which brings me to his next problem: to El-Sayed, winning election to the Senate is simply a means to an end. He has been very clear that his main priority for winning is so that he can have influence over who becomes the Democratic nominee for President in 2028 as the Michigan primary is scheduled to be early in the calendar. In other words his run for the Senate is basically a shadow campaign to get inside the corridors of the Democratic power structure and the interests of the people of Michigan are secondary, if that.

To the average progressive, perhaps even more strongly in Michigan, this is all they care about which if nothing else shows that they don't even care about the electorate at large at all. And outside of Gaza, El-Sayed has had great difficulty giving a message that connect to any other part of the electorate, even the progressive stump speech. When asked to explain how his campaign would help the working class he answered: "I think a custodian who makes $14,000 a year is sick and tired of his tax dollars going to Israel."

It's one thing not to be able to connect with a working class voter; it's another to not even be able to parrot back one of the key points of the progressive stump speech since at least 2016. He couldn't even be bothered to say: 'eat the rich' or "the top 1 percent."

This actually leads in to the next issue: in the final weeks of the campaign multiple polls showed El-Sayed winning by anywhere from 10 to 15 points against Haley Stevens. Instead, he barely managed to eke out a victory with 48.5 percent to Stevens' 47.5 percent. This argues that so much of the support that was for Al-Sayid was soft to begin with and that the primary was divided.

All of this is difficult enough before you consider that El-Sayed is running in a state that went for Trump twice. Michigan is not a hotbed of progressivism; it's a swing state that has been more red than blue recently. And Mike Rogers, El-Sayed's  Republican opponent, is no fresh-faced rookie. Two years ago he barely lost to Elissa Slotkin by little more than 3 tenths of a percent out of over 5 million cast.  Rogers carried all but 10 of Michigan's districts and it took two days to call the election. Slotkin was a far more moderate candidate than El-Sayed is.

And in all the polls that were run in the months leading up to the primary not one showed Al-Sayid ahead of Rogers while multiple polls showed Stevens with a slight lead over him. Indeed on the eve of the election a poll that showed El-Sayed with a sixteen percent lead over Stevens in the primary saw him trailing Rogers by ten points going into the general.

None of this seems to have troubled any of the people who voted for El-Sayed on August 4^th.  For all I know it doesn't seem to have trouble the candidate. But it's now not just his problems but the Democratic Party's who will have to spend a lot of time and money propping up a defense of a seat when they're trying to take back the Senate. That they now have to do so while trying to fight a damaged campaign against Susan Collins in Maine – another problem the far left has saddled them with – is an issue that they will spend the next three months struggling with and Rogers and the GOP will spend every minute making sure they have to.

I'm deeply skeptical that El-Sayed will be of much help in this regard. If he wants to win the election – which I'm not convinced he cares much about – he will now have to spend the next three months convincing the 47.5 percent of the Stevens voters that he doesn't hold her or the people who voted for her in the visceral contempt he made little attempt to hide when he was running in the primary. The only way he can do this is to move to the center, which the left has defined as moving to the right and they have always lambasted Democrats for doing when they won elected office.  They will consider any movement he does as remotely conciliatory as an unforgivable sin and consider it tantamount to treason.

 And there is a halfway decent chance that many Stevens voters will either stay at home or when they go to vote choose to vote the Democratic ticket but leave El-Sayid's name off the ballot.  One saw this playout in the Maine primary when Platner received fewer votes than the Democratic candidates for governor so its easy to see it happening on a larger scale here. Considering that El-Sayid did best with young college educated voters but struggled with rural voters and African-Americans in the primary that is a double burden as he will need both on his side if he hopes to win.

If any of this was a factor in the minds of the nearly 1.2 million Michigan voters when they voted for a candidate who as of now stands an average of 4.4 percent behind Mike Rogers and who overnight shifted Michigan by ten percent to the GOP it doesn't seem to have bothered them. It pales compared to what nearly happened in the Wisconsin governor's race this year.

Now to be fair while what is happening in Maine and Michigan is completely the left-wing of the party's fault the same can't be said in Wisconsin which has been a clusterfuck ever since the incumbent Tony Evers chose not to run for a third term. The primary race has been a mess for almost the entire cycle with candidates getting in, then getting out, then getting back in again.

This speaks to the larger disorganization of Democrats in Wisconsin overall. Wisconsin is very much a swing state at Michigan is and the Republican presence in the 21^st century has been bigger than in Michigan with Ron Johnson and Scott Walker winning Senate and Governor's races, respectively in 2010.  The Democrats have been unable to unseat Johnson in two reelection attempts and while Evers won the governor's race in 2018 and then was reelected, as with Michigan, the state went for Trump two years ago.

The governorship reflected the unsteady nature of knowing who the nominee was, while it leaned Democrat it was always closer to toss-up. Then just to put the cherry on the crap sundae two weeks ago Mandela Barnes the lieutenant governor during Evers' first term and the prohibitive front runner, dropped out of the race when allegations of his treatment of young women came to light.

Barnes had been the only Democrat option with a lead in the general over Tom Tiffany, who has represented the 7^th district since 2020 and serves in the Freedom Caucus. His withdrawal was just the latest in an endless series of problems. Sara Rodriguez, the current Lt. Governor, dropped out in July because of inaccuracies in the campaign's financial reporting.  This led to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowledy, who dropped out of the race a few days earlier to reenter the race.

This led to the rise of Francesca Hong has been part of the Wisconsin State Assembly since 2021. She's a Democratic Socialist but Wisconsin has always been more willing to accept this then other places. Hong is running on the same kind of media strategy and messaging as Mamdani did running for Mayor of New York City. But there's a difference between running for mayor of one of the most Democratic cities in the country and governor of a swing state that just went for Trump. It's one thing to argue Thanksgiving is a 'colonizer holiday' and defund the police as a socialist in a deep blue district; another to do so when you're running for governor in a state that is more conservative then it looks on the outside.

Were the Democrats in Wisconsin less chaotic Hong would not have been in a position to be a nominee at all and that's not really her fault. Her bigger problem is one I noted in an earlier article. Hong, like most socialists, has a huge approval with young voters in Wisconsin  To them the biggest issues are health care, affordability, social issues and ICE. There are thirteen issues that impacted their vote. Hong led on 12 of them, most notably AI data centers and affordability. There's only one she didn't lead in: electability.

To her credit Hong seems to have realized that while this might not bother her strongest supporters the rest of the electorate in her state probably will have a problem with it. She's spent the last week backing away from some of her most controversial social media posts in the kind of backpedaling that would do a generation of conservatives proud. On Monday she said her positions have evolved but Thanksgiving is a time that's 'incredibly painful for many people in our communities." Two days later she told Politico Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday.

She's also distanced herself from much of the DSA platform, saying in the only televised primary debate, she doesn't support defunding the police, abolishing prisons or the Senate. Many people believe that some voters won't like Hong's past rhetoric and it's clear that the DSA is already pissed that she's not fully endorsing it. Critically AOC and Sanders who were upfront of their support of Platner and Al-Sayid  refused to endorse Hong. Interestingly AOC herself seems to have moderated her point of view on defunding the police in a recent interview, which means I expect her to be primaried in 2028 rather than trying to run for higher office.

Once again polling vastly overestimated the appeal of the left-wing candidate in a Midwest state. The overwhelming majority of polls showed Hong with a huge lead over David Crowley, with anywhere from a 19 to 22 percent margin. And just as in Michigan the results vastly overestimated the support for Hong with her not even able to get 40 percent of the vote. And unlike in Michigan this time it made a difference as Crowley managed a remarkable upset to win the nomination.

That actually leads to the major issue I have with so many left-wing candidates running for office this cycle, whether it is in ads they've run in primaries in my home state of New York or whether in primarying incumbents at large, whether it be the Connecticut governor's race or running for the Senate in Minnesota. It’s a talking point they've been using for a decade: that they will 'stand up against Trump'.

The thing is while I know all too well what this looks like for an activist or a celebrity I still have no idea what it would mean for an elected official, particularly a Senator or representative. No one has ever explained how one Democrat, alone, in either house of Congress can do something more than any current representative against an incumbent President.

The best case scenario is that this is just done to rouse the base during primary or general elections. They were still using during Biden's term so I could see that. But the worst case is more troubling because it mirrors so much of Trump itself. Essentially so many of these candidates are using one of his classic arguments: Washington is broken and I alone can fix it. That argument makes a certain sense if you're running for President; if you running for a House Seat in New York or Senate in Maine or Michigan, it's a delusion of grandeur and I find it beyond troubling that so many of Platner and El-Sayid's supporters seem to believe it.

What's more after the last decade we've seen countless examples of the fallacy in that statement in the Republican Party. This election cycle alone, with Trump's popularity at its nadir, we have seen in primary after primary how much the base thinks of Republican officials who stand up to Trump. In the Indiana statehouse election, with Thomas Massie in Congress and Bill Cassidy in the Senate, it is very clear that standing up against Trump costs you votes, not the other way around. I've made this argument how helping Trump's agenda hasn't cost the Republicans who stood with him and how standing against him has hurt incumbent Democratic senators. It's always been true about the Republicans who were against him since he took office; it's just as true now.

And even that argument has an expiration date: its November of 2028. Whatever (very) limited success far left candidates have had in the last decade has been entirely based on Trump being the opposition that has managed to unify the Democratic Party. In the majority of the Senate and Congressional primaries that have taken place this cycle the electorate has by and large embraced centrist candidates in deep red states to win in the Senate and gubernatorial races and in swing districts. They'll unify against Trump and MAGA in the general, of course, but that's because he's still President and that will be the main argument for them going into 2028.  Once he's gone from power, the main reason for keeping the progressive wing of the party with relative kid gloves will be gone forever and the Democrats will have to look at their track record – which must be measured by  how many general elections they've won during that period and how many elections they've cost the party over that same period. That will lead to a reckoning with the left and I'd argue it has to start after the midterms.

For candidates like Jackson and El-Sayid for Senate, these elections will play a far bigger part in that accounting then their earlier primary wins. The question "Are you electable?" has never been rhetorical ; the voters always make it very clear what they think and there is only a yes or no answer to that question. That their strongest supporters consider this is a non-issue but it’s a very real one for the Democrats and perhaps America at large. And in this case I hope that the Democrats will in the aftermath take no for an answer  - and mean it.

How Is It Celebrities Are More Passionate About Their Causes Then Ever Before… Yet Are Somehow Doing Far Less To Help Them?

 

When I was six or seven I remember when 'We Are The World' was recording and how big a deal it was in order to raise awareness about the AIDS crisis which Reagan's administration was basically ignoring. More important then that was that the recording was there to raise money for it, stepping in where the government was clearly failing those who were suffering the most.

During their decade we had some of the most memorable charity based concerts in history: Live Aid, which I vaguely remember and Farm Aid, which I don't.  Every Labor Day weekend Jerry Lewis was doing a forty-eight hour telethon to help the victims of MS and every year for much of the eighties and nineties Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams would have Comic Relief where comedians and Hollywood types from all over would get together and do routines in order to raise money for whatever cause was prominent.

I don't know if celebrities were more genuine about their beliefs back then or if this was built out of some version of liberal guilt. What I do know is that there was something admirable about them being willing to give time and energy and using their platforms to raise money for a good cause far more then just to raise awareness of it. In fact during that period it was considered gauche by celebrities to use your platform at award speeches to draw attention to political causes (Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins at the Oscars were one of the biggest offenders) with the understanding that it was better to help either in subtle ways or direct, by using your platform to raise money for them.

In the 21^st century celebrities are more political then they ever were back there. And given how much the conservative revolution under Republicans has done much to erode, if not eradicate much of the safety net we had for so many of the downtrodden both here and abroad you'd think they'd be more willing to do something to raise money for these causes. Instead as we reach the middle of the second Trump administration the opposite has become the case. Celebrities are focused entirely on raising awareness but doing anything else is by and large, not their responsibility.

There are individuals who are exceptions, of course, and there are sometimes exceptions. We still have annual telethons for the victims of 9/11 and there are Red Nose Days for Breast Cancer on TV. But increasingly the celebrity culture when it comes to supporting major causes begins and ends with wearing a pin on an awards show or making a speech on social media.

Objectively I'm baffled as to why this has become the norm among the Hollywood left. At a certain level I get why the current generation of left does it: to them raising awareness is all they feel that they owe society with posts online and the occasional protest making them feel like they've done their part. At their core they practice the same selfishness doctrine that they mock those on the right who are loyal to Ayn Rand's philosophy: it's our job to point out the flaws in our system, it's society's job to step in and do the work. They've always argued the system is irrevocably broken and that it is the system's job to fix itself. They don't feel they owe society anything else then that.

But even if the Hollywood culture is effectively taking its cues from the millennial/Gen Z generation of left and they are so isolated from the general public because of their wealth and fame (both of which are legitimate possibilities) you'd think that they'd been willing to use their platform in order to do more than harangue people about their moral failures, which is now what passes for so many of them as 'raising awareness'.  This makes them look very much like they are rich and entitled but it also makes them look lazy.  It's though they feel their obligation to society is no more than the conservatives they spent most of their time haranguing. And since in the last decade they've argued that we are in a 'post-shame world' then their approach seems pointless.

It's almost as if the internet has led to a breakdown between both the left-leaning public and the celebrity. Those on the left demand, if not insist, that the average celebrity take a stand on causes that are important to them – ICE, defund the police, the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community – and judge them for not saying anything even more harshly then taking the side of the right. This culture almost seems to have a delusion about how power works in our society and the role that we have in it.

Consider JK Rowling or Dave Chappelle. One is an author; one is an entertainer. Neither holds elected office or has the power to make, enforce or carry out laws. Their positions  towards the transgender community, regardless of what it is, has no effect on the policy of government in either America or the United Kingdom.  It might draw support in conservative circles but no politician has ever made policy based solely on what a public figure says in history.

Now turn it around. If either Chappelle or Rowling were to offer complete and full-throated support to the transgender community, would it change anything for that community? All the laws that were restricting them the day before would still be in place and Nigel Farage or Mike Johnson would not come running to their constituencies to reverse their positions because of it. That's not how the world works.

In either case I find it difficult to believe it would make a difference from those who are bullied and beaten most of their lives and face restrictions from the laws one bit if they changed their opinions. Can you really see if there was a meeting of an alliance of them in Mississippi and this came out? "Well the state has passed more restrictive laws in bathrooms and women's sports and three more of our members were beaten up in hate crimes. But things are sure gonna turn around now that Harry Potter's on our side!"

In 2026 just as in 1986 or 1996 celebrities don't have the power to introduce bills in Congress, sign laws or enforce them. What they can do – and I'd argue they should be doing – is using their platform to try and raise money to help all those who are suffering under this administration. And in the decade since Trump first won they've fundamentally failed that test.

Oh I grant you they'll show up at No Kings protests or anti-ICE protests and make dozens of social media protests a day about all of the horrible things that the administration is doing, has done or will do. But I can find that out if I look at the news or really anywhere.  John Oliver telling me how bad things are in America isn't giving a message any different then Rachel Maddow or Anderson Cooper are and I'd argue it helps less when a man whose one of the richest men in Hollywood comes to us once a week to tell us how much the wealthy and powerful are screwing the average citizen. It has done wonders for the career of John Oliver but it hasn't helped the average American or indeed anyone else in the world.

To be very clear I'm not denying how horrible the world is today and that the problems we face don't need help. So I ask the question: in the nearly three years since the attacks of October 7^th what exactly have Hannah Einbinder or Mark Ruffalo or Susan Sarandon done to help the people of Gaza?

Take it at its most objective: if there is a crisis of the level that these celebrities are saying is happening in that section of the world, what exactly have those in Hollywood done to abate it? This isn't entirely a trick question: I'm fully aware that the only people who can bring about a resolution to this crisis are the Israeli government and Hamas and as recent news has told neither side seems to show any interest in doing so in the immediate future.  Multiple presidents and other governments  have tried to solve the problem of threading  this needle; I fail to see how a man whose last job was to play Tom Brandis in Task would be able to make a difference in foreign policy.

That's fine because it's not his job. That being said how on Earth is raising a stink on  a red carpet or passing petitions at foreign film festivals helping resolve the crisis? It doesn't even pass the stink test of 'raising awareness' anymore, we're all painfully aware of what's going on because people like Ruffalo will never stop reminding us of it. But there's nothing that people at the Golden Globes or Berlin Film Festival can do to influence Netanyahu or Hamas's leadership either and you'd think Ruffalo and his colleagues would have at the very least, realized this after three years of doing exactly that.

So if the people of Gaza are suffering so badly, if you'd wanted to do something constructive you could raise money for food and medicine and blankets and basic needs. You could have a mini-special somewhere or do a charity drive. God knows there are enough prominent people who care about this cause. And yet in nearly three years no one is willing to go that far beyond symbolic efforts that seem designed to draw attention to the presenters then to actually solve the problem.  (I won't name names.)

And that's basically how the celebrity culture is with every problem facing America today. Worse in more cases then I can count they seem more intent on shaming the people they see as responsible rather than doing anything to actively help. When John Leguizamo says on social media that if you're a Trump voter don't go to his films or buy his albums then he's throwing a tantrum on social media that costs him nothing. How would he know if that were to happen, by the way? Does he think that people show voter ID cards before going to see The Odyssey?

But that's keeping with a Hollywood and celebrity culture that is more about performance even in the raising awareness culture. Shouting "No one is illegal on stolen land' at the Grammys or cosplaying against the One Percent at the Met Gala doesn't help those who are being detained by ICE or those struggling to make ends meet. I'd actually argue those who celebrities claim to be 'supporting' are completely unaware of the 'stands' these men and woman are making.

Celebrities are less interested in giving back to those in need then taking away from it. You can make a speech at an awards show, you're not helping those in need, you're making it about you.  They're not even bothering to use their platforms to say to their fanbase to give money or charity to those suffering in places. I should know. I've seen hundreds of posts on social media pointing out 'the oppression of Israel', I've seen nothing arguing what they want us to do to help the people of Gaza. What would it cost them to put in a link to some kind of charity drive or food drive in all those words arguing of post-colonialism or Western oppression?

But that's basically the way both Hollywood and the left has become these days. These days those who raise money or work to give their fortune to causes are considered suspect because they are in a position to raise money or give their fortune. And those who make private efforts, whether in charity drives or Go Fund Me pages are praised not for their willingness to do the work for a worthy cause but instead held up as a sign of how the government has failed its job. It is the government and the government's responsibility alone to solve the problems of today and since they are corrupt and owned by the special interests they can't be trusted to do so.

I'm baffled by this culture among Hollywood in particular. Here are some of the richest and most famous people in the world, who if they were willing to do the work for a common cause their fans would gladly be willing to follow.  They know that the only way to solve these problems is through a combination of time, effort and money, something that the current generation has made it clear it doesn't want to give. But rather than use their platform to argue otherwise the vast majority spend their time and energy in complete agreement with their fans.

All of this just reminds me of the 21^st century equivalent of the public service announcements I remember growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. Celebrities would go on TV, speaking in favor of causes involving a Drug-Free America or AIDS or everything else. It might have had the same effect as those celebrities who made endorsements for Toyotas or Maytag but at least most people knew it was a lie. Now Mark Ruffalo or Billie Eilish makes speeches on red carpets that have the same level of sincerity as those long ago PSAs – and yet this exact same audience seems to believe it’s a genuine expression of sincerity and belief, despite never believing it when the same words come from elected officials.

Is that all celebrities feel they owe the causes they stand for these days? A post on Instagram and a hashtag? And what does it say that for so many teens and 20 something's that counts more then giving money to that same cause? I honestly don't have an answer.

What I do know is that I'll accept that these celebrities are serious about what they stand for when they get together to record an album in which not only will they not be paid but all the proceeds will be giving to that cause. It might not be as instantly validating as a social media post but trust me the people who need will appreciate it far more.

 

Coalition of the Sane: Leftists Can Do Nice Things Sometimes - Usually By Accident.

 

Some time earlier this year, I don't remember when, I ended up following a writer on this site I'm going to refer to as Charlotte. I don't know why I did this exactly because after three or four articles and even more appearances in various comments sections it was very clear to me that she is the kind of writer I've done my best in this same period to actively avoid, usually by blocking them the moment I read one such article and it becomes very clear that I'm basically reading the same article I've read on this site thousands of times during 2025 alone.

Charlotte, according to their author's bio, claims to be expressing the views of oppression by a series of cultural studies. Which is of course the exact thing the world has been crying out for all this time and is what we need more of to solve the problems of today. This particular work of art had a title that involved "Why Men Are Submissive if A Male Dominated Society'. 

I should have known better and blocked the author right then but sometimes you just have to know what you get when moral indignation and cherry picking  combine. This article was no different than any of the ones Charlotte has written over time in that it used thousands of words and several links to previous articles to basically say what could have been said in a hashtag or an Instagram post and probably have been. And by the end of it I was in the same place I almost always am after one of them. And as I sometimes too, I gave them one and a half barrels.

I'm going to quote verbatim what I said:

Seriously. Just write over and over. All western cultures are horrible. The west has destroyed everything. All men are bad and there's nothing we can do about it.

Just keep doing that. Every article. Don't bother with supporting evidence from some old book, don't bother with philosophy, don't bother with current events. Just do that. Over and over. Much quicker, saves your readers a lot of time Has the same intellectual affect.

Because if you're not going to come up with a way we can lead a revolution against our oppressors, step by step, including a place to meet and a way to do it, honestly you're wasting everybody's time. I've been hearing smashing the patriarchy in some form for decades on line. It was written by generations of feminists before you. And yet somehow you have yet to do it beyond this passive aggressive BS arguments to the faithful on sites like this.

Because honestly if this is your way of causing a revolution you're really, really, really failing the cause. I acknowledge fully how much worse things have gotten over the last decade in particular in society but all people like you've done has been to say, "Told you so" and then go back to writing the exact same articles you always do. I don't know what you're waiting for any more or if you're still waiting for everyone else to do the work for you.

All you people do here is talk, talk, talk and nothing else. Violence from group aligned with you outbreak, you passive aggressively condemn it, right does it you act with full fervor and still do nothing. Gilead could form overnight and you'd be putting on the gowns saying, "Somebody needs to do something." You and your colleagues do nothing. You march, you write angry letters, you run a few candidates in far left primaries , end of the day you have contributed nothing and changed nothing and yet you somehow think articles like these are valuable to the cause.

You are not winning the battle for hearts and minds because you never talk with anyone who doesn't give you anything but unvarnished praise. You think your followers on this site are a force when they're just part of the virtual ether. And trust me you can dispel all the cultural narratives you want. That doesn't solve a damn thing.

And if the only problem with patriarchy is drawback but you can live under it, then honestly it must be working out better than you think at least for you. Perhaps it's not working out well for women who are poor or struggling but since they don't have access to sites like this or free time to read them, I guess they don't matter.

Personally I'd appreciate you doing something to speed up the revolution. Any day now. And not by writing another angry article. Though I guess that involves less effort.

Was I being unpleasant? Yes. Was I being sincere? Completely.

Because I have been reading this exact article with the POV changed for race, sexual preference or gender identification on this site so many times. It is articles like these make me yearn for a hashtag or a simple black square. At least then we don't have as much pontificating and intellectual cherry picking and we can move on to other things.

I've been beyond clear and the left itself knows this all too well on what the right is doing and has been doing the last decade. You would think, considering that by this point many of these articles list the effective strategies of the right wing, somebody among them would say: "You know writing all these articles isn't changing anything. Maybe we should come up with a plan. Or at least change our approach."

I wasn't expecting a response at all or if I did it was going to be some kind of hate-filled creed. I got part of column B but the actual response was in its own way, insightful.

 Again I'll quote verbatim:

A) We can't solve a problem that we don't understand the properties of.

B) And how did you manage to miss the 5 citations to outside sources as well as the links to three other relevant stories that are themselves filled with citations to experts (like all my stories are)?

C) How did you manage to miss the entire paragraph where I talk about the other artificial stratifications that are a part of a dominance hierarchy system?

“It’s an artificial method for maintaining not just gendered hierarchies, but all sorts of other kinds of social stratification — related to things like race, religion, wealth, sexuality, education, able-bodiedness, etc. The gender aspect is a reflection of the larger cultural system and just one aspect of it.”

If you're not also angry about the subjugation of women, then you, my verbose friend, are a huge part of the problem, but it's pure projection that you find the tone of this piece to be angry. It's simply matter-o-fact. I think your emotions are getting the best of you.

If you honestly believe that any woman who writes online about women and society never encounters anyone who doesn't agree with her, you are more delusional than you previously appeared.

Why is it MY job to start the revolution for you? Grow up - you sound like a petulant child.

Now as you'll notice all the tendencies I gave from an earlier piece on how progressives handle criticism are here:

1. Stating a point of view in the loudest and most self-righteous way possible.

2. Using cherry-picked facts to buttress their argument.

3. Gaslighting any debate by saying the problem as you.

4. Calling you the worst name possible depending on the section of the left aisle they're stumping for (racial, gender, LGBTQ+ etc.)

Here's the most important difference and I think its critical. Charlotte feels no moral obligation to do anything to change her approach. As far as she's concerned the burden rests entirely on society to change despite the fact she regularly writes for a site which argues society is essentially incapable of changing itself.

This is remarkable. In all the years I've been reading these articles and taking the brickbats of the people I criticize I've never seen anyone basically say the quiet part out loud. The burden on society to change is on society. I don't owe it a damn thing.  Why should I take an active role in making the world a better place? The most I'm willing to do is write these cultural studies which prove to me my point of view. If no one else does anything despite this, well I've done my part.

Needless to say Charlotte all but confirmed what I was saying in my original criticism with her response but what I consider the worst possible sin Charlotte considers it proof of her own position.

This is what confirmed the worst part of her to be. First when she asked for contributions she highlighted it with "For the drawbacks of living under the patriarchy." Which I guess means shit sucks for society but I'm getting paid. And more damningly that comment in which I criticized her she clapped for it before giving her own response. So she either she looked at this criticism with the fervor of someone looking for their name in the pan of a play or she just saw it as another way to add to her brand. Either way Charlotte confirmed what a narcissist they are.

Now I admit I could have blocked Charlotte right then but I was curious what she'd do next. So I followed up:

You were, to be clear, less original in your 'takedown' of me, then in your original column. Outrage? Check. Gaslighting? Check. Not answering any of the suggestions I pointed out? Check. Saying it's not YOUR responsibility to do the work? It's usually just implied so thank you for stating it directly for once.

Tell me, just for the record, in all of your writing and research into the subject of these problems that you clearly understand, have you managed to come up with a solution yet? Something that ignorant people like myself might be able to do to help the world I live in. Because I must have missed that among the dozen other articles I wrote in which you essentially said the exact same thing.

And of course you're not angry. Just like this post was not angry but coolly and calmly thought out.

Honestly the only surprise I really have is that you answered my post at all. I guess you wanted more validation then your original article and your waiting for your legion of supporters to applaud you for your bold stand.

I'll be in the other room, doing phone banks trying to get a woman elected to the Senate in Alaska later this year. I'll also be trying to get other Democratic officials elected in letter-writing campaigns this year. Not for you and your supporters of course. I could give a darn what you actually thought of me. But because I want to make the world a better place and I don't think dispelling erroneous cultural narratives alone will do the job. But you do you.

My readers know that I'm being sincere in all of these facts, including my efforts to elect Mary Peltola this fall. (Primary's next Tuesday!)

I honestly didn't expect a response to that one. And yet less than an hour later:

Yes - I write about it all the time, but I'm not going to link them because you're not going to be around to read them. What part of understanding the problem before you can create a solution do you not understand? Also, I don't owe you articles about anything whatsoever. Where are yours though? All I see are stories about TV shows.

When I get to the place where I'm just shaking my head at what an idiot someone is, it's time to block them, so let's just say, that's on the horizon.

Toodles!

Note yet again the self-centered behavior as well as the fact Charlotte doesn't believe she doesn't owe anyone who doesn't completely agree with her an answer, even if it would solve society's problems. 

All that Charlotte has done was illustrate in a way that involves far more candor then usual how little so many leftists think they owe 'the cause'. The world owes them everything and they owe it nothing in return, not even if they have a solution that might solve the problems of today. For the record I'm skeptical that Charlotte has anything resembling an abstract solution to the problems she argues for, let alone one that would receive mass acceptance.

Not that I intend to find out. I blocked her after the most recent conversation. If she wants to think she got the last word, I'm not going to burst her bubble. As we all know people like her have no desire to venture outside in the first place and I have no desire to fight a battle of wits with an opponent who is so clearly unarmed. I do have more important things to do with my time.

Author's Note: While I've quoted verbatim 'Charlotte's' response to me and have vaguely restated the title of the article that caused this, I have no intention of revealing either the real pseudonym nor where her articles can be found.

Some of my readers might be able to figure out where and when they find them. I urge them in the strongest possible sense not to. It's not worth the time or brain cells you will waste doing so.

 

 

 

 

 

Better Late Than Never: Shrinking Season 3

 

 

It has been one of the great joys of my experience is as a viewer to see Shrinking, which in its first two seasons has become a contender for one of the greatest comedies of the decade. A collaboration of Bill Lawrence and Jason Segel, it is another in this decade's trend of comedies about community and friendship , along with such fellow Emmy nominated and winning series such as Abbott Elementary and Only Murders in the Building.

So naturally it's taken me six months since Season Three dropped for me to finally get around to watching Season Three. In my defense it's not like I've been idle during this period; indeed much of the last few months have been spent watching some of Apple Tv's latest crop of brilliant freshman comedies such as Margo's Got Money Troubles and Widow's Bay both of which, like Shrinking, were deservedly among the most prominent Emmy nominees for Best Comedy. I haven't per se been saving the best for last – I did spend much of the last that period saying goodbye to Hacks – but I had a feeling that since I was going to spend the leadup to the Emmys dealing with some of the darker dramas and limited series I was going to need this show as balance.

And indeed having got through the first two episodes (technically three because the season premiere is a two-parter that was released as an hour-long one) I'm very grateful I waited. Because as always Shrinking is just as sublime, sentimental, sometimes dark, sometimes messy and always hysterical as its always been.

The first two episodes deal as much with Paul (Harrison Ford has to get the Emmy this year!) dealing with the fact that his struggles with Parkinson's are getting worse. He has spent much of the first two episodes having conversations with his doctor girlfriend Julie (Wendie Malick) about getting power of attorney and all the other negotiations. Jimmy (Jason Segel) suggested: "Why don't you just get married?" Paul's response was, as every line out of his mouth, classic: "Did you just propose to my girlfriend?"

Much of the first two episodes dealt with the plans for the wedding which was done primarily by Gabby (the always awesome Jessica Williams) who seemed to be throwing all of her energy in it because she liked being a wedding planner. This bugged the hell out of Paul (but doesn't everything?) who spent much of the episode trying to say that she was meddling. As always Gaby pointed out that she was doing this for her she was doing this for Julie and it sunk in that he was being  a prick to a woman he genuinely loves.

So as always they got married. Unfortunately after the wedding Paul saw a patient from the Parkinson's clinic (Michael J. Fox) in his kitchen. And since he knows one of the symptoms is hallucinations he immediately knows he has an issue. Paul has taken the position of  "Fuck Parkinson's" and is determined not to let this disease destroy him. That doesn't mean he enjoys having to lean on other people and he sure as hell doesn't like that Liz (Christa Miller!) has taken over his scheduling.

Jimmy (Jason Segel) is actually in a better place than when we met him two seasons ago. He seems to have managed to come out on the other side where he was, he's trying to get used to the face that Alice (Lupita Maxwell) is going to college on the other side of the country, and he's increasingly more balanced then when we first met him. He's still meddling like the first couple of seasons but it's less problematic then before; he has accepted the help of Paul when it came to handling certain problems. The one thing he's still struggling with is the idea that he will never love again. He thought he got it with Tia and that he can be fine without it.

But in one of the better storylines the woman he bought a car from last season (Cobie Smulders!) actually showed up at his doorstep under the fig leaf of bringing a spare key. The two of them had a pretty good conversation and it was clear the two are attracted to each other – and just as endearingly she's just as bad at approaching another man as he is. Jimmy then walked up her home at the end of the third episode, then walked away, then walked back, then walked away. Segel's hasn't gotten as much a chance to do his physical comedy during Shrinking, it's good to know he's still good at it.

All of the people in Jimmy's circle are going through their own transitions. Gaby is struggling with whether the kind of therapy she's doing is the right kind anymore and she was never thrilled about how both Jimmy and Alice were spending so much time around Louis (Brett Goldstein) the hit and run driver who killed Tia and whose involvement in their lives was the focus of Season 2. In an extraordinary monologue Gaby unleashed all of her anguish about how she can never forgive Louis for killing her best friend while still managing to be therapeutic. And in keeping with how Shrinking works this proved an impetus for Louis to finally find a way to move forward. He found closure with his girlfriend and at the end of the third episode told Jimmy and Alice that he planned to move to San Diego and carry on with his life.

Derek (Ted McGinley) continues to grow as a character along with providing the wonderful marriage that he and Liz share. Much of the first three episodes was about how their 25 year old son had moved back home yet again and neither of them could figure out how to tell him to get on his own. Liz loved being the bad cop but she showed at some level she didn't like it with her kids and Derek spent time struggling to do the right thing. He eventually did it and Liz thanked him – and in typical fashion then went to her son to apologize for him.

Brian (Michael Urie, nominated for his second consecutive Emmy) has been preparing for the birth of he and his husband's new child and have trying to figure out how to deal with the adoptive mother in the picture. Urie has always been good at showing both the selfish and vulnerable sides of him all at once and this was clear with how they dealt with the mother. Brian was clearly sensitive to her needs but they'd been delaying how much they wanted her in the child's life because Brian wanted no involvement. Liz managed to persuade him it was good to be selfish and he went to the meeting with the intention of doing so – but once he heard just how bad her life was he and his husband backed away. Liz then told him what a weak person he was – and then assured him she would have done the same thing.

I know because I'm very clear of how the average season of Shrinking works that things will be both bad and good as the season progresses, that there will be fights, arguments and messiness all the way through, with darkness and much as light. This has been the sweet spot that Bill Lawrence has worked in so masterfully in ever since the classic Scrubs debuted back in 2001 (and now it's back too!) and he and his incredible writers and actors have created one of the funniest and sweetest comedies in TV history.  And when you add some of the great comic actors of all time combined with one of the greatest actors of all time giving arguably the greatest performance he's ever given (every line out of Ford's mouth is gold) you have a masterpiece. There are Emmys in this show's future and eventually a Best Comedy prize. Maybe not this year but it's inevitable for a show that is now on the shortlist for a show that meets the high bar Bill Lawrence has been setting for decades and yet incredibly, manages to surpass it.

My score: 5 stars.

Homicide Rewatch: All Is Bright

 

Written by Rafael Alvarez; story by James Yoshimura & Julie Martin

Directed by Matt Reeves

 

Homicide's track record with introducing new characters has always been decidedly hit or miss and that's particularly true with female regulars. Generally the show's pattern has been that they start out like gangbusters and then as time goes by they become less significant to the overall plot until they eventually end up leaving. While there were outside factors in each case, we saw this play out with Isabella Hoffman as Russert and we've been seeing it playout with Michelle Forbes's Cox this season.

It would have been easy to assume the same pattern was going to play out with Callie Thorne's Laura Ballard.  Just like Russert she was introduced as a force of nature in the three part season premiere and has been less of a presence ever since, barely getting ten minutes of screentime in the four episodes that followed. But perhaps because they were now facing the certainty of their star leaving the show and a still uncertain future the writers now knew they had to build up the new arrivals as forces in their own right. They've spent much of the first third of the season on Paul Falsone to the point you might have forgotten that Ballard and Gharty were still there.

All is Bright seeks to rectify this in what is one of the biggest departures from the pattern. This is the first episode in years in which the main story features entirely along two detectives who the viewer has little knowledge of. Gharty has the advantage of having been around a few episodes over two previous season so we know his character a bit but we don't know his prowess as a detective and we haven't seen Ballard in action at all. So there's something of a thrill that when the teaser ends and a name is written in red under a detective who to this point we've never seen investigate case as a primary.  The result is a tour de force by Thorne and it confirms that the writers have no intention of failing Ballard. And though the viewer can't know it yet it's a harbinger of how well it will do by the various newcomers who will join the unit during the final seasons.

That is does so in one of the bleakest storylines the show has done – in a Christmas episode, no less! – is a tribute to how the series has complete confidence in everything it does even as it's future is still uncertain going into the end of 1997.

Its entertaining seeing Ballard and Gharty bickering about how apparently a waitress at Jimmy's mistook them for a married couple. (Considering how so many partnerships are closer then marriages its harder to argue this.) Ballard's annoyed about the assumption, Gharty's annoyed that Ballard doesn't think he's good enough to be married to so Ballard just says they'd be fine together. Pembleton and Bayliss talk about the darker parts of humanity while driving to crime scenes, Ballard and Gharty bicker about whether the fact that he spills gravy on his pants is a disqualifier for a husband.

The victim is Philip Longley, killed as his local laundromat with a bottle of liquid detergent and he hits the machine on the way down. Cox actually misses that at the crime scene someone poured bleach down his throat. This leads to Gharty asking at the morgue: "Anything else in his system? Drugs, alcohol, fabric softener?" (It was that line, more than anything, that made me accept Gharty as murder police.) The owner doesn't know much. She went to get quarters for the machine and when she came back Longley was dead on the floor.

Longley's parents assume that their son was a victim of urban crime, but we already know this isn't a robbery. As we'll see they didn't know their son at all or for that matter, neither did the many women he was seeing. Gharty handles it with decorum we haven't seen him use so far this series and he and Ballard get to some part of it.

Philip seems to have been what was then referred to as ladies' man and now more accurately might be called a 'man-whore'. We see four different girlfriends, all of whom seemed to be fine just sleeping with him. And its clear he was whatever each of the women he was sleeping with wanted him to be.  "Pick your adjective we got it covered," Gharty tells Giardello. Its clear all of them knew about the other women but none of them had a reason to kill him. Then we get to the very real motive: Longley was HIV positive.

Its worth noting Longley was aware of his diagnosis and yet made no effort to tell any of the women he was sleeping with during this period. Ballard immediately finds this as a reason to hate the victim and honestly it's hard to blame her.  It's one thing to be a womanizer, it's another to be one who has a fatal disease that is transmitted sexually and not tell your partners. Gharty immediately shows his problem saying Longley had AIDS and doesn't want to tell the mother.  Tellingly his mother knows and has been keeping it from her husband, not even planning to tell him if it led to her son dying. She spent all her savings keeping him alive for the last six years. Gharty actually has the moral high ground when he points out she also knew of her son's womanizing. He swore that he used protection and she believed him – except with Rita Hale who isn't his address book.

There are many extraordinary guest performances in Season Six and the Emmys was more than generous for once. But Kathryn Erbe's work as Rita, the woman who was a victim of Philip Longley before he met his end, is one of the most haunting in the entire series. Considering that during the 1990s Hollywood was giving a fair amount of awards recognition to those who played victims of AIDS its surprising that Erbe didn't get nominated. Then again, maybe it's not. With the sarcomas of the disease all over her face and a death shawl practically hanging over her, her Rita has all the mark's of someone dying of AIDS but doesn't wear the cause of victim. Indeed her first line is of someone who is expecting the cops to show up at her door, who almost seems more than happy to confess to her crime.

Much of it involves a long monologue by Erbe in which she tells the detectives the story of who she was before and when she met Longley. She was practically a virgin, still waitressing, barely out of college and she fell in love with him because he put maple syrup on his scrambled eggs like her.  Marriage and children were discussed. Then there was a blood drive.  She learns she's HIV positive. And Phil reveals what we already know. He played the same line on her with every other woman he's been with. "My life is over, Detective, I get sicker and sicker. Soon enough I die." The treatments that are working just fine for the man who infected her are not doing a damn thing for her. She makes it clear that all the headlines about the AIDS epidemic being contained are a bad joke as far as she's concerned. "Their cocktails work for two-thirds of the people who need it. For the rest of us, it doesn't do jack." She has less than five months to live and nothing to lose.

She's on the verge of confessing when Ballard walks out the room with Gharty behind her. Ostensibly its because she doesn't believe in her condition a woman of Rita's size can do this. Gharty says "You're angry enough you find the strength." He points out she did just admit. "He gives her AIDS. She gets sick. He doesn't." Ballard doesn't want to get the confession out of her.  Gharty keeps pressing her and blows up: "You don't want to go after her because she's sick." Ballard retaliates: "You want to go after her for exactly the same reason." Then she loses her ground saying: "You know what's unfair? What Longley did to her." Gharty then acts like a grownup (for once) "Let's forget about the disease…and treat her like any other suspect."

The show also takes a bit more of the shine off Falsone. The moment he learns Hale has AIDS he's stunned that Kellerman and Lewis don't seem more bothered and seems determined to get the courthouse. His excuse is that he's suing for custody of his son and he doesn't want this to be used against him. But that's a straw man argument and we all know it. The way he argues against Meldrick saying that you can't get it by breathing the same air really sounds like the kind of rhetoric you'd hear from an anti-vaxxer. That immediately afterwards Kellerman confronts him about leaving the Mahoney file on his desk – and then he starts right up taunting him again – is perhaps the best explanation why so many fans took a very hostile look at the character by this point.

The scene in the box between Gharty, Ballard and Hale is one of the best scenes in the entire season, arguably one of the best interrogation scenes of the entire series. Considering that at this point the two actresses had little experience in TV and the other has no experience in the interrogation room, its striking just how well it holds against any of the scenes we've seen Braugher and Secor do over the years.  What's also clear is the empathy she shares with the suspect: they're both 29, she broke up with her fiancée in Seattle and she's dating again.

When they go back in the room Hale almost seems to enjoy haranguing the detective about the single life: "Always wear a rubber." She says she should do public service announcements instead of sitcom stars. (That said her argument about using her as a public service announcement does foreshadow how some groups have dealt with diseases like lung cancer in the 21^st century.) Eventually Gharty starts leading the conversation where it needs to go. Finally Hale denies it saying that she was at home sick as a dog. Ballard tries a sympathetic approach saying that if she explains her story to a jury it'll be okay. Hale explodes. "Nothing will be OK!"

Both detectives get to the same point. Gharty thinks she did this because she felt nothing mattered she was still going to die. Ballard says the killing was justifiable based on Longley's actions. "So you gather up the last bit of strength that you have and you follow him to the laundromat."

(I have to tell you when Rita tells you that poor people are told 'a healthy dose of bleach will clean out the virus', you might get triggered, )

Her last words on the subject will haunt anyone. "Philip Longley murdered me. I murdered Philip Longley. Wouldn't you have done the same?"

Ballard actively pleads with them not to charge her and Giardello is utterly unsentimental. "Don't we have an infirmary at the state prison?" He points out Rita Hale committed premeditated murder and ignores Ballard's attempt to try and argue this is self-defense. He tells her that in Italy a person with AIDS can't be sent to prison. (Or at least it was true in 1997.) He tells them of one man who robbed eleven banks in one summer and each time he was caught and released. Ballard tries to argue that this is a reason to let Hale go. Gee reminds her this is Baltimore, not Italy.

Ballard storms off and Gharty finds her. He admits he understands why she did what she did but he doesn't believe she should get away with it. He's closer in spirit to Pembleton in this case. Ballard then says that she's worried about all of Longley's girlfriends who didn't know about his having HIV.  So then they spent the next several hours notifying them of his condition and we see it play out (see below)

 

What stops this episode from getting too bleak is that the B-plot centers on John Munch. Munch has no more use for Christmas now then he was partnered with Bolander but now he owns a bar and has to get it ready for Yuletide customers.  Now he's summoning his inner Charlie Brown saying that Christmas is too commercial. His fellow detectives and Billie Lou are helping him at first but in typical Homicide fashion one by one he's abandoned.

It is the fact that he's busy cleaning that we finally meet someone we've never met in five and a half seasons – Munch's own Ghost of Christmas Past.

 Yes its his first ex-wife  Gwen, played by that fireball of comic energy Carol Kane. In a wonderful touch a performer known for her brilliant eccentricity a comedienne chooses to turn her panache so low its practically a straight woman.  And that's because she knows Richard Belzer is the comic star of Homicide and when you get a chance to use that power you don't get in his way. She can joke with the best of them but all of them are delivered almost deadpan. She's here for a sad reason: her mother has died. John can't even bother to mask his unhappiness:

John: She loathed me and I loathed here right back.

Gwen: She didn't loathe you.

John: She despised me.

Gwen: She didn't despise you.

John: She disliked me?"

(Pause)

Gwen: Okay, maybe loathed is the word.

Munch doesn't know how he can help his mother-in-law met a horrible end. Gwen's response: "Sorry to disappoint you." She needs him to plan what she believes will be a very elaborate funeral.

Gwen's mother was a literary critic of some note and she is planning a funeral in which she expects everyone she ever reviewed to show up to pay their respects. (Clearly Gwen has to good a view of both her mother and critics overall.) Gwen goes through the funeral with starry eyes, thinking of what an extraordinary life her mother led and so many experiences. Munch argues she did a number on him and he honestly thinks she did on Gwen. When Gwen says she likes some of the men she brought home John can't contain himself: "Briscoe?"  The more he brings it up Gwen tells him to stop the car and she gets out in the middle of the road, hailing a cab.

The joke, of course, is that Mrs. Munch is buried to an empty room with only Gwen, a shill that Bernard paid as the deluxe package and Peter Maas, the author of Serpico and The Valachi Papers, among others. (Of course he knows David Simon from around.) John immediately tries to console his ex-wife. "It's not an empty room, there's you…and me…and a woman crying…" Maas came down from New York to "have a last laugh at a petty, vindictive, parasitic old hag."  He uses his own prose to illustrate that Gwen's mother was a bitter old crone who didn't know "good writing if it were tattooed on her forehead."  He came to the funeral to make sure the woman was really, most sincerely dead.

The end of the episode balances all the parts. We have one of those rarities for Homicide a conversation between two female characters. I'm not sure it was quite pass the Bechdel Test; they're not talking about men so much as their fears of the single life. Ballard talks about her failed engagement without every mentioning the man's name (save to say he was an idiot) and that while she's cautious, she's not sure she trusts her own judgment. Cox points out she's no help as she definitely doesn't trust her own. (We're going to get an example of that in the final minute.) Their final exchange is about how frequently you should get tested.

The final scene is in the Waterfront where the Yuletide joy is in full swing. Pembleton has a drink and goes home to be with his family.  Gwen is now in the position of realizing just what a monster her mother was and John is trying to make his wife feel better.

And what happened next? Well in the Waterfront they say Munch's heart grew three sizes that day. He raised his glass and says one of the sweetest things he'll ever say on the show:

"On this evening a solemn ceremony was held to convey the remains of Genevieve Talbot. She was a strong woman possessed of many opinions. She lived life on her own terms. She had a daughter, a beautiful daughter, who took as her husband a charming if somewhat peculiar man. Genevive Talbot loved her beautiful daughter and so feared for her happiness that she did everything she could to discourage this union for the man was hopelessly peculiar and quite perverse. And the daughter, she was a rare gift, who deserved much, much better."

And after a season of flirtations and longing on one part Bayliss gives Cox a Christmas present and the two kiss for the first time. On some shows this would be a sign for happiness going forward. On this show…well, that's actually one of the more daring themes of the final season.

To wrap this up I have to tell I have a special place in my heart for All Is Bright because it's one of the darkest Christmas-set episodes in all my years of TV viewing. Does that make me peculiar and perverse? Maybe. But maybe once you've been deluged in twenty-four hours of It's A Wonderful Life sometimes you want a different kind of Christmas episode. Because a lot of Christmas's are really like this, with random hookups and bad holiday experiences. I love 'The Constant' don't get me wrong but there's something to be said to ringing in the holidays with Blood Makes Noise over a woman getting tested for HIV.  And sometimes we need it more than we think.

Anyway, Merry Christmas.

 

 

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

"Detective Munch": Typically for Christmas we get to see a lot more of Munch's Jewish side then usual, starting in the Waterfront. Lewis actually gets the best line: "Hey Munch, you're gonna make some poor orphan I nice Jewish mother someday.  

As you'd expect the best scenes come with Undertaker Munch who seems determined to mark up the price.  John then tells his brother: "When you were nobody, when you had no connections, when you asked your brother the Homicide cop to pass around a few business cards to the relatives of those recently  departed, who was there for you?" Bernard then meekly goes back to his calculator and comes up with a reduced rate. "You're a real mensch. "

That plus his eulogy at the end really shows the worst and best parts of him

Mahoney PTSD: Kellerman gets back to the squad and finds pictures of Luther Mahoney on Falsone's desk. It's almost as if Falsone is openly taunting him now. He confesses to Juliana he has yet to tell Lewis or Stivers about what Georgia Rae has on him. Kellerman is dodging it, saying he's waiting until after Christmas. Juliana tells him to man up. When he does tell Meldrick at the end of the episode he tries to assure Lewis that even if Georgia Rae has a videotape we don't know what's on it. Lewis doesn't bother with this: "We know what's on it. Kellerman ices dealer. News at eleven." Kellerman tries to tell the story on the official report and Lewis makes it very clear that this he's not buying that either.

Continuity Error: When Munch goes to SVU we'll eventually see Gwen and she seems to have lapsed into some kind of mental condition, either bipolar or schizoid-effective. There's no real evidence of it during this episode, though her outburst might be a precursor of a condition that developed later. (There was a lapse of nearly a decade between that appearance and this one.)

FUTURE INMATE: Kathryn Erbe already had a decent resume having starred in What About Bob, the sequel to The Mighty Ducks and the Nicolas Cage film noir Kiss of Death. Then after this role Tom Fontana would cast her as Shirley Bellinger, the Susan Smith type killer who spent the better part of three seasons as the only woman on OZ waiting on Death Row before being hung. It was one of the most memorable stints on this series.

Immediately after her character was killed off she would be cast as Detective Eames on Law & Order: CI. (And in the way episode are aired 'All Is bright' aired immediately after The Subway, which meant if you watch Homicide that December you saw the two main leads of that show and didn't know it.) She was so focused on that she did nothing else during its run and has done relatively little for awhile afterwards. But by 2017 she was acting more regularly playing Kay Ambrose on Season 1 of The Sinner, Jacqueline on Season 4 of How to Get Away With Murder (Jimmy Smits' ex-wife) and has since been seen on Pose, Instinct, The Good Fight, The Blacklist and had a recurring role on the series City on A Hill. Her last role was in the Emmy nominated Black Rabbit,

Hey, Isn't That…Carol Kane broke into Hollywood in the 1970s starring in small roles in such seminal films as Carnal Knowledge, The Last Detail and Annie Hall. She was nominated for Best Actress for playing Giti in Hester Street in 1975. She would start in such cult films as When A Stranger Calls and La Sabina before finally breaking out as Simka, the girlfriend and future wife of Latka on Taxi. She is best known to millions for playing Valerie ("I'm not a witch, I'm your wife)in The Princess Bride and the Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooged.

Let's focus on TV for the rest of this. She played Aunt Sylvia on the Emmy winning Brooklyn Bridge and received an Emmy nomination for playing Marguerite Birch on Chicago Hope in 1995. She had the role of Annie in the one season show Pearl, LL on the Showtime critical hit Beggars and Chooser's, would play the Penguin's mother on Gotham  and Lillian on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She PLAYED Bianca on Los Espookys, Mindy Markowitz on Hunters and is currently playing Pelia on Strange New Worlds. I could tell you about her voice work but that's another page.

By the way you'll blink if you miss her but Jenny is played by Rhea Seehorn in what was her first screen role. Her career for the next fifteen years was not that great. She was a regular on one season comedies like 'I'm With Her'  an even more short-lived series The Singles Table, a role on The Starter Wife and played Roxanne on Whitney for three season, and the recurring role of Ellen on Franklin & Bash.

All of which is to say if you never heard of her before she was cast as Kim Wexler its not your fault. Vince Gilligan seeing something in her as Kim is just as remarkable as what he saw in Bryan Cranston and Bob Odenkirk.

Oh and in case you were wondering…yes the Matt Reeves who directed this episode is THAT Matt Reeves. He was a TV director for shows like Felicity and Homicide before he managed to direct Cloverfield. After that came the Andy Serkis led Planet of the Apes franchise and now Batman. It's not just great actors that get their start in TV.