The Only Three Senators The Left Has Respected in the Last 50 Years. You Won't Be Stunned By What They Have In Common

 

 

After Richard Nixon's 49 state landslide in 1972 both political parties went to the right and both parties enjoyed electoral success by doing so. For the Republicans it would be part of 5 out of 6 presidential elections between 1968 and 1992, gaining control of both houses of Congress in 1994 and maintaining a lock on the House for 18 years in the 21^st century so far and the Senate 14 of so far this century. The Democrats by contrast would manage to win the White House in the rest of the  twentieth century when they elected centrist Southern governors (Carter in 1976, Bill Clinton in 1992) and control of the White House with Obama in 2008.

The left has essentially been on the outside looking in with only a few exceptions during the next half a century and have never regained the influence they had during the forty years of mostly Democratic control of both Congress and the White House between FDR's first term and the end of LBJ's presidency. They know the reasons why this happened but they basically refuse to accept reality, instead yearning for a simpler time when Democrats had all the power and Republicans were perfectly docile and happy being the minority party and having no real power to change policy. The fact that many of these years many of those who were Democrats were more conservative than some Republicans at the time is a fact they've chosen to erase from their collective unconscious.

In fact I suspect many are openly hostile that during Republican administrations, that Democrats chose to work with Republican Presidents. Much as they hold men like Mitch McConnell and Newt Gingrich with his visceral hatred I suspect that they wish Tip O'Neill or Nancy Pelosi had openly refused to work with Reagan or W. or that Tom Daschle had used the filibuster with the same reckless abandon to stall Republicans.  Like so many other things the left thinks bipartisanship should only apply to Republicans reaching across the aisle to Democrats when they have power and never the other way around.

I suspect the left has much of the last twenty years angry at how so many Congressional Republicans have thwarted the agendas of first and Obama as much out of envy as frustration. "Why didn't our guys think of that when W. was in charge?" must have gone through every left-wing thinker during that period. Furthermore their outrage over a permanently stagnant Congress that accomplishing nothing only bothers them as far as it allows them to play into their own outrage. To them Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court only get in the way of the true left-wing agenda which everyone wants. That they've never bothered to define what it is, only what it isn't, is just a minor detail.

In the left's mind the American dream died when Democrats decided to abandon the liberal dream for the trivial reason that they'd been told in no uncertain terms in 1972 that the voters didn't want it. Watergate officially erased every single flaw in George McGovern's presidential campaign in 1972 and indeed every single flaw that had made so many in the Democratic establishment think – rightfully, I should add – that the voters would send them to electoral disaster that year. The fact was that in the Congressional election in state after state that Nixon won Democrats were able to either run ahead of Republicans.

If you win a landslide as sweeping as Nixon you should have huge coattails. And yet despite that four Republicans who'd been in the Senate for two terms years lost their elections. Margaret Chase Smith got 47 percent of the vote in Maine as Nixon got 61 percent of it for President and lost. Gordon Allott who'd been in the Senate in Colorado since 1954 narrowly lost by one percent to Democrat Floyd Haskell even as Nixon carried the state by 22 points. Jack Miller lost Iowa by ten points as Nixon carried by 38 points.

And here's the biggest sign of McGovern's weakness. In his home state of South Dakota McGovern lost with 46 percent of the vote. Yet Democrat James Abourezk won election over his Republican opponent with 57 percent of the vote. In South Dakota George McGovern was less popular then a freshman Democrat.

And just to drive the point home when McGovern managed to win reelection two years later he only beat his Republican opponent by 6 points. McGovern's very left-wing positions might have been popular with a certain group of Americans but they were out of touch with the rest of the Democratic Party and his own state. When he ended up losing as part of the Reagan landslide it was by 19 points to James Abdnor. McGovern actually outspent Abdnor by nearly 2 to 1 but Abdnor made it very clear that McGovern's liberal voting record was out of context with the involvement of the people of South Dakota. And just to make that point clear McGovern, who was pro-choice, actually faced a primary from an anti-abortion Democrat that year. He beat it back, to be sure, but it demonstrated the validity of Abdnor's point: even South Dakota Democrats thought McGovern was too far to the left.

As I've said before the 1980 Senate election sent a message just how much liberalism in its current form was dead as some of the most famously liberal senators such as Frank Church, Birch Bayh, Warren Magnuson and Gaylord Nelson lost their seats. The Democrats would eventually take the Senate back by a big margin by gaining eight seats, including Tom Daschle defeating Abnor. Many of the Democrats who gained office would be forces in the Senate for years to come such as Barbara Mikulski and Harry Reid. But given how narrowly many of them managed to win election as well as how difficult it was for some incumbents, the Democratic Party had received the message: liberalism as they knew it was no longer a winning sales pitch.

This was true even when Bill Clinton won election in 1992. The Democrats managed to lose 9 seats in the House and made no gains in the Senate. Clinton was a minority President having gotten barely 43 percent of the vote and was no doubt helped by victory by Independent Ross Perot's historic third party run. The key to Clinton's success had been by his arguing liberalism was dead and that his approach was 'a Third Way'.

But a freshman senator from Wisconsin didn't get the message. That year Russ Feingold had run as a progressive who had made it very clear that his way was the only way. During the campaign he unveiled an 82 point plan to eliminate the deficit by the end of his first term. The plan called for a raise in taxes and cuts in the defense budget. He was viewed as an extremist by Republicans and two liberal by Democratic opponents.

When Feingold won election he quickly became a bigger pain in the ass to the Clinton administration then the Republicans were. He frequently broke with his own party to the detriment of the President. He opposed NAFTA and other Free Trade, actually was the only Democrat Senator to vote against a motion to dismiss Congress's impeachment charges (he would vote against conviction, he thought Clinton's approach to health care wasn't progressive enough and voted against the Defense of Marriage Act

Say what you will about Feingold he was an equal opportunity pain in the ass to Democrat or Republican. He was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act, voted against Timothy Geithner being confirmed as Treasury Secretary and was the only Democratic Senator to vote against Dodd-Frank both times it came before the Senate. He moved to amend an appropriations bill that would have given emergency relief to Katrina to require troops withdraw from Iraq. He voted to censure W in 2006 and most Democratic Senators wouldn't give him the time of day. He led a filibuster against extending the Patriot Act in February of 2006. In one of the biggest examples of bipartisanship in the 21^st century, the Senate voted 96-3 to break it up.

I won't deny that Feingold was behind many major important Congressional acts included McCain-Feingold and co-sponsored the Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency act. But Feingold's position basically put him at odds with his own party most of the time. And there's a clear difference between both he and John McCain being considered 'political mavericks'.  When McCain did it, he went across party lines to help the opposition. When Feingold did it, he was hurting his own party to make a point.

And I think one of the reasons for Feingold's popularity came in December of 2004 when he went on a golfing trip to Greenville Alabama. Afterwards he'd wrote about it for the left-wing publication Salon.  After noting how nice the people were and that Wisconsin had similar places he expressed sorrow that 'such a poverty-stricken area was the reddest spot on the map because of policies that Feingold considered destructive to the poor and middle class." He talked about the trailer parks, check cashing stores and a rundown used car lot.

The Republican mayor of the city and the Republican governor of Alabama were perturbed by his description and invited him to make a tour of the city to make amends. I suspect that the readers of Salon were upset that he apologized. If he had doubled down on his remarks as I suspect they wanted, he might very quickly have become the frontrunner among left-leaning Democrats for 2008 as he was considering running at the time. In fact there was a Draft Feingold campaign starting in 2005. But after the midterms of 2006 he announced he would not seek the nomination in 2008. Having done so he told his supporters not endorse anyone for the Presidency who voted for the Iraq War. Considering that only 23 Senators had voted against going to war and he had accused his fellow Democrats of being timid this was as close as he came to calling members of his party sellouts.

I suspect his support of Obama in 2008 was because he was the only candidate who met that criterion and as I listed when Obama became President he was no more of an ally to him on his agenda unless it suited his own purposes. When he lost reelection in 2010 to Ron Johnson there's a part of me that wonders how many Senate Democrats who basically said: "Good riddance'.

Say what you will about Feingold, he was even more of unhelpful to Democrats out of the Senate then in it. He formed a PAC called Progressives United to raise money for 50 Progressive candidates which for its label supported as many non-progressives as progressives – it gave money to help reelect Jon Tester as it did to elect Elizabeth Warren. It didn't help four progressives running in Wisconsin. And he saw no problem breaking his pledge about campaign finance reform the moment Citizens United decision becoming just as willing to spend as much money as the conservative PACS did – though to less success.

Nor did he agree to run in the recall election of Scott Walker after it happened which might very well have helped the Democrats take the seat back after the recall took place. And as a result Walker became the first governor to survive a recall and the people of Wisconsin suffered under him. In fact he won by  a bigger margin then when he was elected the first time.

Scott Walker was as much a boogeyman to all progressives during the first half of the 2010s as Russ Feingold had been their hero during the 1990s and 2000s. But during the decade Feingold lost reelection to Ron Johnson in 2010 and again in 2016 while Scott Walker won three elections. Which would seem to argue that the state of Wisconsin had a clearer idea of what they wanted from elected officials then the left wanted from theirs. Of course by that point the left had long forgotten Feingold and moved on to their most recent standard bearer who wasn't even a Democrat but was more than willing to play one on college campuses.

Bernie Sanders' first four years in the Senate overlapped with Feingold's final term and by the time Feingold had lost Sanders' had taken the torch from him and run even further to the left as the biggest problem the Democrats. Unlike Feingold Sanders has spent 20 years in the Senate and has been a bigger failure by any metric you want to use.

He has not passed any major legislation during that period. Both his runs for the Presidency in 2016 and 2020 ended in him losing the nomination to more centrist candidates. The various movements inspired by his candidacy, the Justice Democrats and his own Progressive Democratic PAC have pretty much failed to create a significant bloc of progressive elected officials outside of a few Representatives in deep blue districts. During the peak of his influence between 2016 and 2024 the Democrats have controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress just once in Biden's first two years in office and many left-wing candidates and his own followers were more upset that he chose to work with the administration.

And just as with McGovern and Feingold Sanders has frequently had little influence even within his own state. In 2018 Christine Halquist was the Justice Democrat candidate for Governor in Vermont. She was running in one of eight states that Hilary Clinton had won in 2016 that had a Republican governor. And yet in the midst of the national blue wave Halquist got just 40.3 percent of the vote, the worst performance for a Democratic Party candidate in Vermont since 2008. Sanders received 67 percent of the vote running for reelection which means that 27 percent of Sanders voters chose Republican Phil Scott for Governor.

To drive the point home in 2024 Scott won his fourth term getting 73 percent of the vote. Esther Charlestin, his opponent had the endorsement of both the Democratic and Progressive Party in Vermont and only received 21 percent of the vote. By contrast Bernie got 63 percent of the vote winning reelection which was still over 37,000 fewer votes than Scott got for governor. The good people of Vermont think Bernie's too far to the left for their liking.

The reason for Sanders' continued influence in the Democratic Party for the last decade is mainly due to the Democratic Party's determination to crack the reason for why Sanders's is so popular with young people. And that reason is the same one that McGovern did so well with college people in his 1972 primary campaign.

It's never been that complicated. Young, college educated, white voters are more left-leaning then the average American and will always vote for the most progressive candidate running in a primary. That's the real link as to why this cycle Democratic primary voters chose Abdul El-Sayid in Michigan, Angie Nixon in Florida and Ed Markey in Massachusetts to be the party's nominees for Senate. Race, gender and age aside they were by far the most left leaning candidates running for their office and that is why they won the nomination.

But as been the case with McGovern, Feingold and Sanders, what is popular with these kinds of progressive voters in primaries has never really carried over with the electorate at large in the last half-century. It may make these candidates popular nationally among certain circles because of the stands they take but as I've illustrated the electorate at large and in every case the voters of their  states have a different opinion of it of what they want from their elected officials.

For the last half century left-leaning scholars and ideologues have increasingly devoted themselves to a way of life that not only perished before many were even born but was in fact the same kind of nostalgic view of the past that is far more common among their equivalents on the right. They've spent far more time and energy arguing why the progressive dream was destroyed by the conservatives then they have finding a way to reverse engineer a similar takeover of the Democratic Party. That the voters, even a decade after Trump's arrival, by and large still have no desire for these ideas, may be part of the reason; that they can't define what it is, only what it isn't, may be a bigger one.

For that reason George McGovern, Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders have been among the very few elected officials they respect, not because they succeeded in established a left-wing agenda for the nation but because they met the metric of what the left really wants from its elected officials: to not give into the establishment doctrine. That this doctrine was rejected by the electorate, either nationally or by their own states, is actually part of the reason for their being lionized. The left has never really escaped the activist model for how it wants to get things done and these Senators were far closer to being activists then they were being effective senators. And while they make you heroes to some it just pisses off the people you need to work with if you want to get things done.

As we enter the midterms it's important not to let extremists on either side of the aisle continue to define what government and representatives should be rather than what they want them to be. A Senator is theoretically supposed to serve the voters of their state, their party and their country. The leftist believes an elected officials is only supposed to support the progressive agenda, even if that is in direct opposition to what all three of these masters tell them to do and even if it means the voters reject them at the polls. They've always been indifferent to the idea of any form of public service in the first place, so it's never as important to them if these officials lose and therefore can no longer do good for anybody.

Republicans, for all their flaws, do understand something of party unity and often have a better reading of what the voters of their states want then the left does. (I'm not having the debate the left wants to have about why that is here.) To a left that considers the Democrats and the Republicans two sides of the same bad coin, they don't care if a centrist Democrat loses to a Republican. To people like Hakeen Jeffries and Chuck Schumer it's something they take very seriously because it's their job too. And for half a century these kinds of Senators have made it so much tougher for Democratic Presidents to get anything done. That hasn't exactly helped the brand of a party that's considered ineffective and disorganized even by its members.

I refuse to indulge the progressive dream any longer, certainly not when so many years of losing having proven the reality to be otherwise. The left is going to bitch that nobody is doing what they believe is right no matter who wins so its time to stop indulging them. They want to vote for left wing candidates who speak their language – and no one else's – well, that's what they've always done. The voters have told a different story and I think it's time we started listening to where they actually are rather than where the McGovern's and Feingold's and Sanders's say they should be. If that means betraying 'the cause', well, it hasn't worked out for those guys so why I should I trust that they know what they're talking about anymore?

Coalition for the Sane:Two Times Op-Eds Last Week Illustrated For Me Why The Left Keeps Losing the Battle For Hearts and Minds

 

What's the line between academic theory and conspiracy theory?

Before every intellectual starts yelling at me about how their study involves research and deep study and not to put them in with the Alex Jones and Joe Rogans of America I need to be very clear that I've read my share of right wing and left wing academic works over the years and I can tell you with the certainty of a child of an academic both sides can use research to fit their political ends. I've lost count of how many right-wing studies I've seen arguing that FDR had links to Communism that explain why the New Deal was created and why it never worked, why the Great Society was just a smokescreen for LBJ to get blacks to always vote Democrat without thinking and that the real reason Nixon was impeached had to do with his plan to expand the government in his second term and Watergate had nothing to do with it. These are just as nuts as any theory I've read from Oliver Stone from the last thirty years in which he believes the deep state had Kennedy killed to benefit the military-industrial complex.

So many educated people – most of them left-wing – have a spent a lot of time bemoaning how so much of America has fallen sway to the conspiracy theories of the right. And I could take them more seriously had I not spent much of Biden's administration reading Daily Kos, a progressive site that spent so many of its articles coming up with its own conspiracy theories as to why so many Americans had become stupid enough to believe the gospel of Fox News and Republicans rather than the warm embrace of collectivism preached by Bernie and AOC which was the correct theory of government that was of course being suppressed by the rich and the special interests. You know, rational stuff.

As always progressives never ask the right question which is why do the masses embrace the conservative conspiracy theory of government, which are complete BS, instead of the socialist conspiracy theory of government, which are correct. (Yes I left the Democratic Party out of the equation. I'm getting to that.) The short answer is simple: right wing  theories have always been able to help political parties in America then left wing ones. That has been true for 200 years and its still true today. And a large part of it is that right-wing theories are easier to match with the extreme views of people then left-wing ones.

Let's say, for example, it's 2012 and Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity is talking about how if Obama is reelected it will bring about the destruction of America because he is a Kenyan communist. If he were to bring, say, George Will or Bret Stephens (back then full-throated members of conservative think tanks) they would be able to describe how Obama's first term is all about creeping socialism, that he is bringing around Sharia Law, and all the worst things the right already thinks. Because this audience is inclined to vote Republican, it can be used to attack Democrats and help Republicans.

But if Rachel Maddow or Chris Matthews wants to defend Obama's first term, she couldn't bring in someone like Noam Chomsky or Nikole Hannah-Jones to do that because their writings argue that there's no real difference between the two political parties. They will cheerfully attack Republicans if they're paid to do so but not long after they'll write articles arguing that Obama is just the latest example of neoliberalism engaged in protecting Wall Street and expanding American Empire. (Oliver Stone in fact used the final episode of 'Untold History of the United States which aired during Obama's administration essentially making that argument in the final episode.) Many of them no doubt at the time would have attacked Bernie Sanders because he caucused with the Democrats as having 'sold out'.

So at the most cynical level the reason left-wing theories are not popular with the masses is because of marketing. The right-wing academic can easily frame its theories to sell to the people and his elected officials who'll buy into it because it offers a solution. The left-wing academic is essentially still selling their product to a far more intellectual group of academics which is by definition smaller and less political.

I was reminded of this by two articles I read in the New York Times within 24 hours last week. Both were written by two prominent left-wing academics: Nikole Hannah-Jones and Roxanne Gay. Both are African-American female academics who even by the standards of left-wing academia are incredibly left-wing and therefore very successful. In other words they have become rich and successful in America by pointing out in great detail why America is a failure and how everybody is failing America. )Apparently irony is not something they study.) And like almost every other African-American academic who has become successful they take a certain pleasure in writing about how American has always failed minorities and women can never do anything to make things better for them, and have sold many, many books arguing that point.

In 24 hours I read how Hannah-Jones and Gay looked at two major problems – systemic racism and the crisis in Gaza – and how they thought each could be solved. Naturally because Western Civilization is racist, favoring the patriarchy and white supremacy neither mentioned even the idea that institutions such as democracy or diplomacy could resolve these deep problems. And of course as with all these kinds of works it is implied that these problems are solvable but that 'they' – whoever 'they' you  want to use – lack the will to do so. That these problems may not in truth be solvable is not considered by an academics who work only in the classroom and have little to know involvement with putting their theories into practice. And such things as economic or political process can't solve them.

No what both Hannah-Jones and Gay chose to argue is that old hoary chestnut: raising awareness. Like the overwhelming majority of left-wing thinkers they truly believe the problems today are not solved because the masses are unaware of it. That their writing by definition is meant for a niche audience as well as the fact that much of their writing argues the masses are sheep anyway is a contradiction they ignore. The fact that the masses might care about things that they don't care about – like say, paying their rent and their bills – is not something they are able to comprehend despite all of their talk about wealth inequality but that's a subject for a different essay.

Those of you who read my article know all too well what Hannah-Jones wrote about. In her article: In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? Hannah-Jones explained in great detail how her decision to put her daughter Najya in an integrated public school rather then a segregated private school ended up doing nothing to help the problem within that school and that her own child's education suffered as a result. I considering that article self-aggrandizing and self-promoting as Hannah-Jones seemed to have exploited her daughter a decade ago for her own cache among her colleagues and was doing the exact same thing today, with no apparent growth or self-awareness on her part. She openly compared herself to the parents of Ruby Bridges and her classmates, even though she fully acknowledged that she came from a far wealthier history and had benefited from their sacrifices. She was unapologetic about how she had used her five year old daughter – who was in no position to consent – and how when it came to choosing between her daughter and her values, she spent six years choosing her values.

Since the article came out on Sunday Hannah-Jones has become the target of the right-wing media which I really do think was part of the point of Hannah-Jones publishing this article. When Fox News and the New York Post choose to call out a prominent left-wing scholar or Democratic politician it has the magical effect among liberal and Democrats of erasing the message because of the messenger. This is a method that has worked for Hannah-Jones in the past with the Times before. Prior to the publication of The 1619 Project multiple historians had argued against it because of the cherry picking and the twisted versions of leftist academia and presentist thinking. For whatever reason the Times chose to publish and when Trump and the right wing attacked it Hannah-Jones was essentially insulated because of who she was being attacked by. Magically all the very real criticisms could be put under the label of racism and conservatism and she ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize and multiple awards. All of the criticisms of her work, which have not ended, have become background noise.

Najya Hannah-Jones will soon be going to college and I suspect will have many things to say when asked about her experience. She may even write them herself.  So I suspect her mother published last week's essay as a kind of damage control and preemptive strike. That article was not about her daughter's struggles and how she contributed to them; it was about her using her arguments to get ahead of this. And it worked. This is no longer about what her daughter went through because of Nikole Hannah-Jones parenting; it's about systemic racism and whether you want to be on the right side of history or Fox News.

And it masks the arrogance of a woman who truly believed that she could almost single-handedly improve a public school where decades of liberal government had failed. It was clear as early as first grade to the rest of the parents who'd come with her that it was a fait accompli and it was also clear to Hannah-Jones how badly the system was failing. But Hannah-Jones makes it clear that when it came to the problems of this particular school, she alone could fix it. Like any extremist conservative confronted with failure Hannah-Jones chose to double down and only backed away when her daughter confronted her on it. Her article, while better punctuated and more literate then the average Truth Social Tweet, is just as defiant about her position: she didn't fail her daughter, the system did. Perhaps Najya should use this article for the therapy she's definitely going to be spending years as an adult paying for.

Not 24 hours after this I read Roxanne Gay's piece about Ed Sheeran and the controversy surrounding his latest tour. I'm not going to recount it here because  by this point everybody and their Irish uncle has heard about it and Gay really didn't have anything original to say about it. And while I read Hannah-Jones article with a gathering sage of rage, I read Gay's with the constant belief "Am I reading the Times or The Onion?"

Because right in the center of it Gay actually wrote: "With the exception of a relative few such as Mark Ruffalo, most celebrities don't use their platforms to raise sufficient awareness." And I could only think: "Girl, if this is them not being sufficient, I'd hate to see them in they met your standards."

This isn't the first time I've read such an article: over the last year I've read in some reviews of the Emmys and the Oscars for being 'insufficiently political' as if that were a condemnation rather then something to be celebrated. By this point you'd think Gay would know that celebrity awareness does nothing to solve problems. Remember last February when everyone at the Grammys was telling ICE to go F--- itself because of what was happening in Minneapolis? And every left wing thinker cheered Billie Eilish for saying "No one's illegal on stolen land."

The Times published an article this past week arguing that during the summer ICE deportations are just as high with numbers greater then in 2025. So it doesn't seem like all the awareness raised at the Grammys did a single thing to stop it. But it's not like celebrities have been paying as much attention to it this summer anyway because the administration has been less showy and more organized then it was during 2025. Either way, the awareness of it has done zip to change policy.

Nor did Gay mention the organization Artists4Ceasefire which was founded two weeks after October 7^th 2023 and has a fairly sizable membership bigger than Mark Ruffalo. And while this article was published before Netanyahu's appearance at the UN last week where Hannah Einbinder and Susan Sarandon were arrested protesting his appearance (though its not like they need an excuse to protest period) at this point in time it's harder for me to find a celebrity that hasn't taken the gospel position that Gay has on Gaza.

Like Hannah-Jones' Gay's article is based on a false construct even more flawed than hers. The problems that are happening in the Middle East have not been solved because singers like Ed Sheeran have spent too much time singing and recording albums and not raising awareness about Gaza. Even writing that sentence down makes you wonder about the sanity of Gay if she thinks that this is how the world works, but having spent enough time among the left on this site and others that's how they see the world on everything.

Both Hannah-Jones and Gay are essentially arguing that the problems with America and the world are too important that they can be left in the hands of the people who are qualified to deal with them. Their version of the world is one where all decision operate on a simple and binary moral calculus which everyone but them has failed. And obviously we can't trust the proletariat to solve the problems of today because they're dumb and racist and have been brainwashed by the wrong sort of elitists. To them democracy is too important to be left in the hand of the voters and foreign policy to important to be left in the hands of the diplomats.

No the only people who can solve it are left-wing millionaires, educated people in Hannah-Jones reading, celebrities in  Gay's. And even if they are unable to solve these systemic problems because they are unqualified at every level, it is far more dangerous if they don't make even token efforts to please left-wing thinkers like the author's of these columns. Gay, I should mention, thinks Sheeran is a lousy singer anyway and probably hates Macklemore's music with a passion but I assume she likes him more because of his politics.

I can't help but wonder how much of this is based on the level of education and race more than anything else. These same people, had they watched any number of Fox News speakers rant 'Obama's not a real American', they'd have dismissed him outright. But if those same speakers had said: "Obama's not a real liberal" would they have changed the channel so fast?

I'd say that Hannah-Jones and Gay have lost the plot when it comes to how to fix problems of America were it not for the very fact their wealth and success come by writing how they are unfixable. Hannah-Jones is not humbled by her experience and Gay seems as unaware as anyone in a right-wing media thread how little connection she has to even the world of the left-wing. And because both are African-American women, criticisms of their writings no matter how legitimate can be labeled as ''racist' and 'sexist', almost all of that defense no doubt coming from educated white people first and foremost.

Their writings will be read by the highbrow readers of The New York Times and criticized and torn apart by those on Fox News and other media. Hannah-Jones and Gay will receive accolades from one group and abuse from the other, leading to them getting more rich and famous. The problems they raised will remain unsolved despite their efforts to raise awareness. And the average American will continue to ignore all of it focused on such minor details as getting through the day and paying their bills.

And next month, despite the efforts of Hannah-Jones and Gay to raise awareness, the overwhelming majority of Americans will cast their votes based not on Gaza nor systemic racism but the real issue of this election: affordability an issue that stopped being important to either of these scholars years ago and that they can only comprehend in the same abstractions that make up the lion's share of their writing. Perhaps they'll vote, perhaps they won't. Regardless they'll complain within days or weeks of the election how America has failed yet again depending on what current trivia or reality touches their fancies. And the endless theorizing about how America needs to do something will continue from this, free from the possibility of ever conceivably being put into practice.

See capitalism does work. Where else could you get rich saying your country has failed you? As another famous African-American said: "Only in America."

 

Stephen King Writing As Richard Bachman, Part 4: Roadwork (1981)

 

In 'Why I Was Bachman' Stephen King acknowledges that Roadwork was his first real attempt to do 'a straight novel'. It was written in the period between Salem's Lot and The Shining when Kings makes it clear "I was young enough in those days to worry about that casual cocktail-party question: 'Yes but when are you going to do something serious?" He also admits it was in part to make sense of his mother's death by cancer the previous year that he says: "I was left grieving and shaken by the apparent senselessness of it all."

For that reason he thinks Roadwork is the worst of the lot because it's trying too hard and to find some answers to the conundrum of human pain. (King had no idea in 1985 just how much film and TV would end up dealing with this subject in the 21^st century or for that matter how much he would end up dealing with in a more genre type vein in his own novels in the decades to come.)

You can debate whether King ever tried to right a 'straight novel' after Roadwork. There's certainly some work of his in the early 1990s such as Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne that basically that basically have no real supernatural elements to them and certainly most of his best novellas in Different Seasons and later on would have no real supernatural elements to them. What I do know is that Roadwork is a better book that King thinks it is and that's almost certainly due to setting as much as anything else.

Roadwork is the only Bachman novel that has something resembling a timestamp. Every chapter is a date from November 20, 1973 to January 20, 1974. The book has the subtitle 'A Novel of the First Energy Crisis' and takes place at the center of the oil embargo that was part of Nixon's policy towards the Middle East. It takes place just as the unparalleled economic growth that's existed since the New Deal has come to an end and the record inflation that would become the feature of the seventies isn't even close to becoming as bad as it will become. The Vietnam War is nearing its end as is Nixon's Presidency. All of this is essentially background noise to its main character/

In August of 1972 a young reporter is covering the mayor and governor in a groundbreaking ceremony. He interviews a man in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves who makes it clear the groundbreaking of a highway is a piece of shit. That's cut from the story automatically

That man is  Bart Dawes who lives in an unnamed city and state (it's possible it's Wisconsin but King never gives it away) At the start of the book Bart is dealing with the fact that he has to move out of his house which is right in the line of where the title roadwork is going to take place. His neighborhood has agreed to take the buyouts and has relocated to other towns where their business take them. He and his wife Mary are the last family still there. His wife has accepted this reality. He hasn't.

Bart is the manager of the Blue Ribbon Laundromat which is being taken over by a corporation and has to relocate. The store has an option to buy a Thom McCan in Waterford on November 26^th when the book begins but Bart has been unwilling to pull the trigger even while the 784 extension is being built. Bart's one of the few people who's still part of the old ownership under the Tarkington family who put him through college. Bart Dawes is very much the model of the kind of guy whose lost in the past both in terms of work and family. When he tries to explain what is so good about his old bosses to an underling even he admits he's lost the thread by the end of it. There is a logical reason for it – the new site is going to require at least a quarter of a million in renovations before it even turns out a clean sheet – but all of that is very much based on Bart's own word and his contempt for boss. Bart seems so bent on self-destruction he doesn't seem to realize he's going to destroy the entire company he spent his life working for.

I don't know if the term 'midlife crisis' existed when King wrote Roadwork but you could make an argument Bart is just having a very bad one. He even has a good reason. Three and a half years ago his son Charlie was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor:

Somewhere…deep in Charlie's brain was a collection of bad cells roughly the size of a walnut. If you had that collection of bad cells in front of you on the table, you could squash them with one hard hit. But they weren't on the table. They were deep in the meat of Charlie's mind, still smugly growing…

Within months Charlie is dead. Bart admits he never cried, while his wife cried immensely. It has essentially left their marriage a shell of itself and turned her into someone who drinks, though not as much as Bart and it takes away a lot of who she is. But eventually she is the one who heals, albeit within what a 1970s woman who has not embraced feminism is allowed to do. He has been robbed of all the things father's do with their sons and he can't get over it:

And if a collection of bad cells no bigger than a walnut could destroy all these things…what did that leave? How could you ever trust life again? How could you see it as anything more meaningful then a Saturday night demolition derby?

All of it was inside him, but he had been honestly unaware that his thoughts were changing him so deeply, so irretrievably…and if the world was only a demo derby, wouldn't one ne justified in stepping out of his car? But what after that? Life seemed only a preparation for hell."

Bart does have outlets; indeed his wife suggests multiple times he see a therapist. And its certainly clear even to Bart that he has lost his reason even when the novel begins in earnest:

He kept doing things without letting himself think about them. Safer that way. It was like having a circuit breaker in his head, and it thumped into place every time part of him tried to ask But why are you doing this? Part of his mind would go dark.

He does this when he walks to a gun store and just decides to buy two rifles with his credit card and lie about it. He does it when he lies to his wife over and over about going to see a new house. He lies about it to his bosses and to his employees. And at the start of the novel all of those lies catch up with him when he loses first his job, and then his marriage on the same day. His wife takes it the hardest, thinking she's blaming him for everything. Even then he doesn't have an explanation and he doesn't think he owes anyone.

Much of Bart's rebellion is pathetic. He drives on the freeway, frequently drunk and keeps the thermostat high in violation of the energy crisis. Eventually it becomes more dangerous with him deciding to blow up a highway installation with gasoline cans on Christmas Eve and seeing a gangster named Sal Magliore who wants to buy explosives. It's telling that the mobster's first reaction is that he thinks Dawes is a fruitcake. "This is a game to you. Crazy but still a game." And Magliore is correct Dawes increasingly seems to enjoy being against 'the man' even though his rebellion is far more pathetic then those who chose to march on Washington and burn their draft cards."

That's clear with Olivia, a hitchhiker he meets in her early 20s and tries to explain himself to in what he refers to as 'The Trained Dog Ethic:

…explains such mysteries as the monetary crisis, inflation, the Vietnam War and the current energy crisis. Let us take the energy crisis as an example. The American people are trained dogs, trained in this case to love oil guzzling toys…In the years 1973 to 1980 we will be trained to hate energy toys. The American people love to be trained. Training makes them wag their tails…I don't object to saving energy. I object to training.

Like Pavlov's dogs…we've been trained to salivate when somebody shows us as a bombardier skidoo with overdrive or a Zenith Color TV with a motorized antenna…It isn't the Trained Dog Ethic I object to anyway. It's the fact that the masters are mental, moral and spiritual idiots."

Olivia, who is very much the model of the college protestor, has to have heard this before and her reaction is "You're just trying to soothe your conscience with a lot of rhetoric." When he shows her the highway that has wrecked his life her reaction is to shrug: "It's roadwork, so what?"

Still she does have some perspective and can put it better than Bart does:

I started to think of the last 15 years or so as some kind of grotesque Monopoly game. Francis Gary Powers gets shot down in his U-2. Lost one turn. N----ers dispersed by fire hoses in Selma. Freedom riders shot gunned in Mississippi, marches rallies, Kennedy getting blown up in Dallas, Vietnam, more marches, Kent State, student strikes, women's liberation, and all for what? So a bunch of heads can sit around stoned in a crummy apartment watching Bob Hope?

Olivia has looked at America and has decided that the best thing she can do is try to get her life together. She's decided to get a job and try to move forward. Bart decides to keep paying her money, first from his life insurance and then for his sale of the house. But as with Magliore she has a clear idea that he's a fruitcake himself and his interest is all about himself.

Roadwork does make it clear that Bart is dealing with forces that don't have his best interests: late in the novel it's clear that the city has been tapping his phones, may be engaging in surveillance and that in fact there is a darker reason behind why the city is building (though in keeping with Bachman's work in general Dawes has no idea of it at the time.) And it makes clear that everything Dawes ends up doing is meaningless in the grand scheme of things; even when the truth comes out it doesn't nothing to stop the moves of progress.

However Bachman/King is very clear that none of this excuses any of Bart's actions and not even he can accept it. At the climax of the novel there's a period called 'stop time which is basically a Joycean type sentence which is coherent. It reveals that not even Bart realized how far this would go that demonstrates the duality of his mind as well as how crazy he's actually gone.

When he talks with the press even the reporter who will end up becoming a Pulitzer winner because of it makes it very clear how lost he is: "I'll see your side gets told."

Bart just says: "I have no side. That's why I am doing this."

Late in the novel Bart seems to have realized that remind us very much of the journeys we'll see characters like Walter White and Jimmy McGill take in this century

He had done things he had never done before…Deep emotions had been excavated from his dry, middle echelon executive's soul like the effect of a dark religion on an archeological dig. He knew what it is what like to be ALIVE.

Then after recounting his sins:

But even those things, as bad as they had been, had been new and exciting, like the thought that he might be insane or going insane. The tracks through the interior landscape he had been strolling (or crawling?) through these last two months were the only tracks. He had explored himself and if what he had been finding was often banal, it was also sometimes dreadful and beautiful.

It's at that point he briefly thinks of getting out, finally going somewhere else, maybe with Olivia, maybe on his own. He admits he can't remember Charlie's face anymore, denying what even he believes his stand has been about. At one point Mary actually tells him: "What good are you doing yourself thinking about Charlie all the time? It's eating you up. You're his prisoner."

At that point Bart says his last words to his wife. "You knew it was time to leave him and so you did. I wish I could be that instinctive."

It's clear throughout the novel that Bart is trying to find a way to kill himself rather than fix himself and face his fears. He knows this is a mortal sin and is told so twice late in the novel, one by an expected source, one by an unexpected one. In a very real sense he spends the entire novel destroying everything he has ever held dear and what happens at the end of the book is just the biggest way to do so.

All of the novels in The Bachman Books end with the lead character either killing himself or going insane and considering that Bart Dawes is pretty much crazy at the start of Roadwork the ending is inevitable. One might want to read into Dawes the pattern of so many assassins and American born terrorists we've had in the over forty years since Roadwork came out but Bachman bears no more responsibility for that then for any school shootings that came in the aftermath of Rage.  One of Bart's last thoughts is that there is no good place to make your stand in this world and he might hate that he becomes a symbol of sorts after it.  Bart Dawes isn't a rebel without a cause, not just because he doesn't have a cause but he's not really a rebel. He's just a guy for whom tragedy led to the worst kind of midlife crisis and rather than try to find a way through he decided to make sure 'midlife' was all the life he got.

 What a sad, lonely man. If he'd just lived a little longer he'd have seen Nixon resign. If that wasn't something to live for, I don't know what was.

 

 

Why Did So Many People Leave Lost After Season 3, Conclusion: In Defense of Those Who Stayed With Lost During Season 3

 

In my last article I explained there were quite a few valid reasons for fans to become frustrated with Lost during those first six episodes of Season 3. So now the question is: why did many of us choose to stay?

Speaking for myself and I suspect most of those who stuck with it there were two very big reasons involving two characters who became series regulars. The first was one we'd met during Season 2 and was about to officially become Lost's antagonist for at least the next two seasons (your mileage will vary as to when he stopped being one) and who deservedly received the first of four consecutive Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama in 2007. The second would make an impression so quickly that when TV Guide listed Lost at number 9 on its 10 best list of 2006 then critic Michael Ausiello would say that 'her presence alone justified her being there'.

I speak, of course, of Michael Emerson as Ben Linus and Elizabeth Mitchell as Juliet Burke and because so much of the first six episodes have Mitchell front and center I think its worth beginning with her.

The opening teaser for Season 3 isn't quite at the level of Man of Science, Man of Faith but its up there. We open on the eye of a woman putting a CD in that starts playing Petula Clark's 'Downtown'. It's clear that she's on the brink of tears despite the upbeat song. We see her putting together chairs in a circle, hearing the smoke alarm before muffins come out of the oven and opening the door to her bungalow apologetically. We then see a book club involving Stephen King's Carrie and it's pretty clear many of the members don't like the book choice. Then the furniture starts shaking and everybody heads to the doorway.

Because we've been here before, the viewer is relatively certain we're still on the island even before everybody runs outside to see Oceanic 815 breaking into three pieces and that the man we know as Henry Gale (viewers will call him Benry for the first few episodes until we're officially introduced) starts giving orders to Goodwin and Ethan to go to where he thinks the wreckage will come. What's different this time is what the viewer knows. We know that Ben is sending both Ethan and Goodwin to their deaths. We know that despite that neither one hesitates before heading into danger and their demises. What we also notice is that everyone – including Ben – is genuinely shocked by what they're seeing. And the way Ben just says to Juliet "So I guess I'm out of book club," doesn't fit with what we knew of 'Henry Gale' at any point during Season 2.

In the DVD extras of Season 3 Elizabeth Sarnoff said that "it was important to establish early…that Ben Linus has lots of underlings and not all of them are happy with his leadership." By starting the season from Juliet's perspective the writers make it clear she's Others Exhibit A and Mitchell registers that in every scene she in during those first six episodes.

It's clear that while Juliet is just as capable of violence and manipulation as all the Others we've met so far, she's not as committed to it as that group. She is capable of tasing Sawyer when he tries to escape on their first introduction and holding a gun to Kate's head when Sawyer' tries a prison break in The Glass Ballerina. But compared to those such as Danny Pickett or Tom, it almost seems like a job more than a calling. The same is true during her interactions with Jack during 'A Tale of Two Cities'; the moment she manages to break Jack for the first time she walks out into the next room where Ben thanks her and she responds with perhaps the most neutral "You're welcome" you possibly could. 

This has nothing to do with the fact that she nearly drowned during Jack's attempt to escape (though the fact that Ben seems willing to let her die is not lost on the viewer). Mitchell makes it very clear that for her this is a job and she really wishes she could clock out and go home. As she'll joke to Jack later on "It's stressful being an Other' and as with so much of what Juliet says she means it.

Mitchell also makes it clear in her scenes with Jack that she's honest in a way that neither Henry nor any of the Others (sorry) have been. She's actually forthright with him in a way that none of the natives have been to this point. It's clear she knows far more than she's telling but she's also more forthcoming. When asked she tells Jack that the station they're in is called the Hydra, that's an aquarium that was used for experiments on animals from sharks to polar bears. Even though she knows everything about Jack from the files they've collected on them, she allows him to lie to her and she's honest about the speakers not working properly. And we learn very clearly that she is a doctor and she doesn't want Jack to get dehydrated or lose his energy because of the drugs they put in his system.

She also shows emotion far more readily then any of the Others we've met during this period and she also remembers her job. In Every Man for Himself she's called into operate on Colleen after she's been shot and is near death. Juliet then breaks protocol by demanded that Jack scrub up to try and help save Colleen.

This is important because Lost has already established, as Back to the Island makes clear "it's a dude-heavy show, with a lot of episodes focused on a moody doctor with a brusque demeanor, a hero complex, and daddy issues. And then here comes Juliet, also a doctor and also very complicated, but with a different energy." The biggest difference is that we've already seen Jack willing to violate the Hippocratic Oath multiple times in order to get what he wants and while Juliet is more than willing to manipulate people when required she truly believes in 'first do no harm.' And if that means she has to violate the Leaders orders in order to try and save a woman dying of a gunshot wound, that's exactly what she's going to do, Ben Linus be damned.

As the series continues it's worth noting that Juliet takes her oath far more seriously than Jack ever will. Despite his mantra that he needs to fix things we've already seen that is almost always arbitrary on the island, even when it comes to being a surgeon. Juliet, by contrast, will maintain that belief throughout her full three seasons on the series and there's an excellent chance the main reason she defects from the Others is because she's been forced to violate it because of the mission statement of Ben Linus. (If you look at Missing Pieces on the Season 4 DVD Set there are more than a few segments featuring Juliet that will back that up.)

When Colleen ends up dying despite the best efforts of Jack and Juliet, she confides in him she's a fertility specialist and then bursts into tears. Jack consoles her and while he makes it clear it’s a professional courtesy you can tell Juliet needed to hear it. This scene really does humanize Juliet in the eyes of the viewer; she may be 'one of them' but it doesn't make us care for her any less. And it helps matters that by this point we've gotten to know her boss a little better as well.

There have been some series that when the writers try to humanize the villain it backfires because it takes away some of the menace behind them. I'm reminded of William B. Davis's Cigarette Smoking Man and how the show's writers would make efforts in the later seasons to give him a family  of his own as well as a name – and then abandoned it when the mythology moves on to try and putting him back where he was. Michael Emerson is a special case, mainly because when the writers introduced him he had only a three episode arc but because of his performance they kept expanding his role and decided to make him the leader of the Others.  Darlton made it clear that by the time Emerson made his debut as 'Henry Gale' in Season 2 they'd only roughly conceived of who the leader of the Others would be and they sure as hell hadn't cast him. In one of those elements of synchronicity that worked out more often for Lost then not along came Michael Emerson and the rest is TV history.

Famously at the end of Season 2 Ben told Michael "We're the good guys." Considering who said it and what we'd already seen that season we were inclined to take this with a  pillar of salt. Eventually it will become clear that Ben believes it and that every action he has taken is for that purpose. Much of the first six episodes try to show bits and pieces of Ben, showing one face to the three Oceanics he's captured and the other to his underlings. What's clear is that neither group particularly respects him or even likes him that much. We assume that the Others are following him because he knows all the secrets of the island and we will hold that believe until Season 3 is nearly over.

That's why the opening scene of Season 3 is just as important for Ben's character as Juliet's as it reveals he's not in control of events as he makes himself appear to Jack, Kate and Sawyer. He's capable of improvising on short notice but those decisions have already led to people dying and we've heard with Walt "we got more then we bargained for.' At the opening of The Glass Ballerina Colleen comes to him and tells then that Sayid, Sun and Jin have a boat. Juliet tells them it doesn't matter because they'll just sail around aimlessly. Ben ignores her and sends a team after it – a decision that gets them the boat but leads to Colleen being mortally wounded. The fallout of this decision leads to her husband deciding to kill Sawyer and while Ben tries to hold him in check it fails the moment he goes into surgery which will lead to Danny's death.

While this is going on we become reacquainted with a familiar face – Alex. We met her in 'Maternity Leave' when she went against her father orders and broke Claire out of the Staff Station. We've seen her a couple of times in the last two episodes of Season 2 and she seems more interested in Claire's wellbeing then carrying out orders. The few times we see her in the first six episodes she's looking for her boyfriend Karl and she's not happy about it. By the time 'I Do' ends its clear that Alex is Ben's daughter – or as the viewer knows, has been raising her as such since he abducted her from Rousseau as an infant.

We'll get to know Alex much better during the rest of Season 3 (Tania Raymonde will appear in nearly half the episodes) but our first impressions of her are correct: she's no more committed to the vision of the Others then Juliet is and her reasons are far more personal. For one thing Ben has given the dress he gives to Kate from Alex's wardrobe. (The way Alex says "It looks better on you" to Kate during The Glass Ballerina will break your heart.) By 'I Do' it's clear she's team Oceanic all the way: she warns Kate that they're planning to kill Sawyer and she actually helps Jack break out of the Hydra station. In a scene I really wish had been part of the episode (you can find it in the deleted scenes of the DVDs.) Ben calls Alex into his office. Alex yells at him: "I hate you. I hate your guts. I wish you were dead!" It's then that Ben tells her about the tumor on his spine. In what is his most human scene yet Ben says that what upsets him more is how badly our relationship has suffered. It doesn't make a difference: Alex isn't around for Ben's surgery and by the time the action resumes in Not in Portland, she's actively trying to help Sawyer and Kate escape.

So its fascinating to see Emerson when he formally introduces himself to Jack at the end of 'The Glass Ballerina'. He takes on the form of this being a socially awkward position rather then the fact he's holding Jack and his friends hostage. Jack spends most of this scene refusing to buy a word of it, and he's absolutely right to do this. Ben's lying even when he says he's lived on this island his whole life and Jack knows that whatever offer he makes about bringing him home has to be a trap.  That at first he believes they have no contact with the outside world is understandable and it's telling Ben has to show him the final out of the 2004 World Series just to confirm it.

Those last moments show a perfect mix of comedy and darkness. There's the humor as Ben has to explain the greatest comeback in baseball history to Jack (knowing full well that he's never seen a game in his life) and then how Ben shows that final out, completely unaware of the significance of the Red Sox to Jack.  While the Others will prove to know every single piece of data about the survivors lives they have no way of know the personal details and therefore can't know that Christian's favorite saying was: "That's why the Red Sox will never win the series." There's been some debate whether Jack's reaction at the end of the episode is based just on seeing a recording of a baseball game or whether he secretly believed in his father's theory on fate and free will. I suspect it’s a combination of the two.

And it's at that point that Matthew Fox manages to take baby steps towards finding direction for Jack. It helps matters that of the three characters who've been taken prisoner it’s the greatest power reversal for his character. Jack has been the reluctant leader ever since the crash, the one that everybody takes direction from whether they listen to him or not. It's gotten hugely frustrating seeing that dynamic during the first two season with Jack not wanting to be the leader but unwilling to relinquish control. Now for the first time in the series he's in a position where he has none of all, where he's at the mercy of people who've made it clear they will do him harm. Much he doesn't believe a word they say, he knows he has to let this play out.

It helps matters that he has the most interaction with Mitchell and Emerson during this period which in turn helps the two of them up their game. With both characters it's clear Jack doesn't believe a single thing either of them say and while he may be more at ease with Juliet, he never misses a chance to punch back at the flaws in her character. We see this most apparently in Every Man for Himself when Juliet, having just tried to convince them that they make decisions independently, Ben runs in and says "Juliet, we need you right now." The smirk on Fox's face as he says goodbye makes it clear that this just took the piss out of the woman trying to lure him to their side.

When Jack sees the x-rays its clear he makes the connection almost immediately. We get to see a different side of him in 'The Cost of Living' when he tells Ben "It must hurt."  He then describes the tumor on Ben's spine and how its borderline inoperable. When Ben tries to deflect Jack shrugs it off as if he could care less. The moment Juliet shows up the game is given away:

Ben: Why did you show him my X-rays?"

Juliet: I didn't tell them they were yours. But I guess you just did.

The look on Ben's face that moment is brief; Jack's isn't.

When Ben goes to visit Jack while he eats a cheeseburger (no, we never found out where they got it) and tries to let down his guard we don't know if this is yet another manipulation of his. The problem is that Ben literally doesn't have time for manipulation. In the opening of 'I Do' Jack tells him about the X-ray and the OR before telling him "You need to be in surgery yesterday."

That scene between them is magnificent. Ben seems to assume Jack has agreed and then in what is the cruelest scene of all Jack says he's not going to operate: "I just want to tell you how you're going to die."

There's a darkness in Fox's behavior that we've never seen on Jack's face before, and its abated by the fact that his reasons are absolutely valid: Ben has no intention of letting him go home; this is just another manipulation. This leads to an even darker exchange:

Ben: I'm very disappointed in your decision.

Jack: At least you won't have to be disappointed for very long.

Here's how much we're on his side. When Sawyer learns about this from Kate he completely agrees with Jack's decision even if it means he'll die the following day. And with the benefit of hindsight you do wish Jack would follow through given how many people will end up dead as a result of Jack's eventual decision to save Ben. No viewer could have known this for certain in November of 2006 but that didn't mean when Jack agreed to scrub in that we didn't think in our gut that this wouldn't have a happy ending for anybody, least of all Ben.

While the overwhelming majority of the good stuff is happening on Hydra Island there is some interesting stuff back on the beach and unsurprisingly it involves John Locke.  Terry O'Quinn's work in the first six episodes is fascinating because it's very different from what we've seen before and what we'll see in rest of the series.

'Further Instructions' the first Locke-centric episode of Season 3 shows John unable to speak, presumably as a consequence of his decision to not push the button, causing the Swan to implode. (We actually see the wreckage of it.) John builds a sweat lodge and has one of the trippiest sequences of the entire season in which he goes on a vision quest where 'Boone' shows up to guide him. We see him in an airport in a wheelchair unable to walk and we see how he views the castaways. Interestingly his visions will end up foreshadowing much of not only Season 3 but the show to come with the arc of the characters (I'll just talk in regard to Season 3). He's told by Boone there's someone in the airport he needs to help

Charlie, Claire and Aaron are together as a family. Boone says: "They'll be fine. For a while."  (One of the major stories of the season is whether Charlie will die.)

Sayid is talking to Sun and Jin who are having a quarrel. "I think Sayid's got it," Boone says. (This seems to refer to what happened in the previous episode but Locke has no knowledge of that yet.)

Hurley is at the airport desk, checking everyone in the same way the Swan did every time they entered the numbers. "Not Hurley" Boone assures him. (Locke seems to have realized Hurley has a connection to the hatch and perhaps the island he wasn't aware of.)

Desmond is seen in a pilot's uniform. "Forget it, he's helping himself," Boone says. (Rescue will come this season because of Desmond.)

Kate, Jack and Sawyer are at the gate. Locke starts pointing at them the moment he sees 'Henry Gale'. (Ben is wearing that as a nametag and as of this point that's the only name John knows him as.) "There's nothing you can do to help them, not yet.

"First you have to clean up your own mess."

At the top of the escalator is Boone. Locke climbs it and at the top he sees Boone covered in blood and Eko's stick.

John comes out of his experience able to talk and knowing he has to save Eko.

Charlie comes with him, despite Locke's warning "Bad things happen when people are around me." The rest of the episode is Locke's rescuing of Eko from a polar bear. John tells Charlie he was told to clean up his own mess.

Locke confides in Eko that this is his fault. If he'd let Eko keep pushing the button he could have helped his friends and none of this would have happened. He will spend the first half of the season trying to take up the role of leadership.

It's surprising just how good John is at during the first half of the season. He's more democratic in his approach then Jack, more willing to take counsel from people like Sayid and he knows when to tell the truth and use his discretion. When Eko's killed he only tells Sayid that he was killed by the Monster because he doesn't want to create a panic and at one point he goes with Sayid to tell just Charlie and Hurley what happened so that morale doesn't get any lower.  

It's possible that Locke's arc in the second half of Season 3 was necessary for how the rest of the series played out. Considering that the writers began to do so after they'd negotiated an end date for the series makes me pretty confident that this was what Darlton and company planned for John all along. And much as I'd like to have seen this narrative followed considering O'Quinn won an Emmy for his work as a large part because of that turn, I can't argue it didn't work for Lost.

 

But let's not kid ourselves. The biggest argument for sticking with Lost after the first six episodes of Season 3 is the rest of Season 3. Generally speaking from the moment actin resumes whatever problems the show had before almost immediately become resolved and we have one of the greatest stretches not just in the show's history but in TV history.

And we'll get to that when I officially resume the 20^th anniversary coverage of Lost next year. (There'll be more articles in between.)

 

Homicide Rewatch: Pit Bull Sessions

 

Written by Sean Whitesell ; story by James Yoshimura & Julie Martin

Directed by Barbara Kopple

 

Every so often when I'm watching a rerun of 1990s TV series – almost always a drama – and I see an actor in a small role who has now become either a superstar or one of the most award-winning performers in the business, I watch the episode to see if there were signs, even in a small role, if you could see it coming. There are times its more obvious than others and rewatching Homicide sometimes it's more obvious.

You could tell watching Edie Falco as Eva Thormann there was a great actress waiting to come out; you could see with Dean Winters or Shawn Hatosy in what were their first acting gigs that they had potential and its been crystal clear this season with such future talents as Jeffrey Wright and Michael Pena. But I think one of the few times I was certain both the first time I saw an actor who was at that point a complete unknown had the potential for greatness that didn't prove me wrong was in 'Pit Bull Sessions'

Paul Giamatti had been acting in film and TV for awhile but not so you would notice him. The biggest role he'd had in 1997 was as Kenny, Howard Stern's nemesis in Private Parts but he wasn't there yet. His role as Harry Tjarks was him just on the cusp of becoming a bigger name: during the summer he would have roles of note in The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan and show his capacity to steal scenes from Samuel L. Jackson in The Negotiator all of which were among the biggest box office and critically acclaimed films of 1998.

It took a bit longer for him to move from "Hey, It's That Guy' to one of the greatest actors of this century and certainly working today – his official breakout role came as Harvey Pekar in American Splendor and he's never looked back since – but it was pretty clear in this episode that there was a force of nature there. And that's all the more remarkable because his work as Harry is one of the most atypical role he ever does. Most of his work has always been where there's something deeper beneath the surface; as Harry he's someone who is so clear intellectually and emotionally vacant that it appalls the detectives.

The episode is already superb even before Giamatti shows up, mainly because it brings the unlikely pairing of Falsone and Pembleton. This is the first time they've worked together all season and it's notable that Paul seems a little in awe of his fellow detective. The way he and Frank talk about being completely different kind of cops in the unmarked car is telling: he says Frank is a thinker while he's something of a shuffler.  This is likely the first time since we met him that someone who isn't Bayliss hasn't complimented Frank on being a great detective; whatever respect Frank has in the squad has been completed negated by his arrogance over the course of the show. You can tell Pembleton doesn't know how to deal with it – his reaction is to deflect – and the fact that Falsone isn't offended but can joke about it shows the kind of cop he is.

We're also aware how much Frank is becoming a team player. Gone is the detective who famously refused to partner with anyone in the first season and scorned his colleagues. He partnered effective with Stivers and Ballard during Something Sacred and he worked with Lewis with none of the rancor we saw in their previous partnerships. It's fascinating that as Braugher enters the homestretch of his final season, we see him showing emotional growth on the job that wasn't present even last year. The arrogance we know shows up on the job, but not with his colleagues anymore.

This is clear when they get to the crime scene and find everybody outside. The victim is Leonard Tjarks. The officers are over the body when the killers emerge – pit bull terriers'. Leonard is 82 years old and the master is the grandson Harry, who isn't around. Everyone's waiting for animal control and Falsone puts his coat around his arm, determined to put the dogs back in the basement by making them 'consider you'. Falsone opens the door and that gives animal control enough time to tranquilize them. Pembleton takes this in with complete neutrality, his expression never changing.

It's only afterward he calmly and quietly asks Falsone whether he was going to let the dogs gnaw on him. The exchange is amusing:

Pembleton: You really going to let those dogs chew on you.

Falsone: I was going to let them eat my coat.

Pembleton: What were you gonna do when they eaten through your leather? Call time out, show 'em your badge? What?

Falsone: You don't understand dogs.

Pembleton (looking at the body): Neither did he.

There's also some amusement as Scheiner seems bored by the cause of death. When Falsone asks if he was drugged or strangled, Scheiner talks back: "Maybe he fell from an airplane" before walking off.  Then they find the second 'dead body' – a golden retriever who's been similarly mauled to death.

Pembleton and Falsone go to see Norman Tjarks and in a riveting scene the son tells him just how much Harry has been a disappointment to him over the years, how he came back home to ask to live with him, how when his own father called and asked to help him with an errand, he didn't hesitate but his own son didn't feel like it, how the grandfather let his grandson move in with him, how his grandson brought home the pit bulls that led to the grandfather's death. Falsone and Pembleton ask where Harry is. Norman makes it clear that if Harry had something to do with his father's death, he wants him in jail. Falsone feels guilty about lying about Harry being a suspect. Pembleton doesn't think he is but he wants to know "what kind of moron owns three pit bulls."

After a spirited debate between the two detectives about whether pit bulls are cruel or misunderstood the detectives return to the unit. Giardello tells them not to waste time: figure out if it’s a murder or not. Pembleton then tells Falsone about the unwritten rule of Homicide: there's enough names on the board without them making more work for themselves. Gee doesn't want to make a murder out of an accidental death.

There's some unsettling talk about dogfights and how they are done (while they'd fallen out of favor even by 1998, animal cruelty laws were still not on the books in Maryland by then) and its frightening how causally the way the dogs attack each other is discussed by one dogfight expert. Tjarks has been looking for dogs and has been trying to trade up. However one dog breeder makes it clear his dogs are trained to only attack each other, not human beings. The breeder says there's only one master and that the dogs work off command. Considering Leonard and Harry had a fight before Harry stormed off, there's a clear implication.

The case takes on a new wrinkle when Harry shows up at animal control – and his first concern is his dogs. That's when we meet Harry – and I first met Paul Giamatti. At this point he still has most of his hair and a scruffy beard. And there's something frightening about his first concern is his dogs and not his grandfather, even after he learns his grandfather's been killed by them he still wants them. He cares more about the dogs being misidentified as their breeds and he seems okay with the Golden Retriever being killed because 'it was going to die anyway."

So much of the brilliance of Giamatti's work comes in things you can't adequately describe: the long silences, the way he keeps coming back to the dogs, his dull incomprehension about simple question about common courtesy. The only thing he can show emotion about is his dogs. He sees no problem in that he prioritizes his dogs ahead of his grandfather's wellbeing.

Eventually it becomes clear to the detectives what happened: during the fight Harry stormed out of the house without locking the dogs up. The old man had never been alone with the dogs before and the dogs turned on him. It's another in a line of cases where while there's been a violent death, there hasn't been an actual murder. Pembleton realizes this quickly but Falsone won't let it go: he keeps trying to find out if this was an intentional act.  Pembleton can tell that this wasn't premeditated but Falsone is trying to make it fit. Next he tries to say he acted in the moment. Falsone acknowledges he's stupid and tries to get Harry to say he did in the moment.

Falsone goes back in the box and tries to berate Harry for the failure it is. He can't pay the rent, he's never had a full-time job, he's never had a steady girlfriend. He's 35 years old and can't remember he ever had a relationship and he's Paul Giamatti so he's not good looking. He doesn't have any real friends and its not clear he considering going to the burial of his grandfather. He can't even seem to grasp how much this would affect his father. And while I'm relatively sure that Falsone is lying about the first thing that came out of his father's mouth, given his attitude in that scene I can believe it's not much of an exaggeration. And not even that can provoke an emotional response from Harry.

Pembleton then tells him the truth: Harry Tjarks is empty. Even if he got a confession and got 30 years, it would be meaningless. Falsone wants him to be guilty of murder because it would explain his actions. But it's something more frightening then that: Harry just doesn't care. And its telling the only reaction Falsone gets is when he tells him that his dogs have to be put down because they killed a man. And its then we get a sense of the genius. The moment Harry hears that his dogs are going to be put down he reacts in a whirlwind of emotion that is both incredible because of how suddenly it comes and how disproportionate it is to the loss he's actually suffered. There should be something absolutely pitiful about how Harry keeps saying: "Please don't kill my dogs!" tearfully over and over, the way he suddenly collapses that you can see a man who has Emmys in his future.

 

In the Waterfront Gharty and Munch come in for coffee where Bayliss is working and discuss how their most recent case – a cab driver is murdered for his fare – is down because the criminal mastermind was, in Gharty's memorable turn of phrase "in need of liposuction between the ears'. We then get the flashback and I have to share these lines:

Munch: You know that old line 'a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime?

Gharty: We never believed it!

Munch: Why should we? I mean, how can anyone be so stupid as to rob and kill a cab driver and then forget job one? To run away!

To be clear Butchie came back because he forgot his gym bag. This leads to a hysterical sequence where Butchie declares innocence because Huggie did it, took the cash and has the jewelry on him. Butchie actually thinks that if he tells the detectives where the accomplice is he gets to go home. He then calls them, taking advice on where to meet him and then is promptly indignant that he's been locked up.

This begins a series of retelling of some of the dumbest criminals in Baltimore to laughter, drinking and the eventual arrival of Ballard to join in. Bayliss talks about how he was investigating a crime with a stabbing and he suspected his stepbrother was the killer. He tells Maurice that he intends to use 'the camera' where they take a picture of the dead man's eyes which show what the victim saw the last moment of his life. Naturally Maurice admits even before the photo is taken that he in fact did it because his brother Lorenzo left laundry in the dryer. (And he forgot the add the fabric softener.) Munch relates the story of a bar knifing he and Kellerman investigate two barflies who are getting along until they start talking about Vietnam. One guy says he was there during Tet and starts bragging about the 1^st marine division. The other guy says he was with the first Air Cavalry. They start arguing who was better than out come the knives. But the thing is, neither of them served in Vietnam because the 'Marine' was 13 in 1968; the 'Air Cavalry' was 11! Ballard and Gharty talk about the death of a fireman who gets a fire truck for his birthday. 2 15-year old knuckleheads who take 20 dollars and the toy fire truck. They take the money and ditch the wallet but are caught because they still have the fire truck.

And then the story, as always, becomes serious. We can tell because Gharty becomes so at once and tells them about an incident a week later and Ballard sobers thinking about the wife and the 8 year old. The fireman's widow asks to drive her and her son to where her son was shot and that the 8 year old wants to see where his body was. "If I can go where the kid was killed, I want to see what he saw when he died." The eight year old walks away and he says his dad doesn't have to be there anymore. The fact that Gharty can remember the case but not the name of the victim shows that even the most tragic deaths are just one name on the board after another.

I suspect that the story about Tony, the man who's drawing and writing about the cases in his Bible is a stand-in for Simon himself and the way he recounted them "is about listening to hear what your souls are'. That the moment they hear about this Bayliss and Munch fire him and demand their names be removed sounds very much like how some detectives may have treated him after the book and series came out.

The major plot point for the Mahoney storyline takes place when we learn why Stivers was at the courthouse (facilitating why Falsone and Pembleton are partnering in the first place.) The wrongful death civil suit which the city attorneys assured Kellerman would be tossed out has been bound over for trial. Kellerman is upset. Stivers speculates about the tape but for once Mike is right: if she had one, she'd have to turn it over for discovery and she didn't.

The real point is to show the corruption of the Mahoney organization in the legal system. Judge Gerald Gibbons in Division 14 was the presiding judge who felt there was sufficient evidence. The detectives think he's solid for them but then Kellerman points out something. Five months ago Georgia Rae Mahoney was arrested for her role in Junior's shooting at the detectives and Gibbons was the judge who let her out on bail. Gibbons specifically asked for the case. Mike concludes he's dirty. Al tells him not to jump to conclusions. Turns out Mike's instincts are right. He just follows them wrong. He immediately tries to schedule an appointment with Gibbons at his office and essentially tries to first cajole, then bully his way in. It's only when the secretary makes it clear she will call security that he leaves.

The episode ends with Falsone and Pembleton on the roof. They talk about their kids and Falsone wonders if they're raising losers. Pembleton tells Falsone to let it go because Harry Tjarks isn't a killer. But just as with Bayliss Falsone can't let it go at the end of the day and won't accept the idea that Harry is just simple. Pembleton is reluctant to answer but eventually he does and it's not comforting:

Pembleton: "Norman Tjarks is going to bury his father this week. And he's probably gonna think on that for the rest of his life. Harry Tjarks will mourn his dogs as long as it takes to go down to the kennel and buy some more pit bulls.

Falsone: "So Harry wins. Simple wins."

Pembleton: "Every now and again."

Sometimes even if the criminals are stupid it doesn't always make the detectives sleep better.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

Sean Whitesell, who has the recurring role of Dr. Eli Devilbiss, makes his debut as a writer. He will later serve in the writer's room of OZ where in the first season he memorably played Donald Groves, the Jeffrey Dahmer like killer, who met his end my firing squad in the first season.

From Simon's Book: The first three cases that are recounted in the Waterfront by Munch, Gharty and Bayliss all appear in Simon's book. Just as onscreen, it's done to illustrate the frequently stupid nature of the criminals and the bizarre nature of some of the killings the detectives investigate.

Pembleton's line: "Scheiner may outlive all of us" is a direct lift from the pilot of St. Elsewhere.  When one of the resident mentions Dr. Auschlander has fatal liver cancer, Dr. Westphal says: "Dr. Auschlander will outlive us all." And it's worth noting he does outlive quite a few of the younger characters on that series.

Mahoney PTSD: Bayliss is working a shift at the Waterfront because Billie Lou is off and Meldrick has apparently missed four straight shifts. It's a sign of how focused Meldrick is on Georgia Rae that he's apparently letting his other job fall by the wayside as well. Kellerman didn't bother going to court to see the Mahoney case thrown out. Stivers did. His lack of concern about this compared to the fact he is the impetus of it shows a growing refusal to take his job seriously.

Detective Munch: Gets to the deliver a line that could be a mantra for so many detectives over the years. When Bayliss asks if the violence makes them stupid or the stupidity leads to violence:

"The important point is that we win certain cases because our brains are repositories for intelligence and their brains are day old banana pudding…Stupid criminals are a gift from God.

Hey, Isn't That…As with so many film actors I'm going to simply deal with Paul Giamatti's TV work. As we all know that's pretty substantial for its own column. His career began as Heckler #2 in the TV Movie She'll Take Romance. He'd had one episode roles in small shows such as New York News and NYPD Blue. Later in 1998 he would play Herman Klurfeld in Winchell the Emmy winning TV Movie for HBO and Ted Hedley in If These Walls Could Talk 2 in the segment which would win an Emmy for Vanessa Redgrave. He played Anthony Russo in the FX movie The Pentagon Papers. But it was for playing the title role in HBO's landmark limited series John Adams that would he receive the recognition he deserved winning an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for Best Actor in a TV Movie.

In 2011 he played Ben Bernanke in Too Big to Fail, the HBO TV film about the 2008 financial crisis. He would receive an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries for that. He has also been nominated for Best Guest Actor in a Drama in 2014 for playing Harold Levinson in Downton Abbey and Best Guest Actor in a Comedy for Inside Amy Schumer where he famously played Juror #10 in the classic '12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer' episode. He did not receive a single Emmy nomination for his incredible work as Chuck Rhoades in Billions, the classic Showtime Drama series whose being ignored by the Emmys I will bear a grudge to my dying day. He would play Christian Barbrow in Season 2 of the HBO horror mashup 30 Coins and Philip in the most recent season of Black Mirror. He just finished playing Nus Braka in the critically panned Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series on Paramount Plus which I don't hold against him. He also played L. Marvin Metz in the critically acclaimed AMC series Lodge 49. He's also done his share of voice over work for PBS both in documentaries particularly Ken Burns having recreated John Adams voice for Benjamin Franklin and The American Revolution as well as The Roosevelts (Theodore Roosevelt) and Nature as well as Adult Swim such as Teenage Euthanasia and Rick & Morty.