Word: liebermans
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...ironically fitting that Joseph Lieberman should make his convention acceptance speech after the penultimate episode of "Survivor" - exactly the sort of amoral pop-culture threat to public values that Lieberman has made a career in the Senate of attacking, and a show that, no doubt, whupped him in the ratings several times over. "Survivor" is a simulation of reality manipulated to produce conflict; a political convention is a simulation of reality manipulated to produce harmony. Guess which wins? If the Dems had a true media genius on the payroll, they'd have locked Joe in a Studio City bungalow with...
...even more fitting, if a touch sad, that he should appear on the Democratic podium, in L.A., on the same night as did Jimmy Smits, an actor best known for baring his soul and, très un-Liebermanically, his ass, on "NYPD Blue." Oh, and Smits was preceded at the mike by Robert Rubin, arguably the single member of the Clinton administration most identified with the economic prosperity that the Democrats are relying on to win Gore-Lieberman the election. Guess which one got the hearty welcome? That's right, while the distracted delegates seized Rubin's few minutes...
...Even in the devil's own medium, however, it was Joe Lieberman's night Wednesday, and the beneficiaries of the First Amendment gave a generally warm reception to the man who has essentially promised that if TV doesn't clean itself up, the government will do the job for it. On ABC, former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos - who we're sure has become an entirely impartial observer in the, what, three minutes he's been a journalist - notified us that the Gore camp is thrilled with the bump Lieberman has given the campaign, which evidently is noticeable everywhere...
...Lieberman, perhaps under coaching from the top of the ticket, pretty much laid off the Hayes Code recitations tonight. It was interesting, however, that his one culture-war declaration - "No parent in America should be forced to compete with popular culture to raise their children!" - came immediately after he declared that he and Al Gore would maintain the U.S. armed forces as the strongest fighting machine on the planet. Interesting, because that military statement was a Cold War holdover, the kind of line Democrats long felt obligated to crow for fear of being labeled commies. The army, after...
...could argue that what keeps America the world's only superpower today - especially economically - is precisely the same vulgar culture that Lieberman reviles. Crappy American movies imprint the American consciousness across every continent; millions of little Elians the world over go to bed and dream of Lara Croft; French kids with an entire national tradition of great cinema are instead obsessed with "South Park" (Eric Cartman's face is more ubiquitous in the French countryside than bitter, entitled-feeling farmers). America doesn't dominate the world because it fears us; we dominate because the rest of the world wants...