And the insanity continues

It's only been a month! Heck, it's been less than a month since Donald Trump took office. We've got another week to go before it will even have been one month,... and we've got at least four years of this stuff ahead of us!

What have we done to ourselves? What has the Republican Party done to us? Can America survive four years of these people?

And that's four years at best. That assumes we pull our heads out of our asses and start voting. Keep in mind that, if you didn't vote for Hillary Clinton in November, this is your fault. But I keep hearing people making excuses for bone-headed idiocy.

We don't need Russia to destroy America, because we're doing it to ourselves.

COPS: Skyrim

There's a whole series of these. If you haven't played the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - or, perhaps, if you're unfamiliar with the TV show, COPS - you might as well skip this. But I thought it was funny.

Atheists on television?

(The Good Wife)

Earlier this week, I suggested that we atheists take a page from the gay rights movement and 'out' ourselves (but only where that won't cause big problems).

Well, there's another way that LGBT people have become more visible - and more accepted - and that's on television. And now, according to Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, we atheists might be starting to see that, too.

At least, two atheist characters have apparently just outed themselves on The Good Wife. I don't watch the show, but Mehta explains how it went:

Reporter: Ms. Hayward, how do you respond to the controversy over your actions at last week’s benediction?

Maddie Hayward: My actions… you mean the video on the Web of me not bowing?

Reporter: Yes. During prayer. There’s been some chatter about your insensitivity.

Hayward: Well, I apologize if it, uh, seemed insensitive. I was just trying to avoid being hypocritical. I am an atheist.

Reporter: Really? Don’t you worry about how that’ll play in a state where only 15% call themselves non-religious?

Hayward: I worry about everything. [Nervous laughter] But I am who I am and I don’t think you should run away from that. Let’s just let the voters decide.

Reporter: And what about you, Mr. State’s Attorney?

Peter Florrick: I respect Maddie’s point of view.

Reporter: But you don’t share it.

Peter Florrick: Well, it’s different. I was in prison. Belief means a great deal there. In fact, sometimes, it was the only thing we had.

Reporter: And your wife?

Peter Florrick: Oh, well, I think my wife can speak for herself.

Alicia Florrick: I’m an atheist. [Smile.]

That's great, but I wonder how it will go from there. I remember the first episode of The Mentalist, where the former psychic (fake, of course) was surprisingly open about his atheism. Among the detectives, the only true believer was a young woman clearly portrayed as naive and gullible. (The others were noncommittal, but didn't seem to respect her faith much.)

In succeeding episodes, though, the show really backed away from that (probably because their advertisers were unhappy, don't you think?). Patrick Jane was never shown as religious, but they were never as clear about it, and they never again made the faith-based girl seem especially naive.

In fact, they even started including mysterious psychics in the show, people who weren't obviously scamming the public - and apparently making even Patrick doubt, a bit. But I didn't watch it long, not after that, so I don't know where that went or how it is now.

Will these two atheists in The Good Wife find religion? I guess we'll see. (Well, not me, probably, since I don't plan to start watching it.) This sounds pretty good so far, though. And this is another thing we need, to be seen as ordinary people - perhaps even admirable people - in the entertainment media.

Happy Martin Luther King Day

I thought this was great - and quite appropriate for Martin Luther King Day. :)

Actress Nichelle Nichols tells the lovely story of how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. convinced her to remain on Star Trek after she had decided to leave the series for Broadway:

I was going to leave “Star Trek,” and [creator] Gene Roddenberry says, “You can’t do that. Don’t you understand what I’m trying to achieve? Take the weekend and think about it.” He took the resignation and stuck it in his desk drawer….

As fate would have it, I was to be a celebrity guest at, I believe, it was an NAACP fundraiser in Beverly Hills. I had just been taken to the dais, when the organizer came over and said, “Ms. Nichols, there’s someone here who said he is your biggest fan and he really wants to meet you.”

I stand up and turn and I’m looking for a young “Star Trek” fan. Instead, is this face the world knows. I remember thinking, “Whoever that fan is, is going to have to wait because Dr. Martin Luther King, my leader, is walking toward me, with a beautiful smile on his face.” Then this man says “Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am that fan. I am your best fan, your greatest fan, and my family are your greatest fans…. We admire you greatly ….And the manner in which you’ve created this role has dignity….”

I said “Dr. King, thank you so much. I really am going to miss my co-stars.” He said, dead serious, “What are you talking about?” I said, “I’m leaving Star Trek,” He said, “You cannot. You cannot!”

I was taken aback. He said, “Don’t you understand what this man has achieved? For the first time on television we will be seen as we should be seen every day – as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance, but who can also go into space, who can be lawyers, who can be teachers, who can be professors, and yet you don’t see it on television – until now….”

I could say nothing, I just stood there realizing every word that he was saying was the truth. He said, “Gene Roddenberry has opened a door for the world to see us. If you leave, that door can be closed because, you see, your role is not a Black role, and it’s not a female role, he can fill it with anything, including an alien.”

At that moment, the world tilted for me. I knew then that I was something else and that the world was not the same. That’s all I could think of, everything that Dr. King had said: The world sees us for the first time as we should be seen.

Come Monday morning, I went to Gene. He’s sitting behind that same dang desk. I told him what happened, and I said, “If you still want me to stay, I’ll stay. I have to.” He looked at me, and said, “God bless Dr. Martin Luther King, somebody knows where I am coming from.” I said, “That’s what he said.” And my life’s never been the same since, and I’ve never looked back. I never regretted it, because I understood the universe, that universal mind, had somehow put me there, and we have choices. Are we going to walk down this road or the other? It was the right road for me.

TV’s first interracial kiss—between Nichols and William Shatner—also occurred on Star Trek.

America has really changed since then, hasn't it? That didn't just happen. It took brave people like Martin Luther King, Jr. - and many, many others - to make it happen.

I have to wonder about that "God bless" comment from Gene Roddenberry (who was one of us), but it's a great story. There's a video there, too, if you want to hear Nichelle Nichols tell it in a little more detail.

PS. I think I was in love with Nichelle Nichols when I was a kid. I used to think that Captain Kirk was crazy to overlook the beautiful lieutenant who worked right alongside him on the bridge. But then, I suppose there were strict Starfleet regulations about that, huh? :)

Fiscal Cliff

Clever, isn't it? But I don't know who created it. All I've got is this link.

As God is my witness...

(The Far Left Side)

Here's another one that's too late for Thanksgiving. Oh, well, too bad, but I thought it was hilarious.

If you don't get the joke, I guess you've just lived a sad, sheltered life, haven't you? But this might help:



That was a classic episode of a really funny television show, wasn't it?

QI

If you live in England, I'm sure you know about QI ('Quite Interesting'), but as an American, I was happy to discover these video clips on YouTube.

This one was apparently the pilot, from when the show started in 2003. The set has certainly changed since then, but the format is the same. And the shows tend to be absolutely hilarious!

Anyway, if you want to check it out (I'll warn you that it can be a real time-waster), here's a playlist covering every season, apparently. Here's another.

Note that the shows are identified by letters, with the first season being 'A' and the current season 'J.' The 'XL' shows are 'extended length' - about 45 minutes, rather than a half hour for the others.

I've just been sampling them - there's a lot of television there - but my gut hurts from laughing so hard. They really are quite interesting... and quite funny.

Stars Earn Stripes

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What kind of country have we become? Have we completely lost the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality? Every time I think we've reached the bottom, I'm surprised by a new low.

I remember thinking about this when the Rambo movies were popular. Sure, we might have lost the real Vietnam War, but in the fantasy world of the movies, Rambo could kick butt. Yeah, that was real macho, wasn't it? We could all be tough vicariously, in our imaginations.

Likewise, chickenhawks in the Bush administration, who'd been very, very careful to avoid serving in the Vietnam War themselves, viewed war as a spectator sport. Well, they were all faith-based. They didn't seem to have any mechanism for distinguishing fantasy from reality. War was fun and politically popular.

Yes, without a draft - we're all "loyal Bushies" in that respect, in the care we take to avoid danger ourselves - America loved it. When Afghanistan got boring - how dare they have no good targets for our high-tech missiles? - it was time to boost ratings with a new war in Iraq.

Sure, we didn't have any real excuse for invading Iraq, not even the poor excuse we had for invading Afghanistan. (The 9/11 terrorists were actually Saudi Arabian. And Barack Obama showed us how we could have gone after Osama bin Laden in the first place, even if we hadn't been smart enough to consider terrorism to be a crime, rather than 'war.')

But Iraq had lots of oil, so the war would "pay for itself," right? And they had lots of targets for our high-tech weapons. Military contractors were giddy at the prospect of shooting off our whole stock of enormously expensive missiles.

Ordinary Americans loved it, too. It was like the Fourth of July. We got to see the explosions in real-time without getting off the couch - and certainly without being in any danger ourselves. Reality TV! What fun!

And it was all free, since we just put it on the nation's credit card. I mean, you can hardly pass up a free war, can you?

But now, I guess, we're bored again. And until the Republicans regain power, we probably won't have a new war to watch. (I can't wait until we can all watch the explosions in Tehran! What about you?)

I mean, that stuff's not real, is it? It's just television, right? And the Obama administration just doesn't know how to entertain us. Afghanistan? That was boring a decade ago! Come on! We need a fresh war to keep ratings high.

Or maybe just 'reality' TV. Yeah, that's the stuff. For Americans, this is 'real,' I guess. Or, at least, real enough, since these days we seem to have a harder and harder time telling the difference.

Is anyone else as embarrassed at this as I am?