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Media

Author Makes Confession About ‘The Good Wife’

GoodWifeAt first, “The Good Wife” was the show I watched when I was sick. The travails of Alicia Florrick were strangely soothing, as I lay in bed with my snot rags and antihistamines.

Somewhere along the line I got hooked; I don’t how or why. As a heterosexual male over the age of 40, I am, shall we say, not the target audience for a show based on a woman wronged by her prostitute-boinking husband.

But I couldn’t stop. I watched five seasons in less than 12 months, which means my psyche absorbed more than 120 episodes and untold number of scenes of Alicia holding a glass of wine and staring out a window.

It is a difficult obsession to explain. It is, after all, a network show and, to put it bluntly, I don’t do network.

Let’s call a snob a snob — I’m too good for “The Good Wife.” Network TV is for other people. My tastes are steeped in the classics, “The Larry Sanders Show,” “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” – the bulwarks of excellent television. I was into “Damages” before “Damages” was cool. I can spend long hours discussing the inside jokes in “Californication,” but I couldn’t name the lead character in “Scandal.”

“The Good Wife” goes way beyond a guilty pleasure. “Sons of Anarchy” is a guilty pleasure. Good Wife-love is more like admitting that you just can’t stop watching “The Bachelor.”

But I’ve come clean and admitted my obsession. I’m not even embarrassed by my fanboy status. I explain my obsession in this article for Ozy.com.

Kevin Brass writes for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and many others. He is the author of “The Cult of Truland,” a satirical novel set in the world of celebrity journalism.

 

Comment, Media

The Real Reason Brian Williams is Toast

Brian Wlliams nightly newsNBC anchor Brian Williams may have survived lying about his war record in Iraq, if it was simply an offhand remark to David Letterman. News anchors are habitual blow-hards who often inflate their stories to help create their own self-myth. Telling a little white lie on a talk show is almost expected, part of the job of promoting the nightly news.

If it was nothing more than a talk show gaffe, Williams could have shrugged off the revelation that he really wasn’t flying in a helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during the Iraq War. He might have tossed it aside as simply a late night slip, one of those things that comes out at the wrong moment. A quick apology, a few mea culpas, some hearty laughs about bad memory, and Williams would be back on the air.

But as soon as he incorporated his little white lie into a news story, he was toast. Reporting the incident on air as actual news separated Williams’ hubris from the realm of stupid party boasts. He crossed the most sacred of journalism lines and now he must face the consequences.

There is no way Williams “misremembered” the helicopter story. You don’t forget that you were actually in the helicopter that was not hit by a rocket, instead of the one that was actually hit. We’re not talking about an event from ancient days; it was 11 years ago. Some newsmen can remember what they had for breakfast 11 years ago. There is no quick explanation for why Williams thought he was in the helicopter forced down in the desert, unless he is delusional in a very dark manner. If Williams was willing to fudge the truth on the Iraq story, then it is completely reasonable to question what else he fudged over the years.

Yet, before we burn him at the stake of the righteous, let’s keep in mind he was a news anchor and news anchors are typically creations of illusion and truth stretching. They are presented as serious news personnel, toughened reporters who can be trusted with your news. But most anchors are nothing more than news readers, capable of looking good on camera and enunciating with flair. They provide a hint of a frown at the right time; maybe the rise of an eyebrow. Their journalism is relegated to punching up their scripts and standing where the producer tells them to stand.

The networks spend millions creating images for these anchors, which may have little connection to reality. Anchors don’t need to be reputable reporters, but they do need to be able to act like one.  “The remarkable thing is not that [Williams’] war exaggerations have been found out, but that he’s managed so confidently to pull off the network anchor role for so long,” Michael Wolff wrote in the Hollywood Reporter.

“He is America’s most prominent newsman but never has reported the news. He is the managing editor of a news organization, once among the largest in the country, that has been stripped down to the barest bones. He has assumed the mantle of network anchorman, as though it is a job that still commands the greatest stature and gravitas, but which, everyone understands, is mere relic now. He gamely continues the conceit that the network news broadcast is one of the primary sources of news for most Americans — at best a nostalgic, if not comical, notion.”

Williams’ main role was as “an in-house, all-purpose corporate face and moderator,” for the corporate owner of the network, Wolff notes.

As a corporate spokesman, Williams could have overcome the fallout from his lie about his war experiences. Anchors are all built on little white lies. But there is no way NBC can present him as its icon of credibility and trust after he so clearly lied in a news story. No amount of makeup or snappy commercial spots will clean up that image.

Kevin Brass writes for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and many others. He is the author of “The Cult of Truland,” a satirical novel set in the world of celebrity journalism.

Comment, Kevin Brass

The ‘Colbert Bump’ Impact on Celebrity Mocking

Colbert_SquareWith the demise of “The Colbert Report,” TV has lost its best mocker. There are better interviewers and funnier sketch artists, but nobody mocked better than Stephen Colbert, the character, in full stride. His ability to walk the thin line between parody and cruelty was unmatched, and may never be equaled.

That’s a difficult to line to walk. He was pompous, overtly racist and demeaning of everyone. And yet it was impossible not to laugh and enjoy the mocking, even if it may hit close to home. The only TV character to come close to the same line was maybe Archie Bunker, Carroll O’Connor’s armchair Nixonian, who put a face to a generation of bigots.

In an age when every cable pundit sneers at their opposition, Colbert made it fun to mock again, returning satire and humor to a humorless industry. In the process, Colbert separated the world into people who got the joke and those that were the joke.

Making fun of the famous came with a sophisticated edge for Colbert. He allowed us to laugh at the buffoonery of their day to day antics. Blowhards were always his favorite targets. He skewered the pompous. But managed to switch to a gentle smile when dealing with those that were simply stupid.

In many ways, Colbert was far more subversive than Jon Stewart, who works from the traditional fake news format. Colbert did it from within, by becoming one of them, using the punditocracy’s own words, mannerisms and zealous self-importance to undermine their pedestal. He embraced their talking points and made them his own. We all could recognize the thread of reality in Stephen Colbert, the character.

Colbert will go down in history for injecting that character into the political dialogue, blurring the lines between a fictional asshole TV pundit and the assholes on TV every day. But he went further, taking on the silliness of celebrity and the personal shallowness that invades the rich and powerful. Much like Lisa Kudrow’s self-absorbed character in “Comeback,” his personal idiosyncrasy’s and view of daily life were a clear window into the shallowness of celebrity and fame obsession, a vivid profile of people convinced of their entitlement.

More than any other comedian, Colbert provided a daily caricature of the corrupting influence of fame. Stephen Colbert, the character, was convinced of the righteousness of his own place in the world, even though he did not have a single definable skill. It didn’t matter. He was famous. And fame was a lifetime gold stamp to get in front of the line. That’s just the way it is, get over it, Stephen Colbert explained night after night.

Political satire will go on, and new voices will emerge, but nobody will hit the same note as Colbert, that pitch-perfect mock.

Kevin Brass writes for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and many other publications. He is the author of “The Cult of Truland,” a satirical novel set in the world of celebrity journalism.