The Post-TV Candidate

Assuming he wins, I think Barack Obama will be remembered for, among other things, being the first presidential candidate to successfully use the internet to organise his campaign and win the White House. We saw an early version of this with Howard Dean in 2004 but he never made it past the Democratic primaries. From Fight the Smears to the iPhone application, he’s re-written the rules for any future successful politicians. 

That said, TV is still the most important medium and has been since the days of JFK. Last night, Obama aired his informercial, which I only watched on YouTube this morning. I was undecided before but after seeing this, I am totally getting a Shamwow. Like his acceptance speech at Inesco Field in Denver, the special provided the stunning visuals that act as a kind of shorthand to communicate the idea among his supporters that the US must now turn a corner.

So he certainly knows how to use TV to communicate his ideas (and not using public campaign financing doesn’t hurt, either). Still, I can’t help but wonder if, on a personal level, Obama doesn’t see TV as having as much relevance as it used to. Yesterday during a speech, he tried to make a joke about Sanford and Son and ended up confusing it with the Jeffersons. He also names M*A*S*H as his favourite show. 

This suggests not only that he is unfamiliar with 30 year-old Norman Lear produced African-American-themed sit-coms, but that he hasn’t watched much TV since he was a teenager. Does he even have a TV in his house? Oh, and John MCain and I like a lot of the same shows. 

Obama has said that families need to turn off the TVs once in a while to spend more time together. This is good advice but I suspect something else at work. I think it’s fair to say that the foundation of his support comes from the internet. Obama is also on record as a Trekkie (and please, please let his Secret Service nickname be “Tuvok”). Star Trek has taught us that by 2040, television will have lost its significance. It’s already started with people shifting to podcasts, and over the next 32 years, we’re going to watch even less television. But then again, with one or two broadcasters, like CanWest and CTV globemedia, rerunning the same damn shows over several different cable stations, why would we?  

I think this fact is not lost on him and he’s already there, in the future, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with him.

Pure. Mutual. Hatred.

I’m just going assume you’ve seen it or read about it. In SNL’s cold opening this weekend, Tina Fey relinquishes her “Sarah Palin press conference sketch” to the real Alaska governor herself. As they pass each other, I could sense the room going cold. Palin claims Fey is “a hoot” but I think she’s just trying to be a sport. I can’t imagine her having warm feelings about someone who uses her own words to ridicule her.

Beyond Tiny Fey-as-Sarah Palin’s listing of states she considers “Anti-American” (New York, California, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Delaware), I’m not really sure what Palin’s appearance on SNL achieved. She was more of an onlooker, rather than a participant, in the sketches that were directly about her. But, more importantly, it just wasn’t terribly funny.

The New Crew

 

Well, here they are. Left to right: Chekov, Kirk, Scotty, McCoy, Sulu, and Uhura. The photo was released with a number of other stills from JJ Abrams’ Star Trek prequel/reboot/whatever the heck it’s supposed to be. 

I’ve talked about this before a few times and its run through a variety of rumours, including Matt Damon as Kirk and Gary Sinese as McCoy, but I think that was always just fan-casting. 

This is what I think I know about the movie, so be mindful of spoilers herein: A bald, one-eared Romulan pirate named Nero wants to kill Captain Kirk through time travel but Spock hears about it so he goes back in time to help his younger self save his future friend and this brings us to the film’s setting: the original crew’s first adventure aboard the Enterprise. Wow, that actually sounds dumb now that I’ve typed it out.

Also, from what I gather, because of time travel affecting the course of history, the story in this new film will occur in a separate timeline so that the show’s original 40 year history is still intact. This, I think, will allow more films to be made that would normally contradict the show’s continuity, but would also ensure that “Spock’s Brain” never happened.

I still have reservations about the idea of recasting an entire cast for a franchise but it’s not without precedent – the Bond films have been doing it for decades. Still, my preference would have been something in a time period after the Picard years but who knows? Maybe if the movie is a hit, there could be a TV series. 

The movie is to be released in May which will come at an interesting time for sci-fi. Battlestar Galactica will have just finished its series and, if the series thus far is anything to go by, it’ll be bleak. Watchmen, with its dark take on the superhero genre will have been released in March and at Christmas, the adaptation of the post-apocalyptic The Road will hit theatres. That’s a lot of downer material right there.

I wonder if a throwback to the optimistic age of sci-fi will be a hit. I hope so. I don’t think it’s necessarily naive to think, or at least hope, that the future will be better than our present.

Well, THAT was a waste of time.

So Stephen Harper claims our government has become disfunctional and therefore, we need an election, so the 58% of us who could be arsed to to get to polls go and elect…pretty much the same government. 300 million dollars for that? Nice fiscal prudence there, Stephen.

He has thrice gone to the polls and thrice failed to deliver a majority government. I don’t care how much he tries to spin it as a win, he cannot seal the deal with Canadians. If I was a Tory, I’d be thinking about shopping for a new leader pretty soon.

And, is it not time for the NDP and Liberals to merge, just as the PC and Reform parties did almost 10 years ago? I don’t think that, in a first-past-the-post election system, it makes sense to have two parties holding many of the same positions. Maybe they should figure out where their common priorities lay and go from there. The problem with that, of course, is that the left finds it very difficult to agree on anything. Still, it’s something that should be considered. If it did happen, would the NDP end up absorbing the Liberals in the same way the Reform absorbed the PCs? Last night was the worst ever showing for the Liberals. If they want to avoid perpetual Conservative minority governments, they’re going to have change something and it isn’t just the leader. 

That said, as much as I admire my own Liberal MP, I voted Green because I’m sick of the left/right narrative.

The Elections

I haven’t had much of a chance to discuss the elections on either side of the border. Some other things are demanding my attention these days. I thought now is as good a time as any to launch into a rambling commentary on the political landscape as I see it.

This weekend, while watching 3600 Secondes d’Extase, I saw the above advertisement from the Liberal Party. In it, Member of Parliament Denis Coderre suggests that, according to the polls, Barack Obama will be elected the next president of the United States. He asks us to imagine Stephen Harper meeting with the new president on such issues as climate change, culture, and the economy.

Pointing out the disconnect between Harper and Obama, Coderre suggests voters choose a leader (like, you know, Stéphane Dion) who will be on the same page as the president.

This sort of thing usually bugs me in that I’ve never felt that Canada need elect leaders with ideologies which match those of their American counterparts. Years ago, a co-worker once opined that we needed to send troops to Iraq just to maintain our trade relationship with the US, which might be the most boneheaded reasoning for war, ever. Although to say there aren’t, or weren’t, Canadian soldiers in Iraq simply isn’t true.

Still, this is probably the first political ad I’ve ever seen that suggests that an election in another country should impact the one going on here. And, as heartened I’d be by an Obama victory, I find that ad a little weird.

I am also heartened to see Harper’s chances of a majority government growing slimmer the closer we get to next Tuesday. I can’t help but wonder if, after running as party leader in three elections without having delivered a majority, Harper’s days would be numbered.

I think on Tuesday we’ll see another Conservative minority government which, I would hope, the Bloc, Liberals, NDP, and, one would hope, the Greens, would use to reign in Harper’s more grandiose ideas. I’ve said before that I don’t mind switching up parties in government but there is a coldness to the Harper brand of Conservatives that I find unsettling. It’s not as nasty as recent McCain-Palin rallies but it does rely a little too much on the “us vs. them” strategy.

Sometimes, I miss Joe Clark.