Ramblings, mostly with the TV

Grey and rainy late October. Prolly see a fair amount of rain for the next five or six months. And as I never tire of noticing --documented immigrant from the Original Thirteen Colonies that I am-- even as it gets chillier, the rain produces the lushest and greenest part of the year.

Speaking of immigrants, I come across a Latino documentarian being interviewed. He related the sad story of an illegal alien from Mexico who does not prosper but winds up in jail and then is deported back home to the poverty he wanted to escape. The filmmaker says he made it so that people like Meg Whitman can learn that undocumented immigrants "don't have any other option". Obscenities from me at the TV. Not our frickin' problem, Jose.

Flipping through the TV dials, I once again note that the fall guy, the moron, the dope, the object of pity in all the commercials is always a white male.

Hence. If you belong to a group with societal privilege, never give it up in order to be "fair". In the end, the poor victim group you are trying to make nice with --who only wants 'an even playing field' or 'a place at the table'-- will take its revenge and seek to supplant you utterly. Group status (which requires subaltern groups) is a powerful force in history.

Black and white films, like black and white photos  --is greyscale a more accurate description?-- have an intensity and clarity that color media don't have. Is the minimal range of color an invitation to fill in with your own imagination? Or does that minimalism allow you or force you to focus your attention?

Jack LaLanne, still selling juice and health in his 90's, asks, "How can you love anyone when your self-esteem is low?" Maybe that was the problem.

BBC America promotes itself by showing clips of its news items. One is of Obama making a speech, "I believe. With every fibre of my being. That we. As Americans. Canstillcometogetherbehindacommonpurpose." Shot of the West Point cadets who were his audience: clearly either bored or hostile. Did no one vet this piece? Or was that purposeful?

Stereotypes are supposed to be a great great great sin in our oh so uniquely enlightened society. Even recently sacked Juan Williams prefaced his firing-offense remarks about Muslims by assuring Bill O'Reilly that he was no "bigot." Watch for a few minutes, if you can stomach it, the LGBT channel's version of Real Housewives, The A-List. Every loathesome skin-crawling gay stereotype that anti-gay types hold is celebrated openly by the gay network: rich, vicious, empty queens. Funny how what is evil lying in the mouth of one's opponents becomes birthright identity at the hands of one's own tribe.

While I'm at it, could the homegrown black thug hip hop and ho culture, celebrated as "authentic", be anymore of a confirmation of mountains of Negro stereotypes? Bizarre.

There's a new version of I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up commercial on. A Southern woman about 60, praising the LifeAlert systems she bought after falling in the tub, only by luck rescued by her daughter, coquettishly tells the invisible interviewer that it even makes her feel "even younger". Creepy.

The invisible and silent interviewer has become a media staple. Like an infomercial, it tries to snooker you into thinking that what is clearly a scripted self-promotion is actually genuine response to an interested outsider's inquiring mind.

(I guess a lot of real life conversations are like that, too. At least my blog's narcissism is clear.)