Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

Can't Shake the Devil's Hand and Say You're Only Kidding

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

As all denizens of the internets know, Jumping the Shark is a phrase that has come to represent that moment in which a good something becomes permanently broken. It originally referred to the moment on Happy Days when Fonzie, for no evident reason, has to jump over a shark on waterskis because…well, because he had to, okay?

The actions of the formerly redoubtable Jane Hamsher during this health care debate, sadly, have now reached a point beyond Jumping the Shark. Hamsher has Transcended Sharks. She has rocketed over ever every member of Superorder Selachimorpha, and she is gone.

It’s not just her incessant parroting of right-wing talking points on individual mandates in her quixotic quest to “Kill the Bill.” Yes, Hamsher’s rhetoric since the public option was stripped has essentially mirrored the right-wing talking points (the evil government is gonna make you buy insurance! And if you’re doing well, you might even end up spending more on insurance, which will help others get insurance, but so what? What about your rights?), and that was the point at which she jumped the shark.

But now…well, now Jane has just gone beyond beyond. Because she’s allying herself with the worst elements of the Republican party. And I don’t mean that figuratively:

Jane Hamsher, Grover Norquist Call for Rahm Emanuel’s Resignation

By: Jane Hamsher Wednesday December 23, 2009 12:17 pm

Today, Grover Norquist and I are calling for an investigation into Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac, and the White House’s blocking of an Inspector General who would look into it. The letter follows: […]

This is, in a word, unforgivable. It would be akin to working directly with Dick Cheney. Norquist is, quite frankly, a man who has devoted his entire life to destroying the Democratic Party, and any form of government more robust that that which exists in Somalia. He famously has said of his aims, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” He wants to eliminate the FDA, the NEA, the IRS, and the Department of Education.

Norquist cut his teeth working with the Contras for Ollie North. He helped Newt Gingrich write the Contract With America. He’s the genius behind the TABOR legislation that’s been slowly strangling Colorado. Norquist was an early and enthusiastic backer of then-Gov. George W. Bush’s run for the presidency in 2000, and he has been associated with Karl Rove for decades. His goals are anathema to the goals of Democrats, or indeed anyone more liberal than James Inhofe.

Quite honestly, if Grover Norquist approached me and asked me to help him in his quest to save puppies, it would lead me to rethink my feelings about puppies. So it’s not just alarming, but flatly wrong for Hamsher to join in common cause with Norquist, even if there was strong evidence that Rahm Emmanuel had done something specifically wrong during his brief tenure at Freddie Mac, which there isn’t. ((There is some evidence that Emmanuel did nothing during his brief tenure at Freddie Mac, and that he basically received a paycheck for doing said nothing because he’d been a high-ranking official in the Clinton Administration, but while such a deal may be unethical — indeed, is unethical, in my opinion — it isn’t criminal, and isn’t much different than, say, Halliburton hiring a politically-connected former Defense Secretary as its chief. Indeed, such practices are sadly common, on both sides of the aisle. That may be reason to think Rahm isn’t particularly ethical, or even a reason to think Emmanuel’s a bad person. It isn’t by itself reason to call for his resignation. And it certainly isn’t the real reason Hamsher or Norquist are doing so.))

At any rate, Hamsher isn’t concerned about Emmanuel’s ethical problems. She’s mad because Emmanuel put pressure on the Senate to find a compromise that could get through the Senate, and that led us to the bill which lacks the public option, which alone has caused mandates to go from fairly understandable requirements to the worst! violation! of liberty! ever!!! And Hamsher wants to punish Emmanuel and the Obama Administration however she can. if that means making common cause with the likes of Norquist or Phyllis Freakin’ Schlafly, so be it.

Well include me out. I can understand being so frustrated with the bill coming out of the Senate that you’d oppose it. I think the idea that a better bill is just waiting for more willpower, or attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., or a really good speech from Barack Obama betrays a certain naïveté about the realities of the American system of government, and I think the main lines of attack from the Kill Bill crowd have been specious at best, but I can understand the frustration shared by anti-compromise forces; indeed, I share it, even as I understand that reality means we have to give in to Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman because that’s the way the system works.

But Hamsher has moved beyond principled opposition to the bill, and beyond even strong and forceful criticism of the Obama Administration. She’s now working with people who do not wish to improve the Obama Administration, but instead wish to destroy it. She’s working with people who do not want to improve the bill working its way though Congress so that more people are helped and corporations get their just deserts, but instead with people who want Congress to end Medicaid because it helps the wrong sort of people.

I’m sorry, but that’s beyond the pale. Hamsher may have the purest of intent. But her actions are helping and emboldening the right. She has, ultimately, become the mirror of her greatest adversary, Holy Joe Lieberman, another person who started out a moderate liberal, and ended up joining forces in common cause with the Republican Party. In his case, it was just the war he was with them on. In Hamsher’s case, it’s just health care and Rahm Emmanuel. In both of their cases, they’re gone. And they’re never coming back.

"Michief in the Forest," by Stephanie McMillan and Derrick Jenson, seeks funding

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Ampersand

My friend and cartooning colleague Stephanie McMillan is drawing a children’s book, written by Derrick Jenson. It seems like a cool project.

The funding mechanism is pretty cool as well; you can essentially pre-buy copies of the book (by donating $12 for pdf, $25 for dead tree), but your credit card will only be charged if they raise enough money to produce the book. (You could also donate more in return for more valuable rewards, like original art). If they don’t raise enough money, then none of the donors are charged anything.

Follow that link to see a video preview of the book (including the first five pages of art), or check out the more extensive Youtube preview.

I hope they raise the money they need. It’s a really neat idea — crowdsourcing grants for the arts, in effect. (I might try to fund the second Hereville book the same way!)

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 3 Comments

Hoisted By Their Own Prayertard

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

So do you remember when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-ExxonMobil, was telling teabaggers the other day to pray that “something” would happen to prevent a Democrat from making it to the Senate to cast their vote for cloture on health care reform? Sure you do. It was essentially a call to pray for the death of 423-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, D-State Now Named for Robert Byrd.

Anyhoo, it was pretty despicable, and it made Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pretty furious. I think Coburn thought he was being cryptic enough that nobody would catch on, but Coburn really isn’t that bright. I mean, even Treason-in-Defense-of-Slavery Yankee backed him in hoping for the death of the Senior Senator from Byrdland.

At any rate, it will not surprise you that teabaggers took Coburn’s call to pray to heart. It may surprise you, however, to find out that the prayers worked. A senator did miss a vote today. But not Byrd. Nor conservative bête noire Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn. Nor Patty Murray, Roland Burris, nor even Holy Joe Lieberman. No, the senator unable to make it to vote was Sen. James Inhofe, R-Chevron.

Yes, the lulz are serious with that. Coburn managed to encourage a prayer that took out his fellow Oklahoman-slash-Corporate Whore. But it gets better. Because of course, the teabaggers did pray. And they’re a little bit worried about the powers they are dealing with.

It is to laugh.

The best part of the video — which, for the YouTube impaired, features a tearful teabagger telling Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., that his group had “prayed real hard” that Sen. Byrd would die or be unable to make the vote — is the man essentially accusing Barrasso of not praying hard enough for Byrd’s death, thus causing God to punish James Inhofe for…something.

Of course, if I was a man of deep and abiding faith in a God who wants to influence the Senate by killing off its members one-by-one, I would tend to suggest that God making Inhofe sick is not so much evidence that teabaggers weren’t praying hard enough for a senator to die, but more that God has different ideas about which senators are expendable. It might even make me think that God kind of wants this bill to pass, and might support our nation’s slide into Muslim Marxist Communist Fascism.

Alas, I imagine that Inhofe is just under the weather. ((Which is proof that global warming doesn’t exist. Also.)) Still, while I don’t believe in a God that interferes directly in our lives, this tests my lack of faith; if I were God, making Coburn’s fellow Republican just a bit too sick to make the vote is exactly the sort of thing I’d do in response to Coburn’s prayer. The only change I’d make would be that Coburn himself would have food poisoning or a bad cold or some other temporary, non-lethal ailment.

But I suppose that would be too obvious — proof denies faith, after all. And God wouldn’t want that.

Hmm. You don’t think…?

Well played, God. Well played.

UPDATE: Inhofe evidently missed the vote because he had to fly with his wife back to Oklahoma, but he’s going to then fly back to DC to cast more votes. Now, I’m assuming his wife isn’t eleven years old, so I’m not sure why she can’t fly home on her own, other than the general conservative belief that women are not, in fact, people.

Posted in Elections and politics, Health Care and Related Issues | 11 Comments

On HP’s Racist Webcams (Or Lack Thereof)

Posted on December 22, 2009 by the angry black woman

on-hps-racist-webcams-or-lack-thereof

To start, I’m sure many of you have seen or heard about the YouTube video of the black dude who shows that the webcam on the HP MediaCenter does not track his face but does track the face of his white co-worker. The vid is here, in case you haven’t seen. It’s pretty funny, too, because the dude (Desi) seems like a fun guy. When he says “I’m going to go on record and say HP computers are racist” you know he’s mostly joking, though it is really messed up that the camera doesn’t recognize his face as a face.

Now, this vid was uploaded to YouTube (ironically using the HP MediaCenter) on December 10th but it took a few days to really blow up around the ‘net. HP caught wind of it a couple of days ago and put up something on their blog mentioning lighting conditions and they were working to solve the problem and whatever. But that hasn’t stopped tons of commenters on blogs and Twitter and Facebook from declaring that HP is racist or, at least, its webcams are.

I find myself in a strange position here, because I’m about to say something I don’t normally say: people, there’s not racism here.

That’s not to say there isn’t a problem and a serious one. But it’s more along the lines of the stuff I pointed out yesterday with the digital frames. One of not thinking or considering, one of privilege and blindness, but I am failing to see how racism is involved.

Let’s back up a bit. In case you’re not sure what’s going on here technologically, there is a feature in some webcam software that is designed to zoom in on the face of a person looking into the camera. I don’t know why this feature is necessary, but obviously someone likes it. Anyway, Face Tracking is supposed to keep your face in close up no matter where you move within the webcam’s field of vision. It identifies what is a “face” by an algorithm I won’t even try to explain because I don’t know how it works. HP said something about measuring the distance between the eyes and cheekbones but, again, I have no clue. That is what Desi was trying to get to work in the video but could not.

The software behind all this is part of HP’s MediaCenter suite which looks like one big program all created by HP. However, that’s not exactly true. When I was playing around with the program I noticed that it was really similar to CyberLink’s YouCam software, from the way the buttons and settings menus were designed to the kinds of effects and avatars available.

It’s no secret that vendors often bring in third-party software then put their own branding on it. Why develop webcam software in house when perfectly good software already exists? You can find YouCam software on a ton of computers, not just HP, and you can also download it yourself. I put it on a computer of mine and tried the Face Tracking thing and it works the same. So, if anything, the software is “racist”, not the webcam and not the computer manufacturer.

Though HP probably did some testing to ensure that the software interacted well with their system, I doubt anyone at the company tested all of the features. That’s not their job, actually, that’s the job of the software developers. So if we’re going to look for culprits here, we need to turn our attention to CyberLink. I don’t know for sure, but I’m going to guess that the folks at CyberLink tested the Face Tracking with a few people, but either not with any dark-skinned employees (assuming they have some) or not in enough varying lighting conditions with said employees.

The webcams included with most notebooks and all-in-one PCs are not of the highest quality. They’re for Skype chatting and mking silly YouTube reaction videos or lip dubs. The brightness, contrast, and backlighting correction are rarely the best (I know, as I’ve tested dozens). And that’s where the software runs into problems.

Go look at this video, then this one. It shows that a simple change in the software’s settings makes the difference between the webcam being able to track the face of a dark-skinned person and not being able to. (Also note that different shades of dark skin make a difference, too.) So what’s the real problem here? It’s two fold: one, that the software developers didn’t properly take dark-skinned owners into consideration when creating the product. Two, that crappy webcams make everything worse in life.

Given all this, I don’t see racism here. I think this is a fine wake-up call for CyberLink or whoever actually made that software to expand their testing parameters. I am willing to bet that they probably didn’t take dark-skinned people into consideration, but I’m willing to be told I’m wrong. If they didn’t, it’s probably because all of the developers on the team were fairer-skinned (which doesn’t mean white. The webcam works fine for East Asian and light-skinned Black faces, for example). It’s looking more like a case of blindness due to privilege. Like I said, problematic, but not malicious or even unfixable.

For my part, I’m going to continue to enjoy the video that started it all. Because it’s damn funny. And though I hope people will stop just parroting the HP Is Racist line and start asking “Who made the software?” and “How can we get them to fix this problem?” I can’t force people to. Instead, I will just pop popcorn and watch the drama unfold.

And now a word from our sponsor…

Your ad could be here, right now.

On HP’s Racist Webcams (Or Lack Thereof)

Posted in Race, racism and related issues, Syndicated feeds | 18 Comments

Open Thread: Man Convicted For Nudity In Own Home

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Ampersand

As Radley Balko says, WTF?

Williamson denied standing naked in his doorway or front window and said he had no intent to expose himself to anyone. But [Judge] O’Flaherty wasn’t buying it and likened Williamson to bank robber John Dillinger, who also “thought he was doing nothing wrong when he walked into banks and shot them up.”

Anyhow, consider this an open thread. Discuss what you like, when you like, with whom you like, wearing the clothes you like, noshing on the food you like. You can even do it naked in your own home; I promise not to call the cops on you.

* * *

Media Doesn’t Get Why Left Is Upset With Obama

Our anger is not rooted in our naivete, or our idealism. It’s rooted in our realism. We know that when you fight for something in politics, you can very often win. But if you don’t fight, you’ll never win. We are upset at the President and the Congress because no one fought for the public option, for the President’s own campaign promise.

Obama admin violates judge’s order, refuses to give health benefits to lesbian partner of fed employee

One reason I won’t give a cent toward’s Obama’s re-election campaign. This isn’t politically necessary; it’s Obama’s administration acting like homophobic assholes. I honestly don’t know if they’re acting from deep-seated cowardice or from pure bigotry, but in either case they’re breaking every promise they ever made about LGBT rights.

On Centrist Ideologues:

The habit of insisting that only the right and the left have “ideologies” and that people in the center don’t is one of the absolute most frustrating elements of conventional political discussion in the United States. The fact of the matter is that “centrist” ideological taboos have been the big story of the Obama administration. That starts with the imposition of an arbitrary cap on the size of the stimulus bill, it continues to the utterly merciless and fanatical centrist opposition to the existence of any public option, to the Fed’s refusal to undertake further monetary easing, to the unwillingness to contemplate really stern measures against bailed-out banks and their executives, and on and on and on.

Posted in Link farms, Prisons and Justice and Police | 9 Comments

Drooling with Hatred, So-Called "Christians" Cut Gays Out of Immigration Reform

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Ampersand

They really are hollow people, with no hearts at all:

A bill introduced earlier this year by Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) dealing with family reunification policies for immigrants was completely rolled into the reform package, except for its provisions allowing same-sex partners of permanent residents to qualify for a visa. The decision behind the little-noted change sparked friction between liberals hoping to kick off debate with an all-inclusive bill and Hispanic leaders more focused on keeping religious leaders on board with the plan.

“All the evangelists, Catholics and churches that are part of this were whacking out “over the gay and lesbian provisions,” said a Democratic lawmaker familiar with negotiations on the bill.

Democrats say they’re planning to reinsert the provision later in the process. I hope they do.

I can’t imagine what sort of human being would oppose a simple, compassionate policy like this. Allowing longtime, committed cross-national couples does not “endanger” marriage, nor does it harm any straight person in any way at all. But even a tiny bit of compassion towards LGBT people is more than organized right-wing Christians can stand.

You think it would get old; you think I’d stop being shocked by things like this. But no; I’m continually astonished at how some (not all) Christians — and in particular, politically powerful, organized Christian groups — lack even the most basic decency or compassion. What the hell makes them so petty?

Posted in Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Homophobic zaniness/more LGBTQ issues | 3 Comments

Picture Yourself

Posted on December 21, 2009 by the angry black woman

picture-yourself

Those of you who know me personally know that in another aspect of my life I write about technology. I get to play around with a fair number of gadgets in order to review them and it’s a very cool job, generally. There are very few times when the ABW in me is activated by something that happens in the course of my tech writing, and when it does I’m often conflicted about where I should best express my concerns. Is the issue best discussed on theangryblackwoman.com or on my personal tech blog or even on my work tech blog? This time I’ve opted for ABW not because this issue is particularly anger-making (it’s more annoying), but because I feel like the readers here will discuss it more thoughtfully than those more tech-minded.

A few months back I reviewed a slew of digital picture frames all in a row. I had to set them all up and evaluate whether they made good gifts for grandma and grandpa. All of the frames came with some starter images to show you how the slideshow bit works before you put your images on, which is pretty standard. But as I set each frame up, I started to notice that all of the images that came pre-loaded were of white people. White families, white adults, white kids, white white white¹.

Now, I realize that this is not all that different from regular frames (next time you’re in a Target or Wal-Mart or something, go stroll down the frame aisle. If there are pictures of people in them, chances are they are white people) but for some reason this struck me particularly as I was setting up these digital frames. I kept thinking: are there no brown people of any ethnicity available in stock photo bins? Or do they not even think, just choose the first pictures of happy people they see and put them in?

Then again, companies often control every aspect of a product down to the number of water drops on the image of a waterproof phone to ensure it doesn’t seem too waterproof and thus fool customers (yes, this is a real issue that came up once). Hard to believe that the photos pre-loaded on all of these frames weren’t mulled over and specifically chosen by someone.

I was reminded of this again when I posted on my work blog about good family holiday gifts and wanted to mention the frames. I was so sick of only finding images of frames with photos of white people inside that I went and found some brown people and photoshopped them in.

The reason this annoys me yet doesn’t really anger me is that it smacks not of malice or prejudice, but of unconscious privilege and blindness. Do the people who choose the images for the frame ever stop and consider that a Black or Latino or Indian or Native American family might buy the product and might appreciate if the pre-loaded photos maybe looked something like them? It’s a small thing, but would indicate to me that someone at the company was paying attention to the fact that not only white people exist in the world. And since the frame usually comes with 4 – 10 images on it, you can satisfy a whole slew of people by showing families of different races and ethnicities and also just mixed groups of people having fun and being together.

I guess I wish that people were more thoughtful. This is, I’m sure, far too much to ask.

And now a word from our sponsor…

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Picture Yourself

Footnotes

I can’t be sure if there were only white people across the board because I’ve sent some of the units back, but about the third one I paid close attention and only saw white folks.

Posted in Syndicated feeds | 10 Comments

The Reason for the Season

Posted on December 21, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

There is a reason that Mithras’ birthday was celebrated this time of year. A reason that Bacchus’ birthday, the Saturnalia, Jesus’ birthday, and the New Year come this time of year as well. For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, at 17:47 UTC today (9:47 AM Pacific Standard Time) the Sun’s slow ebb reaches its nadir, and begins its welcome return. For those of us who live in northern climes it is a not insignificant day; the sun will not rise today in Portland until 7:48 AM and will have set by 4:30 PM, a meager eight hours and forty-two minutes of daylight. And Oregon is in the pink compared to, say, Stockholm, where the sunrise doesn’t come until 8:44 AM and sunset is already complete at 2:48 PM–just over six hours of daylight.

It is no wonder that millennia ago, our forebearers saw this day as especially meaningful — the moment at which the Sun began its triumphant rebirth. Thus Mithras, the Sun God, was reborn on this day, to grow and prosper, rising until July, when he slowly began to wither and die. Thus the Son God, Jesus, has a story that, calendar be damned, fits well with the idea of Sol dying, and being resurrected. All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again, an infinite cycle, repeated infinitely — or as close to it as we humans can imagine.

And so today, we celebrate the day that is the progenitor of all our winter festivals, the Winter Solstice–and await again our planet’s rebirth into the light. Happy Solstice.

Posted in Mind-blowing Miscellania and other Neat Stuff | 3 Comments

A Love Supreme: Dollhouse Review 2.08

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Maia

This two episodes a week schedule is really hard to maintain. This is a trucated review of episode 8. I enjoyed it (despite the presence of both Alpha and the supposed love between Ballard and Echo), but I didn’t love it the way I loved the previous episode, so there’s less ranting. Just a request that people don’t discuss the latest episodes in the reviews for this one out of respect for other people’s spoiler . I’ll try to get my review of Stop Loss up in the next few days, so that

I didn’t talk a lot in my last review about what had happened to Adelle – I felt that this episode shed so much light on her character, that it was worth holding some of the discussion off to this review. Adelle’s bargaining, craven reaction to Alpha, was very telling about how the three months we missed had changed her.

As Alpha said to her “All this bargaining, you don’t have anything I want that I can’t just take.” She’s lost her ability to bluff and negotiate – she didn’t just have her power taken away in that time, but her ability to use power, the desire to be in control and her belief in her ability to do so. ((I don’t think any of the characteristics she lost were characteristics to be admired in a human being, but she’s definitely a very different character without them))

I think part of it is that she’s lost the lies she used to tell herself, the ones where they were doing good. She knows she’s brought about the apocalypse for her own personal power, and I think that knowledge is one of the reasons she can’t assert herself the way she used to. ((Incidentally, I’ve seen it suggested in several places that they’re doing a season 5 of Angel and she’ll turn out to have a deep plan. I think this goes against everything we’ve seen in her character development in this episode. I also think it doesn’t make any sense – she hasn’t just joined some secret society or killed someone, she’s given Rossum the plans of how to bring about Armageddon.)) She told herself all sorts of lies, and she doesn’t have those lies anymore. All she has left is the will to survive.

I don’t think she’ll stay like this forever though, something must happen. The Adelle we saw in this episode would let Clive Ambrose take Victor’s body to eat crab in for the rest of his life. ((Making the Adelle we see now compatible with Epitaph One is, I think, an extreme challenge for the writers. I think they’re probably up to it)).

The new Adelle has implications for the rest of the dollhouse. One of the things that we had been seeing, over the course of the show, is that those running the dollhouse were regularly deciding that it was easier to let people have some freedom than maintain total control. ((This bares more than a passing resemblance to real life)) Echo wasn’t really acting like a doll, Victor and Sierra were spooning. The process some dolls went through in Needs worked (from the point of view of the dollhouse) in making them easier to manage, as did some freedom. But Adelle doesn’t feel like she can allow them that freedom anymore. Her grasp on power is too tenuous.

Her reaction to Echo, Ballard and Boyd makes perfect sense. Her response to Echo seemed particularly cruel, and well designed. I found it distressing to watch Adelle use Victor against Echo. Echo and Victor had been allies – and the situation she was in was terrifying enough without the breach of trust there. ((Not that poor Victor could help it – and more in the “is there anything Enver can’t do” files))

We even got a tiny Victor and Sierra moment, and I’m all about tiny Victor and Sierra moment. (although obviously I prefer large Victor and Sierra moments, or Victor and Sierra episodes, or “The Victor and Sierra Show”) I enjoyed Noir Sierra (that’s what she was right? I’m not an expert on film genres). It’s a shame that we haven’t seen more of that sort of thing, in the show. One of the many aspects of the show that Fox didn’t support.

I wasn’t overcome with excitement when I learned Alpha was going to be in these . I think Alpha was one of the biggest missteps of season one. Serial killers are profoundly uninteresting, and every decision they made about Alpha’s store made him more boring. I’m not a massive Alan Tudyk fan anyway.

But if they have to bring back Alpha I can think of worse things for him to do than go round systematically killing all the men who have hired Echo. In fact, by the old measure that the character who is meanest to Ballard is my favourite character for the episode, he was my favourite character for this episode (more on that later). It was particularly enjoyable to see him blow up Matt of the inane fantasies, because I hated that guy and who doesn’t love a pun?

Of the characters we’ve seen on screen that have had sex with an active 6 are dead (Hearne, bow-hunting guy, Matt of the inane fantasies, Nolan, teaser guy in a caravan and Ballard), 1 got stabbed in the neck, 1 is in prison, and 2 (Joel Myner and Adelle) seem to be intact. ((I am assuming that baby guy didn’t have sex with Echo – because they were new parents and she wasn’t what he needed)). That’s a much better ratio of rapists to consequences than in the real world. ((A fact that almost makes me uncomfortable. One of the things that bothered me most about X-files was that it was a moralistic universe – almost all the time, particularly in the early seasons, everyone who died deserved to die. While it’s satisfying to have people killing rapists left, right and centre, that’s not how the world works. I’d much rather watch an uncaring universe than a moralistic one, even a moralistic universe which shares my moral understanding)) Although how the dollhouse remains open with that survival rate among it’s clients is becoming more and more of a mystery.

I liked the return of Joel Myner (and the visual image of him running away from Paul Ballard down the beach was hilarious – I’d run too). Obviously he’s an entitled rapist creep, but I always thought it was interesting that the dollhouse was giving him what he wanted – not what he needed. That by giving him Rebecca every year they were ensuring that he could never really live in this world. He appreciated Rebecca in Echo, which I thought was awesome.

The bait and switch was beautifully done. Even if I had to grit my teeth through Alpha’s speech about how Ballard must really love Echo because he didn’t sleep with her. He quotes Nietzsche, what on earth does he know about human relationships?

But, clearly all that is forgiven, if Ballard is truly dead. At the end of watching Meet Jane Doe I was talking about how much I hated Ballard and the many ways I wanted him to die. But I knew that none of them could possibly come through “Ballard can’t die,” I said “But he could go into a coma, wouldn’t it be awesome if he was in a coma.” Dollhouse has a weird habit of granting my wishes, ((I complained that there wasn’t enough relationships between the dolls and I got Stage Fright (which I still think was under-rated). I complained that they were using sexual violence to tell stories, rather than telling stories about sexual violence and I got Man on the Street.)) so now Ballard’s in a coma.

Let’s hope it’s the permanent sort of coma. I understand that Tahmoh Penikett probably hasn’t been written out of the series and Epitaph One gets a little pesky at this point, but they could have imprinted Ballard with someone else (or that could be Alpha with Paul’s personality viewed through Echo’s brain). The only problem there is that I don’t think Tahmoh Penikett’s two and a half emotions make him doll material as an actor.

It’d be annoying if Echo and Ballard were a tragic love story (they were together and we killed one of them – it’s a new things Joss is trying). But far less annoying than watching him. How are we supposed to view Ballard? How do the writers see Ballard? At this stage I honestly have no idea. The last two episodes were constructed like an epic love story. As if the audience had been hanging out for the kiss since the beginning of the series. But they had to know that a large chunk of their audience were chanting “Go Team Alpha!” Ballard was always creepy, they knew he was creepy – they had him having sex with a dead Caroline and raping Mellie. So why do this? Why take Echo in this inexplicable, ridiculous and unearned direction?

But all’s well that ends well I guess – go coma!

Posted in Buffy, Whedon, etc. | 5 Comments