I have a new post up at PBS’s Blueprint America blog (I’m reporting for the project) on the best of infrastructure posts online from the past couple of weeks.

It’s always been my favorite holiday. My dear old friend Zim has the perfect explanation why.

What?

The State Department has decided that TG’s last visit to the states demonstrates that it’s not a “factual documentary”, but rather a “entertainment”? And this changes Jezza’s visa status? And generates a slew of jokes on fact versus jokes? Have they never heard of Peter Watkins?

And then Chrysler won’t lend them a car because they’re “horrid” about their cars?

This is why Top Gear will never work on commercial television in the US. PBS must step up.

I’ll shut up now.

It really is getting better. Or at least different. O’Mara’s modulating his performances. But best of all, though, there’s a slow, satisfying divergence from the BBC version that’s unfolding.

My friend Joy Gregory’s comments still obtain — the scripts are still are still punctuated with sickening obviousness. But all of the characters are diverging nicely from the BBC archetypes, as are the stories. Which means they’re no longer haunted by the ghosts of Glenister, et al.

That said, memo to ABC: Half the time the ads in your online streams don’t work. At all. As in, black screen, or just static text.

Long story short: It’s pretty bad, though not necessarily for the reasons you might think. That said, there’s potential in it. More below the fold. (Spoiler alert!)

(more…)

If one of my students ever wrote something like this, I’d be deeply, deeply humiliated. And if I ever get that lazy, please slam me in the skull with a two-by-four.

Campaign ads are not automatically newsworthy. Certainly not worthy of time on newscasts until they’ve proven themselves so. That’s called “free airtime”, y’all. That is all.

I want to write a post heded: Ironic irony in which I point out pithily that conservatives decry ‘ironic detachment’ and lament that young people no longer embrace causes greater than themselves, their friends, and their possessions. Yet when the left coalesces with (some) enthusiasm behind an emphatically non-ironic and in-pursuit-of-something-bigger-than-any-of-us candidate, suddenly those values are worthy of mockery.

What I’m missing is links to articles in which conservatives decry ‘ironic detachment’ and so on. Any love?

This post got some attention from my colleagues in public television. And honestly, I cannot figure out why.

(more…)

On last week’s Bill Moyers Journal, I had a piece on the link between unionization and middle-class wages.

Earlier last week, I posted a web-exclusive video essay on the Bush Administration’s latest stupid plan to spy on you no matter what you do.