RTVW has a really great interview with showrunner/writer/creator Matt Nix, better known as the man behind the greatest show on television, Burn Notice. There’s lots of great stuff in here, but here’s one thing that caught my eye:
And I think that one of the things we kind of use as a touchstone that owes a lot to that kind of classic television is the idea that we’re really - like, Michael is a classic hero. We all like Michael. We all like Sam. We all like Fiona. We all like Madeline.
I think if you think about a lot of contemporary television, including a lot of my favorite shows, I should say, I mean I’m not slamming this at all. It is an important part of contemporary television, feeling ambivalent about the characters that you’re watching is, you know, it’s kind of something that people do now. And I think Burn Notice is not that.
[...]
When we think about Michael, it’s whatever challenges or whatever darkness he may struggle with, ultimately he’s a hero. He’s a guy who’s going to put his ass on the line to save people, and so that kind of - you know, those are the kinds of touchstones we use, and I think that is a bit of a throwback to classic television.
Also, in the interview, Matt Nix does give us a heads up as to what’s going on in the upcoming season. In particular, I can’t wait until this episode:
The 13th episode is, well, it’s sort of the Burn Notice answer to Die Hard, I’ll say, and we really wanted to look at–we were looking at the idea that running around with a gun in a building full of hostages was perhaps, you know, it makes for a lot of action, but it’s also a great way to get a lot of people killed. And so we thought, okay, well, what would Michael do in that situation? The answer is, he would do a lot of really cool things, really subtly, and really hidden, and so I don’t want to give too many things away, but basically watching Michael sneak around in a situation like that doing those - and he builds some amazing things and comes up with some amazing ways of turning the tables on the bad guys without them even knowing it, and it’s a lot of fun.
Daniel Gross has a fascinating article about the current economy indicating that a lot of people are foreclosing houses and liquidating businesses rather than trying to make it work.
Liquidation has become the corporate analog to residential foreclosures—with banks slow to restructure mortgages to help out shaky borrowers, and borrowers quick to “mail in the keys” to the bank when the value of their house plummets. Foreclosures rose 79 percent in 2007 and spiked another 81 percent in 2008, to a record 2.3 million households. “It wouldn’t surprise me if we approach 3 million households in 2009,” said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of RealtyTrac, which compiles foreclosure data. At the same time, hedge funds, which helped foment the boom, have started mailing in their own keys. If a fund suffers losses in a year, the managers can’t start earning lucrative performance fees unless the fund returns above its high-water mark. Rather than soldier on, many operators have opted to simply fold, returning money to investors.
Companies, homeowners, and money managers willing to quit rather than fight is both a symptom of the nation’s deep economic woes and emblematic of the challenge the Obama administration faces. More than a mere “economic crisis” is facing Barack Obama. Our Yes, We Can president is going to have to fix a No, We Can’t economy. In his inaugural address, Obama noted he was taking office “amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.” That’s almost an understatement. The macroeconomic numbers have been simply horrible, with job losses mounting, sales-data plummeting, and the already-frayed safety net coming undone. Several states’ unemployment funds are in danger of being depleted. The crisis has rendered the last several years something of a lost decade. By the end of 2008, stocks had fallen back to where they were in 1997. Household net worth dropped from its peak of $62.6 trillion in the third quarter of 2007 to $56.5 trillion in the third quarter of 2008, below the level of 2005. The economy is losing jobs at an appalling rate.
Personally, I’m curious to know how much of this is really people “quitting” and how much of it has to do with the awful, awful, awful 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act, which made Chapter 11 much less viable and personal bankruptcy much harder to work out.
Yahoo! has on its featured articles a dunk by some college basketball player and the blogger there, Eamonn Brennan mentions nothing of the farce that this purported “leapfrog” dunk clearly is. Most of the commenters notice how unremarkable this is and they point out the ridiculous taunts (expulsion worthy) that the other team initiate.
First, this is obviously a charge as the defensive player was well set when the other guy ran into him. Moreover, when you watch the video, you see clearly, especially in slow motion, that the offensive player propels himself off of the defensive player’s left shoulder. Reminds me of another dunk video.
Burn Notice is back with new episodes today, baby! And if you don’t understand why I’m so excited, check out my article from a few months back as to why Burn Notice is the best show on television…
Contra the trends of the last 30 years of spy literature, Michael Westen is not an amoral thug for whom the ends justify the means. He is an actual hero, who fights for the little guy and is always trying to do the right thing. (As Michael says, “As a spy, it doesn’t matter if you’re helping rebel forces fight off a dictator, or giving combat tips to a third-grader. There’s nothing like helping the little guy kick some bully’s ass.”)
Via James Joyner, I’ve learned that Barack Obama took the Oath of Office for a second time after both he and Justice Roberts flubbed the oath during the Inauguration.
Legally, I don’t think it was necessary for Barack Obama to take the Oath a second time, but I’m glad he did it if nothing else than because it will shut up the carping of a hundred fringe conspiracy theorists.
Writing for Slate, Noreen Malone has an interesting bit of history about the Bibles used by Presidents at their inauguration. One thing that I noted in particular is that John Quincy Adams used a volume of Constitutional law rather than a Bible. That strikes me as being more appropriate. Of course, I’m amused by the fact that people take oaths on the same Bible that specifically forbids oath taking, so your mileage may vary.
I have noted before that one of the wonderful things about the ideals of our Founding Fathers is that they have given us a common mythos and ideology that people have been able to harness to expand liberty in this country by calling to mind our ideals, rather than offering a radical new vision or violence. Via Ta-Nahesi Coates is an incredible example of this by Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Kevin Drum makes an excellent point about the wave of over-the-top Obama merchandising:
But there’s another side to it: this outpouring of excitement is based as much on relief that George Bush is finally leaving office as it is on optimism about Obama taking over. Obama is obviously a charismatic figure, but if he were succeeding Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan or George Bush Sr., I don’t think he’d be getting half the adulation he is. But Bush has been a lame duck for two long years now, and public weariness over his chronic and all-too-obvious ineptitude has reached depths seldom seen in a democracy. At this point, people would be relieved and hopeful if Mike Gravel were the one taking the oath of office on Tuesday.
CNN has a excellent little account about the professionalism exhibited by the flight crew of US Airways 1549 that crash landed in the Hudson with no casualties.
An official who heard tape recordings of the radio traffic from Flight 1549 reported the pilot was extraordinarily calm during the event.
“There was no panic, no hysterics,” the official said. “It was professional, it was calm, it was methodical. It was everything you hoped it could be.”
The pilot and air traffic controller discussed options, including landing at Teterboro airport in New Jersey, the official said. Then there was a “period of time where there was no communications back, and I’m assuming he was concentrating on more important things.”
Our long national nightmare is finally over…