What Comes Next for Republicans (and please don't let it be Palin)?

I would like to think of myself as a conservative. Back in the day, I was a solid Republican, before joining the Republican Party was about a litmus test on issues like abortion. When I say I was a conservative, it doesn't mean I was a screaming Rush Limbaugh type looney, or a bible thumping Bush lover, or a Lou Dobbs death to all immigrants maniac. No, there are very few contemporary politicians who I can identify as solid conservative idols, maybe (strangely enough) it would be a guy like John McCain, if you ignore the Iraq issue. If I would identify with one modern politician, it would be a different Arizona senator, Barry Goldwater, though arguments exist as to whether he would be the conservative conscience he was if he were alive today.

The Bush years saw me slowly float away from the Republican Party, to the point where it is no longer recognizable to me. It is now a party of hate, a party full of jackals who are isolationist, war-mongering, Jesus-freak anti-intellectuals. Some will not appreciate this characterization of the party, but can you really disagree with it. (President) Barack Obama was portrayed as an elitist for his Harvard law degree (with honors) and his U of Chicago professorship, but they forgot that he IS the American dream. President Obama didn't get to where he was because of affirmative action, he did so because of a close knit family (even though he was from a single mother) and through his own hard work (Bill Clinton's another Democratic example of this). George Bush, on the other hand, was famously "born on third base, thinking he hit a triple."

The fact that the Republican "base" was so energized by Palin, who could see Russia from Alaska, had no clue what the Bush doctrine was, and who didn't know Africa was a continent, is extremely worrying. As it comes out more and more that even McCain's campaign aides were referring to the Palins as "Wasilla hillbillies", one has to wonder what led McCain to foisting this mental midget on the US populace. Palin must go away, for the good of us all, but it seems that she is a damn good politician and, depending on how her Pretty Woman shopping spree turns out, she may not be as buried as most of us hope. If Palin isn't left for dead, the foreign policy experience and leadership skills that she lacks are things she can work on in the next few years to make herself into a more serious candidate. Will the GOP accept her mediocrity again? Will they finally realize that while being an elitist is a bad thing, being part of the intellectual elite is not?

Further, will the "Party of Lincoln" go back to being that? Will it be about small government and a strong nation, instead about abortion and immigration? In Tucker Carlson's Slate commentary on what the GOP needs to do, he states:

Social conservatives, a group in which I count myself, might profitably meditate
on how to disentangle our primary political goal—the protection of the
unborn—from secondary issues like, say, abstinence-only education and the debate
over evolution and intelligent design, which dovetail too easily with
caricatures of religious fundamentalism (as Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin both
discovered in the media coverage of their campaigns).

Tucker, is your bow tie on too tight? I agree, that the GOP needs to stay away from the "secondary" issues which make it easy to show you all to be insane. That said, since when is social conservatism defined solely by abortion? This is exactly what the GOP needs to get away from. Being a Republican should be about small government that stays out of your life and fiscal responsibility, it should not be a litmus test over a single issue. Anyways, doesn't this legislating what others can and can't do fly in the face of true conservatism?

After the Kerry defeat it seemed like the Democratic Party couldn't get any lower, how on earth could they have lost to Dubya? How does the Republican Party come back from this? It seems that the great divide in the Party, between the religiously charged "base" and the corporatism of the leadership, is worse than ever before. They need to unite again, find a way, a candidate, and a leader to pull back the "Obama Republicans" that allowed President Obama to win solidly Republican states like Indiana. It's not an easy task.

Thanks For Nothing...

While watching the Paralympics, either in the venues or on tv, something very odd occurred to me. Thanks to my journalist credentials, I was sitting in the media area during the Opening Ceremonies and so could watch the tv footage as well as seeing it live right in front of me. On tv and in the stadium there was a sign language interpreter for anyone who was deaf. During the rest of the Games, there was sign language interpretation during all Paralympic broadcasts on Chinese television. Perhaps this may not seem unusual to you, but let me clue you in to 2 things:

1. There was none of this during these same Chinese stations broadcasts during the Olympics
2. Deaf athletes do not take part in the Paralympics

CCTV must have thought that deaf people wouldn't be interested in watching the Olympic Opening Ceremonies and so therefore didn't offer sign language interpretation or subtitles. While I applaud the efforts of inclusion during the Paralympics, the whole concept just seems strange. It seems to imply the deaf, and to expand it, the disabled, would only be interested in disabled sports. The whole thing just seemed kind of stupid...

"Us, Man..."

Rewatching the Wire lately and realizing that shit's classic, there will never be another, and not like Sex and the City, there will never be a "The Wire" the movie. This scene really strikes me, beautifully shot and so emotional and yet unemotional. Not going to spoil it for those who haven't seen the show, but this has to be the coldest scene in tv history. They each did things the only way they knew.

Cold man, cold, but like the show always says, "it's all in the game"...

WinTV a Major Loser

I previously talked about Guangdong TV's purchase of the English Premiership tv rights a number of times on this blog, here is just one example. Now That's Beijing has offered up proof of how huge a disaster Guangdong TV's PPV plan turned out to be. Here is a bit of what they had to say in their Sports Roundup:

However, the number of viewers who actually tune in to each game is thought to
be around 10,000 – falling well short of the EPL’s high expectations. By
comparison, the NBA, which is aired on free-view CCTV 5 and BTV 6, commands
nearly one hundred times as many viewers per game. The EPL’s eagerness to accept
the highest bid from the Chinese market did not take into account that many
Chinese would be unwilling to pay the relatively expensive viewing costs.

Exorbitant prices and failure to get off the ground in major cities for the start of the season were two of the plan's biggest problems. Now the only question is will they continue insisting on keeping things PPV for next season or will Guangdong TV's investment really go down the toilet and will they move to free tv? For Guangdong TV, this is a disaster, but I don't think it influences the EPL too much. EPL games start very late at night here and only the most dedicated fans, typically expats, bother staying up to watch all the matches. While there are huge number of "fans", typically they follow their team through the web (downloading torrents of games and reading websites) and in the news. Perhaps that would have changed if, like the NBA, games were on free tv, but its hard to say. However, 10,000 fans per game is such a minute figure, I'm guessing infomercials that run at the same hour as the EPL matches get more than 10,000 viewers. Hell, the blank screens that go up when the tv channels go off the air probably get 10,000 viewers (though all drunk, but in that sense, not much different from those soccer fans staying up to watch the matches). It will be interesting to see, especially considering the length of this relationship, what changes the EPL "proposes".

Is CCTV Really NCTV?

The numbers have been out for awhile regarding viewership of the annual Spring Festival Gala on CCTV and as usual, they are very high, nearly 70% of Chinese tv viewers tuned in this year to see an overly painted Zhang Ziyi lip synch, Zhao Benshan do his thing, Jiang Wen pander, and Li Yong's crazy outfits. Going inside the stats reveals some interesting details, the majority of viewers were in northern China. The top 5 provinces with the most viewers were (in order of ranking): Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Beijing, and Hebei. You have to go down to 15th before you find a "southern" province, in this case Anhui. The bottom 5? Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan. Disappointingly for CCTV, less than 5% of Guangdong viewers tuned in this year.

The numbers, all from AC Nielsen claim 68.16% tuned in at least at one point during the 5 hour broadcast, a percentage that would have any American tv exec drooling. When you have that many people tuning in, its easy to say that the show is overwhelmingly popular, but at the same time, the stats show a different story. So why is the show so popular in northern China and not watched in the south? Is it an issue of dialect? Is it just habit? In the north, Spring Festival is ALWAYS about preparing dumplings while watching CCTV and complaining about how horrible this year's show is while reminiscing about previous years. Do those in the south fail to tune in because they don't feel connected or is it just their New Year's habits are different?

The Greatest Show on TV, EVER!

I don't think its an exaggeration to say that HBO's "The Wire", is the greatest show on tv. It is by far the most realistic example of inner city life (and probably the most realistic show, in general) that has ever made it onto the small screen and for whatever reason (cough cough, racism, ahem) the show has never really found its proper audience. Too many black faces and no recongizable stars has meant its been reduced to the outer edges of HBO coverage. However, the show has found its niche amongst the high-minded as well as the lowerer classes that it portrays, though losing everyone in between. I've gone through seasons 1-3 a number of times and am currently doing it again, with the promise of season 4 (thank you Shanghai DVD sellers) waiting at the end.

But I digress, season 5 (the final season) is coming up and is said to be moving the focus to the media, as can be seen in the trailers that have been released. Of course, there's also the promise that McNulty's back on the bottle, which is bound to lead to some interesting escapades. To check out the trailers, go to youtube or hit up the excellent blog, Can't Stop Won't Stop (whose author is also behind hip hop's bible of the same name).