"Lies My Blogger Told Me" -- The last cut
Comes word that HBO has finally green-lit a movie from genius writer and producer David Milch that will serve as the two-hour story conclusion to the Peabody-winning series
Deadwood, that ran from 2004 to 2006. Milch has a script completed and he has re-assembled the cast to put the finishing touches to a story that ended abruptly more than a decade ago. This is going to be way better than the
Will & Grace re-boot.
Deadwood was an obsession of mine at the time it aired, and I wrote quite a lot about it. I helped direct a Moeller Family Reunion to the Black Hills in 2007 because of this series. The original manuscript of
Lies My Blogger Told Me contained the following creative writing piece, but removing it was one of the last editing decisions I made. When you read it, you'll see why it was nixed-- I was trying to avoid the dreaded NC-17 rating...
'Cocksucker' University: The Deadwood-to-English dictionary
2/24/06
It took some digging and the further-fostering of a now-bordering-on-dangerous program obsession, but I've pinpointed from on-line sources the tentative DVD release date of HBO's "Deadwood- Season 2." Having been delayed, due to the re-scheduling of Season 3 on the pay-cable network, the discs are now expected to be released May 23rd, just in time for Memorial Day and the debut of the show's new season.
In advance of your purchase, here's a handy language translation guide so that you might better determine just what in the hell these strange-speaking David Milch creations on "Deadwood" are actually saying...
Episode 1 excerpt--
GOLD PROSPECTOR ELLSWORTH: Now, with that limey damn accent of yours, are these rumors true that you're descended from the British nobility?
SALOON OWNER AL SWEARINGEN: I'm descended from all those cocksuckers.
ELLSWORTH: Well, here's to you your majesty. I'll tell you what, I may have fucked my life up harder than hammered shit, but I stand before you today beholden to no human cocksucker, and workin' a payin', fuckin' gold claim. Not the U.S. government sayin' I'm trespassin', or the savage fuckin' red man himself, or any of these limber-dicked cocksuckers passin' themselves off as prospectors had better try to stop me.
SWEARINGEN: They'd better not try it in here.
ELLSWORTH: Goddamn it, Swearingen. I don't trust you as far as I could tho you, but I enjoy the way you lie.
SWEARINGEN: Thank you, my good man.
Translation:
ELLSWORTH: Are you descended from British royalty, Al?
SWEARINGEN: Yes.
ELLSWORTH: I come from humble stock myself, but I've worked pretty hard to get what I have.
SWEARINGEN: I know that's true.
ELLSWORTH: Here's to you, Al.
SWEARINGEN: Cheers.
---
Episode 13 excerpt--
SWEARINGEN (gesturing to the construction of telegraph poles): Messages from invisible sources. Or what some people think of as progress.
HIS 'MUSCLE', DAN DOHERTY: Well, ain't the heathens use smoke signals all the way through recorded history?
SWEARINGEN: How's that a fucking recommendation?
DOHERTY: Well, it seems to me like a letter posted to another person's just a slower version of the same general idea.
SWEARINGEN: When's the last time you got a fucking letter from a stranger?
DOHERTY: Bad news about Pa.
SWEARINGEN: Bad news. Tries against our interest is our sole communications from strangers, so by all means, let's.. let's plant poles all across the country, festoon the cocksucker with wires to hurry the sorry word, and blinker our judgments and motive, huh?
DOHERTY: You've given it more thought than me.
SWEARINGEN: Ain't the state of things cloudy enough? Don't we face enough fucking imponderables?
DOHERTY: Well, by God, Al, you give the word-- them fucking poles will be kindling.
Translation:
SWEARINGEN: I despise the fact that telecommunications technology has arrived in town. Major changes in the community are a disconcerting reminder that my lucrative gambling and prostitution operations won't last forever.
DOHERTY: I didn't mean to anger you by speaking up. Do you want me to sabotage the construction process?
---
Episode 11 excerpt--
HOTELIER E.B. FARNUM (spying through a peephole at a newcomer to town): The man's a charlatan, Richardson. A cheat. A broadtosser, and a clip. I only wonder if the daughter's been in it with him. Or she's his pigeon?
HIS ASSISTANT, RICHARDSON: May I look, Mr. Farnum?
FARNUM: Yes. When you've grown a full head of hair.
Translation:
FARNUM: I don't trust this visitor, Richardson.
RICHARDSON: May I look through the keyhole at the man?
FARNUM: No.
---
Episode 15 excerpt--
SHERIFF BULLOCK (to his dead brother's son): Good morning, William.
WILLIAM: Good morning, Mr. Bullock. You got your gun and badge back.
BULLOCK: I did. I put them in that basket for you to see.
WILLIAM: Did you fight that man again?
BULLOCK: No. We didn't have to fight.
WILLIAM (gesturing to an acquaintance on the street): That boy's going to Oregon.
Pause.
BULLOCK: There's a trout. Loiters just downstream there.
WILLIAM: Boy called him 'Jumbo.'
BULLOCK: Maybe after work, we can make him pay for his slothful ways.
Translation:
BULLOCK: Good morning.
WILLIAM: Good morning, Seth. I see that you got your gun and badge back.
BULLOCK: Yes. Notice how I followed through on an earlier promise in an effort to be a positive influence on your life.
WILLIAM: I'm lonely. There are no other boys to play with in this town.
BULLOCK: Let's go fishing when I get home from work.
---
Episode 9 excerpt--
THE WIDOW ALMA GARRETT: I'm certain Mr. Ellsworth's in very capable hands but I hope you're not disassociating yourself from my affairs.
BULLOCK: I already got my impression of this fellow, Mrs. Garrett. This meeting is how you form yours.
GARRETT: I see.
BULLOCK: Then we'll compare notes and decide how you proceed.
GARRETT: Fine.
BULLOCK: For the future point, when you tell me my thinking's so consistently wrong-headed, it's a waste of your valuable time having to deal with me.
GARRETT (smiles): In any case, I know you have many claims on your attention.
BULLOCK: A couple.
GARRETT: Thank you very much.
BULLOCK: I'd lean more on what I felt about this fellow than what I saw.
Translation:
GARRETT: I want to have sex with you, Mr. Bullock.
BULLOCK: And I want to have sex with you.
GARRETT: Very good then.
BULLOCK: I'll clear my schedule, and we'll meet soon in your room.
A traitor to the flag
I'm trying to understand the new definition of being a "traitor." Does questioning the contentions of the Central Intelligence Agency now qualify? This global intelligence agency of the United States that has meddled in dozens of foreign elections going back to its creation in the 1940's, going so far as to assassinate undesirable candidates, now seems to have the unqualified support of
the other of the country's two major political tribes. We have turned on a dime. Am I a traitor to side with the Chilean government in opposing the CIA's assassination of that country's president, Salvador Allende, in 1973? Am I a traitor to call bogus the CIA's claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction somewhere inside Iraq in 2003? But then I am a traitor if I question the report on Russian hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election from the person of Robert Mueller, George W. Bush's former FBI director, and one of his paid liars on the one-time matter of Iraq's alleged WMDs.
When reports such as Mueller's get released, they demand terrific scrutiny, not blind allegiance. An indictment is a prosecutor's document. There is no evidence in it. There are, instead, assertions. This is very different. We've seen how prosecutors can stack assertions to issue indictments, and also to
avoid indictments, such as in several high-profile police shootings of unarmed black children. Assertions are not proof.
These accusations of national disloyalty are sadly typical of the style of attacks against Donald Trump from the Democrats. We've done a complete 180 from the time that the McCarthyism existed on the right. But then it's worth remembering that, at the time of its inception, McCarthyism cut across both major political parties, leaving its victims without any mainstream political support whatsoever.
When a time of crisis, such as now, calls for more precision in debate and in the application of reason, we get more slop instead. When a critical case of presidential malfeasance needs to be made effectively to battle-weary voters, we get transparent partisanship instead. Nobody's switching sides based on these fiery internet memes. All we get are accusations that the other side's entirety amounts to a flock of sheep. And remember, the case of collusion involving Trump is another one to be made completely separate from that of the alleged hacking itself. I'm missing the part in the indictment that connects Guccifer 2.0, DCLeaks, and Russia's GRU with the Trump campaign. And if Trump simply benefited from an alleged campaign to disable the Clinton campaign, didn't Bernie Sanders also benefit? Is he
also a paid Russian agent, and a traitor? Will that accusation surface when it becomes inconvenient during a 2020 Democratic presidential primary?
Is the sloppiness the strategy? Are we just attempting to rein in Trump by indiscriminately muddying him? Because that's a questionable axiom in American politics. Inferring to or telling the American people that half of them are stupid hasn't borne out-- of late-- to be a winning strategy for the Democratic Party.
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In the meantime, the cable television arm of the Democratic National Committee, MSNBC's parent company NBCUniversal, is revealed by the Intercept-- on the same day that the indictment came down-- to have given a campaign contribution to the incumbent opponent of the Democratic Socialist upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her victorious New York congressional primary. It's clear then that NBCUniversal knows where the real political revolution is happening, and they're taking up sides against it.
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For future reference, it's worth noting that, if the indictment can be trusted, Twitter, Facebook, Google, and WordPress all
indisputably shared data with the U.S. government as part of the Mueller investigation. That information means to you exactly what it means to you.
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If you read the linked article above, you also are now aware of the fact that the former contractor for the National Security Agency Reality Winner-- sent to jail for five years-- was found guilty at the end of her 2017 trial of giving journalists the same information about Russian hacking that is contained in this indictment.
"Love or lack of it"
Facebook really used me and I don't feel good about it. I "like" Fred Rogers and
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on the social media site, and they sent me a news article last week about the new Rogers' documentary film
Won't You Be My Neighbor?. I linked my way to that and read it, then they exploited that weakness by sending me an Amazon listing for the 2015 book
Peaceful Neighbor-- Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers and I bought that book moments later with just a few easy clicks. Now I'm sure I'm a marked man for any number of online point of purchase displays.
The book is enlightening. Written by Michael G. Long, a religious studies professor at Elizabethtown College, is interested, among other venues, in the ecumenical roots of Rogers' worldview. Fred was an ordained Presbyterian minister before he was a public television star. He was also a radical Christian pacifist. His entire first week on the air nationally with
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, in 1968 shortly after the discovery of the My Lai massacre, was devoted to teaching children the tragedy of war. He believed that war violated the word of God in any instance. He believed that it was child abuse even to send a child's parent away from their home to fight in a war, that it violated the sanctity of the child's sense of safety and well-being. Nothing was more important to Fred Rogers than protecting children, and nothing was more abhorrent than violating their trust. He was not only a
pragmatic pacifist, meaning that he believed non-violence was effective, but he was also a
principled pacifist, meaning that he embraced it on principle even in instances where he did not believe it would be effective, and I'm appreciative to Michael G. Long for introducing me to that distinction.
Rogers' other countercultural beliefs included an early commitment to civil rights and tolerance of gays and lesbians. I invite you to watch the new film to witness for yourself the person of Francois Clemmons
, a gay African-American man, who was Officer Clemmons in the neighborhood, who soaked his feet in a kiddie pool on-air with Mr. Rogers during a time that blacks were being denied entry into swimming pools, and who was an openly gay man working on the set of the series in Pittsburgh. Fred championed the vegetarian movement, empathy for animals, and environmentalism. He opposed consumerism and the idea that any of us, but particularly children, existed to be consumers. He opposed the death penalty, believing that it set a horrible example for children. He called it an example of "power punishment," that is, negative reactions to something we identify as a "personal challenge" or a threat to our security. He believed in "loving punishment" instead, the absence of revenge, and redemption.
His lifelong focus was early childhood development, but he believed that those principles formed during that time were the ones that stayed with us, so what applied to children should apply to adults as well. Until I saw the movie, I was unaware that Fred Rogers retired briefly from his program during the 1970s to focus on making programs for adults, exploring music and all matter of topics of that series, but the final products didn't catch the public's fancy. Indeed, Rogers was out of step with the majority of American adults on any number of social issues at that time including several already mentioned (and even more so today). He was probably the most radical figure in the history of American television, a man that only non-commercial television could give us, and a man who became synonymous with public television itself. He is, easily, the most important man in the broadcast channel's history, almost single-handedly responsible for keeping it funded by Congress for several years. The film explains in detail.
He was infuriated by other television programming aimed at children, all of it faster-paced, louder, and dumber than his show. He believed it was wrong to ever lie to children. Making up a story was betraying their trust. After being told once that a child had died jumping from a tall window because of the supernatural powers of Superman, he devoted a full week of programs to the topic of safety and teaching the difference between the real and the imaginary. He also thought it important to talk openly about death and grief and anger, always reminding children that they were safe to be themselves, but that often adults were just as confused as they were. In the film, a black and white TV interview from the '60s shows Rogers stating that all the world can be explained by "love or lack of it."
The core belief of the show, I believe, is that all people have value. Biblically, if you prefer, all people have a light shining inside of them. The songs say it, "You're Special to Me," "There's only one of you in the whole world." This has become a surprisingly-polarizing opinion in a modern culture that seems to increasingly believe that the problems of the world have been caused by
too much self-esteem, rather than too little. That alternative movement to devalue defenseless children can be explained by admitting to ourselves that it's all a well-orchestrated ploy to excuse greed and selfishness, and to perpetuate a reckless and often violent, but profitable, economic and social system of winners and losers.
Fred Rogers the performer, writer, and philosopher is a person we need today for guidance, but he's no longer with us, dead of cancer in 2003, and it's hard to have confidence that we will see his likes again. Furthermore, it's difficult not to believe that, collectively, we have failed Mister Rogers. And done so badly. He instilled in us all that we needed when we were children, but the tide against him and us was overwhelming. Human compassion today hangs by a thread. We were called upon by him to be prophets and peacemakers, but we have been calculating and cruel instead. We forgot who we were back in his neighborhood. We forgot each other. We forgot our friends. We forgot that we have no meaning here except for what and who we are to each other and to the least of ours. My favorite video image from the series is displayed briefly in the film but is not alluded to specifically. I invite you to look for it yourself. A child piano player, likely a prodigy, is playing the piano for Mr. Rogers in his television home, and Mr. Rogers looks at this talented younger person, as he was wont to do-- with joy and wonder, but he's not looking at the extraordinary hands in motion, he's looking only at the child's face. In fact, he never breaks contact with the face and he is smiling. He's not looking at what the boy is doing, he's looking at who he is. That child is his neighbor and his friend.
