If Jesus made a sitcom it would be All In The Family.

I'd like to say a few words about Norman Lear, who's mostly famous nowadays (if he is famous nowadays) as the founder of The People For The American Way, which is a First Amendment advocacy group that's big enough to get onto Free Republic's list of scary left-lib organizations, but not to get mentioned by Glenn Beck: Every generation has its wunderkinder, its reputed super-geniuses, who can't seem to touch anything without it's turning into gold ...until suddenly it doesn't any more. The Eighties had Matt Groening; the Nineties had Klasky-Csupo; the Two-Thousandsies have Trey Parker and Matt Stone; and the Seventies had Norman Lear.

His breakout hit was All In The Family, which aired on Tuesday nights on CBS, from 1971 through 1979. He was 28 years old, and his skit-based comedy program, Turn On, had just been canceled (after just one episode) by ABC. After that debacle, ABC was not enthusiastic about taking on another Lear series, especially not one with a main character who was a "foul-mouthed bigot". CBS, on the other hand, was looking to update their image, after a decade of specializing in hayseed comedies like The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. Something edgy like All In The Family suited them right down to the ground.

They were careful though. They knew the series broke new ground, in terms of language and subject matter, and they prepared as best as they could to handle any objections. Before the first episode, they ran a disclaimer, which read: "The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show -- in a mature fashion -- just how absurd they are.". And they opened several extra telephone switchboards to handle the calls of complaint that they expected would come pouring in.

As it happened, it took a full season for All In The Family to get off the ground, but once it did, it was a phenomenon. Audiences loved the show about Archie and Edith, and their kids Mike and Gloria. Young people rooted for the kids, because they were liberal, idealistic (and in Gloria's case, cute as a button as well, and with a super-mega awesome wardrobe my friends and I would have killed for). Older people rooted for Archie and Edith, who had at least been able to hold things together, through good times and bad, and stayed together with most of their love intact. Angry conservatives rooted for Archie, who said in public what they only said in private (even if he did get slapped down by someone, by the end of every episode). And he was considered such an accurate portrait of his type of uneducated, bigoted working man, that by the Presidential election season of 1972, commentators were talking about "The Archie Bunker vote."

Hell on earth or today's America NSFW

We've all heard it, the lies and deceit spread by the media and the governmental factions. We've all heard the fear mongering floating down to us from the top of Capitol Hill. We've all seen government officials ignore our best interest to line their own pockets with gold. How can we not have? It's all that ever happens in the political world. The political system in America is broken beyond repair. Politicians no longer care about the US citizens. They don't give a damn whether we're freezing to death or starving to death while they cavort around at their fancy coke parties. Politicians don't even have to have a decent IQ to be elected. Look at Sarah Palin! She's only in it for the money and they still flaunt her about and want her to run for president. Really? The whole Republican party is built on Fox news superstars who decided they could spread their insanity better if they were sitting pretty in the Oval office. Do you think they really care about Americans? Do you think they really care about the numerous crises facing us? They're fucking insane! Fox News is a plague that has infected the American population and is now sucking them dry. Its tendrils creep into their brains and soon their brainless slaves working for the Murdoch empire. This can't go on people! If we let Conserva-facists rule our country we're screwed! That's like saying "Bend over America and let me dildo you in the ass." Conservatism? More like Limbaughism! Has anyone else noticed how high Ayn Rand has been elevated in the Tea Party movement? She's like a god to them! What ever happened to "Thou shall not worship false idols"? They call themselves Christian. Libertarian-ism is never going to work. Don't they get that? Are they really stupid enough that they can sit back and watch their country being destroyed without it bothering them in the least? My father once told me that it was easier to find Atlantis than it was to find an intelligent Tea Partier. There is no hope for America if we keep letting the Conserva-Facists gain more power. Money talks and it says "Fuck you America!" This cannot go on. The Democrats are really no better. They cavort around Washington DC giving in to every single demand the Conserva-Facists make and basically asking to be tied up and anal raped. Meanwhile, the citizens of America have no choice but to watch and wait. If they try to spread the word about the corruption occurring in the capitol, they get stalked by the CIA or thrown in a federal prison. Freedom of speech anyone? Not anymore! The lawmakers up on Capitol Hill won't listen to a petition. They actually make up petty little problems with them  to get them thrown out. Damn! It's a sad day to see when the American citizen no longer has his freedom. The Conserva-Facists are denying us public education as they slash more and more money from its budget. They steal  away our Social Security. They throw around money like it grew on trees and then blame the Democrats and the Muslims. They deny good citizens certain rights based on race or sexuality. What's next, a resurrection of the KKK? Look people, if we don't do something soon we're screwed. Go out and hold a sign. Sign a petition. Write a letter to your congressman or the President. Just do something to keep us from becoming the next Nazi Germany. The next time you hear from me, I might very well be in prison. I've said some very "damaging" things. Conserva-Facist fools. I'm so sorry for the course language, but this is a topic I feel strongly about.

HyperSmash

After the Apocalypse, there will be cake.

Christian conservatives are way, way better with metaphors than you ever thought they were. Either that or they're totally insane. I'll warn you right from the start, this post is written entirely from an outsider's perspective, about a phenomenon that has never made much sense to me, not even when I was growing up in a conservative Christian church myself. I am describing something that seems profoundly weird to me, about how Christian conservatives look at Jesus, and hope for his Second Coming.

When outsiders think of Christian conservatives, they generally picture a bunch of angry haters, scary nutballs like the mother in Carrie, who like nothing better than to envision the day when Jesus is going to return and start kicking some serious ass on all the nonbelievers and sinners in the world.

Corporations don't give a sh**, and the government slacks off before the job's done: A short history of America's public safety laws

America's history for the past 150 or years or so, can be summarized with the words "growing urbanization". More and more of the population started living closer and closer together; fewer and fewer people were living the Little House on the Prairie lifestyle of growing your own food, and building your own house, and relying only on yourself and a couple of close neighbors. In other words, people were starting to have to rely on the kindness of strangers. When I say "strangers", I mean Armour Meatpacking (made famous in the 1890's, when they sold the Army 500,000 pounds of beef, that had had already been returned as inedible, when they tried to sell them in England), and Dr. R.V. Pierce (who sold patent medicines that were mostly opiates and lead, for disorders ranging from ovarian tumors to masturbation), and by "kindness", I mean that aside from a few state laws regulating local products, and a regulation against impure tea, there were no laws in this country to restrict companies from selling whatever they wanted, and calling it whatever they wanted.

Ten Strikes You're Out

   Little Jimmy is going away for a long time. Five years to be precise. Why? He linked to a Youtube video that streamed copyrighted content. When the media companies found out about this and the fact that it had received 15 views they wanted Jimmy's head. Poor little Jimmy. He was only ten when they sent him away to prison. He's going to have a hard time there.
   Do you want this to happen to your child? Do you want this to happen to you? It might. Senator Amy Klobuchar has recently proposed a new "ten strikes" bill that adds public performance to copyright laws. Seems harmless enough right? Movies have been warning against that kind of thing for years when they say not to host public performances of the movie. Right? Right? Wrong! Public performance is defined loosely enough that Youtube could be considered public performance. If your sweet little girl decides that she wants to sing along to her favorite Glee song and post it Youtube, she might just be shoved in a jail cell for the next five years. Nice. If she's lucky she'll only be raped repeatedly and not killed. That's outrageous. The bill has not been voted on yet and you better hope that it doesn't get passed.
Demand Progress
Check out Demand Progress' extensive coverage of the new bill and make sure that you send a letter to your congress man. Otherwise you might end up in a prison for nothing more than lip-syncing to your favorite Lady Gaga song. Oh and get this, you get a longer jail cell for breaking the copyright laws then you do for molesting a child. If I had to choose a crime, I think I'd hump a kid before I posted a lip-sync. Lord knows I want to get out of prison sooner.





HyperSmash

Fat Clothes

I've talked before about how my mom made me go to Diet Watchers meetings (not Weight Watchers, Diet Watchers; I think the copyright police caught up with them shortly after my mom and I reached goal weight). I went. And I quite enjoyed the meetings, which were led by a nice Jewish grandmother with a sense of humor, who wore embroidered bell-bottoms and tight tops, to show off her slim figure.  I wanted to be just like her when I grew up.

Who I didn't want to be like, was all the other ones: Flabby middle-aged ladies, like Divine without the attitude, they wore short-sleeved muumuus, and their upper arm flab used to hang out from the sleeves and wave around whenever they moved their hands. I was scarred for life by those ladies. I didn't want to be fat like them. And I didn't want to own a muumuu.

And I wasn't fat. In fact I weighed practically the same thing, from the time I was 14 to the time I was 20: 155 pounds, of which most of it was muscle, because I used to walk everywhere, miles and miles, and for hours and hours, however far I needed to go, to get where I was going. I used to drop about 10 pounds every year or so, when my mom's guilting started to get to me, and then put it back on again as soon as I started eating normally again. I lived in a perpetual state of tight waistbands, and was constantly cycling blouses in and out of my wardrobe, depending on if I could get the buttons to close down the front or not. -- I had this one size twelve red print dress that I never wore, because I could never get down to wearing a size twelve for long enough, and it finally went out of style at the back of my wardrobe. -- Here's me when I was 18:

I remember being very impressed with the fluffy blue thing they made us wear for the picture, because I didn't have to worry about whether it would fit over my ass.  I never got so fat that I had to shop in the fat ladies' section at the department store though. And I never visited a Lane Bryant.