Monday, June 11, 2012

Who knew?

… The rebirth of tragedy. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


That the president and attorney general are so familiar with the series underlines its enormous resonance.

Maybe. Or maybe it tells us they spend too much time watching television and not enough doing their jobs. I mean let's get serious. I'm supposed to be impressed by a TV series because a couple of politicians are. Next I'll have to be impressed by a politician  because some  celebrity is.

4 comments:

  1. Class Notes
    Teaching The Wire
    By Paula Marantz Cohen

    "The Wire has plot and linguistic elements as complicated as any Shakespeare play, and its connection to the society it represents is equally as productive of thought and discussion. I’m not suggesting the show is on a par with Shakespeare, but The Wire is Shakespearean in scope and ambition."

    http://theamericanscholar.org/teaching-the-wire/

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  2. I have heard plenty of good stuff about the series but will reserve my comment until I see it.

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  3. Paula's opinion seems balanced to me. But scope and ambition do not necessarily translate into achievement. And I still don't think citing the President ad AG moves the argument an iota forward.

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  4. Back during the days of Bush 41, Vice President Quayle attempted to make his mark as a culture warrior by criticizing a plot element on the show "Murphy Brown". Some days later, at a joint press conference given by Bush and the Canadian Premier Joe Mulroney, there were a number of questions about this, one addressed to Mulroney. His response: "What is a Murphy Brown?" I felt an unaccustomed admiration for the Canadian political system.

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