thedashingfellows

walked outta superman.

(Source: frankocean)

Another Day, Another Fake Scandal

By Alex Jenkins

When news of the NSA’s secret data-collection program (PRISM) broke last week, most observers easily predicted the onslaught of shameless hypocrisy that was unleashed by republicans and conservatives.  The vast majority of these commentators were either neutral or supportive of George bush’s much more Orwellian spying program that took place from 2001 to 2007.  Yet, these same voices are suddenly up in arms over a considerably more tepid version now that Obama is at the helm.  For those of you unfamiliar with either program, here’s a brief summary of the differences.  The current program is subject to judicial oversight (it was authorized by the FISA court), whereas Bush’s program was authorized by executive order.  The current program is congressionally supervised, as all congressmen were fully briefed prior to its enactment. By contrast, Bush failed to meet his duty to notify congress and instead briefed only 13 handpicked congressmen, who were then forbidden from sharing the information with their colleagues.  Lastly, unlike Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, the current program doesn’t involve eavesdropping since the content on conversations and text messages are not tracked.  The government only records the phone numbers of the sender and receiver of the call or message, along with the duration of the phone calls.

Given these facts, the hypocrisy of the former Bush apologists is on display for all to see.  But what I find much more interesting is the more subtle hypocrisy of the liberal commentators in their reactions to this latest “scandal”.  Liberals often pay lip service to the idea of social justice, but for many, their passions are only stoked when the injustices are exacted upon fellow Americans or upon mainstream American society.  This was demonstrated during the controversy over Obama’s decision to launch a targeted drone strike (based on secret evidence) to take out Anwar al-Awlaki, an Al Qaeda leader based in Yemen who was believed to be responsible for several terrorist attacks against Americans.  The U.S. had carried out numerous targeted drone strikes prior to this operation, not to mention the untold numbers of conventional (i.e. not of the drone variety) targeted assassinations of enemy commanders, whose deaths never made the news.  The left, for the most part was comfortable with the idea of killing enemy combatants without due process.  That is, until one of those combatants happened to be an American citizen.  It was as though the right to due process should only apply to the American citizenry.

A similar principle is operating in the case of the PRISM data collection program.  The reality is that, with or without the PRISM program, the information being collected can easily be obtained by the government at any time based solely on the arbitrary standard of  “probable cause”.  Under the current national security regime, having a Muslim name and a beard is often sufficient to arouse suspicion and justify the issuance of a warrant.  But while the targeted group was limited (or at least thought to be limited) to this small minority, there was no scandal.  Now, when the monitoring is being applied across the board - which is arguably a more equitable and more effective way of doing it - it is suddenly a gross miscarriage of justice.

Personally, I’m not thrilled about the idea of the US government keeping a log of my phone calls.  But on the scale of injustice, this hardly rises to the level of scandal.    That’s why I find it very instructive to notice which of the government’s transgression induce outrage, and which ones simply generate shrugs from the media and the public.  Learning that the government is archiving the phone calls of Verizon customers was apparently infuriating to the media much of the public (whether or not they themselves had plans with Verizon).  Yet learning that the government is currently incarcerating 166 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the vast majority of whom have never been charged with a crime, and many of whom the government fully acknowledges are innocent and should be released, this only warrants a shrug.  If those prisoners had names like Smith and MacDonald, instead of names like Muhammad and Ahmad, perhaps they would inspire the same outrage currently being devoted to the PRISM scandal.  Or perhaps the answer is for all the detainees to switch their plans to Verizon.

Arrested Development and the trouble with binge viewing

By Colin Ellis

Arrested Development’s new season on Netflix arrived with the highest expectations for a TV series in recent memory. Not since The Sopranos has a show on such a long hiatus come back to such popular demand.

After it’s somewhat unjustly cancellation in 2006, the show’s cult status grew thanks to DVD, Netflix and other on-demand services. People could watch the entire series in one go, binge viewing as they call it. Why wait for the DVD when you can watch it online for eight bucks a month?

And so the business heads at Netflix realized why not bring the show back from cancellation? It made sense. A built in audience craving new episodes; a cast with nothing better to do (apparently); and a business model that let viewers watch the whole season all at once rather than over 13 weeks. What could go wrong with that?

Truth is, it wasn’t a bad idea. The way people consume television has arguably changed a great deal in the last ten years thanks to the web, so Netflix was only trying to capitalize on what the public presumably wanted. But I’m not convinced it’s a model that’s necessarily going to work, or even should.

Arrested Development’s return should have been a triumph, but it’s been met with mixed reviews. I’m only three episodes in and I’m not impressed. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if episodes were being rolled out once a week. Some seasons take time to build up steam (see The Sopranos season 4). You expect, or hope, the payoff will be worth it. But if you roll out the whole season at once, you give critics, and fans, the chance to chime in early and report on what a disappointment it is.

Rolling out the whole series at once wouldn’t be so bad if the entire season was really good, but then it has to be really good. The reason Arrested Development and other shows built up a huge audience is because people heard through word-of-mouth how good it was. Since they had the first three seasons available to watch on Netflix, their expectations were fully met. And then they told two friends, and they told two friends, and they told two friends…

But unfortunately, I don’t think the binge model of television is one that should be adopted wholesale. Narrative television is one of those mediums that work well in installments. As much as I like having a whole series to sit through over a weekend, I only sit through it if I have some guarantee that it’s going to be good. After watching that first episode of House of Cards, I was pretty reluctant to invest the rest of my time in the show when I heard mixed reviews of the whole season . Had it been released like a regular TV series, I might have been willing to give it more of a chance.

I don’t know if Netflix’s binge model will revolutionize the way we watch television, but as an experiment, the results are still in the lab stage.