Letters to the Editor
tomreedtoon
Published Letters: 805 Editor's Choice: 81
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For "Emergency Planning Anonymous"...
[Read the article: University officials waited two hours to warn campus, students say]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...first of all, you had a good post, so why the hell are you ashamed of posting your name? Or a consistent pseudonym? Are you part of the culture of fear?
Second, perhaps emergency plans might not have caused zero deaths, but it would have saved some lives. That's not very satisfying, I know. If only 14 people had died, it would still be worse than Columbine, and there's no way to know that the emergency plans had saved 19 lives. The phrase "it could have been much worse" wouldn't satisfy the 14 dead.
But the idea that there WERE emergency plans, and someone was carrying them out, might have reduced the shitstorm that the college administration will shortly be receiving.
I came across a post...don't know if it was here or on Democratic Underground...where someone blandly said "The college is covered. They are insured and their lawyers will ascertain that they had no responsibility to protect the lives of their students, who are considered adults." In other words, the American institutions of higher education are all run by Michael Browns. Heck of a job, guys. You have no reason to complain about the Bush Administration.
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Jack Bauer wrote this article.
[Read the article: The longest day ever]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Havrilesky couldn't have written it. She hates TV. She hates everybody. If she loved anything or anybody, she'd lose the respect of the Kool-Aid Kids who adore everything she writes, no matter how lame.
So Bauer used some of the tech of CTU to infiltrate Salon's servers and submit this article. (Just like the tech on Star Trek: The Next Generaton, technology is magic: it doesn't have to be consistent or ralistic. If you can "reverse the polarity" or "channel the flux through the Jeffries tube" you can do anything.) And he did it to protest the destruction of his series through incompetent or compromised story editing.
The individual writers of episodes don't see the big picture of a series. The story editor, under command of the producer, is supposed to keep the series consistent and on the planned path for each season. The obvious fall guys are the two people listed as the show's story editors, Duppy Demetrius and Matt Michnovetz.
But maybe they've been blackmailed by one or several of the "producers" listed for the series. In a typical Hollywood glory-grabbing mode, there are a couple of dozen people listed as "producer" on the series. Even Kiefer Sutherland, the guy who plays Jack Bauer on-screen, is listed as a "co-executive producer/executive producer." Any or all of the army of producers could have blackmailed Demetrius or Michnovetz into betraying the principles of quality story editing. Maybe they kidnapped their wives and tortured them with box cutters, or threatened to release airborne AIDS in the Fox office building.
The motive's not hard to discern; keep upping the excitement of each succeeding episode, even if it ultimately kills the series. Long-term thinking is anathema to American businessmen of any business. It's the same reasoning behind Menu Foods using cheap, tainted ingredients to make cheap pet food and sell it under many aliases. Sure, the cats will eventually die, but not until the suckers give us their money!
Jack Bauer, the man...well, the character...finally got fed up seeing important characters killed for momentary shock value, and performing in more Cheney/Gonzales torture scenes, and random, inconsistent plot points. So he got out this impassioned, beautifully written article. And what better alias to adopt than someone who hates TV, her readers and probably life itself? But Bauer blew it. It was too well-written. He should have thrown in some "chickens" and curse words for this false flag operation to work.
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Well, Dak Splunder, thanks for the info.
[Read the article: The longest day ever]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I only know what I've read about Hollywood production. I work in local TV, but have been a student of it all my life. And unlike Havrilesky, I'm glad when someone tells me something I didn't know. I was basing my "story editor" concept based on what I know of British TV shows, and mistakenly assumed Hollywood worked the same way. Honestly, thanks for correcting me. Maybe the fact that I am willing to listen to intelligent people like you may make me less of an idiot in your eyes? Perhaps you haven't drunken deeply enough of Havrilesky's Kool-Aid to completely lose your humanity.
But you must admit that 24 has gotten ridiculous. And that's not acceptable in 2007. It was a lot of fun on The Wild, Wild West and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but those shows were deliberately aimed at kids. 24 is intended to be tension-filled entertainment for the people who love Tom Clancy's fascist fantasies and the right-wing techno-thrillers that clone Clancy. Once the people in charge groan when they get out of bed, cursing the fact that they have to work on the show that day, of course they take the easy way out and find some other show character to torture or kill.
You may have your finger on why the show has declined; no one who makes it is passionate about it any more. South Park continues to work because Parker and Stone still care about it and stay involved. Caring about something - love, if you will - makes the difference.
And that's why I keep posting, despite the abuse from the Kool-Aid Kids. I care about TV. Havrilesky cares about nothing. 'Nuff said.