April 4, 2018

Into the depths of "Roseanne Gets the Chair" — Episode 3 of the "Roseanne" reboot.

It's seems like candy, a sitcom. You consume it, and it's gone. It's hard to even remember enough to talk about it. Maybe you can quote (or only paraphrase) a couple of lines — that's why we put marshmallows on yams? — and purport to know the "lesson" taught — parents need to set boundaries for their kids? — and retain a question to puzzle over — did Roseanne commit criminal child abuse on her granddaughter? 

But did you really see what happened?

I watched the show last night, and even had a conversation about it afterwards, but I didn't feel capable of writing about it without watching it again. So that's what I did, first thing this morning, when I got up at 5. I rewatched. And I did a lot of rewinding and thinking. I took notes — 5 pages of notes.

So what I'm going to do now is, essentially, "live-blog" my reading of my notes. That is, I'm going to post updates as I go. I plan to go really deep, which is why I'm using the the live-blog format, which I know seems (paradoxically) shallow. It will help me not get impatient with the length of what I want to say and to discover things that I'm sure are lying just beneath the surface, waiting to emerge. It is not candy. It is a Thanksgiving feast, with all the yams and marshmallows.


The action takes place entirely inside the Conner's house. We see Roseanne traveling a path within her own house, beginning and ending in the upstairs bathroom. It is a path from dirty to clean. We begin with Roseanne — the only person awake— experiencing the filth of her own house. Towels on the floor, dishes in the hallway, left outside the door like it's "the Mariott." In the end, she will enter the shower naked — ousting her clean-enough granddaughter. She will travel through the door marked "Not an Exit" to the bedroom of her daughter Darlene. She'll be downstairs next, in from her work as an Uber driver. Her husband will attempt to her lure upstairs, not for sex, but to try out the "Easy-Climb 5000" he's installed on their staircase. But she doesn't want the easy way up. She refuses to ascend. In that downstairs space — living room, kitchen, laundry room — the action unwinds and a climax is reached. And then it becomes possible to go upstairs. Once again, Roseanne goes through the "Not an Exit" door. And, finally, she gets her place in the shower.

In the first sequence, Roseanne is troubled by needed to clean up after everyone, but she's doing it. She takes out her irritation on Darlene, who's sleeping, who know how late? Darlene, who's moved back home for money reasons, is sleeping in what is not (I assume) her childhood bedroom but her brother's old room. The wallpaper has little tractors and trucks on it, and there's a red batter's helmit on the shelf above the bed. There's a Kiss poster on the wall. The bedsheets, though, are girly — flower-patterned, like one of Roseanne's sweaters. Roseanne wakes up Darlene to complain about the "slobs" in the house and tells Darlene, the mother, to step up to role of disciplinarian. Roseanne wants  the role of "fun grandma."

Darlene attributes the mess to her daughter Harris's new business — using Etsy to sell used clothing — even though the mess we've seen so far is dirty towels and dishes. Darlene is down and flat, explaining economic reality, as if that trumps the ordinary household matters that concern Roseanne. Darlene does PR for Harris: it's "cool" to present the clothing of the poor through Etsy. Roseanne says the word "fun" again: "Yeah, it’s all fun and games until you’re reusing your diabetes needles." She's been limping around, looking unhealthy, but she is the one who's awake early and working, while Darlene is sleeping and barely able to talk without her coffee.

In the next scene, we see Roseanne entering the house through the kitchen, greeted by her husband as his "Uber gal." Dan makes a prostitution joke: "How was your day picking up strangers for money?" That raises the idea of lawlessness, adding resonance to Roseanne's complaint that one guy wanted her to "stop at every single stop sign." Roseanne and Dan take following the government's law rather lightly (even though following the rules within the jurisdiction of the Conner house matters a lot to them). All that stopping "killed" her bad knee. She looks for her ice pack, and Dan says — continuing his sexual innuendo — "I've got something way better to show you."

Dan beckons her out of the kitchen, but they travel only to the living room, to the foot of the stairs, where what's supposed to "overjoy" her is the contraption that gives you a ride up the stairs, the "Easy-Climb 5000." Roseanne doesn't want to use it. It's for "old people" she says first, then switches to the economic argument: They can't afford it. But Dan "got it for the very reasonable price of our neighbor died and they're tearing down his house." That is, he stripped it from a vacant house. Lawlessness again. Did he just steal it? Roseanne asked. No, he also stole the copper pipes.

Harris bursts on the scene, running downstairs — she's young! — and revealing that she left the ice pack up there after using it to keep a smoothie cold. Harris, with her mother Darlene, have moved back to Roseanne's house after living in Chicago, and Harris, despite her economic need, sees herself as from a higher class. She drinks smoothies, makes money on Etsy, and feels entitled to live somewhere else. But she lives here, and these are her people. She breezes through the room and right out the front door, causing Dan to say sarcastically, "We're so lucky she lets us live here," which is one of many jokes about the ownership of the house (and who really has jurisdiction over it).

The ice pack — coldness, not love — is what Roseanne needs but it's upstairs. How can she get what she needs when she needs what she needs to get what she needs? Dan — representing warm love — gestures comically, maniacally at the mechanical device. We don't know about Dan's genitalia, but the Easy-Climb is an externalization of his physical love for her. But she doesn't want to use that, because for her, it symbolizes not his love, but her weakness. She rejects it/him, and declares she doesn't need it, she's "young and vibrant."

There follows a sequence in which my DVR malfunctions, but it seems to be a race between the Easy-Climb and Roseanne walking feebly up the stairs, with Dan narrating like the sports announcer for a horse race. I think the audience experiences this as very funny, and I wonder if there was an alternative script in which, as Roseanne plods away, we see some trace of sadness in Dan, that his effort to reach her has fallen short. But Dan's manhood is a buried subtext. The show is "Roseanne."

Next, we're in the kitchen, and Roseanne is complaining to Darlene about Harris's excessive use of the laundry machines. The laundry is just outside the kitchen door, and you can see into it through the window over the kitchen sink, which is made of those glass louvres I think they call "jalousies." These allow us to see characters approaching the kitchen door, and Becky (Roseanne's other daughter) is seen tearing toward the Roseanne-Darlene confrontation. Darlene is saying she'll talk to Harris when she gets out of the shower, and Becky ups the confrontation: You're going to wait for your kid to get out of the shower? Mom used to yell at us when we were in the shower. Becky then does an imitation of the shower scene in "Psycho" — screetching and making a stabbing motion — at Roseanne. Roseanne quips, "Well, at least Norman Bates respected his mother."

I've been reading comments as I go along, and one thing I just learned is that the book "American Psycho" ends with the words "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT." The words are on a sign over a door, and that was, as I noted above, is the sign on Becky's door. Now, there is direct discussion of the Hitchcock "Psycho," so it's virtually certain that the sign on Becky's door was an intentional invocation of the "Psycho"-influenced book/movie "American Psycho." Speaking of lawlessness, we're not talking about murder. Murder in the shower. The water is flowing — in the laundry and the shower — and the blood is flowing — figuratively, in the form of anger — and there's an insinuation that real blood may flow. I mean, it can't, really, because this is a sitcom. But there is a dark undercurrent, and it is a current of blood.

But Becky's not the real focus here. She's had her bit, and she's gone. It's Darlene who matters. She's going to move the laundry, the cleanness mess Harris made that Harris can't deal with because she's getting clean in the shower, and Dan wonders when Darlene became "such a pushover" — Darlene, whom they once actually "feared a little bit." Darlene reacts feistily and Roseanne pushes her toward the stairs and tells her to "aim it at your kid." When Darlene tells Roseanne to cut Harris some "slack," Roseanne says — and this is the ostensible lesson of the whole episode — "Kids don't need slack. They need boundaries." That very normal wisdom is then bumped up with the tinge of psychotic criminality: "The happiest kids are raised in cages. And it keeps the meat tender."

The audience laughs. Because it's a sitcom. And if that's not enough to lift you from the darkness, a commercial for Febreeze is next, with a supertidy black woman sniffing with dainty disgust and spraying the product in what looks like the cleanest house in the world. The voiceover says: "No matter how much you clean, does your house still smell stuffy?" That's the most perfectly placed ad I have every seen. There's no aerosol spray that can eliminate your urge to murder your children and eat them, except yes, there is. The urge is only in your head, and if you truly believe that Febreeze works on whatever's the stuff that's stuffing your head, it does work.

And the commercial break doubles down on blackness with a promo for the sitcom "Black-ish." We see an upper-middle class black family with the son announcing that he got into Stanford. The mother shows surprise, then censors herself to a mawkish, insincere "Of course, you did sweetie." This is an important — and, I assume, intentional — set-up for a joke that comes up in "Roseanne."

We're returned to the Conner's kitchen, where there is even more cleaning going on. Darlene is scrubbing a zucchini with a vegetable brush, an item Roseanne treats as unfamiliar and ridiculous. Dan seems unfamiliar with zucchini and asks if she could scrub it enough to turn it into a french fry. Harris — or as I call her "Debbie" (the actress is Debbie from "Shameless") — breezes in to say she's going to the mall and Darlene lamely jabbers about meeting Harris's friends and ends up giving her $5 to spend. Harris calls her mother "Darlene," which Aunt Jackie (played by the brilliantly mugging actress Laurie Metcalf) defends as "very modern" and: "It allows the parent and the child to address each other as equals." But when Harris responds, "Thanks, Jackie," Jackie insists on "Aunt Jackie," because it's "the only title that I have." Some people feel entitled (Harris) and some care staunchly about their title to their property (Roseanne), but all Jackie has is the modest honorific, "Aunt."

Harris displays her attitude of social superiority grandly in this scene. She was dragged out of Chicago to this "hick town" where people drink beer behind the Dairy Queen, but she snaps up the $5 with a little-girl "thanks." She leaves, and Dan and Roseanne tells Darlene she did everything wrong. You can't trust your kids, Roseanne says, "because they're stupid." Darlene opines that Roseanne's parenting didn't always work and "some of it was against the law." There's that lawlessness again. And Roseanne defends it: "Yeah, it's against the law because your generation made everything so PC." When you send kids to their room to think, Roseanne says, what they think is "I can't believe this loser isn't spanking me." Dan reminisces about his father hitting him with a broom. And Jackie reminisces about Dairy Queen: She dated a boy who worked at Dairy Queen and gave her free Dilly Bars... pause... "I guess they weren't totally free." There's that coldness for love again. Laurie Metcalf's line reading is so good that it's very funny and simultaneously horrifying. She gave sex for ice cream and we get the queasy feeling that the sex was rape and the Dilly Bars were an after-the-fact appeasement, along the lines of put some ice on it.

We see Dan and Roseanne piled on top of each other sleeping on the living room couch. They've slept "from 'Wheel' to Kimmel" — it's 11. Dan says, "We've missed all the shows about black and Asian families," and Roseanne says, "They're just like us." Here's where the "Black-ish" set up mattered. Roseanne isn't pushing Dan into some PC place. She's being sarcastic: The Conners are poor, and the black and Asian families on the shows are much better off economically.

Roseanne rouses herself to get up and go do laundry, after Harris monopolized the machines all day washing "hobo clothes" (for selling on Etsy, which Roseanne calls "the Betsy"). Dan talks about how Darlene doesn't want to be the "bad cop" and doesn't have the advantage of a 2-parent family where the parents can do a "good cop/bad cop" routine. It doesn't work to just have "good cop," because "the movie nobody ever, ever wants to see" is "Clint Eastwood as 'Supportive Harry.'"

But then Dan won't get up and help Roseanne with the laundry or even just keep her company. He stretches out to go back to sleep. She asks, "Where'd all the real men go?" And he answers, "They're hiding from all the real women." And there's Roseanne again, as she was in the beginning of the episode, the only one awake in the house and facing housework. She travels to the laundry room, then does a sudden reversal: "Damn!" Let it be noted that hanging on the wall behind her is a Make America Great Again hat.

Roseanne is mad and ready to ascend the stairs and, at last, to use the "Easy-Climb" — a machine of her own. "It's on!" She's yelling. All must wake up. Dan wakes, but pretends to sleep. She's going up after Harris. It's The Uprising.

After the commercial break, Roseanne is ascending in the chair. A kind of throne. Roseanne "Gets the Chair" is the name of the episode.  It makes a buzzing sound — perhaps like a vibrator (finally getting satisfaction from Dan?) — and that makes Dan jump up. He gets out his cheap old phone to get a photo — amateur-pornishly. The hubbub unleashes Harris, who comes running down the stairs as Roseanne is rising slowly, now in the wrong direction. Roseanne reverses and eventually makes it to the kitchen, where Roseanne's erstwhile weakness also reverses.

Roseanne asserts her dominance over Harris. First, by taking away the muffin she's eating and returning it to the plastic grocery-store container. Roseanne makes the rules and the muffins are for breakfast. Second, Roseanne tells her off. Harris is acting as though she owns the place and "we don't even own the place." Roseanne wants control of all of her territory: the dryer, the muffins, the house. She has title. She's entitled. She's proud and has self-respect, even though she's utterly aware that she's poor. She takes Harris down. She's not "better than everybody else," and "You're smart for a kid, but you're still dumb for a person," and "start showing some gratitude instead of acting like an entitled little bitch."

Harris's response: "I don't need to get yelled at by some stupid old hillbilly."

Here's the child abuse part. Roseanne tricks Harris by telling her to rinse off the muffin plate and, when she obliges, jumping on her back, jamming her head down in the sink, and grabbing the spray faucet and dousing her, yelling "Welcome to The Hillbilly Day Spa!" This is not interrupted by the big strong granddaughter shaking off the feeble grandmother. Either Roseanne's psychological dominance works or we're supposed to believe for just this one scene that Roseanne is physically strong, that Roseanne's anger infuses her with new powers, or that there is a childlike part of Harris who longs for limits and the steadying hand of authority. This washing clean of the sin of rebellion is interrupted by Darlene, who stops the hillbilly waterboarding and requires Harris to apologize and to get her clothes out of the laundry.

This denouement is interrupted by a second climax: Harris drops a sweater that has a security tag on it, revealing that Harris has been going to the mall to steal clothes (or receive stolen goods) for her Etsy scheme. More lawlessness.

Darlene brings up the outside-of-the-house authority: You could go to jail for going on line and selling stolen things. "Are you stupid?" Roseanne yells through the jalousies: "Yes." Harris says she just wanted to make money "because my life sucks." Roseanne yells through the jalousies across a windowsill loaded with prescription drug bottles and assorted crap (including a troll doll) — "Hey, all our lives suck. That's why we put marshmallows on yams."

Darlene gets time to be the bad cop with her daughter. Darlene spouts: Harris betrayed her. She trusted Harris, because she felt guilty about bringing her into the grandparents' domain. Harris tells her mother that she should feel guilty. She doesn't belong here. And she's trying to make money to go live in Chicago with a friend's sister. Darlene is shocked: "Part of me wants to ask how big Anna's sister's apartment is, but let's go to a healthier place here." Darlene is so distracted by her own poverty and disappointment, as if she has no foundation for asserting control over her child, who's energized to migrate for better economic conditions. The "healthier" idea she comes up with is: "Are you really that unhappy?" And Harris not only says yes, but "If you make me stay, I'm going to hate you."

Darlene rises to the challenge of parenthood: "Then that's how it's going to be." But "we're in this together" and "No matter what you think of those crazy old stupid hillbillies, they will get in a pickup truck and they will pull you out of any well that you fall into." They may dunk you in the sink, but that's a shallower water place than a well, and they'll pull you out of a well. Darlene renders judgment: 3 weeks of grounding, end the Etsy, and give me all your passwords.

Next scene, back where we began: Roseanne goes through the "This is not an exit" door. Roseanne sits on the bed next to Darlene, and just behind Roseanne's head, under sharp lighting from a lamp, is that red batter's helmet, and I feel sure it's meant to echo the Make America Great Again Hat in the laundry room. Lessons are summed up. You can't just trust people. "Kids lie, people cheat, and you don't want to be eaten by the bear," says Dan (in what I don't think is a deliberate allusion to Russian interference in the last election).  And it's hard to be a parent, but Darlene stepped up.

Darlene and Roseanne dive into using Harris's passwords to check out her social media. Dan somberly begins: "Rose, it's okay for a mom to check up on her, but we're just snooping." Then, he flaps his arms girlishly and chirps, "Move over, girls!"

We return after a commercial break to see naked-from-the-shoulders-up Harris, taking a shower. It's the shower scene, after those "Psycho" references. Harris recites all the good things she's done — washing dishes, etc. — but Roseanne punches at the shower curtain, in a rhythm that's like Becky's imitation of Norman Bates. Roseanne bursts into the shower, not to murder Harris, but to get in there naked with her. Harris runs out, and naked Roseanne, washing one armpit, says, "Oh, what? You're too good to shower with your grandma?!"

Order is restored. The grandma gets to be fun, and the mother has grounded herself in authority. After that dirty bathroom that began the show, there's been so much washing — all that laundry, the dunking in the sink, and finally the teenager and the grandmother's shower. The grandmother exults.

Nobody wants to see Clint Eastwood as "Supportive Harry," but we don't need "Dirty Roseanne." We want to see her prevail over all — all being everything inside that house. Everything is clean, and she can be Supportive Roseanne, because the mother has risked the threatened hate of her daughter to be the bad cop — to be Dirty Darlene.

"Roseanne Gets the Chair"= the old woman deserves her seat, and it's time for the next generation to do the hardest work.

226 comments:

1 – 200 of 226   Newer›   Newest»
exhelodrvr1 said...

And brown sugar?

MadisonMan said...

I have never liked marshmallows on yams. Brown sugar, or Maple syrup -- and plenty of butter. That's how to bake a yam.

richlb said...

I watched up until the first commercial break. I didn't turn it off, I just had somewhere to go. Anyway, I didn't see the first episode but I found it quite delightful. I miss those kinds of sitcoms - just everyday life in a not-so-normal quirky family. And the bit with Dan narrating Roseanne racing the electric chair up the stairs made me laugh out loud - a rarity on network TV.

Everyone looks good except the older daughter. Man, did she have some personal problems? She's very "manish" now. She reminds me of Tonya Harding. I wish they would bring back the substitute Becky - she's at least still hot.

SeanF said...

I'm trying to figure out how to be a good troll, but I can't, so I'll just be obnoxious - this is episode 3, not episode 2.

Rich, Sarah Chalke (substitute Becky) does have a recurring role on the new series - she plays the woman who hired Becky to be her surrogate.

Ann Althouse said...

"I'm trying to figure out how to be a good troll, but I can't, so I'll just be obnoxious - this is episode 3, not episode 2."

Thanks. I've corrected. It's week 2. But you are right. They showed 2 episodes last week. It felt abrupt when it ended after such a short time this week.

Ann Althouse said...

"And the bit with Dan narrating Roseanne racing the electric chair up the stairs made me laugh out loud - a rarity on network TV."

My DVR malfunctioned during this scene! It's going to affect my live blogging.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

I'm trying to figure out what you just said, Ann. Not having seen the show, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I am not sure it would make more sense if I had seen the show.

In light of my comments in last week's thread about child abuse by Roseanne on the old show, your comment about child abuse in this show (?)piqued my interest. So, waiting to hear what you have to say.

While I think that Roseanne in the old show was committing child abuse, I do not think it met the legal or criminal definition of abuse. That is, wrong but not something cops and courts should do anything about. Ann seems to imply that last night's was a higher level of abuse meeting the criminal standard.

John Henry

Carol said...

Her husband will attempt to lure upstairs by her husband,

Who whom?

Lash LaRue said...

I prefer marshmallows on sweet potatoes, but not on yams.

Chuck said...

I watched the show last night. For the first time, of the re-booted series. And largely because of what I have been reading on Althouse and hearing from others. I was not a big fan of the original show; but like most people I had seen some of it, and knew what the show's basic sensibility and style was.

It's much the same as the original show, right? There was always Roseanne as the no-nonsense, not-p.c., blunt-talking blue-collar heroine.

There wasn't any pro-Trump politics, was there? Did I miss it? I was making a late dinner as I watched, and I missed the first couple of minutes.

And still; as much as Roseanne might be a Trumpian member of the blue-collar class, I still think that when push comes to shove, the show is going to be pro-LGBT rights and normalization. Roseanne (like Althouse) basically regards Donald Trump as the same pro-SSM guy who in the 1990's favored amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sexual orientation. (That Trump who, during the campaign said that he'd "strongly consider" nominating judges to the Supreme Court who would reverse Obergefell.)

Ann Althouse said...

"Her husband will attempt to lure upstairs by her husband, "

Thanks. I very much appreciate help with proofreading. (I restructured a sentence and failed to clean up the remnants of what was there before.)

This is especially helpful as I'm attempting to power forward and less likely to tend to rereading what's already there, though I am doing that (as well as checking comments).

Chuck said...

By the way; the new Althouse/media fascination with Roseanne is due entirely to the linking of Trump with Roseanne, right?

the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...

"...She will travel through the door marked "Not an Exit" to the bedroom of her daughter Darlene..."

I thought I knew where I remembered this from, and Google confirmed: it is the last line in 'American Psycho' by Bret Easton Ellis.

So I did a bit more Googling, and found this analysis on Quora:

"So what does it mean?

I look at it in two ways: the first is that it’s an indication that Patrick Bateman has suffered a psychotic break from reality and is aware of it as much as person can be aware of such an event. The second is that Bateman, in the awareness of his psychotic break, is suffering an existential crisis in which he has come to realize the absurdity of his life and that all of the vain pursuits are essentially meaningless. To deal with this awareness Bateman chooses to refrain from despair, thus making the comment that “This is not an exit”.

Also from 'American Psycho':

"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there."

Contextualize this with these factors of 'Rosanne':

The John Goodman character died in the original show. He is back, explained only by a quip. Is it simply: he is not there?

The Darlene character (who has the "Not an Exit" sign on her door) was played by two different actresses in the original show. She originally left the show, and now came back: her previous leaving was Not An Exit.

'American Psycho' was known for its fastidious detail of the well-to-do protagonist's material world. The set of Roseanne -- as detailed by Althouse -- is full of detail about the Roseanne family's blue-collar world.

Does Darlene see herself as a blue-collar version of Patrick Bateman? She desires a better life -- a life of the riches detailed by Ellis -- and knows that she can not get there from here: there is Not An Exit from her circumstances.

Her father has died, but her mother acts like he is still with her: He Is Not There.

She was replaced by another woman whom her mother never even recognized as being a different person than her daughter. Was She Not There?

Her male siblings are gone. Her mother talks about them, but are they really still alive? Are They Not There?

Is Roseanne, in this world of people who Are Not There, even present in reality, or is she in a fugue state?

Collectively, her family has suffered a psychotic break -- brought on perhaps by the demise of the American Dream for blue-collar America.

Meanwhile the rich get richer -- the Patrick Batemans of today. They are the American Psychos, killing the working class.

To quote another Ellis work: the Roseanne family is Less Than Zero.

The Germans have a word for this.

the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...

"By the way; the new Althouse/media fascination with Roseanne is due entirely to the linking of Trump with Roseanne, right?"

And if it was, does that make it not worthy of analysis?

Is it not another context of the landscape we are living in?

Is anything that can be connected to Trump the subject of automatic-reflex disdain?

What is the point of your question?

It seems like you are meaning to say something by not just saying it.

Or was Jesus wrong -- it is not the meek who will inherit the world, but the passive-agressive?

The Germans have a word for this.

Thorley Winston said...

I just finished watching it and thought it was hilarious. There's definitely an audience who are sick and tired of spoiled smart-mouthed teenagers thinking that they run the world and want to see them put in their place. Nobody wants to see Clint Eastwood play Supportive Harry.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Chuck said...

By the way; the new Althouse/media fascination with Roseanne is due entirely to the linking of Trump with Roseanne, right?

I would guess no. The fascination with Rosanne is due to what it says about our current cultural moment. While Trump took advantage of it, and his win highlighted it, the cultural moment exists independent of Trump.

Ann Althouse said...

Thanks for the tip about "American Psycho"!

It was the other daughter, Becky, who was played by 2 different actresses. (Becky was the "Darren.")

buwaya said...

True, Trump is a consequence or a symptom of underlying conditions. People love to attach significance to persons, they love symbols, because the reality is too large and complex. Sometimes it is too scary to think about. A face makes it less frightening.

There are many other such circumstances and consequences all piled up, in common symbology, under "Trump".

Perspective is difficult.

Ken B said...

@Ignorance is bliss
To Chuck, nothing exists independently of Trump.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I wonder if there was an alternative script in which, as Roseanne plods away, we see some trace of sadness in Dan, that his effort to reach her has fallen short. But Dan's manhood is a buried subtext.

I'm not an expert on the show, but I doubt it. I suspect Dan's manhood is far more dependent on doing the right thing and far less dependent on getting someone else's approval of what he has done.

Carol said...

We'll probably need one of those stair chairs ourselves here. It's not going upstairs that's dangerous, it's going downstairs. One day I'll have a retard moment and go ass over teakettle.

So I say they should keep

Carol said...

..it..

Rick said...

Did he just steal it? Roseanne asked. No, he also stole the copper pipes.

I've never seen the show but I think this is funny. Not the act - playing word games with peoples expectations. IRL I find this sort of humor useful to identify who is paying attention.

Carol said...

Funniest stairchair bit was when Edina's mom got one on Ab Fab. Thing was so freaking slow...

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Progressive's just can't seem to understand that Trump is a symptom of what's happening in the world, not the cause. And since they are working to create utopia on earth, anyone not on board must be evil and therefore can be ignored or, if necessary, violently suppressed.

Roseanne doesn't want to use it. It's for "old people" she says first, then switches to the economic argument: They can't afford it. But Dan "got it for the very reasonable price of our neighbor died and they're tearing down his house." That is, he stripped it from a vacant house. Lawlessness again. Did he just steal it? Roseanne asked. No, he also stole the copper pipes.

I find this paragraph fascinating. I bought my mother one of those "help I've fallen and I can't get up" buttons because she had a stroke and had mobility issues. She would not use it. She would rather lay on the ground for hours waiting for someone to come to the house to help her up. I think she was afraid if she used it we would put her into a nursing home. However, we got it so that we wouldn't have to put her in a nursing home. The tearing down of the neighbor house instead of it being sold is indicative of their neighborhood and town losing population. But, as you said earlier, they had a daughter return to live with them from Chicago, so apparently there is no economically viable jobs for blue collar people there either. And then you have the theft of the copper pipes. That's pretty common, and a lot of work. Chances are if the people doing it could get a job they would. You know where else it is common for things that have copper and other metals that can be sold for money stolen, up to and including power lines, desperately poor third world countries. This is a portrayal of a family in an economically dire situation.

Another thing I noticed. Rosanne is working as a Uber drive. That is, she's in the "gig" economy. People talking about the "gig" economy being the wave of the future are not working in it. Otherwise they wouldn't be blase about it. Don't know how significant it is, but Archie Bunker moonlighted as a cab driver in 70s New York, when it would have been fairly dangerous, in order to support his family, including a free loading son-in-law who thought he was better than Archie. r

Ron Winkleheimer said...

This is a portrayal of a family in an economically dire situation.

And class, but's that ok. They can just get gigs in the new economy or retrain "for computers" or something. And if they fail to adapt, well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQXAqP6ReqY

WisRich said...

The Germans Have A Word For That. said...

The John Goodman character died in the original show. He is back, explained only by a quip. Is it simply: he is not there?

----------


I have seen all three episodes and you bring up an interesting point: Is he still dead?

My recollection, I'd have to go back and review, is that all Dans' comments are directed at Roseanne and vice versa. In other words, I don't think I've see Dan have a conversation one on one with anyone else in the family.

Maybe Dan is a figment of her imagination and that's how she deals with his loss.

I'm just spit-balling here.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

The original Rosanne show ran from 1988 - 1997. NAFTA was enacted in 1992, but deindustrialization had started a decade or two before that, NAFTA just accelerated the process. I saw large factories leave my hometown for overseas in the 70s. And when that happened a lot of skilled trade jobs died because they were dependent on the factory for a lot of their work. I keep reading that wages have been stagnant for 40 years. since 1978. Wonder why that is?

iowan2 said...

I would guess no. The fascination with Rosanne is due to what it says about our current cultural moment. While Trump took advantage of it, and his win highlighted it, the cultural moment exists independent of Trump.

This
The President did not create the current atmosphere. He identified it, spoke to the people that live in it, connected, ruminated, responded, and commiserated with the current attitude.
To see this as President Trump, is just as stupid as thinking that the problem addicts have is centered on the substance, and not the addict.

Rick said...

Maybe Dan is a figment of her imagination and that's how she deals with his loss.

Which would mean the stair glider isn't real either. Did anyone actually use it - maybe this is why not.

If so I think this sucks as a plt device. It's a juvenile twist along the lines of Dallas's "who killed JR" shower dream.

Chuck said...

Ken B said...
@Ignorance is bliss
To Chuck, nothing exists independently of Trump.


Fuck you. Click on the Althouse "Roseanne" tag. You'll see that before the Trump-era political season, her last "Roseanne" post was in 2015. And in the current political climate, Althouse has now done 10 "Roseanne"-tagged posts, and many of them explicitly political in Trump-related ways. Althouse is every bit as Trump-curious as I am in this context. More, I'd say; since "Roseanne" was never a great interest of mine at all.

Althouse kicked off her current streak of "Roseanne"-tagged posts with a commentary on Roseann not liking Hillary Clinton and with Roseanne herself saying something that Althouse apparently liked. I'll quote Althouse:

I'm blogging this because Roseanne is saying something that isn't heard too much anymore: Democrats and Republicans aren't different enough to get excited about. I remember back in 2000, when Ralph Nader was a strong third-party candidate and lefties scoffed at the option of voting for the Democrat, as if Al Gore were significantly different from George W. Bush. It was a popular joke to say "Gush and Bore."

It really is the perfect irony for me; Trump supporters who were enthusiastic about Trump because Trump represented something that was Non-party, or Cross-party, or Anti-party or something like that.

And now we'll see Trump out on the Midterm campaign trail, shouting as loudly as he can that we need more Republicans in the House and especially the Senate, and that a Democratic wave would be a disaster for the country. That what we need, to Make America Great Again, is a Republican supermajority in the U.S. Senate.

Lulz. It's actually fine with me; I just wish I could be more enthusiastic about the Party, but we're being led by Trump, so...

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Dead guys don't steal stuff from vacant houses. I think they are just going to ignore the fact that he was supposed to be dead. They "hanged a lantern on it" with a joke in the first episode.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hang%20a%20lantern

traditionalguy said...

Let me get this straight. FDR was only a reaction to a World Depression and the total World at War. He was not a great leader and a near perfect commander-in-chief of a truly mighty endeavor, or if he was so what. Like DJT, FDR was only a reaction the pecularity of the culture.

langford peel said...

This is like "Television Without Pity" by a clueless elitist.

Mary Beth said...

"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there."

That makes me think more of Obama - “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

buwaya said...

FDR could easily have been someone else.
Anyone capable of winning the Dem nomination in 1932 would have appeared impressive in some way.
He did nothing substantial about the depression but serve as a symbol of hope, for some, mainly because he could not be blamed for it.

Otherwise there was no genius in his governance. As for WWII the only FDR-specific strategy that came of it was his extremely close-to-the-chest maneuvers to force Japan into war. Everything else was a collective consensus of the US leadership.

rhhardin said...

"The happiest kids are raised in cages. And it keeps the meat tender."

"THAT'S NOT FUNNY!"

What makes it good is its targeting the easily offended, meaning women in this case.

Itself it's just free associating and expanding from slack, boundaries, cage, animal husbandry.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

"We're so lucky she lets us live here," which is one of many jokes about the ownership of the house (and who really has jurisdiction over it).

Kind of describes National Socialism, German style. Many people, including some here claim is not "really" socialism because, you know, private ownership.

So, under whatever ideology, if you do not have jurisdiction or control over something, do you "own" it in any meaningful sense of the word? Regardless of any papers with your name on it.

john Henry

Rick said...

He did nothing substantial about the depression

Completely false. He dramatically extended and deepened it, turning a recession into The Depression.

wildswan said...

The show is like I Love Lucy in that it moves pretty fast with lots of one liners. You can just laugh and move on. But since it's the only widely watched product of TV that actually includes support for Trump and the only one that presents situations from life as lived now - old age as lived now, parenting as lived now, the economic situation as lived now. - well, I guess it's going to be analyzed. It's written by very clever people, very literate in post-modern and in TV-movie cliches. The people in the show who are culturally like the people making the show - the aunt and the teenager - are not very sympathetic characters which makes the show very amusing to watch. But I maintain that if the show ends up saying that Roseanne and her husband and their joint situation (however sympathetically, however amusingly, portrayed) are a consequence of living in an economically outdated place then this is really sabotage TV. The economic situation in the Rust Belt and elsewhere is caused by policies - trade policies; opposition to cheap energy; importing cheap labor which displaces blacks; casually hating and destroying business as if that didn't destroy the tax base of the welfare state; over regulation; over taxation; general governmental over reach. The Democrats propose to keep and increase such policies. Trump is undoing them. It's hard to know how you support Trump without knowing his analysis of the situation and his reasons for policies. And plenty of people in the Rust Belt supported Trump because they knew what he was saying and why and agreed. And I think the clever people doing Roseanne could introduce some of this if they wanted to. Ultimately, it would help the blacks who have been hit hardest by the economic collapse and who are most often replaced in jobs by cheap immigrants. So even if you hate the white working class, there's that.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

So the chair came from a house that was going to be torn down, not just an abandoned house. Would the chair have been salvaged and sold or just carted to the dump? I suspect carted to the dump. Hard to remove in one piece, hard to sell, liability issues if they do. It was also probably a rather ordinary house so, after removing furniture and appliances, I suspect they just brought a big muncher and put it in dump trucks without salvaging anything.

So is it stealing?

Sure, he could have asked the wrecking crew when they showed up but:

1) Letting him remove the chair probably would have delayed the job.
2) What about their liability if he gets hurt removing it?
3) The owner is dead so they can't be contacted except via ouija board.

I suspect that the same would apply to the copper pipes, too.

Dan, as a drywall contractor and neighbor has "local knowledge" about what is considered OK or not.

Technically it is stealing but I am not sure I would be so quick to condemn it.

Ditto the copper pipes, perhaps.

John Henry

SeanF said...

The Germans Have A Word For That: She was replaced by another woman whom her mother never even recognized as being a different person than her daughter.

Ann's already pointed out that it was Becky, not Darlene, who was played by two different actresses. I'll just add that the show did, in fact, include several lines of dialog implying that the other characters were aware of the different Beckys.

Drago said...

If you think LLR and #StrongDemDefender Chuck is going to allow any discussion of any subject that would remotely hint at support for Trump to go un-attacked, well, then you haven't been paying attention.

LLR Chuck is literally days away from going the Full Kristol and publicly advocating for the election of Michelle Obama in 2020.

LOL

Gee, I don't know Chuck, why would Althouse suddenly be posting more about a re-booted and apparently massively popular Roseanne Show when Althouse hadn't posted anything about the (then) long-dead TV series in the years prior to that?

Gee, it's really inexplicable...isn't it?

But the dem narrative points are out now and LLR Chuck is just doing his part.

Nonapod said...

Let me get this straight. FDR was only a reaction to a World Depression and the total World at War. He was not a great leader and a near perfect commander-in-chief of a truly mighty endeavor, or if he was so what. Like DJT, FDR was only a reaction the pecularity of the culture.

It's the classic criticism of the Great Man theory, that we're all slaves to history or whatever. There's no way to realistically prove one way or the other of course, since we can't perceive alternate timelines for the counterfactuals (what would happen if the person never existed).

So what's the truth? Is history determined by "great men" or are we just swept up in the tide. Personally, I think it's a bit of both, that there are exceptional people whose existence is significant at key moments, but that there are also prevailing forces that can't be struggled against.

If a character like Steve Jobs was born into Spain in the 8th Century AD, his life may have been uneventful. But because he was born at the right time and he possessed the right characteristics he become an extremely important figure.

Similarly there could be a man who would have been a warlord if he was born in another time living some banal, uneventful life today.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Don't sell FDR short!! He extended the Depression, interned the Japanese, was totally fooled by Stalin, and kept his VP in the dark about pretty much everything!

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

Blogger Rick said...

Completely false. He dramatically extended and deepened it, turning a recession into The Depression.

Thank you, Rick, for pointing that out. He also devalued the dollar from $20/oz to $35.

The depression may have been worse in 1937 than in 1932. (Some disagreement about that)

He dragged us, kicking and screaming, into the European war. That was the only way he could figure to finally end the depression.

Yes, Germany declared war on us in 1941 but we had been actively in the war for a year or two prior.

70-80% of the American public, in November 1941, were against us getting involved. We wanted FDR to keep his campaign promises of 1940:


Mr. Roosevelt said at Boston on October 30: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."

The same thought was expressed in a speech at Brooklyn on November 1: "I am fighting to keep our people out of foreign wars. And I will keep on fighting."

The President told his audience at Rochester, New York, on November 2: "Your national government ... is equally a government of peace -- a government that intends to retain peace for the American people."

On the same day the voters of Buffalo were assured: "Your President says this country is not going to war."

And he declared at Cleveland on November 3: "The first purpose of our foreign policy is to keep our country out of war."


John Henry

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Let me get this straight. FDR was only a reaction to a World Depression and the total World at War. He was not a great leader and a near perfect commander-in-chief of a truly mighty endeavor

Chances are pretty good that if the Depression hadn't happened and the good times had continued then FDR wouldn't have been elected. Also, a lot of economists think his policy prescriptions lengthened the Depression.

If the PTB in DC had actually addressed the issues that Trump took up, illegal immigration and deindustrialization brought about by Globalism destroying the livelihoods of millions of people instead of denigrating them and their culture, then Donald Trump would never have been elected. He probably wouldn't have even ran. The fact that Donald Freakin Trump is POTUS is proof that the PTB in DC simply don't give a shit about the working and middle class in the US and that they thought they could safely ignore them. From my perspective it looks like the people in charge saw elections as useful fictions for pacifying the masses but as good technocratic leaders not something you would want to base any policies on.

Obama has stated, and I quote, "globalism is inevitable." I'm sure he believes that, which means he's not going to try to stop it. The future is essentially borderless and just because you happen to have been born somewhere that is prosperous, that is through no virtue or your own. In fact, your ancestors probably exploited someone to create that prosperity. So, if someone else from a less prosperous area can perform your economic function more economically it is only fair to let them do so. In fact, its racist to deny them the chance.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

Blogger exhelodrvr1 said...

kept his VP in the dark about pretty much everything!

Since his VP was a hearty socialist and Soviet fanboy, I see that as a good thing!

John Henry

tcrosse said...

Imagine what a great show Roseanne would be if the writers had put as much into it as Althouse takes out of it.

rhhardin said...

I can do a deep analysis of Get Smart (2008) but it involves identifying mistakes made by the script writers vs focus groupers encounter.

So you get a deep story undermined by what got put in.

rhhardin said...

She dated a boy who worked at Dairy Queen and gave her free Dilly Bars... pause... "I guess they weren't totally free." There's that coldness for love again. Laurie Metcalf's line reading is so good that it's very funny and simultaneously horrifying. She gave sex for ice cream and we get the queasy feeling that the sex was rape and the Dilly Bars were an after-the-fact appeasement, along the lines of put some ice on it.

Overreading from an Althouse hot-button. She liked the sex, and the bar was an expression of gratitude from the guy, is the normal interpretation. She's making a joke.

She wouldn't have paused if the deal was candy for sex. She's just considering a joke in the pause.

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
stevew said...

If yams need all that sweet stuff to be palatable why not just skip the yams altogether?

I don't have time to read the whole post, what precipitates the child abuse charge?

The show sounds awful.

-sw

Known Unknown said...

Laurie Metcalf is one of the most underrated actresses of all time.

Etienne said...

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...Since his VP was a hearty socialist and Soviet fanboy

You misread history. Truman was a socialist, but not a Stalinist.

Truman, like Roosevelt, thought it was immoral for the banks to sit on the money, so they created debt.

The banks were forced to pay for it, but the real ice cream, was they were also allowed to charge interest.

Thus today, the banks get $2 trillion off the top of every budget.

The socialists get to wade in a pool of peasants.

Known Unknown said...

Although she has won 3 Emmys for her portrayal of Jackie Harris.

langford peel said...

William is very astute in his comments. Roseanne is another in the long line of blue collar comedies such as The Honeymooners or All in the Family. This is opposed to the suburban family comedies like Father Knows Best and the new raft of ethnic shows. In fact Roseanne makes fun of those ABC racialist shows when they fall asleep. She says the slept from the Wheel until Kimmel. Dan notes that the they missed the sitcoms but that ok because he got the message. We are all the same. Typical liberal pap.

Rosesanne is much more grounded in reality. It always was until the last two seasons. The nuance of what she is doing does not go unnoticed by anyone who is paying attention.

traditionalguy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

Let me get this straight. Trump's deals would happen with or without him. They are refections of Manhattan real estate and up scale Golf Resorts whose time had come. And FDR was asleep when he started the Manhattan Project, named Ernest King the Navy CNO with Chester Nimitz as his Commander of the Pacific Fleet, and named George Marshal as his Chief of Staff, and kept Churchill from making saving the British Empire our war aim, and effectively made Harry Truman his hand picked successor. Accidents do happen...but wait, you say they were just reflections of a peculiar culture

The great Man theory of History is still the one that the Deplorables of the USA trusts.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

I think the last poor black family sitcom was Good Times. Who lived in a project in Chigaco. And were a two parent family until they killed off the husband in an accident while he was working on the Alaskan Pipleline.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

Everyone is following ABC's instructions, aren't you?

You are to ignore the pictures of Roseanne made up like Hitler and putting gingerbread Jews into her over.

IGNORE IT!!!!!

DO NOT HARSH THE NARRATIVE!!!!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZe4wROXUAEHypS.jpg

That is all.

John Henry

Robert Cook said...

"The President did not create the current atmosphere. He identified it, spoke to the people that live in it, connected, ruminated, responded, and commiserated with the current attitude."

Exactly. Just like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, he bullshitted his way into office by conning enough voters, (helped by unappealing opponents who could not successfully bullshit enough counter-voters).

tcrosse said...

I think the last poor black family sitcom was Good Times.

Until Jimmie Walker took it over with all that Dy-no-mite shit

Known Unknown said...

"You are to ignore the pictures of Roseanne made up like Hitler and putting gingerbread Jews into her over. "

Satire is hard these days.

If she had taken that photo in Scotland, she'd be in jail.

Yancey Ward said...

Ms. Althouse wrote:

"Here's where the "Black-ish" set up mattered. Roseanne isn't pushing Dan into some PC place. She's being sarcastic: The Conners are poor, and the black and Asian families on the shows are much better off economically."

That is an interesting observation about sitcom culture with regards to African-Americans. While I have never been a big watcher of sitcoms in my life so maybe my view is incorrect, those centered on blacks are skewed in a way I would not expect just based on demographics- I can think of Cosby, The Fresh Prince, The Jeffersons, and Blackish. I do remember Good Times, but there the poverty wasn't really played upon so much in the show (they lived in one of Chicago's public housing monstrosities of the day)- still it is the outlier. Is it that it is un-PC to make fun out of such poverty if the main characters are black? Of course, there are tons of dramas that have no problem with the issue.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...


Blogger Etienne said...


You misread history. Truman was a socialist, but not a Stalinist.

huh?

Why do you assume I was talking about Truman?

Truman was VP for less than 3 months.

I may or may not "misread" history but I do read a lot of it. Apparently more than you.

FWIW: I don't think Truman was much of a socialist. Not much of a president, either.

John Henry

Yancey Ward said...

And as I was writing my comment, I see Ron Winkleheimer caught the same oddity, so maybe my view isn't too narrow.

Ken B said...

Etienne, wrong VP.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Let me get this straight. Trump's deals would happen with or without him.

That's not what anyone is saying at all. Suppose the PTB had responded to the problems caused by globalization by stopping illegal immigration and taking steps so that lower and middle classes could continue to find meaningful work and didn't take every opportunity to denigrate traditional american culture. In that case, nobody is going to be running on MAGA because there would be no need.

But since the situation exists, Trump is pretty uniquely qualified to take advantage of it. He's exceedingly rich, he's famous. His father had money, but he made it in the building trade, and Trump did so as well. So Trump is able to relate to the working class because his family came out of the working class and not all that long ago. He's smart. He understands marketing, which is probably one of his biggest strengths. And he gets to run against Hillary Freakin Clinton. I still think that there was a better than even chance that Bernie Sanders could have beat Trump. They were running on a lot of the same issues. Most notably, jobs.

Robert Cook said...

"And he gets to run against Hillary Freakin Clinton. I still think that there was a better than even chance that Bernie Sanders could have beat Trump. They were running on a lot of the same issues. Most notably, jobs."

Yep. Bernie would have beat Trump. The stupid Dems blew it by supporting a terrible candidate.

MadisonMan said...

You'll see that before the Trump-era political season, her last "Roseanne" post was in 2015.

(laugh) This is your argument?

Althouse has a long history of posting about TV shows. American Idol, for example. Or Project Runway. Perhaps you will suggest that Althouse isn't blogging a lot about Idol now because of Trump. It makes about as much sense as claiming the Roseanne blogging is a function of Trump.

Larry J said...

Etienne said...

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...Since his VP was a hearty socialist and Soviet fanboy

You misread history. Truman was a socialist, but not a Stalinist.


Truman didn't become VP until Jan 20, 1945. Before that, Henry Wallace was FDR's VP. He's the one many believe was a Stalinist. He went on to found the New Republic magazine.

MadisonMan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MadisonMan said...

btw -- I'm enjoying this live blog immensely. I didn't watch Roseanne last night -- I've not watched any of the new shows. But this cliffhanger of Harris calling Roseanne a hillbilly!

I hope Darlene has the next word.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Yep. Bernie would have beat Trump. The stupid Dems blew it by supporting a terrible candidate.

This is one of the few things Robert Cook and I agree on. I don't know if it is certain, but I can certainly see Bernie winning rust belt states that Clinton mistakenly thought she had a lock on. For one thing, he might have took the trouble to campaign in them. And its simply indisputable that Hillary was a terrible candidate. I mean, look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7zmjyhSpbs

Anonymous said...

Robert Cook said...
"The President did not create the current atmosphere. He identified it, spoke to the people that live in it, connected, ruminated, responded, and commiserated with the current attitude."

Exactly. Just like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, he bullshitted his way into office by conning enough voters, (helped by unappealing opponents who could not successfully bullshit enough counter-voters).


No, Obama took a bad situation, and like FDR, made it continue being a bad situation. Which is why "the new normal" was poor economic growth and a much lower labor participation rate.

Or, at least, that was normal until Trump became President. Surprise, surprise, but reversing the Left's attacks on the economy through the regulatory state, and the economy starts growing at a better rate, and more people start looking for work!

Inga...Allie Oop said...

I didn’t like Roseann the first time around and I’m pretty sure I won’t like it any better this time around. If I want to watch a comedy based on pro/negative Trump silliness, I just come here.

the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...

"It was the other daughter, Becky, who was played by 2 different actresses. (Becky was the "Darren.")"

Yep. Groggy earlier.

Swap my original line with:

"Her sister was replaced by another woman whom her mother never even recognized as being a different person than her daughter. Was She Not There?"

But I am thinking further about this house of ghosts, and that makes me think they are actually in another place with No Exit: Jean-Paul Sartre's play "No Exit."

From Wiki:

"The play begins with three characters who find themselves waiting in a mysterious room. It is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity."

Deceased characters? Ghosts? Dopplegangers? Trapped in a room -- a room like the Roseanne living room?

Also from Wiki:

"The original title is the French equivalent of the legal term in camera, referring to a private discussion behind closed doors."

We are watching the family through the camera that feeds our television, and we are watching them without their knowing -- we, indeed, are "private discussion(s) behind closed doors."

And what is this play most known for?

The quote "Hell is other people."

These people who aren't even there, but there is No Exit from their continued presence.

(Althouse front-paged my American Psycho reference, but I didn't get tagged. So I'm doubling down with Satre).

The Germans have a word for this.

buwaya said...

"He dragged us, kicking and screaming, into the European war. That was the only way he could figure to finally end the depression. "

The depression was over already by 1941, GDP had recovered past 1929, because of the European war. The Euros (and everyone else) were buying American stuff like crazy.

Francisco D said...

"You're smart for a kid, but you're still dumb for a person."

That is a wonderful line that all parents need to understand.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

She gave sex for ice cream and we get the queasy feeling that the sex was rape and the Dilly Bars were an after-the-fact appeasement, along the lines of put some ice on it.

Where the hell do we get that feeling? The joke is about prostitution. There is not the slightest hint that any force or threat of force was used, or that she was in any way incapacitated.

And of course, the prostitution comment was a joke. Do you really believe that she was having sex because it would get her Dilly Bars? Dating == Prostitution is a common joke, because, on average, guys like sex more than women. People who are dating try to show it by doing nice things for each other. In many relationships, the nicest thing that a girl can do for a guy is to engage in sex ( or in a particular activity that the guy enjoys more than the girl ). The guy can't do something nice for the girl by engaging in sex, because the girl is less interested in that then the guy. So the guy is nice to the girl in other ways, frequently in terms of gifts, or taking her out to dinner.

langford peel said...

True comedy uses a lot of call backs. You set up a premise and the you call it back with situations or comments that lend a comic riff to it.

That is the real fun of the show. If you are familiar with the characters you enjoy the comedy. Darlene was the original smart mouth rebellious teenager. Now she is the Mom and is clueless about how to handle her own daughter. She turns to her Mom who she used to mock unmercifully. She gets depressed. Can't get a real job. Had to move in with parents. Real life. Real problems. Still love and laughter even though they are hillbillies despised by liberals like Inga and LLR pansies like Chuck.

"Yes they are Hillbillies but if you get in trouble they will get in the pick up truck and get you out of that well."

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

Blogger buwaya said...

The depression was over already by 1941, GDP had recovered past 1929, because of the European war. The Euros (and everyone else) were buying American stuff like crazy.

He started dragging us into it in 1937-38, Buwaya. Little by little, step by step. It started with giving Britain credit, then Lend-Lease, then 50 destroyers, then invasion of Iceland, Anti-submarine air patrols, then "Sink on sight" orders to the US Navy (sink German subs)

Pretty soon the Germans had no choice but to declare war on us:



MR. CHARGE D'AFFAIRES:

The Government of the United States having violated in the most flagrant manner and in ever increasing measure all rules of neutrality in favor of the adversaries of Germany and having continually been guilty of the most severe provocations toward Germany ever since the outbreak of the European war, provoked by the British declaration of war against Germany on September 3, 1939, has finally resorted to open military acts of aggression.

On September 11, 1941, the President of the United States publicly declared that he had ordered the American Navy and Air Force to shoot on sight at any German war vessel. In his speech of October 27, 1941, he once more expressly affirmed that this order was in force. Acting under this order, vessels of the American Navy, since early September 1941, have systematically attacked German naval forces. Thus, American destroyers, as for instance the Greer, the Kearney and the Reuben James, have opened fire on German submarines according to plan. The Secretary of the American Navy, Mr. Knox, himself confirmed that-American destroyers attacked German submarines.

Furthermore, the naval forces of the United States, under order of their Government and contrary to international law have treated and seized German merchant vessels on the high seas as enemy ships.

The German Government therefore establishes the following facts:

Although Germany on her part has strictly adhered to the rules of international law in her relations with the United States during every period of the present war, the Government of the United States from initial violations of neutrality has finally proceeded to open acts of war against Germany. The Government of the United States has thereby virtually created a state of war.

The German Government, consequently, discontinues diplomatic relations with the United States of America and declares that under these circumstances brought about by President Roosevelt Germany too, as from today, considers herself as being in a state of war with the United States of America.

Accept, Mr. Charge d'Affaires, the expression of my high consideration.

December 11, 1941.
RIBBENTROP.[18]


Emph added-JRH

John Henry

Bad Lieutenant said...


traditionalguy said...
Let me get this straight. FDR was only a reaction to a World Depression and the total World at War. He was not a great leader and a near perfect commander-in-chief of a truly mighty endeavor, or if he was so what. Like DJT, FDR was only a reaction the pecularity of the culture.

4/4/18, 10:41 AM


You again. I swear you must be a fucking retard. Shut up with the FDR licking. Only a Southern ginger lawyer would worship at the altar of government-by-rabbit's-foot:

Amity Shlaes explains why FDR was bad for the U.S. economy — including this incredible story:

At some points Roosevelt seemed to understand the need to counter deflation. But his method for doing so generated a whole new set of uncertainties. Roosevelt personally experimented with the currency — one day, in bed, he raised the gold price by 21 cents. When Henry Morgenthau, who would shortly become Treasury Secretary, asked him why, Roosevelt said that “its a lucky number, because its three times seven.” Morgenthau wrote later: “If anybody ever knew how we set the gold price through a combination of lucky numbers, etc., I think they would be frightened.”


Don't get me wrong, I love redheads, they're the best pussy, but they shouldn't fucking talk.

OBTW his commie VP wasn't Truman, it was Wallace.

PS FDR had nothing to do with winning the war, but everything to do with losing the peace.


Also:


Blogger Known Unknown said...
"You are to ignore the pictures of Roseanne made up like Hitler and putting gingerbread Jews into her over. "

Satire is hard these days.

If she had taken that photo in Scotland, she'd be in jail.

Did you know that Roseanne Barr is Jewish?

Luke Lea said...

Wildswan makes a great comment at 11:00 AM

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Sanford and Son had poor blacks as well. The Jeffersons inaugurated the successful upper-middle class blacks oeuvre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYcqToQzzGY

An interesting point concerning the show is that the family patriarch, George Jefferson, was openly racist. For instance, he was against "race mixing." Since the show was produced by Norman Lear, I suppose the message was the same as with Archie Bunker, these ideas are ridiculous but the people espousing them are good hearted, but were maleducated. The arc of history bends toward universal love and harmony, so we just have to put up with these people as best we can until they die off.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said.... She gave sex for ice cream and we get the queasy feeling that the sex was rape and the Dilly Bars were an after-the-fact appeasement, along the lines of put some ice on it.

We do? How...how do we get that feeling, Professor? I got the feeling (from your description) that she's comically realizing that she in some way traded sexual access (to herself) for ice cream treats. What part of that makes "the sex rape?"

How can Jackie's post hoc realization possibly negate her consent? Her consent at the time, I mean. She wasn't tricked into sex, so at worst she could say that looking back her trade (of sex for Dilly bars) was a bad deal she wouldn't make today--but note that she doesn't even say that! From your description she's only just now (comically) realizing that she was in a sense paying for her free ice cream treat with the consent she gave (for sexual activity).

How did you get from that to "she's saying that he gave her free Dilly bars as an apology for raping her and/or to keep her quiet about the rape(s) she endured?" I didn't watch the show--is that somehow communicated in her delivery?

johns said...

John Henry said:
"Technically it is stealing but I am not sure I would be so quick to condemn it"

The show is supposed to illuminate and characterize blue-collar families and their situation today. Should they be shown as 100% law-abiding? A good question. But either way, why would we "condemn" anything? It's fiction.

Maybe the concern with the stealing as well as the allegations of child abuse is a fear that this is how the left is going to attack the show and damage it. I don't think that would work. The attacks would backfire. Would make the show more popular.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Cream comes from/is a part of milk.
Milk is what mammalian mothers use to feed their young.
Mammals reproduce as a result of sex.
Milk is meant for the infants of the mother/milk-giver.
Humans take milk from other animals without those mother-animals' consent, and use it to make ice cream treats.
All ice cream is rape.


Or how about:

Milk can only be created by mothers.
Milk is a strong/sacred symbol of a mother's love.
Taking that sacred object and using it to make a sugary, unnutritious, harmful (diabetes discussion) food is a severe violation of the milk's purpose and by extension of a mother's love.
The warmth of real milk (from a mother) starkly contrasts with the coldness/lack of love found in a Dilly Bar ice cream "treat."
Cold/frozen milk is a metaphor for a violation of women--of rape.

traditionalguy said...

FDR Derangement Syndrome is strong today. Bad Lieutenant is a Bircher and Buwaya has the condemnation by faint praise down perfectly.

Perhaps a long view will help. In 1938 , apart from the USA, the Japanese Empire and the British Empire and the German Empire and the French Empire and the Russian Empire ruled the earth and had plans to rule the resources of USA.

Seven years later FDR's USA ruled the earth and the resoures of the USA were no longer on the table. FDR had proven himself to be a winning leader. Thus was FDR Derangement Syndrome born.

buwaya said...

That was December '41

The US was NOT actively loaning anything to the Euros until later in 1941 with Lend-Lease.

In fact in 1936-37 the Neutrality Acts limited arms sales to Europe right when Britain and France started rearming. It hurt European rearmament considerably.

It wasn't till the end of 1939 that arms sales were permitted on a 'cash&carry' basis - that is, without credit sales, or even shipping on US vessels. The US was NOT offering credit.

Besides armaments however the US saw an export boom on normal commercial terms for all sorts of commodities and other industrial goods, such as railway equipment and machine tools.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Its a lot easier to parent when you have a steady income and aren't stressing about paying the bills and putting food on the table. Its especially hard if you don't see any prospect that things are going to get better. In such a situation you might do anything, you might even vote for a reality TV star for president.

Also, working class people are just more physical than the upper-middle class and the rich.

Known Unknown said...

"Did you know that Roseanne Barr is Jewish?"

Yes! Next question.

PJ said...

The stupid Dems blew it by supporting a terrible candidate.

If the Dems who made the difference had merely supported the terrible candidate, the terrible candidate may never have been nominated. Those stupid Dems fixed the nomination for the terrible candidate, and they did their level best to fix the Republican nomination for the man who beat the terrible candidate. I do not hold Dems in general responsible for their 2016 nominee, and in my neck of the woods the Bernie supporters remain in a state of righteous rage.

Ann Althouse said...

" In fact Roseanne makes fun of those ABC racialist shows when they fall asleep. She says the slept from the Wheel until Kimmel. Dan notes that the they missed the sitcoms but that ok because he got the message. We are all the same. Typical liberal pap."

I have seen that interpretation elsewhere on line, but I'm sure it's wrong. Did you hear how the line was delivered? It's sarcastic. She's saying the black/Asian families on the shows are idealized, like white families were on shows other than Roseanne, and they are not like the Conners.

MartyB said...

"My recollection, I'd have to go back and review, is that all Dans' comments are directed at Roseanne and vice versa. In other words, I don't think I've see Dan have a conversation one on one with anyone else in the family.

Maybe Dan is a figment of her imagination and that's how she deals with his loss."

Dan had interactions with at least Jackie, Becky and Darlene's boy (forget his name) in the first 2 episodes, so this seems unlikely.

buwaya said...

" the Japanese Empire and the British Empire and the German Empire and the French Empire and the Russian Empire ruled the earth"

The German empire did not exist in 1938.

The British and French Empires were losing propositions, far too expensive to maintain and, except for the sake of wartime manpower, not worth keeping. They were all white elephants. The British had already offered home rule to India.

The Japanese were in a tremendously costly and enormously stupid war with China, and what empire they had was second rate compared to even the Dutch. What they did in December 1941 was a Hail-Mary play in desperation.

The Russians - well, there you have a point. They were in a peculiarly good position, communism notwithstanding.

As for the US winning - It could not avoid winning, given that all the others lost by beating each other into a pulp, if they weren't in a disastrous state anyway. The US was the last one standing.

Anonymous said...

jamming her head down in the sink, and grabbing the spray faucet and dousing her, yelling "Welcome to The Hillbilly Day Spa!"

1: That's not child abuse
2; That IS funny

Chuck said...

Let me get this straight. Trump's deals would happen with or without him...

I'm really curious; what are the signature "Trump deals" coming out of this presidency? What are some good examples of Trump dealmaking so far? And where are we likely to see Trump's dealmaking skills displayed in the future?

There's been no healthcare deal.

There's been no immigration deal.

The tax passage was a wonderful thing in the view of many, but the one thing that it wasn't much of, was any sort of "deal." It is noteworthy for being a kind of an achievement that required no dealmaking, other than to get the agreement of all Republicans, for a pure party-line vote. And so it was done.

There's been no infrastructure deal, and no deal to result in Trump's pet project (The Wall).

There WAS a budget deal. By all accounts, including Trump's own account, it was a deal made in Congress, and a deal that he substantially hated, and will not sign if another one comes to him that way in the fall.

I can't think of one single major "deal" by the President whose ghostwriter authored "The Art of the Deal."

Ron Winkleheimer said...

She's saying the black/Asian families on the shows are idealized, like white families were on shows other than Roseanne, and they are not like the Conners.

Yep, it was a real big deal when the original show started that the family was working class and had actual problems. I can think of two other shows that were about working class people who had actual issues relating to money, The Honeymooners and Archie Bunker.

Bad Lieutenant said...


traditionalguy said...
FDR Derangement Syndrome is strong today. Bad Lieutenant is a Bircher and Buwaya has the condemnation by faint praise down perfectly.


I hardly know what a Bircher is besides an epithet of the Left, but if it's an anti-communist, I'm fine with that. Sadly FDR admired all the various forms of European statism, as apparently you do, and let "Uncle Joe" wipe the floor with him at every negotiation, as apparently you like. You're a little off with your pre/postwar empires: after, there was the US AND the USSR. From a world divided among half a dozen powers, to one split pretty evenly between two.

Known Unknown,
Yes! Next question.

OK, so while the Hitler gestures were no doubt nauseating, I don't see that as anti-Semitism but more as garden-variety leftist crazee. You must remember this woman comes from a difficult childhood, including a traumatic brain injury. She has periodic eruptions of teh crazee, as with the anthem episode. So, inappropriate, but perhaps not rot-in-hell evil.

Or maybe I miss your point. Sorry, you desired a question, so: maybe I miss your point?

Balfegor said...

Re: traditionalguy:

Perhaps a long view will help. In 1938 , apart from the USA, the Japanese Empire and the British Empire and the German Empire and the French Empire and the Russian Empire ruled the earth and had plans to rule the resources of USA.

I know The Man in the High Castle and Wolfenstein make it look that way, but I seriously doubt anyone had concrete designs on the resources of the USA proper. Our colonial possessions across the waters, like the Philippines? Sure (although the Japanese don't seem to have cared about the Philippines as such -- they just needed to protect their flank for the invasion of the Dutch East Indies, which is what they actually wanted). But not the US proper.

Anyhow, the USA came out ahead at the end of the war, largely by virtue of being the only great power whose industrial base hadn't been bombed to smithereens.

Geopolitically, the big winner of World War II was Stalin. The USSR was one of the original aggressor powers, with the invasion of Poland in 1939, but he ended the war having massively expanded the territory under his control. He got Europe up to the middle of Germany (including the other half of Poland). And in the Far East, he got the northern half of the Korean peninsula, finally achieving the Russian Empire's war aims from the Russo-Japanese War. So they helped start the war, and ended it way ahead.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Also, Donald Trump would have wiped the floor with Sanders. Aside from a catastrophic minority turnout/margin, Sanders ultimately was a weak man.

langford peel said...

That is exactly right. Those shows are white face comedy. They shoehorn ethnic families into a suburban lifestyle to normalize their experience and show that all is right with America. The melting pot is working. It is all hunky dory except for small misunderstandings.

The sarcasm is directed at the hack sitcom writing. Not the slice of real life that Roseanne is trying to mine for comic effect.

Rosanne has always tried to show how it is for white working class families. Those other shows are fanasty wish fulfillment.

For example you have the show "Off the Boat" about a family that owns a Chinese restaurant. If you had ever met an immigrant family that ran a restaurant you would know the show is complete and utter bullshit.


langford peel said...

There was another show about the white ethnic working class. Very popular. Set in Wisconsin no less!

Can you name it?

Rick said...

Consider the left's worst characterizations of Trump.

1 Antagonistic in unwarranted fashion, demonizes opponents.
2 Not knowledgeable on policy so changes in advisors (which happened often) has dramatic impact on policy
3 Changes plans and contradicts himself seemingly from one day to the next.
4 Takes both sides of arguments.
5 Claims to prioritize people his policies hurt, reliant on their ignorance for his popularity

Regardless of how true these accusations are of Trump there is one President for whom they are dead on balls accurate (industry term): FDR. For this they love him.

Howard said...

Balfegor: Russia has never recovered from WWII and it's still a festering shithole. They lost more than 10% of their population and many of their major cities were in rubble without a Marshall Plan bailout to rebuild. The big winner in WWII was USA with an unscathed industrial base of equipment and skilled labor was able to dominate the world economy for the next 20-years which transformed the American Dream to reality.

buwaya said...

Anyway, the ground was fertile for a Trump. What Trump does with it is up to him.
Its not always that a potential "great man" has a setup like this.
But it also requires a "great man".

There are several schools of history -

- The "great man" - the genius who moves things his own way through his will and ability. Napoleon was one. He decided, things happened. Things did not turn out in quite the way he wished in the end, but the process changed a great deal that would not have otherwise.

- The "greater forces" - your Toynbee and "Annales" of Braudel, or thinking more broadly, Marx, Weber, Pareto, Spengler, etc. Thats what makes the fertile ground for events.

- The "horseshoe nail" principle. The random events or decisions that turn things, sometimes enormous things, from one channel to another. The confusion of messages to D'Erlon at Quatre Bras/Ligny, McKinley's overnight dream that led him to decide to keep the Philippines, setting up two generations of great power rivalries with Japan.

There are elements of all of these.

Nonapod said...

There was another show about the white ethnic working class. Very popular. Set in Wisconsin no less!

That 70s Show.

Howard said...

IOW, Blue Collar America was the big winner of WWII and the Rosanne show depicts the subsequent destruction of American Blue Collar prosperity from Globalism.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Also, Donald Trump would have wiped the floor with Sanders. Aside from a catastrophic minority turnout/margin, Sanders ultimately was a weak man.

I'm no fan of Bernie, but he had less baggage than Trump. Hillary, despite the press' best efforts to hide it, had way more baggage than Trump. You're a working class guy or girl, your community is decaying, the kids are moving away, you have no prospect to improve your lot in life whatsoever and you have two guys talking about making changes to bring jobs back to the US. You can't really discern any substantive differences in what they are proposing. It all sounds pretty similar. So, do you choose the reality star billionaire with the weird hair and hot, hot, hot third wife who is running as a Republican or the Democrat who they say looks like a guy on a show on HBO you've never seen? Personally, I think the hot, hot, hot wife throws it to Trump.

langford peel said...

That's one but I am thinking about one of the only shows that dealt with factory workers.

In the first season of Roseanne she and Jackie worked in a factory. Where George Clooney was their supervisor.

buwaya said...

"I can't think of one single major "deal" by the President "

A huge one - which has gone under the radar.
The royal coup in Saudi. That's enormous. Its overturned geopolitics. And it was done with the acquiescence of the US government, against previous US foreign policy.
Its Iranian-revolution significant.
We will be dealing with fallout for quite a long time, and blowback still TBD.

Larry J said...

The original Roseanne series was the antithesis of "The Cosby Show". As such, it was often wildly funny because a lot of people could relate to a financially struggling, dysfunctional family from the Midwest as compared to an upper middle class (doctor and lawyer) from NYC.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

IOW, Blue Collar America was the big winner of WWII and the Rosanne show depicts the subsequent destruction of American Blue Collar prosperity from Globalism

Yep, I would say that accurately describes the situation.

Nonapod said...

Russia has never recovered from WWII and it's still a festering shithole.

I'd argue that the reasons why Russia is the way currently is have much less to do with the specific aftermath of WWII and much more to do with the idiocy of command and control economy of the Soviet era followed by the evil of the current oligarchic kleptocracy.

langford peel said...

The working class has always been the object of derision by establishment Republicans. They want to replace them with Mexican slaves they exploit.

The elites of both parties march in lockstep. Sleepy Chuck Todd and Stupid Chuck from Althouse both disdain working class Americans. Especially white working class people who they think of as trash.

As a great patriot once said there is not a dimes worth of difference between them.

Dave said...

A batter's "helmet" is part of a baseball player's costume.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

I had forgotten about My Name is Earl. That isn't the answer to the question though. Is it Laverne and Shirley?

langford peel said...

Yes it was Laverne and Shirley. Slapstick but still dealt with working class issues.

By the way. Sqiiuggy? Dead ringer for Chuck.

langford peel said...

Also DJ wore that helmet on the short bus as he as always depicted as half a retard.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Of course My Name is Earl wasn't about working class issues. When Earl and his brother visit his parents they're nice, respectable, prosperous middle class people. Earl is just a bad seed who reforms after getting hit by a car. If you really think about it the implication is that he suffered a traumatic brain injury that changed his personality.

SeanF said...

The Germans Have A Word For That: Swap my original line with:

"Her sister was replaced by another woman whom her mother never even recognized as being a different person than her daughter. Was She Not There?"


Except that her mother did apparently recognize her as being a different person, as I said above.

Drago said...

It's very very very important for LLR and #StrongDemDefender and #BillKristolFanBoy Chuck to try and shift our attention away from the most conservative year in governance in the last 60 years.

Otherwise, you might get the incorrect impression that Trump had something to do with it.

And we can't have that, lest it detracts from the lefty/LLR ally demoralization campaign needed to get the dems back in power.

You should feel free to draw obvious conclusions.

FullMoon said...

I watched it. Wanted to like it. Not so much because it "supports Trump" as because it might be something funny once a week..

Not real good. Filmed in front of live audience but has an annoying laugh track...

Dan was joking about stealing copper pipes. It was a joke, he didn't steal it. Kinda funny to me because theft of copper pipe in functioning buildings and live underground electrical copper wire in local news a lot several years ago...And, the chair? Had a hard time giving away one of those during a remodel job several years ago. Homeowner had receipt for $8,000.00 and it was like new.

Most of the stuff they say is meant to be funny to each other, not serious.

Test of whether a show is funny is to laugh along with the laugh track.
Try it.

SDaly said...

I would say "Alice" also dealt with white working class, but was more of a pro-feminist show.

Drago said...

its quite clear "Bowe Bergdahl republican" Chuck is still quite upset that John Kasich did not win the primary and therefore was unable to respectfully, in an adoring way, lose graciously to Madame Hillary.

I don't think either Chuck or Kasich is ever going to get over that.

I will say I'm very impressed by how Kasich and Chuck have embraced the newer, more passionate "surrender early and often" strategy desired of republicans by the dems.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Dan was joking about stealing copper pipes.

I haven't watched the show, but that makes a lot more sense.

traditionalguy said...

That's the spirit, Buwaya @ 1:23... Great leader meets great times and then , by the skin of his teeth, he doesn't screw it all up.

There was once a surveyor turned Virginia Plantation owner who showed up at The Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775 dressed in his old Military uniform. He was a natural leader. He alone did what no other man could have done, and he never screw it up. Maybe his victories were few and far between, but his men trusted in his Great leadership and clung to their guns and Bibles until he won in the end. For that his face is still on our $1 bill as a reminder to us of what Great Men in great times can do.

Known Unknown said...

Normal Bates.

Revealing typo from the hostess. Or intentional?

Chuck said...

Well, traditionalguy; George Washington was only able to do all of that because he didn't have heel spurs.

Known Unknown said...

"OK, so while the Hitler gestures were no doubt nauseating, I don't see that as anti-Semitism but more as garden-variety leftist crazee."

Maybe? So many people have satirically impersonated Hitler over the years it is hard to tell. It's certainly not anti-Semitism.

And Hitler gestures can be hilarious.

narciso said...

Certainly buwaya this is the 3rd day when Prince Salman' s words are not front page news.

Jim at said...

You are to ignore the pictures of Roseanne made up like Hitler and putting gingerbread Jews into her over.

Not me.

Between that - and her braying of the National Anthem - you couldn't make me watch a minute of that hideous, obnoxious beast. I couldn't possibly care less what her politics are.

traditionalguy said...

Buwaya @ 1:28 for the win. Great leader met a great time and the entire New World Order's cash flow just dumped Soros and his bribed politicians and fell into agreement with Trump's version of Nationalism

The Media morons from Obama's yesteryear are still complaining that Egypt has not been destroyed like Libya was and Syria was, until Putin stopped it. Instead Saudi Arabia is under new management and dearly loves Egypt, and accepts Israel.

Meanwhile Trump's new Caribbean Resort Run by Mattis is ready for corrupt leaders.

Jim at said...

By the way. Sqiiuggy? Dead ringer for Chuck.

What do you have against Squiggy?

David said...

There are a lot of talented people in Show Biz and also a lot of suffocating drones. Nice to see the ones with talent get a freeish opportunity to show their stuff.

John henry said...

buwaya said...

The royal coup in Saudi. That's enormous. Its overturned geopolitics.

I agree that it is potentially as major as you say. You seem, though you are not clear, to view it as a bad thing. I view it as probably a good thing though it is still too early to know for sure.

Related is that he has been talking about more rights for women, allowed President Trump to fly direct from Saudi Arabia to Israel. First flight ever. And a commercial flight a week or two ago, first commercial flight ever, Recently came out in favor of Israel's right to exist pulling funding for Wahabis, sitting down to talks with Israel and other countries and more.

That seems huge and potentially great.

Also NoKo seems to be resolving. Still to early to know but it looks hopeful for the first time in 60+ years. No more nukes, apparently. Yeah, yeah, I know that was an "earthquake". I'll go along with that but would be curious what caused the earthquake. Could it have been a metal rod falling from space?

And why has the USS Jimmy Carter completed 2 "combat patrols", not normal patrols or deployments but "combat patrols", in the Pacific in 2017?

US Manufacturing is way up, US unemployment is way down.

Obamacare is gone. Not replaced. Should it be? I don't think so, I think it should just be gone.

Illegal immigration down. Illegals being deported. DACA dead.

A president who says he believes in 2A.

Taxes

Are these "deals"? Depends on how you define the word. I would say that whether or not they are deals they are certainly accomplishments and I look forward to more.

Maybe someday I'll be tired of so much winning but this day is not that day.

John Henry

langford peel said...

The tweet where she dressed as Hitler and put gingerbread Jews in an oven was just a joke. Get over it you pussy.

Outrageous humor is only tolerated if it targets Trump or white people in general. If you mock a protected class they will be out to destroy you.

That is why I would not have fired Kathy Griffin. She should have kept her gig on CNN. She is what they are all about. She should be their spokes model.

Achilles said...

buwaya said...

There are several schools of history -

- The "great man" - the genius who moves things his own way through his will and ability. Napoleon was one. He decided, things happened. Things did not turn out in quite the way he wished in the end, but the process changed a great deal that would not have otherwise.

- The "greater forces" - your Toynbee and "Annales" of Braudel, or thinking more broadly, Marx, Weber, Pareto, Spengler, etc. Thats what makes the fertile ground for events.


The path of Paul Atreides vs. the path of Leto Atreides.

Trump capitalized on events. Which path?

He is apparently choosing to do good things with the opportunity. I don't think anyone expected him to be as successful in rolling back the ObamaBushClintonBush mendacity as he has been.

Either way short term he will be hated like Reagan in popular culture. But in the end the elites will be surprised how thankful the masses are. Like Reagan.

Peter said...

Ms. Althouse:

Thank you very much for this post. It was fascinating, insightful and obviously took a lot of time.

John henry said...

Blogger FullMoon said...

Test of whether a show is funny is to laugh along with the laugh track.

I ride a stationary bike 50 minutes most nights. In my office and usually watching Amazon Prime or Netflix to pass the time.

A while ago I discovered that almost all episodes of Hee-Haw are on YouTube. I wanted something a bit lighter and started watching them.

Some date back to 1969 and they are stupid, repetive sketches and silly jokes that my grandkids would look askance at. I find my self smiling and laughing the entire show. Yes, I am laughing out loud to a TV show. I love Junior Samples who can't even get through most jokes reading a cue card.

And the music is to die for. Roy Clark, Buck Owens, Grandpa Jones, Stringbean, Buck Trent and more as regulars and a big star featured every week. Last night George Jones and Tammy Wynette.

Unlike Laugh In, which inspired it, Hee-Haw was never topical. Every once in a while a joke about the price of gas or such but we can make the same jokes today. The fashion, or lack, is timeless. The show doesn't look out of place today.

THIS is true blue collar TV.

John Henry

Achilles said...

Chuck said...

Well, traditionalguy; George Washington was only able to do all of that because he didn't have heel spurs.

Compare and contrast with John at 2:30.

One is an actual conservative. The other pretends to be.

Chuck would clearly vote for any democrat against Trump. Kristol is already part of the Obama for 2020 campaign just like they were both on the Hillary 2016 campaign team.

langford peel said...

At one time CBS was know as the rural network. NOt so much blue collar but rural and Southern. Andy Griffth. Mayberry. Hee Haw. The Beverly Hillbillies. Gomer Pyle. The Waltons.

They traded in traditional values and a softer gentler way of life.

That changed under new management and urban workplace comedies like Mary Tyler Moore and liberal minstrel shows from Norman Lear took over.

There has always been an sudience for these gentler, kinder shows and they can be found on the Hallmark Channel in such excellent shows as "One Call the Heart" and "The Good Witch."

langford peel said...

Roseanne has always been unique. They tried to copy it with a show starring Brett Butler back in the day but it didn't make it.

"The Middle" does hit some of the same notes but seems more slapstick than behavior based.

Brian said...

Dan was joking about stealing copper pipes.

I haven't watched the show, but that makes a lot more sense.


It started with her joking about him stealing the chair, she doesn't mean it. She knows he didn't steal it. He then was just escalating the joke further. She knows he didn't steal the copper pipe either. She knows the house is abandoned. She doesn't want the chair because it makes her feel old. Old people need those chairs. Old people that die in the house next door and are forgotten.

He's worried about her. He can't provide a fix for her knee, but he is handy and can put this chair on the stairs. He jokes with her about it to make it ok for her to use the chair. It's ok, you aren't old, this is a toy to have fun. Even though he knows her knee is bad and she needs the help.

Life struggles are real. You cope by accepting that life is a struggle and keep doing the right thing. Not by hoping that someone else will fix your problems. Not by feeling entitled. Not by stealing clothes and reselling them on etsy. Not by letting your kids do whatever they want.

I would kill for a Jordan Peterson analysis of this episode.

p.s. that's a joke, I wouldn't kill anyone. It's a turn of phrase.

MadisonMan said...

THIS is true blue collar TV.

Well BR-549 to you too!

Robert Cook said...

"Also, Donald Trump would have wiped the floor with Sanders. Aside from a catastrophic minority turnout/margin, Sanders ultimately was a weak man."

I'm not personally much of a fan of Sanders...he talks the good talk but he mostly walks the walk...of the Democrats. However, yes, I do think he would have possibly defeated Trump, who won not so much for his "merits" as for his opponent's demerits.

traditionalguy said...

The Professor seems to have spotted the Biggly win this Rosanne show has become for Trump. No matter what else it does or fails to do, it has normalized the Orange Clown from New York City. Roseanne has that common man schtick perfected in her every facial expression and comic punch line.

Roseanne binge watching be required education for aspiring Trial Lawyers.

Nonapod said...

That changed under new management and urban workplace comedies like Mary Tyler Moore and liberal minstrel shows from Norman Lear took over.

Yeah, there's an interesting wikipedia article about the so called "rural purge" that occurred at the tail end of the 60s. Being born is '74 I only know all those shows from syndication. They always seemed corny and sweet and not too cynical. They were sharply contrasted from the far more grimmer, "realistic" portrays of blue collar class families that followed later such as All in The Family and later still Roseanne and the much more sardonic Married with Children.

langford peel said...

There is a difference between stealing and salvage. Dan is in construction so he might have some connections with the people demoing the house. Sometimes the demo crew lets scrappers take out the pipe and other items to sell and get a cut of the proceeds.

There was a pretty cool show about that on Spike TV called Scrappers a few years ago. You can check it out on You Tube.

Definitely blue collar. A blue collar reality show.

Drago said...

#StrongBlumenthalStolenValorLiesDefender Chuck: "Well, traditionalguy; George Washington was only able to do all of that because he didn't have heel spurs"

It's always nice when Chuck takes time out from his serial strong defenses of dems to comment on other issues.

langford peel said...

TV runs in cycles.

I can't wait until we get over the zombie cycle. Enough already with this nonsense.

Robert Cook said...

"By the way. Squiggy? Dead ringer for Chuck."

And Lenny? He grew his hair and became a member of Spinal Tap.

Drago said...

Robert Cook: "However, yes, I do think he would have possibly defeated Trump, who won not so much for his "merits" as for his opponent's demerits."

What demerits could the most qualified, most competent, most brilliant, most accomplished, beautiful, insightful, inspirational candidate ever for the Presidency possibly have?

Just ask any dem/"Tru Con" LLR.

traditionalguy said...

Spengler and Buwaya have become my favorite historians.



Drago said...

Achilles: "Either way short term he will be hated like Reagan in popular culture. But in the end the elites will be surprised how thankful the masses are. Like Reagan"

I disagree.

The dems/left and their LLR allies will never forgive Trump for puncturing the supremely false images they constructed of themselves in their own minds.

LLR Chuck, Bill Kristol, Max Boot, the entire left MSM mob, are all fine examples of empty suits who have been exposed and will not rest until they burn the constitution down to rid themselves of this singular reminder of their imcompetence.

langford peel said...

I think it would behoove many a mainstream show to have a character or two who were Trump supporters and not presented as a caricature or as evil. Especially the cop shows.

The problem is that most cop shows have villains who are always white guys. Businessmen. Or specifically clergymen or people of faith.

That is why the ratings of channels like Hallmark and CMT are on the rise.

langford peel said...

Can you name a character in any primetime show that is a Trump supporter and is presented in a positive light?

I can't think of one even though shows like Chicago Fire and Chicago PD should have a bunch of them. Even Hawaii 5O or Mcgver should have pro Trump characters. There is nary a one anywhere.

The Ultra Liberal stance is monolithic. And boring.

Nonapod said...

I guess I put the wrong link
Rural Purge

Drago said...

Roseanne should crank up an episode that features a local "republican" self-described electoral expert who basically complains about every good outcome from the Trump presidency and defends vigorously any democrat that comes under scrutiny.

Talk about "ripped from the headlines"....

reader said...

When I was growing up my mom made sweet potatoes (or yams, whichever she could get at the market) without marshmallows. They weren’t in a casserole either. She would parboil, peel, and slice them ahead of time. Right before we would eat she would melt a little butter (let’s be real it was margarine) sprinkle it with brown sugar and fry the slices of sweet potatoes.

It’s the only way my husband’s family will eat them now.

iowan2 said...

Let me get this straight. Trump's deals would happen with or without him. They are refections of Manhattan real estate and up scale Golf Resorts...

You're flailing badly. Stop. Yes hotels and resorts were built before President Trump. Cabinet appointees will get appointed.

The point is, President Trump did not create the atmosphere that President Trump saw, and filled the desires of the voters. Republicans and Democrats alike, were deaf to the voice of millions of people. Voters that President Trump listen to and understood. President Trump filled their needs, instead of other politicians that attempted to convince them that the direction they wanted to force them, was in the voters self interest. building resort is easy to build, but to make it profitable is knack the most people don't have, the ability to read the desires of others and fill those desires. Not sell the people what they don't want.

Chuck said...

John Henry, I define "deal" in a way that I'd like to think is clear, simple and almost universally accepted. A "deal" is an agreement that is reached between counterparties each having some level of negotiating power. An agreement that is reached after one or more offers, counterproposals, etc.

In North Korea, there has been no "deal." You say the situation there is looking better. That's fine, and I don't care. What I was saying was that there is no deal there.

You say US manufacturing is way up, and unemployment is way down. Those two things are continuations of trends well under way before Trump was sworn in. It's nice, that manufacturing is up and unemployment is down. Trump's unilateral action on cutting regulations might have helped the process. But there was no "deal" in that regard.

You say that killing off Obamacare with no replacement is fine with you. You are entitled to that opinion. Some -- I am not at all sure how many -- would agree with you. But that isn't what Trump campaigned on. Trump campaigned on making a deal. A really great deal where he got everybody in a room and came up with something that would cover everybody and would lower costs and premiums and co-pays and deductibles and co-insurance. That deal hasn't been made; that deal hasn't even been DESCRIBED by Trump.

You say that DACA is dead, and illegal immigration is down and it's all good. Fine. You can think that way. I'm not going to argue that with you. What I am asserting is that there has been no deal on immigration. Nothing that could get 60 votes in the Senate. That's the starting point, for any deal. Trump hasn't made a deal; he hasn't come close.

And then you say Trump is a president "who believes in 2A." I don't know about that; he talks a lot about the Second Amendment, sometimes in a way that makes me think he doesn't really know much about guns and gun rights but that he's been told what to say. I remember Trump being in favor of the 1996 federal gun bill to ban so-called "assault" weapons. But whatever; we each regard Trump differently, on guns. What is not debatable is that Trump has made no "deals" on guns. Maybe no "deals" should be made! My point is that Trump hasn't made any important deals. And he's definitely made no gun "deals."

You conclude with "Taxes." And I already covered it before you posted. People are free to think that the big tax cut-and-reform bill is great. But it wasn't a "deal." Trump didn't deal with Democrats. He rolled them, thanks to Republican majorities in both houses that allowed a bill under budget reconciliation to pass. So call it a win for the president; I know that I call it a win for the president. But it was not a deal.

I haven't yet used my monthly recitation of David Frum's Tweet from a year ago: "Regular reminder that Donald Trump’s core competency is not dealmaking with powerful counter-parties. It is duping gullible victims."

I'm right. No matter what you might think of Donald Trump's record of accomplishments in office, none of those accomplishments involve any great "deals."

langford peel said...

Squiggy all the way down.

Larry J said...

langford peel said...

Can you name a character in any primetime show that is a Trump supporter and is presented in a positive light?


Tim Allen's character Mike Baxter in "Last Man Standing" was an unapologetic Republican. Despite good ratings, ABC canceled the show.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Squiggy all the way down.

"We may not be strong, but we make up for it with what we lack up here!" (taps head).

langford peel said...

You see Squiggy would burst in and interrupt whatever was going on. He always wanted it to be about him.

Sounds familiar?

FullMoon said...

Chuck says:

(many, many words)

TLDR:

Trump accomplishments good, Trump bad.

exhelodrvr1 said...

So Trump is making very good progress (better than most people expected) towards accomplishing what he said he would do, but Chuck doesn't want to acknowledge that because "deals" haven't been involved. LOL! I guess that's one way to avoid giving him credit!

Drago said...

"A Dem's Best Friend In A Storm" Chuck: "Trump's unilateral action on cutting regulations might have helped the process."

Lol

Yeah,"might have heloed"...

No wonder the lunatic lefties on this blog love you so.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Chuck said...I'm right. No matter what you might think of Donald Trump's record of accomplishments in office, none of those accomplishments involve any great "deals."

I dunno; convincing enough/the right gullible idiots like you to trade their votes for the opportunity to not have Hillary Clinton seems like a pretty great deal, man.

Chuck said...

Fuck you ignorant shit heads. I'm not here to commune with you. I'm not part of the team. I'm not here to help.

I set forth a simple proposition: that Donald Trump, the supposedly great deal-maker, hasn't made any noteworthy "deals" since he's been president.

I don't want to be distracted by what you think he's done that is so good, as the nation's chief executive. We can argue about that, and not convince each other of anything. As a Republican, I happen to think that some very good things have occurred with the federal government and federal executive policy since Trump has been president. That's fine. It's not my point.

I advanced the proposition that Trump hasn't made any big deals as president. And not one of you have come up with a single example of a big deal that he's made.

langford peel said...

He managed to make people like Bill Kristol, David French, George Will and you show that you are not who you say your are. He has exposed you cucks and losers who want liberals elected instead of instituting conservative policies that are not done in a gentlemanly manner.

That's a good deal if there ever was one.

langford peel said...

By the way from now on can you please start you posts by saying:

"HHHHHEEEELLLLLOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Thanks Squiggy.

Achilles said...

Chuck said...

Fuck you ignorant shit heads. I'm not here to commune with you. I'm not part of the team. I'm not here to help.

We know who's team you are on Chuck.

The only thing I object to is your continued pretense. Stop lying to everyone. You want open borders, "free" trade, and wars everywhere along with a corporatist crony run state.

You clearly support uniparty/democrats. Kristol might be a little silver spoon up his butt bitch bought and paid for by the same uniparty that runs DC. He is at least honest about what he is.

Trump is single-handedly responsible for the most conservative year of governance this country has seen or almost a century despite the traitors in the House and Senate that go by the name of Republican.

Period.

FullMoon said...

Chuck said:

(TLDR;)

I'm smart, not dumb like everyone says...

langford peel said...

He tries to be Fredo but he is just Squiggy.

langford peel said...

I just hope he doesn't snap like that Iranian vegan bitch.

I know he tried to copyright a Twister like game called "Greta's Titty Twister" where you stood on a rubber sheet and had to twist the titties of the other contestants. He just couldn't monetize it.

I hope he doesn't lose it but his last post seems to indicate that he is getting close.

Should we contact the Broward County Sherriff's Department?

exhelodrvr1 said...

I'm an ignorant, deplorable, bitter, clinging, racist shithead! But at least I get to tell my wife how to vote!!

Achilles said...

Then there is langford peel, another construct.

I guess we are all constructs of some sort..

langford peel said...

Construct?

What gives you the right to call someone else a construct.

You don't know me.

You are no different than me. We are both very clear about what we believe.

Chuck said...

Bunch of bitches; none of whom can name a single signature Trump presidential "deal."

glam1931 said...

For some amazing Roseanne hatred, check out Roger Friedman's horrific review of this episode.
http://www.showbiz411.com/2018/04/04/review-shrill-roseanne-episode-3-mocks-abcs-black-and-asian-shows-endorses-physical-violence-of-grandkids-plus-dan-may-be-dead-after-all

langford peel said...

"Bunch of bitches?"

Nice alliteration Squiggy. Why not suggest that to Hillary then next time you are brainstorming her comeback. It has more of a ring than deplorable.

Bad Lieutenant said...

We are both very clear about what we believe.

I dunno peel, you're a bit out there. We don't know if you're for real. I enjoy many of your comments but I don't engage because any moment you're going to say something that makes me sorry for it. Keep on how you're going, but even I, who evidently am a Birchist, find you too much.

Drago said...

#StrongCNNDefender Chuck: "Bunch of bitches"

An epithet LLR Chuck would never in a million years hurl at any democrats anywhere for any reason.

Just like the lunatic lefties.

You should feel free to draw obvious conclusions.

Bad Lieutenant said...


Blogger Chuck said...
Bunch of bitches; none of whom can name a single signature Trump presidential "deal."


Here, Chuck, I'll predict one. When Mt Rushmore II goes up, PDJT will be on it. Oh wait, that lacks a deal-like aspect? No one will care, like they don't care now.

Drago said...

LP: "Why not suggest that to Hillary then next time you are brainstorming her comeback."

Actually, LLR Chucks distaste for republican base voters would make Hillary blush.

FullMoon said...

I know he tried to copyright a Twister like game called "Greta's Titty Twister" where you stood on a rubber sheet and had to twist the titties of the other contestants. He just couldn't monetize it.

You missed his spin
He didn't threaten to twist her titty, he offered to twist it.

langford peel said...

I respect that Bad Lt. I am who I am. I know I am an old school racist but my life experience informs me of that fact. So I make no apologies.

Think of me as an amalgam of Huey Long, Pat Buchanan and Governor Wallace and you have it right.

If that scares you don't sweat it. I am ok going it alone.

Drago said...

I havent seen LLR Chuck this upset since Trump exposed li'l Dick Durbin for the bum that he is.

Chuck hates that kind of stuff.

traditionalguy said...

Chuck... Does Trump have to sign the Norks unconditional surrender to him on the decks of the USS Missouri out of dry dock to count as a Deal.

Chuck said...

traditionalguy said...
Chuck... Does Trump have to sign the Norks unconditional surrender to him on the decks of the USS Missouri out of dry dock to count as a Deal.


The beauty of all of this is that you can pick whatever you want as a Trump signature deal. I don't care. I just don't think you can name any goddamn thing of substance, as a great deal that President Trump has made. Trump has done some good things as President, and a veritable spreadsheet of stupid things. We all know that. We'd all have to admit to that mix.

But somebody up above mentioned Trump's deal-making. And it was always a kind of an article of faith; that Trump was a clever negotiator, a super-skilled dealmaker. And he actively sold himself that way on the campaign trail. And I was someone who thought it was all bullshit. That Trump wasn't a skilled dealmaker; he was a skilled bullshitter. A salesman, of unusual skill and unusual duplicity. One of the best and most dishonest salesmen I had ever seen.

So, traditional guy; I'm not interested in hypotheticals. I continue to ask for one, or a couple, or more, real examples of great Trump deal-making as president, and (as I expected) nobody can name one damned thing.

wildswan said...

Another thing I notice about the show which you get from reading the comments is that no one is quite sure what is funny any more. Stole copper pipes - but was that a joke or is the joke that he stole the chair while he was stealing pipes? Rosanne "waterboards" her granddaughter - is that a joke or child abuse? I watch Atlanta occasionally and I have major problems over there but of somewhat the same kind - there is scene after scene where I think "that's not funny" but however I've laughed. I think the black Steve McQueen in shorts is funny but - I wouldn't watch this with anyone I know; I could laugh wrongly, bigly!! and that could lead to one of those life-destroyed-in-20-minutes-by-a-Twitter-storm (while I was out mailing a letter) situations. (Only that I'm not on Twitter or Facebook and my phone loses charge because I need a new one so I wouldn't notice even when I got back from mailing the letter. There just would be beautiful ineffectual Twitter hates beating their wings in vain in the void.)

Drago said...

Chucks ability to craft new and hilariously premised "standards" to preclude giving Trump credit for anything promises to provide us all with endless mirth and enjoyment.

Well, that and Chuck's also hilariously contrived defenses of his democrat allies.

A walking caricature.

Drago said...

The most conservative year of governance in our lifetimes.

No wonder Chuck is so angry and lashing out.

In precisely the same way as far left democrat partisans.

You should feel free to draw obvious conclusions.

walter said...

"We don't know about Dan's genitalia, but the Easy-Climb is an externalization of his physical love for her. But she doesn't want to use that, because for her, it symbolizes not his love, but her weakness."

This reads better aloud in a German accent.

MadisonMan said...

200!

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