But don't worry. Celebrity Treasure Island is.
Okay. Watch Children of Men. Watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
Children of Men is Wyndhamesque, and if you don't know who John Wyndham is, you're probably not reading this blog for the pop-culture stuff. Simple idea, apocalyptic, strong independent love interest and protagonist who's only peripherally involved with world-changing events. That's the Wyndham formula. So good.
Studio 60 is what Aaron Sorkin does after he throws his hands up in the air and leaves The West Wing. It is Sorkinesque. If you don't know who Aaron Sorkin is, see above. It involves people talking quickly, acting as if their job is the most monumentally important thing in the world, having just about the cutest little love affairs ever, and being quirkily hilarious. Plus, half the cast of The West Wing are in it, just for the hell of it. That's the Sorkin formula. Also good.
Mary Cheney is having a baby, and I don't particularly care, but no doubt plenty of Americans do, and that's why Aaron Sorkin has a job. If the world was nice and sane, he wouldn't have anyone to
John Pilger reckons the US is gearing up to attack Iran. He's going to say so in The New Stateman tomorrow. He points out that investigations by The New York Times, The LA Times and others, including British military officials, have concluded that Iran is not giving weapons to Iraqi insurgents. The world is getting more terrifying by the second, everyone. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that for the last three years, its inspectors have been able to "go anywhere and see anything". The head of the IAEA says an attack on Iran would have "catastrophic consequences" and will inspire the regime to actually go nuclear-armed. Quoting Pilger:
The "threat" from Iran is entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran's "nuclear ambitions", just as the vocabulary of Saddam's non-existent WMD arsenal became common usage. Accompanying this is a demonising that has become standard practice. As Edward Herman has pointed out, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "has done yeoman service in facilitating [this]"; yet a close examination of his notorious remark about Israel in October 2005 reveals how it has been distorted. According to Juan Cole, American professor of modern Middle East and south Asian history at the University of Michigan, and other Farsi language analysts, Ahmadinejad did not call for Israel to be "wiped off the map". He said: "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." This, says Cole, "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all". Ahmadinejad compared the demise of the Israeli regime to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Iranian regime is repressive, but its power is diffuse and exercised by the mullahs, with whom Ahmadinejad is often at odds. An attack would surely unite them.
Climate change! Also terrifying. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have issued their fourth assessment report. Acrobat document here. That's for the mitigation of climate change. Our civilisation needs to be overhauled, and the world is dragging its heels on something that it simply cannot waste time about. This is an evolutionary test of the human species, and we're quickly on our way to failing.
But that doesn't stoop Rebecca Loos from being a "celebrity" on "Celebrity" Treasure Island. She is not a celebrity, Matthew Ridge is a prime munter, Touchdown is the devil, and TVNZ pimps this stuff out to Kiwi viewers who don't know any better and are knowing less by the second.
To New Zealanders, this unique and special responsibility means quality television that educates, informs and entertains through local home-grown programming and the best of international programming.
It just felt appropriate to quote the TVNZ website there. Why is this on my mind? Because Studio 60 is to American television what The West Wing is to American politics. It says, "Imagine a world where people shaping that world had slightly more integrity than they do in the real world."
Something of actual depth tomorrow, I assure you.
Count
