The End of Adam Sandler's Career is Probably Far Away

Hollywood has always had a dichotomy between commerce and art, between blockbusters and Oscar bait.  In 2009 I was amused that many people picked Avatar to win the Best Picture Oscar over The Hurt Locker because Avatar had made more money; Hurt Locker won precisely because Avatar had made more money, and Hollywood hates to give awards to people whose films make a lot of money.  In recent years the only top grossing film to win Best picture was Titanic, which is in a class by itself.  If making money won you Oscars, Stan Lee would be the most successful movie producer in Oscar history.

Probably no single person in Hollywood embodies the distinction between art and commerce more than Adam Sandler.  Critics lambasted his latest film, Pixels, which is nothing new.  However, apparently audiences are now staying away as the film grossed “only” $23.7 million in its opening weekend, coming in second behind week two of Ant Man.  My observation is that $23.7 million is impressive given Sandler’s track record.

The Metacritic scores of films featuring Adam Sandler (not counting animation voice-over work and films where he appeared as himself) are a study in small numbers.  Pixels had a score of 27, which is bad but still better than his attempt at “serious” work in The Cobbler, which got a score of 23.  Men Women and Children had a score of 38, which amounts to a critical rave compared to Blended’s 31, Grown Up’s 30 and Grown Ups 2’s 19 (if the rumors about a Grown Ups 3 are true, Metacritic might have to use negative numbers).  He broke into the 60’s with 2009’s Funny People, but before that came Bedtime Stories (33) and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (37).  2007 produced his second most acclaimed film, Reign Over Me, clocking in at 61.  Except for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love (78) the only other Sandler film cracking 55 is The Wedding Singer at 59 (which is a ridiculously low score; I suspect some critics were simply piling on Sandler early in his career).

Since 2007’s Reign Over Me, the average Adam Sandler live action movie has a 34.3 Metacritic score.  Given an eight year run of bad movies, I’d say a $24 million opening weekend is surprisingly positive.  If the average ticket price is $8, that means three million people still want to see Adam Sandler star in a movie comedy.  Of course those 12 films grossed an average of $75 million (even when throwing in The Cobbler, which had a domestic gross of zero), and half of them crossed the $100 million threshold ( which includes both Bedtime Stories and Just Go With It, both of which had a Metacritic score of 33).

However, if you do a correlational analysis on his last 10 live-action films (excluding The Cobbler and Men, Women and Children, neither of which opened in wide release), you find that there is an inverse relationship between Metacritic scores and box office gross, with a correlational coefficient of -0.269.  The more critics hate an Adam Sandler film, the higher the box office revenue.  And that’s not even including Punch Drunk Love, which grossed a mere $17 million despite (or maybe because of?) its 78 Metacritic rating. If you take the entire Sandler oeuvre, the average Metacritic score is 40 with a negative correlation of score vs. revenue of -0.173.

I guess you can’t criticize how Adam Sandler has managed his career, given all the money his films have made.  He has consistently aimed for the lowest common denominator, and most of the time he’s hit it.  Grown Ups 2 was reviled by critics and grossed $133.7 million.  So why should he try harder?  Pixels, even if it flops, will put him over the $3 billion box office threshold.

I’ve always said it is difficult to make an effort when you get rewarded for not making one.  One actor that I think made a conscious effort to improve his craft despite early success is David Boreanaz, who was a vacuous, good looking hunk during his first season on Buffy, The Vampire Slayer.  I don’t know if it was working with the other quality actors on that show (and its spin-off, Angel), or working with Joss Whedon’s material, but by the finale of Angel Boreanaz could hold his own in dramatic scenes and had a definite flair for comedy. He parlayed his eight seasons on Buffy and Angel into eleven seasons and counting on Bones, and while he’ll never get an Emmy nomination, being a star on TV for nearly 20 years is an impressive achievement.  Just ask anyone who starred on Baywatch not named Hasslehoff.

If this is the end for Sandler’s career, I assume he has enough socked a way to get by.  Of course it won’t be “the end” as he’ll continue to find work (having just inked a deal with Netflix), and maybe he’ll find the right vehicle.  His next project, The Ridiculous Six, is already getting bad press and Sandler is showing incredible insensitivity about racial issues.  I suppose if he gets desperate enough he can always land a sitcom on NBC. 

I don’t think Sandler is talent-less, as attested by the good reviews for Reign Over Me, Punch Drunk Love and The Wedding Singer.  I think he needs to try harder to find a sweet spot where he can please both the critics and the ticket buying public.  But this probably won’t happen as long as someone is willing to pay him for name recognition alone.

Movie Review: Tomorrowland

Whenever anyone talks about “the Future” there is usually a reference either to jet packs or flying cars.  At some point in our culture, those became the hallmarks of futurosity, and the concept got stuck.  No amount of cell phones, internet access, or microwave ovens could convince us we were living in what used to be the future, because we remained Earthbound.

The message of Tomorrowland is that every present gets the future it deserves.  In the 50’s we saw a nuclear-powered future with flying cars; in the 60’s we had Star Trek, with its optimism that one day a Black woman, Russian man and gay Japanese guy could work in harmony under a white male leader.  But somewhere things went wrong.

The word of the day when it comes to the future is “dystopian” (one of my favorite words, by the way).  Our prospects are bleak.  Movies give us Insurgent and Divergent; TV gives us the rebooted Battlestar Gallactica and Defiance.  As someone once said, the future ain’t what it used to be.

Tomorrowland, yet another film named after a segment of Disneyland but infinitely better than The Haunted Mansion, hypothesizes a feedback loop, as it were.  Things now are less than optimal, so we imagine a bleak future; we then decide that since the future is hopeless we might as well give up and devote ourselves to video games, twitter feeds and the candidacy of Donald Trump rather than doing anything to make things better.  One of the many disconcerting aspects of Tomorrowland is that the Bad Guy in the film makes this argument, and he is actually quite persuasive.  Maybe we have all tuned in and dropped out without the “turning on” that Timothy Leary advocated.

The plot of the movie revolves around a young girl named Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) who is mysteriously given a pin with a large blue “T” on it that, when she touches it, transports her to a futuristic city in an alternate dimension.  Deciding to track down more information (because she’s curious because she’s a scientist) she is pursued by smiling agents in black turtlenecks and helped by a precocious ten year old girl named Athena.  The audience is familiar with Athena because in flashbacks we saw her (looking the same) at the 1964 World’s Fair, where she befriended a young boy named Frank Walker, who grew up to look like a grizzled George Clooney.  Casey finally meets Frank and the two of them travel to the alternate dimension, no longer quite so shiny, to save the future.

Few other actors than Clooney could have made this work; maybe Tom Hanks but that’s it.  Clooney is an amazingly grounded actor who always seems believable even when his characters spout nonsense (if you don’t believe me, see The Men Who Stare at Goats; or don’t because it’s not that good). We wouldn’t accept this set-up as credible unless Clooney convinced us it is.  The production design is amazing, truly visionary work in creating a part of a theme park into a realized world.

The film had a “disappointing” opening weekend, grossing a mere $33 million in the United States.  Why?  Was the film too original in an age where seemingly 90% of films are remakes, reboots, or based on a comic book?  Was the film too optimistic in an age where most futuristic films are about teenagers fighting to save humanity from a totalitarian state?  Did co-writer Damon Lindelof bring too much Lost-like Rube Goldberg plotting to a story with a simple message?  Maybe a bit of all three.  Director Brad Bird does a commendable job of keeping the plot barely under control, but at times the leaps come too fast and too furiously to follow or accept.

The film deserves to be viewed, and in a theater.  It left theaters so fast after its opening weekend I had to wait for it to make it to a second run cinema. It makes me wonder what it must look like on an adequately lighted screen with decent sound.

If you missed Tomorrowland in theaters, catch it on DVD and check your cynicism at the door when you put the disc into the slot.  It is filled with ideas and energy, elements missing from most modern cinema.  Maybe that’s the ultimate irony; Brad Bird has the technology to make such an intelligent movie, but the audience’s minds haven’t caught up with the technology.

ESPN increases the blather

I watch way too much ESPN.  There, I’ve said it.  I DVR three (soon to be two) shows every afternoon and watch them when I get home from work, plus it is my default if I want the TV on but I’m not paying attention.  Unless golf is on; a previous post mentioned that I am getting tired of golf analysts awaiting the return of Tiger Woods, which at this point is like waiting for Godot.

ESPN frequently runs into so interesting journalistic ethics questions.  ESPN likes to fancy themselves as “journalists” all the while their network is an intimate partner with most major professional sports leagues.  On the one hand, they like to have talking heads who yell and make outrageous claims, but not if they bite the hand that feeds them too frequently.

Not long ago ESPN allowed Bill Simmons, resident basketball guru and the guiding voice behind their Grantland auxiliary website, to leave for greener (for him) pastures.  Simmons is phenomenally brilliant, churning out incredibly long, yet incredibly detailed, articles on basketball with remarkable speed.  His works tend to the epic length; I bought his The Book of Basketball for a friend as a present and nearly got a hernia carrying it to the birthday party. 

But Simmons was a fan first and “journalist” second and he never fully recognized the line between the two.  He was suspended for three weeks in 2014 because he called NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a liar on a podcast over Goodell’s dealings with the Ray Rice situation.  Even through the suspension his name and photo remained on the Grantland masthead.  This was only the latest of several problems he has had with ESPN censoring his content.

Another ESPN personality with Goodell issues is Keith Olbermann, who will be leaving ESPN at the end of this week. Olbermann has called for Goodell’s firing so often for so many different reasons that number theorists at MIT are busily attempting to devise larger numbers with which to count.  He has also called for the firing of the President of FIFA, the head of the US Women’s soccer team, the owner of the Washington football team, and countless others.  He rarely met a situation that didn’t call for someone’s firing.  Olbermann was also penalized by ESPN for some impolitic tweets regarding Penn State.

Without Simmons and Olbermann ESPN will be much, much blander.  They still have a number of voluble analysts, such as Stephen A. Smith and Tony Kornheiser (both of whom have run afoul of ESPN’s rules), but one wonders how much longer they will last.  Apparently ESPN likes “controversial” statements when they are directed at teams and players, not ESPN’s partners like the NFL.  Roger Goodell’s administration of the NFL has been nothing short of grossly incompetent, but two of his most notable critics at ESPN are now gone. 

There were reports that ESPN was interested in renewing Olbermann’s contract only if he refrained from commentary.  These reports have been denied, probably because if true they would have been absurd.  Asking Olbermann not to do commentary would be like hiring Pavarotti but asking him to keep the noise down.  Keith Olbermann probably wakes up in the morning and immediately starts complaining about what was wrong with his dreams.  And with such large targets as Roger Goodell and Washington football team owner Dan Snyder out there, the temptation to insert commentary on any news items would have been irresistible.

I suppose if ESPN wants to maintain a business model where they only hire people to give opinions if those opinions are on whether LeBron can win in Cleveland without Kevin Love (apparently, no) or if Tiger Woods will win the next major (his chances are only slightly better than Charles Barkley’s), That’s sustainable.  They can claim not to be anyone’s lapdog as long as Outside the Lines does an occasional expose on concussions or someone mentions the Washington football team name on Pardon the Interruption every few months or so.  Meanwhile, they can maintain the illusion of controversy by hyping all their personalities who wax rhapsodic about who will win the NFC East next season.

But the departure of Bill Simmons and Keith Olbermann within weeks of each other gives the impression that the network has a problem with iconoclasts. Of course the fact is that Olbermann is notoriously prickly to work with; and as I said Simmons began as a fan and is not someone steeped in journalistic training, meaning he often wears his heart on his sleeve in a way that is inappropriate for a reporter. 

But two points establish a “trend.”  Let’s see if other instances arise of ESPN smacking down on-air personalities who take swipes at ESPN’s corporate partners.  For now, the cancellation of Olbermann opens up a 30 minute hole in my evenings, which I will not fill with ESPN.

Follow up note: I just discovered that in April ESPN ended their association with analyst Gregg Easterbrook, creator of Tuesday Morning Quarterback.  In addition to bringing policy analysis skills to football, Easterbrook was a staunch critic of Roger Goodell and the NFL.  He labeled the NFL package with Dish an illegal monopoly, and he criticized the NFL's handling of concussions.  So add a third point to the evidence that ESPN is pushing out talking heads who are too critical of their business partner, the National Football League.  

Movie review: Mr. Holmes

Sherlock Holmes remains one of the most popular fictional characters ever created, even more than 160 years after his supposed birth in 1854.  Two current series, CBS’ Elementary and BBC’s Sherlock are direct variations on Holmes, while TV series like House used him for inspiration (House’s address was even 221B, if there was any doubt about his parentage).  What has fascinated generations is that magnificent mind of his, mightier than any magic hammers or indestructible shields that modern superheroes wield.

So imagine Holmes teetering on the edge of senility.  It’s like Tony Stark battling evil armed with a pocket calculator.

That is the premise of Mr. Holmes, based on the novel “A Slight Trick of the Mind.” Set in 1947, Holmes is 93 years old and has just returned to England from a trip half way around the world to Japan.  He went there seeking a cure for his memory loss, because he is desperate to remember exactly how he solved his final case.  He assumes it did not end well, because he subsequently exiled himself to Sussex to tend bees for 35 years, but he has only fleeting memories of the people involved. 

He is aided by the son of his landlady (Laura Linney, not playing Mrs. Hudson, who has passed away) and her son Roger (Milo Parker, who is excellent).  McKellen works nicely with the young actor, showing Holmes’ initial skepticism about children before warming up to the lad.

McKellen, of course, gives a masters’ class in acting.  I am frequently curious about actors of a certain age playing roles where they are feebler, either mentally or physically, than they actually are.  McKellen, who plays Holmes as a feeble but vital 93 year old and also as a dashing 60 year old, captures both roles perfectly. Watching him play Holmes as a weak old man is sometimes painful to watch, like visiting a close relative in an old age home (excuse me, “assisted living facility”).

The film marks a return to more cerebral filmmaking for director Bill Condon, who once did Oscar bait like Gods and Monsters (with McKellen) and Kinsey (with Linney), but has since dabbled in musicals (Dreamgirls) and drek (two of the Twilight Saga pictures).  He is always pushing our sympathy for Holmes’ plight but never making him the subject of pity.  For a movie about a nonagenarian the film moves at a brisk pace, and the flashbacks to Holmes’ “younger days” are nicely filmed in a way that is distinct from the scenes with 1947 Holmes.

I mentioned that Parker does excellent work as Roger, Holmes’ partner in these exploits.  His chemistry with Holmes is critical for the plot to work, and he makes the audience understand why a stand-offish Holmes would come to trust the boy.  Linney, a three time Oscar nominee and four time Emmy winner, is a bit underused in her role, but since she worked with Condon before (and her accent is acceptable) that can pass. 

This movie is a relief for anyone who is beginning to tire of Johnny Lee Miller’s Holmes pulling clues out of thin air while generally behaving like a sociopath (at least Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes has the decency to call himself “a high-functioning sociopath”).  The original Holmes was always portrayed as brilliant but not a miracle worker, and a 93 year old Holmes nicely maintains the mundane ratiocination while not having to explain that he can identify 135 different types of moth, or some such nonsense.

It’s nice that McKellen, one of the greatest actors of our age, can cash in on the X-Men films and the Lord of the Rings movies and then be able to do work like this.  Come to think of it, Holmes and Galdalf are sort of similar, wizards that enjoy astonishing people with a twinkle in their eye all the while harboring dark secrets.  

The future of TV--too many channels, too little time

So, what do Thursdays Emmy nominations mean?  They mean the world of video entertainment is becoming increasingly incomprehensible.  When there was a universe of three broadcast networks, it was possible to make determinations that weighed this show against that show and decided on a victor.  Best Drama, Best Comedy, heck Best Western back when that was a category, it all made sense.

Then FOX came along and three networks became four (four and a half with PBS on the fringes).  In the 1960’s changes in FCC regulations suddenly increased the need for more programming for local affiliates and syndication took off, although it was ages before any syndicated show could compete for Emmys.  Cable came along, but shows on cable were kept in the ghetto known as the Cable ACE awards.  Remember those? 

In 1987 cable shows were finally allowed to compete for Emmys, and they got 15 out of 337 nomination, or 4.5%.  This year the five broadcast networks got 188 out of 567 nominations, or 33.2%.  Only two of the 14 shows nominated for Best Drama or Best Comedy are on broadcast networks: Modern Family and Parks & Recreation in the comedy category.

A quick recap on why this matters; after all, 95% of households now get the “broadcast” channels via cable. Still, the FCC regulates the broadcast networks more tightly as presumably they are being “beamed” into people’s homes unbidden.  Therefore cable shows have greater latitude in content and language.  Premium channels like HBO and Showtime don’t rely on advertisers, allowing creative producers to create edgier content without the fear of offending sponsors (a manufacturer of gas ranges once objected to a Rod Serling script that mentioned the gas ovens in German concentration camps).  Premium channels also rerun content more often, so they can demand fewer episodes per season, resulting in higher quality per episode.  Cable, especially premium cable, has a huge advantage over the broadcast networks when it comes to producing quality TV.

That just deals with a cable/broadcast universe; now content can come from anywhere.  Yahoo, an ISP, got its first Emmy nomination for Community (in the stunt coordination category).  Amazon, which is essentially an on-line warehouse, produced Transparent which got 11 nominations and has already picked up a couple of Golden Globes.  Louis C.K. got six nominations, thanks in part to content released on LouisCK.net. Something called Acorn TV, which I can’t find on my cable network, picked up a nomination. In 2008 Joss Whedon won an Emmy for his internet sensation Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog in a category called Outstanding Special Class – Short Format Live Action Entertainment; if it were released today it would be nominated for Outstanding Movie.

With content now so ubiquitous, who can take it all in?  Is Kyle Chandler’s performance in Bloodline really one of the six best performances by an actor in a drama?  Did those voting check out all the content on IFC, Logo, EW.com, Pivot, and FunnyorDie.com?  I doubt it. 

There are in the neighborhood of 352 scripted series on television.  If 5 nominations were adequate when there were 4 broadcast networks and nothing else, then there should be 15 nominees per category now that broadcast sources amount to 1/3 of the nominees.  Instead of a system of nominations and runoffs like now, where we winnow all those who make submissions down to 6 to 8 nominees and then select from among them, there should be a television version of March Madness with 64 nominees in brackets facing off to see who ultimately wins.

By the way, I am really getting peeved by everyone saying that someone who didn’t get nominated was “snubbed.”  Not everyone who deserved a nomination could get a nomination, because there are too few nominations to go around.  Yeah, I’m pissed off that Eden Sher, Ellie Kemper and the cast of You’re the Worst didn’t get nominated, but I am going to assume it wasn’t anything personal.

Getting back to my point, this fragmentation of televised content coming from broadcast networks, basic cable, premium cable, DVD distributors, ISPs, and internet sites makes the Emmys outdated.  We’re not comparing apples to oranges, we’re comparing apples to irrational numbers.  A single ascetic criteria cannot hope to encompass all of the content emanating from all of these sources.

What is the answer?  I don’t know.  While the Emmys seem to have stemmed the tide somewhat this year, with more first time nominees and better definitions of categories, eventually they will become irrelevant.  So many shows will be inaccessible to so many people that no consensus can form as to who is worthy of distinction.  I only watch two of the Best Comedy nominees; why should I care?  I don’t have time to track down the others, or I don’t subscribe to HBO or Amazon Prime. 

Every year humans are capable of watching an increasingly smaller fraction of the televised universe.  Eventually everyone will watch shows that cater to their niche, and no one will care about shows from other providers.  Then we can have a hundred Emmy Awards; broadcast, basic cable, internet, etc. 

Bruce Springsteen’s lament that there’s “57 channels and nothing on” will be an understatement.  There will be 10,000 channels, and people will think there’s nothing on 9,990 of them.

The 2015 Emmy Nominations

The 2015 Emmy Nominations are out!  Let the kvetching begin!

 

There seems to be general agreement among the sources I consulted that this year’s Emmy nominations are a slight improvement over previous years, meaning that they suck less.  There do seem to be fewer nominations-by-rote than before, but for every rubber stamped unworthy booted from the ranks of nominees (Jim Parsons’ performance on The Big Bang Theory is brilliant, but it is a one trick pony that needs no further encouragement) there seems to be a deserving repeat nominee kicked out as well.  Cutting down on the number of Supporting Actor nominees from Modern Family is laudable, but did Ed O’Neill have to be one of the ones not nominated?

 

My biggest gripe (now that our long national nightmare of Tatiana Maslany not being nominated for Orphan Black has been resolved) is the failure of Ellie Kemper to get a nomination for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.  Not only did she give the best performance by an actress in a comedy that I’ve seen since Felicity Huffman in Sports Night, but the series relied on her character being perceived as “special” and she delivered in spades.  It was nice to see the show nominated for Best Comedy and several of her co-stars nominated (although I suspect Jane Krakowski’s pick was more a nod to her prior work on 30 Rock and Ally MacBeal), it remains inconceivable that the show would have worked at all without her brilliant performance in a very nuanced role.

 

One of the (not surprising) nominees from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was Guest Actor Jon Hamm, who is probably more likely to pick up an Emmy for his work on the series Mad Men.  Thanks to Mad Men’s strategy of postponing its final season, he now faces a very thin class in the Best Actor in a Drama category. Most of the competition he’s lost too previously is gone (although Kyle Chandler managed to sneak in for a new show), and the fact that Jeff Daniels and Chandler have won before actually hurts their chances to repeat.  Kevin Spacey deserved the Emmy for House of Cards’ first season but it has been diminishing returns since then.  The only possible thing that could upset Hamm finally winning the Emmy as Don Draper is if Better Call Saul picks up where Breaking Bad left off and Bob Odenkirk follows in Bryan Cranston’s footsteps.

 

There is no broadcast network series nominated for Best Drama; only the unstoppable Modern Family and the departing Parks & Recreation are nominated in the Best Comedy category.  I’m not sure what the most obscure outpost to secure a major nomination might be, but I think it’s something called Acorn-TV getting a best TV movie nomination for the awkwardly titled Agatha Christies’ Poirot Curtain: Poiriot’s Last Case.

 

Louis C.K. picked up six nominations by himself, three for performing, two for writing and one for directing.  He’s a talented guy.

 

Will someone explain this to me: these are the Primetime Emmy Awards, Saturday Night Live comes on at 11:30 PM Saturdays, and its cast members are called The Not Ready for Primetime Players; so how is SNL eligible for Primetime Emmys?  It makes no sense.

 

There is now a category called “Best Narration.”  Where was this category when Ron Howard was doing brilliant work on Arrested Development?

 

I predict the run of The Daily Show progeny winning Best Variety Series will continue with “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” following up ten wins by The Daily Show and two by The Colbert Report.

 

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt picked up seven nominations, but was denied ones for Main Title Design and Main Title Theme.  That’s like not nominating Jon Hamm for Mad Men; simply nuts.

 

Predictions?  Best Drama: Mad Men one last time.  Best Comedy: Louie ends the Modern Family juggernaut.  Best Actor, Drama: Jon Hamm, Mad Men.  Best Actor, Comedy: Jeffery Tambor, Transparent. Best Actress Drama: Elizabeth Moss, Mad Men.  Best Actress, Comedy: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep.  Outstanding Variety Show, Talk: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Outstanding Variety Show, Sketch: Inside Any Shumer.  Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series: Community (yes, the show was nominated for Stunt Coordination, and for the second year in a row.  Go figure).

Don't watch sausage being made

H.L. Mencken once said “For every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.”  Stephen Leacock once described the actions of a character who “flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”  Both of these quotations were in full display in the California legislature this week.

In the wee hours of June 16^th an apartment balcony in Berkeley, California collapsed, killing six people and injuring seven.  Less than a month later the legislator in whose district the tragedy occurred declared that she knew exactly what happened, who was at fault, and had devised hastily written legislation to make sure that such an accident would never, ever happen again.  Maybe someday the California legislature will figure out how to outlaw rainy days during picnics; oh wait, given the drought, maybe they have.

The bill in question, SB 465, is what is called a “gut and amend” meaning that a bill is significantly along the legislative process when its contents are taken out and replaced by something completely different; it is a way legislators have of circumventing the annoying legislative process. The contents of SB 465 were gutted and replaced with a proposal to require general contractors to, among other things, report to the Contractors State License Board any settlement they make concerning a dispute that is for more than $50,000.

If I was truly cynical I would claim that the bill authors, Senators Jerry Hill and Loni Hancock, were taking advantage of a tragedy to pander for votes.  But I won’t.  I suspect both authors are moved by the tragedy and sincerely believe in their proposal.  The problem is they are both utterly incapable of thinking logically.

At the hearing on the bill the industry associations representing contractors pointed out a plethora of problems with the proposal.  There is no evidence at this time that the collapse was due to general contractor negligence.  Settlements by general contractors do not imply fault and are a cost of doing business, and in fact this bill would encourage lawyers to threaten lawsuits or offer settlements just below the $50,000 threshold.  A $50,000 settlement, while possibly significant in regards to a $300,000 home, would be de minimus on a multi-million dollar construction project. 

If I heard correctly on my audio feed, I believe Senator Hill said that he agreed with all of the objections except that he still urged an Aye vote.  I expected him to stand up and shout, “For God’s sake, we have to do something NOW!!!”  When some members of the committee suggested holding the bill over until next year, Senators Hill and Hancock stressed the urgency of doing something immediately or other people would die.

So apparently the goal of the California legislature is to abolish death (unless you are actually dying, then they want to help it along.). 

When someone else pointed out that we really did not yet know what the cause of the balcony collapse was, Senator Hill replied with certitude that we did know, as if the writings of the San Francisco Chronicle had acquired the verity of the Word of God.

It is not known what caused the balcony collapse; it could have been poor design, negligent maintenance, misconduct by a prior tenant, inadequate building inspection, or excessive weight being applied (preliminary analysis indicated wood supports were degraded by dry rot, but the reason for the dry rot is not evident).  It is not known whether requiring contractors to report settlements to the CSLB would prevent such occurrences, partly because we don’t know that the contractor is at fault, partly because shutting down every contractor who settled a claim would cripple the building industry. 

So, we don’t know the problem, and we don’t know if this solution would fix the problem we assume we have, but according to the authors the bill has to be passed immediately.  Fortunately people with saner heads than Senators Hill and Hancock prevailed and the bill did not get out of committee.

Of course Senator Hancock declared this exhibition of sanity to be a sign that the legislature was ineffective and this would “shake people’s confidence in government.”  Frankly, I’m encouraged any time the forces of logic and reason can prevail over the forces or irrationality and nonsense.

There are systems in place to deal with incidents like this.  Buildings are required to be inspected; contractors are held liable if they are proven to be negligent; firms that do poor work go out of business. No system is perfect, and tragedies still happen.  Not every tragedy requires new laws.

In April of 2007 a truck carrying gasoline crashed in Oakland, injuring the driver but otherwise just causing damage to the freeway overpass.  Once it came out that the driver had a criminal record, someone introduced a bill prohibiting ex-cons from driving fuel trucks, even though there was no connection between the crash and the driver’s status as an ex-con (it was pointed out that truck driving is one of the few jobs ex-cons can assimilate into easily).  Like H. L. Mencken said: an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Someone needs to be fired

The Republican Presidential candidate merry-go-round continues to spin; the most recently announced candidate is Donald Trump.  And across America, comedians wept for joy.

Lily Tomlin once said that the problem with being a cynic is you just can’t keep up; the problem with making fun of Republican Presidential candidates is that they keep getting funnier.  Donald Trump is the perfect storm of a Republican candidate—he has never had a single rational thought go through his rug-covered head in his life, and he has no filter between his brain and his mouth.  Other GOP politicians are probably as stupid as Trump, maybe stupider (if that is possible; at some point you just hit bottom), but as professional politicians they don’t announce what’s piled up in their attic.  You can say one thing about candidate Donald Trump: anything he says is an idea he has sincerely believed in for at least 30 seconds.

I’ve read several reports that the existing GOP presidential field is unsure how to react to Trump; on the one hand, they want to widen the GOP’s gates to millions of Hispanic voters, but on the other hand they don’t want to offend Trump’s vast legion of supporters who agree with his sentiment that immigrants from Mexico are criminals and rapists.  What to do, what to do?

First of all, it is typical of politicians to think there is some middle ground that can satisfy voters with Hispanic backgrounds and virulent racists who want to build a 20 foot high wall on the Mexican border.  On other issues the GOP don’t have trouble picking a side; no Republican stays up nights wondering how to increase his (or her, but mostly his) appeal to gun control advocates, or people who think abortion should be legal just because the Supreme Court says it is.  It’s a simple choice—either woo Latino voters, or say that Trump has some darned good ideas that you’ll look into once you’re elected and kiss the Hispanic vote goodbye.

If it is simply a matter of electoral math, the calculus should be simple: the number of Hispanic voters far exceeds the number of people who support Trump’s demagoguery.  Besides, most Trump supporters don’t vote because they don’t know their own birthdate and therefore aren’t registered.

But secondly, this isn’t some nuanced point of national policy; this is a megalomaniac spouting the most vitriolic, racist nonsense a “candidate” for national office has spouted since George Wallace in 1968.  Any Republican candidate who has any remnant of a soul should have one response—call Trump a lunatic whose values are NOT shared by the Republican Party and move on.  Anyone hesitating in denouncing Trump because there might be some political gain from appearing to support him should be disqualified from holding elective office. 

To badly misquote Mark Twain, always tell the truth because you’ll satisfy your friends and amaze everyone else.  If the Republican Party wants to have any credibility that it wants to lead all Americans and not just a cabal of super-wealthy White Men, then they need to turn their collective backs on Donald Trump now.  The fact that this hasn’t happened proves either that they agree with him, or they are afraid of him.  In either case, they can’t be trusted with any position of responsibility in the American government.

Will the 226th best golfer in the world please go away?

One of the things that is great about sports is that outcomes are quantifiable. Objective.  Who’s the best basketball team? The Golden State Warriors (unless Cleveland fans want to whine like babies about some of their players being hurt during some really important games).  Who’s the best woman’s tennis player? Anyone who doesn’t answer “Serena” needs a reality check.  Sport celebrates the best and ignores the rest.

With one exception.  ESPN cannot go a week, maybe a day, without talking about the 226^th best golfer in the world.  There are 225 golfers who are superior to this player, based on the PGA rankings of July 5, 2015.  The 226^th best golfer in the world used to be very good, but he hasn’t won a major tournament in seven years.  This year he has shot a round of 80 or higher three times, including an 85 at The Memorial.  His highest finish so far this year was tying for 17^th place at two tournaments.

I am at a loss to understand why ESPN remains fixated on the 226^th best golfer in the world.  They could spend more time talking about Thaworn Wiratchant, who is number 220.  Or profile Colt Knost, who is 206^th.  I would like to know more about Andrew Dodt at 151^st.  But no, ESPN will fill countless hours asking the question of whether the 226^th best golfer in the world is “back” because had an impressive Greenbriar Classic, where he tied for 32^nd.  Yes, tying for 32^nd is considered an impressive showing for the 226^th best golfer in the world.

The 226^th best golfer in the world is probably past his prime, although in golf people can still win or at least challenge into their 50s. He has suffered numerous serious injuries, several to parts of his body that are important to golfers (legs, back).  He has not shown any pattern of development, any sign of progress towards regaining his past greatness; he misses a cut, or shoots an 85, everyone declares him finished, and then they predict he’ll win the next major because he shoots a couple of rounds under 70 at a tournament where seven under par is only good enough for 32^nd place.

Will the 226^th best golfer in the world ever win another major?  Will Rafa Nadal be knocked out of four consecutive Wimbledons by players ranked outside the top 100?  It could happen; it might happen.  But until it happens there is no evidence for such optimism. Of the four majors in 2014, the 226^th best golfer in the world did not play in two, missed the cut at the PGA Championship, and finished 69^th at the Open Championship.  It will be hard for the 226^th best golfer in the world to catch Jack Nicklaus for most majors won with results like that.

I do not wish the 226^th best golfer in the world ill.  I respect the fact that he has shown brilliance at a game that has frustrated millions. I acknowledge that he has broken down racial and cultural barriers through his hard work and excellence.  Even if he doesn’t quite catch Jack Nicklaus for most majors won, there is still an argument to be made that he is the best golfer of all time, given the increased difficulty of beating the field now compared to the 1960’s.

I just wish ESPN would shut up about the 226^th best golfer in the world.

The Supreme Court isn't that liberal

At the climax of the musical 1776, the fate of America as a new nation comes down to the vote of a single individual.  On that momentous occasion, the decision is made based on what would assure the voter the greatest anonymity.  In the play and the movie versions, delegate James Wilson decides to vote for the American colonies to leave Great Britain because otherwise his name would go down in history as the man who blocked American independence; his desire was to be remembered (if at all) as just one of those who voted for it.

There has been much analysis of the recent Supreme Court decisions long the “liberal/conservative” axis, and while that has been the standard for several decades, I think it may have out-lived its usefulness with the Roberts Court.  I think many of the recent decisions that have been perceived as “liberal” (supporting the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage) are better explained by the Court simply keeping its head down, just like James Wilson.

I think Chief Justice Roberts’ opinions are driven more by his philosophy of how the Supreme Court should be perceived by the public rather than political belief.  It used to be that every year in June the Supreme Court would hand down dozens of opinions, many of whose titles would become instantly recognizable.  The Court would issue sweeping decisions that would transform American society, from Miranda to Roe v. Wade to Bush v. Gore.

Recently the number of “name” decisions has diminished, as the Court has avoided many debates and limited their holding in others to narrowly apply only to the parties in the case, making no sweeping conclusions. I suspect that Robert’s goal is to diminish the role of the Supreme Court in resolving social debates, allowing the political process to take a more demonstrative role.  For decades, particularly since the warren Court, the Supreme Court has protected the rights of the minorities against the wishes of the politically powerful; I believe Roberts wants “democratic” political forces to win, whether the political winds blow to the left or to the right.

Take the decision supporting the Affordable Care Act (ACA), NFIB v. Sebelius, 132 S.Ct. 2566 (Roberts 2012). If the Roberts court had followed the lead of most conservatives in striking down the ACA, it would have firmly established the supremacy of the Judicial branch over the Legislative and Executive branches.  Nine unelected old men (and women) would have thwarted the popular will of the people acting through Congress and the President.  The Roberts court would have risked being equated with the obstructionist court in the early days of the Franklin Roosevelt administration, which struck down aspects of FDR’s economic recovery plan based, not on legal principles, but on a conservative economic philosophy. 

Roberts didn’t want to hand social liberals a complete victory, so he voted to uphold the ACA but based his reasoning not on the ubiquitous Commerce Clause, but on Congress’ power to levy taxes.  This simultaneously reins in the Supreme Court’s power while not giving Congress carte blanche, and reminding people of the least liked aspect of the ACA, the fact that technically it imposes a “tax” on people who refuse to buy health insurance. 

Similarly, with gay marriage, Roberts chose to get out front with the liberals on the Court and “ride the wave” of growing support for same sex couples.  Support for same sex marriage increased faster than, for example, support for interracial marriage, which the court took nearly two centuries to approve.  Striking down gay marriage would have created a firestorm of protest in many parts of the country; making gay marriage universal will engender far less outrage and will be concentrated in mostly Southern states.

Analyzing Chief Justice John Roberts’ recent decisions on a liberal/conservative axis makes less sense than looking at them through the lens of judicial activism/judicial passivism.  By systematically lowering the profile of the Supreme Court in resolving major social and political issues, Roberts is trying to ensure that the Court will never revert back to being the driving force behind social change in America that is was under Chief Justices Earl Warren and Warren Earl Burger.