Because what America needs is a way to further devalue the democratic process. pic.twitter.com/LfoR51Srr1
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) January 5, 2016
Donald Trump is the harbinger of our political future. From the Hollywood Reporter:
Showtime is investing in the 2016 election. The cable network is partnering with Bloomberg Politics on a new weekly series, appropriately titled The Circus, which will air from January through November.
“Americans are captivated by the 2016 presidential election, and a real-time political series of this nature has never been done before,” said Showtime Networks president David Nevins. “People don’t want to wait a year to see how and why things played out and the impact they had. Everything today is immediate, so there’s no better time to change the way American politics are covered. Mark [Halperin] and John [Heilemann] are the preeminent chroniclers of the presidential scene with their deeply influential books, and I’m thrilled that, along with Mark McKinnon, they will bring their years of expertise and the pedigree of Bloomberg Politics to Showtime in a truly dynamic and innovative way with The Circus.”…
From Showtime’s advertising:
… THE CIRCUS will follow multiple individual stories and key characters from the campaigns and capture their unique perspectives in weekly half-hour shows between January and November. With intimate, behind-the-scenes access, cameras will offer viewers a look at what the public rarely sees and explore the high human drama inherent in the pursuit of the Oval Office…
Under the leadership of the Game Change guys and “No Labels” McKinnon. It’ll be a yooooge, very classy, no-limits game-changing series — bigly.
***********
Apart from despairing for the future, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
jl
making emergency plans to never be exposed to such a dumb show.
Amir Khalid
In America, only one side does it.
? Martin
Thankfully I don’t have a Showtime sub so there’s no way I can even accidentally be exposed to that derp.
kindness
Anything written by Halperin has to be wrong.
When did Showtime go AOL on us?
schrodinger's cat
Don’t have Showtime. Even when I had cable I would change the channel when Mark Halperin’s mug showed up on the screen. Pass.
Bobby Thomson
What kind of bread pairs with this?
Howard Beale IV
Kodak is bringing back Super 8 cameras and film.
dmsilev
@Bobby Thomson: Banana bread, maybe?
Arm The Homeless
This has been the expected outcome from anyone who ever watched an episode of Survivor. This is simply another vector for ignorant slobs to fuck around and elect Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
Are we going to let the tweeting audience choose the VP?
We are fucked
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
There’s still a high demand for them at film schools. When I was getting my screenwriting degree about 10 years ago, they were buying Super-8 cameras from Russia off eBay to keep students supplied.
Villago Delenda Est
I am not “captivated.” The worthless offal of the MSM are “captivated”. I am disgusted, particularly with the parade of shit that is the GOP hopefuls.
The day the exsanguinated body of Mark Halperin is found in a back alley in New York will be a great day for the species.
Mike in NC
This tripe from Showtime is about as appealing as watching the vile “Kate Plus Eight” on TLC, or “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”. Cable TV is the vast new wasteland of derp.
jl
@Bobby Thomson: Sour $Dough$
a different chris
Yes, I’m ‘captivated’ by what by all appearances is the steady march towards Civil War v2.0. I’m sure it will make great light TV viewing.
Mike J
@Mnemosyne:
When I was acting in my freinds’ films, they were using hand cranked Bolexes. Bolices seems like it should be the proper plural of Bolex. Whevs. Certainly kept the shot length down.
Baud
Odd. Showtime hasn’t contacted me yet.
Tommy
Clearly what is wrong with politics in this country. Why we can get a Trump.
I often note here my father is a moderate Republican. He, because of our family ties to a community going back 100+ years, has huge name ID in his town which is really the entire voting population in his Congressional district. He has been asked many times to run for office.
And like Trump, if push comes to shove, at a smaller level he could self-fund the campaign ….
He laughes at people that suggest this.
Been asked so many times he has a few “canned” things he tells them.
1. People will try to dig up dirt on my family/friends. My father is 67 and has never even had a parking ticket. But my brother and myself are not perfect. We have not harmed anybody, nothing close, but at a time or two in our lives done things we should not have done. Apart of a public record. He finds any of this unacceptable at many levels. To attack him through other family members.
2. He won’t call ANYBODY to ask for much less BEG for money. NEVER!
3. If he was in DC and talking about say, a women’s right to have birth control or climate change is a reality, and he was told those things are not true, he’d tell those people they are shit all stupid and laugh and mock them. Actively mock them.
4. If the RNC called him to tell him to change his vote because of XYZ he’d tell them to go pound dirt.
5. Back to the third point, my father doesn’t suffer fools lightly. You say stupid shit he will call you one it.
But they still ask him to run.
Mike J
@Baud: Hold out for Cinemax after dark.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
I still think he should just change party registration and become a Democrat. He’s never again going to be welcome in the GOP with attitudes like that — and I think you’ve said that your mother has already pretty much seen the light, yes? Tommy’s dad is welcome. All are welcome.
debbie
I hope they ask McKinnon for tips on how to sneak a candidate’s debate book into his/her opponent’s headquarters. Now that would be captivating!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike J: That does seem much more baudy.
Satby
It’s just the logical end point of treating politics and elections in this country like a televised team sport. We even have the reality tv guy leading on the Repuke side. It’s all a game, it doesn’t have any real life consequences, right?
SFAW
OK, I realize I’m an old fart, and don’t understand all the new lingo that you hepcat kids come up with — for example, “sketchy” has a different meaning for me than for You Kids What Are On My Lawn — but since when did people start using the word “preeminent” to mean “most clueless motherfuckers, and with a both-sides-do-it agenda, covering politics today”? Am I THAT out of touch?
Noah Webster is rolling over in his grave
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh yeah mom came over in 2008. Dad might have, maybe long before, but he won’t talk about it. We can talk politics for hours and hours. But if I ask him who he voted for he says that is a private matter. I only needed to hear that once and never have asked again.*
So with that said I don’t push too hard with my parents on politics but I have with my father. He worked 30+ years at high levels in the DoD. You might think as a Republican he’d be pro-war. Nothing could be further from the truth. I like to joke my father wrote the manual on the use of air power during a war. He kind of did.
He was against the war in Iraq from the start. Against almost everything we are doing now. Against just dropping domb or droneing people.
I’ve told him maybe on taxes we don’t see eye to eye, but you are a liberal and you just can’t/won’t admit it.
*I know he is a registered Republican because of a few things, like sitting on the board of the local community college, where you have to declare your political affiliation.
Archon
@Satby:
People on ESPN are held more accountable for poor analysis then beltway political commentators.
Mike J
@SFAW:
WereBear
This is one of my life mottoes.
Baud
@Mike J:
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Good idea. That would be consistent with my campaign promise to engage in constant nudity and to use “bumfuzzle” more frequently.
Baud
@Mike J:
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Good idea. That would be consistent with my campaign promise to engage in constant nudity and to use “bumfuzzle” more frequently.
SFAW
@Mike J:
Uh … OK.
Can you translate that from English into ‘Murican? But I still don’t see how it would apply to Tweedledumb and Tweedledumberer.
pea
been there , done that…the kardashians, real housewives from anywhere, teen moms, bad girls…hedge fund managers, fucking corrupt republican penis ring toadies, home schooled idiots .the lowest common denominator brings everyone down.
wal-mart, starbucks…
the death of the oceans, the burning of rain forests…
donald trump?
ted cruz?
marco eubio?
jeb bush?
kiss this our home goodbye.
SiubhanDuinne
@Satby:
Exactly. Whenever a candidate suspends his campaign, the media reaction is essentially “He got voted of the island” or “YOU are the weakest link!” I’m just waiting for the inevitable day when Trump either storms off in a huff or is soundly defeated in a significant election, and the equally inevitable headline riffs on “You’re fired!” from our creative, innovative, and original media.
benw
Aww, the villagers get their own show. They’re so cute!
Tommy
@Satby:
That is a pretty profound statement and I think accurate.
My district had a Democrat in our House seat for 60 years straight. Well until last year and we elected a “Tea Party” guy.
I am at the local convenience store the other day. Guy working tells me his girlfriend’s apartment had water up to her second floor. She was a renter and lost everything pretty much, including her car which ended up floating away. No renters insurance.
I suggested she call our Reps office, Mike Boost, say she is a resident of his district, and ask for the phone numbers to call for help/relief. You know make them do some services.
I know we flood here a lot and we have Federal, if not State programs to help.
I would learn a day or so later Boost’s office almost laughed at her and didn’t address anything she asked.
So that happened …… but then again if you want less government I guess the best way to get their is to do everything to ensure government doesn’t work, even if actively undermining it is your only option.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
You appear to be assuming that there’s any in there to begin with. Might want to check your assumption(s).
the Conster
Twitter has taught me that Trump’s followers are single minded and completely sure that whatever he says, will be done. Because he builds things that are really big. I keep hearing the song “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” in exchanges with them – they’ve slipped from the grasp of the forces that have kept this country together over the “illegals”, and as much as I think Trump will implode, the darkness that he represents will not.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
Well, he may claim to be a Republican, but I’d bet good cash money he votes for Dems whenever the opportunity arises :-)
And, actually, good. There are doubtless many others like him. If the GOP thinks it has more true believers than it really does, I’m fine with that :-)
SFAW
@srv:
Well, you’ll be disappointed to know that Jeb!?!?! ain’t gonna make it. And he certainly is more of an economic leader than any of the current crop polling at/near the top of the Rethug Partei.
BillinGlendaleCA
Looks as though the rain has ended for today, they predicted about 1″, we got 2.5″. It doesn’t sound like the hills have washed into the basin so we’re good.
Baud
@srv:
Unfortunately, Obama is term limited.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SFAW: I think the troll was thinking of the guy who goes bk and stiffs his creditors when things don’t go his way.
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne:
I keep thinking that. I mean like 24/7. Dad has a PhD. So when the topic of things like climate change comes up and all the other people with PhDs in that field say it is a fact, he tends to agree with them. I don’t have a PhD, just an MA, but I know the effort it took to get it. So when other people that have spent their entire adult life trying to learn about this or that, I tend to listen to them and not some tool on Fox Noise or even MSNBC.
mellowjohn
too bad Showtime already has a series called “Shameless.” that would be a much better title for this POS.
SiubhanDuinne
Would that our elected officials were that wise. Maybe you’re the one in your family who should run for office.
NotMax
Meh. Mark, Mark and John: The Three Kluges.
Shall very quickly devolve into treacle and maudlin soap opera.
But with more T&A (it is pay cable, after all).
SiubhanDuinne
CNN seems to be really fixated on the fact that President Obama cried for the children massacred at Sandy Hook.
Any bets on what one of Anderson Cooper’s first questions will be during his much-hyped Thursday night interview with the President?
This President — we’ve all said it before, many times — can’t win for losing. He’s being pilloried and mocked by conservative media for showing genuine emotion in talking about violently dead children. Someone on Fox apparently asserted that he had a raw onion hidden at the podium so he could cry fake tears.
But if he hadn’t teared up, I can almost guarantee that the same people would accuse him of being cold and unfeeling.
Can’t win for losing.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: I was surprised they’re still making Super 8 film stock. Then again, we still have a casette plant here in the good ol’ U S of A, so…..
Schlemazel
@the Conster:
I love that scene, a perfect transition from bucolic bliss to bellicose bluster
Tomorrow Belongs to Me
PurpleGirl
@Tommy:
*I know he is a registered Republican because of a few things, like sitting on the board of the local community college, where you have to declare your political affiliation.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t change his registration — he’s very committed to the Community College and his work on their Board.
Keith G
@SiubhanDuinne: Don’t amp up needless pessimism. The Prez did a masterful job and while the lovers will pour love and the haters will spew hate, look to those in the middle. I made it a point to “quiz” a few nonaligned folks I know and to a person they were moved and impressed.
He can win for losing, as that what he has often done over the last seven years.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: Well if you could peg my father on one issue it wouldn’t even be close. Education. So maybe.
Schlemazel
@NotMax:
I bet there will be at least one earnest and true reporter digging for facts and working tirelessly to expose the truth.
I believe the kids call this a ‘Mary Jane’
WereBear
@Baud: What about kerfuffle? I demand you commit to kerfuffle!
SFAW
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Does that guy stiff his creditors Yuuugely and in a very classy way? If so: yeah, that’s what I was assuming. (Just trying to make sure I’m on the same page as you.)
SFAW
@WereBear:
Isn’t kerfuffling outlawed by the Geneva Convention?
PurpleGirl
@SiubhanDuinne:
a raw onion hidden at the podium so he could cry fake tears.
Don’t if I’m different or weird but peeling onions and chopping them never makes me tear up. Never.
SiubhanDuinne
@Keith G:
You are quite right, and thank you. I should have specified that he “can’t win for losing” among the RW media (and much of the GOP generally). The sad truth is, those are the ones who get most of the oxygen, but you are correct that there are many others who are supportive of the President’s initiatives.
SiubhanDuinne
@PurpleGirl:
No, actually it doesn’t make me tear up either, but some woman on Fox accused him of using the old onion trick.
Tommy
I am about to say something I think might not be popular. I don’t mean that to be the case, but this is a pet peeve of mine for years.
I live a few miles from the Mississippi. Where I live it floods a lot. I’ve posted a number of comments about how hard it was to get all the water out of my basement.
But with that said, as sad as I feel for people that lost everything, water up to the second story of their homes, STOP BUILDING HOMES IN THE MISSISSIPI flood plain.
I can throw my mouse from where I type this and hit a 5,000 acre field. Walk a block to my left and there is an expanse of fields that run farther than the eye can see. Turn the soil and it is as black as tar/coal. Why we grow much of the food that both Americans and the world as a whole eats.
But there is science behind the soil. The Mississippi floods and has for tens of thousands of years. Well millions really. When it does the silt from the river is placed on this farm land. It has created a soil and an area of this county that is a bounty of riches. I wouldn’t think I’d have to say this, but if a Republican is here that is kind of how things work.
My town was one of the first in Illinois. If you head to the local historical museum (and I have BTW) and read the letters of the first German settlers that came here it will make you cry. Several families took a “steamer” from New Orleans thinking they’d settle in St. Louis. In the 1820’s they found the city dirty and lawless. They sold everything they had and started to walk East. About 30 miles. They had no idea what would happen, what they would do.
When they came onto the place that would be my town they openly talked about putting a spade into the ground and dropping to their knees and crying. The riches. In soil, trees, wild game was beyond anything they could understand.
They wrote back to Germany and said COME TO AMERICA! Why when I was a kid German was a language class offered before Spanish. It wasn’t that long ago, you could speak German in a local store just as much as English. But I guess that is another comment …..
Let me say it again, don’t build a house in the Missippi flood plains. It will flood. That is what the Missippi does pretty often. Then when it happens you are confused. Just stop it.
PurpleGirl
@Tommy: I’m quite sure that the Ancient Egyptians didn’t build right up to the edge of the Nile. It floods yearly and the whole year’s crops depend on the amount of the flood. They even built several level markers so they could record what the flood was year to year. They built their towns a bit back from the river’s edge — the edge was too important for farming to use for housing.
WereBear
What the capital F is the next step? Their heads spontaneously explode like in Scanners?
The Lodger
@PurpleGirl: Jeeze. Next thing, you’ll tell me the Egyptians didn’t bury their dead and store the national food supply in the same buildings.
SFAW
@WereBear:
One can only hope.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: Alton is kind of a neat town. Always the hardest hit by flooding in the area. There is a hardware store in the town, been there since the 1870s. Less than 100 yards from the actual Mississippi river. They have marks on the wall as you enter showing the water levels of different floods. A few are above my head.
Just stop building in the freaking Mississipi flood plain. Stop it.
Look I got a lot of ties to Louisana. I kept almost a daily post-Katrina blog for 3+ years. When people said why have a city below sea level, don’t rebuild, I ranted against them. But this is different.
You/I/we know they own houses that will flood. It is just a statement of fact. Stop buying houses there.
Tommy
@The Lodger: LOL. I find it funny that the world will give us a flood of a major river, that gives us silt that will allow us to grow just about anything, but let’s leve that off. Chop it up. Then use chemicals to do what the Earth provides.
When I watch shows about Egypt and other ancient nations they seem to be far smarter then we can grasp …..
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
I can’t be in the same room as someone chopping onions … but it doesn’t look much like sad crying.
Frankly, I think that a-hole said it because she really wasn’t all that upset by Sandy Hook and doesn’t understand why other people were.
the Conster
@Schlemazel:
Yup, For me, that whole scene is about the old man in the wire rimmed glasses, registering dread and disbelief about what’s coming. Half the people in this country are itching for fascism, totally convinced they’re patriots.
Tommy
@WereBear: Wait a second. That is a real thing? Obama had an onion?
Look I can be a heartless person. I can count on one hand the times I’ve cried in the last 30 years. But recently I find some leakage of my eyes for this or that. I cry for pets abused and well gun victims. The level of pain I feel is for gun victims is something I can’t put into words.
the Conster
@the Conster: and by wire rimmed, I meant horn rimmed. Also too.
Anne Laurie
@Schlemazel:
That would be a ‘Mary Sue‘, sweetie. MaryJane is a different slang term, with a rather longer history…
(And if you’d told me, back when we were inventing fanfic, that ‘Mary Sue’ would be in general use 40 years later… I’d have assumed you were consuming a little too much of that ‘mary jane’!)
Satby
@Tommy: no he didn’t have an onion. The Foxbot accused him of that, it wasn’t true.
J R in WV
Here’s a man, a good man, with at least some responsibility to protect the people of the nation, even from each other. And here he is, listing the many times people have been harmed and killed by their fellow Americans. People that he is trying to protect, and, so far, hasn’t been able to protect.
Tears from a stone!
He preached a eulogy at the scene of one mass murder, of one of the victims, that was a gifted and inspired Christian sermon. And evil bastards still call him a mooslim Kenyan traitor! I know who the traitors are.
President Obama is one of the bravest and most patriotic men in America. He stands there in the spotlight, on the bullseye of the target, with his wife and children, knowing that there are KKK members drooling for the chance to kill him. Yet when he speaks of those killed in tragic mass murders, he cries for those most affected by the killing.
As I have aged I have become more prone to cry for the evil in the world, and so I understand Obama and his emotion. We will never have a better man as President. We may have Presidents who are as good a leader, even better at being President. But we will never have a better man for our President.
mclaren
If they’re doing a live series about the Republican primaries, they should call it “The Cesspool.”
They could intersperse it with clips from Creature From the Black Lagoon. For local color.