Seig shares a Toy

Well, here it is... Sunday, the first of 8 consecutive days off.  Vacation.  People have asked me what I'm going to be doing, plans for anything special, and the answer is "not really."  Really, this is a vacation from work.  I don't know how, but for some reason the notion has evolved that 'taking vacation' means going somewhere and spending lots of money.  Not for me.  My definition is solely based on the concept of getting paid to not have to go to work; to be able to do things I find enjoyable without the constraints of a work schedule.
A couple of things about last evening.  When I got home from work I thought I might stream a little of the Olympics... right.  I clicked on the NBC Sports link and got to watch 5 commercials in a row...  that's not good.  There was also a small box in the right hand corner of the my screen: "verify now."  Since I pay for NBC Sports Gold, I figured I'd verify.  Well, it seems that doesn't do it.  Since I don't have FIOS cable I would need to purchase an NBC Sports Package if I wanted to stream the events from Pyongyang.  Sorry.  Guess I'm not going to be streaming the Olympics. 
Then later, when I laid down to go to sleep... in the dark... the dogs jumped up on the bed as usual.  Normally they find a comfortable spot and lay down... not last night.  They seemed restless.  Lying there, with the glow of the nightlight to dim to see anything but shadows, something wet landed on my face, right on my nose and mouth.  It was furry, so I pulled it off and turned on the light.  Big Seig had dropped his soggy, beaver... and it had landed... on my face.  Believe me, I can't think of anything worse then to have a wet, soggy beaver on my face.  So I threw it on the floor and turned the light off, and eventually he laid down too.
Since it's a drizzly, rainy morning, I think I'll go back to bed and take a bit of a nap.  The dogs are already there... and the beaver is no where to be seen.

The Cleavers out live their welcome

A few weeks back I was watching the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and had a really good laugh at a piece in which he showed a clip of Bill O'Reilly lamenting the passing of family values as depicted by the Cleavers in Leave it to Beaver.  I suppose Mr O'Reilly doesn't understand this show was a sitcom and that it included a laugh track because producers felt they needed to tell the American public when they should laugh.  People were being told to laugh at a white, upper class family.  Where as the majority of Americans worked in manufacturing (because those jobs were still in the United States), Ward Cleaver worked in "an office."  He carried a briefcase.  June Cleaver always wore a dress, and those pearls.  Real pearls are expensive, maybe that's why she never took them off.  I've seen the show in repeats and while the episodes are humorous, they are not hysterically funny.  In fact, compare the show to those on air today and they seem more then a little lame.  Yet this is a family, both Mr. O'Reilly and quite a number of conservatives, want to set up as the inspiration of Family Values.  To be honest, the show was popular but never made it into the top ten during its five or six year run.

Soon to be forgotten

Let's be honest, this show would never make it on the air today without it undergoing some massive changes.  To begin with, June would have to start wearing slacks, maybe even jeans, and the pearls would have to go. Oh, and she'd need to get a job.  Ward would have to worry about his job being outsourced to Poland, or Hungary, or Lithuania.  The cast would need to include a Latino and a black and probably a gay or lesbian neighbor.  Beaver and Wally would need to deal with some serious issues, nothing as mundane as getting "C" on a report card, perhaps a friend might be arrested for possession of a controlled substance.

The show was popular and still is to a small group today.  One needs to understand, however, the world is never going to return to the simplicity of the late 1950's and early sixties.  It's time has passed.  This is why, when the show went off the air, it was not replaced by some clone.  People and their attitudes changed and because of that sitcoms changed.  To pluck out a show from the past and say "this is how we need to be" is walking down a dead end road.  As time moves on, and the generation which watched Leave it to Beaver die off, this will become more apparent to everyone except those who live for TV Land.

Fox News is killing the Republican Party

Democrats are ecstatic and Republicans are devastated.  What else can you say about the recent election?  I'll also go so far as to say most Republicans now find themselves in a quandary; how to regroup and proceed when statistically they alienate women and minorities.  I actually work with an associate who was claiming in the break room that Obama won "because the Democrats were loading people into vans, registering them, and taking them to vote."  When I started listing voter polling results he claimed "that's all from the liberal media, who lie," though I'd actually seen the information on number of websites from the Washington Post, and Bloomberg, to MSNBC.  Oh, wait, I'm wrong, there is a bastion of Conservative Honesty on the airwaves and it's called Fox News.  As soon as this associate said that I knew Fox News would kill the Republican Party.  Why?  Ratings!

I'd first read, a number of years ago, the Republican Party playbook was based on the ancient television show Leave it to Beaver and that the family values represented by that fictional family were those they wanted all Americans to aspire to; it doesn't work.  There was a time when the Republican Party was, like the Democratic Party, more centrist.  This is where the majority of Americans sit, leaning a little right here, veering a little left there, but never really straying too far to either side.  The Democrats get this, the Republicans don't.  Fox News doesn't either.  They mistakenly believe, based on high television ratings, that the American People accept Fox as an authority.  While some, like the associate I work with, might, most Americans vote their gut instincts, not the way some news organization wants them to vote.  We are not sheep, well, most of us aren't.

As for the Republican Party?  They've sutured themselves to Fox and as a result are in a terrible dilemma.      They have shut out most Women, Black, and Latino voters because they did not fit in with their Leave it to Beaver playbook.  And, things are only going to get worse for them.  During this past election Puerto Rico voted to apply for statehood.  When this gets ratified there will be even more Hispanics the Republicans will need worry about.