Educational TV

I occasionally run into people who tell me with obvious self-satisfaction that they don't watch TV.

Well, except for PBS.

It's probably because I hang out with the liberal elite.

What these fine people, with their impressive educational credentials, seem to be missing is that they are depriving themselves of the fine educational value of modern television.

For example, without television -- well, television ads to be specific -- how would anyone know that having an erection for more than 4 hours is an actual certified medical condition. Priapism, it's called, I learned from the helpful sellers of Cialis.

Like any good lesson, though, the Cialis revelation raises whole new questions. Like, 4 hours? Seriously? That long before it's a medical condition? How did that get set as -- pardon the choice of terminology -- the cut-off? At 3 hours and 30 minutes, all is well? Just a really good batch of Cialis?

Maybe those questions will be addressed in the next ad campaign.

Anyway, the discourse on painfully swollen male genitalia for some reason got me thinking of Robert Novak.

Go figure.

It turns out that Novak could use a little televised education. Which is surprising, since he makes much of his living by appearing on television. It was, in fact, during one of those television appearances last week that the gap in his education was revealed.

Novak, you may recall, is the columnist who revealed to the world that Valerie Plame was a covert operative for the CIA. She had been working extensively on investigation of Iran's nuclear capabilities, so you can see why telling the world (which, for any Fox News viewers who accidentally happen to read this, includes the aforementioned Iran) what she was up to might not have exactly been in the national security interests of the United States.

So last week, Plame went to Congress to explain why outing her to the world was dumb. It was a pretty simple message. Fox News decided to have a commentator during her testimony. Kind of like the color commentary on Monday night football, only even less necessary.

They picked Novak.

'Cuz that's both fair and balanced.

During his commentary, Novak explained that it wasn't all that big a deal that he published Plame's name in one of the most read newspapers in the world. She wasn't covert, he said, and he explained why:

During the 2000 campaign, she gave money to Al Gore. (That's not the reason she isn't covert -- it's just the reason Novak screwed her over). When you donate to a presidential campaign, you are supposed to list your employer. Plame listed a front company. Not the CIA. And that's why she wasn't a covert operative, according to Novak.

No need to read that again. You read it right the first time. It doesn't make any sense, and Novak's an idiot. But that particular aspect of his idiocy could have been cured with just a small dose of TV. Anybody who watches TV knows the spies have to construct a careful front company so they can stay covert and undercover and sexy.

Ok, the last one might only apply to Sidney Bristow on Alias.

The point is, if Novak spent less time on TV, and more time watching TV, he would know that listing a fake employer is how spies stay covert, not how they blow their cover.

Anyone who watches TV know it's the manipulative evil bosses who blow the spies' cover.

You can see that show on PBS. It's called the news.

A Hero Passes. Now What?

Captain America is dead.

Technically, I suppose, he was never alive, except as a collection of drawings and ideas that sprang from the minds of generations of comic book writers and artists. But ideas have life, in their own way, and in last week's issue of the comic book that bears his name, the idea that was Captain America died on the steps of a federal courthouse at the hands of a sniper.

I don't know why Marvel decided to bring this iconic character's story to such a dramatic terminus. Chances are it had more to do with the publisher's bottom line than with the Jeffersonian marketplace of ideas. But whether Marvel intended it or not, Cap's assassination symbolizes more than just a decline in comic book sales.

Captain America, of course, has always been a character rich in symbolism. He debuted a few months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and surged to popularity as a symbol of American freedom and bravery during World War II. Costumed as he was in the Stars n' Stripes, he really couldn't help but stand out as a sort of walking, talking and fighting American flag.

Like many comic book characters of the time, the 1940s Captain America offered a simplistic, one-dimensional portrayal of good versus evil. He was Captain America; he was literally wrapped in the flag. He was good. The flag was good. America was good. By definition, what America did was good. Just what it meant for America to be "good" -- or the ways in which it might fall short of that goal -- never came up.

A couple of decades later, though, when Captain America made his comeback, our collective view of America (and maybe "goodness") had developed some depth and become more subtle. In the 1960s and 70s, wondering about the wisdom of our leaders was no longer the province of select radicals. It began to permeate cross-sections of society, imbed itself in our popular culture. And the good Captain began to reflect that depth. He still stood as a symbol for America, but he no longer took for granted that everything America's government did was right and good. He asserted the right to question his government, to follow his own moral compass, to reject and oppose orders issued by the American government if those orders ran afoul of the American ideal symbolized by his Red, White and Blue uniform.

Don't get me wrong. Captain America was no lefty pacifist. He fought. He killed. He accepted the need for violence as an instrument of policy. It would have been a pretty boring comic book if he spent every issue giving Red Skull a stern lecture on the democratic process.

But Captain America rejected the idea that violence ordered by his government was necessary and justified simply because it was ordered by his government. In recent years, he harbored serious doubts about how the government waged the war on terrorism, questioning surveillance of American citizens and challenging the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. Captain America did not always like what his government was doing in his name.

In our name.

What's great about Captain America is that it's awfully hard to question the patriotism of a guy who runs around in star-spangled tights. When Captain America questions what America is doing, not even Dick Cheney could just write him off as anti-American. As a symbol, Captain America could make us look deeper at what it means to be a patriot, to be a citizen, to love this country.

To be American.

Cap saw America for what it is, or at least what it aspires to be. America is not merely a place on a map. It is not a president or even a whole government. It is not infallible. It is a set of evolving ideals, rooted in the belief that all people are created equal, that government should be of those people, by those people, and for those people. It is a place where dissent is not merely the right of the people, it is their sacred obligation.

Timing is everything. In this case, it is serendipitous that Captain America died in the same week i) a Justice Department audit revealed the FBI's rampant abuse of the Patriot Act, ii) Lewis Libby was convicted of lying to protect his bosses' underhanded tactics; and iii) serious questions were raised about whether U.S. attorneys around the country were fired because they didn't pursue enough investigations of the president's political opponents.

Of course he also died at a time when nearly 70 percent of the nation opposes the president's policies. Dissent is everywhere, and dissent is easy when most people agree with you.

What Captain America showed us, when his book was at its best, is that questioning the government, even when the government is overwhelmingly popular, is the height of patriotism.

But what concerns me about Captain America is that a fictional comic book character understands the essence of American democracy so much better than our non-fictional president.

Some Thoughts on Self-Employment

Regular readers may have noticed a bit of a drop off in the frequency of my posts, as well as a precipitous decline in their length. This, it turns out, is a side effect of having opened my own law firm.

So I figured as a sort of blogospheric karma thing, if running my own firm has been distracting me from serving the loyal reading public, then it's only appropriate that I at least share some thoughts on this departure from steady pay into the adventure of self-employment.

So, here goes:

WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?

I suspect there are others, but somehow none of them manage to get heard over that one.