Thursday, February 25, 2010

Reading is Dangerous

Last week, a 40-year-old Iowa man named Christopher Handley was sentenced to six months in prison, three years of supervised release and five years of probation. His crime? No, he didn't torture anyone. They don't throw you behind bars for that in this country. They put you on Meet the Press. Mr. Handley didn't harm anyone at all except, quite arguably, himself. His crime was that he had a big collection of Japanese manga, some of which depicted underage females engaged in sexual activity.

It is worth noting that nowhere in his alleged crime were there any actual underage females. There were no claims that anyone had actually been molested, either by Handley or by those who made the manga he'd purchased. These were all drawings of imaginary underage females. It is also worth noting that Mr. Handley is an adult with no criminal record — he even served in the U.S. Navy — and it was not claimed that he'd shown his collection to children or in any way tried to replicate any actions depicted in it. He was charged merely with having the stuff in his home for his private inspection.

Initially, he faced up to fifteen years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. A threat of that magnitude is enough to make most people grab for a plea bargain...which Handley did, pleading guilty to charges of possessing "obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children." If he'd maintained his innocence and battled on, it would probably have kept him "imprisoned" (in the non-literal sense) for a lot more than six months. It's a deal anyone might have grabbed...but people should not be put in that situation. And our law enforcement forces and prosecutors should not be wasting time on this kind of thing...a fact they probably know. They can't have believed life in Iowa will be better with Christopher Handley behind bars for six months. At best, they knew it would be an easy "win" and some nice headlines that gave them credit for protecting children.

• Posted at 8:00 PM · LINK

Unhealthy Care

I couldn't bring myself to watch all of today's Health Care Summit. I did see John McCain playing Cranky Old Man with nothing positive to offer. I did see Sen. John Barrasso (a Republican doctor from Wyoming) tell us how a Canadian premier just went to Florida to get heart surgery, which seemed to be another way of saying, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with our health system. It works for rich, important people!" I saw Obama smack down some factually-unsound claims. But most of all, I saw Republicans fall back on their two big cures for whatever's wrong. One is tort reform and the other is selling insurance across state lines. Neither one would do much more than increase profits for insurance companies. Ezra Klein explains why this "opening up the market" is really just another way to further deregulate an industry that's killing people (literally) because it's so unregulated.

• Posted at 2:30 PM · LINK

Today's Bonus Video Link

I was going to wait 'til CBS posted the video of Craig Ferguson's chat with Stephen Fry to link you to it...but a prominent Ferguson fan (prominent enough that he's "followed" on Twitter by Mr. Ferguson's Twitter account) has posted the whole thing in chapters to YouTube. So here's an embed of the opening monologue and then if it intrigues you, you can find your own way to the rest of it.

A couple of comments about the monologue. Ferguson makes the odd point that the studio from which they do his show isn't really large enough for an audience. That's true. One of the things that people don't seem to notice about his Late Late Show is that it's a successful example of something all the networks have been aiming at for some time, which is to drastically reduce the cost of programming. (Mr. Leno's 10 PM show would be the most notable example of an unsuccessful attempt.) Craig's show is very cheap — no band, small writing staff, little in the way of sketches or production values, etc. His long-time competition on NBC, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, was a show that cost two or three times — someone told me five — what the Ferguson program costs to produce, and Jimmy Fallon is only a little cheaper. Someone at CBS and/or David Letterman's company made the decision that they were not going to spend a lot of money on the show that followed Dave. They haven't and it seems to be paying off big for them.

Anyway, I think it was odd that Ferguson made it sound like his show had to be done from that small studio. In the same way, he always complains about the bad lighting on his show like there's no way to change it. He could be in a bigger studio with better lighting. CBS has such things. The folks above him have merely decided not to spend the money.

Also odd was that he said his show's had no promotion and that there are "no bus ads for Craigy, there's no billboards." Uh, yes, there are. I've seen plenty of both in my neighborhood...and I live within walking distance of where Mr. Ferguson tapes so he drives to work past them. Maybe there aren't any if you get more than a few miles from his studio but they do exist. (Back when Pat Sajak did his late night show there, it was said his contract required billboards with his likeness on them in locations where he was likely to drive. There was a huge one right across the street from CBS. More recently, though not at the moment, that billboard had a huge picture of Bill Maher...who does his HBO show from CBS. I think CBS bought it back during the Sajak days and now it always shows someone who's working at Television City in Hollywood. I'm not sure but I believe Mr. Ferguson's Scottish face was on it for a while.)

Anyway, here's Craig. I haven't gotten around to calling for the ratings to see if they dipped. But either way, I hope he does more broadcasts like this. Thanks to Shmuel Ross for letting me know this was up...

• Posted at 11:44 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Robert Schooley sent me a link to this article by Michael Hiltzik, which is kind of a follow-up to the piece here the other day about rich folks paying little or no taxes. It's about how the now-divorced couple that owns the L.A. Dodgers made $108 million over a recent five-year period and paid zero state and federal taxes.

This was something that drove my late father to distraction. He worked for the Internal Revenue Service and hated his job for many, many reasons. One was just seeing how unfair was the spreading-around of the tax burden. He would come home from work some days, shaking his head over the inequity...how some poor guy living off minimum wage and struggling to feed his family would be hit with a huge tax bill while some zillionaire got away without paying a nickel. Too often, it was like famed hotel magnate Leona Helmsley said: "We [the rich] don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

I understand not wanting to pay taxes. Despite the way Conservatives sometimes caricature Liberals, no one likes the idea of taxes, and if I had enough loot to own the Dodgers, I'd tell my accountants to use every legal means to lower my tax bills. What I don't get is why low-income folks who especially resent their tax burden cheer on the rich folks' avoidance and don't demand the laws be adjusted to spread the burden more fairly. I always think of that line in the play 1776 where John Dickinson explains to John Hancock that "most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor." Since the day in which that show was set, it's kind of evolved into "most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming super-rich than face the reality of being poor."

• Posted at 10:50 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

It's more-or-less conventional wisdom that when an incumbent in political office is polling below 50% for some upcoming election, that incumbent is toast. Nate Silver crunches numbers and demonstrates that's not true; that plenty of incumbents get elected again even though at some point, they were below the 50% mark. A good thing to keep in mind.

• Posted at 10:30 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here we have the first five minutes of Craig Ferguson's chat with Stephen Fry. The whole hour has not yet been posted to the CBS website but I assume it will be and will announce that when it is. There's nothing particularly extraordinary in the chat. I just thought it was an interesting conversation and that network television doesn't think people want to watch interesting conversations...

• Posted at 12:32 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Matt Taibbi has become the go-to guy if you want to hear what treacherous bastards the execs at Goldman Sachs were and are, and how their greedy machinations have been responsible for much of this country's current financial tar pit. This is not to say he's totally wrong or totally right, though I suspect he's closer to the latter. This latest article of his will make you laugh and get angry, often both via the same sentence.

• Posted at 12:30 AM · LINK