‘This Is Neoliberalism…’

Two excellent videos, on the topic of neoliberalism, were published by BarakalypseNow to YouTube last September. They combine for one hour of viewing time. I wasn’t aware of them immediately thereafter. Had I been, they would have been a Progressives Chat blog topic last fall. But, now I am. And they are this blog entry’s topic.

TV Stars—Meet Oscar!

Rami Malek, star of USA Network’s Mr. Robot, received a 2018 Oscar nomination for Best Actor
as Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards were announced this week, on Tuesday [January 22, 2019], and a pattern has been held. (Here is a link directly to the site of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences: https://oscar.go.com/nominees.)

It used to be television and film stars didn’t mix.

This decade of the 2010s has seen nearly each year bring an Oscar nomination, at the least, to an actor or actress who was or is currently with a television series.

This wasn’t the case in the previous decade, the 2000s. In fact, I find I have to do some research in order to cite particular years, and examples, but which not add up to many consecutive years of such examples. From the 1970s to 2000s, these actors were examples: Cloris Leachman, while starring on CBS’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show, won the 1971 Best Supporting Actress Oscar in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show. … Lee Grant, while starring on her ill-fated NBC comedy series Fay, won the 1975 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Hal Ashby’s Shampoo. … Judd Hirsch, while starring and winning two Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series on ABC’s Taxi, was nominated for the 1980 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Robert Redford’s Best Picture winner Ordinary People. … Louis Gossett Jr., while starring on NBC’s ill-fated The Powers of Matthew Star, won the 1982 Best Supporting Actor Oscar in Taylor Hackford’s An Officer and a Gentleman. …  Denzel Washington, while starring on the final season of NBC’s St. Elsewhere, received his first Oscar nomination for 1987 Best Supporting Actor in Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom. … Christine Lahti, while starring on CBS’s Chicago Hope (and winning the 1997–98 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series), won the 1995 Oscar as co-producer for Best Live Action Short Film (and Lahti-directed) Lieberman in Love. … Helen Hunt, while starring and winning four Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series on NBC’s Mad About You, won the 1997 Best Actress Oscar in James L. Brooks’s As Good As It Gets. … Felicity Huffman, while starring and winning the 2004–05 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series on ABC’s Desperate Housewives, was nominated for the 2005 Oscar for Best Actress in Duncan Tucker’s Transamerica. (It does dawn on me that I may have missed at least one more name. I am not claiming to have provided a full list.)

During this decade, this has been happening nearly every year for someone on television landing an Oscar nomination; in some cases, actually winning.


Here were (and, pending the outcomes of the upcoming 91st Academy Awards, are) the examples from the decade of this decade:

2009

On March 7, 2010, and while starring on her BET series, The Mo’Nique Show, Mo’Nique won the 2009 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Lee Daniels’s Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.

2010

On February 27, 2011, and while starring on HBO’s Treme, Melissa Leo won the 2010 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for David O’Russell’s The Fighter.

2011

On February 26, 2012, and while starring on NBC’s Community, Jim Rash was one of the three writers who won the 2011 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Alexander Payne’s The Descendants. … While starring on DirecTV’s Damages, Glenn Close was nominated for the 2011 Oscar for Best Actress in Rodrigo García’s Albert Nobb. … While starring on HBO’s short-lived drama series Luck, Nick Nolte was nominated for the 2011 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior. … While starring on CBS’s Mike & Molly, and winning the 2010–11 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, Melissa McCarthy was nominated for the 2011 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids. … While starring on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, Kristen Wiig was nominated for the 2011 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Bridesmaids.

2012

With the ceremony held February 24, 2013, and while executive producing and providing voices on his animated Fox comedy series Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane was nominated for the 2012 Oscar for Best Original Song for “Everybody Needs a Friend” from (the MacFarlane-directed) Ted.

2013

On March 2, 2014, and while starring for one season on HBO’s True Detective, which broadcast January 12 to March 9, 2014, Matthew McConaughey won the 2013 Best Actor Oscar for Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club.

2014

With the ceremony held February 22, 2015, Patricia Arquette won the 2014 Best Supporting Actress Oscar in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Her CBS series, CSI: Cyber, premiered March 4, 2015. But, clearly, Arquette had already been in production with that series.

2015

Not applicable!

2016

Ceremony was held February 26, 2017. While starring on ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder, and winning an Emmy for her work in 2015, Viola Davis won the 2016 Best Supporting Actress Oscar in Denzel Washington’s Fences, which had won Davis a Tony in 2010. (The original production of August Wilson’s play dates back to the 1986–87 Broadway season.) With this achievement, Davis became the 23rd person to win the Triple Crown of Acting: Oscar, Tony, and Emmy.

2017

While starring on, and having won two (of her seven Emmys) on CBS’s Mom, Allison Janney won the 2017 Best Supporting Actress in Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya. … Nominated for the same award, for her performance in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Laurie Metcalf was in production of the reboot of ABC’s Roseanne, which premiered March 27, 2018, just 23 days after the 90th Academy Awards of March 4, 2018.

2018

At this time, awards are pending outcomes on February 24, 2019. But, there are three applicable. Rami Malek, nominated for Best Actor playing Queen lead singer Freddy Mercury in Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody, currently stars on USA Network’s Mr. Robot, for which he won an Emmy in 2016. (It last aired in the fall of 2017. But, it will return in 2019 for its fourth and last season.) … Mahershala Ali, the 2016 Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor in Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, is nominated again for Best Supporting Actor in Peter Farrelly’s Green Book. Ali currently stars in the third season of HBO’s anthology drama series True Detective. … Sam Elliott, nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star is Born, co-stars on Netflix’s The Ranch.



My theory is this: It has to do with material. That, when it comes to quality material, motion pictures no longer lords over its perceived superiority to reduce television as so small. Television already has the reputation for being bigger nowadays in much of its scope—HBO, Netflix, some basic-cable programmers, et al. While this has been going on, there is no longer such a great divide between actors from films vs. those from television productions.

‘Beyond [“BuzzFeed”]: The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump/Russia Story’

Glenn Greenwald has a superb The Intercept piece, Beyond BuzzFeed: The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump/Russia Story, from Sunday [January 20, 2019], in which he not only writes about but also highlights numerous false reports over the last two-plus years of propaganda commonly referred to as RussiaGate.





Notes:

• Tomorrow [Tuesday, January 22, 2019] are the nominations for the 91st Academy Awards (which will be broadcast live by ABC on Sunday, February 24, 2019). In an upcoming blog topic, I may write and post something which relates. 

• I acknowledge that Sunday [January 20, 2019] marked the 10th anniversary and the 2nd anniversary of Barack Obama [D–Illinois] and Donald Trump [R–New York] having officially become the 44th and 45th presidents of the United States. I could write about Trump, in particular, as if I was assessing his presidency. But, in terms of policy, I have nothing good to say about him other than being appreciative of his not having launched the United States into more wars—so far—to the level experienced by Obama. That is not really something to impressed by. It does say something about how low the U.S.’s standards are nowadays.

Happy Birthday, Betty White!

Yesterday [Thursday, January 17, 2019] marked the 97th birthday of Emmy-winning actress Betty White. She was born January 17, 1922, in Oak Park, Illinois, and has been a professional actress for—get this!—80 years. White has been married three times—twice while she was in her 20s—with her longest-lasting marriage to game show host Allen Ludden, from 1963 to his death in 1981. She has no children.

From best I can recall, it was in 2010 that marked this conscientious awareness and appreciation for Betty White which regard and respect for the fact that she has endured. She was 88 that year. A Facebook campaign to get her to host NBC’s Saturday Night Live was what finally moved White, years after having been offered, to accept. She did that on May 8, 2010. Four months later, she won the 2009–10 Emmy for outstanding guest actress in a comedy series. (Wikipedia says she has eight.)

What I think has done it for White, to still be part of the culture, is that she was born before and outlasted her Golden Girls cast mates. Three consecutive years, 2008 to 2010, marked the deaths of Estelle Getty, Beatrice Arthur, and Rue McClanahan. White certainly made it past 2011. And here she is, in 2019, and she is now 97.

What I also think did it for White is that people revisited her work and rediscovered what a really good actress she is. Her performances as man-hungry Sue Ann Nivens on CBS’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show (for which she won Emmys in 1975 and 1976) and pure-and-naïve Rose Nylund on NBC’s The Golden Girls (the first from the cast awarded an Emmy, in 1986) were versatile. And, like with the best quality you can find in an actor, she made it look easy.

Below are video clips of Betty White as Sue Ann and Rose.

Happy Birthday, Regina King!

This Tuesday, January 15, 2019, marks the 48th birthday of actress Regina King.

Born January 15, 1971 in Los Angeles, California, King has been an actress since childhood. She made her mark playing the daughter to Marla Gibbs on the NBC comedy series 227, broadcast from 1985 to 1990, and which won fellow cast member Jackée Harry an Emmy in 1987.

In the 1990s, Regina King had roles in films like Boyz N the Hood (1991, which established John Singleton as the first black person nominated for the Oscar for best director), Poetic Justice (1993), and Fridays (1995), as well as a much-acclaimed turn as the wife of an Oscar-winning Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire (1996). In the 2000s, her film work included Down to Earth (2001) and another acclaimed turn opposite an Oscar-winning Jamie Foxx in Ray (2004).

On television, over the last roughly ten years, King has had roles on Fox’s 24, a lead role on NBC’s and TNT’s Southland, and HBO’s The Leftovers. Since 2015, her performances have landed her four Emmy nominations and three wins for ABC’s American Crime (2015, 2016) and Netflix’s Seven Seconds (2018).

Regina King is the frontrunner to win the 2018 Oscar for best supporting actress in If Beale Street Could Talk. This is a film by Barry Jenkins, the director of the 2016 winner for best picture, Moonlight, and it is based on the novel by James Baldwin. Since late-November 2018, King has swept the supporting-actress category from all four main film groups: National Board of Review, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics, and National Society of Film Critics. On Sunday, January 6, 2019, she was awarded the Golden Globe. Although the Screen Actors Guild of America oddly left her off its list of nominations—which many consider a fluke—King is favored for the Oscar anyway. (Nominations come out Tuesday, January 22, 2019.)

This is an actress who is pure, soulful, and is as real as one can ask going from one role to the next. I have skipped watching live the Academy Awards ceremonies. But, also likely to win—and on her seventh try—is Glenn Close, as best actress, in The Wife. So, the upcoming 91st Academy Awards (ABC, Sunday, February 24, 2019) may be a little more worth tuning in than the most recent years. Then again, if the ceremony becomes too much about President Trump…I would be wrong.

Aaron Maté

During the week of Christmas, I added to the “Recommendations” list Aaron Maté.

Maté recently left The Real News and is now with The Nation.

I am not sure what I think of this. (I haven’t given it much though due to some other things.) But, I am not one to root for failure. (Not usually. Certainly not often.)

I wish him well—and, for us, more excellent journalism from Aaron Maté.





The following is an interview, published to YouTube on December 17, 2018, between Status Coup host Jordan Chariton and Aaron Maté.

Katie Halper Interviews David Sirota

Katie Halper interviewed David Sirota around Christmas 2018. (I did not know this until the past weekend.) They discussed his report on Beto O’Rourke’s (D–Texas) record regarding his voting record and his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign contributions; a tweet by Sirota which was twisted by Center for American Progress’s Neera Tanden; and other matters.

Jimmy Dore Interviews Ralph Nader

In December 2018, Jimmy Dore welcomed guest Ralph Nader.

The holidays played a role in it taking a while to get the three video segments published to YouTube.

Here they are: