"Monsters, John! Monsters from the Id!" That's the warning delivered by a dying Warren Stevens to Captain Leslie Nielson just before the climax of Forbidden Planet. And he's explaining the downfall of a civilization. Last week's monster from the Republican Id stepped out all elbows and insults. Do I have
No, not that race card. But some candidate will play it before the election. Promise. I mean the horse race card. I’m abandoning the Survivor metaphor for this time out, in honor of the first Triple Crown winner in nearly four decades. We’ll come back to
Every campaign has at least one noir moment, when (as in film noir) the protagonist tries to do The Right Thing but winds up doing exactly the opposite. That's a powerful plot device in fiction, getting the lead into deeper and deeper trouble, so that
When Stephen Colbert coined the word "truthiness" in 2005, he meant "
We're back on the boat deck filled with potential Survivor contestants, waiting to see who will commit by jumping into the water and swimming to shore. The action has picked up considerably since I last wrote. The water in front of us is now churning
WHEN TO WATCH: Pick a broadcast network and watch the nightly news. Any day. Or pick a cable network opinion-veiled-as-news show. Watch any minute. Political Survivor continuously—and all too often in a short, closed loop. Speaking of short: campaign news seems to happen in bursts, so
On second thought, don't flash that cash—I'll get ill. The Koch brothers have reportedly committed $900 million, give-or-take, to Republican 2016 campaigns—and are currently auditioning candidates that they can buy with it. (More on that later—word is that they've already brought Scott Walker to the
Political Survivor: USA. This show plays almost continuously, with an ever-changing cast, on many shows and many networks. I discovered the first season of Survivor (summer 2000) in its fourth episode, when they caught and ate rats, and I was hooked instantly by the elemental nature
