It was this or rank all the versions of A Christmas Carol and, despite a hefty campaign, I’m still about six short of doing so.

By popular request (presumably because of this). Originals via.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Somebody should just let Brad Bird (no relation) direct all the action movies.

(As for the Dark Knight Rises preview: visually exciting, looks epic, excited for the movie, but totally unable to figure out what the hell Tom Hardy was saying through his Bane mask.)

Gene Marks’ “If I Was A Poor Black Kid” has been getting widely trashed around the intertoobz for its shameless display of white privilege and jaw-dropping ignorance about what actually being a poor black kid is like. You can read numerous takedowns of this and they’re all good. Smarty P. Jones’ response is an excellent one, as is Jeff Yang’s “If I Were A Rich White Dude.” Both pieces address the essential fact that poor black kids have a hell of a lot on their plate before they even get to the issue of doing well in school and both are worth reading.

But my problem with Gene Marks’ drivel isn’t that it’s privileged. My problem is that his underlying argument is simply morally abhorrent.

Gene Marks barely concedes at the beginning of his screed that poor black kids have it tougher than, say, middle-class white kids. What is Marks’ solution to this problem? Ah ha, that’s a trick question because so far as Gene Marks is concerned, there is no problem:

But that doesn’t mean that the prospects are impossible for those kids from the inner city. It doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for them. Or that the 1% control the world and the rest of us have to fight over the scraps left behind. I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. Still. In 2011. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia.

Marks then goes on to describe how poor black kids can should just get ahead with Technology ™ and how you can get a cheap computer or a free one even (from generous accountants!). And this is of course its own brand of stupid, ignoring the basic truth that a kid isn’t gonna know how to buy a cheapo computer at the age of eight much less be able to afford one.1 But he soon comes back to reaffirm the idea that the way things are is merely a minor setback.

In Philadelphia, there are nationally recognized magnet schools like Central, Girls High and Masterman. These schools are free. But they are hard to get in to. You need good grades and good test scores. And there are also other good magnet and charter schools in the city. You also need good grades to get into those. In a school system that is so broken these are bright spots. Getting into one of these schools opens up a world of opportunities. More than 90% of the kids that go to Central go on to college. I would use the internet to research each one of these schools so I could find out how I could be admitted. I would find out the names of the admissions people and go to meet with them. If I was a poor black kid I would make it my goal to get into one of these schools.

And if not – then what? “Tough luck, kid – we know you wanted to go to a good school, but it turns out there was at least one more kid than you who was just too qualified to pass up. I bet you’re wishing you spent more time on math so you didn’t only get an A-minus in it three years ago, huh?” No, wait, Gene Marks has you covered too!

Or even a private school. Most private schools I know are filled to the brim with the 1%. That’s because these schools are exclusive and expensive, costing anywhere between $20 and $50k per year. But there’s a secret about them. Most have scholarship programs. Most have boards of trustees that want to give opportunities to kids that can’t afford the tuition. Many would provide funding for not only tuition but also for transportation or even boarding.

You know, it’s not often I say this any more, but what the fucking fuck.

His next answer is private school. Really. Look, I know from private school tuition assistance. More often than not, they’re willing to help out. But for those students who have nothing? The competition for those plum spots is insanely tight and makes the magnet school spot competition (which is already crazily intense) look like a relaxing garden party.2

It continues in that vein, of course. If you can’t go to a magnet school or a private school you can work with your school’s guidance counsellor. You can always learn to code software (and I have plenty of friends who work in software and I will say, straight up, that the idea of coding as a universal panacea to aid all social mobility problems is wildly overrated whether it is coming from Stupid McRichdude or Cory Doctorow). In Gene Marks’ world there are always opportunities. I know this because he says so repeatedly, and if a poor black kid has to work harder to get those opportunities, well, maybe that’s not fair, but that’s just how things are.3

And this is where I just throw up my hands because I was not a poor black kid. I was a middle-class white kid, possibly quite like Gene Marks. I did not have to memorize half a dozen pieces of software in order to study or learn skills that would be valuable to future employers instead of sneaking out with my friends to play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.4 Indeed, I got into an elite private school and got kicked out of it. And I still went to university and got a degree, and then eventually got into law school. Because I was a middle-class white kid, I got to spend my childhood playing rather than working tirelessly to have a decent future. And that’s all right. What isn’t all right is expecting that poor black kids are just going to have to work their asses off to get even a fraction of the opportunities I got.

Everything about Marks’ stupid, stupid essay assumes as unchanging truth that a poor person will have to work ridiculously hard in order to have a future where they are not poor, and this is the root of the problem that Marks not only doesn’t address but asserts is just not that big a deal in his preamble when, after applauding Barack Obama for talking about income inequality, claims that the superrich aren’t getting vastly more than their fair share. Because there’s nothing wrong with expecting someone to work hard to rise above their current status. But there’s plenty wrong with expecting kids to load themselves to the bone with work in order to have a chance to rise above their current status.5 He’s willing to pay lip service to the idea that inequality is wrong, but he’s not willing to suggest that something be done to address the problem of inequality. It’s just another hurdle for poor black kids to jump, and he’s ever so gracious to admit that he, Gene Marks, did not have to jump these hurdles – and that’s just how it is. Tough luck, poor black kids! Those of you who cannot do these incredible and amazing things to struggle upwards, well, there’s always McDonald’s.

In the end, Gene Marks’ prescription for the societal problem of inequality is that individuals be exceptional. But that doesn’t work, because everybody can’t be exceptional. That’s kind of the opposite of what the word means. And that’s why his essay is abhorrent and stupid: because it doesn’t address the problem. Indeed, it’s barely willing to admit the problem exists. His entire idea consists of tinkering around the edges with stale, stupid advice that comes as no surprise to anybody who’s thought even for a second about it,6 and that just isn’t enough.

1. Also, some of Marks’ ideas about how Technology ™ can help are kind of stupid. What makes Project Gutenberg better than, say, a public library? [↩]
2. And let us not forget that many private school scholarships oddly have a tendency to go to poor kids who are also athletes. [↩]
3. It’s worth remembering that in order for a poor black kid to receive all of this useful advice, the poor black kid has to be reading Forbes magazine. You know – as poor black children are wont to do. [↩]
4. Granted, I probably should have been getting high instead, but there you go. [↩]
5. And even in Marks’ scenarios, he admits you need to be lucky. [↩]
6. Did this guy not see Waiting for Superman? I mean, it’s a flawed movie, but at least it makes the point about poor parents being willing to bust ass to get their kids into good schools and failing. [↩]

My “Villain” entrant in Torontoist’s 2011 Heroes and Villains is sort of a repeat.

Bob Garon, Vietnam veteran:

The bit I love is watching Mitt Romney’s dead eyes as he initially assumes that this old, crotchety, flannel-wearing gentleman is “safe” and then realizes that in fact that this is not the case.

Victorians Smiling is one of Retronaut’s older posts (nearly a year and a half at this point), but I still like it greatly, because it serves as a reminder to me that history is not the cold, sterile thing we often imagine it to be. We do have a tendency to imagine the past as staid – not least, I think, because frozen images connote a certain formality in that part of our monkey brains which equates stillness with seriousness. (In twenty years or so, people are going to start thinking hippies were uptight, just because it’ll all be pictures of dead hippies and the boomers will mostly be dead and won’t be able to say “no, it wasn’t like that at all, we were the generation of love and peace and so on.”)

But I like the post mostly for this picture:

If only because you know that one of them must have farted.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Recently, Rob Shearman and Toby Hadoke embarked on a marathon project, the kind of thing that is only really ambitious for Doctor Who fans: They agreed to watch the entire series. It’s amazing to think about, really; what would be the baseline for fans of most other science-fiction/fantasy show, “Have you seen every episode?”, is considered to be the mark of utter devotion to Doctor Who fans. They’re actually writing a three-book series about their epic re-watch, “Running Through Corridors” (full disclosure: I’ve hung out at cons with Lars Pearson and Christa Dickson, and they’re really nice people and I enjoy plugging their stuff.)

But it’s more complicated even than that. Because if you read “Running Through Corridors”, you’ll notice that they don’t actually watch every episode. They can’t. They listen to audio recordings, they look at still photographs that another devoted fan has formed into a sort of slideshow, and occasionally they’ll view short clips, but for 108 of the episodes they write about in Volume 1, no recordings exist. Think about this for a moment. If you were to define a “true Doctor Who fan” as someone who has actually seen every single episode, they would have to be fifty years old at a minimum (and older, if you want them to have coherent memories of the missing episodes.)

It’s hard, I suspect, for fans of other shows to really wrap their heads around this. Sure, ‘Firefly’ or ‘Star Trek’ gets canceled (frequently, in the case of the latter…) but they can console themselves by watching and rewatching the old stories, creating a shared experience based on the show throughout their fandom. While Doctor Who fans…Doctor Who fandom is generational. Older fans share fond memories of stories younger fans cannot, by definition, experience, and must discuss solely based on received wisdom. (It was even worse in the pre-video days. ‘Star Trek’ might have been endlessly re-run, but there were many Doctor Who stories that were not seen for decades due to a lack of rebroadcasting. Even the stories that the BBC saved, they didn’t decide to show again until home video made it a lucrative moneyspinner for them.)

Which is why Doctor Who fans experience an unprecedented excitement when, as was the case today, new episodes get discovered. It’s not just that there’s more Doctor Who for us to watch; as mentioned, it would take a solid year of two-a-day watching to get through the whole series, and probably several thousand dollars of financial outlay to buy them all. (To say nothing of the books, the audios, the films…I’m not sure how long it would take you to watch “all of Doctor Who”, but suffice it to say we’ve never been short of it.) It’s not even the sense of joy that something we consider to be part of the world’s cultural heritage has been restored. I don’t hold any illusions that Doctor Who is high art, even though I do consider it to be significant and worthy of preservation.

It’s the sense of discovery. For decades, all we’ve ever experienced of ‘Galaxy Four’, visually, is what other people have told us; fans who’ve described it, writers who’ve novelized it, reviews that have discussed it. Most of us don’t even know what the Rills or Chumblies look like; only a couple of still photos exist of either of this episode’s principal “monsters”. (Although, not to spoil, the real monster is prejudice!)

It is exciting, to finally get a chance to see for yourself what you’ve only heard about from others your whole life. Of course, it probably won’t live up to those excited, fannish descriptions; what does? (Certainly not ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’.) But it’s the joy of reclaiming some of the series for ourselves, away from the “fan consensus”, that is unique to Doctor Who and one of the reasons why days like today are such an event. An event that seems unlikely to be repeated; the number of attics and cellars containing lost episodes has to be growing smaller by the day, and these discoveries are rarer and rarer each time. This may be the last…but we thought that last time, too.

Now, here’s the thing. A lot of people will be bitching mercilessly about the new Three Stooges trailer…

…but the problem is that all of the comedy in this trailer is exactly like classic Three Stooges, except the Stooges live in the modern day. The performances are just as broad as old Stooges shorts were. The slapstick is just as crude and energetic as old Stooges shorts’ slapstick was. The dialogue is just as forced as old Stooges dialogue was. Will Sasso is just as bald as Curly Howard was.

If the movie is like this trailer, then people who proclaim their love for the original Three Stooges and who say this is garbage will be exposed as poseurs. Hypocrites. Comedy snobs.

(For my part, I am kinda meh about it, which is not a knock on its quality as a Three Stooges movie. I was not always meh about the Three Stooges – but then I turned nine, and swore my allegiance to Lords Julius, Leonard and Arthur forevermore.)

I know a lot of people will be remembering Morgan as Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H (or his guest appearance as a crazy general that earned him the role), but this episode of Dragnet (“A.I.D.: The Weekend”) perfectly encapsulates why I enjoyed his Officer Bill Gannon as much as, if not more, than Colonel Potter.  (Sadly I could not turn up the episode with his secret ingredient for barbecue sauce.)  Morgan’s kooky, idiosyncratic Gannon plays off the straightest-of-straight-men Jack Webb so perfectly that any other, Gannon-less incarnation of the show seems pointless somehow.