All the News That Fits

I have detested the LA Weekly for a long time; before its corporate parent engaged in transparent Clear-Channel type muscle to force and bribe the smaller edgier New Times out of town.

To me the combination of unchallenged, thoughtless, doctrinaire, sanctimonious leftism with ads for vaginal 'rejuvenation', penis enlargement, jewelry, fashion, and the reviews latest, hippest trends typifies much of what pushes me away from the mainstream left that dominates Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.

But I have jones for newsprint, and since Layne and company haven't sent me my sample copy of the L.A. Examiner yet, I picked one up at dinner last night (confession: We went to a trendy Venice sushi bar and had a wonderful time, then walked around my old neighborhood and enjoyed urban life for a bit).

And damn if they didn't have two excellent articles I want to push out to folks.

The first one is about a group of students and teachers who stood up to the LAUSD and actually tried to get Locke High to become a place of learning...

By March, the LSU had condensed their concerns to 10 demands. First on the list was "an immediate end to brutality toward students, including illegal searches and seizures, unlawful arrests, constant surveillance, and excessive use of force." They demanded qualified teachers in every class, and that teachers stay awake and not talk on cell phones. They demanded books and materials, the hiring of additional counselors, more extracurricular activities and sports, a well-rounded curriculum. They demanded an end to standardized tests like the Stanford 9, which they considered racist, and to be informed of their right to opt out of taking such exams. They demanded more "positive social events" like dances, field trips and, tragically, vigils. They demanded access to the school's budget to see how funds were being spent. In short, they demanded the right to have a voice in their education, and, more basically, they demanded an education. Before the semester ended, they would have to add an 11th demand: "The freedom to express injustice without retaliation toward teachers, students or parents."

The second is a review of a TV show called The Office; since we have no TV, I can't testify to the quality of the review, but I had to pull a quote and show it to you:

Brent and Gareth find their jobs rewarding, but then they're both severely deluded individuals. Tim (Martin Freeman), a moody sales rep so crushed with boredom it almost paralyzes him, and Dawn (Lucy Davis), the melancholy receptionist he's in love with, are the "normal" characters, all too aware that they're leading dead-end lives. One feels for them — who wants to work in a rinky-dink paper-supply company, after all, especially when you're apt to get downsized for your pains? — but The Office is perhaps a little too eager to dismiss such work as meaningless, almost beneath contempt. (I, for one, use paper quite a lot, and am happy someone's out there supplying it.) Ricky Gervais, who not only plays Brent but also co-writes and directs the show, told The New York Times recently that, minus the comedy, the show is about "missed opportunity" and "wasting your life."

Well, yes, no doubt it is — at least when viewed from the giddy heights of television stardom. There are very few jobs that don't amount to a waste of time, if you want to look at it that way, as the movie About Schmidt recently reminded us. (Who can forget Jack Nicholson watching the minute hand crawl toward 5 o'clock on his last day?) But would working for a paper supplier be a mistake if it paid $1 million a year and landed you two fast cars and a house in the country? Or are "creative," "cultural" occupations, like working at the BBC, for instance, the only dignified ones left to us? There's an unexamined snobbery in The Office that leaves a bad aftertaste. In fact, it can't even be bothered to really show us what the jobs of the various characters amount to. We see them play pranks on each other, answer the phones and fiddle vaguely at their keyboards, but that's about it.

If this keeps up, I guess I'll have to adjust my own prejudices. I hate it when that happens, don't you?