When Politicians Debate Fictional Characters, It's Time for a Reality Check

Sarah Palin's recent problem with "Family Guy" is not without historical precedent. It was in the early 1990s that politicians began having problems distinguishing between reality and fiction: they began attacking fictional television characters. In Michiko Kakutani's Fiction and Reality, Blurring the Edges, we're reminded:

... Vice President Dan Quayle attacks Murphy Brown, the fictional anchorwoman played by Candice Bergen, for undermining traditional family values by deciding to become a single mother, and in this week's season premier of the show [week of September 25, 1992], Murphy Brown strikes back, having already elicited even further condemnations from Mr. Quayle.

President Bush [The Elder] speaks of wanting to see an America that looks a lot more "like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons," and in a subsequent episode of the popular television show, Bart Simpson retorts, "We're just like the Waltons. We're praying for the Depression to end, too."

Even Ross Perot, who mocked Mr. Quayle's remarks about Murphy Brown, has gone on the record as condemning the television character Doogie Howser for having sex with his girlfriend ...

And Ms. Kakutani concludes:

In the end, it's dangerous to mistake fictional representations for the real thing. To do so is to ignore one of the most basic impulses behind art -- the impulse to order the chaos of regular life, to transform it into something more perfect, more shapely and more satisfying, to turn it into something with a beginning, a middle and an end.

Worse, to erase the boundaries between reality and fiction means forsaking our ability to make distinctions. It means living in a dimly lit world of shadows, mirrors and self-delusions, content with approximations and soothing mispresentations, instead of continuing to try to discern the truth. One ends up like Don Quixote, Cervantes's would-be knight whose sense of reality was shaped by popular chivalric romances -- a hapless, if well-meaning fellow who believed he could model his own life on that of his favorite literary heroes and who ended up tilting at windmills.

The New York Times has published three articles about Sarah Palin's dust-up with "Family Guy," here, here, and here. Sarah Palin, of course, took confusing reality with fiction to a whole new level.

Michiko Kakutani is a Pulitzer Prize winning critic for the New York Times.

Hartland: A Las Vegas Mansion, Glue-Gunned to Perfection

A HOUSE with 32 chandeliers, twin spiral staircases and so much rococo plasterwork that Marie Antoinette, were she planning a weekend in Vegas, would say, “The heck with the Bellagio, I want to stay with the Hart family in that rundown neighborhood where Liberace used to live,” may not be for you. ...

... The entrance hall has a dramatic black-and-white checkerboard floor and a 35-foot dome. Stair rails are swagged with stiffly wired gold lamé, white silk roses and ivory velvet. The living room measures 33 by 57 feet — so big, they were able to shoot a scene for the film “Casino” there. Ms. Hart’s bedroom has a velvet bedspread, made by her son Larry, which is ornamented with cabochon pearls and weighs 34 pounds. The house itself takes up some 25,500 square feet. ...

... The only family member who still lives at Hartland full time is Garry, in a suite off limits to reporters and reportedly utterly free of pearls.

A Las Vegas Mansion, Glue-Gunned to Perfection, from the New York Times.

Why 'Samson' Runs: Jerusalem Fever

By CLYDE HABERMAN,
Published: May 13, 1992

JERUSALEM, May 12— The sturdy young Canadian thought he was Samson, and went on to prove it by smashing through a wall to escape the other week from Kfar Shaul, the Government psychiatric hospital on Jerusalem's western reaches. ...

... A few years ago, Kfar Shaul had at the same time two patients convinced that they were the Messiah. He put them together, the hospital director recalls, but it didn't work out.

"They spoke, and they discussed," he said. "And finally, each decided that the other was an imposter."

Note: In print, the article's title was the same as this post's title. The printed article has a photo of Dr. Yair Bar-El.


Clippings from The New York Times appear at a new blog: New York Clippings

Photoshop and Photography: When is it real?

From David Pogue's column, Photoshop and Photography: When is it real?

In the March issue of Popular Photography magazine, the editor's note, by Miriam Leuchter, is called "What Is a Photograph?" ...

... But meanwhile, we live in an age where Photoshop jobs are commonplace, reality TV shows dominate the airwaves, and news bites are taken out of context and manipulated. Maybe, these days, the question isn’t “What is a photograph?”; it’s “What is reality?”

Technology Assisting The Repo Man

It was a surprise, this morning, to read in the NY Times about a new technology to assist repo men (and women). Surprising, because there is another technology that may be much more useful.

The technology described in the Times photographs license plates and matches plates against a database of vehicles with payments past due. It's interesting and works, but there is another way.

A car dealer can now place a device that is essentially a GPS receiver and cell phone in the vehicle when it's sold. With that installed, the car can be tracked and its location known at any time (well, as long as it's in an area with cell phone coverage and receiving GPS signals). The device can do more than send data to someone interested in the vehicle's location.

The device can receive data: It can be programmed to send an alarm if the vehicle travels outside an area, for example. It's even possible to send the device a message that will prevent the car from being restarted.

An attractive thing about the technology is that the cost of installing the device and monitoring the buyer's use of the vehicle can be passed on to the buyer. The technology is especially interesting to dealers who have had to resort to financing vehicle purchases themselves rather than selling their purchase contracts to banks, which became difficult to do when the credit cruch hit.

Both technologies exist to find out where an interesting vehicle is. The one described by the Times may not be the most effective.