Morons of the Month - March 2012

Let's get this month's lunacy out of the way early.  And, no, this doesn't mean that my monthly pay network charges have gone up on my Direct TV bill.

Indeed, my big issue with Home Box Office (and when was the last time anybody mentioned it by its non-abbreviated name?) is content-oriented.  And their increasing inability to provide an even-handed and unbiased view of anything.

Truth be told, I should have blog-spanked these assholes a long time ago.  They employ the incredibly vile and disgusting Bill Maher and that alone should turn their airwaves to snow.  Here's a guy who regularly calls any people with opposing political views "retards," "racists," and, in the case of Sarah Palin, a "see u next Tuesday."

But, that kind of civil discourse is fine if you're a liberal HBO executive sitting in either New York or Los Angeles and you think this kind of chatter is A) clever or B) truthful.  Meanwhile, Maher, who needs to crawl back up the dog's ass he was originally shit out of, donates one million dollars to President Obama's Super PAC fund for re-election.  Ahem.  Gee, Barack, who's the prostitute and slut now?  Yep, I said it.  All the while, am I the only one who knows that Bill Maher was so desperate to get talk show work about ten years ago that he was trying to position himself to broadcast executives as a conservative??

But, I digress.  No, HBO, your March sin has nothing to do with the continued persistence that Bill Maher is somebody we need to see on a weekly basis.  After all, your original programming choices since the end of the Sopranos have been suspect at best.  Very little has registered with the viewing public.  But, they keep on trying.  Totally forgetting that the large majority of their audience don't necessarily vote the Democratic ticket in either New York State or California.

Take, for instance, their current made-for-TV movie "Game Change" based in very small part on the non-fiction book of the same name.  You may remember it.  I reviewed the tome here a while back and I was a big fan of this complete and unabridged account of the 2008 Presidential campaign. 

As a book, "Game Change" was an almost impartial re-telling of that election and focused on all the candidates involved from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton to John Edwards to John McCain to Sarah Palin.  For once, I thought, political writers don't necessarily have an agenda.  They were uncommonly honest in showing the warts of all. 

When I heard that HBO was going to make "Game Change" into a movie, my mind raced with the casting possibilities.  Who could play Hillary?  What actor would be daring enough to take on the challenge of playing Obama?  I started to envision that the broadcast results would be so rich that HBO would have to turn it into a multi-part mini-series.

I thought about all that stuff for nothing.  Because HBO, in its seeming divine liberal stance, ultimately chose to ignore 85% of what was in the book.  On the air, "Game Change" does nothing but focus on the unfortunate and inept vetting of Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate.  Shame on the authors for letting this happen.  Bigger shame on the schmucks at HBO for taking the easy way out.

This essentially turns "Game Change" into a biased piece that is played for laughs.  After all, it's about Republicans so they must be buffoons, right?  They're all turned into cartoon characters that can be laughed at and ridiculed.  Whatever the circumstances behind the whole Palin mistake, the story doesn't deserve the treatment that HBO and the moronic and lazy filmmakers give it.

If I remember the book correctly, there was a wealth of great stuff that could have been terrific played out on the small screen.  Hillary Clinton's growing anger at the way she was treated and upended by supposed "friend" and fellow Democrat Barack Obama.  How about the charges of reversed racism when our esteemed future President stooped to sewer levels and continually played the race card against the Clintons?  And, let's not forget how we would have enjoyed seeing the John Edwards marital issues depicted as it was in the book?

Yeah, that would be too easy. 

But, of course, HBO chose not to give you the whole and substantiated picture because....well, they don't think you need to see it.  Once again, if we don't agree with it, these things never happened, right?  Another slice of restricted life provided to you by some assholes who think that everybody in the country agrees with them 100%.

Hey, HBO has every right to do what they want with their programming.  But, to call this mess "Game Change" after the book of the same name and even pretend that it's a total adaptation is complete and utter folly.

I guess this is what Home Box Office needs to do in 2012 to gain attention.  They certainly haven't done much else since Tony and Carmella Soprano munched on some onion rings in the closing shots of their series.  And they really have done little to keep me interested. 

Morons, indeed.

Dinner last night:  Turkey burger and pasta salad.