Berning the Emmys

I enjoyed last night's Emmy's a lot. I was fully on board with Samberg as host.  The opening number was great - a little Hamm, a little Kerry Washington, pretty solid Castle joke and, you know, there ARE a lot of shows about wives!  Samberg dropped a pretty solid Trump burn during the monologue.  And then after that he showed up briefly and not too often and was funny every time.  All in all, well done.

Three black women taking home trophies was pretty awesome, and that speech Viola Davis gave was one for the ages!  And even when the person I wanted to win didn't win, I still liked who won.  To wit:

I was obviously all in for Titus Burgess:

But, come on, Tony Hale is great!

And how does Amy Poehler not win for her last chance as Leslie Knope?

Well, here's why:

Yes, you are, JDL.  You are really fucking great.

Veep is such a good television show.  Firstly, it is really so very funny  To wit:

But the second thing it does is satirize brilliantly how focus-grouped and sterile and bullshitty American politics are.  

You never know what party Selina Meyer is.  Typically, I abhor "both sides do it" talk as its own super special kind of mega-toxic bullshit because generally one side is worse than the other.  A lot. (Hint: it's the grand old one).  But when it comes to spit shining every last ounce of genuineness out of policy-making, well, both sides do it.

A quick Molly Ivins aside:

Politics is not a picture on the wall or a television program you can decide you just don't care for.  Our entire lives are set into and written by the warp and woof of politics.

Political decisions affect your life every day in thousands of ways - whether the food you eat is safe, what books your children read in school, how deep you will be buried when you die, if the lady who dyes your hair is competent, how safe your money is in stocks or banks, whether you have a job, whether your kid has to go fight in a war, who is qualified to prescribe your eyeglasses - that's all politics.

  

(Man, I wish Molly Ivins were still around, don't you?  She would fucking love Veep! ) 

I think this is a thing a lot of us grok on a fundamental level.  Politics matter and our politicians do not take them seriously enough.  The things that matter matter less to our politicians than whatever shiny object is bouncing around the 24 hour news cycle and their own ambition.

Enter: Bernie Sanders, a dude who cannot keep his hair combed and says things like:

And I think that he does find it vulgar that we're having a war of billionaires.  I believe when he says:

He doesn't mean it because he thinks it will play well for some sought after demographic.  He means it because it's true and it's right.

Look, I know I'm too old to be a true believer.  I know I'm supposed to take my lessons from the very successful Obama presidency and remember that you have to play the game to win.  But after eight years of competent executive government endlessly fucked with by incompetent reactionary congressional bullshit, I am sorely ready for someone willing to shovel the bullshit away.   

I know the Beltway pundits and pols turn their nose up at someone like Bernie.

But I really like him.  I'm all in for #Bernie.  You?