All Eyes on Me

I recently— well, a few months back —completed a rewatch of King of the Hill, as soon low-intensity background TV. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit; it aged better than I would have expected, and it's interesting from the standpoint of it being a show about conservative people that doesn't itself necessarily have a conservative viewpoint. It’s basically about how they’re being confronted by a changing world and how they are forced to adapt and grow because of it, which is a timeless premise that I think they did a lot with.



It can be too "centrist" for my taste, occasionally depicting manipulative or overzealous upsetters of the status quo as villain-of-the-week. Sometimes those “go too far” antagonists are gun nuts or religious zealots or society mavens, but sometimes they’re social workers or hippies or an anti-racism educator. Overall, though, I’d say it's actually quite critical of the narrow-mindedness, ignorance, and bigotry that shows up in that kind of culture, even as it has clear affection for other parts of living in a small, mostly working class town in Texas. One of the greatest strengths in the writing is how they depict the kid characters. Bobby, Connie, and Joseph all feel very believably like real children, with that very real mix of being ignorant of the ways of the world and yet much more aware and with it than you’d necessarily expect. And I think their conception of Kahn, though not without flaws, was a pretty complex and human depiction of an Asian man for a late 90’s-early 2000’s era show. He’s one of my favorite characters, and I might write more about him sometime later.

But the piece that's most interesting to me looking back on it with 2021 eyes is Dale Gribble-- the basement-dwelling gun nut who's obsessed with anti-government conspiracy theories. If he were a little bit wealthier, you can imagine him being one of those yahoos who stormed the capitol. It’s kind of shocking at how differently we have been forced to see people like that. The show definitely portrays him in an unflattering light-- dumb, helpless, cowardly, financially supported by a wife who cheated on him with a hot neighbor for years, unwittingly raising the son of that other man. QUITE LITERALLY, as people like him would say, a beta cuck. Still, he is largely presented as harmless, and actually an extremely loving and supportive husband and father. I guess they’ve let him be a more well-rounded character, and they certainly make it clear he sucks, but I’m not sure how I feel about how ultimately they act like’s nothing really dangerous about him.

Just writing it here for the record in case it happens.

I'm not one for believing in complicated conspiracy theories when simple greed, corruption, idiocy, and incompetence will explain everything. But for a long time it's bugged me how many Ruepublicans sided with Trump even after they denounced him as incompetent, or he verbally abused them. I mean, see above-- they want to be on the winning side, the slimebuckets. But last week it occurred to me that as Speaker of the House, the notoriously spineless greed-driven coward Paul Ryan is third in the line of presidential succession. And I found myself wondering if he threw in his lot with obviously unqualified and explosively controversial Trump, who he initially opposed and who in fact insulted him, in order to play a long con and at some point take advantage of that fact.

Trump's approval rating just hit fifty percent, a low that it took George W. Bush three years to finally reach, in the first goddamn week of his presidency. His indiscriminate use of poorly-planned and legally-unvetted executive orders, also in the first goddamn week of his presidency, are creating more and more of a case that we are in a Constitutional crisis. Not to mention Trump's other violations, such as his refusal to divest his business interests placing him in breach of the Emoluments Clause. People are already calling for his impeachment, and I think there is at least a fair chance, even if I'm not being too optimistic, that it could happen. It could be due to his recent unconstitutional policies-- like, there's been tape surfacing of Rudy Giuliani saying Trump literally asked him how we could find a legal way to institute a Muslim ban. And if it is, there's also a chance Pence would be found complicit in them as well, as it seems clear he's given his support and approval of them. So maybe Pence could be taken out too. Which would clear the way for... Paul Ryan. Who is the leader of the body who'd be bringing the Articles of Impeachment.

Yeah, that's ridiculous and unlikely. The Republicans as a self-interested, loot-and-run party probably stand to gain much more as an entity without their president being impeached. Even if Ryan wanted it, as a group I doubt they'd all go for it. But... Trump is nuts. And Ryan is probably more in line with their goals at large. We learned during the primaries that most of the establishment hates him, and even though they need him for their goals now, I seriously doubt that they have learned to like him any better. So... maybe?

If so, you heard it here first.

I really enjoyed Luke Cage and thought it was awesome. I have a handful of criticisms, nothing major— except one thing was pretty glaring to me.

In episode 10 “Take it Personal,” I did not like how they made Mariah’s crusade against Luke Cage look like a successful attempt to co-opt a movement like Black Lives Matter. Her bending people’s real lives and feelings to her own ends is appropriate for her character arc, but I don’t think the way she did it scans. They showed Mariah appealing to people who were sympathetic to a pro-black safety movement, thereby invoking the suggestion of BLM. But BLM is a movement to demilitarize the police, while Mariah was calling to arm them with experimental weaponry. And instead of facing down the social structures that systematically devalue and destroy black lives, she was attempting to take down one man, and a black man at that, who had been shown to stand up for average people and was mostly cast as a threat by an attack on cops. There is no equivalence there, so to show her efforts taking in those people suggests that the people in pro-black safety movements are easily swayed by incorrect rhetoric and corrupt leaders. I don’t think they intended that, but I find it an offensive implication.

What I would have done was had Mariah increasingly side with the system to take him down, even at the expense of the people of Harlem she used to champion. Have her use the rhetoric of “law and order” and respectability politics, saying how a dangerous person like Luke Cage damages the reputation of the black community, appealing to the fear of white people of scary powerful black men to get institutions on her side to take him down. She’s on a path to darkness anyway, so to have her go from a champion of black culture to joining with the corrupt system that harms black people in order to serve her own heads would show a nice thematic following. I think that would have been a way more effective way to show her growing corruption than to draw any kind of equivalence between the rhetoric she uses to persecute Luke and the efforts of Black Lives Matter.