Month: April 2014

After David Letterman announced his impending retirement last night, Rob Sheffield assesses his legacy:

Letterman came to late night in 1982 as the first of the young guys, and he leaves as the last of the old guys. There was nobody like him before; you can see all his acerbic sensibility in a sketch like “They Took My Show Away,” in the way he mocked both TV and the idea of a world beyond TV. (“Don’t be swayed by so-called ‘friends’ who reject TV in favor of ‘going out,'” he advised back then.) He was New York via the Midwest, definitely not L.A., yet he had total disdain for the idea of aspiring to SNL-style outlaw cred. There was no “guerrilla television” in his game. He was a comedy pro, a surly workaholic man-boy living single in Manhattan — a few years later, Jerry Seinfeld would turn this same image into the premise of a sitcom.

Linda Holmes reflects on the gonzo approach that made Letterman unique:

Letterman — and, just as significantly, his collaborator Merrill Markoe — treated the 12:30 a.m. slot, when they had it, almost like nobody was watching, so why not … do whatever? Drop stuff off a building. Stupid Pet Tricks. Leaping onto a wall in a suit of Velcro, or into a giant glass of water in a suit covered with 3400 Alka-Seltzer tablets.

Unlike Candid Camera or the bloopers shows that became popular in the mid-1980s, around the same time David Letterman did, the unplanned or unpredictable — or the ending in disaster — wasn’t treated as a mistake or an embarrassment. It was part of what they did. For many years, I kept a VHS tape of the episode of Late Night that featured the Monkey-Cam Mobile Unit, which consisted of Zippy the Chimp on roller skates with a camera strapped to him. I considered it one of the funniest things I’d ever seen, though I couldn’t have told you why.

Brian Abrams speculates over who will succeed him:

I’d love it if CBS picked a woman. Chelsea Handler just ended her contract, bitterly, with E! Amy Schumer isn’t making the money, or getting the budget, that she wants for her Comedy Central series. Hell, Sarah Silverman would kill at that time slot–imagine the pot shots and friendly competition between her and her ex-boyfriend at ABC.

The candidate would also have to compete with Fallon’s social media cutie pie craft. No matter how Mickey Mouse the “Tonight Show” host may be, the CBS replacement will have to keep the content coming on Twitter and YouTube. It’s a tough call. Zach Galifianakis maybe abandons Funny or Die for the slot? Could you see a Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller in a suit and tie every night? It’s not difficult to imagine a movie star take another juicy TV gig.

Apparently Colbert is in contention. Poniewozik advises the big names being tossed around not to take the job:

Dave was an original. Your names are being thrown out there because you’re originals. Which is exactly why you are probably the wrong people for the job. If one of you takes over Late Show, you might do fine. (Dave’s ratings have been low enough lately that you’ll have a nice low bar to clear.) But you won’t be able to make a truly original creation, because Late Show is now an institution. Institutions have expectations, constituencies, and targets to meet. Steve Jobs didn’t change his industry by becoming CEO of IBM.

In today’s media, bigger isn’t automatically better. Jon Stewart–without the benefit of the big networks, you made The Daily Show‘s fake newscast into a laser-sighted commentary on politics and the media, unafraid to take sides and call b.s. You think you’d get to do that on CBS? Your bosses will be watching the ratings for Fallon’s Tonight, where he just invited Sarah Palin on to play the flute.

Esther Breger also pushes for a woman, maybe even a woman of color like Retta or Aisha Tyler:

As Alexandra Petri pointed out in The Washington Post last night, in the history of late-night broadcast television, there have been more hosts named Jimmy than women and people of color. (Cable also just lost its only late-night show with a female, as Chelsea Handler announced she’s ending her E! talk show.) Looking at the hilarious women across the rest of the TV dial—in sitcoms, Comedy Central shows, and Saturday Night Live—the idea that there are no women funny and likable enough to helm a TV show past 11:30 p.m. is increasingly absurd. There’s a deep clench to choose from, if CBS is willing to make the kind of risky move it did by hiring Letterman in the first place.

Phillip Maciak nominates Ellen DeGeneres:

There are a lot of reasons Ellen would make a phenomenal replacement for Letterman, and that list could easily begin and end with the fact that she would be the only openly gay person and the only woman in a landscape of straight men. But that’s obvious. What isn’t immediately obvious is that Ellen belongs to this interstitial timeslot. She belongs to—maybe even pioneered—this new generation of hosts who don’t care what time it is.

Cook hears that the odds are getting better but that it’s far from a sure thing:

Perhaps because of the vacuum created by Christie’s recent stumbles, as well as other factors, speculation about Bush running has increased over the past few months. We hear from people close to his inner circle that his own interest has in fact picked up; now we are faced with maybe a one-in-three chance that he actually enters the ring. Sure, there is a lot of hand-wringing over political dynasties, but with Democrats clamoring for another Clinton, and Republicans just hoping to get a nominee who isn’t politically tone-deaf, that concern might very well be overrated. Bush is a political thoroughbred; the GOP would be lucky to get him in the race. But the odds that he will run, while higher than before, still aren’t great.

Waldman doubts that Jeb has enough fire in the belly:

Running for president is so grueling that if you don’t want that prize with a mad desperation, you won’t get anywhere. Now, it should be said that Bush hasn’t been much in the public eye in recent years, so we don’t know where his head is at. But I always got the impression that he thinks he’d be a fine president, but he wasn’t going to crawl over hot coals to get there.

Larison raises an eyebrow at George Will’s assertion that Jeb could peel off some blue states:

Jeb Bush will probably receive more than a respectful hearing inside the GOP over the next two years, and much of it will be based on the faulty assumption that he can win in traditionally Democratic states. This wasn’t true of his brother, and it wasn’t true of McCain or Romney, and it almost certainly won’t be true of him. Jeb Bush represents exactly the kind of Republicanism that makes the GOP uncompetitive in all of the states across the Northeast and Midwest that they need to be able to carry in order to win presidential elections. He is pro-corporate, pro-immigration, and pro-war, and all of these are political losers. A Republican Party that thinks Jeb Bush is the answer to its electoral woes is a party that is sure to keep losing one presidential election after another.

Massie points out Jeb’s other weaknesses:

It’s not that Jeb’s an utterly hopeless candidate. Nor, at 61, is he too old. But, still, the disadvantages seem acute. Do we really want to go through all this stuff all over again?

Granted, Hillary Clinton’s reasons for running for the Presidency (we assume she is running) are hardly any more noble. It’s about time she enjoyed her turn; about time, too, America elected a woman Commander-in-Chief. And that’s about it. An attractive combination of entitlement and identity politics. Ask not what I will do; ask instead how my historic presidency will make you feel. Vote Hillary, consider yourself a decent person. And stick one to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy while you’re at it.

What a joyous prospect. Hillary might be hard to beat anyway but even a numbskull could craft an effective advert asking Americans if they felt like electing the third President Bush or the first female President.

(Photo: By Andy Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

Jason Koebler points to a new study out of the UK that found ketamine to be an effective treatment for major depression:

Like in recent American studies, ketamine proved useful for treating some patients whose previous depression treatments had failed. University of Oxford researchers report in the Journal of Psychopharmacology that the drug rapidly reversed depression, though most patients began feeling depressed again within a day or two. In about 30 percent of the patients, however, depression didn’t return for at least three weeks, and 15 percent of patients reported feeling benefits for as long as two months.

Despite the fact that not all patients saw long-term benefits, the drug appears to be a viable option for the treatment of depression: The study’s 45 patients had exhausted most other forms of antidepressants and were candidates for electroconvulsive therapy, a treatment that’s still highly controversial and often comes with memory loss. Ketamine proved effective, at least in the short term, and patients showed no memory loss or cognitive decline.

Soong Phoon, who used to suffer from severe suicidal depression, describes what the drug did for her:

I tried all the available SSRIs and had 18 treatments of Electroconvulsive Therapy. Nothing worked. Then my psychiatrist and a senior consultant suggested ketamine infusions. … Researchers know why ketamine works, but still have no idea why ECT, the traditional treatment for severe depression, does. They only have vague theories. And ketamine is a much cheaper treatment than ECT; a ketamine infusion in New Zealand costs $200, whereas ECT is closer to a grand.

I had four infusions and within a couple hours, my mood lifted considerably. During treatment I was euphoric. Never had the K-hole experience—although I did have some entertaining conversations with the clinical director, ECT doctor, nurse, and registrar. After the treatment, I no longer had thoughts of suicide, and felt good for the first time in forever.

Previous Dish on the non-recreational wonders of ketamine here.

An AP investigation found that USAID, working under the radar, tried to build a mobile-based social network similar to Twitter in Cuba called “ZunZuneo” in the hopes of using it to foment political unrest. The White House (above) claims it was just a regular development project and denies that it was “covert.” Larison dismisses the administration’s spin:

It strains credulity to say that the program was “discreet” rather than covert in nature. The agency reportedly went to great lengths to make it extremely difficult to track the funding for the operation back to the U.S. government, and it did this deliberately because it understood that association with the U.S. would interfere with the goal of stirring up unrest.

Jay Ulfelder points out how such “myopic” projects undermine the real development work USAID does:

Programs like this “Cuban Twitter” fiasco erode USAID’s credibility as an agent of development assistance everywhere. “If the U.S. government used USAID as a Trojan horse in Cuba,” politicians around the world might ask themselves, “why not in my country, too?” It’s hard for me to see whatever marginal effect this Cuban program might have had on the prospects for regime change in that country being worth the costs those doubts will impose on USAID’s work everywhere else.

Adam Taylor piles on:

Actions like this make Russia look smart for expelling USAID.

And Cuba has an especially complicated place in the USAID world – for example, in the past the money it’s funded to democracy organizations and Cuban American groups reportedly ended up being spent on Godiva chocolates and cashmere sweaters, plus the “Cuban Twitter” plan came remarkably soon after Cuba arrested American contractor Alan Gross for installing Internet networks. Gross was a USAID subcontractor, and he was later sentenced to 15 years in prison – his release is regarded as one of the key steps needed for increased dialogue between the U.S. and Cuba.

Ed Morrissey asks why “USAID went to all this risk and cost, only to never put the network to its intended use”:

It lasted more than two years, which gave USAID plenty of time to build a following in Cuba, and yet they apparently never once tried to boost dissent on the island. Another good question will be how this project was funded and managed. They spent more than $1.6 million in funds earmarked for a project in Pakistan, according to the AP, which might raise a few more eyebrows on Capitol Hill about how agencies are shuffling funds around to unauthorized projects.

Catherine Traywick looks back at USAID’s “long history of engaging in intelligence work and meddling in the domestic politics of aid recipients”:

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the agency often partnered with the CIA’s now-shuttered Office of Public Safety, a department beset by allegations that it trained foreign police in “terror and torture techniques” and encouraged official brutality, according to a 1976 Government Accountability Office report. USAID officials have always denied these accusations but in 1973, Congress directed USAID to phase out its public safety program — which worked with the CIA to train foreign police forces — in large part because the accusations were hurting America’s public image. “It matters little whether the charges can be substantiated,” said a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report. “They inevitably stigmatize the total United States foreign aid effort.” By the time the program was closed, USAID had helped train thousands of military personnel and police officers in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries now notorious for their treatment of political dissidents.

Ray Laraja argues that Wednesday’s ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC  “should not be evaluated by some imaginary gold standard of campaign finance rules, but by the current state of affairs.” He lists reasons why it is an improvement over the status quo. Number one:

Parties and party leaders control more money. Right now Super PACs are gaining an upper hand in the electoral system.  The people running these Super PACs might be former party hacks but Super PACs are still less accountable to the broader party coalition, much less to voters who don’t know the affiliations of these Super PACs.  By allowing a party to raise more money through joint committees and removing the aggregate limits that constrain them, the party leaders have more say in who runs for office.  These party leaders typically support candidates who are not ideologues because they have a better shot at winning.  If you prefer moderation and compromise in your politics, then you should prefer candidates getting their support from the party rather than issue groups.

Though he thinks the ruling was a huge mistake, Steven Hill hopes it will at least undermine Super PACs:

[E]ven as McCutcheon tips the playing field in favor of wealthy donors over ordinary citizens, it also in a perverse way levels the playing field for politicians, by allowing candidates and political parties to receive larger donations and thus giving them the chance to spend sums closer to what the super PACs do. Yes, it’s a corroded silver lining—kind of like allowing one gang of thugs to better compete against another gang of thugs: Each is partly in check, but the net result is more thuggery.

Some donors might still prefer to give to super PACs, since the law allows them to do so anonymously, while donors to candidates and parties must be fully identified. On the other hand, giving donations directly to campaigns and parties might be a more effective way of building good will with a prospective officeholder, so some deep-pocketed donors may find it more to their liking to give directly.

Jonathan Alter recalls the outsized impact Sheldon Adelson alone had on the 2012 presidential elections, through his Super PAC donations:

Reformers like to complain about the malign influence of money in politics. The real problem is big money in politics, and here a gap has opened between the parties. (I wrote about this issue, and about Adelson’s role in the 2012 campaign, in my book “The Center Holds.”) The average donation to Obama’s 2012 campaign was less than a hundred dollars, while the average donation to Mitt Romney was more than a thousand dollars, according to a Romney staffer. Adelson, the Koch brothers, and a few others took the game to a new level after the Citizens United case, in 2010. Currency trader George Soros contributed twenty-seven million dollars to try to elect John Kerry in 2004. Adelson spent more than three times as much in 2012.