I think I have found my favorite candidate for president.
Unfortunately, he’s not eligible, because he’s not an American. He is Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and not just because of his parents’ fine choice of first name.
On New Year’s Day, while Americans were sleeping off their hangovers, Canada achieved its goal of having the most business-friendly tax system of the Group of Seven (G-7) nations — which include, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
On January 1st, Canada’s federal corporate tax rate automatically fell to 15 percent from 16.5 percent as the last installment of a series of corporate rate cuts launched in 2006 by the administration of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. When Harper initiated his campaign, Canada’s overall corporate tax rate was 33.9 percent according to the OECD, third-lowest in the G-7. The federal corporate rate was 22 percent and the average provincial rate was 11.8 percent. Today, Canada now has an overall corporate tax rate of 25 percent, the lowest rate of the G-7 nations.
Harper’s opponents said the same thing that American politicians say when the subject of reducing business taxes come up — too much revenue will be lost, government needs the money more than individuals, blah, blah, blah. So imagine the surprise to find, according to The Globe and Mail:
Remarkably, the gradual lowering of the corporate tax rate appears to have resulted in little loss in corporate tax revenue (when compared with long-term, prerecession revenues). …
By 2010–2011, federal corporate tax revenue reached $30-billion, substantially more than the average of $25-billion in the last four years of the prior Liberal [Party] government: 2002 through 2005. Further, federal corporate tax revenue equalled 1.8 per cent of Canadian gross domestic product, a much higher percentage than the revenue produced during the recessionary years in the early 1990s. In tough-times 1992, for example, corporate revenue, with higher tax rates, fell to 1 per cent of GDP.
Economists predictably disagree on the economic importance of corporate tax rates, mostly on an ideological basis, but it makes good sense to keep this particular tax as low as possible. These taxes, after all, are a direct cost of doing business — and Canada’s corporate cuts ensure that this country will have a cross-border edge for the next two or three years at least. With a combined federal-state rate of 39.2 per cent, the United States has the second-highest rate in the world (after Japan, with 39.5 per cent).
Our 39.2-percent rate is only the federal rate. The actual rate is higher because of the added state corporate income taxes — 7.9 percent in Wisconsin’s case. When you add state rates, businesses pay from 39.2 percent (Nevada, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming have no corporate income tax) to 49.19 percent (Pennsylvania), which gives the U.S. the highest, not second highest, corporate income taxes in the world. (Other states, such as Ohio, tax not corporate income, but gross receipts, which are still taxes businesses must pay — or, more accurately, businesses’ customers must pay.)
Canada is not the only country to get the idea of reducing business taxes:
Canada can only revel in its lowest-tax status for a few months because on April 1st, Great Britain will lower its corporate rate to 25 percent from 26 percent. Britain’s rate is scheduled to fall even further to 23 percent by 2014. Over the past six years, the only G-7 nations that have not cut their corporate tax rate are France, Japan, and the United States. Japan and the U.S. have combined corporate rate over 39 percent. …
The drive by Canada and the U.K. to have the lowest corporate tax rates in the G-7 cannot be ignored. Canada is, after all, our largest trading partner, and the U.K. is our sixth-largest trading partner. Perhaps not so coincidentally, China — America’s second-largest trading partner — also has a corporate tax rate of 25 percent, nearly 15 percentage points lower than the U.S. rate.
Businesses use profits in one or more of three ways — reinvestment back into the business, increased compensation for employees, or dividends to shareholders (which comprise half of U.S. households). Any of those uses is better than giving the money to the government., particularly a government run by Democrats who see business as (1) a source of consequence-free tax revenue and/or (2) a necessary evil.
On Monday night, the Ripon Area Board of Education will hold a special meeting on buying land for a future site for a middle or high school.
There are no public reports as to where the land being discussed is located. The Ripon Area School District owns 35 acres of land near Murray Park Elementary School, which the Ripon Commonwealth Press is only large enough for a middle-school building.
Before the school board votes on a land purchase — which will require voter approval — and certainly before the school board starts considering where to build a new middle and/or high school, the school board needs to consider two major factors.
The first is the accessibility of a site near Murray Park that would be accessible primarily from Eureka Street. It took having children attending Murray Park and Quest Elementary School, as well as playing baseball at Murray Park, to see the regularly scheduled traffic tie-up at the four-way stop at Eureka and Oshkosh streets. That snarl is made worse by employees leaving Bremner Foods at about the same time that students are leaving Murray Park.
Four-way stops are the worst kind of intersection traffic control. How many drivers know the correct order for traffic to go through a four-way stop? (Few, based on observation.) The design produces more pollution from idling vehicles. Because they require all traffic to stop, they also waste the only truly, provably nonrenewable resource — time.
The best alternative from a safety and time perspective, installing a roundabout, is highly unlikely given the size of the intersection, the adjacent properties, and the public unpopularity of roundabouts. As it is, any intersection improvement will require state Department of Transportation approval. Having the Ripon Police Department direct traffic at that intersection between, say, 3:15 and 3:45 p.m. doesn’t seem like a good use of resources given that students are going from school to home all over the city at that time.
All of those facts suggest that any school construction on Ripon’s north side is a bad idea. Another reason should influence any school construction proposal anywhere in Ripon.
The Ripon Area School District has three school districts to the west — Green Lake, Markesan and Princeton — whose long-term viability is in question for a combination of reasons. None of those school districts are growing in enrollment or in population. And yet they all face the costs that could be lumped together into the term “overhead” — paying administrators, maintaining buildings and buying supplies — that is not decreasing, particularly as the federal and state governments pile on more mandates, usually unfunded, onto schools. Smaller school districts also are less able to provide the kind of student programming larger (to a point) school districts can provide.
Wisconsin has 3,120 units of government — counties, cities, villages, towns, school districts and other governmental bodies. Only Illinois has more. That many governmental bodies in a relatively small state population-wise is not a formula for governmental efficiency, and it’s certainly not a formula for wise use of our tax dollars. Some future Legislature will figure that out and will use a carrot and/or stick to make school districts merge, or combine cities or villages with adjoining townships.
The way to prevent getting hit by the state stick is to take the initiative. The school district should approach its smaller neighbors to the west and discuss whether a merger might create better educational opportunities for students of the school districts while costing the taxpayers of those school districts less than now. That discussion needs to take place sooner rather than later because school district geography should influence where future school buildings, particularly a high school, are built.
… and over here on my parents’ wedding day in 1961:
The number one single today in 1977:
Today in 2003, the Beatles Book Monthly closed after 40 years. The publisher said there was nothing more to say about the Beatles.
One non-music anniversary: Wisconsin’s earliest tornado in 2008. (One does not expect to get a tornado warning email on Jan. 7.)
Birthdays begin with Eldee Young, who played bass for Young Holt Unlimited:
Paul Revere of the Raiders, not of the midnight ride:
Andy Brown played drums for the Fortunes:
Kenny Loggins:
Kathy Valentine of the Go-Gos:
One death of note, today in 2004: Drummer John Guerin, who worked with Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, Linda Ronstadt, Gram Parsons and Todd Rundgren, and who played the drums for this TV theme:
The inspiration for this post came from Curbside Classics‘ “The Short and Odd Life of the Two-Door Station Wagon,” which begins by asking:
Whose idea was that? Along with the business coupe and the Ranchero/El Camino utility pickups, large two door station wagon ranks right up there in the Pantheon of American car oddities. One can even make a pretty good argument that it towers above them, given its questionable heritage and utility. The business coupe’s origins go back to the earliest coupes, like the Model T, when roadsters and two-passenger coupes were common. And the utilities were just an update on those same coupes and roadsters with little beds grafted onto them, the pickup’s precursor. But for about a dozen years or so, Detroit graced Americans with something they had no idea they needed: the two door wagon.
Well, Detroit has a deserved reputation for producing answers in search of questions. (Two words: Pontiac Aztek.) Station wagon aficionados recall GM’s ’70s alternatives to everyone else’s tailgate that swung down or to the right. The Chevrolet Vega and Pontiac Astre wagons had hatchbacks. So did the midsize Chevy Malibu, Pontiac LeMans, Oldsmobile Cutlass and Buick Century wagons. (Until their 1978 downsizing, when they went to tailgate glass that swung upward and tailgates that swung downward.) The Chevy Impala/Caprice, Pontiac Catalina/Bonneville/Grand Ville, Olds Custom Cruiser and Buick Estate Wagon took Rube Goldbergian complexity a step farther with tailgates whose window glass swung upward into the roof while the rest of the tailgate swung into the floor. (The latter worked better than the former, from what a former owner tells me.)
1939 Plymouth Business Coupe
The business coupe was originally designed for, as you’d think from the title, businessmen, specifically on-the-road salesmen who needed trunk space more than they needed passenger space. You can see from the photo that the ’30s business coupes were designed this way; the coupes with back seats and the sedans were more square:
I don’t know if my grandfather the salesman ever had a business coupe; by the time I knew him, he had a succession of station wagons with everything behind the front seats stuffed with farm implement literature. Even by the standards of the day, business coupes were stripper cars, because apparently their customers weren’t interested in creature comforts going from sales call to sales call.
The next step, I suppose, from business coupes were what are called “coupe utilities” by some, but are more often known by their model names — essentially a car from the B-pillar forward, but with a pickup box behind the B-pillar, all usually mounted on station wagon chassis. They’re called “utes” in their country of origin, Australia, where a farm wife asked Ford to build “a vehicle to go to church in on a Sunday and which can carry our pigs to market on Mondays.”
The first U.S. coupe utility was the 1937–39 Studebaker Coupe Express:
Since the Big Three carmakers built one size of car in the 1950s — large (except for specialty projects like the Corvette) — the first coupe utilities were that one size, the 1957 Ford Ranchero …
… and the 1959 Chevrolet El Camino:
These were popular because pickup trucks had no creature comforts at all, not even power steering or brakes. My grandmother owned a second-hand store next door to my grandparents’ house, and they bought a ’59 El Camino for the store. After they closed their store, my stepgrandfather drove it to work until his retirement a year before his death in 1984.
Ford and Chevy then diverged before meeting again. Ford switched the Ranchero to its compact Falcon chassis in 1960 …
… then to its midsized Fairlane chassis in 1966 …
… before canceling the Ranchero in 1979 …
… while Chevy terminated the El Camino in 1960, but brought it back onto its midsized Chevelle chassis in 1964 …
… where it stayed until its last model year in 1987:
One of the more famous El Camino owners was Bill Clinton, who once told GM workers in Shreveport, La.: “When I was a younger man and had a life, I owned an El Camino pickup in the ’70s. It was a real sort of Southern deal. I had Astroturf in the back. You don’t want to know why, but I did.” Clinton obviously covered the box with Astroturf to protect it from the elements. Or to practice putting.
Since the mid-’60s and later El Caminos and Rancheros were based on Chevy’s and Ford’s mid-size cars, when muscle cars — mid-sized cars with engines out of full-size cars — were created, their coupe utility brethren could be equipped with most of the same go-fast parts as the Malibu and Fairlane two-doors. The zenith probably was the 1970 El Camino SS, which could be ordered with a 450-horsepower V-8.
Chrysler Corp. was late to the coupe utility game in the U.S., turning its Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni into the Plymouth Scamp and Dodge Rampage in the early ’80s:
AMC never built one, although it did build a prototype, the Cowboy, from its Hornet:
The U.S. death of the coupe utility was from several causes. (GM’s Holden and Fordstill sell utes in Australia.) Full-size pickups started to become better equipped. GM and Ford introduced the Chevy S-10 and Ford Ranger compact pickups around the time they redesigned their mid-sized cars, and neither apparently felt El Camino and Ranchero sales warranted adding them to their new mid-sized lines.
Being a Subaru owner, I do have to point out Subaru’s two coupe utilities, the BRAT (which stood for Bi-drive Recreational Auto Transport, and yes, those are seats in the box), imported from 1978 to 1987 in time for, of all people, Ronald Reagan to own one …
… and the 2003–06 Baja:
The original inspiration of this post was the two-door station wagon, known as a “shooting brake” in Europe. Curbside Classics notes that station wagons were generally commercial vehicles until World War II. Two-door wagons started as the wagon equivalent of business coupes at least in use, including the rear-window-delete panel deliveries.
But then came the 1955 Chevy Nomad, which was an expansion of a Corvette station wagon concept car.
The Nomad and the Bel Air convertible led the Chevy line in 1955, with Chevy’s new V-8 engine. Even though the two-door Nomad lasted just three years, it’s an iconic ’50s car, combining the coolness factor of coupes with the utility of wagons. Because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Nomad was followed quickly by the Pontiac Safari …
… the Ford Parklane …
… and the Mercury Commuter hardtop (note the lack of B-pillar), which included the option of, believe it or don’t, two or four headlights:
It should be obvious by now that two-door wagons were the brief triumph of style over utility. People didn’t buy two-door wagons because they couldn’t afford the extra $100 for the extra two doors. I can see fathers agreeing to buy the two-door wagon because at least it was a wagon, but not quite a station wagon. (Similar to the animus today against minivans.) And the driver could always tell objecting passengers that the alternative to going over the front seat into the back seat was to walk.
The last two-door wagon bigger than a Chevy Vega was the 1964–65 Chevelle:
Proving that American ingenuity knows few bounds, the end of Detroit production of two-door wagons does not mean the end of the two-door wagon. As you know from last week, I’m a fan of big Cadillacs, in addition to land yachts and station wagons. Put them together, and you have a 1974 Cadillac Eldorado wagon conversion.
Someone created a Buick two-door station wagon that includes the Vista Roof also found on the Olds Vista Cruiser:
What’s that? You prefer Ford products? How about a 1978 Lincoln Continental Mark V wagon conversion?
Most, if not all, of these cars demonstrate the biggest reality of carmaking today — cars are more capable than ever before, but less interesting than they used to be. I read in Automobile Magazine back in the 1990s a comment about the Big Three carmakers’ standardizing their chassis and drivetrains, with the added suggestion that maybe the Big Three could therefore offer more variety in body styles. That unfortunately has not happened — for the most part, you can have a sedan and, to a much smaller extent, a coupe or wagon.
As long as we’re talking about automotive nonsequiturs …
… this also belongs in the oddball category — the original Pontiac Grand Am, a midsized car sold from 1973 to 1975. According to How Stuff Works:
The 1973 Pontiac Grand Am started out in the development stages as a GTO. But the muscle era was drawing to a close and, very much aware of that, Pontiac decided to change the car’s character. Instead of continuing to make the GTO a stoplight drag star, the next iteration was to be more European — more along the lines of a luxury sport sedan. With that in mind, Pontiac designers and engineers examined Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and Volvo as likely targets. …
Pontiac’s product planners, under assistant chief engineer William T. (Bill) Collins, got behind the ’73 Grand Am because they knew something different was needed to replace the GTO. By 1973, the GTO was breathing its last breath; dying by cubic inches, it had been done in by low compression and GM’s need to meet fuel and smog mandates. Any politically correct car could no longer run around delivering eight miles per gallon between stoplights. And yet Pontiac had no intention of giving up its “excitement” image.
So the Grand Am offered a new opportunity. This was a car that Pontiac saw as the division’s entree into the European sport-luxury-sedan field. Pontiac chassis engineers, under John Seaton, would de-emphasize straight-line performance in favor of crisp handling and overall responsiveness. Seaton based the Grand Am’s readability on the division’s trade-marked Radial Tuned Suspension, which in turn was based on new GM-spec steel-belted radial tires. Ten-inch front disc brakes gave the car wonderful stopability, and Saginaw Division set up the power steering with a quicker ratio and plenty of positive feedback. …
Inside, the Grand Am driver and the front passenger settled into supportive bucket seats equipped with recliners and lumbar adjustments. All doors had pull straps, not molded-in plastic grab handles, while the fully instrumented gauge panel and console presented touches of real African crossfire mahogany laminated onto a plastic substrate. …
Unfortunately, Pontiac launched the Grand Am at exactly the wrong time. The first energy crisis shook the world in October 1973, and Americans bailed out of large Detroit cars into smaller imports, especially Japanese models. Even intermediates like GM’s A-cars languished on dealer lots. By 1975, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, a Grand Am with the 400 V-8 could return only 11 mpg in the city and 18 mpg on the highway. (The 455 was the same.) Prices went the other way, thanks to a new round of inflation, and at just a smidge under $5000 to start, the ’75 Grand Am was not exactly cheap.
So while Pontiac did well to move 43,136 Grand Ams for 1973, sales slipped to 17,083 for ’74, then to a disappointing 10,679 for ’75. With that, the Grand Am became expendable and would not be continued. Another reason was that rectangular headlights were coming in, which would have meant retooling the model’s unique hood and front fascia. With sales low and not likely to recover, Pontiac felt it wasn’t worth the expense.
A friend of mine and the brother of a friend of mine had two of those 70,898 Grand Ams. I’ve never driven one, but it was certainly a cool-looking car. (A wagon version was proposed, but not built.) And it was cool looking even before you ask yourself how a car bigger than almost every European car with a much larger engine than almost every European car could be considered European-like. It should also make you shake your head to think that GM’s idea of innovation in the early 1970s was radial tires, which had been used on French cars since the late 1940s.
Do a photo search on your favorite search engine and you’ll find that many of these misfit cars are still owned and driven today, some in their original form, others (particularly business coupes) modified for more modern touches such as wider radial tires. Maybe the business coupe, the coupe utility and the two-door wagon were answers in search of questions, but I have a hard time imagining that the 2042 Iola Old Car Show will feature lovingly maintained or modified Toyota Camrys.
Ladies and gentlemen, direct from Pasadena, the University of Wisconsin Marching Band:
And for those who wonder what marching at the Rose Bowl (which involves much more than the football game), read this excellent Los Angeles Times story. The grueling schedule in the story was what those of us in the band in the ’80s, dreamed about doing.
At the end of the annual UW Varsity Band Concert, director Michael Leckrone always said, “We never say goodbye, we’ll see you real soon,” including a reference to maybe Pasadena someday. Leckrone has been the UW Band director since 1969. In his first 24 years as band director (which included five years of me), the Badgers went to three bowl games, none of them Rose Bowls. Since the 1993 season, however, Leckrone and the band have gone to five Rose Bowls, and have gone to a bowl game every year since the 2001 season. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, a rising football tide lifts all boats.
Two items passed on by the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web Today might give you pause about the second-place showing of former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R–Pennsylvania) in Tuesday’s Iowa Caucuses.
In a general election, where the focus is almost certainly going to be on economic issues, it is questionable whether Santorum’s relentless focus on social issues will play well with independent voters, especially in the crucial suburbs. It was the loss of those suburbs, where voters tend to be socially moderate but economically conservative, in states such as Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia, that gave those states to Obama in 2008. …
After all, the Tea Party and 2010 elections were largely about economic issues and the desire to limit the size, cost, and intrusiveness of government. And those issues are not Santorum’s strong suit.
There is no doubt that Santorum is deeply conservative on social issues. He is ardently anti-abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, and no one takes a stronger stand against gay rights. In fact, with his comparison of gay sex to “man on dog” relationships, Santorum seldom even makes a pretense of tolerance. While that sort of rhetoric may play well in Iowa pulpits, it will be far less well received elsewhere in the nation. …
When Hillary Clinton was justly excoriated by conservatives for her book It Takes A Village, which advocated greater government involvement in our lives, Rick Santorum countered with his book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, which advocated greater government involvement in our lives. Among the many government programs he supported: national service, publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, and economic-literacy programs in “every school in America” (italics in original).
Santorum’s voting record shows that he embraced George Bush–style “big-government conservatism.” For example, he supported the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind.
He never met an earmark that he didn’t like. In fact, it wasn’t just earmarks for his own state that he favored, which might be forgiven as pure electoral pragmatism, but earmarks for everyone, including the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere.” The quintessential Washington insider, he worked closely with Tom DeLay to set up the “K Street Project,” linking lobbyists with the GOP leadership.
He voted against NAFTA and has long opposed free trade. He backed higher tariffs on everything from steel to honey. He still supports an industrial policy with the government tilting the playing field toward manufacturing industries and picking winners and losers.
In fact, Santorum might be viewed as the mirror image of Ron Paul. If Ron Paul’s campaign has been based on the concept of simply having government leave us alone, Santorum rejects that entire concept. True liberty, he writes, is not “the freedom to be left alone,” but “the freedom to attend to one’s duties to God, to family, and to neighbors.” And he seems fully prepared to use the power of government to support his interpretation of those duties.
The Cato Institute’s David Boaz reports that Santorum told National Public Radio during his 2006 reelection campaign (which he lost):
One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a libertarianish right. You know, the left has gone so far left and the right in some respects has gone so far right that they touch each other. They come around in the circle. This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.
In his book he comments, seemingly with a shrug, “Some will reject what I have to say as a kind of ‘Big Government’ conservatism.”
They sure will. A list of the government interventions that Santorum endorses includes national service, promotion of prison ministries, “individual development accounts,” publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, strengthened obscenity enforcement, covenant marriage, assorted tax breaks, economic literacy programs in “every school in America” (his italics), and more. Lots more. …
With It Takes a Family, Rick Santorum has served notice. The bold new challenge to the Goldwater-Reagan tradition in American politics comes not from the Left, but from the Right.
Boaz adds:
He declared himself against individualism, against libertarianism, against “this whole idea of personal autonomy, … this idea that people should be left alone.” And in this 2005 TV interview, you can hear these classic hits: “This is the mantra of the left: I have a right to do what I want to do” and “We have a whole culture that is focused on immediate gratification and the pursuit of happiness . . . and it is harming America.” …
At least Santorum is right about one thing: sometimes the left and the right meet in the center. In this case the big-spending, intrusive, mommy-AND-daddy-state center. But he’s wrong that we’ve never had a firmly individualist society where people are “left alone, able to do whatever they want to do.”
It’s called America.
I think I’ll pass on Santorum. If overreaching government from the left is wrong, it’s wrong from the right too.
Experian–Simmons apparently “measures the consumer preference of various political ideologies,” including their TV watching, according to Entertainment Weekly.
EW reports that “sarcastic media-savvy comedies and morally murky antiheroes tend to draw Dems. While serious work-centered shows (both reality shows and stylized scripted procedurals), along with reality competitions, tend to draw conservatives.”
First, the shows those who identify most strongly as being a “Liberal Democrat” watch (with EW’s comments in italics):
– The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (Comedy Central): As you might expect.
– 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation (NBC): Literate media-savvy comedies score high among Dems in general, notes Experian-Simmons senior marketing manager John Fetto. “Sarcastic humor is always a hook for them,” he adds.
– The View (ABC): Shows that skew female tend to do better among Dems, while male-friendly shows tend to do perform higher among Republicans.
– Glee (Fox)
– Modern Family (ABC): Last year, the progressive Glee and Modern Family scored surprisingly strong among both political leanings. Among conservatives this year, the shows still do fairly well, but have dropped out of their top ranks.
– It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)
– Treme (HBO): GOP Kryptonite. Not only a Dem favorite, but so unpopular among Republicans that the report scores the show with a “*” because not enough conservatives in the study group had actually watched it.
– Cougar Town (ABC)
– The Late Show With David Letterman and The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (CBS): Dems favor late-night programming, with one big exception that we’ll see below.
Also in the mix: The Soup (E!), Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Adult Swim), Raising Hope (Fox), Saturday Night Live (NBC), The Office (NBC), Project Runway (Lifetime), Shameless (Showtime), Parenthood (NBC), Conan (TBS).
Nothing on this list is particularly surprising. I don’t watch “30 Rock” because every time I see Alec Baldwin, I want to punch him out. There was a hilarious tweet about “The View” last month that I can’t really repeat here (it involved male genitals and cinder blocks). We can’t watch “Glee” because its subject matter makes it unwatchable for young families, even though Fox puts it on at 7 p.m. Letterman’s increasingly one-sided political observations have turned me off, but then again he was funnier on NBC.
Now the “conservative Republican” list:
– Swamp Loggers (Discovery) and Top Shot (History): Gritty documentary-style work-related reality shows on cable index really strongly with conservative Republicans. Swamp Loggers is particularly polarizing.
– The Bachelor (ABC): They also tend to gravitate toward broadcast reality competition shows.
– Castle (ABC): Ranks fairly high among Dems, too.
– Mythbusters (Discovery)
– Only in America With Larry the Cable Guy, American Pickers, Pawn Stars, Swamp People (History): If you’re a Republican candidate looking to raise money, put ads on History.
– The Middle (ABC): Does well among libs, too.
– The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (NBC): “Did you hear about this? Yeah, this is true: Jay Leno is the late-night choice among conservatives… “
– The Biggest Loser (NBC)
– Hawaii Five-O, NCIS, The Mentalist (CBS): Popular crime dramas — except the left-wing Law & Order franchise — tend to draw a conservative crowd.
Also: Dancing With the Stars results show (ABC), Man vs. Wild (Discovery), Auction Kings (Discovery), Wheel of Fortune (syndi), Top Gear (BBC America).
One irony of this list is that “Castle” plays opposite “Hawaii Five-0,” which I guess demonstrates how many homes now have DVRs. One shouldn’t be surprised that cop shows are popular with Republicans. In fact, National Review recently commented on “Castle”:
You might think some on the Right might flinch at a show that begins just about every episode with a grisly murder, and the investigation often has the protagonists taking a short tour though some strange subcultures — S&M aficionados, people who like to pretend they’re vampires, soap-opera fans, rival New York pizzerias. On the other hand, the show depicts police detectives as honorable and dedicated. Criminals are rarely misunderstood victims of society but almost always greedy or unstable and undoubtedly belong behind bars. In short, the good guys are the good guys, and the bad guys are the bad guys. The cops rarely if ever enter dark anti-hero territory or bend the law (though occasionally they’ll ignore procedure) and almost every episode is self-contained: A criminal commits a murder with seemingly ingenious methods to escape detection, and the hard-charging detectives and their novelist sidekick pick through all of the evidence and chase down every lead until they get their man. Thankfully, the criminals aren’t always the predictable “the rich old white Republican did it” cliché that marked so many Law & Order episodes (sorry, Senator Thompson) though Castle has conformed to the ironclad Hollywood rule that if Ray Wise is in a television or film and a murder occurs, he did it.
I am rather surprised that reality shows are popular with Republicans because the term “reality show” is an oxymoron.
Now for the opposite lists — which shows would Democrats and Republicans not be caught dead watching? First, Democrats:
– Swamp Loggers (Discovery): What are they doing on this show, feeding Nancy Pelosi to alligators? [If they did, maybe I’d watch.]
– Dog the Bounty Hunter (A&E) and COPS (syndication): “Question authority.”
– The Ultimate Fighter (Spike TV): Conservatives can make their own “cut and run” jokes…
– The Price Is Right (CBS): Annnnd a budget-crisis joke.
– CSI: Miami (CBS)
– Kitchen Nightmares (Fox): Odd. Who doesn’t like a clean kitchen?
– Secret Life of the American Teenager (ABC Family): Not popular among stalwart Republicans either.
– Ghost Hunters (Syfy), Ghost Adventures (Travel Channel) and The Haunted (Animal Planet): Libs don’t believe in an afterlife? Or just don’t believe in shaky night-vision reality shows that claim to prove an afterlife?
Also: Operation Repo (TruTV), Swamp People (History), Hardcore Pawn (TruTV), River Monsters (Animal Planet), Deadliest Catch (Discovery), Only in America With Larry the Cable Guy (History), Storm Chasers (Discovery), Billy the Exterminator (A&E), Deal or No Deal (GSN), Forensic Files (TruTV), Dirty Jobs (Discovery).
Now, Republicans:
– Weeds (Showtime): Female-centered drama, lots of drug use and a morally murky antiherohelp make this show the lowest-ranked series among righties.
– The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (Comedy Central): But not disliked equally. Republicans prefer Colbert between the two (maybe some pretend he’s being serious).
– South Park (Comedy Central): Aww, South Park is an equal opportunity offender! But, again, media-darling sarcastic comedies tend to be a turn-off.
– TMZ (syndication)
– General Hospital (ABC)
– Family Guy (Fox)
– Dexter (Showtime): Again, that antihero thing…
– Jersey Shore (MTV)
– The Walking Dead (AMC): Really? But it’s about the Apocalypse!
Also: Divorce Court (syndi), The Big C (Showtime), Let’s Make a Deal (CBS), Bridezillas (WE), My Fair Wedding With David Tutera (WE), Don’t Forget the Lyrics (VH1).
A few no-shows on the Republican list surprise me. “South Park” is actually quite libertarian, and the biggest targets seem to me to be PC liberals. “TMZ” is all about pop culture, but by showing celebrities in their unguarded states, it should make viewers think twice when Baldwin makes another airheaded political statement. “Dexter,” for those who haven’t seen it, is about a serial killer who murders criminals. Remembering that the show is fiction, how can conservatives be against such savings of taxpayer dollars?
As for “Jersey Shore,” the first and until now only person I have de-Friended on Facebook is a huge fan of “Jersey Shore,” which tells you everything you need to know about my ex-Friend. And I would rather stick forks in my eyeballs than watch “Bridezillas.” In fact, given the artifice of all reality TV (including my wife’s and kids’ favorite, “The Amazing Race”), it can be said that the popularity of reality TV is a sign of the Apocalypse.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 