Too witty for most Americans — esp. Californian liberals — who prefer the juvenile slapstick of Humor to the cerebral ironies of Wit. I’ve sent clips from this wonderful series to some of the smartest people I know and they respond “it was too much, couldn’t keep up, didn’t get it” and then send back a video of a couple of clone-characters out of American sit-coms like Friends, with one doing a mime of a dog; the other a cat. Beevis and Butthead smelling each other’s butts, that kind of thing, which they find “Hilarious!”
But this series, Yes, Prime Minister, depicts what we’ve only recently come to catch a glimmer of, and what we now call the Deep State here in America: That is, the geologic permanence of an entrenched bureaucracy in democratic politics, in general, but in America especially; and the reason nothing changes from one administration to the next: We go from George Bush to Barak Obama to Donald Trump and nothing of any significance ever changes. This wonderful British comedy sketches out why that is — although, you have to watch more than this one particular segment, to get the gist of it. Thanks for posting it up.
Zack AndersonPost author | April 16, 2019
I don’t know if this is exactly apropos, but Notre Dame is burning, Hill the Shill is still being wheeled out like that stuffed moose your crazy uncle ran over with a snowmobile while on holiday in Vladivostok, and mega-corp Netflix is asking the world to please stop using the term “Chick Flicks” because of its sexist (i.e., gender specific) connotations while offering up enough dumbed-down, offensive and violent lewdness to distract the entire planet for the next four Armageddons.
Failing to Rise to the Occasion
Ready to taste a thousand joys,
The too transported hapless swain
Found the vast pleasure turned to pain;
Pleasure which too much love destroys.
The willing garments by he laid,
And heaven all opened to his view,
Mad to possess, himself he threw
On the defenceless lovely maid.
But oh what envying gods conspire
To snatch his power, yet leave him the desire!
Nature’s support (without whose aid
She can no human being give)
Itself now wants the art to live;
Faintness its slackened nerves invade:
In vain th’ enraged youth essayed
To call its fleeting vigour back,
No motion ’twill from motion take;
Excess of love his love betrayed:
In vain he toils, in vain commands;
The Insensible fell weeping in his hand.
Yes, Minister.
Too witty for most Americans — esp. Californian liberals — who prefer the juvenile slapstick of Humor to the cerebral ironies of Wit. I’ve sent clips from this wonderful series to some of the smartest people I know and they respond “it was too much, couldn’t keep up, didn’t get it” and then send back a video of a couple of clone-characters out of American sit-coms like Friends, with one doing a mime of a dog; the other a cat. Beevis and Butthead smelling each other’s butts, that kind of thing, which they find “Hilarious!”
But this series, Yes, Prime Minister, depicts what we’ve only recently come to catch a glimmer of, and what we now call the Deep State here in America: That is, the geologic permanence of an entrenched bureaucracy in democratic politics, in general, but in America especially; and the reason nothing changes from one administration to the next: We go from George Bush to Barak Obama to Donald Trump and nothing of any significance ever changes. This wonderful British comedy sketches out why that is — although, you have to watch more than this one particular segment, to get the gist of it. Thanks for posting it up.
I don’t know if this is exactly apropos, but Notre Dame is burning, Hill the Shill is still being wheeled out like that stuffed moose your crazy uncle ran over with a snowmobile while on holiday in Vladivostok, and mega-corp Netflix is asking the world to please stop using the term “Chick Flicks” because of its sexist (i.e., gender specific) connotations while offering up enough dumbed-down, offensive and violent lewdness to distract the entire planet for the next four Armageddons.
Failing to Rise to the Occasion
Ready to taste a thousand joys,
The too transported hapless swain
Found the vast pleasure turned to pain;
Pleasure which too much love destroys.
The willing garments by he laid,
And heaven all opened to his view,
Mad to possess, himself he threw
On the defenceless lovely maid.
But oh what envying gods conspire
To snatch his power, yet leave him the desire!
Nature’s support (without whose aid
She can no human being give)
Itself now wants the art to live;
Faintness its slackened nerves invade:
In vain th’ enraged youth essayed
To call its fleeting vigour back,
No motion ’twill from motion take;
Excess of love his love betrayed:
In vain he toils, in vain commands;
The Insensible fell weeping in his hand.
— Aphra Behn (London, 1684)