Are we forced to buy cable?

I recently told my parents that when I live on my own I won't pay for cable. I made this decision several years ago, and in the past few years I find this option easier and easier to do. Cable television packages are pretty expensive, and since I watch much less television than I ever have in my life, coupled with the fact that most of "my shows" are still on the broadcast stations, I don't see the need to spend money I'd otherwise save on something I won't use often. Another selling point for me is that so many television shows are availible online--clips on YouTube, Hulu, South Park Studios, even network web sites carry the episode a few days later. All I need is an internet connection and a DVD player to rent the shows that I want to watch later, and I'm set.

My parents told me that this is impossible to do, that I can't just have the basic stations that I had as a child, before my mom caved and agreed to buy cable. Since I can't pick the stations I want (HBO, Showtime, Trio; ditching Spike, Animal Planet, and Speed), I'd rather not pay for 50 channels I never watch just to get my MTV and Vh1 (or the Viacom empire). Besides, I can catch all the music videos they don't play online anyway. So are my parents right?

Connected with this is the news that Cablevision, which covers my area, is now allowed to offer a DVR service through a user's existing cable box. It's on a remote server instead of an individual DVR that the customer buys separately. The Appeals court ruled, after two years, that this system does not violate copyright law. What's amazing is that in two years, DVR usage has grown from 1 in 14 homes to 1 in 4, which has got to be one of the fastest adoption rates for an emerging technology.

For consumers, this is great. I am one of what seems to be the last remaining household of my class and income bracket that does not have a DVR, and if I can access one, even with limited storage, my options for watching increase, especially as I only watch things online as a last resort.

While of course advertisers are all abuzz about how to get their message out there now that people are skipping commercials left and right, there is potential for new tactics:

Network DVRs also prop open the door to new methods of advertising. Cablevision could insert ads dynamically, customizing and updating commercial pods for different consumers and at different times.

“It allows advertisers to do things they can’t do on a physical DVR,” Mr. Rutledge [Cablevision's CEO] said. “Let’s say you record an episode of ‘Lost.’ Three months later you want to play it back. The advertising that was on ‘Lost’ is stale and no longer applies, but the capability to refresh the advertising exists if the content owner wants to do that with the cable operator."

That's actually pretty cool, from the advertiser's perspective. But then you can't rewatch old commercials and laugh.

You look ugly

Why do girls feel the need to put lots of tiny blonde streaks in otherwise boring brown hair? It doesn't look cool, chic, or make you prettier. It turns your hair a shade of ash-blonde gray.

For those girls who have mousy brown hair, forgo the streaks, the "highlights". You paid a lot of money to look gross. Make it look nice (you'll stand out because your hair is normal) or figure out another way to wear it.

Being Healthy is Now a Liability

The Wall Street Journal gave us another gem today:

[I]n a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?

So because Obama likes to work out and eat healthy, and God forbid, does not care for ice cream, it’s another sign that he’s “elitist” and “out of touch” with Americans, since we’re all fat and eat disgusting fried junk. We can’t relate to someone who buys arugla at Whole Foods, who doesn’t eat “typical” All-American fare like Cheese Whiz, who’s too much of a celebrity and superhuman since he doesn’t have to struggle with what to eat and constantly worry about his weight.

What an insult to the millions of Americans who not only have brains, but actually do care about eating healthy, who exercise, and to all the thin people out there. Those kind of preoccupations are obviously only for the wealthy and the famous. Gyms must be a coastal thing, since according to the article, it’s all the Midwesterners and Southerners (and female Clinton supporters) who have problems with Obama’s food and exercise preferences. And if you exercise too much, not only is it big news but the implication is you are vain.

The article touches on his recent Access Hollywood interview, other presidential “gaffes” with food, and how President Clinton’s oft-discussed McDonald’s habit helped him win voters back in 1992, especially in Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee, since they have a large number of overweight people.

Although Obama, “stays away from junk food and instead snacks on MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and drinks Black Forest Berry Honest Tea, a healthy organic brew,” at times he has to pretend that he really, really isn’t that guy:

Lately, Sen. Obama is more careful. On a campaign stop in Lebanon, Mo., on Wednesday, Sen. Obama visited with voters at Bell's Diner and promptly announced, "Well, I've had lunch today but I'm thinking maybe there is some pie."

He settled on fried chicken and told the crowd he's become a junk-food lover. "The healthy people, we'll give them the breasts," he told the waitress. "I'll eat the wings."

Even though his smoking habit has gotten attention—although even that is considered a liability, since the percentage of Americans who smoke has decreased rapidly—apparently it’s not enough:

Some voters say that even this adds to Sen. Obama's somewhat superhuman persona.

"I mean, really, who quits smoking and doesn't gain any weight?" says 30-year-old Stella Metsovas, an Obama supporter in Laguna Beach, Calif.

Everything, especially in politics, is a lose-lose situation. If Obama was overweight and ate junk food, coverage would be about his health and all the millions of voters who would be turned off by his laziness and disrespect for his body, and Republicans would question how fit he is for the job, physically and mentally. With all the constant coverage on how unhealthy and fat Americans already are, there’s no need to criticize the candidate for taking care of himself and liking what he likes. Mike Huckabee won a lot of support for being vocal about his weight loss struggles, and became an inspiration to many. That’s the kind of initiative voters look for in presidents—and what many see in Obama.

Huh?

Has anyone noticed that the New York Times website layout has changed?

This has only happened to me a few times, but the article becomes centered, written in blue Arial, instead of the black Georgia that it's used for forever.

What's up with that?

Come On

Again with the candidates and their eating habits, this time courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

Political commentators are busy analyzing and psychoanalyzing the presidential candidates' words for hints about the real Barack Obama and John McCain. We gastronomers have a better way of penetrating the campaign spin. We take the time-honored approach of that proto-food-blogger Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), who said: "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."

At the very least, we believe that a candidate's taste in food is a more reliable indicator of character than the carefully strained statements issued in the current atmosphere of gotcha and gotcha back. So we have worked our sources and come up with the names of the candidates' favorite restaurants in their home states. We have tried them out and assessed what an appetite for their particular offerings might mean about two men with a 50-50 chance at spending the next four years ordering meals from the White House chef.

Can we move off this subject now? Why on earth would I pick a candidate based on--or even be interested in--their taste in restaurants?

I already know that John McCain likes to grill and that his campaign lifted a cookie recipe from the Food Network's website, and that Barack Obama is a fussy eater. Now both of them are pizza fans. Wow! That's so unusual. The only good thing about this article is that I now know some good restaurants in Chicago and Arizona.

Embarrassing Obama?

Why is Barack Obama constantly being embarrassed by his wife?

Maria Menounos (who is moving up in the world, doing segments for Today and the Nightly News) recently did a four-part segment featuring the entire Obama family on Access Hollywood, and Barack rarely spoke, letting his daughter Malia and wife Michelle spill all his dirty secrets, like how he doesn’t like most sweets (except pie).

Most of this stuff is benign, but it was delivered with a hint of hostility, a tone I’ve detected in Michelle’s previous comments about her husband’s personal habits. Her daughter has picked up on this, too.

I don’t understand this impulse at all. I don’t find it endearing or cute. I know people razz on their friends and family members all the time, but usually there’s an undercurrent of affection in the teasing. But with Michelle Obama, I just don’t see it, even though I’m sure she means well. It’s supposed to open up the candidate, showing us who he really is, foibles and all. That’s why candidates and their families do silly puff interviews like the Access Hollywood one in the first place, although Barack has been regretting it of late. I usually don’t mind personal habits—to a degree. Nothing embarrassing, nothing I’m cringing at. It also has to be delivered in a way that makes all parties ok with it, and my problem seems to be that because Barack himself doesn’t seem to be ok with this teasing, I’m not either. He doesn’t look mildly embarrassed, a little sheepish, just coldly nodding his head, letting the facts stand there.

It’s also what Michelle Obama says that irks me. Her comment that he is “snore-y and stink-ey” struck me as low, even if she’s talking about him first thing in the morning. There’s a difference in saying that a spouse is clumsy or forgetful at times; attacking him for personal hygiene habits is too TMI for my taste.

I understand that Michelle Obama is just trying to flesh out her husband and not deify him, to offset this kind of cult rock star figure image that has glommed on to him. As she stated in the Glamour article, as an explanation to her earlier comments:

I think [most] people saw the humor of that. People understood that this is how we all live in our marriages. And Barack is very much human. So let’s not deify him, because what we do is we deify, and then we’re ready to chop it down. People have notions of what a wife’s role should be in this process, and it’s been a traditional one of blind adoration. My model is a little different—I think most real marriages are.

But in the Access Hollywood interviews, his family spends a good portion of time ragging on him; he barely gets a word in. He only eats mint gum. He doesn’t like sweets. He hates to shop. He wears old clothes. Wowee. He might be a little staid, but so are a lot of guys, so are a lot of political guys. Maybe it’s their way of just saying that he fits right in, despite all the ugly rumors proving he’s too much of an outsider. But it doesn’t come off that way; from Michelle it sounds like a litany of complaints. I’m not interested.

I’m not saying first ladies or potential first ladies and campaign spouses have to hold their tongues. Especially nowadays with their own high-powered careers, there is no need for them to be completely demurring and just fawn and smile sweetly when discussing their husbands, but there’s something to be said for discretion. Cindy McCain has acknowledged that her husband was away for her three miscarriages and her addiction to painkillers—something that would kill many other marriages. Like the Obamas, they decided to spend a good portion of their time living in separate places, each working where their career took them and the women largely raising the children. But while Cindy McCain has mentioned these hard times in both her marriage and in her life, she has not denigrated her husband.

Now, because I’m not voting for either Michelle Obama or Cindy McCain, this shouldn’t matter. It should have no bearing on my feelings for either candidate.

But stuff like this seeps through. Cindy McCain says she always knew that John would put the country ahead of her—so should that make us feel confident that he would make a good president because he cares about the country’s needs more than his wife’s? Should I wonder why Obama married a woman who would insult him in public? Is this a good thing, because he knows criticism and can handle it, shrugging it off like he does now? Or is this harmful, because he is immune to criticism? How does this affect—or not—his running of the country?

Recently, Slate’s XX blog has been discussing Ellen Tien’s apparently scathing account of her husband, how she thinks about divorce every day. I didn’t even read the article (written by the woman who does the Sunday Style’s Pulse), but I was appalled. What is the point of trashing your spouse (or significant other), who you are still currently with, in a public forum (print, online, video)? The only logical conclusion would be that you want out, and you want to hurt that person very, very badly.

Which is exactly what Christie Brinkley did in her exceedingly humiliating spectacle of a divorce. She exposed Peter Cook to humiliate him (and her), to get what she wanted, children and propriety be dammed. Exposing such nasty truths only serves as revenge. Michelle Obama, who has said that she won’t let Obama run again if he loses, and Cindy McCain, who is known to dislike the whole running for president thing, aren’t as brokenhearted and humiliated as Christie Brinkley is (we hope), but I don’t think they are saying these things purely out of spite. They are just telling the truth. But the truth doesn’t have to sound like they hate their husbands.

Strange article

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran an article on how retail workers, trained to fold clothes a certain way, have brought these obsessive folding standards home and that it's wrecking their relationships. This article, by the way, is on the front page. Not only is this strange, but the fact that the Journal, known as a staid, conservative business newspaper, covered this at all is quite funny. Imagine the woman pitching the story: "So apparently Gap workers are so into folding clothes properly that it bleeds into their home life and causes trouble for their kids and spouse. It's a comment on the rigid standards of our culture!"