One is struck by the ponderous and patently silly nature of Mr. Munson’s deconstruction. Hey, Sam, I’ve got your deliberately informal tone right here. It’s called letting your hair down.

[UPDATE: Mark’s opened up a can of whipass.]

[FURTHER UPDATE: It looks like the devil will cite scripture to serve his purpose. Because it’s now clear that the assclowns at the New Partisan have too much time on their hands, and because they feel the need to frame ad hominen attacks within faux MLA essays (that’s editing?), I have delinked their post. I’m all for a democratic discussion about what literary blogs are. I’m even willing to be called every name in the book (and have). But when the purpose of these posts serve as pale Dale Peck imitations (e.g., “as word-drunk and pointless as a Foucault-worshipper’s dissertation” used shortly before bemoaning name calling — a hypocritical framing in the extreme), without a single reasonable argument or example, and are used as efforts to get attention, then I will ignore them. Memo to New Partisan: If you want to go after the heavy-hitters in an intellectual way, go check out Dan Green’s the Reading Experience, where Green regularly cites from books and articles to back up his points. Now excuse me while I try and recover.]

I don’t watch a lot of television. In fact, just about the only time I turn the teevee on is to watch Six Feet Under, which in its previous seasons somehow transcended its overwrought situations with musings on life, interrelationships and death. Now that I’ve caught up (thanks to insomnia) with this season, I’ve lost just about all hope for Six Feet Under. It can’t be an accident that the last episode was called “That’s My Dog.” The show not only does not respect the integrity and intelligence of its characters (what happened to Keith’s rage or the intricate relationship with his family?), but is content to rip off its plots from subpar movies like Training Day, though without even that film’s nuances. I speak of the recent hitchhiking subplot, whereby David had several opportunities to run away or roar off with the van, but didn’t. I speak of Michael C. Hall, a talented actor of understatements, reduced to cardboard histrionics. I speak of a situation in which characters are now spread across a wide expanse as opposed to being united in the funeral home, whereby the horrible plot device of coincidence will no doubt bring these people together. (Is this why Olivier is back? To keep Brenda’s mom in the picture?) I speak of the stunt plot devices (seen with the shit packages, perhaps a clue from the writers that they’re burned out?) and the cartoonish characterizations (the death of the religious lady seeing the balloon, the ogling security guards, and even Brenda’s new boyfriend, Joe, a one-dimensional nice guy played by tin Theroux, an actor hindered by slipshod writing and thus not allowed to showcase his quirks). Even the opening deaths, with the “unexpected” person of the two dying, are as transparent as gauze.

We’re now five episodes (i.e., five hours) and not only are the story arcs barely moving (slower than the recent HBO adaptation of Angels in America!), but they lack any of the vitality and meaning seen particularly in the show’s first two seasons. If the current season continues in this vein, then I hope HBO will be kind enough to bury the corpse. Six Feet Under has become no different and no less dumber than network television. And it’s a goddam shame.

Oh, and memo to Alan Ball: Beyond actually keeping your goddam characters consistent, if you’re going to have crackheads and crack dealers, how about a little verisimilitude, you out-of-touch motherfucker? Crackheads are dingy, unwashed, unattractive, hopelessly addicted, and sad. They are not picked, as you presented them, clean with slightly used threads and about two days’ stubble from the adjacent set of some failed MTV effort at streetcred.

Man, I knew I should have kept my boob tube off.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Return of the Reluctant has obtained an advance copy of Stanley Crouch’s memoir, entitled I’ll Slap ‘Em If They Smoke My Shit, to be published by Knopf in October 2004. Curiously, the memoir has been written in the third person, with a similar style to his previous work.]

When Stanley went to Tartine with Stanley’s ego to meet his nemesis, there were a lot of brief stares. Stanley thought of a horse, which spurred him to remember, as he now preferred to remember, because he could remember, that he was so masculine looking. His skin was shaven as a piece of paper, his torso just short of superman but muscular, his eyes the perfect tint to match the black marble in his floor and bathroom, and also the hotel room he stayed in last week, and also a few shades he saw at Tina Brown’s party, but he was very angry and mad, and he knew that all the women would want to fuck him because of his manliness and his eyes and the hotel room that he could check into with one of the six credit cards in his wallet, his eyes greedy and nearly decadant in their dramatis personae.

This contrast, whcih they used to joke about while smoking seven cigarettes a piece in a place that had a roomful of smoke, fury, and masculinity, meant too much and mayhaps too little right now. It was Peck that put a gash, a scar, a bullet hole, a razor burn, an affront to his masculinity in his maculine spirit. He, they, and we were superior or not, but it troubled him because there was someone in the room, maybe the owner of Tartine or the busboy who ran away because he was intimidated by him, disrupted by Stanley’s smooth, goddam smooth, smoother than his third cousin’s (second removed) infant bottom. The two had never talked, but there had been a review, a goddam review, a pretty ragged and pretty nasty and not so pretty review of Stanley’s book. Stanley’s genius stood next to Peck’s table, five times the genius of Peck, five times the man, five times the fighter (like Tyson back in the day), five times in his mind slapping Peck and watching him squirm five times the way that boy at the Voice did.

It had gotten a little hard to follow in Stanley’s mind. His grammar had deteriorated because Stanley had played the race card. Now he would play another one, just to see who Peck was. Five times. Tina Brown would be happy.

(Hat tip: Ron)

When I first heard the news about soldiers anally raping children in Abu Ghraib last night (Seymour Hersh says that the Pentagon is sitting on the tapes), I hoped to hell that it was a rumor. I was filled with an overwhelming sense of disgust that something this barbaric was allowed to go down. But I was left speechless. Fortunately, Stavros has weighed in on the matter. We’ll see how the White House and the Pentagon respond to this one (if they respond at all) and what, if anything, Hersh manages to ferret out of his military contacts.