In Which We Were Pretty Much Dead To Begin With

White Flight

by DICK CHENEY

The Walking Dead
creator Frank Darabont
Sundays at 9 on AMC

Only white characters are permitted backstories on AMC's The Walking Dead. If you are white, you have a beautiful child who looks exactly like you and a charming meet-cute story about how every other person you know died from a bacterial infection but you made it out alive. Should you be hurt in the days that follow, never fret. Your pallid Caucasian exoskeleton will survive direct gunshot wounds without complications. You are basically invincible and impervious to pain. If you're a person of color on The Walking Dead, you'll probably just end up killing yourself by accidentally slashing your wrist.

the buddy system

The show's currently surviving characters of color, who have never exactly been named, are portrayed by Anthony Anderson and the little Chinese kid in the second Indiana Jones. He even has the same hat. Anderson, for his part, seems to have done well in recent years. (He also hosts a show on the Golf Channel.) These young men aren't allowed to go about with the other white characters. They have a buddy system, like little kids on a field trip to the aquarium. Someone asks them condescendingly, "Did you close the gate?" as if they would forget and leave it open to the undead.

be there for her, Glenn

The Korean fellow, Glenn (Steven Yeun), can't even close out an attractive woman's attentions on him as she mourns the passing of all her male friends. All her dead ex-boyfriends are immortalized on her refrigerator in a haphazard shrine to her loneliness. Glenn just sits there, he doesn't even put his arm around her. When the saddened young woman Maggie (Lauren Cohan) showers him with attention, he refuses her advances and suggests she take up sex with a whiter member of his party. Not since Newhart has open racism been given such a prominent forum on American television.

You can't have pity sex on The Walking Dead, but you can get excited by Georgia's amazing values on new homes. A raised ranch in a nice neighborhood is absolutely free. Should you desire actual meaning from watching white people shoot zombies in the head with bullets and arrows, don't bothering looking in Robert Kirkman's comic books. They look like they were drawn by a four year old, with a litany of "BAZOOOM" and "GURGGGL"s in place of actual dialogue and drama.

SEE! he closed the gate

In fact, The Walking Dead is drama devoid of all its modern components. It's just people, not usually in conflict, walking around in woods that could be anywhere on Earth, trying to find something interesting to talk about. A full ninety percent of their conversations begin with either the phrase "Dark's coming on soon" or "It'll be dawn in a moment." Talking about the weather is truly the lowest form of conversation. Perhaps what these desperate survivors really fear is the rising and setting of the sun?

We think of the bubonic plague as a singular outbreak, but in reality the black death emerged for the first time during the age of Justinians. It took a break of a few thousand years, waiting for people to experience new sins. No one was white then, they were mostly tan. As in The Walking Dead, every survivor spoke in exactly the same vernacular, with identical intonations, despite wildly disparate backgrounds. We were all alike, witnessing the onset of something we could not fathom — except the Korean kid and the black man who finds himself unable to deviate from the dialogue Danny Glover was given in the first Lethal Weapon. 

The cliffhanger in The Walking Dead's season premiere consisted of the white boy named Carl getting shot in a hunting accident. It's a law of the jungle that if someone gets shot, they probably had it coming. As if a young boy's bullet wound weren't upsetting enough, the incident is re-lived constantly by every single person involved, as if no one else had died in this Georgian landscape.

"Approach me, white boy!"

Rick Grimes (the British thespian Andrew Lincoln) muffles his accent with a throaty growl, his wife (Sarah Wayne Callies) doesn't have to fake an accent; she puts all her energy into overacting. Her anguish is so over the top at this point, given that she is hardly the only person to have lost someone, that we find ourselves wishing her face eaten off.

Last night's episode featured the far more disturbing image of a man (Jon Bernthal) with hair shaving himself bald, a disturbing sequence which should have merited a TV-MA warning in and of itself. Bernthal's character is not only stricken with guilt for sexing Rick's wife Lori when he was in a coma, but he's also genuinely upset about losing an intra-cast overacting competition to her. On top of that, he had to sacrifice his fat friend Otis to save her son from that hunting wound. Killing hundreds of diseased people merits no sorrow or sadness, but allowing one healthy person to die is a haunting, inescapable crime.

soap is inexhaustible during the end times

In fact, the unfortunately named "Shane Walsh" (the handle doubles as Jon Bernthal's porno name) has nothing to be ashamed of. Sure, he originally made a mistake that caused his best friend Rick to become catatonic. Correct, after that he made sweet love to Rick's wife and treated the man's child as his own. And yes, after Rick showed up from the dead he got very drunk and scared the shit out of Rick's wife. And then to save Rick's son from death, he had to sacrifice another innocent. So basically, yeah, nothing to be ashamed of.

The man I shot while hunting quail was 78 years old — he also survived, although he now has about 30 pieces of birdshot lodged in his chest for the rest of time. When you shoot someone by accident, to show the slightest bit of regret or disappointment gives the entire game away. And don't shoot children when you're out hunting — it's frowned upon, even when there is no intent. Don't hunt deer, either. That deer could be someone's mother; a fresh quail tastes like Linda Hamilton.

So what is there to enjoy about The Walking Dead? I have no idea, can only speculate. From time to time it is emotionally profitable to become lost in a place and time not of your own making — that is the therapeutic importance of the dream world. The men and women of The Walking Dead have wandered so far from civilization that they can identify no useful landmarks. One highway begins to look like a lot like another road.

At every destination, they find the same leering disappointment — no matter how useless their new lives are, they experience each sadness as if it were the first, as if everyone they knew had just then become undead, instead of things having been that way for awhile. The advantage of remaining tragic, instead of gradually feeling better about yourself, is that when the next bad thing happens, you are no worse off than you were before.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of the United States. He last wrote in these pages about Boardwalk Empire. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Tomorrow is a Long Time" - Elvis Presley (mp3)

"Blue Jeans" - Lana Del Rey (mp3)

"Space Junk" - Wang Chung (mp3)

In Which We Never Rely On The Promises Of Drunkards

Unsympathetic Kingdom

by DICK CHENEY

Boardwalk Empire
creator Terence Winter

To find someone who really enjoys Boardwalk Empire, you need to find a very subtle and self-destructive person. Paranoiacs, specifically potheads, enjoy Boardwalk Empire more than regular people like you or me. Sitting down to enjoy Ken Burns' Prohibition requires an advanced degree, a willingness to pretend you have never see a documentary before now, today, and a stick with which to flay yourself. Sitting down to watch Boardwalk Empire requires all that and a suspension of your disbelief.

Last night Hulk Hogan wrestled his last match. I should say, he "wrestled" "his" "last" "match", because the match was so horrible it was difficult to tell if there were any wrestlers in it, and the outcome (he lost) was predetermined. Numerous back surgeries that have left Hogan, born Terry Bollea, a shell of his former, still-not very mobile self, and he could not take any bumps flat on his back, and indeed barely left his feet during the match at all. Despite his evident handicaps, and the fact that he was the de facto bad guy in the match, the Philadelphia crowd cheered him. After the match, he presented a disgusting photo of his back that will haunt me for all time.

his ex-wife's sailboat is called the "Alimoney", no joke

Hogan is one of the most notorious Italian-Americans since Al Capone. Although Capone should be the biggest heel in Boardwalk Empire, for some reason he is portrayed as a happy-go-lucky teenager. In last week's episode, his father died, and no one really cared, least of all Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson. Finding a villain on Boardwalk Empire is easy, finding one you care about is a lot harder.

Instead of just promoting himself as Hulk Hogan, the conquering hero, Terry Bollea wanted to play a bad guy who is good deep down inside. The fact that Hogan's last match drew a pathetic crowd of only 2,500 in Philadelphia emphasizes the fact that the paying customers don't care about tortured souls, they only care about watching good guys and bad guys settle things in the ring.

The rings of Boardwalk Empire are its gorgeous and elaborate sets, which look to have cost a fortune. Considering the only person I know who likes Boardwalk Empire recently suffered a thematically timely stroke, the ratings cannot possibly be justifying the wanton spending. Many big-budget shows, in order to save costs, built concept episodes into their seasons, hour-long editions that only use one set: think Breaking Bad's "Fly" or The Sopranos' ultimate masterpiece "Pine Barrens" or "Soprano Home Movies." I cannot imagine wanting to be any one place in the New Jersey of a century ago for an hour.

In fact, everyone is a heel on Boardwalk Empire. Nucky Thompson's an election-rigging corpuscle of corruption, his common-law wife (Kelly Macdonald) rationalizes his behavior and regularly lies for him, his former protege Jimmy Darmody (the incredibly charismatic Michael Pitt) doesn't appreciate his guidance and kills someone in cold blood during every single episode, his own mentor the Commodore has a face that looks like a leather purse, and Nucky's two stepchildren would probably be better off on a raft back to Ireland. Last night the introduction of a new Jewish character featured him sharpening his knives.

Abe Foxman immediately raced to his computer and began blogging

Nucky's black friend Chalky White (Michael Kenneth Williams) can't even get a hero's welcome after he assassinates a Klansmen defending his family. In order to make Paz de la Huerta sympathetic, the writers of Boardwalk Empire put a bun in her oven, forced her to weep for an entire sixty minutes and had her threaten to throw her gigantic pregnant body down a flight of stairs. I still didn't give a shit. As for the woman formerly known as Gretchen Mol, she wouldn't be sympathetic if she was falling from the World Trade Center.

It doesn't help that at least twenty percent of each episode of Boardwalk Empire is devoted to making sure we know what racist and sexist bastards everyone in this time period was. Granted, no one on the show is quite as unsympathetic or unrepentantly sexist as the fat guy on Mike & Molly, but they all are generally disgusted by members of other ethnic groups. You'd need a scorecard to really remember who is Italian, who is Irish, and who just eats a lot of pasta or potatoes. Usually you know if someone's black, although that is mostly because only one black character, Chalky, is permitted emotions slightly more complex than indignation or anger.

Actually, Chalky has been permitted to have scenes with other actors of color this season. He saw some black guys in prison and pretended he could read, wasn't that a hoot? In last night's episode, he freaked out on his family because his daughter ("Princess", smh) brought home an educated black man who was interested in medicine. It was unclear whether Chalky was upset because of the exorbitant cost of malpractice insurance, or if he was just really drunk on Nucky Thompson's watered-down whiskey.

In either case, he went from loving father and husband to wanton degenerate in about forty-five minutes, which would be uniquely captivating if every other father on the show wasn't also a total fucking shitface.

Even if you can't care about Boardwalk Empire's characters, you should be able to at least get a little turned on. What passes for sex on Boardwalk Empire is a cartoonish imitation of eroticism, designed to repel us from liking any of the people involved in it. Even the innocent sight of a naked breast is fed through a black cage of sin, or offered and then retracted like the promises Nucky makes to his maids.

The central couple of Nucky and Margaret is by all appearances completely chaste. Michael Shannon's prohibition agent won't have sex with either his wife or his pregnant mistress, Chalky White isn't even permitted to touch his lovely paramour, Jimmy Darmody gets the occasional hug from his common law wife, Arnold Weinstein was apparently a closeted homosexual, and Meyer Lansky was 13 years old with a smoothed over bump where his cock would normally be. As it mocks the prudish prohibition of alcohol openly, Boardwalk Empire embarks on a subtler crusade against the enjoyment of sex.

Little known fact: "Rounders" came out in 1963

One of the main reasons we look back at history is to find those people who wanted to achieve something beyond their own time. No one on Boardwalk Empire wants to do anything great. They're all super satisfied with the inventions of the early 20th century. When they talk on the telephone they stick out their elongated pinkie fingers in the air; when they ride around in a motorcoach they sniff its filthy exhaust as if it were an opiate. They don't want do anything. Remind you of anybody?

I'm willing to witness the shady backstage dealings of some not very imaginative or interesting people if in the end they either get their just deserts by paying for their sins, or come out magnificently scot-free despite their foibles. History — real history — ruins this possibility. For christ's sake, I already know the date of Nucky Thompson's death, and I have no chance of unknowing it. For the purposes of Boardwalk Empire, Nucky is as immortal as a fucking Highlander.

With that said, there's a part of me that loves how different Boardwalk Empire is from the rest of television. Granted, it's not exactly an imaginative difference, but you can appreciate all that must go into it — like eating an elaborately prepared meal that tastes no better than the drive-thru at Burger King. It is what makes the lack of satisfaction that could come from these characters, from this place and time, all the more frustrating.

awesome shawl there Margaret

Some people go their entire lives without admitting an essential truth: they are desperately seeking someone to admire. I too succumb to this fundamental human urge from time to time (until I find a very tall & wide mirror). When I attempt to worship a person, they end up cheating on their wife, or starting a federal campaign against obesity, or telling me they respect Ezra Klein, or inadvertently allowing me to learn they subscribe to The Atlantic Monthly, perhaps when I drop a deuce in their bathroom.

When I was in high school in Wyoming, I idealized a certain woman, call her Evelyn. Every gesture she made was like the wave of a wand; our conversations were ebullient displays of equanimity. Once I came — no orgasm, simply a discrete ejaculation in my pleated khakis — when Evelyn hugged me after I'd explained the Pythagorean theorem. Nothing could ever be the same after that. Eventually, she started dating a guy whose penis resembled the Washington Monument in both proportions and color.

Evelyn was a shitty person but potentially a great character on Boardwalk Empire. In last night's episode, Jimmy Darmody's wife Angela (Aleksa Palladino) painted his disfigured bodyguard and chaffeur Richard Harrow. He took off the half-mask that covers the wounds he obtained in the Great War. He tells her a very moving story about how, after his twin sister Emily cared for his wounds, he became unable to love her as he did before. It is a vaguely threatening fable about how knowing everything about someone is tantamount to destroying them.

Captivated by how he integrates savagery and vulnerability in one person, Angela sketches him as best she is able. Before the final product is revealed to us, Angela seems the exception to the rule: she alone aspires to something ineffable, something immortal and everlasting, beyond time. Then, with a start, we see Richard Harrow as she has depicted him. It is the image of a man, and nothing more.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of the United States. He last wrote in these pages about Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Through the Dirt and the Gravel" - We Were Promised Jetpacks (mp3)

"Picture of Health" - We Were Promised Jetpacks (mp3)

"Hard to Remember" - We Were Promised Jetpacks (mp3)

In Which We Find Ourselves Pet Detectives No More

Hazy Days

by DICK CHENEY

Breaking Bad
creator Vince Gilligan

Condi Rice recently lashed out at me because I suggested in these memoirs that she cried in my office. And so what if she did, exactly? I've cried twice this week, and I can scarcely remember seven days that elapsed when I didn't. I cried reading Friday's TR, I cried when Princess Diana first wore a crown (for the death of England, natch) and I cried after reading Ender's Game. For some reason the entire premise of genetically engineered orphans always gets the waterworks flowing.

Here are some of the other times I remember weeping like a baby. (In the Pentagon we called them "wepts", like, "My So-Called Life gave me one hell of a wept last night.")

- When Molly Young deleted her tumblr; I was like, "WHY DIDN'T I MAKE SCREENCAPS"

- Nine times during Brideshead Revisited. Being British, or even knowing a British person, is just about the saddest thing I can imagine. Each time you come to an old townhouse near Shropshire you're overcome, and that kind of vulnerability touches me deeply;

- the homophobic lyrics of Katy Perry;

- The day in 1994 when it was no longer OK to say "Allrighty then" and generally pretend to be Ace Ventura;

- When they freed the West Memphis Three and Eddie Vedder was like, "G chord";

- The idea that Kate Winslet is eventually going to turn into that horrible old woman in Titanic;

- Whenever anyone's an orphan and is taken in by caring parents, especially in the third world;

- Seeing another man cry, especially if he was on CSI;

- Anytime someone reblogs Andrew Sullivan approvingly;

- SIMBBBBBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAA!;

- Anytime someone uses the name Robert Downey Jr with a positive connotation;

miss when u weren't trying so hard

- When Jonah Hill got thin and looked like the Scarecrow in Oz and/or the thought of someone caring about his godawful animated series;

- The old West was sad as shit;

- Every single moment Michelle Williams dresses up as a dead or suicided ingenue;

- After the Mission Accomplished banner on that aircraft carrier, but it was tears of joy.

Despite my ample experience working the tear ducts, watching Breaking Bad's Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) do the weeping last night came as something of a shock. One disturbingly emotional moment fuels every man's drive for power. Winston Churchill's entire political career happened because one of his young classmates told him to stick a ceramic vase up his fat ass.

Yes, the traumatic loss of Gustavo's first chemist partner, and possibly his Chilean lover, brought on tears we haven't seen from the man in any previous episode. Gustavo, in fact, never seems to break his steely countenance. He never laughs, which is the one universal sign that the person sitting across the table from you is, in fact, human.

The men and women of Breaking Bad usually make a habit of showing us their humanity. Last night's episode began with Walt (Bryan Cranston) at the doctor for a cancer checkup. As a newly diagnosed patient lapses into reverie about the hopelessness of his condition, Walt disabuses him of his sorrowful notions: "Live life on your own terms. To hell with your cancer. Every life comes with a death sentence." This reality check itself is enough to get most men wet and teary, but not Walt. He's fresh out of salty discharge. Like Gus, he's well into the anger and resentment phase that Jesse (Aaron Paul) expresses by playing video games.

If you really analyze it, there is no human experience without pathos. Just watching John Edwards wake up in the morning or try to rationalize a single thing he's ever done is enough to get a hard wept out of Dick Cheney lately. The very sight of the wonderful new home Jesse made possible for his ex-girlfriend and her son, and the way he is unable to credit himself for doing a good thing is sadder than when all the lower class passengers were not permitted in the lifeboats.

Gus was questioned by the DEA last night, and his ample excuses for the fingerprints they found in the apartment of one Gale Boetticher dimmed the suspicion of law enforcement. His steely countenance as he took the elevator up to the place where he might meet his end was also quite moving.

Maybe I've just gone soft. When I wake up on a typical Sunday, I don't even feel the urge to light my neighbor's copy of the Sunday Times on fire. My wife Lynne said, "Dick, when you don't even want to set fire to a newspaper containing the writing of Paul Krugman, I have to worry about our future together." I said, "Quiet, I'm watching a YouTube of Stevie Nicks lip-synching 'Wild Heart'."

DEA agent Hank Schrader's rehabilitation from gunshot wounds, first inspired by a hospital handjob and then by the potential investigation of Mr. Fring, was enough to get most of the conversatives I watch Sunday night TV with ensconced in velvet tears. Usually it's hard to focus on the episode in my house, because whenever Jesse Pinkman shows up on screen, Grover Norquist is screaming, "Stop whining!" or Laura Ingraham is yelling, "Take off your shirt!"

Last week's amazing sequence, which featured Pinkman telling off the director of his Narcotics Anonymous support group, deserves more Emmys than Matthew Weiner has in storage. This was the best theater since Neil Simon's Chapter Two. I'm considering getting a tattoo of this entire scene permanently inscribed on my colon.

Listening to this scene more than once inspires a litany of different reactions. At first, there is stark approval of Jesse's destruction of the entire therapeutic purpose of a support group. Then, astonishment at the honesty of everyone involved, especially the group's alcoholic leader. Lastly, a hatred of everything that exists to bring about such an annihilating moment.

We think it takes one thing to make us cry, that something sad itself is enough to disturb the calm of our face, the twitching of our ears, tension in the cheekbones. But it is our own mental state that takes primacy: a instinct designed for self-preservation. Nothing, then, could be more tormenting than what we ourselves become in the moment of collapse. To overwhelm the gravity of the feeling, we attempt to transcend it through self-importance. When we weep, we're saying, "Me! Me! Me! Me! Me."

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find an archive of his work on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about shame.

"Capitol City" - Wilco (mp3)

"Rising Red Lung" - Wilco (mp3)

"I Might" - Wilco (mp3)

The new album from Wilco, The Whole Love, is available on September 23rd and you can preorder it here.