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By Kyle | February 15, 2013
I’m a couple episodes behind on “Downton,” so I scrupulously avoid reading anything about it, but obviously not least among its pleasures is its conservatism. (Julian Fellowes is a Tory peer of the realm.) This Forbes headline caught my eye (though I can’t read the piece yet).
Topics: TV |
February 15th, 2013 at 5:55 pm
You can read it, Kyle…it is in general with no particular spoilers to worry about.
February 19th, 2013 at 9:58 am
The Forbes headline is totally accurate, if by “torching” the writer means “showering with rapturous praise,” or “delightedly obsessing over,” or “planning entire viewing schedule around,” or “diligently avoiding spoilers about,” or….
I suspect he’s trolling for hits.
February 19th, 2013 at 10:32 am
As the Forbes writer said, “torching” is from the NY Times. So if anyone’s trolling for hits, it’s them.
Here’s the NYT piece:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/another-british-critic-torches-downton-abbey/?smid=fb-share
February 19th, 2013 at 10:50 am
Most of the people I know, have read, and have heard from in one way or another about this show are further to the left of me and love Downton. I haven’t heard such rapturous praise about any show in years. Sounds like a few disgruntled Brits feel otherwise.
Slow news day.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:24 pm
I’d like to read a lefty defense of Downton. Maybe lefties who endless obsess over improving human behavior from the top down secretly fantasize that the poor will recognize the paternalistic benevolence of statism and express appropriate gratitude/deference rather than clinging to guns, religion and large sodas.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:31 pm
You’re overthinking it. Most lefties I know who love the show simply enjoy the drama and characters. Leave musings over “the paternalistic benevolence of statism” and expressions of “appropriate gratitude/deference” and whatnot to musty academic journals and tedious seminars.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:33 pm
I try to avoid Downton at all costs but did watch the Christmas ’special’. Two hours of complete dross.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:49 pm
Yankeefan, whyever would I do that? #Englishmajor
February 19th, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Kyle, be sure to use “transgressive” early and often in any academic critique of lefty viewers’ attraction to, and fascination with, Downton.
February 19th, 2013 at 5:20 pm
I smell a debate brewing! This time I’m just gonna get the popcorn and spectate. This looks like an interesting one.
February 19th, 2013 at 6:29 pm
I normally frown on ad hominem attacks, but Yankeefan is the worst human being since Pol Pot.
February 19th, 2013 at 10:29 pm
Pol Pot is my hero, and a deeply misunderstood progressive. Early proponent of gay marriage and very much in favor of a top marginal rate of 39%. Alas, he was more of an agrarian than I, hence our mild disagreements.
February 20th, 2013 at 11:15 am
Contrarian.
February 20th, 2013 at 11:21 am
Pol Pot was a locavore. He consumed only his own people.
February 20th, 2013 at 11:39 am
Pol Pot combined the best aspects of Bush and Obama national security policies: waterboarding was in fact the Khmer Rouge’s preferred interrogation method. Steeped in ethics as they were, no doubt from their Parisian philosophy courses, they didn’t understand waterboarding to be torture.
And, in Obamian fashion, Pol Pot killed nettlesome citizens. He clearly took good ideas from whereever he could find them; perhaps a model for hyper-partisan DC today.
February 20th, 2013 at 2:54 pm
Pol Pot was a great environmentalist. He saved that precious resource, water, by eliminating it from his waterboarding procedure, which he performed instead with reusable plastic bags, tied at the neck with recycled baggie ties.
February 20th, 2013 at 3:08 pm
I write this in all seriousness: After seeing “The Killing Fields” during a winter break, I returned to The People’s Republic of Oberlin to encounter at least one fellow student who told me the picture was “OK, but a hatchet job on Pol Pot.”
February 20th, 2013 at 4:48 pm
Too bad it wasn’t an actual hatchet job, like the one performed on Trotzky.
February 21st, 2013 at 10:40 am
Yay Stalin!
February 21st, 2013 at 1:35 pm
I don’t know if yankeefan is actually being serious. I don’t care if Pol Pot was the Messiah. When you admit “Pol Pot killed nettlesome citizens”, the debate ends there. Before he was PM, Cambodia had 8 million citizens. When he was done, it had 5 million.
February 21st, 2013 at 2:22 pm
…but only the nettlesome ones, so no great loss.
February 21st, 2013 at 3:02 pm
I think a million or two came here.
February 25th, 2013 at 10:49 am
I’m a leftie who likes Downtown. Honestly, the show has been waning since the first season. The way it presents the servants and the noble family is too clean and I think of the show as nostalgia for yesteryear. You know, where you remember it better than what it was actually like. It is also only called class warfare when the poor fight back.
February 25th, 2013 at 3:41 pm
It is also only called class warfare when the poor fight back.
Fight back how?
February 25th, 2013 at 6:14 pm
Pitchforks and guillotines.
February 25th, 2013 at 6:50 pm
I see. In other words, it’s only called class warfare when it actually is class warfare.
February 26th, 2013 at 12:58 pm
There is no class welfare. 0.1% of the population is not a class - it’s a club. A country club.
February 26th, 2013 at 1:50 pm
*Warfare
Funny coincidence, though.
February 26th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Huh?
February 26th, 2013 at 5:28 pm
I don’t know if it’s “huh” to the fact that my second comment was not moderated at all but my first comment wasn’t approved until after the second comment was posted, possibly creating confusion.
Or if you’re confused about 400 billionaires not exactly being a class in society.
February 26th, 2013 at 9:02 pm
The first. I saw only the second comment.
Re. your point: Obama’s notion of “the rich” is not 400 billionaires, but millions of people earning 250K a year, as he showed in the fiscal cliff fight. They’re a class, alright.
February 26th, 2013 at 11:30 pm
I disagree with his notion that people making 250K before taxes are rich.
But all I heard during the Republican debates, in response to questions about the Buffet Rule - a 30% minimum tax on less than 1% of the population - was that it was class warfare.
The warfare part of the term uses the same political rhetoric as the War on Drugs, War on Terror, War on Poverty, War on….there is no warfare. The “war” part is thrown in to get people riled up and paying attention.
As for the “class” part of the term, since when is 0.75% of the country a class? Even in feudal Europe the nobility were around 5% of the population. That was more deserving of the term “class warfare”. This is country club warfare.
February 27th, 2013 at 7:03 pm
You may disagree with his notion, but he was selling it to the public.
250k a year are known as upper middle class. Calling middle class people “the rich,” and demanding they pay “their fair share” is an attempt to set the classes against each other, or more precisely, to stoke the jealousy of the lower-income classes. Your Talmudic hairsplitting about what qualifies as a class does not change that.