What Are We Learning From Cable Shows? -- III

Gold Rush is yet another extremely popular cable show:

Discovery Channel Struck gold on Friday Dec. 11 [2020] as two series, GOLD RUSH and GOLD RUSH: WHITE WATER, broke ratings and viewership records for the season. GOLD RUSH was the #1 program on ALL OF TELEVISION among Men, beating all broadcast networks, including CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX. On cable, GOLD RUSH and GOLD RUSH: WHITE WATER topped all networks among both Adults and Men.

The development we're starting to see here, now a decade and more in process, is a completely new style of television entertainment that's eclipsed the sitcom of the 1950s and 60s. I suspect that the new genre has been so effective -- remember that people are now paying extra, directly, for these shows via cable subscriptions, when I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best were "free" -- that people have even become less nostalgic for the old ones. With good reason. This says mostly good things about the current state of our culture.

The "stars" of Gold Rush aren't in fact very Hollywood. None is conventionally handsome. They wear dirty jeans, work boots, hard hats, and safety vests. They aren't especially well spoken; Parker Schnabel is normally taciturn, and when he elaborates, he's tactless. Tony Beets is not only blunt and taciturn, what apeech he utters is so profane, the bleeps are nearly constant. In fact, all of them often simply act like bullies and jerks. This is anything but escapist fantasy.

The episodes show little or no leisure activity. There's a weigh-in scene at the end of each week's events in which each team gathers with carefully masked bottles of beer, but that's pretty much it. Everyone is driven. An odd byproduct is that in a sense, the show makes workaholics somehow appealing.

If elite culture thinks "white people" enjoy shows like this because there's some sort of nostaligic retreat to a world of Leave it to Beaver or Dick Van Dyke, nothing could be farther from the truth. If there's escapism in such a reality-based show, it's escapism only in the sense that being a workaholic is a form of escape from the family, which is a recognized motive for being that way -- if you're at the office 'til 11 PM, you're in fact not with your family, and to such people, that's not a bug, it's a feature.

I don't think it's coincidence that so many of these very popular cable shows portray mostly men in environments, from Oak Island to the Bering Sea to gold mines in the Yukon, where their families are absent. Most in fact do have families, but wives and daughters, while they sometimes appear, aren't primary figures and, with only a few exceptions, don't normally accompany the men. Plot devices do sometimes take particular men away from certain episodes due to family issues, but their function is simply to make the men absent. When the men return, they resume their near-exclusive focus on the work.

The big exception that proves the ruie is the Beets family, since Tony's wife clearly sets policy and runs the finances with a firm hand, and most of their children also live on site and work in the family mining business -- but they're hardly the Brady Bunch. Although they don't appear to be religiously observant at all, there's a certain Old Testament atmosphere in the family's dedication to a common purpose via hard work, thrift, and resourcefulness.

I think that the Beets family is so unusual for such a show reflects the continuing crisis of the US family that began in the early 1960s, certainly with the advent of more effective birth control. Where TV shows before that time centered on the nuclear family, presenting an idealized picture of suburban life without serious crisis, by the Obama era, the most popular general-insterest shows effectively dropped the family as any kind of focus and left that issue for someone else to handle.

"Reality" shows are in fact scripted in whole or part. The main action in Gold Rush episodes hinges on often unpredictable factors -- mechanical breakdowns, technical surprises, weather, injuries, other emergencies -- but it requires editing to stitch the pieces into a coherent narrative. What's intereting is the more obviously scripted action the producers constantly insist on inserting, excited whoops, cheers, high-fives, man hugs and such (my wife and I note that Parker Schnabel and Tony Beets are apparently exempt, but everyone else must do these things at the producers' behest). I think this is an effort, possibly even conscious on the part of the producers, to replace bonds of affection and familiarity that are otherwise missing without conventional family bonds.

This is a reflection of what popular entertainment is now telling us about the culture.

What Are We Learning From Cable Shows? -- II

White House Press Secretaary Jen Psaki, an upper-class white woman with The Look, acknowledged the importance of the most-watched cable shows a few weeks ago, when, implying that white conservatives were somehow lagging behind in getting their vaccinations, she said,

“We’ve run PSAs on the ‘Deadliest Catch,’ we’re engaged with NASCAR and Country Music TV,” Psaki added. “We’re looking for a range of ways to get directly connected to white conservative communities. . ."

I found a 2014 piece in Variety that gives an indication of Deadliest Catch's continuing popularity:

The show, which tells real-life stories aboard fishing vessels in the Bering Sea during crab fishing season, averaged 3.02 million viewers in the 9 o’clock hour, according to Nielsen, its largest audience in five weeks. It finished close behind TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” (3.03 million) as the most popular cable series overall on the night.

It’s in key demos, though, that “Deadliest Catch” is especially potent. Its 1.2 rating/4 share in adults 18-49 was tops on cable for the night, and even beat programs on Fox and CBS (a repeat) in its time period.

But it's beyond oversimplification to say it's a show about white guys, which is certainly what Jen Psaki suggests it is. From my time in the insurance industry, I know that Bering Sea crab fishermen are among the very few occupations for which insurers will not underwrite life insurance policies, period. The show gives a very clear picture of why this is. Not only are the workers routinely subject to injury and death while on deck, but whole vessels simply sink and disappear with some regularity, losing most or all of their crews.

Among other things, the show doesn't romanticize or sugar-coat any of this. It does strongly suggest that highly capable captains and crews can minimize the chances of these things happening, which is a theme we've learned since Melville and Conrad, and it's sometimes the focus of action in particular episodes.

In fact, I would say that this is a strong factor behind the show's ongoing popularity: there's an admiration for competence, experience, and job knowledge. Among the crews, on one hand, there's a sense that going crab fishing may be something of a last chance in a life headed toward the bottom, but clearly the job demands the ability to do exhausting physical labor for 24 hours and more at a stretch, in extreme cold, with ocean water pouring over the deck.

By and large, the ones who wittingly accept those conditions rise to the challenge, and this is something the episodes often reflect as well. And while some scenes in any cable show like this are scripted beforehand by the producers, or editors stitch individual scenes to imply a continuity that wasn't originally there, the fact that the episodes are filmed on deck and in the pilot house from day to day as the voyages unfold means there's a core of experience that can't be faked, glossed over, or moralized.

Jen Psaki strongly implies that the shows are about, and appeal primarily to, white people. The first impression I have is that if you watch the show or others like it, this simply isn't the case. Just earning a living in a place like Los Angeles, or for that matter a place like Alaska, people run into such a wild mix of populations that it's hard to tell who's what -- and that's because you're running into different people all day, every day, and let's face it, you're busy.

In our Roman Catholic parish there are Anglos, people of African descent, both from the US, Africa, and wherever else, people of South Asian descent, Filipinos of Chinese descent, Filipinos of Filipino descent, Koreans, Vietnamese, Latins from anywhere, and so forth, to the point that nobody from any group is entirely certain who's what. At one point, we had two priests from India, but the Filipinos were convinced that one of them was Filipino, which both the Indian priests enjoyed greatly. The fact is that in the real world, nobody has time for who checks what box.

The impression I have from watching Deadliest Catch is that the crews are inevitably going to be that sort of mix. Some are whites, some are Native Alaskan, some are going to be Russian, Hawaiian, Japanese, or Chinese. They're all filthy, unshaven, wearing rain gear with hoods, waves pouring over them. Nobody, on deck or at home, has time to worry over who's what, too much is going on. This is much of the world in the 21st century.

The issue is getting the job done and getting home safely with a big reward. Clearly this sort of thing resonates with the plebs. Jen Psaki, an upper class white woman stuck in a bubble, hasn't a clue.

What Are We Learning From Cable Shows? -- I

It's hard to tell which cable shows are highest rated, but amomg those is certainly The Curse of Oak Island, in which a bunch of white guys, under the guise of searching for hidden treasure, are actually starting to sponsor legitimate historical research in an area that's had little serious study. Nobody at this point, including the Lagina family, seems focused primarily on what treasure, if any, remains buried under the island. The question is increasingly what the heck went on there over a period of possibly 200+ years, because it's becoming plain that something did, and we know absolutely nothing about what it was.

The 2020-21 season, shortened and handicapped by COVID restrictions, had the serendipitous effect of redirecting the searchers to what might be found on the surface in a shorter period and without heavy equipment. The result was to discover a heavily engineered road, probably reflecting military use, extending over some area of the island. Other naval and military artifacts appeared in conjunction with the road. This had been buried under several feet of overburden and had been invisible up to the decision, from necessity, to excavate in that area rather than in the more fully explored parts of the island.

As the show has become more successful, it's had the resources either to hire full time academics to assist in the excavations or to bring in PhD specialists as consultants. Their opinions of artifacts, as well as carbon dating of organic material from the excavations, suggests there was intense activity on the island, completely undocumented up to now, between potentially the 1500s and the mid 1700s. One team of archaeologists suggests that in fact, given the relative paucity of artifacts vis-a-vis what might be expected on an equivalent site, considerable effort must have been taken to conceal evidence of the activity after it ceased.

Even the current historical record gives little reason to think there would have been much activity in that part of Nova Scotia in colonial times. There was a series of almost constant colonial wars between England and France in greater Acadia, but the key events took place near Halifax and farther north and along the Bay of Fundy, not on Oak Island. Oak Island may have been used as a refuge by Scottish colonists in the area following the French reconquest of Acadia in 1632, but what we're also beginning to see is evidence of much more extensive British military-style activity through at least the 1760s, so far completely undocumented and unrelated to known military maneuvers in the wars against the French. Other artifacts suggest activity in the 1500s or earlier.

The Lagina brothers appear to come from a middle-class background in northern Michigan. Marty, Rick's younger brother, appears to have made a fortune as a canny businessman and has undertaken more upper-class style sidelines like winemaking, but he has invested a considerable fortune in exploring Oak Island, in some part to indulge his brother Rick, a retired postal worker. Marty has clearly been skeptical of Oak Island speculation until very recent discoveries like the heavily engineered road.

The peculiar thing about the project and the media empire that's grown up around it is that it springs from entirely plebeian culture. The brothers became interested in the island due to a Reader's Digest story. Other than Franklin Roosevelt, who visited the island in the early 1900s with associated investors, the project has attracted largely working-class entrepreneurs through much of its history. The current investment seems to be essentially mad money from a middle-class businessman who became very prosperous through hard work and canny foresight, supplemented by equally canny TV producers who recognized the project's potential mass appeal.

At this stage, the project has potential for extending our knowledge of North American colonial settlement in ways that still can't be predicted, but could even influence key historical narratives. But the impetus hasn't come from the academy or philanthropic foundations. It's come from the plebs, and its interest is from the plebs as well. This is an important cultural development.

Overtaken By Events

Despite Tuesday's updated CDC guidance, this PSA from the California state health department continued to appear on Facebook yesterday. Although the CDC distinguishes between the vaxxed and unvaxxed, clearly this is unenforceable on a sidewalk or transit platform or in a public park. As a practical matter, unless an indoor restaurant strictly enforces the mask rule -- though they'd also have to ask for evidence of vaccination if they did -- masks have basically become optional.

And it's worth noting that it was only on March 30, a mere month ago, that Dr Walensky, the head honcho of the entire US public health establishment, gave her weepy warning of impending COVID doom. Some Cassandra.

But there are lurking questions that, so far, nobody seems to be asking, much less answering. California completely avoided the February-March third surge in COVID cases that was limited mainly to the US northeast. But vaccine became available to all states, with equally limited distribution, in mid-December. California experienced just as many of the new varieties as any other state, and it had just as much travel in and out (but Arizona's and Nevada's COVID patterns are similar to California's). And so far, the vaccines have proven effective against the new varieties.

Yet California is in fact heading toward that word nobody is daring to use, "herd immunity". As of yesterday, 39% of those in the state are "fully vaccinated', at least two weeks past their last shot. LA County has announced that, after three weeks in the "orange" tier, it will almost certainly qualify to move to the still less restrictive "yellow" tier by the middle of next week. The recent trend suggests that the rest of the state will follow within weeks.

The received wisdom from the Mayo Clinic, which reflects the view of the public health establishment, is this:

Experts estimate that in the U.S., 70% of the population — more than 200 million people — would have to recover from COVID-19 to halt the pandemic. This number of infections could lead to serious complications and millions of deaths, especially among older people and those who have existing health conditions. The health care system could quickly become overwhelmed.

. . . But reaching herd immunity through vaccination against COVID-19 might be difficult for many reasons.

The U.S. is currently making progress toward herd immunity through a combined approach.

. . . Given the challenges, it’s not clear if or when the U.S. will achieve herd immunity.

The example of California suggests that the process can take place much faster, and with far fewer vaccinations, than the public health establishment has anticipated. In fact, the pause in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine looks to have been done mostly to try to slow things down, since after dithering for a week and a half, the experts just said "never mind".

The question has been raised in many venues why the US Congress, which is assumed to have been fully vaccinated for months, chose nevertheless to be masked and socially distanced for President Biden's address, when even CDC guidelines now suggest this was unnecessary. The answer is that the people who run the planet are clearly reluctant to drop the controls that, however ineffective at stopping multiple surges of COVID, have nevertheless apparently served whatever obscure purpose they've been serving.

What a shame that the public panic is going to go away, later if not sooner. The problem is the people we pay to protect the public health are the ones who'll be least likely to recognize this.

California Is Still A Puzzle

The map above shows California's COVID status as of April 27, just two days ago. Most counties are now in the "orange" tier, and this covers nearly 90% of the state population. "Orange" restrictions are still stricter than in many other states, but they do allow most indoor activities at 50% capacity.

What's remarkable is how quickly conditions have improved. The map at right is from just a month ago, March 30, with far fewer counties in the "orange" tier, most still "red" and three in "purple". Over the course of just a month, most of the state changed from "red" to "orange", with the three worst cases leaving "purple, while two more became "yellow". At this point, it appears that over the course of May, most of the state will move to "yellow", though this will still be more restrictive than other states like Florida or Arizona.

But here's the continuing puzzle. I've already noted that Los Angeles County in particular has been very aggressive in locating vaccination sites in the poorest areas, but from the second map above, it's been unique in this. Earlier this year, once vaccine became available, the county was very quick to move from "purple" through "red" to "orange", but other counties like Fresno, with many poor residents but apparently not quite as aggressive, nevertheless followed LA County from "purple" to "orange", lagging by only weeks.

The fact is that, as the maps show, there have been no stubborn problem areas anywhere in the state. All the counties have been improving and making progress from tier to tier within weeks of each other. The maps are just snapshots.

LA County health department press releases, while carefully worded, have begun to indicate that even with aggressive efforts to make vaccine available in the poorest areas, uptake there hasn't been as expected.

The pandemic also disproportionately affected Non-White populations in the County. The impact on Pacific Islanders was particularly severe, with nearly 6 times as high a hospitalization rate as among White residents, and more than 3 times as high a death rate. Although Latino/Latinx residents were hospitalized at only 2.9 times as high a rate as White residents, they died from their infections at 3 times as high a rate. Black/African American (1.7), American Indian/Alaskan Native (1.6), and Asian (1.3) residents also died of COVID-19 at rates higher than those of White residents.

And,

The County has now vaccinated about half of Asian, White, and American Indian/Alaska Native residents in L.A. County and have also made some important gains in vaccinating multiracial community members, where vaccinations increased from 11% to 37% with one dose. In Latinx residents, the vaccinated proportion of the population increased more than fourfold of what it was two months ago, and in Black residents, the proportion increased more than threefold.

Despite all efforts, the impact has still been most severe on Latins. This is probably why the counties in the San Joaquin Valley have been slower (though by a matter of only weeks) to move from "red" to "orange", as they have a high proportion of poor agricultural workers, who are mostly Latin. In turn, the reason for this is that Latins are the group most likely not to have their immigration status in order, and vaccination does require that one register. Best not to do anything that could bring attention to themselves, clearly.

But then, with a certain substantial part of the population, which is the poorest and sickest, resisting vaccination, why is California otherwise doing so well, the best in the US and up there with the best in the world? I've got to think that, since all US states have received vaccines in the same proportion, and California counties have all been improving individually and apparently doing better than many US states, other factors besides just vaccines are involved.

But I don't think it's lockdowns. The most severe lockdowns in the country had no effect on the late 2020 surge in California. There must be another factor besides vaccines.

Panic Dissipating?

There's been a stir about yesterday's updated CDC mask guidelines, but I think the takeaway is that they're largely semantic and at this point, without tattoos on people's foreheads showing their vaccine status, completely unenforceable, even by the most zealous Karens. With the chart above in mind, let's say an unvaccinated person decides to eat at an outdoor restaurant without a mask. Since there's no requirement that he wear a lanyard with his vaccine slip in a clear plastic holder, there's no way anyone can check if he's fully vaccinated or not and thus permitted to go maskless.

Even it a Karen has her suspicions, if she confronts him in a huff, the unvax can simply huff back at her to mind her own business, and the other patrons more likely than not will shout her down as well. But the relaxation overall is pretty pusillanimous, and it's actually based on nothing new. At least in LA County, it was always OK to go jogging or bike riding without a mask. Beyond that, Dr Fauci has in effect been acknowledging that this whole mask thing has never been common sense, even when he said it was:

The CDC guidelines allow people who have been fully vaccinated (defined as being at least two weeks removed from their last shot) to do things such as walk, bike or eat at an outdoor restaurant without masks. Pretty much everything except congregating in large groups of strangers is considered safe, and even then, a mask should protect you, according to the guidelines.

“You can do so many of the things that are common-sense things,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told WTOP.

But depending on the state they lived in, people could do all these things without the shot, and still can, with infection statistics generally better than in states where they couldn't. And for Dr Fauci, common sense is how he feels at the moment anyhow. Last January, he was saying it was common sense to wear not one mask, but two:

During an interview with Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s TODAY earlier this week, he was asked for his thoughts on if wearing two masks would make a difference.

“It likely does because this is a physical covering to prevent droplets and virus to get in,” Dr. Fauci told Guthrie. “So if you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective. That’s the reason why you see people either double masking or doing a version of an N95.”

So by January's standards, if you're vaccinated, you're obviously still safer if you wear a mask, so why not keep wearing one? Indeed, why not keep wearing two? It's pretty clearly a case of what will keep Fauci on the Sunday talks, which I think this sequence shows. He knows what he can get away with, even with Savannah Guthrie.

But there are other signs that the mood is improving. After the Chauvin verdict, despite several new well-publicized officer involved shootings, the riots haven't resumed -- and there was some justified fear that the riots would resume whatever the verdict. And the precipitous decline in Oscar viewership shows the public is increasingly tired of woke. This has been carrying over to big-league sports as well.

We aren't dealing witbh epidemiological issues here. The COVID crisis was never the Black Death nor ebola, neither polio nor yellow fever. With an estimate of 5 million deaths worldwide that I saw recently, it's about 10% the size of the 1918 Spanish flu, with an estimate of 50 million. But short of vaccine, public health efforts to curb COVID via masks and lockowns have been feckless, and we're seeing little insight so far into how the disease actually spread.

The problem has been one of moral panic, not public health.

The Failure Of Anglicanorum Coetibus: The Record

The North American ordinariate began its life with several major disappointments, and it's never really recovered. It's now in a situation where the first generation of priests who came in with early groups has reached retirement age, but, as in the case of Fr Ousley, their replacements don't have equivalent background or experience. My regular correspondent from the old blog outlines the record as the ordinariate approaches ten years of age:

We have frequently discussed the conspicuous failures among the Ordinariate communities: the small, struggling “continuing” groups which became small, struggling Catholic groups, the groups gathered as ordination opportunities for clergy who have subsequently retired or moved on to local diocesan posts or otherwise departed from the scene. But the apparently successful communities also reveal grave weaknesses.

In ten years only eleven groups have achieved full parish status. Four of those were inherited from the Pastoral Provision, so in fact only seven groups have achieved this goal under the provisions of Anglicanorum coetibus. And the parochial status of one of them—-St Luke, Ft Washington—-is somewhat problematic as it shares a building and a pastor with the local diocese, suggesting that it is not actually a self-sustaining congregation.

You have reported on the problems of St Barnabas, Omaha, now awaiting the arrival of its third pastor since joining the Ordinariate in 2013. Fr Bengry seems to be holding it together on his own at St John the Evangelist, Calgary, but that situation, including its odd financing, is a ticking time bomb. We hear little about Incarnation, Orlando and Mt Calvary, Baltimore, but we will assume that their situation is stable.

Christ the King, Towson seems to be relatively thriving; my only concern is that it seems to be unduly centred on the Meeks family. Liturgically and musically it resembles a typical OF parish, with lengthy sermons by Fr Meeks which have been faithfully posted every Sunday on YouTube for the last decade.

Like the much smaller St Timothy, Sykesville whose live-stream video drew wails of horror when it was posted on Ordinariate-themed FB pages a few months ago, CTK is a liturgical outlier whose members would find little to attract them at a typical OCSP mass.

So, this is all there is to show, and it’s not much.

All the ordinariate parishes are at best marginal. What's struck me about my experience of the diocesan Church is how much it contradicts the traditionalist stereotypes of gay clergy, happy-clappy liturgy, and declining interest. Cardinal Mahony and the St John's Seminary in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles have been consistent targets of traditionalists, but the senior priests we've encountered who've been products of the seminary and ordained by Mahony are impressive men who set inspirational examples, and the younger priests who've followed them are just as good -- a number have passed through our parish, and they're pretty exceptional.

Why woukld people who've voluntarily become Catholic, presumably with no emotional or family ties to declining parishes, want nevertheless to isolate themselves in a ghetto of retro mediocrity? The only upside to this seems to be how few people wish to do it.