Family Guy and Cawthorn: premonition and trajectories

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is a good thread and you cannot change my mind.

[NYDem]

I hope you were able to get help with whatever psychological episode triggered this post. [In retrospect this seems a tad harsh]

It's Family Guy, its not that deep. Don't go all BRTD on us.

[PSOL]

I hope you were able to get help with whatever psychological episode triggered this post.

It's Family Guy, its not that deep. Don't go all BRTD on us.

You think Brian hyper fixating on Pelosi that episode and storming into a federal building to kill her wasn't a warning sign? How conservative grifting didn't bring in an assortment of loons didn't lead to violence and electoral failure?

You think Democratic strategists who saw Cawthorn go down the way he did didn't impact their electoral strategy? Or how the Republican establishment didn't like the crazies they created run the party?

[WD]

That’s it, shut this place down.

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

I never saw so much autism in one post.

Want to see me talk about how Quantum Leap is directly connected to Democrats' electoral fortunes?

[PSOL]

I never saw so much autism in one post.

Want to see me talk about how Quantum Leap is directly connected to Democrats' electoral fortunes?

Go try and I’ll tear it all apart

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

I never saw so much autism in one post.

Want to see me talk about how Quantum Leap is directly connected to Democrats' electoral fortunes?

Go try and I’ll tear it all apart

On March 26, 1989, the science fiction television series Quantum Leap premiered on NBC, and our hearts. While the series never had particularly strong ratings, it was notable for having remarkably progressive values for its time (such as "Racism is bad and racists should be punched", "Sexism is bad and sex pests should be punched", "Homophobia is bad and gay people shouldn't kill themselves").

It can also be argued that the series is intrinsically linked to Democratic electoral fortunes. Indeed, in 1992, Dean Stockwell campaigned for Democrats, and Democrats won the Presidency that year. But first, I must point out the successes Democrats saw in the 1990 midterms. Four days after the episode Miss Deep South (Season 3, 1990) aired, Democrats netted seven seats in the House and won one seat in the Senate. Seven days after Star Light, Star Bright (Season 5, 1992) aired, Democrats lost a net of nine seats in the House and zero seats in the Senate, but they gained the Presidency.

The series faced cancellation in both the seasons in which a major U.S. election was held. In the 1990-91 season, a letter-writing campaign saved the series for a fourth season, while in the 1992-93 season, the series was not saved for a sixth season. The final episode of the original series aired on May 5, 1993. The aftershock of Dr. Sam Becket (drop the T) never returning home and Admiral Al Calavicci never getting over it resulted in Republicans winning the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years a year and a half later.

Fast forward to September 19, 2022. Quantum Leap returns to the airwaves, and while it lacks Scott Bakula, it's still enough for Democrats to keep their losses in the House manageable (losing what appears to be a net of nine seats) and gained one seat in the Senate in November, the day after the midseason finale, Stand By Ben (Season 1, 2022).

TL;DR: After NBC renews The Blacklist for an eleventh season instead of renewing Quantum Leap for a second season, you'll know who to blame when DeSantis breaks 400 EVs in 2024.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I never saw so much autism in one post.

Want to see me talk about how Quantum Leap is directly connected to Democrats' electoral fortunes?

Go try and I’ll tear it all apart

On March 26, 1989, the science fiction television series Quantum Leap premiered on NBC, and our hearts. While the series never had particularly strong ratings, it was notable for having remarkably progressive values for its time (such as "Racism is bad and racists should be punched", "Sexism is bad and sex pests should be punched", "Homophobia is bad and gay people shouldn't kill themselves").

It can also be argued that the series is intrinsically linked to Democratic electoral fortunes. Indeed, in 1992, Dean Stockwell campaigned for Democrats, and Democrats won the Presidency that year. But first, I must point out the successes Democrats saw in the 1990 midterms. Four days after the episode Miss Deep South (Season 3, 1990) aired, Democrats netted seven seats in the House and won one seat in the Senate. Seven days after Star Light, Star Bright (Season 5, 1992) aired, Democrats lost a net of nine seats in the House and zero seats in the Senate, but they gained the Presidency.

The series faced cancellation in both the seasons in which a major U.S. election was held. In the 1990-91 season, a letter-writing campaign saved the series for a fourth season, while in the 1992-93 season, the series was not saved for a sixth season. The final episode of the original series aired on May 5, 1993. The aftershock of Dr. Sam Becket (drop the T) never returning home and Admiral Al Calavicci never getting over it resulted in Republicans winning the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years a year and a half later.

Fast forward to September 19, 2022. Quantum Leap returns to the airwaves, and while it lacks Scott Bakula, it's still enough for Democrats to keep their losses in the House manageable (losing what appears to be a net of nine seats) and gained one seat in the Senate in November, the day after the midseason finale, Stand By Ben (Season 1, 2022).

TL;DR: After NBC renews The Blacklist for an eleventh season instead of renewing Quantum Leap for a second season, you'll know who to blame when DeSantis breaks 400 EVs in 2024.

That completely ignores the Obama years and second Bush midterm.

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

That completely ignores the Obama years and second Bush midterm.

Journeyman aired in 2007 and was a blatant ripoff of Quantum Leap. Your move.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That completely ignores the Obama years and second Bush midterm.

Journeyman aired in 2007 and was a blatant ripoff of Quantum Leap. Your move.

2007 is after 2006.

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

That completely ignores the Obama years and second Bush midterm.

Journeyman aired in 2007 and was a blatant ripoff of Quantum Leap. Your move.

2007 is after 2006.

But before 2008. In any case, The elections from 1996 to 2020 don't follow the same rules as 1994 due to Quantum Leap not being on TV being the new mean by 1996.

[Dr. Yakub]

Everybody in this thread is misunderstanding Family Guy in one way or another. Let me briefly outline why:

First, as to the claim of M. PSOL upthread that early-season Family Guy represents the views of the working class: no, except insofar as the working class is ideologically captured by Bourdieuvian high-economic capital low-social capital petit bourgeoisie of the type whose lives the show chronicles (a doubtful proposition even in the parts of the country where it is the most true, and absolutely not correct in Rhode Island). The main four friends of Family Guy are proletarian only insofar as the labor aristocracy in an affluent American suburb is: that is to say, not at all, except in the warped minds of the cracker punditocracy that passes itself for an intellectual class in this country. Quagmire is an airline man who can afford a massive house full of expensive industrial gizmos to facilitate his sexual escapades. Joe is a cop. Cleveland is a small business owner. Peter has the greatest claim to proletarian status, but is clearly under the employ of a boss who favors him above other workers, and has the sort of proximity to great wealth that precludes his ever experiencing the real precarity of working-class life in the United States (which does exist, just mostly outside the view of the burghers of places like Quahog. Consuela, a racist caricature born of what the Harvardmen who produced Family Guy imagine is the white working class mindset, is the most representative). This group is important in American elections, but ultimately not in the class struggles that I am sure we agree will decide a greater part of the future of this world. You are in no way "abandoning your caste" by consuming media made by others who incorrectly believe themselves to be abandoning *their* caste. Like others who imagine themselves to do so, Seth MacFarlane's politics are ultimately based on affect: after supporting Sanders in 2016 when it was the aesthetic preference of his type to do so, he was one of Pete Buttigieg's greatest donors in 2020. What his project really is is to incorporate the only group he imagines to be part of the working class (well-paid, mostly white suburbanites with varying relationships to the production process) into his own ultimately conservative-minded ideological bloc, much as he attempts to reincorporate musical theater into hegemonic white heterosexual masculinity. Despite all that, he remains a fundamentally honest artist: he allows a shade of his central impotent embourgeoisé self-loathing (a sentiment common to such artists for at least a century), which is "liberated" into the jouissance of violent action by the far right. It is here, and only here, that my Illinoisan friend has the kernel of a point.

So much for the OP. I now turn to those schoolyard moralists who disparage the intellectual and aesthetic worth of the show. Media are not inherently hierarchically arranged. They are tools, and a skillful wielder of any tool suited to their work can wring more or less anything out of a human soul, or put more or less anything into a human mind. M. PSOL's confusion on the subject of class relations is evidence that Family Guy has done at least one part of its, and done it well. Only, to repurpose the taunts of the philistines, an idiot would refuse on grounds of a definition of "taste" worked out for them by high-school curricula and pseudo-intellectual socialization to study at the feet of any master of a medium as objectively important to ideological and social reproduction as television when offered the chance.

I will include a more protracted reply regarding the remainder of this thread's errors when the fancy and the free time strike me.