Right Wing Nation

The following general scenario is one of the most common during office hours:

“What can I do for extra credit?”

“Other than the online quizzes, nothing. Here, let me pull you up in the gradebook. Have you done the online quizzes?”

“Every one!”

I pull up the student’s record in the gradebook and look.

“You understand what the online quizzes are, don’t you? According to your record, you haven’t done one of them. They’re these,” I then pull up the quizzes in a browser.

“Oh, those. No, I haven’t done any of those. They’re only a point each.”

“They’re extra credit, the only extra credit available in this course.”

“Can I do them now?”

“No, you can only do them the week they are assigned. Once the week is up, the quiz for that week goes offline.”

“Can you make them available to me so I can do them?”

“No, we have no power to do that. They go offline automatically. Here, let’s see how you’re doing.”

Again, I look at the student’s record.

“You currently have an F. You did the first two projects, but you haven’t turned in any since.”

“I was really busy.”

“I see.”

“Can I do them now?”

“No, we accept no late assignments.”

“But you’re the teacher, can’t you make an exception?”

“No, because the gradebook is on a central server, and all of the grading is done automatically by program. I am shut out of editing anything, other than adding comments.”

“I have to pass this class.”

“To get a C, you’ll have to get 97% of the remaining possible points. Can you do that?”

“I don’t know. Can’t I do something for extra credit?”

So the student hasn’t been interested in doing the work for the class, but when he figures out that he’s failing and won’t get into the business school, he suddenly wants extra credit. I am reminded of this all too frequent scenario by the writers’ strike.

Consider: Every season, we’ve been getting more shows with dialogue-free scenes, and those scenes have become longer and more frequent. You know what I’m talking about, those “musical interlude” scenes where the actors walk around and mug for the camera, scenes with no dialogue, scenes the writers didn’t write, because there’s nothing to write other than “mug here” or “put on Sunglasses of Justice here” or “set jaw and look intent here” or “look up into the camera as it zooms in here” or “twiddle thumbs to muzak here.” It started — rather, I first noticed it — with CSI: Miami, when there would be at least two muzak scenes of nothing but David Caruso (and the Sunglasses of Justice) mugging for the camera; then, to make them seem more substantial (I suppose), they would have several simultaneous content-free mugging-to-muzak scenes, on a split screen. But it’s not the only one. Cold Case, a show I have grown almost to despise (give me another season, and it will have me throwing things at the television), has more and more of these, except instead of David Caruso, it’s Lily and her one-eyed (disenfranchised! disempowered! oppressed!) cat, or her partner, whatever his name is, looking sad or intense or bored, all to muzak that the band can’t sell — that’s why you see those credits for the band. And when they do write, with remarkably few exceptions (Bones is a truly remarkable exception, speaking of), they give us crap like, “I always [insert dra-may-tic pause here as David Caruso puts on the Sunglasses of Justice and mugs for the camera] do the right [insert another dra-may-tic pause as he mugs again] thing, [insert yet a third dra-may-tic pause as the camera zooms in on Caruso and the Sunglasses of Justice] Mr. Parker.” Or we get a closeup of Delko with his lip trembling, looking like his poor feelings are hurt — accompanied by really awful muzak from a really awful band who can’t sell their muzak because it’s so bad — who then says, “You’re blaming the victim!” [zoom in on trembling lip and hurt expression here]

There’s good writing for you.

So we have writers who can’t be bothered to, you know, write, and can’t write when they try, and now, they’re on strike because they want more money. I’m sure these writers were my students, the ones who came in when they realized they were flunking and wanted extra credit. No doubt these writers went to public schools, where the teachers and administrators patted them on their heads, told them how bright and speshul they were (you know, to raise their self-esteem), and gave them all the extra credit macaroni art projects they asked for. Then, they got to my class and flunked, because, well, no, they don’t get to do all that macaroni art instead of the assigned work, and because they hadn’t done it, hadn’t learned the material, and because they couldn’t get into the business school, because they hadn’t learned the material and couldn’t pass the course, decided to become writers.

They must have. It’s the only thing that explains the parallels.

Strike, my *ss. Patco the morons, and hire some real writers. Maybe they’ll earn more money. If anything, the TV writers need to have their pay slashed. And enough with the extra credit macaroni art, teachers. How bad does television have to get before you stop it?