Social Media Habits, and How the Coen Brothers Saved Election Night

For some reason I feel compelled to explain why this post exists. I’ll keep it brief. A week before the election, I went cold turkey on Facebook and Twitter. I realized that, like the rest of the country, I was going insane, and social media was only accelerating the process. I was checking Twitter constantly for updates and new polling numbers, mainlining everyone else’s fears and hopes at the same time. Conversely, I’d stop by Facebook for a break from the news – Post some photos of your damn cats! – only to get sucked back into the maelstrom.

It finally dawned on me that this was part of the problem.

Time for a sabbatical. I still read the news, but in concentrated doses. (Do the republic and yourself a favor: subscribe to a newspaper. Journalism is important enough to pay for.) By election night I felt calmer, I was sleeping better, and once out of the echo chamber I’d unintentionally built I was even somewhat prepared for the eventual outcome. I also discovered I wasn’t in any hurry to get back to my old habits.

I’ve made some resolutions for the coming years. If anything I’m going to spend more time in bars, because what we all need to do now is talk directly to friends and strangers alike in a congenial atmosphere. Engagement must be the order of the day. (Here’s a segment from WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show about the role of the bar as community meeting place on Election Night, featuring the terrific New York Times Magazine writer/bartender Rosie Schaap.)

And I’m going to reduce my social media presence for my own peace of mind. Not eliminate it; the pull’s too strong, and I know how essential it is for promotion. (Did I mention that Rosie Schaap blurbed my book Down The Hatch?) While I am going to scale back, I do still have an overwhelming urge to shoot my mouth off. So I plan on posting here again – I’m aiming for once a week, maybe Thursdays – with recommendations and updates. Why not start with how I spent election night?

No way was I watching returns on television. I gave up TV news, especially the cable variety, a while ago. Instead I tracked the results online and entered the brave new world in the company of Joel and Ethan Coen, who never let me down. I rewatched a trio of their titles that seemed unusually apt, given the circumstances.

Burn After Reading (2008). I have irrational affection for what’s often viewed as a “lesser” Coen film. When it came out, I glibly told people it was about how the United States ended up going to war in Iraq. I never developed the theory in detail; it just felt true to me. This was the Coen movie I thought of the most during the election cycle. Pretty much every character is a self-absorbed idiot, by turns entitled and aggrieved. Empathy ends at their fingertips. They obsess over their own problems and assume the worst about everyone else. The only decent person to be found lacks all conviction, and naturally ends up meeting the cruelest fate.

Plus you have Frances McDormand, looking a little like Hillary Clinton, sobbing about having to build a firewall. So yeah, 2016 in a nutshell.

Miller’s Crossing (1990). The angry man behind the desk is a Coen motif. Sooner or later, their protagonists always have to square off against one. Crossing doubles down on the theme. Gabriel Byrne’s Tom Reagan stands before two such desks – Albert Finney’s and Jon Polito’s – as both advisor and adversary. There are valuable lessons here for the next few years. In a harsh and unpredictable world, the only way to win is to play the long game, even if it means keeping your true motives hidden.

Hail, Caesar! (2016). Fourth viewing of their latest movie. I don’t think it’s a minor work. I think it’s a dense, unconventionally structured masterpiece. (My pal Ethan Iverson likes it, too.) The “man behind the desk” evolves in the Coens’ films – when the figure appears in Burn After Reading in the form of J.K. Simmons’ CIA chief, he’s as befuddled as everyone else – and it’s strangely moving that in Caesar, they’ve finally made him their hero. All you can hope for is that, like Josh Brolin’s Eddie Mannix, he has a soul and is trying in his own way to do the right thing. Slapping some sense into wayward movie star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), he says, “You’re going to do it because the picture has worth, and you have worth if you serve the picture, and you’re never going to forget that again.” Finding something larger than you and serving it. Good advice for the week.

Book: Stranglehold, by Ed Gorman (2010)

Washington State now conducts its elections via mail, so my ballot is long gone. The highpoint of this year’s process was seeing that a Republican candidate for the state house preferred to be identified as a member of the Problemfixer party. Once again I wrote in the name of sex columnist Dan Savage instead of voting for Seattle’s apparently permanent Congressman. There was one issue that spoke to me personally, an initiative to privatize liquor sales and force the state out of the retail business. Big money lined up on both sides; hell, Costco wrote the prospective law. I supported it in the hope that some enterprising bartenders will open a store along the lines of San Francisco’s Cask. And if they don’t, I will.

All of the above had me in the ideal mood for Stranglehold, the latest book by Ed Gorman. It marks the return of Chicago political consultant Dev Conrad, an irascible operator whose dirtiest secret is that he still believes in the system. Dev heads downstate in response to a distress call from one of his aides; an incumbent Congresswomen locked in a tough re-election bid is losing her focus. The candidate’s stepmother, a one-time actress who craves respectability and controls the family purse strings, doesn’t appreciate Dev’s involvement. Dev’s digging unearths a web of blackmail and murder dating back decades.

There’s insider information galore here. Ed tells the tale with that deceptively simple style of his, his casual observations sneaking up on you. Dev’s disappointed idealist voice brings out the best in Ed. Consider:

In most motel rooms there are spirits of lust and loneliness in the corners. If you listen carefully late at night you can hear them. They speak to you. They’d told me many things over the years about others as well as myself.

As always in a Gorman book, there is compassion for every character and they retain the power to surprise. Each of them is, “like most of us, a person of parts.” Stranglehold is the perfect antidote to the current season, an entertaining book that will stay with you.

Here’s my Q&A with Ed about Stranglehold.

DVD: “One of those guys was the Governor.”

The Eliot Spitzer scandal offers ample fodder for commentary. I could contemplate the hypocrisy of a square-jawed reformer being felled by the most sordid personal behavior. Or consider the irony of a former hard-charging prosecutor becoming ensnared in the kind of elaborate investigation he once spearheaded. Or ask why Spitzer felt the need to import a call girl to our nation’s capital. You’d think Washington, D.C. would have plenty to choose from with its mix of money, power, and men separated from their wives. Or do New Yorkers view their prostitutes the way they do their pizza and bagels?

But none of those approaches interests me.

Instead, I will use the love guv’s woes as an excuse to voice one of this site’s long-standing complaints: there is still no special edition DVD of the 1995 sex thriller Jade that includes the extended ending aired on cable television. Joe Eszterhas wrote a prescient script about the governor of a major state frequenting hookers. That fictional governor, to quote a recent affidavit, could also be “difficult” and would ask his escorts “to do things that, like, you might not think were safe.” It’s uncanny. And proof that now more than ever, America needs Jade.

Miscellaneous: More King of Kong

The AV Club is on a roll this week. Today they have a lengthy interview with Billy Mitchell, the putative villain of The King of Kong. I love how it came about: AV Club staffers ordered up a mess of Rickey’s Barbecue Sauce, probably as part of this article on B-list celebrity food products, and Mitchell himself called to confirm the address. Whatever Billy’s faults, the man knows service. A must-read if you’ve seen the movie.

Miscellaneous: Political Art and Science

The Washington State caucuses are on Saturday, and for once they matter. Within a span of 24 hours Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain were all in Seattle. It’s nice to be wanted. For several hours this morning I couldn’t think with the sound of news helicopters circling the Obama rally.

But I won’t be at the big shindig tomorrow, for three reasons.

1. I have a prior engagement. All those Saturdays when I have nothing to do, and now this happens. Great.

2. I still have nightmares about my experience at the 2004 caucus.

3. I don’t feel so strongly about my choice that I want to stand around a high school gym discussing it with strangers.

Still, it was nice to discover I’m not the only person who is intrigued by Obama but vaguely embarrassed by the frenzy surrounding his campaign.