pop roundup

A few disparate threads from the world swirling around in my head.

So this new political book is being released today, Game Change, and it's caused a storm in the political blogosphere. Some Sarah Palin stuff on 60 Minutes, the Harry Reid explosion, and a lengthy (8,000 word) excerpt in NY Mag. The excerpt isn't what you'd expect - Palin or Biden or Clinton or Obama, even. It's the chapter on the implosion of John Edwards' campaign, called Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster. I liked John Edwards a lot, and of course adored Elizabeth. This excerpt isn't easy to read, and honestly partially makes me feel even more naive for believing in them. Although, who knows anymore, maybe I've bought too totally into the PR image, but I do think it's unfair to Elizabeth. It's too glib, painting her as a shrew and bitch and their marriage as completely dysfunctional before anything ever happened with his kook mistress. Real lives are more complicated than what staffers see, or reporters or analysts piece together in hindsight. What's clear is two real lives that are messy and extraordinarily complicated.
--
Desperate Housewives fans? I read someplace last year that Mark Cherry, the creator and head of the show, wanted to cover the loss of a child in one of the housewives' stories, and that's playing out now. I've always resisted the conventional wisdom thinking that Felicity Huffman was the best actress on the show, far above the others. Her character was too self-righteous, too strident, too something. This season, at 45, loving her career, 4 kids nearly raised, she found herself pregnant, with twins. And quite ambivalent about it. Ridiculous storyline of plane crashing into a street party found her, 6 months pregnant, diving to the ground to save the life of another child on the street. All seemed fine, until she clutched at her belly and was rushed to surgery, only to wake and learn one of the twins had died. The one people are talking about is the episode where she imagined what her life would be like if the twin survived surgery and was born with a host of unspecified issues. It was good. Last week's show, though, is the one that left me in tears. She's carrying on, seemingly fine, by burying her grief and looking forward. Her husband confronts her, says we never talk about it. And she says, what are we supposed to talk about? How we'll look at our one baby and always see the one that isn't here? It's powerful stuff, hard to watch. But so far, done very, very well, and mercifully, in short, small doses.
--
Anyone watch Good Morning America today? I saw a few promos for a story on another surrogacy-gone-wrong tale (not the one I've seen discussed yet), but decided most emphatically NOT to watch it. But pointing it out in case anyone else wants to go look it up. The thing that really caught my attention though? The promos said something like, 'millions of people rely upon surrogacy to build a family....' Really? Millions? What sort of sketchy math is going on over at ABC? I'm sure it's just a matter of time before this story makes its way over to Private Practice.

And speaking of my least favorite Private Practice, I've got the last three episodes on my DVR. Meh.

Anything capturing your attention these days?