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Hey, look, they found another thing to go on an ill-considered rant about!

 Jimsolo wrote:

Joss Whedon hates cops, for example. I haven't seen the SHIELD show yet, but outside of that, he has never done a television show with any law enforcement official, minor or otherwise, who wasn't crazy, stupid, or corrupt. I certainly can't think of one.

I can think of a few from Firefly. You know, the show about the awesome outlaw smugglers?

I was going to say, the sheriff in the train job seemed to be a good man who caught on that something was wrong, and when they made right accepted that they'd been poorly informed about the job and let them go. Hardly a crazy, stupid or corrupt law enforcement individual.

 Spinner wrote:
awesome outlaw smugglers?

I'm just gonna come out and say this is why I never liked Firefly. The crew of that show, never seemed to me to be as awesome as they thought they were. Mal especially just came off as some sci-fi version of a bitter southerner pissed off the North won the war.

Until Serenity came along, I didn't like anything produced by that show and I only liked Serenity because the Operative was awesome not because the crew was awesome. They were about as lackluster as I expected.

Didn't they have the exact same segment and argument when the Muppet Movie came out in 2011?

I think they even mention it in the video. Did the same thing when that lame sequel to that Oliver Stone film came out too.

 motyak wrote:
I was going to say, the sheriff in the train job seemed to be a good man who caught on that something was wrong, and when they made right accepted that they'd been poorly informed about the job and let them go. Hardly a crazy, stupid or corrupt law enforcement individual.

Yeah, he was the one that leaped to mind. A bunch of the Alliance people seemed to be just regular folks doing their job, too - sure, the captain in the first episode really seems to hate the main characters for the five minutes he's on-screen, but, well...they're smugglers looting the site of a shipwreck. And then he goes off to help what he thinks is a stranded civilian ship instead of chasing them. Decent enough guy.

...of course, we can balance him against Officer Organ Smuggler later on, but it's not like the criminal types don't get the chance to be evil...

Aw, Hats, you make me sad. Different tastes, I suppose.

Oh, er, right, topic. Does this sort of thing actually pick up steam, or just ridicule? I can't remember anyone taking the rant over the Muppet movie seriously, and this sounds like pretty much the same thing.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I don't have a problem with dirty cops in films, books, or movies, but some directors/writers take it too far. When anyone does a show where a single profession (cops, soldiers, etc) are either villified or glorified beyond reason, it gets a little tedious.

I find it most frustrating when cops are both. Like in Die Hard, where Bruce Willis is a heroic badass who takes down a dozen terrorists by himself, while the other cops are total numpties who blunder in to each terrorist trap with incredible incompetence, especially the SWAT guys trying to enter the building.

Can't we just have trained, professional cops who do their job? Not one or two heroes who do everything while the rest of the police force just feths everything up, but an actual police force with 9-5 regular professionalism and competence?

 sebster wrote:

Can't we just have trained, professional cops who do their job? Not one or two heroes who do everything while the rest of the police force just feths everything up, but an actual police force with 9-5 regular professionalism and competence?

No.

Probably for the same reason we can't have guns with a finite amount of rounds in a magazine!

 motyak wrote:

 pities2004 wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
First Lego was racist because they're all white, but now they're anti business as well. For Shame Lego!

Actually they are yellow

So skin colour is all that's important to you? Well done dakka, you've raised a monster.

You could make a really racist joke about them bring made in china...

gak, What about Lex Luthor?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
gak, What about Lex Luthor?

He's a job creator!

Soo... has Fox news ever watched Robocop?

 iproxtaco wrote:
Sometimes I think it would be great to have a version of Fox news here in the UK.

We have the Daily Fail, thats at least as flying rodent gak crazy.

I find it funny that people are offended that a person who willingly involved themselves in politics is being mocked for laughs when I can't open my facebook feed without one of my conservative friends posting a picture of Obama with donkey ears and huge lips and that he is "killing America lololol" and people say in that case it is totally justified.

If your in politics, be ready for criticism and ridicule.

 sebster wrote:

Can't we just have trained, professional cops who do their job? Not one or two heroes who do everything while the rest of the police force just feths everything up, but an actual police force with 9-5 regular professionalism and competence?

Depending on how married you are to the whole... 'competence' part of that statement, you might enjoy the film "The Other Guys." Or, at least, the first 10 minutes of it.

I'd argue it's less about cops/businessmen/capitalism or whoever being the bad guys. It's just whoever represents 'The Man' - It's all about glorifying the outsider / rebel. I'm sure there's plenty of studies about it, probably relating to America's own history.

Things are different in other countries. I'm probably way wrong in this, but while the UK, for example, has a lot of shows and things about the outsider still being the hero, ultimately it's about gaining the respect of whoever is in charge and it's often the 'middle management' that's seen as the foils. - Take for example the Richard Sharpe stories, it's quite often the Lieutenants, Captains and Colonels that are portrayed as the poncy, incompetant buffoons, but the Generals are normally the good guys and the Reasonable Authority Figure, with Wellington, of course, being the big dog.

Of course, this is not to say that every film and tv show is like that, but I imagine that there probably is a greater tendency, with shows like 24 and Stargate being less common.

Although, an outlier really does have me somewhat stumped here. Agents of SHIELD really does have me stumped. I don't know if it's just because of the history from the comics (I imagine there was some international participation in it at some point), but I'd generally expect something like SHIELD to be portrayed as the bad guys (ala SMERSH, SPECTRE), as opposed to the heroes and, aside from some bad eggs that will no doubt crop up, will generally remain the goodies in some form.

Sharpe is actually really interesting, as he grows higher and higher in rank the 'middle management' shrinks. Initially in India it is mostly Lieutenants and Captains who are rotten (and sergeants), but as he climbs the ranks Lieutenants and Captains become more useful, for example Harry Price despite the fact he's a drunk, as well as the French exile, the name escapes me. L'something? While this happens, it becomes the majors and colonels who are less useful (bloke who buys the South Essex, etc). Finally at the culmination of it all (Waterloo) you have competent Majors and what not (Ompteda) with the focus of the incompetence just one rank below Wellesley, in the Prince of Orange.

I just thought it was interesting that as Sharpe progresses and approaches the higher ranks, we are sort of expected to progress with him, and as such the people we are allowed to blame (the middle management as you put it) shrinks.

Movie has batman in it. That makes it awesome in my book, and the haters can suck it.

Tibbsy wrote:
No.

Probably for the same reason we can't have guns with a finite amount of rounds in a magazine!

You're probably right.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Compel wrote:
Depending on how married you are to the whole... 'competence' part of that statement, you might enjoy the film "The Other Guys." Or, at least, the first 10 minutes of it.

That does look like an interesting take on the fact that buddy cop movies have two totally awesome cops, and a whole department of jerks who turn up about 30 seconds after the action scene ends. I have meant to check it out for a while now.

I'd argue it's less about cops/businessmen/capitalism or whoever being the bad guys. It's just whoever represents 'The Man' - It's all about glorifying the outsider / rebel. I'm sure there's plenty of studies about it, probably relating to America's own history.

Yeah, I think that's a pretty common structure. I don't think it's necessarily an American thing, but instead just caused by the natural tendency for people think the person just above them telling them what to do is a jerk, and so it becomes a nice fantasy to see the guy played on screen as an incompetent jerk who gets everything wrong, and is often a villain.

But at the same time there's generally no desire to undermine the whole system because just want to watch an enjoyable fantasy, so the big boss is set as a good guy - "yeah your boss is a jerk but the overall system is fine think no more and just enjoy the rapping grandma".

The classic example, to me, is all those Robin Hood stories that make a point of saying that while Prince John was a total bastard, King Richard was great. If they didn't make a point of showing Richard establishing order and justice at the end, then at the end we'd sit there looking at all Prince John was allowed to do and say 'hang on, Robin might have the girl and John was defeated in a sword duel, but really this showed that giving absolute power to one man is a terrible system - this isn't a happy ending Robin needs to march across all of England and burn the whole horrible system to the ground'.

The hopelessly fake Undercover Boss is another good example, albeit in reality tv and not fiction... okay so still in fiction. The (admittedly not very many) episodes I've seen all have entry level employees being revealed as great workers hopelessly under-appreciated, and poor middle management getting exposed... all by the CEO. It's that same easy fantasy.

Yes Fox unregulated capitalism is the salvation, welcome blade runner.

Fox never lets Facts get in the way of a good news story

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Yes Fox unregulated capitalism is the salvation, welcome blade runner.

Fox never lets Facts get in the way of a good news story

They're pretty middle of the pack with regard to opinion/factual reporting split, actually. Nowhere near as bad as MSNBC. At least according to Pew.

Shouldn't the news be 100% factual? Or at least as close to 100% as is humanly possible.

The trick is that not all of the shows on the stations are "News". Most of the notorious ones are all "Entertainment/Opinion".

 Corpsesarefun wrote:
Shouldn't the news be 100% factual? Or at least as close to 100% as is humanly possible.

I think we gave up the ghost on that a long time ago.

 Seaward wrote:
They're pretty middle of the pack with regard to opinion/factual reporting split, actually. Nowhere near as bad as MSNBC. At least according to Pew.

"We're no more crap than the rest of the cable news networks" is not a defence I'd like to rally under.

 sebster wrote:
"We're no more crap than the rest of the cable news networks" is not a defence I'd like to rally under.

Nor I, but it is amusing to watch people claim they're so much worse when what little objective evidence we have says otherwise, and considerably well at that.

 Seaward wrote:
Nor I, but it is amusing to watch people claim they're so much worse when what little objective evidence we have says otherwise, and considerably well at that.

Well, they used to be much worse than anyone else. Not in regards to their opinion to factual news ratio, but the content and overt political bias. Then MSNBC realised that FOX news outrated everyone else by a mile, and concluded it must be because overt political cheerleading was ratings gold. So they decided to suck just as hard, just with the opposite politics.

Meanwhile CNN continued to carry on with vaguely centrist news that's mostly just kind of embaressing to watch. If anyone did watch it.

Strange I actually remember listening to one American conservative blogger who was praising the Lego movie as being about a brave outsider/individualist who takes on a big government that wants to oppress everyone by gluing them in place.

I guess people just see what they want to see in these films.

Some people just love reading into things so they can be offended (and to make a quick buck on some headlines). The video in the OP has gotten a lot of hits just for how ridiculous it is. Hits is ad revenue + publicity etc etc.

 LuciusAR wrote:
Strange I actually remember listening to one American conservative blogger who was praising the Lego movie as being about a brave outsider/individualist who takes on a big government that wants to oppress everyone by gluing them in place.

I guess people just see what they want to see in these films.

Conformation Bia's is just part of who we are as humans.

Isn't MSNBC primarily business and financial news? (or is that another, similar channel?) and therefore would be expected to be mostly focussed around assorted experts opinions?