Corrective Lenses Fails In Its Efforts
To Avoid Becoming Another Political Blog
(This time with a TV review)

So, I didn't do much serious reading last week, but I did watch a lot of PBS' latest historical reality miniseries, "Texas Ranch House." Like "Colonial Village" and the pioneer one, the point of this show was to put a group of 21st Century folks into a way of life from out of American history. And like "Survivor" and other shows of its ilk, it ended up being mostly a study of group dynamics. The historial education that came along with it was just a nice added bonus, or a hook for the PBS snob, whichever way you look at it.

Anyway, "Texas Ranch House" put a group of people in the situation of running a cattle operation on an open ranch as it would have been in 1867. And as I watched the Cooke family play the roles of ranch owners, I kept being reminded of another guy who likes to play at being a Texas ranch owner.

Like Bush, Mr. Cooke is a manager who values loyalty above competence. He is almost completely isolated from the work he makes others do, and shows little interest in them -- except when things go badly and he lashes out at them.

And as bad as Mr. Cooke is, Mrs. Cooke is the most irritating person on the cast. I understand that it's harder for 21st century women to go back to a 19th century situation than it is for 21st century men, but she chooses when she wants to cling to her feminist ideals and when she wants to play out her little domesticity fantasy. For instance, she insists on being present at business meetings (that's another 21st century management problem Mr. Cooke has, a penchant for holding meetings), and when the ranch hands resent her butting in, she interprets this as male chauvinism. At the same time, the only work she appears to do is domestic, and she doesn't do enough of it. She spends a lot of time doing crafts, for instance, while neglecting to clean the dishes after a party for more than a week. (In the Texas summer! 107 degrees! The house becomes infested with flies!)

What she does best is softly bully her husband. He will have a civil talk with his ranch hands and come to one wishy-washy conclusion, then relate it to his wife. She will force him into another, more forceful conclusion and he will then go impose the new requirement upon his workers. To them, the changes prove him to be unreliable and they quickly lose respect for him. Meanwhile, as soon as Mr. Cooke starts to show any sign of regret, his wife cuts him off by softly saying, "You're a good man."

More shades of Bush: What matters are values. Never mind that the "values" in question -- other than loyalty to the boss -- are not consistent, or even apparent to anyone else.

At the end of the program, when Mr. and Mrs. Cooke are reading the evalution of their ranch, as put together by a team of historians, and they begin to see how negative the judgment will be, Mrs. Cooke stops reading out loud and says, "Why are we even reading this?" Oh, I don't know. Curiosity? About yourself? About other people's points of view?

What was it Bush said about how history will view him? "I don't know. We'll all be dead."