Archive for the ‘Culture Wars’ Category

Family Life Even When Complex Is a Call to Holiness, Authors Argue – The Tablet Catholic Newspaper

Khaled and Mariam pose during a Jan, 7, 2020, visit to the newly opened Catholic-run clinic in Beirut for a checkup for their two-month-old son, Mohammad. (Photo: Catholic News Service)

By Christopher White, National Correspondent

NEW YORK Marriage and family are primary sites of the field hospital Pope Francis envisions for the Catholic Church, according to theologians Julie Hanlon Rubio and Jason King.

In their new edited volume, Sex, Love, Families: Catholic Perspectives, they compile a range of short essays addressing the complexities of family life today, including migration, racism, consumerism, the hook-up culture, and more all with a perspective toward how this affects the call to holiness.

In an email interview with The Tablet, Hanlon Rubio and King discuss how they believe these challenges can be engaged with compassion and love.

The Tablet: For starters, who is this volume for? Can lay Catholics without theological training make sense of it?

Hanlon Rubio and King: In this volume, we were trying to change the Catholic conversation about sex, love, and families. Too often, discussions of these topics narrowly focus on couples, should couples live together, use contraception, get divorced, and so on. This narrowness has been exacerbated by culture wars that have turned these discussions into battle lines and divided people into camps. What was left out was so much recent scholarship that spoke more to peoples experiences in trying to negotiate sex, love, and families but also the ways in which sex, love, and families can embody the commands to love the neighbor and stranger.

The main audience for the book is students of theology and ethics, but the essays are meant to be accessible to lay Catholics. Those who pick it up will find new and expansive approaches to ethical issues that concern them, including fatherhood, immigrations impact on families, and infertility.

This is a volume on sex, love, and families. Given that, how much did Pope Francis 2016 exhortation, Amoris Laetitiachange the conversation on those issues and how is that reflected in this volume?

A volume like this would not have happened without Pope Francis. His emphasis on the Church as field hospital, accompaniment, and welcome opened up new questions and the synods on the family modeled inclusive, frank conversation. Amoris Laetitia brought this new approach to sex, marriage, and family, with a focus on every day married life and parenting and a call to those who minister in parishes to walk with the diversity of families who show up each Sunday.

Our volume builds on this model of accompaniment by including essays on how families encounter structural challenges such as poverty, racism, incarceration, as well as ordinary questions like screen time, privilege, and child care. The authors ask what the Catholic tradition has to offer families but they also show that families have wisdom to offer the Church.

Youre both professors on college campuses so perhaps its somewhat natural you begin with the hook-up culture. What surprised you from some of the contributions on that topic?

Hookup culture communicates a narrative about the meaning of sexual activity pleasure with no commitments. Its dominance in our cultural imagination makes people believe that this is what everyone desires, even though most research indicates most dont. Given this dissonance, it seemed logical to start with it.

What is surprising in the hookup essays is the way they connect love and justice, avoiding simple conservative and liberal perspectives. The contributors draw on peoples experiences and found how unhappy they are with hookup culture and how fraught it is with sexual assault. What is missing is a basic sense of justice. Other essays in the book bring a similar attention to justice to sexual relations in dating, marriage, singleness, and gender, and they do so in hopes of more genuinely loving relationships.

Catholic families look incrediblydifferent today than how they have traditionally looked, been written about, or even portrayed in art from a rise in single families to mixed marriages to LGBT parenting, etc. what are some overall takeaways from this volume that are applicable at the parish level?

We wanted the volume to speak to the questions of the diversity of Catholic families. The issues you mentioned were on our minds, as were nones in Catholic families, working parents, blended families, etc. We wanted as many Catholics as possible to be able to see themselves in this book.

Parish ministers who read the book might notice: (1) We dont avoid controversy. Most of the major sex and gender issues are covered and the tradition is respectfully engaged. (2) We dont get stuck in controversy. We provide essays to help Catholics think through questions about living a good life, from raising ethical kids to paying for domestic care. (3) We dont draw a hard line between family life and social justice. Every major issue treated in Catholic social teaching shapes family life and families are called in CST to contribute to the common good. We imagine that social justice Catholics and family life Catholics could come together to discuss our book.

This obviously isnt covered in the book, but how will the global pandemic shift our thinking on sex, love, and families that scholars several generations from now may be writing on any predictions?

COVID-19 is exposing divisions between families a major theme in our book. Those most affected by the virus and the economic impact of Shelter in Place are disproportionately poor people of color and other vulnerable populations. Were seeing families that already lack privilege struggle with unemployment or risky employment, while those who have the luxury of working from home suffer some discomfort but have much more security.

We think this shift, this necessity of considering social divisions, will keep us from narrowing our focus such that we neglect cultural, economic, and political forces. In Sex, Love, and Families, we brought together thinkers whose approach to sex and love was attentive to these social aspects. Contributors pushed for an expansive understanding of love that could animate people and families, moving us to care for those outside our homes. Hopefully, this perspective will be durable and useful as we try to go forward in this pandemic.

Of course, its hard to know what will emerge on the other side of social distancing. Will we be more afraid of those outside our homes because weve become used to thinking of others as threats to health or will we feel more connected because weve become more conscious of how much we depend on each other? Stories of medical personnel working all day and quarantining away from their children read like Catholic teaching on sacrifice for the common good played out in real time. Walking down the street and seeing sidewalks decorated with beautiful artwork, earnest messages of encouragement, and elaborate hopscotches, we see hope that these strange and destructive times are teaching us the reality of interconnection and the inseparability of justice and the home.

View original post here:
Family Life Even When Complex Is a Call to Holiness, Authors Argue - The Tablet Catholic Newspaper

Capitalism, contagion, and moral hazard: A cure worse than the disease? – NationofChange

Moral hazard. Its an odd-sounding term for a concept well-known to worldly philosophes (a.k.a., economists), but few others. More recently it has become a veritable catchphrase for critics of crony capitalism (a.k.a. corporate capitalism). Chalk it up to the deadliest, most disruptive, pandemic in modern history.

The Covid-19 pandemic has upset the global economic apple cart in ways few could have imagined, ways natural calamities (hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts) and human-induced shocks (terrorist attacks, recessions) in the past, for all the damage, dislocation, and human suffering they occasioned, did not. Lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, school closings, social distancing, people dying in agony surrounded by aliens in full Hazmat gear, and the ubiquitous facemasks that render us all faceless. Such scenes have turned bustling cities into something resembling a sci-fi film depicting life on Planet Earth after the Apocalypse.

The Economist, a paragon of classical liberalism which has been singing the praises of free enterprise since the 1840s, predicts that among the long-term consequences of the coronavirus crisis will be the 90% economy:

In many things 90% is just fine; in an economy it is miserable, and China shows why. The country started to end its lockdown in February. Factories are busy and the streets are no longer empty. The result is the 90% economy. It is better than a severe lockdown, but it is far from normal.

Far from normal means different things to different people, especially in an age of deep class divisions, rising inequality, and culture wars. What it means for frontline workers in medicine and law-enforcement, for example, is farther from normal than for the self-isolating, social-distancing, mask-wearing majority. What it means for furloughed wage-earners and for tens of millions who have filed unemployment claimsis the crushing burden of unpayable bills, families in free fall, and financial ruin.

Will most workers in the private sector still have jobs when local economies reopen? A Goldman Sachs survey found that two-thirds of small-business owners expected to run out of cash in less than three months. In the U.K., the number of commercial tenants in arrears on rent due has risen by nearly a third. Unsurprisingly, the hardest-hit parts of the 90% economy in the U.S. and Europe:

Even now in Europes five largest economies, over 30m workers, a fifth of the labor force, are in special schemes where the state pays their wages. These can be generous, but nobody knows how long they will last.

Meanwhile, far from normal is different altogether if you happen to be Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and the worlds richest capitalist, who reportedly raked in $24 billion in profits during the first few months of the pandemic. That is far from normal, too, but it points to a fact of political life under crony capitalism that Republicans in leadership positions never talk aboutnamely that for not a few billionaires with deep pockets who shell out millions in campaign contributions to elect legislative lapdogs, the pandemic has already opened the door to profiteering on an epic scale. And if the past is prologue, we aint seen nothin yet.

Americas billionaires grew their wealth by $282,000,000,000 in just 23 days during the lockdown. Thats $12,300,000,000 a day. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are out of work and struggling to pay the bills. This is a tale of two pandemics.

Robert Reich Tweet, May 2, 2020

In a recent article entitled How to think about moral hazard during a pandemic, The Economist proffered this definition: Moral hazard describes situations in which the costs of risky behavior are not entirely borne by those responsible for that behavior, so encouraging excessive risk-taking in the future.. The moral dimension arises from the fact that moral hazard invariably involves moneymoney managers, money markets, and, above all, moneyed interestsand the greater the amounts the greater the hazard.

If youre thinking something along the lines of No wonder economics is called the dismal science youre not alone. Think of the checks and balances that form the cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution. Its an idea that became a lofty principle aimed at safeguarding the separation of powers. Now think about moral hazard. In the absence of checks and balances and a separation of powers, what is to prevent a few uber-rich individuals from buying votes in Congress on everything from taxes, trade, and tariffs to health care and immigration?

Its not rocket science. The answer is obvious: Moral hazard in a capitalist system dominated by a corporate elite arises out of political-economic power relationships that are fundamentally unbalanced and unchecked. Rarely, says The Economist, has the scope for moral hazard seemed as massive as now.

As readers of a recent piece in Forbes magazine learned, the CARES Act provides a glaring example of just how massive the moral hazard is at this time in history.

A $1.7 million stimulus check?

While wealthyAmericans are not eligible for the comparatively measly $1,200 stimulus checks that are now being disbursed to many Americans, they are on pace to do even better.43,000 taxpayers, who earn more than $1 million annually,are each set to receive a $1.7 million windfall, on average,thanks to a provisionburiedin the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

A headline in ProPublica provides another example:

The economy is in free fall but Wall Street is thriving, and stocks of big private equity firms are soaring dramatically higher. That tells you who investors think is the real beneficiary of the federal governments massive rescue efforts.

In this trenchant piece, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jesse Eisinger calls the federal governments attempt to pull the economy back from the brink both a spectacular success and a catastrophic failure. In early May, a time of unfathomable pain across the country not seen since the Great Depression, the stock market was buoyant. Junk bonds, historically dodgy during an economic swoon, have roared back, Eisinger noted.

Shares of major private equity firms like the Apollo Group and Blackstone soared.

The reason: Asset holders like Apollo and Blackstone disproportionately the wealthiest and most influential have been insured by the worlds most powerful central bank. This largess is boundless and without conditions. Even if a second wave of outbreaks were to occur, JPMorgan economists wrote in a celebratory note on Friday, the Fed has explicitly indicated that there is no dollar limit and no danger of running out of ammunition.

Bottom line: Its a bailout of capital.

Capitalism: Cure or Curse?

In politics and the natural order, the key word is balance. Its also true of economics. The Greeks understood the supreme value of balance in all things and gave it a namethe Golden Mean.

There was arguably a time in American economic history when a proper balance was struck between the free market and state intervention. The Great Depression was the occasion and the New Deal was the robust policy response that restarted a badly stalled economy and lifted the hopes of the huddled masses.

That was then and this is now. Then America had Franklyn Delano Roosevelt in the White House; now we have Donald Trump. Then the Republican Party nominated the moderate and decent Alf Landon as its presidential candidate. Now Mitch McConnell is the grim face of Republicans in the Senate who only represents the corporate interests of an elite class of capitalist extremists and libertarian lunatics who conflate any state intervention aimed at protecting competition, consumers, and a balanced economy with socialism. Here, for example, is Leora Levy, a wealthy onetime commodity trader and Trumps pick to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Chile, on Twitter: AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A SOCIALIST COUNTRY!!! she posted. WE ARE BORN FREE AND WILL STAY FREE!!! (@labbielady 2/5/19)

Todays extreme capitalists (a.k.a. far-right conservatives) extol the virtues of deregulation and stigmatize any public-spending designed to help people who need help as socialism and a giveaway while insisting that billion-dollar bailouts for banks, massive tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for agro-industry, coal mining, and big oil are necessary for economic expansion and job creation.

The Founders buying into the idea of a commercial republic is a mirror image of Adam in the book of Genesis taking a bite of the apple. The original sin that gave rise to the unbalanced, oligopolistic capitalism so evident in America today can be traced to the late 17th Century when John Locke (the Father of Classical Liberalism) set forth his seminal ideas on social contract theory, natural rights, and private property.

A century later, Adam Smith rhapsodized about the invisible hand of the marketplace in The Wealth of Nations, a work destined to become the holy gospel for the apostles of modern market economyand for its apologists. What began as an economic theory has been perverted and turned into a secular religionan extreme version of capitalism neither Locke nor Smith envisioned but Karl Marx predicted in his three-volume work, Das Kapital.

Jump ahead to 1945, the end of a cataclysmic era bracketed by two world wars, the stock market crash, depression, and the Holocaust. The turbulent interwar years produced two major totalitarian threats, one on the left and one on the right. They also produced original thinkers like Karl Polanyi, author of The Great Transformation.

Polanyi lived in social-democratic Red Vienna during the turbulent 1920s and 1930s. Nikil Saval writing in The Nationexplains how Polyani at first embraced Marxism as a hopeful counterpoint to the Dickensian poorhouse on one extreme and fascism on the other and later not only broke with Marxists but also broke new ground as an economic historian. Polyani showed how the gold standard rendered the efficient and humane management of a market economy impossible and, at the same time. Under the gold standard, he wrote, . . . the leaders of the financial market [are] in the position to obstruct any domestic move in the economic sphere which [they happen] to dislike. As Saval notes,

For Polanyi, the problem with this social arrangement was not only that it impeded the democratic process but that is also allowed the interests of the market to assert their primacy over those of society.

The aforementioned article first appeared in December 2016. Thats significant because the author did not have the kind of window on the cruel and corrupting side of capitalism the Covid-19 pandemic has given the world.

Clearly Wall Street traders, bankers, and hedge-fund managers have no answers to the medical challenges this pandemic poses. What is equally clear that the elite business class is not to be trusted with answers to the economic challenges we face.

Indeed, many highly influential business and banking elites back the deceitful, hate-mongering, name-calling narcissist in the White House. Skeptics are urged to read Evan Osnoss trenchant How Greenwich Republicans Learned to Love Trump (The New Yorker, May 3, 2020):

The story of Trumps rise is often told as a hostile takeover. In truth, it is something closer to a joint venture, in which members of Americas lite accepted the terms of Trumpism as the price of power.

Osnos, who grew up in Greenwich, notes that the latest Forbes ranking of the worlds billionaires lists fifteen of them in the Greater Greenwich Area, led by Ray Dalio, the founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater, who is worth an estimated eighteen billion dollars.

Nor did the rise of a politically engaged, jet-setting billionaire class happen overnight, Osnos argues. In fact, a generation of unwitting patrons paved the way long before Trump stepped onto the political stage.

From Greenwich and places like it, they launched a set of financial, philanthropic, and political projects that have changed American ideas about government, taxes, and the legitimacy of the liberal state.

No wonder the government of the richest nation in the world was among the least well-prepared or equipped to deal with a pandemic! Its not because market economies are inherently corrupt and chaotic or because free-enterprise is a bad idea in theory. What Churchill said about democracythats its the worst form of government, except for all the otherscan also be said of capitalism. Its the worst way to operate an economy, except for all the others.

Capitalism is inherently neither cure nor curse. The problem is a state-sponsored, pseudo-capitalist ideology that bestows massive bailouts and tax benefits for the superrich. A system that rewards greed and manic wealth accumulation at the expense of everything worth protecting and preserving in an otherwise decent societyeven to the point of denying people a living wage or coronavirus victims access to affordable health care.

The problem is not capitalism with a small c but Capitalism capitalized, the kind of extreme capitalism that seeks to kill competition rather than protect it, that rewards the use of junk bonds to finance hostile takeovers, and that turns the myth of the free market into a commodity to be sold to a public conditioned to believe that state regulation and intervention are thinly veiled socialism.

As both history and the current Covid-19 pandemic amply demonstrate, an active state is both an economic and social necessity. Competition, not deregulation, is the key to a market economy that works for the many rather than the few. Experience in this unprecedented health crisis is conclusive: Absent an impartial referee there is nothing to prevent a mythical free market from decaying into crony capitalism and causing irreparable damage to society, economy, and a badly battered political system. The role of the state in normal times is to keep markets functional and fair; in a crisis, this economic principle becomes a moral imperative.

FALL FUNDRAISER

If you liked this article, please donate $5 to keep NationofChange online through November.

Follow this link:
Capitalism, contagion, and moral hazard: A cure worse than the disease? - NationofChange

Postcards from the Red Wall: Victory Celebrations for a Nation at War with Itself – Byline Times

Graham Williamson reports on how the COVID-19 phase of the culture wars in Middlesborough are an endless re-run of the 1940s.

We are, it is said, at war. The full commemorative tea set of metaphors has been brought out to persuade us that the fight against COVID-19 is this eras Blitz. The anxiety, though, comes not just from the crisis but its potential aftermath. Boris Johnson now coyly refers to austerity as the A word, but that unspeakable road ahead is still one his party finds ideologically acceptable.

Here in Middlesbrough, we havent recovered from the last dose of austerity. Nobody here looks forward to seeing their town mentioned in the national press, unless they get a perverse kick out of cataloguing things were worst in the country for.

Heres one. On 1 March, Professor Sir Michael Marmot released his Health Equity in England report, which revealed that, for the first time in a century, Middlesbroughs life expectancy was moving backwards and quickly. From 2011 to 2016, the average Middlesbrough man saw 1.3 years shaved off how long he could expect to stay alive.

This was partly ascribed to deaths from substance abuse and suicide among forty-somethings. But, poverty has slower methods of killing, ones which are particularly lethal coupled with the Coronavirus.

Insecure work never knowing if next month will bring you enough money to live on saps the heart and immune system, as well as the spirit. Poverty makes newborn babies underweight and adults fed on cheap, low-quality food overweight. It forces families into overcrowded houses with damp walls and insufficient heating. These are all time-bombs that go off during a public health crisis. It is why the Centre for Progressive Policy put the area as number one on its list of at-risk areas.

If this is a war, a noticeable minority act like it is a phony one. Cleveland Police have been called out to 20-person barbecues and mass VE day parties. Our independent mayor Andy Preston blamed the BBC for giving the impression that lockdown would be relaxed on VE day an impression not dispelled by Prestons decision to re-open parks that very same day.

The rest of us know whos really to blame: the Idiots. They are not a unified group and share few interests other than idiocy and ruining it for the rest of us. Idiocy is so vague, it can provide a shared enemy even in times as divided as these.

Britains current culture wars are essentially a duel between competing visions of the 1940s: military glory versus the welfare state, an endless re-run of Churchill versus Attlee.

The comments sections of local news sites have been full of condemnation for them, which is fair. But something about the insatiability of the idiot discourse disturbs me. Even the most catastrophic failure of Government now causes little more than a sigh, but the Idiots never fail to provoke fury. Somehow, weve come to expect more from ordinary people than elected officials.

The idiots apparent nihilism, refusing to protect even their own lives, is another symptom of the same underlying condition behind our mortality rates. If you live in a place where the economy basically functions, the world now looks frightening and strange busy streets deserted, shop fronts now impassive metal masks. If you live in a poor area, this is what things look like all the time.

So our new normal is basically the old normal, which can breed a dangerous complacency. A VE Day party was held on the Grove Hill near my house, an estate traduced as the Beirut of Britain in the early 1990s and slowly demolished over the following decades. The people living there have seen nothing improve under John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May or Boris Johnson. Why should they listen to the Government now?

But it also expresses of a longing for community, the same need which drives the Clap for Carers ritual. In Middlesbrough, it verges on folk art, with NHS murals on garden walls and home-made banners being driven past the hospital.

Theres a particular breed of columnist who interprets everything that happens outside Wapping as moral panic or virtue signalling. Clap for Carers lends itself well to that boilerplate. The left resent the perceived insincerity of Conservative voters applauding nurses, the right tried and failed to hijack it with Clap for Boris.

I love it. Its the first time Ive seen my street, the residents of which can be transient, insular, isolated by age or illness, all outside doing the same thing. There are some parts of this country where the streets do not hold tea parties for the latest royal baby; Clap for Carers is our social bonding.

But it doesnt allay my fears about what comes next. In the race to deal with the pandemics economic fall-out, the Netherlands are using Kate Raworths doughnut model. Britain merely has a hole, specifically in our understanding of recent history.

Even The Guardian keeps discussing deficit spending by mentioning Gordon Brown, then Rishi Sunak and, in between, nothing. It is as if the facts of the last decade brutal spending restrictions that failed so badly that they massively increased borrowing, produced feeble growth and failed every other test Cameron and George Osborne set themselves is so incomprehensible to the commentariat, that their memories rejected it.

Yes, austerity is unpopular, but unpopularity is too generous a fate. Its actually pseudo-science. In 2010, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published a paper claiming that economic growth collapses once debt exceeds 90% of GDP. It came at exactly the right time to justify austerity measures across the Eurozone, but no one could reproduce its findings.

It emerged that the 90% figure was the result of a spreadsheet error. To their credit, Reinhart and Rogoff withdrew their conclusion. The politicians who used their work did not. An Excel typo robbed my townspeople of more than a year of life. But that wasnt widely enough reported, so austerity is still seen as merely a harsh medicine unpleasant, but still effective.

It could, then, be re-sold to the public. The idiots are unpopular enough to be pressed into rhetorical service, just as the last age of austerity was blamed on their ancestors, the Scroungers. Or they could be reclaimed, like the DeVos-funded anti-lockdown protests in America, as the real patriots.

Local newspaper comments about VE day parties werent all condemnatory. One man said he was proud to join in, that the parties were about freedom and patriotism. All you lot, he said, go to the hospital to applaud every Thursday. Why couldnt the estates have their celebration?

Britains current culture wars are essentially a duel between competing visions of the 1940s: military glory versus the welfare state, an endless re-run of Winston Churchill versus Clement Attlee. Should the need arrive, this will be the populist rights gloss on our current moment: council-estate patriots being scorned for celebrating VE Day, while the middle-classes meekly applaud their socialist healthcare.

It is divisive, mean-spirited and above all untrue. But theres a war on, and we all know what the first casualty of those is.

Read more:
Postcards from the Red Wall: Victory Celebrations for a Nation at War with Itself - Byline Times

Happiness looks good on Patton Oswalt in the charming and wry I Love Everything – The A.V. Club

Photo: Kent Smith (Netflix)TV ReviewsAll of our TV reviews in one convenient place.

Patton Oswalt looks happy. Traversing the stage at the Knight Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, for his latest Netflix special, I Love Everything, the comedian cant help but burst into a giant grin repeatedly over the course of his set. Even during his complaints about the horrific nature of the healthy breakfast cereals he now makes himself consume in his 50s (Im eating cereal that tastes like an unpopular teenagers poetry), Oswalt is all smiles. It may seem surprising to longtime fans who still recall the royally pissed-off nerd who launched salvo after whip-smart salvo in the culture wars during his early comedy albums like Feelin Kinda Patton or Werewolves And Lollipops. But the man who once raged against the appalling nature of 80s hair metal seems to have made peace with thingswell, except maybe Dennys.

B

B

Patton Oswalt

May 19 on Netflix

Actually, this newfound joy might sound even stranger to those who remember Oswalts fiercely cathartic set addressing the 2016 death of his wife, writer and journalist Michelle McNamara, as detailed in his most recent stand-up special, 2017s Annihilation. Since then, he has remarried, and rediscovered the joy of everyday living. After acknowledging that he had initially assumed he would just exist after McNamaras death, he urges the audiencein the most earnest and emotional moment of I Love Everythingto seek out the best reason for living: If you find love, run toward it. And all of the jokes that surround that exhortation are suffused with that sense of uplift. Does it sap some of the vicious bite from his wit? Undeniably so. But it also makes it awfully hard not to like spending an hour with the comic; hes gone from being the antisocial malcontent holding hilarious court at the end of the bar to the funny friend who makes you feel better just by being around. Its a fair trade.

I Love Everything, for all its easygoing charm, is still instantly recognizable as the work of Oswalts free-associative comedic persona. Whether riffing on how the blandly organic makers of his aforementioned breakfast must have begun (Sorghum Farms was born outside a Phish concert in 1990) or inventing lengthy backstories for the tragic-looking characters on the kids menu at Dennys, his penchant for following narrative curlicues down absurdist rabbit holes remains undimmed. But where the punchlines used to live in the outrage that seemed to continually simmer below the surface of every acid observation he made, now Oswalts humor is laced with a relatable world-weariness that comes from having been through the wringer, coming out the other side, and being confronted the fact that maybe its not worth getting so pissed off about the little things, no matter how irritating. This is comedy borne of fascination, not rage.

Thats not to say some things dont still make him mad. But Oswalt largely passes by the Trump-shaped elephant in every room, pointing out the nigh-futility of joking about this administration by comparing it to an eighteen-wheeler full of monkeys and PCP that crashed into a train full of diarrhea. And everybodys watching it, like, Holy shit, look at this! And then you as a comedian walk up and say, Hey, wanna hear a joke I wrote about this? Instead, he saves his ire for things like having to miss the Hollywood premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story, complete with a life-size recreation of the Millennium Falcon you could wander around in, because he had to attend his daughters second grade art show. Though even this gets shrugged off with the subsequent realization that his younger self would be fine with this trade-off, given it means he will have sex at some point in the future.

G/O Media may get a commission

Oswalt ends it all with an epic thought experiment about the time he took his daughter to Dennys as part of a Daddy-Daughter Day, a closing bit that demonstrates the comedian fusing together all the things he does bestunexpected wordplay, imaginative flights of referential fancy, and cutting assessments of humdrum corporate actions that might just be far more sinister than they appear. Its funny, smart, and imaginative in all the right ways, with a generosity of spirit underlying the cutting nature of the humor. (That generosity extends to his fellow comedian Bob Rubin: Oswalt has attached the stand-ups set to play right after his.) Patton Oswalt is changing into a different, more empathetic type of comedian, but for those willing to follow along on his new path, there are ample rewards.

Read this article:
Happiness looks good on Patton Oswalt in the charming and wry I Love Everything - The A.V. Club

The Legends Of Tomorrow get stranded during an apocalypse, naturally – The A.V. Club

Jes Macallan, Caity LotzPhoto: Jeff Weddel (The CW)

Heres whats happening in the world of television for Tuesday, May 19. All times are Eastern.

DCs Legends Of Tomorrow(The CW, 9 p.m.): Its an inevitability in a time-travel story: Eventually, your heroes will find themselves in an apocalypse. So here are the Legends Of Tomorrow, stranded in the U.K. and surrounded by zombies.

Look for Allison Shoemakers recap of the fittingly titled I Am Legends tonightan episode that seems likely to continue the shows hot streak.

Can you binge it? The first four seasons await you on Netflixand when you reach the crossover episode each season, you may want to zip over to the other Arrowverse shows for context.

Patton Oswalt: I Love Everything (Netflix, 3:01 a.m., comedy special premiere): Patton Oswalt looks happy. Traversing the stage at the Knight Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, for his latest Netflix special, I Love Everything, the comedian cant help but burst into a giant grin repeatedly over the course of his set. Even during his complaints about the horrific nature of the healthy breakfast cereals he now makes himself consume in his 50s (Im eating cereal that tastes like an unpopular teenagers poetry), Oswalt is all smiles. It may seem surprising to longtime fans who still recall the royally pissed-off nerd who launched salvo after whip-smart salvo in the culture wars during his early comedy albums like Feelin Kinda Patton or Werewolves And Lollipops. But the man who once raged against the appalling nature of 80s hair metal seems to have made peace with thingswell, except maybe Dennys. Look for the rest of Alex McLevys review on the site today.

The Flash reunion (Stars In The House via YouTube, 8 p.m.):The Flash wrapped up its season just last week, but if youre already pining for Grant Gustin and company, todays your lucky day. Gustin will be joined by fellow cast member Jesse L. Martin, Danielle Panabaker, Candice Patton, Tom Cavanagh, Carlos Valdes, Danielle Nicolet, and Hartley Sawyer, and like all streams from SITH, the event will raise money for The Actors Fund.

G/O Media may get a commission

After the Dance with Stephen A. Smith: A SportsCenter Special and The Story Of Soaps (ABC, 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.): Tonight, ABC airs a pair of non-fiction specials intent on shedding light on other TV events and entertainments. First, ESPNs Stephen A. Smith tries to wring just a little bit more out of The Last Dance with this wrap-up special, which will feature a discussion with Magic Johnson and more surprise NBA legends.

Thats followed by The Story Of Soaps, a documentary special chronicling the evolution of the soap opera. (Yes, Susan Lucci will appear.)

Read this article:
The Legends Of Tomorrow get stranded during an apocalypse, naturally - The A.V. Club