Count me among those who will miss ER. I watched the retrospective and the 2-hour final episode last night, and all I can say is this: any show that, after 15 years, can make me laugh out loud one moment, bring tears to my eyes the next, surprise me with the twists and turns of various story arcs, and make me yearn for more has not overstayed its welcome--whatever its Nielsen ratings.
The writing on this show has been the best in television for so long that it's easy to forget how excellent it is. The proof? The writers do not believe in unflawed characters, even the ones we are supposed to like--especially the ones we are supposed to like. Mark Greene sacrificed his first marriage to his ER job; Abby Lockhart was an alcoholic; Peter Benton was egotistical to the max; John Carter got addicted to painkillers; Archie Moore was a twit . . . you name a character, I can name his or her often massive shortcomings. Yet we cared about all of them anyway.
The writers do not believe in sweetness and light and universally happy endings. One example: John Carter and his wife Kim love each other very much. But he loves Chicago, too; it's his home. For Kim, however, Chicago is the place her baby died. Her grief when she is physically there drowns out everything else. So they stay married, but both in pain and cut off from each other in important ways.
At the same time, the writers are skilled enough to give a sense of closure through the mechanism of the new beginning. I was thrilled to see that Rachel Greene, daughter of the late, great Mark Greene, intends to pursue a career in medicine--ER medicine--and was taking her first substantive steps toward that goal as the episode closed.
For me, watching ER has been like reading a good book, one I'll gladly reread more than once. I grieve that there will be no more new episodes. I rejoice that TNT is running the series as part of its weekday morning "Prime Time In The Daytime" block. [I just wish TNT didn't have to cut vital, even if small, snippets from every episode to accommodate additional commercial time. Oh, well. Nothing's perfect.--Ed.]
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US Attorney General Eric Holder did the right thing in dismissing the indictments against Ted Stevens, former US Senator from Alaska. Stevens' conviction on those indictments was so flawed by prosecutorial misconduct that Holder had no other choice--not if he intends to run a Department of Justice that does justice instead of playing politics.
My observations: (1) This doesn't mean Stevens did not lie on his US Senate financial disclosure forms; all it means is that the prosecution messed up the case so badly that Stevens did not receive a fair trial.
(2) It doesn't mean the Department of Justice could not get a conviction after a new trial, a new trial being the almost certain ruling coming out of Stevens' appeal of his conviction. It just means the DOJ has more important and pressing problems to resolve as both part of getting its credibility back and using its limited resources to their fullest effect.
(3) The egregious prosecutorial misconduct happened in George W. Bush's "Justice" Department, to a staunch Republican senator. No objective standards, no oversight, no respect for the spirit AND the letter of the law. Typical of Dubya's entire administration.
(4) A Democratic Attorney General accepted the responsibility of cleaning up the mess. He could have fought Stevens' appeal and prosecuted the new trial. He was smart enough to realize that, given Stevens' age (86) and the fact that he was not re-elected in 2008, dropping the indictments was the most prudent course of action. It was not only the right thing to do, it was the practical thing to do.
(5) For Holder understands that the goal of the prosecution is NOT to get convictions, but to see that justice is done . . . a concept that regrettably is lost on too many people, including too many prosecutors.
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I've said this before, but I'm saying it again. I am sick and tired of all the whiny high school seniors out there who are upset that Mummy and Daddy can no longer finance their college educations 100%. I was born near the middle of the calendar year that had the highest birth rate of the entire Baby Boom. I came to college age during the era of the OPEC oil embargo and stagflation. I've spent my whole life competing for resources that weren't expanded to meet the challenges of the Baby Boom until about 2 years after I needed them. [That's everything from desks in school to scholarships to student loans, to--well, you name it.--Ed.] My parents fully expected me to go to college, but I had to find my own way to pay for it.
So to those whiny seniors: GET A JOB. Suck it up and deal with it. Learn some history. This may be the first time it's happened to you, but this isn't the first time it's happened. You are not the center of the universe. Get over yourselves.
You know, I don't normally agree with much of what child-raising expert John Rosemond says in his weekly newspaper column. I have to agree with him about this, however: parents should not try to be their children's friends. They are parents, and they should act the part. Otherwise, you wind up with generations of spoiled, selfish, self-centered brats like the ones we have now. [For which I largely blame my fellow Baby Boomers, by the way. We weren't going to raise our kids the way we were raised, by God, and now we're paying the price--our kids raised their kids the way we raised them, and their kids in turn raised theirs the same way.--Ed.]
Self-esteem does not come from being told "you're wonderful" no matter what awful things you do. Self-esteem comes from having the inner certainty that you are capable of dealing with whatever life throws at you. Parents who want our schools to tell their students what to think are wrong. Children should be taught HOW to think, not what to think. The genuinely educated don't necessarily have all the "book-larnin'" in the universe. They know how to find out what they need to know to solve the problems that confront them in their daily lives. And they have the confidence that they will succeed through applying that knowledge, not through some superficial pre-conception that they are everyone's darlings and should get what they want just because they want it.
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