If someone melts down on CNN, is that just one small gaffe or the natural order of things Ashley Parker and David Carr recap episode six of “House of Cards†through the prism of politics and media. In this step-back, we end up detouring through the South-by-Southwest festival, where yes, people were talking about Frank Underwood and Zoe Barnes in addition to Dennis Crowley and Elon Musk.
Version 6.0 of this series has spoilers baked into the code, so avoid if you have not seen. And if you want to catch up with past chats, you can find episode one, two,three, four or five for the clicking.
Episode 6.
Synopsis: Congressman Frank Underwood’s battle with the teachers union over his education bill finally comes to a close, but only after a major public embarrassment for him, when a CNN interview goes awry. Congressman Peter Russo, recently sober, asks Frank for his help in becoming governor of Pennsylvania.
Parker: In this episode, I was reminded of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s real-world admonishment when he was serving as chief of staff in the Obama White House: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.â€
Every crisis is a potential opportunity, Mr. Emanuel understood â€" an adage the fictional Frank Underwood intuits after a brick goes flying through his townhouse! window one evening. Though he can’t officially pin the vandalism on the labor unions and its leader, Marty Spinella, who’s leading the teachers’ strike against Frank’s education bill, he certainly seizes the moment to make a compelling hearsay case.
“Disorganized labor†becomes Frank’s rallying cry, as he spins the brick-throwing incident as an indictment of Mr. Spinella’s failure to control his troops. Pretty soon, the phrase has gone viral, popping up as a talking point in the corridors of Congress and on cable news. (The labor unions, warns one talking head, “might want to tone down the rhetoric before disorganized labor turns into organized crime.â€)
In a way, this pure political calculation reminds me of what we’ve seen recently in Congress, with sequestration. Each side has tried to use the crisis of automatic and arbitrary across-the-board spending cuts to blame their opponents. The Obama administration, for instance, canceled all WhiteHouse tours (Message: Blame the Republicans that your 12-year-old child can no longer visit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on your long-planned trip to D.C.), while the Republicans held media events at military facilities in their district (Message: Blame the Democrats for our soon-to-be weakened national defense).
By the end of the episode, Frank has seen his fortunes turn twice â€"first for the worst, when his embarrassing CNN interview goes viral, and then for the “better,†in a perverse sense, when a inner-city elementary school boy who should have been in school is killed in a gang drive-by.
“I’ve got a dead, underprivileged kid in my pocket,†Frank tells Marty Spinella. “What do you haveâ€
So, David, I’m curious: In both “House of Cards†and in our actual Congress, is this savvy politics, or politics at its most base
Carr: I loved watching Frank melt down under the hot lights of cable news when his moment came. He takes such delight in watch! ing other! s stumble that seeing him in the same crucible and watching as the marble slowly rolled off the table seemed like a fair comeuppance.
Anybody who has ever been on television can identify with that moment. I was on “Real Time†with Bill Maher one time and I stupidly tried to be funny on a comedian’s show. I was trying to make a joke about how he and other people see people from middle America. But then the room bounced at the wrong time, he brought me up short and it sounded like I was the effete jerk making fun of average Americans.
I spent three days on the Internet as the worst person on the planet and there were calls for me to be flogged or fired from government officials, radio talk show hosts and many others. My brother even called to chew me out. You can try to explain yourself, to fill them in on the subtext and what really happened, but then, the camera doesn’t lie. Or does it
The power of that cable-powered echo chamber is so well-rendered on this episode, I felt a littleuncomfortable watching it. By now, we know the drill: The soundbite comes un-moored from its context, and suddenly it is a meme that catches fire. Before you know it, it is auto-tuned to its most damaging perfection.
(There was one thing that I have to whinge about in this episode and it has nothing to do with politics or media. Mr. Russo’s sponsor in a program of recovery is chosen for him by Frank. Without getting into the particulars, even in the District and om Hollywood, where recovery programs and professional life crash in unseemly ways, I think this is too far-fetched. With that out of the way, I do think that they get most of the alcoholic stuff â€" both drunk and sober â€" right on the money.)
As usual, Frank gets what he needs in this episode, even when he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, which is a strong, running theme of the show. But it makes you wonder when the music stops, if Frank will be right over the chair he wants or just one step to the left or right. You have! to know ! that he will crush whoever is sitting there.
Weird question if you want, Ashley. We bumped into each other at the South-by-Southwest conference, an event where people wear badges, important men make speeches and the hierarchy is vigorously enforced in both business and social settings. If you get my drift, did you find your time in Austin refreshing or annoyingly familiar
Parker: In a weird way, SXSW reminded me of a political convention â€" the good and the bad. You had the legitimately interesting people keynoting the conference (the equivalent of the Bill Clintons and Chris Christies, if you will); you had the hangers-on and scenesters who were there just to be there and “take meetings†(the lobbyists, perhaps); and then there was everyone in between (the journalists, the aides and staffers, the PR swarms). You even had actual politicians, with everyone from Al Gore to the twitter-savvy Newark Mayor Cory Booker popping up to speechify.
You had hotels that were too epensive and too far from the downtown, you had free food and free alcohol, you had long days and even longer nights, you had parties you were invited to and parties you crashed, you had fortuitous run-ins with people you knew from back home and people you only knew from Twitter, and you had a definite scarcity of cabs. (A fitting parallel: at the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, I somehow found myself at 3 a.m. stranded in the freezing rain in the warehouse district after a party, and had to take pedi-cab 60 blocks back to my hotel . This past week, I found myself a bit earlier in the eveningâ€" I am now four years older, alas â€" stranded in the pouring rain in the warehouse district after a party, and had to take a pedi-cab a mile back to my hotel).
Of course, we were both there for the interactive part of the week, which maybe was more wonky and dorky â€" and more like a political convention â€" than the rest of the week, which is basically just one giant film festival and concert featu! ring set ! after set of great shows.
One funny thing, though, was that as soon as anyone learned I was from D.C., the first question they invariably asked was, “Do you watch ‘House of Cards’â€
Carr: True that, but then the question quickly pivoted to the implications of the Netflix delivery model, the threat to cable bundles, and a future of consumers calling the shots and ala carte programming. That and whether Slugline was going to IPO any time soon.
