– Gives you permission to be normal: All the characters are very average, rank-and-file American middle class. They are remarkable for the unremarkableness. They are not super successful, but nor are they unambitious; they mainstream culture consumers, not bohemians; they are not rich and have to deal with paperwork and car payments and real life. This works. IYou can more easily associate with them becasue they remind of you people you know — and youself — so you begin to appreciate the subtlties of a character as you get to know of the course of the show. This is not new. Sienfeld was pioneer here. Nonetheless, The Office is earnest. Sienfeld was snarky, unattached, cynical. More importantly, they were New Yorkers. The charactersa are kind of ass holes. But on the Office, they are good people who you genuinely feel for and who are genuinely trying to make it at life. Jerry did really work. These people have jobs, mortgages, health insurance plans and all of this gets talked about. Much of our sense of values and self-worth benchmarks come from the media. The Office holds up average joes and makes them beautiful and appealing. It tells viewers that it’s okay to be stuck in middle management at a paper company in Scranton, PA. This contradicts the prevailing messages which emphasis uniqueness, success, individuality. Inevitably, any movie where the job of the person is irrelevant, they will do something very interesting and successful.

– It also blends reality with fiction in both form and process. Form: it’s a faux documentary where the characters regularly talk to the camera. Process: many of the actors are also involved in the production of the show, especially B.J. Novak who plays Ryan and is the show’s head writer. –> The effect of the reality-fiction blend is a more believable product and heightens the emotion because I know that the actors have a real relationship in real life too.

– Meme stealing: The Office can successfully steel culture memes without looking derivative, trite or awkward. The show often steels from YouTube (e.g. Pam and Jim’s wedding song), news (e.g. references to Barack Obama) and wider culture (e.g. Michael and Dwight’s white-boy rap at the end of the most recent episode). Because the characters are doing it, just like you might do with your friends at home, and because the show’s production schedual is real-time enough, the show’s creators are free to use topical references without outright stealing them or being too late.

All this combines makes for an effective embrace of the normal and the human. The message I get from the show, especially the most recent one, directed by John Krazinsky (Jim), is that it’s okay to not be a super over achiever. Krazinsky’s show, which was the first he had directed, looks pretty amature considering it was aired on a major network. There are a couple of akward cuts, the story doesn’t move quit as quickly as other episodes, and — most notably — the majority of the show was a highlight reel which turned into a cheesy music montage going through the best notes over the past five seasons. It’s a pretty done approach, but for the Office — it’s perfect. I’m glad Krazsinsky — who is a very impressive and admirable individual — didn’t wildly surpass expectations. He did well enough. I feel like I know him better.

Perhaps, post-postmoderism, for lack of a better name, will be a rejection of its predecessor (as so many other movements have been) — an embrace of simplicity, certainty and earnestness. I’m already seeing, from both ends of the intensely polarized political/culture spectrum, a sort of convergence on fondness of the traditional, and thus simple and earnest. Those on both sides of the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between not just Democrat and Republican, but the whole culture and mentality of Blue State and Red State — urban vs. rural, Prius vs. pick up truck, craft beer vs. Budwieser, hipsters vs. rednecks — are increasingly embracing a nostalgic primitiveness and a rejection of the consumerism that defined the postmodern man or woman. The right has long embraced “traditional values,” such as stable hetrosexual, marriage, but has more recently, with the recession and aggressive government response, latched onto a neo-Jeffersonian concept of politics and culture exemplified by the Tea Party movement and Republican establishment’s embrace of the movement. While the movement and its champions like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann often don’t make much intellectual sense and lack an a clear internal coherency, the thread that ties all of the New Right’s activity — from opposition to health care to promotion of guns, opposition to bailouts to a an opposition to gay equality — is a strong, if nebulous desire to return to some (real or imagined) eden when things made sense and people meant what they said. Common sense, simplicity reign in this world view.

Meanwhile, the left has witnessed the rise of organicism and localism in its food choices — the most basic and perhaps most pervasive human activity — and growing desire for a pastoral agrarianism in is life-style and aspirational ideals. Anti-corporationism, anti-consumerism and an environmentalism have long traditions in the left, but like the disparate agendas on the Right, they are finding a new convergence on the Left in the form of a desire to return to a (real or imagines) simpler, agrarian time. The back-to the land movement, which originated in the 1970′s, has found new popularity, and taken on a new manifestation with the proliferation of urban gardens and a desire to connect more directly with the farm in the form of farmers markets and stores like Whole Foods. Blue Staters will pay a premium for organic, local not for the inherent value of the food itself but because it allows them to quell the cognitive dissonance of participating in and contribution to, (through their purchase of said good) to the corrupt corporate culture they protest. The left also embraces antiquity (real or falsified), and nostalgia as they both provide (a restaurant, house, t-shirt, etc.) with “character” that is often lacking in the mass-produced world we inhabit. Further evidence: the success and popularity of Michael Pollan, who urges his readers to simply “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.” Pollan detests anything new, packaged or processed and their is growing agreement among his young, urban readers. Barack Obama, the young, hipster and farmer’s candidate. Obama is nothing if not earnest. How can hipsters who are nothing if not ironic support Obama (support anything?).

The resurgence of religion. The rhetoric surrounding the need for community.

Both sides are motivated by a fear (subtle on the left, very real on right) that the world is moving a little too fast and out of control, and the belief that if we could only return to this (real or imagined) utopia of simple, earnest agrarianism, things would be much better. After a century of rejecting We want to believe again, in something (religion, art, our friends, our food).

Maybe they can actually do something now. Probably not:

South Park explains why the Japanese hate whales and dolphins so much:

From Air Force Times:

The largest solar neighborhood in the continental U.S. will be on an Air Force base in Arizona’s Sonora Desert, where the sun shines 350 days a year.

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base outside Tucson is putting the finishing touches on its record-setting “green” privatized housing development called Soaring Heights Communities, according to Col. Charles Hunter, commander of the base’s 355th Mission Support Group, which oversees the project.

The installation of 81,000 solar panels — 45,000 on the ground and 36,000 on some 900 rooftops — should be wrapped up by early December. Work started in October.

Once up and running, the panels will generate about 6 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply about 75 percent of the community’s power needs. The savings will translate into lower utility bills for airmen and more energy for Air Force missions, and will press home the Air Force’s intention to be a good neighbor to Tucson, Hunter said.

Ironically, this base is also home to the Air Force’s boneyard, home 4,400 decommissioned aircraft from wars bygone baking in the same dessert sand fueling the future.