America’s free society in the 21st century operates on two fundamental principles:
1. The majority rules.
2. The minority rules.
Do you see a reason for conflict here? If you do, congratulations. You are smart enough to become eligible to win a free medium Coke at McDonald’s. If you see that these two principles make “conflict” the most important word in 21st century American free society, then you are as smart as Britney Spears or Karl Rove and may have a lucrative future in entertainment or politics.
Every American knows about the majority rules. Well, I take that back. Most Americans know about the majority rules. That principle is one of the rocks of the Constitution. We all learn about it in school. And then some of us forget it in the time after class it takes us to get to the water cooler.
But very, very few Americans know about the minority rules. We are all exposed to that principle every day, but we have no idea it is happening because it isn’t taught in school. Unless you want to become a journalist. Or a pop star (or a pop star’s mother). Or a politician (or a politician’s chief adviser). If you want to be any of these, you must go to Media School.
In Media School, you are given a Media Toolbox. This very week I gave my college journalism students the Toolbox and I told them it was the single most important document in journalism.
“If you know the tools in the Toolbox, and how to use them,” I said, “then you will never again in your life have any trouble analyzing and organizing any given pile of raw information, and turning it into a news story. Or a PR pitch. Or a marketing program. Or a love letter. Because with the Toolbox, you go straight to the heart of the matter.”
The Toolbox works by teaching the students what people want to know, or need to know, or may be interested in, or may be fascinated by.
A few students understand immediately that, with that knowledge, they may also use the Toolbox to manipulate people. These are the students most likely to go into entertainment and politics. And terrorism, for that matter. Nobody knows the Toolbox better than a terrorist. If you want a textbook example of a terrorist using the Toolbox, go back and look at the Five W’s – Who, What, When, Where, Why – of the 9/11 attack.
The Five W’s are in the Toolbox, but they are not as important as the 12 Event Values. In fact the Five W’s owe their existence to the 12 Event Values, or the “Daily Dozen,” which are Conflict, Progress, Disaster, Prominence, Novelty, Proximity, Sex, Sensationalism, Human Interest, Timeliness and Consequence.
In the last 100 years, media professionals have used the Toolbox to create a dynamic, exhilarating and addictive Manipulation Media in America. This media’s power is astonishing, and scary, because it is in the Manipulation Media that the minority rules.
Television is the most popular of the Manipulation Medias (the others are Books, Magazines, Movies, Radio, Recording, Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations and Politics). Television also most clearly demonstrates that the minority rules. Take Oprah Winfrey. The woman has fame, influence, wealth and power. There aren’t many Americans who have not heard of Oprah.
Yet Oprah gained this fame, power and wealth with a television show whose Nielsen Rating is between 4 and 5. Let’s be generous and say 5. That means that 95 percent of the Nielsen survey was watching something else.
Does this minority make Oprah a spokesperson and role model in 21st-century America? Well, yes, it has. Fascinating. I’m writing a book about it. If, in a population of 290 million Americans I sell 100,000 copies, I’ll be invited on Oprah to talk about it.
January 30, 2005
January 26, 2005
Thinking on Freeways
After giving it some thought, I have decided to pass up my opportunity to become a subscriber to the “Great Thinkers on Cassette” series.
The subscription material said these cassettes were designed to make your driving time more rewarding. As I commuted to work, I could punch in the “Giants of Philosophy” cassette and hear the narrated works of Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and the others. Or, I could punch in, “Giants of Political Thought,” and hear Thomas Paine, Jefferson, Hobbes, Thoreau, and so forth. If economics were my mood, I could punch in that tape and hear the essays of Schumpeter and John Maynard Keynes.
Naturally I declined. A freeway in Southern California is no place for great thinkers. I tried to imagine Soren Kierkegaard, driving along in the Los Angeles rush hour, thinking the thoughts he did, and I thought how quickly Kierkegaard would become completely uninsurable, assuming he survived at all.
Sure, I let my mind wander on the freeway. I don’t concentrate 100 percent on the pickups, SUVs and gravel trucks thundering by. But when you think about the concentration levels required of Machiavelli’s discussion of the Florentine Politic, I start to feel uncomfortable. I feel even more uncomfortable thinking about the driver of the black Hummer with oversized tires, who has become completely immersed in the thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas, on Scholasticism.
I wondered what the great thinkers would think about this. I saw us on the freeway. I was driving. Thomas Jefferson was in the back seat, along with John Stuart Mill and Jean-Paul Sartre. Plato was riding shotgun. Jefferson didn’t say anything. He just sat and rolled the power window up and down. John Stuart Mill sat with his head down, thinking. Then he looked up and spoke:
“Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest,” he said.
“That’s profound,” I said. “Why, just in the last presidential campaign . . .”
Sartre, in a sour voice, interrupted me and said, “Keep your eyes on the road.” Ah! Divided opinions, I thought: Mill for great thinking on freeways, Sartre opposed.
Then Plato spoke: “There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.”
“Oh, shut up,” growled Sartre. I glanced approvingly at him.
“How quickly you pick up our clichés, I said.
“Well,” Sartre said, “we are great thinkers, aren’t we?”
Plato shrugged. “Until philosophers are kings,” he said, “cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race.”
I looked at Plato. “It would mean the end of freeways as we know them,” I said, just as we rear-ended a Toyota Tacoma.
“What in the hell were you doing?” said the Toyota’s driver.
“Talking to Plato,” I said.
“Tell it to your insurance company,” he said. I wondered what John Maynard Keynes would think about that.
The subscription material said these cassettes were designed to make your driving time more rewarding. As I commuted to work, I could punch in the “Giants of Philosophy” cassette and hear the narrated works of Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and the others. Or, I could punch in, “Giants of Political Thought,” and hear Thomas Paine, Jefferson, Hobbes, Thoreau, and so forth. If economics were my mood, I could punch in that tape and hear the essays of Schumpeter and John Maynard Keynes.
Naturally I declined. A freeway in Southern California is no place for great thinkers. I tried to imagine Soren Kierkegaard, driving along in the Los Angeles rush hour, thinking the thoughts he did, and I thought how quickly Kierkegaard would become completely uninsurable, assuming he survived at all.
Sure, I let my mind wander on the freeway. I don’t concentrate 100 percent on the pickups, SUVs and gravel trucks thundering by. But when you think about the concentration levels required of Machiavelli’s discussion of the Florentine Politic, I start to feel uncomfortable. I feel even more uncomfortable thinking about the driver of the black Hummer with oversized tires, who has become completely immersed in the thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas, on Scholasticism.
I wondered what the great thinkers would think about this. I saw us on the freeway. I was driving. Thomas Jefferson was in the back seat, along with John Stuart Mill and Jean-Paul Sartre. Plato was riding shotgun. Jefferson didn’t say anything. He just sat and rolled the power window up and down. John Stuart Mill sat with his head down, thinking. Then he looked up and spoke:
“Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest,” he said.
“That’s profound,” I said. “Why, just in the last presidential campaign . . .”
Sartre, in a sour voice, interrupted me and said, “Keep your eyes on the road.” Ah! Divided opinions, I thought: Mill for great thinking on freeways, Sartre opposed.
Then Plato spoke: “There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.”
“Oh, shut up,” growled Sartre. I glanced approvingly at him.
“How quickly you pick up our clichés, I said.
“Well,” Sartre said, “we are great thinkers, aren’t we?”
Plato shrugged. “Until philosophers are kings,” he said, “cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race.”
I looked at Plato. “It would mean the end of freeways as we know them,” I said, just as we rear-ended a Toyota Tacoma.
“What in the hell were you doing?” said the Toyota’s driver.
“Talking to Plato,” I said.
“Tell it to your insurance company,” he said. I wondered what John Maynard Keynes would think about that.
January 21, 2005
Inaugural
I don’t always agree with President Bush – in fact he worries me a lot – but I was cheering for him during the inauguration ceremonies Jan. 20.
He is, after all the President of the United States. I am always moved by the pomp of inaugurals and presidential funerals because they honor the man some, but mostly the office. Presidents come and go, and they leave a good mark, a bad mark, or no mark at all.
But the office endures, in the dignity and power guaranteed to it by the Constitution of the United States. As long as the office stands, the land will stand, and it is a soaring moment whenever it is put at center stage by the people it serves. On Inauguration Day, there was the President of the United States, and there was George W. Bush.
And the day was special because of what Mr. Bush had to say. He called his inaugural address “the freedom speech,” and by the end of it, I was smiling.
“Eventually,” said the President, “the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul.” The words brought to mind my dear friend, a proud, fiercely intelligent woman, 54 years old, who loves the United States of America and in our frequent email exchanges is openly admiring of the Constitution. We have an ongoing dialogue about freedom and the happiness it ensures. Freedom is simply the power to make choices, not only politically, but personally. People without that choice-making power do not enjoy freedom and live in fear. The solution, of course, is to take back power, and that always requires courage.
“The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations,” said the President. “The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it.”
People who have confronted the task, fought the battles, and won the freedom, could not agree more. They, more than anyone, know that in this world it is a time for courage. America, said the President, has accepted that need.
“By our efforts, we have lit a fire in the minds of men,” he said. “It warms those who feel its power. It burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.”
And when it does, he said, it will burn away demons both living and fossilized, not from a person's individuality, but indeed from individuals in their own skin and habits “that may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom and make their own way.”
I knew my friend was not watching the inaugural, and I could not wait to share these words with her. This was the new American world mandate. I emailed her and, quoting from the speech, wrote: “We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right.”
When she got back to me, she was skeptical. I was not surprised. She is a Blue Person. She lives in San Diego, but she says, “As far as Bush and his people care about my own voice, and my own freedom, and my own way, I might as will live in Serbia.”
That’s how polarized we are, in this time for courage, the time of Blue People and Red People in the United States. When in the world did we become Blue People and Red People? I think it was toward the end of the first Bush Administration. Now the second one begins, and in the inaugural, at least, there are words of hope.
He is, after all the President of the United States. I am always moved by the pomp of inaugurals and presidential funerals because they honor the man some, but mostly the office. Presidents come and go, and they leave a good mark, a bad mark, or no mark at all.
But the office endures, in the dignity and power guaranteed to it by the Constitution of the United States. As long as the office stands, the land will stand, and it is a soaring moment whenever it is put at center stage by the people it serves. On Inauguration Day, there was the President of the United States, and there was George W. Bush.
And the day was special because of what Mr. Bush had to say. He called his inaugural address “the freedom speech,” and by the end of it, I was smiling.
“Eventually,” said the President, “the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul.” The words brought to mind my dear friend, a proud, fiercely intelligent woman, 54 years old, who loves the United States of America and in our frequent email exchanges is openly admiring of the Constitution. We have an ongoing dialogue about freedom and the happiness it ensures. Freedom is simply the power to make choices, not only politically, but personally. People without that choice-making power do not enjoy freedom and live in fear. The solution, of course, is to take back power, and that always requires courage.
“The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations,” said the President. “The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it.”
People who have confronted the task, fought the battles, and won the freedom, could not agree more. They, more than anyone, know that in this world it is a time for courage. America, said the President, has accepted that need.
“By our efforts, we have lit a fire in the minds of men,” he said. “It warms those who feel its power. It burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.”
And when it does, he said, it will burn away demons both living and fossilized, not from a person's individuality, but indeed from individuals in their own skin and habits “that may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom and make their own way.”
I knew my friend was not watching the inaugural, and I could not wait to share these words with her. This was the new American world mandate. I emailed her and, quoting from the speech, wrote: “We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right.”
When she got back to me, she was skeptical. I was not surprised. She is a Blue Person. She lives in San Diego, but she says, “As far as Bush and his people care about my own voice, and my own freedom, and my own way, I might as will live in Serbia.”
That’s how polarized we are, in this time for courage, the time of Blue People and Red People in the United States. When in the world did we become Blue People and Red People? I think it was toward the end of the first Bush Administration. Now the second one begins, and in the inaugural, at least, there are words of hope.
January 19, 2005
Airbus 380 Debut
Interesting flight. Nonstop, Singapore to Heathrow. At one point, 334 cellphone conversations under way all at once. Seventeen arraignments on assault and battery charges before the magistrate in the tiny but sumptuously appointed court chambers on the lower deck between the Baccarat Lounge and the Racquetball Court.
But now the captain brought the Airbus 380 to a full and complete stop at the Heathrow gate and 800 passengers rose as one to collect belongings from overhead bins.
At the back of the aircraft, Laura, in Seat 221-T (aisle), made eye contact with Tommy, in 223-W (window). The airplane’s vastness made it possible for them to stand upright, even beneath the overhead bins, and Tommy could readily appraise Laura’s bosom, as her eyes surveyed his lean jaw and wide shoulders. Though her bin was above Row 219, Laura glanced up at the bins over 223, the last row in the aircraft, as if her belongings were there and so the reason for her maneuvering back to 223.
In the silence typical of passengers waiting to deplane, but made distinguished by their number, like 800 people riding one elevator, Tommy whispered to Laura: “Hello.” She smiled at him and said “Hello.” Several hours later, they were holding hands and could speak at conversational level, the silence having dissolved into numerous conversations between and among passengers discovering mutual backgrounds, making business deals, comparing childhoods, starting novels, falling in love. And for a time there was the thrum of cellphone conversations until batteries steadily began to go dead.
At the front of the aircraft, passengers struggled with overstuffed luggage, skis and ski poles, baby carriages, musical instruments in their hard cases, exotic Malaysian totems, disassembled rickshaws, office equipment, computers, mystery crates strapped in duct tape and yellow “Police Control” ribbon, etc., until one by one the items yielded and fell heavily to the aisles, making room for the next passenger’s struggle. With each success, the victor joined the queue at the stairway descending to the metered ramp for merging into the queue of passengers moving forward from below.
Just as they detected the first deplaning motion far ahead, Laura and Tommy shared their first kiss. It was at Row 207 that Tommy said, “Laura, will you marry me?”
“I need time,” Laura said, smiling and pleased, but confused. Eddie was waiting to meet her, out on the concourse. Yet she had never known the pleasure of lovemaking such as she and Tommy had shared at Row 214, where they had paused to watch a movie.
At 199, Laura embraced Tommy and said, “The answer is yes.”
“I’ll make your wedding dress,” said a kindly woman behind them. “My Singer is in the overhead bin, and several bolts of Javanese silk.”
At 171, Laura’s dress was ready. The magistrate married them in Row 167, and they drank champagne and danced at their reception in the galley between Rows 165 and 164 while the London Chamber Orchestra (flying in from Sydney) played.
They honeymooned at 143 and enjoyed the birth of twins behind the curtain separating Coach and Business Class. The children, Full and Upright, completed first and second grades in the 20-seat elementary school below First Class and emerged with their parents from the jetway into the concourse happy children well adjusted to the new age. Furtively, Laura searched for Eddie and actually walked right past him but didn’t recognize the beard.
But now the captain brought the Airbus 380 to a full and complete stop at the Heathrow gate and 800 passengers rose as one to collect belongings from overhead bins.
At the back of the aircraft, Laura, in Seat 221-T (aisle), made eye contact with Tommy, in 223-W (window). The airplane’s vastness made it possible for them to stand upright, even beneath the overhead bins, and Tommy could readily appraise Laura’s bosom, as her eyes surveyed his lean jaw and wide shoulders. Though her bin was above Row 219, Laura glanced up at the bins over 223, the last row in the aircraft, as if her belongings were there and so the reason for her maneuvering back to 223.
In the silence typical of passengers waiting to deplane, but made distinguished by their number, like 800 people riding one elevator, Tommy whispered to Laura: “Hello.” She smiled at him and said “Hello.” Several hours later, they were holding hands and could speak at conversational level, the silence having dissolved into numerous conversations between and among passengers discovering mutual backgrounds, making business deals, comparing childhoods, starting novels, falling in love. And for a time there was the thrum of cellphone conversations until batteries steadily began to go dead.
At the front of the aircraft, passengers struggled with overstuffed luggage, skis and ski poles, baby carriages, musical instruments in their hard cases, exotic Malaysian totems, disassembled rickshaws, office equipment, computers, mystery crates strapped in duct tape and yellow “Police Control” ribbon, etc., until one by one the items yielded and fell heavily to the aisles, making room for the next passenger’s struggle. With each success, the victor joined the queue at the stairway descending to the metered ramp for merging into the queue of passengers moving forward from below.
Just as they detected the first deplaning motion far ahead, Laura and Tommy shared their first kiss. It was at Row 207 that Tommy said, “Laura, will you marry me?”
“I need time,” Laura said, smiling and pleased, but confused. Eddie was waiting to meet her, out on the concourse. Yet she had never known the pleasure of lovemaking such as she and Tommy had shared at Row 214, where they had paused to watch a movie.
At 199, Laura embraced Tommy and said, “The answer is yes.”
“I’ll make your wedding dress,” said a kindly woman behind them. “My Singer is in the overhead bin, and several bolts of Javanese silk.”
At 171, Laura’s dress was ready. The magistrate married them in Row 167, and they drank champagne and danced at their reception in the galley between Rows 165 and 164 while the London Chamber Orchestra (flying in from Sydney) played.
They honeymooned at 143 and enjoyed the birth of twins behind the curtain separating Coach and Business Class. The children, Full and Upright, completed first and second grades in the 20-seat elementary school below First Class and emerged with their parents from the jetway into the concourse happy children well adjusted to the new age. Furtively, Laura searched for Eddie and actually walked right past him but didn’t recognize the beard.
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