The History Channel presented a program on one of history’s most under-appreciated technologies the other night, and I could certainly relate.
No one gives the slightest thought to what happens when they flush a toilet. The stuff disappears, and goes somewhere. Who cares where? As long as it goes.
Well, exactly. One summer, I was on a crew that worked anonymously out of a couple of white city pickup trucks to keep the stuff going. It was one of the most interesting jobs I have had, and one that very few people know anything about. Citizens in their vehicles passing by gave us the most uninterested glances, not knowing at all what we were up to.
Our work always started with a call, or calls, from an address, a street, a neighborhood. Toilets would not flush, and users demanded to know why and to have it fixed immediately. We on the sewer crew were either anonymous or guilty.
Most of the time, we found the problem with our noses. It took a manhole a few hours to fill up and overflow into the street. Calls always started coming long before that. Our strategy was to pick a point a couple of blocks away from the complaining address and idle slowly toward it, sniffing the air above each manhole as we passed over it. We batted a thousand that summer, for finding the manhole that was backing up.
Somebody would lift the lid, to make sure. Then the technique was to retreat, to the next manhole back, which we knew would be dry. A manhole is just what it says it is. It lets a man climb down into the brick-lined chamber to the bottom, where the clay sewer line is easily accessible. Seniority dictated who did what. You had to have some seniority to be the one to climb down with the hammer to break a hole in the line. The hole had to be big enough without damaging the line too much, so it would be easy to patch. Inside, the line was relatively dry.
Then out of the pickup came lengths of steel rods, strong but thin enough to be flexible. At each end the rod had what looked like a Tinker Toy cylinder. These coupled the rods together, and through each cylinder passed a hole, at right angles to the rod. Into the hole was slipped a solid steel rod, about three feet long, that was manually rotated to cause the entire length of coupled rods to turn.
Several rods were thus assembled, an auger-like device coupled to one end, and this and the rod were fed down into the manhole, inserted through the break in the line, and the auger pointed upstream, toward the blockage we knew was in the line between this manhole and the smelly one up the street. Above the manhole, the honor of rotating the rod fell to the crew’s junior member. That was me. I twisted, lengths of rod fed into the hole, and more were coupled on. Every couple of lengths, I would move the twist rod back, slip it through a new hole, and continue.
Typically, the going was easy at first, and then the auger would find the blockage. What was the blockage? Anything a citizen could find that would flush down the toilet. With the resistance, managing the twist rod became tricky. Considerable torque could build up, and if I lost my grip, the twist rod in releasing that torque could do me considerable damage. In July in West Texas, the whole process was something of a challenge.
With luck, the blockage would break in under 10 minutes. I felt the torque release, flow was restored, the manhole or manholes between us and the address emptied themselves, and all that was left was to pull the rod out of the line, which was also the junior member’s job.
April 30, 2007
April 24, 2007
Flies
Lots of flies out there.
They are there all the time, but they have been easy to see the last several days because of the Virginia Tech carnage. Flies go to carnage. They settled by the millions around the television coverage from Virginia Tech.
The media is obligated to report the news, and the killings were a huge story: the worst massacre in United States history.
Unfortunately, stories like this in America have become so common that a media template has developed. Day One: discovery, bulletins, amateur video, people and police running, breathless reporting of unconfirmed information, general excitement, a breaking story going forward at breakneck speed, an afternoon media conference with no real information reported, event logos with background music showing up on television screens by early evening. Day Two: the shooter identified, nothing more known, investigation, national media figures arriving, Day One videos replayed, video of investigators coming and going, replays of video of investigators coming and going, talking heads blah blah. Day Three: day of mourning, profiling victims, ceremony, presidential visit, plumbing of social ills, influence of media.
In this story, Day Three has a twist: the shooter is media-savvy enough to send a press kit to NBC, and NBC uses some of it, infuriating millions and escalating the already obvious feelings among many that they wish the media would just leave. The networks are in fact ready to leave; they are losing money on live coverage as soon as the soap opera hours start. Coverage shifts exclusively to cable. By Day Four, just like the Super Bowl, the media starts to cover itself. The Times critiques television, worrying about network news anchors behaving like national grief counselors instead of professional journalists, calling it the “Anderson Cooperization of the news.”
The media deserves the criticism, and the growing resentment, in a public service sense. In the business sense, the media is only doing its job, which is to turn a profit. Any media organization, news or entertainment, must make money or it will go out of business. Thus the First Law of Media: The media is a business. At Virginia Tech, the media was obligated to report the news; it was also obligated to the First Law of Media. In the television media business, executives don’t want to spend money on a product unless they have good reason to believe the product will attract a minimum of 10 million sets of eyeballs.
Flies are reliable customers. They are usually dependable for a minimum of 10 million sets of eyeballs, or whatever the minimum is to stay in the black; it varies from media business to media business. The number is always manageable, relatively small. Ten million people is only three percent of the U.S. population.
There is a bit of fly in most of us. An attraction to the hot, bloody palette of violence, and its residue. Carnage, death, waste, trash, putrifaction. Personally, by the time I was 12, because of what I had seen in movies, I had killed hundreds of men, in the gulches, back alleys and foxholes around the 400 block of Poplar Street. Though I put down my weapons then, and my focus turned to girls, I continued to patronize fly flicks right up until “Robocop,” which was not about people at all, but about guns and exploding flesh. I am not that much of a fly. I haven’t been to a fly flick since.
There was “Robocop II,” though, meaning the presence of a sufficient repeat audience, and from what I read, the fly flick genre has enjoyed growth, as has fly material in radio, music, books and television. By Day Four last week, it was a hot topic. Was the shooter a fly? Probably, but millions of people are flies, who would never shoot anyone.
This isn’t a story about the shooter or the media. It is about the audience, and the media staying in business. You may remember “Lord of the Flies,” a short 1950s novel about this subject. The fly in a group of boys started to emerge when they were stranded on an island. At the end, two boys were dead and the fly psyche was about to prevail, when an adult showed up. In that instant, with the appearance of order, in a cymbal crash of symbolism, the savage, bloodthirsty flies reverted to little boys with painted faces.
They were returned to the orderly world, where dwelled, lo the irony, a fly population ominously growing in the adult world that prompted William Golding to write the book in the first place. Last week on Day Four, the inventory of present-day media fly products was the talking heads hot topic. What does that mean to us, on our island of 2007?
They are there all the time, but they have been easy to see the last several days because of the Virginia Tech carnage. Flies go to carnage. They settled by the millions around the television coverage from Virginia Tech.
The media is obligated to report the news, and the killings were a huge story: the worst massacre in United States history.
Unfortunately, stories like this in America have become so common that a media template has developed. Day One: discovery, bulletins, amateur video, people and police running, breathless reporting of unconfirmed information, general excitement, a breaking story going forward at breakneck speed, an afternoon media conference with no real information reported, event logos with background music showing up on television screens by early evening. Day Two: the shooter identified, nothing more known, investigation, national media figures arriving, Day One videos replayed, video of investigators coming and going, replays of video of investigators coming and going, talking heads blah blah. Day Three: day of mourning, profiling victims, ceremony, presidential visit, plumbing of social ills, influence of media.
In this story, Day Three has a twist: the shooter is media-savvy enough to send a press kit to NBC, and NBC uses some of it, infuriating millions and escalating the already obvious feelings among many that they wish the media would just leave. The networks are in fact ready to leave; they are losing money on live coverage as soon as the soap opera hours start. Coverage shifts exclusively to cable. By Day Four, just like the Super Bowl, the media starts to cover itself. The Times critiques television, worrying about network news anchors behaving like national grief counselors instead of professional journalists, calling it the “Anderson Cooperization of the news.”
The media deserves the criticism, and the growing resentment, in a public service sense. In the business sense, the media is only doing its job, which is to turn a profit. Any media organization, news or entertainment, must make money or it will go out of business. Thus the First Law of Media: The media is a business. At Virginia Tech, the media was obligated to report the news; it was also obligated to the First Law of Media. In the television media business, executives don’t want to spend money on a product unless they have good reason to believe the product will attract a minimum of 10 million sets of eyeballs.
Flies are reliable customers. They are usually dependable for a minimum of 10 million sets of eyeballs, or whatever the minimum is to stay in the black; it varies from media business to media business. The number is always manageable, relatively small. Ten million people is only three percent of the U.S. population.
There is a bit of fly in most of us. An attraction to the hot, bloody palette of violence, and its residue. Carnage, death, waste, trash, putrifaction. Personally, by the time I was 12, because of what I had seen in movies, I had killed hundreds of men, in the gulches, back alleys and foxholes around the 400 block of Poplar Street. Though I put down my weapons then, and my focus turned to girls, I continued to patronize fly flicks right up until “Robocop,” which was not about people at all, but about guns and exploding flesh. I am not that much of a fly. I haven’t been to a fly flick since.
There was “Robocop II,” though, meaning the presence of a sufficient repeat audience, and from what I read, the fly flick genre has enjoyed growth, as has fly material in radio, music, books and television. By Day Four last week, it was a hot topic. Was the shooter a fly? Probably, but millions of people are flies, who would never shoot anyone.
This isn’t a story about the shooter or the media. It is about the audience, and the media staying in business. You may remember “Lord of the Flies,” a short 1950s novel about this subject. The fly in a group of boys started to emerge when they were stranded on an island. At the end, two boys were dead and the fly psyche was about to prevail, when an adult showed up. In that instant, with the appearance of order, in a cymbal crash of symbolism, the savage, bloodthirsty flies reverted to little boys with painted faces.
They were returned to the orderly world, where dwelled, lo the irony, a fly population ominously growing in the adult world that prompted William Golding to write the book in the first place. Last week on Day Four, the inventory of present-day media fly products was the talking heads hot topic. What does that mean to us, on our island of 2007?
April 17, 2007
How to head it off?
We at Grossmont College, in El Cajon, Calif., have some information that may have made a difference in the Virginia Tech massacre.
A Grossmont student one October afternoon several years ago walked into a fitness center several miles from campus, raised a rifle, and shot four innocent people dead. Then he killed himself.
The student had been enrolled in a creative writing class at Grossmont. In the class, he wrote a story that was printed in local media as part of the coverage of the murders. The story described almost exactly the shooting scenario that he eventually acted out.
Why didn’t that story send up a very red flag to faculty and campus authorities?
It’s the same question being asked today on the Virginia Tech campus. Their shooter, 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, was in a creative writing class. He wrote stories “so disturbing,” reported the Associated Press, “that he was referred to the school’s counseling service.”
“There was some concern about him,” said Prof. Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the Virginia Tech English Department. “Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things, if they’re imagining things or just how real it might be. But we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.”
It doesn’t appear that they were alert enough to know about the Grossmont experience. If they had, Cho might be alive and deep into therapy, and 32 people might be going about their business on a promising spring day.
Is it impossible to tell when someone like Cho is going to snap? Maybe, but it seems like a good idea for campus authorities to give themselves the best chance of preventing massacres like this. Did the Grossmont experience enter any kind of national campus violence prevention database? Apparently not. Might it have been used to create a meaningful – that is, believable enough to call for action – profile of someone who isn’t just imagining things?
There is always going to be a risk of acting against an individual who might have turned out to be just very creative, and otherwise innocent. There is also a risk, as the Virginia Tech president pointed out, of stationing an officer at every doorway, in what is supposed to be an open society. Wherever the decision point falls, it needs all the backup information that experience can provide. Where and how can Grossmont College help to build a dynamic, accessible, national database to give all educators their best chance to act in time? On our campus, we still grieve, that our student turned out to be describing the future.
A Grossmont student one October afternoon several years ago walked into a fitness center several miles from campus, raised a rifle, and shot four innocent people dead. Then he killed himself.
The student had been enrolled in a creative writing class at Grossmont. In the class, he wrote a story that was printed in local media as part of the coverage of the murders. The story described almost exactly the shooting scenario that he eventually acted out.
Why didn’t that story send up a very red flag to faculty and campus authorities?
It’s the same question being asked today on the Virginia Tech campus. Their shooter, 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, was in a creative writing class. He wrote stories “so disturbing,” reported the Associated Press, “that he was referred to the school’s counseling service.”
“There was some concern about him,” said Prof. Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the Virginia Tech English Department. “Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things, if they’re imagining things or just how real it might be. But we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.”
It doesn’t appear that they were alert enough to know about the Grossmont experience. If they had, Cho might be alive and deep into therapy, and 32 people might be going about their business on a promising spring day.
Is it impossible to tell when someone like Cho is going to snap? Maybe, but it seems like a good idea for campus authorities to give themselves the best chance of preventing massacres like this. Did the Grossmont experience enter any kind of national campus violence prevention database? Apparently not. Might it have been used to create a meaningful – that is, believable enough to call for action – profile of someone who isn’t just imagining things?
There is always going to be a risk of acting against an individual who might have turned out to be just very creative, and otherwise innocent. There is also a risk, as the Virginia Tech president pointed out, of stationing an officer at every doorway, in what is supposed to be an open society. Wherever the decision point falls, it needs all the backup information that experience can provide. Where and how can Grossmont College help to build a dynamic, accessible, national database to give all educators their best chance to act in time? On our campus, we still grieve, that our student turned out to be describing the future.
April 14, 2007
Texas Barbecue
I have a couple of briskets, one a 14-pounder, the other 13, on my 22 ½-inch Weber kettle, and they are coming along nicely. Beneath the briskets is a pan catching drippings, from which I will make sauce tomorrow.
I am barbecuing them for an educational foundation fundraiser tomorrow. The pinto beans are made already and will have tonight to cool and marry in the refrigerator. Tomorrow morning I will make pecan pie squares, and then just before leaving for the fundraiser, Jim Price’s Skillet Cornbread, which has for me become the only way to eat cornbread.
I started these benefits, Texas Barbecue for 20, three decades ago, when I was writing a newspaper column. I still get the occasional request for reprints of my technique, so here is this year’s.
A word about education. The First Amendment guarantees individuals the right to do all sorts of things to meat and call it barbecue. In this nation, you can find places in which the law states that pork is the only suitable meat for barbecue, and in others, people will shake fists at anyone who does not accept mutton, or goat, as the standard. I have not attempted to eat mutton barbecue, but goat, or cabrito, isn’t bad, and I have had some delightful Southern pork barbecue, even if they do put it on a bun with a gob of coleslaw.
All this is fine. The only universal standards that I think apply are: barbecue is never basted, and you have to give it enough time. In the case of these briskets, they are going to have about 14 hours. I don’t baste them, because they baste themselves. They are whole briskets, bought “in the bag,” as they say, and they will have some fat on them. Most of the fat will melt away in the smoker, and as it does, it bastes the meat. Some years ago, I taught lessons in Texas cooking, here in Southern California, and as we were sampling the result in a brisket class, a gentleman asked: “What did you baste it with?”
“I didn’t baste it,” I said. “Huh,” he said, and went back to eating. A few minutes later he spoke again. “You sure you didn’t baste it?”
The briskets went on at 6:30 this morning. I built a fire of 30-35 mesquite-laced briquets and stacked it against one side of the Weber fire grate, with the drip pan opposite. The briskets were fat enough that I trimmed off a little fat with poultry scissors. They got generous dustings of sea salt and freshly ground pepper, plus sprinklings of garlic powder and celery salt, just for kicks.
I use a big cookie sheet to carry the briskets out, one at a time if they are big like these. The smallest I would recommend are eight or nine pounds. The briskets go over the drip pan. They are going to overlap, and be hard to handle. Add three or four small chunks of mesquite charcoal – most supermarkets have it – and put the kettle cover on with the vents half-open. The vents go over the meat, to draw the smoke.
All day long, I will tend the brisket hourly at first, then every 90 minutes. Keep rotating them, end-for-end and side-for-side, over-under and under-over. Use old hot pads, or folded paper towels, to handle the meat. Give the fire seven new briquets and a couple more chunks of charcoal each time. Poke the fire to let air in through the ashes.
At seven or eight tonight, I will feed the fire and turn the meat for the last time, then leave it overnight. In the morning, I’ll take the cooled briskets and wrap them loosely in foil. I’ll heat the drippings, pour them into a saucepan, and place the pan in the refrigerator freezer to bring the fat to the top and freeze it. After a few hours, the fat will lift off like a frozen discus. Heat the drippings again, just until they are heated through – boiling ruins the chemistry – and strain them into another saucepan, pushing the solids against the sieve with a spoon. To the drippings add a bottle of barbecue sauce – I use KC Masterpiece Original – and add vinegar (not much), pepper and oregano to taste. Heat the sauce thoroughly, just to blend.
When you’re getting ready to eat, slice the excess fat off the brisket. There’s a cap end and a flat end. The flat end is leaner, the cap fatter. The cap end, if you ask me, is to die for. The cap is just that: a cap of meat on top of the flat part. Slice diagonally starting from the flat end, slices a quarter of an inch thick. When you reach the cap, lift or cut the cap off and trim excess fat. The cap will fall apart as you try to slice it.
Place the meat on heavy tinfoil, loosely gather the foil (you don’t want to steam the meat as it is warming), and warm it on a new, small fire on the Weber. Heat the sauce, pile the brisket on a platter, set out the beans and cornbread, and enjoy.
I am barbecuing them for an educational foundation fundraiser tomorrow. The pinto beans are made already and will have tonight to cool and marry in the refrigerator. Tomorrow morning I will make pecan pie squares, and then just before leaving for the fundraiser, Jim Price’s Skillet Cornbread, which has for me become the only way to eat cornbread.
I started these benefits, Texas Barbecue for 20, three decades ago, when I was writing a newspaper column. I still get the occasional request for reprints of my technique, so here is this year’s.
A word about education. The First Amendment guarantees individuals the right to do all sorts of things to meat and call it barbecue. In this nation, you can find places in which the law states that pork is the only suitable meat for barbecue, and in others, people will shake fists at anyone who does not accept mutton, or goat, as the standard. I have not attempted to eat mutton barbecue, but goat, or cabrito, isn’t bad, and I have had some delightful Southern pork barbecue, even if they do put it on a bun with a gob of coleslaw.
All this is fine. The only universal standards that I think apply are: barbecue is never basted, and you have to give it enough time. In the case of these briskets, they are going to have about 14 hours. I don’t baste them, because they baste themselves. They are whole briskets, bought “in the bag,” as they say, and they will have some fat on them. Most of the fat will melt away in the smoker, and as it does, it bastes the meat. Some years ago, I taught lessons in Texas cooking, here in Southern California, and as we were sampling the result in a brisket class, a gentleman asked: “What did you baste it with?”
“I didn’t baste it,” I said. “Huh,” he said, and went back to eating. A few minutes later he spoke again. “You sure you didn’t baste it?”
The briskets went on at 6:30 this morning. I built a fire of 30-35 mesquite-laced briquets and stacked it against one side of the Weber fire grate, with the drip pan opposite. The briskets were fat enough that I trimmed off a little fat with poultry scissors. They got generous dustings of sea salt and freshly ground pepper, plus sprinklings of garlic powder and celery salt, just for kicks.
I use a big cookie sheet to carry the briskets out, one at a time if they are big like these. The smallest I would recommend are eight or nine pounds. The briskets go over the drip pan. They are going to overlap, and be hard to handle. Add three or four small chunks of mesquite charcoal – most supermarkets have it – and put the kettle cover on with the vents half-open. The vents go over the meat, to draw the smoke.
All day long, I will tend the brisket hourly at first, then every 90 minutes. Keep rotating them, end-for-end and side-for-side, over-under and under-over. Use old hot pads, or folded paper towels, to handle the meat. Give the fire seven new briquets and a couple more chunks of charcoal each time. Poke the fire to let air in through the ashes.
At seven or eight tonight, I will feed the fire and turn the meat for the last time, then leave it overnight. In the morning, I’ll take the cooled briskets and wrap them loosely in foil. I’ll heat the drippings, pour them into a saucepan, and place the pan in the refrigerator freezer to bring the fat to the top and freeze it. After a few hours, the fat will lift off like a frozen discus. Heat the drippings again, just until they are heated through – boiling ruins the chemistry – and strain them into another saucepan, pushing the solids against the sieve with a spoon. To the drippings add a bottle of barbecue sauce – I use KC Masterpiece Original – and add vinegar (not much), pepper and oregano to taste. Heat the sauce thoroughly, just to blend.
When you’re getting ready to eat, slice the excess fat off the brisket. There’s a cap end and a flat end. The flat end is leaner, the cap fatter. The cap end, if you ask me, is to die for. The cap is just that: a cap of meat on top of the flat part. Slice diagonally starting from the flat end, slices a quarter of an inch thick. When you reach the cap, lift or cut the cap off and trim excess fat. The cap will fall apart as you try to slice it.
Place the meat on heavy tinfoil, loosely gather the foil (you don’t want to steam the meat as it is warming), and warm it on a new, small fire on the Weber. Heat the sauce, pile the brisket on a platter, set out the beans and cornbread, and enjoy.
April 11, 2007
Why talk to Imus?
And so with the beginning of Week Two, the media moves into the part of the story that says, “Forget about what Imus said; listen to this.”
Wednesday’s “Today Show” featured interviews with a black pastor, the Rev. Dr. DeForest Soaries, who said there’s “a double double standard” when it comes to racist, sexist, misanthropic language, and who says it.
"If Don Imus had called the wife of a CBS executive an ugly whore he’d have been fired,” said Dr. Soaries.
But, the story suggested, if a rapper on a CD or in a video, or a black comedian on stage or television calls any black woman that very thing, “no one bats an eye.”
Don Imus pointed that out. He said the language he used originated not with him, but with them.
Does that make it okay? Heck, no. The Rutgers basketball coach, who can get on a fascinating roll once she starts talking, said, “The society is what it is because of those in leadership roles. He (Imus) is three times the age of a rapper. If we don’t set the example, there can’t be a return to real decency. It starts with each one of us and what we do.”
Well, that sounds noble, and great, but starting with each one of us is not a very good strategy, because, one, we wouldn’t make much of a difference, and two, many of the each ones are not at all interested, if the television and radio ratings are correct, in a return to real decency. Goodbye to the “American Idol” and “Survivor” genre of broadcasting, most of radio talk shows, and practically all of the blogosphere, which derive their success from dropping indecencies onto human beings by the skiploader-full.
It would have been better, and way more realistic, if the Rutgers coach, C. Vivian Stringer, had said that the society is what it is because of those in leadership roles who sign checks. The only meaningful development in the Imus story so far is the announcement that advertisers like Proctor & Gamble, Staples and Bigelow are pulling their advertising from CBS Radio and MSNBC during the Imus show.
People can huff themselves up over this until they explode, but it only gets scary to the people who look at what losing Imus will do to the revenue stream and all its tributaries. The New York Times points out how cheap it is for MSNBC to throw Imus into a morning simulcast slot for three hours. How are they going to fill that time if Imus goes, and how are they going to pay for it? It is hard to imagine a significant number of people watching a telecast of a radio show, but their money is as green as anybody else’s, and if a televised radio show commands enough eyeballs, that is all the advertisers want. And if the advertisers are happy, CBS and NBC are happy.
This is not a story about a new stage in the demise of decent society. When Imus uttered the unfortunate words, they were heard by maybe two million people in the combined radio-television audience. That is roughly six-tenths of one percent of the American population. Many Americans, hearing this story for the first time, said, “Don who?” But this is an amazing story about the Second Law of Media: “The media is an exercise in the power of small numbers.” A customer base of six-tenths of one percent makes advertisers happy, networks richer, and Don Imus famous. The Times said he makes $10 million a year.
Rappers get rich and famous with racist, sexist lyrics that are considered an industry success with sales of one million units. That won’t change even when incidents like the Imus show blow the decency debate up to the national level, on television programs like “Today” or the evening news shows, whose combined rating is under 30, meaning more than 70 percent of concerned citizens are doing something else. Nothing will change until those in the society’s media leadership roles stop signing checks. The Rutgers team shouldn’t be meeting with Don Imus. It’s those leaders they really want to talk to.
Wednesday’s “Today Show” featured interviews with a black pastor, the Rev. Dr. DeForest Soaries, who said there’s “a double double standard” when it comes to racist, sexist, misanthropic language, and who says it.
"If Don Imus had called the wife of a CBS executive an ugly whore he’d have been fired,” said Dr. Soaries.
But, the story suggested, if a rapper on a CD or in a video, or a black comedian on stage or television calls any black woman that very thing, “no one bats an eye.”
Don Imus pointed that out. He said the language he used originated not with him, but with them.
Does that make it okay? Heck, no. The Rutgers basketball coach, who can get on a fascinating roll once she starts talking, said, “The society is what it is because of those in leadership roles. He (Imus) is three times the age of a rapper. If we don’t set the example, there can’t be a return to real decency. It starts with each one of us and what we do.”
Well, that sounds noble, and great, but starting with each one of us is not a very good strategy, because, one, we wouldn’t make much of a difference, and two, many of the each ones are not at all interested, if the television and radio ratings are correct, in a return to real decency. Goodbye to the “American Idol” and “Survivor” genre of broadcasting, most of radio talk shows, and practically all of the blogosphere, which derive their success from dropping indecencies onto human beings by the skiploader-full.
It would have been better, and way more realistic, if the Rutgers coach, C. Vivian Stringer, had said that the society is what it is because of those in leadership roles who sign checks. The only meaningful development in the Imus story so far is the announcement that advertisers like Proctor & Gamble, Staples and Bigelow are pulling their advertising from CBS Radio and MSNBC during the Imus show.
People can huff themselves up over this until they explode, but it only gets scary to the people who look at what losing Imus will do to the revenue stream and all its tributaries. The New York Times points out how cheap it is for MSNBC to throw Imus into a morning simulcast slot for three hours. How are they going to fill that time if Imus goes, and how are they going to pay for it? It is hard to imagine a significant number of people watching a telecast of a radio show, but their money is as green as anybody else’s, and if a televised radio show commands enough eyeballs, that is all the advertisers want. And if the advertisers are happy, CBS and NBC are happy.
This is not a story about a new stage in the demise of decent society. When Imus uttered the unfortunate words, they were heard by maybe two million people in the combined radio-television audience. That is roughly six-tenths of one percent of the American population. Many Americans, hearing this story for the first time, said, “Don who?” But this is an amazing story about the Second Law of Media: “The media is an exercise in the power of small numbers.” A customer base of six-tenths of one percent makes advertisers happy, networks richer, and Don Imus famous. The Times said he makes $10 million a year.
Rappers get rich and famous with racist, sexist lyrics that are considered an industry success with sales of one million units. That won’t change even when incidents like the Imus show blow the decency debate up to the national level, on television programs like “Today” or the evening news shows, whose combined rating is under 30, meaning more than 70 percent of concerned citizens are doing something else. Nothing will change until those in the society’s media leadership roles stop signing checks. The Rutgers team shouldn’t be meeting with Don Imus. It’s those leaders they really want to talk to.
April 03, 2007
Confession of a m-man
I wish to congratulate The New York Times and Mimi Sheraton for the thorough embarrassment they caused me, and I am sure many other men, with their Travel section on Sunday.
It was a brilliant idea, to begin with, to turn the lead travel story into a food piece, thus targeting the male reader. Women more than men are attracted to travel sections, but not this one, with a color photo in the upper left corner of a golden cutlet of Veal Milanese so big it covered the plate. A color photo of the Taj Mahal? Psh. Left-hand pile. Veal Milanese? Pull out the section, fold it under my arm.
I must also protest, at the same time, the obvious glee with which Ms. Sheraton composed the following paragraph, and making it the second paragraph in the story, hitting a man in the chops before he is ready:
“But of all culinary trademarks, the most elegant is the winey, saffron-gilded risotto Milanese, the short, wide-grained vialone rice from the Po Valley, creamy with butter and marrow then etched with grated Parmesan, whether as a course in itself or as an accompaniment to the spoon-tender braised veal shank, osso buco.”
With those 51 words, Ms. Sheraton got even with every male who ever slighted her in any way, all the way back to junior high school, and with every male in general, on general principles. I deeply resented her, wherever she was Sunday morning, looking at us in her mind’s eye, chained to breakfast nook chairs halfway around the world from Milan and its most elegant culinary trademark, saffron-gilded risotto Milanese, creamy with butter and - .
The m-word! She used the m-word! Sprung it on me in the second paragraph. That is where the first cry of protest rose in me. Cruel and unusual - unprecedented, in this case – using the m-word on a man with that weakness before breakfast. I uttered a low wail of anguish, which my wife heard: “What’s the matter?” she said.
“Listen to this,” I said, and read her the paragraph.
“Ick,” she said.
Well, exactly. Ick food! The best! No shame, I admit it. I love marrow. Write me up, report me. I am a registered marrow lover. Have been since I was four, and my Texas grandmother was putting prurient slices of fried ham on the table, bone-in, with its little button of browned marrow. I can still court a fix, at certain San Diego establishments and private homes where they know what osso buco is. But please. To read: “creamy with butter and marrow, then etched with grated Parmesan . . . as an accompaniment to spoon-tender braised veal shank . . .” Where is the decency, even for me and my kind?
Now I am inflamed. If Mimi Sheraton has no decency, I shall have none. When I am apprehended in the wheel well of a Milan-bound jetliner, or in the Po Valley marshes, rooting for wide grains of vialone rice, or in the back of a delivery truck easing through the narrow Milanese streets stacked with butter, saffron and veal shanks, I will say it was lust causing it, loosed by words and images published by The New York Times and its provocateur Mimi Sheraton, your honor, who possesses the morals of a Larry Flynt. And on a Sunday morning! “Spoon-tender braised veal shank.” Guilty, my God, guilty. When Ms. Sheraton wins the Pulitzer for that paragraph, my teeth are going to grind.
It was a brilliant idea, to begin with, to turn the lead travel story into a food piece, thus targeting the male reader. Women more than men are attracted to travel sections, but not this one, with a color photo in the upper left corner of a golden cutlet of Veal Milanese so big it covered the plate. A color photo of the Taj Mahal? Psh. Left-hand pile. Veal Milanese? Pull out the section, fold it under my arm.
I must also protest, at the same time, the obvious glee with which Ms. Sheraton composed the following paragraph, and making it the second paragraph in the story, hitting a man in the chops before he is ready:
“But of all culinary trademarks, the most elegant is the winey, saffron-gilded risotto Milanese, the short, wide-grained vialone rice from the Po Valley, creamy with butter and marrow then etched with grated Parmesan, whether as a course in itself or as an accompaniment to the spoon-tender braised veal shank, osso buco.”
With those 51 words, Ms. Sheraton got even with every male who ever slighted her in any way, all the way back to junior high school, and with every male in general, on general principles. I deeply resented her, wherever she was Sunday morning, looking at us in her mind’s eye, chained to breakfast nook chairs halfway around the world from Milan and its most elegant culinary trademark, saffron-gilded risotto Milanese, creamy with butter and - .
The m-word! She used the m-word! Sprung it on me in the second paragraph. That is where the first cry of protest rose in me. Cruel and unusual - unprecedented, in this case – using the m-word on a man with that weakness before breakfast. I uttered a low wail of anguish, which my wife heard: “What’s the matter?” she said.
“Listen to this,” I said, and read her the paragraph.
“Ick,” she said.
Well, exactly. Ick food! The best! No shame, I admit it. I love marrow. Write me up, report me. I am a registered marrow lover. Have been since I was four, and my Texas grandmother was putting prurient slices of fried ham on the table, bone-in, with its little button of browned marrow. I can still court a fix, at certain San Diego establishments and private homes where they know what osso buco is. But please. To read: “creamy with butter and marrow, then etched with grated Parmesan . . . as an accompaniment to spoon-tender braised veal shank . . .” Where is the decency, even for me and my kind?
Now I am inflamed. If Mimi Sheraton has no decency, I shall have none. When I am apprehended in the wheel well of a Milan-bound jetliner, or in the Po Valley marshes, rooting for wide grains of vialone rice, or in the back of a delivery truck easing through the narrow Milanese streets stacked with butter, saffron and veal shanks, I will say it was lust causing it, loosed by words and images published by The New York Times and its provocateur Mimi Sheraton, your honor, who possesses the morals of a Larry Flynt. And on a Sunday morning! “Spoon-tender braised veal shank.” Guilty, my God, guilty. When Ms. Sheraton wins the Pulitzer for that paragraph, my teeth are going to grind.
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