The Mainstream Media needs wingmen. I volunteer.
Katie Couric and news operations at the radio and television networks, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and other national newspapers, are members of the Mainstream Media, or MSM, as it has come to be called. These are the people responsible for encountering, finding, and objectively reporting the news, and they are the ones that really count, in terms of the safety of the democracy. In fact let’s give them an identifier of their own. They are the Mainstream Mainstream Media, or MMSM.
Besides the MMSM, all MSM organizations also have an opinion operation housing analysis and commentary, but those opinion operations don't need wingmen. Some of them should BE wingmen for their MMSM colleagues.
A wingman is a commentator, no doubt about it. I am about to attack those people who have taken the MMSM under attack, and my mission is to keep them under attack for as long as necessary. I am flying a pretty good airplane. I have 35 years of experience at the controls of the media profession, and I know the news side as well as I know the opinion side.
The mission needs wingmen because the MMSM can’t defend itself without appearing to lose balance and objectivity, particularly in a political season such as this. I can take on the McCain and Obama camps with impunity, however, because I am a declared commentator flying partisan colors, but they are not politically partisan. I am partisan free press. I am pro-MMSM, and anyone who is not is walking on the fighting side of me. The role of the MMSM in American democracy dates to the 1734 Zenger verdict and predates presidents, politics, and the Constitution. A free press is as basic to American democracy as oxygen atoms are to air. Nothing about this republic is more worthy of our regard and our respect.
I decided to become an MMSM wingman last night when I heard John McCain say to Katie Couric, “This is not the first time I have seen a governor being questioned by some quote, ‘expert’.” Katie Couric couldn’t bite his head off, but I sure can. I can wonder why a man who would aspire to the presidency of the United States would place his partisan needs before the principle of democratic oxygen. The nation is gripped by fear of financial failure, but no one is asking about the effect on the republic of an MMSM failure, which is far scarier. Rather, it has become open season on the free press. I could hear millions of Americans last night, joining McCain’s attack, cheering his words in the dark. Does he not see the risk?
In today’s MMSM, speaking of Gov. Sarah Palin’s candidacy, Ron Carey, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, said, “Thanks to the mainstream media, quite a low expectation has been created for her performance.” Katon Dawson, the GOP chair in South Carolina, again referring to Palin, spoke of “a pile-on by the media elite. You don’t have this kind of negative media attack without a question mark being put up.”
If the MMSM’s reporting – and yes, they are the elites in their business – does not meet the Zenger verdict’s standard of truth, there will be retractions and corrections. In the meantime, the people are free to react to the information with high or low expectations, and with exclamation points or question marks. This wingman mission is all about the people. Taped to my instrument panel are these words:
“The guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press.”
Thus an attack such as McCain’s on the MMSM must in fact be an attack on the people. It is time it, and they, were defended.
September 30, 2008
September 24, 2008
National guitar champion
When Tyler Grant was youth soccer age (an age I thought would never end), I used to harp on him about moving his feet. He had very slow feet.
It would be years before I realized I was watching the wrong parts. If I wanted fast, I should have been watching his hands. Those were the hands that last Saturday picked up a guitar at the National Flatpicking Guitar Championships, and when they set the guitar down again, Tyler had won first prize. There were 32 contestants. He was awarded $2,000 and a guitar of his choice. He chose a Collings, hand-made by a company in Austin.
I figured he chose the Collings because he had a space in the Collings Room for it. He must have rooms for all the guitars he has won – the Martin Room, the Gibson Room, etc. Me? I am making room in the Pride and Envy corners of my head to allow for the kind of swelling created by the news that your kid is the National Flatpicking Guitar Champion of the United States of America.
Many fathers can take credit for guiding or coaching or inspiring their kids to this sort of success, and I feel highly motivated to try. We do have a guitar connection, but it is a flimsy one. I have been crashing through three-chord progressions since I was 12 or 13 and wanted to copy the rock and roll that overnight had started pouring out of the radio. I learned a few Elvis songs and a few Johnny Cash songs, establishing a repertoire that has changed hardly at all to this day. I tried to play the guitar licks between verses, but my hands were as fast as Tyler’s feet would someday be, and I gave that up and just stuck to the chords.
So Tyler heard his dad play guitar from the time he was born, and he may have been inspired by the sound, or by staring through the bars of his crib, thinking somebody really needed to teach me how to play that thing, and it might as well be him, someday. I do know that on Tyler’s MySpace page, he lists me fourth among the people who have inspired him, behind Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Jerry Garcia, and David Grier.
That is pride enough for me. I think the inspiration that brought Tyler to becoming a guitar champion started the same place that mine did, listening to music he liked. When he heard bluegrass, he knew what he wanted to do. Then he did the work.
It has been a lot of work. Tyler started when he was 16 or 17. Now he is 32. He has degrees from Grossmont College and California University of the Arts. He knows music theory. He plays classical guitar. He practices three or four hours a day. One day years ago he was playing and I asked him what the tune was. “Just notes,” he said. He was practicing what he called a pentatonic scale. Sounded like music to me.
I have watched Tyler’s hands through these years. They weren’t nearly as fast in the beginning. About a year ago, I heard him reach a fluidity that gives the impression that playing the guitar isn’t work at all. The reward for all the work is that playing starts to sound easy. When I hear Tyler playing on a CD, I see his fingers on the strings, and that connection is a gift for a lifetime. There is a very good photo of him at his sister’s Website at oliveme.wordpress.com. You will also find there a very good summation of the winning ways that Tyler brought to the stage with him last Saturday.
It would be years before I realized I was watching the wrong parts. If I wanted fast, I should have been watching his hands. Those were the hands that last Saturday picked up a guitar at the National Flatpicking Guitar Championships, and when they set the guitar down again, Tyler had won first prize. There were 32 contestants. He was awarded $2,000 and a guitar of his choice. He chose a Collings, hand-made by a company in Austin.
I figured he chose the Collings because he had a space in the Collings Room for it. He must have rooms for all the guitars he has won – the Martin Room, the Gibson Room, etc. Me? I am making room in the Pride and Envy corners of my head to allow for the kind of swelling created by the news that your kid is the National Flatpicking Guitar Champion of the United States of America.
Many fathers can take credit for guiding or coaching or inspiring their kids to this sort of success, and I feel highly motivated to try. We do have a guitar connection, but it is a flimsy one. I have been crashing through three-chord progressions since I was 12 or 13 and wanted to copy the rock and roll that overnight had started pouring out of the radio. I learned a few Elvis songs and a few Johnny Cash songs, establishing a repertoire that has changed hardly at all to this day. I tried to play the guitar licks between verses, but my hands were as fast as Tyler’s feet would someday be, and I gave that up and just stuck to the chords.
So Tyler heard his dad play guitar from the time he was born, and he may have been inspired by the sound, or by staring through the bars of his crib, thinking somebody really needed to teach me how to play that thing, and it might as well be him, someday. I do know that on Tyler’s MySpace page, he lists me fourth among the people who have inspired him, behind Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Jerry Garcia, and David Grier.
That is pride enough for me. I think the inspiration that brought Tyler to becoming a guitar champion started the same place that mine did, listening to music he liked. When he heard bluegrass, he knew what he wanted to do. Then he did the work.
It has been a lot of work. Tyler started when he was 16 or 17. Now he is 32. He has degrees from Grossmont College and California University of the Arts. He knows music theory. He plays classical guitar. He practices three or four hours a day. One day years ago he was playing and I asked him what the tune was. “Just notes,” he said. He was practicing what he called a pentatonic scale. Sounded like music to me.
I have watched Tyler’s hands through these years. They weren’t nearly as fast in the beginning. About a year ago, I heard him reach a fluidity that gives the impression that playing the guitar isn’t work at all. The reward for all the work is that playing starts to sound easy. When I hear Tyler playing on a CD, I see his fingers on the strings, and that connection is a gift for a lifetime. There is a very good photo of him at his sister’s Website at oliveme.wordpress.com. You will also find there a very good summation of the winning ways that Tyler brought to the stage with him last Saturday.
September 18, 2008
Approaching HDTV, over
Lots of circles closing around here. One last week, and now another one. I like circles closing, but when they start coming fast like this, there is the dark breath of a suggestion of an end being nigh. When the One Great Circle starts to close . . . well, never mind. Is it too late to get some new circles started?
This circle started in 1952, when word came that Abilene, Texas, my hometown, was going to have its own television station going on the air in 1953. This was hysterically good news to a nine-year-old who had already successfully badgered his elders into placing a 21-inch Zenith, complete with ChannelMaster antenna, in a corner of the living room even though the nearest stations were in Dallas, 160 miles away. It was truly miraculous. I could bring in ghostly images from KRLD and WFAA and faint snatches of voice escaping the static. Otherwise the TV was a good vase holder, and of course an easy way to shut me up for hours at a time.
In 1952, television was novel technology. The radio, you turned it on, you turned it off. The television, you had to know how to operate it, requiring a melding of the mind with strange new forces inside the TV that were swayed by an array of controls. I can honestly say, in 2008, that television in 1952-53 was a television from another planet.
Here’s how you changed the channel. First you had to physically know where the station transmitter was from your house. For me, Channel 9 was south, Channel 12 was west. Say I’m watching 9 and want to watch 12. I have two options. I can rotate the ChannelMaster dial from S to W and run madly outside and watch the antenna swing around. Or I can click the TV dial from 9 to 12, then rotate the ChannelMaster and shriek with delight as the 12 picture slowly emerges out of the driving snow. My grandmother would take this in with the clearest expression I have ever seen of someone in a world coming to something that was totally devoid of a lick of sense.
Then you had to adjust the Vertical Hold, the Horizontal Hold, and the Fine Tune Knob, and quite possibly the ChannelMaster some more until the 12 picture yielded to these demands and centered itself quietly more or less in the center of the screen. Half an hour later – or maybe just 15 minutes – a lot of shows in 1953 were only 15 minutes long – to flip back to Channel 9, you repeated the process.
Television eventually became as simple as a radio to use, and all through the 1980s and ‘90s I would brag to young remote-wielding couch potatoes how making a television picture come in took one part boy, one part God and one part Charles Lindbergh. Yesterday the circle closed. Karen wondered if we shouldn’t investigate HDTVs. It was an offer a 65-year-old boy couldn’t refuse.
Quickly I found that television has entered a new world. The last TV we bought, we went to the store, decided which was the best picture, took it home, plugged it in, turned it on. It has been that way for 35 years. Now it is 1953 again. I am reading about HDTV online and it is all if, and, and but. Compared to this, the 1952 Zenith really was black and white.
This circle started in 1952, when word came that Abilene, Texas, my hometown, was going to have its own television station going on the air in 1953. This was hysterically good news to a nine-year-old who had already successfully badgered his elders into placing a 21-inch Zenith, complete with ChannelMaster antenna, in a corner of the living room even though the nearest stations were in Dallas, 160 miles away. It was truly miraculous. I could bring in ghostly images from KRLD and WFAA and faint snatches of voice escaping the static. Otherwise the TV was a good vase holder, and of course an easy way to shut me up for hours at a time.
In 1952, television was novel technology. The radio, you turned it on, you turned it off. The television, you had to know how to operate it, requiring a melding of the mind with strange new forces inside the TV that were swayed by an array of controls. I can honestly say, in 2008, that television in 1952-53 was a television from another planet.
Here’s how you changed the channel. First you had to physically know where the station transmitter was from your house. For me, Channel 9 was south, Channel 12 was west. Say I’m watching 9 and want to watch 12. I have two options. I can rotate the ChannelMaster dial from S to W and run madly outside and watch the antenna swing around. Or I can click the TV dial from 9 to 12, then rotate the ChannelMaster and shriek with delight as the 12 picture slowly emerges out of the driving snow. My grandmother would take this in with the clearest expression I have ever seen of someone in a world coming to something that was totally devoid of a lick of sense.
Then you had to adjust the Vertical Hold, the Horizontal Hold, and the Fine Tune Knob, and quite possibly the ChannelMaster some more until the 12 picture yielded to these demands and centered itself quietly more or less in the center of the screen. Half an hour later – or maybe just 15 minutes – a lot of shows in 1953 were only 15 minutes long – to flip back to Channel 9, you repeated the process.
Television eventually became as simple as a radio to use, and all through the 1980s and ‘90s I would brag to young remote-wielding couch potatoes how making a television picture come in took one part boy, one part God and one part Charles Lindbergh. Yesterday the circle closed. Karen wondered if we shouldn’t investigate HDTVs. It was an offer a 65-year-old boy couldn’t refuse.
Quickly I found that television has entered a new world. The last TV we bought, we went to the store, decided which was the best picture, took it home, plugged it in, turned it on. It has been that way for 35 years. Now it is 1953 again. I am reading about HDTV online and it is all if, and, and but. Compared to this, the 1952 Zenith really was black and white.
September 12, 2008
Acorn Fever strikes Southern California
It is 2:30 in the afternoon in San Diego, California, and I just pulled on a sweatshirt. I've felt it coming on for several days and now, just like that, it has hit. Acorn Fever.
Acorn Fever strikes thousands of Southern California residents every September. Some suggestion of fall weather breaks out and infects us with strong urges to pull on sweaters, build fires, rake leaves, and drink apple cider. The problem is, there are no leaves to rake. This afternoon and tomorrow, I can expect to go out for a drive and see numerous Pendleton-clad Acorn Fever victims with leaf brooms, purposefully raking green, leaf-free lawns. I can drive to the freeway and notice thick eastbound traffic, headed for our local mountains 30 miles away to buy jugs of cider. From chimneys I can expect the scent of wood smoke. Threats to life are in the air.
We are fortunate this season that the Fever appears to have struck on a Friday. Most people don't have to go to work tomorrow. In years when the attacks come on a Monday or Tuesday, the next day you will witness our downtown streets populated with workers in plaids and woolens and pashminas. Weather that started cool and gray at sunrise will have evolved by noon into a blue glare of sky and beach temperatures. By 2 p.m. the downtown temperature may be in the 80s. September is typically our hottest month in Southern California, which is why Acorn Fever is so insidious. By 3 p.m., police and other emergency agencies will be cruising the streets, watching for dark clumps of woolens where a citizen has collapsed and is dissolving into a puddle of sweat on the sidewalk.
Acorn Fever hardly ever strikes twice the same way, but the result is always the same. There is the viral suggestion of fall, enough to make people find sweaters and pull out stewpots, but the suggestion is short-lived, quickly followed by typical September temperatures in the 90s or over 100, which catch the afflicted in their tracks, or in their cars with the heaters on.
Sometimes Acorn Fever arrives with a snap, or what we call a snap in this part of the world. Snaps usually arrive at the end of a particularly hot July and August. A couple of years ago, we hit 118 one afternoon in July. People forget that Southern California essentially is a desert, all the way to the ocean. If we didn't import water over long interstate distances, very few people would live here at all. So after a summer like that, one morning in September the temperature will actually briefly slip below 60. That is what we call a snap.
But this summer has been atypically cool, very few afternoons even into the 90s, even inland, away from the ocean. Among Acorn Fever observers, interest was heightened as September arrived. How might it hit this year, if at all? A September without Acorn Fever would make history. Last Monday, I noticed – or more than noticed – I felt – the morning light arrive later, and the evening dusk arrive sooner. A circadian gear shifted in my head. Then on Wednesday, driving home in the early evening, objects beyond the windshield lost their edges, reminding me of the scene in "Dark Victory" when Bette Davis wonders where the clouds came from so suddenly. I'm at an age where I have lost both hips and my prostate, so it wasn't difficult for me to imagine instant glaucoma. I rubbed my eyes.
But then I looked at the windshield and saw the film of fog spreading upward from the dashboard. I couldn't feel it, but the glass was sensitive enough to feel some differential in the air. It was the Fever out there, incubating. Then today the morning clouds didn't burn off. It even drizzled. At 2:30, the clouds are still there and the house feels cool. Too cool. It is so cozy in this sweater. I should probably build a fire, but I think I'll settle for a couple of chili dogs and see if the thing blows over.
Acorn Fever strikes thousands of Southern California residents every September. Some suggestion of fall weather breaks out and infects us with strong urges to pull on sweaters, build fires, rake leaves, and drink apple cider. The problem is, there are no leaves to rake. This afternoon and tomorrow, I can expect to go out for a drive and see numerous Pendleton-clad Acorn Fever victims with leaf brooms, purposefully raking green, leaf-free lawns. I can drive to the freeway and notice thick eastbound traffic, headed for our local mountains 30 miles away to buy jugs of cider. From chimneys I can expect the scent of wood smoke. Threats to life are in the air.
We are fortunate this season that the Fever appears to have struck on a Friday. Most people don't have to go to work tomorrow. In years when the attacks come on a Monday or Tuesday, the next day you will witness our downtown streets populated with workers in plaids and woolens and pashminas. Weather that started cool and gray at sunrise will have evolved by noon into a blue glare of sky and beach temperatures. By 2 p.m. the downtown temperature may be in the 80s. September is typically our hottest month in Southern California, which is why Acorn Fever is so insidious. By 3 p.m., police and other emergency agencies will be cruising the streets, watching for dark clumps of woolens where a citizen has collapsed and is dissolving into a puddle of sweat on the sidewalk.
Acorn Fever hardly ever strikes twice the same way, but the result is always the same. There is the viral suggestion of fall, enough to make people find sweaters and pull out stewpots, but the suggestion is short-lived, quickly followed by typical September temperatures in the 90s or over 100, which catch the afflicted in their tracks, or in their cars with the heaters on.
Sometimes Acorn Fever arrives with a snap, or what we call a snap in this part of the world. Snaps usually arrive at the end of a particularly hot July and August. A couple of years ago, we hit 118 one afternoon in July. People forget that Southern California essentially is a desert, all the way to the ocean. If we didn't import water over long interstate distances, very few people would live here at all. So after a summer like that, one morning in September the temperature will actually briefly slip below 60. That is what we call a snap.
But this summer has been atypically cool, very few afternoons even into the 90s, even inland, away from the ocean. Among Acorn Fever observers, interest was heightened as September arrived. How might it hit this year, if at all? A September without Acorn Fever would make history. Last Monday, I noticed – or more than noticed – I felt – the morning light arrive later, and the evening dusk arrive sooner. A circadian gear shifted in my head. Then on Wednesday, driving home in the early evening, objects beyond the windshield lost their edges, reminding me of the scene in "Dark Victory" when Bette Davis wonders where the clouds came from so suddenly. I'm at an age where I have lost both hips and my prostate, so it wasn't difficult for me to imagine instant glaucoma. I rubbed my eyes.
But then I looked at the windshield and saw the film of fog spreading upward from the dashboard. I couldn't feel it, but the glass was sensitive enough to feel some differential in the air. It was the Fever out there, incubating. Then today the morning clouds didn't burn off. It even drizzled. At 2:30, the clouds are still there and the house feels cool. Too cool. It is so cozy in this sweater. I should probably build a fire, but I think I'll settle for a couple of chili dogs and see if the thing blows over.
September 11, 2008
"Hockey Mom" fading, "Lipstick Season" awaits
“Hockey Mom” is still pulling great ratings, but I saw my first “I’m sick of” comment in the media pages today. Tomorrow, “HM” episodes will have been on the air 24/7 for two weeks, with almost no change in the dialogue. Sarah Palin says the same lines, over and over again. It’s worse than being forced to watch nothing but “Survivor” 24/7 for two weeks. Pretty soon, nothing helps. You could put lipstick on “Survivor” and it would still be “Survivor.”
That’s where we are. You could put lipstick on “Hockey Mom,” and it would still be “Hockey Mom.” The novelty is wearing off, as the novelty always does. If the show’s producers expect Sarah Palin to get John McCain elected, look for some re-invention soon. God help them if the audience starts calling for guest appearances from Joe Lieberman.
Wherever that goes, “Hockey Mom” has been responsible for a great spinoff, “Lipstick Season,” which may be topping the Nielsens long after the election. At last, the media has a reality show that means something. Millions of American women are coming onstage to talk about what it means to be a woman in a society where “Hockey Mom,” which portrays a woman as a marketing tool, can become a hit.
Millions of American men should be drawn to “Lipstick Season” too, but I’m only interested in one of them. Me. Karen has poured thousands of rounds of cannon fire into the television since “Hockey Mom” came on, and I find myself mystified. It is as if she is speaking a second language that I never heard before. I have fancied myself a hard worker where understanding women’s issues is concerned, but now I have to borrow a line from Olympia Dukakis: what I don’t know about women is a lot.
I think it is a matter of women finally having a double standard placed so everyone can see it, and placed there by a woman in the employ, of all agencies, the Republican Party, which women think wouldn’t know a double standard if one came up and bit it on the leg. It’s very convoluted, very hard to follow, totally new in my experience. Someone on morning television speaks of Palin’s right to privacy, and Karen fires back, the kitchen shaking with the thunder of the barrage. She is visibly incensed and combative, that same intensity I have sensed in the national air since Palin came on the scene.
I ask Karen to explain it to me, and she growls that the right to privacy is the bedrock principle of a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body. I try to put it together, but I have always been weak with any thinking that involves inverted or over-under-around-through logic: if this is right, then that is wrong, which makes this other thing right. It takes the form of, well, how can Palin do this, when that is so, or not so?
It may be that Palin has pulled the pin on a gender grenade starting a war that women have been itching to fight, but couldn’t, because before, it was always a man pulling the pin. Is this a war that can only be fought with lipstick? Am I making any sense? I wish I knew, but I do know that I am feeling decidedly grateful in an over-under-around-through way to the GOP producers for “Hockey Mom” and the way it is setting the stage for “Lipstick Season.” I think it is going to be an epochal production.
That’s where we are. You could put lipstick on “Hockey Mom,” and it would still be “Hockey Mom.” The novelty is wearing off, as the novelty always does. If the show’s producers expect Sarah Palin to get John McCain elected, look for some re-invention soon. God help them if the audience starts calling for guest appearances from Joe Lieberman.
Wherever that goes, “Hockey Mom” has been responsible for a great spinoff, “Lipstick Season,” which may be topping the Nielsens long after the election. At last, the media has a reality show that means something. Millions of American women are coming onstage to talk about what it means to be a woman in a society where “Hockey Mom,” which portrays a woman as a marketing tool, can become a hit.
Millions of American men should be drawn to “Lipstick Season” too, but I’m only interested in one of them. Me. Karen has poured thousands of rounds of cannon fire into the television since “Hockey Mom” came on, and I find myself mystified. It is as if she is speaking a second language that I never heard before. I have fancied myself a hard worker where understanding women’s issues is concerned, but now I have to borrow a line from Olympia Dukakis: what I don’t know about women is a lot.
I think it is a matter of women finally having a double standard placed so everyone can see it, and placed there by a woman in the employ, of all agencies, the Republican Party, which women think wouldn’t know a double standard if one came up and bit it on the leg. It’s very convoluted, very hard to follow, totally new in my experience. Someone on morning television speaks of Palin’s right to privacy, and Karen fires back, the kitchen shaking with the thunder of the barrage. She is visibly incensed and combative, that same intensity I have sensed in the national air since Palin came on the scene.
I ask Karen to explain it to me, and she growls that the right to privacy is the bedrock principle of a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body. I try to put it together, but I have always been weak with any thinking that involves inverted or over-under-around-through logic: if this is right, then that is wrong, which makes this other thing right. It takes the form of, well, how can Palin do this, when that is so, or not so?
It may be that Palin has pulled the pin on a gender grenade starting a war that women have been itching to fight, but couldn’t, because before, it was always a man pulling the pin. Is this a war that can only be fought with lipstick? Am I making any sense? I wish I knew, but I do know that I am feeling decidedly grateful in an over-under-around-through way to the GOP producers for “Hockey Mom” and the way it is setting the stage for “Lipstick Season.” I think it is going to be an epochal production.
September 09, 2008
The Willie circle
Jessie posted a terrific photo of Willie Nelson on her blog last week. She was given a ticket to go to his concert up in Humboldt County where she lives. She snapped the picture just as he was going onstage, and in the blog, she wrote that seeing Willie sing changed her life.
It closed a circle for me. I don’t think parents realize they have these things like circles closing with their kids to look forward to. The thing has to happen, the circle has to close, before you see it. Now that it has happened, I must say that it is the coolest thing. I now know, also, that, if I wanted to, I could probably look forward to other circles closing involving Jessie and me, but I don’t think I want to. It would be smug. Yick. For better or worse, as a father and grandfather I am not a doter.
This particular circle started its long journey on July 4, 1980. On that day, seeing Willie sing changed my life. It was, and remains, the longest day of my life. I apologize again to my companions that day, my ex-wife (Jessie’s mom) and a splendid couple, Lynne and Bill Schwind, from San Antonio, who came along because I told them it would be fun. Bill even drove, poor devil.
The occasion was Willie’s Eighth and Last Annual Fourth of July Picnic, celebrated at Bee Cave, Texas, southwest of Austin in the Hill Country. I went down there to write about it for my newspaper. I talked to Willie, and he did sing, but I don’t remember that very well. It’s an interesting thing about memory. The memory is created more by the rememberer than the thing remembered. Willie is the memory’s bookmark, but what I, the rememberer, remember, is heat and stench, or, as they say around Bee Cave, “steench.”
Scientists just last week announced some findings about the brain and memory which could help explain this. They found that memory of an event resides in the same brain cells, or neurons, that activated, or “fired,” most furiously when the event was actually experienced. It is as if the memory neurons are actually re-living the event. It is possible, therefore, that, remembering that event, my talking-to-Willie memory neurons aren’t firing as furiously as my heat and stench memory neurons. It means I am re-living the heat and stench more than I am re-living Willie. I am sad about that, but relieved that, given the furious-firing premise of these memory findings, that I can remember anything at all besides sex.
The heat neurons were fired by the famous Texas Heat Wave of 1980 – they made T-shirts about it – and the fact that it took us, and the other 30,000 patrons in attendance, four hours to go the 10 miles on a two-lane road from the main highway to Bee Cave, and then four hours to get back out. A human can’t love Willie any more than that. The stench neurons were fired – many of them fusing in apoplexy – by a telephone booth on the edge of the concert grounds into which I ducked to phone my story to the paper, to find a temperature of maybe 130 degrees and a steench left by some bad Texas boys and girls who as the beer flowed and the day went on couldn’t hold it any longer. It took many days and showers before I didn’t smell like that phone booth. Thinking about it, I can smell it right now. Hey guys, your findings are right! Damn, I need a shower.
It closed a circle for me. I don’t think parents realize they have these things like circles closing with their kids to look forward to. The thing has to happen, the circle has to close, before you see it. Now that it has happened, I must say that it is the coolest thing. I now know, also, that, if I wanted to, I could probably look forward to other circles closing involving Jessie and me, but I don’t think I want to. It would be smug. Yick. For better or worse, as a father and grandfather I am not a doter.
This particular circle started its long journey on July 4, 1980. On that day, seeing Willie sing changed my life. It was, and remains, the longest day of my life. I apologize again to my companions that day, my ex-wife (Jessie’s mom) and a splendid couple, Lynne and Bill Schwind, from San Antonio, who came along because I told them it would be fun. Bill even drove, poor devil.
The occasion was Willie’s Eighth and Last Annual Fourth of July Picnic, celebrated at Bee Cave, Texas, southwest of Austin in the Hill Country. I went down there to write about it for my newspaper. I talked to Willie, and he did sing, but I don’t remember that very well. It’s an interesting thing about memory. The memory is created more by the rememberer than the thing remembered. Willie is the memory’s bookmark, but what I, the rememberer, remember, is heat and stench, or, as they say around Bee Cave, “steench.”
Scientists just last week announced some findings about the brain and memory which could help explain this. They found that memory of an event resides in the same brain cells, or neurons, that activated, or “fired,” most furiously when the event was actually experienced. It is as if the memory neurons are actually re-living the event. It is possible, therefore, that, remembering that event, my talking-to-Willie memory neurons aren’t firing as furiously as my heat and stench memory neurons. It means I am re-living the heat and stench more than I am re-living Willie. I am sad about that, but relieved that, given the furious-firing premise of these memory findings, that I can remember anything at all besides sex.
The heat neurons were fired by the famous Texas Heat Wave of 1980 – they made T-shirts about it – and the fact that it took us, and the other 30,000 patrons in attendance, four hours to go the 10 miles on a two-lane road from the main highway to Bee Cave, and then four hours to get back out. A human can’t love Willie any more than that. The stench neurons were fired – many of them fusing in apoplexy – by a telephone booth on the edge of the concert grounds into which I ducked to phone my story to the paper, to find a temperature of maybe 130 degrees and a steench left by some bad Texas boys and girls who as the beer flowed and the day went on couldn’t hold it any longer. It took many days and showers before I didn’t smell like that phone booth. Thinking about it, I can smell it right now. Hey guys, your findings are right! Damn, I need a shower.
September 06, 2008
Pulling the plug on the First Amendment
In 35 years of newspapering and teaching, I developed a quiet amusement over the general public's almost total ignorance of how the news media does its job. Then, last year, I received the following email from a reader, one Stuart Jewell, complaining about media content: “It’s strange to me, that almost all columnists and reporters assume the talent of being able to define what ‘the people’ want to know and how urgently they want to know it.”
His words struck not my newspaperman's heart, but my media educator's brain. I thought: "It’s not strange at all. Columnists and reporters don’t assume anything. They go to journalism school, where they learn the definitions of what the people want to know, and how urgently they want to know it. The study of journalism, and all the other media forms, is as black-and-white as learning English. The media uses definitions, rules and values that are as clear-cut as the conjugation of verbs."
Suddenly, and clearly, I understood that Stuart Jewell's problem was not ignorance. It was illiteracy. Media literacy is not a required subject in American schools, from kindergarten to university. Jewell had offered a judgment of a vital democratic institution without any sort of a knowledge baseline. With his focus, I expanded my ongoing research into the media-public relationship, and I found a gap, between the media and the public.
This gap has always been there but it really started to open in 1950s America. David Halberstam, in his comprehensive history, "The Fifties," noted it: "It was in the fifties that the nation became wired for television, a new medium experimented with by various politicians and social groups." Only 10 years later, "television had begun to alter the political and social fabric of the country, with stunning consequences."
It was a literacy gap. All the knowledge about the new medium resided with the experimenters, knowledge to which the general public had no real access. At the heart of the gap was a code, centuries old, but simple and easy to learn in college and university media degree programs. I teach it to 200 new students a year. It should be taught to everyone.
Never before have I seen that gap more apparent than in the Republican convention and the events surrounding it. In May 2007, U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics indicated 1.07 million media professionals in an adult population (15 and over) of 240 million. In 21st-century America, if you are not a media professional, you are, like Stuart Jewell, essentially media-illiterate. In this illiteracy, Americans accuse the media of bias, irresponsibility, moral decay, Hannah Montana. And many of those accusations are true, because media professionals, in a media-illiterate world, know they can get away with it. The gap has become a wedge. The result is an American crisis, creating fear and mistrust, even loathing, of a media institution that is the life blood of democracy.
At the Republican convention were thousands of Stuart Jewells (with millions more watching) and a handful of media professionals, most notably a Republican strategist named Steve Schmidt. So notable was Schmidt's presence in the proceedings that he is the subject of a long profile in the Sunday, Sept. 7, New York Times. Using media tools, Schmidt manipulated public response that brought the audience, who had no idea why, to a frenzy. Democratic media professionals did the same thing last week at Denver, but in St. Paul, there was an ominous difference. Schmidt attacked the media, again and again, in ways that were not legitimate. He did not do this viciously; he did it as a professional using media tools to evoke a response.
If the public understood that, all would be well. But they didn't and don't. In their media illiteracy, Schmidt the media pro knew he could get away with it. And that is a huge part of the American crisis, going forward from this convention.
The public doesn't understand, because they have never been taught, that people are the authors of the media code that the professionals use, and thus are the source of all media, particularly journalism, or what Americans have always called a "free press." That connection is consistently revealed by professionals seeking to define exactly what journalists do. In a 1987 speech, Jeff Greenfield, now of CBS, laid it down nicely: "The bedrock theory of the free press is that once society decides to invest ultimate power in the people, they must have access to the widest possible range of information."
Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press. The natural, enduring strength of this circularity is acknowledged by the deliberations of the nation's founders. The place for their guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Journalists, educated in these realities and principles, write to it, write to the people, as if through a window which no power, natural or man-made, can close.
Steve Schmidt is trying, though. If he succeeds, he will have succeeded in pulling the plug from the First Amendment. Somebody needs to get him to talk about that. But for Sunday's New York Times profile, he declined to be interviewed.
His words struck not my newspaperman's heart, but my media educator's brain. I thought: "It’s not strange at all. Columnists and reporters don’t assume anything. They go to journalism school, where they learn the definitions of what the people want to know, and how urgently they want to know it. The study of journalism, and all the other media forms, is as black-and-white as learning English. The media uses definitions, rules and values that are as clear-cut as the conjugation of verbs."
Suddenly, and clearly, I understood that Stuart Jewell's problem was not ignorance. It was illiteracy. Media literacy is not a required subject in American schools, from kindergarten to university. Jewell had offered a judgment of a vital democratic institution without any sort of a knowledge baseline. With his focus, I expanded my ongoing research into the media-public relationship, and I found a gap, between the media and the public.
This gap has always been there but it really started to open in 1950s America. David Halberstam, in his comprehensive history, "The Fifties," noted it: "It was in the fifties that the nation became wired for television, a new medium experimented with by various politicians and social groups." Only 10 years later, "television had begun to alter the political and social fabric of the country, with stunning consequences."
It was a literacy gap. All the knowledge about the new medium resided with the experimenters, knowledge to which the general public had no real access. At the heart of the gap was a code, centuries old, but simple and easy to learn in college and university media degree programs. I teach it to 200 new students a year. It should be taught to everyone.
Never before have I seen that gap more apparent than in the Republican convention and the events surrounding it. In May 2007, U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics indicated 1.07 million media professionals in an adult population (15 and over) of 240 million. In 21st-century America, if you are not a media professional, you are, like Stuart Jewell, essentially media-illiterate. In this illiteracy, Americans accuse the media of bias, irresponsibility, moral decay, Hannah Montana. And many of those accusations are true, because media professionals, in a media-illiterate world, know they can get away with it. The gap has become a wedge. The result is an American crisis, creating fear and mistrust, even loathing, of a media institution that is the life blood of democracy.
At the Republican convention were thousands of Stuart Jewells (with millions more watching) and a handful of media professionals, most notably a Republican strategist named Steve Schmidt. So notable was Schmidt's presence in the proceedings that he is the subject of a long profile in the Sunday, Sept. 7, New York Times. Using media tools, Schmidt manipulated public response that brought the audience, who had no idea why, to a frenzy. Democratic media professionals did the same thing last week at Denver, but in St. Paul, there was an ominous difference. Schmidt attacked the media, again and again, in ways that were not legitimate. He did not do this viciously; he did it as a professional using media tools to evoke a response.
If the public understood that, all would be well. But they didn't and don't. In their media illiteracy, Schmidt the media pro knew he could get away with it. And that is a huge part of the American crisis, going forward from this convention.
The public doesn't understand, because they have never been taught, that people are the authors of the media code that the professionals use, and thus are the source of all media, particularly journalism, or what Americans have always called a "free press." That connection is consistently revealed by professionals seeking to define exactly what journalists do. In a 1987 speech, Jeff Greenfield, now of CBS, laid it down nicely: "The bedrock theory of the free press is that once society decides to invest ultimate power in the people, they must have access to the widest possible range of information."
Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press. The natural, enduring strength of this circularity is acknowledged by the deliberations of the nation's founders. The place for their guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Journalists, educated in these realities and principles, write to it, write to the people, as if through a window which no power, natural or man-made, can close.
Steve Schmidt is trying, though. If he succeeds, he will have succeeded in pulling the plug from the First Amendment. Somebody needs to get him to talk about that. But for Sunday's New York Times profile, he declined to be interviewed.
September 05, 2008
Days of our lives
When I was 17 years old, if I had told my grandmother Susie that someday I would read about a kid my age who knocked up the daughter of a woman governor, then two days later watched the kid and his girl and the governor hugging and shaking the hand of a candidate for President of the United States, Susie would have said, "You're crazy as a loon, boy."
Well, these are loon-crazy times, Suze. Watching TV this week has not been like watching a soap opera, it IS a soap opera. Republican political managers, most famously Karl Rove, are gifted media producers. As a media professional myself, I can't help but admire their work, even as it scares hell out of me. Their work of the last week has been frighteningly inspired, and also lucky.
Media producers use a set of known values to obtain a reaction from an audience. In fact the values taken together are known as a “reaction package.” Among the values are conflict, progress, disaster, prominence, proximity, human interest, novelty, sex, and sensationalism. All of these values are present to some carefully calibrated degree in every media product you see. Ninety-nine percent of Americans are completely unaware of these values at work, and their media illiteracy in the 21st century has become a real danger.
The Republican team's assignment this time: produce a media product for the Republican National Convention that is guaranteed to make news (a powerful way to maximize the product’s profit); to create proximity (an abiding level of warmth and belonging among the conventioneers and the Republican Party); to create conflict between adversaries and the Republicans; to maximize that conflict and turn it on the adversaries; and to manipulate emotions among Republicans everywhere.
How would I do it? The same way any media professional would do it. My convention follows the Democratic convention, with its charismatic star Barack Obama, and as that convention nears, I learn details that I incorporate into my planning. The speech in an outdoor stadium with an audience of 80,000 is a difficult act to top. I am going to need something to snatch away that image quickly, the next day, if possible. I will want John McCain to announce his vice-presidential candidate on the Friday after the Democratic convention ends.
How can the power of that announcement be maximized? Prominence, possibly. Conflict would be nice; people are drawn to conflict, which is why soap operas are successful. Of course sex always sells. Sensationalism could trump the Democratic sensationalism. And then novelty. Something so rare and made such big news that it would snatch away the media from the Democrats, and keep them away indefinitely. A surprise candidate . . . Obama kept people guessing, but then Biden certainly didn’t come as a surprise. What I need is a surprise candidate whom nobody knows.
A nobody lets me control change of the status quo. I want the biggest change possible, which will put me in control of the media. A nobody will generate a frenzy of media coverage, which works for me two ways. It creates curiosity and excitement, creates prominence for the nobody, and after a couple of days of media hounding, we’ll attack the media for its “feeding frenzy,” and the entire constituency will feel good.
Let's see: conflict, sex, sensationalism, novelty, a nobody who will make news. And there sat Sarah Palin. It must have felt like finding Marilyn Monroe sitting on the stool at Schrafft's. It was close; deadlines are hell in the media business, and it came down to the final days. McCain wanted Joe Lieberman, but the poor guy was still thinking that an election was about governing. Media professionals see this all the time. It was a media professional in the 1960s who told the National Football League owners, "Guys, you're not in the football business, you're in the television business." A media pro had to pull McCain aside and explain to him that he wasn't in the governing business, he was in the winning business.
And so "Hockey Mom" went on the air, and it could not have been more successful: 10s for conflict, sex, sensationalism, novelty, proximity, fury at the media hellhounds, and sexism as a torch to stick in the face of any critic.
It's crazy, Susie. Real life isn't a soap opera. Millions of people find themselves troubled by the looniness, in part because they don't understand this has been a media production. But the story isn't over yet. In my profession, I see over and over how fragile novelty is. When the novelty wears off, and there's nothing to talk about but Palin's qualifications, who will she be then? There's an interesting irony lurking in the wings. This week an email is circulating, generated by an Alaska woman who has known Palin since 1992. Reading her take on Palin's governing and management style is startling. If you read the information not knowing who it was about, you could swear it was George W. Bush.
John McCain has done everything possible to separate himself from George Bush. What if he wakes up in October and finds he is joined to George Bush at the ticket? The joke will be on him. What's the difference between George Bush and Sarah Palin? Lipstick.
Well, these are loon-crazy times, Suze. Watching TV this week has not been like watching a soap opera, it IS a soap opera. Republican political managers, most famously Karl Rove, are gifted media producers. As a media professional myself, I can't help but admire their work, even as it scares hell out of me. Their work of the last week has been frighteningly inspired, and also lucky.
Media producers use a set of known values to obtain a reaction from an audience. In fact the values taken together are known as a “reaction package.” Among the values are conflict, progress, disaster, prominence, proximity, human interest, novelty, sex, and sensationalism. All of these values are present to some carefully calibrated degree in every media product you see. Ninety-nine percent of Americans are completely unaware of these values at work, and their media illiteracy in the 21st century has become a real danger.
The Republican team's assignment this time: produce a media product for the Republican National Convention that is guaranteed to make news (a powerful way to maximize the product’s profit); to create proximity (an abiding level of warmth and belonging among the conventioneers and the Republican Party); to create conflict between adversaries and the Republicans; to maximize that conflict and turn it on the adversaries; and to manipulate emotions among Republicans everywhere.
How would I do it? The same way any media professional would do it. My convention follows the Democratic convention, with its charismatic star Barack Obama, and as that convention nears, I learn details that I incorporate into my planning. The speech in an outdoor stadium with an audience of 80,000 is a difficult act to top. I am going to need something to snatch away that image quickly, the next day, if possible. I will want John McCain to announce his vice-presidential candidate on the Friday after the Democratic convention ends.
How can the power of that announcement be maximized? Prominence, possibly. Conflict would be nice; people are drawn to conflict, which is why soap operas are successful. Of course sex always sells. Sensationalism could trump the Democratic sensationalism. And then novelty. Something so rare and made such big news that it would snatch away the media from the Democrats, and keep them away indefinitely. A surprise candidate . . . Obama kept people guessing, but then Biden certainly didn’t come as a surprise. What I need is a surprise candidate whom nobody knows.
A nobody lets me control change of the status quo. I want the biggest change possible, which will put me in control of the media. A nobody will generate a frenzy of media coverage, which works for me two ways. It creates curiosity and excitement, creates prominence for the nobody, and after a couple of days of media hounding, we’ll attack the media for its “feeding frenzy,” and the entire constituency will feel good.
Let's see: conflict, sex, sensationalism, novelty, a nobody who will make news. And there sat Sarah Palin. It must have felt like finding Marilyn Monroe sitting on the stool at Schrafft's. It was close; deadlines are hell in the media business, and it came down to the final days. McCain wanted Joe Lieberman, but the poor guy was still thinking that an election was about governing. Media professionals see this all the time. It was a media professional in the 1960s who told the National Football League owners, "Guys, you're not in the football business, you're in the television business." A media pro had to pull McCain aside and explain to him that he wasn't in the governing business, he was in the winning business.
And so "Hockey Mom" went on the air, and it could not have been more successful: 10s for conflict, sex, sensationalism, novelty, proximity, fury at the media hellhounds, and sexism as a torch to stick in the face of any critic.
It's crazy, Susie. Real life isn't a soap opera. Millions of people find themselves troubled by the looniness, in part because they don't understand this has been a media production. But the story isn't over yet. In my profession, I see over and over how fragile novelty is. When the novelty wears off, and there's nothing to talk about but Palin's qualifications, who will she be then? There's an interesting irony lurking in the wings. This week an email is circulating, generated by an Alaska woman who has known Palin since 1992. Reading her take on Palin's governing and management style is startling. If you read the information not knowing who it was about, you could swear it was George W. Bush.
John McCain has done everything possible to separate himself from George Bush. What if he wakes up in October and finds he is joined to George Bush at the ticket? The joke will be on him. What's the difference between George Bush and Sarah Palin? Lipstick.
September 02, 2008
News happens so fast these days
It was about noon yesterday. We had just gotten back from walking and I went straight to the kitchen to turn on the TV and check out Gustav. I was watching this when Karen came in from her computer in the study. “Are you watching the news?”
“I’m watching Gustav,” I said. “It’s moved onshore now.”
“So you haven’t heard the news,” she said.
What news is that?” I said.
“Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant,” she said.
“You’re kidding!” I said. “She will have to resign!” I pictured John McCain fuming at her lies. But it turned out she wasn’t lying. McCain knew about the pregnancy when he announced her selection as his VP. Then that meant that HE was the liar. Why would he do that? Did he think they could maintain the cover-up until the election?
Then the analyses started, one of which stated that Palin being the mom of a pregnant teenage daughter could be appealing to voters. I stopped worrying about it. Too complex. Never worry about anything that is too complex to describe in a sentence of 12 words or less. Most of my worries are about one-word things, like “politics.” And in the politics of this election, it’s a simple worry: “Who will win?” Thought about at that level, I don’t think John McCain could attract enough votes to beat Barack Obama if he figured out how to mate a mink with an oil well.
So I am free to wonder what it must feel like being the parents of a boy who got a governor’s daughter pregnant. And how they must yearn for the calm of those days, before the governor became the vice presidential candidate. I wonder who they will vote for.
I have also been doodling ways that McCain could have worked the news into his presentation of Palin as his selection. That would have been the best thing: get it right out there. Remember when Dick Cheney shot the hunter, then tried to cover it up? Same thing. The cover-up story is always bigger than the up-front story. Truly, McCain would be far better off to have put it up-front in some warm fuzzy way. None of my doodling so far would have been any help to him.
As for agents who have contacted the boy about a book, I would say 25, with another 15 on voicemail. The book will buy the young couple a nice first house.
“I’m watching Gustav,” I said. “It’s moved onshore now.”
“So you haven’t heard the news,” she said.
What news is that?” I said.
“Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant,” she said.
“You’re kidding!” I said. “She will have to resign!” I pictured John McCain fuming at her lies. But it turned out she wasn’t lying. McCain knew about the pregnancy when he announced her selection as his VP. Then that meant that HE was the liar. Why would he do that? Did he think they could maintain the cover-up until the election?
Then the analyses started, one of which stated that Palin being the mom of a pregnant teenage daughter could be appealing to voters. I stopped worrying about it. Too complex. Never worry about anything that is too complex to describe in a sentence of 12 words or less. Most of my worries are about one-word things, like “politics.” And in the politics of this election, it’s a simple worry: “Who will win?” Thought about at that level, I don’t think John McCain could attract enough votes to beat Barack Obama if he figured out how to mate a mink with an oil well.
So I am free to wonder what it must feel like being the parents of a boy who got a governor’s daughter pregnant. And how they must yearn for the calm of those days, before the governor became the vice presidential candidate. I wonder who they will vote for.
I have also been doodling ways that McCain could have worked the news into his presentation of Palin as his selection. That would have been the best thing: get it right out there. Remember when Dick Cheney shot the hunter, then tried to cover it up? Same thing. The cover-up story is always bigger than the up-front story. Truly, McCain would be far better off to have put it up-front in some warm fuzzy way. None of my doodling so far would have been any help to him.
As for agents who have contacted the boy about a book, I would say 25, with another 15 on voicemail. The book will buy the young couple a nice first house.
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