out of context

Laci who?

In October, I went with my friend Katherine to a couple of events as part of The New Yorker Festival.  One was a panel discussion with the three network news anchors, "From Where We Sit:  the Campaign and the Network News."

After about an hour of moderated conversation by the New Yorker's media critic Ken Auletta, they allowed questions from the audience.  I knew this would be my chance to vent some of my frustration with the mainstream media, so I hurried up to one of the microphones to ask a question.  I didn't know it at the time, but C-SPAN was filming the event (my mom was flipping through and saw me the next day).  I also got a call a few days later from my old co-worker Jennie in Sacramento and then from my friend Adam's brother Alex in Cincinnati, both of whom had sworn they had heard my voice on the radio.  Sure enough, the NPR show Fresh Air played portions of the panel, which you can listen to here (to get to my question, fast-forward to minute 31:30).   
 
Here's what I asked:

"You all have spoken very eloquently this morning about your frustration with only having 18 or 22 minutes every night to report the serious issues - and everyone agrees that there are very serious issues affecting our world, and affecting, you know, our country  - so I wanted to hear kind of a justification from you about why you feel the need to cover the Kobe Bryant trial, the Scott Peterson trial, and I wanted to hear a defense of how that impacts my life and the public good."

Peter Jennings of ABC News refuted the question:

"I didn't cover the Laci Peterson 'thing' on our broadcast at all...I think we did only two pieces on the entire Kobe Bryant trial on World New Tonight."

Dodging the question, Tom Brokaw of NBC News spoke about the emergence of blogs, saying:

"it is a democratization of information, and frankly I think that's very healthy for our society."

I thought that only Dan Rather of CBS News honestly tackled the question:

"If I understand the core of this question, the answer is yes, taken as a whole, there's more reporting about celebrities, reporting about entertainment, people, trends - this is, what I have called in another context, the 'Hollywoodization of the News,' [this has] been a dangerous trend and continues to be...this undertow has developed, once news operations, particularly the major network news operations, became a profit center, it was inevitable that these pressures begin to work...it's a real and present danger that you succomb to...it's very hard to resist that each and every time."

Well lo and behold, today I came across the following story from none other than Peter Jenning's "we didn't cover Laci Peterson" network: "ABC News Original Report: Why We Were Infatuated With the Peterson Case."  Brilliant, Peter, absolutely brilliant.  You krazy Kanadian, you sure know a lot of about journalistic integrity and what's really important for people to know about in today's complex world.  

Media Overdose

My head is spinning right now.  It's Sunday night, and I have been a major media consumer these past several days.  I think that I've o'd on media.

Just in the past week:

I've watched the following TV (about a week and a half ago, my roommates and I got DVR, which, like TiVo, is a device for recording television...side note: a couple of months ago, I was talking about TiVo/DVR with my coworker Eddie and he was incredulous that I didn't have them yet - he questioned my logic and my very existence, saying "I don't know anyone under 25 who doesn't have [TiVo/DVR]," so now I have the opportunties to record and fast forward through the commercials for these shows): The Daily Show, Jack and Bobby, The NewsHour, This Week with George Stephanopolous (go Z), Meet the Press, Best Week Ever, 60 Minutes, Arrested Development, Scientific America Frontiers, Frontline, VH1's Robbing the Cradle (go Meg), the West Wing, Tim Russert interview with George Carlin, CNN special on evangelicals, Charlie Rose, Family Guy, part of the McLaughlin Group, Saturday Night Live, Da Ali G Show, part of the Giants game and a US soccer match

I've watched the following DVDs (I recently renewed my account with Netflix): Freaks and Geeks, the BBC documentary Walking with Cavemen

I've seen the following movies in the theatre: Sideways, the documentary film The Corporation

I've read in print:  part of the book "The Tipping Point," The New York Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, the New Yorker, Harper's, part of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis", part of "Democracy in America"

I've read online: Wonkette, The New York Times, Tom Watson, Slate, Drudge, Gawker, the Black Table, Washington Post, Salon, the Onion, McSweeney's, BBC, DailyKos, FoxNews, the Note, MSNBC, CNN, and dozens of other linked sites,

I went to a Mike Bribiglia comedy show

I've listened to: my iPod, poor jukebox selections at the East Village bar HiFi, NPR (morning edition and This American Life), KEXP (online), KCRW (online), and my roommate play guitar;

This is not to even count all the headlines and magazine covers I've glanced at, or the ads I've seen on websites, on Television, on the radio (even though all of my regular stations are "public", there are still many "sponsors"), on billboards, at bus stops, on people's clothing, on people's shopping bags, in my mail, in my email, on the subway, on tops of taxis, in the elevator at work, in the grocery store, above urinals, on matchbooks, and along emails in my gmail inbox.

I have a voracious appetite for consuming stimulating media - whether it's a thoughtful magazine article, a clever website, an insightful op-ed, an entertaining book, a satisfying satire, a funny show, a balanced news item, an informative segment, an engaging interview, a dramatic depiction, humourous observations, or a powerful song - I want to take it all in. 

I think I need a break.  I don't have enough time to really process anything - I'm just overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of it all.  How do I discern all that I consume?  How do I reflect on what I read or watch or listen to?  How do I stay afloat in this sea of media?  How do I get a handle on all of this? 

The Eggin' Cajun

From the James-Carville-is-officially-on-crack department, we have his performance with his Republican strategist wife Mary Matalin on Meet the Press this morning, where he smashed a raw egg on his face because his prediction in March about the election results was wrong.  Mary, in between moans and groans, still proclaimed "I love this man" and then consoled, as she helped him wipe off the egg off of his face, jacket, and the Meet the Press desk, "it's not that bad, it was a valiant effort." I assume she's referring to her Democratic husband's efforts with the Kerry Campaign, not the egg.

Who's sorry now?

This is a sorry state of affairs.  In addition to the orginal apologetic-to-the-world-on-behalf-of-the-48%-of-Americans-that-tried-to-vote-Bush-out-of-office, sorryeverybody, we now have the very defiant counter sites: sorryeverybodymyass, notsorryeverybody, and werenotsorry, (which doesn't sound right without the punctuation...couldn't they have gotten wearenotsorry, or don't they know how to talk without using contractions?)  Finally, to bring this all together, we now have notsorrynoteverybody, a sort of meta-apology/defiance site.

Let the healing begin.  (By the way, I feel bad for anyone that knows that pirate dude, or anyone that has to interact with him on a regular basis.)

Advice on Surviving the W2

For surviving 4 more years of Bush, Salon's Rebecca Traister offers 10 tips, mostly based on spite ("have extremely deviant sex" and "get divorced") or escapism ("Go to the movies" and "Quit drinking? Start again. Quit smoking? Congratu-fucking-lations. Light up").

As she points out:

"At first it was just exhaustion and the damaging psychological reversals of Tuesday's demoralizing polling-results debacle. We were left sore and nauseated, as if we'd taken a baseball bat to the belly. But it didn't get better after a good night's sleep. Next came rage -- at friends, family, entire states, individuals we've never met. If I could have burned Rudy Giuliani in effigy, I would have. This blinding, electric fury was at least an embrace of something vivid and alive, before the inevitable turn to existential despair. It wasn't about politics anymore. It was about life: there is no hope, no belief. Everyone and everything lets you down. There's been crying -- so much crying. At work and on the street and on subway platforms and at my friend's 30th birthday party on Saturday night at a swank private club. Just little rivulets of tears falling down the faces of
people I don't know to be easy weepers. So common that no one even remarks on it anymore.

So yeah, it all sucks, elementally. We lost. We don't have anything to look forward to. We have been defeated, by our own country, by ourselves. We gave everything we had, just like our parents told us to do, and it wasn't enough. The Enlightenment is being rolled back before our eyes. We can't get a firm enough grip to hold it in place. We're dying. We're all going to die ..."

I remember my rage phase.  I think I'm over that now.  The folks over at Free Williamsburg offer their own tips for getting over the Bush election.  A sampling:

"Be white, straight and rich.

March, impotently, against a disinterested Washington, protesting the latest atrocity.

Theorize about conspiracies. Conspire about theories.

Knock up a Bush twin."

Finally, Base Tree offers it's own 10-step guide for surviving in our new theocracy, which incluces advice like "dust yourself off" and "make money."  (Picture of "WTF" eagle from Urban Botique.)

So Long, New Deal

James Surowiecki's Financial Page in this week's New Yorker is a must-read.  He breaks down the myth of Bush's rosey-sounding proposal for an "ownership society" and sheds light on the result that privatization (of social security and medicare) will really lead to an increased risk for individuals:

"Generally, we want people to reap the benefits of their own successes and pay a price for their failures. But Social Security and Medicare are designed to protect people from things they have little control over—risk of illness, risk of macroeconomic change, risk of industrial obsolescence. To manage that kind of risk, you have to do it collectively. What’s more, as the political scientist Jacob Hacker has pointed out, Americans’ everyday lives are considerably riskier than they used to be. Jobs are less secure. Health-care costs are increasingly difficult to plan for. And the pace of technological change—which can lay waste to entire industries almost overnight—is faster than ever. So now may not be the best time to undermine the few programs that provide people with some protection against bad decisions and bad luck."

This is not to say that Social Security doesn't need reform or adjustments.  The New America Foundation, a hip new-ish think tank offers some compelling analysis on what will fast become an enormous public policy crisis:

"The public needs to know there is no silver bullet when it comes to Social Security reform. While investment accounts can help ensure that money is saved and Progressive Private Accounts can do so in a way that is true to the fundamental principles of the program, all plans will involve making tough choices. In order to devise a plan that is fair to younger participants and future generations, we need to start making these choices immediately."

If we're going to have a radical re-structuring of our basic social contract that was drawn up over 70 years ago, then we need to adequately understand the repercussions. (Cartoon is Tom Toles, from The Washington Post.)

We have a winner

So I was listening to my favorite radio station, KEXP, which is a listener-supported radio station out of Seattle that I listen to online.  (If you've never listened before, it's definitely worth checking out for really good, non-commercial music.) 

This morning, the DJ John Richards was giving away tickets to the Interpol concert this Thursday and Friday in New York at the Hammerstein Ballroom (KEXP has a huge audience outside of Seattle, so they promote shows all over the place). 

I waited for the cue asking for caller #12, and then called into the toll-free number (1-866-903-KEXP).  At first, I didn't get through.  After several attempts, a friendly woman answered saying "we have a winner."

I felt a rush of excitement fill me up - I've never really won a contest like this.  I said to the friendly station woman, "really?!  that's great! that's so awesome!"

It was at this point that the woman interrupted me, saying "yeah, it is great, for the winner - we already have a winner."   I had misinterpreted what she was initially saying.  So I didn't win anything.  I was just a big loser. 

"Oh, I see, I get it" I stammered, "well, thanks, I guess."   And then I hung up.

Now that's what I call a map

This handy little map of the U.S., called a cartogram, is "a map in which the sizes of states have been rescaled according to their population. That is, states are drawn with a size proportional not to their sheer topographic acreage -- which has little to do with politics -- but to the number of their inhabitants, states with more people appearing larger than states with fewer, regardless of their actual area on the ground"  This particular cartogram shows the election results by county, with the range in intensity from red (Bush) to purple (mixed) to blue (Kerry).  This helps demonstrate that we aren't that starkly divided, or at the very least, there aren't too many large population areas in this country that are very red.  So there's hope.  There plenty more maps and analysis at this interesting site, sent to me from my friend Pat via his friend Will.

The System Works

The Onion offers its election recap, in a heart-wrenching story of people helping people: "Nation's Poor Wins Election for Nation's Rich"

"The Republican party—the party of industrial mega-capitalists, corporate financiers, power brokers, and the moneyed elite—would like to thank the undereducated rural poor, the struggling blue-collar workers in Middle America, and the God-fearing underpriviledged minorities who voted George W. Bush back into office," Karl Rove, senior advisor to Bush, told reporters at a press conference Monday. "You have selflessly sacrificed your well-being and voted against your own economic interest. For this, we humbly thank you."

Added Rove: "You have acted beyond the call of duty—or, for that matter, good sense."

Declaration of Expulsion

Good news!  I saw on Wonkette that it turns out there are some whack-job conservatives out there who want the red states to seperate themselves from  the blue states just as much as the blue states want to leave.   Past chairman of the Florida Conservative Union Mike Thompson writes:

"The truth is, America is not just broken--it is becoming irreparable. If you believe that recent years of uncivil behavior are burdensome, imagine the likelihood of a future in which all bizarre acts are the norm, and a government-booted foot stands permanently on your face.

That is why the unthinkable must become thinkable. If the so-called "Red States" (those that voted for George W. Bush) cannot be respected or at least tolerated by the "Blue States" (those that voted for Al Gore and John Kerry), then the most disparate of them must live apart--not by secession of the former (a majority), but by expulsion of the latter."

This reasonable, rational conservative goes on to ennumerate in a thoughtful and delicate manner the differences, in his view between the red states and blue states:

"BUSH USA is predominantly white; devoutly Christian (mostly Protestant); openly, vigorously heterosexual; an open land of single-family homes and ranches; economically sound (except for a few farms), but not drunk with cyberworld business development, and mainly English-speaking, with a predilection for respectfully uttering "yes, ma'am" and "yes, sir."

GORE/KERRY USA is ethnically diverse; multi-religious, irreligious or nastily antireligious; more sexually liberated (if not in actual practice, certainly in attitude); awash with condo canyons and other high-end real estate bordered by sprawling, squalid public housing or neglected private homes, decidedly short of middle-class neighborhoods; both high tech and oddly primitive in its commerce; very artsy, and Babelesque, with abnormally loud speakers."

I am so glad that this white devout Christian is so open and vigorous about his heterosexuality.  Can you imagine if, for just one moment, someone in "Bush USA" failed to be vigorously and unquestionably hetero?  Oh, the humanity!