Author Archives: Brian Lambert

Williams or Stewart? Pick the credible journalist.

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterThere’s at least one powerful irony in NBC slamming Brian Williams with a six-month, unpaid suspension and Jon Stewart announcing his retirement from “The Daily Show” on the same day. And it’s within this question: Which of the two has proven to be the more credible messenger of news? After that you can kick around, “Which is more the caricature of a modern TV news anchor?”

There’s almost nothing more than anyone can say about Williams’ death spiral other than it was whiplash fast and unambiguous. One day he was a celebrity god. The next he’s persona non grata among the chattering classes. But in the brief time it took him to dive from the stratosphere to the asphalt, precious few bloviators and pundits dared place his personal apocalypse in the context it thoroughly and fairly requires.

Quite ironically, Stewart himself got there Monday night. Elsewhere, veteran reporter/writer John Hockenberry, squeezed it in at the end of his column on Williams’ meltdown. I was a bit disappointed that my old pal, David Carr, while eloquent, couldn’t find space to make the same salient point. (Off the radar, another old pal, Jim Leinfelder was on to this question — via e-mail –within hours of Williams’ meltdown.)

“The point” is of course this: If a guy who is basically a network entertainer — someone whose combination of good-looks, charm and polished demeanor reliably attracts an audience large enough to satisfy advertisers — is to suffer the 21st century of a public drawing-and-quartering for over-inflating his war experiences, specifically those in our Iraq invasion, how is it that both the architects of that invasion and Williams’ peers feel no heat? No widespread vilification? Much less legal recourse? Fundamentally no censure or punishment at all for leading us into a multi-trillion-dollar, reputation-blotting blunder and, in the context of the media, playing complicit lapdogs to the whole shameful affair?

Are Williams’ cocktail party-style exaggerations truly worse than the timidity of the vast majority of the national press? Worse than the professional skeptics who stood by, too intimidated by national hysteria to ask impertinent questions, as Dick Cheney and George W*. sold a war of choice based on stovepiped intelligence and fear? It certainly seems so, because Williams’ career is a cinder, while the rest, including the revered Tom Brokaw, are still welcome guests at think-y festivals, graduation ceremonies and Big League journalism award ceremony stroke-a-thons.

Watching Stewart walk us through this Monday night, the most sickening part for me, wasn’t Williams, it was the montage of people like former New York Times editor Bill Keller and his laurel-covered ilk uttering flagrantly false assurances of having done due diligence on the war at its outset. That is the sort of thing, a transparent falsehood, that ought to ruin a career, not something as minor on the grand scale of things as bragging about getting “shot out of the sky.”

Back to the question of credibility. If we truly mean “being trusted and believed in”, is Jon Stewart further down the ladder of trustworthiness than any of the correspondents who, dare I say, “questioned” George W* about the looming invasion on March 6, 2003? (Here’s video.) The record pretty clearly shows that only ABC’s Terry Moran came close to applying any heat to the veracity of the claims Cheney and Bush had been making. Everyone else was caught up in the fog of research-tested patriotism. You have to wonder how someone who hadn’t completely bought in to the group-think of corporate journalism might have approached Bush at that critical moment?

Stewart’s “fake anchor” shtick has made TV history by making “real journalists” squirm over their pettiness, ineptitude, bluster and lack of respect for the truth, all of which is course is baked into the notion of a commercially palatable news product.

So as both Williams and Stewart depart the stage, it is fair to ask, “Which of the two is more credible?” “Which is most respectful of the truth?”

No Vaccine Can Save Christie

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterI should have included Chris Christie in my recent handicapping of the Republican presidential race. At first it was simply that I forgot him. Oops. But then when I remembered, I thought, “Oh, why bother? There’s no way the guy holds up under even a week’s worth of the full media barrage. Sarah Palin, because she’s wrapped in a completely delusional partisan bubble, would survive longer than him.”

The irony here is that there are actually a few things I like about Christie, among them precisely the quirks of personality that would keep him in permanent meltdown mode on the national campaign trail. By that I mean, the guy gets annoyed … easily.

On one level, the one where you and I live, getting annoyed with idiots and the bastards trying to saw your legs out from under you is natural and human. It feels good, cathartic actually, to blurt out things like, “Are you nuts?”, or “[Bleep] off, [bleep]hole.” It’s a healthy sign that you’re not some robot spinning in an orbit separate from all other life on the planet. And, quite frankly, I find it kind of refreshing when a cool, composed dude like Barack Obama let’s loose with a line like that one about Kanye West being “a jackass.”

I’d have a beer with guys like that. More reality. Less pretense.

But beyond that, Christie, despite the infatuation of conservative deep thinkers like the rarely right Ann Coulter, is three-plus bills of liability out in the open field. His very bad week in jolly old England has been instructive in that regard. It began with him giving what would ordinarily be an unremarkable answer to a question about childhood vaccines. He replied saying that he and his wife have had their kids vaccinated, but that parents should retain some measure of control over the decision.

Fair enough, to my way of thinking. Nothing about that gets me too worked up.

But Christie’s a contender for the Throne of Dimwits, and the media is now twitching on a hair trigger for any Republican stepping anywhere, no matter how mundanely, outside the Circle of Fools. So that bland comment immediately became a test of whether Christie was sufficiently anti-science (i.e. anti-gummint vaccine) to remain viable in a world of Rick Santorums, Ted Cruzs, Rand Pauls and the 5000 gibberish-shouting radio ministers bleating into the brains of the party’s base.

Holy anti-virus.

At that point Team Christie began “the walk back”, re-tailoring his response for the fools … and making him look profoundly foolish in the process. Worse, Christie let it get to him. He let the world see him peeve and sweat.

He might have escaped if it weren’t for Bloomberg News resurrecting a story rooted in a year-old book on the 2012 presidential campaign, where Team Romney was pulling it’s well-moussed hair over Christie’s, shall we say, fat cat lifestyle demands, as in private jets and lots of fine dining.

With that coming at him simultaneous with the vaccination story, he melted, calling off press availability (which was kind of the point of him boulevardiering around London, chatting up the PM and what not).

Bottom line? Fiasco.

Then there’s the problem that improper vaxx-thinking and fat cat living aren’t his only skeletons. He likes to sell the story that that squirrely George Washington Bridge flap was decided in his favor. But that isn’t so. Ditto the pricier issue of what he’s been doing with Hurricane Sandy relief money. And then we move on to all the other stuff a heavy-handed governor of … New Jersey … has engaged in that no one outside the state has cared much about, until he sticks his head up to run for President.

So no. No Chris Christie. He’s blunt and prickly, which is okay as far as it goes and appealing up to a point. But his melting point is so low the press and opposition are primed for every word out of his mouth, knowing they have to make so little effort to piss him off to the point he flips over and can’t get up.

Speed for Better Roads: A Modest Proposal

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterThere’s an interesting confluence — or collision — of ideas kicking around the Minnesota legislature these days. Topic “A” is how much to spend how fast to repair our (godawful) roads, bridges and whatever. If you’re following this you know that the Governor, and the DFL Senate want to go big and permanent, with a fairly hefty new set of taxes on a lot of different things in order to do an enormous amount of long overdue work throughout the next decade.

Their argument is sound. Construction work, unlike electronic gizmos, does not get cheaper with time. The “common good” factor in safe roads and bridges is about as obvious as you can get, with its attendant asset to economic activity. Moreover, as they have not argued so much, a hefty infusion of infrastructure appropriation means literally thousands of good-paying, non-exportable jobs for Minnesotans, not-so techy blue collar male-type jobs in particular … for a decade or more. (Maybe they should throw up some numbers about how that ripples through the state economy?)

As usual, the GOP, the self-acclaimed gurus of financial discipline and foresight, want to do much less now, then argue about it all over again every two years for the next decade, while, apparently to their minds, construction costs get cheaper, far fewer cars and trucks are hammering the asphalt, and a road fairy appears from the heavens and fixes everything at no expense to the GOP’s funding/voting base. This would prove again how much more fun it is in the “non-reality-based” world.

Simultaneous with this road funding talk, a report has emerged from the Department of Transportation that could/might result in rescinding the so-called Dimler Amendment, a law which keeps minor speeding violations (i.e. less than 10 miles over the limit) away from the prying eyes of the offenders’ insurance company. The report naturally asserts that there is a significant safety risk in allowing these chronic 74-in-a-65 speed junkies to stay on the highways. (Four tickets in a year and you’re gone, remember.)

To which I say, let’s get real.

Yeah, speed kills … if you’re drunk and/or distracted or pushing an ’87 Yugo beyond its structural limits, which is about 25 mph. But as every national study has shown, modern vehicles, with stability control and various other proven technologies are far, far safer than the crap Dad drove, and highway fatality numbers, even allowing for a five-fold increase in vehicles travelling on pot-holed roads, is as low as it was when Dinah Shore (look her up) shilled for Chevrolet.

So my modest proposal, which involves creating a fresh and voluntary revenue stream for state coffers is a new top tier for driver licenses. Let’s call it the Let’s See What This Baby Can Do, or the LeSeeWhaBaCanDo tier, where for, say $200 a year, which covers full vehicle inspection, you get a license that allows you 20 miles over the posted limit on non-metro freeways. I’m sure here’s some radiometric gizmo, a la the EZPass, you can attach to you vehicle hat that tips cops that you’re one of god’s chosen people and have the right to be pleasantly cruising at well-within-structural-limits up to Duluth or Moorhead, or across I-90.

Obviously, if you’re driving like a moron, weaving in and out of traffic, instead of maintaining a consistent speed, they can still pull you over. And if you’re stupid enough to add bombed-out-of-your-mind to such behavior, there could be a clause that immediately revokes the license, with a massive, “you’ve broken faith with the spirit of this deal” fine.

Critics will shriek that this is some sort of elitist “Corvette pass”, which it kind of is. But … anyone with $200 and the willingness to bring their existing vehicle fully up to required safety code (jobs, jobs, jobs for repair shops) can buy in, and something tells me there’d be quite a few other than hedge fund [bleep]holes in Maseratis who’d pop for that privilege.

More than enough, i say, to add detectable jing to state road repair coffers … on a strictly user-fee basis.

Place Your Bets: Handicapping 2016

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Lambert_to_the_Slaughter[Updated]. From the number of pieces I’ve read recently, handicapping the 2016 presidential race has become a click-bait hobby for plenty of allegedly reputable people. So let’s see how it works with a disreputable, unabashed, socialize-all-medicine, raise the tax and fix the damn roads, free community college for all, screw the F-35 and legalize pot liberal.

With Hillary Clinton a given for the Democrats — although god help them if she’s hit by a bus or caught in a love nest with Vladimir Putin, because there is no “Plan B” — I’ll assign a percentage value to the Republican field poised against her. 0% being the most serious candidate, someone likely to beat her, and 100% being a laugher, the equivalent of another Michele Bachmann delusion.

Jeb Bush: 5%. The Republican ruling class actually did a very good job sweeping the worst of the nut cases off their candidate slate last year. (Yes, Joni Ernst won in Iowa.) But there were no witches, no “legitimate rapes” and very little open Tea Bag pandering, at least compared with 2010. This suggests authority –spreading money to local Tea Party captains — is capable of getting Jeb through the primaries without forcing him to wear a tri-corner hat, leggings and ‘rassle snakes at prayer breakfasts. If that’s true, he’s bona fide serious opposition. He certainly more serious and intellectually engaged than his feckless brother. (I seriously doubt we’d have gone to Iraq with Jeb instead of W*, if only because he wouldn’t have laid the “detail stuff” off on Dick Cheney). But I still don’t think he could beat Her Regency. The Democrats have a profound electoral map advantage, the horror of another Bush is just too much for millions of active voters and while Hillary Clinton is hardly anyone’s idea of a “transformational candidate”, the stage is set and lit, with roses in place for a woman.

Scott Walker: 15%. In most ways a textbook example of the ideal Movement Conservative. He’s got that Tim Pawlenty careerist talent of rarely sounding like the pathological narcissist/cynic he is. Despite a Pawlenty-like mismanagement of his state’s economy, laying on massive multi-billion dollar deficit while Minnesota tries to decide what top do with giant surplus, his “go-big” brawl with public unions is all it takes to be hero to … the rubes who aren’t in unions and his industrialist, union-hating benefactors, most notably the Koch brothers. He’s no serious threat top defeat Hillary in a general election, but there’s no question he has the duplicitous wiles to survive a GOP primary campaign.

Rand Paul: 25%. He’s sort of this year’s version of Newt Gingrich. “What dumb people think a smart guy sounds like.” There are college-age wonkers who love his contrarian poses and think tankers who see a guy who’d go out play with their most batshit Ayn Randian theories. But he’s also a little like Joe Biden, in that he’s not big on filters. Over the course of the grind he’ll say at least 20 nutty things that will serve to remind fence-sitters that Hillary at least is a predictable commodity.

Mitt Romney: 40%. Face it. He’s the only Republican with the exception of Jeb, who doesn’t have bury his face in the laps of the Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson. He could pay for the race out of his mad money jar. Moreover, he might have learned something about pandering to the loonies in 2012. But, come on. Everywhere outside of a Palm Beach investment bankers luncheon Mitt is still the clueless rich guy, a cartoon who gives no indication that even he knows what he really believes.

Ted Cruz: 60%. Now this guy can do some damage. Not to Hillary. It’d be a landslide in her favor if he ever went mano a mano. But he’s the sort of wholly self-absorbed, unapologetic douche bag who’ll blow off any notion of collegiality and force the Jebs and Mitts to explain why they’re not sending in the Marines to block Obamacare. Frankly, I’m amazed that someone hasn’t dug up a juicy scandal on the Tedster. If ever someone looked like they’re hiding a closet full of perversions, its Cruz.

Marco Rubio: 75%. By now his reputation is locked in concrete. An empty suit. A cutey-pie shill for old money interests without the Clintonesque imagination to make a serviceable case for either pole of the same argument.

Rick Perry: 80%. An even emptier suit than Rubio, even with his new “I must read something because I’m now wearing glasses” look. Worse, for him, Jeb, though associated lately with Florida, is closer to the big, safe-bet Texas money. Still, in terms of pure entertainment, Perry was good stuff on the campaign trail, we’d all love to see him back

Rick Santorum. 90%. Say what you will, Santorum was the hardest working guy in a sweater vest Iowa and the Deep South primaries have ever seen. Lacking Bush and Romney-style money, he has no choice but to pander to the most medieval of the crazies, while reminding everyone else of the guy in high school who no other guy wanted to hang out with. He’s the Republicans’ Harold Stassen, unless Romney wants to fight him for it.

Mike Huckabee: 95%. He’s one of those sweaty, grasping characters who just refuses to go away, clinging to the belief, like Jim Carrey in “Dumber and Dumber”, that “there’s still a chance”. There isn’t. There never has been. Besides there’s more money in slinging stale meat to rubes from FoxNews.

Sarah Palin: 1000%. There’s nothing, short of a long weekend with Sofia Vergara, (sorry, dear), that would delight me more than a Hillary v. Sarah face-off. Michele Bachmann was an opportunistic nut-case sucking up $20 checks from embittered revivalists living on Social Security checks, but Palin is the gold standard for naked pandering, startling stupidity, rank incompetence and non-stop public buffoonery. We are already looking back on her as an icon of the age of celebrity worship. “Does she look good in a form fitting suit? Well then she can be president.” I think John McCain said that.

“American Sniper”: Giving Ticket Buyers a War They Can Enjoy

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterI finally got around to seeing “American Sniper”. It was last Friday night in Phoenix, which I mention only because if you’re familiar with Arizona’s largest city, you know there’s rarely a day that goes by without some unholy gathering of big-bellied white guys with weird facial hair milling around a “Gun Expo”, a “Gun Swap Meet” or a “Bullet Circus”, or whatever. Arizona loves guns and all the debate about “American Sniper” aside, what it is selling on the most fundamental level is the thrill of righteous gun vengeance. Take away the smoking hardware and the film’s box-office would drop 90%.

That said, the movie, directed by good ol’ Clint Eastwood, is as slick a piece of big time Hollywood filmmaking as you’ll ever see. Terrific editing, great sound work, top notch art direction, a decent script and solid performances from Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller. Warner Brothers, seeing the near perfect box office fusion of Eastwood, hot young star Cooper and a memoir/”true story” of a goddam bona fide American hero who happened to be the deadliest, baddest mutha of our adventure in Iraq, popped for an enormous budget, which Eastwood got up on the screen. (Warners’ investment has paid off handsomely. The film has done astonishing business for a January general release.)

The theater in Phoenix, an enormous 2000-plus seat “UltraStar” auditorium, was packed to capacity, and while there was no yahoo cheering at the moment when our hero picks off his rival sniper … at a preposterous 2100 meters through a shimmering heat haze … the crowd did sit in rapt attention during the end credits, as real world footage ran of sniper Chris Kyle’s actual funeral in Dallas two years ago. (The whacking of “Mustafa”, a character barely mentioned in the book and never listed among Kyle’s 160-plus “confirmed kills”, is almost entirely a Hollywood invention. For that matter, the US Military has a pretty loose system for “confirming” sniper shootings.)

I confess, I have not read “American Sniper”, despite the attention it got here in Minnesota during Jesse Ventura’s successful defamation case against Kyle last summer. I have as much interest in military memoirs as I do bodice-ripping romance novels, although the latter might actually hew closer to reality. (Kyle clearly had a problem with details. His own sense of his “legend” may well have overwhelmed him.)

Anyway, the point here is to simply to say that while the movie is not some patently ridiculous piece of gun-crazed jingoism, it suffers by copping out on elephant-in-the-room realities that are, unlike so much of Kyle’s story, completely and lamentably verifiable.

No doubt Eastwood, a shrewd judge of mainstream American tastes, loved the thought of packaging an exciting contemporary combat film around, “one man’s story.” No need to muss with broader history and politics. Just tell this guy’s story. (In fact, it appears that it was Bradley Cooper who bought the rights to Kyle’s book and then got it to Eastwood.) By dialing out the rather enormous and fundamental question of, “What in the hell were we and this guy doing in Iraq?”, audiences are allowed to remain comfortably unchallenged, which is to say entertained by the action and splatter and moved by the effect it has on unassuming, easy-going, unfailingly polite Kyle’s mental stability and marriage.

I’m sorry. The far, far braver (and commercially problematic) thing for Warner Brothers and Eastwood to have done would be to work in a deeper assessment of Kyle’s good ‘ol Texas boy blind faith in his country’s war-making decisions and at least some reflection, like say after the Weapons of Mass Destruction canard was fully understood, on why (at the very least) they’re not over in Afghanistan hunting Osama bin Laden.

Personally, I found it very interesting that there is no reference to either Dick Cheney or George W. anywhere in “American Sniper”. In the film, Kyle watches the World Trade Center collapse and the next thing you know, as though it was ordained by national acclamation, he and his pals are kicking ass in … Iraq. I.e. direct linkage.

Constructed as it is, Eastwood cannily evokes an audience response that is more somber than flat-out celebratory. War is hell Who does not agree? But a braver filmmaker and lesser businessman would have felt a responsibility to take Kyle’s story (more or less as he told it to his ghostwriters) and stir in the context of what we now recognize was one of the most misguided foreign policy disasters and most poorly-planned military campaigns in American history.

Those are details you can verify.

2014 Reconsidered: The Glass Half Full Edition

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterIn the last hours of the recent mass holiday madness, with my hamster-on-the-wheel index spiking past “lethal”, a man came on the radio.

I didn’t need to glance at the dashboard to know it was NPR. The guy had that non-threatening, neutered, self-consciously deferential tone that listener-supported radio prefers in its on-air males. (Think: The antithesis of your average play-by-play football baritone.) But he was making perfect sense about how our alleged brains operate.

Boiled to its essence his message was this: More hippocampus, less amygdala. If I followed it correctly, the amygdala is the part of our limp grey blob that processes fear and ignites us into action at the first sign of threat. It’s as old as we are. See lion. Get stick. Run for tree.

The hippocampus is a bit later-evolved organ and is believed to sort out emotions, using memory to remind us that we survived this or that “threat” before, probably will again and so … chill out. Moreover, by checking the amygdala’s constant firing over threats, perceived insults, slights, disses, yadda yadda it is possible to weaken its constant calls to rage and combat. Conversely, by running rank emotion through the filter of the hippocampus we can strengthen it and, you know, behave a bit more rationally, saving us the wear and tear of constantly spiking blood pressure, not to mention the social ostracization reserved for the world’s pissers and moaners, self-dramatizing stress queens, douchy Steve Jobs-wannabe middle managers and just about everyone on FoxNews.

So, despite the radio voice’s court eunuch inflection, I veered around the latest a-wipe texter blocking my shot down the fast lane and hammered my fist on the wheel, “Damn straight, dude! Let’s all calm the [bleep] down.”

With that in mind I reviewed 2014 with a fresher eye and convinced myself that  despite the insanity of psychopathic ISIS rebels, doped-up Boko Haram militias, Vladimir Putin and the House GOP caucus, things weren’t so bad.

For example:

Barack Obama finally figured out that the country is actually OK with him playing “emperor”, which means ignoring the fools elected by amygdala-driven rural America and getting stuff done. Immigration, a minor climate change deal, Cuba, etc. Not cure-for-cancer or Jamie Dimon perp walk quality stuff necessarily, but something, for chrissake. Those moves set Mitch McConnell’s jowls flapping like they were caught out in a 100-mph derecho, but the clear consensus was … “What the hell took you so long?”

The last Congress was an obscene joke, with an approval rating a quarter of Obama’s. It was so indifferent to actual work it produced a fifth of the legislation of Harry Truman’s “Do-Nothing Congress”, while devoting countless hours to threatening to sue Obama for … doing something.

The fools have a majority for the next couple years, which means, as usual nothing will get done on anything big, unless you’re one of those who believe another pipeline full of filthy Canadian oil is the only way to “jump start the economy” and “provide quality jobs” … oh wait, that’s already happening. But I’m believing Obama has at long last found a way to function in face of the GOP’s constant 12 year-old girls-on-a-rollercoaster, full-amygdala freak out.

 

With the Michael Brown-Eric Garner-Tamir Rice (and on and on) cases filling headlines, it was a pretty bad year for unqualified cops. Now New York’s finest are making fools of themselves (when they should be accruing sympathy), by pretending that Bill DeBlasio is the first Mayor to treat them like, you know, public employees being held to a higher standard than street thugs. The hippocampus factor here is that a broader mass of the public has processed a clear pattern of what is really professional incompetence as much as anything else. Lacking knee-jerk public support for every episode of amygdala-panicked gunslinging, the actual adults among the nation’s cops may apply overdue pressure on the fools in their ranks.

 

In the media … KSTP-TV and Jay Kolls’ astonishingly overplayed “Pointergate” story was the obvious low-point for another year glutted with content-free, over-coverage of airline disasters, ditsy celebrity buffoonery, horse-race political “reporting”, a general lack of oversight of corporate tax manipulations (Medtronic being the exception that proves the rule) and fawning “access reporting” on government, business and cultural issues. But the KSTP-Kolls fiasco was such a blatant, cringe-inducing example of a reporter and organization being played for chumps by an agenda-driving source it has to have a chilling, which is to say spine-stiffening effect on every reporter who watched. Sources may not like it, but skepticism does protect your professional credibility.

Speaking of … . Kudos to crusty old Pat Reusse of the Strib for his recent column acknowledging the abundance of “sweetness” in local sports coverage. While I’m far more concerned about the PR work so-called business reporters do for local “job creators”, Reusse’s point is well taken and long overdue from someone of his stature. The sports beat is the classic example of “access reporting”. Watch every locker room stop talking to you the minute you tell the public what’s really going on. But come on, is any intelligent fan supposed to believe the pep rally prattle that comes out of every training camp? Fortunately, as the internet matures the options are both plentiful and credible. Over the past few years I’ve become a fan of Minnesota native Drew Magary, writing on Deadspin.com.  Were daily writers allowed Magary’s license for entirely appropriate vulgarity when describing the NFL ownership group and management Minnesota taxpayers may have saved themselves a quarter billion or more in stadium construction costs. Point being … the countdown to extinction of the stenographer sports writer has accelerated.

Likewise … as an unapologetic car guy, I’m forever dismayed at the shiv car dealer associations drive into the amygdala of every media outlet’s advertising sales manager at the first hint of unflattering coverage of some company’s latest over-teched hangar queen. So here’s a salute to writers like Doug DeMuro at Jalopnik (a sister site of Deadspin). Because they’re not feeding from the hind teat of GM, Mercedes, etc. they provide actual objective consumer information, like DeMuro’s classic series on trying to keep up with repairs on a used Range Rover or “The Myth of German Reliability”.  It goes without saying that both Magary and DeMuro also regularly provide a quality in dismaying short supply in the mainstream press … a good, righteous laugh.

Finally, (for now), as someone who believes few art forms thicken the old hippocampus better than good music, rock in particular, I was heartened by the favor millennial hipsters showered on The War on Drugs latest CD, “Lost in the Dream”. Amid a pop landscape glutted with cheesy, cookie cutter (faux) country acts, all contractually obligated to wear the same hat, and the uninterrupted parade of auto-tuned starlet diva/trainwrecks it was pure delight to hear a band kick it out and rock.  The lead singer’s mom force fed him a steady diet of Bob Dylan from his “Jokerman” era and it shows, to an effect appreciated on “Best of the Year” lists from Britain to West Hollywood.

Likewise, Spoon, another favorite had a good year, (with two stops in Minneapolis). And while neither dampened the panties of the uber hipsters, I much enjoyed the latest from The Kings of Leon and The Black Keys. Ditto, Pearl Jam’s October show at the Xcel … a Springsteen like tribal celebration that walled off the amygdala for days afterwards …

… until election night.

 

 

 

 

Why Are Cops Still Using Real Bullets?

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterOne facet of the current outrage over hyper-aggressive, racially-focused police work isn’t getting much attention, but it keeps rolling back in my alleged mind. It’s this: Why, in 2014 USA is the average beat cop still exercising “lawful” force with live ammunition?

The spate of demonstrations and high emotion surrounding the Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice (the 12 year-old in Cleveland) incidents will subside soon enough, replaced in the public’s attention by some new atrocity, Christmas shopping or speculation of what Leonard DiCaprio was planning to do with 20 supermodels. But until then it’s worth asking the question, “Why haven’t police departments been required to transition to non-lethal ammunition?”

Its been an established fact for decades that the average cop goes his/her entire career without firing their weapon. Obviously, firearms are standard issue equipment for the exceedingly rare incident where the cop confronts some truly lethal perp/psycho. But even then, in those remarkably rare moments when a lone cop or two is caught by surprise, the preferred outcome is to render the suspect immobile and pack him off to jail for the courts to decide his fate.

In the (even rarer) case where the police are in pursuit of an indisputably violent, gun-wielding offender, a situation where back-up is usually called in, it isn’t impossible to switch over to a “live” gun stashed in the cop car … or just let the SWAT team take over.

Without question, the usual suspects, the NRA and its most ardent, imbalanced, gun-fetishizing supporters will howl that replacing death-dealing bullets with rubber bullets (which stun and hurt like hell, especially at short distances) or chemical darts is a new low in lunatic, liberal criminal-coddling, a neutering of the last barrier of flexing machismo between the thug class and the huddled, fearful masses.

The response to that, as always, should be “[bleep] them.” That crowd is as unstable as any street “thug”.

Polling shows a wide gap between what white America and black America think of aggressive policing. And yes, it does matter that the former has almost no experience with an insecure cop freaking out at the sight of you, or getting hostile when asked why the hell he’s getting in your face? For blacks, even suburban professionals, that’s a common occurrence, and one that gets exponentially worse in predominantly black neighborhoods.

This situation wouldn’t be as bad if the average police force had a better pool of police candidates to choose from. But you get what you pay for. At standard salary rates, cop shops don’t exactly have the luxury of culling through the cream of decision-makers.

The cop who killed little Tamir Rice in Cleveland, blasting away before he even got out his car, was regarded as so dismally ill-equipped to make good decisions he was let go from a small town force before catching on with Cleveland’s finest … which never looked at the details of his work history.

I quote his previous commander’s assessment: “ … he would not be able to substantially cope, or make good decisions, during or resulting from any other stressful situation.”

Put bluntly, the guy was/is fundamentally unstable and in a sane world should never have been issued a gun permit, much less given what amounts to a license to kill.

Ditto Darren Wilson in Ferguson. A reading of the grand jury testimony paints a fairly clear picture of an insecure tough guy wannabe, his swagger bolstered by the goods on his hip. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of doubt left that Wilson incited the confrontation and then panicked when Brown (unwisely) told him to “[bleep] off.”

But had he, or the dimwit in Cleveland been firing rubber bullets or chemical darts, no one involved would be dead today, and the courts could have gone about their usual business of … exonerating the cops.

As for Eric Garner’s chokehold death on Staten Island, where would that story be if the cops weren’t on an arrest quota, a la “The Wire”? The guy’s back selling cigarettes. Write him a ticket and find something better to do.

Rolling Stone Failed the Basic Test

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterThere’s a maxim I like that says, “The art of good conversation is in knowing what not to say.” Somewhat along those lines we can add that the art of good editing is knowing what questions haven’t been asked.

As one of those whose coming of age coincided with the birth of Rolling Stone magazine, the University of Virginia gang rape story debacle has a personal edge to it. It’s hard to watch those for whom you once had great affection smear themselves with disgrace. While not exactly among the top tier of credible journalism — too many puff pieces of trendy, interchangeable pop stars with new product to sell — the magazine has retained its reputation for daring where others shrink back by regularly featuring people like Matt Taibbi, unquestionably the leading scourge of Wall Street fraud and manipulation.

But Taibbi and others of solid standing are going to be reevaluating their association with the magazine if Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s tale of a freshman woman being violently gang-raped in a UVA frat house completely dissolves down the drain, which is sure looks like it is about to do.

I only read the piece after it became a national cause celebre. But even as a consumer I was asking, “Where is the full reach-out to the alleged perps?”, “Who for sure knows this happened?” and “This poor girl was thrown through a glass topped table, then brutally gang-raped for hours and she has no signs of cuts or bleeding? What?”

Then came the flabbergasting explanations from Rolling Stone’s editors that they had “honored the victim’s request” not to talk to the men involved, out of concern for retaliation, supposedly. At that point the thick odor of cynical commercialism overwhelmed the episode. If you don’t have confirmation of the incident, you don’t have a story.

There’s enough interest that at some point in the not too distant future we may learn what really happened. My guess … guess … is that the victim, Jackie (apparently her real name), engaged in some kind of abusive sexual experience with someone(s) and fell into a depression over it. The way this thing is trending as of today suggests she very likely confabulated her experience/ordeal into something far more violent, with herself as an unequivocal victim.

At that point Erdely, shopping for a vivid, sensational story on which to build a case against big Universities for their ineffective sexual assault policies, seized on Jackie and then, as an advocate for Jackie’s search for justice, dialed out anything that might in any way weaken the story.

But how Rolling Stone, with a lot more to lose than one lone writer, consented to the terms of Erdely’s agreement with Jackie is beyond me, sort of. Taibbi has gone on record describing Rolling Stone’s fact-checking process as hellishly intense. But obviously intensity toward Erdely’s rape story was for all intents and purposes non-existent, since the editors were willing to dispense with full ascertainment of a charge of violent gang-rape against a group of young men whose identities have been readily speculated upon on the UVA campus and elsewhere.

Pretty clearly Erdely and Rolling Stone were looking for a blockbuster. This episode is a lot like their controversial, and I still say reprehensible cover of Boston marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. There, the magazine cynically imbued the killer with celebrity sex symbol status for marketing impact. The story was solid. But the marketing was, as I say, nakedly cynical. (But hey, it doubled average newsstand sales. So what do I know?) Here, the irresistible impact of an outrageous story of a gang rape of a girl who could be anyone’s teenage daughter pretty clearly trumped the fundamental criteria of confirming if any of it is true.

Rolling Stone of course has a long history of marrying a well-told tale with semi-ascertainable facts. i mean, how much fact-checking did they ever really do on Hunter Thompson? His hilarious ramblings were of course 80% opinion and 20% figments of what was left of his imagination. Devoted readers knew what to take seriously and what was comic lubricant. But Hunter was ripping on venal politicians. He was not making stark assertions of violent gang rape.

If nothing else, Rolling Stone has a serious problem with Erdely and whoever her binky is in the editor’s suite. As we now know, a previous, sex-drenched saga from her developed a lot of serious holes after publication. And lest we forget, Erdely authored the 2012 feature on gay teenage suicides in “Michele Bachmann’s home district”. That one is holding water for the moment. But conservatives are on the attack.

The larger issue is that the culture needs more credible, popular outlets for investigative journalism, not less. Shameless freak shows like FoxNews will always draw a crowd and make money. The great trick of righteous indignation, like Matt Taibbi pulls off, and Erdely has projected, is getting it right.

 

 

 

Nostalgic for Nye’s.

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterNot being all that big on nostalgia, I’m conflicted about the closing of Nye’s Polonaise. Like pretty much everyone who ever walked in, I love the place. If it was in New Jersey you could easily imagine a couple Joe Pesci-wannabes and their gumars hunkered in one of the banquettes. Slickly pompadoured dudes casually discussing whose skull was going next into the vise, while tapping their ring fingers to the polka music.

The vibe at Nye’s was/is “real”, as in earned, acquired and self-created. It exudes an emphatically male persona, which in itself is pretty nostalgic concept. There is no taint of being manicured, color and aroma-coordinated by some chirpy fashionista. What’s there, the red leather, the paneling, the carpeting and the bar was there before there “themes” were a prerequisite for opening for business. Nye’s pre-dates Irish-Asian fusion.

You walk in and the overwhelming impression is “authentic”. A sense that applies to the staff as well. Guys like bartender Dan (never learned his last name, nor he mine) make it feel like you were the guy he’s been looking forward to seeing for weeks, which worked well when you dragged in friends from out of town, or even a complete stranger, like the businessman from Phoenix we hauled over after a couple hours at Brit’s one deep January night.

I can’t make it sound like I live there. But the mere mention sparks a flood of memories. Christmas parties, mid-winter happy hours, going away cocktails, “business lunches”, (love the steak salad). The pleasantly boozed up sing-a-longs with Nordeast geezers and delighted U of M under-grads, half with fake IDs I’m convinced.

I actually believe the “authentic” vibe led to a better quality of conservation. Bullshit befits a bullshit theme watering hole. And it jars in a place that feels so genuine. But that’s just a theory. I’m still work-shopping that one.

It so happens Nye’s is currently owned by a shirtsleeve relative of mine, Rob Jacobs. He’s married to my cousin’s daughter. Nice guy. Only met him a few times, but I get his dilemma. The supper club era is over. The physical structure is kind of a mess and … there’s a fortune to be made in leveling it for a 30-story condo complex.

Apparently thought is being given to holding on to some aspect of Nye’s as the gilded tower rises on the site and fills with the sort of people who, well, advise developers and restaurateurs on what cultural imitation to ape next, what colors to paint it, what “active” music to pie in, how to dress the staff and where to stash cash flow to avoid taxes. But I doubt much will come of whatever they’re thinking other than a plaque in the lobby next to the condo concierge.

For a moment I thought it’d be worth trying the Manhattan trick of building over the joint. They pulled it off with a similar old bar, Reidy’s on 54th St in New York. And you figure it wouldn’t be so tough to yank out the banquettes and bar(s) and all the old photos and slap ’em back into a new space, that wasn’t a firetrap. But really, that’s nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It wouldn’t be Nye’s. It’d be a calculated impression of Nye’s with as much visceral linkage to the Nye’s I love as a Six Flags arcade has to Dodge City of the Old West.

Not that nostalgia doesn’t sell. What is modern country music but a calculated nostalgia act? Simple guys. Simple gals. Simple truths. Ditto “classic rock”: Music to remind us of when we were young and on the prowl.

Likewise, what is the ceaseless stream of inane sit-coms on network TV but an appeal to nostalgia for an era (what era?) of uncomplicated, easily-sustained relationships? Or the dramas? Impossibly good-looking guys and gals solving twisty Arthur Conan Doyle mysteries in 42 minutes or less. And let’s not get too deep into politics, where every viable candidate is required to play a variation on June or Ward Cleaver. Or, God help us, organized religion, where nostalgia is cultivated and monetized by way of tribal fables two and three millennia old.

Point being, we’re practically drowning in nostalgia for things that either never were or were only briefly, and even then with little or no reality attached.

Still, a great bar is a kind of environmental device for pushing away the most intractable realities, if only for as long as it takes to knock back two or three drinks. And in that way I’ll celebrate Nye’s over the next few months, and then remember it with great fondness.

 

 

 

 

Complicity in the Bill Cosby Cover-Up Runs Deep

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterThe “outing” of Bill Cosby as, well what else can we call it but as a “serial rapist”? has kicked off a moment of journalistic soul-searching. It isn’t all that widespread and it won’t last long, but it’s a flicker of light worth prodding toward something more substantial.

But first, my one and only inter-raction with the man. It 
was the late ‘90s if I recall and Cosby was in town to give one 
of his ministerial speeches on the topic of family/male/black male responsibility. After more than the usual back and forth with his people I was granted a 10-minute window for an interview. As a lifelong fan as far back as his “Wonderfulness’ LP, which I wore out on the old Lambert family Magnavox, I was still expecting if not an affable, good-humored pro of the show biz game, a kind of Bob Hope with street cred, at least something other than a self-important dick.

It didn’t go well. Cosby clearly found the whole … 10-minute chat … a tedious ordeal (admittedly, I get that a lot), and his “person”, a middle-aged male toadie who looked as though he’d be beheaded if the boss were asked something he didn’t want to answer, interrupted virtually every (harmless) question for re-phrasing into something Bill would rather talk about, which, frankly was very little beyond his usual boilerplate of “pull up your pants and be (my idea of a) man”. Put another way, the interview lasted about eight minutes too long.

The broader point to this whole still unfolding saga, a multi-pronged tragedy, is again both how little we the public truly know about celebrated public figures and how our culture’s myth-making machinery sends down roots far deeper than reality. (For regular readers, this is an echo of my embarrassing infatuation with John Edwards.)

The media mea culpas going around include one from one of black culture’s most inightful and provocative critics, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who cops to not pushing Cosby hard enough, in a story seven years ago, on assertions already made against him by over a dozen women. Says Coates in his recent Atlantic web piece, “ … it is hard to accept that people we love in one arena can commit great evil in another. It is hard to believe that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist because the belief doesn’t just indict Cosby, it indicts us. It damns us for drawing intimate conclusions about people based on pudding-pop commercials and popular TV shows. It destroys our ability to lean on icons for our morality. And it forces us back into a world where seemingly good men do unspeakably evil things, and this is just the chaos of human history.”

One of the great revolutions in American cultural consciousness-raising would be a campaign to demystify celebrity myth-making. But rational skepticism about the show biz famous is not particularly welcome, even in places supposedly committed to it. If you ask, almost every pop news consumer understands fairly well the business plans of celebrity magazines/media and all their inanity-worshipping stepsisters, the “lifestyle” outlets of one silly sort or another. Not that the average consumer thinks about it much, but if you ask they’ll concede it’s all just a selling game.

A game they consume voraciously.

But as bad as the vast mass of all that celebrity silliness is, clogging our cultural arteries with stupendous flows of irrelevant non-news at best and pure, free publicity at worst, the problem is compounded by an unwillingness of so-called “serious” journalism to apply even the most minimal counter-balance.

I spent more time than I care to remember playing willing shill for the Hollywood hype-machine, interviewing the famous and beautiful with only rarely an untoward or impertinent question. (OK, I was thrown off the so-called “junket circuit” three different times for such transgressions. But because I “gave good profile”, I was eventually invited back.) But that was while working for a free weekly. When I arrived at a supposedly bona fide daily newspaper I had some (seriously misplaced) expectations that, at long last due skepticism would be encouraged … rewarded … cheered.

A guy has rarely been more wrong. The sad fact is that the features departments of mainstream newspapers, even the good ones, (and I wasn’t working at one of those), exert little to no skeptical energy on their show biz subjects. More to the point, they don’t tolerate “cynical”, “negative” rogue writers applying it independently.

From (long) direct experience I can tell you the features end of daily newspapering is completely happy and comfortable serving as yet another layer of the show biz publicity machinery. (If only those cash-strapped papers got a cut of the tickets they helped to sell.) The guiding (focus-group tested) rationale being that readers want the paper to reflect and enhance their excitement and delight in “the stars”, which is to say, the paper’s job is to magnify what “the stars’ ” publicity machinery has already established. (It goes without saying that local TV news, a show biz sales game in itself — morning, noon and night — hasn’t even imagined a skeptical thing to say about celebrities, other than an errant choice of a red carpet gown, or a Justin Bieber-like meltdown.

It’s easy to understand Mr. Coates’ dilemma. Here’s a prominent figure among the black intelligentsia (Coates) conflicted over a direct attack on a revered black icon, (Cosby). The record will show there are plenty of people undermining influential black leadership figures, so why would a young black intellectual add his name to that barrage?

Ironically, the predominantly white managers of mainstream news organizations, no doubt assessed the racial liabilities of reporting the accusations against Cosby as well, and demurred … until the tidal wave granted everyone cover to “reassess”.

But that’s Cosby. What of the mega-tonnage of so-called “journalism” heaped on show biz personalities of all persuasions with for all intents and purposes no application of skeptical perspective at all? Obviously, serial rape is a special level of depravity. But I can assure you that Bill Cosby isn’t the only revered celebrity icon who has successfully marketed a persona wildly out of step with his true nature, and marketed it with the full, albeit unwitting complicity of the allegedly responsible professional media.

Would we really be worse off if professional journalists refused to be a part of the bullshit brigade?

 

 

 

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KSTP-TV and #pointergate. Post-mortem of a Face Plant.

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Lambert_to_the_Slaughter[REVISED] If you’ve caught wind of KSTP-TV’s fiasco with Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges‘ “gang signs” photo and wondered, “How the [bleep] does something that stupid, crass and cynical even get on the air?”,  let me try to help.

For some, the bottom line is simply that (veteran) reporter Jay Kolls all but played paid messenger for a cop shop hit job on a Mayor (and a police chief) the rank and file don’t much care for. (To which I usually say, “Beware a Mayor and Chief that crowd actually likes.”) But worse, for Kolls and KSTP, who are enduring a coast-to-coast savaging for both stupidity and racism, Kolls’ newsroom bosses consented to being played as badly as we was. To the point that they were so credulous they didn’t even bother with the minimum context of noting in their broadcast piece that the “gangbanger” (as Kolls has taken to calling the kid in question in a ridiculously defensive Twitter dialogue) was himself, at the time of the photo … participating in the get-out-the-vote effort mentioned only in passing.

I mean, this story is so nakedly and thoroughly targeted at a key demographic for local TV news you practically choke on it. And by that I mean this: The only viewers who were going to swallow this story — as Kolls and KSTP presented it — are fearful whites with little or no personal interaction with blacks or other minorities. People who almost never counter-balance the “news” they get on TV with any other stream of information, other than maybe an e-mail from an equally fearful friend or relative.

With the audience for local TV news was shrinking nearly as fast as it has been for daily newspapers (until a modest uptick in 2013) the core that remains is both older and (I strongly suspect) less socially sophisticated — i.e. more isolated from “criminal elements” than even 20 years ago. Where savvier news consumers have long since stopped rolling their eyes at the cliched/treadworn “if it bleeds it leads” news segments and turned off the local news altogether in favor of the internet, the crowd that remains faithful to local TV continues to be riveted by the relentless narrative of hardened thugs gunning down each other and therefore, soon to be blasting their way through the front doors of those same terrified viewers, never mind that their doors are in Maple Grove, Big Lake, Victoria, Edina and St. Cloud.

It was to that core local news crowd, primarily white, aged and out of step with the realities of modern urban America that Kolls and KSTP were appealing, and why they look like such pawns and fools today. (According to Pew research 54% of local TV’s news audience is over age 50. Although it could be worse. The over-50 audiences for Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity clock in at 64% and 66% respectively.)

Now, having spent a bit of time in the Hubbard Broadcasting empire, I’m not going to go call anyone over there a racist. Although how the racist overtones of this story didn’t head butt someone in the KSTP newsroom I fail to imagine.

What I will say is that the Hubbards themselves, having always been wealthy, are in fact “different”. They never have to deal with shareholders ranting on the phone about public face-plants like this bit of buffoonery or other embarrassments that might crater the stock price. Instead, you have a family operation that long, long ago got comfortable with doing a very public business in their own private way. A family long accustomed to seeing the world as they choose to see it reiterated on their air. in that context a story handed them by the cops (law and order) directly suggesting that the new Mayor (liberal and female) is sympathetic to thugs (young blacks) fits with the acceptable company narrative. Put another way, it appeals to viewers KSTP wants to appeal to.

More to the point, when you work for “the family”, especially in any kind of on-air or management position, you don’t have to wait for a call or e-mail telling you what to say and what not to say. If, for example, you’re a weatherman, you understand implicitly that human-caused climate change is a hoax and the sort of thing you never mention on air. It becomes a second nature. As part of the “team”, you absorb the essence of the family’s perspective like a kind of survival instinct. What the family prefers or doesn’t object to becomes what you deliver on air, if you’d like to hang around for a while.

That said, this “gang signs” thing Kolls put up is still beyond belief.

Jay, who I covered back in the ’90s and once brawled with over a story I’ve now forgotten (we later had drinks and smoothed things over) is on a “second chance” run with the Hubbards, having been “let go” and hired back at a time when older, white males are not exactly prime consideration for reporting jobs. The Hubbards are good about that kind of thing, perhaps because an older guy (or gal) given a second chance is uniquely grateful and more likely to deliver the type of news product most preferred by the forces upstairs.

Still … the astonishing things to me in this episode are that Kolls allowed himself to be tooled so flagrantly by the cops and then that this thing got past an editor. I mean in what universe does a professional news director in 2014 not look at this mess and say, “Uh, I gotta tell ya Jay, it looks to me like she’s just pointing at the guy. And remind me, what’s she doing with him, anyway? What? He was part of the vote thing, too! Well shit, we better get that in there somewhere.”

Pro news people I’ve known wouldn’t have touched this story if only on the grounds that they could smell a reporter getting tooled by the cops and that if the ran it they’d look so clueless and chumpy, to their professional peers.

And while I’m at it … how does a new director not say to her reporter, “For crissakes, how many dog whistles can one guy blow in the same story?”

So do I think Stanley Hubbard is happy about the way this thing is playing out? No, I do not. If no one had noticed or said anything, he wouldn’t have cared. (Hell, he probably wouldn’t have noticed). But now that his station (which is run by his son Rob)  is a national laughing stock, I’m guessing he’s having a bad day which means a few of his underlings are having a day that’s even worse.

Not that the first crisis management move won’t be to ignore the firestorm as long as possible and hope it fades away, obliterated by, you know, police tape video of a gang-banger shoot-out or something.

Put Out a Contract on These Campaigns

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterGood lord. This one can’t end soon enough, and I’m tempted to say “badly enough’. There really should be penalties and pain for political campaigns as time and attention-sucking and uninvolving as the one we’re enduring right now.

I freely confess to jaded-induced boredom. I’ve seen too many campaigns. I really should slink away to the Yukon with a faithful dog, a store of hardtack and jerky and let this ceaseless barrage of boilerplate bluster and by-the-numbers attack advertising run its course, which of course would mean killing off the last critical synapses in the last sentient voter walking the land. When (or if) I re-emerged the world might resemble the aftermath of some zombie plague, with the brain-eaters being political consultants and messaging experts.

We all know it’s bad, as in dull, monotonous, predictable and off-putting. Need a fresh example? How about GOP Senate candidate Mike McFadden devoting one day to announcing his “contract with Minnesota” and then another day to signing it? Inspiring stuff. Imaginative, too. Another “contract”. The latest in a 20-plus year run of “contracts” thrown up by imagination-free political candidates who don’t dare, and/or are advised not to dare ever saying anything that might engage the mental machinery of what I refer to as the “actively informed voter.”

Obviously, if you’re one of those people you fully understand that these campaigns, which thanks to the epic flow of money unleashed by Citizens United never actually end any longer, are targeted on a sliver of the population that rarely exceeds 15%. These would be your “persuadable voters”, the folks who, put another way, mostly ignore political/government function, get a lot of their news from headlines they see walking past the few newspaper racks still remaining, overhear at the plant or see on some cable channel in the dentist’s office. That’s who all the money is being spent on. And who knows, a couple of them might even be persuaded to vote … against the other guy.

Meanwhile, it is worse than a Newton Minow “wasteland” for everyone else. If you care enough to follow these processes daily, instead of just for a couple weeks every other year, you’ve come to accept that there’s nothing here for you. You’ve heard every attack thousands of times, seen every grainy video of lock-stepping “ultra-liberals” and lapse into narcolepsy at the hint of yet another “debate”. Essentially you made your mind up months (if not years) ago and are enduring this siege of unrelenting blandness as you might a stand-up comic suitable for your mother’s nursing home.

Obviously, if this were Kentucky or even Iowa, or as Joe has been following, South Dakota, it might a little different. There’d at least be a pulse. But here in Minnesota there’s never been any serious doubt that either Al Franken or Mark Dayton was going to be reelected. If there was it vanished with the nominations of Mike McFadden and Jeff Johnson, two guys with all the inspirational ability of a couple corporate trainers who forgot their PowerPoint.

So what to do? Well nothing, if like Franken your handlers, advisers and kitchen cabinet have wrung every last ounce of wit and risk out of you. (Dayton will always and only do what Dayton wants to do.)

But in (my) ideal world here’s something I’d like some genuinely “courageous” candidate “fighting” for the middle-class and “hard working” Americans everywhere to give a try.

Screw these ritualized debates, which long ago degenerated into a trench warfare of pre-digested catch phrases and attack slogans hurled back and forth like mustard gas.

I’d like to see a (formerly) witty, daring guy like Franken agree to a serious of “thesis candidate” interviews with bona fide experts on a series of issues. Tell the League of Women Voters to go find three acknowledged experts each on economics, public ethics, communications, whatever and you’ll agree to sit, by yourself, not with your opponent, and be cross-examined by them for 90 minutes. No horse-race obsessed professional journalists allowed. Instead, a conversation rewarding actual brainpower, intellectual resourcefulness and humility.

To be revealed: What you do and don’t know about the reality of what you’re selling to the persuadables on primetime TV, in between episodes of “Honey Boo Boo” and Thursday Night Football.

Suicide for the fool who agrees to such a concept? I’m not so sure. If Franken agreed to do it, what’s the predicament for McFadden?

Bottom line question: Does any politician dare talk to adults like adults? I’ve decided the answer is “no.”

Hmmm … must check Expedia for packages to Whitehorse.

Pearl Jam, Still Living the Promise of Rock

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterRock and roll, which hasn’t died yet, had a good night Sunday at the Xcel Center.

To a truly packed house — lines to the mens’ room 50-60 deep, and god help the women — Pearl Jam delivered a three-hour reminder of the vitality and, you might even say, purpose of tribal entertainment. The Seattle-based band is a long ways (25 years) past its “grunge” origins. Lead singer Eddie Vedder, guitarists Mike McCready, and Stone Gossard, bass player Jeff Ament, drummer Matt Cameron and keyboard player Boom Gaspar are certifiable rock stars/legends, and are wealthy and revered as such. But the original promise of the power of rock music on a grand scale still has its hooks in them.

That they are less familiar to mainstream America than say, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, The Who and others of that magnitude — acts to whom Pearl Jam regularly pays homage — has as much to do with their own well-considered ethos than as their musical style. The pulsing, grinding waves of sonic sensation that is the grunge signature of many of their fan favorites has particular appeal to adolescent males — and the adolescent in most males — who delight in being rendered semi-conscious by sound and fury. Music fans who prefer being lulled or tickled probably don’t have a clue who Pearl Jam is.

The band has famously fought Ticketmaster over the gamed-out corporate control of both ticket pricing and availability. They’re outspoken advocates for environmental issues wherever they go, women’s freedom of choice, (which partly explains why the audience isn’t entirely male), progressive politicians, (the mis-administration of George W. was cut no slack) and innumerable other functions of a truly cooperative, caring society. (The head of the U of M’s Children’s Hospital made a featured appearance midway through Sunday’s show.)

While you sometimes wonder how much of the lyrics and “message” of rock songwriting gets through the impact of the sound, Sunday’s show, like all Pearl Jam shows was an extended sing-a-long, with fans drowning out Vedder on the chorus to most of the 32 numbers. Pretty clearly the crowd in the house both understands and appreciates Pearl Jam’s underlying ethos.

None of the community-bonding spirit and tribe-around-the-bonfire camaraderie would happen of course if it weren’t for the fact that Vedder and the band are so damned entertaining. They’re disciplined show biz pros who completely understand the value of simultaneous physical and emotional fun in creating a mass mindset. There’s good money in fun alone, less in messages about personal and public morality. But the act that can blend the two lives in rare company.

Personally, I really do try to check myself before launching into a righteous-geezer tirade against vapid, cutie-pie/pin up pop stars, factory-stamped “country” acts all with the same t-shirts and big hats, misogynist, self-adulating rappers and the endless outpouring of essentially soulless entertainers desperate most for the perks of fame. That sort of thing is too easy. Fish in a barrel. Not to mention a cliche.

Better to acknowledge the rare act that believes in something beyond itself and has the vitality and chops to deliver it night after night (Pearl Jam does it all over again in Milwaukee this evening). A purpose — “evolution, baby” as Vedder sings — beyond mere cash flow was a central tenet of the music that allegedly shaped several generations, meaning Bob Dylan, Bob Marley on through Springsteen and U2. At least that’s the way fans of the form like to remember it, and be reminded of it.

Although, that said, the lines for the Pearl Jam merchandise tables were nearly as long as for the toilets.

 

 

Affleck v. Maher. Traditional Liberal Meets 2.0

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterFinally, a debate both worth having and worth listening to.

And obviously I’m not talking about either the Governor or Senate “debates” here in Minnesota. Until they give awards for bland and stultifying the four main combatants in those fights will go unrewarded and ignored for their powers of inspiration. (See Joe’s post on that issue.)

But the face off between Bill Maher and actor Ben Affleck on Maher’s HBO show last weekend was a far .. far … more provocative beast. Week in and week out Maher’s panel is invariably the most compelling “debate” moment on TV, for the simple reason that unlike the DC talk shows, “Meet the Press”, etc., his cast of characters doesn’t include John McCain and glaze-inducing, market-tested “messaging” gets slapped down with unabashed glee. (Here’s a link to a Salon follow-up with Maher.)

The topic last weekend was the liberal misconception that being a liberal means being open and accepting of anyone’s beliefs, without skepticism or criticism. The fact that Affleck missed that point and leapt immediately to charges of racism is what made the moment so interesting. Liberal v. liberal. Hollywood traditional variety v. envelope-tearing.

Specifically, Maher and atheist author Sam Harris (“The End of Faith”, which I highly recommend), were arguing the point that while, yes, organized religion in general is not something they regard as, shall we say, an evolutionary advantage, Islam is a particular problem. Arguably the most conservative of all the world’s major religions, with exclusion, restriction and intolerance toward women, gays and non-believers baked (or widely misinterpreted) into its central tenets, Islam’s propensity to affirm violence currently compares with the worst excesses of Christianity, Judaism and whatever else, which for those up on The Inquisition, the Crusades and the routine invocations of God at every call to battle is really saying something.

Maher and Harris make the point that being a liberal means having a responsibility to identify and speak out against intolerance in whatever form it appears, even when it comes wrapped in the supposedly sacrosanct cloak of another person/culture’s “faith”, i.e. whatever they choose to believe. Affleck the Hollywood heavyweight, instinctively playing the mass audience card, lost barely a second conflating this argument with racism and white fear of inherently violent, gun-wielding blacks.

You can watch the interaction for yourself, but what is on display is very traditional liberal thinking (Affleck’s), where true liberals take a maternal attitude toward all cultures and beliefs, essentially on the grounds that it is antithetical to “liberal values” to making large scale criticisms of any culture (Islam being more culture than race, despite Affleck’s knee jerk inter-mingling with racial bigotry). Put another way, freedom of religion means that if they say they’re doing it because they believe it is the word of God who are we to disagree?

By contrast Maher and Harris are arguing, what for them at least, and I tend to agree, is a kind of Liberalism 2.0. An upgrade in both critical thinking and public courage that says today’s liberals, fully cognizant of science, evolution, modernity and an inter-connected planet, have a responsibility to call out intolerance wherever they see it, regardless of its time-honored, “divinely-ordained” trappings and self-righteousness.

I don’t hear either Maher or Harris arguing for some kind of secular jihad against Muslims. Far from it. Respite from the millennia of religion-sanctioned violence is their overall objective.

What they are saying is that if you are as committed to the full rights of women and minorities as you say you are, you seize opportunities to argue that suppressing those rights is never acceptable. As in anywhere by anyone, a professed religiosity be damned. This applies to cynical cultural/religious conservatives in the United States and no less cynical, self-serving mullahs abroad.

The ironic bind, which makes liberals of Affleck’s ilk jump the tracks, is that a call for a reasoned, sustained protest against religious-inspired intolerance sounds like a call for  … intolerance.

And that is part of what makes this debate so interesting and vital. It would do liberals a world of good to argue out this point.

Haunted by Nickelback

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Lambert_to_the_Slaughteri don’t really know anything about Nickelback, but Google is convinced I do.

If you are as uninformed (not to mention as culturally deprived) as I am, Nickelback, “… a bunch of fatuous frat boys” to quote one reviewer, has earned a reputation as “the worst band in the world”. Says Steven Hyden at Grantland, “After forcibly ingesting The Best of Nickelback Volume 1 for professional (or perhaps sadomasochistic) purposes, I can affirm from personal experience that this band’s music sucks. (Or, more accurately, suuucks.)4 Nickelback distills every cliché about bad white-guy durr music in a convenient one-stop package — the vocals bellow like an excavator tongue-kissing a gravel pit and the riffs sputter like amplified lit farts.”

So in other words … really bad.

Personally, I’m not aware of ever hearing one note of any of Nickelback’s (allegedly) turgid, derivative anthems. Although something loud and horrible was playing at a trucker bar in Ajo, Arizona last winter. All I know is that Nickelback’s name comes up every time a conversation turns to “really shitty music”.

So a couple months ago I’m over at MPR interviewing The Current’s program director, Jim McGuinn, and as a way of wrapping up I ask him if there’s any band who’ll probably never get airtime on his eclectic pop music station? As he mulls his choices I tossed out Nickelback’s name, to which he laughed and said, “only in some highly ironic context.”

With that, I go home, open Google Docs and transcribe my interview with McGuinn, including the line about Nickelback, which is then published at MinnPost.

That’s the beginning. middle and end of my interest in Nickelback. But it’s only the beginning of what Google believes is a ravenous hunger on my part for all things Nickel and Backy, because within days, and ever since, whenever I open Google on my Google Nexus 5 phone I’m greeted by breaking news, gossip and marketing touts about … Nickelback. Nickelback tour dates. Nickelback set lists. Nickelback-licensed emesis bags.

Clearly, Google’s algorithms are convinced I’m a Nickelback fetishist. The kind of sad, pathetic bastard who’ll buy one ticket to a Nickelback show, (because what Nickelback fan could ever get a date?), park himself in the front row and yell himself hoarse demanding a 20-minute guitar solo off their greatest hit … assuming I knew the title of even one of their (alleged) songs … much less their greatest “hit”.

And that’s Google’s interpretation of my cultural interests it is sending to me. I can only wonder what impression of me the uber Cloud is peddling to the multitude of social and commercial interests tapping Google’s servers for access to the highly-sought-after 63 year-old white male suburbanite power washing his driveway while listening to Nickelback demographic. The way this is going, I truly expect Christmas-season discount offers for Nickelback hoodies, framed/concert-used Nickelback guitar picks and Nickelback-sanctioned douche bags, (since “douche bag” and “Nickelback” seem to be synonymous among the pop music cognoscenti.)

As much as I tell myself to laugh it off — and ignore the taunts of buddies to whom I’ve told this story — the experience only aggravates my aggravation at the cyber monitoring, analyzing and “repurposing” of my private information. Looked at through another lens, I cannot imagine hooking myself up to an iWatch or cloud-based health-monitoring system, or, were I not married, disgorging every quirk, kink and appetite of my personality into some on-line dating site, which as “60 Minutes” recently showed, is then harvested by literally hundreds of parasitic re-sellers.

It’s bad enough that I know about my issues with powdered wigs and mink whips. i don’t need offers from Amazon and The Smitten Kitten.

But hey, rock on, Nickelback.

Where the Commissioner Meets the Archbishop

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterJust as every crisis presents opportunities for change, every scandal is a moment ripe for reconsidering conventional wisdom.

The NFL’s off-field domestic violence mess has inspired quite a lot of fascinating, long-overdue reflection on the role of a shrewdly marketed business enterprise that has truly made itself a major pillar of our culture, a bona fide secular religion as faith-based in its own way as any church.

Watching the Ray Rice-to-Adrian Peterson et al debacle unfold, with all the pathetic prevaricating of Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league’s sycophantic apologists has reminded me over and over again of the sex-abuse ridden Catholic Church, particularly here in Minnesota, as it is led by another wholly disreputable, discredited leader, Archbishop John Nienstedt. Both entities have wrapped themselves in vestments of impregnable propriety. Both have enabled abuse and both are now conducting “sham investigations”. Here’s Madeleine Baran at MPR on the Archdiocese, and our old friend Keith Olbermann at ESPN.

Likewise, the appalling behavior(s) of their respective employees followed by arrogant, tone-deaf official response now has both institutions in a similar situation, where the faithful — not all, but an influential minority capable of critical thought — are actively reexamining the faith and money they’ve invested in each. A reassessment long, long overdue IMHO.

A couple weeks back I read a terrific piece on the psychological appeal of the NFL for American men. I thought it was posted at Grantland, but damned if I can find it there any now. So, my apologies to the author, who took the power and profanity of the NFL to a higher, significantly more illusion-rattling level, by exploring just what exactly the league is selling.

The bottom-line of a very thoughtful piece is that the NFL, and really football everywhere in modern America, is one of the final, protected realms of unfettered masculinity, where men (and boys aspiring to be “men”) are encouraged and rewarded for performing as men “must” and “should” to achieve success. Obviously, since football is an entertainment this heretofore manly safe room is passed on/marketed as a fantasy for those who can’t play, but embrace it vicariously, feeling and asserting male privilege by adjacency.

Clearly, this line of thinking is way too touchy-feely and psycho-babbly for mass consumption. But the writer continued on to the make the salient point that the contact high men get off football, the wildly successful NFL in particular, isn’t just confined the sad yobs in their Vikings jerseys scraping and bowing to a beaming Zygi Wilf as he leaves the Capitol with a sweetheart deal that stick the rubes with over $800 million in debt by the time the next stadium is paid off.

No. The psychological power of the league’s message also resonates deeply with the smart guys, the suits and politicians who crave the glow of power and success emitted by the league. Recall again local legislators cramming to get in the photo op with Commissioner Roger Goodell when he came to town to deliver his ultimatum to pick up the tab for the Vikings/NFL … or else.

The (very) monied class is no more immune to the adjacency-buzz given off by the NFL than blue collar couch potatoes. The only difference is that the wealthy experience a special tumescence and dampness over the NFL’s vise grip command of its message, market and balance sheet. Association with the NFL, via corporate suites and/or ludicrously over-priced ticket prices and personal seat licenses being a display of status so vital as to be irresistible to any “player” in the game of commerce.

As a matter of status and survival human nature is all about keeping score, and the NFL, until now at least, has asserted and sold unapologetic dominance like very few other cultural institutions … other than organized religions.

The third leg of the league’s marketing magic is of course the sports media, who daily, hourly, minute-by-get-a-life-minute provide free marketing lift for 32 of the wealthiest men in America. The completely routine whoring of some of the most “credible” names in the country and local communities is taking a corrosive beating.

Here’s Stefan Fatsis on the worst offenders. Here’s another, from Dave Edwards at Deadspin. Fatsis makes the always pertinent appointment about the difference between “access reporting”, where one never pisses off the subject at hand and “accountability reporting” which, well, which is something other than PR work. Day-to-day business reporting could do well with a heavy injection of the latter.

As with the Catholic church (and several other ossified religious organizations) this kind of truth-telling and public-shaming is both long overdue and healthy. For cultures to evolve, no institution should be allowed immunity from accountability.

And I say this as a fan of football, pro football in particular. Before the domestic abuse mess I was telling my cousin, a 20-year college football coach, that I was ashamed of how much pro football I watched last season. Not because I felt guilty about getting whipped up over a bunch of steroidal wife beaters and child abusers, but because the game is so entertaining to watch I wasted way too much time watching instead of tending to the weekend honey-do list.

As a television entertainment pro football has pro soccer beat ten ways to one, even with the NFL’s ridiculous glut of commercials. (Soccer will never cut it in the US if a championship game amounts to 90 minutes of tapping the ball back and forth at midfield, “strategizing” for essentially a home-run hitting contest in a vaguely comprehended overtime.)

The primary appeal being the precision and balletic beauty of the passing game, not the “bone crushing” attempted decapitation of receivers stupid enough to run a crossing pattern.

The credulous faithful of both organized religion and pro football may be having a tough time accepting the criminality and gross arrogance of institutions so vital to their sense of personal value, but as the NFL tells a player reeling from yet another concussion, “You’re going to have man up, pal.”

 

And the Stiffs Just Keep on Comin’

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterLacking anything resembling a passionate issue, this year’s political campaigns, certainly here in Minnesota, have acquired a common theme by default. Put one way it is: “How did we end up with this pack of stiffs and maroons?”

Colleague Joe has been lucid about one aspect of this. But then us fringy blogger types aren’t required to stick a sock in what we really think in the interests of, you know, “promoting a civil discourse”.

Translation: If you’re getting paid for what you write, never publish anything that might upset your mega-church going maiden aunt.

Today though, Strib columnist Jon Tevlin ventures about as far out on the institutional branch as he can get when he surveys the recent Tom Hagedorn/Michelle MacDonald/Keith Downey/Al Franken news cycle, and, after five paragraphs of promising never to sully himself with such gutter talk ever again, declares the lot of ‘em … “a bunch of idiots”.

Jon is a quality guy and a talented writer. (I.e. I’d really rip him if he were a putz.) But his first obligation is to play within the parameters of a mainstream commercial news organization, a business enterprise determined to maintain credibility across the entire spectrum of modern American, uh, “discourse”. Within that business plan, calling aspiring/elected officials “idiots” is a journalistic “no fly zone”.

No matter how ill-informed, craven, hypocritical and reckless, respectable/moderated journalism does not go to … “idiot”. Not even if there’s a clinical diagnosis involved. Juvenile name-calling is left to spittle-flecked bloggers with no advertising base to endanger.

These moments always reminds me of a lunch interview I had with the author Paul Theroux years ago. Theroux occasionally wrote for The New York Times, and struggled with the grand institution’s rules of order. Like the time he was assigned a piece on the physical experience of The Big Apple’s 1980s subway system. This naturally involved describing smelly piles of what the Times copy desk insisted he refer to as  “fecal material” polluting stations and platforms.

Said Theroux in essence, “It was classic Times. Struggling not to describe in language everyone understands what everyone sees under foot every day of their lives.”

The essential point here is to ask (again) how much better our political “discourse” might be if the “real media” described characters and events in terms all of us understand instantly and use every day? How much less of Michele Bachmann’s ludicrous circus act would we have had to endure if words like “lying”, “reckless” and “self-serving” had been deployed with near-daily regularity by the Strib, the PiPress, MPR, and the local TV outlets … instead of just the bed-head rabble of dyspeptic bloggers?

Given the appetite of today’s “movement conservatives” for “idiot discourse” and self-serving demagoguery, the media alone won’t be able to nudge that ship/garbage scowl into a channel of sanity. But let me argue that a professional reporting class permitted a vernacular beyond that which doesn’t induce indigestion in devout Mormons might loosen up some of the “stiffs” smelling up our public offices.

Mar(k) Dayton is probably beyond “loosening”. But how much more effective might Al Franken be if he felt comfortable melding both his innate satirical wit with his policy smarts? How much larger a public platform would he have, with benefits both to Minnesotans and national progressives, if he routinely spoke in a language everyone (other than Mormons and churchy aunts) immediately understands and uses every day? Would he, after applying a little comic lubricant, be more or less influential than the glaze-inducing grey cardboard character he’s playing today? A caricature acceptable enough for Times copy editors.

The commercial media’s role in a renaissance of public “discourse” would be, as it is now, to fairly assess the claims of partisan critics who will inevitably shriek and froth for their base any time Franken or any other politician talks and acts like a human being, as opposed to some committee-neutered corporate spokesman in permanent crisis management mode.

I don’t know if any of this would make me walk a block to listen to a stump speech. But it might at least convince me there’s some blood in their veins.

 

Toxins and Taboo in Ferguson

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterIt is very hard to see how the situation in Ferguson, Missouri gets better before it gets worse. Several of the most virulent toxins of modern American culture have induced a powerful infection.

Our racial/class divide has again been ignited by gun violence. An entertainment-based news media umbilically linked to images of violence, the more violent the better, has descended in numbers equivalent to a Super Bowl, and political leaders better suited for managing profit and loss ledgers are at a baffled for what to say and what to do next.

As the spectacle nears the two-week mark, the situation is as over-heated and overwrought as the last days of the Rodney King trial in LA in ’92. And that was before CNN had 24/7 competition. The toxic brew is so bad its hard to imagine even an indictment against the white cop, Darren Wilson, will do a lot to tamp down the protests, the posturing and the overreactions. (Only an event more irresistible to the cable outlets will make them reconsider their all-hands-on-deck Ferguson deployment. Think: Beyonce trapped on a cruise ship without adequate plumbing.)

No one knows what exactly happened when Wilson shot Michael Brown, and the expectation is that no one ever will. That is often what happens when these things get as politicized and celebritized (made that one up) as this. The truth becomes what it needs to be to “restore order”, which of course to the legitimate protestors in Ferguson means “business as usual’, where an overwhelmingly white police force will continue to routinely shake down every black kid dressed like a rap star.

One area of discussion that has remained largely taboo amid all the talk of the “militarization” of American police forces, with their surplus tanks and Hollywood-looking SWAT gear (the latter used most for over-the-top drug raids, like the one in St. Paul last month) is the character quality of those paid to “protect and serve”.

Recognizing that police work is A: Dangerous, as we saw again in the killing of Officer Scott Patrick recently; B: Thankless, unless you count the occasional “atta boy” award from the chief; and C: Poorly compensated, because the menace of public employee benefits, including pensions, is at least as serious to pandering politicians as street crime, the “bulldog” media is extraordinarily reluctant to question whether certain individual cops should ever have been in uniform to begin with. (That and the reality that ripping the notoriously tight brotherhood of cops means a kind of sourcing death for offending reporters and their newsrooms.)

The suspicion at this point is that Darren Wilson was/is an unremarkable ordinary suburban cop … and that he panicked when Brown pushed back at being collared for walking across a street. (Even the cops have said Wilson didn’t know about Brown boosting the cigarellos.)

My point is that I doubt guys like Wilson go into police work for the money. Most likely they need a secure job, they like the idea of doing something useful, something that commands a level of respect, and … work that comes with a community, a like-minded brethren that they relate to day in and day out. It’s within that brethren where things get funky, especially when the predominantly white “us” is given loaded-gun authority over a nearly all black “them”. With such a brethren you earn respect is a number of ways, not all of them attractive to or publicly condoned by polite society. Occasionally you overreach with someone (a big guy like Brown in this case) who is in no mood to take it and has his own bull moose machismo to display for his peers.

A truly honest discussion of all the factors culminating in Wilson killing Brown should include what it would take to cull out the weakest, least stable, most thuggish of cops and replace them with people in better command of their ego and emotions.

Let Robin Williams Rest

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterFurther proof of how out of step I am with mass culture is my reaction, or lack thereof, to the death of Robin Williams.

Like most, I was surprised to learn of his death, a bit more surprised to learn it was a suicide and not at all surprised that our commercial media seized on it for one of their periodic paroxysms of national eulogizing. Television news being equal parts celebrity marketing and reporting, (OK … 70/30 marketing), couldn’t find enough time to milk the tragedy of the “untimely death” of “a comic genius”. Hyperbole being an essence of marketing, Williams was suddenly and fully elevated into the pantheon of American culture.

I recognize that it is August and there isn’t a lot going on, if what you care about most is pop culture. And I have no animus toward Williams. He was one of thousands of actors crowding the media landscape, and at times (much) funnier than most. But I can’t escape the feeling that these exaltations are primarily a function of a media culture with an over-weighted investment in pop celebritydom and in playing minister to parish in times of common bereavement, especially as they control the magnitude of the mourning.

I only met Williams once, and he did induce a level of hysteria.

It was one of those movie press junkets. A hotel room in San Francisco where he was dutifully hyping his latest film, “Good Morning, Vietnam”. Every writer has a technique for these stagey encounters. Mine was often to begin with something completely unrelated to the obvious/pack line of questioning.

(I once asked William Shatner how he could spend an entire weekend in a hotel, 82 separate interviews at that moment, answering the same question … “How do you explain the enduring popularity of ‘Star Trek’.” His answer? “Drugs. LOTS of drugs.”)

That morning the whack job Governor of Arizona, a right-wing, arguably racist ex-car dealer by the name of Ev Meacham was making news again. The guy was an easy punch line, and assuming Williams followed such stuff I tapped the headline on the morning paper and said something to the effect, “Can you believe this shit?”

That was the last thing I said for 20 minutes. Williams launched into a completely spontaneous monologue, full of sleazy car dealer political pitches, racist rednecks, dessicated cowboy barroom bluster and … something about a coke-snorting pope.

I was in tears. It was (very) funny. But it was also … overwhelming. The compulsion factor was close to frightening. Clearly, he could not stop himself. I remember thinking, “This guy is going to collapse.”

I have a tape of this … somewhere.

Amid all the eulogizing has been talk of the pain underlying every gifted comic. Its a cliche. But there’s something to it. I felt it later in Williams’ career with his series of indigestible, maudlin film characters, chosen I kept thinking, to apply a balm to some wound he felt maybe worse than the audience. Likewise, there has been valuable conversation these past few days about the country’s appalling depression-driven suicide rate. 108 a day, if I heard right. More, if you can believe it, than we gun down exercising our precious Second Amendment rights.

Williams was a unique talent. Who could argue with that? In most ways he seemed a decent, if compulsive, human being. He brought far more to the pop scene than the latest hillbilly reality star du jour, or any preening Kardashian wannabe. More too than a sizable chunk of elected officials, many of whom in this Tea Party age are in it for the same personal aggrandizement as cheap celebrities and are shamelessly marketing themselves to much the same audience in much the same way.

So Williams will be missed. RIP, dude.

I just can’t get passed the feeling that these monumental outpourings are more about the marketing strategies of the media machinery than the “beloved geniuses” they proclaim to mourn.

But that’s just me.

 

 

Jesse Gets Lucky, Again

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterJesse Ventura is one lucky bastard. He got elected Governor in 1998, at the peak of the ‘90s boom economy, when thirty-some percent of voters decided, kind of like electing Floyd the Pig Homecoming King, they could afford a laugh. (The competition from two stiffs like Skip Humphrey and Norm Coleman didn’t hurt.)

Now a jury … of his peers … has decided, in a split but conclusive vote, that he was in fact “defamed”, or as I like to think of it “de-famed”, since Jesse believes the dead sniper’s memoir yanked the rudder of his good ship celebrity and crashed it on the hard rocks of horrible, desolate semi-anonymity. Frankly, I’m as shocked by the decision as the legal experts, scholars and pundits. In today’s free-fire publishing world no one is supposed to mount much less win a defamation case against anyone who has previously appeared on TV.

In a previous post I both said I doubted Jesse could prevail, but that I sincerely hoped he would, if only to throw a momentary chill into the fetid sub-culture of charlatans, hustlers and publicists pumping this — recklessly indifferent — memoir/tell-all offal with wearying monotony. That chill, if it is experienced at all, probably won’t last as long as their next tax deductible business lunch. But at least it’s out there.

Not being a licensed legal expert — although I am three for four in conciliation court (don’t bleep with me) — I am most confused over whether or how the issue of “harm” was considered. The “American Sniper” book, as we learned from depositions of the dead sniper, essentially took a “close enough” approach to the veracity of its claims about the Ventura incident. But as to the book being what cratered Jesse’s big money days? Mmmmmm … I’m not so convinced. And I fail to see how anyone could.

Immediate speculation is that the eight jurors voting for Ventura decided they were cool with their decision on the grounds that, yes he was defamed — the sniper’s tale, as written by a ghost writer, had a lot of funky holes that no one cared enough to correct and they all went ahead and publicized the victim of the incident as our guy The Body. All that equals defamation. But, the guessing is … the fact that damages will be paid by the giant publisher’s giant insurance company nailed the choice shut. (In modern America few entities are fairer game for a punitive scalding than insurance companies.)

The second, larger tier of damages, the $1.3 million and change part, may or may not also be covered by insurance. There seems to be some debate on that matter. But were I a juror in doubt about who was going to pay … not the poor, suffering widow! … I would still go ahead with a fat reward for Jesse’s loss of income, fully expecting that the judge and appeals will shave that number down … a lot.

That way the reckless publisher (and their ilk) would get a loud message, but the inncocent family of a “bonafide American hero” will never miss a meal. (Hell, Clint Eastwood, who’s directing a move of “American Sniper”, could write a personal check for the widow’s losses.)

Until a juror speaks up, we won’t know their thinking for certain. But I want to believe that Team Ventura struck a righteous, populist nerve. A nerve that says writers and publishers, especially big corporate publishing houses have to make at least a good faith attempt at accuracy, and … if you’re big enough to have insurance to cover screw ups, the bastards at Pan Global Monolith Insurance, Inc. can afford to cover the tab.