Don't want to be an American Idiot.
Green Day
The posts on the blog are going to get thin for a while, as I just started work on a new book. But I've been asked for my reaction to the election, and I feel I owe it to you.
Here are the things that I found very encouraging:
I walked to my polling place at around 11:00AM. The polls were busy. Not overcrowded, but busy. My hometown allows golf carts on the streets, and there was one parked in the handicapped space nearest the door. People were courteous letting each other in and out at the door. I had to wait for an open booth. Not long. Just a minute or two. I wouldn't mind waiting like that at every election. My precinct used paper ballots. It's old fashioned and slower, but it worked.
As for my votes versus the results, let's just say my votes reflected the winners the losers except for Issue 6. I wanted the casino issue to pass because I think the people of Wilmington and Clinton County should have the final say on what they do in their community. With the failure of 6, we can all look forward to the gambling issue rearing up on election days over and over, until we get sick of it and finally pass it. Kind of like a school levy that won't pass, it'll be back.
Now, as for Obama, I feel good about it. I really do. His acceptance speech is an example of how he projects an image of confidence and poise, something that has been very lacking in the White House for more than eight years. You have to look back to Reagan to find a president who could carry himself with dignity and class.
And that's what I'm driving at here... class. There was a time when the world image of The United States of America was one of high-tech aircraft, fighters and bombers, rock and roll, low and mean fast cars with names like "Cougar" and "Thunderbird," three-martini lunches, Dave Brubeck jazz, the best air travel system in the world, men in sharp suits with narrow ties, women in the latest fashions, cocktail dresses, and the knowledge of at least one non-English language.
Over the past two decades - arguably the post baby boomer era, when the progeny of the boomer generation came of age and entered the workforce - our image has declined. We used to look to John Wayne or James Bond for role models. Today it's Larry the Cable Guy. The car of our dreams used to be a Cadillac Eldorado. These days you're likely to get behind a pick-up truck with a suspension high enough to allow you to see the car in front of it by looking under the truck, with male genitalia hanging from the tow hitch and at least one sticker on the back window that would get me fired if I read it on the radio and will bring up very uncomfortable questions from your 8 year-old. Our ears used to search for the meanings in bands like The Beatles, Rollings Stones, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and Dylan. "Tommy" was a rock opera for chrissake! Don't want to get that cerebral? Okay, then turn on the Streisand, Neil Diamond, classic Sinatra. Hell, even Linda Ronstadt recorded with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. Today country is the new pop, and the message of most of these songs is a proclamation of the author's simplistic view of the world and life in general. I get my rules for life from choice passages of the Old Testament and NASCAR. Disagree with me and I'll kill you. Hip hop and rap has nothing to say except we like sex, and the author is the best rapper in all the world. Disagree and I'll kill you.
In other words, we've become a redneck nation. Or, for African Americans, we're a gansta nation. And many of us are actually proud of that. For much of the 1990's our president was known as Bubba. When he got caught in an adulterous scandal, we actually applauded the guy. (True, it was no Watergate.) Then, we follow that act by electing a man who can't speak our unofficial national language properly - this from the political party most likely to proclaim one should either speak English or get out - and elevated the Texas mentality to the level of poorly written episode of King of the Hill.
The world watches and weeps for us.
The Republican Party by design ran a Redneck campaign this year. Look at the choices the McCain campaign made. The first major push of the McCain campaign played the POW card to gain good ol' boy sympathy. "Country First" sounds like a positioning statement on Froggy 93. And the capper, the running mate selection of a moose huntin' MILF with an unwed pregnant daughter and a husband who, uh, races snow machines for a living, if I understand that correctly. My god. Jeff Foxworthy couldn't have managed this campaign any more redneck. Had the GOP won, one can't help but wonder how long it would take before one could see a deer hanging and drying from a tree in the White House lawn.
And so, the world takes a heavy sigh of relief at the news that Barack Obama won the election. Finally, a US president we can take seriously. And he's black, too. How about that? The Americans voted for the person they felt was best suited to lead their nation, can speak well, knows how to look presidential, and he just happens to be black. Yes, that's progress. And, that 's class.
You might say, "Ah, but Steve, being a president is more than just projecting an image. You must have substance behind the facade in order to govern effectively. McCain had more experience." To which I respond yes, you're absolutely right. McCain does have more experience.
Which is all the more reason he disappointed me and lost my vote. He knew better than to make the choices he made during his campaign. The Palin thing was stunt casting gone over the top. If this were a TV sitcom, selecting his veep would've been the moment he jumped the shark. He did little to squelch the rumors linking Obama to terrorists. (If you're still harboring any thoughts of credibility on that, ask yourself this: Obama had Secret Service detail assigned to him earlier than any other candidate in history. Do you honestly believe that Homeland Security and the Secret Service didn't run a detailed background check on this guy from the very beginning? Would he have even have been able to run against Hillary had any red flags gone up? Would he even be in the Senate if that were the case? Sit down. Take a deep breath. Relax. Clear your mind and your email inbox. And think.) John McCain is a seasoned politician and a good man, but he got bad advice, pressure from the dittoheads, whack-job spin from Fox News, and the GOP's ads - not approved by McCain, but he could've shouted them down - went beyond negative and into deceit.
And the fact that the majority of this country didn't go for it, is the real reason the world is celebrating.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Just Shut Up and Vote, Already!
"From the rocky shores of Maine, to the sunny shores of California..."
Barack Obama
during a campaign speech
"From the Rock-bound shores of Maine, to the smoggy shores of California...
THAT is a long walk!"
Bugs Bunny
"Ballot Box Bunny"
Barack Obama
during a campaign speech
"From the Rock-bound shores of Maine, to the smoggy shores of California...
THAT is a long walk!"
Bugs Bunny
"Ballot Box Bunny"
Friday, October 31, 2008
Pallin' Around
"Don't you realize this is the last act of a desperate man?"
"We don't care if it's the first act of Henry the Fifth. We're getting out of here."
"We don't care if it's the first act of Henry the Fifth. We're getting out of here."
Okay, now this is just getting silly. Really. Is anybody at the Republican National Headquarters listening to what they're doing? Apparently not, or at least their voice actors on the robocalls have never heard of the Republican Vice Presidential nominee.
Look, I want to make it clear. I used to be a conservative. I voted for Reagan. I voted for the George Herbert Walker Bush. I marched in a parade with John Boehner back in Hamilton, Ohio. I worked at WLW, for crying out loud. It's not like I was raised by hippies, or wolves, or hippie wolves or something.
But this stuff coming out of the McCain campaign is straight out of the 1950's. The Commies are coming! The Commies are coming! Hell, with congress being run by liberal extremists, they're already here. This stuff is not just embarrassing to the GOP, it's embarrassing to the entire human race.
Robo Call just rang me again a few minutes ago. "Joe" told me how appalled he was that Obama said that Georgia should "show restraint" in the face of Russia's military action back this summer. You may recall both sides needed to show restraint, but that's beside the point. Joe shows well-inflected outrage at this, and asks is this what Obama will say when "Putin invades our homeland." Really. I'm not making this up.
So, Russia is marching towards America. And only McCain can stop them. That's funny. No, really. The answering machine recorded it, and I'm saving that one for history. Who needs Comedy Central with these bozos on the phone? But wait, it gets better. At the end of the message, the voice actor - and he is an actor, okay? They paid a guy to do this. - says this message was approved by the "McCain Pallin' Campaign."
I had to listen a second time to make sure I heard it right. Yes. That's what he said. He pronounced America's favorite MILF with a short "a" like we're just hanging out with my pal Sarah, and we're just Sarah pallin' around.
I'm dying. And I swear, I am not making this up.
That's the truly scary part.
Happy Halloween.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The Case of the Missing Morning Man
All-night DJ's used to say, "It beats digging a ditch." Nowadays, in many cities, there are no all-night DJ's, and the people who have the talent for that line of work would rather dig a ditch.
There's an interesting piece in the Chicago Tribune about the decline of the Morning Zoo - those wild and crazy guys who used to dominate local morning radio. Patrick Kampert sights six reasons for the taming of the morning shows:
1 Federal Communications Commission fines
2 Jocks have matured
3 Advertisers don't like it
4 What's so shocking? (Cable and the Internet are relatively uncensored.)
5 The absence of Stern (He's on satellite radio dropping F bombs right and left.)
6 The tenor of the times
To that list, I'd like to add a seventh reason: the brain drain in the radio industry.
Years ago, major market stations kept boxes overflowing with audition tapes from hopeful applicants. These tapes came from the medium markets, where air talents polished their craft after paying their dues in the small markets, where they made their mistakes and found their personality. Only after years of work could a DJ hope to advance to the big leagues. (There are exceptions, of course, but those talents usually held a background in a similar field such as acting or TV.)
Today, the small market stations are owned by Clear Channel or other giants. These companies don't want their small market outlets to sound like small market outlets. Like the Big Mac, they want their stations to be the same all across the country. So, instead of employing a staff of fledgling professionals at their small stations, they bring in 20something sales managers who's only knowledge of the programming side of the business is to hire board operators to make sure the voice tracks imported from other stations get inserted between the songs correctly and sit through "Bob and Tom." These thousand-watt cubicle farms have no room for the Sterns and Dahls and even the Soupy Sales of tomorrow.
Not that Soupy Sales would be caught dead in one of these flea trap organizations. Once a proud part of their communities, many of these stations are now embarrassments. The staffers who were active members of the Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, Optimists, Shriners, and 4-H advisers, were told to take retirement. The hoodlums who run these stations today are far too busy searching for kegs, or crack, or whatever, or whoever they can "tap" next to be bothered with helping with the local Soap Box Derby. My personal experience was to have bar fights break out at my last remotes. A charity event at a bowling establishment turned into an embarrassment when station staffers of the Clear Channel variety got drunk and fell down on the lanes. In my last months working there, I used to half-joke that I'd rather tell people I sell child pornography than work for Clear Channel.
The result of all this is that the promise of talent that would've sent in tapes to the major market radio stations is now making a living in IT, selling cell phones, teaching, farming, or still searching for something, anything that can make them an honest living with their dignity intact. After all, some of these people are raising children.
Right now, there's a man who just issued a notice of foreclosure on somebody's house. He's walking away, feeling small and dirty. In order to bolster his spirits, he thinks back to the day he had to host the ultimate fighting matches for his station and a client who was soon indicted for money laundering. And he says to himself, "Could be worse. I could be in radio."
There's an interesting piece in the Chicago Tribune about the decline of the Morning Zoo - those wild and crazy guys who used to dominate local morning radio. Patrick Kampert sights six reasons for the taming of the morning shows:
1 Federal Communications Commission fines
2 Jocks have matured
3 Advertisers don't like it
4 What's so shocking? (Cable and the Internet are relatively uncensored.)
5 The absence of Stern (He's on satellite radio dropping F bombs right and left.)
6 The tenor of the times
To that list, I'd like to add a seventh reason: the brain drain in the radio industry.
Years ago, major market stations kept boxes overflowing with audition tapes from hopeful applicants. These tapes came from the medium markets, where air talents polished their craft after paying their dues in the small markets, where they made their mistakes and found their personality. Only after years of work could a DJ hope to advance to the big leagues. (There are exceptions, of course, but those talents usually held a background in a similar field such as acting or TV.)
Today, the small market stations are owned by Clear Channel or other giants. These companies don't want their small market outlets to sound like small market outlets. Like the Big Mac, they want their stations to be the same all across the country. So, instead of employing a staff of fledgling professionals at their small stations, they bring in 20something sales managers who's only knowledge of the programming side of the business is to hire board operators to make sure the voice tracks imported from other stations get inserted between the songs correctly and sit through "Bob and Tom." These thousand-watt cubicle farms have no room for the Sterns and Dahls and even the Soupy Sales of tomorrow.
Not that Soupy Sales would be caught dead in one of these flea trap organizations. Once a proud part of their communities, many of these stations are now embarrassments. The staffers who were active members of the Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, Optimists, Shriners, and 4-H advisers, were told to take retirement. The hoodlums who run these stations today are far too busy searching for kegs, or crack, or whatever, or whoever they can "tap" next to be bothered with helping with the local Soap Box Derby. My personal experience was to have bar fights break out at my last remotes. A charity event at a bowling establishment turned into an embarrassment when station staffers of the Clear Channel variety got drunk and fell down on the lanes. In my last months working there, I used to half-joke that I'd rather tell people I sell child pornography than work for Clear Channel.
The result of all this is that the promise of talent that would've sent in tapes to the major market radio stations is now making a living in IT, selling cell phones, teaching, farming, or still searching for something, anything that can make them an honest living with their dignity intact. After all, some of these people are raising children.
Right now, there's a man who just issued a notice of foreclosure on somebody's house. He's walking away, feeling small and dirty. In order to bolster his spirits, he thinks back to the day he had to host the ultimate fighting matches for his station and a client who was soon indicted for money laundering. And he says to himself, "Could be worse. I could be in radio."
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
News in the Night
As election day approaches, I can't help but feel a bit nostalgic for the days when I used to cover local results. I vowed I would not turn this blog into a creaky memoir about the Good Old Days, but election coverage these days is just not the same.
There was a time when Election Night meant constant coverage. Local and national anchor teams sat in front of massive maps giving us the state-by-state breakdown, numbers were posted with magnetic numbers on metal boards, rear projection screens, or even black markers on white boards. On radio, you just read the results. But either way, Election Night meant a long night. The news director ordered pizza. You sat in a board of elections lobby gabbing with your fellow reporters, catching up on media gossip while you waited for more precincts to report in. And when they did, the results were usually written on a white board, or a chalk board, or at one courthouse I worked, they used an overhead projector.
On radio, results were phoned in, which meant you had to share the courthouse phones with your journalistic brethren. Banks of phones would be set up for the media, and you would be using them most of the night, as results trickled in from the hand counting of the ballots. During the 80's cell phones starting showing up. Reporters would unfurl their "bag phones" searching for a "hot spot" much the way laptop dogs hunt for WIFI today. Early cell phones went through batteries like the Tasmanian Devil goes through a Golden Coral. After two or three calls, reporters were searching for electrical outlets. More than a few election wrap ups were phoned in from dark hallways or the men's room. I usually did my final report in the car, with the phone plugged into the power outlet for the cigarette lighter - back when cars had cigarette lighters.
Those were the days. And now they're gone.
You see, there's not much call for wall-to-wall team coverage at the local level anymore. Sure, the presidential elections have been controversial gabfests for the national networks and cable news giants. But for many local stations the contest for sheriff or common pleas court judge really isn't worth the bitch calls they'll get breaking into "Dancing With The Stars." So they run a crawl throughout the night. And these days you can get the numbers on any number of websites faster, easier, and more detailed than you'll find anywhere else. And for the reporters, unless you happen to be at a county where the chads are hanging or a 69 year-old poll worker gets lost with the last precinct of ballots, you're done and on your way home by 10:00.
It's all fast and efficient now. And that's the way it ought to be.
But just once more, how I'd like to taste a soggy pizza in a stuffy newsroom after midnight.
There was a time when Election Night meant constant coverage. Local and national anchor teams sat in front of massive maps giving us the state-by-state breakdown, numbers were posted with magnetic numbers on metal boards, rear projection screens, or even black markers on white boards. On radio, you just read the results. But either way, Election Night meant a long night. The news director ordered pizza. You sat in a board of elections lobby gabbing with your fellow reporters, catching up on media gossip while you waited for more precincts to report in. And when they did, the results were usually written on a white board, or a chalk board, or at one courthouse I worked, they used an overhead projector.
On radio, results were phoned in, which meant you had to share the courthouse phones with your journalistic brethren. Banks of phones would be set up for the media, and you would be using them most of the night, as results trickled in from the hand counting of the ballots. During the 80's cell phones starting showing up. Reporters would unfurl their "bag phones" searching for a "hot spot" much the way laptop dogs hunt for WIFI today. Early cell phones went through batteries like the Tasmanian Devil goes through a Golden Coral. After two or three calls, reporters were searching for electrical outlets. More than a few election wrap ups were phoned in from dark hallways or the men's room. I usually did my final report in the car, with the phone plugged into the power outlet for the cigarette lighter - back when cars had cigarette lighters.
Those were the days. And now they're gone.
You see, there's not much call for wall-to-wall team coverage at the local level anymore. Sure, the presidential elections have been controversial gabfests for the national networks and cable news giants. But for many local stations the contest for sheriff or common pleas court judge really isn't worth the bitch calls they'll get breaking into "Dancing With The Stars." So they run a crawl throughout the night. And these days you can get the numbers on any number of websites faster, easier, and more detailed than you'll find anywhere else. And for the reporters, unless you happen to be at a county where the chads are hanging or a 69 year-old poll worker gets lost with the last precinct of ballots, you're done and on your way home by 10:00.
It's all fast and efficient now. And that's the way it ought to be.
But just once more, how I'd like to taste a soggy pizza in a stuffy newsroom after midnight.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Car Toons
Maureen Ryan's "Watcher" article in The Chicago Trib on WHY NBC HATES US? is worth reading. I often wonder the same things as I sit through the prime time schedule in master control. As for the question as to why NBC ordered a full season of "Knight Rider," the answer to that one is easy. Product placement. "Knight Rider" is a barely disguised commercial for the Ford Mustang and other Ford products, romping about in a live action cartoon. You know Ford is ponying up (pun intended) the production costs to make sure the real star of the show gets plenty of screen time.
A writer's observation: notice how the car is gifted with the ability to transform into any four-wheel vehicle of the Ford family - the easier to update the 'Tang to the 2010 model should the need arise, without a plot device. In the original "Knight Rider" KITT had to be wrecked in order to update the Trans Am. (A pointless exercise, since GM product designs tend to evolve at a glacier pace.) Note how KITT has evolved from the 2008 model.
So, if McCain wins the election, will Ford team up with a network to bring back "Maverick?"
A writer's observation: notice how the car is gifted with the ability to transform into any four-wheel vehicle of the Ford family - the easier to update the 'Tang to the 2010 model should the need arise, without a plot device. In the original "Knight Rider" KITT had to be wrecked in order to update the Trans Am. (A pointless exercise, since GM product designs tend to evolve at a glacier pace.) Note how KITT has evolved from the 2008 model.
So, if McCain wins the election, will Ford team up with a network to bring back "Maverick?"
Monday, October 20, 2008
Getting Digital TV On Track
Want to know what the federal government is spending your tax dollars on next? Seems that with all the other things on the minds of Americans these days - the economy, the presidential election, the war, Brittany Spears is number one on the Billboard charts, will there be a Beverly Hills Chihuahua II? - the switch to digital TV is being drowned out. Shocking as this may seem, the ability to watch your local news anchors to comment on Sarah Palin's performance on Saturday Night Live before going to an exclusive report on clipping coupons (mispronounced as "Q-pons.")to save money is not a priority right now.
As I've previously reported on this blog, the persons most likely to find their TV's inoperable after the February 17, 2009 analog cutoff are the poor, the elderly, and the disenfranchised. In order to reach the poor, the government has offered coupons (COO-pons. It's just a rumor, but I've heard if you ask the government for Q-pons they send you to Iraq instead.) To reach the elderly, they run TV spots every ten minutes, thus putting the federal government in the same league with the insurance gecko and the man who starts the commercial by telling me, "I have genital herpes," as the most annoying things on television.
As for the disenfranchised, a new study conducted by your government has determined that "disenfranchised" means people who like to watch loud cars with tacky paint jobs running in circles on a Sunday afternoon. There are two places you can see this: a Wal-mart parking lot, and NASCAR. The Fed chose the latter.
As a result, and I'm not making this up, for three races, the FCC is sponsoring a car in NASCAR. Here's a part of the press release:
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said of the primary sponsorship, “NASCAR fans are known for their avid interest in this sport. Their awareness and responsiveness to NASCAR sponsors is also exceptionally high. I believe this sponsorship is an extremely effective way for the FCC to raise DTV awareness among people of all ages and income levels across the United States who loyally follow one of the most popular sports in America.”
It must've taken a lot of rewriting to get to that from the original idea: in February of 2009, the managers of television stations across the nation are not going to take bitch calls from people who's only mastery of the English language is to put a "3" on the back window.
Of course, the guy I really feel sorry for is David Gilliland, the driver of the number 38 Ford who's car won't bear the insignia of a macho product like Viagra, or Cialis. (But no beer. That sends a bad message to the youth of America.) No. He has to drive around the track in a car that basically says:
Make sure that your visual demodulator is compatible to the ATSC protocal and capable of downcoverting the data stream to an analog NTSC interlaced video composite of 29.97 fps with a frequency modulated aural carrier at 4 MHz above the visual carrier.
Yeah. That'll read good after he kisses the wall in turn three.
As I've previously reported on this blog, the persons most likely to find their TV's inoperable after the February 17, 2009 analog cutoff are the poor, the elderly, and the disenfranchised. In order to reach the poor, the government has offered coupons (COO-pons. It's just a rumor, but I've heard if you ask the government for Q-pons they send you to Iraq instead.) To reach the elderly, they run TV spots every ten minutes, thus putting the federal government in the same league with the insurance gecko and the man who starts the commercial by telling me, "I have genital herpes," as the most annoying things on television.
As for the disenfranchised, a new study conducted by your government has determined that "disenfranchised" means people who like to watch loud cars with tacky paint jobs running in circles on a Sunday afternoon. There are two places you can see this: a Wal-mart parking lot, and NASCAR. The Fed chose the latter.
As a result, and I'm not making this up, for three races, the FCC is sponsoring a car in NASCAR. Here's a part of the press release:
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said of the primary sponsorship, “NASCAR fans are known for their avid interest in this sport. Their awareness and responsiveness to NASCAR sponsors is also exceptionally high. I believe this sponsorship is an extremely effective way for the FCC to raise DTV awareness among people of all ages and income levels across the United States who loyally follow one of the most popular sports in America.”
It must've taken a lot of rewriting to get to that from the original idea: in February of 2009, the managers of television stations across the nation are not going to take bitch calls from people who's only mastery of the English language is to put a "3" on the back window.
Of course, the guy I really feel sorry for is David Gilliland, the driver of the number 38 Ford who's car won't bear the insignia of a macho product like Viagra, or Cialis. (But no beer. That sends a bad message to the youth of America.) No. He has to drive around the track in a car that basically says:
Make sure that your visual demodulator is compatible to the ATSC protocal and capable of downcoverting the data stream to an analog NTSC interlaced video composite of 29.97 fps with a frequency modulated aural carrier at 4 MHz above the visual carrier.
Yeah. That'll read good after he kisses the wall in turn three.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
