Tip O' The Tinfoil Hat to My Friends at Blondesense
They had a very good thread the other day around this beautiful song, by Paul Simon. I've been lucky enough to work for him a few times. Not enough on account of he's a New York City type to the bone, and I'm allergic to the entire east coast, but the times we've been together have been incredible.
I was able to tell him about how he completely disrupted my world when he released Graceland. I had to walk into my house full of instruments and shake my head in amazement and tell them "OK folks, we're starting over." The injection of the African players and arrangements, using the bass guitar as a melody instrument, placing the rhythm chops on the accordian, the astonishing rythmic nuance and harmony, all changed the way I approached my own playing.
Over and over in the music business I have heard the old refrain of "It's all over, because they invented. . ." The stuff they have said about Napster and Peer to Peer systems destroying music is the same stuff they said about CD recorders, Cassette tapes, Reel to Reel tape systems for the home, vinyl records, and even the wax and foil cylinders of Edison. Everything that advanced the technology was going to "end music as a business or profession." None of it did. Things changed, that's all.
I'm in the middle of change myself. I'm having to do some serious financial reorganization. It galls me. Not because I am opposed to change. My life is better because I made the decision to change not only my life, but the fundamental ways that I look at and approach my life. I did it by getting clean and sober through AA almost seventeen years ago. Not only do I know how to change and adapt, I know that it is something that often must be done.
What galls me is that this is being forced upon me because I played by the rules. The foundation of my investment is in commercial real estate. Most of that around San Diego. I wasn't one of the wild eyed speculators who leveraged and mortgaged myself to the hilt. I did it slow and steady. I invested in viable properties, with solid businesses in them. When profits were high I would do things like resurface the parking lot, or put in greener infrastructure like solar panels and things to make the place more sustainable and profitable.
The foundation of the whole system was in equity and sound business. That equity has disappeared. Poof! Vanished. Gone. Maybe forever. Nobody knows. What is certain is that value and worth that I invested in believing it to be conservative, prudent, and sound has evaporated as surely as the blips and pixels of the wildest crackhead Wall Street suits. Gone. All. Gone.
Normally, in a situation of temporary downturn it would be a simple thing to take some of that equity, use it to raise some temporary cash and weather the storm. That's changed. Not only has the majority share of the equity been magicked away, nobody's lending on the weather the storm basis. They don't know how bad this storm is going to be yet.
Frankly, if instead of trying to be a good steward who built wealth on a solid, stable and enduring platform, I had instead flashed blips and pixels around the internet on wild ass schemes that made the dot.com boom look sedate I would have been better off. If I had been a grasping gimme it now greedy son of a bitch who cashed out at every opportunity and stashed the loot offshore I would be in fine shape right now.
That's the galling thing, I'm in trouble because I believed and followed the rules. There's another front that taking place too. San Diego is trying to reconstitute its government after nearly a decade of corruption and looting. Yes, it was done by a series of republican mayors and city council members. They wrote in hefty, rich pensions for themselves and their cronies that were vested in as short as three months. Then, they all cashed out bigtime. At one point the city bonds of San Diego (and normally munis are another investment that is considered to be sound and safe) were downgraded to nearly junk levels. They stole so much upsteam that there was barely enough flow to make mud in the delta. Just like our national, and world economy, the bills came due and there wasn't anything left to pay them with. After wild fantasy games of the rich and famous, reality came to call, and reality is hungry and has teeth.
Now San Diego is having to raise cash for day to day operations. Properties like mine are ripe for governmental takings. I'm not mortgaged to the hilt so there is a strong profit motive to the takers. If my property was taken the takers wouldn't have to share with mortgage bankers and investment types. The margin of say, yet one more property assessment or another increase in trash, and other utility services would be small compared to the value of the siezed property. The very good and sound practices that made me vulnerable to this, are also what make it even more attractive to the vultures. There's a lot of flesh on the bones, all they have to do is manage the death of a thousands cuts and then all the scavengers get to feed.
I'm in the process of writing a long series about Afghanistan. I intend to focus on Alexander the Great and his three year campaign there. We'll start with Epaminondas, because he was the general who, more than anyone else, taught Philip of Macedon. Then, we'll talk about Philip, because without him and the innovations he brought one really cannot understand the revolutionary innovations of Alexander. We'll also talk about Darius and Cyrus of Persia, we'll spend some time with "Chinese" Gordon, Kublai Khan and the Russians. What I hope to demonstrate with this is that we are about to barge into making the exact same mistakes that conquerors and invaders have met in Afghanistan for the last 2,500 years.
Here's the lyrics to Paul's great song. I've been singing it a lot lately.
Words & music by Paul Simon
Many's the time I've been mistaken And many times confused Yes, and I've often felt forsaken And certainly misused Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right I'm just weary to my bones Still, you don't expect to be Bright and bon vivant So far away from home, so far away from home
And I don't know a soul who's not been battered I don't have a friend who feels at ease I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or driven to its knees but it's all right, it's all right for we lived so well so long Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on I wonder what's gone wrong I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong
And I dreamed I was dying I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly And looking back down at me Smiled reassuringly And I dreamed I was flying And high up above my eyes could clearly see The Statue of Liberty Sailing away to sea And I dreamed I was flying
We come on the ship they call the Mayflower We come on the ship that sailed the moon We come in the age's most uncertain hours and sing an American tune Oh, and it's alright, it's all right, it's all right You can't be forever blessed Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day And I'm trying to get some rest That's all I'm trying to get some rest
I Said Someone Would Have To Pinch Me To Prove What Happened On Thursday Was Real. Someone Did. Hand of Sara Robinson pinching mine (LowerManhattanite's) at 8:47 p.m., Thursday, August 28th, 2008. Photo by Jesse “Doc” Wendel.
Those four days in Denver last week (of which I was there for two of them) were a lot of things.
They were...a stupendous triumph of stagecraft, starting with the charming Obama daughters talking to Daddy long-distance onstage as Michelle Obama looked on, right down to the final day's large-scale event-wrangling—Thursday, when Barack Obama spoke at Invesco field.
They were...thanks to the vigorous speeches from Sen. Hillary Clinton, and the former President, Mr. Clinton, a rusted knife in the heart to the so-called “PUMA” (Party Unity My Ass) movement, sprung from the minds of single-issue crypto-racist Dems and rat-fucking wingnuts bent on rending the Democratic party like bleach-softened fabric.
They were...a star-bereft GOP's nightmare, contrasting the oratorical might of Obama2, a vivacious Hillary and typically graceful, but pointed Bill Clinton, a “where the hell was that dude in 2004?” John Kerry, and a peppery Joe Biden with the doddering McCain who would stumble over the syllables in the word “the” with nineteen teleprompters in front of him, and his “yup-yup”-ing running mate, the proudly dim Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as well as the human plywood that is Mitt Romney.
They were not the second coming of “Chicago '68” as Rush Limbaugh and the rest of his doom-wishing, pointy-hooded pals on the right were wearing out pairs of kneecaps praying for. There was no rioting or anything close to it, save for maybe the post Obama-speech parking-lot clusterfuck where media shuttles disaappeared like frosty cans of Coors™ beer down a sweltering mountain man's gullet, leaving people covering the convention stranded for a good while. There was no last-minute, super-delegate chicanery with a “Come to Kleagle” moment where those specially powered functionaries would chuck the “brotha” over the side to the sharks, and feed the tins of caviar rescued from the sinking ship to an “Unsinkable Hillary Clinton”.
And for those most color-struck among us...those for whom Public Enemy's “Fear Of A Black Planet” or Spike Lee's “Do The Right Thing” still elicit a trickle of adrenalined piss down their pasty, bandy legs, it was not the post-OJ verdict “celebration moment” they predicted with Black folks running wild in the streets, just knowing that salvation had come, and with that, the long-awaited forty acres, the mule, a brand-new Cat-i-illac (as interest) and have mercy—some gub'mint he'p with dem bills. “We's rich, bee-yotch!” (Two tugs on the old semi's air-horn please!)
I was there, Thank God, and thanks to you readers, who kicked in during fundraising time and enabled us to go to Denver and cover the convention. We saw and felt. We recorded and remembered.
We experienced.I experienced.
What will always stand out for me, this first political convention I have ever been present for personally, was the variety of people I saw coming together. Oh yes...there were disruptors. Fred Phelps's 'Truck Full O' Hate' garishly “cruised” Denver's downtown, dripping freshly stenciled bigotry, and yes, a few toothless “mountain cats” staggered out of their dens hoping to cause a ruckus in the Mile High City's streets, only to find their raspy yowls drowned out by everything about them.
“Reverend” Fred Phelps' 'Truck Full O' Hate' driving through Denver's downtown 1:55 p.m. Thursday, August 28th, 2008. Photo by LowerManhattanite
But I saw people galore, from every background there in Denver. One thing that I was conditioned to see, I had to pretty much re-think because of reality. I fully expected the gathering to be the usual overwhelming, pink-hued freeze-out that events like this usually are, where dusky faces are picked out by eagle-eyed spotters in network control rooms to focus on from time to time so as to make us feel better about the typical / tragic exclusion. That wasn't the case here. Save for what represented the main-stream media, I was able to spot “chips in the cookie” all over the place—in the delegate crowds, in the blogger ranks (Pam and Terrance from Pam's House Blend, André from Georgia Politics Unfiltered who I thankfully could not help stumbling across repeatedly during my 48 hours in the mountain west clouds.) and among those who simply came 'to see, and to be' as it were. I'll not forget the two women I came across on my turbulent (literally and emotionally) journey home. I found myself on the intra-terminal shuttle at Denver Intl. Airport and in my car there was myself and two Black women. One was a delegate from Maryland who worked tirelessly for the Obama campaign and thanks to her hard work, nabbed a seat at Invesco to see...well, history being made. The other was a woman from Georgia who simply came because according to her, “she just had to be there to see this.” She was no in-campaign functionary. Just a regular person who wanted to experience something. She came without a ticket to Invesco, and knew no one there. but by sheer pluck, and a storm of luck, she wound up winning in the ticket lottery to see the speech in person. The three of us bonded over the “history” of what we'd witnessed.
The Georgia woman wistfully mused “I wish my daddy was here so he could see this”.
Pam's House Blend's Terrance spoke of bringing his son to D.C. come inauguration time “so he could see history” also.
We're not drama queens for seeing the bigness of this casting its shadow over us all.
The realness of what seems poised to happen—an African American being voted into the presidency, while the country's Black population remains at or slightly below it's percentage of the general populace (10-12%) is a soul-deep sea-change for we “who are darker than blue” here in America. I'm not aged, but I'm old enough to where the images of dogs being sicced on folks who look like me for daring to claim their rights as human beings happened in my lifetime. The murder of Martin Luther King Jr, is vivid for me. I can still see the plumes of smoke curlicuing into Harlem's sky as heartbreak and anger set police cars ablaze. My mother and her brothers, scarred by the ugly de-humanizing murder of Emmitt Till, fled the Jim Crow south as fast as Greyhound could take them in the sixties. All of that and more in the years hence—forty-one unpunished shots, the recent years' “noose-a-paloozas”, and Texas' James....Byrd...had pretty much inured us to the certain reality that this country for all its progress was simply not ready for what seems poised to happen in the first week of November. This thinking was not negativity, but simple pragmatism.
Stuff is what stuff is.
You accept reality and make what way you can in spite of it.
There are those who have sought to deny that reality over the years, as a laughable dodge for the soft continuance of the hard policies of state-sanctioned hate, so as to allow cover for their maintaining a self-benefiting status quo.
The reality remained for us. Hard and fast. And so very true. Never mind the clouding bits of stupidity rendered to give lie to the truth. Embarrassing charades like the installation of pitiful cardboard cut-outs of neo-negritude, such as the cipherous Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice. Those condescending plays at egalitarianism only went over with the sooty-handed bigots who will hate “niggers” long after skittering, Strontium 90-ed cockroaches run our post-apocalyptic world, and maybe a few of our more psychologically damaged brothers and sisters—“Stockholmed” to beat the whole damned band. Most folks saw through those moves for the cynical, intelligence-insulting acts they were...these “installations”. They meant nothing.
But Obama's closeness to this “happening” is a game-changer for us all. Black folks primarily. I joked in my post last week about having to be pinched because this could not be real. And yet, one tweak from Sara later, and my eyes and ears having seen and heard what happened there in Denver...it is real.
What does this mean for America?
Is she no longer racist? Will Officer Stacey Koon roll up to Rodney King's doorstep with a fruit basket, a mouthful of “sorrys” and a sackful of dough to settle up for unjustifiably beating him like a murderous, vanquished beast? I think not. We know not.
But this is something huge. Unlike the aforementioned “installations” of half-wit flunkies like Thomas and Rice, the selection of Obama is a consensus choice, and not a dictatorial one by fiat. People...a lot of people want this. And based on the empirical evidence, the majority of the “choosers” are more bubble gum-pink than “Tootsie Roll”-brown. We, as a country move like a massive ship when it comes to righting the wrongs that play to our prejudices. But move we do, as evidenced by the eventual end of Slavery, the extension of the vote to Blacks (and it's torturous journey to true weight) and women and so on. Those events, along with things like Jackie Robinson's shattering of the color barrier in baseball and so on, are seminal events. Hard points in a trail leading to equality. The possibility of Barack Obama's going where admittedly few have dared seeing someone like him go at this point in time is a turning of the corner in American history—if not a 90° degree turn, at least something of an drill-team's oblique move of several noticeable degrees.
Obama At The Podium—One Step Removed at 8:40 p.m., Thursday, August 28th, 2008. Photo by LowerManhattanite
When I saw and heard him wax Kennedy-on-reaching-the-moon-esque on that blue carpeted runway about ending our dependence on foreign oil in a decade, I was struck by his certitude. It was a line in the sand. A bold stroke like that moon-landing pledge, or Reagan's mantra of vanquishing the Soviets. This thing will not happen while he's in office, either . But he was talking in such a confident “this is the plan” / actualizing way that it was almost chilling when you consider its deeper, social implications. A Black man telling America “this is how it's going to be” and him not being felled by violence shortly thereafter is whether you like it or not, a radical departure for the land of the free and the home of the brave, dear readers.
And while I watched that stadium fill up from early that day, till late that night as the strobes and cameras flashed away like neurons firing in some massive hive-mind of peace, love and understanding, that fear I wrote about in January wasn't there in late August. Even with more people around him—twenty times that crowd at least, fear didn't overwhelm me as it did at winter's end in Iowa. Yes, he is NOT bullet-proof, and plots against him will be found out and the players involved—dipshitterifically dumb as they may be will be punished. But again...I did not feel that fear and worry and “brotha in the first reel of a slasher flick” sense of resigned “this-won't-end-well”-ism when I looked at him onstage. It wasn't any sort of overweening, newfound “Super-Pride in America™” either, that melted my realistic, doomsayer's heart.
It was the realization that people had “gotten on board” with him, and let a lot of the old, stupid shit that has so addled this country in its checkered (Black and White graphic pun unintended) 400-plus year history, go, just a bit. A majority of people were seriously listening to him as a person who could lead and help, and for once not looking at him as we have so many times before at those like him, as “that fancy-talkin' nigger” who makes me uncomfortable with my a.) intelligence or lack thereof, b.) my sense of place in the order of things class and race-wise in America, or c.) confronting this country's legacy of injustice. I know what I saw and heard in Denver. And it was not the usual. Whether it was the appreciation-caused temblors that unnerved many of us in the press boxes high above Invesco's playing field, or my catching a prominent, white-haired cable net Beltway regular (who has not been friendly to the Obama candidacy) with his chin in hand “Jack Benny”-style and nodding silent, unconscious approval at Obama's words as he stood two boxes down from us.
The people I saw swelling the ranks walking on the bridge to Invesco to see the speech, and whose numbers on the light rail cars would eventually make clear the reason they call light rail “light rail”—the overload so stressed the system on the C & E Line that it broke down for a while—spanned the rainow gamut, and their zeal to “be there” smacked of them wanting to prove something publicly. They wanted Denver, and all who were watching Denver that night to know that they believed. If not in necessarily in the man, then in the simple idea that something different has to be done in this country and that it at the very least requires someone who was himself different..
And something different is apparently necessary now. This country finds itself like that pitiful drunk who comes to in an piss-reeking alley—bruised, sore, bleeding from places one should not be and covered with ugly, new tattoos we don't understand the provenance of. We have hit rock bottom. The ruined economy. Our evaporated international prestige. A fractured military. The sundered safety net manifested by the post-disaster disaster of Katrina. And so on. This isn't so much an election, as it is an intervention.
AMERICA: (Pushes out chair gingerly, stands and says with a quaver in its voice) “Hello, I'm America. And I've been fucked to all hell by George W. Bush and his Nixon / Ford / Reagan-era retreads rocks-for-brains policies.”
ASSEMBLED COMMON FUCKING SENSE: “Hi, America.”
When you bottom out, anything is possible when it comes to recovery. It can come from anywhere. Any place or person. And history in general—with conservatives' own chronicling being even more blunt (and inherently racism-fueled)—will not be kind to President George W. Bush. Our eight-year bender of rotgut stupid with his leaden hand at the bar will be remembered by those with a keen-ish eye as the catalyst for America's hyper-accelerated move forward in terms of who it shall consider worthy to seat in its most powerful chair. I don't think this country would be remotely ready for a person who looks like, and sounds like Barack Hussein Obama to lead it (and this is no knock against him, just a simple reality), were it not for the “Rick James on Eddie Murphy's Couch” (NSFW!) treatment of this country and all it stands for by this cavalier fool Bush and his pals. He will become the right's poster child for ineptitude because of what he will have cost them, and for the anathema his idiocy has allowed people to “gasp!” consider. Jimmy Carter held that mantle of the ultimate hate-object for them for decades, but has now emerged a senior statesman and humanitarian of the first order. Bush however...will giddily continue to fuck up...as he has for as long as he's been hoped to be responsible. And he will stupidly continue to hammer his own thumb publicly unlike Carter who skillfully drove nails to build homes and eventually rehabilitate a legacy.
Which brings us back to Thursday. And what it meant.
And what it meant I don't think can be boiled down in one essay. It was about an obvious thirst for change and a return to a more caring time. It was about hope. And growth as a nation. It was about America herself, and what she will be and will not be as this new century gathers steam and rolls hard away from the previous one. It was about people traveling thousands of miles without a plan—just to be there. A happening. A call to all that something must happen now or we meet Rome's fate that much earlier. The stumble that goes to a topple, and the topple that becomes a tumble, and that tumble that goes out of control into a sudden flip over a bannister, into a flailing “Ending-of-Die-Hard” free-fall.
It was...a glimmer. A twinkling one, at the end of eight years—fourteen really when you consider the rise of Newt and the religious right in 1994 and how it sidetracked what could have been—or soul-killing, mind-numbing, country-damaging, freedom-fucking dark.
I was there, and I know what I saw. I could empathize with what people felt.
I found myself in Philadelphia's International Airport early on Friday morning, having caught a hellacious and memorable red-eye flight home a little after midnight after the convention's end. I was bleary-eyed, a little sore, and suffering from a delayed bout of Denver-caused altitude sickness that scarily hit me while on the plane. But I saw something as I de-planed to my connecting flight's gate that struck me. Something that book-ended everything perfectly for the trip. You see, aarriving in Denver, I saw the following jokey, pseudo-political ad in the airport about laptop privacy:
And coming home during the stopover in Philly, I saw this through the terminal windows.
Morning in Philadelphia, 6:38 a.m. Friday, August 29h, 2008. Photo by LowerManhattanite
A beautiful sunrise, washing gold over everything. I stood there dazed for a second, and fumbled for my camera and snapped it. Three times. This was the best of them.
I cocked my head sideways, taking it all in from different angles.
“Wow.”, a fellow stopover-flyer said as she looked on. “You snapped a good one.”
“Yeah. It is pretty.” I said.
“City of Brotherly Love.” she mused to no one in particular as she dragged her luggage on by.
And I thought for a moment about where I was...in Philadelphia. The cradle of this country's birth as a nation...rooted (in word, if not in actual fact) in justice...and tolerance...and the quest to be better people, and a better place than from that which the Founding Fathers came.
It was morning. In Philadelphia. And from that point, it soon would be...all over America.
Here in New York City, the media/TV community is a rather smallish one, incestuous in the respect that everyone knows everyone, and when a controversial or buzz-worthy project is being worked on, the industry folk in town hears all about it in short time. You also hear about the internal scuttlebutts at various studios and soundstages, newsrooms and green rooms, and control rooms and executive suites—little things that make you go “Hmmm.”, and big in-house things that make you scream “Oh shit!”—in your head at your “cube”, and out loud in rest room gossip sessions.
I know several people who work at NBC's New York headquarters and have written before about internal goings-on at 30 Rockefeller Center, particularly during the Imus debacle and how the building's e-mail system that day went bonkers from a mass near-mutiny of staffers tap-tap-tapping back and forth between each other in anti-Imus indignation directed at the management.
About a month ago I got wind of some information that I was tempted to go with here at GNB, but refrained from doing so because it could have exposed some people I know to serious scrutiny as sources, and also because so much of it was so-called “Inside Baseball”, in-company whispering that it seemed kind of trivial.
But one piece of the puzzle fell like a lead brick into place a couple of weeks ago, and if you're a semi-close MSNBC viewer, you've probably picked up on something funky in the process of going down on air anyways—so what I'm about to tell you will serve only as confirmation of what you've already gleaned.
Our long, national nightmare that is the execrable, “nails-on-a-chalkboard-piped-through-a-speaker-punctured-P.A. system” “Tucker” show is nearing its end. Now, that's not the puzzle piece yet, merely the picture on the puzzle box of the completed image, so bear with me.
If you read Atrios with any regularity, or the website TV Newser, you've no doubt seen the awful ratings grid indicating the viewership numbers—or lack thereof for Carlson (Not to mention his buddy at the peacock, Chris Matthews, and Headline News' brush-haired waterhead, Glenn Beck).
A visual aid shows the numerical carnage best: (CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE)
Carlson's numbers have been so horrific that his airtime has been drastically diminished in recent months. After the failure of his show's original “prime” incarnation “The Situation” with Tucker Carlson (where he was thrown up against Jon Stewart's “Daily Show” with all of the fairness of a drunken Verne Troyer going one-on-one against an out-for-blood Lebron James), he was demoted to late afternoons with the simplified “Tucker” program, running first at 4 p.m. and then repeated at 6 p.m. Those numbers cratered so deeply that the Network jettisoned the 4 p.m. first-run hour, leaving him with the 6 p.m. show alone. How bad were the numbers? They didn't replace him with another personality—just a continuation of the afternoon live news anchor wheel. Worse yet, there are NO repeats at all for Tucker's show, while Countdown, Hardball, and even Abrams' shows all get late night (between midnight and 4 a.m.) second showings.
The reasons for this are clear to anyone.
Carlson scans as shittily as any cable news personality going. Bill O'Reilly comes across as more personable (!) in comparison to Little Lord Tuckleroy. The words that come to mind in describing him? Smarmy, Snippy, Jerk,Disingenuous, Hypocritical, Spiteful, Whiny, Putird Hack, and yes...a Dick.
Years ago, I was on a debate team, and had a teacher who grew so frustrated with one kid's annoying, self-pitying style that he just stopped the class cold, slumped his shoulders and sighed at my lame-ass classmate, almost moaning “Young man...I-I don't know what's worse...that you argue in such bad faith—or that you argue in bad faith so damned badly.”
That is the “Carlson Problem”. His style is so pedantic, so off-putting, and so transparently mean-spirited that his frustration shows through and alienates him from the viewers.
Which leads us ever closer to that puzzle piece: Air America's Rachel Maddow.
Now Rachel was a frequent guest on Tucker's show, routinely showing up as his Liberal foil—except for one huge problem: she tended to make Tucky look bad on his own show almost every time she was on. She always came off as well-versed, passionate, verrrrrry affable, physically attractive, non-threatening, and most importantly—quick with a response without coming across as a churlish, nyah-nyah-ing prig—unlike her host. And for a while, she was something of a semi-regular guest, mainly because of the Globetrotter (Maddow) versus the Washington Generals (Carlson) entertainmant of an alleged competition that's actually a showcase for a predictable, but fun-to-watch ass-whipping.
Trouble is, the show itself isn't hosted by the ass-whipping Globetrotters—rather, it's a vehicle for a petulant, and increasingly embarrassed “Washington Generals squad”. So with that, Rachel's appearances on the show dropped to almost nil. But other shows on the network picked her up—like a reluctant Chris Matthews, a very receptive “Countdown”, and a “seeing-the-writing-on-the-wall” Dan Abrams.
As if merely icing her out was the magic panacea for all that ails the increasingly puffy-faced former “pundit-kind”.
You see, the quality-level of his guests has hit bottom faster than an anvil in a two-story elevator shaft. The guests you see on these shows for the most part (unless they're promoting a book) rent themselves out relentlessly as talking heads. An Edwards, a Huckabee, a Richardson, et.al. go on these shows when they have a message to get out—but they don't go on shows where the ratings are so awful, or the scope of influence is so narrow that it isn't worth a damn.
This is why Tucker's big “gets” are the likes of Dick Armey (who no one thinks enough of any more to even pun on his name) and Tom Tancredo. These are the under-the-barrel, scrap-noshers, and Tucker's dim, dank alley of a show is where these losers feast.
Now, back to Ms. Maddow.
You might have noticed recently that she has become almost as ubiquitous on the network as her polar opposite Pat Buchanan. She's on at least three nights a week in segments mainly on Countdown or Abrams, and there's a reason for that—viewers like to see her, as well as her ability to hold her own against even multiple ideological opponents (Something you like to see in a host—heh-heh!). In fact. it seems as though someone was trying to ascertain a “Q” rating for her because of plans to...I dunno, maybe do something special with her.
And then, a friend gave me the following news, which I sat on because as much as it had been rumored about town, people knew it would ruffle some feathers as the network was kind of shady in how they set the whole thing up...
Rachel very quietly taped a pilot for MSNBC. And the site TV Newser broke the news publicly.(via Crooks & Liars)
I myself had heard the story several days before (right after Thanksgiving) from a “tech” person over at Peacock Central and that feelers were already going out to the D.C. set to see what the guest “base” could be like for such a show, (which would be co-hosted by the prime-time VP Bill Wolff.)
Needless to say, the members of the MSNBC He-Man Woman Haters Club are NOT happy with seeing their little mascot Tucky about to be wished into the cornfield. The slimy Joe Scarborough is supposedly all pissy about it, and the pan-faced lout Chris Matthews is openly angry about it, as it indicates a further shift from his “Playboy Club—but no icky girllllz unless they're in bunny suits!” idea of a network. Deep in his mayonnaise-clogged gut, you know it ain't just her progressive status gnawing at him. Her also being an out, proud and very telegenic lesbian really flies in the face of his archaic template for cable news punditry.
Note how dismissive and pissy he gets with her in this post-pilot segment from last week when she dares take a slightly snarky, but truthful opinion he doesn't want to even hear:
MATTHEWS: (TO MADDOW) “You are causing trouble here. Because you don't—I would like to put you on—I would like to waterboard you right now because there's no way on God's earth you believe that! Let's go to Matthew for a straight answer!”
How dare you not play along with my masturbatory little game of “I, Kingmaker...interloper!” Matthews is notorious for his constant mewling about safe spaces for asshole-ish, locker room camaraderie and banter, and seeing a fellow unctuous, neanderthal fuck curb-kicked galls the shit out of him. Here's how he feels about that sort of “fun” and how he defends it:
MATTHEWS: Can you be Imus without being Imus? Can he be the brilliant interviewer that he is? Can he be the guy that‘s very thoughtful on certain things, certainly the expert on music and sports and a lot of other areas? Can he be that interested political person and still—and get rid all the Vaudeville and the minstrel show and all the bad stuff?
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MATTHEWS: Can you still be naughty without being naughty? That‘s the question. Can you still have that wonderful male craziness that men love. I‘ve got to tell—I don‘t know if women love it. Men love it. They get out of the house in the morning. They‘ve been with their wife. They love their wife. But they can‘t wait to get in the car and listen to a bunch of crazy guys cow snap for an hour on the way to work. It‘s a locker room environment. But I think the show can work without some of the bad stuff, because I would hear the bad stuff and I would say, oh, am I doing this show?
All Chris needs is the white, short-sleeved shirt, the fine Haband slacks, cheap tie and horn-rims and the look'll be “Falling Down” complete. He's already got the poor, besieged White guy victim act down like a mother-fuck.
In the doubly sweet ironies of the sword of Damocles' descent upon poor Tucker's laddish mane, munch on these:
1.) Maddow's pilot co-star is Bill Wolff, the former producer of “The Situation”, present MSNBC Prime Time VP, and recent daily guest for the last segment on “Tucker”. Can you all say it in your very best Fred Armisen from SNL voice?—“Awk-ward!”
2.) Maddow and Carlson have a wee bit of a grudge/history thing going back a few years when Maddow first came on Air America with Lizz Winstead on the morning show “Unfiltered”. Shortly afterward, Carlson would debut with yet another failing single-season TV vehicle on PBS...entitled “Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered”. There was more than a bit of zinging back and forth between his and Maddow's camps over the “biting” of monikers. Now, something beyond a mere moniker may be “bitten”.
3.) In noting the ratings jump of the network as it does seem to be offering itself as a more progressive alternative to the scrape-knuckled Fox and the wheel-stuck CNN, there has been a bit of a turn in the tenor of chunks of the programming—particularly the one-time, sure-as-gravity wingnuttiness of the network's GM and after-Olbermann air personality Dan Abrams. He's a friend of Tucker's, as is virtually everyone in the media—or rather, a friend of Tucker's dad, a former news anchor, ambassador, Beltway insider (USIA director), and top dog at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and with that friendship came the patronage and protection of the remnants of Tucky's show in spite of his “Babes”-on FOX-level ratings. But Abrams has had to turn his back on the ideals that his dear friend Carlson holds so close to his shriveled heart, as evidenced by his new administration-ragging regular segment “Bush League Justice”. Abrams along with Wolff as execs (in addition to their on-air personality hats) have found themselves responding to the changing tide and new demand to see more progressive viewpoints and lesser batshit winger nattering with the promotion of Maddow and David Shuster, while whittling T.C.'s airtime down from prime, from two hours to one, and from one repeat to zero. Friends are friends, but when your ratings are down 10% while the network's is up 30%, you are a drag, dead weight, a boat anchor...a “black hole” that corporate cries out to get fixed. The little twerp, sensing the “Turk's” call (“Coach wants you...and bring your playbook.”) even stepped out for some CYA time. If you watch the show (“If” being the operative word), you may remember Carlson doing a series of shows from Los Angeles a few months ago. Well...he was there shooting a game show pilot for CBS.
Didn't Ted Baxter do the same thing on Mary Tyler Moore, prompting Lou to derisively taunt Ted with the line “I'm a QUIZ-master!”? How deliciously apt. From newser to schmoozer. “Ted and Tucky sittin' in a tree, S-H-I-L-L-I-N-G!” That'll lay an egomaniac low. Really low.
Tonight, as he was signing off, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson closed by saying, "That does it for us. Thank you for watching as always, we mean that sincerely to all eight of you. We'll be back Monday. Up next, "Hardball" with Chris Matthews. Have a great weekend."
A TVNewser tipster tells us "MSNBC management [is] infuriated" at Tucker's flippant sign-off.
See, Conan O'Brian can make that joke because when he does it, he's being self-deprecating, and playing the populist geek vibe while knowing that he does have a huge popularity and the numbers to back it up. When Tucky does it, he's openly grousing and sticking it to the network that's on his ass by calling attention to a failure. And my sources tell me that “pissed” isn't the word. They're throwing around “unprofessional” and “baby”. Yikes!
But that's okay, because the swirling rumors have triggered—the birth, or rather...stillbirth of a “Save Tucker” online cam-oh, Goddamn! Ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!-cam-cam-paign!
And as the writing's not just on the wall, but scrawled in smoke across the sky and freshly painted in white in the middle of Main Street, we thus see...Rachel's pilot.
My grapevine originally had it a month ago with Tucky being gone by New Year's. the date I'm hearing now is post the Iowa caucuses.
Will it be Rachel taking the slot? Perhaps not a direct 6 p.m. replacement, but the more likely scenario involves a shifting of the schedule, with the “new” show filling the resulting hour-long gap.
However it turns out, there's been a shift of affections over at the peacock—from the failure-magnet “Ted McGinley” of cable news to the peppy, likable, smart and attractive (Yes, I think I have a crush on her—how perfectly un-attainable.) Maddow.
This should be fun to watch...in that fucked-up, “voted-off-the-island” reality-TV kind of way. I just wonder where Tucky's gonna land next? Dancin' on “Soul Train” and workin; the scramble board? Naaaaaah, they finally cancelled ST a couple of years ago. Somewhere on FOX? Sadly, he's so shitty I don't think even they would have him. That game show pilot? Yeah, but only if it's called “Let's Dunk The Jerk”, and Carlson sits over the tank. Where, where, where?
And the truth has a nasty way of sneaking up on you, you know. It'll blackjack you 'round the ear, and send cascades of squishy stars and spirals fluttering down your stun-slammed eyelids. It can sucker-punch you in the kidney, doubling you over as every nerve in your gut turns to just-salted razor wire.
But sometimes...sometimes the truth will just walk up to you out of the blue...opens its arms and says “Hey baby, don't you know me?”
And you step back, maybe blink a couple of times...and then you recognize it, and you step forward and embrace it—all the while going “Wow! It's you!”
I'd like you, the readers to step back and blink those two times to register a truth standing before you as real.
That truth is, that you are beginning to make a difference and that you MATTER.
As participants/co-conspirators in this thing called “blogging”.
You probably wonder why I say this, today. Why I say this now—what with the frustrations of Mukasey, and the war funding bills, and S-CHIP legislation and so on. Well...I say it because it is your support and follow-up action on the things that the multitude of us write that has pushed the debate about those issues to the point where the opposition actually has to work hard and still look bad in their narrow-margin “victories”. And when I say “the opposition”, I include those ostensibly in our own party/supposed ideological bent who whine for a rough-handed GOP reach-around while getting us all fucked.
There is tangible proof that we—you—are beginning to leaden their steps and labor their breathing after having drawn a little blood from their noses beginning late last year.
That proof lay in an old bromide that I just hate...it's so overused. I really hate to toss it out here, except for the fact that it is so true in this instance that it hurts. It was the famous line from Mahatma Gandhi about the pattern of victory over one's opposition:
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Now, take a look at this succession of reports over the last ten days or so, and tell me what stands out.
The incredibly-shrinking president told the Heritage Foundation today about the new target of his ire.
“When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground, and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters.”
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Picking a fight with “MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters” seems like an unusually petty task for a president of the United States.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) accused “left-wing blogs” of making up “conspiracy theories” about the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which passed the Senate last month. It designated part of the Iranian army a terrorist organization. Lieberman called opponents of the amendment “politically paranoid” and “hyper partisan.”
The curmudgeon within apparently got the better of Rove yesterday when he spoke at Yahoo's “Rise Of Citizen 2.0” event. One of his messages to users was that “Blogs give angry people an undeserved voice.” Michael Bassick wrote a full report at techPresident:
“People on the fringe are no longer voiceless,” noted Rove. Blogs have the unintended effect of giving “angry kooks” an “inexpensive soapbox” and a sense of “pseudo-anonymity” that “brings forth the worst angels of our nature.” He trashed Daily Kos and the liberal blogosphere for using more “dirty words” than conservative blogs like Townhall and RedState.
“The netroots, he said, “argue from anger rather than reason.” Many, he believes, blog for “personal release” and not “political persuasion.” He argued that the netroots have been largely ineffective and said MoveOn.org’s inability to end the war proves his point.
Hmmmmmm. Interesting. Comments, Madame Speaker? Matt Stoller wanted a couple on November 5th:
“I just got back from a fancy NYC fundraiser headlined by Nancy Pelosi for Kirsten Gillibrand to which I snagged a ticket. I wanted to ask Pelosi about Al Wynn, and I managed to get a response, though not a nice one.
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I went up to Pelosi after her odd speech to ask her in person about her support for Al Wynn. I said 'I helped organize a fundraiser for Donna Edwards', and I was about to talk about retroactive immunity and ask her to take this as a sign of frustration, as well as to tell her how proud she makes me as the first female Speaker of the House. But the moment I mentioned Al Wynn, Pelosi's whole face abruptly changed, her smile melted away, and she got hostile and said in an icy voice 'I know about that.' She then turned away to talk to someone else. That's happened to me only one other time in politics, when I said to Jerry McNerney that I was a blogger.
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Many of the Democrats in Congress, Pelosi for instance, are insider frustrated. They know something is vaguely wrong somewhere, they know their activists supporters are unhappy, they are still raising lots of money, they know they are in power and feted at fancy breakfasts, and they are unwilling to consider new strategies that actually challenge the constraints they see as permanent.
And when someone else does, they get mean, their face turns cold, and they walk away.
These four instances are not mere coincidence—especially the perfectly sync-ed Bush/Rove/Lieberman bleats. There is a tart, sweat-smell of desperation in their coordinated attacks on this end of the blogosphere, where I write, and you the readers energize. Somebody's getting under somebody else's skin...like a double-barbed fishhook, and hurting the living fuck out of them. Even with the relative legislative ineffectiveness this Congressional cycle, due to a non-super majority—the tea leaves for next November read badly for our polar opposites, and are brewing up nearly Hemlock toxic. It's you and your patronizing places like this one, and Kos, and TPM, FDL, Drifty and TBogg and S,N!, Maha and Atrios and Pandagon and the whole blogroll here and everyplace else on this side of the street. And it's the action you take after reading and communicating. The calls you make, the e-mails you send—the money you use to reward, and to slap down.
We are past the ignore and ridicule phases of Gandhi's progression. It is now the fight section. Claw, spit, kick, slap, eye-gouge and yes, cock-punch time is upon us.
And that's a good thing.
They're calling you out by name, now. No more faceless “Left”. They are being direct in their venom now...because they are desperate. Why else would there be such an odd coordination of attack via shotgun-blast of talking points?
If you didn't matter...“why all the hub-bub, bub?”
And as for Ms. Pelosi, giving Matt the old dry-ice shoulder pad was damned telling. The netroots' backing of Edwards pissed her off to the point where her trademark smiling veneer while dealing with the “loyal opposition” burned away like coastal Cali's “marine layer” under a blazing sun's assault. If the Edwards fundraising wasn't in any way effective, she could have laughed that shit off, pish-posh...
But she couldn't do that, could she? Because again...you, the people on the ground went right around her and dealt directly with who you wanted to. A well-coutured gatekeeper a brick wall is not.
The main thing is, as far as those who have recently done the obligatory rip n' read from the blast-faxes from right-wing headquarters are concerned, you haven't merely annoyed the beast—you snuck in, you took his lunch, peed on his den wall, and then...slapped his cubs around and made them cry. With that, he's now running through the jungle roaring at everything—rocks and tree stumps, but mainly now...at you. At us.
You've got Republicans in droves opting not to run again, flat-out retiring, and some once-safe, now feeling the hot breath of trouble on their crimson necks.
And those who remain in power can only use the numbers games of parliamentary procedure, and the allegiance of the feckless few who rode the progressive waves of last year on barely-visible neo-con water-wings to continue their obstructionism. That too, is a tenous thing.
Thus, the anger. The un-ironic invective (do winners do imvective?) about coarse language on our end from a man who boldly declared, “We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!” of a political opponent.
We were a monolithic “other” to be mocked not so long ago...but now the barbs are more targeted as the right's...a little shaky on their feet. They say “bloggers”, but they mean something more. They mean the entirety of the medium's participants.
Yeah...folks like me, but more importantly, you too.
The so-called “battle” isn't won, though. Dirty tricks abound. Roadblocks and punji-traps like the Net Neutrality battle and the FISA negotiations loom ahead. And still, with that...we're past the condescension of ignore, and ridicule.
It's a good 'ol fight now—and they don't like it. Your feedback, your activism, you did that.
Got 'em callin' us out. Name-checkin' and-and sellin' wolf tickets and what not. You think those three molotovs tossed our—your way in a week's time was a Goddamn coincidence? Shit like that doesn't happen by accident with these people. The truth is in your face, sayin' “Hey baby, don't you know me?”
The truth is that they're bringin' the hate direct, now. Focusing it. Gone is the yawn—It's now, “bring it on!”
“...then they fight you, then you win.”
Bad bloggers! Mean commenters! Angry communities!
Sheeeeeee-it! I'm a let Sister Jill Scott sum it up, ya'll...
BILLY RAY: “Yeah man, the 'greening' of investment holdings, a new social consciousness with the environment and whatnot, an' the people 'bout to curb-kick the GOP oligarchy—”
WINTHORPE: “I meant the steady shutdown of the action of the trading floor at the stock exchange.”
BILLY RAY: “You think I didn't know that? I suppose you also think I should be yellin' 'Where's my hedge fund, M-F'er?” 'cross the exchange floor, too! That's wrong, Louis! That's WRONG!
You probably remember the anti-establishment, and Reaganomics-(and Freaknomics/Bell Curve) repudiating, 80's comedy classic “Trading Places” starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. It was an uproarious send-up of that go-go, “Greed is Good” era, using the worst excesses of the time's amoral capitalism to lay the system bare.
The movie was as funny as all hell, with the hilarious, arch performances of Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy as the craven Duke brothers, and it boasted a bunch of great comic set pieces—Aykroyd's bottom-hitting meltdown at the Dukes Christmas party, the train berth disguise sequence, Al Franken and Tom Davis' turns as the slacker train baggage handlers (dealing with an in-heat gorilla!), and of course, the uproarious trading floor scene in the movie's climax, where Louis (Aykroyd) and Billy Ray (Murphy) swarm into the wild scrum in the exchange's main room. There they were...in the midst of a multitude of crazed people hopping, and waving paper, a din of brokers and pastel-smocked trade reps screaming at the top of their lungs during the “run” on frozen orange juice futures. For many, that scene, as well as other versions of it in other films came to represent what “The Street” was all about.
There was a lot of truth to it. Pre 9-11, when tourists could waltz above the crazy floor, during runs and “bolts” (bear runs “away” from buying), and one could actually see a version of that “Trading Places” exchange lunacy.
But now, more than post 9-11 cosseting has lessened the chances of seeing that snake pit of American capitalism in action. The prevalence of online day trading, and automatic computer curbs on activity when a sell-off goes over the rails has brought about a considerable lessening of the numbers of people actually on the floor. The “zoo” ain't what it was.
If you've watched the business channels over the last few years, you've noticed it. The “madness in the pit” of the last 70 years is done—and because of it, they're actually shrinking the trading floor itself.
But the buzz emanating from its famous trading floor is dying down as computerized trading has rapidly reduced the need for face-to-face transactions. In the next several weeks, the exchange plans to shut two trading rooms that were added decades ago, when its status as the place to buy and sell stocks was unchallenged.
When the latest retreat is complete, the exchange floor will be half the size it was at its peak. The “crowd” — the brokers and clerks on the floor — has dwindled to about 1,700 from a high of more than 3,000. Before the exchange became a public company in 2005, its members controlled 1,366 seats, or licenses to trade. Now, about 800 brokers pay the annual $50,000 fee for a license.
“It is certainly not as crowded as it used to be,” said Doreen Mogavero, 52, a veteran floor broker, who professed faith in the staying power of the downsized trading floor but admitted that she missed the tingle it used to generate. “There was certainly an electricity that you could feel with people running all around.”
And so ends another little piece of New York history. American history, actually. The little things you take for granted, and think will be there forever—the bustle of the traders and the reps, clogging the floor, creating that roar, then filling the side streets like Trinity Place, and the surrounding single block alley/streets during lunchtime or for tremble-fingered (on rough days) smoke breaks. Replaced by...guys at computers, algorithms, and timed buys and sells.
“Sigh!”
We've addressed this sort of thing before—the phenomenon/reality of how our environments—our cities seem to change right under our very feet. Sometimes the change can be for good—like the revamped LIRR terminal at Jamaica Station, or the addition of free WiFi at many of the city's parks (Bryant, Madison, and Central—I've blogged from each one) and sometimes for bad, as in the systematic killing off of places in New York where people, particularly it's young people, can communally engage in recreation—like the closing of the Skate Key, Roxy, and finally the Empire Roller rink.
The well-anesthetized neutering of the Stock Exchange's once wild and wooly floor won't hurt any recreation-starved kids per se, or coarsen a city...but what it does is signal just a bit more, the submerging of the town's sass—it's getting harder and harder to see the city...“sweat”, as it were.
To go all “McLuhan” about it, New York is becoming a cooler, more internal-dealing city—giving up its hot, more extroverted, outré elements more every day. I suppose that makes it an easier-to-digest place for us all, but we are indeed losing something. No one is championing the return of the worst excesses of the city at its anarchic peak, but a certain...“Wonka-ification” has settled in, where the place has become a still-awesome, but chilly place of wonder. It glitters. It's shiny. But less and less, do we see its “stubble”. Increasingly, it is a showplace where the soul is hidden, and at least as far as what's allowed to be seen, run by cookie-cuttered “Oompa-Loompas”.
The city of sharp elbows, “stubble”, and the onion-breath from a just-wolfed hot dog? Gone. Sipowicz's gruff town has been traded in gradually for the buffed, sterile one of Gary Sinise's “CSI-New York”.
Can't front...I'm missing it. And I'm not alone.
And I can't help thinking how much less uproarious that climax of “Trading Places” would be had that pivotal scene been played out on a computer—like much of today's trading—alá Sandra Bullock's now-ridiculous, “thriller/yawner” “The Net”.
WINTHORPE: Think big, think positive, never show any sign of weakness. Always go for the throat. Buy low, sell high. Fear? That's the other guy's problem. Nothing you have ever experienced will prepare you for the absolute carnage you are about to witness. Super Bowl, World Series - they don't know what pressure is. Via this Dual-Xeon powered laptop, it's either kill or be killed. You make no friends on the cyber-floor and you take no prisoners. One minute you're up half a million in nanotech and the next, boom, your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your Maybach. Are you with me?
BILLY RAY: YEAH MAN!. (High fives Winthorpe—then a beat) Hey, is the screen supposed to be blue like that?—”
WINTHORPE: Wha-ohhhhh...fiddlesticks! It crashed! God, I hope there's a free terminal at the internet café down the street. (Beat) It's looking crappy, Billy Ray.
BILLY RAY: (Sighs) Feelin' crappy, Louis.
*Note to readers: I will complete the series on “How Cities Change”, as started on the original “News Blog”. The startup of this NEW place, and the work involved in that, threw things off just a touch timing-wise. But I have not forgotten about it. Be on the lookout later this week for the second installment—Best, LowerManhattanite
