I just returned from the DC Correspondent's Dinner (which I attended as a member of The Creative Coalition, an organization devoted to the restoration of arts funding in education -- more on that later) and as I tried to make sense of the disconcertingly diverse menu (bulgar wheat and crab salad appetizer, steak-fish-chicken entree, all-you-can-drink grain alcohol trough) I realized I was standing at the nexus of the modern American media, the confluence of politics, news and entertainment.
Here, like a virtual Switzerland (even Arianna wore a fetching designer dirndl!), the cream of all three genres mingled freely and giddily, interacting and crossbreeding with no impediments or animosity. It was a scene which would utterly flummox the ideological foot soldiers, whose raised fists, misspelled signs and froth-flecked rants at their feverishly vilified opponents would make one think the United States is on the brink of a major kanipshin. And after all, isn't she?
And then I had my "road to Damascus" moment (thanks to Google Maps) about the Media (or what it has evolved into). Please allow me to explain, using my most florid prose and untethered metaphors.
To a great degree (leaving out the weather, though I am starting to have my doubts about that, too) the Media's goal is to reconfigure a reasonably intelligent citizenry into a panting audience of ravenous, paranoid zombies, create and/or exploit a series of threats for the express purpose of conveniently providing an equally contrived cure for which the zombies will gladly pay, thereby providing the creators with a self-perpetuating surplus.
Sounds like a 1950's drive-in movie monster made from rubber, carpet fringe and several hundred choice pages from Atlas Shrugged.
But it's not. No longer content with analog-era relics like the stolid delivery of the day's events, occasionally interrupted by benign warnings about the evils of "ring around the collar" and other small-potato syndromes which appealed only to a specific demographic of housebound hausfraus and impressionable insomniacs, they have taken it to the next dimension: the large scale construction of a virtually air-tight environment with built-in problems and built-in solutions; an environment, the function of which is predicated on its inhabitants never needing to leave its confines (lest they find out that their "world" is all a bunch of malarkey).
By piggybacking their digital re-creation upon an existing biological infrastructure (hope, expectation, fear, pride, etc.), the consumer (née citizen) twitches to newer, fresher, more profitable monsters, boogie men with beards and bombs and silver-tongued devils who bow and have brown skin.
Taking the lead from the father of modern PR spin-meistering Edward Bernays (...no relation to the sauce), our current crop of media entrepreneurs leave no corner of our culture unexploited. There's juice to be squeezed from every last pixel. In their scrupulously contrived world, there's simply no money in civility, no money in being patient, thrifty and wise. And along with callously herding the minds of American citizens, they are also merely being faithful capitalists, so, really, how bad can they be?
Wait. I'm just passing the last bulgar wheat kernel. Okay.
Now that we've all been edified by these exhaustively researched conclusions what is, as Tiger Woods might have said regarding his trusty mashie, the upshot?
Well, the first thing we need to do is reinstate the one crucial element which has been purposely deleted from the landscape, one which the designers have deemed an impediment to their profit-driven province:
Time.
Time to ponder. Time to analyze. The time which has lately been highjacked by instant action/reaction and sleek, sexy, high-tech impulsiveness that wires behavior formerly regulated by conscience and informed judgment, all to execute its imperative: to consume, consume, consume its products without question.
That's what I saw.
In other words, the truth behind Our American Media (and to a certain extent Our Modern World) lent those who picnicked along the banks of this Foggy Bottom Lake Victoria and dipped their bunion-warped feet into the carbonated, crystalline pool, a cool serenity, a deeply felt reassurance that all our woes as articulated by the talking heads are no more than products on a shelf, produce to be squeezed, thumped and weighed for salad. We ate, we drank, we laughed until our sides ached. It was a massive, delirious circuit-jerk.
That serene reassurance, however, is denied the audience downstream, where the clever constructs become embedded in daily discourse and have real -- not virtual -- consequences.
That said, take a page from our president: stay cool as a cucumber. Use psychological jujitsu. Let the other guys freak. And if you eat bulgar wheat and steak drink a hell of a lot of water.
Follow Steven Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@TheStevenWeber
"...Tutor's tip: A "Bulgar" is a native of Bulgaria, while "bulgur" is cracked wheat..."
It does beg the question about which you might have eaten ...(haha).
It's likely the reason why tabouli has all the tomato and parsley to go with the bulgrrr (new derivative), and I myself prefer adding some diced 'cool head' (cucumber) and light green onion to it also. Served with kabobs, hummus and pita...
Uh oh, that did it...
Now I'll want Middle-Eastern food until I get some, though maybe a falafel or gyros would suffice. Oh well...
Thank you for the 'other look' at the glamour and ...seeming contradictions of the evening, Steven. Your unique perspective is ALWAYS an 'inner' eye-full and greatly appreciated.
Sadly, the only so-called "news" stories fleshed-out and reported on incessantly, are the ones that should be relegated to the "in brief" catagory.
I saw Brian Williams on Rachel Maddow last night, discussing the problem for the media concerning the BP oil spill in the Gulf. Williams lamented that the spill isn't expanding and threatening coastal areas quickly enough, to maintain the continued deserved interest of the news media.
You can almost imagine producers yelling at the oil spill on their screens, "C'mon and destroy something already, or we're back to Tiger Woods and the Leno/Conan spat!"
Your advice to maintain one's cool when all around are losing theirs, is very good advice indeed, Steven. Now if I can only remember to heed it. I guess I'll just have to take the time to practice patience. ;)
Why do they get access to the White House - they are just workers like everyone else except they make more money.
This disgusts me.
Mr. Weber, saw you new series Happy Town, filmed in my home town. Not a good start, but I enjoyed looking at the homes of friends, etc.
Seriously, other that being an avenue of contact with Mr. Weber, what *on Earth* does the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner have to do with the hit new television series, "Happy Town"?!? ("Happy Town", which can be seen on ABC-TV; Wednesdays, 10pm Eastern/9pm Central, is an engrossing, *very scary* mystery series set in Haplin, Minnesota, in which the actor Steven Weber plays John Haplin, who runs the local bread factory and who has suffered a personal loss at the hands of the elusive and terrifying Magic Man...)
Mr. Weber's creative work efforts have nothing to do with the topic at hand here, unless it is to make the point that watching "Happy Town" would have been much preferred to sitting through Leno's jokes at the White House Correspondents' Dinner... seriously.
Well, it's THEIR dinner, they can invite whoever they want.
"Why do they get access to the White House - they are just workers like everyone else except they make more money."
Actually, I think it's the other way around. I'm sure these pols and reporters like having access to celebrities, or they wouldn't be inviting them to THEIR dinner.
"This disgusts me."
There are lots of things worth being disgusted about in the world today. The oil spill, the wars, unemployment, Wall Street and the banks, Sarah Palin earning 12 million bucks in one year for god-knows-what.
A bunch of pols, reporters and celebrities having dinner and yucking it up with Jay Leno, is pretty low on the list of things one should be disgusted by I would think.
And the finale. A cheap shot at Steven's new show. The green (and I don't mean ecology-wise) in all of your comments, is pretty obvious. Perhaps less time spent envying other people with talent and careers, and more time actually developing your own, would be time better spent.
Richard Jewell guilty of it in the court of public opinion and made no apologies and ruined his life.
I hate to correct you Mr. Weber, but there are NO choice pages of anything written by Ayn Rand.
Thank you for pointing out the lemons so we can make some lemonade to sip while we watch the news.
Time is needed.. I agree, but here's where I'm sure we will not agree; the ultimate solution (in addition to time) is Christianity... following Christ's teachings. As always, it IS the answer to ALL of our social problems.
And I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that we are being masterfully manipulated by an entity (the media) driven by greed. It is a "crime" that this once dependable staple of American life has been "hijacked"; it has become yet another tragic casualty of the misuse of the freedoms of capitalism. And, I will say here, ultimately it's another casualty of the descent of Christianity in this country.
Clearly, nothing is safe from capitalistic greed. It's amazing learning of the many ways in which we are "blindsided" by this greed. The latest is the Carbon Credits scam (that Obama is linked to).
I remember when my Dad used to take my brother and I to the county fair every year when we were little. When I saw all the games, and all the colorful and most desirable prizes sitting there waiting for me to win.. I begged my Dad to let me play... I'd say.. "it's so easy.. I can do that!"... "ha ha ha" my dad would respond... and then he would proceed to explain to me the tricks and schemes that those Carnies would use and how I would walk away empty handed.. guaranteed. Of course, I didn't believe him (it looked sooo easy!).. so my Dad wisely decided that his money would be well spent in this case by letting me play. And of course, he was right... I not only walked away empty handed but feeling like a fool... a sucker. That lesson helps me even today, it enables me to see how we are all "suckers" for the most part. That we are literally surrounded by and bombarded by those "carnies" who spend day in and day out, trying to figure out new ways to get our money. And they do get it. The credit card industry is prime evidence of that.
cont..
Bottom line...discernment is a skill that has become more and more necessary in today's world because of the bold manipulative assaults, of the greedy and selfish, that we are increasingly hit with every day. Discernment is clearly necessary, for example, in deciding which government regulations to pass and which not to. All or nothing just won't work. And that is because of human greed, which is unavoidable.
Nowadays, something I cannot stand is cartoons. The weird Comedy Central variety have their moments, but kids' cartoons are awful. Have you ever noticed there is hardly ever any SILENCE? (The same is true in a visual sense.)
We're all growing up with an expectation of constant motion and noise. Back (a short time ago) when I used to have to commute in the mornings, I gawked at the people I saw on the road, 7 a.m., talking on their cell phones. What the hell do you have to talk about at 7 a.m. every morning?!
The answer is what you've discovered: Nothing. Which is what we're consuming to the point of mindlessness, which--like an ugly face made to amuse, grandma warned--might become permanent.
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Indeed they do.
- Tom
"WALL-E". it's a visual aid accompaniment to your post.
Don Henley warned us of talking heads in "Dirty Laundry"; now, with a crisis around every corner, perhaps the song should be renamed "We Want Your Money So We Are Creating Tension & Driving Fear So You Will Be Sure To Tune In Always"... But then, you really couldn't fit that on a record label.
Signed, Raventoo (Young Lady of WLC - peep!)