Conjugating the News

Fourth quarter, first Wednesday

Michael Grant — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 14:49:00 +0000

The Tuesday elections have proven to be a repudiation of George W. Bush and his administration. Democratic and independent candidates carried the day, and Republicans no longer possess a conservative majority in Congress.

Either way, the nation was going to lose. We’ve lost already, and it’s only the first days after Election Day. Bush has a team that knows how to get around Congress, if it has to. If the Bush team doesn’t have a Republican Congress to “work with,” then the team will work without Congress. Loss of a Republican congressional majority has been a repudiation, but only a vocal one. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales will continue on their same path, maybe with more machete work to do on balances of power put in place in 1789, but continuing all the same.

It is this inevitability that is so depressing. It’s like the nation is behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there’s no mercy rule, and nobody can leave until the fat lady sings. If the Congress had remained Republican-controlled after the elections, who knows what the final score might have been? Now that Republicans have lost control – I don’t say, “Democrats have gained control,” because it’s not that black-and-white (or red-and-blue) – but now that Republicans have lost control, the final score, when Bush is finally carried off the field in 2008, may be 150-14.

Surely a non-Republican Congress can scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives won’t get inside the 40-yard line, against an opponent that knows how to use the rules so well.

But who cares? What good are 14 points in the last quarter of a game that was over at the half? In the Congressional locker room, what will the coach say? “Folks, you did your best.” Well, rah rah rah. The stories in the morning papers, when the gun finally sounds in 2008, will be about which nation is bloodied the worst, Iraq or America.

And all we can do is sit in the stands and watch. Can’t leave, can’t get away, can’t go home and fix a martini and turn on the TV and try to forget. Wait til next year? Sheesh. Who wants to watch 2007 in America?

The Bush team has already won. The new Congress, in red jerseys or blue, will be the scrubs, playing out its worst loss in history against the Bush first-string, still sending in a new play every day with a new way to hide the ball until it’s too late. You almost hope all the Republicans had won on Tuesday. Go ahead and shudder at the thought. Or you can shudder at the thought of what the Bush team can do in the fourth period, even ahead 100-0, if it is motivated by a Congress wearing blue jerseys. It would be better to lose, 150-0, with a red congress, than 250-14 with a blue one. Wouldn’t it? Talk about the blues. I got ‘em, baby.

We take what distractions we can find, from the carnage on the field below. The other day a vendor came up the aisle with copies of The New York Times. I bought one, and in it found a column by Thomas L. Friedman, under the headline, “Insulting our troops, and our intelligence.” I have nothing against Republicans, or Republican or conservative philosophy and ideology, or honest Republican elected representatives, or evangelical Christians gay or straight, and I am not energized by the prospects of a party that counts John Kerry among its leaders. I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with a full quarter left to go, reading a Friedman column that is the most succinct expression I have seen, of the way that I feel. Only Friedman is more optimistic than I. He believes Tuesday could make a difference. Remember Andy Griffith’s funny monologue, “What it was, was football”? Well-oiled fellow next to him slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Buddy, have a drink,” only Andy says, “drank.” To you, my seatmates in this stadium from hell, I slap you on the shoulder and say, “Buddy, read Friedman’s column. And have a drank. Have several.”

Fourth quarter

Michael Grant — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 17:40:00 +0000

The Tuesday elections may prove to be a repudiation of George W. Bush and his administration. Or the Republican candidates may carry the day and maintain the conservative majority in Congress.

Either way, the nation is going to lose. We’ve lost already, and it’s only the weekend before Election Day. Bush has a team that knows how to get around Congress, if it has to. If the Bush team doesn’t have a Republican Congress to “work with,” then the team will work without Congress. Loss of a Republican congressional majority will be a repudiation, but only a vocal one. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales will continue on their same path, maybe with more machete work to do on balances of power put in place in 1789, but continuing all the same.

It is this inevitability that is so depressing. It’s like the nation is behind, 100-0, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, there’s no mercy rule, and nobody can leave until the fat lady sings. If the Congress remains Republican-controlled after Tuesday, who knows what the final score will be? If Republicans lose control – I don’t say, “If Democrats gain control,” because it’s not that black-and-white (or red-and-blue) – but if Republicans lose control, the final score, when Bush is finally carried off the field in 2008, may be 150-14.

Surely a non-Republican Congress can scratch out a couple of scores in two years, but most of the drives won’t get inside the 40-yard line, against an opponent that knows how to use the rules so well.

But who cares? What good are 14 points in the last quarter of a game that was over at the half? In the Congressional locker room, what will the coach say? “Folks, you did your best.” Well, rah rah rah. The stories in the morning papers, when the gun finally sounds in 2008, will be about which nation is bloodied the worst, Iraq or America.

And all we can do is sit in the stands and watch. Can’t leave, can’t get away, can’t go home and fix a martini and turn on the TV and try to forget. Wait til next year? Sheesh. Who wants to watch 2007 in America?

The Bush team has already won. The new Congress, in red jerseys or blue, will be the scrubs, playing out its worst loss in history against the Bush first-string, still sending in a new play every day with a new way to hide the ball until it’s too late. You almost hope all the Republicans win on Tuesday. Go ahead and shudder at the thought. Or you can shudder at the thought of what the Bush team can do in the fourth period, even ahead 100-0, if it is motivated by a Congress wearing blue jerseys. It would be better to lose, 150-0, with a red congress, than 250-14 with a blue one. Wouldn’t it? Talk about the blues. I got ‘em, baby.

We take what distractions we can find, from the carnage on the field below. Yesterday a vendor came up the aisle with copies of The New York Times. I bought one, and in it found a column by Thomas L. Friedman, under the headline, “Insulting our troops, and our intelligence.” I have nothing against Republicans, or Republican or conservative philosophy and ideology, or honest Republican elected representatives, or evangelical Christians gay or straight, and I am not energized by the prospects of a party that counts John Kerry among its leaders. I am just an American, sitting in the stands, rooting for a country that is behind 100-0 with a full quarter left to go, reading a Friedman column that is the most succinct expression I have seen, of the way that I feel. Only Friedman is more optimistic than I. He believes Tuesday will make a difference. Remember Andy Griffith’s funny monologue, “What it was, was football”? Well-oiled fellow next to him slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Buddy, have a drink,” only Andy says, “drank.” To you, my seatmates in this stadium from hell, I slap you on the shoulder and say, “Buddy, read Friedman’s column. And have a drank. Have several.”

Conscious Conservatism

Michael Grant — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 01:26:00 +0000

There are Neoconservatives, and President Bush tried to establish a Compassionate Conservative label, but the development that may ease us toward the light at the end of this national sewer we are in is the growing Conscious Conservative movement.

Conscious Conservatives are those conservatives, mainly Republican, who have become compelled by the events of the past five years to start putting some distance between themselves and George W. Bush as their political chief executive. They and he may still share some core ideologies and philosophies, but they have just become too conscious of Iraq and Katrina, cronies doing a heck of a job, executive power grabs, the word “terrorism” as a political tool, dangerous detainee policies, national surveillance practices and end runs on the Constitution. Unconscious Conservatives have witnessed these same things, and some of them may be nervous about Bush, but they wouldn’t give up his guarantees to pro-life, guns, and James Dobson, if Bush declared Congress unconstitutional and locked out the Supreme Court.

The irony is, they can have those things, and a competent chief executive, too, when the nation’s electorate becomes conscious-based, a consciousness that takes into account globalization, and terrorism, and the price of being lured into asymmetric warfare against the wrong enemy. No president may have been available, who could measure up to the demands on this country after 9/11, but President Bush’s record would not be too difficult to top. If consciousness, and not political railroading, had been a feature of the 2000 conventions and election, the nation may still have had a pro-life, evangelical Republican president, whose record today almost certainly would have to be preferable to that of George W. Bush.

Conscious Conservatives may be starting to realize something else. The administration points out, almost every day, that the nation has not been attacked by terrorists since 9/11. The emerging reality is that the 9/11 attack hasn’t ended yet. It was just the starting point, the place in Manhattan where the enemy plunged a syringe into the nation, injecting us with a fear-based virus that set into motion erosive events that are occurring still, unchecked. One such event is the immigration wall measure, that James Goldsborough wrote about last week. Another is the signing yesterday, by President Bush, of law that deprives some people of the habeas corpus rule that is a cornerstone of United States jurisprudence.

Such events don’t affect most of us directly, but they create a climate. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about loving airplanes. I also love anticipating trips on airplanes. We are going on a trip soon, and I was online at the airline Website, looking at the planes we will be on, looking at our seat assignments, looking at maps of our destination airports, and suddenly I stopped and stared at the screen. I could feel somebody out there in the government, feel what it would be like if somebody was watching my clicks, and wondering what I was doing. I remembered what a student told me recently. At the library he checked out a book for a paper he was writing on terrorism. A few days later, the FBI showed up at his door. President Bush likes to ask: do you feel safer than you did five years ago? At that moment, looking at a map of DFW, I had to respond: No. I felt watched. This is an erosive climate. I can feel the fear.

Some of this new cadre of Conscious Conservatives enjoy high position. Every time you see a Republican office-holder trying to distance him- or herself from the president, you are looking at a Conscious Conservative. With the November elections close by, their awareness is apparent. As they reassure their district and state voters that they are not in lock-step with Bush Administration policy, the Conscious Conservative movement grows.

The movement should have the effect of expanding the political middle. Not only Dubya-dubious Republicans, but independents and moderate Democrats could find Conscious Conservative appealing. I feel that I am one of those. I am pro-choice, but I am also pro-state’s rights, pro-less government, pro-taxes, as long as they are fair, pro-Constitution, pro-separation of powers, pro-business, pro-mom, pro-apple pie, pro-flag, a veteran, and pro-faith. If a person is pro-faith, how can he also be pro-choice? It is difficult, yes, but so is the woman’s position, and the decision she must make. Only she should have the right to make it.

Who would our candidate be? I have a feeling he or she would come from the conservative side. I can’t think of any particular Democrat smart and tough and willing and aggressive enough to lead the country at this uniquely difficult time. John Kerry couldn’t even rise to keeping himself from getting swift-boated in 2004, and good old avuncular Al Gore lacks the charisma to galvanize the millions away from the margins of the staunch, even on the left. I’m not sure there is an American alive, Republican or Democrat, who after six years of Bush leadership could step in and do anything but sink up to his or her knees in the Bush muck. Colin Powell is tall, and John McCain has been in very deep muck before, so one of them might be able to find some useful footing.

What we really need is a Dave, like in the movie. Good old Dave. I have been thinking about him ever since Bush turned his back on New Orleans. If indifference were an impeachable offense, Congress could send George Bush winging off to Texas at just about any time. But it’s not, and George W. Bush will be President of the United States for more than two years. The best that Conscious Conservatives can hope for is for Dave, a stand-in with affection for the country and a reasonable idea of what to do next. Where have you gone, George Washington? Wow. George W: from first to worst.

New brother in the club

Michael Grant — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 23:45:00 +0000

Fascinating, this week, to read the story by New York Times travel writer Joe Sharkey, of his experience on an airplane he believed might crash. He was aboard the executive jet, flying above the Amazon forest, that was clipped by a jetliner with 155 people aboard. The jetliner crashed, killing all on board, but Sharkey’s story tells how his damaged aircraft was able to stay airborne until they could find a landing field.

It was the first such experience I had ever read, since the same thing happened to me, almost 50 years ago. On the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 28, 1958, I was on an airplane that I believed was going to crash. For a moment, in fact, I believed it had crashed, and that I must be dead.

I was a sophomore on our district champion high school football team, the Abilene Eagles, and we were flying from Abilene, in West Texas, for a first-round playoff game against Ysleta, an El Paso suburb. We were on two chartered DC-3s, the first team and head coach on the first plane, the scrubs on the second. I was on the second, in the last seat on the right-hand side.

I loved airplanes, knew all the makes and types, liked to go to the Abilene airport and watch the Pioneer Airlines DC-3s come and go. So I knew, that at Big Spring, 100 miles west of Abilene, there was Webb Air Force Base. The base was south of us, to our left, so I got out of my seat and asked the two guys across the aisle if I could lean across and look out their window at the base. There it was, the runway perpendicular to us, maybe five miles away.

In the next instant, without any sense of anything happening, or time passing, I was stuck, spread-eagled, to the ceiling of the airplane. I couldn’t move a finger, couldn’t close my eyes. Directly below my eyes was the window I had been looking out of. Below that was the ground, brown West Texas ranch land, coming up to get me.

In another instant, again without any sense of happening or time, I was on the floor, underneath one of the guys – Graham Holland – I had been leaning over, and on top of us was a lot of stuff, including a long, large, glossy stick, red and white with black marks and numbers on it. Loving airplanes, I knew this was the stick that, at the airport, they used to measure the fuel in the wing tanks. I looked at the stick and thought: this stick is supposed to be outside the airplane. It must mean that I am outside the airplane, too, which means I must be dead. Never having been dead, it made sense that this is what it would look like to a departing spirit: just like life.

But then we started to stir, pick ourselves up. We were flying again, straight and level. It was very quiet on the airplane. The pilot, Charles L. Kageler, came on the intercom. He said we were almost hit by a T-33 jet trainer, taking off from Webb. He said he cut power to his engines, stood the DC-3 (a fabulous airplane) on its left wingtip, and dropped about 1,000 feet. That’s what stuck me to the ceiling. Kageler said the trainer missed us by about 25 feet.

We flew on to El Paso, played the next day, won, 45-0, and flew home without incident. But the people on the airplane that Friday afternoon had become members of a club who know what it is like on an airplane that is about to crash. We knew three things: your life really does pass before your eyes; the ground really does come up to get you; there is no panic, or terror. No one on the airplane yelled, or screamed; it was eerily quiet, during and after.

For 48 years, I believed the absence of terror was because of time. It happened so quickly, the brain couldn’t figure it out. The brain, being a logical instrument, strives to put patterns on everything, but things were happening too fast. I came to believe it was a form of compensation: people who were about to die at least would not die in the indignity of terror.

Now, this week, I read about Joe Sharkey’s experience, a “terrific jolt,” the sight of a wingtip sheared off and the skin of the wing peeling back, losing speed and altitude, and no visible place in the thick rain forest to land. They were in the air for 30 minutes, “the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life,” Sharkey writes. Plenty of time to figure things out. Yet, Sharkey writes: “Amazingly, no one panicked.”

So there must be something else about human beings. We – not our intellect, but our visceral selves – must understand the singularity of life, of being alive, and we are born with an instinct that says such a possession cannot, will not, be taken away. A wingtip is sheared off, the plane is going down, but that’s okay. Plenty of time left. Plenty of fight. I have witnessed some evidence of this. A person is dying, wasted by disease, yet in the last minutes, the final minute, the last seconds, the body is fighting visibly, ferociously, to stay alive, to possess its singularity, until finally it relaxes, takes a deep breath or two, and then surrenders. This thing about life in us makes us all noble. The World Trade Center victims didn’t jump to die. They jumped because it was their last fighting chance to live.

Front Page Values

Michael Grant — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 14:31:00 +0000

People are so funny. They have no idea how a newspaper does its job. Last week, stripped across the top of our local paper, The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Letters page, were letters whining about some of the U-T’s recent choices for front-page stories.

One griped about the huge front-page photo of Padres pitcher Trevor Hoffman, the morning after he broke Lee Smith’s all-time major league record for saves. Another thought the front page should be reserved for international, national or statewide content. A third wondered about showing a photo of San Diego teachers on the front page, where the news of the day should be.

Reader annoyance with editorial decisions is an eternal, fascinating irony. The values and realities that editors use to make their decisions were not created by the media, or by the first newspaper publishers 500 years ago. Those values and realities were created by people, our ancient ancestors, dating all the way back to the caves, and we carry them still, every day, and we know what they are. News values are nothing more than categorization and measurement of the way people react to events, and those reactions began tens of thousands of years before the media came into being. In fact the media came into being simply by adopting those values and turning them into a business. There are 10 such values in all, each measured on a strength of zero to 10. Every value is present in every story in the paper, each on its strength of zero to 10.

When an editor looks at a photo of Trevor Hoffman on the front page of The San Diego Union-Tribune, he or she sees novelty (10), proximity (10), prominence (10), and sensationalism (7 or 8). Timeliness (7) and human interest (about a 6) are there, too, but the others are the big four behind the Trevor photo.

Novelty is the news value invoked by the unusual, the rare (Snow In San Diego!). Setting a record in major league baseball in America is an unusual event. People still talk about Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record. Setting a record for saves hadn’t been done for decades. Novelty insured that the feat was noted in Monday newspapers all over the country, even three paragraphs in The New York Times.

There are two types of proximity: physical and emotional. Physical proximity means the story happened close to you. Hoffman pitches for the Padres, the home-town team. If he pitched for far-away Cleveland, the story would have been three paragraphs on an inside sports page. Emotional proximity is just that: the story is close to your emotions. Little guy vs. big guy, David vs. Goliath, is the classic example, because in our lives we have all been Davids at some point, and we know how it feels. When you read a David and Goliath story, you are reading it because of emotional proximity. The U-T did, this week, miss an emotional proximity story. In yesterday’s Letters page was a short letter, way at the bottom, that wondered why, in its Monday “This day in history” feature, the paper didn’t list the PSA crash here on Sept. 25, 1978 that killed 144 people. I don’t expect an actual story until the next anniversary year, 2008, but I did scan the pages, looking for a mention. When it happened, it was a 10-plus for all the values except progress, probably the biggest news story in San Diego media history.

Prominence is simple: big names make news. Trevor Hoffman is a celebrity, who achieved a novel feat, in his home town. And sensationalism, in its legitimate sense, refers to an event that is sensational. The biggest sensational story that I can remember is the farewell tour of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. His performances were sensational, and they were noted in the media worldwide, as they happened. My biggest personal sensational story is Steve Garvey’s home run (off Lee Smith, incidentally), in Game 4 against the Cubs in 1984. You can ask anyone who was there (all 10 million of them) if they have ever heard a louder roar.

So if people know what these values are, why do they gripe about front-page content selection? They do it because of demographics. Every reader, from highbrow to sports fan, has his or her own list of stories they want to see. It forces editors into choices, which are usually based on another value, consequence: on any given day, which demographic represents the largest number of readers likely to react to this story? It would be good if the paper could get all the news in, every day, but the paper would weigh 20 pounds, they could never sell enough ads, and 90 percent of the content would go unread by any given reader.

The 19-man army

Michael Grant — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:57:00 +0000

What I can’t get over is how Osama bin Laden managed to damage my country so badly with an army of 19 men.

I guess we would have to concede him his victory in New York. That defeat was an awful price to pay for ignoring all the intelligence that pointed to an attack.

After that, though, it wasn’t any time at all before we completely acknowledged his unique (in our battle history) skill and determination as an enemy. We know his tactics and understand his strategy. Why, then, five years later, are we still letting him bleed us?

All terrorists are media experts. They know how to manipulate reaction. They know how to get into the news, get onto television, and stay there. Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building at 9 o’clock on the morning of a sunny day. Bin Laden’s pathetic soldiers flew the airplanes into the towers at 9 on the morning of a sunny day. They did that for an excellent reason. They wanted to give the cameras maximum time to see. The plot just discovered in Britain all involved blowing up planes coming from Europe to the United States. Those are daylight flights. Going the other direction, they all take off in the late afternoon or evening.

Reaction is bin Laden’s sword. At first it was a tiny sword, no bigger than 19 boxcutters being snuck through security. Today the sword is huge, for one simple, maddening reason, one reaction that bin Laden was counting on: we are helping him swing it, with our Iraq war, and Patriot Acts, and surveillance schemes, and end runs on the Constitution, and dissolution of values and principles into so-called correct ideology.

So much damage, that sword has wrought in five years. And now it is so late, and we are bleeding from so many cuts. There must be someone in my country’s leadership who has the skill, intelligence and determination to take the sword out of bin Laden’s hands. But I can’t think of a name. All the famous names, in the national leadership, and I can’t think of one who would know exactly what to do, and how to do it, at this point. It certainly hasn’t been George Bush. He may be the Decider, but what we need desperately is a Uniter.

We need someone to remind us who we are. The Bush administration keeps telling us we’re safer than we were five years ago. I don’t feel safer. There’s this huge sword swinging around. Our leadership, with all its display, is acting just like the terrorist wants us to act, then suggests we are dead wrong if we disagree. It makes all of us out to be acting just like the terrorist wants us to act. But we’re not that way. I watched the buildings burning on Sept. 11, and at some point got on email and messaged everybody I knew that we should think what the terrorists would want us to do, and then do the opposite thing. Nobody objected, or disagreed. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know how to fight a terrorist. We just all need to be brought together in this quiet, firm, fight, and quickly.

Trying to watch football

Michael Grant — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:15:00 +0000

It’s going to be a long football season. I watched part of the Florida State-Miami game on Monday night and was overwhelmed by the production, which shrank the game itself to a relatively calm eye at the center of a hurricane of visuals and sound.

All television sports is being shrunk in this way, by hurricane production values aimed at a target audience of young men and boys who like bells and whistles more than they like blocking and tackling. The commercial breaks are long and frequent, and the commercials are compressed action movies. Everywhere there are tents and bright lights shining down on sideline sets with former coaches and jocks yelling analysis at each other, and into the living room. Somewhere behind all that are the players, trying to keep warm, even in September, for that moment when play is allowed to resume.

I wish football on television was like dinner at a good restaurant used to be, when the food was great and the waiter was invisible, until two seconds before you needed him, and there he was. Today, everyone who watches sports on television eats at Ruby Tuesday’s (where, true to the form, they brag about making hamburgers out of steaks), or does takeout. ESPN has a morning sports talk show called “Cold Pizza,” which nails the demographic exactly.

The better the game, the worse the hurricane. This weekend it’s No. 1 Ohio State at No. 2 Texas. It is a game that should not be scheduled before the first week of October. It is being played the second weekend in September for only two reasons. One, the hurricane has become monstrously hungry over the last few years, with its power to suck millions of young male eyeballs into primo (god, we even start to talk like them) position to view commercials for steak hamburgers and cheap, shiny cars in which to go for six-packs and tomorrow morning’s cold pizza. That is a hunger that needs to be fed by a big game every week. Two, the hurricane is greedy for perfect conditions. If Ohio State and Texas were allowed to go four games into the season, against teams other than Northern Illinois and North Texas, one of them might lose, and they would no longer be No. 1 and No. 2. They might also be undefeated, and much better, more interesting teams with four games under their belts, but that is not a risk worth taking.

Somewhere in there is a game many of us remember, and still want to watch. The rules have been changed a little, to shorten the game. This year, the clock will start at the instant of kickoff, not when the returner catches the ball, and after first downs, the clock starts when the referee spots the football, not when the ball is snapped. Essentially, the new rules take time away from the game to compensate for the extra time the production hurricane is taking for commercials and halftimes. There are, again, only two reasons for that. One, advertisers and television schedulers want their games in three-hour packets, so when games are stacked consecutively, they can stay on schedule. Two, when games start running long, viewers go to sleep, or pass out, which kills the hurricane pretty quickly.

These are all excellent business reasons, when football on television is the business and revenue is the bottom line. Are they professional? Personally, I don’t think so, but I can’t back that up with anything more than an observation. During the Florida State-Miami hurricane, suddenly there were a succession of football coaches – all the head coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference, it turned out – making simple statements, as if to their teams in the locker room, about fair play and sportsmanship. They didn’t look or sound believable. They didn’t even look like they belonged.

Mr. Bush's Katrina timeline

Michael Grant — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 20:57:00 +0000

President Bush is in Mississippi and Louisiana this week, making Katrina anniversary appearances, but it doesn’t count.

When it did count, or could have counted, a year ago, the president was elsewhere.

On Saturday, Aug. 27, 2005, as national television watched Katrina spinning up to full strength in the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said that, in a worst-case scenario, storm surge would sweep past the levees and flood the city with 18 feet of water. Nagin was exploring the idea of ordering a mandatory evacuation. Making matters worse, at least 100,000 people in the city lacked the transportation to get out of town. Nagin said the Superdome might be used as a shelter of last resort for people who had no cars, with city bus pick-up points around New Orleans. “This is not a test,” Nagin said. “This is the real deal.”

On Sunday, Aug. 28, Mayor Nagin said, “We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.” Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. In Crawford, Texas, at the Vacation White House, President Bush declared a state of emergency for the Gulf Coast, an action that cleared the way for immediate federal aid. “We cannot stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities,” he said. The president participated in a videoconference with disaster management officials, and he spoke by telephone with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. FEMA director Michael Brown took up a position in Baton Rouge, north of New Orleans. FEMA started to position water, ice and military rations to points in the Southeast. Thousands of New Orleans residents went to the Superdome.

On Monday, Aug. 29, the hurricane made landfall south of New Orleans at 6 a.m. NBC’s Brian Williams reported from inside the Superdome as winds and rain penetrated its roof. A levee was reported breached, and flood waters gushed into the city. President Bush was flying from Texas to California, where he made a speech on the new Medicare program at a senior center in Rancho Cucamonga. He and Mrs. Bush then flew to the North Island Navy base in Coronado in the afternoon and rode in a motorcade to the Hotel del Coronado.

On Tuesday morning, Aug. 30, 80 percent of New Orleans was under water after multiple levee failures. President Bush made a speech at North Island Naval Air Station in which he compared the Iraq war to World War II. The media focus was almost completely on the New Orleans disaster. “The scope of the catastrophe caught the city by surprise,” reported The New York Times. “A certainly sense of relief that was felt on Monday afternoon, after the eye of the storm swept east of New Orleans, proved cruelly illusory, as authorities and residents woke up Tuesday to a more horrifying result than had been anticipated.” “The magnitude of the situation is untenable,” said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. “It’s just heartbreaking.” During the day, President Bush said he would cut short his vacation and fly back to Washington. He left San Diego and flew back to Crawford.

On Wednesday, Aug. 31, looting was widespread in New Orleans and the atmosphere increasingly hostile. Some of the looting was of emergency supplies. Food, water and ice were not reaching refugees stranded in New Orleans. Reports from the Superdome were horrifying. “A major American city all but disintegrated yesterday,” said the AP. President Bush departed Waco, Texas, in Air Force One, instructing the pilot to overfly New Orleans and the Gulf Coast devastation. A photo, now famous, is taken of the president looking out of the airplane’s window at the wreckage. The plane continues on to Washington, D.C., where the president later said, “We’re dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation’s history. I’m confident that with time you’ll get your life back in order, new communities will flourish, the great city of New Orleans will get back on its feet and America will be a stronger place for it.”

Thursday morning, Sept. 1, the AP reported that “Criticism of the federal response to the most sweeping natural disaster in U.S. history rose to a fever pitch. Some who survived Katrina’s assault Monday died of neglect in the ruins of their homes, on city streets and at New Orleans’ Superdome and convention center.” New Orleans mayor Nagin issued “a desperate SOS.” The White House announced Bush would tour the area Friday.

On Friday morning, Sept. 2, President Bush flew on Air Force One into Mobile Regional Airport: At a briefing there, he spoke the famous line to FEMA director Michael Brown: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

The president toured sites in Alabama and Mississippi and was driven through New Orleans. But he was a day late and a dollar short. The time for him to be on the ground in New Orleans was Tuesday, or at the latest, Wednesday morning. He may not have actually been able to achieve anything, but he would have at least been perceived as doing something, and that would have made all the difference, to us, and to him. Now, a year later, the world might be a different place. But it’s not.

The 9/11 Comic Book

Michael Grant — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 19:24:00 +0000

Texans of my generation, looking at the “9-11 Comic Book,” will instantly remember their 7th grade Texas History class. A comic book was used then, too, to teach history.

The comic book depicted the struggles in 1836, at the Alamo, Goliad and San Jacinto, that brought about the defeat of Santa Anna’s armies that won independence for Texas from Mexico. I don’t remember how the book was bound, or presented, but the pages looked just like the pages of a comic book you would buy at the drugstore.

As far as I know, the information was factual, but obviously the action in the drawings was, by definition, dramatized, simply by bringing the events “to life.” We proceeded through graphic scenes of battle, and preparations for battle, that were seen only by people who were actually there.

I liked the book. It was as professionally drawn as any commercial comic book you could buy. The Texans were portrayed as the good guys, and the Mexicans were the bad guys, the same bias that ultimately came through in print texts, though it became much more vivid in comic book form. I’m sure there is an archive of complaints about that, and I have a query in to the Texas State Historical Association.

Also included were the typical sound effects (“Blam!” “Boom!” “Whoosh!”) common to commercial comic books. I don’t remember any objections to that at the time – we were, after all, reading the book under the direction of educational professionals – and we had all seen and heard similar sound recreations in the movie theaters.

I have already ordered a copy of the 9-11 book, real name “The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation,” by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. If you want to look at it, slate.com is excerpting it, a chapter a day, until Sept. 7. It is definitely a comic book, very well done, but with liberties of style that are raising the question, “Should they be doing this?” Bringing to dramatized life events that occurred in 1836 are one thing, but bringing to dramatized life the battle to take back Flight 93 is something else.

Yes, there are film and video interpretations of that battle, but people are acclimated to seeing drama on a screen one minute, and then allowing that same screen to show them comedy. Our expectations of comic books are less flexible. Unless, of course, you were a Texan in a 7th-grade Texas History class in the 1950s. I realize that citing the Texas educational system does not amount to an overwhelming endorsement for teaching history in comic books, but it has provided that demographic specific flexibility, that others won’t have, when they look at the 9-11 book for the first time.

The comic book simplifies what happened, and that could be interpreted as disrespect. It is also, for better or worse, becoming typical of how Americans receive all their information: there is a short, visual, simplified version, and a long, print version that is as complex as the subject matter requires. Right now, we see the short, visual version on television, with the tease at the end, “For more about this story, go to our Website at www.cbs.com.” At the Website is the long, complex, print version. Both stories have been written by the same reporter. This semester, in my classrooms, as in all the semesters for the last three or four years, I will teach my journalism students how to write both the visual and print stories, because they won’t get hired anywhere if they don’t know how to do both. In fact, pretty soon, the visual (TV) and print (newspapers) mediums will merge, the TV remote will become a mouse also, and at the end of the visual story on the screen, there won’t be a tease, but a link directly to the Website.

I think this is a good thing. It better be, because it is inevitable. I think it is good because the short, visual version always lacks depth. You obtain depth through the print version. Linking them makes perfect sense. That’s why I think the 9-11 comic book is legitimate, and valuable. It is the short, simplified visual version of the longer, extremely complex, print version that, for the time being, is the document of record of an event that we will be a long time understanding.

A good airline story

Michael Grant — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 16:20:00 +0000

On the shelf behind the toilet in our bathroom sits a roll of toilet paper autographed by Herb Kelleher, founder, former CEO and now executive president, of Southwest Airlines.

Actually, this is “Son of Roll.” There was an earlier Herb Kelleher roll that came to me in events initiated in the 1990s by Jim Price, a native of Childress, Texas, living in San Diego. Jim was in labor relations and traveled a lot, up and down California, mostly on Southwest flights. I knew Jim Price from the media ramble in San Diego, and Jim knew Herb Kelleher, knew him well enough to send him a personal letter of complaint about his airline.

Jim told Herb he had flown Southwest faithfully, “but no more,” Jim said, until Southwest corrected the toilet paper feed on its fleet. At present, Jim said, the paper in the airplane lavatories fed over the top. Everyone with any sense knows it should feed off the bottom. I received a copy of the letter, as one who, Jim sensed from knowing me, would have a definite opinion about toilet paper feeds. Immediately I wrote a column for my paper, The San Diego Union, saying what a great guy Jim Price was, but he was dead wrong about the toilet paper, which should always feed over the top, never off the bottom.

The column found its way to Dallas, because several days later I received a congratulatory letter from Herb Kelleher, along with a roll of Scott tissue, autographed on the wrapper by Mr. Kelleher himself. This I displayed in the bathroom for the longest time, until a new cleaning lady took the roll from the shelf behind the toilet, pulled off the wrapper and threw it away, and installed the roll on the dispenser.

I was mortified, but of course it was my own fault, that the cleaning lady didn’t know the roll for what it was.

Now into the picture comes Dr. Ted Martinez, who until last December was president of Grossmont College, where I teach journalism. At that time, the college district board decided not to renew his contract. It was unpleasant for us. Dr. Martinez was much respected by faculty and staff, as an involved, effective, innovative, president. The board was, well, the board. Faculty and staff were surprised and tickled to death when, in January, Dr. Martinez accepted a high-level job – much higher and infinitely more visible than the Grossmont presidency – in the administration of the new San Diego mayor, Jerry Sanders. I wrote a column about that for San Diego’s online newspaper, voiceofsandiego.org.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a voiceofsandiego column about the ongoing debate (60 years now) concerning a new San Diego airport to replace Lindbergh Field. In that column I expressed great affection for Southwest Airlines, and included a mention of the long-lost Herb Kelleher toilet paper.

This week, we got a call from Dr. Martinez. I wasn’t home, so he told Karen who he was and that he and his wife, Lidia, had read the two voiceofsandiego columns, and they had a surprise for me. As they chatted, Dr. Martinez told Karen that Lidia was the California marketing director for Southwest Airlines. I may have known that, but I had forgotten.

Last night they came over, and Lidia, just back from company meetings in Dallas, presented me a roll of Scott tissue, inscribed on the wrapper: “For Emergency Use Only!” And signed by Herb Kelleher. In a brief installation ceremony, we placed it on the ledge behind the toilet. My next stop is Bed, Bath and Beyond, to get a glass or acrylic case for it. Herb sent a letter, too, and I thought about framing it and hanging it above the toilet paper, but that would probably be a bit much.

Flat truth about TV

Michael Grant — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 01:37:00 +0000

When the public knows how the media works, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

Television as we know it is on the way out.

“After the holidays, the days of picture-tube TVs are gone,” a CostCo buyer told The New York Times. “One year from now, we will not sell picture-tube TVs.”

Demand is dropping, he said. Consumers want the new, flat-panel television screens that offer better resolution with their plasma or liquid-crystal displays.

From what I have seen of them in the stores, I wouldn’t mind one myself, but there are a couple of obstacles. One is the price, and even if the price were acceptable, I don’t know where we would put the thing when we got it home. It won’t fit in our entertainment center, which really is about to become a dinosaur in the American living room.

If we take the entertainment center out, what do we do with it? In weekends after next year, are we to join lines of citizens at U-Haul counters, renting a trailer to join processions of vehicles hauling our entertainment centers, like worn-out artillery caissons, to the landfills? If so, how quickly will the landfills reach capacity and close? No, the landfill is not an environmentally reasonable solution.

Will we muscle it out to the patio, and bust it into kindling? I hate to do that to a perfectly good piece of expensive furniture that we have only had a few years.

And if we did, what would we do with the VCR, the DVD player, the receiver-amplifier, the tape deck, and the equalizer? And the passel of CDs and VHS tapes in the bottom drawers, poking their corners out of the dust bunnies?

We are looking at a new entertainment center, built to flat-screen specs, or we could just tear out a living room wall and install built-ins, at which time bringing home a new, flat-screen TV is costing anywhere from $4,000 to $25,000.

Fortunately, our old TV is relatively new and should be fine until well beyond the time the manufacturers stop making replacement parts. If we open a special flat-screen TV with furniture and accessories savings account now, it is possible we could have the money at the end of the approximately four years we have left before the broadcasters are providing signals that our old cathode-ray tube TVs will not accept. By then, Father Joe will have figured out a way to build houses out of old entertainment centers, so that problem will be solved. The old TV itself – actually, we have four old TVs in the house – will be recycled.

We’re going to hold short of remodeling the living room for the new flat-panel TV, even though new homes being built now are all designed around a logical place to position flat-panel screens. In a decade, those spaces will make nice art walls, when flat-panel TVs become dinosaurs – one thing about them, they will stack neatly in the landfills – and the next technology arrives.

I am 63 years old, meaning my lifetime is about to exceed the lifespan of the old TVs, the big-tube consoles and portables that started coming into living rooms in the late 1940s. I remember how to adjust the Channel Master, the horizontal hold, the vertical hold, the brightness, the contrast, and the fine tune knob (for UHF). I like telling my students about watching TV in the 1950s, and watching Channel 9, then clicking the big knob over to Channel 12, and rotating the antenna, adjusting the holds and the fine tune, and sitting down for half an hour until it was time to get up and click back to Channel 9 and watch the black-and-white picture shrivel into electronic dust bunnies until the holds were adjusted back to Channel 9 again.

It is informative to look back 50 years, and describe a TV set then, and now turn around and look forward 50 years, and describe the TV set of 2056. I truly believe – and this may actually happen in my lifetime – that media communications in the future will be conducted through sensors we carry around with us, under the skin somewhere, or in a section in the brain, that will project images and sounds from the inside-out, into our eyes and ears, and simply with a thought, we will change channels, or turn off the TV and listen to music for awhile.

I don’t think I am going to like it, but obviously we have no choice. A couple of years from now, we will have a flat-panel TV, like it or not.

The World Cup is over?

Michael Grant — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:21:00 +0000

What? The Copa Mundial, the World Cup, is over?

It must mean the end of the world is not far behind.

Soccer, not very popular in America, is nevertheless the world’s sport. I imagine it was invented by a mom, the world’s first soccer mom, living long ago in the cradle of civilization, trying to work with kids under her feet. She wound reeds into a ball, threw it outside, and said, “Go play.”

The kids were gone for hours. The game has hardly changed at all. All you need is a ball or, if you are a solo, a ball and a wall. Scoring would not have come along until the dawn of the socio-political era, when it became important that somebody win. Still the kids were gone for hours, because it was hard to kick a ball into a goal through a crowd of kids using only your feet. And mom said, “No hands!” She knew a good thing when she saw it.

Soccer is also the world’s natural sport. It follows, even derives from, the pace of the universe. On the seventh day, God rested, and dreamed up soccer as the earthly symbol for a divine design in which things happen slowly. The universe is 12 billion years old now, and still expanding. It has taken human beings millions of years of evolving to become smart enough to know they have been evolving for millions of years. God is not in a hurry, and neither is soccer.

Millions of Americans love soccer; for awhile, in the 1600s and 1700s, it must have been the only sport in town. But Americans developed a natural impatience, with a tyrannical government to overthrow, a Constitution to get up and running, and a continent to conquer. Europeans, Africans, Asians, have had centuries to settle in; Americans for the last 200 years have been damned busy, and it has made us impatient. We want results. We want scoring.

Scoring is inevitable – witness the “survival of the fittest” evidence – but too much scoring is unnatural. That is not an American failure; cricket is a revered, old-world game in which scoring goes into the hundreds. That is clearly unnatural. In soccer, meanwhile, scoring more than a goal a week starts to strain the ancient, natural cause and effect balance, and most of the world’s population understands that. Points are not scored in soccer; they evolve, like the first mutation in a salamander’s gill from which buds an air sac, leading to a couple of brain cell changes indicating to the salamander that life on land might not be so bad, and then vestigial leg and arm buds follow, the first micro-inch of tail disappears, atoms clump into molecules forming a hair follicle, and so on, until finally Italy takes a shot on goal.

Americans are too impatient for that, unaware that in turning their backs, they are ignoring their own history. And, yet . . . . Watching Italy and France in the championship game – was it only three days ago? – there was the strongest desire, in our living room, to let them play on. They had played for 90 minutes, then 30 minutes of overtime, plus minutes lost to penalties, injuries, etc., and there was a nobility of purpose, and a divinity in the design, that begged to be honored, asking them to play on until the last man standing toed in a goal with his last breath, and God applauded.

Instead, they decided it in 10 minutes, on penalty kicks. Americans like to say that a tie is like “kissing your sister.” To soccer fans, penalty kicks must be like getting Sophia Loren into bed, and then her father walks in.

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 2006

Michael Grant — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 21:03:00 +0000

For people out there who may be identifying with the feelings of Button Gwinnett, and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence in July, 1776, here is the Declaration of Independence edited to reflect your mood in July, 2006 . . .

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any presidential administration becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to reject it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under relative indifference to their rights, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide competent new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these United States in the second administration of George II; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of the United States [George II] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute power over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to the White House only.
He has called together political and legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved the intent of Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people to expect balance of powers;
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be heard; whereby the Legislative powers have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to incessant reminders of all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for acknowledging Judiciary oversight.
He has made Judges dependent on his advocacy alone, for the definition of their offices.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Discomfiture Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these United States, solemnly publish and declare, That these United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent people; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Rovian doctrine, and that all political connection between them and the State of government under George II, is and ought to be totally contested, with vigor and firm reliance; and to this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our Efforts, our Fortunes, and our Hearts and Minds, to an outcome in November, 2006, and again in November, 2008, that will bring peace and independence to a nation returned to the rule of laws, and not of men.

Disgrace and irresponsibility

Michael Grant — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:15:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

Last Friday, The New York Times led the way in publishing information about a secret government program “to investigate and track terrorists that relies on a vast international database that includes Americans’ banking transactions.”

On Monday, in Washington, President Bush said the disclosure was “disgraceful.”

Saying such a thing is, of course, irresponsible. It is not a heinous irresponsibility, though Mr. Bush has proven himself capable of that level of irresponsibility (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”) There never was a president who didn’t seek to politicize the media, when it suited that president’s agenda and political needs. Labeling the press as irresponsible is a way of life in the government-media relationship. It’s the same as saying to the cop who is giving you the speeding ticket, “Don’t you have criminals to chase?”

It doesn’t hurt, though, to point out this mild presidential irresponsibility, when it happens. Like a bad writer with a metaphor, President Bush will beat a media disgrace to death, with a certain constituency latching on to the irrelevance like bulldogs, as Ann Coulter’s rise this week to the top of the best-seller list proves.

Presidents when they say these sorts of things are being irresponsible to the basic fabric of the republic. Thomas Jefferson, a president of the United States, had disagreeable things to say about the media, but he also understood the reality.

“The basis of our government being the opinion of the people,” he wrote, in 1787, “the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Interesting that Jefferson wrote this in January, 1787, several months before the convening of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. It illuminates a basic truth about freedom of the press in America, that would become spelled out so clearly in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Abbreviated to the business at hand, the First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” The key word in the amendment is “abridging,” which means “to reduce in scope; to shorten in duration or extent.”

Its presence in the First Amendment meant the founding fathers must have understood that freedom of the press already existed in America. Freedom of the press predated the Constitution, which simply confirmed its eminence as a cornerstone in a free society.

That is awesome power, and yes, the power has been abused, and the abuses have been met with correction, both in the courts and in the court of public opinion. The basic power remains unchanged, and as eminent a cornerstone of American society as was confirmed in 1787 and 1789.

The failure of a president of the United States to acknowledge that power, and its role in the society and its governance, is irresponsible. Mundanely so, perhaps, but always worth noting. Mr. Bush, particularly, would serve himself well to embrace that reality, instead of looking for paths around it. There are no paths around the role of the American press. If he understood that, he would know that a program the size of tracking international financial transactions would not remain a secret for long, and he could plan accordingly, on the basis of our government being an opinion of the people.

The truth about Paris

Michael Grant — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 16:53:00 +0000

I look at Paris Hilton and can’t for the life of me understand what people find so exciting about her.

Paris Hilton looks at a picture of me and says there is not a single reason on earth why she should try to excite me.

Her view is closer to the truth than mine.

Sigh. I live in an old world. My biggest entertainment excitement of the summer is wondering if the CBS Evening News will start showing car commercials when Katie Couric takes the anchor seat in September. It would be the first time since 1993 that the advertising world believes I might actually be interested in buying something you can’t find in a drugstore.

Paris isn’t the narcissistic one. Well, yes she is. Narcissism is her business, and she is very good at it. She was shopping in New York City not long ago, trying on shoes, and one pair she was looking at cost $1,000. She argued to the management that she should be given the shoes, because when others saw her wearing them, they would come in and buy a pair, too. For the $1,000 investment, they might get $15,000 back. They gave her the shoes.

But in our unique relationship, Paris isn’t the narcissistic one; I am. Mine is a narcissism of time and place. The time I was 15, or 20, or 25, was the best time in all of history to be 15, 20, or 25, and if everyone understood that, what a wonderful world it would be.

I need to go sit in a large mall for a couple of hours every day, until I reach a point where I can acknowledge that youth has changed. I just need to let go of June Allyson, Phyllis Thaxter, Donna Reed, Wanda Hendrix and even Jean Arthur, as the femme for whom the hero eventually falls. June Allyson sets a good example. June Allyson has grown up; the last time I saw her on a screen, she was selling incontinence apparel.

I need to follow her lead, start to live in 2006, and let Paris be Paris. Matt Leinart has fallen for her, and he certainly is not George Gipp or Monty Stratton or Glenn Miller or an F-86 Sabre fighter pilot with seven kills over Korea. Matt Leinart, falling for Phyllix Thaxter? I need to give myself a break. In a recent Sunday supplement magazine, some fossil in his own recliner at home took a big gulp off his oxygen bottle and wrote Walter Scott’s Personality Parade, wondering, “Why would quarterback Matt Leinart, the 2004 Heisman Trophy winner, who is going to make millions playing for the Arizona Cardinals, hook up with a total airhead like Paris Hilton?” Walter’s reply: “Because he likes tall blondes and L.A.’s club scene. Next question?”

Thank you, Walter. Your answer was like a pail of cold water thrown in my face. Mattworld and Parisville are not strange places at all, in 2006. I am the one who is strange. I am the anomaly, not Paris.

The mall looks so strange to me because I am the only one sitting on the lip of the planter box with my bermudas buttoned at my waist, the hems above my knees, my shirt cut to fit my size, my baseball cap on frontwards, no tattoo on my body, and my cellphone on the kitchen counter at home. From my narcissist 1959 fortress I will peer through a portal at 2006 for an hour today, maybe a little longer tomorrow, and when I am finished I will go over to Marie Callendar’s for a martini and some oatmeal.

An Ann Coulter opportunity

Michael Grant — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:48:00 +0000

Reading Ann Coulter reminds me of watching MTV. I didn’t want to watch MTV, but I felt like I had to, because when my kids were 10 and 15, it was a way to find out what was going on in their world.

Ann Coulter’s point of view is way too out of balance to the right to interest me as reading material, but it would be a way to find out what is going on in that world. She enjoys quite a constituency, I am told, and based on what she is writing and they are buying lately, that world is worth keeping an eye on.

I won’t read her if I don’t have to, and apparently there are sufficient reviewers, critics and other political writers to do that heavy work for me. In several places this past week I have seen reviews and commentary on what Coulter has to say, in her new book, about women who lost their husbands in the Sept. 11 attacks.

“These broads are millionaires,” she writes, “lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much.”

She says that like it is a bad thing.

By coincidence, last night on television was a 1990s docudrama (based on real events) about a woman whose husband is killed and her son gravely wounded in December, 1993, by a man walking down the aisle of a Long Island commuter train, firing randomly from a 15-round assault weapon.

At the instant their names are known, the widow-mom, whose name is Carolyn McCarthy, becomes a celebrity. The movie makes a point of the media following her everywhere. She resists her celebrity, insisting she be allowed to focus on her grief, and her son’s survival and, later (she is a nurse), his recovery. She refuses entreaties to become part of a movement to get a bill through Congress banning 19 types of assault weapons.

Finally, though, confronted by the damage a single crazed person can do, when he is armed with an assault weapon, she joins the movement, lobbies hard for it in congressional corridors, lobbies and offices, and uses her celebrity – she is no fool – at every media opportunity. The bill passes. Later it is repealed, by – the movie maintains – Republican legislators lobbied hard by the National Rifle Association.

The movie ends with McCarthy switching parties, from Republican to Democrat, running for Congress against an incumbent Republican, and winning. McCarthy is now in her fourth term in the House of Representatives. Among her honors: Newsday's 100 Long Island Influentials, Long Island Business News' Long Island Top 50, Congressional Quarterly's 50 Most Effective Legislators, Redbook Magazine's Mothers and Shakers, Ladies' Home Journal 100 Most Important Women, and Advertising Age's list of "Most Impact by Women in 1999," and The American Organization of Nurse Executives' 2003 Honorary Member Award. McCarthy’s son, Kevin, is married and has two children.

Watching the credits roll, I felt like I had just been reading about her. It was the Coulter quote. Carolyn McCarthy’s profile matches those of the Sept. 11 widow-moms. The way their husbands died made them all instant celebrities, stalked by grief-arrazis, and lionized on TV. They may not have liked it, but there was nothing they could do about it except beg to be left alone.

At that point, they had a choice: sink, or rise. All bereaved people, whether celebrities or anonymous (beloved husband and father, maintenance supervisor, dies of prostate cancer), arrive at that choice. Most choose to rise, move on, find a new life where waits meaning and enjoyment of some kind. I have made that trip myself in the last six years, and I can tell you, it is the only way to go. I have emerged into a life that is overflowing with meaning and enjoyment.

Celebrities of the McCarthy and Sept. 11 caliber are, by their circumstances, automatically anointed with power. It is their choice to let that power sink, or rise. McCarthy chose rise, and so did the Sept. 11 women that Coulter mentions: Kristen Breitweiser, Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg and Patty Casazza, all from New Jersey (Coulter lumps them as “The Witches of East Brunswick”), all familiar in D.C. politics now for advocacy and accountability related to the way their husbands died. Karen, my wife, makes a point worth considering: it is not the women, but their power, that Coulter attacks.

Would they prefer to be home with their husbands? Ask any Sept. 11 survivor: it is a moot point. This world is this world, and in it, you sink, or you rise. Coulter’s business model is so well-known, like MTV’s – be outrageous, sell product – that her words about the widows lose meaning in their transparency, at least out here in Balanceville. This blog is not about her. It is an opportunity provided by her, for a survivors proxy to give a nod to all survivors who choose to rise, that is too good to pass up.

Katie at CBS

Michael Grant — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 17:35:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

Some people love Katie Couric, some people can’t stand her.

In my opinion, she is a regular person with very good news sense, and a totally commercial personality. Most of all, she is a gamer. A gamer is a player who always shows up when the chips are down. Joe Montana was a gamer. Reggie Jackson was a gamer. Tony Gwynn was a gamer.

A gamer in television news who is also a totally commercial personality is worth her weight in gold. If Katie weighs 130 pounds, and gold is $650 an ounce, Katie in gold is worth $1,352,000, a month, which is just about what CBS is paying her to become anchor of the Evening News, which is just about right. CBS isn’t paying her all that money because some people love her. CBS just wants the Evening News to improve in the ratings, so advertisers will pay more, and CBS and National Amusements will make more money.

It’s always all about money. If the criterion is content, or meaning to the world, The Today Show essentially is insignificant. If the criterion is money, The Today Show is the most lucrative programming on television, and that’s what made Katie so valuable. We can just be grateful she’s also a gamer. I’ll bet there isn’t a newspaper publisher in the country who wouldn’t pay an arm and a leg (somewhere in the middle-upper five figures, in newspaper values) to have a Katie Couric clone covering City Hall.

The CBS Evening News will be different with Katie as anchor. At least it better be. Having Katie Couric read news is like having Greg Maddux pitch batting practice. She is going to be an interviewer as well as an anchor, and she will be reporting live a lot, both hard and soft news, even the very soft but compelling stories that Charles Kuralt used to find. I can’t see this new show being contained to a half-hour. I wonder if the CBS Evening News will be expanded to an hour and become a fusion of the old Evening News, the Jim Lehrer News Hour without the propriety, and “On the Road.”

CBS has to figure out a legitimate way to keep Katie’s totally commercial personality on the field. That is where her everyday value is. Being a gamer is great, but a gamer shows up only in the really great games, and there aren’t too many of those in the daily news, thank God. If CBS is going to get its bang for the buck, she is going to have to emerge, somehow, in the viewer’s mind as “America’s Evening News Sweetheart,” highly likeable, highly mobile, highly diversified, and highly respected. God help them if they advertise her that way, but that is the end effect of putting all her skills to use, as ways to maximize ratings, which is the only thing that matters.

Looking for a domino

Michael Grant — Wed, 17 May 2006 19:07:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

Yes, I know, if circumstances bring about the resignation of George W. Bush, that means you-know-who becomes president.

It reminds me of Spiro T. Agnew. Remember him? He was Richard Nixon’s vice-president and chief spokesman. That administration, like the present one, didn’t much care for the media, whom Agnew called, “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Or maybe that was Democrats, and the media was the “effete corps of impudent snobs.” They all started to run together.

We always loved to see Spiro T. Agnew coming. But he resigned the vice-presidency in 1973 because of trouble with the law involving tax evasion and bribery while he was governor of Maryland. Imagine the nation’s relief, the following year, when Mr. Nixon resigned and Spiro T. Agnew did not become the President of the United States.

We – people like me – now are learning to hold our breath about Dick Cheney, whose sole contacts of any kind with our world are Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and, in emergencies, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. If the best thing that can happen for people like me is Mr. Bush’s resignation, what do we do about waking up the next morning and being addressed by President Dick Cheney in a Fox News exclusive?

Mr. Nixon presents our only workable precedent, choosing resignation as the lesser of two disgraces, and claiming loss of his political base in Congress as the reason. I remember many of us wishing he had just gone on and admitted knowing about the break-in and obstructing justice, but it was good enough for us, and bad enough, really traumatic, that he was gone and we could move on. As spanking new President Gerald R. Ford said, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.”

People like me have a hard time imagining President Dick Cheney saying something like that. Then again, we don’t know what Cheney would say, or not say, as president. He works, after all, for the President of the United States, whose attributes do not include a frankness in speaking, or an even temper. It would be very interesting to see the extemporaneous Cheney, with the Bush bubble lifted and blown away.

Bush’s baggage is his baggage. Whatever disgrace surfaced that would encourage Mr. Bush, like Mr. Nixon, to choose the lesser disgrace, would remain in place the day after Mr. Bush’s departure for Crawford, sitting there for President Cheney to explain, on the stage of an appalled nation and a hostile Congress. If I were Cheney, facing that, I might go ahead and resign, too, citing the hostile Congress, and fly off to Halliburton and a book contract, and let Dennis Hastert take care of the mess.

“Take care of the mess.” Those are inviting words, traumatic as it promises to be. Underneath the mess, the Constitution still works, and the Republic is only temporarily a government of men and not of laws. We just need a domino to fall.
©Michael Grant 2006

What do we do now?

Michael Grant — Mon, 15 May 2006 00:07:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

The best thing that can happen for people like me is for President Bush to lose his political base in Congress. He seems to be doing a good job of this.
Richard Nixon, a smoking gun aimed at his heart, used the “power base” option when he resigned the presidency in 1974. “Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate,” he said in his resignation speech, “I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me . . . however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. . . From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require.
“I have never been a quitter,” he said. “To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.”
Losing his political base in Congress gave Richard Nixon an out. It is the best hope that we – people like me – have, to be rid of President Bush before the 2008 election. It is not a happy option for us, or anybody. We wish, instead of hoping for his resignation, that we were cheering his presidency.
Instead, we believe that President Bush does not care about us. We are the people in the first three words of the preamble to the Constitution. We are Democrats, Republicans, independents, people who write letters to the editor – I read one this morning – thinking that creation of a third party, a party dedicated to democratic process, is our best resort. We are not polarized politically, or even ideologically. After five years of Mr. Bush, we are polarized chronologically. We are polarized against the past, and for the future.
For us, “the future is now” could not be soon enough. We know Mr. Bush does not care about us. We also know that is the second-worst thing about it. The worst thing is if he DID care for us. It is no solace to us if his millions of supporters are getting nervous. They are no less stuck with his incompetence and, worse, his indifference, than we are. They are no less betrayed than we, who are mobilizing in an unprecedented way to the news about the phone call database.
His rationale is national security. Whose? Ours? If the principle of six degrees of separation is valid, the millions of us are connected, in this database, to target numbers. How do we feel about that? Are we ready to trade privacy for inquisition? What is the price paid, in lost freedom and confidence, in Mr. Bush’s effort to find a needle in a haystack? In the summer of 2001, according to the analyses, his administration couldn’t find a needle in a candybar. That must be a difficult reality for a president to live with, but not justification to end-run the checks and balances that are the real source of our security.
God knows George W. Bush is not a quitter. He may, though, after the phone thing is weighed against the Fourth Amendment, be nearing the point where the political base convinces him that the easy way out, for him, for them, and for us, as traumatic as it may be, is, as Mr. Nixon counseled, “to put the interests of America first,” and get the hell out.

A terrible "United 93" gaffe

Michael Grant — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 17:30:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

The movie “United 93,” about passengers trying to take back one of the airliners hijacked on the morning of 9/11, was released nationally on Friday. All the reviews and talk shows described it as a highly charged event, so very personal to the survivors, and difficult for anyone to watch.

I looked at the full-page ad yesterday (Friday) morning, in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. And I said, “Uh-oh.”

The ad showed the image of an aircraft, taking off, its landing gear still down. At its wingtips were V-shaped vanes, that immediately identified the aircraft as an Airbus product.

The United 93 flight was not an Airbus, but a Boeing 757. What a terrible gaffe. A major movie company does its best to re-create in detail the awful events of United 93, trying to honor the heroism and deaths of those people who defied the hijackers, and then puts the wrong aircraft in the ads distributed to the national print media.

This morning, Saturday, the ad in The New York Times showed the same airplane, but with the vanes airbrushed out. So I wasn’t the only one (how could I be?) to catch the mistake. But it is still an Airbus, one of the short-range versions, in the ad. You can’t airbrush an entire aircraft out of a movie ad, and there wasn’t time, apparently, to recreate the ad with a 757.

The ads should have been pulled entirely. As it is, in tomorrow’s Times, look for the ad either to be pulled, or for more airbrushing. This morning, the aircraft in the ad has a single set (two wheels, side-by-side) of left and right landing gear. A 757 has dual sets of main landing gear.
©Michael Grant 2006

Invasion of the Word Snatchers

Michael Grant — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 16:59:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

Four score and seven years ago, there didn’t seem to be near as much plagiarism in this country.

Call me Ishmael, but I think it’s on the rise.

The latest is the case of the Harvard sophomore, Kaayva Viswanathan, who was profiled in The New York Times just last week. Only 19, she had published her first novel, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.” This week, she is in the news because numerous passages in “How Opal” bear eerie likeness to passages in two earlier novels, “Sloppy Firsts” and “Second Helpings,” by Megan McCafferty. (If you ask me, she should have lifted McCafferty’s titles as well, but that’s another story.)

How did it happen? It happened like it always happens, one little white lie at a time, on this mortal coil with its myriad valleys and vales of tears. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

The author said she loved “Sloppy Firsts” and “Second Helpings” and just didn’t realize how she might have internalized their words. How true, that the world might little note, nor long remember, what McCafferty said there. It very well could have been any port in a storm, when in the course of human events it became necessary to really hustle to beat a publisher’s deadline. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, except when you are a college freshman who is five chapters behind on her first novel, with term papers and midterms staring you in your pretty face, a face that could launch a thousand ships, if only the seas were calm, and the tradewinds fair.

Or it could have been money. Filthy lucre. Money is the root of all evil. She was paid $500,000 for “How Opal,” which means she wasn’t going to have to furnish off her apartment with a two-room Roebuck sale. Temptation, thy name is avarice. Greed is a heartless tyrant, when it has you by the loins, and truth a lonely hunter.

Whither honesty? To be, or not to be, that is the question. In what degree of mind does it happen, that the route to happiness is seen to be paved with the golden tiles of another’s words? Might it not be that others have traveled that route exactly, with nothing more than surcease to gain?

O wretched occurrence! Such was the fate of young Viswanathan, when forward stepped that traveler who, on stopping by a prose freshet on a snowy evening, perceived ineluctably to have encountered that very freshet on journeys prior.

Now the young author finds herself centered on the hot griddle of suspicion which, I would hope, would cleanse her thinking, even in the knowledge that in the new publishing texts, suspicion (it tortures my heart) is identified as the favored strategy to increase sales. Now and then, there’s a fool such as I.

Yet, hope springs eternal. The sun also rises, on the bad and the beautiful, from purple mountain majesty across the fruited plain, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Yea, though we the people walk through the valley of the shadow of having no self-respect at all, Karen, my spousal unit, in the thunder that comes at dawn, looked up from reading all the news that’s fit to print and cried, “Tomorrow is another day!”
©Michael Grant 2006

The U-T wins a Pulitzer

Michael Grant — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:25:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

Wow. The San Diego Union-Tribune has won the Pulitzer Prize. Wow. It’s all I can say.

It is a personal reaction. I worked for the old San Diego Union, the morning paper, for 20 years. When I first reported for work, in the summer of 1972, the Union, and her sister the Evening Tribune, were still in the “old building” downtown, at the corner of Second and Broadway. We parked on the street in those days and went down every two hours to feed the meter. The desks were crammed in so tight, you had to climb into your chair like a fighter pilot into a cockpit. We used typewriters. On the copy desk were scissors and paste pots. In the wire room, the teletypes of AP and UPI brought word in from around the world in a measured, contrapunctal rhythm I can still hear in my bones.

I am fortunate to be just old enough to have rubbed elbows with the last of the glamorous old school of journalists, the green-eyeshade, red-eyeball guys. Not old enough to have actually known a rewrite man or, the mother of all wishes, to have become one, but old enough to work with some people who did.

Those guys felt about journalism the way Texans feel about the Alamo. Hell, all of us out on the city room floor would draw swords for journalism. But the Union, in 1972, was not a very good paper. There are editors from that era who are still alive and can give you the story from inside the managers’ cloakroom. My recollections, the source of my “Wow” reaction this week, all come from the floor, or the street.

The Union didn’t command much respect, in my experience. I dreaded going to press conferences, and watching other reporters feign surprise, and inquire with an evil grin, “What’s the Union doing here?”

Ask somebody else about the politics and the policies in those days. My impression, and it is my own impression, from the reporter’s side, came to be that the Union was the morning newspaper for a bubble world, inside which mostly good news happened, nobody in the community was accountable for anything, God was a Republican, and if people wanted bad news, or news about Democrats, why, they could buy the L.A. Times.

In everyday reporting life, it worked this way. I was assigned one night to cover a speech being given by a major Marxist intellectual at UCSD, where Herbert Marcuse was on the faculty. “Give me a 12-inch story,” said the night ACE (assistant city editor) as I headed for the door. “No quotes.” The Marxist talked for more than two hours. When I stood up to leave, I was surprised my body parted easily from the chair.

Back at the office, I pounded out 12 inches, no quotes, gave it to the ACE. A minute later, he called me over. “Take out this, this, and this,” he said, checking grafs that summarized topics the speaker had touched. I rewrote to six inches, handed it back. A minute later, he called me over. “Take these out,” he said. With a limp resignation that was rapidly becoming familiar, I took the copy, went back, typed three short grafs of the barest information (he was there, he spoke, he left), and that was the story in the paper the next morning. My job that night was to prove that the Union had sent a reporter to cover the speech.

We formed a softball team and named it “The Sacred Cows.” When no one in management complained, I had an impish moment of supposition that no one in the Union front office knew what a sacred cow was.

Otto Bos, a damn good reporter, who covered City Hall, was our star pitcher. We had a lot of good players, and good reporters, at the Union in the old building, but we always knew we were outnumbered by the sacred cows. “It’ll get better in the new building,” we liked to say.

We moved into the new building in Mission Valley one autumn weekend in 1973. In one of those impossibly strange turns of events, the very first paper published in the new building was headlined by the death of publisher Jim Copley. After a time of transition, Helen Copley took the active reins of publisher.

Which brings us to Jeannette Branin, who must be mentioned by anyone passing around credit for this Union-Tribune Pulitzer. If you ask me, it started with her. Jeannette was a platinum blonde with black eyes that flashed and a gorgeous, throaty laugh that rippled out in smiles across the newsroom several times a day.

Jeannette had a heart of gold and steel. As Helen was becoming publisher, she called reporters in by groups for an informal hour of give-and-take. In her group, Jeannette stood up and, in her respectful, Kansan matter-of-fact way, head tilted slightly, said, “Mrs. Copley, do you know that your newspaper has sacred cows?”

That is not an exact quote. Someone in that group may remember it exactly. It was all over the newsroom before the end of the day. After that, things did start to get better. I know, sometimes it has been hard to tell. Of course a little local competition always helps. And now the Union-Tribune has won a Pulitzer. Wow.
©Michael Grant 2006

Chapter 5: The Media Realities

Michael Grant — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 16:21:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

A “reality” is the way something is. A reality is there, and there is nothing you can do about it. Every day we wake up to the realities in our lives like school, work, money problems, traffic, all those things we have no choice but to deal with.

People who are in media production, people who make television programs, movies and records, and who publish newspapers and magazines, wake up every morning with their specific set of realities. These are the realities they face in making their media business a success. They have no choice but to deal with these realities.

The first media reality is balance. This is particularly true of the information media, but it also applies to entertainment media as well. Media consumers insist that their information be presented in a balanced way, that is, both sides of the story are provided. If only one side is provided, or not enough of the other side is provided, the consumers will think the media is biased and unfair in giving so much attention to just the one side.

Of course no story can be perfectly balanced, because no two consumers will see the story in exactly the same way. Here is a simple graphic that illustrates the balance in a story.

Left Center Right

If all the reactions to this story fell directly in the center, the story would be perfectly balanced. But the News Values tell us that each person reacts to a story in his or her specific, individual way, no two exactly alike. Because of this, one person will see this story as balanced, while another will see it biased to one side or the other, either by a little or by a lot.

Sociologically, a person’s views place him or her in one of two general categories. People who consider their views “liberal” are said to be to the “left,” while people with conservative views are to the “right.” A moderate liberal looking at this story might see it as biased to the right of center, but not by much. A stronger liberal might see it biased farther to the right, but not so far that it is out of balance.

Conversely, a moderate conservative will see it biased to the left of center, but not so much as to be out of balance. Of course there are extreme liberals and conservatives who will look at a story and claim it is completely out of balance, though the majority claims it is balanced, but not perfectly.

In order to be believable, the information media must present stories that the majority of consumers believe is balanced. Information media producers wake up every morning to that reality. Balance is also necessary to the success of entertainment media. A simple but good example is a football game. If one team is ahead 35-0 at the half, the consumers are going to turn it off and watch something that is more in balance. Good dramas need balance, whether it is in a love story or in the conflict between good and evil. Good sitcoms need balance, between humor and the believability of life situations. Good novels need balance, to provide tension between the two sides struggling to prevail. A good story can’t be all black, or all white.

Of course much very carefully produced media content appears every day in the media, that has no balance at all, and we look at them with interest. They are called commercials. There are commercials for products, for candidates, for ideas, and for ideologies.

The second media reality is professionalism. Whatever the presentation, media people wake up every morning knowing it must be professional. In journalism, either newspapers or broadcast, the three cardinal rules are accuracy, accuracy and accuracy. The story must be accurate, both in its content and also in its presentation. Spelling, punctuation and grammar must be correct, or the story loses credibility.

Journalists strive every day to be professional, and they do much work that is never seen. A news story is like the tip of the iceberg, the 10 percent poking up above the water, and that is what the consumer sees. But below the water, unseen, is the 90 percent of the iceberg, the work the journalist did to make sure the story was strong enough to sink a ship.

Other people in media go to those same professional lengths. All those wonderful, carefree people in sitcoms and soap operas didn’t win their positions without years of training and practice. It’s no secret how long and hard actors in movies must work to become successes. The musicians in the recording industry, and the technicians who record them, do not just sit down at pianos and mixing boards and make wonderful music. Even the most casual music is a result of careful planning, hard work and perseverance, on both sides of the microphone.

Professionalism is vital to all aspects of the production. Appearances and sets must be professional, both in information and entertainment media. Lighting and audio must be professional. Newspaper and magazine layout, book production and camera angles must all be professional. Continuity must be professional. If one part of a scene is shot at noon, all parts must be shot at noon, on the same day if possible, because the light changes. If half of a noon scene is shot at noon and the other at 9 a.m., the consumers will notice. Likewise there are famous stories of telephone poles showing up in gladiator movies.

Professionalism is even important to tabloid journalism. One television tabloid show, “Hard Copy,” showed a man and woman anchors, beautifully dressed, sitting in a newsroom, narrating the show. In fact they were sitting in front of a blank wall covered by a blue “chroma-key” screen onto which was projected video footage of a newsroom. If you watched “Hard Copy” carefully on successive nights throughout the week, you could see people making exactly the same movements through the newsroom, night after night.

The third media reality is competition. Every morning, media producers wake up to the very hard reality that there are only so many hours in a day, and so many dollars in the consumers’ pockets. And this day will be jammed full of media content, a blizzard of signals from hundreds of television channels and radio frequencies, thousands of newspapers and magazines, racks full of books and CD recordings.

All of them are competing for the consumers’ attention. Advertisers want to see which programs give them the best opportunity to reach consumers and compete for the limited dollars in the consumers’ pockets. What can a media producer do, to enhance his product’s chances of success against the relentless competition?

If the media producer tries to make his product better, to improve its quality, in order to be more competitive, then the effect on the media is good. This happens all the time. There are many examples of quality media products introduced each year.

But often, more and more often, media producers decide to make their product more interesting in ways that are not so professional. They will use the Novelty news value, and the Sex and Sensational news values, to lure curious visitors to the product. Viewers will tune in to a program just to see someone eat a huge South Pacific cockroach on television. It would be hard to argue that this is quality media programming. Producers of the XFL football league tried to create a television product that was a big, sexy macho party at which football was played.

Some of these ideas work; some don’t. “Survivor” was a success; the XFL was not. The ideas that work, encourage the media producers to keep looking for other “sexy” or “sensational” ideas that are meant to manipulate consumers as much as entertain them. All of the celebrity reality shows are based on those values.
©Michael Grant 2006

This just in: the end of resilience?

Michael Grant — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:13:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

What a familiar feeling this week, for millions of Americans, to look at Tom DeLay’s face at the top of the news and be both glad and sad. Glad that we are not card-carrying members of the Republican right, forced to imagine that Tom DeLay is something other than what the news reports him to be. And sad because he was supposed to represent not only them, but us, too, in the United States Congress.

It is especially conflicting for those non-rightists in San Diego, where so recently we smirked at Duke Cunningham’s fall, but then had to look into his face, and listen to his contrition, and realize that his sorrow was no match for the sorrow of those of us he was supposed to lead.

It must be that sense of sorrow, over disgraced leaders, added to our natural cultural inclination to forgive, that makes us so resilient. That may not be such a good thing. If Americans were half as demanding as they are resilient, a lot of us would feel better about the country’s future.

The millions of us who are not card-carrying members of the Republican right are not card-carrying members of the Democratic left, either. We remember being so grateful for that when President Clinton was in trouble for getting after it with a White House intern. Was this the man the Democrats wanted to lead the nation?

It’s the same way we feel now, grateful that we are not card-carrying Republican conservatives having to read about their own party’s doubts about the leadership of a president, the Brownie and Harriet man, in whom they have invested their political, social and moral identity.

If these millions of us aren’t card-carrying Democratic liberals or Republican conservatives, then who are we?

Well, we are resilient, for one thing. In the years between his resignation and his death, we made a place in our thinking for Richard Nixon as a sort of avuncular counselor, whose opinion of national and world affairs was welcomed in the media. It is true that, at his death, many objected to his being afforded a state funeral, even if it was outdoors in California instead of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Many of us only watched on television because the ceremony was about the office, and its nobility, and not the man, and his transgressions. In so doing, we permitted the man back into the office, but that was okay, because we are so resilient. We forgive.

It was hard for us to believe the reports of what went on with the President of the United States who had a fling with a brunette intern. For the most amazing sentence ever written about a President of the United States, I nominate this one, from the Starr Report: “Additionally, the President inserted a cigar into Miss Lewinski’s vagina.”

The millions of us are reminded of how fun it was, to snicker at the bewilderment of the card-carrying Democratic left, who had placed all their social, political and moral investments in Bill Clinton’s hands, and how sad it was, too. Not only for them, but for all of us, because it was all of us, truly, who had such a stake in how the President would lead us. It was not just their hopes and future, but ours, too.

Today, Bill Clinton is not only welcomed in the media, he is a media star, and named to global commissions, and founder of global commissions, and we look at him, and we remember what he did, but we watch him anyway, because we are so resilient. We forgive.

It is hard to imagine a future day when a president as unaccomplished as George W. Bush has ascended to a role of merit in the national thinking, who is sought after by the media, and whom we will watch, as a result of whatever appeal to him that time might provide. It is hard to imagine our granting him a future statesman’s role.

Of course we will, because we are so resilient. Yes, it is tempting to wonder if the administration of George W. Bush has provided the last straw, both to the Republican right, and to the other millions of us. The right, this time, might start to realize that leadership takes more than politics. And the millions of others of us may wonder if resilience this time might yield to need. This may be the era in the American experiment when the experiment needs to be turned around, and the millions decide to hold accountable their presidents for where they put their cigars and locate their wars.

In that case, Americans will become more than half as demanding as we are resilient. It is a reasonable place to start. It is all our futures, not just theirs.
©Michael Grant 2006

Chapter 4: The Public Realities

Michael Grant — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 16:50:00 +0000

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.

In the beginning, was reality.

No rationale, no hindsight, no neurosis. Just primitive human beings, with their bare hands, in a raw environment, and the reality of surviving, or not.

The first realities of human survival were food and water. Where was the food? Where was the water?

So food and water were not the first human realities at all. The first, original, human reality, was information. Where was the food? Where was the water?

If you made a movie about media history, and played it backward, it would speed back from a scene of this World Wide Web screen, through television, radio, the telegraph, the first newspapers, the Gutenberg press (which really did change everything), the scribal culture, the oral culture, papyrus scrolls, hieroglyphs, wood block prints, wall paintings, and then into vast spaces of time in which marks and symbols flashed by and disappeared, arrowing through guttural millennia toward the cusp where humans, separating upward and upright onto two feet, began their quest for survival with the original need for human
information.

From their first days on the planet, humans have needed information to survive. They have always worked very hard to develop information, at first mostly as a result of experience, including accidents, but later on as a result of experimentation. All of human knowledge is the result of information being developed, in one way or another other.

From birth, infants instinctively acquire information about their situation and surroundings. Parents and other adults provide much information to them, including their first information about how to make language.

Both primitive and civilized societies understand that its members can’t succeed without information, which is passed down to them beginning as children. In civilized societies, children begin school at four or five to acquire information. The basic information necessary to function successfully in those societies takes a minimum of 12 years to acquire. In the United States, parents are required by law to see that their children receive this information and understand it before they can “graduate.” After that, much more information is available to students who want it. All positions in a society, from homemaker to genetic scientist, require both general and specific information.

People in the United States get information from many sources, including, after all these thousands of years, experience. People are always learning something as a result of experience. But the single largest provider of information to people is the media. The media provides information to people through the seven media businesses: books, magazines, movies, newspapers, radio, recordings, and television. The information may be technical, or it may be entertaining, or it may simply be informational. Every day, people need all kinds of information, both general (the date, the time, the news, the weather) and specific (transport schedules, product pricing and availability, technical specifications, stock prices). They also want all kinds of information, including stories, plays, games, music, competitions, commentary and humor.

The second public reality is Demographics.

Demographics is the science of dividing people into distributions, or groups. No two people are exactly alike. But they are alike in many ways, and so they become members of demographic groups. The two basic demographic groups are men and women. Men and women are alike in many ways, but they are also so monumentally different that it is a wonder that they occupy the same general physical form.

A person’s demographic group plays a huge role in the media-public relationship. We don’t need to go any further than the men-women division to understand this. The media develops many products specifically for men, and many products specifically for women. Manufacturers and advertisers pay billions of dollars to support these media products, with products of their own that are very carefully conceived and created to appeal to men, or to women.

People are also divided into groups by race, nationality, religion, age, culture, economics, height, weight, color of eyes, and a hundred other factors that create within each of us a unique human being within our demographic group. A person’s reaction to a media event is unique to him or her, as unique as a fingerprint.

The media develops products to appeal to the preferences of demographic groups. Television programming, for example, is strongly influenced by viewers within an age group. Probably the most desirable group to television and its advertisers is the 18-24 age group. Programming or other media content aimed at a specific group or audience is called narrowcasting. Specialty magazines and cable television channels (the History Channel, the Food Network, MTV, the Weather Channel) are examples of narrowcasting.

The Third public reality is Curiosity.

Human beings are naturally curious. It is part of their need for information. They obtain information by being curious. Their curiosity makes people particularly interested in anything new. When people hear there is a “new show” on television, they are curious to see it. They are also attracted by anything unusual, or novel.

The media is very aware of this natural human curiosity. Working within its own realities, the media is constantly looking for ways to appeal to curiosity. Sometimes the appeal is culturally positive, because curiosity is positive in that it brings new and better understanding to humans of the world they live in.

But the appeal can also be opportunisitic. In the last 30 years, competition has become a huge, and difficult reality for the media. It is often the competition reality that entices the media to appeal to that sort of curiosity that causes humans to slow down and gawk at accidents on the freeway. This is the kind of curiosity that has for decades supported the tabloid media, and now is steadily, grimly, infiltrating the mainstream product. So many people are very curious about celebrities, their life styles and their weaknesses, and the media attracts these people, and the advertisers who want to reach them, with classic tabloid products like “Access Hollywood” and “The National Enquirer,” but also everyday celebrity “reality” shows, starring Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith.
©Michael Grant 2006