MTV and the death of democracy

By Carl 

It was thirty years ago today, Robert Pittman taught the band not to play.

MTV launched on August 1, 1980, and literally changed the face of music forever, although you wouldn't know it from the first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles, a band composed of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, both later joining Yes. In the video, the lighting and the costuming and set were all designed to be particularly unflattering to a band whose members were not exactly Hollywood star-material.

OK, so Downes was not ugly, but... did you know that "Video" charted at #444 years before MTV used it?

I digress.

The immediate impact of MTV's popularity was the development in earnest of the music video. Prior to the launch, artists since the 1960s created promotional films for top 40 songs, sometimes even albums. The first true "music video" was for "Surf City" by Jan & Dean in 1964. The later Beatles' albums featured several of these, which were distributed to variety shows worldwide so that "The Beatles" could make an appearance on the show.

These were mostly performance clips of the band, although with the release of Sgt. Pepper, The Beatles went a little avant garde with theirs.

More and more, bands provided short films for their record companies to show in movie theatres, on television variety shows and to various conferences and conventions to promote a band's music.

The music. Not the band. MTV changed that.

I noticed this over the weekend while watching an old Journey video for the song "Seperate Ways," and realizing, damn! That band was uggggggggggleeeeee! The song was released in the MTV generation, to be sure, but the band predates it.

No longer was it enough to be able to sing or play an instrument and/or write a song. Now you had to have "it." You had to be good-looking enough to wet panties and cause wet dreams worldwide. Or, failing that, you had to hire a really expensive and really creative producer to set up your video so it featured really pretty men and women. That means money and that means your record sales and music were beholden to the suits at the label. There was corporate rock before MTV (hello, Monkees!), but the visual aspect and the brand spanking new markets it opened up to songs made corporate rock inevitable.

There weren't bands anymore. They became brands. Brands, the goal of so many people in the blogosphere and even Blogtopia (© Skippy).

Sure, there were exceptions and parodies, most notably "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits, but these were few, far between, and badly needed.

Corporate music begets a bland, pablum of ear candy designed and honed over the years to not offend but to not excite either. It's meant to not make you think: no longer did you have to ponder the lyrics to a song. All you had to do was turn on MTV and voila! Some suit had decided what the song means to you. It moderates everything. There is no radicality except in small pockets of outliers who never really gain acceptance in the mainstream.

To me, it's no surprise that we haven't had another Beatles since MTV. Nor have we had a significant new direction in music since punk, pre-1981. Sure, there was rap, but rap rose without the benefit of MTV and the moment MTV got its hands on it, that was the death knell for bands with a point, like NWA. It stopped being about the music and started being about the heavy rotation.

We all started listening to the same things. Maybe not identical, but all the same things in form. We all needed like-minded entertainment.

It gets worse. MTV created an entire new requirement for filmmakers, who had somehow to reconcile movies and TV to the new form of entertainment. No longer could the camera linger on a scene, establishing mood. Two cigarettes burning down in an ashtray meant two people making love. Now that all had to be established immediately and undeniably. You couldn't infer. You had to state. The attention span of America was quickly narrowing and no one wanted to think anymore.

Maybe you've already guessed from the headline where this is going, and maybe you've started to put the clues together. I'm tempted to stop here but like I just said...

MTV gave us reality TV, too. It started with "slice-o'-life" videos depicting the singer/band in a real-world scenario (usually lost love, or famously Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," about teen pregnancy). It moved onto the Real World programs and continues to this day with Jersey Shore. We've become conditioned to accepting, no, demanding a titillating look into people's closets from MTV. We won't accept a thick line between the public persona of someone and their private life. We *know* there's something illegal or illicit or just plain immoral going on behind the scenes that they must be hiding and we want to know, if only to celebrate the fact that, there but for the grace of God, go we.

Birthers are the logical outgrowth of this. Birthers and shrill harpies of the right who find boogeymen in little children camping on an island.

I could probably go on, from talking about how MTV made it possible for fashion to become really pretty crappy to the fulfillment of Andy Warhol's "fifteen minutes of fame" prophesy to any number of terrible impacts on society.

That's not to say MTV has been all bad. For instance, it was MTV that broadcast Live Aid to try and fight famine in Ethiopia, and it was MTV that gave Bill Clinton the youth vote (and probably Barack Obama as well.) And Jon Stewart got his start on MTV and became a nightly treasure on a spin-off of MTV's Ha! channel. I'm sure if I really sat and thought more on it, I could probably balance this post out with more positives.

But that would make this corporate blogging. :-)

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

The thing is

By Capt. Fogg 

It's not any one thing. It's never one thing. All the things that have led up to my crisis of caring are old things; have been around a long time and I've been aware of all of them all along. Whether things have become so crazy that some trigger point was passed or whether being chronically weak because of a strict diet or a passing virus or whether somehow, the realization that all suffering comes from believing, from having faith that things can ever be all right in the long run, finally seeped through from that repository of things I always say to whatever core of self awareness exists deep down somewhere. 

The thing is -- I just don't care. Neither more or less than the last time I said it, but I don't care. Someone apparently got away with murder? What's it to me? My country is making strides toward being neo-feudal, toward a police state, a corporate oligarchy with no collective concern for anything but maximum profit and maximum exploitation by those who can make the most of it? So what? The great accomplishments of science? That's over, unless it's the science of sales and manipulation and the technology that exists only to make people buy it. I don't give a damn. I don't even give a damn that I don't give a damn and I've forgotten why I ever believed in the progress of man and the slow climb up from the insanity of animals toward enlightenment and civilization -- or even decency. 

But it's always something. 

I got a phone call the other day. It was a recorded voice asking to contribute to the fight against the persecution of Christian parents' rights to raise their families as they saw fit. I have no idea what they meant but I can have some confidence in the assumption that it has to do with interfering with some other group's right to do the same. I pushed the "never call me again" button. I don't care, it's someone else's fight after all, and if they do win, it will take so long they might as well just wait for the next asteroid or gamma ray burst or solar catastrophe. 

I got a flier in the mail, too. Cover photos of grey haired people smiling like they were drugged under a headline of "happy Seniors." Now I hate like hell to be called a "senior," and it damned well is a gratuitous pejorative. I'm still a man and no less entitled to be one than when I was an idiot teenager, fulfilling my duty of buying things to be hip. But no, these happy folks were just in ecstasy because Representative Tom Rooney and his friends Mr. Ryan and Governor "Medicare Fraud" Scott were going to keep Medicare and Social security from being taken over by "unelected bureaucrats" and presumably given over to those entitled by party affiliation to a big Goddamn profit from it. You know, the Republican peerage, the elect. Happy, happy days, but I'm not going to be able to do a damn thing so why worry? 

I bought one of these little flat screen portable HDTV's recently. Figured it would be a good thing for hurricane season, but trying it out today, I was was disappointed to find nothing on the air but Jesus and informercials, but I shouldn't be, of course. That's all there really is in this episode of the Truman Show and all there will be allowed to be because all this amazing technology has no other purpose than to sell to those at the bottom of the pond. The people already borrowing at 400% from Wells Fargo payday loan stores to meet the mortgage payment to Wells Fargo Bank and the credit cards they maxed out at Wal-Mart and who just found out they have to die because they have no insurance and can't even get welfare because they can't pass a drug test because they had to take something for the pain and they can't afford a prescription or prescription drugs. Yes, it's gonna be all right after we 'save' Medicare. 

Some "Practicing physician" as he continually reminded me had the ultimate cure and preventative for heart disease which "we now know" is only caused by "Toxins" that need to be chelated out of our blood stream with his snake oil pills. "I don't wancha getting a bypass. I don't wancha getting a stent." He just wants to sell pills that will stop the "epidemic of sickness overwhelming all of us." It would take more than a pill to stop the irony, but nothing will stop the two born every minute. 

Another channel appeared to be a cooking channel, showing children how to cover apple slices with sugar sprinkles because, as the nice Church lady tells us, "God wants children to eat healthy food" unless of course the fruit contains knowledge of morality. Perhaps that's why so many children are hungry - not enough red and green sprinkles -- or maybe, like me, God doesn't give a shit -- at least not as long as he sells enough air time. And he does sell it. Four stations available on the indoor antenna and three of them have Jesus, or at least so they say. They don't show him, but perhaps he's tied up in the back room while those polyester puffballs strut and parade and chant and solicit money. JEE- Suss! wants you to be rich so buy my prayer towel and my blessing -- call now. 

So why feel sorry for myself. I don't need to if I don't care. I don't feel sorry for America either, they're fed all the crap they can chew on and they will die, or at least make sure you do, rather than make anything better. If I feel sorry for anyone it's people like poor old Jesus who not only thought they could, but tried -- only to be defeated, have their history stolen and used to sell product, to support tyranny and exploitation and persecution, the fleecing of the poor, the fearful, the desperate and to stifle knowledge, damn decency and prostitute hope. 

But who cares? 

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The Sesame Manifesto

By Capt. Fogg

(Ed. note: This is a follow-up to Fogg's post from yesterday. See the Fox News clip there or below. It's certainly enraging, but Hannity et al. are also massively stupid. It's hard to know whether to laugh or shudder. -- MJWS)

It's impossible for me to watch a Fox "panel" chew on a story without thinking of an alligator feeding frenzy or a bunch of mean dogs fighting for possession of a bit of rawhide. Actually, it's impossible for me to watch Fox News at all, but for those of a tougher breed, here's a prime example of that ruthless war on reality called Fox.

Listen carefully and you'll spot the message that Sesame Street aims at lower income, urban kids and you'll smell the racism and you'll hear the Republican anthem that the fraction of a cent per taxpayer that this show costs is "on principle" too much and especially because it tries to elevate the underclasses in direct contravention of Divine Law and Ayn Rand, whichever is the more powerful.

Does anyone really believe that Big Bird is a Communist or that Sesame Street is ruining America and the morals of its children? (Perhaps Doctor Spock fans can sigh with relief now that they've moved on to a new chew toy.)

Perhaps you do, perhaps you watch Fox anyway. Perhaps you're a malicious idiot with delusions of persecution, but here it is again:


(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Only on Fox

By Capt. Fogg 

Did you know that not only is Sesame Street "liberal," not only is Big Bird a bigot, watching it could lead to a totalitarian state and undermines morality and the destruction of the American family. It sets up an appetite for "governmental largesse" and prompts high schoolers to nominate homosexuals to host the junior prom. 

No, not only could you not make this up, you couldn't be paid millions to rave like a lunatic. It's getting to the point where you couldn't pay me to admit I'm American.

Is Donald Trump a racist?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

He claims not. Actually, and amazingly, he claims he's the least racist person around. The proof he gives is that a black man, one Randal Pinkett, won The Apprentice a few years ago.

Once the guffaws subside, I'll leave you to judge that claim, and the proof, for yourselves.

If Trump wants to cite the Mr. Pinkett's success, however, we may respond by citing the lack of success of one Kevin Allen, another black man who was a contestant on that detestable show:

Apparently he doesn't like educated African-Americans very much,

said Mr. Allen, a highly-educated African-American who made it all the way to Week 14, just a week prior to the finale.

Sour grapes? Maybe, though Trump's condescending treatment of Mr. Allen was certainly inappropriate, if not outright racist.

But these are anecdotes from a reality TV show. More telling is Trump's enthusiastic embrace of Birtherism, which to a great extent is a mask for anti-Obama racism, as well as, more explicitly, his ridiculous assertion that Obama needed affirmative action to get into the Ivy League.

Again, I'll leave you to make up your own minds.

(And to help you do that, allow me to recommend Joe Gandelman, Melissa McEwan, and Kaili Joy Gray.)

David Simon's Treme is back for another season on HBO

By R.K. Barry

The 11-episode season two of Treme starts on Sunday, April 24th on HBO. Those of you who had the pleasure of watching season one will know that Treme is a brilliant drama based on life in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Not only does it hit all the hot button issues one would expect like race, the anthropology of a city close to collapse and the politics surrounding efforts to revive her, but it is done with a New Orleans musical soundtrack that is beyond fabulous.

By the way, someone not at all associated with the series went to the trouble of setting up a website to provide information about all the great music featured on the show. You can find that here.

David Simon is the creator of Treme and was also responsible for The Wire, which was another HBO drama with, in this case, each season focused on a different facet of life in Baltimore (the illegal drug trade; the seaport system; city government and bureaucracy; the school system; and the print news media). Another amazing effort, which would appeal to political junkies everywhere.

In fact, both Treme and The Wire are largely political statements about who matters in our society and who does not and how the system conspires to make those distinctions as clear as possible at every turn. Truly brilliant.

As mentioned, in Treme, the music, and the professional life of musicians depicted, is not so much background as another way of telling stories about how people do what they have to do to survive. And then you get to listen to them sing and play -- people like Allen Toussaint and John Boutte.

If you are in a position to watch, I suggest you do.

Here's a clip of the opening scene with theme song and credits from Season 1:

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Remote Farm

     I'll be you have a collection of remotes similar to these....one remote for the TV channels and another for the volume and a third for the cable box and a fourth.

     And I'll bet you've eyed, if not tried, a so-called "Universal Remote".

     Like the author of an excellent story in the NY Times today, I've declared them a dismal failure.

     One Christmas, I invested something like $180 on a top-of-the-line Universal Remote that was Internet-connectible and promised an easy way to completely eliminate the clutter on the coffee table. Alas, like all of the others I've tried, I could not get it to perform at least a function or two...meaning I still needed at least one other remote. And if that's the case, what's the point of the Universal Remote?

     I eventually gave that fancy photo-displaying remote to my at-home IT guy in exchange for some PC reapair work.

     Like Dr. McCoy in the time-travel Star Trek movie ("Savages!"), sometime in the future humans will laugh at how naive we were in using all these hand-helds to get stuff to work. "Daddy? Why didn't they just blink like we do?"

     But till then, we'll just do what we do with all of the technology in our lives that has become too complicated. We use what we can, devise work-arounds by the dozens, an move on, collecting more and more decidedly not universal control gizmos.