Welcome To Tony Palmeri's Media Rants! I am a professor of Communication Studies at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. I use this blog to try to promote critical thinking about mainstream media, establishment politics, and popular culture.
Were it not for Abe Lincoln ("Four score and seven years ago . . . ") almost nobody would know that one meaning of "score" is a period of twenty years. Dating back to 1776, the USA has now been around for twelve score and five years. (Twenty score and one year ago if you prefer to start at 1619).
Not every score in that two hundred forty-five year period has lived up to the promise of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, some twenty-year periods ought to be looked at as deeply shameful times when the iron triangle of fear, tribalism, and political cowardice gripped the land. We've just lived though such a period (2001-2021), though "lived" might be an overstatement.
The years 2001-2021 will go down in history as our third score of shame, rivaled only by 1837-1857 and 1877-1897 for sheer self-induced misery. Each score saw those who fought to expand rights up against vicious attempts to abridge them. Each score in part illustrates W.B. Yeats' famous line from "The Second Coming": "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
In the most shameful periods of American history, public policy
is dominated by the worst: bad-faith actors who exploit divisions for narrow,
self-interested agendas.
Charlie Watts, legendary drummer for the Rolling Stones, passed away last Tuesday at the age of 80. Other beat keeping pioneers of his era (Keith Moon, John Bonham, Ian Paice, even Ringo Starr) dazzled with drums to the point of sometimes taking over a song. Watts' brilliance was more paradoxical; his reserved style resulted in a powerful percussive presence even as he--on the surface level anyway--seemed to minimize that very presence. While Charlie Watts was always admired by drum geeks, the fact that he spent his entire adult life accompanying the naughty narcissists Mick Jagger and Keith Richards made it easy to overlook his achievements.
Watts was brilliant on just about every Stones' song ever recorded, but I will share just ten that I think best represent his legacy.
#10: Get Off My Cloud. Released in 1965, Get Off My Cloud features Charlie Watts in a bombastic style that blew up AM radio that year. Though not a typical style for him, the aggressive beat ended up influencing much rock and roll of that era.
#9: I Just Want To See His Face. Not one of the Stones' best known songs, I Just Want To See His Face is a gospel inspired tune that started off with Watts and then rhythm guitar player Mick Taylor jamming in the studio.
#8: All Down the Line. One of the Stones' signature rockers, a gritty R & B tune with Chuck Berry style guitars and featuring the kind of Watts drum groove that's probably his most typical snare drum style.
#7: Sympathy For The Devil. One of the greatest rock songs of the 1960s, the kind of tune that helped launch FM radio as a vital space for new music. Fans of the Stones at the time dug the socially conscious lyrics and the eerie South American beat. Thank you Charlie Watts for the latter.
#6: Wild Horses. What always fascinated me about this song was how Mick Jagger could take a trite cliche' ("Wild Horses couldn't drag me away") and sing it with a kind of gravitas and emotional frailty quite opposite of the Stones' norm of macho posturing. Watts' drumming in this tune is a classic example of his "less is more" style. The drums are not "in your face," but if they were not there you would miss them.
#5: One Hit (To The Body). Released in 1986 at a time when Music Television was forcing classic rock bands into retirement, One Hit showed that the Stones could still rock with the best of them. Key to the song's success was Charlie Watts' driving beat.
#4 Miss You. In 1978 disco music was still pretty hot across the US. When I first heard Miss You I thought it was a case of the Stones trying to stay relevant as blues-inspired rock seemed to be on the outs. You can tell that Charlie Watts had been listening to disco records as he certainly has the beat down.
#3: Hot Stuff. The first track on the 1976 "Black and Blue" album, Hot Stuff is an excellent example of why Watts and bassist Bill Wyman were one of the great rhythm sections in the history of popular music. The song has the kind catchy, soulful funk groove that a decade later would dominate the pop charts with the music of artists like Prince and Michael Jackson.
#2. Undercover of the Night. This early MTV era rocker (released in 1983) resulted in what was--at the time--considered to be a controversial video. Watts' drumming in this one has a militaristic vibe to it that is consistent with the political themes of the song.
#1: Honky Tonk Women. Released in 1969, this song features one of the coolest intros in rock history: a brief cowbell ring followed by Charlie Watts' grittiest drumming ever. The lyrics to this song don't hold up very well, especially in the #metoo era, but musically it remains as the most classic example of how the Stones at their best could mix multiple genres and end up with something fresh. Charlie Watt's drumming was always central to that act of mixing.
August 6, 2021 Update: Today's New York Times includes a disturbing piece called "No Work, No Food: Pandemic Deepens Global Hunger" by journalist Christina Goldbaum. She writes in part: "An estimated 270 million people are expected to face potentially life-threatening food shortages this year — compared to 150 million before the pandemic — according to analysis from the World Food Program, the anti-hunger agency of the United Nations. The number of people on the brink of famine, the most severe phase of a hunger crisis, jumped to 41 million people currently from 34 million last year, the analysis showed . . . For years, global hunger has been steadily increasing as poor countries confront crises ranging from armed groups to extreme poverty. At the same time, climate-related droughts and floods have intensified, overwhelming the ability of affected countries to respond before the next disaster hits." Goldbaum's report reinforces one of the major points made in this Media Rants post: that the solution to global hunger must be based on more than the philanthropic, charitable giving model that grew in popularity as a result of the 1985 "Live Aid" concert. --Tony Palmeri
The late Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, a rebel inside the Catholic Church because of his outspoken advocacy of Liberation Theology, once famously said, "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."
Archbishop Camara understood that giving food to the poor is not as politically risky as asking why the poor have no food. The 1985 Live Aid concert encouraged giving, but did not raise the difficult questions about why global poverty exists.
For everyone except a number of Republicans in gerrymandered districts in the United States Congress and state legislatures, the idea of giving food to the poor is today noncontroversial. But asking why the poor have no food is still a radical act. In fact in pretty much every "First World" city on Earth, what "conservatives" and "liberals" have in common is discomfort with--and usually avoidance of--the "why" question. Both see poverty eradication as primarily an issue of charitable giving. The theory seems to be that if we get enough donations to food pantries, or enough churches to sponsor free meal programs, or even persuade enough national governments to allocate more foreign aid, then we are somehow making significant strides in addressing "food insecurity" (our euphemism for "hunger").
Donating to food pantries and other charities should be encouraged and applauded, and national governments of rich countries should always be pressed to give more to the poor, but if that's ALL we do to address hunger it's a little like wallpapering over cracked walls. Asking why the walls are cracked should lead to a deep investigation of the foundation. Asking why the poor have no food should lead to a deep investigation of the unjust sociopolitical structures that create and enable poverty.
In 1984 BBC journalist Michael Buerk's powerful and disturbing video report on famine in Ethiopia sparked global outrage. Moved by what he saw, Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof founded "Band Aid." The hit song "Do They Know It's Christmas" raised awareness and money. In the United States, "USA For Africa" did the same with the song "We Are The World."
Inspired by these efforts, Geldof organized "Live Aid," the iconic 1985 benefit concert that mobilized the star power of bands like Queen, U2, and many others to raise $127 million for famine relief. Live Aid was not the first rock-and-roll benefit concert, but it was the first to take advantage of the possibilities of mass media technology to create a truly global event. To this day Live Aid is the prototype for how to employ star power in the service of mobilizing consumers to support a just cause. But Live Aid's legacy is mixed; it turns out that rock-and-roll saints can't really solve difficult issues of global poverty if they won't raise questions that implicate the establishment sinners they are in partnership with.
To be clear: Bob Geldolf, who also organized Live Aid's 20th anniversary sequel "Live 8," was and is sincerely interested in doing whatever he can to alleviate global poverty. The sincerity of individual actors should NEVER be the major issue for debate on such matters. Rather we should be concerned with more difficult questions; e.g. do benefit concerts actually provide the relief advertised? Is charitable giving actually addressing the real problem? Are such efforts maybe even counterproductive?
In July of 1985 the Star Power of scores of musical artists in England and the United States was mobilized by Bob Geldof to raise money for famine relief in Africa.
"Live Aid" and its sequels were never constructed as anti-establishment events. Participants are urged to open their wallets, not overthrow their governments. If participants are to have any interaction with government at all it should be to--like Saint Bob--get leaders "on board" with relief efforts. Geldof, along with Bono of U2, model this kind of "anti-poverty diplomacy," openly pressing world leaders to provide food aid and debt relief for poor countries.
The most cogent criticism of rock stars as anti-poverty crusaders comes from British journalist George Monbiot. In an insightful 2005 piece called "Bards of the Powerful," Monbiot argues that even though artists like Geldof and Bono should be given credit for raising billions of dollars for relief, they ultimately end up giving legitimacy to those responsible for creating the problem in the first place:
"The two musicians are genuinely committed to the cause of poverty reduction. They have helped secure aid and debt-relief packages worth billions of dollars. They have helped to keep the issue of global poverty on the political agenda. They have mobilised people all over the world. These are astonishing achievements, and it would be stupid to disregard them . . . I understand the game they're playing. They believe that praising the world's most powerful men is more persuasive than criticising them. The problem is that in doing so they turn the political campaign developed by the global justice movement into a philanthropic one. They urge the G8 leaders to do more to help the poor. But they say nothing about ceasing to do harm."
In a 2013 piece, Monbiot quotes from Irish scholar Harry Browne's no-holds-barred book about Bono ("The Frontman"):
Harry Browne's "The Frontman" is a scathing critique of rock star Bono, who like Live Aide founder Bob Geldof believes it is possible to move established powers to support just causes. Browne argues that Bono and similar rock stars end up running interference and providing cover for such powers.
"for nearly three decades as a public figure, Bono has been … amplifying elite discourses, advocating ineffective solutions, patronising the poor and kissing the arses of the rich and powerful. His approach to Africa is a slick mix of traditional missionary and commercial colonialism, in which the poor world exists as a task for the rich world to complete".
For a more humorous take on the rock star savior complex vis a vis the African continent, check out British comedian Russell Brand's 2009 "African Child". In the brilliantly satirical video, quite obviously aimed at virtue signalers like Geldof and Bono, Brand's rock star alter ego Aldous Snow is oblivious to the narcissistic and naive roots of his Africa fixation.
Additional criticisms of Live Aid founder Bob Geldof can be found here.
My own critique of rock benefit concerts centers on what such events have done to the status of rock and roll as a cultural phenomenon. As I have written about previously, for me authentic rock and roll isan anarchic, Africa-inspired, anti-establishment art form perpetually coopted by the forces of tradition. At its most authentic, rock-and-roll has truly transformative impacts. Why? Because authentic rock-and-roll engulfs participants into a culture that liberates them from constraints imposed by tradition and social hierarchy. The racist backlash against rock in the 1950s and 1960s was not a backlash against the music as much as against rock's capacity to spark cross cultural communication, collective action, and unity. At its most authentic, rock really does encourage people to ask "why," in part because rock culture provokes rebellion against hierarchic structures that discourage questioning. Authentic rock-and-roll culture (which does not really exist in a meaningful way anywhere today) is very much like a great classroom seminar: a spirit of questioning, mutual respect, and search for meaning animates the proceedings. That kind of classroom experience is rare, as is authentic rock. But both continue to be possible, even in a cynical digital age.
My frustration with benefit concerts is that they deflate the true spirit of rock culture; instead rock is constructed as a mainstream art form in which the "star power" of artists can be used to raise money for cause(s) that the financial donor may have little to no understanding of. In other words, in benefit concerts rock-and-roll becomes part of a sophisticated propaganda campaign, in which asking "why" plays second fiddle to "doing something." "Doing something" invariably means giving money without much of a care or clue as to where it is going and whether or not it's actually solving the problem that the rock propagandists announce from the stage. Live Aid was kind of like an "ice bucket challenge" in a pre-social media age. Even worse--and this is what Monbiot's and Browne's work is especially good at demonstrating--is how establishment figures like politicians and non-governmental-organization bureaucrats exploit these events to build up their own particular brand.
When people collectively ask "why," we start to get some serious conversations occurring at the street level. From those conversations comes awareness that the most serious problems have structural roots. From that awareness comes organized efforts to dismantle unjust structures. Those organized efforts are called "social movements." "Live Aid" and most other benefit concerts, because they do not emerge from social movements geared toward structural reform, end up reinforcing the flawed belief that real change can somehow come from existing structures. Thus the best we can do is hope that enough well-to-do folks in the "First" world can be compelled to swipe their credit cards for the struggling masses in the "Third" world to provide temporary relief.
Some scholars have framed the celebrity humanitarianism discussed in this post as a case of dividing humanity up into two classes: those who suffer and those who save. That division represents the worst legacy of Live Aid because it deflects attention and resources from education that might actually solve the problem of poverty; that is, an education that teaches the need to be in SOLIDARITY with the struggling masses on all continents.
Authentic rock-and-roll is not an agent of the "savior" class. Unfortunately, that's what establishment centered benefit concerts, corporate media, and even social media platforms have reduced it to. Authentic rock-and-roll is ultimately a vehicle for solidarity.
So as not to end on a pessimistic note, let's at least acknowledge that benefit concerts do leave us with some great musical performances. Live Aid gave us the spectacular reunion of Queen featuring the great Freddie Mercury. We can be thankful for great performances at the same time recognizing the limitations of the event itself. Here's Queen:
On July 1, 2021 I turn sixty years young. Fun Fact: I was born the exact same date and year as the late Princess Diana. Unlike Diana I never became royalty, though at my best during these 60 years I have been a royal pain in the neck to established powers. In a small way, the Media Rants column serves as a vehicle for that kind of pain delivery.
To celebrate my 60th, I thought it might be a good idea to summarize what are--for me anyway--the most important media strides made during each decade of my life. The list is purely subjective, but anyone who bothers to look further into the strides mentioned will come to the conclusion that each has had a major impact on the way media is practiced and/or the way we think about media. Some of the strides have had transformative impacts on humanity (for better or worse).
For purposes of space, I will only list and describe four strides per decade. Also, I don't include anything from the 2020s because we are still too early in the decade. If you don't like my list, please come up with your own!
Here we go . . .
1960s: The Birth of "The Media"
To this very day, if you ask 20 people to define what is meant by "the media," you will get 20 different answers. Though media has been practiced and studied for many millennia, it was not until the 1960s that academic studies of the topic began to proliferate. At the same time, uses of the media--for better and worse--start to become more sophisticated in the 1960s. Against that backdrop, here are four 1960s media milestones:
*FCC Chair Newton Minow's May 9, 1961 speech on "Television and the Public Interest." Delivered before the National Association of Broadcasters just shy of two months before the birth of Baby Tony, the speech introduced the phrase "vast wasteland" as a description of the quality of commercial television. Though acting in the "public interest" had been a condition of earning and keeping a broadcast license since the 1930s, it really was not until Minow's speech that popular and academic discourse began to grapple with just how far from that standard the networks had strayed. Sixty years later the problem persists, making Minow's words as vital as ever:
In 1961 Newton Minow called TV a "vast wasteland." Today that phrase can be accurately applied to a range of media.
When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials—many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.
*Richard Nixon's 1968 Campaign For President. The 1968 Nixon For President campaign broke new ground in how it managed to take a profoundly despicable and unpopular politician (i.e. Nixon) and--using techniques then considered cutting edge in the public relations industry--made him just likeable enough to win the race. Joe McGinniss' classic campaign memoir, The Selling of the President 1968, introduced the world to the young Roger Ailes. Ailes marketing savvy on behalf of Nixon was a precursor to the kind of divide and conquer approach to media he would late go on to pioneer for the Fox News Network. I consider Nixon's 1968 campaign a media milestone because it introduced and perfected methods of media manipulation that have been used not only in every succeeding presidential campaign, but most partisan campaigns at all levels of power.
Joe McGinniss' The Selling of the President 1968 was a classic narrative of how the public relations industry transformed a nasty, paranoid loser (Richard Nixon) into a winning candidate.
*The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America by Daniel Boorstin. Professor Boorstin taught history at the University of Chicago for 25 years and then served 12 years (1975-1987) as the Librarian of Congress. The Image, Boorstin's classic 1962 book, was one of the earliest attempts to document the extent to which politics and politicians had become equivalent to entertainment and entertainers. Though the book did not predict the emergence of a Trump White House, its argument that successful politicians now had to be "media stars" certainly suggested the Orange One.
*The Birth of Free Form FM Rock Radio. Contemporary commercial radio is so goddam awful that it's difficult to believe there was a time when it was vital. The late Tom Donahue, a radio giant who should be a household name, pioneered the "free form" FM radio format in the late 1960s at KMPX and KSAN in San Francisco. In 1967 a classic article by Donahue appeared in Rolling Stone called "AM Radio Is Dead and Its Rotting Corpse Is Stinking Up the Airwaves." His free form alternative made FM radio into a space for creative music, community activism, and youth culture.
As the 1960s came to a close, media junkies could with some justification be optimistic. In part as a response to Minow's "vast wasteland" comment, television seemed to be on the brink of developing its potential. FM radio was in a golden age of experimentation and creativity. Even print journalism, as evidenced by the courageous decision to release the Pentagon Papers, seemed vital. Unfortunately, all the optimism turned out to be misguided. In the 1970s media lost its innocence; the contemporary media values of greed, conformity, and clickbait all have roots in that decade. Against that backdrop, here are four 1970s media milestones:
*The Death of Free Form FM Rock Radio: By 1975, Tom Donahue's dream of the FM dial as home of the free form format was already on the way out, done in by the same surrender to commercial pressures that had made AM radio so horrific for so many decades. Maybe it was never realistic to think that the "underground" vibe of the 1967-1975 free form could last in a commercial environment. A good book on this topic is Richard Neer's FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio (Mr. Neer was a popular DJ on New York's WNEW-FM at the height of its free form days.). The death of free form FM radio had devastating consequences not just for rock music, but for youth culture in general. I think a good argument could be made that the emergence of the vapid, conformist, money obsessed "yuppies" (young urban professionals) of the 1980s had at least something to do with the dismantling of spaces--like free form FM radio--that encouraged creativity and nonconformity.
Richard Neer, a popular DJ for New York's legendary WNEW-FM during its high point of creativity and community engagement, wrote a great memoir about the rise and fall of rock radio.
*Watergate and Scandal Coverage: Without question, Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's Watergate reporting for the Washington Post in 1973-1974 was a rare example of how bold journalism could topple a corrupt presidency. Unfortunately, in the media world Watergate became the template guiding all scandal coverage, some trivial.
Woodward and Bernstein established the template for covering political scandals. Unfortunately too many of the "gate" scandals have been trivial, badly sourced, or mere partisan propaganda (think "Russiagate," for example).
*FCC v. Pacifica. This 1978 Supreme Court decision held that the Federal Communications Commission does have the power, in the name of "protecting children," to regulate "indecent" language on broadcast media. The case originated when a man traveling in his car with his 15-year-old son did not appreciate hearing George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" on the air. The Court had the opportunity to say, in legalese of course, that the man could just "change the station or turn the fucking radio off." Instead, the Court made the FCC into our National Nanny, which has ended up stifling legitimate free speech and provoking ridiculous attempts to get by the FCC censor (such as replacing "Fuck You" with "Forget You" in TV broadcasts of movies or editing out swear words entirely in musical recordings.).
In one of the worse Supreme Court decisions ever issued, the Court in FCC v. Pacifica endorsed a view of the Federal Communications Commission as some kind of National Nanny empowered to protect our ears from "indecency."
*The Golden Age of Film. The 1970s were a great decade for film. Directors/Writers Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and many others made groundbreaking strides in narrative development. Scorsese's controversial 2019 claim, that "Marvel movies aren't cinema," is really not controversial at all for anyone familiar with the best movies of the 1970s. Money quote from Scorsese's 2019 op-ed:
For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.
It was about confronting the unexpected on the screen and in the life it dramatized and interpreted, and enlarging the sense of what was possible in the art form. And that was the key for us: it was an art form.
Though media lost its innocence in the 1970s, we left the decade still feeling that for all its faults, media would never become primarily a vehicle for money making. In other words, by 1979 hope remained realistic that "operating in the public interest" was an attainable goal even for profit-driven media. Those hopes were almost entirely dashed in the 1980s, as the Reagan Administration's articulation of profit maximization as THE supreme human value became the value system of a range of institutions including media. Against that backdrop, here are four 1980s media milestones:
*The Rise of Cable Television. In theory, the rise of cable television should have been the answer to Minow's "vast wasteland" critique. With so many channels to choose from, the crapola should be balanced out with high quality offerings, right? Anyone who subscribed to cable in the 1980s probably ended up feeling the same way Bruce Springsteen did when he sang about "57 channels and nothing on."
*Music Television (MTV). If you think of music videos as advertisements for records, then MTV in the 1980s became the first network in history to feature ads literally 24-hours a day. Add in the sexism and misogyny of much of 1980s music video and MTV goes from being an interesting experiment to one of the lowest points in the global history of corporate media.
*The Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. There's been much confusion about what the Fairness Doctrine actually did, and I've written about that here. The caricature of the Fairness Doctrine is that it mandated targets of criticism on broadcast news stations to have some kind of right to respond. The Fairness Doctrine was never that powerful; still, there is no doubt that its repeal contributed to the rapid growth and development of ultra one-sided, mostly right wing talk radio and cable pundit shows.
*Classic Media Criticism. From an academic perspective, the 1980s were groundbreaking for the release of some seminal works of media criticism that set the standard for that genre of writing. Some of my favorites include Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly (1983), Noam Chomksy's and Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent (1988), Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), and Herb Schiller's Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression.
The late Neil Postman's 1985 classic Amusing Ourselves to Death was one of a number of brilliant works of media criticism released in that decade.
1990s: Wasted Opportunities and Dreams Deferred
In part because of the corporate control of politics, the 1990s was a decade of wasted opportunities and dreams deferred. The fall of the Soviet Union could and should have been a rallying cry for democratic reforms all over the globe. Instead, the United States spent most of 1998 and 1999 consumed with the earth shaking issue of whether or not the President of the United States lied about getting a blowjob in the oval office. Against that backdrop, here are four 1990s media milestones:
*The Internet Revolution. Obviously the most transformative technological development since Gutenberg's printing press in the 1400s, the Internet in the 1990s immediately impacted every area of human existence. A number of scholars and pundits treated the new technology with optimism, thinking that the digital age would bring about democratic participation on a scale never seen before. While such optimism might still be justified, democracy activists have learned over the last 30 years that the Internet is more easily coopted by corporate powers and their lapdog politicians than we initially thought possible.
*Hip-Hop Culture. If we look back to the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, we can see that rock-and-roll exerted a dramatic impact on culture, from language to fashion to gender roles to pretty much everything. Today the same can be said about hip-hop. But whereas rock-and-roll was primarily an American phenomenon, hip-hop from its earliest days had a global reach, in the 1990s becoming worldly in extraordinary ways. Hip-hop at its best, like rock at its best, unifies people at the street level and challenges top-down power structures. The establishment always fights back, which is why hip-hop like rock is always in a position of having to rediscover its most pure form.
*Telecommunications Act of 1996. In 1996 the US Congress and President Clinton "updated" the Communications Act of 1934. A whopping victory for big media corporations, the 1996 act set in place a media consolidation mania that has led to more than 90 percent of media content being controlled by six companies (Comcast, Disney, AT&T, Viacom/CBS, Sony, and Fox). Media consolidation has had devastating impacts on journalism, and created "news deserts" in most of the country. Proponents of the 1996 Act laud it for creating the "free and open" Internet, but increasing consolidation and the assaults on "net neutrality" prove that consumer protections in the law were never strong enough.
President Bill Clinton, joined by VP Al Gore, digitally signs the Telecommunication Act of 1996 into law. The Act opened the door for media consolidation and corporate domination of the Internet.
*Third Wave Feminism. In politics, popular culture, the workplace, and other areas, women in the 1990s challenged structures of power more forcefully than at any time since the 1960s. Feminist defenses of Bill Clinton during the impeachment probably undermined the progress of the movement by ceding moral high ground on behalf of a slimey but powerful man. Still, there is no doubt that the third wave feminism of the 1990s raised consciousness in a way that continues to impact women's progress as demonstrated by the #metoo movement, challenging gender stereotypes in film and other media, and the election of more women to public office.
Sparked by the treatment of Anita Hill during the 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, activist women announced a "third wave" of feminism. A record number of women were elected to office in 1992, making it forever the "Year of the Woman."
2000s: The Crisis of Legitimacy
In the first decade of the new millennium, perceptions of mainstream media (especially news) started to decline precipitously. Some of that was the result of the nonstop media bashing by right wing radio and other "conservative" sources that for years had made "the media" into the ultimate straw man. But I would argue that some media advances in the decade were more responsible for undermining the legitimacy of "the media". Against that backdrop, here are four 2000s media milestones.
*The War on Terror. George W. Bush's declaration of a "war on terror" in 2001 had terrible impacts on media. Every administration since Bush has applied archaic statutes (like the Espionage Act of 1917) to go after journalists and whistleblowers. Mainstream media's failure to stand up to and call out the bullying of their own has probably done more to undermine media credibility than any so-called "fake news."
*Embedded Reporting. In the Vietnam era, media for the most part succeeded in covering the war independently. Determined to never again allow the public to see the real costs of war, the Pentagon since the 1980s has slowly but surely co-opted war reporting. In the 2000s, "embedded" reporting on Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in a shameful pattern of Pentagon talking points presented as truthful statements about the conduct of the war(s). During the 1980s, as the Soviet Union was bogged down in Afghanistan, the Russian people received nothing but bullshit from Soviet media about the conduct of and progress of the war. In those days American leaders had no problems labeling Soviet reporting on Afghanistan as pure propaganda. In the 2000s the majority of American reporting on Afghanistan and Iraq--especially in the crucial early years of the wars--came straight out of the old Soviet playbook. Truly shameful.
*YouTube and Viral Media. The sheer number of hours that people (of all ages) spend consumed with YouTube and other viral media is astounding. In the early days of YouTube, we laughed at how viral videos tended to focus on cats or weird forms of human behavior. As time has gone on, we have seen YouTube become a safe space for conspiracy theories, "alternative" news and various forms of quackery passed off as serious analysis.
*Wikileaks. Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange has been incarcerated for almost 10 years now--even though he has never been tried and convicted of anything--essentially for the "crime" of releasing information that proves the dishonesty and crimes of the US and other world governments. World leaders may succeed in silencing Assange, and might destroy Wikileaks, but those efforts are like trying to bury water. Truth and transparency, whether it is being put forward by Assange and Wikileaks or similar actors, like water will keep seeping back up at you if you try to bury them.
When I was born in 1961 the White House was occupied by John F. Kennedy and a spirit of optimism animated the nation. As I closed in on my 60th birthday, the White House was occupied by a buffoon (initials DJT) who was followed by a man (initials JRB) best known for almost fifty years of political hackery in Washington. Can we blame the political de-evolution that has taken place in my lifetime on "the media"? Not completely, but there's no doubt that media played a role in making the mess, and will play a role in cleaning it up too. Against that backdrop, here are some media milestones from the 2010s:
*The Death of Local Journalism. It's hard to exaggerate how destructive the death of local journalism has been not only to communities, but to the entire nation. Where I live in Oshkosh, WI we have to rely on a retired professor of journalism (publisher of The Oshkosh Examiner) to do serious research on critical issues facing the community. Most communities in the country do not have even that much. In the 2020s we HAVE to do something to address the journalism crisis lest we continue our descent into a culture of uninformed, divided tribes more concerned with trolling than teaching.
*The Rise of Social Media. In the 2010s we saw what happens when a culture becomes addicted to digital communication. Sherry Turkle's 2012 book Alone Together was a clarion call urging more mindfulness on these matters, but even she may have under estimated the extent to which the addictive qualities of digital communication make reform difficult.
*Podcasting. Like the Internet generally, podcasting has the potential to make small-d democracy something real. The 2010s saw a surge in the sheer number of podcasts on every topic imaginable. My own podcast (Running on MT with Matt King) tries to discuss serious issues in a way that anyone can understand. Podcasts like that tend to have limited listenership, while sensationalist podcasting hooks millions. Is there a way to reverse that trend in the 2020s? I'm not optimistic, but anything is possible if people of goodwill do the work necessary to make it happen.
*Hate, Inc. Matt Taibbi's 2019 book Hate, Inc. is not the best work of media criticism that I've ever read, but he did capture the central premise of mainstream news media in the 2010s: if consumers of ideologically diverse media can be trained to despise each other, profits will follow. Playing off of Chomsky and Herman's "manufacturing consent," Taibbi calls this state of affairs "manufacturing discontent." In the 2020s I don't think we need to strive to make everyone love each other, but we should at least be able to consume--and maybe even accept on occasion--the viewpoints of others without being made to feel that we have "betrayed" a tribe.
Ten Bold Cover Tunes Part XI: Original Tunes That Got Twist and Shout Treatment
Sometimes cover tunes so completely become thought of at THE VERSION of the tune that the original is forgotten. In fact, the COVER becomes known as the ORIGINAL. Think of the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout." The Fab Four brought so much energy and excitement to the tune that the fine Isley Brothers version--released not so long before the Beatles' and a commercial hit in its own right--was almost immediately forgotten. To this day few people are aware that the first, original recording of "Twist and Shout" was by a Philadelphia based R & B band known as The Top Notes.
So this edition of Ten Bold Cover Tunes is not about the cover tunes. Rather, it's about some classic originals that got the "Twist and Shout Treatment;" originals that got lost due to the immense popularity of the cover version(s). My choices of the ten originals riffed about below were based on two criteria: (1) I personally enjoy the original as much as if not more than the better-known cover, and (2) I think the original deserves a wider audience.
#10: The Family, "Nothing Compares 2 U." Sinead O'Connor's passionate and powerful 1990 cover of the Prince-penned tune, which became one of the most popular and iconic music videos of all time, made the Ireland-born singer an international superstar.
Prince himself actually recorded the song in 1984, but that version was not officially released until 2018. The first "official" version of "Nothing Compares 2U" was recorded in 1985 by The Family, an R & B band that was a side-project of sorts for Prince. I think this version has a melancholy beauty to it that, in some ways, rivals the cries of desperate grief O'Connor brought to it. Check it out: The Family "Nothing Compares 2 U."
#9: Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Proud Mary." Over 100 artists have covered "Proud Mary," but Ike and Tina Turner's funk version became definitive, in part because Creedence disbanded in the early 1970s and writer John Fogerty for many years would not perform CCR songs. Tina Turner, on the other hand, performed the song for 40 years until her retirement from the stage in 2009. John Fogerty has pretty much reclaimed the song since then, but a 2018 movie borrowed the name and used Tina's version.
#8: Bob Dylan "All Along The Watchtower." Though few people know what "All Along The Watchtower" is even about, Jimi Hendrix's version became a baby boom generation anthem. Dylan himself has said that when he performs the song he experiences it as a tribute to Hendrix.
Dylan's original was released in 1968 ( 6 months before Hendrix's cover), a time when his fans still weren't sure if he had made the full transition from civil rights movement activist to aloof, offbeat poet. Thus "All Along the Watchtower" has an aura of social commentary to it even though it lacks the moral clarity of "Blowin' in the Wind" or the generational spirit of "The Times They Are A Changin'. Dylan's folk contemporary Dave Von Ronk probably was correct when he said that by 1968 Dylan had figured out that when it comes to songwriting he could "get away with anything."
Bob Dylan is a critical figure in the history of popular music. His original version of "All Along the Watchtower," probably more than any of his other tunes, represents his uncanny ability to make listeners feel they have been introduced to an earth shaking MESSAGE even as they struggle to figure out just what that message is.
#7: The Sutherland Brothers' "Sailing." Rod Stewart's 1975 version of "Sailing" was an international hit for him and established the song's reputation as an epic love quest. In the early days of music video, established rock stars like Stewart struggled to find a way into the visual space. Video, after all, "killed the radio star." A 1981 music video for "Sailing" was one of Stewart's first contributions to MTV.
The Sutherland Brothers' original 1972 recording has a spiritual vibe to it not frequently heard in popular music. That's not surprising when we consider what writer Gavin Sutherland said about it: "Most people take the song to be about a young guy telling his girl that he's crossing the Atlantic to be with her. In fact the song's got nothing to do with romance or ships; it's an account of mankind's spiritual odyssey through life on his way to freedom and fulfillment with the Supreme Being."
#6: Tiny Bradshaw's "The Train Kept-A Rollin". There have been a number of great cover versions of this tune, the most popular being Johnny Burnette's rockabilly treatment of it, the Yardbirds' British blues invasion cover, and Aerosmith's 1970s reworking of it into an American metal masterpiece.
As great as are the covers, I still find myself drawn to Tiny Bradshaw's original. Bradshaw was a bandleader, singer and pianist whose "jump blues" style became a foundational part of the hidden history of rock-and-roll. "The Train Kept-A Rollin" came out in 1951, and while it has never been considered as a candidate for the first rock and roll song, its energy would certainly justify such an accolade.
#5: The King Cole Trio's "(Get Your Kicks) On Route 66." The Rolling Stones recorded this classic in 1964 for their first album, and their version is probably definitive. They were most likely influenced by Chuck Berry's rendition. John Mayer's outstanding version appears on the 2006 soundtrack of the movie "Cars."
"Route 66" was written by Bobby Troup and originally recorded by the King Cole Trio in 1946. I love this jazzy version not just because Nat King Cole was one of the greatest singers in history, but because when this song was released the actual Route 66 was an exciting place. It was the "Mother Road;" the "Main Street of America" that ran almost 2,500 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica.
#4: Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog." The early Elvis Presley covered songs originally recorded by African-Americans in a style that was--at that time--so unique for White artists that listeners just assumed he wrote the tunes. In fact Elvis never wrote a song, including one of his signature hits "Hound Dog" which he released in July of 1956.
"Hound Dog" was composed by the legendary songwriting team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller and recorded originally by blues great Big Mama Thornton. Wildly popular upon release, the song provoked no fewer than 10 covers BEFORE Elvis'. But no matter how popular the song was in the early 1950s, post-1956 it became identified almost completely with Elvis. In Jim Crow America, huge numbers of white Americans could only hear Elvis' version, either because of their own unwillingness to listen to black artists, or because racist radio stations would not play the music of African-Americans.
If you want to understand the roots of rock-and-roll, Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" is a good place to start. Here it is.
#3: Neil Diamond's "Red Red Wine." UB40's reggae/pop version of this tune was so danceable, and so much fun, that casual listeners would not even realize it's a pretty sad song about getting wasted in order to forget a lost love. Still, the UB40 version became the definitive one.
I like Neil Diamond's original version because he credibly adopts the persona of a depressed man drinking his troubles away. Actually he sounds like Neil Diamond imitating a drunk dude imitating Neil Diamond in a karaoke version of "Red Red Wine." Classic.
#2: Jake Holmes' "Dazed and Confused." When Led Zeppelin released their first album in 1969, they rewrote most of the lyrics to Jake Holmes' "Dazed and Confused" and then had the gall to take full songwriting credit for it! Holmes reached an out-of-court settlement with Zep in 2010, part of which required the Zeppelin version to be credited to "Jimmy Page, inspired by Jake Holmes." Still, the Zeppelin version will forever be THE "Dazed and Confused" people think about when the the song comes to mind. A good history of the song can be found here.
Holmes' original version, released in 1967, is one of the most underrated rock songs of all time. It's got the trippy vibe of the best music released in the "Summer of Love," and some of the most creative instrumentation and melody of the period. Ironically, despite the title ("Dazed and Confused") the tune really has nothing to do with drugs; it's about a guy's reaction to a relationship breakup.
#1: Shuggie Otis' "Strawberry Letter 23." The most recognized version of this song is the 1977 soul/funk jam by the Brothers Johnson. That version is a dance-era masterpiece.
Shuggie's 1971 original is a masterpiece too, though more difficult to categorize. Is it rock? Rhythm and blues? Pop? Folk? Or is it also soul/funk? I love both versions, though Shuggie's strikes me as a bit more authentic, especially in terms of his vocal sincerity. The album on which Strawberry Letter 23 appears, "Freedom Flight," never shows up on those "all time great" lists. Perhaps it's time for that to change
So there you have it: ten original tunes tunes that got the "Twist and Shout" treatment. That is, the cover version of the tune became so well known that the original almost got lost. The purpose of this post was to find those songs again. Hope you enjoyed it!
In last month's Rant, I identified five contemporary commonplaces that strike me as DUMB in the sense that they do little to improve the sorry state of public discourse in the United States, AND are easily exploited by political hacks and opportunists. The five identified were:
"Literally"
"It is what it is"
"Both sides do it"
"Russian Asset"
"Concerns mount"
Snopes has verified that President Ulysses S. Grant actually did utter this quote in an 1875 speech. Ignorance is often created or reinforced by the mindless use of dumb commonplaces.
This rant identifies five more dumb commonplaces. Much more than last month's list, these five are particularly nefarious in how they tend to be employed by bad faith political actors for the purpose of bamboozling the public. These same bad faith political actors willfully exploit commonplaces in an effort to appear like some kind of conscientious or noble public servant. In other words, when you hear these commonplaces come out of the mouth of your local, state, or national officials, be sure to consider the very real possibility that she or he is COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT.
Commonplace #6: "It's Not Sustainable." In the days when sustainability had a direct and recognizable connection to humans and their interaction with the natural environment, cogently arguing that something was "not sustainable" had the rhetorical force of a wake-up call. Environmental activists, scientists, and even some politicians helped the world to see, for example, how "it's not sustainable" meant that our current methods of creating, consuming, and disposing of "stuff" would make life more difficult for future generations.
Today, "it's not sustainable" is used just as frequently by bad faith actors to argue against anything they don't like. For example, elected officials who were always against public school budgets anyway--often in hostile terms--now adopt somber tones to tell us that more resources for schools is "not sustainable." Much of the developed world can have health care for all, paid family and medical leave, high speed rail systems, and many other things that are the hallmarks of decent and civilized societies, but for us they are "not sustainable." Ask the same people about bloated military budgets, or about the billions spent annually on the war on drugs and incarceration, or about corporate welfare policies (if you're a Wisconsinite, think Foxconn) that drain public treasuries, and you won't hear a peep about how each program is not sustainable.
The point is that "it's not sustainable" went from being an ethical descriptor of bad planning to a deceptive propaganda device designed to make bad planning sound good and good planning sound bad. Put another way, "it's not sustainable" became a "heads I win, tails you lose" trick. If Mr. Smith From Hell wants something, it's sustainable. It he doesn't, it's not. Fuck him.
Commonplace #7: "It's not politics, it's math." One of the major responsibilities of government is to pass a budget. Because budgets are less about numbers and more about values, budget discussions are hard. This is true at the local, state, national, and even international levels. Most people don't like hard discussions, and hard discussions about values tend to send them into apoplectic tizzies.
Over the years I've listened to and even participated in a number of budget discussions. The most educational are at the local level; because local government is non-partisan, government officials don't just fall back on partisan talking points or (as in the Wisconsin state legislature) just parrot the views of party leaders. Instead, officials will often trot out shibboleths seemingly designed to silence opponents: "we have to listen to what the people are telling us" (translation: we don't have to listen to what the people are telling us), or "the people want this" (translation: the people DON'T want this) or "the people don't want this" (translation: the people DO want this).
All of the above are transparently weasel-like, but this one is my favorite: "it's not politics, it's math." That gem is usually said by someone attempting to position him or herself as somehow being above the fray that we mere mortals mess around in. I'm not sure when I first heard "it's not politics, it's math," but it is the kind of phrase that started to gain currency during Bill Clinton's remaking of Democratic Party rhetoric in the 1990s. Clinton endorsed the "triangulation" strategy, a tactic of framing oneself as the "reasonable" middle ground between polar extremes. So you would end up getting pure bullshit like this (I'm paraphrasing typical triangulated rhetoric): "Partisan politics won't let us get anything done. The Democrats think we can spend our way out of our problems. The Republicans want to starve government while cutting taxes for their rich donors. So both sides just keep playing politics to appease their tribes. But when I look at our budget deficit I want both sides to understand, it's not politics, it's math." Brilliant, eh?
Commonplace #8: "It's Just Common Sense." Public advocates framing their policy ideas as "just common sense" is something that has irked me for a long time. In fact in 2013 I wrote an entire Media Rant on it. As noted in that piece, in the public sphere when advocates say their plans are "common sense" they generally mean one of three things:
In my experience this is true.
I really, really want this to be true.
People I admire believe this is true.
Privileging our experience, privileging our desires, and privileging the views of authorities are three of the major enemies of critical thinking. So what do we do when officials insist their appeals are grounded in "common sense?" Once again I'll refer to what I wrote in 2013: "The good news is we don’t have to be passive victims of common sense appeals. All we need to do is keep asking critical questions, be mature enough to change our minds when the evidence suggests we should, and resist all the pressures urging us to be intellectually lazy."
Common Place #9: "Violence against women." How could anyone possibly be opposed to the "violence against women" commonplace? Everyone's against "violence against women," right? Wrong. As noted most eloquently by University of Massachusetts professor of media studies Sut Jhally, the phrase "violence against women," because it does not identify the agent of the violence, makes it easy to ignore the fact that violence against women is an issue that MEN have the responsibility to do something about. Women of course have a role in ending violence against women, but the failure to clearly and unambiguously identify the agent of the violence has let most men "off the hook" on being part of the solution.
As noted by Dr. Jhally, we (men) need to "break the silence" and call out our complicity in enabling the small amount of men responsible for most of the violence against women. A huge part of that effort requires changing the language of domestic/relationship violence. So whenever someone in your presence says something about "violence against women," politely interrupt them and ask, "you mean MEN's violence against women, right?"
Commonplace #10: "We are better than this." I was a fan of the late Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Congressman who represented his district for 23 years in the House of Representatives. Rep. Cummings' booming voice and moral tone always brought forth memories of the giants of the 1960s Civil Rights movement like Martin Luther King, Jr. Part of the Cummings brand was to express in vivid and moving terms some atrocity being committed by the government, and then end with "we are so much better than this!"
When Elijah Cummings said "we are better than this," his emotive force made me suspend any attempt to ask if the statement was/is true. Are we in fact "better than this?" When anyone else besides Cummings uses the phrase, it seems as if ALL I think about is its accuracy or lack thereof. And unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that we are NOT "better than this." In fact, in most areas we are probably a lot worse than we think. Imagine a Roman senator thousands of years ago, surveying the cruelty and greed of the actions of powerful people across the empire and concluding "we are better than this." With sober hindsight, we can reasonably conclude that Rome could never "be better" as long as it insisted on running a cruel and greedy empire.
Thank you for engaging part II of "Dumb Contemporary Commonplaces." Let us all pledge to be less dumb by being more mindful of our linguistic choices. To cite another commonplace I hate, "we got this!"
