Stop Making Sense: politics as theater

Stop Making Sense... for the game has changed.

It may be worth mentioning ... with the computer there has risen the possibility of extending consciousness itself as a technological environment. If this is to be done, it cannot be done on the basis of any existing notion of rationality.-- 1971 (Marshall McLuhan)

Marshall McLuhan died in 1980 but remains the only man who understands the computer/ internet age, an age he predicted with absolute accuracy. McLuhan knew that computer technology would shift the individual's "central nervous system into the electro-magnetic technology, it is but a further stage to transfer our consciousness to the computer world as well."-- 1964.

That means your brain and central nervous system are right there in the cellphone you are grasping. You have uploaded your thoughts and emotions into Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. You are vibrating with the universe. The world is one big city. The global village... as McLuhan so aptly named this world we now inhabit. You, and all of us, and Trump, our tribal leader, are family.

So this new world has you scared. We are all sitting around the electronic campfire and people are shouting weird things into the air. These thoughts, the fake news, the insane fears, the terrorism, the 11 year old boy in the Bronx using a knife to protect his mother from an intruder to their apartment... all of that, along with the Kardashians, Sean Spicer, Melissa McCarthy, etc., all spinning around your brain and spinal chord thanks to that powerful computer in your hand. You are the right, you are the left, you are all of it.

And most prevalent of all images is the image of Donald Trump, that orange-haired image has been burned into your consciousness. His name is on everybody's lips. The cable news follows his every exhalation and exultation. You wince-- how did he work himself into your consciousness? You and I are Trump.

I notice that Trump remains ahead of the men and women of the news. They are stuck in the print era like newsmen out of the screwball classic His Girl Friday. All they lack are Cary Grant's fedora and the clever lines of dialogue. The television newspeople-- still called "the press"--  struggle to find rationality in Donald Trump's ravings and whine about fake news and alternative versions of reality. The game has changed and Trump rubs it in with references to "the failing New York Times."

The New York Times worldview, the serious, sober reporting from the Gray Lady, falls to pieces in the lightning war of electrons-- the all spin, all the time world in which we presently live. If you are waiting for Truth... fuhgeddaboutit. 

Truth has given way to theater and image-making. Trump knows it and discovered it from his experience with the New York City tabloid newspapers-- not the New York Times.

Every day another drama-- just like the tabloid covers of the New York Post (conservative) and the New York Daily News (liberal).

The difference between now and just a few years back is the depth of our involvement. The Social Network has us all involved. And it moves at the speed of light. Just ask Bill O'Reilly. The master of the "No Spin Zone" got spun like a top and left by the curb by Fox News. I don't think O'Reilly got fired because Rupert Murdoch and his sons found new moral convictions about the rights of women. The global village decided to shun O'Reilly. Twenty-first Century Fox quickly jumped aboard.

The Fox News empire knows that the electronic network electrocutes quickly. They didn't have time to take a poll-- they stuck their fingers in the air and felt the electronic wind blowing hard against O'Reilly's bullying, sexist tendencies. They didn't want to piss off a whole gender-- and O'Reilly hit the road, $25 million in his pocket to ease the pain. And, in some strange way, we feel Bill's pain. After all, we got to know him so well.

An external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness.-- 1964 (Marshall McLuhan)



references:
The Talking Heads album-- Stop Making Sense (1977)--
McLuhan quotes from Essential McLuhan (1995)-- p. 296.
"Piss off a whole gender..."-- this line taken from Aziz Anasari's monologue on SNL

Bill O'Reilly-- Get a Life, Dude

Bill O'Reilly, the 6 ft 5 in gargantuan of a TV performer, and host of the The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News, has been lording it over us for many years. He claims to be a good Catholic boy from humble roots on Long Island, New York. Bill and I are both from Long Island-- and we are exactly the same age.

O'Reilly calls himself a traditionalist, claiming to be open-minded on political matters. Says he loves the working class, the regular guy, the average American. He is a hero, a talented broadcaster and spokesman for conservative viewers of Fox. That's cool. We're all entitled to a political viewpoint. He portrayed himself as a rational student of world events but truly has never been welcoming to people with viewpoints at odds with his own. He kind of bullies on the air.

But here's the thing. How did a guy, supposedly so smart, forget the golden rule for avoiding workplace romance... Don't get your honey where you get your money. O'Reilly has a net worth of $85 million, an immense fortune, and the power that comes with having the highest rated show on cable news. Power is the greatest aphrodisiac, with money a close second. Bill has both power and money. He should have no problem attracting women, even at 67 years of age. Does he really have to limit his sexual hunting to the Fox News office place?

Makes no sense-- and you even have to wonder if behind it all Mr. Bill O'Reilly wanted to get caught. I mean come on, New York City is full of beautiful women. Many would be discreet about sharing intimacy with a famous TV personality, O'Reilly is possibly the most successful TV performer out there.

And then there's the first lawsuit, the 2004 situation with Andrea Mackris, a former producer for his show. She sued O'Reilly but dropped her sexual assault lawsuit against O'Reilly after reportedly receiving a $9 million bucks payout. That was the famous loofah/falafel shower fantasy:

Her complaint alleged that in phone conversations, O'Reilly had "advised her to use a vibrator and told her about sexual fantasies involving her" and an allegation that he threatened that if she reported his behavior, "Roger Ailes...will go after you...Ailes operates behind the scenes, strategizes, and makes things happen so that one day BAM! The person gets what's coming to them but never sees it coming." (Wikipedia)

So, Bill had an unpleasant workplace experience back in 2004, gets burned for $9 million, and goes back for more! I would call that Catholic guilt on steroids. It's not okay for me to make all this money, have all this success, and so I won't pursue a beautiful companion by simply walking over to a Manhattan bar/club frequented by super models. No, that's too easy. Instead, I'll hound the women I work with-- so I can be rapped over the knuckles with a ruler by Mother Superior. And that Mother Superior is the Social Network-- the biggest network of them all.

Bill and his show have been totally savaged across the Internet and into the real world. The O'Reilly Factor sponsors are leaving faster his show faster than a woman racing away from a guy with a cold sore. Try to No Spin that one.

From Russia With Love

“President John F. Kennedy had named Fleming's novel From Russia with Love among his ten favorite books of all time in Life magazine,^[4] producers Broccoli and Saltzman chose this as the follow-up to (James) Bond's cinematic debut in Dr. No. From Russia with Love was the last film President Kennedy saw at the White House on 20 November 1963 before going to Dallas.”

(Wikipedia)

The film From Russia With Love (1963) came out at the height of the Cold War. I didn’t know about the John Kennedy connection until today while reading the Wikipedia article. But the movie is an indication of where the average American stood on the subject of Russian culture. The Cold War propaganda fed to American kids at the time was best exemplified by the character Rosa Klebb, the ugly Russian spy who attempts to kill James Bond with a poisoned toe-spike.

The image of Russia offered to us featured a vast, colorless, inhumane Communist gulag filled with unattractive women and brutal men and totally lacking in consumer goods—except shoes with spikes in the toes.

And now we have learned that Russian women are hot—the beneficiaries of a fantastic make-over, historically speaking.

Vladimir Putin is depicted as something akin to the harsh Communist bureaucrats, very utilitarian and single-minded in his quest for world domination. We are always reminded he began adult life as a KGB agent. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The new twist is Donald Trump, the American president, having a pro-Putin stance. This twists America’s psyche into knots. The ugly women are now the pretty women? The bad guys are now the good guys? Or, are Russians still the bad guys—only now they may have been clever enough to have influenced an American election.

If a bunch of Russian hackers had the skill to get Donald Trump elected American president—everyone should be hiring them for their next project. Trump may have been the biggest underdog in Presidential history. Now he’s President. He’s keeping everybody engaged with his unpredictability, his erratic tweeting and his disregard to proper Presidential behavior. And added to his unpredictability, he refuses to say negative things about Putin and the Russians. Does that mean he colluded with the Russians? Not so sure about that. I can’t picture Trump cooperating with anybody.

But here’s a twist—two of Trump’s wives have been of Slovak-style background. Ivana Trump married Donald way back in 1977, long before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She must be celebrated by Trump for her contribution of their daughter Ivanka, the light of Donald’s life. Mother Ivana was born in Czechoslovakia and attended University in Prague. She’s really Czech! What a Czech… check her out!

Melania Trump, Trump’s present wife and First Lady of the United States, was born in Slovenia, part of Yugoslavia at the time. She went to school in Ljubljana and that’s not in Kansas. Melania speaks 6 languages--English, French, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, and her native Slovene. She loves fancy clothes, no doubt, as a former model.

So, Donald Trump showed some open-minded freedom in his choice of mates and has a carnal connection to the part of world once firmly in the embrace of Soviet Russia, as part of the Iron Curtain countries. Trump’s women have been Russian—esque, maybe not actual Russian but certainly from the Soviet suburbs, and that part of the world has been good to him. The American press (media) never considers a man’s basic drives, sex and procreation, when understanding Donald’s Trump’s fondness for people from the cooler climes, just east of Europe.

And Ivanka will sell you all kinds of fancy shoes, but none with spikes coming out of the toes.