The New York City borough of Queens has two residents more famous than the rest-- Donald Trump and Archie Bunker. Donald Trump is real and Archie Bunker is a fictional character. Normal Lear, the groundbreaking television producer, named the show All in the Family and cast Carroll O'Connor as Archie.
Trump and Bunker resemble each other in many ways. Archie sits on his throne, a comfortable chair in the middle of his living room. He hurls insults and says the things others are thinking but are afraid to say. Archie has problems with racial diversity, homosexuality, longhairs, war protesters, etc. etc.. Each show ended with a positive message about healing and crossing barriers.
Tump's speeches do not end with that kind of uplifting message. Trump has his throne to the Oval Office. He shoots from the hip just like Archie. Neither man shrinks from controversy.
All in the Family (AITF) ran from 1971-1979 and helped heal some of the lingering pain of the Vietnam era. The show confronted American society's prejudices through the voice of a bigoted, white working-class guy. r
Archie's blunt language reminds us of Donald Trump. Both men have a natural, colorful speaking style. Their hate-filled rants have another thing in common, they attract a loyal following of fans. Both Archie Bunker and Donald Trump speak like guys not afraid to offend. Agree or disagree-- you cannot get Archie Bunker or Donald Trump out of your head. Both are born entertainers.
Trump and Bunker are colorful. They speak in the cadences of the man in the street. Trump has a wealthy background but does not feel elite. Archie comes from humbler stock. Archie feels fear about the future. He doesn't like change.
Trump also seems to want to long for the past. He's done everything possible to rollback the Obama year changes. He constantly inflames liberals and reporters from CNN and MSNBC.
Trump may be non-fictional but like Archie he is product of the media. Trump calls the media "the enemy of the people" but media is Trump's biggest friend. A true con man, Trump convinces us that the most outlandish ideas have validity. And foolishly the media underestimates Trump and calls him a fool. One of the conman's greatest gifts is to convince the other guy, the mark, that he is smarter than you.
The TV camera is Trump's real mistress, a gal more loyal than porn star Stormy Daniels and all the other female accusers. The media speak about Trump constantly, from both left and right, from Fox News to the The New York Times and Washington Post.
New Yorkers are famously abrasive. Usually that New York attitude does not play well in the flyover states. The American Heartland has affection for modest people, the "Aw shucks" attitude of a Gary Cooper, who rides into town on a white horse and takes care of problems like it was easy as pie.
Trump builds his own importance with the fever of a narcissist looking in the mirror. He loves to hear his name repeated. The Trump name resonates across the airwaves and social media with metronome regularity. The crude, colorful language
Despite all the odds against them, the two Queens products have hypnotized America to their way of thinking. Archie has bunked us and Trump has trumped us. And we like it!
Sunday, July 22, 2018
Saturday, July 14, 2018
Cure for Media Frenzy: the right-side of your brain
It's scary out there? People are talking, tweeting themselves into a nervous breakdown. Civility... or Civil War? Above the frenzy we have Donald Trump. Trump savors the sound of dropped jaws and shocked gasps only he seems capable of creating daily to feed the 24/7 news beast. Donald Trump is operating from the right side of the brain. Let Marshall McLuhan, media guru and the Oracle of Toronto, explain:
Marshall McLuhan felt that the Edgar Allen Poe short “A Descent into the Maelstrom” (1841) about two Norwegian fishermen brothers pulled out of their boat by the swirling waters anticipates our media vortex. One brother drowns. The other survives. The second brother survives the maelstrom. He attains a revelation while in the midst of the whirlpool, a moment of beautiful clarity, an understanding of how objects are moving, being hurled through the water. That is the moment of clarity we need now.
The surviving fisherman’s revelation suggests we can achieve clarity regarding our media situation, or "nightmare" situation, as some would characterize the hurly-burly of social media.
People feel afraid. The natural order seems upended by Donald Trump. Sure he's a fast-talking, constantly shifting New York real estate developer with a penchant for bankruptcy and attacking enemies without conscience. But the fear that this is all Trump may be misplaced.
But Trump may simply be a signal, a blinking neon sign perhaps, that the medium has changed—from analog (newspapers) to digital (cellphone).
Trump may just be the first political candidate to grasp the speed and ferocity of social media. His strategy, obviously, has worked. He is on the lips of all, friends and enemies alike, 24/7, night and day, sun up to sundown.
We’re talking about a change in the medium—from print to electronic—that has turned the world upside down even more than Donald Trump.
On September 6, 1976, Marshall McLuhan appeared on NBS’s Tomorrow Show with host Tom Snyder. Their exchange helps us understand the panicky nature of our digital lifestyle. McLuhan explains that “right-brain thinkers” do better in this All-at-once vortex of electrons we now inhabit.
Snyder: Before I go too far, what is the world of electronic simultaneity?
McLuhan: All-at-onceness. At the speed of light there is no sequenced; everything happens at the same instant. That’s acoustic, and everything happens at once. There’s no continuity, there’s no follow-through, it’s all just now. And that, by the way, is the way sport is. Sports tend to be like that. And in terms of the new lingo of the hemispheres, it’s all right hemsphere. Games are all right hemisphere because they involve the whole man, and they are all participatory and they are all uncertain. There is no continuity. That’s just all surprise, unexpectedness, and total involvement.
Snyder:Is that okay, do you think?
McLuhan: The hemisphere thing?
Snyder:Yes, but I mean the whole thing, all surprise, all spontaneity, no connection, just all at one time. Is that okay for people?
McLuhan: Well “okay,” meaning is it good for people?
Snyder: Yes.
McLuhan: We live in a wworld where everything is supposed to be one-thing-at-a-time, lineal, connected, logical and goal-oriented. So, obviously for the left-hemisphere world, this new right hemisphere dominance is bad. We’re now living in a world which pushes the right hemisphere way up because it’s an all-at-once-world. The right hemisphere is an all-at-once simultaneous world. So the right hemisphere, by pushing up into dominance, is making the old left-hemisphere world, which is our educational establishment, our political establishment, make it look very foolish. It’s just a flip that is taking place.
Understanding Me, 2003
Lectures and Interviews (page 246-2247)
Marshall McLuhan
Right brain thinking moves the world. The simultaneous environment has taken over. The shift from print to electronic, as massive as the invention of the printed book by Johannes Gutenberg, has all of us by the throat and will not let go. The best plan... try to get some perspective like that surviving Norwegian fisherman from the Poe story. Otherwise, we may all sink into the maelstrom.
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Living at the speed of light: no more secrecy
Another strange effect of this electric environment is the total absence of secrecy. What Nixon refers to as the confidentiality of his role and position is no longer feasible. No form of secrecy is possible at electric speed, whether in the patent world, in the fashion world, or in the political world. The pattern sticks out a mile before anybody says anything about it. At electric speed, everything becomes X-ray. Watergate is a nice parable or example of how secrecy was flipped into show business. The backroom boys suddenly found themselves on the stage. Political support for election purposes ceases to be confidential or quiet or secret. There's no way of having any form of secrecy in these matters. With the end of secrecy goes the end of monopolies of knowledge. There can no longer be a monopoly of knowledge in learning, in education, or in power.
Understanding Me, Lectures and Interviews (page 237-238)
Marshall McLuhan
Living at the Speed of Light
These remarks made on February 25, 1974. McLuhan gave a lecture to 2,000 people at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The Mueller investigation has brought many comparisons to Watergate. McLuhan sees the issue as a function of the electric medium. Television dominated the electronic environment in 1974. The exposed confidential documents, from the Trump-Russia dossier on Trump activities in Russia to the Bradley/Chelsea Manning leak of American military data to Wikileaks to Russian hacks into Hillary Clinton, means secrecy is a thing of the past.
In 2018 we have a faster, more comprehensive electric environment. Social media and the 24/7 cycle and the rapid pace of Trump World make television and Watergate seem positively quaint by comparison. The talking heads compare Watergate and the Mueller investigation for political similarities and look for moral equivalencies. We had Republicans and Democrats working together in those days. No more. Why not? McLuhan sees the answer in the invisible technological environment surrounding us.
Trump, to his credit, figured out something about the electric environment that the rest of us have missed. He has a cult of personality and an informal speech style that entertains while creating controversy and a fracturing of the political landscape. His tweets supposedly offend but are read with relish, and repeated, by friend and foe alike. Trump may have been better served when tweets were limited to 140 characters. Trump's tweets have turned into essays, complete with spelling and grammatical errors.
We wonder if future politicians will employ some of Trump's tactics-- or if his administration is a one-off. Will partisanship ever recede? I don't know. The playbook has changed with the Trump presidency and his absolute dominance of the airwaves. Perhaps no politician will dominate us quite like Trump-- though Obama dominated during his tenure.
Obama's gentlemanly approach seemed mandatory. As the first black President, deemed controversial enough due to his skin color, Obama dared not stir the racial stew. If Hillary had won we can only imagine the anger that might have risen from her many detractors. It would have been ugly--maybe even uglier than we are experiencing. Unlike Trump, Hillary would have continued with the tone of past Presidents. But that will be harder.
The electric environment bristles with emotion and everybody getting into everybody else's business-- just like McLuhan predicted.
Understanding Me, Lectures and Interviews (page 237-238)
Marshall McLuhan
Living at the Speed of Light
These remarks made on February 25, 1974. McLuhan gave a lecture to 2,000 people at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The Mueller investigation has brought many comparisons to Watergate. McLuhan sees the issue as a function of the electric medium. Television dominated the electronic environment in 1974. The exposed confidential documents, from the Trump-Russia dossier on Trump activities in Russia to the Bradley/Chelsea Manning leak of American military data to Wikileaks to Russian hacks into Hillary Clinton, means secrecy is a thing of the past.
In 2018 we have a faster, more comprehensive electric environment. Social media and the 24/7 cycle and the rapid pace of Trump World make television and Watergate seem positively quaint by comparison. The talking heads compare Watergate and the Mueller investigation for political similarities and look for moral equivalencies. We had Republicans and Democrats working together in those days. No more. Why not? McLuhan sees the answer in the invisible technological environment surrounding us.
Trump, to his credit, figured out something about the electric environment that the rest of us have missed. He has a cult of personality and an informal speech style that entertains while creating controversy and a fracturing of the political landscape. His tweets supposedly offend but are read with relish, and repeated, by friend and foe alike. Trump may have been better served when tweets were limited to 140 characters. Trump's tweets have turned into essays, complete with spelling and grammatical errors.
We wonder if future politicians will employ some of Trump's tactics-- or if his administration is a one-off. Will partisanship ever recede? I don't know. The playbook has changed with the Trump presidency and his absolute dominance of the airwaves. Perhaps no politician will dominate us quite like Trump-- though Obama dominated during his tenure.
Obama's gentlemanly approach seemed mandatory. As the first black President, deemed controversial enough due to his skin color, Obama dared not stir the racial stew. If Hillary had won we can only imagine the anger that might have risen from her many detractors. It would have been ugly--maybe even uglier than we are experiencing. Unlike Trump, Hillary would have continued with the tone of past Presidents. But that will be harder.
The electric environment bristles with emotion and everybody getting into everybody else's business-- just like McLuhan predicted.
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