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.

Melania Trump: what she wore

She wore an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini

For the first time that day…

(Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, 1960)

Of course, Melania Trump did not wear a bikini to visit the border country between Texas and Mexico. She did not hide in the locker room rather than step out and face the gawkers. But she did the next worse thing… Melania wore a Zara jacket priced around $45 with an angry message on the back: “I don’t really care do U”

The T-shirt message tells us what you the wearer really thinks. Melania’s message reflects her thinking-- but why is she so alienated? My guess is that refugee children and their fate hardly crosses Melania’s mind. Certainly not enough to run off and get a Zara jacket.

Zara, Melania’s choice may provide clues to her thinking. Zara began in Galicia, Spain—the most northwest province of Spain. A woman, Rosalia Mera, co-founded the company with her husband and became the richest self-made female entrepreneur in the world. Zara’s secret to success was bringing new designs to market with incredible speed and cost efficiency.

Melania may know nothing of Rosalia's story. The casual-green jacket with the modest price tag may remind her of you youth, the days when she had to pinch pennies as a struggling model. We all long for the carefree days of our youth, and Melania may miss those exciting early days on the runway.

Melania’s life changed suddenly and took a quantum leap with the marriage to Trump. He got elected President. Talk about a game changer! Melania became a FLOTUS, the First Lady of the United States. Even the name sounds uptight and boxed-in. 

Melania showed a lapse in judgement. Possibly she gambled too riskily by shouting to the heavens, asking for a life intervention from the Higher Powers. 

As the Princess chained to the top of Trump Tower, Melania has no easy way off the island. She may be eligible for a break—the jacket actually had a free-flowing, casual quality— reminding us of the relaxed world Melania seeks while no one listens. 

Donald got promoted, possibly to the job he cannot do, and Melania may be suffering the same fate. She wants a fashion line of her own. Anything other than the First Lady’s stuffy uniform. 

Melania has to look a certain way and act a certain way. She’s tired of the whole fishbowl existence and, just like the immigrants plight captured by the Emma Lazarus poem at the Statue of Liberty... Melania yearns to breath free.

The New Colossus 

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Trump’s drunken dance: may be working

 Zeibekiko is a popular Greek nightclub dance, done by only one person at a time, a male performer, and everyone else has to kneel down, forming a circle around the dancer, clapping following the rhythm and encouraging the dancer. Zeibekiko dance does have some particular steps, but the most impressive dance is the one where the dancer shows his creativity, performing special feats, adding a little humor and personal touch to the occasion.

(Wikipedia)

Donald Trump moves with the creativity and freedom of a drunk or a Greek guy stumbling around the dance floor. The Zeibekiko dancer sometimes mimics a drunk.Trump stomps across the world stage with the stumbling grace of a drunk. He bellows around the White House or Mar a Lago or Trump Tower, stomps out of G7 gatherings, hires Rudy Giuliani as alternative drunk uncle to fend off Robert Mueller and the Stormy Daniels lawyer. Trump huffs and puffs and tweets like a man possessed, but still pulls off a meeting with North Korea. Donald J. Trump, a teetotaler, never has touched alcohol, but moves with the stumbling grace of a drunk.

Trumps lack of planning may be his secret. Presidential campaign? He hadn’t a clue. Came up with a great slogan—Make America Great Again. Surprised people by filling up stadiums on the campaign trail. He talked different. Trump delivers speeches like a standup comic. We all watch him wondering about his next move. The behavior of an improvisational performer attracts our attention. 

Trump’s understanding of modern electronic media may explain his mastery of the improvisational. Our social media network is very interactive. As Marshall McLuhan correctly predicted—the new era of electronic communications, the one we’re living in now, is all about engagement. Cellphones, video games, Facebook, etc. engage us more personally than books, newspapers and even the television of old.

Trump has integrated his Twitter account with the hours of coverage he attracts on cable television to become a broadcasting system all his own. How does he keep his viewership, readership, follower numbers at a high level?... He does it with outrageous statements, insults, provocative lies, and manufactured culture wars with American football players, and the timing, intonations and attitude of a seasoned standup comic.

I look for traces of Donald Trump in old footage of his early television appearances. He seems slightly shy but eager to master the TV studio. He has a glint in his eye. I see a Rascal.

Trump reveals in those brief TV appearances, traces of the rascal, the scamp, scalawag, scoundrel, who would come to fruition during his run for Presidency. He quickly wanted to master the TV performer’s craft. He had some success but really flourished when he began to control everything. 

“Emoluments? What is that? I want to make money and be President at the same time.” 

He seems out of control but then controls almost everything. 

The improvisational mode suits Trump and his spontaneity suits the new electronic media environment. Trump’s media enemies hate the ease of his approach and fault him for being stupid, a sign they do not “get” Trump’s mastery of their own medium.

And the Zeibekiko dance continues.... 

Trump totters at the edge of the nightclub stage, verges on a drunken stumble but always finds his footing. 

He somehow avoids falling down-- and surprises us again and again with the outrageous behavior of a wild standup comic.

American Puritanism vs Vegas Mob

The Puritans arrived early. The Pilgrims landed at the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 and the Puritans soon followed. Their conservative religious beliefs have influenced the American nation to the present day. Belief do not always account for behavior. The Bible Belt reflects the Puritan message to the present day. But you have to wonder-- who won the way Puritanism or hedonism?

What is Puritanism? Puritanism suggests “against pleasure” and Puritans are not associated with having fun. That’s where the mobsters who built Las Vegas come in. The Italian Mafia understood the sensual side of human beings—sex, eating, drinking, gambling and “being naughty” are part of the human psyche. 

Religious beliefs do not erase the pleasures of the flesh. The Puritans and Mafia may have agreed on man’s sinful nature. Each group took a different approach to the sins of the flesh. The Protestants said “don’t do it outside of marriage.” The Vegas Mob eventually said “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

The Vegas Mob realized even the holiest among us entertain erotic thoughts. Our human senses seek expression. They filled that need—starting 400 years after the Puritans arrived on Plymouth Rock. Hoover Dam, legalized gambling and the arrival of the Mafia dons started Las Vegas on its path and eventual reputation as Sin City.

Though no expert—give the Mafia credit. They knew the showgirls had appeal but came up with a few great marketing strategies. 

1)   Offering free drinks to gamblers is absolute genius. Nobody else gave out free alcohol. The Vegas crime bosses figured that alcohol lowers social inhibition. Vegas is all about lowering inhibition. Drunk and stoned people spent more time at the gambling tables.

2)  Offering good food at bargain basement prices produces similar results. Vegas always had a reputation for inexpensive food. Now it’s know for excellent food. Taste is another human sensory pleasure and you eat well in Vegas.

3)  Making you feel important. Spend money in Vegas and they treat you nicely with comped rooms. The American tendency has always been to be modest and unassuming. In Vegas they said “Hell no to modesty.” They recognized customers, acknowledged them and brought them back for more.

4)  Turn the gaming rooms into comfortable air-conditions dens of iniquity. The flashing lights, clanging slot machines, scantily clad waitresses bringing free drinks and the lure of easy money all worked like a charm. 

5)  Remove all clocks and turn the gambling area into a labyrinth. No clocks  visible and you reduce the uptightness about time of day. Difficult to escape hallways and corridors all lead customers back to the fun rather than back to the rooms.

6)  Legalized prostitution. That’s pretty self-explanatory. Now that many states have legal gambling—Vegas has been forced into an entertainment center. Prostitution is an entertainment draw—along with comedians, magicians, lion tamers and Rat Pack revival groups.

The Bible Belt probably extends as far west as Texas, but not all the way to Nevada. However, religious devotion is a big part of American life from coast to coast. 

Got to give the Vegas Mob credit—for understanding hedonism as well as the most devout churchgoer. The Mob turned just went a different route and turned sin into a profit center.

MLK’s speech: "assumes the sale" for racial justice

On August 28, 1963. That was the day of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. King began by stating the is “the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” His remark holds true today. Possibly it remains true for the rest of American history. The reason—King’s visionary speech.

I was 14 years old at the time. Do not recall understanding King’s speech but the Civil Rights movement was in full swing. In those days many found MLK Jr to be too moderate, too willing to work for the white man. Malcolm X, may felt, was the true revolutionary.

Just listened to the 17 minutes speech. Taken by the great logic of his remarks:

Problem stated:

1) Negro lives on an island of poverty.

2) Negro is languishing in the corners of American society.

3) America issues a promissory note to every citizen—guaranteeing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—except to the black man. 

4) There should be sufficient funds in the “great vaults of opportunity of this nation” to promise the same acess to freedom and the security of justice to citizens of all races.

Solution:call to action

1) Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

Warnings issued:

1) The riots were not a case of the Negro blowing off steam. The revolt will continue to shake the nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

2) Black men should not give up the thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

Common Ground: the American dream

1)   I still have a dream. It is deeply rooted in the American dream.

The famous closing of the “I Have A Dream” speech “assumes the sale”—assumes a future of racial justice.

·      The children of slave owners and former slaves sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

·      Mississippi will no longer be sweltering under the heat of oppresson—but will become an oasis.

·      My 4 little children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their characer.

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.

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Tom Wolfe: writer "got" McLuhan

Tom Wolfe, pioneer of New Journalism, "got" Marshall McLuhan in a way few other writers, thinkers, pundits and fellow travelers ever did. Wolfe wrote an article for the New York Herald Tribune in 1965, asking "what if he is right?" in its title and we now know that McLuhan anticipated the electronic environment a remarkable achievement for a man who died in 1980.

 Tom Wolfe, pioneer of New Journalism, "got" Marshall McLuhan in a way few other writers, thinkers, pundits and fellow travelers ever did. Tom Wolfe died last week at 88 years of age. The news anchors highlighted Wolfe as a pioneer of the New Journalism and as a novelist with a keen eye for societal structures and strictures. None mentioned Wolfe and his interest in Marshall McLuhan.

Wolfe entered the world of Sixties and a Ken Kesey led group of acid-dropping hippies in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”You were either “on the bus”with the acid droppers or otherwise “off the bus.”Wolfe never dropped acid but managed to stay on the bus to tell the story.

Wolfe captured the excitement of the Apollo space program with“The Right Stuff”.  He helped make test pilot Chuck Yeager a household name with his evocative stories of cool cucumber pilots breaking the sound-barrier and moving us closer to the heavens.

In the “The Bonfire of the Vanities”Wolfe explored Wall Street greed back in the Eighties and the high rolling Masters of the Universe with their big ambitions and financial clout. 

McLuhan, probably a sociologist at heart, loved society and its paradoxes—the“human carnival,”he always stated, was going stronger than ever and provided a great palette for the writer observer, the student of human foibles.

None of the news broadcasts or Tom Wolfe obituaries mentioned his interest in the theories of Marshall McLuhan. As far back as 1965, Wolfe wrote an article on McLuhan where he asked in the title—“what if he is right?”

McLuhan correctly perceived McLuhan had unlocked the cuckoo clock of technology and the profound effect the new electric environment would have on us all. Wolfe, a quick study, explains the shift in sensory balance as Electronic Man moves from the printed word with its emphasis on the eye and the visual to the acoustic, multi-sensory electic world. McLuhan brilliantly predicted a return to a kind of tribalism, the rise of a global village where we all sit around an electron-powered campfire.

Wolfe mentions McLuhan's book "Understanding Media" as an underground best-seller at the time of this article. He points out McLuhan as the master of the epigrammatic statement with "global village" and "the medium is the message." 

What you say on the cellphone is much less important than the fact that you are using a cellphone.”

The new electronic man becomes more emotional as he leaves the visual logic of the printed page. The tribesman in the jungle gets his information around a campfire. The process is intimate and emotional. Our social media world rocks with out-of-control emotions as information travels at the speed of light and everybody knows the business of everybody else.

Follow the link here to read the New York Herald Tribune article from 1965.

http://www.digitallantern.net/mcluhan/course/spring96/wolfe.html

The full title of the piece:

suppose he is what he sounds like,
the most important thinker since
newton, darwin, freud, einstein,
and Pavlov what if he is right?

-TOM WOLFE

Turns out--  McLuhan was right!

Electronic World: electrocutes instantly

The social network is lately full of scandal. Scandal production rises to meet the speed of communication. Is there more scandal-- or just more reporting? Trump's adultery, Michael Cohen's payoffs, Stormy Daniels making a media splash-- has been happening since Adam and Eve or, at least, since Luci and Dezi took over the television airwaves.

So, what has changed?

Transparency. The incredible transparency that allows us to get the dirty details on everybody. Think of the big names that disappeared from the scene almost instantly-- Charlie Rose, Louis CK, Russell Simmons, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, Elliot Spitzer, Bill O'Reilly.  Those bights ignited, burned quickly and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The speed of collapse has changed. Decades of stardom gone in a few days.

We learn too much sometimes--  the sexual behaviors of Dustin Hoffman, bothered me. I liked his movies... including Midnight Cowboy and The Graduate most of all. Now I have to push Dustin Hoffman's rumored sexual behaviors out of my mind when I watch those films.

Ronan Farrow turns out to be the Sherlock Holmes of our era. Ronan did what The New York Times, Washington Post, etc could not do without him-- got the #metoo movement going.

Ronan got published in The New Yorker to get those Harvey Weinstein stories out. Ronan entered the annals of American history with his reporting on Harvey Weinstein. Ronan began his public career on shaky ground He failed as a MSNBC TV personality starting at too young. But he came back as a muckraking journalist and has changed society. Maybe Ronan has a political future?

Woody Allen is Ronan Farrow's father. Ronan stuck tightly to his sister's accounts of Woody having abused her sexually as a child. We have no proof of what actually happened but does that matter? Once the rumor takes hold, publish the rumor. Suddenly Woody seems guilty in the court of public opinion. Nobody cares to hear Woody's side of the story.

Woody has a wonderful sense of humor. Now I gotta consider Ronan's sister when watching a Woody Allen film. This places Ronan's sister on equal footing with Woody Allen-- one of the great comic geniuses.

Donald Trump has eluded the rapid fire dangers of the social network. Trump has brilliantly exploited the technology to great advantage.

Interesting the Donald Trump figured out Twitter at 70 years of age. Donald showed a preternatural ability to recognize Twitter as such an effective tool. He revolutionized American politics with the Twitter method for communicating with the electorate, at least his portion of it. This has nothing to do with morality. Twitter is available to us all.

Just remember... the electronic world electrocutes instantly.