CSotD: Priorities and pie fights
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Amid a torrent of mediocre cartoons about security at the Sochi Olympics and predictably partisan back-and-forth views of tonight's State of the Union (all of which, in both categories, seem to be hoping for an I-told-you-so disaster), comes this quiet, pointed commentary from Tom Tomorrow.
Not only does it stand out because everyone else seems to be chasing their own and each others' tails, but it stands out because he's right.
And a quick digression: The rise of cheapskate sources for less-than-market editorial cartoons, plus the loss of cartoonist staff positions which it helped accelerate, has created a situation where editorial cartoonists are under increasing pressure to catch onto popular, rather than important, themes. It's not just a matter of cheesy Pearly Gates tributes but a lot of herd-mentality drawing across the board, because getting editors to pick up your trenchant analysis of Justin Bieber has become critical to paying your rent.
Though maybe that wasn't a digression. You can bet that, if some chemical company had poisoned the water supply of the Greatest and Most Important City in the Universe rather than Charleston, West Virginia, this would be a viral cartooning topic of Bieberesque — nay, of twerkological — dimensions.
A month or more without potable water in West Virginia being clearly less of a crisis than being stuck for four hours in a traffic jam trying to get into TGAMICITU.
Yeah, I know: Chris Christie is/was a leading contender for the GOP presidential candidacy, so the bridge issue was of national importance as a reflection of his character. Or the GOP's character. Or whathaveyou.
So where is the candidate who wants to guarantee clean water for everyone in America?
Bernie Sanders will probably make some right-on, impassioned speech about it, but Bernie — whom I like a lot — is an Independent for a reason, and, while he caucuses with the Democrats, he's, if not the Court Jester, at least a kind of harmless crank who can be trotted out to show that, yes, there are decent people in Congress.
Just none with any particular influence.
They trotted Bernie out on CNN last night for a cage match with Michele Bachmann, which is kind of like some political/media version of "Carrie," only Bernie didn't trash the studio and everyone in it over the humiliating prank. Instead, he wasted energy blowing up all over one of the few members of Congress with even less influence than he has.
It's too depressing to embed the interview. If you want to see it, click this link.
Wolf Blitzer declared the exchange "excellent," which means it was the kind of degrading shouting sandbox exchange that, sure enough, is being re-posted all over the tubes this morning with both sides saying it proves they are right.
And the people in West Virginia still have no drinking water. They should call their Senator, if they have one.
Everyone should have a Senator. Pharmaceutical magnate Barney Pillsbury does, as noted in today's "Barney and Clyde." I think they're deductible as a business expense, and they're more useful, for the most part, than governors.
One sort of encouraging development, or perhaps its only an insight, is the topic of Matt Wuerker's latest panel, which is the thought that, for all that the echo-chamber outlets brag about and squabble over viewership, they only compete with each other, not with much of anything else on television.
Frank Rich makes a not-entirely-convincing argument in a much-shared article, Stop Beating a Dead Fox, that the network of crazies has far less influence than liberals give it, and would have even less if liberals weren't so easily goaded into publicizing it.
Perhaps, but, while Rich notes that Fox has only a million prime time viewers compared to the CBS Evening News' audience of eight million, he doesn't address the difference between three or four hours versus a half hour, much less the distinction between a cumulative and an average audience.
And there is a metaphor to be applied in the small percentage of America's TV viewers who are watching Fox and the small percentage of America's toxic chemicals that flowed into the Kahnawha River. Apparently, he doesn't read the comments sections of very many web sites.
In the same issue of NY Magazine, Robert Greenwald, who directed the searing 2004 documentary on Fox News, "Outfoxed," (video here) said he didn't plan to return to the topic: "The people who watch Fox News on a regular basis believe what they’re seeing, and I don’t think whatever we do will change those folks. There’s always going to be a certain number of people that believe that Bigfoot is in the next yard."
Wuerker makes a related, critical point: It's not like viewers are turning, instead, to something elevating and intelligent.
I keep hearing that this is a new Golden Age of Television, but I promise you that, if Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling and David Susskind and John Frankenheimer had worked with current technology, no thinking person would dare challenge their crowns by offering up even the best of the current piffle.
And Matt's typical American family is not even watching "Downton Abbey," which may be fun to watch but is hardly knee-high to the quality of "Requiem for a Heavyweight" or "Marty" or "Twelve Angry Men."
Still, if people are burning their brain cells on what, even in this Gold Leaf Age of Television, is clearly garbage, we may take some comfort in the fact that none of the fake, moronic screamers on "Real Housewives" are running for office.
Yet.
Juxtaposition of the Day:
Never mind television. The really valuable, intellectual stuff is in magazines.
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