Of Fees, Futility, and Mike Huckabee

So, this one requires a little review. 

On December 18, 2013, an article entitled Talk Is Not Cheap: Why Do Ex-Politicians Earn Huge Money From Making Speeches? was published in the International Business Times, said article including some quotes from your humble servant, yours truly. I shared the article, accompanied by some discussion and analysis, in a post entitled, Giant Speaking Fees-Fi-Fo-Fum, back on February 23rd of 2014.

I thought that was the end of it. Wrong again!

Out of the quotes in that published article, which were taken from a larger set of quotes I had provided to the reporter, a single quote was recently re-quoted (is that anything like re-gifting?) in an article published by the Daily Dot. And in case you're not familiar with this outlet (and I have to admit that I was not myself before now), here is how they describe themselves:

The Daily Dot is the ultimate destination for original reporting about Internet life. We recognize Web users are deeply passionate about their communities and offer them stories that highlight the members of those communities. Our writing is definitive, comprehensive, and pulls from the best traditions of journalism. It is coverage that, uniquely, is not just on the web, but of the web.

So, the particular article in question was published on May 6th of this year, written by Matt Rozsa, and entitled, The Real Reason Mike Huckabee Keeps Running for President. If you want to click on the link and take a look at the article over on the Daily Dot site, please be my guest. I'll provide you with most of here, minus the links and added material, so if you want to follow up, again, go check it out.

So, Rozsa starts it off like this:

Shortly after Mike Huckabee ended his campaign for president in 2008, he began another career—this time as the host of his very own show on Fox News. If you want to understand Huckabee’s reason for making a recent entry into the 2016 race, you must start by recognizing that being an Also Ran can be very, very profitable.

After all, Huckabee’s chances of actually winning are quite slim. “Mr. Huckabee would seem to face greater obstacles than during his first presidential campaign, when he battled only a couple of rivals for the party’s conservative base,” writes Trip Gabriel of the New York Times. “Now half a dozen or more declared and likely candidates appeal to social conservatives, and Mr. Huckabee’s party has moved further rightward.”

If his vulnerabilities among the GOP’s conservative base weren’t damning enough, he is also damaged by his own checkered history when it comes to espousing ideas that are (to put it generously) controversial:

At this point, Rozsa provides several tweets dealing with Huckabee's offensive remarks make in the past, which you can view over there, I won't bother with them here, let's just get on with the point of the article:

These tweets demonstrate that the Internet is very much aware of Huckabee’s past views on gay rights, such as quarantining AIDS victims and supporting legislation permitting discrimination against gay people, as well as his paranoid Christian agenda in general. (Remember that time he claimed the American government was trying to criminalize Christianity?) Although presidential nominations are snagged by appealing to one’s party base, general elections are won by winning over the center, and considering that the American center opposes the injection of religion into politics, Huckabee’s very political brand guarantees his own unelectability.

Naturally, one must wonder: Could Huckabee really be deluded about his own chances of winning? If not, what possible reason could he have to enter the campaign?

“Huckabee is one of a number of people who have managed to make a career out of staging one long, endless, futile presidential run,” explains Drew Magary of GQ. “If you have enough money, a few rich benefactors, and a handful of bafflingly stubborn constituents, you can usually cobble together a campaign that is doomed to fail, but deliberately so.”

Now, here's where we get to the connection to the earlier article regarding speaking fees:

Politicians from both parties indulge in this practice. Rudy Giuliani earned more than $9.2 million in speakers fees in the year before his 2008 presidential campaign, while Hillary Clinton has been to known to accept as much as $200,000 for individual speaking engagements since her tenure as Secretary of State came to a close.

Other pricey Also Rans include Al Gore, whose agency requires him to be compensated “$100,000, plus travel, hotel, security, and per diem expenses”; Mitt Romney, who has averaged between $40,000 and $60,000 per appearance since his unsuccessful 2012 campaign; and Howard Dean, who has been paid $20,000 for speeches as short as 10 minutes in duration.

Of course, the original article on speaking fees was as much if not more so about the winners, like Bill Clinton, as it was about losers like Gore and Huckabee. And this article, on the other hand, is not limited to the topic of speaking fees alone:

Nor is it merely speaking that can rake in the cash for an erstwhile presidential contender. A study by the University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier determined that Sarah Palin—who voters with good memories may recall toyed with a presidential bid in 2012 before being snapped up by Fox News—earned $3 million during her three years as a commentator there, averaging out to $15.85 per word.

Though not earning nearly as much as Palin, many political observers theorized that Huckabee decided against running for president in 2012 because he’d have to give up the $500,000 annual salary from his show.

So now, let's get to my own little quote, or re-quote, in this article:

Dr. Lance Strate, a professor of communication and media studies and associate chair for graduate studies at Fordham University, argues that former presidential candidates can successfully demand egregious sums of money because they have star power. Strate told the International Business Times, “For some, there is the basic interest in being associated with a celebrity, the prestige that comes with the presence and participation of a famous and influential individual.”

And there you have it. Now it's on to bigger and better things:

The digital age has only exacerbated this trend. “Throughout modern campaign history successful candidates have tended to outpace their competitors in understanding changing communications,” explained a 2012 Pew Research Center study on Web and social media use during that year’s presidential election. This ranged “from Franklin Roosevelt’s use of radio, to John F. Kennedy’s embrace of television, to Ronald Reagan’s recognition of the potential for arranging the look and feel of campaign events in the age of satellites and video tape.”

Whereas previous technological advances merely extended the reach of a candidate’s message, however, the Internet allows them to remain in the public eye as long as they can generate headlines on Twitter. Candidates who are able to flourish in this climate may not have demonstrated an ability to effectively serve in public office, but they certainly prove something else entirely—namely, that they are marketable commodities.

Actually, there are no headlines on Twitter, but as long as you are a trending item, or at least a popular subject, sure that would be true. But celebrities do not live by Twitter alone, and the bottom line is that there are many platforms that can create and maintain visibility, and many ways that fame can remain even after the individual is no longer with us. YouTube, for example, is a prime example, in this regard.

And as for running for president as a ploy to gain greater fame, well I imagine that the name Donald Trump comes to mind for you as well as for me. Anyway, back to Rozsa:

While it’s bad enough that former politicians have the ability to so egregiously cash in on their fame, the more-likely-than-not phony campaigns of candidates like Huckabee take the problem of money corrupting politics to a whole other level.

Aside from the questionable fiscal ethics of conjoining a bid for elected office with one’s personal financial agenda, running for president simply to make money later distorts our democratic discourse. Every candidate who campaigns insincerely takes time, money, and attention away from those making good faith bids for power. Even worse, when a genuine candidate and a mercenary one have overlapping constituencies, the unelectable alternative can take votes away from the option who could realistically advance the cause of his or her constituents.

Now, I have mixed feelings about this argument. I do agree that turning the serious matter of running for elected office into a public relations strategy to promote the celebrity's own visibility is bad for democracy. This is the kind of argument that resonates with Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and my own Amazing Ourselves to Death. 

On the other hand, the idea that having too many candidates constitutes a problem, something we're hearing a lot of lately with some 20 odd (and I do mean that in both senses) major party candidates right now, and that we should only focus on the candidates that have the best shot at winning strikes me as inimical to the proper functioning of a democracy, of the free marketplace of ideas, and I think that happens all too often. I know that this is a point on which my colleague and friend, Paul Levinson, and I agree.

Let them all have a voice, our political process is much too constrained as it is, I mean, why are only two parties given serious consideration? Doesn't that limit political discourse to a narrow range? Wouldn't more parties, as well as more candidates, broaden the range of opinions and ideas, and therefore make for better deliberations?

In taking this position, I hope you understand that I in no way endorse the candidacy of Huckabee, who Rozsa rightly points out is seen by many as something of a bigot:

Of course, in the case of candidates like Huckabee, the toxicity of their cause is in its own right a problem. Despite the enormous strides made in recent years on issues like gay rights, there are still many Americans who wish to make a political crusade out of denying basic civil liberties to men and women with different sexual orientations.

Even though he won’t become president, and is unlikely to be the Republican nominee, Huckabee’s candidacy will still serve as a focal point for anti-gay bigots throughout the country, giving them an outlet to exercise (at the very least symbolic) electoral power. To play this role sincerely is deplorable; to do so with the primary goal of making money is even worse.

At some future date, a historian studying the early 21st century may look back at the hucksterism of men like Mike Huckabee and wonder how he got away with it. For now, unfortunately, we have to live with yet another doomed campaign.

The upshot of all this, once again, is the problem of the blurring of the boundaries between politics, journalism, and entertainment, which again brings me back to our fatal amusements and amazements.

 ............................................................................ 

How are we to view Huckabee, after all? As a former governor, presidential candidate, and generally speaking, a politician? As a broadcast journalist? Or given the criticism of television news in general, and FOX News specifically, as an entertainer? His politics may be reactionary, but in his blurring of the boundaries, what he represents is downright revolutionary. And that too is cause for concern. 

Penning Our Stories

My most recent op-ed in the Jewish Standard  was published on May 29th, and entitled Penning Our Stories. And as is the custom here on Blog Time Passing, you can click on the old link to read it over there, or stick around and read it here:

“The last time I got a fountain pen was for my bar mitzvah.”

That line was uttered during the two-part season finale of the ABC television network’s popular series Once Upon a Time, which aired on May 10. It was a little inside joke inserted by series creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, who co-wrote the episode; both of them may well have received fountain pens as gifts for their own bar mitzvahs. There was a time when a fancy fountain pen was as commonplace a gift as savings bonds for bar mitzvah boys, so much so that an often repeated bar mitzvah joke was, “Today I am a fountain pen.” (This was a play on the cliché declaration “Today I am a man,” this being a time before the bat mitzvah was fully instituted as an egalitarian religious practice.) Michael Hilton, in his book Bar Mitzvah: A History, reports that “in July 1946, Barry Vine of New Haven Connecticut, received sixteen fountain pens as gifts”! Now that’s the write stuff!

Fischler as Jimmy Barrett

Once Upon a Time’s bar mitzvah boy was played by the actor Patrick Fischler, who perhaps is best known for his role as the Jewish comedian Jimmy Barrett on the recently concluded AMC series Mad Men, and who also appeared on the series Lost, a series that Kitsis and Horowitz previously had worked on as writers. Fischler’s character was introduced in March, during the final story arc of the series’ fourth season, first through references to a mysterious “Author” whose writings set the course of the series’ storybook characters, such as Snow White, Prince Charming, Rumpelstiltskin, Captain Hook, Robin Hood, Maleficent, and Regina (aka the Evil Queen, Snow White’s nemesis); as “The Author” he also had the power to rewrite their stories, and change their fate.

Fischler as Phil from Lost

By the end of the season, we learned that the “Author” is a title and status that has been bestowed upon many different people, that this particular Author is named Isaac, that his last name is Heller (possibly a tribute to Jewish novelist Joseph Heller of Catch-22 fame), that he was from Brooklyn, and that back in 1966 he was a novelist who was having great difficulty getting anything published, working to support himself selling television sets, a job at which he was also unsuccessful. Selected to become the next in a long line of magical authors, he is asked to select a pen to use, prompting his remark about his bar mitzvah. Although that comment was the only instance in which the character was directly identified as Jewish, his name, voice, place of birth, look, and manner all allude to his ethnicity, and presumably his religion.

Part of the humor of the bar mitzvah comment comes from the incongruity of inserting a bit of Yiddishkeit into a series that remixes characters from Disney’s animated films, most of whom are derived from European fairytales and folklore. (Disney owns Once Upon a Time’s television network, ABC.) After all, even during the two decades that Michael Eisner was CEO of the Walt Disney Company, the film studio added no characters to its pantheon like Fievel Mousekewitz of Stephen Spielberg’s An American Tail. And we certainly don’t expect to see anyone named Cohen or Levy in Cinderella, Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast, or Frozen.

Fischler as "The Author"

There is, however, a long tradition of inserting inside jokes that only Jews could appreciate fully into Hollywood films. My all-time favorite is in the 1936 Marx Brother movie Animal Crackers, when the cast sings, “Hooray for Captain Spaulding, the African explorer,” and Groucho responds, “Did someone call me schnorrer?” I also love the subtle jab in the 1930 science fiction musical Just Imagine, in which characters from the future explain that people drive planes instead of cars, planes with names like Rosenblatt, Pinkus, and Goldfarb. In response, the distinctly Jewish character from 1930 remarks (in reference to the automaker’s anti-Semitism), “It looks like someone got even with Henry Ford!”

No doubt there also was a degree of identification between Kitsis and Horowitz, as the creators of Once Upon a Time, and their character, Isaac Heller, as “The Author” of the storybook tales that seal the fate of the series’ heroes and villains. And perhaps making Heller a villain involved a bit of self-deprecating humor. Certainly, it was ironic that Isaac’s status as “The Author” is revoked for changing the heroes’ and villains’ stories. That is exactly what Kitsis and Horowitz have done in the series, not the least by making both types of characters less black and white, more morally ambiguous, and therefore more realistic.


Still, portraying Once Upon a Time’s only Jewish character as a villain is more than a little problematic. There are echoes of Shakespeare’s Shylock in the explanation that Isaac gives to Snow White and Prince Charming, that it was “a lifetime of bad bosses” who “fancy themselves heroes, pushing around people like me,” that led him to resent the heroes and identify with the villains. The problem with having only one Jewish character in a popular narrative is that the character’s Jewishness becomes more than an individual attribute. Instead, the character becomes a representation of the Jewish people as a whole, in this case a negative representation, indeed, a negative stereotype.


But there is nothing negative about the Jewish connection to the role of “The Author” after all. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we pray that we may be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year, and we wish the same for others. In our tradition, God is an author, indeed, The Author, an understanding that has been adopted by the other Abrahamic religions. Of course Moses, our greatest prophet, was also a writer, and through the Torah and the Tanach, we became the first people to write our own historical narrative. And the stories our ancestors wrote have changed the course of history for the entire world, and continue to capture the imagination of billions of people.


Upon doing a search for “Jewish authors” via Google, a listing of “authors frequently mentioned on the web” appeared, and cited 50 names, including Phillip Roth, Saul Bellow, Franz Kafka, Bernard Malamud, Sholem Aleichem, Anne Frank, Joseph Heller, Isaac Asimov, J. D. Salinger, Elie Wiesel, Isaak Babel, Ayn Rand, Primo Levi, Marcel Proust, E. L. Doctorow, Amos Oz, Arthur Koestler, Leonard Cohen, Theodor Herzl, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Gertrude Stein, Emma Lazarus, Art Spiegelman, Tony Kushner, and Boris Pasternak. No doubt a full listing of every Jewish novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, screenwriter, comics writer, and writer of nonfiction would strain even the Google search engine’s enormous capabilities. Interestingly enough, Google’s list also included King David, Josephus, Maimonides, and Paul the Apostle, and it is certainly worth noting in this context that the Christian Gospels are to a large extent the product of Jewish authors, their impact immeasurable.

So maybe a fountain pen isn’t all that terrible a gift to give on the occasion of a bar or bat mitzvah? Certainly, research indicates that in the classroom, learning and retention is greater for students who take notes by hand as opposed to on laptops and tablets, and there is much to be said for taking pen in hand in regard to creativity. Our tradition of writing extends from Torah and Tanach to Talmud and Zohar, from Maimonides and Karo to the writings of our modern rabbis and lay leaders, from the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist branches as well as the Orthodox, and to the secular, scholarly, popular, and artistic works of Jewish authors all around the world. With the magic of the pen, we can continue to be authors of our own history as a people. And with the magic of the pen, we can inscribe our own names into a personal book of life that we each can write for ourselves.

A Nick in Time for Firesign

Another significant loss came back on June 18, when Phil Austin passed away. Austin was one quarter of the comedic fab four known as Firesign Theatre. With roots in radio going back to the sixties, the Firesigns created what many would agree have been the most innovative and simply put, the best comedy produced in a purely acoustic format.

The Four Firesigns

As a baby boomer, most of my rather substantial record collection acquired over the course of the sixties and seventies, and into the eighties, consisted of musical recordings. It was not unusual, however, to also include a few comedy albums in your collection, and I myself had a couple dozen. A few were stand-up recordings. There wasn't all that much of that sort of thing at that time, before the big explosion of stand up in the eighties, but one of them was Woody Allen's double album. Then there were the Monty Python albums, which were great, although most of them were simply soundtracks from the TV show, funny as hell, but not created especially for audio. I'd rate them second to Firesign Theatre when it comes to sound recordings.

The way that I, and many others, explained Firesign Theatre's comedy recordings to others not familiar with them, is that they were like music. That is, for most comedy albums, you could listen to them once, maybe twice, and then they lose their appeal because you already know the punchline, know the entire joke. The Pythons you could listen to repeatedly because of their downright zaniness, the intellectual quality of their humor, and those marvelous English accents. But you'd never call what they did music, as opposed to the Firesign Theatre, who took things to a whole new level. 

Firesign Theatre's humor alone bear multiple listenings, the wordplay is nothing short of superb, but it's the complexity, the rhythm, counterpoint, and polyphony of the four voices, complemented by myriad sound effects expertly deployed, that turned a form of radioplay into something more, something that for lack of a better word can be described as musical.

Marshall McLuhan, Edmund Carpenter, and Tony Schwartz, along with Edward T. Hall, wrote about a phenomenon their referred to as acoustic space, or sometimes auditory space, and the McLuhan-inspired composer and media ecology scholar R. Murray Schafer extended the idea into the concept of acoustic ecology. And Firesign Theatre truly create acoustic spaces and ecologies through their recordings, immersing the listener in a total environment, albeit one based on the ear alone. In this sense, like music, Firesign Theatre created comedic soundscapes that could be listened to, indeed become immersed within, over and over and over again.

Their most popular album was their second release, back in 1969. We were never exactly sure what the actual name of the album was, because the cover presented two possibilities. The shorter one, All Hail Marx and Lennon, would seem to be the most likely, but in actuality it was the longer one, the improbable How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All that was the actual album title.

It was a title that perfectly captured the new electronic media environment, very much in keeping with Marshall McLuhan's observation that when we appear on television, we become its content, we are sent over the airwaves. The same may be said of our voices as transmitted via radio broadcast, or over the telephone wires. We are, indeed, in two places at once, as well as not anywhere at all. What a perfect way to describe the phenomenon that William Gibson referred to as cyberspace!

By the way, here's the back side of the album cover, featuring the four Firesigns once again:

What made this particular album especially popular was its B side. I suppose I should explain that back in the days of vinyl recordings, every record had two sides, and these sides were designated, you might have guessed, as Side 1 and Side 2, and/or referred to as the A side and the B side. This had particular significance for 45 rpm singles, where it was often the case that that side 1 was the song released as a single, in hopes of making it onto the Top 40 charts, while side 2, the B side, was not. "B side" therefore indicated a recording of inferior quality, or something less mainstream, more quirky, than the A side. Also known as the flip side, not having to conform to commercial requirements often gave "B sides" a charm all their own.

When the emphasis shifted from singles to albums over the course of the sixties, the two sides lost that particular significance, and simply indicated the order in which the various tracks on the album were meant to be played. Now, on How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All the two sides are relatively independent of one another, although there is a reference to "the other side of the record" on the flip side, as well as some additional mentions in an odd little coda that comes at the end. The joke loses its self-reflexive humor on the CD issue of the recording, and when listening to it online, instead morphing into a kind of accidental invocation of nostalgia within a track that is dominated by the intentional invocation of nostalgia.

Anyway, the B side on this album is the one that is more mainstream, and the reason for the recording's special popularity. The title of the track is, "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger," and introduces the character of Nick Danger, Third Eye, played by Phil Austin. Running a little over 28 minutes, it takes up the entire side of the record album, and is presented as an episode from a radio program circa 1941, featuring a private detective as the hero. It is at once a parody of the kinds of content common during the good old radio days, and a surreal sixties soundplay with many references to sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Beatles songs in particular. There are fans who have all or most of the dialogue memorized, and most of us can recite many of the lines from this recording. So here, why not just listen, and see, I mean hear for yourself (or if you know the album, treat yourself to another replay):





So, the "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger" is more accessible than many of their other tracks, including Side 1 of How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All, which consists of 6 tracks that are woven together in a stream of consciousness kind of flow. And it was successful enough that Firesign Theatre came out with a few other Nick Danger adventures, and Austin also did a solo collection of Nick Danger monologues, none of which lives up to the brilliance of this first and finest recording.













Phil Austin was not the first of the quartet to depart for that great sound studio in the sky. He was preceded by Peter Bergman over three years ago. And over the past half century, Firesign Theatre simply has not received the recognition they so richly deserve. It's time to rectify that, don't you agree?

Yes, Squire

So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say. I know the title of this post sounds like a line from Monty Python, but it concerns another group of talented Brits, the progressive rock group Yes, and in particular their founder and perennial anchor, Chris Squire, who passed away this past Saturday, June 27th, at 67 years of age. I bring this up because Yes is one of my favorite bands of all time, and Squire was the only member of the band to appear in all its incarnations, from its founding in 1968.

And I know that the music of Yes is not to everybody's taste, and I'm not trying to push it onto anyone who doesn't care for it, but as a late baby boomer, witnessing the passing of members of the early baby boomer generation that had an influence on me during my formative teens is more than a little significant. And of course, we've lost quite a few along the way, and will lost many more to come.

But Yes was my favorite when I was in high school and college, and remained one of my favorites ever since. And the one constant in every incarnation of the band was Chris Squire. More than anyone else, it was his band. And that's not to say that they simply cannot go on without him. But it does mean that they will never be able to go back to any of their early, classic line ups ever again. And it does mark the end of an era.

As mentioned, Yes is a progressive rock group, really one of the bands that helped to define that genre of popular music. Within progressive rock, their music was sometimes labeled as classical rock, not to be confused with the much broader category of classic rock. Classical rock represented a reversal from the earlier roll over Beethoven aesthetic, incorporating aspects of symphonic and other types of classical music into rock formats. Yes sometimes did this directly, while also drawing on jazz, rhythm and blues, and acid rock and psychedelia, and of course the music of the earlier British invasion bands, the Beatles having been a major influence on them. 

But what stands out most about the British group is the complexity of their music, and the virtuosity of their members. They were interested in doing something far greater than appropriating bits and pieces of classical music. They aspired to create songs that were on a par with classical music.

And maybe you find them to be over the top. That's not uncommon. For myself, I have found their music to be intellectually engaging, as well as emotionally and spiritually moving, and that is why I have been listening to them for four decades.

And what distinguishes Chris Squire was his ambition to transform his instrument, the bass guitar, from a bottom dweller than simply kept the beat into a lead instrument. And he succeeded. He was an innovator, as well as a major influence on many other bass players. Much has been made of the fact that the bass player of The Who, John Entwistle, died on the same day, June 27th, over a decade ago, in 2002. Some are now saying that Squire and Entwistle were the two greatest bass players in rock history. And maybe that's true, although I think Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead would also belong in that number.

But by way of a tribute, let me include a high quality recording of their studio track "Heart of the Sunrise" for their

1971 album, Fragile. This is one of many songs that displays Squire's unique abilities, and the potential he introduced of how the bass guitar could perform as a lead instrument. 

Arguably, "Heart of the Sunrise" is one of the best examples of what progressive rock is all about, with Squire's bass complemented by the ethereal singing and lyrics of Jon Anderson, balanced by the amazing drum work of Bill Bruford (the song is credited to Anderson, Bruford, and Squire), and also the keyboard wizardry of Rick Wakeman, and the brilliant lead guitar of Steve Howe. The video itself is very nicely done, all credit to vzqk50HD Productions. 

And here are the wonderfully poetic lyrics:

Love comes to you and you follow
Lose one on to the Heart of the Sunrise
SHARP-DISTANCE
How can the wind with its arms all around me

Lost on a wave and then after
Dream on on to the Heart of the Sunrise
SHARP-DISANCE
How can the wind with so many around me
Lost in the city

Lost in their eyes as you hurry by
Counting the broken ties they decide
Love comes to you and then after
Dream on on to the Heart of the Sunrise
Lost on a wave that you're dreaming
Dream on on to the Heart of the Sunrise
SHARP-DISTANCE
How can the wind with its arms all around me
SHARP-DISTANCE
How can the wind with so many around me
I feel lost in the city

Lost in their eyes as you hurry by
Counting the broken ties they decided

Straight light moving and removing
SHARPNESS of the colour sun shine
Straight light searching all the meanings of the song
Long last treatment of the telling that
Relates to all the words sung
Dreamer easy in the chair that really fits you

Love comes to you and then after
Dream on on to the Heart of the Sunrise
SHARP-DISTANCE
How can the sun with its arms all around me
SHARP-DISTANCE
How can the wind with so many around me
I feel lost in the city

Immediately following the conclusion of "Heart of the Sunrise" this particular video includes the brief reprise of Jon Anderson's "We Have Heaven" that comes at the very end of Fragile, which is altogether fitting in the context of a tribute to the memory of Chris Squire.



Again, I recognize that we all have different tastes in music, and all I want to say is that this music meant, and means something to me, which is why it deserves a place here on Blog Time Passing. And this is a topic I'll come back to in future posts.

The Future of Communication Theory

So, just a couple of weeks ago, I was at our annual meeting of the Media Ecology Association, this year hosted by Metropolitan University in Denver, Colorado. The convention was held on June 11th to 14th, and it began, following the welcoming remarks, with a plenary session I organized, entitled The Future of Communication Theory.

I also served as the moderator of the session, and since it was videotaped and uploaded to YouTube by our friends at Metropolitan U., I'm pleased to be able to share it with you here on Blog Time Passing.

As you'll see, I'm seated all the way on the right, and proceeding from right to left, the participants are Larry Frey from the University of Colorado, Boulder; Karen Lollar, from Metropolitan University, the convention coordinator and MEA Vice-President; Corey Anton of Grand Valley State University and MEA Immediate Past President; Robert Craig, Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and MEA Past President Janet Sternberg.






Some caveats, that due to one of the microphones being faulty, some of the discussion is difficult to hear, so you may need to crank it up to the maximum setting (but don't worry, you can hear me just fine, ha ha). And the discussion does stray from the topic of the future of communication theory, and from the topic of communication theory itself, but it is nonetheless thoughtful, illuminating, and provocative.

At least I thought so. Let me know if you agree...

Thunderation!

So, I know what you're going to say, that I've been holding out on you. And it's true. I have. It's been almost four months now that my first book of poetry was published. 

I do have a little bit of an excuse, though. You see, when it first came out, back in March, Amazon took a week or two to make it available through their site, and much longer to get the book cover up there, along with other information. Something about playing hard ball with small presses that don't work directly through Amazon, I'm told. Has to be something, because over on Barnes and Noble's site, it was up there much, much earlier.

So anyway, by the time it all got sorted out, the thrill of fresh publication was gone, I got caught up with other things, and so on and so forth. But enough of that. Better late than never, so let's hear it for:

Thunder at Darwin Station

Published by NeoPoiesis Press, no less! And with the coolest cover. Here, take a look:

And here's some basic info about it:

Thunder at Darwin Station
Lance Strate
NeoPoiesis Press/March 4, 2015
5.5”x8.5” perfect bound, paper/ $14.95/ 82 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9892018-7-2

And hey, blurbs, blurbs, blurbs, gotta have some blurbs. And here they are:

Thunderation! Open up this post-atomic cocktail of poems by Lance Strate and let it shake you up! Thunder at Darwin Station, blends Huxleys with Darwins, evolves with jolts of Joyce and a double DNA dose of Wells and Watsons, spins the reverberations of a blues apocalypse with a green sprig of enlightenment, and delivers you a Galloping Galapagos. Drink up, it will serve you right!

David Ossman author, actor, member of Firesign Theatre

"Rhetorically poignant...witty charm mixed with story-telling prose come to mind when reading this lovely ensemble from New York poet, Lance Strate. I particularly enjoyed the Sixth Thunder."

Alannah Myles, singer, songwriter

a serious entrtainment a theologikul teleologikul ontologikul evolushyunaree whethr by design by who thrust n all our charaktrs th trains endlesslee run like giraffes gazells elegaik rhythmic funkee n elegant langwage heer from th erth n sky watr n fire we all ar sew changing n oftn sew maladaptiv variaysyuns thers not much time 2 wait 4 th train 2 cum in we ar alredee on wun n manee n thers brillyant sharp n profound writing a great reed how far wev cum whats next can we know ourselvs our "specious" specees r we th missing links ths book asks evreething abt thees issews a wundrful xperiens reeding thunder at darwin staysyun

bill bissett, poet, painter, mystic

So, no doubt at this point you are absolutely convinced that this is a must-have, so here's the link to order a copy, and such a bargain too! So go ahead, I'll wait...

Now then, let me take a moment to thank my friends at NeoPoiesis Press, Dale Winslow, Stephen Roxborough, and Erin Badough, and to acknowledge Sheffield Abella for the marvelous cover illustration, and Milo Duffin along with Stephen Roxborough again for the art direction—speaking of which, here's the back, front and spine for you to see:

And you know, I had to do an About the Author blurb, and they insisted on me making it one that was creatively oriented, as opposed to my usual academic fare, so here's what I came up with:

Lance Strate is a native New Yorker, having been born in Manhattan, and moved out to Queens two weeks later, and now working in the Bronx and living in New Jersey, just across the Hudson in SopranoLand. His poetry has been published in Poetica Magazine, KronoScope, Anekaant, ETC, Explorations in Media Ecology, General Semantics Bulletin, and several anthologies, including Candy, and The Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall McLuhan. He has a few books of the intellectual sort to his credit, Echoes and Reflections is one, On the Binding Biases of Time is another, and Amazing Ourselves to Death is his most recent. He is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and he also teaches in the graduate program in Media and Professional Communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He is often identified as a media ecologist, and quite happy to be known as such, having been the founder and first president of the Media Ecology Association. Lance hopes someday to find the time...

So, anyway, I do want to acknowledge that this cycle of ten poems originally appeared on my poetry blog over on the old MySpace social networking site, which all vanished into thin air a few years ago, and the book is dedicated to our old MySpace poetry community.

Anyway, NeoPoiesis Press was born out of that community as well, and you can see my book's page on their website by clicking here.

And, for more information about Thunder at Darwin Station, please visit www.neopoiesispress.com or contact Dale Winslow at info at neopoiesispress.com.

And if you're interested in ordering a signed copy, just let me know, although I imagine marking it up in that way might depreciate its resale value on eBay...

Oliver With a Twist

So, to continue where I left off with my previous post, A Net Gain for Oliver, back in February I was contacted by a French journalist, Fabienne Faur, a lifestyle writer for Agence France-Presse, which describes itself as follows:

Agence France-Presse is the world's oldest newswire with journalists in 165 countries. We publish worldwide in English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Arabic. AFP delivers the news to thousands of media outlets worldwide from newspapers to magazines, radio and TV stations and online services. It reaches an audience of more than one billion people daily.

He explained that he was working on a story about John Oliver as an Englishman who has been successful in the United States as a comedian and host of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, and wanted my views on Oliver, on how why Americans seem to love the English sense of humor, on what Oliver is doing on his show, how it relates to what journalists are or are not doing, and to the work of other comedians and entertainers in the US.

Here now is my response:

There is a long history of successful English comics in the United States. Among the names that come to mind are the film genius of Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel playing against his American straight man Oliver Hardy, the brilliant character comedy of Peter Sellers, and the amazing ensemble known as Monty Python, and more recently Sacha Baron Cohen, to name a few.

There are several different things Americans love about English humor. First, we love the accent. You can say just about anything in an English accent, and it automatically puts a smile on an American's face. And there is something about the British accent that makes silly talk sound much funnier to us than it does back in England. For example, the Monty Python program featured a great deal of topical humor and national references that were completely lost on American audiences, but what we found funny was the way they talked, their mannerisms and expressions, and the fact that we had no idea what they were talking about made it even funnier, and also is the reason why their comedy did not become dated here the way that it did over in England. So John Oliver just has to open his mouth and already he sounds funny to us. Add to that the cultural differences, particularly the English reserve, tendency towards formality, restraint, and politeness, and those differences come across as comedic to an American audience. And English humor often incorporates violations or challenges to their politeness, restraint, and formality, which Americans can readily identify with. Additionally, American culture is decidedly anti-elitist, and we equate English accents with elitism, that's why our movie villains typically have English accents, so we love it when an English actor is the butt of a joke, utilizes self-deprecating humor, or generates humor by acting in a foolish manner.

Of course, there are some differences when a Cockney accent is in play, which often is associated with putting down the upper class or otherwise acting the fool. And there is a lower class connection as well, when you consider Benny Hill, for example, which relates to the American view of Europeans in general. Based on the Puritan roots of American culture, we see ourselves as more innocent and moral, whereas Europeans are viewed as more seductive, sexually active, risqué. This works well for Oliver in that his program on HBO is able to include language and nudity that other channels, such as Comedy Central, do not allow.

Another advantage that English comedians have is their education. Humor correlates quite strongly with intelligence, and while there is a powerful strain of anti-intellectualism in American culture, associated with our anti-elitism, we can appreciate intellectual humor and educated references, and the English excel at that kind of comedy in the same way that we excel in humor based on popular culture. Liberals especially appreciate intelligent comedy, and John Oliver's appeal is very much to the liberal side of the political spectrum. You could say that, in contrast to Jon Stewart who criticizes journalists and politicians, Oliver's approach is to educate his audience, albeit in a highly entertaining fashion. And again, his English accent serves him well, automatically conferring on him a degree of authority that an American doing the same kind of program would have to earn over time.

There is no question that Oliver is following Jon Stewart's lead, and Stewart was not the first to do parody and satire of television news, but Stewart did open up new territory and take things to the next level, in providing critical commentary on television news, and the absurdities of newscasters and politicians. Both Stewart and Oliver are doing the job that the press ought to be doing, acting as a fourth estate and holding politicians, corporations, and the new media themselves accountable for their actions and statements, pointing out their contradictions and hypocrisies, and in their own way upholding the Enlightenment ideal of rational discourse. Stewart created the opening, and Oliver has made a significant contribution by expanding it even further.

What I find to be one of the most interesting things about what he does is the way he identifies himself, and especially his use of the first person plural pronouns, us and we. Sometimes he talks about "us" as including himself as an American, and sometimes he presents himself as English. The way that he moves back and forth between the two is something I haven't seen before, but it makes sense because if he were to criticize American society without including himself, that might come across as elitist, and alienate his audience. Of course, there's also the reality that Britain has become, in some ways, a part of greater America, along with Canada and Australia, at least as far as our shared media environment is concerned.

The quote that M. Faur picked out was just a couple of sentences from all that, which is par for the course, of course, of course.  






 

So anyway, recall that the FCC ruling in favor on net neutrality was delivered on February 26th, and John Oliver was credited as having a major impact on the issue, so while that was not the original focus of the piece, who took on greater importance in the aftermath of that decision. And depending on the outlet that picked up the story, they placed greater or lesser emphasis on that connection. For example, in the Panamanian paper, El Siglo, the Spanish language version of the article ran under the headline, El "efecto" John Oliver, pone a reír y pensar a EEUU. The story is dated March 2nd, and my quote reads as follows:

"Hay un efecto 'John Oliver' que impacta en la vida real", tituló recientemente la revista Time. "Jon Stewart había llevado muy lejos la crítica de la información en la televisión y a los hombres políticos", comenta Lance Strate, profesor de comunicación de la Fordham University en Nueva York. "Oliver lo amplificó aún más".

At the same time, A French language outlet, RTL, had the headline as, Neutralité du net: John Oliver salué après la décision américaine, and my quote looked like this:

"Jon Stewart avait porté très haut la critique de l'information à la télévision et des hommes politiques", dit Lance Strate, professeur de communication de la Fordham University à New York, "Oliver l'a encore amplifiée". Les deux humoristes "font le travail que la presse devrait faire, en dénonçant les contradictions et l'hypocrisie des politiques, du monde des affaires et des nouveaux médias", dit-il.

But you probably want the English language version, which appeared first, I believe, in Business Insider, the headline reading, John Oliver, the British comedian spurring America to action. So let's take a look, shall we? Here goes:

Washington (AFP) - John Oliver may have been ruled out of the running to replace Jon Stewart but the British comedian's role in helping sway the debate over "net neutrality" has cemented his status as The Daily Show host's spiritual heir.

Oliver was the first name on most people's lips last month when Stewart sent his legions of fans into mourning after announcing he was stepping down from the satirical Comedy Central show after nearly two decades as host.

The prospect of the 37-year-old Birmingham native sliding into Stewart's chair receded, however, when HBO swiftly announced it was renewing his own show, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, for two more years.

Yet Oliver's role in galvanizing American opinion over the once-arcane concept of access to the Internet was in the best traditions of Stewart, a master of using biting humor to unravel complex questions of the day.

So far, we're on pretty familiar ground. Now the story shifts to the FCC ruling on net neutrality:

Oliver's 13-minute segment on "net neutrality" last year, in which he exhorted viewers to deluge the US Federal Communications Commission forum with objections, is widely credited with crashing the FCC's comments page.

Within 24 hours of Oliver's rallying cry, more than 45,000 comments on net neutrality had been posted on the FCC forum, according to the Washington Post.

Fast forward to last Thursday, and the FCC acquiesced, approving landmark rules to prevent broadband providers from separating online traffic into two unequal lanes, which would allow them to charge fees for better access.

Many people gave credit to Oliver.

"The democratic support for this decision relied heavily on citing the millions of citizen comments submitted via the FCC's website, and those comments were overwhelmingly inspired, directly and indirectly, by Oliver's advocacy," Aram Sinnreich, a professor of journalism at Rutgers University, told AFP.

Oliver, whose show just kicked off its second season, gained massive popularity in 2013 when he stood in for Stewart to guest host The Daily Show while the Comedy Central comedian took a leave of absence to make a movie.

"I'll do anything for him, whether it's hosting this show or disposing of a body," Oliver said.

At this point, we have a new section entitled, "The 'John Oliver effect'":

HBO came to Oliver with the 30-minute show, which has only grown in success since.

Stationed at a desk, wearing a standard suit and tie plus dark-rimmed glasses, Oliver has pilloried, in a series of clear, well-documented and wonderfully funny arguments, vitamins, the militarization of American police, FIFA soccer corruption and the bikini-clad women of Sports Illustrated magazine.

Time magazine recently ran an article titled: "How the 'John Oliver Effect' Is Having a Real-Life Impact."

It credits Oliver, in part or whole, with a list of accomplishments including increased donations to an association of women engineers, a proposed bill in the US state of Washington to allow online video comments on new legislation, and Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement that he will enact major limitations on a controversial confiscation law.

Okay, what about my little quote, you are no doubt wondering by now. Well, get ready, here it comes:

"Stewart created the opening, and Oliver has made a significant contribution by expanding it even further," said Lance Strate, a communication and media studies professor at Fordham University in New York.

"Both Stewart and Oliver are doing the job that the press ought to be doing, acting as a fourth estate and holding politicians, corporations and the new media themselves accountable for their actions and statements," he said.

And that's it for me, but here's the rest of the story:

Furthermore, said Paul Booth, a professor of media and cinema studies at DePaul University in Chicago, "many Americans do love the English sense of humor."

"Oliver definitely embodies some of the best traits of British humor—he's sly, witty, charming, able to poke fun at himself, a bit awkward," he said.

Cambridge-educated, Oliver began his career in Britain before hopping the pond to audition in 2006 for The Daily Show, becoming its "British correspondent."

Married to an American, Oliver claims to love reality TV and hate massages.

"The idea is horrifying to me that a stranger would physically force you to relax," he recently told Vanity Fair magazine.

In summarizing his take on humor, he said: "If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring. Apple could put the entire text of Mein Kampf inside the iTunes user agreement, and you'd just go agree, agree, agree—what?—agree, agree."

The English language version of the story also appeared in Lebanon, in The Daily Star, and in quite a few other places that I wasn't able to keep track of. So it was pretty cool to wind up with a multilingual quote on the subject, for which I can only say merci beaucoup, muchas gracias, and thank you very much!