Recently in Culture / Media Category
After a couple of weeks in London and one in New Orleans, I'm back in L.A., immersed in the American media culture (!) once more. The health-care debate, which, for better or worse, would have been concluded in about two or three months in any other Western democracy, grinds on, positions being repeated pretty much as they were before the big Town Hall scare of August. About all that's changed is that the current wave of health-reform commercials inundating cable news seems to have shifted over to the pro-whatever-the-current-bill-is side. That, after a summer of anti-whatever-the-current-bill-is-not spots, leads me to one conclusion: The true beneficiaries of the drawn-out health-care-reform debate are not the doctors, nor the drug or insurance companies, and surely not the patients. The true beneficiaries are the broadcasters.
If I were a conspiratorially-minded gent, I would even suggest that that fact explains the timing of the Obama Administration's push. Sure, they had other possible priorities -- the climate-change bill would seem to have a more pressing deadline, figuring out a plausible strategy in Afghanistan could have come sooner in the year to suit some folks.
But this is a non-election year. Broadcasters are suffering, with no welter of campaign commercials to buffer them against the disappearance of car spots and bank spots and department store spots (remind me again what department stores were). So this is the perfect year to stage an endless debate, the major product of which is hundreds of millions of dollars in television commercials.
But this is a non-election year. Broadcasters are suffering, with no welter of campaign commercials to buffer them against the disappearance of car spots and bank spots and department store spots (remind me again what department stores were). So this is the perfect year to stage an endless debate, the major product of which is hundreds of millions of dollars in television commercials.
Not since the mandated digital changeover have broadcasters received such a lovely gift from their federal government.
(Photo: Flickr/Andrew Aliferis)
(Photo: Flickr/Andrew Aliferis)
LONDON--I've been spending two and a half weeks in search of the British summer. Like American culture, it's elusive at best. And, despite the cross-Atlantic jokes, the two countries have so much in common. The UK is following America down a second consecutive warpath (although the "P-word" has not yet been used as Britain's opposition parties react to 8 military deaths in one day in Afghanistan, no one has yet called Gordon Brown "Barack Obama's poodle). British troops are regularly alleged to have inadequate equipment, to have a few bad apples roughing up the locals, to be in need of an exit plan. It all sounds so Yank.
Then there are the differences. The one that's particularly attracted my notice is the difference between the British and American newspaper industries--namely, the Brits still have one. In the last month, the biggest UK news story--a rolling expose of the expenses run up by Members of Parliament but paid for by taxpayers--flew off the front pages of the nation's only remaining daily broadsheet, The Telegraph. This past week, another major story--about the alleged rampant use of wiretapping to listen in on the messages and conversations of political and media celebs--was hurled by one newspaper, The Guardian, at the top management of another, the News of the World. In other words, an old-fashioned newspaper war.
We all know how bad things are for American newspapers--the closing down of dailies in Denver and Seattle, the thinning (both in page width and page number) of the proud East Coast monarchs, the constant near-death experiences of the Tribune properties. Look at any big-city daily on a Saturday, and you'd think the world had run out of news, or the forests of Canada had run out of trees.
In London, the Saturday editions plop on your porch with the weight of a white paper on Afghanistan, except that they're full of color magazines and free offers. You think: Did I drink too much Friday night and sleep all through Saturday? They look like American Sunday papers, fat and overstuffed, even with news. Then Sunday comes around, and it all happens again, more heft, more color magazines, more scary stories saved up for brunchtime.
The UK newspapers have maintained a quaint tradition of competition between the daily and Sunday editions of the same nameplates, under the same owners.
I asked a British friend about this phenomenon, of the lack of death rattles from (what used to be) Fleet Street, and he said, calmly, "I guess we're still a nation of newspaper readers." In fairness, the UK has no Drudge or Huffpo, no scrappy news aggregator drawing all the hits. If you're online in Britain, you get your news from the papers' (or the BBC's or SKy News') websites.
But one can't help comparing the plenitude of stuff--gossip, ads, supplements, offers, even news--delivered all through the weekend, by both the classy titles and the downmarket tabloids. Comparing them to the wan offerings on Saturdays in the states, one has to wonder if our British cousins are teaching Americans an ironic lesson: when it comes to newspapers, more is better.
It ill behooves a humorist to take a public position on another comic's jokes, so I'll just say that people, like Chris Matthews, who abjure Letterman's "knocked up" joke on grounds that the language is unacceptably rough must have missed the fact that a major movie studio released a picture by that very title to wide public support.
But, as to Sarah Palin's response: I'm gratified to see one politician who sees fit to avoid the current fad of pretending to have a sense of humor. Who hasn't gagged as Senators and other supposed dignitaries have trooped onto the stages of Dave, Jay, Conan, Jon, Steve, and SNL to demonstrate their "good to have a beer with" credentials? I will never forget being on Bill Maher's old "Politically Incorrect" when Sen. Orrin Hatch showed up with a memorized sheaf of witticisms cranked out by his staff, and delivered each one the way the morning paper is delivered: with a plop, usually ending up wet. Like other pols on the same mission, Sen. Hatch made only two mistakes: he had his jokes crafted by political, rather than comedy, professionals, and he uttered them with all the comic timing of a C-SPAN speech.
Governor Palin, on the other hand, stood proud as someone incensed by joking. I for one think our politicians should have an adversarial relationship with humor, and vice versa. That's healthy for the country.
I'm also glad to see Governor Palin attacking Dave's japes for contributing to a serious problem; "no wonder young women have such low self-esteem", she said of joking about sexual indiscretions with minors. I therefore anticipate with great eagerness the governor's next assault against a social force that causes young women to have low self-esteem, namely, the numberless pageants where, from age 4 upwards, such women are persuaded by their parents and other elders into tarting up and parading in states of garish overdress and unbecoming undrerdress before judges I'd trust around young women a lot less than Dave.
Carrie Prejean, for example, gained a national platform for her views purely because such eminences judged her most toothsome in a bathing suit. I'm sure Governor Palin recognizes the damage that does to the self-image of young women who aspire to be acknowledged for what they know or what they can do, not how well they can pad out the top of a swimsuit.
Oh, wait.
Never mind.
Harry Shearer
