Even the mesmerizing displays of high-definition technology flashing at me every day in my stores -- and available at wholesale prices -- haven't enticed me to join the "bigger is better" arms race.
What's the point?
Although a conspicuous sporting event occasionally grabs my attention -- like last month's season-ending baseball drama, a Patriots' playoff game, VCU's improbable run to the Final Four, championship golf before Tiger Woods's perplexing self-immolation -- to watch one of these broadcasts from start to finish is for me an excruciating and frivolous exercise.
As for the nightly menu of network nirvana -- contrived song, dance, and dating competitions; fantastical reality documentaries; mini-series of epic proportions; preposterous police procedurals; dysfunctional and dismal situation comedies; insipid melodrama -- except for a few pungent entrees, it might as well be printed in a foreign language. Perusing a list of Tuesday and Wednesday night prime time favorites, which included The Middle, Up All Night, Suburgatory, The X Factor, Criminal Minds, and Happy Endings, I recognized only two: Glee, never-to-be-missed by a thirteen-year-old friend of mine, and Survivor, which has apparently outlasted rumors of its demise.
Maybe if I had the proper -- by today's standards -- equipment, I might be persuaded to settle comfortably into a front-row seat for an enhanced viewing of some blockbuster Hollywood production I missed in the theater but deemed worthy of the requisite two-hour plus investment, having encountered a seductive trailer or rave review; yet none seems intriguing enough to be indispensable, especially when a veritable library of unread books beckons me.
But there are some evenings when even this bibliophile is too brain-dead to tackle the current bookmarked volume -- whether it be a mindless popular thriller, pretentious literary fiction, or instructive narrative history -- and must resort to some less-taxing diversion.
I should go to bed, so I can awaken refreshed and invigorated, and early enough to get to the YMCA and then to my office at a respectable hour. But I don't. Instead, indulging in an innocuous guilty pleasure, around 8:00 PM, I sneak into the aforementioned studio, click the remote, and immerse myself in Cable News.
Consider this fascinating conundrum. Even when there is nothing new or noteworthy to report, these networks -- FOX, CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC -- manage to fill twenty-four hours of airtime with ingenious iterations of the same story, employing a rapid-fire repertoire of seasoned tactics and techniques: one, two, or multiple person hosted formats; straight news regurgitated from teleprompters; in-depth (five to ten minutes) analyses of timely topics; commentary from politicians, government officials, journalists, and so-called experts (some of whom are on the company payroll), who frequently materialize on split screens and try to outshout each other. It's a raucous merry-go-round of bobbleheads, all gushing oily blather like gallons of gasoline thrust into thirsty carburetors and expelled as noxious exhaust and vacuous hot air.
Often on leisurely morning or afternoon drives to and from the far reaches of the Schewel mini-empire, as I surf from one satellite radio station to another, it's anchors away as Fox and Friends, Morning Joe Scarborough (and friends), Wolf Blitzer, The Five (at five), Bret Baier, Shephard Smith, and Chris Matthews dazzle me with their kaleidoscopic renderings of the day's news.
The creme de la creme is of course reserved for the prime time hours -- 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM on week nights, when a few million political masochists like me tune into the genre's headliners.
The top-rated cable news show during this time period is The O'Reilly Factor on FOX at 8:00 PM; it draws around three million viewers compared to one million for The Ed (Schultz) Show on MSNBC and five hundred thousand for Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN. The second highest rated is Hannity on FOX at 9:00 PM, which draws an average of two million viewers, doubling Rachael Maddow's numbers on MSNBC and tripling Piers Morgan's on CNN. Close behind Hannity is FOX's On The Record with Greta VanSusteren at 10:00 PM, which outdistances MSNBC (The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell) and CNN (reruns of Anderson Cooper 360) by similar proportions.
Since two hours of this stuff is about all I can take -- even if I could get past Greta's affected innocence, slanted grin, and slurred speech -- this self-styled media critique will confine itself to the 8:00 to 10:00 time slot.
If O'Reilly and Hannity consistently trample their competition, with a blush of embarrassment I must confess myself one of the enthralled. While subscribing to a liberal tradition nested in a congenital sympathy for the underdog, a prickly suspicion of unfettered capitalism, and a rational advocacy of a public safety net -- which has been severely tested by the non-stimulative excesses of the current Administration and a compliant Democratic Congress -- I cannot deny a contrarian preference for the boob tube's most prominent conservative mouthpieces.
To what can be attributed this perverse love-hate relationship? In simple terms, it resides in the very nature of the beast: slick entertainment and unadulterated propaganda conjoined in unholy matrimony to beget a precocious offspring -- biased news reporting, one-sided, hardly fair, definitely unbalanced.
O'Reilly, Hannity, and their cross-channel rivals are accomplished performers whose practiced body language, facial expressions, and vocal modulations equal those of any dramatic or comedic personality. They are superb interviewers, adept at evoking controversy, deflecting or denigrating (sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly) opposing views, and patronizing the zealots who preach the party line. And they are smart, well-versed on a wide variety of subjects -- unless that fluent omniscience is just scrawling in front of them.
On FOX, it's all neatly packaged to burnish the purity of the Conservative agenda -- less government, lower taxes, defending individual liberty from the evils of Democratic socialism -- to convert the heretics, to reassure the vacillating, to fortify the acolytes. Anyone harboring a dose of objectivity recognizes the theatrics for what they are, yet watches anyway, luxuriating in his own discomfort, impelled to shout back at the screen and challenge the pious pontificators of the gospel, futile protests that will fall on deaf ears.
To be fair (and balanced), the liberal talking heads on MSNBC, Ed Schultz and Rachael Maddow, are no less infuriating.
I got interested in Ed a few months ago when I ran across his martial presence at the ten o'clock hour opposite Greta VanSusteren. His booming voice never falters as he wages a desperate holding action against nefarious banks, heartless corporations, and their relentless usurpation of the American Dream.Most of the time his broad visage saturates the screen, suggesting to me that it is perched atop a grotesque corpulence, an illusion clarified when I witness a svelte stand-up soliloquy with suit jacket unbuttoned and luminous purple tie in full bloom. In fact he's a former Minnesota State University Moorhead quarterback who once led the nation in passing, a passionate outdoorsman and pilot, and the father of six children, one of whom, Dave, is a professional golfer.
In an industry dominated by the right, he rode his success as a liberal radio talk show host to MSNBC in 2009, first at 6:00 PM and then at 10:00 PM. Just last week he moved to the 8:00 PM time slot formerly occupied by Keith Olberman, whose vitriolic verbosity finally went "a little too far over the top" (his own words) for even this combative network.
The big news Monday night -- Halloween -- is the sexual harassment charge against Herman Cain. Ed can't wait to compare "the pizza man" to the disgraced New York congressman, Anthony Weiner, hardly fair considering the evidence against Weiner was more solid, and then review Cain's day-long inquisition, during which he twists, squirms, and parses words like a slippery Bill Clinton.
Within hours Cain's emphatic denials, lapses of memory, and absences of awareness morph into settlements, agreements, and his bizarre comparison of a female employee's height to his wife's. "It's a credibility killer for this dude," says Ed, as he stares down his audience, daring anyone to contradict him. "Do you want this man to be president?" He convenes the ritualistic panel, which collectively condemns the Cain campaign for being totally unprepared, poorly managing its response, and compounding the damage by this pathetic "rolling disclosure."
The absurdity of MSNBC's "gotcha" games with Bill O'Reilly is laid bare in a "much ado about muffins" montage. A clip of O'Reilly telling a guest "Don't make claims you can't back up" is countered by a series of outtakes in which he berates the Department of Justice for serving $16 muffins -- muffins which he, O'Reilly, paid for with his hard-earned tax dollars -- at a 2009 conference. Well, says Ed smugly, the Department of Justice has issued a correction, and now says the muffins did not cost $16. Who cares? It's obvious O'Reilly was only using the information previously reported; Ed doesn't tell us what the muffins actually cost; and I've paid comparable exorbitant prices for meager continental breakfasts at similar luxury resorts.
Next, Ed airs more dirty laundry "Circling the Drain," the clever title of his ongoing investigation of the Whirlpool Corporation. He's just returned from Newton, Iowa, former headquarters of the Maytag Corporation, which Whirlpool bought in 2006. "Maytag," says Ed, "was once the gold standard of the appliance industry," consistently providing the residents of Newton high-paying jobs and comprehensive benefits. "But today, in this town of 15,000, there are 700 homes for sale, 70 foreclosures in the past twenty-four months, and 4000 jobs lost." It's a sad tale -- but only part of the story. This is when I feel like throwing a shoe at Ed.
It's not all the diabolic corporation's fault. By 2005, before its sellout, Maytag's market share had declined to an all-time low, as had its customer satisfaction rating. Today appliance makers like Whirlpool -- and retailers like me -- are being whipsawed, caught in a vise between weak demand and higher raw material and regulatory (government-imposed efficiency) costs. Downsizing measures are a desperate attempt to remain in the black. Ed implies that $177 million in profits the last quarter is unconscionable, yet fails to mention that it's only 3.8% of revenues and that the company has lost 50% of its capitalization in the past year.
Emboldened by his revelations, Ed smoothly transitions from Newton, Iowa, to the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which is planning a general strike in Oakland, California. Like these courageous crusaders, Ed is standing up for justice, every night at 8:00 PM. Or as someone else on another network might phrase it, "He's looking out for you."
Of course, Bill O'Reilly's take on these disturbing events is very different. In his Talking Points memo, his opening monologue, he addresses the violence that erupted when Oakland police tried to remove demonstrators from a plaza outside City Hall. With no verification, he proclaims, "The Occupy Wall Street Movement is not -- is not -- a spontaneous protest against economic inequality. It is a well-thought-out campaign to bring down the infrastructure of this country, to turn it into a Western European entitlement state . . . These people are being exploited by powerful radical organizations [like Moveon.org] . . . who want to rein in the 1%, and punish them."O'Reilly projects an authority, glibness, and confidence no mere mortal would presume to question -- never mind that even the most obtuse citizen would have to acknowledge some deepening cracks in the system.
Back in 1996 when O'Reilly joined the fledgling FOX News, capping a long career in broadcast journalism that included six years anchoring CBS's Inside Edition, his posturings of political independence might have been semi-credible. Today his "no-spin zone" is a dizzy vortex of partisanship and "fair and balanced" a late-night punchline. Belying his professed "humble beginnings," he grew up in the middle-class suburb of Westbury, Long Island, attended a private school, and was put through college by his father, an oil executive.
When confronted with a factual statement he's unable to refute, O'Reilly's favorite debating tactic is to accuse his guest of stating an opinion, a variation of the tried-and-true "attack the messenger" routine. When Greenpeace's John Passacantando asserted that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Region would yield only six to nine months of oil, O'Reilly retorted, "That's your opinion." When a drug policy advocate said marijuana impairs driving less than alcohol does, O'Reilly's answer was, "Well, that's your opinion." (FAIR web site, July-August, 2001)
A typical O'Reilly opinion is front-and-center Monday night when he expostulates on America in Decline -- citing a poll which registered 69% espousing that view. The pollsters don't offer a reason for this lamentable state of affairs, so O'Reilly invents his own: the decline in self-reliance. In a two-minute history lesson, he lectures that "the foundation of America's power . . . was a code of conduct based on honest labor and neighborly charity [with] no tolerance for cowardice or narcissism" -- never mind that "honest labor and neighborly charity" are poor substitutes for inherited opportunity, innate intelligence, and environmental influences.
In one facile paragraph, he indicts liberalism and the federal government for undermining the nation's superstructure -- "for sustaining those who can't or won't compete in the workplace, for massive entitlement spending on single mothers and children, for spending profligately to provide for the have-nots." It's the party bill of fare condensed into a tasty hors d'oeuvre for mass consumption by the lowest common denominator. It makes so much sense, yet the inaccuracies and omissions are egregious.
O'Reilly plays his own brand of hardball with Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, firing this rocket at his 20% flat tax: "So how much would the feds lose under your plan, Governor?" Which Perry doesn't (or can't) answer, instead resorting to the tired, stale, problematic supply-side arguments we've heard ad nauseum. "I don't really worry about what the feds are going to lose," he says. "We know what happens when job creators keep more of their money; they have the confidence to go out and spend that money to create jobs that in turn create wealth . . . I truly believe you've got to grow your way out of this." Does anyone still take this voodoo economics seriously or his promises "to balance the budget by 2020 and . . . [to] make sure you get the . . . modeling so you can see how it works."
O'Reilly induces Perry to admit to a number of mistakes -- like participating in campaigns (he misspeaks; he means debates) "when all they are interested in is stirring it up between the candidates," and using the word "heartless" to characterize critics of college tuition assistance to the children of illegal immigrants. (O'Reilly cynically interjects that what's really heartless is to use his tax money for that purpose.) The outrage of this whole matter escapes me, particularly if the grant recipients are natural-born citizens, and since at least twelve other states have adopted the same policy.
O'Reilly goads Perry into flaunting his animosity toward Mitt Romney. "You guys look like you don't like [each other] too much . . . So you think he's a weasel . . . You don't think he has any principles," he charges, shoveling the dirt right into Perry's mouth. Perry doesn't flinch. "I think in his own words he says, listen, I need to say whatever I need to say for whatever office I'm running for . . . How do you change at fifty or sixty positions on life, positions on guns, positions on traditional marriage . . . To change those at fifty or sixty tells you all you need to know about that." And listening to Perry tells you all you need to know about him.
In tonight's Culture Warrior segment, O'Reilly lambastes the "far left wing" New York City teachers' union for implementing mandatory sex-education for sixth graders -- a "very graphic course" which includes "everything imaginable." When guest Margaret Hoover defends the program, claiming it will reduce the fifty per cent rates of intercourse and out-of-wedlock births, O'Reilly primly dismisses her opinion. For him, there's "skullduggery" afoot in the New York City public school system, his very appropriate closing "word of the day."
Over on MSNBC at 9:00 PM, Rachael Maddow is perfecting her own hatchet job on candidates Perry and Cain.Rachael's popularity eludes me. As one who "leans forward" and to the left, shouldn't I be expected to embrace her ebullient liberalism? But there's something about her that leaves me cold -- and it's not just her cropped brunette coiffure or minimalist accoutrements. Although she proudly spurns the blond bouffants and shimmering sheaths that are de rigueur for other female "auto-cutie" (her own term) reporters, I find her gangling posture, sly demeanor, arch humor, and confrontational shrillness "phony-cutie."
For millions of others, however, this "youthful, easy-tempered, thirty-eight-year-old gay woman" exudes sincerity and charm. (Hadley Freeman, The Guardian, April 11, 2011) From her first radio hosting job in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 2000 to her television debut as a news panelist in 2005, her rise to prime time cable anchor has been meteoric. Several pinch-hit appearances for Keith Olberman -- during which she drew the highest rating in the 25 to 54 age group -- earned her the 9:00 PM time slot in August 2008. Within a month, she doubled the audience for that hour.
Rachael salivates over a speech Perry gives in New Hampshire on October 28th; it has its farcical moments, but is hardly the death knell to his campaign she is so eager to trumpet. Only her million viewers tonight are going to see the sequence of clips that highlights the worst aspects of Perry's performance -- and only a sliver of them will even remember it, as this political circus rolls on. It's just wishful thinking when Rachael "argues Rick Perry can no longer be considered a serious contender for president after this . . . After you see this tape, you'll never see this guy in the same way again."
Through Rachael's filter, the pitiless camera lens does convey a portraiture of buffoonery and semi-inebriation. Grinning like a hollow pumpkin head, Perry plants one rotten gourd after another: "This is such a cool state. I mean 'Live Free or Die.' You gotta love that [like the Alamo] where they declared 'Victory or Death' . . . Bring it . . . Gold is good . . . If they print any more over there in Washington [shaking his fists], the gold's gonna be good."
His tax plan elicits more unabashed glee. "You can stay in the old system, pay the lawyers, pay the accountants, or that," he almost shouts, as he reaches into his coat pocket and triumphantly extracts a postcard. "Twenty per cent flat tax; put it on there, take your deductions, send it in." It's hard to decide which is more otherworldly: the proposal itself or the look of rapture in his eyes.
Rachael delivers her coup de grace when a local official thanks Mr. Perry with a gift of liquid gold, a bottle of New Hampshire maple syrup; he clasps it to his breast like a precious child, a gesture that so titillates her that she produces her own bottle and imitates him. The scene doesn't work; the mockery is of her own sappy, sticky, syrupy personality. "Sorry," she says, offering a feigned apology for being unprofessional. "I won't do it again." But the "phony-cutie" can't resist a gratuitous reprise before signing off.
Rachael piles on when she says "it's possible Perry was having a medical problem or bad drug reaction." Even a physical explanation for his behavior could raise concerns "of whether he is cut out to handle the presidency." Whatever one's opinion of Mr. Perry, such vulgar insinuations are inexcusable.
Night after night, these telegenic oracles massage the most benign facts and figures to conform to their political ideologies and to stir the sympathies of the most skeptical. Rachael's recent analysis of "the three traditional pillars of a secure retirement -- pension, savings, and social security" -- is merely the launching pad for her to incinerate the straw man of the season: Wall Street. As those three pillars have crumbled, she says, taking with them everyman's nest egg, the financiers and stock traders have risen from the debris.
It's no secret that company-funded defined benefit plans have in recent years been almost universally replaced by 401k's -- as Rachael's chart illustrates. But it's not true that pensions were "separate from the whole Wall Street banking apparatus," which in fact always managed these funds, nor that 401k's have become a sudden "windfall for Wall Street," which now towers "between you and your retirement." What is true -- and left unsaid -- is what precipitated the demise of the defined benefit plan: government mandated funding requirements, which imposed costly burdens on employers.
As for the second pillar, it got swept away as the personal savings rate in this country collapsed from 10% a generation ago to near zero today -- a function, says Rachael, and rightfully so, of the stagnation in the wages of the bottom 90% of Americans compared to a 300% spike for the top 1%. She wades into murky waters, however, when she blames banking policies for a parallel decline in interest rates from 15% in 1981 to 0.5% today -- a vast oversimplification which ignores economic conditions and the role of the Federal Reserve. Disgruntled savers looking for better returns have turned to -- you guessed it -- "gambling" in the stock market. Of course, no one complains when stock prices are on the rise, only when they they are tanking.
Wobbling precariously is the third pillar, Social Security, now under attack "from the right as a Ponzi scheme." Since 2004, when the Bush Administration floated semi-privatization as an option, it has been the goal of the Republican Party "to allow individuals to invest a portion of their Social Security in -- the stock market," according to Rachael. But surely she realizes that this "secure retirement fund" is merely an invisible cache of iou's, that it's already been filched by cowardly legislators and greedy bureaucrats, and that only future taxes on our children and grandchildren will assure its solvency.
Such pseudo-intellectual digressions are rarely sighted at 9:00 PM on Fox, where the irrepressible Sean Hannity regularly holds court, although who knows which incarnation will manifest itself: the tawdry televangelist trawling for cash, or the backstreet bully looking for a brawl.I find his shows more straight-news oriented than those of his prime time peers and his persona less abrasive when seen as well as heard; when I used to listen to his afternoon drivel on AM-FM stations before I discovered satellite radio, I often imagined writing a blog: "If I could talk (back) to Sean Hannity."
I surely could have outpointed his erstwhile "fair and balanced" punching bag, the mild-mannered Alan Colmes, whom he pummeled mercilessly until finally driving him from the ring in 2009. Hannity is a college dropout and ex-bartender who was fired from his first radio hosting job for unleashing a virulent anti-homosexual diatribe on the air; he was plucked from relative obscurity in 1996 by FOX co-founder Roger Ailes to headline the 9:00 PM hour along with a LTBD (liberal to be determined), and has been a fixture there ever since.
Hannity ascribes his popularity to his "principled consistency" (Brian Stelter, New York Times, October 20, 2011) -- and certainly he is well-known by a legion of signature catch-phrases, like "You're a great American," "I never got a job from a poor person," "How much income taxes do the bottom 50% pay (zer0)," "Give me an example," (his favorite debating ploy, when challenged by a generalization), "We need to live within our means," and "That's the liberal mainstream media for you." Last night he managed to dredge up the all-but-forgotten "unrepentant terrorist" William Ayers at least five times in comparing the media's unsparing coverage of Herman Cain's indiscretions to the relative "blind eye" it turned to Barack Obama's flirtation with a traitor.
One of Hannity's frequent guests -- and to me one of the most repulsive -- is Pillsbury doughboy Karl Rove, the so-called architect of W. Bush's two elections and the undisputed master of nasty innuendo and devious character assassination. Tonight, after exchanging mutual admiration pleasantries, Hannity asks the seer to dissect the most recent presidential poll numbers.
Like a cagey poker player, Rove holds his cards close to his vest, although he enjoys brandishing his infamous whiteboard. Even before Mr. Cain's current problems surfaced, Rove is intent on pricking his bubble. "I'm not sure he's necessarily sustaining [his recent] surge any longer," he says. Rove exhibits his remarkable talent for talking out of both sides of his shrunken mouth when he denies wanting to diminish Cain's rise and then proceeds to skewer him for his gaffes on negotiating with terrorists, abortion rights, and the Palestinians' right of return.
No one escapes his devilish pitchfork. Newt Gingrich "has no chance." "Mitt Romney's debate performance has been surprising . . . he's everyone's second choice." "Ron Paul's been talking to himself." "Bachmann and Santorum need to show some real strength in Iowa." Rove's just waiting for the front runner to emerge so he can grab onto the coattails.
Hannity puts his own "Culture Warrior" nose to the ground as he sniffs out a rancid lawsuit filed on behalf of Muslim students at Catholic University; they are requesting the removal of crucifixes in classrooms where they gather to pray. Hannity can't contain his wrath at this insidious assault on Christianity -- and takes out his frustrations on Ibrahim Ramey; valiantly trying to defend the plaintiffs, Ramey wilts under the harangue like a helpless Alan Colmes. "Let them close their eyes and pray, or attend a Muslim University [there are none] and put up a Star of David for the Jewish students . . . This University has been accommodating enough just by admitting them."
When Jay Sekulow, president of the American Center for Law and Justice (obviously a conservative think tank) chimes in with "There's no legal basis for such a case in the Constitution," I'm convinced, although I find the squabble overwrought; surely these folks can settle this in a civilized manner without going to court, even if it means depriving Hannity of his self-righteous soapbox.
For some inexplicable reason, Hannity's producers have decided to showcase his quarterback skills. Fortunately, he only has to toss his red-white-and-blue football across the studio to his "great, great, great American panel," which, in toto, is about as lame as his arm. Two journalists, one conservative and one liberal, and one aspiring (or expiring) celebrity with a right-wing but mostly inarticulate opinion engage in a trivial free-for-all in which the best one can hope for is to expectorate a sound bite or two.
Last night's token liberal, Steve Murphy, scores twice in a scrimmage over media coverage of Herman Cain. When Hannity recycles his William Ayers rubbish, Murphy calls a foul on him for comparing apples to oranges; later he crackbacks with the most penetrating spear of many a night: "this [show] is not media; it's conservative propaganda." To which FOX resident expert, Angela McGowan, adds the exclamation point: "Herman Cain is a threat to the liberal establishment."
Fair and Balanced. Lean Forward. Take your pick. As one talking head said about Herman Cain's steadfast incoherence, "Somewhere in there is the truth." Maybe not.
