In Praise of Praise

[Daveparts]

In Praise of Praise
By David Glenn Cox


Howard Stern responded to Michael Jackson’s calling himself the King of Pop by calling himself, “The King of All Media.” Not that he was, just that if Jackson could make such an outrageous claim, he would top it. Dizzy Dean, the baseball hall-of-fame pitcher, once advised, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.” Yet Elvis never called himself the king of rock and roll and Jimi Hendrix never called himself the greatest guitar player in the world. And both he and Elvis could have, indeed, done it.

There is a line between praise and self-promotion, between hyping the goods and hyping the hype. Winston Churchill, when running for his seat in the Commons, was called by his opponent, “A braggart, a man who trumpets his every small accomplishment to the public.” Churchill answered, with his head down, “My opponent is a humble man, he is a man with much to be humble about. A man whose accomplishments are humbler still.”

Churchill was a braggart and he did trumpet his every small accomplishment. He changed parties; he changed his positions. His opponents saw him as unscrupulous and ambitious; the public saw him as ambitious, tenacious, hard-working, and no one's fool. The electorate was forced to choose between either a man who would feign sleep during an opponent’s speech in the Commons, pretending to snore and when pointed out by the speaker for his rudeness, would snore louder still. Or choose a petty, party bureaucrat.

It was about expressing opinion; by feigning sleep he expressed his opinion and refuted the speaker. By making it obvious he was faking sleep, he expressed his opinion even more so. He could, indeed, do it and with tools that others had never dreamed of. Was it rude? Yes, of course it was! But no one remembers the issue that the speaker rose to address, only that Churchill knocked the props out from under him without even opening his eyes.

Today it sometimes seems like it’s all promotion: cross promotions, hyping the hype by hyping the hype even more. I was in a store the other day where they had video monitors over the checkouts. “Don’t miss the seventh annual CMT Network Music Awards! All your favorite CMT artists will be there!” I thought to myself, gee, I wonder whose gonna win?

They’ve always done it, but today it seems like the noose is tightening around our necks. Disney, the original self-promotion experts, create a teen band inside a TV show that airs on their own network. With news bites about the band's upcoming tours and how excited the public is about it. Posters, toys, games, and when they reach voting age, or are no longer the flavor of the month, or dare to ask for more money, they are out on their young rumps.

The line between the media showcasing talent and creating what is called talent, is dissolving. Fox News with their "exclusive" interviews with Dick Cheney, when up until lately, exclusive meant something available here and only here. Few but the gullible couldn’t see that exclusive now meant: safe, nurturing, fawning, unquestioning. But the principle is the same, be it Dick Cheney or Hannah Montana, to present a performance as unscripted reality.

Friday, on CNBC, the morning anchors interviewed Jeffrey R. Immelt, the Chairman and CEO of General Electric, which owns CNBC. A hard-hitting interview it was not. Could you ask your own boss on TV, “When did you stop beating your wife? When will GE stop building weapons of mass destruction? How does GE’s outsourcing of its consumer products division to China play into America's economic downturn? Why does NBC Universal give money to Hillary Clinton’s campaign but not to John McCain?"

Instead, we were served up big softballs, promoted by the network all day as an interview that we must see. Sound bites dropped into news broadcasts, but it might as well have been Brittany Spears in a suit and tie. Nothing was said of any consequence, only that the CEO of GE was out in front of the camera, trying to explain away a lousy quarter after, in all his previous interviews, he professed that GE would not have a bad quarter. Or, in the words of Churchill, ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Immelt took full blame for the downturn, explaining the economy was worse than predicted and that sales had slowed more than expected. The blame was all his; the sub prime mortgage crisis had hurt GE’s consumer products division more than expected. He then predicted, with full confidence, that the next quarter would be better. Was this journalism or damage control? Was the timing of this interview, after the announcement of the bad numbers and prior to the opening of the stock market, an attempt to manipulate the market? As Mel Brooks said in "History of the World," “It’s good to be the King!” I bet Bear Stearns wishes they had a TV network.

But it is all around us and almost unavoidable. The local NBC affiliate has started billing its news broadcasts as balanced. Just like CNBC bills itself as a balanced reporting of business news. Like non-flammable and inflammable, it means the opposite of what you’d think. If they have to say that they are balanced now, what were they before? Ask Orwell or Pilate. April is a yellow month in Atlanta, the pollen levels run 3000-PPM, along with our noses. My wife thought she was going to be on the local news so I was required to watch the show. During a story about the high pollen levels, the anchor said, “local doctors have recommended Xyzal as a highly effective treatment during this time of the year.”

Two commercials later, what product is advertised? Why Xyzal, of course. Ask your doctor about Xyzal. News as commercials and commercials as news. If the anchor had recommended staying indoors as much as possible, that would be honest advice, but pimping a prescription drug is over the line. How would you reference such actions in regards to balance? It could be said to be true, just as four out of five dentists recommend Crest, it’s true only because it can’t be proved false.

We have "American Idol" that is supposed to be reality TV, where the judges sit at their table with their glasses clearly labeled Coke. How long would Momma Cass have lasted on that program? Or Bob Dylan or Jim Morrison or even Elvis? After Elvis’s first appearances, the networks were deluged by angry letters about his obscene performance. Only Ed Sullivan’s intervention prevented Elvis from being banned from television. A year later it didn’t matter, Elvis was the biggest singing star in the world. Mom and Dad wrote angry letters but the kids bought records.

Which is why "American Idol" winners, pumped and primped and coached and trained, disappear from the charts soon after disappearing from the show. Talent is everywhere; a real star is talent plus the intangible. A star can be hard to deal with; a contestant never is or never is for long. The media's pretends its business is creating the entertainers, rather than finding talented entertainers, and they have judges claiming to know the difference. What did you think, Simon?

“Mr. Presley, do you call that thing that you do, dancing? Why do you wear a guitar around your neck if you’re not going to play it? I just think that perhaps you should calm down and perhaps next week you can come back and do a Bee Gees tune for us.”

A genre, a box framed with barbed wire for entertainers to fit inside or be gone, always looking for the last great idea. Who will be the next Barry Manilow, not the next Kurt Cobain, for only by being outside the box can you be a star. Buddy Holly was fired, Jerry Lee Lewis was fired, Hendrix was fired repeatedly for refusing to go near the box. Stardom is about the next thing, not the last thing.

The modern media attempt to interpret the message and then, like a mother bird, to regurgitate it to us. Rather than a clearinghouse of information, they’re an exclusive art gallery of selected information that I’m sure you will enjoy. We’ve picked out what we know is best because we know you are too busy and too inarticulate. Yet, record sales are down, newspaper and magazine sales are down. TV network market shares are down and the network executives blame the Internet. But what is it that main stream media has that the Internet does not? But them!

The censors and filters, that want to explain the world to us. Downloadable music sites soar because people get to decide what they like instead of being told what they like. Internet news sites grow like wildfire because they present the news rather than explain it. CBS will soon fire Katie Couric; if they were smart they would fire the whole department and start with a clean slate. Give them one mandate: report the news, good, bad, or otherwise. But that would be impossible. That’s outside the box and how would people know what we want them to think?