Let me get this over with: Yes I grew up in Southern California. Yes I loved the Beach Boys. And yes, I was a serious skateboarder until my freshman year of high school.
I also surfed. Once. I stood up on the board once. Briefly.
Then it came out of the waves like a torpedo and hit me in the head. No more surfing.
But here are the Beach Boys with Surfin’ USA. A rip-off of Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen. But an anthem even to a wannabe who could only claim one smack in the head. Truly the essence of cool in 1963 Southern California.
Did you know that we skateboarders also had an anthem? It was called Sidewalk Surfin’ by Jan and Dean. Any of my incoming students this fall are welcome to ask to see the scar on my left forearm from a truly nasty fall on my friend Ricky’s long, smooth, concrete driveway.
As I suspected, my favorite home supply store —Home Depot — did have some ads on Michael Savage’s show of which they were unaware. And Home Depot’s connection to the show is over. I just got this gracious and straightforward response from Sarah at Home Depot’s corporate communications department:
Hi Steve – Sarah here again. Yes, we have since learned that a couple stations ran our ads by accident in time slots we did not authorize. Our customers have done a great job keeping us informed where they heard them run, right now we’re aware of NYC and Detroit. If you or your readers hear our ad during this program on any other station/city, please let me know. Also, I provided an email address where I could be contacted before, perhaps you did not get it? I’ll include it right in my message this time.
I rarely fume as ferociously as I have about Michael Savage’s comments. And I do support a boycott of current Savage advertisers who do not sever their relationship.
But I am not a jerk. And part of any boycott, or possible boycott, is to show gratitude to any entity that acts in good faith. And not only is Home Depot off my list, but I am going over to the really well-managed Home Depot #6903 right now for some mulch, batteries, and a wrench.
And just a word to Home Depot that I hope will not sound arrogant: You lost almost two valuable days in a crowded and messy and fast-moving media environment during which you could have quickly confirmed facts, fessed up to any unintended errors, set up a toll-free number for questions, and clearly stated your revulsion at Savage’s remarks.
But I have to go: So help me, I love to buy tools and garden supplies. Not that I always come home and actually use them!
Professors of media, journalism or communication are almost never treated to examples of media idiocy as juicy as Michael Savage’s most recent comments on autism. Unfortunately for us, most media personalities often show just enough coherence to avoid being placed in the “stupid beyond words” category. We can only be grateful that Savage’s courageous assault on disabled children has provided us with a perfect example.
I ask you: What kind of courage and strength of conviction must it have taken for him to speak truth to power with these brilliant observations about autistic children?
I know that some people might argue that by sharing the audio of his mind-bogglingly stupid rant, I am extending his reach. I simply think that, unless you hear his words with all the bile included, you might not fully appreciate how someone with such a tenuous hold on sanity continues on the air.
“What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, `Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, you idiot.'”
So here’s the latest:
The completely predictable free speech argument is now being raised by some of Savage’s supporters, or whatever you call someone who listens to him. This reveals a profound misunderstanding of the first amendment that is also seen all across the ideological spectrum.
So let’s get it straight: Savage certainly has the right to say anything he wants and to salivate as much as he wants. That is why I never objected to any of the right-wing boycotts proposed by sundry loony-tunes. It really was Jerry Falwell’s right to express deep and grave concern that the purple Teletubby was actually gay. The man was afraid of being hit on by a stuffed animal and we needed to know that!
But no one in a commercial system of broadcasting is entitled to a permanent, sponsored platform.
Savage: You do get to say what you want. Sponsors, though, get to decide if and when an association with you becomes more of a liability than an asset. AFLAC, as they did yesterday when they jettisoned you, gets to decide that – however large your audience – they will pay more of a price by an affiliation with you. Other sponsors get the same choice. If not enough remain to make your show profitable, you still get to express your views. But not on their dime!Or on their radio network.
This is what kills me about you supposed free-market capitalists: You love a free-market until that free market bites you in the behind. Then you weep about your rights to free speech. Or you want to be able to rob sub-prime borrowers without annoying government interference like taxes, and when you screw up miserably, you are on your pathetic hands and knees begging for a bailout.
A free market and free expression means you can rant without restriction and others can do everything possible to get you off the air. Don’t worry, Mike: If enough sponsors choose to stick with a guy like you who is gutsy enough to ridicule disabled kids, you’ll stay on the air. If not, you are welcome to walk outside and start to babble.
One last thing: You have to see the carefully worded statement on Savage’s web site. One day he is calling autistic kids “idiots” and telling them not to “act like morons” and the next he is saying that “My comments about autism were meant to boldly awaken parents and children to the medical community’s attempt to label too many children or adults as “autistic.”
What canned, hack-written, C.Y.A. nonsense.
I beg you, Savage: Spare us the official“I better be sane and backtrack so my sponsors don’t head for the door” statement.These statements are hilarious in their desperation, illustrating how idiocy and cruelty only works on trash-radio until the sponsors get antsy. Then it’s time for a quick conversion to sanity. If you are going to be astoundingly ignorant, Mike, at least do it proudly and openly.
And Mike: Your attempted last minute conversion to sanity is truly a laugh riot. Just know that we can see through to the phoniness and transparent desperation designed to save the sponsors who finally know the truth: They have been paying to reach an audience who like hearing a nut make fun of disabled kids.
We can only hope that none of the sponsors buy it.
Oh, by the way, here is a list – courtesy of Greg Reich – of some of the sponsors who advertised on Savage’s July 18th broadcast. Greg’s blog, Greg’s Take, has an excellent post on his experience raising a daughter with autism.
Sometime during the recent academic year, a student handed me a film being promoted at an public relations agency where he was working. After I watched it and was left almost paralyzed by rage at a justice system completely out of control, I promptly forgot to tell anyone about it.
But I just saw that Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern’s The Trials of Darryl Hunt is now available from Netflix and wanted you to know about it.
Nobody quarrels anymore with the fact that innocent people are wrongly convicted. Prosecutors know it. Defense lawyers definitely know it. And hundreds of prisoners exonerated by The Inncocence Project stand as the ultimate proof of persistent and pervasive injustice.
Having said that, I’m not sure I have ever seen a more egregious example of gross prosecutorial misconduct than the case of Darryl Hunt.
And while I am not one who believes that suffering is necessarily redemptive or ennobling, it is nothing less than thrilling to watch the young Darryl Hunt evolve into a truly great man, a hero who will not be deterred in his quest for truth and justice.
There are so many horrifying twists and turns that I will resist telling you any more. But if you are intrigued by the thought of a true, living nightmare rendered brilliantly in a documentary film — a Non-CSI take on what happens when race collides with astoundingly ruthless prosecutors — you must see The Trials of Darryl Hunt.
My love-hate relationship with 24 hour cable news continues.
I’ve admitted it before: None of my criticism of 24 hour cable news – including what I have to say here – can hide a simple fact: When all hell breaks loose, or when an event occurs that is important to me, I am tuned in for the wall to wall coverage like any other news-loony.
The problem with MSNBC, CNN, and FOX is that they are responsible for news holes too immense to fill and too costly to fill with in-depth reporting. So they each rely on all sorts of filler — talking heads, re-runs of regular network magazine shows, and reality shows from independent producers – to fill the schedule. Of course, this is a tacit admission that they are simply unwilling to spend the resources required to fill the hole with serious news or analysis.
On MSNBC, for example, we are treated to such unrepentant claptrap as Lockup Raw and Caught on Camera, and, reaching even deeper into the cultural garbage bin, re-runs of To Catch a Predator.
Believe me; I am sure that they would rather fill the hole with enough truly cataclysmic events that they could keep “BREAKING NEWS” flashing on the bottom of the screen permanently. The problem is that, by mercilessly hyping any remotely interesting news story, they have raised the catastrophe bar so high that a war between India and Pakistan might not even make the cut unless one of the countries loaded up the nukes.
OK, so I exaggerate.
But barring a world that doesn’t come apart 24 hours a day, they each look to trashy programming as filler.
And this is where “Prison-P–n” comes in. One of MSNBC’s most popular fillers is Lockup Raw, which offers hours of riots and fights inside prisons backed by a soundtrack of screaming and yelling and all-around mayhem. We learn nothing about the causes of prison conditions.
But we do learn the profound and shocking lesson that inmates occasionally beat the hell out of each other. Brilliant. And deep. Very deep.
Normally I wouldn’t waste keyboard strokes about “Prison P–n” programming, but last week I heard a feature on NPR’s All Things Considered about the inhuman conditions in California prisons, including crowding, disease, and sexual assault. As I listened, I was struck even more how garbage like Lockup Raw, with all its screaming and bleeding, is too mindless to offer even a slightly provocative insight about why prisons are the way they are.
They keep it quite simple: Prisoners are animals. Prisons are zoos.
The reason I ask is that, while I found the whole gory spectacle to be lusciously dark and haunting, the real shocker was Johnny Depp’s astounding vocal performance. Really a revelation.
So often the high quality of singing in a filmed musical is distracting. The songs are more star-turns than integrated elements of a story. At worst, they are so operatically overwrought that they detract from whatever story might be developing. My favorite example of conspicuously inappropriate singing in a film was Rossano Brazzi’s slightly ridiculous rendition of Some Enchanted Evening in Josh Logan’s film “South Pacific” (1958).
I still am not sure how to describe Johnny Depp’s epic accomplishment. I know he was singing. But he was also doing something very different, using music and an idiosyncratic voice to express the anguish of a tortured soul. This was the “singing” of an extraordinary actor, for whom storytelling trumped vocal pyrotechnics.
It reminded me of a sad funeral I had to attend many years ago for a young man accidentally killed in gang-related crossfire. I knew his mother, and her wailing during the service remains the most haunting sound I have ever heard. Her convulsive tears seemed to be coming from a corner of the soul where only the most painful grief resides.
Johnny Depp seemed to sing from this same place.
When I left the theatre, I thought: This was extraordinary. But the purists, the opera crowd, will never appreciate it.
“In Mr. Depp’s portrayal, words come first in the shaping of a phrase. Expression, nuance, intention and controlled intensity matter more than vocal richness and sustaining power. These principles of vocal artistry matter just as much onstage, as the best operatic artists understand. But too many opera singers are overly focused on making beautiful sounds and sending notes soaring at the expense of crisp diction and textual clarity. They could learn something from Mr. Depp’s verbally dynamic singing… I don’t mean to suggest that his vocal performance is merely a savvy kind of sung speech. There is musical distinction in his work.”
MEDIA AND MAYHEM 