CALIFORNIA
Like reading a map, or a welcome sign. An atlas, maybe.
Monday, February 4, 2019
Marooned
At some point in our existence a person has been fucking, or about-to-be fucking, the singer of Maroon 5 (Adam something, I think). They have looked down and seen the word California tattooed across his upper stomach in big letters, written like this:
Like reading a map, or a welcome sign. An atlas, maybe.
Like reading a map, or a welcome sign. An atlas, maybe.
The Spectacle Always Wins
A couple of hours into
the Super Bowl Experience, an experience in which the game itself constitutes,
at most, 37% of said experience, we began to wonder when the ultimate
commercial would appear, the commercial that would take what we had seen to
this point and distill it into its purest definitive form. After a few minutes,
we had conceived the ultimate Super Bowl commercial of 2019.
A CGI’d image of Gandhi
sitting in his cell. We see the suffering of his fellow countrymen, shots of
starvation and cruelty, then cut back to Gandhi. A British prison guard enters
the cell, says a few mocking words about his hunger strike before producing a
bag of Wendy’s (logo prominently displayed). “We’ll see if this might change your mind,” laughs the guard as he leaves. Gandhi
looks at the bag, then looks out the window. The bag, then the window. He is
contemplating his choice. His mouth begins to water. Finally, he lunges across
the room, tears open the bag with a violence that stands in direct violation of
his non-violent principles, and slowly, and with great pleasure, savors a
delicious Wendy’s Double (I had one last week—they sent me a coupon in the mail!).
There would be outrage
of course, both real and feigned. People would point out the less savory
aspects of Gandhi’s personal life (not good people). An interview would appear
where the current custodian of the Gandhi brand would explain how much money
they received for allowing their great-grandfather’s likeness to be used in the
commercial, and how a portion of that money would go towards charities to fund
causes which Gandhi would have supported, &tc., &tc.
After eleventeen or how
many commercials conflating social justice and buying a product, whether it was
Serena Williams describing her feminist journey and then urging us to download
an app, or the endless ads calling for “unity” and “togetherness,” after a
while you just wanted to puke. I have to disagree with the Coca-Cola company. I
don’t think it’s wonderful that we all have different views, not when some of those
views involve white supremacist violence. That is a view that lots of people
have. And the fact that we all drink Coke (which we don’t) doesn’t, uh, make me
feel any better about it.
While we’re on the
subject of soft drinks, Pepsi putting their logo all over the city of Atlanta
(the birthplace/headquarters of Coke) is some pretty cold-blooded branding.
Though given the (intentional, deliberate, easily avoidable) price gouging
currently going on re: insulin, I’d advise everyone to take it easy on the
sugar.
Or corn syrup, for that
matter. Did you know the cure for corn syrup is beer, not just any beer, but
one beer in particular?
Look, you have to enjoy
this shit. There’s something both hilarious and tragic in a commercial where the
protagonist, a generic everyman, is bombarded throughout his day with bad news
(morning paper headline: Today Even Worse Than Yesterday), only for us to
arrive at the end of the commercial and find out the cure for our protagonist’s
suffering is...a home security system connected to his wi-fi. Last night’s theme
boiled down to Everything Is Completely Fucked But We Have A Product That Will
Make Your Life Easier Please Buy It. The fact that it delivered this message through
either ironic comedy or a story of personal struggle only made it more insane.
Speaking of personal struggle,
I realized last night that the idea of what constitutes “sacrifice” has changed
in the last couple decades of our neoliberal descent into individualized
madness. Making a sacrifice used to mean taking on personal hardship in order
to help someone else, i.e. sacrificing your happiness for the greater good of
society, loved ones, whatever. Today it means getting up at 6am to exercise so
you can make the sports team. The essential meaning of “sacrifice” in 2019 is
the idea that you are putting off your own personal, selfish short-term
pleasure in order to achieve a greater, more significant long-term pleasure
that is every bit as personal and selfish.
But it’s the appropriation
of real, concrete social struggle that is the real psychological tarpit of last
night’s festivities. There’s a case to be made that seeing feminism and social
justice displayed all over the most-watched television event of the year can
have a positive effect. I definitely prefer it over, say, the idea of using
white supremacy and tax cuts to sell products. I suppose the marketability of
marginalized people can be interpreted as a positive sign of where we stand as
a society. Still, as the night rolled on, I couldn’t help thinking that hearing
the language of protest used in a commercial can also have a negative effect.
It can rob the language of its power. Or to put it another way, last night we recognized
that language as the language of protest. Today we recognize it as the language
of advertising. And the next time someone says those words, they might not
sound like someone fighting for justice. They will also sound like someone
selling a product.
The slogans of the Situationists
became the car commercials of the 80’s. Demand the Impossible sounds like
someone driving a Jeep through water, not students and workers united in solidarity
against a society that offers nothing except more work and an early spiritual
death.
The revolution will not be advertised. Capitalism can assimilate any form of rebellion. These ideas have always been true, and always will be true. But, in spite of this, change is possible. Real change is already happening. It is essential to remember that a better world isn't for sale. It's not something any of us can buy. I think a lot of people already know that. But the semi-inclusive, semi-woke messages on display last night didn't bring anybody a single step closer to shit except for the company's writing the checks.
Me, I was hoping the final score would be 3-0, and people would finally stop watching this bloodsport--the commercials as well as the game.
Sunday, February 3, 2019
The Number Fortys: Real Life - "Send Me An Angel"
In The Number Fortys, we review every song that was sitting at #40 on the Billboard chats, starting in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either), and here concludes our introduction.
This surprisingly muscular piece of synthpop came from Australia's Real Life. It's possible their Australian-ness supplied the muscles. Apocryphal stories abound about how Aussie bands in the 70s/80s had to pay their dues playing to bars full of thick-necked dudes in white tank-tops throwing cans of Fosters at them or something. Regardless of how true the stories are (I'm pretty sure the Go-Betweens mostly played art colleges), it certainly explains how AC-DC, Midnight Oil had a certain toughness in their music. The first two examples are (I hope) obvious, but don't sleep on INXS. There's a toughness in their music that you don't find in say, New Order. Here's their song Guns In The Sky (it's a 7).
Most New Wave artist subject matter--and Real Life is extremely New Wave sounding--revolved around two major subjects: nuclear annihilation and/or sex. Real Life picked the latter on this one (Modern English picked both on "I Melt With You," which came out in 1982 and never cracked the Top 40 in any country; it's a 10). Send Me An Angel is about a person who is desperately longing for love. Even as he tells us he Don't know what to do, he also gives us advice Don't tell a lie / Don't be false or untrue (I give this advice a 7; while it's important to have a relationship based in honesty, sometimes a partner will ask what you're thinking and it's better to keep it to yourself). There a weird line about If a girl walks in and carves here name in my heart / I'll turn and run away. Which, is he's speaking literally, is good advice. Otherwise, it maybe just suggests the sexual confusion--of preference, of pressure--that embodies adolescence.
Who the fuck knows? This song didn't become a sorta hit (it went on to reach #29 in the US) on the strength of its lyrics. Send Me An Angel possesses an intensity that's rare for chart-sniffing synthpop. It's propelled by a bassline of eight notes that wouldn't sound out of place a few later on a Pixies record. And then there's the popcraft, those four notes after he sings the title line during the chorus that sounds almost celestial, and is the kind of touch that wouldn't be out of place in an ABBA song.
With its encouraging cries of Don't give up and promises that You can be lucky in love make the song an It Gets Better message decades before the movement, or the internet existed. Send Me An Angel probably saved a few lives back in its day, and that's no small feat.
Also, it's fun to take the word angel, in song about angels, and change it to angle. Here's my favorite song about angels. It's by Half Japanese, and it's an 8.
Real Life had a drum machine they named Gloria. Echo and the Bunnymen had a drum machine named Echo that they replaced with a human named Pete de Freitas. de Freitas died in a motorcycle accident in 1989; I give his crash a 0. But I give the song, and its Phil Manzanera-esque guitar solo (New Wave is unimaginable without Roxy Music) a 7.
THE NUMBER ONE
Paul and Michael were still at #1. We covered it last installment, but I just want to add that the ensemble acting in this video is pretty damn fine, especially by Linda.
This surprisingly muscular piece of synthpop came from Australia's Real Life. It's possible their Australian-ness supplied the muscles. Apocryphal stories abound about how Aussie bands in the 70s/80s had to pay their dues playing to bars full of thick-necked dudes in white tank-tops throwing cans of Fosters at them or something. Regardless of how true the stories are (I'm pretty sure the Go-Betweens mostly played art colleges), it certainly explains how AC-DC, Midnight Oil had a certain toughness in their music. The first two examples are (I hope) obvious, but don't sleep on INXS. There's a toughness in their music that you don't find in say, New Order. Here's their song Guns In The Sky (it's a 7).
Most New Wave artist subject matter--and Real Life is extremely New Wave sounding--revolved around two major subjects: nuclear annihilation and/or sex. Real Life picked the latter on this one (Modern English picked both on "I Melt With You," which came out in 1982 and never cracked the Top 40 in any country; it's a 10). Send Me An Angel is about a person who is desperately longing for love. Even as he tells us he Don't know what to do, he also gives us advice Don't tell a lie / Don't be false or untrue (I give this advice a 7; while it's important to have a relationship based in honesty, sometimes a partner will ask what you're thinking and it's better to keep it to yourself). There a weird line about If a girl walks in and carves here name in my heart / I'll turn and run away. Which, is he's speaking literally, is good advice. Otherwise, it maybe just suggests the sexual confusion--of preference, of pressure--that embodies adolescence.
Who the fuck knows? This song didn't become a sorta hit (it went on to reach #29 in the US) on the strength of its lyrics. Send Me An Angel possesses an intensity that's rare for chart-sniffing synthpop. It's propelled by a bassline of eight notes that wouldn't sound out of place a few later on a Pixies record. And then there's the popcraft, those four notes after he sings the title line during the chorus that sounds almost celestial, and is the kind of touch that wouldn't be out of place in an ABBA song.
With its encouraging cries of Don't give up and promises that You can be lucky in love make the song an It Gets Better message decades before the movement, or the internet existed. Send Me An Angel probably saved a few lives back in its day, and that's no small feat.
Also, it's fun to take the word angel, in song about angels, and change it to angle. Here's my favorite song about angels. It's by Half Japanese, and it's an 8.
Real Life had a drum machine they named Gloria. Echo and the Bunnymen had a drum machine named Echo that they replaced with a human named Pete de Freitas. de Freitas died in a motorcycle accident in 1989; I give his crash a 0. But I give the song, and its Phil Manzanera-esque guitar solo (New Wave is unimaginable without Roxy Music) a 7.
THE NUMBER ONE
Paul and Michael were still at #1. We covered it last installment, but I just want to add that the ensemble acting in this video is pretty damn fine, especially by Linda.
Friday, February 1, 2019
The NumberFortys: Robert Plant: "In The Mood"
Tom Breihan over at Stereogum has been running this column called The Number Ones, where he reviews every #1 single in the history of the Billboard charts starting in 1958. Even when I disagree with Breihan's take, it's still worth reading. And it gives me a reason to visit Stereogum's vertical stacking of (mostly) irrelevant garbage. It's a great premise. I wish I had thought of it.
In that spirit, I'd like to inaugurate The Number Fortys, where I'll review every single song that sat at #40 on the Billboard chart, starting at the beginning of 1984. I'm hoping the bottom of the chart will toss up more surprises, bring stranger stuff to the light. We'll see. I'm not going to cheat by looking ahead. I'm hoping the bottom of the chart will toss up more surprises, bring stranger stuff to the light. We'll see. I'm not going to cheat by looking ahead.
Why 1984? Well, it's right around the time I became fully cognizant and obsessed with popular music. Also, it was a really good year for music. I could have done 1983, but the #40 song the first week of 1983 was Air Supply's "Two Less Lonely People In The World." If we're going to evaluate music on a scale of 1 to 10, and if we're being inspired by mainstream-ish music crit, I guess we have to--like in keeping w/the premise, the Air Supply song is a fucking 0, a bunch of helium-sucking Meatloaf trash.
You can't kick off a series with that and expect anyone to ever come back to anything--this site, the internet, recorded sound--ever again. The week after Air Supply, A Flock of Seagulls "Space Age Love Song" reached #40. That song is emphatically a 10 (am I doing this scoring thing right?).
But it feels like cheating to start something like this on the second week of 1983. I mean, the premise is already flimsy enough.
And so our first song, the song that will be the inaugural song is from Robert Plant, a man who spent the 1970s singing for a band called Led Zeppelin (their entire recorded output gets a 3--hey, this scoring stuff is fun!). After the death of their drummer, and many years after the band's collective death as a creative entity, (basically everything after "Over the Hills and Far Away" can go fuck itself), the remaining band members went their separate ways. Plant began his solo career in 1982 with an album called Pictures at Eleven. I've never heard it, and I don't recognize the title of any of the songs (I was still two years away from music obsession). But his next album, The Principle of Moments, from which this column's inaugural single was pulled from, is pretty good.
All the things I hate about Led Zeppelin, the squealing vocals, the squealing guitars, the strutting obvious testosterone, are gone. Instead, "In the Mood" is all subtlety, the kind of song you want to put on repeat because it'll make the morning last forever. The entire song sounds like an experiment in exploring the infinite space between moments of time. Over a bed of humming meditating synths, there's this guitar riff that moves with the lanquid pace of a dream. Blink-blink-blink, and I don't think I've ever heard a guitar riff with three notes in those exact spots. The first and third notes are (almost) exactly on the snare beat, but that second one seems to slide around the beat, occurring in a moment that is both slightly ahead of, and slightly behind, where you'd expect to hear it.
It sets the pace for the rest of the song, a song that is about wanting to hear a song that may or may not be the song that we are listening to. It's not very far from Eno's solo stuff. Phil Collins drums here, and also drummed there. Indeterminacy is everywhere in "In the Mood." Every part of the song, the guitars, the drums, Plant's vocals, have a stop-start quality, rushing ahead and falling back, but nothing about the song feels herky-jerky. It feels meditative. It feels attuned to the natural rhythms of life. After all, our breath, our hearts, also have tempos that fluctuate and lurch.
The week after this, "In the Mood," climbed to #39. It was the highest it would get on the charts. I found The Principle of Moments in my local Goodwill a few years back. This is definitely the best song on the album, but "Big Log" (I know, right?) is also good.
Score: 9/10
THE NUMBER ONE
The #1 song that week was Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson's "Say Say Say." It's competent hyper-melodic soft soul from McCartney that gets over on Michael Jackson's vocals, who at this point in his life, could sing the absolute shit out of anything (to be fair, Paul almost holds his own at the 2:45 mark). Fun fact: did you know rhinoplasty can change the timbre of one's singing voice? Michael and Paul would both feel the effects of this as the years went on.
In that spirit, I'd like to inaugurate The Number Fortys, where I'll review every single song that sat at #40 on the Billboard chart, starting at the beginning of 1984. I'm hoping the bottom of the chart will toss up more surprises, bring stranger stuff to the light. We'll see. I'm not going to cheat by looking ahead. I'm hoping the bottom of the chart will toss up more surprises, bring stranger stuff to the light. We'll see. I'm not going to cheat by looking ahead.
Why 1984? Well, it's right around the time I became fully cognizant and obsessed with popular music. Also, it was a really good year for music. I could have done 1983, but the #40 song the first week of 1983 was Air Supply's "Two Less Lonely People In The World." If we're going to evaluate music on a scale of 1 to 10, and if we're being inspired by mainstream-ish music crit, I guess we have to--like in keeping w/the premise, the Air Supply song is a fucking 0, a bunch of helium-sucking Meatloaf trash.
You can't kick off a series with that and expect anyone to ever come back to anything--this site, the internet, recorded sound--ever again. The week after Air Supply, A Flock of Seagulls "Space Age Love Song" reached #40. That song is emphatically a 10 (am I doing this scoring thing right?).
But it feels like cheating to start something like this on the second week of 1983. I mean, the premise is already flimsy enough.
And so our first song, the song that will be the inaugural song is from Robert Plant, a man who spent the 1970s singing for a band called Led Zeppelin (their entire recorded output gets a 3--hey, this scoring stuff is fun!). After the death of their drummer, and many years after the band's collective death as a creative entity, (basically everything after "Over the Hills and Far Away" can go fuck itself), the remaining band members went their separate ways. Plant began his solo career in 1982 with an album called Pictures at Eleven. I've never heard it, and I don't recognize the title of any of the songs (I was still two years away from music obsession). But his next album, The Principle of Moments, from which this column's inaugural single was pulled from, is pretty good.
All the things I hate about Led Zeppelin, the squealing vocals, the squealing guitars, the strutting obvious testosterone, are gone. Instead, "In the Mood" is all subtlety, the kind of song you want to put on repeat because it'll make the morning last forever. The entire song sounds like an experiment in exploring the infinite space between moments of time. Over a bed of humming meditating synths, there's this guitar riff that moves with the lanquid pace of a dream. Blink-blink-blink, and I don't think I've ever heard a guitar riff with three notes in those exact spots. The first and third notes are (almost) exactly on the snare beat, but that second one seems to slide around the beat, occurring in a moment that is both slightly ahead of, and slightly behind, where you'd expect to hear it.
It sets the pace for the rest of the song, a song that is about wanting to hear a song that may or may not be the song that we are listening to. It's not very far from Eno's solo stuff. Phil Collins drums here, and also drummed there. Indeterminacy is everywhere in "In the Mood." Every part of the song, the guitars, the drums, Plant's vocals, have a stop-start quality, rushing ahead and falling back, but nothing about the song feels herky-jerky. It feels meditative. It feels attuned to the natural rhythms of life. After all, our breath, our hearts, also have tempos that fluctuate and lurch.
The week after this, "In the Mood," climbed to #39. It was the highest it would get on the charts. I found The Principle of Moments in my local Goodwill a few years back. This is definitely the best song on the album, but "Big Log" (I know, right?) is also good.
Score: 9/10
THE NUMBER ONE
The #1 song that week was Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson's "Say Say Say." It's competent hyper-melodic soft soul from McCartney that gets over on Michael Jackson's vocals, who at this point in his life, could sing the absolute shit out of anything (to be fair, Paul almost holds his own at the 2:45 mark). Fun fact: did you know rhinoplasty can change the timbre of one's singing voice? Michael and Paul would both feel the effects of this as the years went on.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
A Message To Our Stockholders
In just two weeks, we have 250 page views. By the standards of 1995, k-postpunk would be considered an extremely influential and important zine. By the standards of 2019, it can only be considered a commercial failure.
Bad Faith Campaigning - No One Is To Be Trusted Not Even Ourselves
I'm not going to write his name out, in order to pretend I'm somehow above the fray, and to keep the rich stupid prick from getting the attention he so desperately craves (who are we kidding, he's already getting the attention). Let's write it out as H0ward $chultz.
None of this should be taken at face value. Nobody's intentions are to be trusted. I don't believe a singl thing about H0ward $chultz, other than he wants attention. Same goes for the people talking about him on the tv. Same for the people dragging him on Twitter. Same for the people pointing out, "Well actually FDR hasn't been president in 75 years and wanted to tax the rich." What makes you think H0ward $chultz doesn't know that? Him saying that is why everyone was talking about him yesterday instead of say, Jay Inslee (Inslee, much like my 12-year-old cat, would make a better president than H0ward $chultz).
The first goal of 21st century US life is to get attention. The second goal is to figure out how to monetize that attention. The third goal is to use that to get more attention. The fourth goal is to use that attention to get more money. I think the fifth goal is to never die. I'm not sure on that one.
Because H0ward $chultz, and the people who talk about H0ward $chultz, are all trying to fulfill goals 1-4, nothing any of them--even the people you or I might agree with--can be taken at face value. I've written elsewhere that this entire country is just one bad faith argument, and the chatter around H0ward $chultz is the perfect embodiment of this. When he says he was motivated to run by the (hypothetical, long-way-off) policy ideas of Alexandria Ocasio-C0rtez, Schultz isn't just stating his policy positions, he's using her celebrity to signal boost himself. Talk about the thing that everyone's talking about and you're more likely to be noticed.
That's true of cultural critics as well. With everything quantified and trackable, you learn real quick, wherever you are in the culture/entertainment industry (which, at this point, pretty much everything, including our politics, is definitely in that industry), you're guaranteed to get bigger numbers talking about something popular or trendy than by trying to champion something you think should get more attention.
It should be noted that the word "talking" refers to all contemporary vehicles of communication--print, website, social media, podcasting, screaming in an empty room, etc.
So anything H0ward $chultz says, or anything anyone says about him, even the historian in my Twitter feed who issued that devastating takedown of H0ward $chultz's campaign ideas (both those last words should be put in quotes to clearly point out their bullshit factor--so "campaign" "ideas"), are communicating in bad faith. Because that historian, or that pundit, or that op-ed columnist could be writing about Andrew Yang (look him up). But they aren't, because people are more likely to pay attention to them paying attention to H0ward $chultz than if they pay attention to Andrew Yang.
I mean, look at this account retweeting the ABC account fellating the H0ward $chultz account. I saw it because it was retweeted by an account I follow, a writer for what used to be called Gawker Media Account.
The NYT reporter is right, of course, but so what. Should we assume that ABC News, or Rick Klein don't already know this? Should we assume they even care about being correct? There is no better way to get attention that saying something hyperbolic and ridiculous.The stupid people who see the hyperbole will believe it, and the intelligent people won't be able to resist their attempt to publicly demonstrate their superiority.
We are all compromised compromisers, attention addicts looking for the next fix. I am not immune to any of this, though I'm working to be more aware.
Even the company H0ward $chultz used to run makes him more marketable as a celebrity candidate than if he had been the CEO of, say, Auto Zone, or even Dunkin Donuts. Coffee, particularly gourmet coffee, conveys a certain status, a certain branding panache. If the CEO of Dollar General announced his (or hers, I have no idea who the CEO there is, but, y'know, playing the odds) candidacy, and that he (or she) was running on a pro-wealthy platform, and had a history of union-busting during their CEO days, they'd be seen as a reactionary, no-hoper. And while H0ward $chultz is all of those things, because his self-brand conjures up images of Seattle, Starbucks, images of liberalism. So even though H0ward $chultz is on record as calling universal health care "not American," his right-wing Randian horseshit can be counterbalanced by the things associated with him so that he can present himself as a centrist. And yeah, I know that hating unions and universal health care is about as "centrist" as it gets, but the Democratic party has been evolving away from that since 2008. In 2018, H0ward $chultz embodies the worst aspects of everything left of Ted Cruz. His policies are stupid, cruel, self-serving, and it's only the presence of that flabby, self-hating, waxen lump currently in the White House that keeps me from laughing at the whole goddamn pathetic spectacle.
But this isn't a political campaign, it's free publicity (once you discount whatever he's paying his PR people, of course). The only way to win is to deny this asshole the attention he's so desperately craving.
Note: While I was writing this, D0nald Tr*mp Jrrrr abbreviated the TV show Saturday Night Live as "S&L." People are currently tripping over themselves to laugh at his stupidity, but ask yourself this question. Would his message have reached as many people if he had written SNL? Also, never assume your audience holds the same views that you do. And remember that as you signal boost what, to you, seems like stupidity, his mocking of universal health care and reproductive rights is being transmitted all over the internet.
None of this should be taken at face value. Nobody's intentions are to be trusted. I don't believe a singl thing about H0ward $chultz, other than he wants attention. Same goes for the people talking about him on the tv. Same for the people dragging him on Twitter. Same for the people pointing out, "Well actually FDR hasn't been president in 75 years and wanted to tax the rich." What makes you think H0ward $chultz doesn't know that? Him saying that is why everyone was talking about him yesterday instead of say, Jay Inslee (Inslee, much like my 12-year-old cat, would make a better president than H0ward $chultz).
The first goal of 21st century US life is to get attention. The second goal is to figure out how to monetize that attention. The third goal is to use that to get more attention. The fourth goal is to use that attention to get more money. I think the fifth goal is to never die. I'm not sure on that one.
Because H0ward $chultz, and the people who talk about H0ward $chultz, are all trying to fulfill goals 1-4, nothing any of them--even the people you or I might agree with--can be taken at face value. I've written elsewhere that this entire country is just one bad faith argument, and the chatter around H0ward $chultz is the perfect embodiment of this. When he says he was motivated to run by the (hypothetical, long-way-off) policy ideas of Alexandria Ocasio-C0rtez, Schultz isn't just stating his policy positions, he's using her celebrity to signal boost himself. Talk about the thing that everyone's talking about and you're more likely to be noticed.
That's true of cultural critics as well. With everything quantified and trackable, you learn real quick, wherever you are in the culture/entertainment industry (which, at this point, pretty much everything, including our politics, is definitely in that industry), you're guaranteed to get bigger numbers talking about something popular or trendy than by trying to champion something you think should get more attention.
It should be noted that the word "talking" refers to all contemporary vehicles of communication--print, website, social media, podcasting, screaming in an empty room, etc.
So anything H0ward $chultz says, or anything anyone says about him, even the historian in my Twitter feed who issued that devastating takedown of H0ward $chultz's campaign ideas (both those last words should be put in quotes to clearly point out their bullshit factor--so "campaign" "ideas"), are communicating in bad faith. Because that historian, or that pundit, or that op-ed columnist could be writing about Andrew Yang (look him up). But they aren't, because people are more likely to pay attention to them paying attention to H0ward $chultz than if they pay attention to Andrew Yang.
I mean, look at this account retweeting the ABC account fellating the H0ward $chultz account. I saw it because it was retweeted by an account I follow, a writer for what used to be called Gawker Media Account.
this is laughably incorrect https://t.co/5D4fLvmB4B— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) January 31, 2019
The NYT reporter is right, of course, but so what. Should we assume that ABC News, or Rick Klein don't already know this? Should we assume they even care about being correct? There is no better way to get attention that saying something hyperbolic and ridiculous.The stupid people who see the hyperbole will believe it, and the intelligent people won't be able to resist their attempt to publicly demonstrate their superiority.
We are all compromised compromisers, attention addicts looking for the next fix. I am not immune to any of this, though I'm working to be more aware.
Even the company H0ward $chultz used to run makes him more marketable as a celebrity candidate than if he had been the CEO of, say, Auto Zone, or even Dunkin Donuts. Coffee, particularly gourmet coffee, conveys a certain status, a certain branding panache. If the CEO of Dollar General announced his (or hers, I have no idea who the CEO there is, but, y'know, playing the odds) candidacy, and that he (or she) was running on a pro-wealthy platform, and had a history of union-busting during their CEO days, they'd be seen as a reactionary, no-hoper. And while H0ward $chultz is all of those things, because his self-brand conjures up images of Seattle, Starbucks, images of liberalism. So even though H0ward $chultz is on record as calling universal health care "not American," his right-wing Randian horseshit can be counterbalanced by the things associated with him so that he can present himself as a centrist. And yeah, I know that hating unions and universal health care is about as "centrist" as it gets, but the Democratic party has been evolving away from that since 2008. In 2018, H0ward $chultz embodies the worst aspects of everything left of Ted Cruz. His policies are stupid, cruel, self-serving, and it's only the presence of that flabby, self-hating, waxen lump currently in the White House that keeps me from laughing at the whole goddamn pathetic spectacle.
But this isn't a political campaign, it's free publicity (once you discount whatever he's paying his PR people, of course). The only way to win is to deny this asshole the attention he's so desperately craving.
Note: While I was writing this, D0nald Tr*mp Jrrrr abbreviated the TV show Saturday Night Live as "S&L." People are currently tripping over themselves to laugh at his stupidity, but ask yourself this question. Would his message have reached as many people if he had written SNL? Also, never assume your audience holds the same views that you do. And remember that as you signal boost what, to you, seems like stupidity, his mocking of universal health care and reproductive rights is being transmitted all over the internet.
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