This Is NOT Normal!

Thank goodness November 26 is "It's Good Grief Day"

Nov 24, 2024

NOTE: I’ll see you next on December 8.

LOOKING AHEAD: November 26 is It’s Good Grief Day. (Good Grief!) November 28 is National French Toast Day. December 7 is It’s Letter Writing Day. (Go ahead…go analog and write a real letter!) December 8 is It’s National Brownie Day. (Eat up!) PLAN ACCORDINGLY!

The phrase that I hope you’re going to be repeating, almost as a mantra is “This is not normal!” Too many are going to be working to convince us otherwise, to our detriment. One of the best lines I saw recently was one welcoming us to the “new abnormal.” Remember, this is not normal!

The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving – Rebecca Solnit

With every governmental appointment DJT has proposed, they (he and his minions) are indeed “flooding the zone.” Each Cabinet nominee portends a new crisis. Individually we cannot focus on everything. So, a good deal of my focus will continue to be on the information ecosystem, although I expect to take many detours.

My nomination for the happiest story of the past couple weeks is about the satirical website/newspaper The Onion winning the auction to take control of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars “empire.” As you know, on his Infowars platform, Alex Jones promoted the idea that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was all staged – it was a hoax – with those involved “crisis actors.” Jones maintained that it was “a pretext for draconian gun control.”

Finally, in 2018, 10 families of the Sandy Hook victims filed a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones. Many told them it would be impossible to win. The families endured six years of harassment until finally in 2024 (more than a decade after the 2012 shooting), a judge declared a judgement against Jones in the amount of $1.5 billion in damages to be paid to the families. That required the sale of all the assets Jones held in Infowars. The winning bid gives The Onion control of the website and archive, the mailing list and production equipment, and ends 25 years of Jones’s Infowars. It also includes a warehouse full of nutritional supplements Jones pushed on his listeners. No decision yet on what to do with those!

The families chose to forego more settlement money offered by Jones rather to back The Onion’s bid. For them, it would be “cosmic justice.” The takeover includes a multiyear agreement with the non-profit Everytown for Gun Safety for exclusive advertising on the relaunched satirical site.

Ben Collins, the CEO of the newly reinvigorated Onion is bringing satire and seriousness to the issue of gun safety, but not limited just to that. As Collins said,

“It’s not just [Jones], it’s the people on Instagram trying to get you to drink raw milk; it’s the [multilevel marketing] people trying to get you to join a scam. Those people have outsize impact in our completely bifurcated and balkanized media environment.”

The site is down for the time being, but, of course, there is a bump in the road. The other top bidder in the auction backed by DJT and his acolytes, Steve Bannon, et.al. contend that the bidding was rigged. This Monday their arguments will be heard in court with a forthcoming decision to be made whether The Onion has indeed won. Keep your fingers crossed.

The Onion wins auction to take control of Alex Jones’s Infowars | The Washington Post | November 14, 2024

The Onion’s Bid to Acquire Infowars Has Gotten Messy | The New York Times | November 19, 2024

One of the most heart-warming essays I’ve read over the last couple of weeks is by a contributing OpEd writer in The New York Times, Margaret Renkl. Here are just a few excerpts of wisdom from her:

“I am 63 years old, a liberal child of the Jim Crow South. For my whole adult life, I have been fighting for a world where a man like Donald Trump would never be elected — not once, much less twice — and I am tired of fighting…. A different result last week would have been, at best, just a reprieve, and I knew that. I wanted the reprieve anyway. I wanted to wake up on Nov. 6 and breathe a sigh of relief.”

But, she is resigned:

“What this election has made absolutely, indisputably clear should have been clear to me all along: I will be fighting for the rest of my life to preserve the promise this country still holds for pluralism, for fairness, for decency, for true freedom. I am never going to breathe a sigh of relief. What choice is there but to fight?”

She said she didn’t want to write, as so many others are doing, about theories of how or why this happened, but instead, to write about grief.

“I want to find words for how the only thing that ever comes close to touching the solitude of grief is tenderness. There is no cure for profound grief, but beauty and love and tenderness can walk alongside it and ease the solitude, at least.”

She talks of walking in the rainy woods, of conversations with friends, of reading and poetry, of finding ways to find joy amid the fight, and of resting when the fight is too much.

But she is resigned into a very wise approach to our situation – to life itself:

“I will be fighting with all that I am, but I will also be reminding myself again and again not to wait for the world to give me a reason to sigh with relief. I will give myself respite. I will remember not to keep waiting for sweetness and rest to arrive on their own.”

And quotes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

“If it be not now, yet it will come: The readiness is all.”

Against Panic: A Survival Kit | The New York Times | November 11, 2024

THE UNDER TOAD

The title character in “The World According to Garp,” whose son mistakenly hears someone referring to an undertow at the beach, “subsequently use[s] the phrase ‘under toad’ to refer to the omnipresent threat of disaster that lies beneath the surface of everyday life.” (as described in Wordsense)

It was such a hopeful moment when Biden came into office and in October 2021 installed Jessica Rosenworcel as Chair of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). She voted to enforce net neutrality (one of my pet concerns that disallows a two-tiered internet with “fast lanes” for the privileged), helped in subsidizing internet access for low-income individuals, expanded consumer protection against robocalls, worked to update the connection of high-speed internet for libraries and schools, and upgraded emergency phone services, among many other projects. She worked to make people’s lives better.

DJT’s pick for FCC Chair is another story. Unlike most of DJT’s proposed nominees, Carr does have expertise in his domain, just not the kind we may want. He was first appointed as an FCC Commissioner in 2012 and served as Chair of the FCC for a period under DJT. He wrote the FCC section in Project 2025, so he will be well-positioned to institute those proposed changes. On one hand he could be a thorn in the side of Big Tech as he wants to investigate and regulate it, and rewrite Section 230 which protects Big Tech from any responsibility for what third parties post on their sites.

On the other hand, he is fully in support of DJTs desire to see any broadcaster who provokes DJT’s ire to lose its broadcast license. Carr is a major advocate for free speech (but primarily the far right kind!) boosting the Musks of the world. Carr also is in favor of removing restrictions on media ownership, which will allow for the strangling of what’s left of a free and fair media landscape.

In short, under Carr the media environment is going to become a very difficult space to operate in. Stay tuned.

Trump’s new FCC nominee promises to bring Project 2025-style governance to media | Nieman Lab | November 1, 2024 (no paywall)

Trump’s Pick to Run the FCC Detailed How He’d Run the Agency in Project 2025 | Gizmodo | November 18, 2024 (no paywall)

“You are the media now.” That was the message being spread by the right wing after the election. The phrase was first posted by Elon Musk and quickly echoed. The right-wing activist James Keefe elaborated:

“The legacy media is dead. Hollywood is done. Truth telling is in. No more complaining about the media. You are the media.”

Excuse me, who’s truth?

Elon Musk spent $44 billion buying Twitter in order to undermine existing media institutions and to push his politics. In addition, Charlie Warzel writes in this essay,

“QAnon devotees also know the phrase as a rallying cry, an invitation to participate in a particular kind of citizen ‘journalism’ that involves just asking questions and making stuff up altogether.”

In all the post-election analysis, the questions that are arising are, “who is the media, anyway?” and “how much influence does a given medium have (Joe Rogan podcasts, for instance)?” “Was this the podcast election?” “How do you get people’s attention (just by being outrageous?).” “What do we do about the fact that way too many people ‘don’t read, trust, or really care’ about what papers and magazines have to say?”

Warzel provides a long list of problems facing legacy media – declining trust, bad economics, political pressure, vulture capitalists (looking at you Alden Global Capital), the rise of the internet, the perceived need to be “even-handed” when truth would dictate otherwise, on and on.

Warzel speaks of the influencer economy that has emerged on social media platforms. He notes that that’s not an ecosystem that produces original reporting, but somehow “it feels authentic to its audience.” These podcasters and independent online creators are not constrained by journalistic standards or ethics or need for objectivity. It’s primarily about developing a relationship with their audience by being in their ears or in their faces for hours on end each week.

Warzel contends that a subscription falloff also highlights the confusing logic of this time for legacy media:

“It would mean that the traditional media industry—fractured, poorly funded, constantly under attack, and in competition with attention gatherers who don’t have to play by the same rules—is simultaneously viewed as having had enough power to stop Trump, but also past its prime, having lost its sway and relevance. Competition is coming from a durable alternative-media ecosystem, the sole purpose of which is to ensconce citizens in their chosen reality, regardless of whether it’s true. And it is coming from Musk’s X, which the centibillionaire quickly rebuilt into a powerful communication tool that largely serves the MAGA coalition.”

Warzel concludes that a world in which “do your own research” is the watchword of the era, a Trump or a Musk can operate with impunity. And, he offers this:

“The right’s media ecosystem might be chaotic, conspiracist, and poisonous, but it offers its consumers a world to get absorbed in—plus, the promise that they can shape it themselves.”

In sum:

“’You are the media now’ is powerful because it capitalizes on the reality that it is difficult to know where genuine influence comes from these days. The phrase sounds empowering. Musk’s acolytes see it as the end of traditional-media gatekeeping. But what he’s really selling is the notion that people are on their own—that facts are malleable, and that what feels true ought to be true.”

Real media is going to have to figure out a way to lure people back to the value of fact-based journalism if we are to have any hope of a shared future.

Bad News | The Atlantic | November 8, 2024

IN DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY

In one of her columns this week, Jennifer Rubin, perhaps the only reason I may continue subscribing to The Washington Post, bemoans what we could assume is an “uninformed public.” Nonetheless, she devotes her column to a segment of the news ecosystem that does seem to be growing: non-profit journalism. In her column she focuses on ProPublica, an organization that has been breaking some of the most important stories we’ve been seeing – stories the for-profit media has missed or has been too hesitant to take on. Those stories have included the actual taxes that billionaires have been paying, to the financial scandals surrounding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Just two examples.

Since it started in 2008, it has grown from a $10 million to a $50 million budget with a current staff of 150, focusing on serious reporting. In that time, it’s received seven Pulitzer Prizes, five Peabody Awards, eight Emmys, and 15 George Polk Awards. It has partially fulfilled the demand for local reporting by partnering with and supporting local journalists across the country.

They’re on to something. Hopefully, others will follow.

Our democracy needs a different model for journalism | The Washington Post | November 21, 2024

ON THE MUSICAL SIDE

For those who may have missed this piece in The New York Times, note that Jon Batiste, the bandleader formerly with the Stephen Colbert Show and a Grammy and Academy Award-winning musician, has just released a new album, “Beethoven Blues.” Drawing on his original roots as a classical piano student, in this thoughtful interview, Batiste talks about improvising on Beethoven. He recorded the album in a day and a half at his home in Brooklyn. Below are a few of the selections.

Jon Batiste Can’t Stop Thinking About Beethoven | The New York Times | November 19, 2024

Symphony No. 5 Stomp | Jon Batiste | Album: Beethoven Blues (2024)