It's a sad day for comedians everywhere. After three weeks of his name being the punchline for everyone from late-night comedians to bloggers and twitterers, Anthony Weiner resigned from the House of Representatives Thursday at one of the most bizarre press conferences ever.
Giving his short, four-minute resignation speech at the same senior center in New York where he began his career, Weiner seemed to be prepared for the media circus that gave new meaning to the phrase “media circus”. He read through his prepared statement, firmly and without hesitation, as some idiot from Howard Stern's show kept yelling stupid things like “Are you more than seven inches”, the old people in attendance yelled their support, and other hecklers just made a lot of noise.
As the flashbulbs flickered, Weiner made his final exit without answering questions. Of course, it would have been quite embarrassing to have to answer questions about his penis size. In hindsight, maybe it would have been better for Weiner if he had released a prepared statement instead of resigning in front of a bunch journalists, weird old people, Howard Stern employees, and the television and Internet audience.
Weiner, however, may have wanted it this way. His speech in some ways sounded more like a campaign speech than a “politician leaving in disgrace” speech. This may, in fact, not have been his final exit, but just a brief glitch in a long career in politics. “I got into politics to help give voice to the many who simply did not have one,” Weiner said. “Now I'll be looking for other ways to contribute my talents.”
What he plans to do with his talents remains to be seen, but Weiner clearly is not done with politics. He has no law degree, and politics is all he knows, so look for an Eliot Spitzer-like rise from the ashes. Or he could take up that job offer from Hustler's Larry Flynt, who knows a good hire when he sees one. Weiner has other options, such as marketing his own action figure, for example. His name alone will sell products, and just add the words “anatomically correct” and watch the money pour in.
As political scandals go, this one has got to be the weirdest. It was, after all, a sex scandal without the sex, which is relatively a new thing. The only other one that comes to mind is Republican Congressman Chris Lee who sent shirtless photos to women he met on Craigslist. In that case, however, Lee immediately resigned, causing only a minor media spectacle.
Weiner decided to cover up his indiscretions. And then lie about them. And then lie about them some more. This may have worked in the 90s, but these days, when you post pictures of your crotch on the Internet, there will be a record of it.
In 1987, Gary Hart was photographed on a yacht called Monkey Business with Donna Rice sitting on his lap. It put an end to Hart's presidential campaign, but the photo didn't become public until after Hart had withdrawn from the race. The fact that Hart was wearing pants didn't hurt. But in Weiner's case, the pictures don't illustrate the story, the pictures are the story.
Most political scandals involve sex with prostitutes, or at least some sort of illicit affair. Not online, but in person. In these cases, there are no photos of the intimate details, and therefore nothing to share on Facebook, Twitter and all the other Web sites out there.
Maybe Weiner didn't even have to quit. Sure, he was getting pressure from his own party. But other politicians have done much worse and have successfully weathered the storm. Take Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, for example. In 2007, the news media discovered that Vitter’s phone number had turned up in the records of a Washington-area escort service that was a front for prostitution. After a week of refusing to answer questions, Vitter emerged from seclusion with his wife to admit to “a serious sin” and to apologize for his actions. Vitter said his transgressions were a private family matter, and then refused to say another word about the subject.
David Vitter is still in office, winning re-election in 2010, even though his transgressions were illegal - prostitution is still illegal except in Nevada. Polls show that Weiner still had the support of over 50% of his constituents. Sure, he dug a deep hole for himself, but maybe if he had just shut up for awhile, he could have stayed in office. It might not have been possible, but maybe worth a shot. At least it would have given us more time to speculate and make jokes at Weiner's expense. Of course that's why he quit. He wanted to spare his family the humiliation of further Weiner jokes. Maybe it would have been different if his name wasn't Weiner.
Only time will tell if Weiner can make a comeback on the national stage. It is my view that he can. But while there will continue to be Weiner jokes, the story will wind down, occasionally surfacing as a cautionary tale about how not to handle a scandal. The so-called mainstream media will use “Weinergate” as a way of comparing future scandals. The nightly news will go back to business as usual: hard news, followed by intermittent Charlie Sheen and Donald Trump-type stories. Meanwhile, the comedy world is in mourning.
Did Weiner pull out too soon? Comedians think so. They will now have to come up with new material. After all, this kind of comedic perfect storm can't possibly be repeated anytime soon.
Showing posts with label Charlie Sheen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charlie Sheen. Show all posts
Friday, June 17, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
Forrest Gump and Donald Trump: The Oliver Stoning of America
It's been a roller coaster month for important news stories, and the media has been there to cover it: Osama bin Laden is killed; the flooding Mississippi River submerges Memphis; gas prices climb to all-time highs, while oil companies continue to reel in record profits; politicians continue to fight over how to reduce the federal budget deficit; mostly peaceful revolutions in the Middle East turn violent, as an insurgency against Moammar Gadhafi's reign in Libya fails to prompt the defiant leader to resign, even with the help of NATO air strikes; the Israeli Prime Minister rejects Obama's call to return to Israel's 1967 borders; Donald Trump drops out of the 2012 GOP presidential race... Wait a minute. Why is that news?
The fact that Trump's announcement was news at all puts a spotlight on the media's role in blurring the line between news and entertainment. While CNN was sending 400 reporters to cover the royal wedding, after only sending 40 reporters to cover the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the real news seemed to be that Charlie Sheen was no longer in the news.
If this is getting confusing, let me put this all in perspective, so I can get back to my usual activities of watching funny videos of cats on the Internet.
Back in November of 2010, Trump told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America that a presidential run “could be fun”... And fun it has been – if you're a fan of idiotic gibberish. It was obvious from the start that this was not a real news story. Trump was “running” for president to boost the ratings for Celebrity Apprentice, the popular reality show in which he got to show his presidential credentials by moderating fights between Meat Loaf and Gary Busey, and other C-list actors, has-beens and musicians.
When it looked like the media was losing interest in Trump, and comedians had come to the end of funny jokes about his hair, Trump came up with the perfect campaign strategy. In early April, he demanded to see President Obama's long-form birth certificate, saying he doubted that Obama was born in the United States. He claimed that he had sent investigators to Hawaii. “I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they're finding”, Trump said in an interview on NBC's Today Show. Calling it potentially one of the biggest scams in the history of politics, Trump jumped to second in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of potential Republican nominees, tying Mike Huckabee with 17% behind Mitt Romney's 27%, showing that either the American public is incredibly stupid, or these polls don't accurately reflect the views of the voting public. Or maybe the pollsters wait until happy hour to ask their questions.
As Trump continued his attack on Obama's citizenship and lack of foreign policy credentials, he continued to rise in the polls, hovering near the top. He came up with catchy sound bites such as: “I love this country, but this country is going to hell... The world laughs at us. They won't be laughing if I'm elected president.” His ego is so big, and his narcissistic personality made it impossible for Trump to realize that the world was in fact already laughing at him.
Obama strategically produced his long-form birth certificate, and with perfect political timing orchestrated the killing of Osama bin Laden, announcing the news during a prime time showing of Trump's Celebrity Apprentice, causing the show to be interrupted. But the night before he got bin Laden, the President appeared at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, an annual event that gives the president a chance to do some stand-up comedy. George W. Bush wasn't so funny when he was president, but Obama has shown that he can hold his own with professional comedians, including Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers this year. The President's monologue poked fun at various politicians and the media, but he reserved his best jokes for Trump. For example, after a week when Trump incredibly took credit for the fact that Obama turned over his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate, Obama joked that Trump could now focus on the serious issues, from whether the moon landing actually happened to “where are Biggie and Tupac?” It was funnier in person, from Obama's deadpan delivery, to Trump's stone-faced look, caught by the television cameras as the audience laughed hysterically.
As uncomfortable as Trump looked to be during Obama's zingers, he seemed even less amused as Meyers picked up where Obama left off. “Donald Trump often talks about running as a Republican,” said Meyers. “I just assumed he was running as a joke.” Close-up of Trump as he looked as though he was about to throw his chair at the stage. Again, it was funnier in person, and as is usually the case in comedy, the truth is sometimes the funniest. The fact is, and pretty much the whole audience that night as well as the television audience knew, he was running as a joke. Trump obviously knew.
The media also knew that Trump was running as a joke. So why did they continue shoving microphones and television cameras at him every time he uttered another stupid comment? Let's see, after he took credit for getting to the bottom of Obama's birth certificate, saying he was “honored” to give the American people an answer to this important question, Trump decided to continue to find new ways to sound like a racist. The man who said he has a good relationship with “the blacks” went on to question Obama's college degree. You would have thought the birth certificate fiasco would have knocked him out of his fake campaign right then and there. But no, the nation's most famous snake-oil salesman was becoming the leader not of the GOP but of the Society of Village Idiots by demanding that Obama release his records from Occidental College.
While Obama was secretly plotting to take down Osama bin Laden, Trump was plotting his next brilliant political maneuver, designed to convince us that he was a serious candidate. His new campaign promise was to get to the bottom of the question of how Obama made it into the Ivy League, transferring from Occidental to Columbia, and then going to Harvard. How could a black man of Obama's inferior intellect, Trump wondered, get into the Ivy League. Drum roll please: affirmative action.
So the media hung on Trump's every word, no matter how stupid and implausible. The reason, as is has been the growing trend in this so-called journalism, is because of ratings. Entertainment sells - the wackier the better. And it didn't just start with Charlie Sheen, who, like Trump, turned the media into his own private publicity machine.
It wasn't always this way. Long before Sheen had a public mental breakdown for profit, and Trump waged a fake presidential campaign to boost ratings for his reality show, there were real newscasters delivering real news. Entertainment was presented as entertainment.
Years ago, the adults used to watch Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News while the kids played with toy guns, Lincoln Logs, Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes. It was a simpler time. Nobody knew Rock Hudson was gay or what drugs Doris Day was hooked on - and nobody cared. In fact, they preferred it that way. The American Dream was 2.5 kids and a house with a white picket fence, not 10,000 followers on Twitter and a Facebook page showing pictures of your chance encounter with Erik Estrada.
Now we have 24-hour news coverage with the help of the Internet and mobile devices that keep us connected. We have instant access into the lives of Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, and other celebrities who have gone on to make us forget about Robert Downey, Jr.'s drug-induced meltdown or Winona Ryder's shoplifting spree.
Before Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central became the primary source of news for young people, news and entertainment were separate. Things started changing in 1978, when ABC started a news program called 20/20. The show was a ratings disaster, until they realized that instead of interviewing world leaders and other news makers and important people, the only people viewers were interested in were movie stars and rock stars. That was inevitable. Television is an entertainment medium, and has always had to fight the urge to not entertain us. That leaves newspapers, and with modern technology, who needs them?
So we jump a few years forward to Dateline NBC, which started out as a copy of 20/20 in 1992. The show evolved into an investigative series looking into things like food safety, but quickly found ratings gold in 2004 when Chris Hansen began catching pedophiles on To Catch A Predator.
Not only did Hansen's investigative reporting examine a serious news issue, but by using Dateline's signature hidden-camera techniques, Hansen was able to insert himself into the story, becoming sort of a modern day G-Man of sex crimes. Audiences were mesmerized as our superhero Hansen saved us from the most heinous criminals around. It was better than Law & Order: SVU.
For a while, NBC had a hit on its hands, even beating one of the most popular comedies, The Office, in the ratings. Then, in 2006, one of the predators that Hansen caught shot himself in the head while the NBC News cameras waited outside his home. Some people started to wonder whether this whole Peeping Tom era of hidden cameras had gone overboard. These were definitely sick people, and were the worst type of criminals out there, but their crimes were hypothetical, and they wouldn't even have been there if NBC hadn't lured them there.
This game of entrapment lasted a few more years until NBC pulled the plug in 2008, but not because the pedophile that Hansen brought into our living rooms to entertain us shot his brains out. The show was canceled because it had become so popular that was impossible to attract potential predators to the location where a particular show was being filmed. It turned out that the show was a favorite among pedophiles. But the show never seems to die. Repeats continue to air occasionally on MSNBC, and a new spin-off called Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes continues with previously unseen footage containing additional commentary by Hansen.
The progression from shows 20/20 to Dateline's To Catch A Predator evolved into Comedy Central's Daily Show making fun of the media. But somewhere in between, Hollywood caught on to the popularity of news as entertainment, as Oliver Stone made us believe things were true even though they weren't, for the sake of making real events more entertaining. He wrote and directed movies like JFK and Nixon, and when things started to get slow in the screenplay, Stone freely made things up.
Another form of entertainment that became popular in film started around the time Forrest Gump met John F. Kennedy. At that time, television commercials starred dead people. Along with the Oliver Stoning of America, the line between reality and news and entertainment was becoming blurred beyond recognition. And now, with every young person schooled in Photoshop, seeing is no longer believing.
True events and real people like Donald Trump and Charlie Sheen, however, continue to capture the really big television ratings and Internet chatter. Leading up to the Internet takeover was the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder case, which was known as "the trial of the century", but was really the biggest takeover of the airwaves ever, at least up to that point. The Los Angeles Times covered the O.J. case on its front page for more than 300 days after the murders, and the major television networks gave more air time to the trial than to the Bosnian War and the Oklahoma City bombing case combined.
The O.J. Simpson case was immediately followed by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which led to the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton and high ratings for news channels, with its perfect mix of sex, politics, and lying and cheating.
The high point of media madness had not yet occured, however, until June 25, 2009. That was the day that Michael Jackson died, and anyone doubting the sanity of the news media only had to watch CNN's Anderson Cooper go on the air with a feature about Jackson's former pet "Bubbles the Chimp". My faith in the news business, and Anderson Cooper, went down a notch.
But Cooper is not normally known for reporting on celebrity pets. In addition to his long-running show Anderson Cooper 360, his most recent gig is CBS' 60 Minutes, where he interviewed Eminem and Lady Gaga in addition to Afgan cops. Cooper has become the model for the modern day reporter who is also a celebrity who interviews other celebrities who think they are reporters. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, and George Clooney, among many others, have made an art form out of the celebrity as serious newsmaker. But in reality, they are actually using their celebrity to do good - unlike egomaniacs like Donald Trump, who spends most of his time trying to make us think he's richer than he really is - or Charlie Sheen, who spends most of his time trying to make us think he's saner than he really is.
Although Anderson Cooper has been sidetracked by celebrities, both human and chimp, he has redeemed himself with some solid reporting on at his desks at CNN and CBS. However, the lunatics have seemingly taken over the asylum elsewhere. Fox News leads the way with nut jobs like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity anchoring, along with a list of correspondents that belong in a Will Farrell comedy, not on a major cable news network. The network trademarked the slogan "Fair and Balanced", just in case anybody questioned them. Fox News spends its time defending people like Donald Trump, and was a big supporter of Trump during his very important search for President Obama's birth certificate.
When President Obama took credit for giving the order to raid Osama bin Laden's compound, Fox News gave special thanks to members of the military and, of course, the true mastermind, George W. Bush. At the time, Donald Trump was still a candidate, and just as Fox News was trying to figure out a way to give Trump credit for taking out bin Laden, Trump dropped out of the race.
On May 16th, NBC announced the shows it was picking up for next season. On that list was Celebrity Apprentice. That was, not coincidentally, the day that Donald Trump dropped out of a presidential race that he was never actually in. It was a bad day for comedians. Jon Stewart and his joke writers were saddened by Trump's departure, so Stewart begged him to come back.
The media is no longer repeating every goofy thing Donald Trump says, and the in-depth coverage of how he gets his hair to look that way - which was first reported by Time Magazine and picked up by the major news media – has come to an end.
When we got Osama bin Laden, it looked like the news was actually news. Not so. The White House lost control of the story and the media began to focus on what was actually a small news item in the scheme of things: the collection of porn found on bin Laden's computer hard drives. Finally, when we got back on track with the news of what else was found on the hard drives, the American public got bored.
We have moved on to more important news. In a bombshell announcement, Arnold Schwarzenneger admitted that he had fathered a child with a member of his household staff ten years ago. That was a few days after he separated from his wife. New revelations come out daily. Today's headline: "Mother of Schwarzenneger's Love Child Revealed!"
Other news that competes with the Schwarzenneger revelation: Lindsay Lohan sentenced to "shoplifting alternative school"; a man eats his 25,000th Big Mac; the Royal Couple go on a $720,000 honeymoon; Gwyneth Paltrow furthers her musical career by turning to rap; the Apocalypse is scheduled for May 21st; the Apocalypse is rescheduled until next year; the top two contestants are revealed on American Idol; Stephen Hawking announces that there's no heaven... Wait a minute - that sounds like news to me.
I must admit, sometimes I fall for all this entertainment masquerading as news. But I'm not letting the media get away with their charade this time. I want to know what's really happening - what's really affecting our lives. The only news that matters right now is Oprah's farewell spectacular, airing on May 23rd and 24th.
When that's over, I'll go back to watching funny videos of cats on the Internet. That is, until the next celebrity goes off the deep end, or the world's most wanted terrorist leaves behind a collection of porn. After all, Oprah just doesn't have the same entertainment value as Charlie Sheen, Osama bin Laden, or Donald Trump.
The fact that Trump's announcement was news at all puts a spotlight on the media's role in blurring the line between news and entertainment. While CNN was sending 400 reporters to cover the royal wedding, after only sending 40 reporters to cover the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the real news seemed to be that Charlie Sheen was no longer in the news.
If this is getting confusing, let me put this all in perspective, so I can get back to my usual activities of watching funny videos of cats on the Internet.
Back in November of 2010, Trump told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America that a presidential run “could be fun”... And fun it has been – if you're a fan of idiotic gibberish. It was obvious from the start that this was not a real news story. Trump was “running” for president to boost the ratings for Celebrity Apprentice, the popular reality show in which he got to show his presidential credentials by moderating fights between Meat Loaf and Gary Busey, and other C-list actors, has-beens and musicians.
When it looked like the media was losing interest in Trump, and comedians had come to the end of funny jokes about his hair, Trump came up with the perfect campaign strategy. In early April, he demanded to see President Obama's long-form birth certificate, saying he doubted that Obama was born in the United States. He claimed that he had sent investigators to Hawaii. “I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they're finding”, Trump said in an interview on NBC's Today Show. Calling it potentially one of the biggest scams in the history of politics, Trump jumped to second in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of potential Republican nominees, tying Mike Huckabee with 17% behind Mitt Romney's 27%, showing that either the American public is incredibly stupid, or these polls don't accurately reflect the views of the voting public. Or maybe the pollsters wait until happy hour to ask their questions.
As Trump continued his attack on Obama's citizenship and lack of foreign policy credentials, he continued to rise in the polls, hovering near the top. He came up with catchy sound bites such as: “I love this country, but this country is going to hell... The world laughs at us. They won't be laughing if I'm elected president.” His ego is so big, and his narcissistic personality made it impossible for Trump to realize that the world was in fact already laughing at him.
Obama strategically produced his long-form birth certificate, and with perfect political timing orchestrated the killing of Osama bin Laden, announcing the news during a prime time showing of Trump's Celebrity Apprentice, causing the show to be interrupted. But the night before he got bin Laden, the President appeared at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, an annual event that gives the president a chance to do some stand-up comedy. George W. Bush wasn't so funny when he was president, but Obama has shown that he can hold his own with professional comedians, including Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers this year. The President's monologue poked fun at various politicians and the media, but he reserved his best jokes for Trump. For example, after a week when Trump incredibly took credit for the fact that Obama turned over his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate, Obama joked that Trump could now focus on the serious issues, from whether the moon landing actually happened to “where are Biggie and Tupac?” It was funnier in person, from Obama's deadpan delivery, to Trump's stone-faced look, caught by the television cameras as the audience laughed hysterically.
As uncomfortable as Trump looked to be during Obama's zingers, he seemed even less amused as Meyers picked up where Obama left off. “Donald Trump often talks about running as a Republican,” said Meyers. “I just assumed he was running as a joke.” Close-up of Trump as he looked as though he was about to throw his chair at the stage. Again, it was funnier in person, and as is usually the case in comedy, the truth is sometimes the funniest. The fact is, and pretty much the whole audience that night as well as the television audience knew, he was running as a joke. Trump obviously knew.
The media also knew that Trump was running as a joke. So why did they continue shoving microphones and television cameras at him every time he uttered another stupid comment? Let's see, after he took credit for getting to the bottom of Obama's birth certificate, saying he was “honored” to give the American people an answer to this important question, Trump decided to continue to find new ways to sound like a racist. The man who said he has a good relationship with “the blacks” went on to question Obama's college degree. You would have thought the birth certificate fiasco would have knocked him out of his fake campaign right then and there. But no, the nation's most famous snake-oil salesman was becoming the leader not of the GOP but of the Society of Village Idiots by demanding that Obama release his records from Occidental College.
While Obama was secretly plotting to take down Osama bin Laden, Trump was plotting his next brilliant political maneuver, designed to convince us that he was a serious candidate. His new campaign promise was to get to the bottom of the question of how Obama made it into the Ivy League, transferring from Occidental to Columbia, and then going to Harvard. How could a black man of Obama's inferior intellect, Trump wondered, get into the Ivy League. Drum roll please: affirmative action.
So the media hung on Trump's every word, no matter how stupid and implausible. The reason, as is has been the growing trend in this so-called journalism, is because of ratings. Entertainment sells - the wackier the better. And it didn't just start with Charlie Sheen, who, like Trump, turned the media into his own private publicity machine.
It wasn't always this way. Long before Sheen had a public mental breakdown for profit, and Trump waged a fake presidential campaign to boost ratings for his reality show, there were real newscasters delivering real news. Entertainment was presented as entertainment.
Years ago, the adults used to watch Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News while the kids played with toy guns, Lincoln Logs, Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes. It was a simpler time. Nobody knew Rock Hudson was gay or what drugs Doris Day was hooked on - and nobody cared. In fact, they preferred it that way. The American Dream was 2.5 kids and a house with a white picket fence, not 10,000 followers on Twitter and a Facebook page showing pictures of your chance encounter with Erik Estrada.
Now we have 24-hour news coverage with the help of the Internet and mobile devices that keep us connected. We have instant access into the lives of Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, and other celebrities who have gone on to make us forget about Robert Downey, Jr.'s drug-induced meltdown or Winona Ryder's shoplifting spree.
Before Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central became the primary source of news for young people, news and entertainment were separate. Things started changing in 1978, when ABC started a news program called 20/20. The show was a ratings disaster, until they realized that instead of interviewing world leaders and other news makers and important people, the only people viewers were interested in were movie stars and rock stars. That was inevitable. Television is an entertainment medium, and has always had to fight the urge to not entertain us. That leaves newspapers, and with modern technology, who needs them?
So we jump a few years forward to Dateline NBC, which started out as a copy of 20/20 in 1992. The show evolved into an investigative series looking into things like food safety, but quickly found ratings gold in 2004 when Chris Hansen began catching pedophiles on To Catch A Predator.
Not only did Hansen's investigative reporting examine a serious news issue, but by using Dateline's signature hidden-camera techniques, Hansen was able to insert himself into the story, becoming sort of a modern day G-Man of sex crimes. Audiences were mesmerized as our superhero Hansen saved us from the most heinous criminals around. It was better than Law & Order: SVU.
For a while, NBC had a hit on its hands, even beating one of the most popular comedies, The Office, in the ratings. Then, in 2006, one of the predators that Hansen caught shot himself in the head while the NBC News cameras waited outside his home. Some people started to wonder whether this whole Peeping Tom era of hidden cameras had gone overboard. These were definitely sick people, and were the worst type of criminals out there, but their crimes were hypothetical, and they wouldn't even have been there if NBC hadn't lured them there.
This game of entrapment lasted a few more years until NBC pulled the plug in 2008, but not because the pedophile that Hansen brought into our living rooms to entertain us shot his brains out. The show was canceled because it had become so popular that was impossible to attract potential predators to the location where a particular show was being filmed. It turned out that the show was a favorite among pedophiles. But the show never seems to die. Repeats continue to air occasionally on MSNBC, and a new spin-off called Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes continues with previously unseen footage containing additional commentary by Hansen.
The progression from shows 20/20 to Dateline's To Catch A Predator evolved into Comedy Central's Daily Show making fun of the media. But somewhere in between, Hollywood caught on to the popularity of news as entertainment, as Oliver Stone made us believe things were true even though they weren't, for the sake of making real events more entertaining. He wrote and directed movies like JFK and Nixon, and when things started to get slow in the screenplay, Stone freely made things up.
Another form of entertainment that became popular in film started around the time Forrest Gump met John F. Kennedy. At that time, television commercials starred dead people. Along with the Oliver Stoning of America, the line between reality and news and entertainment was becoming blurred beyond recognition. And now, with every young person schooled in Photoshop, seeing is no longer believing.
True events and real people like Donald Trump and Charlie Sheen, however, continue to capture the really big television ratings and Internet chatter. Leading up to the Internet takeover was the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder case, which was known as "the trial of the century", but was really the biggest takeover of the airwaves ever, at least up to that point. The Los Angeles Times covered the O.J. case on its front page for more than 300 days after the murders, and the major television networks gave more air time to the trial than to the Bosnian War and the Oklahoma City bombing case combined.
The O.J. Simpson case was immediately followed by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which led to the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton and high ratings for news channels, with its perfect mix of sex, politics, and lying and cheating.
The high point of media madness had not yet occured, however, until June 25, 2009. That was the day that Michael Jackson died, and anyone doubting the sanity of the news media only had to watch CNN's Anderson Cooper go on the air with a feature about Jackson's former pet "Bubbles the Chimp". My faith in the news business, and Anderson Cooper, went down a notch.
But Cooper is not normally known for reporting on celebrity pets. In addition to his long-running show Anderson Cooper 360, his most recent gig is CBS' 60 Minutes, where he interviewed Eminem and Lady Gaga in addition to Afgan cops. Cooper has become the model for the modern day reporter who is also a celebrity who interviews other celebrities who think they are reporters. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, and George Clooney, among many others, have made an art form out of the celebrity as serious newsmaker. But in reality, they are actually using their celebrity to do good - unlike egomaniacs like Donald Trump, who spends most of his time trying to make us think he's richer than he really is - or Charlie Sheen, who spends most of his time trying to make us think he's saner than he really is.
Although Anderson Cooper has been sidetracked by celebrities, both human and chimp, he has redeemed himself with some solid reporting on at his desks at CNN and CBS. However, the lunatics have seemingly taken over the asylum elsewhere. Fox News leads the way with nut jobs like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity anchoring, along with a list of correspondents that belong in a Will Farrell comedy, not on a major cable news network. The network trademarked the slogan "Fair and Balanced", just in case anybody questioned them. Fox News spends its time defending people like Donald Trump, and was a big supporter of Trump during his very important search for President Obama's birth certificate.
When President Obama took credit for giving the order to raid Osama bin Laden's compound, Fox News gave special thanks to members of the military and, of course, the true mastermind, George W. Bush. At the time, Donald Trump was still a candidate, and just as Fox News was trying to figure out a way to give Trump credit for taking out bin Laden, Trump dropped out of the race.
On May 16th, NBC announced the shows it was picking up for next season. On that list was Celebrity Apprentice. That was, not coincidentally, the day that Donald Trump dropped out of a presidential race that he was never actually in. It was a bad day for comedians. Jon Stewart and his joke writers were saddened by Trump's departure, so Stewart begged him to come back.
The media is no longer repeating every goofy thing Donald Trump says, and the in-depth coverage of how he gets his hair to look that way - which was first reported by Time Magazine and picked up by the major news media – has come to an end.
When we got Osama bin Laden, it looked like the news was actually news. Not so. The White House lost control of the story and the media began to focus on what was actually a small news item in the scheme of things: the collection of porn found on bin Laden's computer hard drives. Finally, when we got back on track with the news of what else was found on the hard drives, the American public got bored.
We have moved on to more important news. In a bombshell announcement, Arnold Schwarzenneger admitted that he had fathered a child with a member of his household staff ten years ago. That was a few days after he separated from his wife. New revelations come out daily. Today's headline: "Mother of Schwarzenneger's Love Child Revealed!"
Other news that competes with the Schwarzenneger revelation: Lindsay Lohan sentenced to "shoplifting alternative school"; a man eats his 25,000th Big Mac; the Royal Couple go on a $720,000 honeymoon; Gwyneth Paltrow furthers her musical career by turning to rap; the Apocalypse is scheduled for May 21st; the Apocalypse is rescheduled until next year; the top two contestants are revealed on American Idol; Stephen Hawking announces that there's no heaven... Wait a minute - that sounds like news to me.
I must admit, sometimes I fall for all this entertainment masquerading as news. But I'm not letting the media get away with their charade this time. I want to know what's really happening - what's really affecting our lives. The only news that matters right now is Oprah's farewell spectacular, airing on May 23rd and 24th.
When that's over, I'll go back to watching funny videos of cats on the Internet. That is, until the next celebrity goes off the deep end, or the world's most wanted terrorist leaves behind a collection of porn. After all, Oprah just doesn't have the same entertainment value as Charlie Sheen, Osama bin Laden, or Donald Trump.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Donald Trump: His candidacy is as fake as his hairline
The world's most famous comb-over resides on his head. What's inside it is another matter. I'm talking about Donald Trump. He wants you to think he's running for president. He's not.
The reality show candidate has taken over the media lately with his non-stop ranting about President Obama's birth certificate, or rather his lack of one. To downplay any question as to whether he is playing a very dangerous race card, Trump claims “I have a great relationship with the blacks”. In order to further his great relationship with “the blacks”, Trump goes on to say that Obama is the worst president ever, even worse than Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, all of whom Trump previously gave the honor.
Trump's surge to the top of several recent polls has given members of the media a chance to hyperventilate, and given Trump's ego a chance to inflate even more than it's usual grandiose level. And comedians everywhere have been given new material, the kind that can only be called stranger than fiction, and of course funnier, especially to Democrats.
Democrats have gotten a good laugh at this Republican sideshow, while Trump's popularity in the polls has left his rivals dazed and confused. None of Trump's potential opponents have been particularly specific or consistent on policy issues, and Trump has been especially bizarre and prone to hyperbole when he isn't babbling about Obama's birth certificate.
An example of Trump's foreign policy strategy: re-invade the Middle East and take control of Iraq's oil fields. In a recent interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Trump rationalizes that because we spent $1.5 trillion in Iraq ousting Saddam Hussein, we've earned the right to Iraq's reserves of crude oil.
“So we steal an oil field?” asked Stephanopoulos, trying to keep a straight face.
Trump responded: “Excuse me. You're not stealing. Excuse me. You're not stealing anything. You're taking – we're reimbursing ourselves – at least, at a minimum, and I say more. We're taking back $1.5 trillion to reimburse ourselves.”
This type of wacky psychobabble is calculated to grab headlines. Unlike Charlie Sheen, who also recently brought the media to a frenzy, Trump is not delusional and is not showing signs of mental illness. He has always talked like this, being prone to outlandish statements and embellishments of the facts. He doesn't really seem like he cares about facts or substance. He's obviously more interested in the delivery. He craves the spotlight.
If you agree with what Trump is saying, well, you're the one who's delusional, not him. He's just another carnival huckster looking for publicity. The facts are irrelevant. The joke's on you.
Trump is content taking his clown act to the airwaves, urging his paranoid followers to take up his crusade demanding that Obama prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's not a Kenyan-born Muslim out to destroy America.
It's fun to watch Trump MC a fight between Gary Busey and Meat Loaf, but do you really want the reality show host setting Middle East policy?
There will always be a fringe group of right wing crazies who think Trump is up for the job, but when reality sets in, the Republican party will settle into politics as usual, which means there will emerge a candidate with a normal hair line and some semblance of rational thinking.
Like most of the Republican field, Trump has not yet confirmed that he is a candidate. But even if he were to decide to run, there is no way he would win the nomination. A well-known publicity addict, when Trump sees a microphone and camera, he can't contain his bluster. But it's all a publicity stunt, and nothing more, which explains why Trump is announcing his decision about whether he will seek the nomination on the season finale of “The Apprentice”.
It's all about the ratings, not only for Trump and his NBC show, but for the media, who are following his every word as if he's the second coming of Charlie Sheen, which he is. But as for Trump, it's all a stunt used to increase his show's ratings, sell his bottled water and signature mail-order steak, bring people to his casinos and golf courses, and feed his giant ego.
Or maybe I'm wrong. But if Trump becomes president, I'm moving to Kenya.
The reality show candidate has taken over the media lately with his non-stop ranting about President Obama's birth certificate, or rather his lack of one. To downplay any question as to whether he is playing a very dangerous race card, Trump claims “I have a great relationship with the blacks”. In order to further his great relationship with “the blacks”, Trump goes on to say that Obama is the worst president ever, even worse than Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, all of whom Trump previously gave the honor.
Trump's surge to the top of several recent polls has given members of the media a chance to hyperventilate, and given Trump's ego a chance to inflate even more than it's usual grandiose level. And comedians everywhere have been given new material, the kind that can only be called stranger than fiction, and of course funnier, especially to Democrats.
Democrats have gotten a good laugh at this Republican sideshow, while Trump's popularity in the polls has left his rivals dazed and confused. None of Trump's potential opponents have been particularly specific or consistent on policy issues, and Trump has been especially bizarre and prone to hyperbole when he isn't babbling about Obama's birth certificate.
An example of Trump's foreign policy strategy: re-invade the Middle East and take control of Iraq's oil fields. In a recent interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Trump rationalizes that because we spent $1.5 trillion in Iraq ousting Saddam Hussein, we've earned the right to Iraq's reserves of crude oil.
“So we steal an oil field?” asked Stephanopoulos, trying to keep a straight face.
Trump responded: “Excuse me. You're not stealing. Excuse me. You're not stealing anything. You're taking – we're reimbursing ourselves – at least, at a minimum, and I say more. We're taking back $1.5 trillion to reimburse ourselves.”
This type of wacky psychobabble is calculated to grab headlines. Unlike Charlie Sheen, who also recently brought the media to a frenzy, Trump is not delusional and is not showing signs of mental illness. He has always talked like this, being prone to outlandish statements and embellishments of the facts. He doesn't really seem like he cares about facts or substance. He's obviously more interested in the delivery. He craves the spotlight.
If you agree with what Trump is saying, well, you're the one who's delusional, not him. He's just another carnival huckster looking for publicity. The facts are irrelevant. The joke's on you.
Trump is content taking his clown act to the airwaves, urging his paranoid followers to take up his crusade demanding that Obama prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's not a Kenyan-born Muslim out to destroy America.
It's fun to watch Trump MC a fight between Gary Busey and Meat Loaf, but do you really want the reality show host setting Middle East policy?
There will always be a fringe group of right wing crazies who think Trump is up for the job, but when reality sets in, the Republican party will settle into politics as usual, which means there will emerge a candidate with a normal hair line and some semblance of rational thinking.
Like most of the Republican field, Trump has not yet confirmed that he is a candidate. But even if he were to decide to run, there is no way he would win the nomination. A well-known publicity addict, when Trump sees a microphone and camera, he can't contain his bluster. But it's all a publicity stunt, and nothing more, which explains why Trump is announcing his decision about whether he will seek the nomination on the season finale of “The Apprentice”.
It's all about the ratings, not only for Trump and his NBC show, but for the media, who are following his every word as if he's the second coming of Charlie Sheen, which he is. But as for Trump, it's all a stunt used to increase his show's ratings, sell his bottled water and signature mail-order steak, bring people to his casinos and golf courses, and feed his giant ego.
Or maybe I'm wrong. But if Trump becomes president, I'm moving to Kenya.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Is the media as delusional as Charlie Sheen?
"What's going on in the head of Charlie Sheen?" That was the question leading off the ABC interview of Sheen on 20/20 Tuesday night, but Sheen was allowed to ramble on incoherently for the next hour without the question ever being answered.
One thing is clear. Sheen is coming mentally unhinged in a very public forum.
Originally the story was an actual news item. CBS had canceled filming on Sheen's sitcom Two and a Half Men for the rest of the season. Then the story began to focus on Sheen's odd behavior. Every major news network, including politically-oriented networks like MSNBC and Fox News, have taken the story and run with it, even as it has turned into something less like a news item and more like a desperate scramble for ratings at the expense of Sheen's mental health.
Celebrity addiction expert Drew Pinsky told TMZ: "It's no joke. He's getting manic. These are bipolar, manic symptoms."
Many medical professionals agree with Pinsky that Sheen is exhibiting bipolar symptoms, although they caution against diagnosing him based on media sound bites.
Whether bipolar disorder is the cause of Sheen's erratic and grandiose behavior, or whether it is caused by drug intoxication or even withdrawal, the question is no longer: "What's going on in the head of Charlie Sheen". It's "What's going on in the heads of TV news executives who report Sheen's manic rantings as news?"
Unlike other celebrities who have suffered similar meltdowns such as Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, no one in Sheen's inner circle is able to reign him in. So he's out there, rambling incoherently, and the news reporters are hanging on every word, laughing at every "joke", as if Sheen is actually making any sense.
The media can be excused for wanting to jump on the ratings bandwagon, but it is clear that Sheen is delusional, and the real question is: "When someone is coming mentally unhinged and in serious need of medical attention, how can it be ethical to enable him by encouraging his delusional behavior?"
What may be amusement for TV viewers is serious business. Unless someone steps in and helps Sheen, the only way this story ends is in complete destruction.
One thing is clear. Sheen is coming mentally unhinged in a very public forum.
Originally the story was an actual news item. CBS had canceled filming on Sheen's sitcom Two and a Half Men for the rest of the season. Then the story began to focus on Sheen's odd behavior. Every major news network, including politically-oriented networks like MSNBC and Fox News, have taken the story and run with it, even as it has turned into something less like a news item and more like a desperate scramble for ratings at the expense of Sheen's mental health.
Celebrity addiction expert Drew Pinsky told TMZ: "It's no joke. He's getting manic. These are bipolar, manic symptoms."
Many medical professionals agree with Pinsky that Sheen is exhibiting bipolar symptoms, although they caution against diagnosing him based on media sound bites.
Whether bipolar disorder is the cause of Sheen's erratic and grandiose behavior, or whether it is caused by drug intoxication or even withdrawal, the question is no longer: "What's going on in the head of Charlie Sheen". It's "What's going on in the heads of TV news executives who report Sheen's manic rantings as news?"
Unlike other celebrities who have suffered similar meltdowns such as Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, no one in Sheen's inner circle is able to reign him in. So he's out there, rambling incoherently, and the news reporters are hanging on every word, laughing at every "joke", as if Sheen is actually making any sense.
The media can be excused for wanting to jump on the ratings bandwagon, but it is clear that Sheen is delusional, and the real question is: "When someone is coming mentally unhinged and in serious need of medical attention, how can it be ethical to enable him by encouraging his delusional behavior?"
What may be amusement for TV viewers is serious business. Unless someone steps in and helps Sheen, the only way this story ends is in complete destruction.
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