Peridyd's Progress

For those of us who are old enough to remember when the Fourth Estate maintained an adversarial relationship (rather than cocktail-party friendship) with whatever government was in power, the last 15 years of news-watching have been frustrating indeed.

My friend Rob forwarded this excellent article to me from the Huffington Post. It appears that American Morning producer Chez Pazienza has been dooced by CNN.

To say that Mr. Pazienza has not gone quietly into that dark night would be a bit of an understatement, but perhaps I'm a bit biased, since he's so deftly skewering an institution that I feel has been so cynically screwing the self-same viewing public that it's ostensibly serving.

I'll provide this brief excerpt, which will hopefully whet your appetite for what is one of the best political tracts that I've read in a long time.

During my last couple of years as a television news producer, I watched the networks try to recover from a six year failure to bring truth to power (the political party in power being irrelevant incidentally; the job of the press is to maintain an adversarial relationship with the government at all times) and what's worse, to pretend that they had a backbone all along. I watched my bosses literally stand in the middle of the newsroom and ask, "What can we do to not lead with Iraq?" -- the reason being that Iraq, although an important story, wasn't always a surefire ratings draw. I was asked to complete self-evaluations which pressed me to describe the ways in which I'd "increased shareholder value." (For the record, if you're a rank-and-file member of a newsroom, you should never under any circumstances even hear the word "shareholders," let alone be reminded that you're beholden to them.) I watched the media in general do anything within reason to scare the hell out of the American public -- to convince people that they were about to be infected by the bird flu, poisoned by the food supply, or eaten by sharks. I marveled at our elevation of the death of Anna Nicole Smith to near-mythic status and our willingness to let the airwaves be taken hostage by every permutation of opportunistic degenerate from a crying judge to a Hollywood hanger-on with an emo haircut. I watched qualified, passionate people worked nearly to death while mindless talking heads were coddled. I listened to Lou Dobbs play the loud-mouthed fascist demagogue, Nancy Grace fake ratings-baiting indignation, and Glenn Beck essentially do nightly stand-up -- and that's not even taking into account the 24/7 Vaudeville act over at Fox News. I watched The Daily Show laugh not at our mistakes but at our intentional absurdity.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A modern/postmodern fable about the role of storytelling and narrative by Spencer Holst.

The Zebra Storyteller

Once upon a time there was a Siamese cat who pretended to be a lion and spoke inappropriate Zebraic.

That language is whinnied by the race of striped horses in Africa.

Here now: An innocent zebra is walking in a jungle, and approaching from another direction is the little cat; they meet.

“Hello there!” says the Siamese cat in perfectly pronounced Zebraic. “It certainly is a pleasant day, isn’t it? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, isn’t the world a lovely place to live today!”

The zebra is so astonished at hearing a Siamese cat speaking like a zebra, why, he’s just fit to be tied.

So the little cat quickly ties him up, kills him, and drags the better parts of the carcass back to his den.

The cat successfully hunted zebras many months in this manner, dining on filet mignon of zebra every night, and from the better hides he made bow neckties and wide belts after the fashion of the decadent princes of the Old Siamese court.

He began boasting to his friends he was a lion, and he gave them as proof the fact that he hunted zebras.

The delicate noses of the zebras told them there was really no lion in the neighborhood. The zebra deaths caused many to avoid the region. Superstitious, they decided the woods were haunted by the ghost of a lion.

One day the storyteller of the zebras was ambling, and through his mind ran plots for stories to amuse the other zebras, when suddenly his eyes brightened, and he said, “That’s it! I’ll tell a story about a Siamese cat who learns to speak our language! What an idea! That’ll make ’em laugh!”

Just then the Siamese cat appeared before him, and said, “Hello there! Pleasant day today, isn’t it!”

The zebra storyteller wasn’t fit to be tied at hearing a cat speaking his language, because he’d been thinking about that very thing.

He took a good look at the cat, and he didn’t know why, but there was something about his looks he didn’t like, so he kicked him with a hoof and killed him.

That is the function of the storyteller.

Thanks to Margaret for placing this fable in my path.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My good friend Greg's tribute/pastiche/appropriation of the New Yorker's Eustace Tilley's style. I especially like how Greg's execution of the drawing is suffused with his signature humor. One of the great pleasures of my professional career has been my involvement in software project teams that included Greg as the graphic designer. Any time there was a lull in the meeting, one could usually catch Greg cartooning.

I hear tell that the drawing might make its way into the magazine.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)