It’s Not Pretty

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The family gathering at the recent funeral down in New York City spawned another reunion up in New England.  A gaggle of my siblings gathered and we broke bread at a local diner that had a sign that touted their fried clams and ice cream.  Quite a combination.  But we had neither of these.  I had a Reuben and a cup of coffee and the rest of the crew went up and down the menu.  Somebody even got the pot roast and mashed potatoes.  And as we sat there and enjoyed our fare several of us remarked on the virtues of a good local diner and the fact that they seem to have disappeared from some locales where they were formerly ubiquitous.  Brooklyn used to have a ton of Greek diners and you could always get baklava at midnight after a movie or some other outing.  Now they’re all gone, or so it seems.

This being New England, baklava was not on the menu.  But this diner was one of a very few locations within a twenty mile radius that would be open much after 1 am.  And they had very courteous service which is also quite rare nowadays.  One very strange business practice, they’re a cash only establishment.

That’s another reason to hate the Biden administration and the Democrats.  The COVID lockdowns bankrupted so many small businesses including restaurants.  Sure, you can always go to Mickey D’s when you’re coming off a late shift or a date but the local diner was so much more welcoming a sight.  A place where you could order an actual burger and finish with some pie and ice cream.  That’s how I remembered the world back in the day before mega-corporations finished off all the mom-and-pop shops in America.  And sure, there are plenty of good chain restaurants that serve good food and do employ the local kids as wait staff.  But history has some bearing on it.  The place we went to eat has been around for seventy years.  The grandchildren of the original owner run the place.  We’ve been going to it for over thirty years.  Is the food four star?  No.  Is it good.  Plenty good.  Are the prices fair?  All things considered, yes.  The food is fresh.  The silverware is clean and the waitresses are good humored.  What else could you want?

I know that Donald Trump has an enormous to-do list on his plate.  He’s got a raft of executive orders a mile long and he’s battling everyone from the presidents of Denmark and Panama, to the deep state, to that dopey lesbian bishop in Washington.  But if he needs another item to add to his list, I’d say he should figure out a way to boost small businesses.  The billionaire class has beaten the snot out of small and even not so small businesses over the course of the last thirty years.  Amazon alone has killed off the downtown retail district of every city and town in the country.  And with it has gone any hope of ever meeting up with your neighbors.  Probably grocery shopping is the last gasp of that.  And even there Amazon is doing its darndest to conquer all.  I know I must sound like a Luddite but I think anti-monopoly laws are there for a reason.

And if there’s no way back then something fundamental has to be done to force people in the same locale; town or neighborhood, to spend some time together talking to each other about the details of their community; their kids’ schools, the trials and tribulations of their police force and their fire dept. and all the pot holes that the road department hasn’t fixed and all the other things that need attention.  The problem is we’re all too busy or too lazy or too anti-social.  But people are going to have to start solving these problems.  If we leave all of this to the “experts” they are going to tell us how to live and we really won’t like the rules they come up with.  In fact, we’re already there.  It’s time people woke up and looked around at the default setting of the New America.  It’s not pretty.

Zero

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This week we saw the last of Jim Acosta and Chuck Todd.  Now each of them made farewell statements on air promising that they would be back bigger and better in some self-branded sub-stack-like-blog avatar sometime soon.  Well, sure.  So, did Don Lemon but when was the last time anyone remembers seeing him since his exit from CNN?  Exactly.

So, this got me thinking.  NBC’s parent company is kicking MSNBC to the curb (technically spinning it off) and at the same time lightening the boat of such flotsam and jetsam as Chuck Todd that isn’t bringing in cash anymore.  And CNN is likewise giving the boot to someone as partisan and rancorous as Jim Acosta and plenty of other dead wood that is cluttering up their studio and tanking their ratings with the majority of American viewers.

Could this be the beginning of a new template for media companies?  Could they be thinking of telling the truth?  Well, not the whole truth of course.  But maybe something close to the truth, or truth adjacent, or a reasonable facsimile of the truth?  Well, probably not.  But maybe they are picking up on the fact that about 70% of the country know they’ve been lying about everything from Russia gate, to COVID, to how the war in Ukraine is going, to what puberty blockers do to children, to how many illegal aliens are in the country, to how much crime is happening around us, to how senile Joe Biden was, to how stupid Kamala Harris is, etc., etc., etc.

Has the loss of credibility gone so far that these companies can’t make enough money to keep dolts like Acosta and Todd on the payroll anymore?  I think the answer is a resounding yes.  After all these people make millions of dollars a year.  Think about that.  Not only does Rachel Maddow make 25 million dollars a year but even Joy Reid (Joy Reid!) makes millions of dollars a year.  If your company is losing money and you’re paying Joy Reid more than minimum wage you’re doing something terribly wrong.

It seems clear that in the new media landscape we are going to see things dry up for talentless hacks who think they’re actual reporters.  CNN realized that news is being made by Donald Trump and his cabinet.  The chances of Jim Acosta getting an interview with Donald Trump are precisely zero.  Therefore, his value to CNN is the same; zero.  And that goes for Chuck Todd.  During his tenure on Meet the Press he was one of the most partisan and mendacious talking heads on television.  None of the incoming administration will bother talking with him.  He’s just a short, balding guy with a beard who no one wants anything to do with.  So, he’s gone.

But who’s next?  Well, if I were guessing I’d say anyone who makes an eight-figure salary has a bullseye on his back for sure.  As seen recently with Maddow, taking a pay cut may be one of the ways to stick around for a while.  But honestly, I think most of the suits running the networks are going to be looking to remove a zero from the paychecks of the media darlings they’ve been paying all these years.  And even that isn’t going to be enough.  We’re used to ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and MSNBC.  I think that’s a temporary situation.  I think in another year or two the number of those networks will be half.  Maybe ABC, Fox and pick one more.

And a similar thing may be going on with the print media.  The New York Times seems to have stabilized its revenue.  But the Washington Post is tanking.  So is the Los Angeles Times.  And so are many of the daily papers.  Let’s face it, most liberals can probably get along just reading the New York Times.  Maybe the right will adopt the Wall Street Journal (that is, if it stops leaning so far left as it has lately).  But for the most part people get their news from the internet; YouTube and X.  Small shops are able to make a living by providing factual coverage.  Sure, they still slant it for their niche customers.  But at least it still has some semblance of reality to it.  So where does that leave the Acostas and Todds of the world?  Unemployed.

You know this is a perfect time for Fox News to make a conscious effort to separate their opinion and news once and for all.  And also develop a policy on the news side to report it right down the middle with no slant at all.  I’d actually be willing to pay a small fee to get that kind of news coverage.  But let’s face it.  What’s the chance of something like that happening?  Zero.

Back When Darren Stevens Was Still on Madison Avenue

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Even the commercials were better back in the old days when we were allowed to be happy.  The guys writing the commercials could write clever lyrics and even add a spritely tune for good measure.  Now?  Not so much.

Maybe President Trump can make MAGA also mean “Make Ads Great Again.”

 

 

I’m Still Working Out the Details

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So, which is it?  Rage against the dying of the light or serenity in the face of the inevitable and natural cycle of life and death?  I was at a funeral and I looked at my cousins and saw what time was doing to them.  All of us were proof of the inevitability of aging and death.  Each one was a slightly different take on mortality.  Some seemed to be aging gently and they exuded humor and calm.  Others looked very tired and deeply saddened by how hard the way is.  Well, that difference comes of a combination of internal and external factors.  Luck plays a part and also wisdom and also temperament.  If I’m going to guess I’d say luck and temperament play the largest parts.  I mean I guess someone like Gautama could remain tranquil in the face of fate’s onslaught against our loved ones and our selves but most people are not so stoic.  We need some luck to keep us going.  Even Job finally had enough and wanted a word with the Big Guy Upstairs about all those boils.

So, is there a correct attitude toward the Big Sleep?  I’ve always taken a somewhat legalistic attitude about what kind of deal we get from fate.  When I was a bit younger, I used to say that fifty years was somewhat the break even point.  What I meant by that was if fate gave you fifty good years you should think that you got a decent deal.  Not great but decent.  The first fifty years are the best part of a life and with any reasonable amount of effort you can get quite a bit done in a half century.  You can raise a family.  You can become an expert in your profession.  You could even have served as President of the United States by then.

It’s not really a full lifetime but if you don’t lollygag around until forty you can cram a lot of living into fifty years.  So, if you live comfortably to seventy, I think you can feel like you got a pretty sweet deal.  I’m approaching the biblical “three score and ten” mark myself.  And even though I’m not anxious to throw in the towel quite yet I can’t see myself going through the whole wailing, gnashing my teeth and shaking my fist at heaven act.  I feel it would reflect a certain amount of ingratitude.  After all, think of kids who die of cancer or some other terrible disease before they ever get their permanent teeth.  That’s where I see someone lodging a legitimate grievance against the way the universe is run.  I’ve always been repelled by the suffering of the innocents; “the problem of pain.”

So that’s my somewhat simplistic but easily explainable philosophy of life and death.  God owes us fifty good years.  And we owe it to ourselves (and Him) to use the time wisely and diligently.  And this is coming from a profoundly lazy man.  No male in my family has ever truly grown up before thirty.  We have a talent for floating above the ground for an inordinate amount of time before being forced to finally settle down and get to work.  For this reason, I feel like I have been blessed in having reached my age with all of the milestones accomplished.  Of course, all of the credit for this goes to Camera Girl.  She refused to let me stall her plans and so she had her kids while we were very young.  Which means we were desperately poor for the first ten plus years of our married lives.  Which means I was that much luckier to get the whole thing to work out.

So, seeing death and dying is a humbling experience.  But it also makes me grateful for what I’ve already been allotted.  And honestly, I’m not very excited about ending up a nonagenarian or even an octogenarian.  I’m hoping for some very lazy death.  I’ve toyed with the idea of starving myself.  But I’m afraid I might keep putting it off every time I smell something good on the stove.  I’m still working out the details.