No, It’s Not August 1
I have an excuse: the invisible dog ate my computer. We were having a wonderful short week on Nantucket Island. I was finishing the House Organ to get to you on Thursday. But, on Wednesday, this is what my laptop looked like this:
We couldn’t leave the island. There was no Apple store. I finally made it to Chicago late Thursday and couldn’t get the technology together to get this to you until right now! My father told tales of travel travails for years in the Weinberg House Organ.
I think it’s only the second time in nearly five years I haven’t sent it out on the first of the month…Thanks to several of you who asked “Where’s my PY-O-MY?” when it didn’t arrive as scheduled.
Amazon, redux
In the last issue of the PY-O-MY Letter/Weinberg House Organ, I included an item about Amazon, its scale, power and methodology. It was a prime attraction July 1. If you haven’t read it, it’s a click away and about a ten minute read: http://inthesetimes.com/features/amazon_ftc_antitrust_monopoly_bezos_competition.html
The Media Burn Phenomenon
I must admit I created the concept of Media Burn we started the video archive in 2003 and three decades before The Apprentice and 46 years before the election of its star as 45th President of USA. He fulfilled the prophesy of Media Burn Now everyone worldwide has witnessed it and can relate to how 14 years on NBC prime time enabled him to become a monster nobody would have predicted, possibly even himself. I suspect if he weren’t the President, he would have fired himself by now.
He is only the latest example of Media Burn: it’s what happens to people who get famous because of television and now computer screens. Their emotional transformation as human beings is a direct result of how others perceive and react to them as characters, not as humans.
The prime example that everyone knows about is how he went from “The Donald” to the most visible and powerful person in the world for a few years; similarly, how Cliff Huxtable morphed into Criminal Cosby; or how Stephanie Germanotta emerged as Lady Gaga.
Those are three blatant contemporary examples, but the dynamic of how screen presence becomes regular person to-celebrity, to-cultural-icon, to-outsized-character has been building geometrically since national television was unleashed in 1947.
The Book, 2019
I’ve written hundreds of pages and a bunch of articles about Media Burn since 1970. It became anAnt Farm art event (1975) and a video archive (2003.) Finally, now it’s a 40+ page book proposal, soon to be on its way to a publisher. Long-time design and conceptual collaborator Elan Soltes and I have been concentrating on it for months. Some day, while we’re still vertical, the book will be published and promoted and an ongoing website will track new developments. The goal is to plant the seeds for “Media Burn” to grow into a universally-quoted phrase, an original idea on the tips of our tongues like “Global Village,” “The Tipping Point,” “Fake News” and “The Long Tail.” We’re getting close, and I’m confident, as Lennon and McCartney wrote: “We’ll get by with a little help from our friends.” Here’s what it looks like at the moment:
MEDIA BURN:
The Impact of Screens on Our Lives
NEARLY EVERYONE IS ADDICTED TO ELECTRONIC MEDIA.
SCREENS AND THEIR EFFECTS ARE GLOBAL, NATIONAL AND PERSONAL.
WHILE EXAMINING THE LARGER PICTURE, THIS BOOK IS FOCUSING ON INDIVIDUALS — WHAT HAPPENS TO THE MINDS AND PERSONALITIES OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ON SCREENS AND TO THOSE WHO CREATE WHAT THE REST OF US SEE/ EXPERIENCE.
I HAVE BEEN A CREATURE OF MEDIA FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE TELEVISION AGE (1947) UNTIL THE ERA OF DIGITAL DOMINATION IN THE PRE-POST-TRUMP WORLD (2019-20.) I’VE BEEN A VIEWER, PRODUCER, PROFESSOR, ARCHIVIST AND WRITER.
We Are Not Alone In the U.S.A.
I came across this rant by Harry Oldmeadow, well-respected Australian author and philosophizer online after the surprising third-term victory of Scott Morrison as Prime Minister last May:
“A triumph for ignorance, self-interest, fear cowardice mediocrity, mindless nationalism, resentment, mean-spiritedness and heads-in-the-sand. And he devil take the hindmost—all the people on strugglestreet, refugees, the unemployed, the homeless, indigenous people…not to mention mother earth! A great day for the Big End of Town, the Good Ole Boys, the land developers, the mining companies—helped along by the billionaire expatriate pornographer/press baron, Clive Palmer. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LH1uVTYoUY)
To oversimplify, we are in a period in history in which the person/party with the most television exposure gets elected. And usually that candidate has raised (or has) the most money to spend on TV commercials.
A Joke about Nothing
Jerry Seinfeld was asked what he thought was the best joke ever.
He credited this one to Rodney Dangerfield:
“I was making love with my wife, and she had a faraway look in her eyes, and I said, ‘Darling, is there someone else?’ and she said, ‘There must be.’
“That’s as perfect a joke as I can imagine,” said Seinfeld.
It’s Just TV
The Democratic Presidential debates on CNN were performance; they’re TV shows.
And not produced well at all.
What works is evoking common references (“yadayadayada”) or talking directly into the camera and addressing TV audience (as Mayor Pete did: “If any Republican Congress members are listening…”)
We were watching with about 20 people, ages 18-84, all Democrats, best I could tell. After about 35 minutes of the debate, pffffft, no more millennials. They all went outside to hang out and never returned.
I wonder if they’ll bother to vote.
The Russians Are Coming (to Chicago)
Saturday August 24 is the North American premier of Ghosts in the Machine, the film produced by two Russian video artist/filmmakers and two Americans. Each of the four 15-minute films used Media Burn archival footage to explore perspectives on Fake News.
It was shown in St. Petersburg, Russia, last month to large audiences and enthusiastic reception.
It is a remarkable and revealing hour. I urge you to go if you can. Executive Director Sara Chapman will present the film and Q&A with four filmmakers
Saturday August 24 at 6pm at
Film Row Cinema at Columbia College
1104 S. Wabash in Chicago.
It’s free. Capacity is 260.
The Grandkids
She’ll start kindergarten at end of month
takes a new high 16 steps with Grampa.
Family moved to Bozeman, MT
Happy, healthy August to you and your loved ones.
Please enter your comments here or write me as usual at tom@mediaburn.org.
PY-O-MY 
I celebrate the new look and presence of the Py-O-My on an electronic format and am not immune to the irony of this happening in the midst of all the MEDIA BURN! Burn away, Py-O-My!
SCORE : Thanks, from San Francisco, on good August handed-out NEWSLETTER. Warm good luck on AGENT. —Barry for Good government!
Debates–misnomered of course–deserve even more criticism
Yup. THANK YOU THANKN YOU AND also THANK YOU.
Thank you, thank you and thank you.
From Elan:
If you haven’t yet seen it, I suggest you watch The Great Hack on Netflix. It might help explain why the millennials walked out on the Democrat’s debate. It might also explain why the debate format itself is so boring and outdated.
Trump’s candidacy was enabled by his celebrity status – see also Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, John Glenn and Bill Bradley. But his victory was enabled by his campaign spending $1 million/day on social media in response to Obama’s success in 2012. And it was Cambridge Analytica (founded by Steve Bannon et all) that helped Trump’s campaign target the complacent and undecided millennials with slogans like “Crooked Hillary” and “Lock Her Up” and calls to protest along the lines of “Blue Lives Matter.”
They were also behind the pro-Brexit campaign and other right wing elections around the world. All by mining personal information off Facebook and other social media.
Celebrity loaded the gun for Trump, but our raw data pulled the trigger.
Twitter and Facebook are just the next steps along the political path that led from Roosevelt’s fireside chats, to Kennedy’s TV debate victory and Obama’s win in 2012.
The Russians and Assange didn’t hurt either. As Bannon has proselytized, they want our political process to crumble so it can be remade in an extreme far right vision.
– Elan
From Larry Kirshbaum:
I understand the concerns about Amazon, but keep this in mind. They have made most of their success by creativity and ingenuity. Bezos convinced Wall St to let him reinvest profits for many years. He made on-line ordering and shipping dependable. He revolutionized the book business and has been a huge factor for independent authors. (I’m at a conference of these authors and they never could make a living depending on publishers previously.) The Kindle revolutionized e-books. Amazon Prime was a smart way to leverage the on-line potential of their data base. Where were competitors like Wal-Mart or Costco which have the muscle but no strategic brains? Amazon built its cloud business against competitors like Microsoft, IBM, Google, Cisco, Oracle. These were pure tech companies. Ditto for Alexa, where was Apple or Google? Thank God for the Washington Post. Yes they bought Whole Foods, but did any of the other major supermarket chains try to do so? Fresh Direct seems to be in a good place as a competitor.
As Bezos says, “it’s easier to invent the future than predict it.” Seems like he’s been true to that concept. I worry about the Trump government messing with the tech cos. Trump’s loyalty is to coal. He’ll kill us all and destroy the planet. It may prove to be true that we need to create smaller entities, but the real problem is a lack of management skill at our top corporations and we may regret pulling the wings off our butterflies because they’re too beautiful.
From Tom:
Larry: everything you say about how innovative and singularly successful they are/he is, is true.
Nobody has matched them in so many ways.
(including getting multi-year pass on generating earnings)
But, as you know as well as anyone on planet, it cuts a wide swath and bowls over anyone or anything in the way…and that is frightening. And yes,Trump is MORE frightening.
wow…strong stuff. thanx, MB
Is there another place to see that Russian/American film?
there are four parts…approx 15 minutes each.