August 2020

“Why? Because I’m the Dad”

That’s what I told my young children when all else failed.

I listened to my dad most of the time.  It was hard not to:

He was 6’2” and I was under five feet until I was 13.  He was bigger and louder.  And funny…he told story-jokes.

He never lost his curiosity about people and the world.  He was interested in ideas…which he shared unabashedly with practically everyone everywhere.

My brother John, our mother and I all knew his stories. He told the same ones and used the same expressions and punchlines for all of the 23 years we were both alive. I seem to have some conflated memories about what he sounded like.  I don’t have any movies of him with sound.  He died in 1967, two years before my first video camera.   

It’s ironic: I have interviewed and saved the videos of maybe one thousand men older than me.  As I put together my Media Burn Zoom presentation last week, (an hour of representative videos plus discussion now at https://vimeo.com/441428993)

I realized that one of my main specialties the past 50 years has been listening to and recording old guys talking.

I haven’t heard my dad’s voice for 53 years, but I do have seven bound volumes of the Weinberg House Organ, written and mailed from 1953 to 1967.

Here’s a lift from February 1956:

The newspapers today are so full of stories about crimes of violence, dope addicts, juvenile delinquency, etc., etc., etc., that one somehow unconsciously begins to wonder if this is the norm – and if decency, as we know it, is not only not news – but also if it is not rare.

Maybe that’s why I got such a kick out of this piece by Carol Taylor in the New York World Telegram, which I read while I was in New York.

‘It’s the seventeenth anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Regis L. Peloquin…

As the morning wore on, Mr. Peloquin phoned from his office on Madison Avenue, Manhattan, as was his custom to give his best to Mrs. Peloquin – still busy with the housework and the kids.  He just happened to mention to her to be sure and read the morning paper. ‘A friend of ours is in it,’ he told Mrs. Peloquin, then hung up…

Here’s what she read in the public notices:

‘I am responsible for all debts and obligations of my wife,

Bernice, both present and future, is more than happy to be the provider for a woman who has borne me three lovely children, and with an abundance of love and care has made the last 17 years of married life the best years of my life.  On this, our 17^th Anniversary, I wish to publicly express my gratitude.

L. Regis Peloquin’

I’m not much of a hand at quoting ‘beautiful thoughts’ – but once in a while one reads something that is really memorable.

—LWJr.”

Full disclosure: My parents were divorced six years later. No idea what happened to the Peloquins.

Louis Weinberg Jr.’s house organ revealed what he thought about, but it wasn’t a diary or explicit collection of ideas as he felt them.  It was more like public performance writing. And as you just read, he was good at it. He had more than ten years at ad agencies writing long-form magazine ads. He wrote words to sell products in the 1930s and ’40s. 

In the original Weinberg House Organ (always with the PY-O-MY logo at the top), I always felt he wrote more for effect (how he wanted it to be perceived by the reader) than from his heart or subtle brain.

As a writer, he was an outty.  I’m more of an inny.  But, just like him, I HAVE TO  WRITE every day. I write my house organs for myself, but I care about what the reader(s) will think of my writing…and yes, ultimately of me.

I’m a character in my own writing just as he was, though I’m coming from a different place in that my “writing” has included editing videos to have the effects I want the viewer to experience.  That’s one of the takeaways from putting together my hour video and print smashup of clips from tapes I’ve spent a lifetime producing, packaging, and showing, mostly on TV.

As some other TV guy once said: “Enough about me…what do you think of me?”

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I had a dream…

The Tulsa Takeaway

From his script at his first rally after he declared that COVID-19 was “disappearing:”

“Do you want to bow before the left-wing mob,

or do you want to stand up tall and proud

as Americans?

…The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments, tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control!   They want to demolish our heritage so they can impose their new progressive regime in its place.”

Actually, there IS no ”left-wing mob.”

But there is a significant number of Black Americans whose demands for equal justice under the law is actively and increasingly supported by millions of white people. 

The only mobs I see these days are young white Americans, empowered by the President, and frequently paid cash, to take advantage of the volatile environment to create chaos and be thoroughly disruptive in many American cities.

Who is that “unhinged left-wing mob?”  Who is responsible for desecrating and tearing down, punishing, canceling and persecuting anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute control?

It’s NOT the people who have been marching in the streets for over two months now.

Trump is right:  there is “a mob,” but it’s not “left-wing” or “progressive.”  It’s a reflection of his own strategy and tactics. It is classic projection. The transplant of federal forces was rejected by the body of Portland.  No need to amplify it here.

Worldwide, the vast majority of people condemn and reject Trump’s clownlike behavior. More importantly, they, like we, fear a powerful guy who spews hate, venom and indefensible ignorance every day. 

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This Month’s Cover

Oprah Winfrey has published her monthly magazine for twenty years. A
photograph of her has been on the cover of every issue…that’s about 240
straight. She got bumped from next month’s cover in favor of Breonna
Taylor, the emergency medical worker in Louisville who was shot and killed
in her bed in March 2020.

The three policemen who raided her apartment without warning at 3 a.m. and shot her eight times have not been indicted.  It is outrageous, a travesty of justice no less than that of George Floyd in Minneapolis (2020) or Fred Hampton in Chicago (1969).

Eleanor and I have been to prayer meetings, rallies and marches in Louisville dedicated to justice for Breonna Taylor’s murder.  All were 100% peaceful.  Participants were angry, but nonviolent.

People have been on the streets for 60 straight days and nights.  The mayor hasn’t taken a single action, even a symbolic one, to heal the intensifying public wounds. He did call in the Kentucky National Guard, a member of which shot and killed the owner of a barbecue stand/restaurant who was on the street protecting his home and business and many frightened citizens after curfew. 

It’s shameful.

Maybe the attention drawn by Oprah can help bring justice.

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On the Subject of Mayors

I’ve been friends with Paul Soglin since high school. He’s the “Mayor for Life” of Madison, Wisconsin.  Based on his experience In his 22 years in office, he says there are two main things that must be done to keep the peace during protests:

1. Put the cops on the street, walking in groups of 3-5 in their shirtsleeves, talking with and listening to protestors…not threatening them.  Don’t wear their hats unless it’s raining or snowing.
2. Never call in the National Guard.  It’s like “feeding meat to the lions.”

Obviously, the mayors of Portland, Chicago, Louisville, Atlanta and many others didn’t follow Paul’s advice.

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QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“He is channel-surfing his way through the Presidency.”

—Anonymous staffer quoted in New York Times.

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BRIEFLY NOTED

The letter on Justice and Open Debate from Harper’s, online in July and in the October print issue of the magazine. It was signed by a few dozen prominent professors and authors.  It’s an examination of self-censorship and fear of reprisal from the vast impact of social media.  “We are already paying the price in greater aversion among writers, artists and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.”  It has sparked major debate and disagreement among liberals, progressives and others, much of it played out in the mainstream media. The implications of cancel culture are rampant these days in the Trump-Coronavirus environment,

Similarly, a “dog whistle” emanated by a columnist the Chicago Tribune has been festering the last few weeks. The tipping point came with anti-semitic tropes written by a veteran conservative columnist.

After the storm in local media initiated in the influential blog written by the dean of Chicago media columnists Robert Feder, and strong opposition from the from his colleagues in the Chicago Tribune Guild, the column was removed from its 23-year spot as “lead-column” of the paper and relegated to the “Opinion” page.

Hopefully, it’s the last stop on its path to journalism oblivion.

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Rick Kogan, the voice of Chicago in many ways, wrote a wonderful story about the powerful 1978 reissued documentary The New Klan: Heritage of Hate in the Chicago Tribune last week.  When it came out in the paper, readers had no way to find it.  It’s 59 shocking but prescient minutes and viewable here: https://mediaburn.org/video/the-new-klan-heritage-of-hate/. 

Credits: Directed by Eleanor Bingham and Leslie Shatz.

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More Oprah

Family discussion after the Breonna Taylor cover:

“Why isn’t she Biden’s vice-president?  We know she can run stuff.” 

“She’d be the best of all people to beat Trump.  Her VIDEO CREDIBILITY dwarfs his.  She’s been on TV more, made way more money, and has loyalty based on her values, who she is and where she comes from.”

“Yeah, I bet she doesn’t want her personal life to become so public.”

“Oy, what a country!”

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I have to remind myself to expand on Video Credibility next month, but for now, here are the people who make it feel hopeful our lives will be better after the age of COVID…the grandkids:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ollie and Eliza Palm, spend their summers outdoors in Bozeman, Montana 

 

 

It’s hard to understand why, with the world out of sync and all of us forced to be confined, time goes by so quickly.  Have a healthy and fun rest of August. I’ll start earlier on the September edition.