April 2022

From April Fool’s Past
Occasionally I get it right.

In the 2014 April Fool’s  edition, my first year as proprietor of the Weinberg House Organ, I wrote  about the joy of spring training:

…what an absolute thrill to get the first look ever at a player we KNOW will be a Hall-of-Famer like José Abreu, White Sox first baseman who immigrated from Cuba over the winter.

He turned out to be the Rookie of the Year in 2014.  He’s driven in more than 100 runs six times and was American League MVP in 2020.  He’s still a joy to watch eight years later.

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Putin Over the Years

We all read and hear about him every day.  Maybe you knew all this. I didn’t, but it might help explain why he has been so cruel and ruthless in the campaign to conquer Ukraine and re-create the Soviet Union.

He had a childhood without his biological parents. Born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1952, the Kremlin leader’s reclusive character was formed during his childhood, when he had to grow up in a surrogate family that he had been sent to by his biological parents.

According to political scientist Stanislav Belkowski, this was a very traumatic time for Putin, and led him to distrust people and to only feel comfortable in the company of animals.  

It has been reported that the Russian president’s best friends are his four dogs, Buffy a Bulgarian shepherd from Bulgarian President, Yume, an Akita gift from Tokyo, Verni, an Alabai from President of Turkmenistan and Pasha, a Sarpleniac Shepherd from the President of Serbia.  They are twelve, ten, five and three.

German author Erich Schmidt-Eenboom claims that the former KGB agent physically abused his ex-wife Ludmila in the 1980s, and that to this day, he has no relationship with her (they got divorced), nor with his two daughters from the marriage, Mariya, 37, and Ekaterina, 36.

In addition, the same author reveals a curious fact about Putin: “Sex and a sex life are totally alien to him.” But there are widespread reports that he fathered three other children with Alina Kabaeva, an Olympic gold medal gymnast, 31 years his junior. 

As we all know, he is most definitely a billionaire, though he always was in government positions.  His most blatant and profitable financial moves came when the state took over ownership of oil, media, manufacturing, mining and other industries from the oligarchs who had legally controlled them.  It’s generally acknowledged that a chunk of the buck stopped with him.

The Kremlin official word is that he is 5’7” but  insiders claim that he’s closer to 5’4.”  So what?  That might explain his efforts to appear as an outdoorsy,  big strong macho man.  Napoleon was 5’6” and Hitler claimed to be 5’8.” Like Putin, he had childhood traumas, a lack of affection and a quest for power not only economically and socially, but territorially.

47 Years of Putin

1975-1991 KGB operative, mostly East Germany as “a translator.”

1990-1996  Official and campaign manager in St. Petersburg 

1996-1999 Various official jobs in Moscow

1999  Appointed acting Prime Minister by Yeltsin

2000-2004 First Presidential term.

2004–2008  Second Presidential term.

2005: Says: “Collapse of Soviet Union was greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20^th century.”  He has been trying to rectify that ever since.

2008-2012 Barred from Presidency by Constitution, he still ruled as the Prime Minister.

2012-2018 Third term as President.

2014 First invasion of Ukraine.

2018-now Fourth term as President. (Announced he won’t run in 2024 [Yeah, sure!])

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Now we know: “Getting away with murder” is in full swing in 2022.  At least, so far!  Stay tuned.

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“I grew up in front of a TV. I get lonesome if it isn’t turned on.”

That’s what John Malone told the Los Angeles Times. 

I get it.

This is how history is created: Malone did an interview with LA Times in the 1970s which was quoted in the New York Times 30 years later.  Then requoted in the New Yorker in 2022.   So, it must be a real quote. I don’t doubt that he said that. 

Malone, who is worth upwards of $9 BILLION and owns more land in the United States than anyone including Ted Turner, can do anything he wants.  He’s 81.  He and his interests gave more than a million to Trump’s Inauguration fiasco in 2016.  

Now the trades are speculating and analyzing what Malone’s influence will be when Discovery which he controls, takes over CNN with its current gazillion-dollar merger with Time-Warner-AT&T.

Malone has proven that he is the smartest media investor in the US, if not the world.  He lives modestly in Colorado.  He has always been in it for the long term.  

Malone has called the kind of television programming on Discovery “comfort food.”  He was talking about reality-show offerings such as 90 Day Fiancé and Fixer Upper.

Lots of us are just like Malone. We grew up with TV on all the time.  For me, the differences may be that I never got a doctorate in electrical engineering and didn’t focus every day on amassing even one billion.  I didn’t have the talent or the inclination.  

He must have been watching different shows.

Will CNN shift to the right?

How much does it matter in a world that Fox News dominates and distorts?

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Good Question

I have a 2006 book living in my bathroom called Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson.  The ideas are still relevant.

One example refutes the common belief that kids are rotting their minds in front of screens.  Johnson thinks they’re learning digital dexterity from games and porn.   It’s an example of how popular culture gets more sophisticated all the time. Rather than harming our brains, these advancements actually make our minds measurably sharper.  He sees that as optimistic for the future.

For many of us septuagenarians, our minds are going the opposite direction.  I feel it every day.  Many of the new developments are just too much for me to learn and adapt to. I can just barely read a menu or easily put my plane ticket on my phone.  If that’s the key to surviving the future, maybe it’s just as well that people like me have a longer past than a future.

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So, SCREENS

I know something about TV and video.  And what does and doesn’t work on screens. I’ve experienced the addiction for 70+ years as a watcher, maker, experimenter, producer, writer and teacher.  

We are now streaming  ImageUnion.TV  online 24/7, (go here.)

The idea is to meld our media sensibilities and experience to online digital, I still must face the reality that I’m something of a dinosaur in the digital universe.  I use my phone more for email than anything else and still watch television, especially live. 

It’s a whole new game for 12 to 29-year-olds, relatively few of whom own a television. They’re on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram  and YouTube every day.  Gaming is a bigger industry than TV, music and movies combined.  Minecraft is by far the all-time most popular and I’ve never tried it.

A few networks are still primarily seen on tv/cable.  Discovery has 60% of its audience on TV screens and only 16% online.  But, it’s just about the opposite for most others.  The number of eyeballs and advertising revenues in games and online media dwarf conventional media.  It has been a steady trend for the last 15 years.   

Consumer availability is in a constant state of birth and death.  Microsoft alone has eliminated 70 products in the last 15 years, most of them desktop computer-based.

These days, 7.2 Billion (84% of the world) use smart phones. 

So, “Screens” just ain’t what they used to be.  We all know this intuitively, but the data. Is overwhelming.

Screenland

I almost never miss reading the “Screenland” feature in the Sunday New York Times. I learn new stuff all the time, but the topics have become more specialized and less what I think of as screens. 

To me, Screens mean all of what we consume, why it matters and how it’s changing. Regardless of how electronic screen images and delivery evolve, my take is that it is that people who are seen are subject to the same forces they have been since the beginning of media time—which I define as 1947, the beginning of television.

My theory of Media Burn, essentially the effect media participation has on people who appear on the screen and the cultural impact of celebrity is just as valid for YouTube stars as it was when I began writing about it some 50 years ago.

Many of you have heard this before so I won’t elaborate here.  However,  a few classic quotes can illustrate it:

…the fatal power of the media is to confer instant celebrity upon anyone, anyone at all, simply through exposure to all those millions of people. And, once such celebrity is attained, the ability to influence, to control, the thoughts and actions of those millions follows automatically.” 

— Jerzy Kosinski, Being There, 1971 book, 1979 movie  

I still don’t believe it…the way I think…it’s kind of HIM and ME.

‘Me’ is me… I was always in this body and the body’s grown up.

‘Him’ is that famous guy. He’s very famous.

—Paul McCartney on Late Night, September 23, 2019

“[TV] Cameras, though they pretend to be innocuously recording our reality, are all the while altering it by their mediation…Bombarded by cameras, we’ve eventually learned to relax in front of them…We acknowledge the television camera’s authority over us and when detained by it are ready to assist it (as if it were the police) with its inquiries…Its subjects must be willing to sacrifice themselves to it.”

—Peter Conrad, in The Medium and Its Manners

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The Kids

We did a family trip to Arizona last week…what a rare treat for “Grampy” 

As I say over and over, their energy and personalities all provide hope and confidence, regardless of the messed up world we will leave to them. 

Seeya in May when it finally warms up in Chicago