Category Archives: Media

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When Friends Rally

This will be a bit messier and less polished than my normal work. It’s timely and a moment is upon us. I may edit or add to this later, but I want to share it now.

It was a curious Christmas Eve. Somewhat out of the blue, an antisemitic leaflet was left outside our house. It referenced a claim that, “Every single aspect of the media is Jewish” and that “6 Jewish corporations own 96% of the media.” Even more curious, in smaller print it also stated that, “These flyers were distributed randomly without malicious intent.”

None of that requires much in the way of interpretation. The flyer was placed in a plastic bag anchored with small pebbles so it could be tossed from a passing car window (my guess) and not blow away. The cowardice of that free speech exercise is apparent.

As a matter of course I reported it to the local police, who informed me that many of these had been distributed in the neighborhood and my home was not singled out. That didn’t make it better, but it did give me reason to believe something more threatening was unlikely to follow. Remember, these are cowards who operate in the shadows. For me, free speech only has gravitas when it has a clear author willing to stand by the expression of their considered thoughts.

None of that is why I write this on Christmas Day. I write this because emerging from that heinous expression of bigotry was a mitzvah, a blessing of goodness. You see, as an author, I have been pounding out these posts for years and years, alongside three published novels, all of which likely add up to a somewhat progressive worldview. You might expect as much from the later generation of an immigrant family that sought freedom, opportunity, and acceptance in this imperfect but still idealistic place called America.

Well, guess what, I have all I wanted. The cowards lost. I won.

Here’s why.

Shortly after I received the ugly missive of antisemitism, I posted a photo of it on social media. You know that old expression, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” It’s true.

I guess I wanted to warn others in my area that bad actors were doing malicious deeds on the seventh day of Hanukkah, which also happened to be Christmas Eve. I also wanted to share outrage with my community, as if to wonder how on such a sacred day that speaks to joy and peace, someone took it upon themselves to exploit that occasion for fear and hate.

I didn’t expect much response. I write a lot and never quite know how it lands. That’s the thing about being on this side of the screen. You compose thoughts, share them, sometimes you get a response, more often than not you don’t hear from people you know. They are busy. They get accustomed to seeing your posts and only occasionally comment.

If you write a lot, you do receive a fair amount of criticism from people you don’t know. Some of it is warranted. Some of it helps me to be a better writer. Sometimes it comes in the same form as the antisemitic leaflet delivered on Christmas Eve. If you offer a public point of view, incoming invective comes with the territory. The worst of it is anonymous, more cowardice, and you become largely immune to it. I had excellent teachers on this topic.

I don’t write for a response. As I’ve said many times, I write to breathe. The written word is air to me. It’s my breathing pattern. Whether you hear me or not, I still need to breathe.

To my surprise on this one, on busy Christmas Eve, you heard me. You responded, full-throated and magnificent. You reminded me that it matters to many of you that I do this, that I type these words, why each breath matters.

Here’s a sample of what you said on social media:

You know, there are many hundreds of us who have your back.

We are standing with you.

Oh no. No no no,

That’s awful, I’m sorry, Please keep safe.

Love to you and your family.

Wishing you much peace and safety.

May your light shine bright this Hanukkah season.

These heartening comments are still coming in and probably will be for a while. That’s because there are shared values we can count on in the circles we travel, and when one of us blows the whistle on malfeasance, our communities rise together in response.

When do we know we have made a difference? When friends rally.

To know there is a community standing in solidarity together is to know that one’s voice is being heard. We are not alone when we are attacked for race, gender, ethnicity, origin, age, preference, or any other identity trait that makes us who we are. We stand on that platform of diversity, acceptance, kindness, and reject all who stand against our freedom to embrace our living history and self-define without ignorant critique.

You heard my voice. I heard yours. You acknowledged me as someone who matters. The cowards drift into irrelevance.

Our community is strong. Our community is ours.

Isn’t that the message of the day, that in this world of constant conflict, the voice of love is the platform we celebrate? Yes, we celebrate the idea of peace—the peace that begins in our hearts, resonates through our community, repels the ignorance that would undermine our shared compassion, and returns to our hearts to rekindle the flame.

We light the menorah to remind us there is light in the world. The candles are iconic, a visual metaphor of commemoration. We are the light when we choose to be, when we empower each other, when we stand by each other, when we commit to build a better day as the reason for the season.

I deeply, profoundly thank you for reminding me what is too easy to forget, that our work is never done. It is best done together when we show each other how much we care.

I believe it’s one part coincidence and one part fate that today is both Christmas and the eighth night of Hanukkah. Whatever you are celebrating, or even if you’re not celebrating but just contemplating the potential for good in our troubled world, I write today to assure you it’s there if you look hard. People will surprise you out of nowhere if you let them.

So let that be.

As I wrote to my social media community: Stay vigilant, teach all who come your way the beauty of diversity, the power of compassion, and the healing strength of love.

_______________

Photo: Pixabay

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The Thing About Vin

This month I suspect the nation is accidentally divided into two unsuspecting camps: Those hearing the beloved name Vin Scully for the first time, and those who feel the world has lost a soul whose voice permeated their imagination for what seems like forever. I probably don’t have to tell you, but my tent is in Camp Two.

I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to the touching tributes to Vin all month now, waiting for the words to come to me that might add something different to the mix. Like so many fans of baseball, I am finding it impossible to quantify the impact Vin has had on the game and my life. Let me try to get there by focusing on what Vin brought into our lives that exceeds anything to do with a child’s game played by adults for well over a century on our pastoral fields of dreams.

Vin was decent in a way that defines decency. Try to think of anyone in the public eye where you never hear a single bad word uttered about him. People like this about someone but not that, people argue about the talents and abilities of professionals, people offer pointed critiques of someone’s shortfalls despite their success. I’ve never heard anyone utter a cross comment about Vin. Never. It’s uncanny. I can’t think of anyone else who fits that bill.

Vin was a storyteller of the highest order. We frequently overuse the word storytelling to describe the sequencing of events that constitute an unfolding narrative, but Vin turned broadcasting into art and baseball into a series of real-time epics built from a foundation of plot and character. You never had to love the Dodgers to love the resonance of Vin’s unmistakable voice. You listened to the anecdotes excerpted from the lives of MLB players told gracefully between balls, strikes, hits, and runs. You never missed a play, and every chapter of the story added up to a portrait of an era.

Vin brought us together. Whether you were sitting in Dodger Stadium with a transistor radio earplug hanging below your ballcap, watching a big screen with rowdy strangers in a sports bar, or sitting at home texting friends and family while Vin did the play-by-play alone in the booth, everyone choosing to participate in the day’s game came together as part of the event. Vin was inclusive, and he made us inclusive. Our differences didn’t matter on game day when he had the mic. His friendship was our friendship. Vin made sure everyone felt welcome to be part of his 67 years of telling campfire stories while athletes performed them in stadiums linked to historic moments.

“Hi, everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you.”

“If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky.”

“A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the deep South for breaking the record of an all-time baseball idol.”

“In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”

“I know in my heart that I’ve always needed you more than you’ve needed me.”

Vin turned simple words into profound statements, moments into musical notes, radio and television commentary into sound bites for the ages. Today that might seem corny, impossible to pull off without sounding dated or forced. I guess when you have the perspective of almost seven decades to evolve your act, whatever you say is instantly perfect. It’s jazz. You’ve rehearsed as much as anyone alive, so you can improvise without a worry. You also instinctively know when quiet beats loud.

The stories of Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Hank Aaron, Don Larsen, Fernando Valenzuela, Don Drysdale, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente — they are each 100% their own, and Vin knew that more than anyone. Vin was forever the reporter, never the story, that was his inviolable commitment. Yet the stories were better because he told them. Everyone knew that. If you had a story in the game, you wanted Vin to tell it, to record it for the ages, to make it vital, enchanting, and historic. Doing the outlandish in a game that has never seen a moment like yours is one thing. Having Vin lock down the tale for all of time is quite another.

As I think about all the kind words I’ve read and heard about how deeply this one humble man touched so many lives, I am repeatedly left breathless by the stories the fans themselves have shared. Fathers and sons who couldn’t find the right words to say to each other turned on the radio and had a catch while Vin called the game. Families who couldn’t afford the price of tickets parked their cars in open spaces, opened the tailgate of an old station wagon, spread a picnic blanket and grilled hot dogs as Vin made them feel like they were at Chavez Ravine. Brooklyn loyalists who never forgave Walter O’Malley for moving the team west generations later got satellite TV and fell in love again with their Dodgers bridged by the same voice who loved the team as much as they always had.

So here’s the thing about Vin, where the legend of simpler times and radio days brings us to the less innocent evolution we’re all trying to navigate with fragments of heart and hope. Some of us are getting older, losing the icons that carried us from youth to adulthood while poignantly keeping us young at heart. Every April baseball season begins with enormous hope, and every October it ends with one World Series champion. We all know the beginning and end of that cycle come with a change in the cast. Some of our favorite players will be gone. Some of the most important people in our lives may be gone. That is the sad and precious reality of our time together. Our memories are both powerful and fragile. When we remember a common voice that triggers the goodness in those memories, biological age for an instant is no longer a thing.

Vin was there for so many of those memories. He had the seat of honor at so many of our tables. He will stay tied to those memories as long as we stay tied to those memories. The gift of his life was to enrich the lives of all those who carry forward those memories. He wanted that even more than to call a perfect game. For Vin, every game was a perfect game.

I’ll give the wind-up to Vin, because I cannot imagine any other way to set up the close and get off the air:

“When I was eight years old, I fell in love with the roar of the crowd coming out of the speaker of a four-legged radio. When you roar, when you cheer, when you are thrilled, for a brief moment I am eight years old again.”

Yep, so am I. Thank you, dear Vin Scully. Your gift of optimism and connection is once in a lifetime, once in a century, once in sports history. Your gift forever keeps us eight years old.

_______________

Photo: Library of Congress

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Don’t Look Up

I don’t often write about movies. The last few times were out of concern and offense.

That’s not the case this time. Don’t Look Up is an honorable accomplishment, brilliant in aspiration if not execution.

Bob Lefsetz may have summarized it best:

“Don’t judge the movie as a movie. Judge it as a cultural exposé.”

It’s not a great movie. It is an important movie.

It’s not a laugh-out-loud funny movie. It is a twisted, masterful mirror making it a profound movie.

It’s leafy green vegetables dipped lightly in ranch dressing, not a snack without compromise, but still good for you.

Most of the movies we see released these days are either popcorn tentpoles with superheroes meant to fill actual theaters, or esoteric art pieces that win awards but stream largely in obscurity.

What happened to issue-based, mainstream entertainment movies like The China Syndrome, Erin Brockovich, or Midnight Express? The bottom line finance culture running the studios couldn’t possibly come to terms with those kinds of bets today. Throw in a platform of satire, dark humor, or caustic irony like Dr. Strangelove or Network and the chance those movies get backed today approaches nil.

Today we would call greenlighting medium to high budget films like those a bad business decision, and we would probably be right. Yet there was a time not long ago when many of us experienced these releases as popular culture events. Perhaps the most important thing these flicks accomplished was to inspire conversation.

We might like or dislike the stories. We might accept or reject the message hurled at our psyches. We might enjoy or be bored to tears by the characters. We could agree or disagree with the premise. It was the very act of talking about them that made them worthwhile as events even when art and science failed.

I miss those discussions and debates a lot. They made me think about things differently, They opened my mind to different points of view. They helped me get to know people better, both interacting with strangers and close colleagues.

It doesn’t happen much anymore. Show business has changed too dramatically. The distribution landscape is too fragile. The stakes are too high to take these kinds of chances and wildly big swings. The entire approach seems of a bygone era.

Don’t Look Up took me back to that bygone era.

It’s a gutsy picture. It steps up to the plate and takes some bold, big swings,

What’s my idea of a bold, big swing?

How about a world-ending comet headed for the earth as a metaphor for apocalyptic climate change? That’s hardly a whiff.

How about Ariana Grande satirizing herself as an indictment of vacuous celebrity influencers? That’s a power at-bat.

How about the collective sensory assault of TikTok diluting an otherwise complex idea down to its own reductionist dismissal of gravitas? That’s taking a crack at a tough pitch.

Most of all, how about giving away the punchline in the title? How do we make something go away if we don’t want to believe it? Just don’t acknowledge it.

It’s that simple, and pardon the spoiler but it’s coming in this sentence… If you don’t believe a fiery killer projectile is headed for our planet and about to wipe out all life as we know it, just don’t look at it.

If you can’t see it, it’s not there.

If you wish to deny the imminence of a crisis, all you have to do is deny the possibility that it is coming.

Journalists certainly don’t matter, they are subjective. Scientists might matter even less, they are products of their bias. What you find on the internet that supports your point of view is all that matters. Belief is not empirical. All belief sets are valid points of view.

To put all that in a mainstream movie, think somehow it will be funny over two hours, pay a bunch of expensive movie stars to show up, and think this makes good business sense—there’s something wacky in that logic.

I wish I had laughed more throughout the movie. I wish some of it had been more subtle. I wonder how it will age when people watch it three or four decades from now. I am skeptical it will have the same dire resonance that I am attempting to express here regardless of its flaws.

Then I think back to the unforgettable dialogue of Peter Finch as Howard Beale that has been ringing in my head since my youth: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

I think about the decades of conversations I’ve had with people about those words and how much they’ve done to impact my interpretation of the weight of social issues still tearing at the fabric of modern living.

I think about how blessed we are that screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky crafted those words and director Sidney Lumet got this movie to the screen for generations to ingest, discuss and debate.

I think about how long it’s been since I’ve had a satisfying conversation about an unequaled topic of global consequence triggered by a work of fiction.

The recent words ring solidly in mind: Don’t Look Up.

It’s anything but a perfect movie. It could be a lot more polished and funnier. Still, I think more people need to see it. And ingest it. And talk about it both with those who agree and disagree with its premise.

Thank you, Adam McKay. I think you’ve done something brave, needed, and important.

_______________

Image: Pixabay

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I’m Out On Meta

“Someone has to tell me why we keep allowing social media and our very lives as social creatures to be dictated by the most socially awkward person in history.” — Bill Maher

I have the same nagging question. The self-celebrating visionary Mark Zuckerberg continues to express that he knows something about building human ties that the rest of us can learn from his business mission. I see scant evidence that Zuck can guide us anywhere better than where we are at the moment or have been. There is near zero chance that he is going to stop talking because his determined point of view is driven by a conflicted agenda where he benefits most. I am done listening.

I recently learned a new acronym: IRL. You’re probably ahead of me, but it means In Real Life. That would be the opposite of what we bucket today under the category of virtual. Virtual would be something other than sharing the same physical space. Zoom is virtual. Social media is virtual. Running around in a 3D online game space is virtual. Meta is virtual.

If you already know this, forgive me for catching up late. Here’s something that might irritate you even more: I don’t like Meta. Agreed, I don’t like the company now known as Meta, but I really don’t like the idea of meta.

Said better, if I have a choice to interact with you in person—In Real Life—unless we’ve already established an unrepairable dislike for each other, I would prefer to interact with you in shared physical space over shared electronic space. I believe we get more done in person more quickly. I believe there are fewer errors in interpretation when we are together in person. I believe our relationship has a better chance to improve in person. I believe our manners are better in person.

That doesn’t mean I don’t see a role for virtual, I just prefer IRL. Virtual has proven more accessible, often more practical, certainly more economic. The compromise is that virtual leans toward purely transactional exchange, algorithmic efficiency often at the expense of building emotional intelligence. There’s the rub—a lot can get lost when we eliminate nuance from contact.

Zuck probably doesn’t agree. I don’t think the renaming of Facebook to Meta is simply a PR stunt to get us to see past the failings of the platform called Facebook. I think he saw the early experiment called Second Life as an end, not a means. He lives better in the virtual. He belongs in the virtual. He wants us to join him in the virtual. He can be King of All Data in the virtual.

Count me out.

My sense is much of the unbearable divisiveness we are experiencing results from too many of us coming to the conclusion that virtual, or meta, is a substitute for IRL. I’ll accept virtual as an adjunct to IRL—an extension, enhancement, or convenience to supplement IRL. I also think we need to relearn IRL, and quickly, because human contact is a big part of what makes us human. Creating a machine interface between us does not always extract our best selves.

Regretfully, I am a hypocrite on this. I worked with an innovative team at Disney over a decade ago that created ToonTown Online, the first massively multiplayer universe for kids and families, complete with third-party vetted built-in safety. We never intended this virtual playground to be a substitute for recess or a replacement for after-school outdoor activity. It was meant as an alternative for when that playground wasn’t available, particularly for children dependent on parents for logistics.

I don’t think alternative or supplement is what Zuck has in mind. I think primary platform is what he has in mind, as addictive as Facebook, but even more isolating. We will have less agency in Meta. We will have less freedom. We will behave less well.

Zuck will have more authority. Zuck will have more control over directing our actions. Zuck will revel in even less oversight. Zuck will make more money.

Dystopian fiction usually takes us on a gradual journey into descent. In well-told stories, it doesn’t happen in an instant. We are drawn in slowly. Then we realize we have been had and are trapped. Kind of like Facebook.

I see a revolt on the horizon. It won’t look like January 6. It will be the alternative to getting “Zucked” in. Slowly we will grow tired of Facebook. Meta will fail, because IRL is better.

Several years ago during another public flare-up, I posed this question: Is Facebook the Next AOL? Then as now, I wondered if the voracious beast would devolve into oblivion. Why does that destiny today seem even more possible? Because Meta is fundamentally flawed. It advances a business agenda over a human objective. It presumes addiction is a higher-order force than graciously serving customer needs.

Zuck early on said the purpose of Facebook was to make the world more open and connected. He lied. How do I know that? Because he walked away from that proclamation the same way that Google walked away from don’t be evil. It was too hard to be consistent and authentic. Eliminating the binding pretension made it way easier to generate exponentially more cash.

The purpose of Facebook is to collect vast amounts of personal data and leverage it for advertising value. I’m actually okay with that. It’s a true and understandable business objective. We can resist it. We will resist it.

The purpose of Meta is to head-fake us from the world we need to improve to an alternate reality we can never make better than the one we can experience IRL. Even John Carmack, the technical genius behind Oculus, knows the vast details behind building a metaverse are well beyond the hype of advocating for its imminent commercial deployment.

Here’s a thought, Mr. Meta: Fix some of the nasty problems you’ve already created moving fast and breaking things before you dump another pile of poorly considered conflict on us.

Lest you be readying to drop the Luddite card on me, please know that I remain wildly optimistic about the application of virtual reality and augmented reality to medical and other scientific research. I also bear no grudge toward the gaming community, which gave birth to my career, as long as it approaches immersive gaming in a healthy balance with healthy living.

My gripe is with Zuck and anyone else advocating isolating technologies. Escape is not a viable substitute for learning to develop coping mechanisms that lead to mastery of the highly demanding but uniquely rewarding anything-but-meta real world.

Let’s hear a cheer for evolving our delicate mastery of IRL.

Avoidance of human beings in person is not a strategy for learning how to navigate the human landscape, which is created in a natural state to be physical first, virtual as an adjunct and counterpoint. A little social media now and again probably won’t ruin our lives, everything in moderation. Digital sharing can have its place when it defies obsession. I suggested a better rebranding of Facebook might have been Happy Birthday Central. That would celebrate its finest function.

Focus on the basics as we revisit each other IRL: being polite, making eye contact, actually laughing when something is funny rather than typing LOL. Go outside for walks, and when it’s safe to be maskless, smile at passersby. Feel the sun and the rain on your biological skin and be thankful for the gift of our senses.

We truly are a unique blend of the physical, psychological, and dare I say, spiritual. Productive communities are established in tangible places before they become replicated models. There remains evidence to suggest we can be better together than separate. It takes work to keep producing this evidence, but my experience is that removing an LED screen between us offers a dimension of clarity that is otherwise less satisfying and cannot be replicated.

When we let Zuck know we are out on Meta and all-in on true human connections, the real agenda of living with advanced technology can continue. As I have written so many times, technology is advancing much more quickly than our ability to make sense of it. This is not a secret. It’s why we feel anxiety. It’s why we don’t like Mark Zuckerberg when his answers to the hardest questions are unsatisfactory. His vision will not be our vision.

Bill Maher summarized his point of view in his recent ‘New Rules’ segment on Real Time succinctly: “The more time you spend in the virtual world, the more you suck at engaging in the real world.”

Given too many of my own interactions in the pandemic recovering world, I find that awfully and unfortunately compelling.

We won’t get fooled again.

_______________

Photo: Pixabay