Brits: War Too Dangerous for Prince Harry, Okay for Everybody Else

The British press threw a temper tantrum when Matt Drudge reported that Prince Harry, who matters to them for some reason, is serving with their army in Afghanistan. How could Drudge be so callous towards the prince's safety, the tabloids bitched. Foppishly. And also, the Brits had the story two months ago but signed a deal with the Ministry of Defense promising not to publish anything till Harry was back in his London palace bed. British media to Drudge: no fair!

I've never been more proud to be an American, coming from a land of freedom, where semi-professional ad hoc journalists can spread the news without kowtowing to the big divine right lobby. Twenty-four hour news cycle, people, and you'll report on "Dog's tricks are 'better than TV'" and "Fat-carvers bring home top prizes," but not "Third in line for throne serving in Afghanistan?" This is what people want to read on their way into work; think of the advertisers and the stockholders. Think, if you compromise Harry's safety enough and get really lucky, you could see two spikes in readership.

Not that I'm really surprised, but everybody's skirting the real issue here. The media that signed this deal with the army, now that they've been screwed, chastise Drudge's callousness toward the safety of Harry and his unit — marking the first time the British tabloids have ever been concerned for the well-being of one of their subjects. And of course that subject just happens to be in the middle of a fucking war zone, but let's delude ourselves that war isn't supposed to be dangerous. Then the reporters left out of the inner circle are above it all, in an ethical debate over whether one guy's safety overrides the public's "right to know."

But that's a false dichotomy, or it would be if not for the real ethical knot here: the media's cozy relationship to its source and the principles they're willing to sacrifice to maintain that relationship. None of this off-the-record, shady deals nonsense; a reporter's job is to report the news under the theory that the readers are smart enough to filter it. The press shouldn't have spent the ink to write about Harry's detail, not because the Ministry of Defense asked them nicely not to but because it's not newsworthy. Some "news" just isn't relevant to anybody's ability to participate in the civil structure, and the press also has a responsibility to make sure that what's trivial stays trivial.

Look, I don't need to know exactly where in Iraq our troops are stationed and where they're going to patrol today and what time they're having breakfast — and I don't really care either. All I need to know is whether we're kicking insurgent ass, by which I mean providing enough stability for the Iraqi government to restore the nation's infrastructure and secure the borders. And I need to have enough faith in the media so that when the reporter in Basra tells me that we're kicking ass, I can be confident that we are, in fact, kicking ass. Then I use that information to decide whether I want the old guy, the black guy, or the woman to be my next president, and that's how democracy works.

A Perspective on The Wire

You've probably been too busy following Lost or American Gladiators to pay much attention to The Wire, which is the best, and most disillusioning, show to ever cross the airwaves and not come into your house. I'm surprised I went seven weeks without talking about it, and I've been particularly shaken by the final season so far, walking away from three shows agape, "Holy shit..." This season's Institution of Massive, Unabashed Failure is the media, and the storylines explore what's been hinted at previously: the twisted, co-dependent relationship between the hegemony of news organizations and, the root cause of all the world's ills, you (yes, you) and your simple-minded complacency. Set a year after "A New Day in Baltimore" never materialized, the broke-ass city is still perpetually desperate for political capital but also actual, monetary capital. Carcetti sold his soul to the powerful upper-middle class white wing of the Democratic party, brushing off the governor's offer from last season and leaving the schools in the same unacknowledged decrepit, useless condition from last season. The cash crunch has reached into the Baltimore P.D.; the five percent raise Carcetti enthusiastically promised the police department is being paid out ━ or, more precisely, not paid ━ in sheets of office paper, to be redeemed on that glorious day when the city actually has a few coins in its coffers. The media, the once-venerable Baltimore Sun, not a real newspaper but "still a pretty good newspaper," is beset by similar financial privation and, suffering takeovers from the Los Angeles Times and then the Chicago Tribune, abandonment from a corporate structure with other things on its mind. The institutional mantra in Baltimore is "more with less," which is even more retarded than it sounds.

The one institution thriving in Baltimore's new day is the New Day Co-Op, and particularly Marlo, who's consolidating his power after a year-long hiatus while under scrutiny from the MCU. The MCU, which was shit-canned twice when the city did have money, is disbanded along with its investigation into the row house murders, and McNulty is shipped back to his perch, and continuing downward spiral, in homicide. This season, more explicitly than any of the others, asks how the common people, shlubs like McNulty, just trying to do their damn jobs for Christ's sake, get ━ that is, wheedle or extort ━ basic resources from The Powers That Be, y'all and your wallets, and what that makes them and their society. It would involve using you, an ATM for your own good, and examining the moral consequences later; I'm reminded of House: "I teach you to lie and cheat and steal...and as soon as my back is turned, you wait in line?" So The Wire presents three parallel scenarios: McNulty, after a lot of alcohol, tampers with crime scenes and old cases to manufacture a serial killer terrorizing Baltimore; Clay Davis finally faces exposure of the shady non-profits he's been skimming from; and a Sun reporter, Templeton, makes himself the paper's new golden boy by fabricating quotes and making up the news. How do we get what we want, what we're entitled to, or what we believe we're entitled to? We give you what that base, emotional, jumping to conclusions part of you wants ━ whatever that is, it's pretty cheap ━ and you reciprocate.

That's where the press comes in. The utopian idea is that the media is supposed to provide us with the information we the people need to run our country, it being a democracy and all, but with that in mind, I'm starting to realize how phenomenally irrelevant it is. I'm talking about the opening to the six o'clock news: a minute on someone shot in Rockaway Beach, another minute on somebody stabbed in Bayonne, then three people shot in Morrisania, all in critical condition, with some blonde reporter standing by at the hospital's ambulance bay. This, followed by, "Danger in the kitchen: which household product that you own can kill your whole family? We'll tell you, at eleven." What am I supposed to do with this "news?" More to the point, shouldn't we assume that all this, and the context it creates ━ You are not safe if you leave your home! Also, you are not safe in your home! Buy plastic sheeting and duct tape! ━ is bullshit anyway and the weather forecast is the most honest, straightforward part of the news?

So McNulty creates a "Homeless Strangler" character (that would be a guy who strangles the homeless, not a homeless guy who strangles ━ important difference), broadcasts it around, and gets nothing. I've always wondered this about the media, especially the sensationalist tabloids: in the exploitative, parasitic relationship between the papers and their readers, which comes first, the public's interest or the media's interest? The Chicago Tribune, being a business operating in a free market, would argue that they give their readership what it wants; as a (potential) reader, I note that my options are limited to what the media chooses to provide me. The serial killer story McNulty gives the press ranks somewhere in the middle of the Metro section. It seems formulaic: Alma's triple homicide story wound up in the same insignificant nether-zone. Number of victims, divided by how far on the fringes of society they were, plus salacious details equals location, with some bonus points for being white, an ex-cheerleader or pageant queen, missing in Aruba. Templeton, always the attention glutton, has to pretty much beg McNulty for some gripping detail for the story, something front-pageworthy, something the Post and Daily News could make a tasteless pun on.

Certain critics, who I respect even though I wish I had their jobs, read this, McNulty's serial killer yarn, as the moral decline that really costs him his soul. His transgression: making shit up? Deceiving people? He hits rock bottom ━ which is inane hyperbole in The Wire; rock bottom is more like Bubbs accidentally poisoning Sherrod ━ after giving Larry, a crazy homeless guy, a hundred bucks to relocate to Richmond and pretend to be the Strangler's next victim. Which is wrong, but morality on The Wire isn't merely a mess of gray areas but a complete condemnation of the right-and-otherwise dichotomy Sepinwall forces on it. (Oddly enough, Sepinwall lets this quagmire slide when it comes to Dexter: he does bad things for a good reason, but he's working through it.) There are bad consequences and there are bad consequences; so in this week's episode, Kima has to tell the parents of McNulty's crazy homeless man that their son, who they could no longer care for and had to let go on the street, was probably a victim of the Strangler. And it is awkward, quoth Sepinwall:

Last week, I talked about how Jimmy's abduction of Larry was the moment where he took his scheme way too far, but Kima's interview with the parents of an earlier "victim" show that Jimmy's actions have been reprehensible from the start. Sure, the dead guys are in no condition to care about what's being done to their corpses, but Jimmy's lie is devastating the family members. Like the parents say, it's bad enough to live with the knowledge that you didn't (or couldn't) prevent your son from killing himself with drugs and alcohol, but it's far, far worse to believe that you failed to protect him from being murdered and sexually molested.

Interesting, in a season that twice called out Sepinwall's medium (he's the TV critic for New Jersey's own Star-Ledger newspaper) for showing more sympathy for white victims than black victims, and for upper-class victims than poor victims, he complains about how McNulty's lies affect a white, middle-class family with nary a word about the twenty-nine (by my count) black people that Marlo had murdered, including our friends Bodie, Prop Joe, and Butchie. The Wire gives us this amazing omniscient panaroma, where the full butterfly effect of everyone's actions become clear, and still our own parochial viewpoint takes precedence. Let's review: The MCU's budget and personnel are slashed, Marlo immediately resumes consolidating his power. Marlo consolidates his power, he represses the West Side community, pays more to shady lawyer Maury Levy, makes more "donations" to Prop Joe's fake churches and New Orleans hospitals (which are likely connected to Clay Davis, especially given the land deal Nareese brokered for that drug dealer slash strip club owner), and in particular buys more heroin from the Greek. The Greek sells more, he ships more Slavic prostitutes to America in cargo containers, not to mention whatever he does with his implied terrorist connections. Reading in the paper that your son was murdered and molested (assuming the Sun printed that, even though there's no confirmation that Crazy Larry was either) must be horrible, maybe even almost as bad as being dragged to a vacant by Chris and Snoop, or working as a sex slave in freaking America.

It's not that Sepinwall's ethical take is wrong, especially given that, as I said above, McNulty isn't extorting resources because he wants to catch Marlo but because he thinks, as a homicide police, he's entitled to some resources. But The Wire is full of characters who make ethical decisions that are, let's say, short-sighted, and the degenerate world thrives on them. This season I may admire Bunk and Kima for doing the right thing, real policework (although it seems like Bunk wouldn't have re-opened the Marlo investigation if McNulty's selfish jackassery hadn't put him in a bind), but at least McNulty isn't taking the ethical shortcut the System lays out for him and passing responsibility to somebody else.

This attitude is persistent in Baltimore, under the guise of "fairness" and "political correctness." We saw the same thing last season in the schools, with our sympathies reversed because it was children at the bottom of the shithill instead of drug pushers. I'm thinking of the scenes where Donnelly socially promotes a finally thriving and clearly unready Dukie to high school, effectively ending his education. "Did I do something wrong?" he asks. No, it's just too much trouble, from the superintendent, the media, City Hall, having him in the school and she is long past that. "Have some kids of your own," she tells Prez, who's protesting Dukie's promotion, as if helping nobody is morally superior to helping just one person. All of these institutions that are supposed to make us civilized instead leave a Hobbesian world where there's no loyalty, and no altruism, to anybody but you and yours. Then the police complain that these gangsters won't snitch.

Today's good political news is that Guiliani dropped his 9/11-fetishizing ass out of the presidential race, so we won't have to worry about America turning into that particular police state. The bad news is that John Edwards also dropped out of the race, if you were even aware that he was running in the first place. The early-stage primary wasn't about finding the best presidential candidate but about who the media could cling to like a barnacle during the few moments they weren't too busy to cover steroids in baseball or Cloverfield or other important news. I'm completely clueless about how the media functions, which stories become big stories, who comes up with that thoroughly uninformative graph on the USA Today, why Natalie Holloway's disappearance is newsworthy but Chioma Gray's disappearance hasn't gotten a single back-page below-the-fold headline. (I'm sure the fact that Holloway was a white, blonde, ex-cheerleader has nothing to do with the media interest.) Edwards, with his "Two Americas" thesis, seemed to be the only candidate with some cognizance of the distinction between the American lifestyle afforded by wealth and the one afforded by ━ not poverty ━ but the lack of wealth and the lack of political power and social autonomy that accompanies it.

The media's election narrative, written way back in 2004, didn't have a guest role for Edwards since he's not black or female, as Senator Obama pointed out in one of the zillion previous debates. The nation, at least in the eyes of the media, either influenced by or influencing the vox populi, is looking for change from the Thirty-Percent President, but we're so vapid that we're satisfied with someone who looks different. Edwards was the only candidate among the thousand or so in the race advocating genuine policy changes. He pushed for universal health care, renewable energy, ending the genocide in Darfur. And when was the last time a politician called for an end to poverty? But what was most important about Edwards' candidacy was that he actually spoke out with untested ideas, rather than re-packaging the stale but comfortable hegemony that's politics' stock in trade. The media, as stagnant and complacent as any other corporate bureaucracy, in neglecting Edwards, was also stifling the unfortunately un-American message that things could be better, for real.

Fortunately, some of the Edwards platform, like the Gore platform, has leeched into the rather banal campaigns of Hillary and Obama. Hillary, I hate, but not in a right-wing conspiracy sort of way. I just hate her for being the Republicans' object of scorn, and because her very existence probably cost Gore those two-hundred Florida votes back in 2000. Also, she cried, and what the hell was up with that? I'm sticking with Obama, even though I don't like his message about rising above partisanship in Washington. "I'm a uniter, not a divider," makes you either one of two things: a liar or a pussy. He's supposed to have beliefs and if he's going to compromise them, I'd like it to be in service of something other than crazy Senator Inhofe's pigheadedness.

Tonight is the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate, which – no offense to democracy or anything – is a new low in our staple lazy, dilute field of journalism. No matter what Anderson Cooper bloviates, it's not a revolution; the questions for the second 2004 presidential debate and the third 2000 debate (supposedly) came from average Americans. The only difference here is the involvement of YouTube, which has already brought us important contributions to the political discourse, such as Nora the Piano-Playing Cat and the "Will It Blend?" guy. New populist technology gives Time Warner a massive boner.

It's not that Americans aren't a naturally curious bunch, but that our curiosity is about as directionless and easily distracted as the war on terror. I assume that "television's number one political news team," a.k.a. CNN's unpaid summer interns, will weed out the "Boxers or briefs?" and "Could you take a moment to pray for Oregon, for us, right now?" sorts of questions, but you've still got Bill Richardson, who's negotiated with freaking Kim Jong Il for Christ's sake, answering questions from fifth-graders. (Okay, obviously the questions were parent-scripted, but there's still a cuteness over substance issue going on here that's not healthy for a functioning democracy.)

The problem is that your answers reflect the style of the questions. Jeffrey Sachs and some attention whore in a cow costume could ask the same question about ending global poverty, but — thirty second time limit aside — Sachs would get an answer that addresses all the facets and gray areas of a complex issue, and the cow guy would just be patronized to. Which is pretty much what happens in these debates, and that's why I generally avoid them. This is why we have journalists — people (theoretically) trained to ask piercing questions and to recognize when the response is lacking. There's a difference between asking Hillary, "Why haven't you apologized for your vote to authorize the president to go to war in Iraq?" and "To what extent was your vote to authorize the Iraq war influenced by the fact that 70% of Americans supported the war in 2002?" The former lets her do that political, passive voice, weaseling-out thing ("I was duped.") and the other actually holds her accountable not just for her actions, but for her whole concept of how a democratic government should work. Should our leaders reflect the consensus of the governed, or transcend it?

But that question can't be answered in two minutes.

Here's what I'd like to see: lots of debates. Twenty-eight, minimum. Just two candidates, and one topic for the entire hour, that really gets explored in terms of the candidates' views, their past actions, and their philosophy on governance in general. No ad hominem attacks, which are just a cheap way to eat up your thirty seconds without answering the question. Maybe we'd even have a panel of experts on whatever topic they're talking about.

Anna Nicole Dead: A Tearful Nation Mourns

Anna Nicole Smith, voice of a generation of fat retarded hicks, died the other day. I was absolutely shocked when I heard about this tragedy — not so much because Anna Nicole is dead but because I heard about it on CNN instead of The Insider or Access Hollywood one of those other coked-up tabloid gossipmonger panels obsessed with B-list celebrity news. Even worse, CNN's once-respectable anchors Wolf Blitzer, Paula Zahn, and Anderson Cooper (who really didn't have much more credibility to lose after hosting The Mole) aren't treating Smith's death with the requisite respect; that is to say, none. At least the duly sane among us have Jack Cafferty, who combines the sarcasm of Jon Stewart with the sex appeal of Larry King, putting Blitzer and The Situation Room in its place. If there were any justice in the world, Cafferty would've long ago been promoted from the guy who reads viewer e-mails to at least the guy who kicks Glenn Beck's ass.



But even Cafferty is kind of a pussy when it comes to morally evaluating Anna Nicole's death and the media response — I guess being televised live in front of a national audience of housewives who think they're too sophisticated for Oprah sort of neuters even the bravest of us. I want to go a step farther than just, "Who cares?!" Dead Anna Nicole = GOOD! Yes, I'm being flippant, and I don't want to hear shit from anyone who's less indifferent to Smith's death than to the any of the other approximately 6,500 deaths that occur in America every day. Every life is a sacred child of God — unless that life is being lived in Iraq, obviously — but the world is overpopulated and natural selection isn't working the way it once was and if we're going to get rid of someone, we might as well terminate a socially useless, narcissistic, drug-addled, semi-coherent, gold digging drunkard and stripper-turned-diet-pill spokeswhore. I mean, just think of how much Trimspa's now gonna be left over for the rest of us! Anna Nicole's death might have just solved America's obesity epidemic!

I'm on the train this morning and there's this relatively hot woman with big tits reading Maxim magazine. I just have to fucking stare....

.... Uh, anyway, did you all check out Maxim's 50 Lamest Things of All Time or were you too busy ogling the exclusive Victoria's Secret fashion shoot and "reading" about secret sex exclamation-point? Before you ask, no, hackneyed countdown lists of the upper-middle class's most shameful exploits clogging up the pages of what's essentially a soft-core porn magazine somehow didn't make the 50 Lamest Things of All Time list. I guess it must be number fifty-one. Ironically, however, soft-core porn is number twelve, so go figure.

I just don't understand the point of this. My best guess is they had this five-page photo spread of some Croatian chick in her underpants but an hour before Maxim went to press, the editors discovered she had a penis. There was a scramble and someone was like, "You know, men wearing helmets and white-collar bikers have been getting a free ride way too long. Someone ought to knock them down a few pegs with a two-sentence insult." Thank you, Maxim, for taking on subjects that Playboy dares not touch, like pets in handbags and Utah. It's good to know someone is looking out for the common frat-man.

You Report. We Decide.

Following CNN's I-Report, an experiment in journalism democracy where any jackass with a computer, internet connection, and hands can submit a history-alerting report on "What does your workspace say about you?" or "Is severe weather happening near you," Reuters posted an entry in their editors' blog inviting amateur photographers to send them digital photos of news as it's breaking. They have a "strategic alliance" with Yahoo called You Witness — which annoys me, because if they had the strategic alliance with CNN, they could call it I-Witness, and that's a pun that actually makes some sense. So let's say you're in the middle of a South Asian typhoon, but you're a little too comfortable huddling in the corner of your straw hut, hoping the seawater doesn't flood in and drown you. You could grab your cameraphone, take some pictures of giant waves crashing down on the boats and palm trees, and e-mail those pics to Reuters, where they'll put them on their website and not pay you. Good deal.

I'm not saying that any old person can't be in the right place and the right time and get a newsworthy snapshot, but Reuters casting a super-wide net hunting for photos isn't so much about good journalism as it is about pandering to our sense of post-modern egalitarianism, where anybody can do anything and distinctions in quality are irrelevant, like YouTube or the People's Choice Awards. I can see what's next: All of America votes on our favorite inane news photo — Will it be "Skateboarding Dog?" Or how about maybe "Highway Accident Kills Five?" — and Reuters can award them the meaningless distinction of Stringer Idol, where they'll be fawned over for a week before being forced to take pictures for Ford Motor's advertising department.

Reuters's photo guidelines reflect the sad shift in the media from reporting what's newsworthy (i.e. ethnic slaughter in Sudan) to what's popular (i.e., Michael Richards unable to hold his racist tongue). Here's what they say makes a good picture:

Most importantly, it will be of interest to a wide audience. It may depict an event in the news: a train crash, a clash in the streets, deliriously happy fans the moment the big game is won.

No, no, and no, you facile nitwits! I think if you check out Reuters's Oddly Enough section, you can tell that the editors really understand that what makes something necessarily worth publishing isn't that superficial. Every time there's a major sporting event, one team wins and another loses, and the fans react; what makes for an interesting picture is a single image that captures and can stand in for the whole event and atmosphere.

Well, no longer. Thanks to the 24-hour news networks turning every single stupid event into news (I should say, every single stupid event, as long as it happens in America) and the Internet making every single stupid event available to the world, the distinction between real news that really affects people and random stuff that just happens is gone. Again, from our friends at Reuters:

Or it may not be of a strictly ‘news’ event. It could be an out-of-the-ordinary moment in time in an otherwise ordinary day. Something that has novelty and impact. For example, a model falling over her huge heels on the catwalk, or a fox running up Downing Street, or a fire station catching fire, or a mouse hitching a lift on the back of a toad during a flood.

I could make fun of how slow a news day it would have to be before Reuters reported on that mouse and toad story, but I won't. Some people will think it's cute, and that's all well and good for them. It's just not important. Like, I'm as big of a fan as anyone of vacuous models tripping over their ridiculous footwear, and I'd bookmark the damn clip on iFilm along with this and this. But I also realize that there's a larger world out there, and it's selfish and solipsistic to waste Reuters's resources on my own parochial preferences. This is what MySpace is for.