This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Don’t look surprised as this is nothing new. L.A. Times editor resigns. American newspapers have been the life’s blood of politics for generations. Newspaper editors were once demigods and the publisher’s real gods. Franklin Roosevelt’s famous radio chats were due in part because the newspapers were all staunchly Republican. If Roosevelt wanted to get his message out, he was going to have to do it himself.

Citizen Kane was released in 1941, despite William Randolph Hearst’s best efforts. Hearst Newspapers wouldn’t run advertisements for the film and tried to blacklist the actors. “Mr. Kane, I quit! I won’t be a party to a newspaper silenced by its owner!” Bye! See ya! Who did you think you were working for?

As the sun sets on the Pacific Ocean and the L.A. Times editor sinks slowly into the west. What knowledge was gained by this? Bosses can be assholes? “You just wait! I’ll stomp my feet, and I’ll tell everybody what an asshole you are!”

When General Electric owned NBC, they didn’t want to say anything negative about nuclear power. Lest they rile a faceless someone upstairs in the selling nuclear reactors department. Only good news understand? Atoms are our friends! SHHernobyl!

In 1959, CBS aired “The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson.” It ignited a firestorm of public opinion against the use of DDT. It made a lot of wealthy people very angry. It cost wealthy people millions of dollars. CBS promised never to do it, again and never has.

You know when I was a teenager. Whenever I went to downtown Chicago. I had to pick up a copy of the Rolling Stone. It was hard to find out in the suburbs being a “radical” publication. Rock record reviews and outrageous Gonzo Journalism made it cool and a must have. Then it went corporate and became just another corporate mouthpiece. No cooler than, say a copy of Time or Better Homes and Gardens.

“Taylor Swift’s New Romance!”

Here’s a review of a new album put out by a company that does over fifty million dollars in corporate advertising with us every year. We think you’ll really like this album. Like Tony the Tiger says, ‘it’s great!”

Unlike your father’s Oldsmobile, this is your father’s newspaper. This is your grandfather’s newspaper. Same format, same formula, just like always. Change the size, change the logo but don’t change nothing! Whoever owns the newspaper decides the news. It’s their bat and ball and the only way you can hurt them is by walking away. Ironically, that’s just what is happening to newspapers.

On the Internet they’ve erected Paywalls, and that expands the circulation how exactly? It is doubtful, I’m going to sign up for the Dallas Morning News for one news story. One quick right click, and I’m on to someone else with same story. In days of old, the advertisements in the paper paid the production costs and the money you paid was profit. Internet production costs are significantly lower than paper production costs, but the ads are still expensive.

In Atlanta, they opened a new Homeless Shelter. Smaller and further from bus and rail stops than the old shelter. Off the beaten path, so as not to offend local merchants trying to gentrify the neighborhood. They celebrated the New smaller Homeless Shelter with a party and just everyone was there. Politicians and the newspaper and TV stations. Everyone was smiling and patting each other on the back. There were streamers and champagne. Isn’t it great? We needed a bigger shelter, but we built a smaller one instead. Out of the way and just half a mile from the bus stop. You don’t mind walking a bit, do you? The local merchants would surely appreciate it.

It was a great event, the newspaper and TV stations said so. So what? It’s 200 beds smaller; it’s new! It’ll be great!

The Chicago White Sox had one of the most unsuccessful baseball seasons in history. What did the TV, Radio and newspapers say? Well, ah, they’re still better than nothing. We should be glad they’re here. They’ll be better next year. “ The most successful rant was by a fan who called into a radio talk show. Ranting for over seven minutes about the White Sox and the White Sox front office. No effort was made to silence this man, and the rant has since gone viral. He was only saying what media couldn’t say or wasn’t allowed to say.

How is it? An American Presidential candidate can profess his love for Adolph Hitler and not be blacklisted, banished, and instantly repudiated? Instead, Mr. Trump’s remarks go largely unnoticed by major media with only an occasional “gosh, he shouldn’t say that!” But he did. Fox News, “Trump excites a raucous crowd!”

Twenty years ago, the Internet was the wild west. There were plenty of independent websites offering all sorts of varied opinions. Then civilization came and the websites were either crushed, purchased, or ignored to die on the vine. Foul poles were erected, as the sanitation began.

Tucker Carlson began his website with just two million dollars in his pocket and unlimited credit. His website is successful because he’s a bright young man, right? He says things people really want to hear, right? He’s not a corporate propagandist at all, right? He’s telling it like it is, right?

Woody Guthrie walked away from a million dollars back when a million dollars was a lot of money. He’s was offered a coast-to-coast radio show. Only one small hitch. The network wanted the final say on what songs Woody would be allowed to perform. Woody walked out and never looked back.  Censorship wasn’t anything new to him.

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”
― Woody Guthrie