“The expression derives from a series of incidents from 1983 onward in which United States Postal Service (USPS) workers shot and killed managers, fellow workers, and members of the police or general public in acts of mass murder. Between 1986 and 1997, more than forty people were gunned down by spree killers in at least twenty incidents of workplace rage.”

Now the phrase has gone beyond referring to postal workers. Kids who murder their teachers and fellow students? Going postal. On a recent radio talk show aired on XM a caller referred to Josh Powell’s unspeakable evil act of blowing up his house, killing himself and his two young sons (who he chopped with hatchets after saying “I have a surprise for you” as they entered the door and a social worker was locked out) as “going postal.”

But it does refer to the 80s when murder seemed to undergo a shift: yes, there been assassinations, murders, mass murderers and serial killers from time to time, and state sanctioned mass murder in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union — but this seemed to be the beginning of the lash-out workplace mass murders. Each murder got tons of publicity and — to use the accurate cliche — gave other rage-filled or unstable potential killers ideas on how they, too, could get back at their perceived enemies and the world by creating a big body count.

“Murder by Proxy: How America Went Postal” is a masterful documentary examining not just the string of postal mass murders starting with one of the first in Edmond, Oklahoma on August 20, 1986 when 14 employees were shot and killed at the post office by postman Patrick Sherrill, who took his own life with a shot to the forehead. It also puts it in a larger context.

Context: most of the people involved had no criminal records. Context: some of those who became killers had faced what some co-workers later insisted was bullying, targeting, harassment and abuses by management. “Murder By Proxy” at no time condones the killers, but it seeks to find the “why” underneath the “how shocking.”

Though superb use of archival and some rarely seen footage, top rate editing, and expert interviews, “Murder by Proxy” traces how these killings that seemed to inspire later mass killings in other areas of American life seemingly reflected a major shift in the relationship between individuals and society as well a between workers, management and government. These changes are political and economic: the film traces some of the shift to the Ronald Reagan era, with Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers, which many experts believe ushered in a decline in labor union power and accentuated management workplace power.

But “Murder By Proxy” is not a partisan political film.

It answers some of the questions of what led up to someone walking into a post office and tossing aside all standards of humanity and empathy would wipe out not just people the killer had clashed with but virtually anyone nearby who breathed. It’s like the workplace became one big, shooting gallery video game rage-filled employees used to vent.

“”Murder by Proxy” answers the question: what can bring a person who seems totally normal to the point of becoming a mass murderer? But, even more importantly, some interviews explore efforts to try and rectify at least part of the problem.

PERSONAL NOTE: I know the impact of this kind of tragedy a too well. On July 18, 1984, James Huberty, an unemployed security guard and survivalist, walked into a high traffic McDonald’s restaurant on San Ysidro Boulevard in the San Ysidro section of San Diego, California and opened fire. His shootings resulted in 22 deaths (including his own via police sniper). He snuffed out the lives of innocent men, women and children (including a boy outside riding his bike). Nineteen others were injured. I was interviewing the Consul General of Mexico in downtown San Diego in my job as staff reporter on the San Diego Union when I got the page (before cell phones) from the city desk.

Then San Diego Union City Editor Marsha McQuern (one of the very best journalists and editors I worked with in my career) called in everyone and their mothers to report and edit this major story (I did some reporting and was drafted to work on the desk). And here is what stays with me forever:

“Murder by Proxy” communicates the grief and tragedies such as this. These aren’t just numbers. These are lives. And when each life is obliterated, several linked lives are changed forever. It was wrenching enough covering “The San Ysidro Massacre.” But it was not much better a year later when the paper assigned yours truly and other reporters to go back and talk to victim’s relatives and see how they were doing. The answer? Not well at all. Part of their lives were brutally murdered as well the same day Huberty butchered the men, women and children in the McDonald’s (which McDonald’s Corporation quickly tore down, donated the land and rebuilt up the street — fearing a copy cat massacre one day).

In the case of Huberty, books have been written to try and find out the why (unemployed, couldn’t get an appointment at a mental health center) he did what he did.

“Murder by Proxy: How America Went Postal” provides a good explanation of why some things that happened provided a trigger for tragic postal massacres that happened — and what legislators can do about it. But politics nixes needed solutions.

Writer-Director Emil Chiaberi’s “Murder by Proxy: How America Went Postal” is required viewing as a vital history of the chain of massacres that inspired other massacres in non-postal areas of American life, a chronicle of the conditions that fostered some of the workplace conditions that seemingly set off employees, and a film that explores ways to try and change some of conditions that could contribute to workplace massacres.

Here’s the film’s trailer:

“Murder By Proxy: How America Went Postal” will be opening in select cities around the United States — but you can also buy a DVD copy of it by going to this website. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Peter Broelman, Australia

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibitied.

Remember, I Will Always Love You…

In the 5th Avenue’s production of Oklahoma!, Jud Fry becomes more than a foil for the protagonist; he actually becomes a representation of the American narrative’s deepest fear. Jud Fry is a symbol of everything and everyone who will not submit to the dominant narrative. He is chaos lurking in the shadow, he is instability refusing to bow to the logic of the room, he is otherness unable or unwilling to assimilate. Jud Fry is the irritant, perpetually challenging the validity of our American dream. Whether it’s a wedding, a community dance, or just simple daily living, Jud Fry lurks in the corners of the room, challenging the united chorus of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Kyle Scatliffe’s magnificently tormented portrayal of Jud Fry keeps Oklahoma! from being the feel good musical of the year. His existence is woven into almost every ecstatic moment and heartfelt resolution. All joy is tempered by the simple truth that not everyone has joined the narrative of hope and love. No matter how loud and passionately the cast sings “Oh what a beautiful morning,” we are reminded that there are some who will never enter into the beauty of that song. This is the magic of Oklahoma!. No matter how hard we try to define society with one overarching agreed upon song, there is always someone refusing to sing that song. Consequently, when Oklahoma! ends, the audience is left both with a beautiful song in their head and a tinge of sadness in their heart. “That would have been a lovely wedding, if only Jud Fry hadn’t showed up.” How dare he ruin our happy ending.

Although I’m focusing the majority of this review on Oklahoma’s well crafted tension, it is important to note that the story is far more than Jud Fry.

Oklahoma’s set design, lighting, and staging are mesmerizing. The opening scene’s use of framing and perspective clearly articulates that the audience is about to be drawn into an experience. I am repeatedly awed by how 5th Avenue productions succeed in both spectacle and simplicity. Instead of competing with the actors, the scenery fuels the mood and motion of the story. Oklahoma! is full of scene transitions that figuratively and literally frame the story’s arc. This is most evident when the audience is ushered into the claustrophobic confines of the smokehouse. The elevated staging evokes a sense that one is watching the drama unfold from beneath the floorboards. This magical, oppressive scene underscores the darkness that is lurking just below the surface.

The acting, singing, and dancing is exemplary. Particular note should obviously be given to the rich choreography and elaborate ballet dream sequence. It is a true treat to see modern and traditional forms of dance integrated into each number. Although the choreography has a passionate and distinctive voice, it does not compete with Oklahoma’s historical context. It is a true joy to engage a musical that includes the best music, lyrics, and dance theater has to offer.

To be honest, I simply don’t have time to articulate all that is right with the 5th Avenue’s production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! I enjoyed the humor, the love story, and the nuanced subtleties expressed by a cast and crew who clearly trust the power of one of America’s preeminent musicals. If you haven’t yet discovered the magic of the 5th Avenue, then let me welcome you to Oklahoma!

Doug Blogs and Tweets Fairlyspiritual

The book is called Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives In North Korea by Barbara Demick. We’ve all heard the stories out of North Korea about the famines or how the average North Korean is shorter than his South Korea brother, but this book takes a new tack that gives you a real insight into the nation.

The author chose to focus on one city in North Korea and tried to speak to as many people as possible from that city. She then chose several of them and relates their stories in the book, giving us a really personal kind of feeling for what they have gone through.

The subjects range from top elite members of the country to the bottom of the pile, they have true believers and silent rebels, adults and children. You find yourself wrapped up in the stories and rooting for them to succeed. Often you also find yourself saddened by the pain they have suffered and the losses the have endured.

The story is not entirely one sided either. It points out that during the 1960′s North Korea was far more economically stable than South Korea and that it was this that compelled many to move to that nation. It also points out that not everyone who has come to South Korea has found success or joy.

Perhaps one of the most moving stories though involves a doctor who escapes North Korea for China. She is just over the border and is looking for shelter. She opens a gate and notices a bowl on the ground with white rice and some meat in it. The bowl catches her attention because it has been so long since she had seen white rice, something of a luxury back home.

But she is confused as to why the bowl is on the ground until she hears a dog bark.

As she put it, this was when she realized that dogs in China eat better than doctors in North Korea.

The book is full of stories like this and is an amazing insight into a mysterious nation.

You can find it at B&N and other bookstores.

As compared with the Brits, few Americans have made India their home. Among those Americans who became well-known, I wrote about the legendary Samuel Evans Stokes Jr who fought along with Mahatma Gandhi to free the country from the colonial rule, and also brought horticulture revolution in the hills. The other well-known figure is an Indian actor of American origin – Tom Alter – who is now a household name.

Born to an American Christian missionary couple, Tom Alter acted in several Bollywood and Hollywood films and also made a name for himself in theatre and TV serials. His elder sister Martha has a PhD in Sanskrit and his brother John is a poet and a teacher.

He has worked for noted filmmakers like Satyajit Ray in Shatranj Ke Khiladi and is remembered for his role as a British officer in Kranti. In Sardar, the 1993 film biography of Indian leader Sardar Patel, which focused on the events surrounding the partition and independence of India, Tom portrayed Lord Mountbatten of Burma.

Tom has also played Indian characters in Indian TV series, such as the long-running Junoon, in which he was the sadistic mob lord Keshav Kalsi. He also acted in Hollywood movie One Night with the King with Peter O’Toole. More here…

Tom was given a civilian award Padma Shri by the Indian government for his distinguished contribution in the field of art.

Now Tom Alter has turned his attention to writing about cricket, a game that makes Indians go crazy. In his first article “In the name of cricket, we market grief, violence and greed”, Tom hits out at those who have turned this “gentleman’s game” into a pure profit-making activity.

“Does no one realize anymore the beauty of bat on ball, the simple and so, so difficult art of spin and speed? … We have marketing everything – everything—now we market grief, and violence, and greed..

“Would it not be wonderful to see our players representing the country with only India written on their shirts; on their hearts? To have a sponsor who had no wish to have his name even bigger than India’s on the beloved jersey? To have a player say that he will play for India for free, and wear a jersey, of his own choice, with only India written on it, in royal blue?”

More here…

(The YouTube video above shows Tom Alter interviewing India’s cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar when the latter was very young.)

Yes, if you’re Michelle Obama, who has been making the rounds of talk show hosts and beating them in feats of physical fitnessl in the name of her “Let’s Move” initiative.

Her latest victim was Jimmy Fallon of “Late Night,” who visited the White House to take on Mrs. Obama in a series of event, including push-ups, tug-of-war, hula hooping and potato sack racing.

Click here for a link to the video.

I groaned when I read that Madonna would being doing the halftime show but ended up being blown away by her performance, while the chorus lines and bells and whistles surrounding her weren’t bad, either. That’s right, someone who hasn’t been moved by Madonna was moved not because I was enraptured by the songs she performed, but simply because she was damned good.

Much of the criticism surround the Material Girl is that at age 53 she just isn’t as good as she was when she burst on the scene with her first solo album in 1983. To which I say, “No kidding.” Neither are Paul McCartney nor Bruce Springsteen as good as when they burst on the scene, but I have not read or heard a peep of criticism about either of them or other aging male music stars.

But alas, Dickens died of a stroke nearly two decades earlier, at the less-than-ripe age of 58, so the sound of his voice is lost to history.

Maybe we would have been disappointed by the recorded evidence. Even the many photographs of Dickens seem unsatisfactory: more often than not, they depict a starchy midde-aged Englishman with strange hair and an inscrutable countenance, his eyes fixed and expressionless. Was this the face of the genius who gave us Ebenezer Scrooge, Wilkins Micawber, Fagin, Uriah Heep, Aunt Betsey Trotwood, Wackford Squeers, Miss Havisham, Mr. Pickwick and dozens of other wonderfully named characters who leaped to life in his pages? Well, yes and no.

Photographic portraits of Dickens don’t seem to capture the vivacious spirit of the man. Apparently you had to see Dickens in the flesh to appreciate his riotous vitality. His contemporaries have left us some vivid depictions of the living, breathing dynamo that was Dickens…

“The most delightful of companions”… “ever buoyant, full of spirits and imagination”… “the very soul of enjoyment”… “From top to toe every fibre of his body was unrestrained and alert. What vigor, what keenness, what freshness of spirit possessed him! He laughed all over, and did not care who heard him!”

They spoke about his mesmerizing deep-blue eyes: “like exclamation points” that “mingled kindness and sharpness” with “a look of keen intelligence about the strong brow and eye — the look of a man who has seen much and is wide awake to see more”… eyes “unlike anything before in our experience; there are no living eyes like them.”

And yes, they gave us some sketchy descriptions of his voice and speech: “Deep, rich, cheery”… “genial-voiced”… “natural and unaffected” — though Mark Twain complained that he didn’t enunciate clearly enough to be understood in the balcony, at least by a man from Missouri.

That now-unknowable voice once entertained multitudes. Dickens was the literary equivalent of a rock star, something almost unimaginable in today’s postliterate culture. His dramatic recitations of famous passages from his works drove his audiences to frenzies of laughter, tears and terror. Those innocent Victorians would literally scream and swoon as he re-enacted the murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist with a wild homicidal ferocity. In fact, the heart-pounding intensity of those recitations may have driven him to his premature death. Dickens never did anything half-way. You might say he was a maximalist, in life as in his writing.

When he wasn’t funneling his furious energy into his novels, Dickens would find relief from his mental labors by walking 10, 15 even 20 miles at a clip. Sometimes he’d spend the entire night roaming the streets of London — always observing his surroundings, always absorbing fresh material for his next masterpiece.

He was a less-than-ideal husband and father. His wife, Catherine Hogarth, served primarily as a brood mare for their ten children. Dickens fell in love, chastely but feverishly, with her younger sister, who died in his arms and left him inconsolable. Eventually he abandoned Catherine and took up with the actress Ellen Ternan. Obviously Dickens’ reptuation as the patron saint of domestic felicity was overstated. But his reputation for kindness wasn’t.

Dickens never forgot the stings of his epically tumultuous boyhood: of watching his lovable but improvident father being carted off to debtor’s prison… of being yanked out of school and forced to labor in a rat-infested blacking factory… of being sent back to his labors by his mother even after Dickens the Elder won his freedom as the result of a timely inheritance.

A battle must have raged in the young man’s soul… a battle between cynical disillusionment and a warm, all-encompassing sympathy for the downtrodden victims of industrial-age Britain: the orphans, the urchins, the browbeaten and the unloved. Ultimately he managed to have it both ways, and his sympathies stopped where cruelty began: he channeled his latent cynicism into devastatingly memorable satirical portraits of tyrant schoolmasters, bosses, lawyers and step-parents.

Dickens was no communist; he identified with the bourgeoisie and enjoyed his wealth. He populated his novels with good and wicked specimens from all social classes, though he seemed to reserve a special contempt for those who rise in society through stealth and avarice. Dickens probably wouldn’t have loved Wall Street investment bankers or dissembling American politicians.

We don’t read Dickens for his politics, but he seems more relevant than ever today. When I was in college, it was fashionable for professors of English to deride Dickens for his sentimentality and praise him for his “radicalism.” Where they saw sentimentality, I saw a warm heart. Where they saw radicalism, I saw a simple but unflagging insistence on fairness and decency in human affairs.

Was Dickens a radical? Only in the sense that anyone with an active social conscience is a radical. When you think about it, the mere presence of such a conscience shouldn’t automatically relegate us to the leftward fringes of the political spectrum. Charity should be mainstream.

In the end, I’d label Dickens (if I were forced to label such a human whirlwind) as a radical moderate. He was one of us. He believed in serious reform, but just enough to usher in a new era of fairness and decency. He wasn’t about to set up a new guillotine to lop off the heads of the money-changers. Remember that he gave old Scrooge a reprieve: he had the heart to understand the miser’s heart, and simply led him to rediscover the kind soul that was trapped and withering inside him for so many years.

It’s a sad commentary on contemporary American society that so many self-professed Christians and traditionalists scorn the charitable virtues exemplified by Dickens. It’s an ominous sign that so many Americans, Christian or not, seem to take wanton pleasure in the “epic fails” of their peers. What are our televised reality shows but social traffic accidents engineered for our viewing pleasure?

I feel the need for Dickens now more than ever. I enjoy and admire him for his wit, his incomparable imagination, and his ability to breathe life into the most implausible characters. I love him for the greatness of his heart, and I salute him on the anniversary of his birth two centuries ago today.

Rick Bayan is founder-editor of The New Moderate.

To celebrate the launch of the all-new 2012 CR-V, Honda brought Ferris Bueller’s Day Off back in a big game commercial. We cast Matthew Broderick as himself, skipping out on a day of acting work and living it up in his all-new CR-V. Relive movie history with Honda’s fresh twist and wonderful homage to this ’80s classic.

Think you’re a true fan of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? We hid over two dozen references to the movie throughout the commercial. Some are obvious, some are VERY subtle. See how many you can find. #dayoff

And here’s the “extended” version of the ad starting the always delightful Broderick:

Here’s the Today segment where they also it did it, but had an interview with Radcliffe — talking with his normal accent (an even shorter version performed outside):

Here’s the full show-stopper on the CD (not abridged and it IS a show stopper). Even if you watched the above, listen to it in its entirety.

I’m on a national tour in my other incarnation which ends at the end of May. I have the CD of the Broadway show with me. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

For a roundup of the best Super Bowl commercials from 2007 – 2011 GO HERE.

Chances are if you (among the millions) watch the Super Bowl today you’re going to see one ad that turns out to be highly controverial. The Hill:

Super Bowl advertisements have a long history of attracting political controversies, and this year is no different.

While the match-up between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants will be country’s focus on Sunday, the high-priced ads during the game will come in a close second. And in an election year, the odds are that there will be some ads that stir up political controversy.

Terry, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president to attract attention to the anti-abortion cause, filed a complaint with the FCC after WMAQ Chicago, an NBC affiliate, refused to run his ad.

Jason Rose, a public relations expert in Arizona and partner of the firm Rose, Moser and Allyn, said the sheer size of the Super Bowl audience drives companies to take a risk in advertising.

(UPDATE: NBC scored a real touchdown with its own NBC network promo for the Super Bowl — a slick musical number from “How to Succeed” adapted to promote all of NBC’s shows with some of its biggest entertainnment and news names. GO HERE.)

The Hill gives these links to five of the most controversial Superbowl commercials:
Pepsi Max
Focus on the Family
Sales Genie
Snickers
Move On

And if those aren’t enough for you, here’s a collection of Super Bowl ads from past years:

The top 25:

The Top 10 from 2011:

The Best from 2010:

The Top 10 from 2008:

The Top 10 from 2007:

Just look at this report by my friend Justin Ver Burg:

P.S. Ventriloquists aren’t the only ones looking for work. These days you see a lot of dummies clamoring for jobs, too (it’s election year).

Some close to the smooth-voiced television host described a man hurt and distraught by bad business decisions, poor health, and an ugly divorce that took hundreds of thousands of dollars from his children and other family members….

In 1982, he underwent a 21-hour operation to fix a congenital malformation in blood vessels in his brain. “You choose your brain surgeons for their stamina,” he later told the Washington Post. “You’re never quite the same afterward. Travel is always a real test.”

He also suffered a stroke in the last decade. His health was not the only thing to deteriorate. By the mid-2000s his personal life began to unravel. After a failed first marriage that produced two sons, Anthony and Raymond, Cornelius married a much younger Russian model named Viktoria Chapman in 2001.

NYTimes obit and appraisal. Some great Soul Train moments.

I’m concerned. More than concerned, in fact: deeply troubled.

How can I say this, diplomatically? Hmmm.

Your new news  shows look like crap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And by “look” I mean the physical plant that serves as a backdrop for your hosts.

They are an embarrassment, and, much as I’d like to be a fly on the wall for the sessions in which your “look” was rationalized, whoever made the decision was an idiot, no matter what high-falutin’ Manhattan “black canvas” artsy rationalizations were woven from threads of purest coruscating B.S. 

I want to pick up on a thread from yesterday’s conclusion to the “Selling the New Nixon” series: staging matters. Command of your elements matters. How you dress MATTERS. In show business, in politics and yes, even on TV news and opinion shows.

What I’m trying to say is that your presentation looks about as awful as that old cable access (do they still have cable access?) crank who duct-taped the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag behind his coffee table every week as his set on every cable system in the USA. (It was different guys, of course, but eerily the same awful presentation).

Live! Hello from Al Gore’s garage …

There is a DIFFERENCE between cable news and cable access, and, at this moment, Current TV has this dreadful look of a former governor of Michigan (I watched the debut, last night, of THE WAR ROOM with Jennifer Granholm), a former vice president of the United States, and two former MSNBC hosts broadcasting from an abandoned fallout shelter somewhere in the tri-state region.

Seriously?

Much as I would like to take vorpal pen in hand and do some serious snicker-snacking, let me offer some constructive criticism, instead. The rant portion is more or less concluded and you can unstop the eyes of children and impressionable persons, now.

I lived and worked in Hollywood for fifteen years, and I know a little something about media and presentation. Here’s a tale to establish my bona fides and get us into the meat of the matter:

Once, when I was a film critic, I attended a screening at MGM down in Culver City (after they tore the back lot apart and sold off all their memorabilia). And, I don’t recall the film, which was fairly forgettable, but I recall the smallish screening room, which, like all the old screening rooms, had plush seats and ASHTRAYS on the back of the seats, and you could actually often SMOKE in them, even though smoking was illegal in all movie theaters in town (L.A.M.C. Pi R Squared).

Anyway, sitting a few rows away in an uncrowded, small, screening room, was Leonard Maltin, from Entertainment Tonight at the time, and innumerable TV Movie guides, a fancy art book on Walt Disney (I have a copy in the other room and am too lazy to get up and check), etcetera.

A slight, trim fellow, with a ghostly but not ghastly beard, owlish glasses and a pleasant face on a slim frame, as we’ve all seen on television, at one time or another.

The movie ended. As the lights came up, he was easy to spot in his satin Mickey Mouse jacket — probably a freebie from a grateful studio, and definitely a cool bit of apparel — if I might break with heterosexual male convention for a moment and actually acknowledge another man’s clothing.

And then Leonard stood up.

From the waist up, slim, trim fellow with shoulders as narrow as his smile was broad.

From the waist down: The U.S.S. Missouri.

The line from the musical came to mind: “She’s got a pair of hips/just like two battleships.”

But, though he’s been on camera for years, you never see that. He actually looked like one of the leftovers of the zodiac: two disparate creatures welded together at the waist: half a horse/half a man, or half a goat/half a fish.

Here, he was half a slight, bespectacled film critic, half Moby Dick.

BUT YOU NEVER SEE THAT.

That’s called the magic of television, and I will counterpoint that with the brick walls of the “Young Turks” and the “War Room” sets.

Much of the evening consisted of the host talking
to inanimate television sets scattered throughout
the National Guard Armory basement  it was shot in

DO NOT SHOW ME BRICK WALLS that make it look like you’re a bunch of amateurs broadcasting from an abandoned tenement lobby.

This violates the first tenet of motion pictures — which TV news finally picked up from what has been classical animation technique from before the clown jumped out of the inkwell: background movement. A motion picture is just that: it MOVES.

Just having a drunk lurching around with a hand-held camera DOES not make that dead brick move. Nor does a brick wall communicate OTHER than poverty; it may be charming at a coffee shop in Soho, but on video it’s death. It’s every bit as intrusive and not nearly as pleasant as Naked News, where strippers read the news and take off their clothes.

Looks kind of like somebody broadcasting from a garage

At least with that, you watch. Seeing someone in blue jeans, set against a backdrop of a brick wall with a bunch of old political posters prancing between large-screen flat TVs isn’t cutting edge. It looks more like a burglary in progress at BEST BUY.

Keith Olbermann’s set has vanished entirely (rumors of consistent technical errors and malfunctions), but I can’t say that I care for the “Charlie Rose on PBS” black void. It’s far superior to the brickwork derelicts that serve as the other sets, but Keith is a professional, and he pulls it off with aplomb. But, again, losing the tie is a mistake.

(Why? I’ll tell you at the very end. Most of this criticism is aimed at The Young Turks and Granholm’s show.)

Let’s go back to Hollywood: Yesterday, I told you the story of Ronald Reagan and how to hold a phone for the camera. No matter how “authentic” it might look to the method actor to cover half their face by holding the phone as one would ACTUALLY hold the phone, it serves no purpose and is, in fact, counter-productive. The audience already knows what a telephone looks like. They didn’t pay for that. They paid to see Marilyn’s face.

And, in TV news — as in Leonard Maltin’s example — we don’t need to see you from the waist down.

Look: I’m not suggesting that you go the way of Faux Nooz­™ by adopting the video equivalent of the old college debate dictum: if you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with BS.

We don’t actually multitask — we just weave endless fugues, combining processes, as when someone knits, watches TV and carries on a conversation about what the lady up the block said — and all that frippery fragments consciousness, rather than focusing it.  But a dead wall is dead space, and that draws my eye FROM the broadcast and gets in the way of my watching it.

Less  CBS News than “Fernwood 2Nite“

TV news looks the same all over the world for a REASON: it imputes authority and gravitas to what is, inevitably, a narrator reading from either a paper script or a teleprompter and looking into the camera.

It’s not meant to be an exciting medium, but it is meant to be a communications medium. Wearing a TIE communicates an underlying ethos and gravitas; wearing a suit, sitting at a desk lend a specific trained credibility to the host.

You see, the FORM of communication is a communication, too. I learned that in typesetting (which I did between writing gigs, and paid a lot better than being a Kelly Girl® temporary typist).

You can set a serious message in a certain typeface and completely destroy the meaning of the message just by the type design. Here’s a sentence:

You never did “The Kenosha Kid.”

And here’s that sentence in three different typefaces (you’re reading this in Georgia, most likely):

What you see here are the three standard typefaces that you see in virtually all commercial printing:

• Fritz Quadrata Bold (usually called “Albertus Bold” on PCs) is popular for commercial logos, and you can see it in the KFC and Safeway logos just about anywhere. You’ll be surprised at how many places you’ll find it if you look.
• Souvenir is the standard typeface for ad and magazine copy and is utterly ubiquitous. ‘Nuff said.
• Helvetica (usually called “Swiss” or “Ariel”) is used in place of Souvenir, and is very popular in instruction manuals and technical documents.

If you have those three typefaces, you’ve pretty much got a typesetting shop. Very little “fancy” type ever gets used outside of those three, with their bold and italic corollaries.

But EACH one communicates a subtly DIFFERENT message. Each sentence is slightly different. Or consider this:

Now, instead of looking at the sentences, all you see are the different sorts of type, each repeating the same sentence, but in a subtly different way. Or, to make it even more explicit:

Right now, the video “typeface” that Current TV is using is the bottom typeface, which gives the impression of a ransom note or a mad bomber, just as the “news” sets gives the impression of somebody who’s snuck into the basement of the local high school.

Somebody in business attire behind a desk, with a green screen background is the Fritz Quadrata of news around the world. And that format and formula weren’t derived by accident. They are used because, after trial and error, they WORK.

And please don’t let me see the cables and wires. This is a no-no from time immemorial. They don’t make you look “cutting edge” they make you look like a bunch of amateurs. And, trust me, conveying the metamessage of “cheap,” “dirty,” and “amateurish,” is NOT the way to present news. The digerati of Manhattan may think it’s kewl, but it is a monumental turnoff AND distraction.

The point is communication, so why undercut your message with an underlying silent communication that you either don’t know what you’re doing, or else you just don’t give a crap. Neither mitigates towards credibility.

And if credibility weren’t an issue, why hire Keith Olbermann? Why hire Jennifer Granholm? Why have Al Gore on primary night analysis?

Serious news show or garage band?

If you want to play news, wear a suit and tie, and if you’re in jeans, fine, but do it behind a desk. Contrary to popular delusion, you don’t need to have a news staff prancing about aerobically to deliver credible, reliable, important news. Consider Leonard Maltin.

All you need, actually, is two faces of a desk (front and top), and a green screen wall behind the desk. I’ve GOT a can of green screen paint from my last video shoot, and you’re welcome to it, if you want it. Bought at the movie supply house on La Brea across the street from the old KCOP 13 studios, it’s industry standard and goes on with a standard roller and brush.  You can slap it on anything you’d like for a flat surface.

JUST that much would improve your programs about 300% and, at a bare minimum, wouldn’t DETRACT from what you’re messaging in the news.

If you can’t afford sets, take the old Hippocratic Oath to heart: First, do no harm.

The story is told that Jimi Hendrix gave two concerts at one of the Fillmores (I forget which) on New Year’s Eve, and, after the first concert, with all the jumping and behind-the-back and playing with his teeth tricks, Bill Graham supposedly said “It sounded like crap, man! You don’t need all the circus tricks. Just play the music.”

And Jimi did the second set stock still, creating a legendary performance. Reportedly, no one in the audience registered offense or walked out because the musician wasn’t jumping around on stage like a cocker spaniel on Meth.

I would commend that approach to you, Current TV. Forget the circus tricks, the phony embrace of the everyman squalor and poverty of what looks like you’re broadcasting from inside the local National Guard armory.

Did they forget to pay their electric bill?

OK. I know this is a bit painful and perhaps kind of embarrassing, but dammit, it’s IMPORTANT that an alternative progressive cable channel succeed. For all the rightie howling about MSNBC, it’s still under the thumb of NBC news, and infiltrated through and through with Joe Scarboroughs and Michael Steeles (and other, impossible rare conservative Black Republicans, who seem to gravitate to MSNBC and CNN like unicorns to a magic spring) and, until he fell off the Kooky Klannish Kliff, Pat Buchanan.

The corporate media are almost COMPLETELY bought, and Comcast, who now controls all NBC and MSNBC content, is run by Brian L. Williams, whose political affiliations are murky. Comcast’s new head of NBC/Universal, however, is a Republican Über-contributor named Steve Burke.

So you HAVE to succeed, Current. Now, buck up, and take a little constructive criticism from someone who doesn’t want to watch you shoot yourself in the foot and then hop up and down squealing while the Sadists of the Reicht howl with guttural grunts and clicks of glee.

If you’re going to show TV screens, just HIDE the damned TVs. This is a perfect metaphor for what’s wrong.

1939 black and white TV

For seventy years or thereabouts, the Cathode Ray Tube television was the standard and only TV available, and became available everywhere.

Same thing seventy years later

But, aside from some weird nerds who built their own HeathKit® color TVs from a kit, nobody actually ever SAW a cathode-ray television.

This is a CRT TV:

Naked Lunch: this is what a TV actually is

We “know” it’s true. Somewhere, we actually saw that “real” TV, but we have always preferred the snazzy package with the magical screen floating in the middle. The REALITY of the CRT TV is ugly and disturbing. So we give it a pleasant or even a non-descript, nothing “set” in which to watch the magic, flicking of the 60 scan per second electron gun zapping rare earths.

Right now, you’re broadcasting shows that are that Naked Lunch cathode ray tube and electronic assembly bolted to a metal (or plastic) chassis.

Do what everybody has done from day one and let that magic screen float in a pleasant box. Heck, you might recall that for “The Situation Room” the big star is the giant modular TV screen. But it’s still an ugly assemblage of wires under that package. Hide them wires!

The star of the CNN program, and Wolf Blitzer

Now, one last little story and then I’ll let you get back to your garage for the next show.

Napoleon said that he’d learned more about statecraft from Talma, the famed French actor than from his contemporary Talleyrand, the famed French statesman and survivor.

Because, he said, he’d understood from Talma — a personal friend — that you have to ACT THE ROLE required of you. When Bonaparte was engaged with the Legislature, he DRESSED as a legislator. When engaged in war, he dressed as a general, and never confused the two. The clothing, believed Napoleon, was essential to playing the role properly. Any actor will tell you the same.

Or, as Ivan Markoda used to teach his acting students at the VANMAR Academy in Hollywood: If you go through the motions of anger, your body will find the emotion, without a bunch of fancy Stanislavsky of Boleslavsky emotional memory crap. Act out the physical manifestation of anger, and the anger will be there in the scene.

If you’re going to play newsman and newswoman, ACT like newsmen and newswomen.

And, if you’re going to play newsman and newswoman, DRESS like newsmen and newswomen.

You might recall the movie “Patton” when George C. Scott’s character arrives to take command of a US Army in North Africa that’s just suffered its first disaster of World War II at Kasserine Pass.

He immediately issues orders that the men are to be in regulation uniforms, shoes shined, ties on, or else:

Gentlemen, from this moment, any soldier without leggings, without a helmet, without a tie, any man with unshined shoes or a soiled uniform… is going to be skinned.

He imposes what might seem a martinet’s version of arbitrary discipline, but there is a deadly serious reason for it, as he explains:

You want to know why this outfit got the hell kicked out of it? A blind man could spot it. They don’t act like soldiers; they don’t look like soldiers; why should they be expected to fight like soldiers?

That is advice to take to heart, Current TV.

Act like credible newspersons and LOOK like credible newspersons, and everyone will expect that you ARE newspersons.

Capisce?

Hey, I love what you’re doing. Just get the Bohemian Rococo out of the picture and run some mildly animated backdrops on the green screen behind the desk. Less setting, more sentience, please.

Florida primary “War Room” — or is it Radio Free Piscataway?

Movies is magic, friends, and if you don’t make that magic your friend, it will surely be your enemy.

Which is, alas, where it currently stands.

Cordially, yer pal,

Hart Wms.

Courage.

===================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Here is Gingrich singing his post-Florida theme song:

So here..from one of the weirdest song-filled films in filmdom is future James Bond singing with an elderly Mae West playing a woman much, MUCH younger than her real age. Ringo Starr was also in this film. West died two years later.

PS: I have a copy of the DVD of this truly stunning (in several ways) film at home. If you’re interested I advise you to get your copy soon…since it ain’t gonna be reissued. Ever.

But check in with TMV often to get the takes on the debate from other TMV writers.

Towards the end of the evening I’ll be putting together a roundup on the debate — with quotes from blogs, news stories and Twitter.