This Is Not News

In Florida, a thirteen-year-old boy was convicted of murder in the beating death of a young child. The child’s lawyer had attempted to claim that the child was merely attempting to imitate actions he had seen on televised professional wrestling — the defense was rejected. Meanwhile, former Democratic vice-presidential candidate and current Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman announced that he has prepared a draft of legislation that would give federal authorities more latitude to deal with entertainment companies that deliberately market violent movies, TV shows, video games, et cetera, to children. The legislation is in response to a Federal Trade Commission report last year that indicated that media companies routinely test-marketed for and targeted young audiences for works that their own voluntary ratings boards indicated were suitable only for adults.

Also meanwhile, Eminem’s haul of Grammy nominations has caused much protest and hand-wringing among many in the music industry. It seems some critics find his writing and performing talents praiseworthy, but others are less than thrilled at what they consider misogynistic, homophobic and violent lyrics that send a poor message to the kids who are buying his albums and watching his videos on MTV. Some people manage to be in both camps at once, which must make those conversations in the mirror real interesting. Read the remainder of this entry »

Reading the initial reviews of Radiohead’s Kid A, you would have thought that Jesus Christ himself had risen from the dead, listened to a whole lot of Aphex Twin and delivered unto the world a masterpiece the likes of which it had never seen. Four-star reviews leapt from every music magazine; large, positive adjectives were bandied about. “Challenging.” “Difficult.” “Experimental, ambient, difficult challenges.” “Not unlike an experimental, ambient Can meets the difficult, challenging soundscapes of…”

Upon the record’s release months later, a mysterious phenomenon began to surface: the backlash. The same magazines that had praised Radiohead for being so daring began to slam them for being too pretentious, too arty. In my humble opinion, here’s why.

Things would have been different if the band had allowed journalists a promotional copy of the record to listen to for a while before reviews went out. This is the way it usually works, in a nutshell: Writers receive a copy of a record months before it’s actually released, partly so that they have time to form an opinion about it before they write about it, but mostly because magazines have ridiculously large lead times. (As you read this, the magazine I work at is working on its March issue.) The Kid A promo push didn’t work like this. Instead, for fear of the mighty Napster, press were forced to get their first listens at listening parties sponsored by the band’s publicity company. I was fortunate enough to go to one. Read the remainder of this entry »

All right, we’re required by federal law to have a discussion of the whole Napster fiasco, so let’s get it done and move onto more enjoyable musical topics. I really want to discuss the issue, though, because not only are there plenty of interesting intellectual-property-in-the-Internet-era questions to try and answer, but the Recording Industry Association of America’s actions so far are one of the readiest examples of not thinking things through that I can find. I’ll confess to a bias right now: when I see a large number of extremely well-paid people completely failing to use their common sense, I start rubbing my hands together and head for the word processor. Having followed this issue for the last year or so, my hands are almost chapped.

For just a moment, let’s assume that the big record companies are right, and downloading an MP3 file without somehow paying for it is morally and legally equivalent to shoplifting a CD single out of your local record store. There are plenty of reasons to argue that it isn’t, and I promise I will get to them, but for right now let’s give the benefit of the doubt and see where we go from there. It seems fairly straightforward to me that, if people downloading MP3s for free is bad, record companies (and all law-abiding citizens who support them) should pursue a course of action designed to stop people from downloading MP3s for free. Anything else is essentially making a donation to the American Trial Lawyers Association. Read the remainder of this entry »

It has been my experience that most cab drivers have not read Emily Post. At least not the ones that I’ve met. Because if they had, they’d know that most basic rule about conversation in “polite society.” No politics and no religion. One gentleman in particular comes to mind. He was a middle-aged driver named Lou. Not seconds after picking me up at Philadelphia International Airport, Lou launched into a discussion about a variety of hot political subjects. In a thirty-minute drive, he hit everything from drug legalization to welfare to campaign finance reform. It was the best conversation I’d had in months.

Now I’ve encountered a few cab drivers moonlighting as political philosophers (born and raised in New York City, you see) but Lou was by far the most eloquent. As he probably intended, he got me thinking. I got to thinking that we, the politically apathetic American electorate with our cynical talk and embarrassingly lax voting habits, could learn a lot from Lou. If you can’t find Lou, though, you could just turn on The West Wing.

The West Wing, NBC’s drama set in a fictional American White House, has exactly the quality Lou possesses. It’s also a quality that too many of us seem to lack: the courage to speak freely about politics. Picture yourself in the following situation: you’re sitting with a large group of people you know, they could be acquaintances, friends, family, whatever. The conversation turns to some political topic, doesn’t even matter which one. What happens? Does somebody groan? Does someone say “Let’s not talk about this now.” Does someone immediately change the subject? Do people start to get up and leave? Why? Because the law of averages says that if that group is large enough, at least two people are going disagree on that topic. Political disagreements are uncomfortable. Political disagreements are tacky. But as I write this, The West Wing is in its second season. Looks to me like political disagreements just won a boatload of Emmys and make up one of the few truly thought-provoking hours of television. Read the remainder of this entry »