The newspaper at the end of the drive

Sunday mornings I stagger out and walk down the drive in the dew filled morning with the Canadian geese honking and my neighbors homes looking less suburban in the christening light of dawn and there on the end of the drive in blue is my newspaper. It is a fat rolled information log of New York Times descent that I scoop up and carry back in for my coffee and pancakes to start my Sunday ritual. That is until about a week ago when the my delivery was unceremoniously halted for nonpayment. The digital age just took another small step into my life.

I had the three day delivery package of Friday Saturday and Sunday. My suburb of Chicago is a bit of a stones throw from NY so I pay a little  more I figure. And I have bounced along paying my roughly forty dollars a month for the extreme pleasure of seeing that blue rolled harbinger of the world at the end of my driveway. I cant tell you how upset I was the few times it did not arrive, harassing some poor customer service rep who assured me it would appear in a few hours. It never did, but that was related to the fifteen or sixteen year old or the mom working the night shift who flung my paper in the wee hours of dawn.

But the reason my delivery stopped was that my bill had grown out of control. I am not sure why but suddenly  I was down one hundred and forty bucks. And the bill had a way of climbing. Maybe late fees, maybe I missed a payment. But suddenly I was coasting toward two hundred bucks for the privilege of having a newspaper at the end my driveway. Times being what they are I let it go and the Times declared my account suspended and my Sunday ritual changed. No longer was the paper there waiting for me and no longer did I feel that excitement when I picked up the voice of the world.

It had been replaced by a nanosecond of anticipation in my Kindle. .99 was the cost for a quick download and just like that the newspaper at the end of my drive had been replaced. I was not crazy about this development but I was used to reading on my Kindle and like everything else it had become driven by economics. Sitting down with my coffee and small screen may not be the same as the spread out newspaper, but it was better than nothing and I could afford it.

I promise myself that I will straighten out my account and pay up and get my delivery fired up again. I do want that moment of seeing the paper lying there waiting for me as a sort of postscript of the week. It had become a marker for one week ending and another beginning. But there is that feeling that this ritual might be historical and I might just get used to the digital paper and never go back.

 I guess I could leave my kindle on the end of the drive and pick that up. Or have the newspaper lady fling it there to give it authenticity. It might work.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Our Tacky Age of Social Media

Social media is tacky. It is our personal billboard, the billboard of yesteryear with the lawyer telling us that bankruptcy is the way or the triple XXX truck stop with GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. We would see these billboards from our car and wonder what type of people would respond to such garish enticements. Bankruptcy, triple XXX. Really? But now we know, we would respond to those billboards and we prove it every day on the Internet. It is the age of tacky.

Anothy Wiener is just another casualty of our twittering reality. We now advertise ourselves to others in ways we would have never dreamed of or condoned. Jump into facebook and behind the pictures of Aruba or the vacation in Switzerland is a self advertisement for the Fantasy Life. We now advertise ourselves to others and present our lives or our version of our lives to others and this brings the glow of braggadocio to our cheeks as we hide behind our screens.

We now sell ourselves. Anthony sold himself as the hip congressman to a twenty six year old and went down salacious avenue to see what he could drub up. Why not? Social media gives us the vehicle so we can all act like prostitutes and then turn off the computer and go about our everyday life. But social media has a dark side and the Andrew Brightbarts of the world are the perfect vampires. They look into the underbelly of our tweets and posts and our comments and they find the worst of us. Now our letters and furtive phone calls of yesterday are sitting in cyberspace, waiting to destroy our lives.

The only way social media works is by self promotion. We all have cellphones so the communication gig is only a small part. Social media is the high school girl or boy saying the dirty words and then taking it another step by saying the dirty act. We ride high in our reflected glory that comes back in comments and posts and tweets and pictures and videos. The humdrum life has been amped up along the lines of the cheap thrill of pornography and lasts about as long. Because the dirty secret is social media mostly plays to an audience of one and the fantasy we are playing to millions fades with the screen turning to black.

Ultimately we are left withe pathetic bits and bytes of middle aged men with their shirts off or women with their computer cams that are all the more tawdry when exposed as the hubris of politicians or celebrities. Social media is the final democratization of a culture with not enough celeb to go around and so we tackily post our own bios and our own pictures and then our obits. Mostly to no one, but ourselves 

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in July

Anthony Wieners Wiener

It isn't so much that Anthony Wiener snapped a picture of his own wiener and shot it out into cyberspace via twitter it is that the media machine between Palins Wallyword vacation takes a break and puts Wieners Wiener page one in cable and network land. The wiener in question hacked by the crazed hacker who shot it off to the unsuspecting innocent is now abroad in some cafe on the left bank with a mask on and a handheld, laughing into his latte as Wiener explains his wiener to Wolf Blitzer who looks like he never had a wiener and if he did it had a beard.

But famed nobody Andrew Brightbart could not wrestle this wiener to the ground as twitter pulled in every network and newspaper in one hundred forty character hubris or the equivalent pixilation which makes for a very grainy wiener shot indeed. Anthony Wiener on explaining his wiener told Wolf and anyone who would listen that a hacker prankster punk took a shot of his wiener unbeknowst to him and tweeted his weiner to all would follow a Wiener. But is it your wiener Wolf persisted. Lets just say I wont dignify that with an answer Mr. Wiener responded.

And even as Lawrence O'Donnell berated the Wiener followers and Weinter cabitzers for being so fascinated with Wieners wiener he led with the story also to say no one should lead with a wiener story and haven't we fallen to a new low? Indeed. Mr. Wiener held fast to his hacked punked pranked story but did not specifically deny the wiener in question was his wiener bringing more wiener speculation from the Wiener watchers and followers.

At the end of the day all we know for sure is that a mans' wiener was compromised by being tweeted by someone and we cannot be sure that the wiener was not Anthony Weiner's weiner who tweeted his own wiener but that it is someones wiener even though Anthony Wiener will not say that is it not his wiener but that he was punked hacked or pranked by somewhere out there in cyberspace by someone who possibly took Anthony Wieners weiner and tweeted it for all the world to see. The moral to the story is that no man  should ever tweet another man's wiener. Especially not Anthony Wieners wiener.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Palin Tell All Author Speaks Out of Both Sides of his Mouth

You cant'  have your cake and eat it too. But if you are Frank Bailey you will try. The aide who wrote the tell all book Blind Allegiance is having it both ways and maybe that is a hallmark of the new crop of I worked with a celebrity now I will rat them out genre. Bailey popped up on Lawrence O'Donnell and spoke with great contrition of the way he smeared good people at Palins direction and how his book is an apology for all the bad things he's done and also he got one hell of an advance. The last part mumbled of course. O'Donnell was very nice because Frank was bashing Palin and saying all the things we know about Sarah, egotistical, dictatorial, venal, vain, greedy, etc etc. His answers were coached and canned. Good PR screamed at us as he painted himself as the reformed conservative who has seen the light. By the end he outDonalled Lawrence O'Donnell.

Then I caught him on the Sean Hannity show on Fox. A different man. He spoke of Sarah's falling from the concept of smaller government and how she really wasn't a good conservative and had actually grown government in Alaska. Hmmmmm. Him speak with forked tongue. But Sean Hannity whom I am no fan of actually went after him. You wrote this book for the money. You betrayed Sarah. You are the worst kind of person. Someone who keeps all his emails for publication. Sean ripped him a new you know what what. Poor Frank looked like someone had stuck a pin in his PR coached persona. You could almost see the book publicist telling him, now when you go on Fox talk about how Sarah grew government and how she was not really a true conservative. But Hannity wasn't buying any of it.

Frank looked pretty bad by the end. He looked like a loser whom some agent had packaged into a book with some emails and gossip and then photoshopped him onto the front of a book with Palin. Which Hannity pointed out is exactly what the cover consisted of. Frank slinked off the Fox set off to another show. You can just see the publicist tweaking his pitch. Now lets use a little big government and a little redistributionism with a twinge of Beckian Tea Party nuance. Right.....

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off this summer

Poor Ed

Poor. Ed. Could a guy get more contrite and not melt into the floor? I don't think so. He must have said he was sorry to Laura Ingram twenty times before he was done with his sign off before his week of suspension for calling Laura a slut of the mouth. You really expected someone to come out and throw a bucket of water on Ed by the fifth I apologize to my family, my boys, to the network, to Laura, to just about everyone on the planet for what I have done. And then Ed could melt into the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West.


Yeah Ed is over the top. Yeah he is usually ranting about the same old populist stuff and he sure is no Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O'Donnell. He is the pissed off big guy who gets steamed up by his own words during his show to the point he looks like he's going to jump off the screen and tackle someone in your living room. I cannot really watch Ed too much. It is so much retread, but I did feel sorry for the guy when he groveled for ten minutes for calling whatshername a slut.

Yeah, he shouldn't of done it. Yeah he spouted off. But do you watch Fox News? I do. And when they spout off about not giving assistance to the tornado victims or is Obama really a citizen or giving Andrew Brightbart night after night to voice his racist opinions( he never apologized to anyone for trashing a woman's career) then you kind of feel Ed has a point. Riddle me this one, can anyone remember anyone from Fox News apologizing for anything? Anything at all? After years and years of racial attacks on the President and everything he stands for.

Of course not. Not going to happen. But I can name David Letterman, Keith Olbermann, Lawrence Odonnell, Ed Schultz as having apologized on the air for remarks they have made. Now why is that? Why are the liberal guys always apologizing and Rush and Becks and Sean merrily spewing their hate? Guess that is their shtick.


Anyway, old Ed is gone. And who knows if he will come back. He sure looked pained when he apologized to the world. Maybe somone should have thrown a bucket of water on him and he could have just melted into the floor into a smokey steaming mass...I'm sorry for being a liberal...I'm sorry for being a liberal...I'm sorry for being a liberal...

Guess you only see that on Fox.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man will blast off this summer

Our Taunting Media

Our media taunts us all the time. They love stories about people who are ten or twelve or twenty and who just started a company and made a million dollars while donating shoes to an impoverished county without shoes. They love someone who looks like they are nine who started a website and became a billionaire. They love someone who is twelve who starred in a movie and sold a million downloads of a song or who just happened to be fifteen when they came up with the cure for cancer in their spare time while donating time to homeless people in rough neighborhoods of Chicago or New York.

Publishing is even worse. They love the story of the girl who self published a novel and got a million downloads. Or the girl who sold a first novel at twenty five to an agent who was thirty to an editor who was ten. For a million dollars. That one really makes writers feel like crap. Writers especially feel that kind of taunting because most writers make nothing. Zero. Nada. Or like me they worked years and years and chased down publishers like timber wolves and finally shot them or got them to publish their book. The discovered moment came after years of toil. And that is still the exception.

I suppose working people get very tired of hearing of the guy who quit his job and then took five hundred dollars and started a web based company and sold it for five hundred million. Or the billionaires You get really tired of the billionaires. Even the name is obnoxious. Billionaire. Not merely rich. Billionaire. Like something from another planet. And maybe they are. I certainly don't know any billionaires. I know of them and I know what they look like and I did see The Social Network. That billionaire looked like a boy. I don't even know many millionaires. A few. But they only have a few million. Not very impressive.

In fact I know mostly people who don't have squat. I know people who look liked drugged coal miners from stress. They have been stressed for years now with unemployment, foreclosure, taxes, college tuition. It seems like everyone I know is barely making it. They are happy to have enough money to have a night out. A drink after work. And these people have college degrees. Lots of them. They are hardly the working class, but maybe they are.

So I guess the taunting will go on. It is designed to make us feel worse. It is designed to make us want what those people have. Sure. Who doesn't want a million dollars. Or a billion. Who doesn't want to be famous. But most people are just middle class. You sure don't read about them in the paper. Except when they lose their ass. Then it makes a good story.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off April 26th

MSNBC Taking Water Fast Post-Olbermann

I admit it. Keith Olbermann was my man for a long time and even when I moved away from combat punditry I would always flip on Keith to see what he was up too. But now he has left MSNBC or more specifically Count Down and turned it over to Lawrence O'Donnell. The scuttle is that after two years of Keith negotiating with the network they parted ways over differences we can only guess at. Pushing the bar must have finally got to the brass, but all you have to do is watch the network post-Olbermann to see it is a ship taking water. Fast.

I like Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell, but they are no Olbermann. Bringing in the Ed Schultz show is just piling on left wing on liberal on left wing. He brings little but bombast and regurgitation to the lineup and I am a liberals liberal but Ed is too much for even me. But Lawrence O'Donnell while sincere and heartfelt is a man with a cross hair on his back. You can already see the brass's next move when the plummeting ratings come in. And they will plummet.

The problem is Keith wasn't just Count Down, he was the anchor of MSNBC at night. Hardball, Maddow and O'Donnell were the warm up bands for Keith, though they often followed each other with reciprocal stories. But Keith just took it up a notch and blasted a hole right through the rights latest buffoonery with scathing indictments, dripping sarcasm, and boyish glee. Many times he went right over the top and blasted out of the roof, but it was always an interesting rocket to watch. Now we are left with the smoke and blow back of his departure and there seems to be little propellant left in the MSNBC tank.There is just a gaping hole.

Lawrence will do his best to fill the big man's shoes but he is doomed. The left suffers from lack of firepower in general and they just lost one of their biggest guns. Keith had the guts and and the position to take on anyone including the President and say exactly what he thought which is probably why the higher ups at CBS and MSNBC squirmed and pulled on their collars. But of course it was that type of red hot editorializing that cranked up the ratings and made MSNBC a player.

It almost makes you wonder if the golden age of combat punditry is coming to an end. If the age of civility does indeed occur then certainly the other combat pundits will be out of a job. Maybe Keith Olbermann saw the writing on the wall and got while the going was good. But before it is over a Jay Leno type of scenario would not be that surprising with Olbermann returning to bring ratings back in line. I think a flame thrower would be the proper metaphor for the regard he would show the short sited higher ups of MSNBC and company.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in February

Good Night and Good Luck-Olbermann Leaves MSNBC

Edward R. Murrow who Keith Olbermann obviously modeled himself after said these words every time he signed off from his broadcast. Good Night and Good Luck. It is irony at it's best, but Murrow meant it. He wanted people to have the luck it would take to fight the corporate powers, government, the natural tyranny of men. His job was to poke holes in these forces and shine light into the dark corners of human chicanery. He eventually took on McCarthy in the darkest days of the House on Un-American Activities and did what no man in the news had done up to that point--he took on the underside of American democracy that destroys people while hiding under the flag.

Now Mr. Olbermann has left MSNBC for reasons unknown, but we can guess. If you watched Keith at all he was the one of the few who took on the dark side of American politics and American business. He was the underdogs dog and barked at anyone who came near. Many times he slipped into bombast and of course his show was hopelessly one sided with his triumvirate of Chris Hayes, Howard Fineman, and Eugene Reynolds to comment and mostly back up Keith's latest thesis. As time wore on Keith did become predictable, but he was always heartfelt and always unafraid.

Sometimes we cringed when he really got on a roll, but like a good novel you had to listen closely to the prose. Keith was a thinking man's  liberal cable show. He was no slouch when it came to mixing history, liberal theology, and politics, throw in the Olbermann anger and indignation and you had a cocktail of  talk show bravado that could knock your socks off and many times did. Sometimes, you just wanted to stand up and cheer when he finished his Final Comment.

But he has left the network and we don't know where he will land. Keith did what Maddow and now Lawrence O'Donnel can't. He did have an Edward R. Murrow touch that had a moral indignance and gravitas that lent credibility to his charges against the nightly villains. Keith Olbermann does care about people and he does want to be the voice of those who cannot defend themselves. And so when he signed off with his customary Good Night and Good Luck at the end of his show, he said, look I know the cards are stacked, but le'ts keep trying anyway. We can only hope he lands somewhere and continues the fight. So back at you Keith.

Good Night, and Good Luck.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will Blast off in April.