I Got UVERSED!

Tech for the modern family is the great hemorrhage now. It is as essential as gas. Cellphones, landlines, cable, Internet. The modern family needs it all but the cost...the cost. So I was coasting along when I got telemarketed by a dude who told me he could solve all my problems. One bill. Less Cost. And he would give me a three hundred dollar Visa card for just signing up! Wow. One bill. All the headaches in one central point. And the channels, the speed, the service. Sign me up bro.

He did. And I got UVERSE. And I coasted along and my first bill was just seventy three dollars. Wow. You mean for my cellphones (3) my Internet and my basic tv and Internet just seventy three bucks? Something is wrong here. Hey, don't worry about it. You are good  my salesman told me. Your next bill will be more but you will have all the savings. Alright. Meanwhile I'm on the VERSE. DVRing from my phone. Watching shows on my phone. Styling.

And then I got my second billl....seven hundred and eighty three buckos! Wow. I got UVERSED! So I called up my now non existent saleman and was handed off to the call center. Hours on the phone and guess what I found out? It was all perfectly correct. You see I was prorated, serviced charged, over the topped, moved over, combined, double rated, adjusted, added onto, special serviced, upgraded, downgraded, new contracted, started up, signed on, subtracted, and finally specially considered and at the end I owed SEVEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THREE DOLLARS. Man... I get UVERSED!

And so I checked around. Yeah man. I had UVERSE. Past tense all of my friends. Nobody STILL had UVERSE. Everybody tried it and got the UVERSE Shaft and ended up back with their original carriers. So I asked for a payment plan. Oh yeah we have a plan...you pay now or you pay a week from now buy you are paying or we cut off your service...ALL OF IT. And so I knew they had me .

What about the three hundred dollar visa card? Oh  well. You have to stay with us for ninety days and then it takes six to eight weeks to get it. Wow...did I get UVERSED. So I am in my extraction mode, but it's going to take some time. So when they call you and tell you they are going to stick it all on one bill and that you are going to save a bunch of money...HANG UP THE PHONE.

Lest you get...UVERSED!

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

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.

Political Theatre on the Left and Right

The first thing we have to do is admit we are no longer watching news. We are watching political theatre. Theatre is fine. Drama is a good thing and it has a  long tradition. A good story pulls us away from our worries and cares for a little while and hopefully we learn a thing or two. But theatre is not news. The reason we watch FOX or MSNBC has little to with news and more to do with our convictions. We want to watch someone with our views get into it with someone else on the other side. If we wanted to watch news we can always tune in Wolf and Anderson and David Gergen. Snore.

Political theatre is a hell of a lot more fun. We are invested in it. It's those damn liberals. It's those damn conservatives. Get a good guest on the show and grab the popcorn and they are off. Will Rachel Maddow tear another Family First conservative to shreds? What the the hell is Keith Olbermann talking about in his special comment anyway? Will Sean Hannity get the whole Great American Panel to tackle the spineless Democratic consultant sandwiched between the wrestler and the NASCAR  driver? Will Bill O'Reilly lose it? Will Glenn Beck break down and cry and explain how in the hell the founding fathers wanted us to live one more time? Now that is entertainment, but it is not news.

It is fine to watch these shows as long as we know we are watching entertainment. Rachel Maddow does research the hell out of the issues and Keith Olbermann passionately believes in what he is saying and Sean Hannity really does believe he is doing the country a favor by exposing the socialists on the left--but the motif of taking a  position and piling on to support it quickly becomes political theatre with a supporting cast of players like Dick Morris on The Factor or the now famous Juan Williams or Howard Fineman and Ezra Klein for Olbermann and Maddow. Any good play must have it's supporting cast and everyone does a hell of a job at putting on the show.

Not that we are not more informed by the end. Not that we don't learn something. But all theatre has a moral imperative or the irony of truth and if David Gergen suddenly came out on the stage and started reading the news we would object to his dry recitation of the days events. But here is the litmus test; a war breaks out with China. Who do you tune in? Fox? MSNBC? No, you turn on the news.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

William Hazelgrove's latest novel is Rocket Man due out in January. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982139241/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0615213073&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0B1G6JP18H927X52KV3A

Our cultural heritage--cable television

Vapidity aside...is it just me or has cable become the dumping ground of all that is cheap, shallow, worthless, produced in a nanosecond on a shoestring with a gnats intelligence? Certainly the pay channels are the only refuge now. I was just reading David Foster Wallaces's essay on television written in 1990 and not much has changed. Or has it?

Wallace did not see the advent of reality television. When he wrote his essay there was just a few nascent starts of Married with Children or Cops. A sort of precursor warm up to Survivor and American Idol or Dog the Bounty Hunter. Reality television tells us about ourselves as it reflects back everyday life. No thought. No work for the viewer. The couch potato has become the comatose patient in the mental ward staring blindly at nothing. One thing about reality television is there is no plot and certainly no meaning so we recall it the way you might talk about an accident--did you see that dude forget his song on American Idol?

Forget about the cries of cultural demise--there is no culture here and whats more in cable land no one cares. The real shows have been relegated to pay or the networks that still care about trying to get some ratings through drama--but cable simply shrugs and puts out more American gladiator type of fare or more cooking shows or more fallen stars followed around with camera crews. Ratings are ratings and the good news is that Americans will watch just about anything with sensational lore.

Nothing new under the sun. We have never held high art in high regard. America was formed as a reaction against a wealthy ruling class in Britain. We surfs were being exploited and so we demanded the right to bear arms and to rebel and overthrow the government if need be. A highly educated sliver of an entitled class may appreciate fine art or high literature, but there is nothing in the Declaration of Independence that says we must have culture. We embrace a populist culture that held up the frontiersman and the cowboy and now the bounty hunter and the cop and the fireman and the all American family falling apart on national television. What is more commonplace or populist than watching ourselves?

Bring on YouTube. We did. We do watch ourselves and we enjoy it immensely. If democracy's final evolution is bringing about celebradom for the masses then we are certainly on our way. A movie star or a singing sensation is hatched overnight thanks to the American Idol motif of talent shows with big payoffs. Do we now have ballads sung by young females that sound like every other young female? You betcha. The point is you don't need originality, you merely now have to morph into what was popular and worked before. If everyone could be a Beatle then everyone would--some things are just trickier to pull off.

So when we flip through the diorama of American cable television and find low budget infomercials and televangelist and wrestlers and bounty hunters and talent shows and fallen rock stars playing dad at home then we really have no one to blame but ourselves. We have deemed art to be accessible and reflective only to the point it reflects us back at us while we sit in front of the tube--or there's me! Or that could be me! In that way television has fulfilled it's promise that everyone can be famous if only for a little while. In a little way.
www.billhazelgrove.com