Episode 61: The Sons of Omission

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When we hear folks say that "objectivity is impossible," what do they mean? In the most basic sense, it proves impossible to sort what is and what is not important without assigning a subjective judgment to everything being reported. When 100 things can be mentioned, and the reporter chooses to mention only 99 of them, objectivity goes bye-bye. I explore this tendency for certain stuff to get unmentioned (and, in some cases, why) in Episode 61: The Sons of Omission.

In this episode, I read from: Will Irwin's 1911 article, "The Advertising Influence" (something I found in a collection called "Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism," edited by Robert McChesney and Ben Scott); two books by Upton Sinclair, including "The Brass Check" (1920, self-published) and "I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked" (1934); Greg Mitchell's "The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics" (Random House, 1992); and Andrew Blechman's "Leisureville: Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008).

Musically, I played: Jahzzar doing "Circles;" Lee Rosevere doing "Gimmicks Three;" and that campfire singing of "Under the Rainbow" led by my friends Julie and Rolf. Also, KMFDMM's "Attack" opens the show with Jan Wong's observation about limitations reporters face.