Episode 90: Triple Threat

Play Now!

(This episode is part of the series The Powell Movement. Sort of.)

Not all of what Lewis Powell suggested has turned into canon by those that follow his memo. Powell was a learned man of his times that eschewed, I suspect, the majority of what the boob tube offers. Therefore, he grossly underestimated what a vast amount of cash could do toward buying the medium that he strongly suggested should be merely watched and criticized. Then again, who could have predicted what that same money, injected directly into the election process, could have done to morph the news medium Powell warned should be watched so closely?

This morphing is the topic of Episode 90: Triple Threat, the rise of the money-media-election complex.

In this episode, I read from Greg Mitchell's book Campaign of the Century, documenting Upton Sinclair's 1934 run for Governor of California; and from Robert McChesney and John Nichols' book Dollarocracy. Audio-wise, I play Senator Al Franken waiting for a potential campaign donor to answer, singing as he does a little ditty he shared with Terri Gross on a Fresh Air interview; and from Counterspin, Jeanine Jackson telling the woeful story of Les Moonves' shocking honesty about what actually motivates national network news. D. L. Myers, of course, read from the memo itself.

I tune up things a bit with Podington Bear's appropriately named song "Dole It Out." I open with KMFDM's "Attak", today backing Henry Giroux, and close with Mistle Thrush's "It's All Like Today."

As with all my episodes, I'm releasing this under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution, share-alike, and non-commercial license.

Ad Nauseam

Hey, Dear Listerners,

I felt you need some explanation as to the delay putting out Episode 90. Bottom line, I'm not feeling well. I mean I'm not feeling well enough to walk to the bathroom (most of the time) without serious doses of mind-warping medication to get me there without prolonging the bathroom experience into one best not described.

Something has embuggered my inner ear to the point where up is down, right is left, and trying to ignore these signals that conflict so obviously with my eyeballs only results in what lubbers must call sea sickness (though I, a 15-year professional mariner, still doubt such silly notions exist in the physical world).

(Then again, I just realized each half of the word "nausea" can refer to the oceans; "nau-tical" for the first part. Hmmmm.)

Anyhoo, the almost finished episode sits, as producers of such stuff say, In The Can just waiting for me to muster enough internally consistent equilibrium to finish and post it. And I'm sure once the third specialist squeezes me in for a look-see I might even get a diagnosis of what even happened, something I've yet to get at all since this began almost a month ago.

The worst part about all of this?! Look at this post's title. I spent months wracking my brains for a decent, clever, catchy title for the Attack Ads! Podcast, and there is was all along. Duh.

Well, that's about all the screen time I can muster, even with multi-minute breaks avoiding the screen itself (which appears to be extremely nausea inducing). I'll get back to fighting the good fight once I can, I promise. Thanks very much for your patience.

-Jim
You Ad A-{blech!}-er.