American politics has gotten ugly -- and, as we know, quite violent -- in the last few years. And especially yesterday.
It's easy to point a finger at you-know-who but really that's the wrong person.
Point it not at the clown in the White House but at his forerunner, the person who set the stage and made him possible -- Newt Gingrich. The former Georgia Congressman who masterminded the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress is the one who created the ugly political atmosphere that chokes us -- and sometimes kills us -- today.
Believe it or not, I blogged about all this back in ... drumroll ... 2008. The year 1994 was a transformative year in American culture and politics ... and, arguably, not for the better.
You should listen to Mr NYC interviewee Kurt Anderson (also from 2008) talk about the lasting impact of 1994 on our politics in a recent podcast with Molly Jong-Fast. As always, Kurt is very smart and incisive. And, as always, Mr NYC was and is Ahead of His Time.
If you pay attention to the news, the media is full of hysterical fearmongering, trying to convince the denizens of this 8.8 million strong burg that it's a crime ridden hell-hole, a dystopia of sorts.
This, of course, is nonsense -- crime remains WAY lower than it was even twenty-years ago, the city is quite safe -- but fear sells, helps otherwise unpopular (i.e. Republican) politicians get elected, the media does everything to help them, and they use it to pursue an agenda in government that no one actually likes.
It's happened before and will go on and on, ad infinitum.
New York City is in no ways a dystopia but the image of the city as some kind of scary place persists. Obviously this has been captured in movies such as Taxi Driver and The Warriors from the 1970s, at a time when the city really did seem to be verging on the dystopic.
Two other movies, very different in premise and plot, show another way that NYC might be dystopic. They couldn't be more different in story and tone, as one is totally surreal and out-there while the other is disturbingly believable and possible -- and something some New Yorkers have really dealt with.
Escape from New York (1981) by John Carpenter is about how Manhattan island, in the year 1997(!) has become a literal wall-off prison where the most dangerous criminals have been sent to live out their lives in an abandoned urban jungle. When Air Force One crashes into the island (thanks to terrorists from the Soviet Union which the USA is at war with), a prisoner named Snake (Kurt Russell) is sent-in to rescue the President in 24-hours -- or he'll literally die. Along the way, he recruits a bizarro cab driver played by Ernest Borgnine and a man from Snake's past played by Harry Dean Stanton. There's also a hot chick and lots of weirdos who follow Snake on his mission, trying to free the president from the crime lord who rules this hell-hole played by, of all people, Isaac Hayes (he of "Shaft" fame). While the premise from Escape from New York is insane, it's a remarkably straight-forward and smartly paced action movie -- and unlike movies today that are non-stop action sequences with tiny bits of plot, in this movie the plot drives the action, and there actually isn't that much violence. And Kurt Russell shows what a great leading man he is, and why he's had a very long career. If you want to see the ultimate NYC as dystopia movie, this is it.
Then there's Single White Female (1992). Now this is a scary movie -- it should have been called These White Bitches Are Crazy! This is a believably dystopic story -- in fact, the only unbelievable thing about it is that two underemployed women could afford a huge apartment in the Ansonia. This is about how the greatest danger you can find in this city might literally be in your own home! Bridget Fonda stars as a woman named Allie who finds out that her handsome fiance is cheating so she kicks him out and gets a roommate named Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh, brilliant as always). At first Allie and Hedy get along great, become friends, and life seems good. But when Allie gets back together with the fiance, all goes wrong -- Hedy becomes jealous, starts to pretend to be Allie, tries to seduce the fiance, tries to take over herself and become Allie -- and all hell breaks loose. This is the NYC dystopia in the form of the roommate from hell, how our worst dystopia isn't a city full of criminals but a house full of craziness. It's also just a really good mainstream thriller, the kind of movie they don't make anymore.
Of course, if NYC had someone who helped to make the city a transportation dystopia that persists to this day -- Robert Moses, the 20th century "master builder" who rammed highways all over town and starved public transportation. There's a new play about him on Broadway played by, of all people, Ralph Fiennes called Straight Line Crazy. Believe it or not, even though it's about a famous New Yorker, this play is a fully British production -- Brit actor, writer, and director, first premiering at the National Theater in London. This news story about the play is fascinating -- watching Ralph Fiennes describe how Robert Moses wanted to thrust a highway in Lower Manhattan is bizarre and amazing to watch.
Today I saw a big article on NYC movies. Obviously there are tons of NYC movies and, when I review one here, I try not to review the big famous ones -- instead, I look for the forgotten or overlooked NYC movies, trying to make my meagre audience aware of those they might have missed. Like this article indicates, I also try to review movies that give you a sense of the city, a feeling of living and experiencing it -- not just where the city is used as a convenient, familiar backdrop.
One such example is Vanilla Sky. A few weeks ago I blogged something that included a clip from the 2001 Tom Cruise movie where he is driving around a deserted Manhattan, stops in an empty Times Square, gets out of his car, starts running, then stops and yells into the (not exactly vanilla) sky. We learn later on that this moment was probably some kind of technical glitch in an artificial dream that he is living through -- and that is apparently the plot of the movie.
I say "apparently the plot of the movie" because, to be honest, the plot makes no friggin' sense. Tom Cruise plays a guy very much like ... Tom Cruise: handsome, rich, famous, lots of broads (one too many as it turns out) who gets into a car crash, messes up his face, gets accussed of murder ... and then, from there on, it becomes a weird heady trip. This movie was on the back-end of a trend that really started in 1999 with movies like The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, and Being John Malkovich where the entire reality of the story, the world the movie is set in, gets totally undermind and flipped around. But instead of using this plot-twist once, Vanilla Sky tries to outdo them but have numerous "reality redefining" moments and you get nice and confused until you don't care anymore and you don't really understand what the "vanilla sky" is or why we should care and then Kurt Russell shows up as some kind of psychiatrist/interrogator and Cameron Diaz gets to look hot and act crazy and Penelope Cruz gets to look hot and get naked and a bunch of other really good actors spend their time telling Tom Cruise that he's an asshole and, yeah, that's about it.
But it's still a great NYC movie -- the city is not only lovingly rendered, it becomes a real character in the movie, the filmmakers give you a great sense of life in the city. I also have a personal love for this movie -- in the scene where Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are driving around (she's busting his balls because she believe that once a guy sleeps with a woman, he owes the lady his entire soul -- and presumably money), and then she drives off the 96th street overpass on Riverside Drive. During this scene they drive past the building I grew up in -- so that was cool.
Anyway, see Vanilla Sky, preferably in an inebriated state, because then you might understand it better.
Oh, btw, Tom Cruise couldn't drive into Times Square and yell anymore -- in 2007, the city turned most of it into a pedestrian plaza so now he'd have to go yell elsewhere.
The great cultural radio show Studio 360 (hosted by Mr NYC interviewee Kurt Anderson) has a recurring segment called American Icons that reviews important works from our nation's culture. These include things like the classic novels The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick, special moments like Jimmy Hendrix's performance of the "Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, the Harley Davidson motorcycle, even the old TV soap Dallas. The segments look at why these various creations, from different points in American history and in radically different art forms, made a lasting impact on not only American culture but also the American psyche. These American Icon segments are some of my favorite things to listen to.
But wait, 'dere's more!
Recently Studio 360 launched a new New York Icons series that does the same thing for distinctly NYC-centric works. So far: the classic salsa album Siembra, Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar", and the musical West Side Story. There are lots of classic movies and books and shows that could qualify as New York Icons, as well as moments like 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World", or Mayor LaGuardia reading the comics on WNYC radio, or Studio 54. The possibilities are endless. May I make one suggestion to the creators of the New York Icons series? Maybe you should include blogs. And, if you're including blogs, maybe you could include, oh, I don't know, Mr NYC!
More than a decade ago the writer and broadcaster Kurt Andersen did an interview for this blog. A native of Omaha, he came to NYC in the 1970s and became a real success story -- he worked as a journalist, co-founded the groundbreaking satirical Spy magazine with Graydon Carter, and wrote books. He has also hosted the very popular public radio show Studio 360 for a long time now.
Recently Kurt made a great appearance on Marc Maron's WTF podcast and it's worth a listen. Several of the things he talks about in the podcast he talked about in his interview with Mr NYC more than a decade go. It feels so good to be a forerunner.
"I'm sorry ... Dave" but I'm having a Stanley Kubrick moment.
Lately Dr. Strangelove has been on TCM. I hadn't seen it in a while but, as always, it's the funniest movie ever made about the end of the world and one of my favorites.
Also, this past March was the 20th anniversary of the great Bronx-born director's death, just months before the release of his last movie, the bizarre (and NYC-based) Eyes Wide Shut.
But Kubrick's masterpiece of masterpieces is 2001: A Space Odyssey which came out in 1968 and changed science-fiction and movies forever. It was, to put it mildly, daring -- little dialogue, little character development, almost pure visual storytelling, a plot that slowly, slowly reveals itself about a mission to Jupiter gone wrong, a story where the villain (HAL) is a computer and not a person, and an ending that can only be described as inscrutable. It's a movie that frustrating to watch the first time you see it but, like all great movies, it gets better and better with repeat viewings.
So how did 2001 come to be? How did this poor kid from the Bronx wind up making an American classic that inspired the world?
You MUST listen to this episode of Studio 360 about the history of 2001 and Kubrick's back story that led him to make it. It's an amazing only-in-NYC story, of how a kid dreamed big -- universally big! -- and changed the world.
Also, please read my 2008 interview with Kurt Anderson, the host of Studio 360. He's fascinating too!
If your life encompassed most of the 20th and all of the 21st centuries (so far) – and you knew and worked with people like Ken Kesey, Lenny Bruce, Kurt Vonnegut, Groucho Marx, John Lennon and Yoko Ono (amongst others) – you might think you’ve lived an interesting, even exciting life.
But what if you changed the culture? What if you changed history? Then you’ve had more than an exciting life – you’re a flat-out legend.
And that moniker certainly applies to Paul Krassner.
A native of NYC, Paul was a child music prodigy who, as a young man in 1958, switched to journalism and founded the The Realist, the first truly great satirical magazine. A generational cousin to Mad magazine (where Paul used to work), The Realist went even further in mocking the hypocrisies of American social mores. Extreme and unflinching, it published things like the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" poster and "The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book", a vicious mocking of the Warren Report. Long before provocateurs like Frank Zappa and Howard Stern were shocking the culture, long before Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show were showing America its hypocrisies, Paul Krassner and The Realist were leading the charge and showing them how it's done.
Paul’s work, however, went far beyond satire. Thanks to Paul, almost three years before Roe v. Wade, Paul helped changed the New York state laws against abortion, ensuring a woman of her full reproductive rights.
He was also a founding member of the Yippees and the Merry Pranksters which would have alone sealed his legendary fate.
These days, truth is stranger than fiction, and satire seems to be reality. That’s why it was so great for Paul Krassner to answer a few of Mr NYC’s questions about his life, his career, NYC, and the crazy culture that he exposed and shaped. You were a child musical prodigy, playing the violin on stage at Carnegie Hall in 1939 at the age of six. Tell us a little bit about your upbringing in NYC, and how you made the leap from music to satirical journalism? Actually, the birth of such morphing occurred during that event in the middle of the “Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor.” I had been performing by rote until my left leg started itching. Balancing on that foot, I scratched the leg with my right foot without missing a note. I woke up to the sound of the audience laughing, and I opened my eyes. I could play the violin with technique, but I had a passion for making people laugh. It was to become the path of my life, starting in Astoria. I went to Long Island High School where I played on the baseball team, elected president of the Student Court — my first official act was to subpoena the new principal — and I wrote, produced, directed and acted in the senior play. In City College, I performed stand-up comedy, using my violin as a prop. I hadn’t touched it for several years, but now I took it out of the closet. The satirical magazine you founded in 1958, The Realist, was far ahead of its time. It was brash, rude, irreverent, and held nothing that was precious. Did you view the magazine and yourself as free speech crusaders, as speaking truth to power -- or were you just trying to be funny and outrageous? I had been writing freelance scripts for Mad magazine, and the editor assigned their artists, though he rejected a few of my submissions because they were “too adult.” I complained to the publisher, Bill Gaines. He told me that since Mad’s circulation had reached over a million, he intended to keep aiming the magazine at teenagers. I said, “I guess you don’t want to change horses in midstream.” He replied, “Not when the horse has a rocket up its ass.” That was the precise moment I decided to publish a satirical magazine for grown-ups. There were none in America. I had no role models, and no competition, just an open field mined with taboos waiting to be exploded. We seem to be living in surreal times that go beyond satire. What do you feel the legacy of The Realist is and what is the place of satire in the 21st century? The more control by government, religion, propaganda, the more truth in satire is needed. My credo of The Realist was to communicate without compromise. The slogan was “Irreverence is our only sacred cow.” There were no labels of journalism or satire in order not to alert the readers from discerning their own pleasure.
In an intellectual property class I took several years ago, we discussed the infamous 1967 "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" poster (showing Disney characters in explicit sexual situations) that the Disney company then sued over and suppressed on intellectual property grounds. Can you tell us a little more about the background of this poster, this historic case, and your thoughts on "intellectual property?" Is it just another form of censorship and corporate greed? When Walt Disney died, the libido of his characters were freed. The Disney attorneys considered suing me but didn’t because they knew that parody wasn’t against the law. I assigned Wally Wood, a Mad magazine artist, to draw a black-and-white two-page spread in The Realist, and then I published it as a poster. In 2005, an anonymous Disney employee painted a larger poster in authentic colors. You can see it on my website, paulkrassner.com. You knew or were friends with a number of legendary cultural figures, among them Lenny Bruce, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Lennon. Telling us about them briefly is impossible but can you, briefly, tell us how you got to know each of these guys and how they impacted your life? Steve Allen was the first subscriber to The Realist. He sent several gift subscriptions to friends including Lenny Bruce, who then sent several gift subs to his friends. Malthusian approach that peaked with 100,000 circulation in 1967. Playboy hired me to edit Lenny’s autobiography. He advised me to drop the violin prop. He wrote some things for The Realist. So did Kurt Vonnegut, who also wrote an introduction to one of my books. Realist readers John Lennon and Yoko Ono visited me. Lennon was absentmindedly holding on to a joint. I asked, “Do the British use the expression, to bogart a joint, or is that only an American term — you know, derived from the image of a cigarette dangling from Humphrey Bogart’s lip?” He replied, "In England, if you remind somebody else to pass a joint, you lose your own turn."
Are there any other famous or interesting people you knew who you'd like to tell us about? Groucho Marx. On a visit to L.A. in 1968, I was invited to a comedic pro-acid movie, “Skidoo,” in production by director Otto Preminger, who had been turned on by Tim Leary. Groucho played a Mafia chief named God. Having read The Realist, he asked if I could get some that’s pure LSD, and also would I accompany on his first such trip. And we did. At one point he told me about one of his favorite contestants on the show: “He was an elderly gentleman with white hair, but quite a chipper fellow. I asked him what he did to retain his sunny disposition. 'Well, I'll tell you, Groucho,’ he says, 'every morning I get up and I make a choice to be happy that day.'”
You were always a crusader for personal freedoms and the joys of pot smoking. Today, gay marriage is legal and recreational marijuana is becoming legal everywhere. Do you feel that the culture is finally catching up to you -- and do you feel you deserve credit for making the culture more tolerant?
I didn’t think in my lifetime that legalized-pot, same-sex marriage, African-American president – they wouldn’t happen, yet they did – although the Trump administration tries to make a U-turn back in my lifetime to those reactionary taboos. My favorite bizarre claim was Attorney Jeff Sessions’ utterance that “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He also stated about the Ku Klux Klan, “I thought those guys were okay until I learned they smoked pot.” Yikes! This is a blog about New York City. What was the NYC of your childhood like and how do you feel about the city today? Well, I loved living in New York, walking around growing up and never learning to drive, being innumerable times on WBAI — a guest of three different programs hosted by Bob Fass, Steve Post, and Larry Josephson — but in 1971, after my first marriage broke up, I moved to San Francisco invited by Stewart Brand to co-edit with Ken Kesey, “The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog.” I continued publishing The Realist and got my own talk show on ABC-FM. I would visit New York two or three times a year to perform at the Village Gate, see old Yippie friends, writers, artists, my parents, ex-wife and our daughter. The latter stayed with me each summer, eventually all the time. Tell us something about Paul Krassner that we might not know? In the ‘60s when abortion was illegal, I published an anonymous interview with Dr. Robert Spencer, a humane abortionist, promising that I would go to prison sooner than reveal his identity. I became an underground abortion referral service. When Dr. Spencer retired, he gave me another such physician to refer. In 1969 Bronx DA (later judge) Burton Roberts told me that his staff found that abortionist’s financial records showing all the money I received but he offered to grant me immunity from prosecution if I cooperated with the grand jury. He extended his and as a gesture of trust. “That’s not true,” I said, refusing to shake hands. If I had ever accepted any money, I'd have no way of knowing that he was bluffing. The DA was angry, but he finally had to let me go. Attorney Gerald Lefcourt (later president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers) filed a suit on my behalf, challenging the constitutionality of the abortion law. He pointed out that the DA had no power to investigate the violation of an unconstitutional law, and he couldn't force me to testify. In 1970, I became the only plaintiff in the first lawsuit to declare the abortion laws unconstitutional in New York State “Later, various women’s groups joined the suit,” Lefcourt recalls, “and ultimately the New York legislature repealed the criminal sanctions against abortion, prior to the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade.” I had morphed from a satirist to an activist. Finally, how do you want your life and work to be remembered? Laughter from the satire I felt urged to share on Earth. Thanks Paul! You’ll be remembered for that and lots more!
Well, it had to happen sometime: ten years ago today, yes, a full and complete decade, Mr NYC debuted here on the interwebs.
Can you believe it? Neither can I.
If you'd like to read the first, inauspicious blog post, you can go here to get all nostalgic.
I could get all boring about this so I won't. I could go on and on about what ten years of Mr NYC "means" but I don't kid myself -- it probably doesn't mean all that much. Iwill, however, note the following ten things about this blog in its ten years of existence:
1. Most blogs don't last very long but this one has lasted a decade -- not a bad achievement.
2. This blog has been viewed over 300,000, more than a quarter of a million, times. That's roughly the population of Iceland. Pretty cool, huh?(Pun intended.) The blog is regularly read by over 1,100 a month. That's a good"traffic" jam."
3. There have been more than 1600 posts all written, for better or worse, by yours truly.
4. This blog has been read all over the world -- the United States, Germany, France, Ukraine, China, Russia, the UK, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Poland, Turkey, Canada, and others.
5. This blog has survived three presidents, three governors, and two mayors.
6. We have done interviews with all sorts of NYC characters like Kenny Kramer, Kurt Anderson, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Richard Bey, and others.
7. Since this blog started, I got married, had two kids, and bought a house.
8. The most popular blog posts around about Alison Steele, Film Forum, and Rao's. I've never been able to figure out what makes a popular post.
9. Readership for this blog seems to spike in the middle of the month for some reason. Still don't know why.
10. I've made some money from this blog but still need a day job.
So I hope you've enjoyed the ten years of Mr NYC. I hope they'll be ten more.
"There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre" - Kurt Vonnegut
I have never known anyone in my life who committed suicide. In this, I consider myself fortunate. But now I feel like I live in a country that chose to kill itself -- and I have no idea what to say. I have no idea what to say about a country that chooses to massacre its own ideals and decency. To paraphrase Mr. Vonnegut, there's nothing intelligent to say about the hideous decision to make Donald Trump, a product of NYC no less, the 45th President of the United States -- because there was nothing intelligent about it at all.
These are dark days in America.
Let me get straight to the point: Trump only won this election through the Electoral College but he lost the popular vote. That means the majority of Americans, however slight, DO NOT want him to be president (bless them all). Yet this monster slipped through because several states in the Midwest hammered by de-industrialization chose to believe Trump's big lie that he will restore manufacturing jobs in the USA.
He won't. He can't.
The global economy, despite his promises to his followers, is here to stay. Technology as much as trade deals is responsible for the disappearance of those great old well-earning, little-skilled and no-education needed factory jobs. Hillary Clinton and the other GOP candidates for president didn't promise to bring back these jobs because they knew it was impossible. But like the great con man he is, Trump promised to deliver something that he knows he can't. He sold these angry, desperate people snake oil and they bought it because they didn't see any alternative.
That's our failure, that's American society'sfailure. We didn't give them an alternative, we didn't provide them with any other hope, so they fell for this con man's promises. What else did they have? America has failed so many of its people for so long that they chose to make the most dangerous decision in its history. It took decades for us to get to this point. Hopefully it won't take quite so long for America to rid itself fully of the stench of the Trump presidency and re-gain admission to the decency of the world community.
It'll be interesting to see in four years when Trump's (hopefully only) term will end. Will those great manufacturing jobs have come back? What about all the other stuff he promises? Will he have built that "big beautiful wall" between the USA and Mexico -- and gotten Mexico to pay for it? Will he really deport more than 10 million "illegal" immigrants? Will he really cut taxes, beef up the military, and build our infrastructure while maintaining fiscal discipline? If he does, then he will have succeeded -- at least on the terms he and his supporters litigated this election on. But if he doesn't, then he's a failure.
And I think he'll fail. He'll fail because he was never serious about succeeding in the first place -- he just wanted to get the presidency and did so by selling snake oil to the masses. In four years, he'll be president and they'll still have nothing except broken promises. But actually, they won't even be broken promises because, as I said, they're promises that Donald the con man never intended to honor. How can a man who has no honor actually honor anything? In short, he'll be a bad president because he's a bad man.
That said, it was heartening to see here in NYC and around the country that many Americans aren't taking this nightmare lying down. They're on the streets, protesting. The resistance starts now and let's keep it going until he's president no more.
I've blogged about the year 1994 -- probably one of the most culturally and politically consequential years of the last quarter century -- several times so I won't bore you with another nostalgic post.
But it seems that I was onto something. WNYC is currently running a month long series called "Summer of '94" where they go back and examine the music of that year and the impact it had: the death of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, rap going mainstream, Dookie, the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, the debuts of Beck, Weezer, and Notorious B.I.G. What were you doing in 1994?
Today is a momentous day in the history of New York City. For 90 years ago on this date, WNYC transmitted its first radio broadcast.
It's hard to believe that this radio station, which is a staple of New York City, has existed for almost a century. In this world of crass commercial radio, it's a great thing that it does.
Back in 1924, of course, there was no television. Or Internet. Nobody had smart phones or even Walkmen. If you wanted to get news about the city, you had to either read a newspaper or listen to the radio. But as people quickly discovered, radio was more than about getting information -- it was about community, about literally bringing together the "8 million people who live in freedom and enjoy the benefits of democracy" as WNYC would proudly announce every day that it signed on.
Today, in 2014, WNYC still holds together this city's vast and diverse community. The station still has great news and entertainment programming. It respects the intelligence of its listeners and broadens our horizons.
All this week, WNYC is remembering its history by going into its vaults and re-broadcasting its classic programming. You can find a link to it here. You'll here a 1959 report on Greenwich Village where they talk about the "problem" of black men and white women being seen in public together. There's a bizarre and hilarious series from 1998 of Kurt Vonnegut broadcasting from the afterlife (I kid you not). And there are also interviews with the Master Builder himself, Robert Moses and his ultimate antagonist Jane Jacobs.
WNYC is a treasure, the crown jewel of the New York City air waves And as it complete its first century of broadcasting, I'm sure the best is yet to come.
No one would mistake Mr NYC for "60 Minutes", and I'm no Babwa Wawa -- but in the
seven-plus years of this blog's existence I've interviewed a wide variety of people.
These include fellow bloggers,
comedians, sex writers, book writers, public radio hosts, even Richard Bey -- yes that Richard Bey --
himself. One of my first interviews was with Kenny Kramer, inspiration for the
iconic TV character, and a New York legend.
In 2008, I did a couple blog posts about the year 1994. One concerned a movie
called "The Wackness" that was a piece of nostalgia about 1994 New York. The
other was a "cultural nostalgia" trip to that year -- a year when everything
changed.
You think I kid. But I kid you not.
A lot happened in 1994. A lot that we're still living
with today.
Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan. The OJ Simpson case. Kurt
Cobain's suicide. The Rwandan genocide. The Major League Baseball Strike. Nelson
Mandela became President of South Africa. My So-Called Life, Friends, ER,
Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction and all the big careers that were launched (and
re-launched).
And the world we live in today was largely created that year.
The Republicans took over Congress and George W. Bush became
governor of Texas -- which lead to President Bush, the Iraq War, and eventually
President Obama.
And 1994 was also the first year when this thing called the
Internet began to penetrate the popular consciousness. As this clip from the
Today show proves, before then, no one really knew what "Internet" was. People
still had yet to grasp the concept of this rootless world of information. It
would take years before things like Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter would
consolidate control over the Internet -- back then, it was an electronic Wild
West. But 1994 was the year it broke through -- and changed our world forever.
"There's nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." -- Kurt Vonnegut
Ain't that the truth. The proliferation of words, words, words -- to steal from Shakespeare -- eventually drench and make muddy whatever meaning they are meant to convey.
The banality, senselessness, pure stupidity of great evil acts speak for themselves.
So is the case with 9/11. In the years since the event that changed the world, billions of words have been written about what it meant then (tragedy, national unity), what it led to (war, divisiveness, neo-McCarthyism, etc.) and what it means now (who knows?). But who knows what any of it means?
That is why I applaud New York Magazine for it's 9/11 Encyclopedia. It takes the tragedy and breaks it down -- person by person, event by event, issue by issue, controversy by controversy -- and gives snippets about each while, at the same time, not bombarding the readers with psychologising. Instead, it's just the facts -- and it lets the readers find the meaning of 9/11 for themselves.
Meet Stephen Goldsmith, Deputy Mayor of Operations Stephen Goldsmith to you that is. He was given the job by Mayor Bloomberg last year and is a former Mayor of Indianapolis himself.
That's right, one of the Deputy Mayors of this town is probably rooting for the Colts tonight. And he's a Republican. He was an advisor to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and our own Rudy Giuliani. Egads.
So why was this fella Goldsmith hired? Well, don't you see, he's brilliant of course! Yes, Mayor Mike thought (and, I'm sure, still thinks) that Goldsmith is "dynamic" and an "out of the box" thinker and he was tasked with "transforming" city government to make it more ... I don't know what.
It's also his job, as deputy mayor for operations, to make sure that the city government is actually, you know, operating. Well, he did a "heckuva job" when the city government so manifestly failed to operate properly last week during the snowstorm. Apparently this recent transplant was in Washington, DC of all places, spending Christmas with his family. That's right: the man whose job it is to make sure that the city is operating full blast during emergencies was 250 miles away during an emergency!
Too bad this guru of "transformation" couldn't transform himself into an airplane and fly back the day after Christmas to do his job.
It gets worse. In the year this supposedly brilliant Midwest Republican has been on the job, he has totally failed to learn how the city government or the city itself actually operates. He really is out of his depth and in over his head (sorry for the mixed metaphors). Can you imagine LaGuardia putting someone like Goldsmith in this job? Think not.
And seriously, Mike, what were you thinking appointing someone who worked for George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaigns? Considering what a disaster that presidency and that campaign turned out to be, should we really be surprised? Anyone who worked for those two maniacs shouldn't be hired for anything, in my opinion. If someone who worked for them applied to a job I was hiring for, I would head for zee hilz!
So please, Mike, tell Stephen to pack up and go home to Indianapolis. NYC already got David Letterman and Kurt Vonnegut so we don't need him.
Due to life happenings, I haven't been able to blog much lately (in case you hadn't noticed) but I would be remiss if I didn't direct you to New York magazine's Who Runs New York? feature from last week (in case you missed it).
Obviously the most powerful people in NYC are Mayor Bloomberg and other politicians -- along with the powerful financial, real estate, and media interests that support them. But, as this insightful report indicates, it's more complicated than that. The days of the old moneyed Wall Street establishment are over, the days of The New York Times and their erstwhile newspaper competitors controlling the daily new agenda are waning, and there is a new generation of real estate moguls who have a different idea of what should and shouldn't be built in this town.
The power in NYC fragmented like never before. Chaos reigns.
For example, take the media. Those who own big the media in this town are no longer the most powerful people (think Sulzberger, Zuckerman and Murdoch). Instead, you have folks like Nick Denton, an irascible Brit, who founded the snarkyGawker site. Ten years ago this guy didn't even live here -- and now he's as important a media figure in this city as Jimmy Breslin ever was.
Or politics. Mayor Bloomberg still may run NYC with as close to absolute power as any mayor in history but his days in office are waning. Soon he'll be just a billionaire instead of the mayor/billionaire. So who will take his place? That will depend, largely, on the new political kingmakers in this town. We're a long way from the days of Tammany Hall bosses like Carmine De Sapio and from labor union leaders like Mike Quill and Albert Shanker. But if you want to find their successors, look no further than Dan Kantor of the Working Families Party, the third-party organization that has succeeded in getting lots of up-and-coming politicians like John Liu and Bill DeBlasio elected. The effectiveness of the WFP turn out operations on election day are becoming famous. In 2009, while Bloomberg spent $100 million on his third term, the WFP was able to get out enough voters to reduce Bloomberg's margin of victory to an embarrassing four points. Kantor may be the most powerful person in NYC you haven't heard of -- but you will.
And then there's the likes of Lauren Santo Domingo who may be in the running for become the city's new Social doyenne, the new Mrs. Astor.
As you can see, in this era of the niche, power in New York is getting more diffuse even as wealth is getting more concentrated. It's an interesting, almost absurd paradigm -- one that is powered as much by new technology as anything.
Even this blog could be considered, in it's small, small way, a part of the new power game in NYC. For example, here am I, a regular guy, a simple blogger, who has been able to publish interviews with the likes of Kurt Anderson and Michael Musto, who has been asked by various business to advertise and plug their products, who has been invited to parties and events because of this blog, and who has gotten more than one person (including a prominent newspaper editor) extremely angry by some of the stuff I published on here. None of this would have happened if not for this blog and the small, tiny bit of power it has in the huge NYC media universe. (By the way, with one exception, I've turned all the invites and requests to plug stuff down. I ain't that kinda guy.)
So who runs New York? Who has the power? We do, my friends, you and me.
It's amazing that these broadcasts have lasted for almost 80 years, and just another example of what makes New York such a great city.
Kurt Baum sang "Addio alla madre" followed by the finale from Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana."
The broadcasts start in December and go through May. You can listen to them here in NYC starting December 12 at 12:30 PM on WQXR 105.9 FM (this first opera is called Il Trittico)
Last year Kurt Andersen, host of the radio show Studio 360, did a great short interview for this blog. As always, he was and is one of the smartest and most articulate social critics around.
You really must listen to Studio 360 as often as you can, it's one of the best long-form interview shows on the radio -- or anywhere -- today. You can find it broadcast several times during the weekends on WNYC.
Recently Kurt rebroadcast some interviews his did about Andy Warhol as well as one with John Cale, the front-man for The Velvet Underground -- one of the greatest rock bands (and a New York band) ever. If you have the time, take a listen. You won't regret it.
The always great Kurt Andersen has a wonderful article in this week's New York magazine about the election of Barack Obama. You might also want to read my exclusive interview with Kurt from January where he said that this would be the most fascinating presidential election of our lifetime. How right he was.
One of the points of Kurt's article, and of a blog entry I did the Friday before the election, is that NYC and big cities in general have largely been marginalized in America politics. Cities like ours might be rich and fun to live in but, when it comes to influencing les affairs d'etat, we've taken a back seat to mostly rural states and the South for the last few decades.
Until now.
Think about it: the President to be is from Chicago, the Speaker of the House is from San Francisco, and two of the powerful people in Congress are Charlie Rangel (Chairman of House Ways and Means) and Senator Chuck Schumer -- New Yorkers both. The electoral map indicates that America is swinging in a more liberal direction, and the South and rural areas -- the "real America" -- are becoming less and less powerful in American politics.
Naturally people in the real America are freaking out. "Oh no!" the Republican culture warriors cry. "What's happening?"
Well, it looks like the "real America" is shrinking. Or maybe they aren't the real America anymore -- we are. Might need to dig up those signs in the boonies that say "The Real America Starts Here" and plant them in NYC.
They're losing the culture war.
Starting with the election of Richard Nixon 40 years ago, the culture war has been effectively used by the Republicans to divide America and put them in power. Play on middle class fears and hatred of taxes, gays, abortion, race, immigrants, and losing their guns -- plus throw in a lot of jingoistic chest thumping and religiosity -- and that'll get people to vote against their economic interests. The late, great George Carlin put it perfectly: "That's the way the ruling class operates in any society -- they try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the f******g money. Fairly simple thing, happens to work." And it worked for a long time. The Republicans won a lot of elections using the culture war. But now Americans are sick of it. They've seen the horrible economy, disastrous war, and broken government the Republicans have given us and they've run gagging to the polls to throw them out. That's why conservative places like Virginia, Indiana, and Colorado have been swinging hard to the Democrats in just the last few years. They're leaving the "real America" behind and coming over to us. Now we're the real America and they're not -- nah nah nah nah. The culture war, like the Iraq War of the War on Drugs, is not "over" by any means. Sadly, it'll probably never end. But for right now, we're winning. And let's pray -- haha -- that this continues.
Re: my post below. Some of you might recall that 1994 was actually a very, very important year in American culture. In fact, it remains one of the most important cultural years ever. Think about it:
It was the year Pulp Fiction came out, revolutionizing independent cinema, unleashing the whole Tarantino phenomenon, and making John Travolta cool again.
It was the year Friends and ER premiered, giving us George Clooney and Jennifer Aniston and a whole lot more big names.
It was the year of the great but tragically short-lived show, the aforementioned My So-Called Life (that gave us Claire Danes).
It was the year REM released Monster, with their big hit "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" Madonna also had a big hit called "I'll Remember" (the video of which you see here), that appeared in a now forgotten movie called "With Honors." The only thing that was interesting about this movie was that it was the last even semi-successful thing Patrick Dempsey did before Grey's Anatomy.
It was the year Kurt Cobain committed suicide and effectively ended the whole grunge movement.
It was the year Richard Nixon died, the first president to do so in more than 20 years.
It was the year Republicans took over the House and Senate, redrawing the political map. George W. Bush was also elected Governor of Texas that year and, well ... we all know what that led to.
And as I also indicated below, it was the year OJ Simpson was accused of murder, starting the whole 24/7 cable news soap-opera format.
I'm not saying everything that happened in American culture 1994 was great but it sure was memorable and it certainly had a lasting impact.
