Self-Righteous Jerks

Note: I'm only using this picture since Tuohy has already posted it publicly on Facebook and Instagram
and it's been reposted in a thousand different places. 

If you're going to be kind, be kind. Don't film yourself, post the results everywhere, and pretend that you're only doing it to prove a point.

Scenario #1: Leigh Anne Tuohy is not anyone who has ever been on my radar. I knew she was the subject of a book and of that Sandra Bullock movie, but that's all. I knew there was some talk about how that movie was basically "heroic white woman saves troubled black youth," but I'd never seen it so I couldn't say.

But then she did this.

In case you haven't been following the story, here's the gist. She owns a restaurant. Two black teenagers came into her restaurant and apparently, were acting in a way that some would find suspicious. Here's the way she describes the scene on her own Facebook page:

We see what we want! It’s the gospel truth! These two were literally huddled over in a corner table nose to nose and the person with me said “I bet they are up to no good” well you know me… I walked over, told them to scoot over. After 10 seconds of dead silence I said so whats happening at this table? I get nothing.. I then explained it was my store and they should spill it… They showed me their phones and they were texting friends trying to scrape up $3.00 each for the high school basketball game! Well they left with smiles, money for popcorn and bus fare. We gave to STOP judging people and assuming and pigeon holing people! Don’t judge a book by its cover or however you’d like to express the sentiment! Accept others and stoping seeing what you want to see!!! #LeighAnnesSundaySermon #BelieveInOthers

Jerk.

To sum up: two black kids were sitting together. Her friend says "they're up to no good." She says, oh no, you're wrong. And then she goes over, sits next to them, and demands to see their phones to prove they're not doing anything wrong!!!

Then, after they prove their innocence, she hands them some cash and then takes a picture with them!! The caption might as well be "look at these poor little black children whose lives I just turned around!" Gross exploitation.

Scenario #2: This video has been going around the social networks lately. Another "heroic" person who decided to give $100 to a homeless person.

No strings attached? Ah ha, not quite. He proceeds to record the guy's actions secretly to find out how he spends the money!!

Watch the video. It's clear that they're filming this man without his permission, at the beginning. At one point, he even tells his cameraman "just don't let him see you." At the end, once they prove to themselves that he's using the money in the right way, he admits to the poor man that he's being secretly recorded.

Would he have admitted it otherwise? This guy, Josh Paler Lin, is a guy who makes ugly prank videos on YouTube - the Bad Dad prank, the Vegas Mafia prank, the Chloroform Kidnapping prank. He thrives on exploiting people's reactions and then making money on them (via YouTube ads.) It's easy to imagine he could have filmed this man's behavior and secretly uploaded it, and never told hm at all. That's what he does.

But instead, he posts it as a feel-good story. Who's feeling good? Paler Lin has gotten 22 million hits on this video. He's making money from ads and his name gets spread all over the internet. Oh, but he's launched an IndieGogo account to raise some money for the homeless man, too.

Think about that. He found a homeless man, decided he was one of the "good" homeless people, and now he's raising money to help him out. But his message is "never judge a book by its cover."

He originally expected to film the man doing something bad - buying alcohol or drugs, maybe. In the description of the video itself, he even says "I wasn't expecting to get this kind of footage... to be honest, I thought this video would be more an exposing homeless people video at first."

Exposing homeless people? These are people on the bottom rung of society, and he's out to expose them??? This man is a bottom feeder. Shame on him for exploiting another human being for his profits. Shame on Leigh Anne Tuohy for exploiting two strangers for her own glorification.

TBTL - a New Beginning? Or the Beginning of the End? (Part 1)

The show was, indeed, too beautiful to live.

One of the greatest radio shows ever (ever!), TBTL (short for Too Beautiful to Live) has been cancelled as an on-air broadcast. The show will be turned into a web-based podcast. So it's losing the regular built-in audience of a major talk radio station in Seattle, and throwing itself on the mercy of the notoriously fickle internet audience. The website, the community, and at least two of the three major players will remain. The new show, such as it is, will be broadcast not from a radio studio, but from a room in the home of host Luke Burbank.

So this is the end of the world. Right?

Or is this really a new beginning? Is it possible that TBTL is going to be one of the new faces of the transformation of the medium of radio?

Here's the thing, friends and neighbors. Radio is changing. Example 1: me. I hardly ever listen to terrestrial radio anymore. I listen most Saturday mornings. I listen to NPR sometimes in the morning, and for about ten minutes while I drive to my job. Sometimes. Sometimes I just plug in a podcast and listen to that instead.

But am I missing NPR? Am I missing key stories? I doubt it. I listen to no less than eight NPR podcasts. I listen regularly to the NPR Story of the Day podcast, the NPR Shuffle podcast and the NPR Music podcast, and that captures most of the content that interests me.

I podcast Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, On the Media, and the magnificent WNYC show Radio Lab, and I never miss an episode of the latter two. Oh, and of course I podcast This American Life, because all of us radio geeks do. It's a rule.

But wait, there's more! There are two NPR podcasts that only exist in podcast form, and they are my favorite NPR productions: All Songs Considered and It's All Politics. Bob Boilen worked for years as a producer for NPR programs over the air, and on the side, produced a music podcast called All Songs Considered. It's eccentric, very personal, and absolutely fascinating, and I have picked up so many new favorite artists from it.

It's All Politics, fairly obviously, is a political podcast produced by NPR's Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving and Political Editor Ken Rudin, who both know entirely too much about the Beltway and are always happy to show off all the maddening Washington insider trivia stuck in their craniums. It's weekly, it's funny, the analysis is always sharp and often brilliant. I learn something every time I listen.

So that's my NPR listenership.

So am I an NPR listener?

I don't think I show up on the Arbitron ratings, because I'm not an over-the-air listener. Even though I listen to 15-20 hours of NPR content every week, I don't count as a listener.

And also, significantly, I don't count for their standard advertisers. I don't listen to the pre-broadcast sponsorship messages. I am not their audience in the traditional way. I'm still inflicted with lots of advertising on the podcasts, but not over the air.

I do still pay for my membership. And once I'm solvent again, I plan to send something into Chicago Public Radio and WNYC for all the great content they're producing.

Can TBTL still exist as a radio show without being an over-the-air radio show? Sure. Why not? There are plenty of podcasts that make a good go of it. Brian Ibbott somehow manages to eke out a living producing Coverville, by selling ads on his website and doing testimonial ad pitches doing every podcast. The Moth has only recently become a radio broadcast, but has existed for years as a brilliant podcast. Other examples come to mine - the Sound of Young America, Ask a Ninja, Rocketboom, This Week in Tech. There are lots of free-standing podcasts. It's a tried and true medium.

But TBTL is the first show I know that has made the jump from on-air to podcast exclusively. (The only parallel I can think of is Howard Stern, jumping from terrestrial radio to satellite, and that is such an apples-to-kumquats comparison that it's hardly worth the effort.)

The jump could spell trouble. They somehow have to hold onto their loyal audience as they make the switch. Luckily (or not so luckily), the overwhelming majority of their audience was listening to the podcast and not the over-their-air broadcast. Most of their listeners are Time Bandits, in the language of the show. They didn't listen the same day, or even the same week. Sometimes, Time Bandits reported falling months behind and catching up in a mind-melting glut of shows.

In other words, the audience of TBTL is already used to downloading the show, not tuning it in. We listen on iPods and on our computer and in streams. We are already an online audience. As Luke Burbank said, this latest move by KIRO's management might be stripping away the worst weaknesses of the show - its on-air audience - and playing to its greatest strengths.

TBTL has always been a show that relies feverishly on its audience. Audience members are often guests on the show, bringing great ideas or unusual perspectives on news shows or just serving as available talent and the in-studio voice of the audience. Some of the greatest ideas on the show have come from its listeners. The blog is ferociously active, and the TBTL audience - the Tens - are a passionate lot, showing up for roller-skating events, baseball games, karaoke nights, concerts held in the back of Mexican restaurants, and other seemingly preposterous gatherings. There are at least 18 groups on Facebook dedicated to TBTL.

On its last night on the air, over 1300 viewers tuned into the webcam to see - what? The hosts singing karaoke and Luke Burbank heroically dancing in his underwear, fulfilling a promise to the audience. This was the essence of the show. No matter how ridiculous, how absurd, the show kept its promises to its audience. The love between show and audience is more pure and heartfelt than I have ever seen for a radio show. It is a beautiful thing. It was clearly not planned, but the love affair between TBTL's audience and its makers is the true center of the show.

The show was not killed. Let us all remember that. KIRO is still putting money behind the show in its new form. As Jen Andrews pointed out, the typical procedure when a radio show is cancelled is that it's pulled off the air immediately, the hosts not allowed to broadcast a final show for fear they'll say something reprehensible on the air about their former employers. With any other show, the hosts would have been ushered out the door by security guards, not allowed on the air. In this case, the TBTL hosts were given six solid hours of airtime to say a proper farewell to their audience. It was a remarkable statement of confidence, definitely not the sort of thing you do for people who you want to boot out the door as quickly as possible.

Let's hope the new format of the show proves that TBTL does not need to be on the FM or AM dial to drew listeners. Maybe it will take its new wings and soar. We can make it happen. We, the TBTL audience, need to prove ourselves worthy.

If you ever listened to TBTL, you owe it to the show to listen on the first day and tell your friends. Post it on Facebook. Send messages on Twitter proclaiming your loyalty. They need an audience that is there from day one and announces themselves loudly. They - we - need to be there for the show. The ratings will not be measured by the standard numbers. It'll be tabulated by downloads of the podcast, comments on the blog, tweets mentioning TBTL, web traffic.

This is a new experiment in radio and it will succeed if the Tens stay faithful and give KIRO a reason to keep funding it. Radio can survive without the ties to an AM or FM frequency. With a strong audience, an active online presence, talented hosts, and enough moxie, this show could become a completely new example of the new face of radio. Let's make it happen.

The Grammys - Hits and Misses

Radiohead with a MFing marching band. My head just about exploded. That was one of the most amazing musical performances I've ever seen on television. Thom Yorke was showing better dance moves than Justin Timberlake. (Sure, it was just Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke on stage, unless the rest of the band was in the back blowing on trombones. Gwyneth Paltrow said it was Radiohead, so I'm going to call it Radiohead.)

ETA: Here's the video. It's on the YouTubes, so watch it fast or save it to your computer - it'll probably be gone tomorrow.

ETA: Scroll down on this page - there's a link to a rehearsal of the performance. Also some nice pictures.

That was an impossible act to top, and it was the best performance of the night. But there were a few other nice moments.

One of them was not Paul McCartney. Here's the thing. Paul McCartney released an amazing album with his odd little side project, the Fireman. I was so hoping to see him perform "Nothing Too Much Just out of Sight" or "Universal Here, Everlasting Now" and rip the heads off the audience. Instead, he trots out a forty-year-old song, gets Dave Grohl on drums, and pretends it's an Extra Special Performance. So now, instead of recognizing that Sir Paul still has some new tricks up his sleeve, everyone goes back to thinking he's just a has-been. (A brilliant, talented, super-rich has-been, but nonetheless.) Yawn me a river.

The New Orleans tribute was nice. Good to see them bring on L'il Wayne, who's been heartfelt in his love for New Orleans, instead of a safer choice. And what about Mr. Allan Toussaint and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, playing a Professor Longhair tune? The whole thing was pretty impressive and done with a lot of heart.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were pretty sweet. Raising Sand was one of my favorite albums this year, and they just sound fantastic live. I'd have rather they did something spookier like "Fortune Teller" or "Nothin'", but it was nice seeing them - and T Bone Burnett - up on the big stage.

T Bone has been one of the hardest-working producers in the music business for, like, twenty-five years now. How many great acts has he produced? Los Lobos, Counting Crows (back when they were a good band), Marshall Crenshaw, the incandescent Sam Phillips (his former wife, by the way), Gillian Welch. Elvis Costello. Bruce Cockburn. Brandi Carlile.

Remember that gorgeous album that k.d. lang and Tony Burnett did? He produced that.

Remember that black and white Roy Orbison tribute performance that you can see once a week on PBS? He was the musical director.

Remember O Brother, Where Art Thou? He produced that soundtrack and wrote the score for the movie.

He also penned one of the greatest and saddest songs about love that has ever been written. The song is called "River of Love" and chances are that you've never heard it. Listen to it now.

T Bone is the real deal. I got to see him live once, in a coffee house in Northampton, Massachusetts. He hadn't slept in three days, never took off his sunglasses, played some of the best songs ever written and told some of the funniest anecdotes I've ever heard from a musician's mouth. I was thrilled to see him get so many honors for this album, a project that nobody else but him could have produced.

R.I.P. George Carlin

"That's my job - thinking up goofy shit. Coming back here every once in a while, letting you know what it is ... or reminding you of shit you already knew, but forgot to laugh at the first time."

Everyone thinks of the seven dirty words when they think of the late, great George Carlin. That's fine - it was a big deal. One of his albums was defended all the way to the Supreme Court. That's pretty fucking cool. As Carlin himself said, "my name is a footnote in American history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of."

Some people will remember the whimsical George Carlin. The charmingly funny stuff, or the goofy funny stuff.

Baseball and Football.

A Place for My Stuff.

Or they'll remember him for his brilliant skewering of the English language, like this routine on euphemisms.

But let's not forget that George Carlin was a bombthrower at his heart. "I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately." His job was to challenge his audience and jar them out of their complacency. As soon as they got comfortable with who he was or what he was going to say, he knew it was time to shake up his routine.

Check out this routine from 1992.

His own audience starts booing him about two minutes into this. But by the end of the bit, they're all on their feet. It's an astonishing and ferocious performance. This is my favorite routine by Carlin, just because it makes me so damn uncomfortable.

Carlin dared the audience to look at the things all around them and realize how fucking ridiculous it all was. Sometimes they hated him for it, but he was just doing his job. There were nights when he was probably the only person in the room who knew it was his job. But he knew it, every day and every night.

For this reason alone, George Carlin is the greatest comedian I ever heard, and the world is a poorer place without him in it.
I don't know if George is up in heaven or not - maybe you have to believe in it before it believes in you - but I wish I could have seen that first conversation between him and god. He must have had the old guy spewing root beer out of his nose.

Good night, George Carlin. Thanks for everything.

Battles - Atlas (taken from the forthcoming album Mirrored)

Killer track. Crank it up, and scare the cats and the neighbors.

The guys in this band are all veterans of various left-field rock bands (Don Caballero, Lynx, Helmet). The drummer's a complete badass. Check out the video for Tonto, where one musician plays keyboard and guitar at the same time, slamming down guitar chords with one hand a la Stanley Jordan.

I found a few tracks by Battles online, and no one can agree on terms to describe their music. A short selection: mathy electro, noise, math rock, noodled, rock, electronica/dance, unclassifiable. The last one works best for me. They operate in their own world, in their own universe (as this video seems to symbolize).

This is the song I can't get out of my head this week. Like the video in "The Ring," I pass it on to you. Enjoy.

ParkSlope47 - the Mystery is Revealed

So the guy who created the Obama/Hillary 1984 ad has revealed himself to the world. His name is Phil deVellis. And he works for a technology company that provides support to several campaigns, including - in some capacity - the Obama campaign.

Now, some people are going to come out with guns blazing, charging that he did this on behalf of the campaign. I don't believe that for a second. I don't think the story about this ad is even about Obama or about Hillary Clinton. Read his manifesto/announcement, and tell me what you think.

Hi. I'm Phil. I did it. And I'm proud of it.

I made the "Vote Different" ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process. There are thousands of other people who could have made this ad, and I guarantee that more ads like it--by people of all political persuasions--will follow.

This shows that the future of American politics rests in the hands of ordinary citizens.

The campaigns had no idea who made it--not the Obama campaign, not the Clinton campaign, nor any other campaign. I made the ad on a Sunday afternoon in my apartment using my personal equipment (a Mac and some software), uploaded it to YouTube, and sent links around to blogs.

The specific point of the ad was that Obama represents a new kind of politics, and that Senator Clinton's "conversation" is disingenuous. And the underlying point was that the old political machine no longer holds all the power.

Let me be clear: I am a proud Democrat, and I always have been. I support Senator Obama. I hope he wins the primary. (I recognize that this ad is not his style of politics.) I also believe that Senator Clinton is a great public servant, and if she should win the nomination, I would support her and wish her all the best.

I've resigned from my employer, Blue State Digital, an internet company that provides technology to several presidential campaigns, including Richardson's, Vilsack's, and -- full disclosure -- Obama's. The company had no idea that I'd created the ad, and neither did any of our clients. But I've decided to resign anyway so as not to harm them, even by implication.

This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last. The game has changed.

I don't think he did this to support Obama so much as he did this in order to prove a point. It'll get blamed on Obama, and the people who blame him will be missing the entire point.

The last sentence of his post says it all. "The game has changed." Suddenly, it's not just campaigns and shady 527s who can make attack ads or support ads. It's everybody. The democratization of technology means that we can all make our voices heard, all at the same time.

Will there be more ads? Sure.

Will some of them be ugly? Sure.

But ultimately, this is good for democracy. Howard Dean changed the rules of fundraising when he started soliciting small donations - $10, $20, $50 - off the web. This one ad has changed the rules of who has a voice in the national elections. And, as it turns out, we all do.

So, this will surely cause some consternation amongst the Obama campaign, and it's possible (but it wouldn't be smart) if Clinton said some things about the ad's creator. But the legacy of this ad and ParkSlope47 is going to last much longer than the fight between those two candidates. This was a cultural watershed. The future just happened.

My Brightest Diamond - you're freaking kidding me.

So My Brightest Diamond has blown my mind.

Her first album is stunning and amazing. Operatic, powerful vocals, weird songs, great and unusual structures. Brilliant stuff. Shara Worden (who is My Brightest Diamond) spent time in Sufjan Stevens' band, so she knows a thing or two about creative song structures.

So what does she do then? She releases Tear It Down, which is a remix album. Yeah - remixes of every song of her album, with multiple remixes of a couple of songs.

I don't have to tell you this, but it's incredible.

So I'm poking around YouTube, and I find videos of her performing the following songs live in concert:

"Use Me" - Bill Withers
"No Quarter" - Led Zeppelin
"It's Over" - Roy Orbison
"Joy in Repetition" - Prince (it's from Graffiti Bridge)
"Be My Husband" - Nina Simone (I'm not sure if she wrote it, but she did the definitive version)
"Youkali" - Kurt Weill

ETA: I've added links to the YouTube videos, because it was cheap and lazy of me not to do that. Some of the videos (Youkali, Be My Husband) are crap, but it's worth it just to hear her.


So yeah, it's possible she's a goddess. It's a possibility. Anyway, go check her out if you've never heard her name before. My. Brightest. Diamond.