The Hollywood Bowles

Those who can't write, edit. Those who can't edit, blog.

We the Press People

Scott Bowles

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July 16, 2017

 

Enough.

Enough with the attempts to define news.  Enough with the mock outrage over a lack of objectivity. Enough with pretending that “social” media is somehow different from its “mainstream” sibling.

It isn’t. Make no mistake: They are siblings, if not identical twins.

That we in the ancient media of print and television ever tolerated the term “social media” is something of a grim miracle. It’s hard to imagine other professions that would tolerate such a mangling of the terminology of its trade. Or that the public would so wholeheartedly embrace the mauling.

How many businesses or people, for instance, would hazard a flight on a plane steered by a “social pilot?” How many would reserve gurney time for an appendectomy by a “social surgeon?”

Yet, like running a hotel or driving a taxi, being a journalist has become the province of amateurs. Thanks to blogs and free vomit buckets like Facebook and Twitter, the idea of being published hinges less on linguistic dexterity than determinism.

Yet so many in the media claim to be outside its Ivy League walls, forbidden entry by out of step gatekeepers. And we’re not just talking conspiracy slackwits like Sean Hannity or Alex Jones.

Really smart people — like, Noam Chomsky-, Sam Harris-, Neil deGrasse Tyson-, Richard Dawkins-smart — make similarly ridiculous claims.

Take Harris, a neuroscience author of staggering eloquence. In his podcast, website and books, he is quick to lament that “the mainstream media refuses or is unable to see” most issues that underpin our society, from religion to economics to politics. The schism, Harris contends, was a leading contributor to the victory of the Trump administration.

Yet in the same talk or web posting, he will wonder aloud how his podcast became so popular, his Twitter account so swamped with activity.

It’s because you’re in the mainstream media, Sam.

Just do the math. While podcast numbers are not officially tallied (like Nielsen ratings for TV, and yes, that’s a hint), Harris has been publicly flabbergasted by a podcast following of 400,000 that exceeds all of his book sales — combined. He has 888,000 Twitter followers.

The Washington Post has a circulation of 740,000. While not an apples-to-apples comparison, If Harris’ Twitter fanbase alone were a newspaper, it would be the fifth largest in the nation

He’s hardly alone in the confusion. There isn’t an outlet in America that doesn’t distinguish between “mainstream” and “social” media.

But what is the real difference? The largest newspaper in America is the Wall Street Journal, with a circulation north of 2.4 million. (It’s also owned by Rupert Murdoch, in case critics of a liberal media forgot).

Compare that to Facebook, which functions like any other news outlet, with curated headlines and all-flavored news and feature stories. A recent Pew Research study found that 68% of Americans have accounts on Facebook.

That’s a circulation of 218 million.

The same applies to myriad “social” media sites: Instagram would have a circulation of 89.9 million; Pinterest, 83.5 million; Twitter, 67.4 million.

Even the term in a misnomer. If something qualifies as social media, by definition it is also renting property in MainstreamVille. How do we even claim separation, particularly when the largest news outlet in the United States decided a presidential election? How does it remain spared of fake news claims?

The truth is, media is like pizza. You get what you ordered, or you go out of business. Does anyone honestly lay claim to the notion that “mainstream” media refuses to report real news because it would rather report on Kim Kardashian’s ass? That it wants to secretly slip the public pap, like giving a fussy baby a spoonful of Gerber’s by making an airplane noise?

So let’s ratchet down the vitriol, Mr. Harris, Dawkins, Tyson et al. You’re criticizing a club to which you belong.

For Esme, with Love and Slobber

Scott Bowles

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July 8, 2017

 

A horrible thought just occurred to me.

You know how dogs sleep? Usually with their feet skipping along, to accompanying mini-yips. It’s really cute.

But then I realized: We  assume a dog is having a pleasant dream when we see that. Perhaps images  of untrodden fields and unsniffed anuses.

Yet my dog never acts that way when she’s awake. I’ve never seen her yip playfully when she runs. Shit, I’ve never heard her bark. Esme would have made a great mime; she’s already got the whiteface.

What if she (and her canine brethren) are actually having nightmares when they’re yipping and skittering along the dream circuit? What if dogs are actually picturing Buick-sized cats and electrified fire hydrants? What if Fido is actually calling out for help: Please, wake me from this hell! I have a memory that lasts 15 seconds; not only will I forgive it — I’ll forget it before I fall back asleep. PLEASE HAVE MERCY!

So I’m going to go on Amazon and buy an air horn. When I see her nodding off, I’ll just gently hold the button and BBBBRRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPPPPP!!!!! No more bad dreams.

You’re welcome, honey.

And now, beloved bitches, a non-alternative Factslap:

  • Only 17% of 11 to 38-year-olds experience no mental disorders, according to a study in New Zealand.
  • There is a castle in Scotland shaped like a pineapple.
  • In 1989, a new Blockbuster store was opening in America every 17 hours.
  • “Sesame Street” has won 167 Emmys and 8 Grammys. An estimated 77 million Americans watched the show as children.
  • Scientists usually omit left-handed people from tests because their brain works differently.
  • Tear gas is banned for use in international warfare, but is still legal to use in the U.S.
  • In 18th century Paris, it was fashionable to wear hats and umbrellas with lightning rods attached.
  • All octopus species are venomous to humans, but only one is deadly, the Southern Blue-Ringed octopus.

 

 

You Comey at the King, You’d Best Not Miss

Scott Bowles

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June 11, 2017

 

As a lifelong reporter, my father lived in notepads. All journalists do.

Dad, however, did some serious scribbling. You wouldn’t say he took copious notes because that would be a disservice to dad and the word. It doesn’t come close to dad’s style.

He must have had thousands of notebooks. He kept every one. He numbered every page. On the cover of every pad, he would create a table of contents: pages 4-12, notes on Cobo Hall redesign. Pages 74-96, an interview with Doug Fraser.

Most miraculously, his handwriting was legible. Almost female in its neatness. Former reporters told me when I joined the paper that dad was the paper’s unofficial librarian. If journalists needed to get background on, say, the Cobo redesign, they would go to him before the paper’s library. He was faster. They talked of him diving into a mountain of notebooks, emerging with the request.

Dad believed he never got to the New York Times because of the attention he paid to note taking, culminating in a confrontation with Sen. Ernest Hollings from South Carolina. Hollings made the mistake of wavering in an interview with dad about getting out of the Vietnam War, a view that got him skewered by his hawk supporters.

When Hollings called a hasty press conference to deny ever making the statement, dad showed up — with his notepad. He called Hollings a liar from the press pit. “Well I’ll be goddamned if I’ll have a reporter call me a liar at my own press conference,” Hollings snapped. “I’ll knock your block off.” Dad rushed the stage, was ushered out by security and made the wires, a story I still have.

Donald Trump had better pray James Comey doesn’t have nearly the transcription skills — or temper — of my father. Because president carrot top would get his ass kicked.

He still may. Comey’s testimony last week can’t be seen as good news for the administration. But what even counts for good news now? A mushroom-cloud-free day?

Still, it’s  astounding to watch the GOP try to tear down its former top cop. Most peculiar, perhaps, was the counterfeit surprise they expressed about Comey’s presumptions. Why in the world, they wondered, would he take Trump’s spoken desire to see the Russia investigation disappear as nefarious?

Has it come to this? Are we really parsing the language of Mafia wannabes? Nice country ya got here. Shame if something were to happen to it…

Perhaps dad had it right. Some note taking is worth rushing the stage.

Speaking of non-alternative facts:

  • Watermelons contain an ingredient called citrulline that can trigger production of a compound that helps relax the body’s blood vessels, just like Viagra.
  • Ancient Greeks wouldn’t eat beans as they thought that they contained the souls of the dead.
  • The Burj Khalifa is so tall that residents above the 80th floor have to wait 2 to 3 minutes longer to end Ramadan.
  • For those who jumped from the WTC on 9/11, the fall lasted 10 seconds. They struck the ground at just under 150 mph, enough to ensure instant death on impact.
  • Tigers can, and will, take revenge on those who have wronged them.
  • Sweden has their own national font, Sweden Sans, to “unambiguously represent Sweden in the world.”
  • You have to be a retired letter carrier to live in Nalcrest, Florida. Ironically, the town does not have mail delivery service.
  • In 2010, Syria had more tourists than Australia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. to Mother Nature: Drop Dead

Scott Bowles

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June 3, 2017

     That Donald Trump pulled the U.S. from the Paris global warming accord was as inevitable as the rising sea.
     What is surprising is the rationale that punctuated the withdrawal — and that we in the press let it pass for logic.
     We would expect the right to applaud it. Republicans increasingly find themselves on the wrong side of science, from evolution to stem cell research, that will eventually leave it the party of ancient texts. Now the GOP can claim a new acronym: Get Our Planet.
     But what was stunning was the pass afforded the administration. We in the media (and that’s all of us, social media strollers) permitted Trumpeteers to applaud the decision as Trump keeping an election promise.  CNN and MSNBC both featured Trump supporters like talking pimple whitehead Jeffrey Lord, hailing the move as canny American scrimping, which it may indeed be.
     Not once, however, could I find an analyst to ask this question: Did the promise itself have merit? We have reached a political strata where simply keeping your word suffices for integrity. But what if the pledge itself is a crackpot one?
     Say, for instance, that Trump promised to make America great again by returning us to slavery. And, thanks to the bible-thumping populace of the American South, he won — largely on that campaign plank. Would we have “the other side” of a political debate? The one that argues that, sure, Trump may have repealed the 13th Amendment, but at least he kept his word?
     Of course not. We would apply a larger question to the issue. Not ‘Is it legal?’ But ‘Is it right?’
     Yet I continue to look for a reporter who will ask this simple question of a single supporter: America makes up 4% of the world’s population. Yet we account for 32% of the world’s carbon emissions. Whatever your thoughts on the economic unfairness of the accord, doesn’t that mean we owe 8 times the amount on the dinner bill? Judge Judy likes to say “You ate the steak, now you have to pay for it.”
     Didn’t we eat eight steaks?
Now, on to other non-alternative facts, bitches:
  • An elephant’s skin can be up to 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) thick but is so sensitive it can feel a fly landing on it.
  • In Nepal, Mount Everest is known as Chomolungma, meaning “Goddess Mother of Mountains.”
  • In 2005, a psychologist and an economist taught a group of monkeys the concept of money. Soon, the monkeys engaged in prostitution.
  • Today’s average American woman weighs as much as the average 1960s man.
  • The U.S. joined Syria and Nicaragua as the only nations that aren’t part of the Paris agreement to limit carbon emissions.
  • If you deprive a fruit fly or a fish of sleep, it will try to catch up the next day.
  • Butterflies have 4 eyes, bees have 5 eyes, most spiders have 8 eyes and Caterpillars have 12 eyes.

 

What’s In A Name? Perhaps Your Soul

Scott Bowles

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April 15, 2017

As a jalopy junkie (I’ve owned at least four dozen get-our-and-push models), I’ve had my share of license plates, most of them expired and registered to dead people to cut down on parking tickets.

I’ve only owned two personalized plates, one intentionally.

The first was a tag that came with a Porsche Boxster that was incalculably more attractive than the owner, who probably had more fixit jobs than the car. She was convinced of her beauty, though, which meant I had to drive a car that read NTACHNC (Not A Chance) until I could get one with with simple digits.

The other came as a suggestion from an Associated Press reporter who had the perfect plate idea when I told him of my yellow and white Mini Cooper: 1BIGEGG.

But apparently, personalized plates — besides being a sign of douche-baggery in LA — is a headache for the DMV officials tasked with approving the plates.

The California agency that fields thousands of foulmouthed, often childish requests for personalized plates — think “PASZGAZ” — is turning down dozens of applications every month because they appear to embrace bigotry.

 Plate requests rejected by the Department of Motor Vehicles in the second half of 2016 often included the letters “HH” and the numbers “88” and “18,” which can represent well-known codes for Adolf Hitler and Nazism.

One motorist was denied a bid for “1KTKKK8,” with the DMV noting the possible reference to the Ku Klux Klan.

Another wasn’t allowed to get “PEPE Y,” despite explaining in the application that it signified both a “peppy car” and a “dog’s name.” The state reviewers noted that the request probably referred to the cartoon character Pepe the Frog, an Internet meme and a symbol to many of white nationalism.

Here are some of the plate applications, and why the state rejected them:

But don’t worry if your plate gets rejected. I’ve got a long list of dead people willing to fill out an application.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jOFf_KB3lI

 

 

Ever Thus to Dimwits

Scott Bowles

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March 7, 2017

 

I’m lucky enough to have friends and a mother who suffer my theories, although I have no idea how gladly.

There’s the Lift-and-Separate Theory of technology.

The God-as-Deadbeat-Dad Theory of religion.

And, of course, the Great Race War Theory of politics: the hypothesis that racial tensions can be quantifiably measured — so, to some degree, predicted — by the racial makeup of the nation as compared to the racial makeup of the nation’s Top 500 executives. And you’ll get a rough (ever sliding) compass reading of our place on the Great Race War scale.

The good news: That theory is out the window.

The bad news: The Great Race War will start much simpler: with a quarter-inch bullet from a Trump supporter.

Trump made the suggestion as he does most: on Twitter and out his ass.
He offered, without proof, that the former president was personally responsible for bugging and trying trying to derail his campaign.

And with that, Trump’s lunatic base suddenly has a legitimate reason (in what substitutes as their eyes) to applaud assassinations.

Trump cast himself as a Jesus figure in the second presidential debate, offering to “take the arrows” from his opponent in a crusade to resurrect the nation. Does anyone doubt a zealot would sacrifice his life (and others) to protect the political Chosen One?

And there’s little evidence Trump would want to prevent one, even if he could. Consider the only two real acts he’s taken in the infancy of his presidency: a Muslim ban rand a $50 billion budget increase for the Defense Department, the nation’s largest police force. All we’d need is a shovel to entrench ourselves deeper.

The president is awfully fond of laying guilt at the feet of his anger; Remember his ‘Blame a federal judge if we suffer a terrorism attack?’

So be it, Mr. President. Take it from an old newsman who knows how a paper is laid on a doorstep.

Here’s the latest issue of Blame,Mr. President. Delivered to your door.

The Golden Shower Lining of a DysTrumpian Future

Scott Bowles

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February 12, 2017

 

Ok, so the past 18 months have been tough for liberals, Democrats, women, minorities, homosexuals, immigrants, the environment, the press and, in an overarching sense,  intellectualism itself.

But there’s an upside to the past year and a half. Consider what has flourished under the New World Order:

Sports. It has been an unreal stretch for all things athletic. The Liecester City Foxes were a 5,000-to-1 shot to win the Premier League soccer championships. But the little town from East Midlands, UK emptied the safes of dozens of booking houses, even prompting a ban on odds that long in soccer matches. The Cleveland Cavaliers came back from 3-1 in the NBA Finals to bring an impossible championship to the city. Then Chicago did them  one better, ending a century-long curse to win the World Series. The Clemson Tigers shocked ESPN’s talking heads by upsetting Alabama for the college football championship. Roger Federer and Serena Williams both claimed record Gran Slam titles at the Australian Open — at 35 years old. That’s the qualifying age to play in tennis’ senior circuit. Even the Super Bowl was supposed to be super, though I did not watch. The Patriots’ victory seemed, in retrospect, as inevitable as Trump’s, and I can’t stand victorious villains.

Comedy. For eight years, comedians had to limit their schticks to lambasting the GOP (Barack Obama was simply too quick to satirize). Now, though, the reins are off, and we’re seeing late-night comedians feasting on a neophyte administration that must look like buzzard snacks. Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Bill Maher and, most surprisingly, Seth Myers have not only struck a resonant funny bone; they’ve effectively taken over participatory journalism from the participatory journalists. Of course, the Donald helps them out: Reacting angrily to a New York Times story that the president putters around the White House in his bathrobe, he had had Sean Spicer shoot down the story by claiming Donald doesn’t even own a bathrobe, perhaps a presidential first. Alec Baldwin has created his most memorable role since Glengarry Glen Ross with his Trump imitation on SNL, which is enjoying its highest ratings in a quarter century. The key to his act? He says he simply “Reads the guy’s tweets back.”

Activism. I come from a generation whose idea of conspiracy was who shot J.R. But today I see my friends marching, debating, engaging over topics they rarely broached. Of course, that’s no guarantee of change. But it’s a lot more promising sign than a protest hashtag.

So cheer up, Bill Maher (the guy really looks like he lost his mother): Assuming we don’t have to hunt or own food or learn how to make a lean-to in a nuclear winter, the next four years could be a hoot.

 

Dear Esteemed Colleagues: Please, Shut the Fuck Up

Scott Bowles

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January 21, 2017

 

I just watched the umpteenth interview with an apoplectic reporter proclaiming the sky was falling (or, as I call it, Chicken Littling) after the latest rumor to circulate from the Trump administration: that he may deport all press to the Executive Office Building next door to the White House.

To hear them, you’d think Trump had just cut the ribbon on a new Gulag for journalists (that’s not due to be completed till 2018. He says the New York Times will pay for it.).

But, as is our tradition will all things Interweb-related, we swine don’t recognize the pearls we wear.

It wouldn’t be the first time. We began our professional descent when we charged for the print version of news, but not the electronic. The porn industry alone should have been a red flag lesson that giving your product away for free is a rickety business model.

Then we didn’t protect the title “social media,”  and even recognized it as an actual thing. It isn’t. The reason you don’t hear about “social surgeons” and “social pilots” is because the medical and aviation industries would sue infringers faster than an Uber training video (13 minutes on YouTube).

Now we are losing our collective wits over the possible eviction, as well as word that Trump may communicate with the press the way he communicates with the public (and, apparently, staff): In 140 characters or less.

To which I say this: Please be true.

Any reporter who has spent more than 4 minutes behind a notepad knows the truth about news conferences: They never contain news. They are simply a cliche delivery system for athletes, celebrities and politicians offering different riffs on the same tune: One Game at a Time, My Fellow Americans, It’s Just an Honor Being Nominated.

By comparison, Twitter is mana from heaven.

Consider his post-Nov. 8 tweets: He blasted Republican lawmakers as pussies, ripped Arnold Schwarzenegger’s performance on The Apprentice, publicly described the CIA and FBI as rife with rubes, hailed a dictator as cunning and, perhaps most egregiously, called Meryl Streep overrated.

Imagine if Obama — or any previous president — said any of those in a news conference. We’d be tripping over each other to get to the computer to file the story first.

Now it’s delivered directly to our phones. As soon as Senators and Representatives see it. The only lag time a reporter faces when writing a Trump-tweet story is how fast the writer can type.

The president’s tweets even create stories where none would have existed. In one missive, he wrote that a nemesis’ actions were “unpresidented.” Had that been a press conference, reporters would have unwittingly corrected the error, assuming that if Trump knew how to say the word, he knew how to spell it.

And we would never have gotten the opportunity to write: “Sorry, Donny, there’s no such word as ‘unpresidented.’ Or even ‘unpresidential,’ despite all evidence to the contrary.” And if you do need a talking head, you have the always-entertaining Kellyanne Conway, whose face looks like it was crushed by another horse’s face.

Finally, follow Fourth Estaters: What makes you think that the threat is any more feasible than, say, draining the swamp or making America great again? Trump would never reject the media; he lives to be in it. We complete him.

To quote our new precedent: Sad!

 

 

Yea Tho I Walk Through the Valley of San Bernardino

Scott Bowles

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January 20, 2017

(photo by Michelle Brown)

True story.

I awoke with some trepidation on Inauguration Day. Perhaps I’d heard ‘bigly’ too often, or feared that Vladimir Putin would do the s(w)earing-in. Whatever the reason, I wondered if a nuclear winter would greet me that morning.

But when I wobbled into the shower and looked out the window, I discovered the world still existed. Not only existed, but was going about its business unperturbed. Rains fell steadily, bringing with them soothing white noise and quenching the state’s drought of six years.

Then the sun broke through, briefly, brilliantly reminding me why we all live here.

And I thought, ‘Maybe I am looking at this whole election thing from the wrong perspective. Maybe I should actually try practicing what I preach. To see glasses half full. To truly appreciate what I can hold, for it’s always fleeting. If we can survive Friday, who’s to say we won’t survive Monday, Tuesday, and the days that follow?

Then I realize:

Shit, I misread the calendar.

Inauguration Day is tommorow.

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