Good for the Pilgrims
While I love my privacy, I hate to be away from Linda. I spent a coupla nights this week in a Mill Valley motel because I’m finishing up the television program on child-rearing. In addition to the wife and dawg, I miss my bed and my pillow. Do I sound like I’m gettin’ old, or got there and can’t find much else to do but rag on the process?
We shot my on-camera segments on Sunday afternoon, and then I recorded the narration, so the main work on the program is done. Most of it. I woke in the middle of the night and realized that I had forgotten one segment. When I was younger, I didn’t need an assistant, but I should have one now, for this kind of work, to go over everything twice, after I do. I can pick out the typos on a menu, but could misspell my name for the screen and not see it. Everyone needs an editor.
My partner-pal Peter and I took the customary four-mile walk down and up Tennessee Valley to the ocean. We’ve known each other for twenty years, and are formally joined at the hip with our political consulting firm, Wins of Change. We have experience in every phase of campaigning, but focus on our forte, media and message. On our walk, we bemoaned the lack of progressive voices in our society today. Most of the Democrats have portaged to the center, within hailing distance of the few Republicans who demonstrate sentience; or maybe to the right of them.
One of the reasons he and I need to actually spend some time together -- we live 225 miles apart — is for him to fill me in on the "real world" as is illuminated through television — the programming and the perceived audience. Linda and I watch very little television, ‘cause there’s nothing to watch. Peter has a stronger stomach, more patience, and a greater interest in the coarse common discourse. A successful veteran radio talk show person, Peter also tracks what’s going on in that industry.
There was a time, when he was in radio and I was in television, when broadcasting was a craft where creative and thoughtful people dominated the airwaves; or at least you could find them by turning the dial. Nowadays, that’s not the case. There are trashpiles of right-wing rant, both political and Ch-chr-christian, and rarely a word anywhere on the dial that would provoke a seriously productive thought. Everything is bite-size and visceral; ideas are pre-digested. Jump on the flag, and wave the bandwagon, I mean....
It’s all about money. The people who sign the checks are trying to buy ratings to attract advertisers. My optimism about the future arises from that premise; I expect that at some point, when the flaccidity and irrelevance of the current programming has reached post-saturation levels, a program manager — perhaps out of simple desperation — will try out thoughtful, witty, dynamic progressive voices, and they will immediately find an audience. Consider that educated, thinking, environmentally-concerned, socially-aware folks who would listen to that kind of radio are going to be the only ones with any spending power over the next stretch.
Of course, we’re gonna need a banner. And a name; "liberal" has an image of weakness and failure. The good guys need to be re-masculated. We can’t leave the flag and the leadership in the hands of the bankers and war-makers. We’ve got a better story to tell, a better future to discuss.
The drive back to Redding on Wednesday night was a moose, what with so many of the folks who normally would have flown deciding to drive to their Thanksgivings instead. The normal ninety-minute drive from San Francisco to Sacramento was five-'n-a-half hours. I listened to my colleagues and stayed into the evening to work on the program. Then I stopped for dinner at the beginning of the trip. Though I did hit a longish stretch of red lights, it was only a hint at what people had suffered through for the most of the rest of the day.
Gotta move to the coast soon, but in the meantime, I'm effervescent with thanks for all that we have. Stovepipe hats off to the Pilgrims.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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