Wednesday, June 6, 2012
COLDS NEWS #2
When the COLD NEWS first appeared, we, America and me, were in the middle of the first Bush Depression. Bill Clinton’s boom was over and the Regressives were getting ready to piratize the public sector, big time. LIKE all good things Clinton’s efforts to spread the wealth, by economic diversification and relative peace, would end with the “need for greed’’, Bush administration.
COLD SOUP, a dinner theatre, started in the summer of 2003. Thus, the COLD NEWS, an integral part of CS, was born of progressive discount, popular rage. 9/11 had been used to silence Bush’s critics. Protesters were put in “FREE SPEECH ZONES,” guarded by riot cops and photographed by plain clothes but obvious agents of homeland security.
Not unlike the anti-war movement during Vietnam, protests became “un-American.” Bill Maher and Cynthia McKinney were attacked, marginalized, and dismissed from the public eye. Max Cleland, a triple amputee Viet-war hero, was run out of office by Saxby Chambliss, a draft dodger, because Cleland wasn’t sufficiently patriotic enough.
The industrial media always eager for war, got in line immediately. Hollywood and public broadcast “self” censored, hiding behind “objectivity,” like a drunk hiding under the covers because something scary was going to happen if they ever uttered the name Bush.
To the point, anybody who merely objected to Regressive policies, were relegated to nonperson status and silenced while the war lovers prepared to profit. These were dark days.
In 2005, COLD SOUP produced The Much Anticipated, Long Awaited, Karl Rove Goes to Hell, my personal fave.
As far as the COLD NEWS went, I modeled my style after the honorable Lewis Black, as translated by John Stewart, a deranged news man out for deep irony with a big slice of snark on the side. My fan loved it.
Only good taste restrained me, but then not often. When the COLD SOUP crowd had drunk all the wine and were scarfing down dessert, the street lamp shone behind me and the vox populist could be heard baying at the full moon.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Cold News:The Vox Populist Putting the 'real' in “really”
To follow in the foot steps of the honorable essayists and comic pundits Mark Twain, Hunter Thompson, Jon Stewart, Saint Stephen Colbert and Lewis Black, the Cold News will report on the counter-intuitive nature of Americans' love of contradiction, i.e., the less we see of Kim Whatshername, the more there is of her. I don't know...maybe it's existential thinking...or not.
When I took my one and only journalism course at Georgia State University, the associate professor warned us sternly about “going gonzo.” Aspirations were crushed immediately—“there would not be any more rogue journalists” allowed to exist in the industrial media. Really?
Hunter S. Thompson or Raul Duke or Dr. Gonzo, whichever you prefer, was paid to punctuate—the screeds of insight were free. They were high velocity blasts at the Evil One, Richard Nixon, and his War on Drugs, which Dr. Gonzo took personally.
Mark Twain went gonzo over 19th century Jingoism. Widely regarded as America's best spokesperson when he wrote about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn's life on the Mississippi. But he fell out of grace with the Hearst empire over the Cuban and Philippine wars.
Jon Stewart took on both Fox News and George W. Bush. Stewart made the entire propaganda machine squeal like a war pig.
When Walter Cronkite declared the Viet Nam war over, it was all over. When Saint Stephen Colbert told the Washington press corp and W to their faces that the Bush presidency wasn't at all “like sailing on the Titanic, it was more like flying on the Hindenburg,” it was pretty much over for Iraq.
So, as Twain said, “There is no defense against laughter.” Really!
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