Dana Blankenhorn

Defending an Atlantan

Having lived in Atlanta for nearly 30 years, I have been witness many times to the degrading attitude my original hometown of New York takes to this place.

Of course, it's the same attitude New York takes to every other place in America. It looks down at us. It assumes a right to define us, to buy and sell us, to treat us as its economic and cultural subjects.

New York does not know best. You have only to look at the fate of Turner Broadcasting in the hands of Time Warner to know that. CNN is crap. The company disinvested in The Cartoon Network, which had been successful, for short term gain. It's sad, and I know Ted Turner would agree.

Usually Atlanta falls meekly under the gaze of the Big Apple. At least white Atlanta does. Black Atlanta -- that's something else. You don't see black rap or R&B artists kowtowing to their New York counterparts. They have succeeded in bringing a little power down here, and that's actually good for everyone, white and black.

Something similar has finally happened in TV thanks to Tyler Perry. He came here less than 20 years ago from his birthplace of New Orleans, penniless. Now he's worth a great deal of money. He has built his own production studio on property formerly owned by Delta Airlines in southwest Atlanta.

Squeal Like a Pig

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 43 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

The recent dust-up between the Obama Administration and Fox News deserves a proper response from someone who knows a little political history.

Squeal like a pig! (This is a family blog. Those who wish to can learn why actor Bill McKinney is smiling at y'all on his Web site.)

Regular readers will know I've been pushing this quite some time. I have actually been looking forward to comparing someone like Joe Biden to Spiro Agnew. And for good historical reason.

The most important thing a Thesis must do, not for validation but just to get its program through, is to change the formula of what is acceptable.

The boundaries were pretty easy to set in our nation's first generational crisis, the Civil War. Supporting the South was treason, supporting peace giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The job was done most subtly by FDR. Many people think of the Hays Code as having been about sex. But has anyone asked why the Roosevelt Administration endorsed it? It was because the Code demanded that movies support the government, saying that "Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed."

After Dinner

While all the news shows were covering the Inaugural Balls this evening, Turner Movie Classics (known at my home as the Dead Movie Channel) re-ran a classic from 1967, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

It's a movie that has lived many lives. It won Spencer Tracy his 9th (and last) Oscar nomination -- he died shortly after filming ended. It then killed Sidney Poitier's career as a Big Star, as black folks who had moved from King to Malcolm X decided he was just an "Uncle Tom."

Nothing could have been further from the truth, but the character he played, a brilliant black doctor with honors as long as your arm, was very much in keeping with what critics call the Magic Negro, an incredibly gifted, infinitely patient, almost godlike black figure who is nevertheless not the center of the story, but a means by which some white character finds their own soul.

There are many examples in contemporary cinema. The caddy in "Bagger Vance." Morgan Freeman in "Driving Miss Daisy," or as God himself in "Bruce Almighty." Queen Latifah in Steve Martin's "Bringing Down the House." (In fact Poitier's characterization is more nuanced. He is, in fact, conflicted about his own choice, and how others will react. It's Katharine Ross' Joanna who is truly unruffled.)

The problem, in other words, was that Sidney Poitier's character was not at the center of the story, but that Spencer Tracy's was. Of course that's the way with drama -- it's the one who changes whom we focus on.

Black Camelot

It is almost certain that, in the next few years, Broadway will mount a re-staging of the Broadway musical Camelot, probably with an all-black cast.

This will happen regardless of the election results. If Obama wins, it's an echo of the Kennedy era. If he loses it's in keeping with the play's actual plot, which is that Camelot is destroyed.

How do I know? This is how Broadway rolls. They reprise musicals 50 years after their opening. Kiss Me Kate re-opened in 1999, The Pajama Game in 2005. Camelot, which first opened in 1960, is due.

That's sort of forgotten these days because, in its first run, Julie Andrews took it over. It was all about the singing. She was a marvelous singer. But at that time, she wasn't a great actress. She wasn't ready to play the villain.

That's what Guenevere is, the villain. And that's what she will be when the play is re-staged.

Why an all-black cast? Because, frankly, there are more really talented black folks ready to grab these parts right now than white ones. (Brian Stokes Mitchell doesn't count. He's played both Coalhouse Walker, a black man in Ragtime, as well as The Man of La Mancha and the lead in that Kiss Me Kate I mentioned earlier. If you want to re-do Flower Drum Song I'm sure he'd be great.)

Rather than concern ourselves with the details of the re-staging (what might be added, or dropped, what might the costumes look like, or the staging) it's far more fun to play that great Hollywood Game -- I wanted, I'd take, I got.

As in I wanted Laurence Olivier, I'd take Dick Van Dyke, I got Dom DeLuise. Only to make this game even more sporting, let's play it this way. Who plays the role on Broadway, who gets it in the Hollywood motion picture, and who goes about touring it in the sticks?

Dirty F'ing Haties

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 9 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

One of the smartest things I have written at this blog came from my daughter, Robin. In a 2006 post I compared right-wing bloggers and talk show hosts to hippies from the 1960s.

No, she said. They're haties.

She's right, but the historical comparison remains apt, and I've made it many times. The haties are in the same historical role that hippies were 40 years ago.

The key to understanding the political changes of that time was its rejection of the hippies, then all those who enabled them. It was these people Spiro Agnew was describing in his speeches about liberal elites -- he was extending the public distaste for hippies to those who found anything redeemable in them.

The historical rejection of the hippies is a key to understanding the Nixon Thesis of Conflict, the political assumptions which have dominated America since that time, and which still dominate our media discourse.

The next step, after dismissing the hippies, was to defang them, and in this their supposed supporters in the media were highly complicit.

You can see it proceed throughout the 1970s. First they were turned into cartoons -- Scooby Doo. Then they were turned into suburbanites -- the Partridge Family. By the end of the decade they were merely a laughable stance -- Mork & Mindy. And they were an historical artifact, forgotten, crushed under history's wheel.

This process is just beginning for the haties of today. I would like to urge you to join in.

Fear Itself

UPDATE: To learn what you can do about this scourge check out our latest post on the Dirty F'ing Haties.

---

Liberal bloggers are getting their undies in a bunch over the Far Right's hate campaign against their man Barack Obama.

It's a game, says Josh Marshall. People won't see through it.

There are lots of charges you can make against liberalism, and by far the worst is their assumption of defeat. They're constantly Charlie Brown before the football, absolutely convinced it's about to be pulled away, because Lucy always gets away with it. (To the right, Cincinnati bloviator Bill Cunningham, of the McCain rally. Give him one back.)

Oh, and the American people are stupid enough to fall for it, say the libs fretfully. Again and again and again. They'll never learn. They're sheep.

It's this assumption of American stupidity I find most alarming. If Americans are that stupid, then maybe democracy is a mistake, and maybe we should have government of our betters, by our betters, for our betters.

Problem is, Mr. Liberal Jackass, you think you're our better, but you're not. Our better is always the ruthless one, the man who best harnesses our base fears. It was true in Latin America for decades, true in Europe before that. True in Africa today. You're not ruthless enough or twisted enough or evil enough to be our better.

Our better is giving you the finger.

The Jazz Singer

And now for something completely different...

I'm no film reviewer, but I just felt a need to tell you about an amazing film I saw on TV the other day.

The Jazz Singer.

Stop laughing a moment. This is one of those films we all assume we know, because of what we've been told about it, and because it's something that is supposed to be in our collective conscious. As the first mass market talking picture, it's one of the most important films of all time, and when we think about it all that's what we usually think about.

The Jazz Singer opened 80 years ago this month. It is regularly derided by critics as a minor piece, and in some ways it is. All the spoken parts are done as a silent, complete with speech cards, so there's this shock when Jolson suddenly starts singing, an excitement you can still feel on behalf of your grandparents and great-grandparents.

But, seeing the whole thing, there is so much more. The actors are behaving as in a talkie, without the heavy pancake and darkened lips of so many silents. Even in the sections which are silent, it's distinctively different. All the acting is naturalistic, not the measured pantomime we associate with the period.

Web Command of the Year

Embed.

The embed command, which places an object, usually a Shockwave player, inside a Web page and directs it to play some video clip on command, is the most important piece of code in our time. (There will be a test on the clip above later in this item.)

What made YouTube was this simple embed command. People don't spend their whole days at YouTube, watching its videos. They search YouTube and, when they find what they like, cut-and-paste the embed command so their own work will give the clip they have found context.

The embed command is why Google paid $1.65 billion in stock for YouTube. The embed command is why Google was hosed in that deal, because YouTube did not own, nor did it control the embed command. It was merely the first company to make embed the heart of its business model.

All the brouhaha over Viacom "taking back" its videos from Google, which even I engaged in, was in the end meaningless because of the embed command. After a very short period of time Viacom added the embed command to its Comedy Central clips, surrounding the window with its trade dress, and we all went on as before.

Face in the Crowd

Penance is supposed to mean "I won't do it again," but in practice it's used as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

The news yesterday was very Catholic as MSNBC and CNN did all-day penance on the Imus thing. Allison Stewart became the "black" host -- I'd always thought she was the young and cute host of The Most.

Services concluded with TCM playing "A Face in the Crowd," starring Andy Griffith. (The scene to the right is from early in the film, when he dominates the screen. Note that as his star rises he becomes smaller.)

Copyright Wars May End Soon

The screen above shows a rant by CBS host Craig Ferguson on the subject of his own alcoholism. It's a good monologue.

That's not why it is here.  Note that when you link to it you will find it comes directly from CBS. It is of high quality. You can see exactly how many times it has been viewed -- about 320,000 by last count -- and what people think of it.

This is invaluable data. There's also space for an ad on the top and an adblock in the corner that could, in the future, contain another ad. A short ad could also be embedded into the stream, by CBS. There's already a few seconds advertising the show at the end.

There are many ways in which CBS (and YouTube) can monetize this, and the cost to CBS is zero. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Bupkis. The null set.

Now contrast this with what Viacom has done, pulling its videos from YouTube. First let's look at the initial costs of pulling its content:

1. Lots of angry Internet users.
2. Negative publicity.
3. Lower audiences.
4. Costs for hosting the content itself.

The company has tried to recover by striking a deal with a start-up competitor, and claims it benefits because it can get "premium CPMs."

Viacom also claims that it's avoiding "piracy." Which means what exactly? It seems to mean that they're not going to have their video content hosted on Web sites like this, with context provided by people like me.

Where is the financial gain in that?