Archive for the ‘Walter Cronkite’ Category

It’s crazy.  DJ AM was found dead in his New York apartment due to an apparent drug overdose.  What’s even crazier, I have absolutely no idea who this guy is.  Or was.  What does that say about me?  I’m 44, a former multi-platinum record producer and I’ve never heard of this guy in my life.  Obviously he was a dj.  So?  High profile romances with Nicole Richie and Mandy Moore.  I kinda know who they are but again, so?  Not even a musician, much less a talented one, and he’s dated Nicole Richie who’s famous for what?  Being friends with Paris Hilton?  The adopted daughter of Lionel Richie?

I’m not so clueless as to know there exists an entire dj culture I know nothing about.

I worked with Lionel Richie, hell of a nice guy.

And Mandy Moore.  Never heard of her.  Sold some ten million records and is an actress.  Honestly never heard of her either, couldn’t pick her out of a lineup.  What does this say about me?

My adolescent heroes are by and large, still names on peoples lips, or at least, still familiar to most people eighteen and over.  Journalists, musicians, actors and writers.  Cronkite, Brokaw and Olbermann.  Miles, Eddie, SRV….  Sean Penn, De Niro, John Goodman, Frances McDormand….  Poe, Steinbeck, Capote, Vonnegut….  I could fill pages.

What does it say about us?  About me?  My generation?  Do the people who know who DJ AM is know who the Vice President is and that he spoke at a very important memorial this evening?  Do they know the last scion of Camelot is dead?  Do they even care?

I understand that there’s always been a disconnect between the youth culture and the more sober reality of the adult world.  Often that cleavage has yielded important cultural upheaval.  If American society had just listened harder and paid more attention to our youth in the late sixties, events might have been significantly less disastrous.  The under under 35 demographic played a huge role in last year’s elections.

A force to be reckoned with.  Pure and not easily confused.

I have to admit, beyond my bewilderment, I don’t necessarily have a point.

Well, maybe I do, but it smacks of codgerliness in an embarrassing ‘kids these days’ sort of way.  I mean, these are pivotal times.  The fate of the country certainly hangs in the balance, as does every single individual who has DJ AM on his or her radar.  Is our children learning?

I read Rolling Stone these days because Matt Taibbi has piece inside, otherwise I have no idea who or what they’re talking about.  The new artists are a mystery to me.  Weird.

To be sure, part of the problem is the phenomena of unchecked media saturation.  I grew up with two and a half channels, the newspaper, a 7-11 a half a hour way on a skateboard and a library forty five minutes away on a bike.  No cable, no internet, no cell phones, no video games except Pong and nothing but time.  I responded to this brevity of stimuli, entertainment and information by constructing powerful homemade explosives, listening to records, reading everything I could get my hands on and learning to play the drums.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I had no interest in sports.  I played a little tennis, these days I like to watch boxing and a little basketball, maybe the Superbowl.

Far  more constructive than today’s youth, I’m sure.

I understand that raging, pulsating hormones and prodigious pressure to succeed  pollute common sense and sometimes erode sensibility entirely, but work with me kids.  Whoever DJ AM was, I’m confident he commands no amount of gravity that even approaches the fight for your future that rages in town halls and the corridors of power as you lament the passing of this cultural speck.

What I’m trying to tell you is we need you.  Pay attention.  You helped us elect a man who was by far the best choice.  Your work is not done.  Sorry, it’s just begun.  It is the price you pay for what you already have.  It is what you owe for it.  Sincere earnestness is required to improve it all.  You are the future.  Read and masturbate more.  Reverse that, spank it more often and then turn off the insidious and ubiquitous media and read something.

The engine of youth is quite capable of driving the course of human events in this country when it’s fuel is righteous.

Drinks for my friends.

“The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed.” -1996 memoir, “A Reporter’s Life.”

It’s a trite understatement to say he lived a full and long life.  My first memories of Walter Cronkite are from a handsome cherry wood Zenith console television, the smell of hot vacuum tubes and visions of astronaut endeavors in black and white.  The Columbia Broadcast System was the only channel with reliable reception on the outskirts of a very small town.

Rabbit ears but no foil.  We were a class act.  Roger Mudd.  Eric Sevareid.  Walter Cronkite.

CBS, NBC and ABC.

CBS.

The great improviser, who declared the Vietnam war unwinnable, after seeing it himself.  Pretty much ending the presidency of LBJ.  Legitimately speechless when Neil Armstrong declared one small step for man.  Yep, he paused when announcing the death of JFK.  Maybe teared up a little.  Unafraid to cover America’s civil rights struggle.  Back then there was the newspaper and the evening news.  The evening news was Walter Cronkite.  An icon who managed to eclipse Edward R. Murrow as America’s pre-eminent journalist.

Comforting that he wasn’t felled early like Murrow, Jennings or Russert.

But oh, what he must have thought of contemporary journalism.  The bar he hoisted so high, disgraced, disregarded and ultimately ignored.   Charlatans like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh et al. Infotainment and Fox News.   Rampant unfounded celebrity worship.

He came from an era when network bosses weren’t sure if America would tolerate a half an hour of hard news as opposed to fifteen minutes.  They did.  They craved it.   To then witness our attention span shrink and atrophy.  Popular culture force fed to America and the rest of the world, a phenomena that eventually rendered actual news not entertaining enough, no matter it’s truth or content.  Mr. Cronkite was already on the sidelines.  Retired.  How this felt to him must have been devastating.

One could argue that America has gone to shit since Cronkite retired.  Sure seems like the time we really began to lose our way.  I’m thinking Reagan era.  Could have used him then.

His own truthful ideal obsolete.  Forced to witness it decline from there.

Graceful and honest.  A surrogate for the people’s necessary information.  He chose to color outside the lines but once or twice.  When he did, he did so with the best intentions and the result sent magnificent waves through all of America.  He affected change by telling HIS truth.  Otherwise, he did a little bit less.  He told us THE truth.

We ended up with Nixon.

He told us what we needed to know as best he could.

Yes, I’m old enough to remember him quite fondly.  The smells of my father’s aftershave and dinner in the kitchen, waiting for Mr. Cronkite to finish with the day’s events.

Good luck old man.

My hope is that you went gentle into that goodnight.

Drinks for my friends.