Plotz, Plotz, Fizz, Fizz, oh how to drive the Water Cooler Set out of the biz.
The Water Cooler Set flaunts ignorance as if it were the Hope diamond. And if you ever doubted it, The New York Times provided you with not one but two examples of Water Cooler Set 'critiques' at their most stunningly stupid.
First up was Judith Warner on July 31st apparently wanting to prove that she can waste op-ed space as well as David Brooks and Thomas Friedman combined. Warner wanted to examine the television show 24 but, somehow, alleged adult Warner was gushing like an uninformed fan. She was giddy over "this idea of 24 as a political crystal ball". So giddy, or possibly just ashamed that she spent an entire afternoon surfing the net to learn about a bad TV show, that she wants you to know: "The big difference, unfortunately, between real life and small-screen fiction is that, on 24, Jack Bauer actually catches the bad guys and saves the world. Good guys are incorruptible; fatuous politicians are made to pay for their sins. There is redemption, there is comeuppance." Let's focus on that before moving to her final thought.
On 24, Jack Bauer tortures repeatedly and plays vigilante. So much so, pay attention Warner, that even the US military is now concerned. As Amy Goodman pointed out (Feb. 22, 2007, Democracy Now!): "Some of the torture tactics on 24 include drugging, water-boarding, electrocution or power-drilling into a man’s shoulder. In five seasons of the show, there have been no less than sixty-seven torture scenes, according to the Parents Television Council. That’s more than one every show." On that program, Human Rights Watch's David Danzig explained that torture portrayals had jumped in TV depictions, "Post-9/11, that number has jumped to more than 100. But what's particularly disturbing for us about this is that when you look at who's doing the torturing, the people who are involved in it have changed. It used to be the bad guys were the ones who tortured, the Nazis or aliens or something like that, and torture never worked. But now it's people like Jack Bauer. It's the heroes of these shows -- Sidney on Alias -- and it always works for these people. So the message that 18-, 19-, 20-year-old soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan get is that good guys use this stuff and it works."
To be fair to Warner, she doesn't completely forget torture. In a column of over 100 lines, she saves it for last: "Oh, and torture works." That's among her big differences "unfortunately." Good guys win and torture works. Poor Warner, if only torture could work in the real world, eh?
She's not what anyone would call "hung up" on the issue, or bothered by it. She wishes it were true. That's probably how she landed the op-ed gig to begin with. Alfred W. McCoy, writing in the October 2006 issue of The Progressive, noted, "As happens with mind-numbing regularity every week on Fox Television's hit show 24, torture has once again worked to save us all from the terror of a ticking bomb, affirming for millions of loyal viewers that torture is a necessary weapon in George Bush's war on terror." Apparently, that is affirmed with Warner, who laments (by her own contextual construction) that torture, like those "good guys saving the day," only works on the small screen.
Like so many centrists criticizing the way the illegal war has been conducted -- as opposed to the illegal nature of the war itself -- Warner just wishes that torture could be as effective in real life as it is onscreen.
Apparently more concerned with tossing in references to Harry Potter books than in what torture does to the human soul (both to the victim and the torturer), Warner just wishes we could fine tune it, by golly.
You have to be real stooge at this late date to be unaware of the criticism of 24 and you have to be a real drip to wax on about where Jack and Audrey went to school. But if The Times couldn't employ stooges, they'd have to fire half their staff.
Needless to say, who is being tortured is also an issue Warner sidesteps.
Apparently offended that anyone could attempt to write more fact-free than she could, the Idiot Bellafante showed up on the front page of the Arts Section the following day with "Cutting a Tumultuous Era's Soul Soundtrack." While Warner's 'research' allowed her to surf a little online, the Idiot Bellafante confined herself to what she saw onscreen.
For those not on a fact-free diet in order to fit into a slimming straight jacket by fall, let's review.
Bellafante informs that Stax Records (the subject of the PBS documentary) never "shared Motown Record's sustained celebrity. That this constitutes one of the crimes of American music history is an argument 'Respect Yourself' makes by pure virture of its narrative." Crimes?
Oh, golly, only the Idiot Bellafante could be so cluless. We'll get back to it. She then pins some of the misfortune on, "Ill-conceived distribution deals and the ouster of Clive Davis at CBS, with whom Stax had a fortunate relationship, were others." The distribution deal, leaving all criminality aside, was in 1972. In 1972, Motown was no longer Motown. In 1972, Aretha Franklin was about to nose dive. The Queen of Soul. Had Davis not been fired by CBS, what does Idiot Bellafante think would have happened? Disco was about to come on the scene and CBS had a notoriously bad image when it came to Black America at that time. When they poached the Jacksons, they had the hardest time turning them into hitmakers for years.
And why should Stax Records have "Motown Records' sustained celebrity" with MTV audiences which are largely White and not to clear on most music from the sixties to begin with? Any female group is likely to be considered the Supremes and don't even try to get the bulk of the viewers to tell you which group is the Four Tops and which group is the Temptations. MTV is not really a music channel these days, but it was never a soul channel (and it's notorious for repeatedly enforcing it's own segregated color line). So exactly why should teens and pre-teens watching MTV today know anything about Stax Records?
Bellafante doesn't know anything but that didn't stop her from weighing in so maybe she feels a lack of knowledge is a good thing. She writes one howler after another and apparently has not heard of the Fairplay Committee. Had she, she might be less enthused with White founder Jim Stewart and avoid wowing over Stax Records allegedly ignoring "segregation in a city where the public pool chose to shut down rather than abide by an order to allow blacks and whites to swim together."
Stax Records dropping out of memory includes many factors. It is the the old story of White business people ripping off African-American artists, to be sure. It's also the story of Atlantic Records which Idiot Bellafante seems little aware of. But it's probably not a good idea to use "crimes" when speaking of Stax Records unless you're addressing all the whispers of mob infiltration within the label, the roughing up of dee jays, the 'promotion' that included waving pistols and the three federal investigations in the early 70s.
Was it a witch hunt? An effort to destroy Black-owned companies? Reports differ. But the reality is that Atlantic owned the Stax masters, including Otis Redding's catalogue, and Stax was largely a brand name with no assets.
In the early 70s, instead of concentrating on the music, Al Bell decided he wanted to publish books, do movies, sell basket balls. Since Idiot Bellafante feels, for some inane reason, that Motown Records (a label that was not a soul label and that strove for "crossover" hits) and Stax Records are soul-twins, let's note that Berry Gordy, head of a much larger operation, had to ease into the movie industry (and later the TV industry). Al Bell was going full speed ahead and, unlike Berry, he didn't even own the masters to Stax Records' golden age. Motown could exist, and does today, as a label that lives off the past. Stax Records couldn't because it did not own its own past.
Whether Bell embezzled (he was cleared in court) or not, he spent money that was not coming in. Before signing the distribution deal with CBS in 1972, he was using his own money to keep the label afloat. Prior to that, Stax Records had a problem with employees bootlegging the company's own releases -- further cutting into the potential for profits. Bell's offered excuses for not reporting these crimes but they've always rang hollow (he's compared the thieves to children -- if he really believes that, it's beside the point, artists were ripped off and they had no say in whether or not charges would be brought because they weren't informed or allowed to weigh in). What most dub "criminal actions," Idiot Bellafante calls "twisted financial fortunes."
She cites Booker T. Jones but is apparently unaware that he and Steve Cropper left the label in 1970 or why, (Cropper has infamously and publicly stated that you don't put a gun to his back.) Possibly when you appear to rewrite Wikipedia (Crap-a-pedia) while on The New York Times' dime, you should, if not be fired, be forced to share some of your check with them? (Shout out to a friend at the paper for that tip-off.)
Stax Records and Motown Records were nothing alike other than the skin color of the artists.
It's insulting for them to be compared to one another. Not to take anything away from the very talented Carla Thomas (forget her father, daughter and father acts aren't big in the pop world), but is the Idiot Bellafante aware of how many artists from that period are largely unknown to kids today, regardless of the genre they recorded in?
We doubt most MTV viewers today would know, for example, the name of Bobbie Gentry and she had a huge number one hit (a position Thomas never reached on the pop charts). She even held Diana Ross and the Supremes' "Reflections" out of the number one spot with that hit. Twelve is the answer to "How many number one hits did the Supremes have?" Six is the number to how many more Ross had. (Seven if you count "We Are The World.") Diana Ross was and is a superstar. Thomas isn't the only one who can't compete with that. Those acts who are remembered in some manner tend to have charted big well past the 60s. Whether it's Gladys Knight & the Pips (on the Motown label before they switched to Buddah) or whomever. But Diana Ross was a superstar as were Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. All three charted for more than one decade. And they were cross-over acts, promoted and groomed as such. Berry Gordy would have a fit if any of them "souled it up" while performing live. He wanted happy faces on stage. Ross never sang soul so why anyone would want to look at her fame and judge it by someone who, though equally talented, wasn't pursuing (by choice or for other reasons) the same goals is beyond us.
Motown Records was a player. Stax Records got played. A lot of the reasons for that go to the fact that one label had a business and creative genius in charge (Gordy) and the other was passed around and pawned off. Motown's peers were CBS, Atlantic, Capitol and Warner Bros. Most its acts weren't legenedary. Motown sold "The Sound of Young America" while Stax Records' sound was heavily rooted in the blues and, yes, country. Even the acts that went on to greater fame after they left Motown (Gladys Knight and the Pips, Ashford & Simpson) usually had a larger following than most Stax Records artists. In the sixties, Otis Redding was their biggest name and his number one on the pop charts came after Monterey Pop and after he died.
It takes a real idiot, and the paper has one in Bellafante, to look at a minor label (a very minor label) and see comparisons to Motown. Stax Records wasn't even on the level of Scepter Records (which had Dionne Warwick, among others) or Dunhill (which had the Mamas and the Papas). Red Bird Records is the comparison to make.
Putting aside all the rumors around the label and all the criminal investigations, Stax Records failed in the 70s because they didn't own their 60s masters, because no label wanted to buy it, because it moved away from music (artists were recording at other studios and using outside producers). To be ignorant of those facts (and others) is apparently not a liability when doing a write up for The New York Times on a PBS special. (What did Bellafante do before Wikipedia came along!)
Substitute MTV viewers with American Bandstand viewers and you'll grasp how off the mark the Idiot Bellafante is when she attempts to compare Motown and Stax Records. Grasp that the majority of 50s artists are forgotten or unknown by a huge portion of the audience (and carry the '50s' up through 1962) and you'll realize what Bellafante can't. Add in that R&B hasn't been able to catch a real break in decades. It was challenged first by disco, then replaced with the Quiet Storm and then with rap and neo-soul. (A comparison could be made to the rejection of Rhythm & Blues with the earlier rejection of the blues following mid-20th century integration efforts.) A bad writer won't grasp that no matter how many hours they spend at Wikipedia. Just as they'll manage to write about a special entitled Respect Yourself without ever noting that the PBS special takes it's name from a number two R&B hit by the Staple Singers or bother to wonder why the much larger hit by the same group ("I'll Take You There") wasn't used instead?
Warner showed up praising a show that's seen a decline in the ratings, is tired and has various serious issues hanging around its neck. Idiot Bellfante set herself as the voice who would resurrect a label that was never huge to begin with (even while it was part of Atlantic Records). Translation, neither topic had any 'heat' but damned if the Water Cooler Set didn't show up yet again to miss the important issues while tossing around lots of words but little facts. When you wonder, as this fall's bombs are heavily pimped by the Water Cooler Set, why that is, look no further than last week when two jaw boners showed up to dispense fact-free 'wisdom.'
