I saw Mayor Pete on CBS Sunday Morning…
I was not impressed.
Actually, this is the first time I’ve watched the show. And now I get it, it’s appointment television for those who still remember appointment television. Oldsters. Youngsters expect the world to operate on their own schedule, on demand.
I’ve got nothing against Pete Buttigieg – it’s just that he lacks EXPERIENCE!
There used to be two threads in the music business:
Overnight sensation pop stars proffered by the major labels and radio and acts which practiced, rehearsed, wrote their own songs and made it over time.
Now we primarily have the former. Overnight sensations. Who we’re supposed to give credence to because they are young.
Let’s take 17 year-old Billie Eilish.
The youngest performer we had in the classic rock era was there 16 year-old Peter Noone, aka Herman. It was believed you had to have experience, you had to have lived in order to have something to say, in order to be great.
Let’s be honest, America has lived through a tech revolution the past 30 years.
And most Baby Boomers are not up to speed.
They can post to Facebook, they can iMessage, but they don’t know how the software works. As a matter of fact, they’re still into hardware and gadgets.
Whereas youngsters have grown up in an era of no tech help – where you figure it out by yourself and the landscape always changes. The youngsters don’t know everything, but they ride the tiger, unlike the ignorant congressman who complained to the Google exec that his iPhone didn’t work properly. The answer was obvious, it’s a different OS, Android vs. iOS, but this oldster didn’t get it.
And Joe Biden doesn’t get it.
He doesn’t realize that unwanted touch is taboo – he’s just saying he didn’t mean it, and that it was meaningless. Kinda like someone who employs epithets against blacks and Jews and claims as an excuse that they’ve never met one before.
And Bernie Sanders has experience, but he’s old too.
Let’s be honest, if you’re in Congress you don’t have time to play Fortnite – you’re so busy you oftentimes don’t know how the world truly works. You’re aware of the big concepts, but not the little events that burgeon and change society.
So where do we go from here?
Somehow, experience has been denigrated, and fresh and new exalted.
Oldsters can’t get their music heard, no matter how good it might be. The system is biased against it. Then again, so many of these acts do boffo at the box office.
In other words is Mayor Pete Lil Nas X, someone who captures the public imagination for a moment but has very little beneath the surface?
Come on, being mayor is not like being governor, or a congressperson.
But our nation has changed. It’s a combination of veneration of the new and young and the lack of hope. We’re holding on to hope wherever we can get it.
I understand the appeal of Mayor Pete. Especially in the way he stood up to Pence. But you listen to him talk and you realize Trump is gonna mow him right down in the debates.
We need someone battle tested. Not in Afghanistan, but government.
As for the right, the CONSERVATIVES, they just want to go back to the past. As if iOS 2 was as good as iOS 12. As if electric cars are not the future and coal is not fading. The right criticizes, but has no new ideas.
And the media wants eyeballs. They want action. And if you’re boring but great, no one cares.
Now Boomers are not going to live forever, but there’s no plan for handing over the baton.
In the live music business, it’s almost all alta kachers, no one’s letting go.
And at the labels, there’s a dearth of young talent because there’s no upward mobility. The youth are unnecessarily stifled.
Yet the youth are the ones who oftentimes push the envelope, unaware of what they don’t know, and change the world.
But when they’re on top, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, they’re out of touch with reality – they can’t manage what they’ve built. Never forget, Steve Jobs wasn’t the man you know until he went off into the the wilderness and lost with NeXT and gained some experience, especially in how you deal with people.
Government is a job. Not anybody can do it.
But the public and the media think everybody’s able.
Do you want Oprah flying your plane? Doing your taxes? Defending you in court? OF COURSE NOT!
You want someone who’s been in the field for decades to handle those jobs. Why do we think anybody can be President? Why do we think anybody can be a pop star?
The truth is experienced studio musicians played on the pop hits of yore. And the Beatles slugged it out in Hamburg before anybody knew who they were, playing essentially all day.
Now you get to the 10,000 hour rule, but those who are truly aware of it know it’s 10,000 hours of HARD PRACTICE! Not dicking around. We want pros behind the wheel.
Which is why so many oldsters can’t understand the music of today. The players/singers/rappers have so little experience that they don’t resonate with them.
So if Mayor Pete goes to Congress, or becomes Governor, maybe he’ll be ready.
But what’s next, the student council president running for Senate? Or maybe the Presidency itself!
But that’s America, there’s no center.
There used to Rockefeller Republicans, who were fiscally conservative, but socially progressive.
There used to be the fairness rule in media.
It all wasn’t about clicks.
The press was a public trust. Now it’s oftentimes no different from reality television, and the wankers at home can’t tell true from false.
Which is why a strongman like Trump appeals. He’s gonna boil it down to those damn foreigners and a few other bogeymen and tell you if you give him all the power, he’ll eliminate the problem.
Meanwhile the left is so busy fighting over everybody’s personal rights that they’ve lost sight of the big picture.
It’s like we’ve got all this technology, but it hasn’t been integrated into the world.
The major labels run their operations like it’s still the 20th Century, radio too.
There are just a few hits, which are either pop or hip-hop, when the truth is there are more scenes than ever but they just don’t get major traction. And the irony is those fighting it out in the trenches survive on experience. Because you’ve got to be good to survive all by your lonesome.
But that’s not the game anymore. It’s all about flash. As if we’re supposed to take the influencers, whored out to the corporations, seriously.
We need new vision, we need hope, but it can’t be based on a rickety foundation.
You’ve got to give the Republicans one thing, they think long term, like with the Federalist Society. Why is everything so immediate when life is long and we must think of the future?
We’re just investing in pop stars.
Still people want to see holograms of dead musicians.
And we’re supposed to be convinced the new acts are nascent Frank Zappas or Roy Orbisons.
I don’t think so.
“And” people want Trump’s taxes? WTF for?
I want Lefty’s taxes! If Lefty can actually cash a check for penning this Sub Standard, Secondary School analogy of the Music Business to political current events, then Pulitzer Prizes going to the Washington Post/New York Times for in depth reporting on the Russian Collusion Delusion start to make sense, “AND” we all get New Cars from Oprah and New Pulitzers for fogging a fuckin mirror.
This is where Lefty came from.
Hunter Thompson – “The music industry is like a long, plastic, narrow hallway full of pimps and hookers. And then there’s the bad part.”
He should go back.
Ouch!!!!
Want my taxes, too?
Hey, I get a refund this year, for what it’s worth
It’s worth what it’s worth for as long as it’s worth it.
🙂
The sad part is the 2020 election should be a “give me” to the Democrats. Not even conservatives can stand Trump. But alas he will be re-elected because I have yet to see any clear message from the Democrats. People understand Trump is in bed with the Russians and he and those around him are corrupt grifters but the Democrats have no message, idea, or excitement around their platform other than ‘Trump bad.”
Sad, I am an independent voter who leans Democrat but if no unifying visionary message emerges from the Democrats I might just sit the election out..
“People understand Trump is in bed with the Russians ” — Which people are those? Morons with ZERO critical thinking skills? There has been ZERO credible evidence that Trump (for all his countless faults) is “in bed” with the Russians. Good Gawd. Turn off Rachel Madcow and join reality.
And if you want “corrupt grifters”..look no further than the Clintons and Obamas. All are in bed with the big banks and go around giving speeches at close to a half million a clip. JFC. You act like corrupt politicians only exist within the Trump administration and everything was fine until he was inaugurated. But you are right about one thing…not voting. Do us all a favor and don’t.
It’s right there in the Mueller report; you should actually take a day or two (I’m estimating, of course) and read it instead of just spewing hackneyed GOP talking points. It’s as clear an indictment as is possible for a GOP lawyer constrained by a policy as corrupt as the current reading of the 2nd Amendment..
I have, you nitwit. There is NOTHING there. It’s a giant case of mental masturbation. Suck on it. Deal with it. It’s over.
No diss, really, but-“Trump is in bed with the Russians”?????
Even without the categorical findings of the biased, partisan Mueller Report, which would have crucified Trump if there had been a “scintilla” of evidence-there is always this–
The Trump Administration has implemented a wide array of sanctions and other punitive actions against Russia for their destabilizing actions and provocations against the U.S. and its allies.
In response to Russian interference in the 2016 election and other malfeasance, the Trump Administration has sanctioned Russian oligarchs and intelligence entities.
Throughout 2017 and 2018, the U.S. sanctioned numerous Russian actors for violating non-proliferation laws by supporting weapons programs in Iran and Syria, and supporting North Korea’s development of weapons of mass destruction.
The Trump Administration has issued sanctions against more than one hundred Russian actors and firms for Russia’s destabilizing actions in Ukraine and its ongoing occupation of Crimea.
In March 2017, in response to Russia’s use of a military-grade chemical weapon in the United Kingdom, the Trump Administration ordered multiple Russian consulates in the United States closed and expelled 60 Russian intelligence officers.
Due to sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration, the Russian economy and Russian geo-economic projects have been severely constrained.
In 2018, as Russian investors reacted to new sanctions, the Russian Ruble made its biggest fall in over three years, and, as of July 2018, is down nearly nine percent against the dollar.
As a part of its sanctions against Russia, the United States has prevented numerous companies from partnering with Russian offshore oil projects, denying these projects access to capital and key resources.
The Trump Administration has also opposed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s largest geo-economic project, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Russia.
In the wake of Russian provocations, President Trump has exercised U.S. military power and worked to bolster U.S. allies in Europe.
In 2017, President Trump approved the sale of lethal weapons to Ukraine addressing the country’s vulnerability to Russian-backed separatists in its eastern provinces.
Under the Trump Administration, Russian mercenaries and other pro-Syrian regime forces attacking U.S. troops in Syria were killed.
The U.S. has increased troops and its military capability in Eastern Europe and dramatically increased training and drills with its NATO partners.
In 2018, the U.S. Department of Defense increased its spending as part of the European Deterrence Initiative by $1.4 billion dollars.
Due to pressure from President Trump, U.S.’ NATO allies have increased defense expenditures by five percent.
What the fuck!!!????!!!!
Careful Chuck. You’re going to explode their skulls by presenting facts.
Don’t bother trying to convince the morons. Sometimes you just can’t fix stupid. If there was a scintilla of evidence there wouldn’t have been a need for Mueller to try and dig up something. I’m no fan of Trump. I do believe he is a simpleton and it’s obvious from the way he speaks and acts. However, because of that I find it hilarious that Hillary lost to him. I don’t vote and haven’t for a long long time because I don’t trust ANY politician. None of them care about the people that vote for them. They only care about their pocket books and the power the position gives them.