The Tabloid Economy

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

Lindsay Lohan misbehaves. TMZ and Radar Online cover it and collect wheelbarrows full of advertising dollars. Arnold Schwarzenegger acts like an idiot and TMZ and Radar Online are all over it. More wheelbarrows of cash. Anybody catching on yet?

Did you know that TMZ is owned by Time Warner and that Radar Online is owned by the National Enquirer? There’s sweet money to be made in the business of trashy behavior. We have a lot of airtime to fill and a lot of media to create and a lot of platforms to satisfy, and well, that’s a whole lot of Charlie Sheen. Yet, in the interest of providing an unlimited stream of foolishness, some celebrities have actually caught on. They’re not avoiding the bad news. They are courting it.

There’s no such thing as bad publicity.
-Muammar Gaddafi

Actually, Gaddafi didn’t say that. It was Irish playwright Brendan Behan, and he didn’t know he was giving good advice to Michael Lohan, Lindsay’s father, master of the art of monetizing bad behavior using reality shows, clips leaked to TMZ, and general hell-raising for the camera. The tabloid economy is robust, and fool/tools like Arnold Schwarzenegger pump it up with a potent mix of adultery and real estate deals.

Thing is, I’ve grown hoarse from shouting at Access Hollywood on TV, so I’m switching my personal economy to the Inspiration Economy. There’s as much money to be made as in the other one, but with better costumes and choreography.

All individuals have a natural right to self-expression by any means, even if such means were insane and meant to prove a person’s insanity.
-Lady Gaga

Actually, Lady Gaga didn’t say that. It was Muammar Gaddafi. But we know that Gaga, like Gaddafi, is about self-expression, sometimes to extremes. And we know they share the same stylist. There is no “offstage” for Gaga or for Gaddafi. Gaga’s a show without an intermission, so she has said, and that sounds pretty terrifying. Truth is, I worry about her. She says she lives halfway between reality and fantasy all the time. This is also true of Newt Gingrich, but since he doesn’t change outfits as much as Gaga, he doesn’t hold our attention.

I believe a revolution can start with the actions of a single person. If you board that logic train with me, it means that somebody who says they can be the queen we need can be an agent of positive change, even if she wears meat sometimes, and somebody else can be an agent of negative change, especially if he wears funny hats. Individuality and inspiration, dressed in sparkly costumes, or even serving an out-of control ego, are better than marching along with manipulators who misbehave, cash in, and repeat. It’s about power, and how you use it.

Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger

Actually, that’s a real one. Maybe he should have a talk show with Gaddafi.

Camera image by Steve Jurvetson via Creative Commons License.

Dirty Tricks

photo credit: dbking via Creative Commons

They were played on Nixon. They were played on Senator Mary L. Landrieu. Sacha Baron Cohen used them in Borat. I’m talking about dirty tricks. In a citizen-journalist-famous-for-15-minutes way, they are back. They’ve even been called a legitimate tool of “investigation.” (“Honey, I was using this nanny cam to investigate the babysitter and it caught you with the pool boy. Care to comment?”)

Quick review. When Richard Nixon made a speech one time in LA’s Chinatown, a prankster named Dick Tuck arranged for adorable children to hold up signs saying “Welcome” in Chinese. Only the signs really said, “What About the Hughes Loan?”, a reference to a controversial loan Howard Hughes made to Nixon’s brother. Nixon was furious and reportedly tore up one of the signs. More recently, James O’Keefe III, a 25-year-old guerrilla videographer, was accused with three other men of seeking to tamper with the office phones of Democratic Senator Mary L. Landrieu. Apparently, the four impersonated repairmen to gain entry to the office of the Louisiana senator.

O’Keefe called his deception an “investigation.” You might argue that impersonating repairmen was gonzo journalism, an act of civil disobedience or a new way to dig for the truth. Digging for the truth – by lying about who you are. Give me a moment to think about that.

In this regard, I am not an angel. In Greece once, with one foot on the dock and another on a boat, I handed a police officer a dummy videotape so we could get the real one out of the country. When I worked for NBC and Fox I wore a wire a couple of times. We conferred with network lawyers before we tried anything like that. When I wore a wire I made a point of saying that everything spoken was on the record. We did those kinds of recordings in states where you didn’t need the consent of the other party, so it was legal. We also didn’t trespass where we didn’t belong. We followed the rules, and listened to the network lawyers, but we knew if we screwed up it would be our asses in a sling, not theirs.

Rougher game now. Fuzzier boundaries. You have Borat and O’Keefe. As a documentary guy I noticed a big change after Borat. People were suspicious about interviews. Was I going to hoax them like Borat, punk them like Ashton or trick them like Colbert? These days, people want to screen an interview before it airs. I feel that old slippery slope under my feet: If I show them the interview they will talk about their hair or why they hadn’t had that mole removed. Suddenly we’re not talking about the story, we’re talking about their performance. The interview becomes performance art.

Lady Gaga, Sacha Baron Cohen and James O’Keefe are all in the same game – entertainment. In their brand of performance art you get to lie, impersonate people and wear funny outfits. I like entertainment, but if you’re wearing a funny outfit, the only people who consent to an interview with you are other entertainers. A closed-loop system. Get ready for Lady Gaga to anchor CNN.

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