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08.12.04 02:50 PM
what a way to get dissed...
So I'm in the corner gourmet deli getting the soy chai on when it starts to downpour yesterday. Workmate and I decide to chill until the rain calms down. Dude who works in the hot food section is also by the door waiting for the bus. He's mumbling things to himself. Workmate moves away and makes a face. I've dealt with food dude before so I know he can be garrulous. But I listen. That's my style.
I listen especially at this moment because he addresses me. "You know what's interesting about VIBE and The National Review being in the same building?" I say, "What, huh?" He starts rambling something about Chomsky, trying to give me a lesson. "I'm familiar with Chomsky," I say. "I have the Chomsky reader."
"Well then you know what's the same about VIBE and The National Review then?" He asks. And I'm like, "Huh?"
"What makes them the same?" Now he's being all surly and whatnot. I smile, but not too affectedly. Just enough to let him know to ease up and just go on and explain his damn self. "Well, anyone who works at a place like that is just contributing to the Infotainment glut that serves as a distraction to the real issues at hand. Here comes my bus."
DAAAAAMN!!!
If anyone knows anything about Chomsky's work, then you know that Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media aims to show just "how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way."
Read: "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream"
Of course I didn't get an opportunity to tell him, "Yo' I teach a course that deals wtih racial and ethnic issues and though we primarily deal with America - we deal with global issues too." Nor did I get to say, "I may work for the mainstream media, but that doesn't mean I'm a full-fledged card carrying member. "
What a way to make a woman feel like the words she writes are nothing but a mirror of a video on BET. Or better yet, like she should be doing some WORK, a la Gurdjieff.
posted by lynne | link to this |
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Comments
I like mainstream media.
posted by Cal Ulmann | August 12, 2004 3:18 PM #
Yikes! He dropped that on you and bounced? Be easy, Lynne. Get that check and keep doing your thing.
I've been thinking recently- is music journalism really journalism at all? I mean, so much is controlled and filtered by pr people that Vibe, XXL, The Source, ect read like fan magazines. Where's the cultural critique?
I actually turn to the Villag Voice and NYTimes for *high brow* hip-hop writing. I can't imagine Oliver Wang's recent review of the Roots album appearing in any of the magazines.
Here's a related article on the death of serious pop criticism: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7324951.htm?1c
posted by Hashim | August 12, 2004 5:39 PM #
but i don't write for vibe, that's the point, well except that last article, but seriously i write for other outlets - i just work there - and i agree with you - any corporate media is a problem b/c it's bottom line depends on the big corps behind the advertisers
and yes i'll stop taking this so personally - now
posted by lynne | August 12, 2004 5:58 PM #
Vibe and The National Review in the same building? Hey Lynne, if you see Buckley tell him to iron his shirt. He's been like that for decades. Great vocabulary but those shirts....
posted by pexdiggy | August 31, 2004 12:14 AM #