Final Newsroom

http://bit.ly/QnkKP6

Politics is kind of like the entertainment business, everybody's friends, it's one giant club, where lifers favor loyalty more than truth and you're not a member.

I don't know what's going on in our country. Facts seem to have gone out of the window and education is no longer revered. It's like the world's gone topsy-turvy. He who can stand on the mountaintop and shout long enough wins. The goal isn't to graduate from college and become a valued member of society, to build edifices and effect change, but to get on television and be famous for your antics, all the while being paid to show up at dance clubs amongst the inebriated masses.

And there's little truth and honor amongst our media enterprises. They're all just jealous they're not bankers. As for the drivers of said companies, the executives, they're so overpaid you'd think they're solving world peace. Did you see that Spotify is paying $30 million a year in salaries? Isn't that like giving a struggling band ten mil a year for effort? (http://nyti.ms/MRm8rY)

And conventional wisdom is art has no power.

Then you wake up to a video like the one above.

I haven't seen confrontation like this in the twenty first century. I haven't seen someone in power nailed to the carpet on national television forever. You know why? If you do, you're excommunicated from the club, you never get a second interview, being friends is more important than being right.

Chris Matthews's son is on "Newsroom." Don't ask me what character, you won't recognize him anyway, he's not one of the leads. But he sits around the table, he's on the show. And I'm sure his proud papa watches. And you cannot watch and not feel slimy, not if you're a newsman. It's kind of like watching a fictionalization of the music business, delineating the myriad ways the labels rip off the artists, then going on TV and declaring you love the artists! They're like your children! As if you'd steal from the piggy bank of your progeny.

I didn't catch this video live. It was e-mailed to me.

And now I'm passing it on to you.

That's how it works in this new connected world.

Unfortunately, we end up with echo chambers of misinformation, right and left, informed and uninformed. The story is out there, but it's twisted so badly, it oftentimes has no effect.

Then it does. Like with the Arab spring.

People are hurting. And billionaires are duplicitous.

That's what this election is about. Do you care about your brethren, are we all in this together, or is it every man for himself, and what's mine is mine.

I'll make it simpler, do you believe in the welfare state or not? The Republicans don't and the Democrats do.

Come down on whichever side you want, but at least be honest about it.

Our whole nation is dishonest.

And then there's a TV show on pay cable pointing this out, striving for the truth, and what does the media-industrial complex do? Decry it! Say it sucks! You know why? Because they don't have the balls to do the same thing, they're so inured to the way it is, they can neither lobby for nor recognize change. They're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Everybody thinks you've got to reach everybody to effect change. This is completely untrue. You've just got to reach somebody. You've just got to bang the drum. You've just got to get the note perfect. And the whole world can change.

That's the power of art.


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