BY BEN WINTERS
Raise your hand if you know what Colin Powell’s kid does for a living.
It’s not a trick question. Michael Powell, the son of the Secretary of State, is the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); and if Pops over at State has a rather important gig, so does Junior at the FCC. Established by the 1934 Communications Act, the FCC regulates radio, TV, cable, and wireless communication–all those complex electronic systems by which we communicate and through which we receive our culture. Here at "ArtsLine," we had no idea how Michael Powell paid the bills until we read a Boston Globe story from April 17, reporting on his appearance at Harvard University.
"Speaking at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center," the Globe’s Mark Jurkowitz wrote, "Powell took some tough questions from audience members who asked about his commitment to ensuring the diversity of views and public interest programming in a rapidly conglomerating media universe." The article suggests that Powell’s slogan regarding the rapidly conglomerating media universe is "conglomerate away!" Despite "a spirited discussion, at least in media circles, about the potential evils of consolidation," Jurkowitz wrote, "Powell indicated that such a debate may not resonate with the consumer."
And how does Powell know whether concerns about media diversity resonate with the consumer? He just asked the guys on his block. "'I do have regular Americans who write me complaining about the concentration of the media and viewpoints, certainly,’" said Powell at the Harvard engagement. "'But I also have a lot of neighbors who yawn at the whole thing.’"
The FCC commissioner’s point was it doesn’t matter if all the TV stations and newspapers are owned by an ever-smaller number of massive corporations–as long as there’s still a lot of stuff to watch, of whatever quality, there’s no problem. "'If anything, I think we feel a tad besieged that we live in all-consuming media environment every second…I mean, I can watch everything from a thoughtful piece on history on the History Channel to 'Fear Factor.’ I think we’re in a period right now where we’re seeing the very best that television has produced, and the very worst.’"
By the way, an excellent Salon.com backgrounder on Michael Powell from August is still available online; it includes a summary of the mild fracas that ensued last June when Powell’s FCC levied a Colorado radio station with a $7,000 fine for playing the Eminem song "Slim Shady."
Battle of the Smarty-Pants
People who read the Sunday Arts & Leisure (A&L) section of the New York Times (NYT) generally consider themselves to be very smart people. But there’s a magazine called the New Criterion, a "monthly review of the arts and intellectual life," whose readership probably considers themselves even smarter than most, and whose editors think Times A&L is being…well, stupid. A snippy editorial in the April New Criterion was prompted by news that John Rockwell, the former rock critic who edits Arts & Leisure, was being removed from that post by the Times’ new executive editor, Howell Raines. The folks at New Criterion think the section has too much pop culture nonsense, and they’re horrified that Raines is reportedly looking for a new section editor who will do more pop culture nonsense.
"We were amazed…to learn that, for Howell Raines, the problem with John Rockwell was not that he was too demotic, too pop- and celebrity-oriented but, on the contrary, that he was not pop- and celebrity-oriented enough… The criticism of high culture in the Times was poor, it was threadbare, it was spotty: but was it poor, threadbare, and spotty enough?" wonders the Criterion, sarcastically. "Coverage of ideas and the arts in The New York Times has been dumbed down, thinned out, tarted up, and generally transformed into a species of advertising copy."
Rockwell himself has professed some bafflement about the decision; the Criterion editorial quotes him from a recent interview: "[Raines] thought that [Arts & Leisure] was esoteric, boring and that nobody read it…There is a certain irony in this, since I am the former rock critic and since we ran 277 stories about movies last year…We did a lot of stories about popular music and about popular culture; we put pop singers and stuff on the cover."
Point taken–anyone using the phrase "pop singers and stuff" can’t be the snobbiest kid on the school bus. But clearly the real snobs are over at the New Criterion, whose editorial was titled "More Britney Spears?" and included this harsh, if convoluted, insult:
"Even as we write, an international team of philosophers is said to be deliberating about whether to name a new paradox after the Times: just as Zeno gave the world thorny paradoxes about motion, so The New York Times has given us the spectacle of constant declivity without destination."
This sounds like a very nasty zinger, although I can’t claim to fully understand it. Final note: Raines is also rumored to be looking for a replacement for nyt’s Sunday Magazine editor Adam Moss, who, during a panel on homosexuality and journalism, declared, "I actually edit a magazine that’s pretty gay."
Tora Bora, Mazir-E-Sharif, and Mount Doom
Lewis Lapham edits Harper’s Magazine, another highbrow cultural periodical no one really reads. On April 24, he popped up in Dan Fost’s "Media Bytes" column in the San Francisco Chronicle, where Lapham’s own journalism career started half a century ago. The chat featured his complaints about the death of the culture, including, yes, a swipe at FCC Chairman Powell, and this choice comment about war coverage:
"'ABC News reporters were not able to go anywhere near the war in Afghanistan,’" Fost quotes Lapham as saying, "but ABC’s parent, the Walt Disney Co., hired Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer to make a 13-part series on the war 'with the full cooperation of the Pentagon. The media always wants to reduce it to a fairy tale…you can’t tell the difference between the war in Afghanistan and The Fellowship of the Ring. Even the names are similar.’"
Lapham’s other big point was that kids today are idiots: "'They didn’t read for pleasure,’ [Lapham] said. Where earlier generations might memorize Latin phrases or quotes from Cicero, he said, his students knew the lines from Robert DeNiro movies. 'It’s not a literary mind,’ he said. 'It’s disconcerting.’"
In response, DeNiro threatened to hit Lapham with a shovel.