Monday Morning Media Quarterback

Motivating young people (OK, anyone) to take responsibility for their actions is tough.  It’s exponentially harder when that person apparently has substance abuse problems.

But that doesn’t mean you can blame others for your latest driving under the influence arrest, especially “the black kid.”

America is the land of second chances, if you’re willing to acknowledge you have a problem, made mistakes and are taking steps to move on  That’s the first tenet of crisis communications. 

People will be skeptical, especially if they’ve been burned by your lies, but if you can show you mean it, they’ll root for you.  From movie star to imprisoned drug addict to movie star, Robert Downey Jr. made that transformation–and didn’t blame anybody but himself.

Which got more publicity, the open-to-the-public Comic Con this weekend in San Diego, or the industry-only E3 videogame convention at an airport hangar in Santa Monica earlier this month?

Comic Con, hands down, because they celebrated the fan–and because the movie studios flocked there to show off new films like IronMan with big guns like star Robert Downey Jr., director Jon Favreau, and 80-year old creator Stan Lee.  That’s word of mouth you can’t buy–and the kind of publicity the ‘new’ E3 for the business guys, not the gamers, no longer gets.

E3 sharply decelerated from 2006 to 2007, braking from 65 (thousand) attendees down to 3 (thousand and severly limiting the number of press.  ComicCon, by contrast, was by and for the fan boys E3 expelled; 124,000 showed up, forty times the video games ‘crowd.’ 

Keeping out the gamers who want to try the games is a riduculous strategy; no wonder the number one selling game in the U.S. is a kid’s game for Gameboy, Pokemon Diamond.  The teenagers are all out watching movies based on comics and fantasy, from Fantastic Four and Transformers to the Simpsons.

Robert Downey Jr in “Iron Man.”

Yes, once again the supposed ‘independent’ analysts from investment banks have been bought off to give buy ratings–which their sales function makes them inclined to do anyway, regardless of reality.

Increasingly a 14,000 DOW is looking like the top as the bad loans come home to roost.   But you won’t find much analysis on the business channels, between Jim Cramer’s shilling, Lou Dobbs’ posturing, and the all important search for a younger, hotter “money honey.”

But no matter how bad it gets we can always count on happy business news from Rupert Murdoch, on his new cable business network and his shiny new prize, the Wall Street Journal.

A press junket, where dozens of  ’journalists’ (often flown in from Podunk by a studio or network) get three minutes with a star, is one of the lowest forms of pack journalism.  Usually the problem is with the talent, who is patronizing, nasty, robotic, chemically-enhanced or like Paula Abdul, ‘just sleepy’.

But this clip of a hardworking Holly Hunter, once the point of triangle,  trying to help a baffled, bumbling blonde ‘journalist’ shows that as Shakespeare put it, “The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.”

Sad to hear the Weekly World News is gone (or gone to the Web, far from the supermarket racks but at home with the other rumor-mongers)  I had just bought a copy for my 8-year old.  We had chuckles over the cover story about how “President Kennedy is alive and fighting for the U.S. Navy in Iraq”–that’s one you’d really like to believe was true. 

The technical term for stories like that are “too good to check.” 

Of course, the Weekly World News, which bills billed itself as the “world’s most reliable newspaper”,  never checked anything.  When I had my orientation at the National Enquirer in lovely Lantana, Florida, back in the 1980’s, I asked where the reporters for their ’sister’ publication, the WWN, were. 

A bloated reporter jerked his thumb towards a distant room: “They make it up over there.”

New Discovery Proves —CAVEMEN INVENTED ROCK MUSIC!

The wars in Iraq and even Afghanistan are not going well.  The economy is starting to shrivel up and people are losing their homes.  The immigration bill failed badly, the Attorney General doesn’t know if torture is OK,  Osama Bin Ladin is still on the loose and the president’s approval rating is at an all-time low. 

But there’s one target the Feds can hit: medical marijuana dispensaries in California, where medical marijuana for suffering people has been legal since 1996.   Today’s raids came the same day the Los Angeles City Council introduced an ordinance calling on federal authorities to stop targeting clinics allowed under state law.

A DEA spokeswoman described the timing as “purely coincidental.”

LA City Councilman Dennis Zine, who spent over 30 years as a police officer, doesn’t think so.  Zine, who wrote a letter to DEA Administrator Karen Tandy asking the agency to stop the raids, called the federal agents “bullies.”

“They’re trying to bully us. Instead of using resources to go after drug dealers ruining neighborhoods and poisoning school kids, they’re going after individuals dying of cancer and suffering from AIDS who need cannabis to have any type of appetite.”

It doesn’t matter how much money or fame you have if you’re dead inside (or , as Pink Floyd put it) .  And that’s where Lindsay Lohan finds herself, in the car wreck that has become her life.

It’s sad; I want to think of her as the little girl in The Parent Trap, that my children watched over and over again after September 11, seeking some comfort.  But what she was able to give to others Lindsay apparently can’t give herself. 

The people who could save her from herself, her family, unfortunately aren’t Disney characters with hearts of gold.  One parent is overly familiar with jail, the other wants to be Lindsay’s party pal and ride her coattails to fame on E! 

Lindsay’s too old for foster care–and I don’t know if I’d take her on for $600 a month.  But I’d help her if I could.

Is jail the answer?  If so, how sad.  But she can’t have an ‘intervention’ if there’s no one to intervene for her.

The New York Times and the Baltimore Sun are better than you.  They can break the embargo on the new Harry Potter book with impunity and justify themselves.  Spoiling the story for eager readers is just collateral damage from their lofty search for truth and justice (and the not-so-lofty one of scooping their competitors.) 

Rachel Sklar feels righteous rage.  So does J.K. Rowling.

“I am staggered that some American newspapers have decided to publish purported spoilers in the form of reviews in complete disregard of the wishes of literally millions of readers, particularly children,” she said.  “I am incredibly grateful to all those newspapers, booksellers and others who have chosen not to attempt to spoil Harry’s last adventure for fans.”

The Times review is here; I made sure not to read it as my silent protest, so I don’t know what it says.

The Times has responded to the Internet age in the same way as the scumbags who videotape Hollywood movies in the theatre and sell them on the street.   No more high-minded morality lectures from the NY Times, please. 

We were right about the free speech issue, but maybe wrong about casting Tom Cruise as heroic anti-Nazi Claus von Stauffenberg.  Many have already commented on an unfortunate resemblance to Hogan’s Heroes…

Valkyrie is set to hit theaters August 8, 2008

I don’t like Hummers.  They’re ugly and kind of road hogs.  But I like this even less.

Perhaps the pundits are right; civil discourse is fraying in this country.  The last time I looked, in America you could drive any car you dreamed of that was street legal and you could afford gas for. 

But if you really can’t contain your righteous opinion, rant about SUVs on your blog, buy something small and Japanese so you’ll feel good about yourself (if not your fellow American workers), or, if you must, stick a note under a Suburban’s windshield like the irrepressible Amy Alkon.  Don’t mess with people’s hard-earned property.

Hybrid technology is promising, and maybe I’ll get a Ford Escape for my next car.  Now, I drive an 8-cylinder Mustang GT.  And if I catch someone vandalizing it I will vandalize them.