When I look back on the year that was, there is something I wish I hadn’t been party to. April 16 2007 was the day that Seung-Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech and then turned his gun on himself. I had just begun a freelance project for a news website. I was there to create original content, but first there was a period of training so that I could learn how to post my stories and visual packages online.
On that day, at about 5pm, I was asked to work late. At 7pm my editor called to tell me to expect a slide show of images. “As soon as you get them, post them live and then go back and write captions for each image,” he instructed. The images were stills taken from the video that Cho had sent to NBC before he opened fire at his college — a video that NBC had aired. On the website it was business as usual to report on this event and in “just following orders”, I became responsible for spreading those poisonous images across the Internet.
Certainly I was not alone. A writer on salon.com called news organisations like the one I was working at “the media echo chamber”, to describe how they “dutifully printed and broadcast everything straight from the mouths of high-profile violent offenders and felons alike, calling it ‘news’”. That night, when I went through image after image of an obviously disturbed and now already dead young man, scowling and pointing his gun into my face, I felt extremely uneasy, but I didn’t stop. I was doing my job.
I couldn’t sleep when I got home, not least of all because the assignment had left me with a mild dose of post-traumatic stress. Each time I closed my eyes I saw the black barrel of Cho’s gun and heard his gruff, strangled threats.
By the time I got to my desk the next day, pale and a little shaky, the news organisation had handed the mouthpiece over to its resident psychologist, who was quickly saving the day by saying how harmful it was for the national psyche (international, really, considering that it’s the “World Wide Web”) to have to stare at Cho’s violent diary of death. Of course, by this time the entire media echo chamber had cut down its coverage to just the tamest photograph of Cho, finally understanding that for a sociopath, anonymity is worse than death.
But the damage was done. As the essay on salon.com says, the media had collectively convinced “other disenfranchised citizens that the best way to get your voice heard is by doing something ‘newsworthy’ in the fine tradition of John Hinkley jnr, Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski, Mohammed Atta and other celebrated sociopaths, terrorists and misfits”.
A few hours later, when one of my senior editors asked me to go down to Korea Town (a neighbourhood in Manhattan that’s bordered by 31st and 36th Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues) and ask Koreans and Korean-Americans how they felt about being Korean in light of Cho’s disastrous deed, I finally found my voice and declined. I can’t say that taking this stand served me particularly well at work — I was viewed after that as a little prickly and criticised by more hardcore news types as “not a real journalist” — but I was glad I turned it down.
I have since moved on from the news organisation — I eventually lost my mojo entirely when, during the civil war in Gaza, our features meetings were all about Paris Hilton’s sojourn in jail — but the small role I played in spreading Cho’s hate-filled message has stuck with me.
Last week, in the Associated Press’s annual vote, the Virginia Tech killings were chosen as the top story of 2007 by US editors and news directors. The mortgage crisis, which unsettled the US housing market, was second; the war in Iraq, third.
Virginia Tech was the worst mass shooting in modern US history and news coverage has prompted colleges to reassess their emergency response systems, but voting it in at number one when the US is still in Iraq and more journalists have been killed trying to cover that war than ever before seems to smack of industry self-congratulation.
But after a year like this, I guess we should all be grateful that the triumvirate of tarts — Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears or Paris Hilton — didn’t make the top three.
This column first appeared in the Sunday Times, South Africa in the Made in Manhattan column
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Sunday, December 2, 2007
On Silence
Sticks and stones are hard on bones.
Aimed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything.
But silence breaks the heart. ~ Phyllis McGinley
Aimed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything.
But silence breaks the heart. ~ Phyllis McGinley
Monday, November 26, 2007
One More Time With Feeling
I don’t own a television. This has been an idiosyncrasy of mine for five years and, bar the odd drama series like Six Feet Under or comedy like Curb Your Enthusiasm, I don’t think I’ve missed much.
So it always amazes me when I meet people who love their box so much it not only has pride of place in their bedroom, they have memorised lines from their favorite show. You say, ’Hello Jerry,’ and they answer, ’Hello, Newman’ without missing a beat.)
With Hollywood TV writers picketing for a larger piece of the expanding corporate-profits pie, TV schedules have been riddled with reruns. Striking actorwriters, including Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) and Tina Fey (30 Rock), gathered on Wall Street to make their demands.
One picket sign said, "We can’t BEAR studio BULL", objecting to studios telling writers there was no more revenue to be had from new media, despite selling advertising on those mediums. Apparently writer-producers like John Wells of ER, Marc Cherry of Desperate Housewives, and Larry David of Seinfeld and now Curb have sidestepped the skirmish; they are considered superstars and paid handsomely for their efforts.
And so it was with more than a small dose of curiosity that I joined my Seinfeld-obsessed friend Adam Shapiro on the ultimate rerun: The Seinfeld Tour, run by Kenny Kramer, the man Larry David based his Cosmo Kramer character on. The real Kramer, it turns out, lived across the hall from David in Manhattan Plaza, a midtown building that used to provide subsidised housing for artists.
Today, he makes his living peddling this tour. He calls it "art imitating life imitating art imitating life".
Shapiro, who was visiting New York from Durban, is now the proud owner of a "Yada Yada Yada" bumper sticker. Thankfully, he didn’t purchase the "Assman" car licence plate.
Before his Seinfeld hit, David was paying $67 for an apartment worth $1 500 (other famous Manhattan Plaza residents include Tennessee Williams, Angela Lansbury and Terence Howard). He was struggling to get booked at local comedy clubs, thanks to his reputation for throwing on-stage tantrums.
David’s dream at the time, says Kramer, was to earn $70 000 a year as a stand-up comedian. His mother told him he’d never make a penny doing comedy. Jerry Seinfeld, meanwhile, was making tens of thousands of dollars thanks to his "Did ya ever notice . . ." routine - jokes that David derisively called scraping the bottom of the barrel, right alongside dick jokes. But it was David that Seinfeld turned to when he was offered a show on TV. And it was the real Kramer and David who brainstormed a show based on the real Seinfeld (David used himself as the inspiration for George Costanza).
Kramer, while involved in getting Seinfeld off the ground and often inspiring entire episodes with his real-life antics, was not cast as himself - David said he’d found a far more interesting actor in Michael Richards. And certainly there is something sad about watching Kenny Kramer scrape up the commercial crumbs with the tour that he’s been running for 12 years.
Kramer, dark, but cheerful, claims that David has given him a blank cheque that he’s never had the occasion to cash. "I talk to Larry all the time," he told us. "He’s very happy because his wife dumped him. Until now, he’s never had the money, the house and the fame all at the same time. He’s loving it."
IF you’re a fan, the Seinfeld tour comes highly recommended for such notable landmarks as Roosevelt Hospital (where George went to get actress Marisa Tomei’s number), the West Side YMCA (where Kramer went to take notes on men’s shower techniques), the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Centre (where Elaine went on a date with the gay guy that she thought she could turn straight), and the façade of Tom’s Restaurant, where the foursome took their daily brunch (the interior is a studio on the Seinfeld lot in LA). Of course, no Seinfeld tour would be complete without a visit to where the Soup Nazi once struck terror in the hearts and bellies of the lunch crowd. While the place was closed two years ago, the store front of Al’s Soup Kitchen International still exists. A video that Kramer made preshutdown has Al (who was originally named by a writer from The David Letterman Show) saying: "Seinfeld was great for my business but it ruined my life. Now my store is filled with immature idiots who watch Seinfeld."
At the time of writing, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had agreed to return to the negotiating table. But then again, what do I care? I don’t own a TV.
This first appeared as a column in The Sunday Times Newspaper, South Africa
So it always amazes me when I meet people who love their box so much it not only has pride of place in their bedroom, they have memorised lines from their favorite show. You say, ’Hello Jerry,’ and they answer, ’Hello, Newman’ without missing a beat.)
With Hollywood TV writers picketing for a larger piece of the expanding corporate-profits pie, TV schedules have been riddled with reruns. Striking actorwriters, including Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) and Tina Fey (30 Rock), gathered on Wall Street to make their demands.
One picket sign said, "We can’t BEAR studio BULL", objecting to studios telling writers there was no more revenue to be had from new media, despite selling advertising on those mediums. Apparently writer-producers like John Wells of ER, Marc Cherry of Desperate Housewives, and Larry David of Seinfeld and now Curb have sidestepped the skirmish; they are considered superstars and paid handsomely for their efforts.
And so it was with more than a small dose of curiosity that I joined my Seinfeld-obsessed friend Adam Shapiro on the ultimate rerun: The Seinfeld Tour, run by Kenny Kramer, the man Larry David based his Cosmo Kramer character on. The real Kramer, it turns out, lived across the hall from David in Manhattan Plaza, a midtown building that used to provide subsidised housing for artists.
Today, he makes his living peddling this tour. He calls it "art imitating life imitating art imitating life".
Shapiro, who was visiting New York from Durban, is now the proud owner of a "Yada Yada Yada" bumper sticker. Thankfully, he didn’t purchase the "Assman" car licence plate.
Before his Seinfeld hit, David was paying $67 for an apartment worth $1 500 (other famous Manhattan Plaza residents include Tennessee Williams, Angela Lansbury and Terence Howard). He was struggling to get booked at local comedy clubs, thanks to his reputation for throwing on-stage tantrums.
David’s dream at the time, says Kramer, was to earn $70 000 a year as a stand-up comedian. His mother told him he’d never make a penny doing comedy. Jerry Seinfeld, meanwhile, was making tens of thousands of dollars thanks to his "Did ya ever notice . . ." routine - jokes that David derisively called scraping the bottom of the barrel, right alongside dick jokes. But it was David that Seinfeld turned to when he was offered a show on TV. And it was the real Kramer and David who brainstormed a show based on the real Seinfeld (David used himself as the inspiration for George Costanza).
Kramer, while involved in getting Seinfeld off the ground and often inspiring entire episodes with his real-life antics, was not cast as himself - David said he’d found a far more interesting actor in Michael Richards. And certainly there is something sad about watching Kenny Kramer scrape up the commercial crumbs with the tour that he’s been running for 12 years.
Kramer, dark, but cheerful, claims that David has given him a blank cheque that he’s never had the occasion to cash. "I talk to Larry all the time," he told us. "He’s very happy because his wife dumped him. Until now, he’s never had the money, the house and the fame all at the same time. He’s loving it."
IF you’re a fan, the Seinfeld tour comes highly recommended for such notable landmarks as Roosevelt Hospital (where George went to get actress Marisa Tomei’s number), the West Side YMCA (where Kramer went to take notes on men’s shower techniques), the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Centre (where Elaine went on a date with the gay guy that she thought she could turn straight), and the façade of Tom’s Restaurant, where the foursome took their daily brunch (the interior is a studio on the Seinfeld lot in LA). Of course, no Seinfeld tour would be complete without a visit to where the Soup Nazi once struck terror in the hearts and bellies of the lunch crowd. While the place was closed two years ago, the store front of Al’s Soup Kitchen International still exists. A video that Kramer made preshutdown has Al (who was originally named by a writer from The David Letterman Show) saying: "Seinfeld was great for my business but it ruined my life. Now my store is filled with immature idiots who watch Seinfeld."
At the time of writing, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had agreed to return to the negotiating table. But then again, what do I care? I don’t own a TV.
This first appeared as a column in The Sunday Times Newspaper, South Africa
Friday, October 26, 2007
On Seeing
"Looking isn't as simple as it looks. Art teaches people how to see." -- Ad Reinhardt
Do we look at art to take from it, to get resolution, or do we open ourselves up to it? Every artist is obsessed or deeply concerned about something. He uses art to explore this obsession or concern. When we look at art, we're looking at these obsessions or concerns.
We've come to see for ourselves. It is an autopsy. We treat the work of art as a crime scene. Note: This is a crime for humanity, not against. We become a witness, we suspend our judgement and we respect the evidence. If we cannot suspend judgement, we lose our sense of wonder and become defrocked or jaded. Every crime scene is a shocking scene. The shock draws your attention, it says: "Wake up. Look!"
- From Filip Noterdaeme's notes, NYU SCSPS
Do we look at art to take from it, to get resolution, or do we open ourselves up to it? Every artist is obsessed or deeply concerned about something. He uses art to explore this obsession or concern. When we look at art, we're looking at these obsessions or concerns.
We've come to see for ourselves. It is an autopsy. We treat the work of art as a crime scene. Note: This is a crime for humanity, not against. We become a witness, we suspend our judgement and we respect the evidence. If we cannot suspend judgement, we lose our sense of wonder and become defrocked or jaded. Every crime scene is a shocking scene. The shock draws your attention, it says: "Wake up. Look!"
- From Filip Noterdaeme's notes, NYU SCSPS
Friday, October 12, 2007
Daddy
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
By Sylvia Plath
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
By Sylvia Plath
Sunday, October 7, 2007
You're Not in Kansas Anymore, Thank God
At the New Yorker Festival, Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk discussed the concept of home. Rushdie said that in The Wizard of Oz the only words he disagreed with were "There's no place like home."
Rushdie: "[In the story] it felt like the lesson [Dorothy] needed to learn was that she didn't need to leave home at all. Rubbish! There was nothing going on in Kansas."
Rushdie: "[In the story] it felt like the lesson [Dorothy] needed to learn was that she didn't need to leave home at all. Rubbish! There was nothing going on in Kansas."
Monday, September 17, 2007
One Smart Cookie
I guess it’s still tough being a woman with an opinion
THE author and activist Naomi Klein sees recent history collectively: “At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the ‘War on Terror’ to Halliburton and Blackwater. After a powerful tsunami devastates the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts. New Orleans’s residents, still scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.”
In the seven years since Klein wrote the anti-globalisation bible No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, she has found a much more sinister enemy to expose: disaster capitalists. John le Carre calls Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, “scary as hell”.
I went to the New York Society for Ethical Culture to hear Klein talk about how governments use disasters to spread the American version of “free market” capitalism. She’s not accusing them of creating the disasters, but rather of pushing through agendas that the public would never usually allow were they not reeling from post-disaster shock. Shock, she says, reduces us to a childlike state.
The idea for a book came after Klein spent time in Iraq in 2000, researching how the invasion was supposed to have laid the psychological groundwork for (Bush’s Iraq envoy) Paul Bremer’s extreme country makeover.
“By shock therapy I’m referring to the economic policies that were really seen by many Iraqis as a continuation of the war, like the huge layoffs in the public sector, the dismantling of the army, the opening up of the country to unrestricted free trade,” she said. “It was an extraordinarily unfair way for Iraqis to enter the free market.”
Klein told Time magazine that she first used the phrase “disaster capitalism” when she saw something very similar to Iraq happening in Sri Lanka. “Just days after the tsunami hit, the government started pushing a very unpopular agenda of water and electricity privatisation.”
What I found most fascinating was Klein’s recounting of her hostile reception from the international press (Klein hails from Canada). A German journalist kicked off the interviews thus: “I explained your thesis to my wife and she said: ‘Has Naomi Klein lost her mind?’” The publicity tour, Klein said, turned into “one big therapy session”. Another journalist ventured: “Your book made me depressed. The forces you describe are so strong and we are so weak.”
To which Klein gave this excellent answer: “If your job is to report on how to change the grim and horrific things that exist in the world and you simultaneously believe that this is undoable, and you use your power and platform to spread futility and powerlessness, then, yeah, when confronted by the need for immense change, I would get depressed too.”
Worth checking out online is the short film about The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which Klein made with Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron. Google it.
By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times
THE author and activist Naomi Klein sees recent history collectively: “At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the ‘War on Terror’ to Halliburton and Blackwater. After a powerful tsunami devastates the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts. New Orleans’s residents, still scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.”
In the seven years since Klein wrote the anti-globalisation bible No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, she has found a much more sinister enemy to expose: disaster capitalists. John le Carre calls Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, “scary as hell”.
I went to the New York Society for Ethical Culture to hear Klein talk about how governments use disasters to spread the American version of “free market” capitalism. She’s not accusing them of creating the disasters, but rather of pushing through agendas that the public would never usually allow were they not reeling from post-disaster shock. Shock, she says, reduces us to a childlike state.
The idea for a book came after Klein spent time in Iraq in 2000, researching how the invasion was supposed to have laid the psychological groundwork for (Bush’s Iraq envoy) Paul Bremer’s extreme country makeover.
“By shock therapy I’m referring to the economic policies that were really seen by many Iraqis as a continuation of the war, like the huge layoffs in the public sector, the dismantling of the army, the opening up of the country to unrestricted free trade,” she said. “It was an extraordinarily unfair way for Iraqis to enter the free market.”
Klein told Time magazine that she first used the phrase “disaster capitalism” when she saw something very similar to Iraq happening in Sri Lanka. “Just days after the tsunami hit, the government started pushing a very unpopular agenda of water and electricity privatisation.”
What I found most fascinating was Klein’s recounting of her hostile reception from the international press (Klein hails from Canada). A German journalist kicked off the interviews thus: “I explained your thesis to my wife and she said: ‘Has Naomi Klein lost her mind?’” The publicity tour, Klein said, turned into “one big therapy session”. Another journalist ventured: “Your book made me depressed. The forces you describe are so strong and we are so weak.”
To which Klein gave this excellent answer: “If your job is to report on how to change the grim and horrific things that exist in the world and you simultaneously believe that this is undoable, and you use your power and platform to spread futility and powerlessness, then, yeah, when confronted by the need for immense change, I would get depressed too.”
Worth checking out online is the short film about The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which Klein made with Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron. Google it.
By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times
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