Time for some real CHANGE!

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As is well known (as Pravda used to say), my family has been involved in the media for generations. For one thing, it got us out of the house. For another, it paid better than piecework. But the most important reason was: We wanted to control the narrative.

Journalism, fiction, movies, it doesn’t matter. Uncle Joe Kahane started at PM, moved on to the Daily Worker and finished up his career editing Frank Rich at the New York Times. My dad, the sainted “Che” Kahane, made his bones with his scripts for Mission to Moscow II: This Time, It’s Personal (winner of the coveted Dalton Trumbo Award) and The Boy from Stalingrad Does West Hollywood (winner of the prestigious Sidney Salkow Award). And I, of course, write this silly column in between lunching at Chaya, pitching at Paramount, and schnorring for spare change at the intersection of Wilshire and San Vicente in Brentwood. Pearls before swine, indeed.

To the untrained eye, what we lefty American media types and our ink-stained comrades everywhere do may look like storytelling, and in a manner of speaking it is. Our stories have characters, events, incidents, action; after all, every screenwriter’s spiritual antecedents are the hack newspapermen from New York and Chicago who headed west in search of nice weather, pretty girls, and a fast buck. “Millions are to be grabbed out here, and your only competition is idiots,” wired Herman Mankiewicz to Ben Hecht, who promptly hopped a train.

Even more important, our stories, like fables and fairy tales, have narrative. A framework of good guys and bad guys, archetypes and stereotypes. A shorthand for our audiences, so that instead of wasting time on establishing characters we can get right to the morality play/propaganda point, all the while disguising it as “news” or “entertainment.” The narrative is like a continuing serial or soap opera, which our audiences can drop in and out of, secure in the knowledge that they know what’s going on. Thus urban minorities = good, white ethnics = bad. Corporate chieftains = bad, union leaders = good. Brave Hollywood screenwriters speaking truth to %$#BUSH@#$!!! = good, Limbaugh/Hannity/O’Reilly = bad. It really is that simple, and, as the election returns showed, the American people bought it hook, line, and BO².

And now, just as you have absorbed and internalized these stereotypes, here comes our boldest one of them all: capitalism = bad, socialism = good. “We Are All Socialists Now” proclaimed Newsweek recently, in a cover story co-written by Evan Thomas, who totally coincidentally is the grandson of the six-time Socialist candidate for president, Norman Thomas. (From the article: “Remember Joe the Plumber? Sadly, so do we.” Now that’s snark you can believe in!) Read this article!

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I've been very ill. bronchitis gone to pneumonia - not good for guy with no lungs left. Actually didn't have the oxygen going to my brain sufficient to post. Finally broke down and went to the hospital and I am feeling better. Relatively speaking. I say that, because what I'm witnessing as regards this nation - this democracy which I chose to defend - is truly sickening. I expect last rites to be delivered at any moment. And that state of affairs is making me really sick. As much as I love this system we have, it is becoming increasingly more apparent that Barack Obama & Co must be stopped at any cost. To allow them to do what they intend is more dangerous to this nation than removing them from power - by whatever means. BHO & Co. Must Go!