“For someone to give up an hour or two of their life to listen to the record I’ve made, they’re doing me a service. I think that the relationship between musician and audience at some point got turned on its head. Musicians started to feel as if the audience needed them. And the truth is I need an audience way more than the audience needs me.  It’s my job to keep the audience interested. Not my job to keep radio interested. Not my job to keep the media interested. But those individuals who are willing to listen to my music interested.” –Moby

Shows I religiously watch include True Blood, Entourage, Real Housewives, Lost, SNL and a few others. Thanks to DVR, I can watch these shows whenever, but I still watch about 8 hours of TV a week.  The story telling in these shows is good, so I don’t mind the hours lost.  What bothers me, however, is the way that TV makes you feel like you have free will and opportunity, when you really don’t.

A lot of people never fulfill their personal goals. Or for those without entrepreneurial aspirations, they never get a chance to work in a place that satisfies them. They want to make changes in their lives, but it just never seems to happen.  I have a strong feeling that TV pacifies their passions and keeps them from living their dreams.

Here’s how it works: I go home and click on Entourage. Vinnie Chase and the boys go live the Hollywood life.  I feel like I’m a part of that life.  I feel satisfied.  I know that if I push myself, I might be able to have that as my life. BUT I DON’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!

It presents opportunities and possibilities to you, but it also leaves you satisfied.  It’s the feeling of contentment coupled with the fake sense of choice that make TV so dangerous.  Instead of doing things, we leave others to do them–in a fake or highly edited world.

I think I’m gonna start switching off the TV again. It doesn’t feed my head the things I need to move forward, and it takes 8 hours of my time a week.

What are your thoughts about Television? Does it kill dreams?

A reader writes:

Reading your blog over the past 30 something hours makes me realize why the MSM is really finished. I mean, this point has finally hit home.You are blogging real time events, with descriptions, evaluation, analysis, and eye witness accounts. You are gathering information from a myriad of sources and putting it out there for a cohesive message.CNN, NY Times, et al are merely running an article about “thousands” of protesters. Its a canned message from just a few stale sources.The revolution is definitely on in Iran. And its on in American journalism too.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

The mainstream media filters and pushes messages. The news talks down to you. There’s no insight.  There are no local stories. It’s a loud speaker squawking at you.  It’s a business that has lost the ability to tell a story.  It doesn’t care about you.

“I will be gleeful when the AP goes out of business.” A look at original news sources: http://tr.im/iSYy (HT @jemimakiss) View Tweet

Which led to this conversation:

For my follow-up to this conversation, check out this post on socialTNT.

The Washington Post had a great article discussing Michelle Obama’s reluctant ascent to fashion icon status.  A good discussion of celebrity and public canonization, it talks about her ardent defenders and how they actually stifle any discussion of reality.

To me, public perception creates a new identity in addition to that which actually exists–the identity of the “celebrity” vs the person herself.  But how does the celebrity mitigate these differences with the doting public?  Does she play up their image, or realizing she can’t be what they want, does she shut herself off?

In her closing paragraph, the author of the piece, Robin Givhan, asks similar questions:

Being an icon is not for the faint of heart. How unnerving it must be to know that your actions have disappointed some stranger. How odd to have anonymous citizens rising up in your defense over something that has caused you no upset. And even more frustrating: How do you show your gratitude or tell your defenders to back off?

via Robin Givhan on Culture: You Gotta Love the First Lady. No, Really, You Have No Choice. – washingtonpost.com.

Sad that we have a whole industry devoted to telling us how celebrities are just like us.  By so doing, they actually perpetuate the public myth.

[During the inauguration] Obama didn’t shout at his wife, Michelle, to shut up. The first lady didn’t roll her eyes and tell Obama to act like a man. No laugh track kicked in, no one danced, and no police sirens wailed in the background.

“They are not here to entertain us,” says Young, a New York Press columnist. “Michelle Obama is not sitting around with her girlfriends saying, ‘My man ain’t no good.’ You’re not seeing this over -sexualized, crazy black family that, every time a Marvin Gaye song comes on, someone stands up and says, ‘Oh girl, that’s my jam.’”

America has often viewed the black family through the prism of its pathologies: single-family homes, absentee fathers, out of wedlock children, they say. Or they’ve turned to the black family for comic relief in television shows such as “Good Times” in the ’70s or today’s “House of Payne.”

But a black first family changes that script, some say. A global audience will now be fed images of a highly educated, loving and photogenic black family living in the White House for the next four years — and it can’t be taken off the air like “The Cosby Show.”

via Black first family ‘changes everything’ – CNN.com.

Black families on TV or in movies were never anything like my friends’ or my mom’s friends’ families.  That’s why it’s great that, instead of the stereotypes, the Obamas allow whites and blacks to see an image of a strong, intelligent black man who is completely loving of his equally strong and intelligent wife.  But this new image of family, to me, also goes beyond race to show that any man can be sensitive, intimate and romantic with his partner and still be strong.

What other stereotypes do the Obamas break? Do you think Hollywood will catch up?

This photo of the plane crash in the Hudson is so beautiful. It was taken from a mobile phone by a passenger on a ferry who then uploaded it to TwitPic and Tweeted it. Citizen Journalism!

As the AP moves to change its pricing structure in 2009, several newspapers are dropping the hundred-year old wire service.  Some say the change in pricing constitutes a new contract.  Other’s are giving their two year notice.