Another day, another faux pas.

Today it was Betsy DeVos applauding black colleges for giving their students choice, completely ignorant of the reason for their establishment, that white institutions were not open to black students.

What did the internet do?

Wait for the “New York Times” to weigh in? For Bill O’Reilly or Rachel Maddow to pontificate on television?

No, the offended, you and me, took to Twitter to express our outrage, and then the media reported it.

The game is rigged my friends. There are no rules, especially when one team believes in alternative facts. So what do you do, sit on your hands, cry like a baby?

NO! YOU WORK THE REFS!

Let me explain how this concept works. It comes from sports. When the coach and the players complain about a call, they don’t expect it to be overturned, they just want to put the referee on notice, make him think twice before he calls another foul, another call to the disadvantage of the complainer.

It works.

And the left has started to do it.

Come on, Trump’s announcement today that he’s rethinking his immigration policy, do you think that happened in a vacuum, no it was a result of public outcry.

Everybody’s human, everybody’s looking for approval, everybody can blink in the face of complaint, especially when it’s justified.

So that’s your job now. Forget the media, it only reports what happened, at best. Forget the leaders, none has stepped up yet. It comes down to you and me.

This is what the right wing has been doing for eons. Say anything they disapprove of and legions come out of the woodwork to tell you you’re wrong. Forget whether you’re right, most people cannot withstand the blowback.

But you’re gonna have to learn how to now.

There’s no getting along. When someone makes a heinous comment, stand up to them. This is what Jews have been doing for centuries, and it works. You don’t let an anti-Semitic comment go by, you call the perpetrator on it. Who says he did not mean to offend, that everybody says it, it wasn’t even about Jews, maybe they even apologize, but one thing’s for sure, these people think twice before making an anti-Semitic comment again.

And speaking of anti-Semitism, did you see Trump blamed the headstone overturnings on left wing perps trying to make him look bad? I’m not saying we should turn over Catholic headstones, but I do think we should all call him on his b.s. Because today we’re all Jews, we’re all a minority persecuted, even the right wing workers who voted for Trump.

That’s right, the rich will have their taxes lowered, the poor don’t even pay any income tax, although they pay plenty of other taxes, sales and gasoline and the amount they pay to government is a greater percentage of their income than the rich. So, the plans of Trump are not going to help most of those who voted for him. Because they’ve been sold the right wing canard that the rich are the job creators and if it’s every man for himself the individual watching Fox News and reading Breitbart will triumph.

Yeah, and call me when you play in the NBA too.

We have to control the dialogue. We are the majority. Trump got elected through a quirk of the system. And the system is rigged, just look up “gerrymandering.” So, we’re gonna play like they do, write the rules ourselves.

Everybody’s got a gay relative.

Many people know transgendered individuals, and many others do too, they just live in closeted communities where no one has come out.

We all want health care.

We all want opportunity.

WE’RE ON THE SAME TEAM!

But our manager has decided to play without us, and denigrate us all the while.

So, we’re going on strike. We’re mad as hell and we aren’t gonna take it anymore.

It’s incumbent upon you and me to stand up to them.

It takes a nation of millions to hold us back. And the truth is Chuck D. and his compatriots got it right, listen to the hit parade, hip-hop dominates.

We should be smiling, not downhearted. We have this. If we just admit to ourselves we live in a new world, not the last century.

In this world the internet is king. Everybody has a voice. Not everybody can be heard, but if we all speak our message it will drown out theirs.

We not only have to call them on their false facts, we must double down on the truth. We must not be gun-shy. We must stand up for what we believe in. Whether it be bathroom rights or climate change or the right to live safely with a roof over our heads and food on the table.

We can’t let this get away from us.

Look at the size of our rallies versus theirs.

As for our rank and file opponents…

Some are just haters, bigoted people who want to go back to a bygone era that never even existed.

But the rest, they’re like you and me.

They want their kids to be educated, they want opportunity, they want to be safe. But they’ve been sold a line of b.s. for so long, about takers, about immigrants holding them back, that it’s time they heard the truth, over and over and over again.

Come on, one woman brought down Roger Ailes.

Never underestimate the power of the individual.

But when we’re all in it together…

We can’t be beat.

Is the number one commodity in today’s world. Unless you can get it, you cannot proceed.

1. You don’t get multiple bites at the apple.

Since attention is scarce and stretched if someone checks you or your product out and is not closed, chances are they will never check it out again. Which is why you should not launch before you are ready and when it comes to a product many companies release first iterations as betas, signaling the customer should expect rough edges. If the concept is good, if the utility is reasonable, people will put up with bugs in betas.

2. You can’t spread the word, your users must.

Advertising is crippled. As is press. They can cause a limited amount of awareness but people today are turned off to ads, never mind DVR’ing TV shows and watching HBO and Netflix, they employ ad-blockers on their web browsers and if you’re paying for advertising you’d better have a monster launch with a ton invested otherwise it’s a no-go, and it still may be a no-go if you spam everybody. Because you can’t reach everybody and people are wary of advertising, they don’t believe it, they need to hear it from their friends.

We all need to hear it from our friends. Who we might know in person or might just know online. It’s about trusted filters. And those filters guard their credibility wisely. Credibility is everything in the attention economy. If you can’t be trusted, then you’re probably going to be ignored. You’re building your reputation every day online, and all the bread crumbs are there for everybody to see.

We don’t take a look until our friends/trusted filters tell us to. And oftentimes, we have to hear from multiple friends/trusted filters that something is worth checking out.

3. Overnight success is history.

MTV blasted acts to the moon and they fell to Earth just about as fast. If you can gain major attention in today’s world right away chances are you’re going to immediately fail thereafter. Because few things live up to the hype and the hype causes backlash and in today’s world it’s not about stagnation but evolution, what does version 2.0 look like, how good is the follow-up song. When the bar is set so high to begin with chances are you cannot jump over it the second time around and people will stop paying attention.

Better to grow slowly.

4. That which is big may not be anointed as so.

Forget the awards shows. Hell, look at the Oscars, those pictures they were honoring all had mediocre grosses at best. And the media is a tool of the companies purveying. Other than politics and wars, where newspapers have full time reporters, the rest of what comes over the transom as news is really glorified press releases. So you read about something and then it has no traction thereafter. Because it’s not that good and there is no base to sustain it and the press is not that powerful.

No one has come up with a metric to detail what gets attention in today’s economy. Except for maybe Netflix subscribers and Facebook usage, but as for art…

We’ve got grosses in film. Ratings in television, but the best shows aren’t rated. And we’ve got streams in music. All these quantifications are relevant (and ignore the weekly “Billboard” chart, it’s out of touch!) But how to quantify the success of “Hamilton,” which for over a year played in only one theatre and has had no Top Forty success, but is referenced by Seth Rogen at the Oscars, sung along to by Melinda Gates… “Hamilton” has yet to peak and unlike so much other art it crosses ethnic and political boundaries, it’s one of the few things that appeals to all. But there’s no chart, just a lot of press which doesn’t resonate.

But when someone tells you about their favorite “Hamilton” song…

Then you feel the bond and know how big it is.

We all have our own internal chart now. We determine whether something is big or small. And we do this by gut feeling. Hell, the media missed the Trump phenomenon completely. But based on the blowback I was getting online I knew something was up. Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters. If you don’t think something is that big, despite the press hosannas, it’s probably not.

5. Don’t hammer the audience.

If you spam us every day looking for attention we ignore you. Launch and then follow up. New songs/more product is much more important that more publicity. Satiate the core, which wants more. It’s the core who will spread the word. But if you drop an album and promote it for two years you’re missing the point. You’re going after the looky-loos, the least committed people, your core is burned out on your new work and abandons you. You need to keep the attention of the core. And the more you say “Look at me!” the more you are ignored, or made fun of. Sure, there’s train-wreck attention, where someone blows themselves up and we all know about it, but it lasts for about a day.

6. Don’t have airs.

The most successful people in today’s economy are accessible. Look at Mark Cuban, responding to the hoi polloi’s tweets. He could run for President and win, he’s more credible than Trump and on TV every week too. So come down off your throne and get in the pit and mix it up a bit. People want to be able to touch you, even if it’s only online.

7. Respect your audience.

You’ve got no time and they don’t either. Even babies are scheduled, we’re all overwhelmed. It’s a privilege to get someone’s attention, you’re not entitled to it. Ask for it nicely and thank people for giving it and don’t ask for too much. Ask people to listen to one song, not an album, if they like the one they’ll ask for more. If you send ten, they probably won’t listen at all. You don’t want to overload people.

8. Pull economy.

You cannot push, that’s positively last century. Sure, you can grease the skids, pour some oil to get something started, but it’s only working if people are demanding more. And if they are not, you don’t have a marketing problem, you have a product problem. Marketing has never meant less. It’s seen as phony and manipulative. You lead with your product. And it’s either growing or failing. Either every day more and more people are watching your YouTube video or you need to make another one, that’s different.

9. You rarely feel like you’re winning.

With everybody clamoring for attention and traditional news outlets challenged you oftentimes don’t know whether you’re winning or losing. Which is why today it’s about stamina and follow-through. When someone hypes you on the work of a twelve year old, laugh and ignore it. The “artist” doesn’t have enough experience to understand the game, they just want fame. And those seeking fame first and foremost are losing out in the attention economy, because it’s not about the one time buy, but a continued relationship. And when there’s no there there, people move on. So you’ve got to polish your product and create new ones and stay in the game, constantly tweaking what you’ve got and trying new things, and if you’re getting more attention you know you’re on the right track, if not, back to the drawing board.

10. Evolution

This is where we are today. Tomorrow will be different. Virality is a thing of the past. As in faking it to get everybody to pay attention, it rarely works anymore, we’ve seen the trick and if you’re trying to goose the process for instant success you’re on the wrong track. Today it’s about an overwhelming number of messages, tomorrow it’s about the winnowing down of those messages. What will this look like? Will there be new gatekeepers? Will so many outlets fail that the ones remaining have more power? If you’re not reevaluating and pivoting on a regular basis you’re being left behind. Now, more than ever, what worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow. So you have to keep experimenting. But success remains tied to attention. Your goal is to get people interested, dedicating their time, giving you their money. And the more sunlight there is online, the less fakery there is too. So, instead of promoting, you should be practicing. The truth is we’re all looking for great stuff 24/7 and if we find it we tell everybody we know. Let it be you we are telling everybody about.

This record should be bad. A guy with no deal doing it independently, we’re inundated with the work of wannabes, we trust labels, radio and the press to weed out quality.

But what if they don’t?

The first criterion for music is listenability. I don’t care about theories, the lyrics, first and foremost it must be ear-pleasing. And I dropped the needle on Aaron Watson’s “Vaquero” and I didn’t want to take it off, and each track was equally rewarding, how can this be?

Remember when you used to buy an album and break the shrinkwrap and sit down in front of the turntable and marinate in the music? Walk around the house and wait for it to seep into your brain? When there were many fewer acts and recording was expensive and you bought an album and you listened to it?

Today it’s different. Everything’s available at our fingertips and we’re beaten into submission by the press and social media but the end result is always so unsatisfying and we end up discarding it all, going back to the oldies.

I’m waiting for the music business to have some self-respect, see itself as a cultural institution as well as a moneymaker. Give credit to the filmmakers honored last night at the Oscars, they were shooting for the stars, whereas too much in music is lowest common denominator.

And then there was Jimmy Kimmel. Terrible on paper, a sheer wonder in action. Because he had no airs, he was an everyman shooting straight and it worked. We used to have people in music like that, who let the work speak for itself. Come on, Jimmy’s jokes hit the target again and again whereas those much more famous than him, known for their comedy work, failed in the gig. Maybe this is the new paradigm, we’re all in it together, that anybody who holds themselves up as a star is a target. And we’ve got so many of these people, more famous for the penumbra than the work, which makes this Aaron Watson album such a revelation.

I’d never heard of it. Nor him. But I got the following e-mail from Marshall Altman…

“Hey Bob,

I’m wondering if you’ve heard this new Aaron Watson album yet. There’s a story here about independent country artists that I think you might find interesting.

Check the album out here:

Aaron Watson – Texas Lullaby

Been enjoying the letter more and more over the last few months. Thanks for telling the truth.

Best,

Marshall Altman

Ps – Full disclosure, I’m the producer on this record, but the story started long before I got involved…”

And I clicked and started playing it before I read the part where he kissed my butt, just to check it out and dismiss it, but “Texas Lullaby,” the opening track, started to lope along and I couldn’t help but saddle up and go along for the ride.

He was just eighteen
Full of fire and gasoline

It’s a STORY SONG!

Remember when music reflected our humanity back upon us?

And Watson doesn’t have the best voice, but the changes resonate and the chorus was catchy and if it’s so simple how come seemingly no one else can do it?

Well, we’ve got Chris Stapleton, who’s selling a bit more gravitas, but he went from zero to hero overnight, that’s how hungry we are for soul-fulfilling music.

And then I started to do some research. Turns out Watson’s last indie album, entered the country chart at number one, and that this new one, “Vaquero,” might exceed the sales and streams of Little Big Town’s new one and enter at number one too.

Which means Aaron Watson’s got fans. And they’re supporting him.

Which gives me hope.

But not as much as listening to this album, which has no clunkers, none I’ve found yet. Too much of today’s new music I just want to take off. It’s repetitive and shoots too low.

And I’m not saying Watson is an intellectual, but he is a beacon, showing us you can reject the system and do it your own way and win.

Then again, he’s been doing it for nearly two decades, his initial LP came out in 1999, and that’s far too long in a world where we want it all and we want it now.

Maybe you can get better with age. Maybe you don’t have to do what’s au courant. Maybe you can just get behind the wheel and drive into the wilderness and people will follow you.

Don’t expect Bob Dylan.

If you hate Nashville and Texas don’t even bother to tune in.

If you make music and wonder why it’s not you having the success, move right along, stay on your sour grapes highway.

But if you’re someone who went to the rodeo with the Byrds, ate burritos with Gram Parsons, liked the SoCal cowboys and are looking for something new to listen to while you do the laundry, drive your car, when you’re unworried about your image and are just going on with your life, you might find that you want Aaron Watson riding shotgun.

He isn’t reinventing the wheel, but at least he acknowledges the wheel still exists, and that’s a rare thing in a world where real instruments are anathema, vocals are tuned and songs are something written by committee.

Check it out.

Do we blame the internet or income inequality, the inability to rise above and get ahead?

Every damn day people tell me I’m an asshole online. And let me tell you, if I say something negative about you or your project, it’s open season, it doesn’t surprise me when you reach out and castigate me. But when there’s no nexus, I don’t know you and you don’t know me, why such vitriol?

Used to be society was divided into those who ruled and those who were ruled. And we kind of liked this, because we had economic mobility, we thought if we just put our nose to the grindstone we could get ahead. But then mothers were working alongside fathers and bills went up and income stayed stagnant and everybody started to scratch their head and say, “Wait a minute here…”

Now the paradigm’s been blown apart. The elites think they rule but they don’t. That  was the story of the Presidential election, those who knew better left behind those who supposedly didn’t and those on the losing end decided to give the middle finger to the winners of society, the educated, the advantaged, even if it was against their best interests, because as the bard from Minnesota once told us, when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.

And the artists are a black hole. Chasing a buck too. Anybody with power refuses to go on record in any meaningful way for fear of alienating a potential customer and the nobodies keep clamoring for attention, when they’re not hating online.

But now they’re tipping over headstones.

I want to know why this is the Jews’ problem, please tell me what my tribe did to become the most hated. Seems we’re decried even more than immigrants. But that bozo shot those Indians in Kansas and what’s even scarier is the nincompoops have guns, it’s like the wild west, if you feel safe…

You aren’t.

But what’s funny is those who feel most at risk aren’t. Those red state denizens where the terrorists don’t go, because there aren’t enough people there. Believe me, they’re going to Oklahoma and Idaho last. But we must beef up the military for a perceived threat that doesn’t exist, when we can blow up the world many times over and we cozy up to the real enemy, Russia.

Makes your head spin, doesn’t it?

But no one wants to accept any blame. Trump wants more facts before he weighs in on Kansas, even though he heard rumors of election fraud and cheering Muslims in New Jersey and had no problem rushing to judgment and pontificating on those subjects. Because golfer Bernhard Langer, not even a citizen, is a more trustworthy authority than the media.

If you’re educated, if you’re doing your job, you’re scorned.

How can this be?

I get it, people have been left behind. But does this mean we give up on facts, we give up on truth, we no longer respect those who are educated and informed? What next, rogue doctors performing surgeries after learning their craft on YouTube?

So the elites won’t acknowledge that globalism results in losers who must be helped and the losers keep telling us we need less government and more guns but we had better not cut their Obamacare.

This is the county we’re living in. One where no one seems to be in control.

We as a society should be excoriating hate. We should be shaking our fists and rallying for truth and understanding.

But everybody’s watching their own news and so much of it is biased and everybody feels powerless so they just yell at each other, over and over again, all the damn time.

But words hurt less than actions.

Once you start shooting people in the name of hatred, once you start vandalizing Jewish cemeteries, calling in bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers, you’ve got a major societal problem. One that we must be led out of.

But who is leading, who do we respect anymore?

I can’t respect a President who believes everything he sees on Fox is right.

And I can’t respect a Democratic elite that left the working man behind.

But I do know we’re only human, flesh and blood.

They teach us to be good citizens…

But now Betsy DeVos wants to eviscerate public schools, even though the latest research shows vouchers result in lower test scores. We want to segregate ourselves more. By race, by religion, by income.

And endgame is?

They’re coming for you next. Don’t think you’re immune. You can pray to your God all you want but that won’t make you safe. Your only choice is to love and understand your brothers and sisters, but this is hard to do when you have trouble making ends meet.

The media has been neutralized. Trump is fanning the flames of discord.

And I’m very scared. Because I’ve been on this planet quite a while and have never seen it this bad. Where anti-Semitism is legitimized. Where immigrants are the root of all problems. Where truth is for pussies and we make up alternative facts that befit our desired scenarios.

Come on, what kind of coarse society do we live in where every immigrant has to be afraid of being rounded up and kicked out while the poor aliens are picking out fruit and the rich aliens are aiding breakthroughs in Silicon Valley. I’m not saying people should be able to cross borders willy-nilly, but if you think the major issue in this country is immigration, you’re not looking at the real problem.

You and me. Who’ve been here from day one. We’re standing by as our society fails, feeling hopeless as we yell at each other online, pointing fingers at everyone but ourselves.

A change has got to come.

And it’s got to start with us.

We are America. We make policy. We have power.

And I don’t care who is in office, who won any election, this hatred has got to stop.