And the right defines the debate once again.

I’ve got to ask you, when was the last time the Democrats put the fear of God into the heart of the Republicans? Not in DECADES!

So let me get this straight. A student breaks a window in high school, they’re called to the principal’s office and the kid tells the official he’d better not be punished, because if they are, all the bullies and ne’er-do-wells are going to break every window in the building. AND MORE!

Or the teenager gets in trouble, and when his parents say they’re going to ground them, or take away their phone, the child says to think about it, because… I’m not exactly sure what. Run away from home? Kids are running BACK home these days. The idea of hitting the road with your thumb out and your wallet empty? NO WAY!

The only place this paradigm works is in the Mafia. You’d better stay silent because otherwise…we’re going to kill not only you, but your entire family. Are the Republicans the Mafia?

Well, one thing about the Mafia, they don’t believe in the rules unless they can twist them to their advantage. Interesting parallel.

But the Mafia, despite “The Sopranos” and other productions, is a mere shadow of what it once was, as a result of law enforcement. Because if you break the law you should be penalized, right?

WRONG according to Trump and the bozos supporting him. They’re not focusing on the merits of the case, they’re just saying that Trump should be inviolate and if he’s brought up for prosecution, BEWARE!

Well, four Oath Keepers were just convicted the other day. They face years in prison. And when it gets serious, that’s when the middle class gets out. As for the lower classes… Many don’t even vote. The participants in the 1/6 fracas had money, some flew in on private jets. It’s one thing when it’s fun and games, it’s quite another when you risk jail, which goes on your permanent record.

At the end of the day people only care about themselves. Just like Donald Trump!

Now the scary thing is DeSantis is fading in the polls. And it looks like Trump might very well be the candidate.

But I’ve got to ask you, has the majority of American voters not gotten the message? That he’s a crook, a grifter? The wheels of justice turn very slowly, but at least they’re turning. This is a great American moment. Elizabeth Holmes didn’t get away with her crimes and hopefully Donald Trump won’t either. Oh, he’s entitled to a trial, but he should be brought to trial. Martha Stewart went to prison for tax evasion and David Crosby for dope, who says if you’re famous you’re immune? Donald Trump and the Republicans, but not most Americans.

So in 2016 Hillary Clinton was portrayed as a bad candidate and although people knew Donald Trump from “The Apprentice” and endless self-hype, they really didn’t know him. They wanted to throw a spanner in the works. They wanted change, because the old system wasn’t working for them. I’ll admit it, even I thought Trump was intelligent. But I was disabused of that notion almost instantly. He’s a rich boy who skated on the money and power of his father, Trump is a terrible businessman, who doesn’t read, barely works, can’t grasp the issues and is ultimately a buffoon.

Oh, I know the right has its knickers in a twist right now, but we’ve seen the movie, and most people agree with me. Even worse, after 1/6, they’re fearful if he does get elected, he’ll never leave. And when it comes to the climate and foreign relations… This guy is just looney tunes, to our collective detriment.

But everybody pontificating on radio and television, in the newspaper, has a flaw… THEY DON’T INTERACT WITH THE RANK AND FILE! I’m astounded how out of the loop these people are. Their idea of talking to the right is talking to elected officials and rich Republicans. As for the hoi polloi, they’re clueless. They might read some poll, but actually interacting with them?

I INTERACT WITH THEM EACH AND EVERY DAY!

That’s right, my inbox is filled with right wing tripe literally every day. And I once made the mistake of responding, gently, pointing to an article and Wikipedia debunking the position proffered, and now that person sends me the same tripe EVERY DAY!

What you’ve got to know about the right is they’re active. They’re playing gotcha 24/7. If they encounter something they don’t agree with, they push back. A Democrat will sit in the recliner, turn on streaming television and forget about it, feeling powerless all the while. But the right? It’s been trained not to give an inch, and to do its best to gain ground while it’s at it.

As for the Fox/Dominion suit… It hasn’t penetrated the right wing base at all. They’re unaware of it. Or have some cockamamie excuse, like Dominion was woke.

Now the Democrats could all line up and hammer this story, and then the media would report it and… Believe me, if Biden and the Democratic senators hammered Fox’s faux pas each and every day, the right wing media would be forced to report it, and the audience would ultimately get the message,  But the Republicans employ this strategy, not the Democrats.

As for the vocal right… I hear from them far in excess of the left. It’s not easy to wake up the left. I have to print something truly heinous by a right winger before the left weighs in. But then the left far outweighs the word of the right.

Are you getting this? IT’S A VOCAL MINORITY!

And I hate to employ Spiro Agnew’s term, but I will, the silent majority is anti-Trump.

But the right keeps making news and the left stays silent so it looks like the right is making progress.

Yeah, Trump lost, by a lot, in 2020. And his party took a beating in 2018 and underperformed by a ton in 2022. Have you read the analysis? About the Red Tsunami? It was completely bogus, to the degree there were “facts,” they were based on bogus right wing polls. Which got Dilbert into trouble. The right is so full of b.s. it’s laughable, but they believe it.

But what about Florida? And Texas? And Wyoming?

First and foremost, all this anti-California crap… Yes, housing is expensive in metropolitan California. As are taxes. But you get something for your money. Did you see the letters to the L.A. “Times” from the people who moved to Florida and then moved back to California? I mean if they can ban books, they can start banning people.

As for banning people… Donald Trump single-handedly fanned the flames of antisemitism. Used to be you couldn’t say this stuff. Now people say it with impunity. Did you read about the lawsuit from the Fox producer, the one who said Fox’s lawyers wanted her and Maria Bartiromo to take the fall, so the boys wouldn’t get hurt? Ultimately she switched to Tucker’s show, and what did she find?

“Mr. Carlson’s staff joked about Jews and freely deployed a vulgar term for women, according to the complaint.”: https://nyti.ms/3lANjzx

If this were the fifties, any time before the internet era, the Dominion lawsuit would have killed Tucker Carlson, just like Joe McCarthy took his fall.

So let me get this straight. The majority of voters are anti-Trump, Trump’s posse has shrunk instead of grown, but we need to be afraid of them, quake in our boots, that they’re going to take action and…

Exactly what?

And if Trump isn’t taken to trial, in more than one case, his acolytes are going to think they’re immune too. They must learn they are not.

God, the U.S. has a crisis of trust and credibility. And what do Trump and his wankers say? YOU’D BETTER NOT TRY AND SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT! Didn’t Superman fight for truth, justice and the American Way? The nation is hooked on comic book movies, but even the essence of Superman does not penetrate the public. Everybody’s working the edges, seeing what they can get away with. They quote the Constitution until it applies to them, then they’ve got some lame excuse. They’re fighting for freedom, but I can only see an impingement on people’s rights, oftentimes by white males with no stake in the game.

The Democrats?

Can you hear the collective sigh?

What’s it going to take to motivate the Democrats, to make them rise up and make Republicans fearful. I thought it was Roe v. Wade, but that didn’t. Maybe because some people thought it didn’t apply to them, even though it did. You guys? That baby is your responsibility too. You grandparents? Get ready for your daughter and the kid to move in, you’re going to be full-time babysitters, you may end up being the actual parents!

The draft applied to every young male.

But we don’t need no stinking draft anymore. After all, where are we gonna fight? Trump and DeSantis want to put a wall around America and this makes them believe the rest of the world will ignore them, that everything will work out fine. How’s this been working for England? Brexit is ruining the economy. The only people still behind it, who put it over the transom, are the yahoos, with little money, who can only feel good by holding on to an ancient dream of England that disappeared years ago.

Let’s see, Brexit was supposed to improve the health system, now it’s crumbling.

But in the U.S. we’ve already seen this movie. Trump had his four years. And most Americans declared no mas. So let me see… If Trump gets nominated they’re not going to be motivated to vote against him, they’re just going to throw their hands in the air and accept him. OF COURSE NOT! 

I’m not saying the left should take no action, quite the contrary, rust never sleeps and you must beware, but if an alien came down to Earth and read and watched the news, they’d think the Republicans own this country, and are winning, when just the opposite is true. But the news business loves it. Isn’t that the essence of what has come out from Fox in the Dominion suit? Keep the idiots happy, tell them what they want to hear, make ’em angry, to the point they want to fight. Truth? Is that really part of news?

Yes, the news business is guilty.

But we’ve also lost track of truth. Online you can find material to support any viewpoint. But that does not make it right. Everything is not up for grabs. 1+1=2. Gravity is real. There are facts. But the right says facts are fungible. The most powerful person in America is George Soros and you’d better not pay any taxes because the government wastes the money, especially on the takers and…

Of course we know that it’s California and other blue states supporting the red states, but you don’t hear Chuck Schumer repeating this ad infinitum. No, he’s constantly telling us what he can’t do. HUH?

You are not alone. You are on the winning team.

And if we can’t believe in the law…

WE’RE SCREWED!

We’re watching “Farzi (“Fakes” in English), on Amazon Prime. It’s really good. A reader hipped me to it, otherwise I doubt I’d ever find it. Distribution is king. As a matter of fact, they point that out in “Farzi”! There’s a plethora of business wisdom in “Farzi.” It might have gotten more traction on Netflix, but it’s lost on Amazon Prime. Just like regular Amazon, the homepage is cluttered and hard to decipher. And don’t get me started on the HBO Max app…talk about slow. What’s going on over there? Sure, aged people watch HBO, not on Max, but younger people? They’re not addicted. What’s the plan? Write it all down, sell it? Did you see that string of “Forbes” covers with the head of Silicon Valley Bank and Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried? You’re a hero until you’re a zero. Is this the same story with David Zaslav? Portrayed as a genius because he did well with the the peripheral Discovery channels, with their ultra-low budget shows, like the Food Network and TLC, we see that he cannot play in the big leagues. And he’s turned CNN into a disaster. Bring back Jeff Zucker. At least he understood television.

But Amazon is even worse. Scott Galloway expects Bezos to come back. Andy Jassy is floundering. He canceled the Smile program saying every charity wasn’t getting enough money. Isn’t any money enough? And it’s not like he said he was going to redirect the monies to another charitable effort, no, that money was just going to fall straight to the company’s bottom line. You’ve got to know when not to nickel and dime. You may nickel and dime on the inside, but never on the outside, it’s a bad look. As for the inside, Jassy’s not doing that well there either. Not a surprise, given that he made his bones in AWS (Amazon Web Services). What has that got to do with broad vision, retailing and managing a large corporation, never mind its employees? Very little. So, Jassy earned the position, by building the super-profitable AWS, but to promote him to the top Amazon gig is the Peter Principle in action. As for Amazon Prime… Couldn’t he hire an interface expert, maybe even bring back Marissa Mayer, who oversaw that at Google, that was the only thing she was good at, and she was very good at it.

I mean didn’t Steve Jobs focus on two things…the look and ease of use? Those should be baked into each and every streaming app. And just because it works, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stop innovating. You’ve got to give Spotify credit here, they keep pushing the envelope while their competitors rest on their laurels. Innovate or die. And that comes to programming too. What we’ve learned over a hundred plus years is that you can never be sure what will resonate with the public. Therefore you have to make a lot of product, of different stripes, or you will never catch fire. Quick, name a hit show on HBO Max, that is not on the cable channel. I bet you can’t. One show can go a long way, but it isn’t easy finding that show. The streaming landscape is littered with product that looked dead on arrival but got blockbuster viewing time. Like “The Tiger King.” Or “Squid Game.” And the latter is important, because the key to art is conception. What the studios are providing to the theatres is me-too product, just endless sequels, mostly of comic book productions. There’s nothing new to drag outsiders in, that’s why the buzz is gone. Same deal in music. All the innovation, all the interesting stuff is happening on the fringe. But the titans of the industry will only invest in and promote what sells, or has raised its head on social media. There’s no vision, only commerce. This is why streaming television is king, because it’s the number one outlet for artistic creativity. At least for the professional class. Go on TikTok and view the amateur productions, you’ll be stunned how good some of them are.

Did you read in yesterday’s NYT Style section about Sabrina Brier?

“Your Annoying Roommate Is Slaying on TikTok – Sabrina Brier is finding success online in the role of a 20-something in New York who’s trying to she her basic suburban past.”: https://nyti.ms/40lPWnv

Check her out on TikTok: @sabrina.cinoman.brier

You can start here:

“Girl who does NOT want to hang out”: https://bit.ly/3lrE3O2

Once again, it doesn’t matter if you get it, if you love it, although I think most of you will. Think about the target demo, the twentysomethings in the city, trying to figure it all out. Lena Dunham built a whole career on this. And every Sunday in the Style section there’s a hype article, and the product usually immediately sinks. But Sabrina is different. Then again, read to the end and you see she’s signed to CAA. Most musicians can’t make that deal, you need to be innovative. Creativity is hard. However, now Sabrina is tied into corporations. Hyping Bumble in her clips. Sure, there’s money there, but this kind of commerciality is old school, as in last decade. This decade is all about trust and credibility. Wasn’t that the point of the SVB crash, that you can’t trust anybody? That’s the power of an artist, to be trusted. The art comes first, the money second, if you go for the money first your audience feels ripped-off, people don’t think they are first, but that you’re beholden to the corporations.

As for you boomers pooh-poohing TikTok and social media… The joke is on you, time is passing you by. They should give digital literacy lessons to oldsters. I heard Bill Maher brag on his podcast that he doesn’t spend that much time on his phone. Then you’re out of it. This is why Bill is so often wrong when it comes to the younger generation and the digital world. Remove yourself at your peril. And believe me, there’s great stuff on social media. But there is no manual, you have to dive in and figure it out for yourself. There’s no live help, that’s the world we live in. If you don’t risk frustration, you don’t progress.

ANYWAY, “Farzi” is an Indian (South Asian?) series. You can listen in English if you want, that’s actually the default. And some of the dialogue is actually in English. But you have to get people over the hurdle, you’ve got to get them interested. More on “Farzi” when we finish, which we haven’t yet, but so far it’s a pretty big thumbs-up. At times things work out too easily for the characters, but don’t look at the show through an American lens.

So I never would have watched “Lucky Hank” if Felice didn’t want to. Because I hate the week by week drip. And I told her I was not going to watch it in real time, I abhor commercials, so I DVR’ed it…and it was pretty good!

Turns out Bob Odenkirk is now an A-level actor in his own realm. I can’t think of anybody else who inhabits the space. Most actors are two-dimensional, they read lines, whereas Bob was a writer, a comedian first. And therefore he’s comfortable uttering the lines, they seem to come right from him.

And Odenkirk in “Lucky Hank” is irreverent in a way we were in the sixties, but is lost to the sands of time. Come on, most of life is b.s., why pretend to take it so seriously? And Hank calls b.s. at the beginning of the show, and it wakes you right up. Can you handle the truth? Turns out students at Railton College cannot.

And it is a college town, a backwater. That Hank protests against, but his wife knows he can’t leave. Mireille Enos as Hank’s wife radiates intelligence and can give as good as she gets.

I must admit, most of the English teachers are two-dimensional, played too broadly, but the students are good. As for Diedrich Bader…he was a doofus on “The Drew Carey Show” so I’m reserving judgment, but he was good in the first episode. You know, the competitor who always has an excuse. Also, when he and Hank converse at the end of their game of racquetball…that’s how men talk. Not most guys you see in the movies, not the famous people, but the regular people. They’re not bullies and they’re not macho and they certainly aren’t bros. And therefore the conversation is deeper, about life, pondering its meaning and your choices and…that rang true.

I actually read “Straight Man,” the Richard Russo book “Lucky Hank” is based upon, but years ago, it came out in 1997. I only remember it vaguely. But the series is adding more and…

Bob Odenkirk can carry a show. It’s fun just to watch him. Some of the broad comedy in “Lucky Hank” does not work, but the more serious jokes, the questions of life underneath the surface, do hit, and demonstrate more depth than the average sitcom.

So check it out.

But really, I’d watch “Farzi” first.

It’s probably not for you. It’s probably not for everybody. That’s the modern paradigm. Today you service your audience and don’t care about anybody else, because truly no one else cares.

“One Thing at a Time” did not get reviews as good as its predecessor, the phenomenon known as “Dangerous: The Double Album.” In truth there are 36 songs on “One Thing At A Time” so it’s too early for me to weigh in, and most of those weighing in are professional reviewers, who are not the target audience for this project. Never kowtow to the critics, they still won’t be happy, like all those writers who berated Bryan Adams for being apolitical. So Bryan played to them with his next album, “Into the Fire,” and it had nowhere near the success of its predecessor, “Reckless.” What you want to know is what fans think, those who are into the artist just like you. As for everybody else, they don’t matter. As for the press, the ink for so many acts, just like late night TV appearances, strokes the ego of those involved, but it doesn’t move the needle.

So Morgan Wallen is following up the biggest album of the past two years. Let’s look at the history of those who tried to do this.

Well, one of the first blockbusters was Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da Vida.” Do you even know the name of its follow-up (“Ball”), never mind a single track on it?

And then there was the first Boston album, a classic. But the follow-up was not, and it went downhill from there.

And then there’s “Jagged Little Pill.” Heard “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” recently? Alanis has made a whole career off “Jagged Little Pill.” As for “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie”…remember that video wherein she was nude? Alanis was self-conscious, she blinked, she didn’t know how to handle all the success and resulting fame, she couldn’t do it anymore.

So the fact that Morgan Wallen has even stepped up to bat is an achievement. Does “One Thing at a Time” sound a little like “Dangerous” redux? Yes. But the audience doesn’t mind, yet. They might, but every act is sui generis today, they’re not competing with anybody else, or in truth they’re competing with not only other musical acts, but streaming television, TikTok, videogames…if you amass attention at all and can sustain it slap yourself on the back, that’s a big achievement.

And Morgan Wallen is not a critics’ darling, playing to small audiences, the little engine that could, he’s a superstar, playing stadiums! Something unthinkable so soon back in the last heyday of stadium shows, back in the seventies, when the headliners had earned their bones over many albums and years. And there are more stadium shows than ever, that’s how deep fanbases are, but they’re not that wide.

The Beach Boys expert.

Tune in Saturday March 18th, to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz