Jeff Hanna-This Week’s Podcast

Jeff Hanna has been in every iteration of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, from “Mr. Bojangles” to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” to “Fishin’ in the Dark” to their just released album “Dirt Does Dylan.” We discuss all of these eras!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jeff-hanna/id1316200737?i=1000578810804

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/978388ed-2006-4111-88d2-4f3f02cc2202/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-jeff-hanna

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/jeff-hanna-206541115

Biden’s Speech

You attack when you’re winning, and right now the tide has turned in favor of the Democrats.

The biggest winner last night? Social media scribe Taylor Lorenz, who Tucker Carlson called out as one of Joe Biden’s foremost advisors, even though there’s no evidence he’s aware of who she is: https://bit.ly/3TEJGon This is what you want, crossover news. The key is to be prominent in your field and unafraid to take a stand to the point you’re on the radar of those not in your sphere and they call you out. And forget all the B.S. entertainment press, it’s all politics, 24/7 in America today. That’s where you make your bones. The Kardashians? Making all that money? Everybody knows the odds of making that kind of cash in America today are impossibly long. So these two-dimensional “entertainers” are ignored by the tastemakers, the newsmakers, those who truly control our country. I’m not saying the young hoi polloi don’t pay attention, but they’re just in the throes of growing up, they don’t know how the world works yet. And as important as money is, the way to win is through IDEAS!

That’s how Donald Trump triumphed. It wasn’t untold spending, it was spreading a message that people agreed with, that resonated with them. And channeling their anger. Why be fair to Hillary and the Democrats when you feel like you’re off their radar, and have been abandoned financially?

Enough of this upper middle class Trump supporter B.S. They may have enough money to travel to D.C., but it’s the rank and file, those who work with their hands, who may not work at all, who supported him, as the Donald said, he loves the poorly educated!

And confronted with Trump’s ascension, what did the intelligentsia, the left wing media do? Studied the problem. Took no action. It was a college seminar taught and peopled by the out of touch, yes the coastal elites. Who really want nothing to do with THOSE PEOPLE! And believe me, THOSE PEOPLE KNOW IT!

And then along comes Joe Biden. Who went to the University of Delaware, which is known for…I CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING!

That was supposedly Joe’s ace in the hole, his ability to relate to the working man. Something leading Democrats used to specialize in until they all became billionaires and couldn’t stop saying they knew better than the rest of us. I’m pissed! Just because I’m not rich I don’t deserve a seat at the table?

Of course rich fat cats out for themselves have ruled the Republican Party forever, but now they’ve lost control of it. The tail wags the dog. People love Obamacare. They think the rich should be taxed more, as well as the corporations. And they want abortion rights.

Not everybody, of course, but the MAJORITY does. And the majority has been disillusioned for years, believing nobody is standing up for their rights. So what did they do? THEY STAYED HOME! Why bother to vote when it doesn’t make a difference.

And then came Kansas.

That was a wake-up call. Turns out Americans are pissed, and the media had no idea. But the individuals who showed up at the voting booth in the Sunflower State are sick and tired of a rigged game where their rights are trampled.

Yes, the Republicans pushed it too far. They lost touch with the public at large. People don’t only want abortion rights, they want gun control too. Meanwhile, the Republicans keep trampling on their desires and… Yes, it keeps getting worse, to the point, once again, that you don’t vote.

And what do the Democrats do? They buy the right wing canard that Biden, the entire party, is beholden to far left extremists. Yes, they attack their own! What kind of bizarre world do we live in where the supposed party of the people attacks their number one spokesperson to the youth? I’m talking about AOC, young people can relate to her. Graduating from college, working in a bar. As for all the cries that she’s too outspoken, these are from the same people who say the Millennials are entitled and Gen-Z is even worse! They won’t even come into the office, goddammit! And they don’t want to work eighty hours a week, they want to be treated like human beings, and you’re pissing on them? You need to embrace them! They’re making new people every day. The youth are our future. And there are more youthful political leaders on the right than the left. There’s not much of a Democratic bench. And the boomers who control the Democratic Party like it this way, which is a recipe for death!

So for years, the right has been bullying the left. And what has been the response of the left? TO COWER! They’re afraid of pissing the right off, they might get hit harder. I mean didn’t anybody on the left go to public school? YOU STAND UP TO BULLIES!

Which is exactly what Joe Biden did last night.

I used to respond to the hatred in my inbox. Stuff you wouldn’t let your wife read, never mind your mother. And when I hit back, they always cried! Why’d you do that man, why’d you hurt me? You didn’t have to do that. I mean I’m here struggling…

Yeah, so why did you send such heinous e-mail?

People love to hide behind anonymity, but you can only build your reputation if you own your actions, with your real name.

Which is what Democrats have been afraid to do. They’ll say almost nothing worthwhile that can be attributed to them. Schumer? He keeps saying his hands are tied. This guy would have been pulled from the game in Little League. Let him carry the water, be the ball boy, but this guy can’t PLAY!

And then Joe Biden played last night. And what did his minions say and do? ALMOST NOTHING! Check not only the news, but social media. The Republicans are out in force, the Democrats…are silent.

I mean this is what we’ve been looking for for decades. Enough with the Obama love, its akin to the Reagan adulation, I mean what did each actually do? Yes, we give Obama healthcare, and Reagan…Communism was gonna fall anyway. Meanwhile, Joe Biden pulls out a legislative win, albeit late and not as big as it should have been. And then he eliminates college debt. The right can take big actions, throw the long ball, but not the left? Bottom line, almost all the recipients are poor, many people of color. After all, if they’d had the money THEY WOULDNT HAVE ANY DEBT! The right is up in arms, but the compassionate left, which needs to be emboldened, is all for it. Climbing the societal ladder is too difficult, people need help. As for the selfish… Is this how far we’ve come, we’ve got to worry about the selfish, that’s a respectable constituency, in a world where Jackson, Mississippi has no running water?

So Biden lays it out there and what does the right do? SQUIRM, say it’s unfair! How dare you piss on them! As if they haven’t been pissing on the rest of us for years. It’s not like these elected officials and commentators had anything positive to say, proposals for legislation, a future roadmap… Biden was right, they all want to go back to a past that didn’t exist in the first place!

As for all the bloviators on the right… Let them rant and rave, it’s just preaching to an echo chamber that will never ever vote Democratic anyway. And there are more Democrats than Republicans which is why the Republicans have been on a scorched-earth campaign to eliminate voting rights, because in a fair election, THEY’RE AFRAID THEY’LL LOSE!

That’s another thing that’s pissed off the majority. Making it harder to vote and making their vote not count. They’re angry. But have felt powerless!

And then, for the first time in eons, the leader of the teetering free world, the Democratic President of the United States, stands up and speaks truth and gives people HOPE!

That’s what it’s all about folks. With hope you’re inspired. We’ve been waiting for Mr. Smith to come to Washington and last night he did. He called out the corruption, the falsehoods, the crap that we the people have been enduring for far too long!

DOUBLE DOWN! That’s my message to the Democrats. Push the button!

The other big social media story is the castration of CNN. Enough with the Zaslav love. Letting John Malone control the news is like letting a pedophile babysit. Somehow CNN and MSNBC are biased and Fox is not? And enough with this two-sideism. That’s like having the robber spouting his justification to the robbed. THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION!

This could be a turning point, if the Democratic Party would just follow their leader, and ramp up and take action. You can’t win a war without soldiers. How come the right knows this and the left does not?

As for the right’s blowback… DON’T YOU GET IT, MOST PEOPLE DON’T EVEN SEE IT!

And when the right blows back you know you’ve won. Because the truth gets exposure in their camp. This is what happens when you make the news and the others do not. That’s the biggest problem in our country, the inability to reach and inform everybody. And the only person who can do so is the president. Trump understood this, and now Biden does too!

It all comes down to the ballot box. The media and the pollsters have been wrong time and again. Because their procedures don’t fit the modern paradigm. I’ve been getting endless texts asking me to weigh in with my political opinions. What do I do with them? I BLOCK THE NUMBERS! I ain’t got time for that crap, I ain’t got time for anything that doesn’t move the ball forward, and these polls do not.

And when you use a crisis to beg for money… Can’t you ask anything else of me, than to give money to a campaign for someone who is probably rich to begin with? It’s not about money, it’s about hearts and minds, that’s how Bernie Sanders did so well in the last two presidential election cycles. Turns out there is more money in small donors than big. People felt Bernie was standing up for THEM, meanwhile these poseurs texting and calling me for money are faceless twats trying to build a career while many of us are home struggling with few options other than a minimum wage job as a service person.

Oh, things are bad in America. Everybody believes the game is rigged, they’re just looking for an edge, or completely deflated. The right is just angry Joe Biden gave the majority of America hope.

Hell, you should see my inbox. Uninformed hate. A constant forwarding of articles supporting their right wing extremism when a simple Google will tell you these sites are biased without credibility.

And then there are those who resort to epithets.

I’ve learned to grow a thick skin, that’s what we all need to do. Joe Biden has shown us the way. You’ve got to wake up at some point, you’ve got to fight for your right to do more than party. And we’ve got them on the run anyway. This Mar-a-Lago search and rescue… The more that comes out, the worse Trump looks. You can tell this by the fact that the right has stopped talking about it!

We’re all sick and tired of the bullies. God, Lindsey Graham and the rest of the wankers who went from Trump-haters to Trump-supporters, they’re no different from the wimps in high school who pay fealty to the bully for protection. And when the bully finally falls, they’re ostracized. No one wants anything to do with those without a backbone, who are afraid to stand up for truth and justice for the benefit of us all.

Like I said, so far elected officials have left Biden hanging, out there alone. He needs support! As for that bogus poll saying his speech worked against him, yeah, and then there were the polls that said that Trump couldn’t win and then there’s that new theory that people tell pollsters what they want to hear, afraid of having an unpopular opinion.

Because if you take sides, like I have above, you’re thrust into the thick of it, you’re going to be attacked. But welcome to 2022. You’re attacked on social media, just grow a thicker skin. Which is why all that anti-bullying crap never works, it’s never about kumbaya, but standing up to the bullies, hitting them right in the face, it’s the only thing that works, sorry if you believe otherwise.

You’ve got to teach bullies a lesson. Otherwise they just get more intense and powerful and hit you ever harder.

And it’s always the same. it’s only the minority who support the bully.

This is war. Has been for years. It’s just that Joe Biden is saying so.

Don’t let the truth scare you, OWN IT!

Staying out of the fray never wins the war, nor does appeasement, just ask Neville Chamberlain.

If you don’t think democracy is teetering, you must be one of those people supporting authoritarianism. That’s what we want over here, right? Putin? Orban? Salman?

Better to fight now than later, it’s so much harder when you’ve lost not only ground, but the government. The right has been fighting for years, now it’s the left’s time. Give Biden credit, he stood up to the bullies, he acted as a leader, he said what we all felt, THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR!

Onward!

Chris Blackwell-This Week’s Podcast

Mr. Island, who has a new autobiography, “The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond.”

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chris-blackwell/id1316200737?i=1000578020336

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/e191c360-530d-4607-974d-7cdd475d2e49/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-chris-blackwell

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/chris-blackwell-206325994

The USC/L.A. Times Book

“Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels”: https://amzn.to/3AGwzKV

1

A couple of days ago, “Washington Monthly” published its college rankings. Which vary widely from those in the “U.S. News & World Report,” both of which are completely different from the rankings in the “Wall Street Journal,” which focus on outcomes, i.e. how you do financially after graduating.

Then again, are you going to college for the job?

Even better, go to a top-tier school for the status, that will open more doors than anything you learn in the classroom.

The progenitor in college status ascension is Boston University. BU got a new president, John Silber, who was hated by the students, but lifted the reputation of the school dramatically.

That was decades ago.

Then came NYU. A city school with zero gravitas is now a world class institution with prestige.

As is USC.

Once again, this didn’t happen organically. Rather there was a driving force, a man in charge, who rallied the alumni, leaned on donors, poached professors with reputations and hopefully grant money too.

USC used to be the poor sister to UCLA. Crosstown rivals, UCLA had the prestige, and USC was all about the money, to the point where at athletic contests UCLA fans waved dollar bills in the stands. Yes, if you were poor, you could afford to go to UCLA, you could lift yourself from the bottom to the top. Whereas USC was perceived to be the institution for those with wealthy parents.

Not anymore.

First and foremost, UCLA is not what it used to be. None of the California state schools are. Because of Ronald Reagan. He removed government subsidies. UCLA and Berkeley are better than ever, but they’re harder than ever to get into, because the schools need out-of-state money to pay their bills, leaving fewer slots for Californians. Supposedly, this year, the in-state population is higher, but…

An education is expensive. And if you’re going to pay for it you want the biggest bang for your buck. And USC has gone from a safety school to a status school. It’s hard to get accepted. Which is why all those parents used Rick Singer and bribes to get their kids in.

USC is a monolith. With a long tradition of insider trading. Not the Wall Street kind, but the alumni kind. There is a USC network in Los Angeles. It pays more dividends than having an Ivy League degree. And now it’s not only about the relationships, the school has cachet, that works all over town.

But USC has been in turmoil. It’s not only the Varsity Blues story, but…

2

That’s what “Bad City” is about. The misbehavior at USC and the L.A. “Times”‘s effort to uncover it.

Well, the effort of a few reporters to uncover it. Because the author, Paul Pringle, a longstanding L.A. “Times” reporter, claims that he was stifled by the brass, that the story was held back for eons and neutered before it was published.

Of course, the brass is now denying this. But the brass was blown out. Which has to be as a result of the HR investigation, otherwise why would they get fired?

There are a lot of issues in this book.

Actually, “Bad City” is two books. One, the story of specific scandals at USC, most notably those of a drug-taking, drug-supplying dean of the medical school, and the sexual abuse shenanigans of a school clinic gynecologist, but also the story of the inner workings of the L.A. “Times.” DO YOU CARE?

That’s a big question these days. With so many opportunities, so many places to spend your time.

At first “Bad City” is positively riveting. The story of a girl overdosing in the dean’s hotel room.

But then it becomes the chronicle of reporting the story.

And at the end, when it focuses more on the paper, it’s a bit less engrossing. Then again, I spent all afternoon finishing it.

Now L.A. is not a typical city. It’s a giant suburb. There is no center. And as a result much of what happens never permeates the populace. People just don’t care. Downtown is a foreign location. And with the L.A. “Times”‘s circulation crumbling, along with the viewership of the local TV news, most people have no idea what’s going on.

But this is not only in L.A., but in most burgs.

The only newspapers who have figured out the modern world are the “New York Times” and the “Wall Street Journal.” The “Times” by becoming the paper of record and focusing on digital subscriptions for years. The “Journal” by having a hard paywall, and being the only major paper with a right wing slant. As for the “Washington Post,” it’s been flailing recently, numbers are down. 

How many major newspapers can the U.S. support?

Certainly not as many as before. And in truth, the NYT does a very good job of covering California, not only in the paper itself, but with its daily California newsletter.

So…

Papers have been shrunk to make the numbers work. And once you do this you’re a second-class citizen, you’ve signed your ultimate death warrant. You provide less and fewer people pay for it and…

The L.A. “Times” has had multiple owners, a rash of crises at the top questioning its credibility, but…the reporters who remain are still dedicated.

That’s a main theme in this book. The reporters take their jobs very seriously. And unlike in most businesses, they don’t just cower to management. There are ethical rules, ultimately a union. The dictatorial style of management you see in tech does not fly in news.

And these reporters can only make so much money, so they’re dedicated to uncovering the truth.

But it’s expensive to produce news like this. And if you do break a story, your competitors are on it nearly instantly, so readers don’t have to subscribe to the production source to read it.

And now chances are you’re truly uninterested. Too much inside baseball. But let me just say as the old institutions are hobbled or die, the new institutions…do no reporting, they’re just opinion, and journalistic standards are irrelevant. They’re just about rallying the base, and if it involves lying, WHO CARES, the end result is what matters, WINNING!

Which is what USC did. The university circled the wagons, stonewalled, and quietly took care of its problems, letting offenders down easy, paying them big bucks along the way.

3

But if you read “Bad City” you will be fully disillusioned. The bad guys win all the time, and those who are supposedly the good guys are in bed with the bad guys!

It’s kind of like the private jet. If someone who owns one gives you a ride, you cannot say anything bad about them, ever, without fully severing the relationship. And the flight may have nothing to do with your core business, but ultimately there’s an intersection and…

This is how America works. The alumni of the Ivys, of USC, are almost secret societies, that pay dividends your entire life, which is why you want to get in to these schools to begin with.

Speaking of investigative journalism, did you read the NYT’s article on the Navy Seals?

“Death in Navy SEAL Training Exposes a Culture of Brutality, Cheating and Drugs – The elite force’s selection course is so punishing that few make it through, and many of those who do resort to illicit tactics.”: https://nyti.ms/3R7hwR9

Sure, the deaths are tragic, but the real story is everybody cheats to pass the test. They take drugs, slack when they think no one is watching, and what does the Navy say? These are the improvisational skills you need in combat!

Wrap your head around that one!

You have to cheat to get ahead. And everybody successful is doing it. And if you’re not, you’re a schmuck, you’re not going to make it. And if you’re an offender, good luck getting caught. Forget his tax issues, Trump took state documents home and insisted he was allowed to keep them, to the point where his attorneys even lied about their presence. And what does his team say? DON’T INDICT HIM OR THERE WILL BE VIOLENCE! Yup, Lindsey Graham said that: 

“Graham Predicts ‘Riots in the Streets’ if Trump Is Prosecuted”: https://nyti.ms/3B32ZAu

That’s how bad it’s gotten, loyalty trumps truth. As for lying in court…that ship sailed long ago.

All of this is in “Bad City.” You don’t finish it and think the good guys won, after all, even those who got blown out at USC got golden parachutes, and have avoided jail. Why should you do the right thing? Why not test the limits?

Forget USC, let’s talk about Putin, the robber baron who is quite possibly the richest man in the world who disappears naysayers and runs his country as if its population is comprised of children with no rights. Navalny is standing up, a few others. But no one at USC stood up, it was the newspaper that brought the malfeasance to light.

This is America. And in “Bad City” Paul Pringle does a good job of delineating it. And unlike in fiction, the story is messy, which real life always is. Which makes this book a bit harder to read.

Then again, it’s got the meat and the gristle. The riveting narrative and the at times boring explanation.

But unlike on TV, investigative reporting is slow. There are a lot of dead ends. And change happens slowly.

God, I wish it were different.