She performed this 91 times in preparation?

This is why music is the hottest art form, because when done right it breathes, it’s alive, it’s a different experience every night. Which is why the more you play to hard drive, the more you kill the essence. At the bigger venues, the stadiums, acts are afraid of getting it wrong, just like Nikki Glaser, and they’ve got it prerecorded with vocals sweetened and tons of production and maybe the brain dead audience has an experience to put in their trophy case, but it’s far from rock and roll.

But comedy is more cutting edge than today’s music. Used to be if you wanted truth, you watched “The Simpsons” or some other animated program. Only two-dimensional characters could be honest. But today comedy rules, that’s where the truth is, that’s where the bleeding edge is… Where Chappelle rides on the edge of cancellation and Seinfeld says colleges are too politically correct/woke to perform at. Bill Burr is more honest than Nikki Glaser…

I’m not saying that Glaser has not performed well at roasts, then again she’s filling the slot vacated by Amy Schumer, who performed the role much better, more believably. Glaser appears to be a sorority girl who stumbled into the wrong room and can’t believe she’s there, she’s not comfortable with herself, and it’s not endearing.

I know, I know, you can’t criticize a woman. Then again, in the era of Trump can you?

Let me see… When did women decide that lipstick should go above and beyond their lips? I mean we’re watching you in hi-def and it doesn’t look good.

And Glaser looks different and…

Most people are not watching at all.

The Golden Globes shouldn’t exist, it was run by a tiny cabal and the truth was exposed but the television property is just too valuable. To be the first awards show of the season?

But in truth the public doesn’t care about the movies, it’s all sequels and events. You can read today’s “New York Times” on the Oscars, I wonder who that’s for. These are the same people who believed Kamala was a shoo-in for victory. The public runs on streaming television and social media, then again seemingly every day in the “Times” there’s an anti-social media rant. Endless stories about disconnecting from the internet… Yeah, like we had telephone holidays in the last century, EXCEPT WE DIDN’T! Why do educated Democrats hate technology, they’re the ones who want to bring us back to the past, not Trump.

You can’t have an awards show of social media because it’s all Balkanized. Then again, so is music, but they continue to have their bogus awards shows as if we all pay attention to the same acts anymore. There are two trains running, one from the past, the left wing MAGA, that believes we live for the movies and the smartphone is the devil, and the other that believes just the opposite.

So, if you’re not a fan of mainstream media, you probably escaped the Nikki Glaser hype. She was everywhere recently, even more than Taylor Swift. And now she comes on and

Doesn’t exactly blow it, but kinda falls flat. Chris Rock operates without a net, and tonight Nikki Glaser was all net.

When you overthink art you screw it up. Too many cooks in the kitchen kill not only movies, but music. You may end up with a monetary success, but there’s no lasting value. Bring back the auteurs of the seventies.

In music, the auteurs are already back. There’s a parallel scene of acts who play live…you go to see them and it’s a visceral experience. It’s smaller venues, you have to be in the know to go. And they are not hit dependent, that’s not what you’re going for.

Once upon a time movie stars were icons. But now that all their warts have been revealed online, we know they’re just like you and me. We want something more, something to truly believe in.

Then again, if you can make it through a Nikki Glaser special, you’re better than me, enough with the scatological material… Hell, I can pull up porn in Google, this is no longer summer camp with dog-eared copies of “Playboy.”

So who are Nikki Glaser and the Golden Globes for?

It’s not like we don’t have options, we’ve got a plethora of them.

And I’m not a fan, but there’s more honesty despite the occasional insanity in a Joe Rogan podcast than there is in tonight’s show. With Rogan you never know exactly what you’re going to get. Tonight, we’re getting exactly what we thought we’d get, assuming we’re paying attention at all!

But you can’t sh*t on Hollywood anymore. Their hearts are in the right place, they give to charity, people love the movies… How out of touch can you be? Once again, this is why Trump won, people are sick and tired of an elite telling them that everything is the same and they should be happy. People want change, they want someone to listen to them.

And tonight Nikki Glaser was so busy listening to her out of touch inner circle that her vaunted monologue fell flat.

If you want me I’ll be in the bar. 

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

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

The one and only!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/neil-sedaka/id1316200737?i=1000682395153

 

 

 

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/ec1224c3-9825-4222-8500-706d1f01aa8f/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-neil-sedaka

“‘It Ends With Us’ Actor and Director and His Publicists Sue The Times for Libel – Justin Baldoni claims that The Times defamed him and his team in an article about the actress Blake Lively’s allegations that she had been the victim of a smear campaign.”

Free link: https://shorturl.at/jU3ro

This is why ABC never should have settled with Trump.

Anybody can sue anybody, but that does not mean you win.

This Blake Lively situation is being played out in the press, where the mainstream media has faltered in the opinion of the public and anything goes online and celebrities are idols of the public because everybody in politics and business is so venal and duplicitous as to be looked down upon. Hell, in the last election cycle Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz burned whatever credibility they still had. The tech titans want to be able to operate unfettered and the public is concerned about privacy and abuse and there are two tiers in society, the overlords and the oppressed, and if you’re in the latter camp, your heroes are social media influencers and celebrities, at least there you believe your vote, your clicks, make a difference. But having said that, we’re evolving into a narcissistic society where only the self matters, it’s like we no longer live in a society but a country of lone oftentimes gunmen.

So, it’s nearly impossible to prove libel of a public figure in America.

The law is clear, the statements must be wrong and published with malicious aforethought.

In other words, the “New York Times” must have been lying with the intention of hurting Mr. Baldoni. Good luck with that.

But in truth this is not about legal court, today everything’s played out in the court of public opinion, you posture, you posit, and that’s what this case is all about.

Which I have been following tangentially. Blake Lively is entitled to make a living, but that does not mean I need to pay attention to her. That’s the world of today, we all live in our own niches and can ignore that which doesn’t interest us. But utilizing a public relations team in an effort to spin a situation to your advantage, that I’m interested in.

Now let’s play this out…

Each and every day people from around the world send me hate mail, or express their negative views of me on social media. Hell, the “WSJ” printed an article about me and the Swifties are out to get me.

That’s the price of doing what I’m doing.

Would I like the hate to go away? On some level yes, but without the hate I wouldn’t know how some people feel, and I need to, I need to take the temperature of the public to be able to do what I do. It’s the price of doing what I’m doing. If you don’t play, if you don’t post online, if you don’t endeavor in the public to some fame/notoriety, you’re immune.

Which is why the law of libel is different for private individuals.

But that’s not who we’re talking about here.

So Baldoni hires a bulldog of a lawyer, Bryan Freedman, who comes out with both guns blasting, believing that a strong offense is better than ever playing defense.

So the goal here is to get people to believe that Baldoni is innocent.

Because the odds of a case like this actually going to trial are de minimis (there’s a legal term for you!)

And the “Times,” unlike ABC, knows that its reputation and business are at stake. Once you do what’s efficient in the name of business…that doesn’t work in the media, because first and foremost you must have credibility, and you must make a stand so that frivolous actions in the future will be inhibited. The “Times” and most of the press have a long history of fighting libel lawsuits.

As for Donald Trump, he’s got a long history of suing the press. And it isn’t about the money, but spin. But now that he’s President…talk about a public figure, what does he want?

Well, he already got the WaPo and the L.A. “Times” to back down, both papers refusing to endorse a presidential candidate in the past election.

And it’s clear it was fear. After Trump got elected, seemingly every business titan/corporation kissed his ring and donated to his reelection campaign.

Is this the country we want to live in, where everybody is afraid to say what they choose?

Furthermore, the right wing trope is freedom of speech. Yeah, right.

Trump won fair and square. The Republicans control both houses of Congress. They’ve got the power, let them rule. And if they cross the line, we’ve got the legal system to stop them…

You can speak all day long as to whether the lawsuits against Trump were frivolous, but when the Supreme Court narrows the legal system’s ability to prosecute Trump…our whole system caves.

We have a system of laws and they must be obeyed.

Do Baldoni and Freedman truly care about the law? I sincerely doubt it. They can drop this lawsuit whenever they want. The odds of it going to court… As far as the “Times” suing Baldoni for malicious prosecution…it’s expensive and hard to prove and most people forgo this effort.

This is big money and famous people.

Which is why if you’re a member of the hoi polloi you’re essentially powerless against the man. You’ve got the RIGHT to sue, but can you AFFORD IT?

We need a strong press. Let’s talk about the freedom of the press, not freedom of speech. And all these social media companies, they’re private corporations, they can restrict speech however they want. But Musk wants to intimidate them to do otherwise. And Trump proved the point by establishing Truth Social. You can start a social media outlet to purvey your thoughts and write the rules as you see fit. Elon took over Twitter/X and if you can’t see the changes, you’re not on it.

Who is going to keep people in line if the press is hobbled?

The corporations have caved, under the rubric of possibly losing money, as if that’s the only thing they’re’ involved in, as if these companies don’t employ humans and sell to humans.

The press’s job is to keep politicians and business people honest. They’re the last line of defense. Which is why it’s so hard to sue for libel and win!

And once we get rid of the rules, once people are intimidated to the point where the laws don’t matter, we’re screwed.

The “Times” is standing up for you.

But you’ve excoriated the “Times” to the point where the paper is considered the enemy, by those on both the right and the left.

This is the world we live in today, where there’s no truth. And if someone tries to tell the truth, you undercut their bona fides.

This is not the world we want to live in.

But this is the one those with power and influence are creating.

Beware.