Now what?

Deborah Dugan tried to step up, and NARAS pushed her right down. Believing it was stronger than she was, that a woman should be thrilled just to be in the room, never mind that oftentimes Dugan was not allowed to be, like when the Executive Committee renewed outside counsel contracts despite Dugan going on record that she wanted to hire inside counsel to reduce those fees, which were exorbitant for an organization of NARAS’s size.

The fact that these men thought this was acceptable, that it would pass muster, is evidence of what a bubble they inhabit.

Yes, after Neil Portnow’s faux pas, after hiring Tina Tchen, you’d think the boys in charge would have woken up and adjusted their behavior. But no, like serial rapists, they continued in their bad behavior, over and over again.

What kind of homes did these men grow up in? Ones in which their mothers scolded them and they just ignored it?

Or maybe it was their fraternities…who instilled this behavior within them?

Let’s start with Joel Katz. Should an attorney have his own plane?

Now I don’t know what kind of plane Mr. Katz has, whether it’s a G550 or a Piper Cub, but the point here is he’s getting rich off the backs of artists and those they’re associated with. Sure, he’s helping them, supposedly, but why does he end up richer than most of his clients?

Now if you read the complaint, Mr. Katz insisted on a private dinner with Ms. Dugan, before she met the entire brass, whereupon he detailed his relationship woes and pursued Ms. Dugan romantically, despite Dugan being in a committed relationship. Don’t we keep hearing “No Means No”?

Obviously Katz doesn’t believe this applies to him.

Okay, that was just talk. But then Katz reaches in for a kiss? In what work world is that approved behavior?

But it gets much worse. Katz implores Dugan to go to Neiman Marcus for Grammy outfits and then says Neiman should be listed as a Grammy sponsor in exchange. You see, Katz represents Neiman Marcus. Furthermore, do you get the conflict of interest here?

As in Katz represents members of the board that approved his compensation.

And artists up for awards were on secret committees deciding who to give the final nominations to. That’s right, they made music in said categories!

Let’s see… Do I nominate so and so or myself? For all time I can say I’m a Grammy nominee, and if I lean on enough of my friends, maybe I’ll even win one, maybe by promising to get them nominated the following year.

As for the nominations…

The organization voted and then the secret committee tweaked. Not only were there personal interests, if Ken Ehrlich wanted an artist on the telecast, they got picked.

This is what the public has believed happens from day one.

But this is not the American Music Awards, this is the ACADEMY, THE GRAMMYS!

In other words, everyone who’s ever been nominated, ever won a Grammy, it’s just been cheapened.

Not because you were good or bad, deserving or not, but because behind the scenes boys had to get paid.

Which brings us to Neil Portnow. Allegedly he raped an artist.

Who knows?

But then Dugan is told to hire him as a consultant for 750k a year?

You don’t reward bad behavior.

But even worse, why does he get to be a consultant anyway? He served his term, ride into the sunset.

But the piece de resistance is they paid Dugan less than Portnow.

If this isn’t egregious I don’t know what is. Do these men not read the news, are they unaware of the scuttlebutt about women making less money to do the same job?

And were they ignorant enough to believe that Dugan would bring no change?

Oh, it happened too fast.

That’s code for “Who is this uppity woman telling me what to do?”

A man comes in and wreaks havoc. A woman comes in and she must play nice.

How did this happen? Who was on watch?

Let’s start with Katz, since he’s the attorney. Shouldn’t he have been telling the Board to clean up its act? After all, it’s a public organization. Shouldn’t someone have been ringing the warning bell? Especially after Neil Portnow stepped in deep doo-doo with the step up comment?

So what we have here is a representation of the world at large.

That’s right, the world is run by cabals, usually male, and they don’t want to let you in and if you’re privileged enough to get through the door you’d better play by their rules.

And you wonder why the populace is up in arms.

Yup, you’ve got the DNC and the NYT saying a centrist must win. Hillary Clinton says everyone hates Bernie Sanders and he gets nothing done. Well, Ms. Duplicity, ever look in the mirror? You have waffled consistently, at least Bernie has been consistent and true to himself. But if Bernie wins, you lose your power, just like the old RNC heavies lost power when Trump came along. When change is overdue it happens radically, and nearly instantly. Can you say ARAB SPRING?

Deborah Dugan lost her job because she was a woman speaking the truth, plain and simple. As for her style…isn’t a leader supposed to lead, how come strong males are lauded and strong women are not?

As for the handling of this debacle…

It was all an inside affair, Dugan was willing to walk for a check. Negotiations were close, and then NARAS offered less and said she had to take it or leave it within the hour. She left it. And all hell broke loose.

Why did the Academy think Dugan would remain silent? Especially when they were leaking all the info themselves?

Harvey Mason, Jr. whines about leaks, and the Academy is the source of them! Even worse, Dugan’s hiring was leaked to the press because the attorneys represent the media outlets too!

Now I have no firsthand knowledge re Dugan’s allegations. But one thing is for damn sure, they’re incredibly damaging to the Academy’s reputation. Rule one is to keep this stuff behind closed doors. Stay a step ahead of the game, anticipate consequences, quiet things down.

So Dugan won’t come back. She can’t, not unless they fire just about everybody else!

So they hire a new person…

Well, it’ll look bad if it’s not a woman.

But what about all of Dugan’s complaints? Are they swept under the rug or addressed? Or is it business as usual?

This is kind of like Murdoch’s “News of the World.” There was no way to fix the behavior, he just shut the newspaper down.

It appears they’ve got to shut NARAS down and start all over.

Truly. Get all new people. Have the voting process be transparent. Wake up and walk into the new age.

But no, NARAS is living in the past and heading for the graveyard. Everybody’s sucking at the tit of the CBS contract in a world where broadcast television is tanking. These are the same people who couldn’t foresee the internet, who railed at Napster and now Spotify. They just wanted the old world to go on forever.

But one thing’s for sure, the men were looting and partying while they held these prestigious, high-paid positions. They thought they were the stars. Forget those people who make the music, they’re just cogs in the machine, we call the shots.

And they do!

But will they continue to?

Highly unlikely.

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday January 21st, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

This is how you pour gasoline on a fire.

Let’s see, published so far are the Grammy payments to law firms. Joel Katz’s firm, Greenberg Traurig, renegotiated the $20 million a year deal with CBS for the telecast. Good work! Until you find out the firm was paid $6,309,936 that year, 2016. The firm was paid $1,758,388 in 2017, the last year for which figures are available. And Greenberg Traurig was paid $1,167,029 in 2015. What were all these fees for? Negotiating employment agreements, dealing with internal lawsuits? I mean, paying top buck when your budget is only so big…who is making these decisions, didn’t anybody think about hiring inside counsel?

That’s right, Deborah Dugan.

But it wasn’t only Greenberg Traurig. Proskauer Rose made $906,691 in 2017, and that year, in addition to the Greenberg and Proskauer fees, there was another $3,737,400 paid out in legal fees! So, in 2017, the Grammy organization paid over $6 million in legal fees, who do they think they are, Boeing?

But it gets worse. The Grammys are all about the awards. Who does the nominating?

Well, it turns out it’s a coterie of supposed experts. It’d be like a bunch of directors from the sixties deciding who should be nominated for Oscars. Actually, that might be better than what we’ve got, but the truth is it’s undemocratic, and there would be no transparency, the way the music business has liked it since its inception… Come on, can you say “royalties”? But no, the Grammys are run just like the business, opaque.

So Harvey Mason, Jr. tells us Dugan’s attorney offered to drop the claims, have Deborah Dugan pack up her bags and go home, in exchange for millions. Are we supposed to be offended by that? Does Mason think we’re ignorant musicians who don’t understand how the world works?

Dugan signed a contract, lengthy according to her attorney, and I’m sure it includes a provision whereupon the Grammys can fire Dugan for behavior beyond the pale. I’m sure there are even examples in said contract. And when you fire someone for cause, they get bupkes, i.e. nothing. So Dugan takes the gig, gives up a solid gig with Red, moves across the country, gets involved in this imbroglio and is willing to walk away with nothing, stab herself in the heart for the good of the Academy? Give me a break, take a look at Muilenberg’s golden parachute. Furthermore, an attorney is an advocate, a representative, their goal is to negotiate, to get you the best deal they can. Isn’t that what Harvey Mason, Jr. wants Greenberg Traurig to do, as he is a personal client of the firm?

Speaking of conflicts of interest…

As for the dueling investigations… Does anybody trust these anymore? It’s like hiring McKinsey, so you can blame the consultant when things go haywire. And how much are these investigations gonna cost? Quite possibly more than it would to pay Ms. Dugan to go home for good!

And the leaks just keep on coming.

Dugan didn’t get along, she didn’t play the game.

But she thought she was hired to clean up the mess. Come on, do you think Neil Portnow was gonna do this, the man who couldn’t even make nice over criticism of the lack of women being nominated and winning Grammys? Sure, maybe he misspoke, telling women to “step up,” but why wasn’t he conciliatory to begin with, why even go on the offensive?

Then Mason goes on to defend the Trustees. They work for free, yippee!

Yeah, for free at those meetings in Hawaii.

Mason is as stupid as Portnow when it comes to defending himself.

As for leaks… That’s how the world works these days. Hell, we have a President of the United States being impeached and there’s been one leak after another, because that’s how you get the truth out! Expect more leaks in this case.

As for the Gammy whistleblower, whose name has been leaked, i.e. Claudine Little, who claims the environment she worked in was “toxic and intolerable” and “abusive and bullying”…just ask Amy Klobuchar’s assistants, Klobuchar’s bad behavior has been well-documented and the “New York Times” just endorsed her for the Democratic nomination for President!

And people are always stunned how business works. This is the territory, and it’s not only men, but women too. And it’s a fast-moving world of big egos and why in the hell does the unverified statement of one employee put the head of the whole organization on leave?

I’ll tell you, Mason was inundated with input from other employees and he’s unsophisticated in these matters, never mind aligned with the usual suspects wanting business as usual.

Now if you follow business, boards are responsible for the behavior of the company, for the actions taken. And if Mason is so right, how come we aren’t hearing from the rest of those Trustees, i.e. board members, regarding what they think? Oh, they’re sucking at the tit and they don’t want to give up those perks while working for “free.” Which is why companies try to exclude board members who are doing it for the money, that clouds your opinion.

So a kerfuffle has turned into a conflagration.

And let’s take the worst case scenario, Dugan yelled at Little.

There’s no allegation Dugan hit her. There’s no allegation that Dugan fired her. Is this a reason to blow up the Grammys just before the telecast, when everybody is paying attention, which they only do once a year?

Now I don’t know what really happened.

But I know more than I did Thursday night.

And as the days go on, I’ll gain even more knowledge.

As for those vaunted Trustees, is any of them of the caliber of Chuck D, who defended Ms. Dugan, who has a reputation for telling the truth, speaking his mind?

So they tried to clean up the Grammys, run it legitimately, they even formed a task force to find the best candidate, who turned out to be a woman with experience in the field, and with celebrity musicians. And I wonder how much that process cost. And now Dugan is trying to institute change and it’s her fault? And alleged behavior trumps ideas?

If Mason was a leader, he’d accept responsibility and take prompt action. But he won’t, he’s a typical two-faced musician, making nice to your face and then stabbing you in the back thereafter.

Oh, don’t argue. Come on, you know how it works, in order to work a musician has to be nice to everybody, that’s how you make it. It’s only when you get to the top that you can do things your way. And even if you do, the label might take it out on you…remember George Michael with Sony or Neil Young with Geffen?

Institutions need to be challenged on a regular basis. To stand still is to die. This is how the labels almost lost complete control of recordings with the advent of Napster. And the truth is today they do not have the control they once did, and never will again. What happens when CBS no longer wants to pay $20 million a year for the telecast? What’s the plan then? Oh, you know it’s coming.

Yes, the artist has gained traction in the internet era. And Dugan was trying to take the focus off the lifers populating the labels and the Grammy organization and she’s the one paying the price.

Only in Hollywood.

“Interim Grammy Chief Slams Deborah Dugan in Letter; Warns of ‘Misinformation,’ ‘Leaks'”

The Democrats’ Best Choices for President

You can’t have it both ways.

The story of the twenty first century has been disruption. New companies aligned with the future eating the lunch of the old established operations who are asleep, super-serving their usual customers and believing in gradual change.

The definitive take on this is by Clayton Christensen, in his 1997 book “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” Everybody in Silicon Valley has read it, but seemingly nobody in New York or Los Angeles.

Christensen said to beware of enterprises producing an innovative product that is shoddy and cheap. Eventually it will get better and demolish your business. The way to counteract this is to innovate yourself, to build your own competitor on these precepts. And when the game changes, when the new product truly gains traction, shut down the old and throw all your efforts into the new.

The “New York Times” is super-serving its core audience of elite baby boomers. There are endless anti-technology articles, as if the smartphone hasn’t improved our lives, as if technology hasn’t made reporters’ own jobs easier, being able to write remotely and transmit instantly.

And it’s hard to grasp the future when you’ve lived in the past. The older you are the more history you’ve got. You’re jarred by innovation.

But that’s the way it happens, overnight.

Like with Trump.

So what did the “Times” do? It said Hillary was gonna win, it missed it completely.

And it’s been flagellating itself for this ever since.

Now credit the “Times” as opposed to Fox, which never admits it makes a mistake and never takes a hard look at itself. And Fox too is challenged, its audience is a tiny sliver of oldsters. Sure, Trump himself watches, but not the youngsters, who get all their news online. Fox does not control the message on the internet, which is why Bannon went from outside to inside in 2016, he had the pulse of the internet.

So all the “Times” and the elites believe is Trump was victorious and he must go. The true reasons for his election, the movement behind it, remain elusive to these writers in the bubble.

But it gets worse, the bubble influences the bubble. The Editorial Board is worried about being woke, worried about being politically incorrect. It doesn’t want to make the Oscar mistake, of not nominating women and minorities. Instead of being influenced by truth, it is influenced by its audience.

Amy Klobuchar has no chance.

But it gets worse, the “Times” talks about her “charisma.”

If Amy Klobuchar has charisma, then so does your grandpa. Brad Pitt has charisma. Robert DeNiro has charisma. Madonna has charisma. Rihanna has charisma. But a bland, Ivy League educated denizen of the Midwest does not. This is what happens when you think with your brain instead of your heart, when you get so caught up in intellectualism that you can’t see the truth. If you only watched Klobuchar, you’d see she had no chance. No one wants the suck-up teacher’s pet, who smiles like they’re popular when they’re not, who keeps on telling us how great they are, to tell us what to do. Klobuchar is not warm and fuzzy. In some ways she’s even repellent. Ask women, why aren’t they behind her?

And that’s another thing, Klobuchar’s poll numbers are abysmal. The elites keep saying they want a centrist and therefore they try and boost her. But this didn’t work for Jeb Bush, why should it work for Democrats?

As for Elizabeth Warren…she’s turned into Joe Biden, shooting herself in the foot.

Bernie Sanders admits middle class taxes will go up with Medicare For All. Warren dodges the question and then comes up with magical thinking to prove how she’ll pay for it without raising taxes on the middle class. And when the blowback gets heavy, she says she’ll delay implementation. Wishy-washy we do not want. We want someone who sticks to their guns.

And then Warren attacks Bernie on a non-issue, whether he said a woman can’t be President. Hell, I said a black man couldn’t be President in 2008, and I was proven wrong. And then CNN kept shoving the shiv into Bernie. This is what the mainstream has missed, the left wing uproar about the CNN questioning. I’m hearing it, but the only place I’ve read it is Matt Taibbi’s piece in “Rolling Stone”:

“CNN’s Debate Performance Was Villainous and Shameful-The 24-hour network combines a naked political hit with a cynical ploy for ratings”

Millennials picked up on this. The “Times” did not. Because it doesn’t fit with their narrative. They want a centrist, they want reasonableness, they don’t want anything that resembles a revolution.

But that’s what Trump was.

As for newspapers themselves, the “Times” is afraid the “Chicago Tribune” is gonna go the way of the “Denver Post.”

Will The Chicago Tribune Be the Next Newspaper Picked to the Bone?

Well I live in Los Angeles, and what’s striking to me is no one gets the L.A. “Times” anymore. I reference it, and I get blank faces. Everybody’s canceled their subscription. Oh, they get the “New York Times,” but not this rag that looks like a pamphlet and too often has the nutritional value of a Twinkie.

Today’s “Los Angeles Times” has doubled-down on awards coverage, it’s got a special section “The Envelope” that is unreadable, pure fluff. Yes, the L.A. “Times” is ruled by publicists. Its national coverage is weak, and its local coverage is lame and you’re expecting people to pay for this, with their time and money?

Oh, you’ll say it’s not the “Times”‘s fault. The web stole movie listings and Craigslist stole classifieds. I ask you, aren’t both of these an improvement?

You cannot prop up the past. The future comes, cheaper and better, but always with some flaws, some losses.

Turns out the local newspaper wasn’t built for these times. And when I can read the national news in the “New York Times,” “Washington Post” and “Wall Street Journal,” why should I settle for a pale imitation of that?

But you get the same complaints again and again from the oldsters.

We should have saved record stores. The internet killed them.

We should save bookstores from Amazon, and while we’re at it, put a finger in the dike of digital books. Hell, you’re reading all day on your electronic devices but when it comes to full-length stories they must be physical? Hogwash!

Yes, the right beats up the “Times” and CNN. So the left shouldn’t, correct?

Of course not! This is like the right saying you can’t criticize the country, you must lionize the flag. Our nation was built on questioning, we want our institutions to be better!

So the “Times” is so afraid of its audience that it punts. Doubles down on the fantastical.

The battle is between Bernie, Biden and Bloomberg, the three B’s.

And that’s not because the populace is only interested in men, and not people of color. Hell, I live in California, Kamala Harris was a flawed candidate from day one. She lacked experience! But the media built her up as the person of color who was gonna save us all.

This is what happens when you try and game the system, when you don’t install the best person for the job, but the one who is politically correct.

Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m not saying that women and minorities should not be given advantages to level the playing field, I’m not saying there should be no affirmative action, I’m just saying you can’t control people’s votes. Turns out the public didn’t want Kamala. Turns out the public, or a great slice of it, wanted Trump. If you don’t live in the real world, you’re going to get trampled.

So instead of asking the hard questions, the “Times” satiates its constituency and lives to publish another day. It says it’s a fight for the soul of the Democratic party. Is it left, or much more left. But rather than making a call, it punts!

And then today the “Los Angeles Times” posts an insightful article, but no one reads it, it gets no traction, because once you’ve sacrificed yourself to the almighty dollar, once you’ve taken your eye off the prize, once you’re considered a loser, you cannot recover.

“Beyond ideology: The voters torn between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden”

Meanwhile, the “New York Times” is propping up a candidate with no chance and another whose campaign is going in the wrong direction.

Warren had the heat, the odds of recovering it are low. Welcome to the twenty first century when you must triumph in the spotlight and keep the attention of the public. The problem with Warren is she disappointed her base. Instead of owning her positions, she waffled, because she kept on reading in the left wing press that she was too far left. But we’re looking for a person who marches to the beat of their own drummer, who is not swayed by the fray. Come on, that’s the social media mantra, if you’ve got a profile, don’t respond to the trolls!

So, can Bloomberg capture enough hearts and minds through his carpet bomb advertising campaign? We’re not sure. A lot of New Yorkers are anti-Bloomberg, and a lot of the rest of the country knows nothing about him. But Trump won because he was on TV, and there’s a theory that online advertising helped his campaign. Even though I don’t believe he’s gonna make it, I’m open to the idea Bloomberg can get there. Because this is the first time someone has ever employed this paradigm.

Klobuchar’s paradigm is as old as the hills. I won before, I’m a fighter, trust me. Huh?

Warren was a leader, but then she got confused, trying to please everybody. And that’s one thing the internet has taught us, this is impossible. Quell climate change and you’ll still be excoriated online. We do not live in a kumbaya culture. Everybody cannot get along.

I’m not saying Warren cannot come back, I’m just saying it’s gonna be tough.

Meanwhile, Bernie is ascending and Biden is faltering and the “Times” has taken its eye off the ball.

As for its constituency…

Those in control like to remain in control. They do not like to lose anything, they do not like to sacrifice. The “New York Times” believes in its own gravitas, it does not want to question itself. And when it occasionally does, it says profit is king it must obey the bottom line, even though the internet companies triumphed by giving it away and monetizing later, knowing that hearts and minds and market share come first, and change must be incremental, even though the last twenty five years have proven that’s a death sentence.

And it’s not only the “Times,” but its audience, its readers.

The people want change. Drastic change. The government is not working for them. And the question is whether disinformation will rule, or truth. Whether the rank and file voter will get the facts, or bogus information that skews their opinions and their votes.

We are fighting for the heart and soul of our country here. And the history of the world tells us that change happens overnight. It’s not there and then it is. The same way a social media platform erupts and then caves, even though those in the music industry think TikTok is forever, just like Guitar Hero.

We’re looking for great leaps forward, we’re looking to be saved, we’re looking for hope.

And today we did not find it in the “New York Times.”