Every day, a new left wing trope. No wonder Republicans are laughing.

To progressives, Obama was a disappointment. He was a centrist in an era of tribalism, one could even call it extremism. On his watch, Democrats lost tons of governorships and state legislatures. Sure, he’s a dignified man, sure, he’s an African-American, BUT THAT’S NOT ENOUGH!

Lionizing Obama is like saying the Backstreet Boys are inviolate, can’t be criticized, because the era they triumphed in was good financially. Hell, let’s add in ‘N Sync while we’re at it, didn’t they sell in excess of two million CDs in a week? That’s right, let’s go back to not only CDs, but Nickelodeon, Hummers, all the “great” stuff that existed at the turn of the century.

Meanwhile, cars don’t come with CD players and the younger generation streams, think they’ll get excited about their parents’ music? I DON’T THINK SO!

Nothing is off the table. Hell, look, at the Republicans, our tweeter-in-chief. He blasts everybody, and it’s working for him. Hell, it’s hilarious to watch the Democrats react to everything he says and make no progress. Better to attack Trump’s financials, demonstrate in front of his faux (as in name-licensed) buildings every day, or TAKE ACTION! That’s what California did, by passing a law that candidates in primaries must show their tax returns. The right is FREAKING OUT over this! You want your enemy freaking out, not chuckling.

Meanwhile, Trump reverses seemingly every Obama advancement. It’s like giving credit to a general who took territory and then his successors lost it, because they were not prepared well enough. And Obama was Jackie Robinson, someone who broke up the white hegemony, but Jackie had to be calm and collected, he couldn’t fit the stereotype of the angry black man, and neither could Barack. Meanwhile, the stars in Obama’s vaunted NBA are completely the opposite, they run the game, and they stand up to racist acts all the damn time…AND THE PUBLIC LOVES THEM FOR IT!

But in the Democratic party, you must be a mouse.

Look at debate #2. Remember anything from it? Any candidate impress you? Did you even watch till the end?

CNN takes the lead from sports, with an intro worthy of a football game (a paradigm invented by Fox, when it scored NFL broadcasts), and the talent…huh? You watched waiting for Biden to fail and Harris demonstrated that she was as portrayed…a prosecutor not in touch with today’s ethos, and Tulsi Gabbard was composed and beautiful, but it’s disheveled Bernie Sanders who triumphed. And all media agrees that the overall winner was Elizabeth Warren, but instead of portraying her positive qualities, they’re making fun of her, saying her policies are pipe dreams.

Watch Fox. Do they attack other Republicans? No, they realize the enemy is the Democrats! Meanwhile, the “New York Times,” trying to appear fair and balanced to the right, which will never believe it anyway, bends over backwards to attack their own and say their candidacies are fantasies.

Look at music… Every few years a new sound comes along to wipe out the old. Until the twenty first century, the internet era, where it’s all hip-hop all the time. The non-hip-hop lovers? They get no attention, no dollars, they’re seen as a backwater in an internet era where nothing is that big and the backwaters are important. We’re ripe for revolution in recordings, but nothing is happening, whereas there’s turmoil in politics, which makes it so fascinating.

Our entire nation, our entire WORLD, was revolutionized by technology. But somehow in politics we must run to the past. Then again, the same media saying Obama is God write stories about the perils of technology, too much screen time. Hell, if it weren’t for apps and free distribution of articles the “New York Times” would be completely irrelevant. This is like musicians bitching about streaming payments, for free, online, via social media, after making their music for almost nothing on their computers. Talk about cognitive dissonance…

The future is not only coming, IT’S HERE!

And digital disruption shows that old farts who refuse to innovate get left behind. Hell, Netflix put a dent in Disney, and Imagine, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s production company, has now pivoted from theatrical to TV.

But in politics?

Everything must be gradual. We must honor the past. We must follow the precepts of the past, uttered by old men who think it’s still the last century.

HOGWASH!

EMBRACE NEW PLATFORMS

The younger generation is online all the time…how else will they connect with their peers? And the younger generation is all about new platforms. Oldsters are on Facebook, you can’t find anybody under twenty who uses that platform. So take the temperature of the younger set, see where they play, and go there. Furthermore, today it’s less about the star than the listener. TikTok works because it’s about the user, not the maker of the original music. This is a sea change in consumption and word of mouth. Oftentimes songs are just a vehicle to make the listeners famous!

WORK THE OLD MEDIA

Which is asleep. Believe me, none of the oldster reporters is living on TikTok, you’ve got to tell them what’s going on online. Unless it’s war, stories always start online. The story in this case was that “Old Town Road” was rejected by “Billboard”‘s country chart makers. Forget that that chart means little, it’s all about radio airplay in country, and Mediabase rules, but suddenly it was a story of us vs. them, of black vs. white, of racial equality, of bias. The truth is this was untrue. Country radio was unaware of “Old Town Road” and the decision at “Billboard” was made willy-nilly, it’s not like they convened the editors to make a judgment. But this story appealed to the mainstream press, and got universal traction, as people on all sides of the issue debated it. It wasn’t about the record, but the CONCEPT! In other words, with a publicity stunt, Lil Nas X and his team surfed the zeitgeist…and people had to listen to the track in order to make a judgment. And the hardest thing to do today is to get attention, listens, and this PR stunt delivered that. But don’t repeat it exactly, it won’t work, just like acts tried to replicate Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” promotion, with its name your own price feature. The key is to know that stunts still work, but you’ve got to get one with a hook, that’s a twist on what came before to succeed. And the more people who try stunts, the fewer that succeed.

KEEP THE STORY ALIVE

This is where the remixes come in. In the age of cacophony, where everybody is deep into their own rabbit hole, not only is it hard to break through, it’s hard to keep it alive, even though tracks last longer than ever. And the reason they last longer than ever is radio wants familiarity, and they stick with that which delivers ears, i.e. ratings. Radio loves playing the remixes of a hit, and they’re always a story online. And getting Billy Ray Cyrus to do the first was a masterstroke. A has-been country novelty act with nothing to lose was willing to sell out and say and do anything for attention, which hit country acts probably wouldn’t have done.

MAKE IT ABOUT STATISTICS

17 weeks at number one? WHERE? “Panini” ranks higher than “Old Town Road” on Spotify. You have to get to #17 until you find the Billy Ray Cyrus remix. And it’s #13 on the Mediabase Top Forty chart, which is the bible of the format. No one is vetting these figures, they’re just deferring to “Billboard” with its formulas that make no sense. With their weighting and… But everybody’s #1 somewhere, some obscure chart, maybe in their bedroom, and in a world with few fact-checkers, you can trumpet this before anybody catches up with it! Yes, “Old Town Road” is #1 at the iTunes Store, but that’s almost like being #1 on the SACD chart. Track sales represent an infinitesimal sliver of consumption, why are they weighted so high? No real music fan buys anymore, it makes no sense when you can get everything for ten bucks a month anyway, and the compressed sound is a far cry from high fidelity. Tell someone, anyone, that a track is #1 on the iTunes chart and they’ll shrug, maybe laugh, because that’s a passe backwater. But “Billboard” anointed “Old Town Road” and there’s a story about the track going #1 for seventeen weeks in all media outlets. Not to mention that #1 isn’t what it used to be anyway. Comparing Lil Nas X to the Beatles is like comparing your flag football team to the Patriots.

MAJOR LABELS

If you’re a one hit wonder, best to align with a major that can spend all the money to do remixes and pound the pundits/writers. They’ve got the money and the power.

CONCLUSION

“Old Town Road” itself is nearly irrelevant. Yes, it shows the power of TikTok, but the track isn’t even as ubiquitous as “Macarena” in terms of mindshare in the public at large. “Macarena” was all over TV…today kids don’t even watch broadcast/cable TV. Active viewers employ on demand streaming services, and they don’t even watch the same thing! Ratings of TV shows are a fraction of what they used to be, even “Stranger Things” and “Game of Thrones.” So to say something is #1 today…usually means almost nothing.

And speaking of #1 I’d say we need new charts, but the charts are already there. We’ve got streaming, sales and radio. Three charts of three different stripes. Radio is behind streaming and sometimes never catches up. “Billboard” has Blanco Brown’s “The Git Up” as the #1 country track and in the Mediabase Country chart…IT DOESN’T EVEN APPEAR!

And you wonder why music doesn’t move the culture like it used to.

The truth is there’s no consensus. Oftentimes what is hyped has a relatively tiny footprint, and if looky-loos check it out they don’t like it, and they check out less new stuff.

One could say that music is a harbinger for media consumption, but you could also say the industry is in a race to the bottom. The majors only want to promote narrow genres of music that many people don’t like and the reporting on the industry is clueless.

And you wonder why people don’t pay attention.

Rhymes with “Orange Julius,” at least according to the Beastie Boys! George produced the Black Crowes’s “Shake Your Money Maker” (and “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion”!) and he’s the music supervisor of choice for Ben Stiller, and he’s worked on films as varied as “The Hangover” and “Frances Ha.” George is a great conversationalist, listen!

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This is why Republicans win and Democrats lose.

Did Republicans tell Trump his wall was a fantasy, that Mexico wouldn’t pay for it? Are they even countering his claim that China will pay the tariffs? NO! Because they’re united, all in the name of victory. Just ask Moscow Mitch. He keeps his troops in line. As a result the Supreme Court is controlled by Republicans. And there you have it, the most powerful man in the country is Mitch McConnell, and his wishes are enforced by the kangaroo court known as Supreme.

EVERYBODY, and I mean EVERYBODY, knows that Medicare for All is presently a pipe dream. It ain’t gonna happen right away, no chance, even if Democrats control both houses of Congress, which they won’t. But not only the other candidates, but the media, can’t stop attacking Sanders and Warren over this. The truth is people are afraid of change, and Bernie and Elizabeth are right, that insurance companies are built on not paying, just like Vegas is built on losers. If they paid out, they’d go out of business!

Of course Bernie and Elizabeth are right about health care, but it’s gonna take a while for the Luddites in America to be convinced. Furthermore, just like in Canada and the U.K., there will be private policies for those who can afford them. Hell, it happened in Canada because of a lawsuit, which would probably win in the U.S. too, all in the name of freedom.

And with your present private policy, you don’t get service, and you can’t see any doctor you want, you’re closed out from specialists, and this is what you want to maintain?

Ain’t that America, where everybody’s afraid of losing something, worried about slipping down the pole when the truth is the corporations and the rich are pulling the strings and laughing behind your back.

And ever since Judith Miller, we know the media is in cahoots with the politicos/power. Hell, check how much those CNN anchors make! As for the people at the papers, they get access, which is no different from being in the music business and getting free concert tickets. The perks are cash, sometimes taxable, but the IRS has been hobbled to the point where it can’t collect.

So you get two candidates standing up for the people and they get EXCORIATED! Sanders and Warren keep making points how the game is rigged, which Trump won on, and they keep getting blowback from those who control the game. The same people who called the 2016 election wrong. Do you think these TV talking heads or opiners in papers actually know the electorate? Of course not! They want to hang in the Vineyard or Nantucket as opposed to Mississippi or the burned-out burgs across this country. This is what income inequality has wrought. An elite completely out of touch with the rank and file.

Trump convinced people he was on their side, that he would fight for them.

And what does the media keep on saying about Sanders and Warren, the only two candidates truly leading the charge for the people? THEY’RE TOO RADICAL!

Sure, it’s a process, winnowing out the losers, the wannabes. But it’s already over, eliminate everybody but Warren and Sanders and Buttigieg and Biden and Harris. But just like in kiddie soccer, no one can be left out, no one can be told they’re a loser, everybody has got to get a trophy.

And the media doesn’t like it that the envelope-pushing ideas of Bernie and Elizabeth are not their own, even though left-leaning websites are all over these issues. Steve Bannon was recruited by Trump to speak to the right wing base and what happened? HE GOT ELECTED!

So let’s narrow it down to the real candidates and pick a winner early and get behind them. BUT NO! Even if Sanders or Warren gets the nomination, the left wing press will criticize them and amplify the opinions of others who do so too. The right unites and the left splinters. The Squad speaks to the youth, who will inherit the earth, and all Pelosi can say is they’ve got no followers. Huh?

Speaking of followers, the most powerful people amongst the youth are the social media influencers. Today it’s about a following, an audience, Trump knows this, he’s got zillions of Twitter followers and he uses his platform regularly.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are lost in the last century, believing it’s all about TV news and newspapers. Meanwhile, the younger generation partakes of neither. It’s all about on demand, when you want it. No wonder they’re disillusioned and don’t vote, NO ONE IS SPEAKING TO THEM!

But then you’ve got the old students of the game, triangulating, not realizing the game has CHANGED! Trump started a revolution and the Democrats want to counter it by saying they’re oppressed. Yeah…

You fight fire with fire. When they go low, you go low.

And no one was ever excited about the status quo. Which is always overthrown, have you heard of digital disruption?

It’s a battle of ideas, and right now the right is winning, because the left is paralyzed. And it keeps shooting its leaders, with good ideas. And lionizing those who broke the economy, and the regular people know it! That’s right, the media keeps trumpeting the efforts, the lifestyle, the RICHES of the titans, the bankers and the CEOs. Bernie and Elizabeth say they’ve got no loyalty to the U.S., working for multinational entities, hell, the rich stash their money elsewhere, and the media says DON’T UPSET THE APPLE CART!

There’s so much wrong with this country. The pay of CEOs, the low taxes on private equity and capital gains. And you find someone who augurs for change, who wants to lead the charge, and what do they keep on hearing…THEY CAN’T DO IT!

The same thing all agents of change have heard throughout history.

CDs are better than files and streaming.

Movies are better on the big screen.

Electric cars are a pipe dream.

Do you hear the younger generation saying ANY of these? No, it was the younger generation that was ahead of the game. The Wall Streeters see Tesla as a business, the youngsters see it as a huge leap forward, they want it to win, they don’t want to live in a world killed by carbon emissions.

Just kick it down the road. Have no dreams. KILL DREAMS!

If you don’t think Bernie and Elizabeth can win, you don’t know this country, not at all.

But their odds will increase if all you Trump-haters will get in line and fight for change.

Never in the history of the country has a party platform been enacted in its entirety. Never has a President delivered everything he’s promised. Why in hell are Sanders and Warren being held to a different standard?

Because the media and the fat cats don’t want them to win. They don’t want to admit society has changed and they’re losing power.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

P.S. As for taxes going up to pay for Medicare for All… OF COURSE THEY WILL, but you won’t have to pay for private health care insurance, it’s a net win, did everybody fail elementary math? But the Republicans have labeled all taxes as bad, so anything that resembles one must be quashed immediately, irrelevant of the benefit, irrelevant of the net positive. And yup, Bernie and Elizabeth were right, CNN, labeled as leftist by the Republicans every day, is carrying the Republicans’ water for them!