"The price listed is the price you pay!" screams the latest TV advertising for an American car maker.
How quaint! After 25 years of already BEING DEAD, American car makers are finally deciding to sell cars like any other commodity, instead of perpetuating the cult of dishonest horse trading from 100 years ago.
Gee! Do they mean I can actually go to the car store and read the price tag without some high school drop-out sliming up beside me and leading off by asking how much I want to spend monthly on payments and whether I have a trade?
It seems so. So at the brink of bankruptcy caused by being out-classed, out-produced, out-marketed, outmoded, out of touch and out of contention, now and only now do I get the exalted privilege of seeing crap I don't want to buy with the actual prices on it?
If we ever wanted to be embarrassed as a nation in a world industry we once helped to create, no finer moment could occur as in these advertisements. Tell you what! You put the stickers on with the "actual prices, guys, but know that I still don't believe you, and I won't darken your door with even one nickel of my money. You can steal from the government for awhile before you end up going bankrupt anyhow, but you lost me and my family members forever as customers over 30 years ago. And don't blame the unions...each union member has had to put up with the same crap as all the rest of us whenever they wanted to buy the product they actually had to produce at the behest and "design" of greedy and out-of-touch management.
There is a special place in business hell for you, where you will have to drive mo-peds, live with perpetually Harley Earl, and drink only oil... in leaky wine glasses. Enjoy!
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Journalism Musings
I used to teach journalism and run a school newspaper. I was trained in order to get a certificate to do this, and I was trained "old-school" by a Chicago Tribune reporter. We spent the first class doing nothing but crafting leads. We later talked about ethics, and the fourth estate, and gate-keeping, and political influences too. It was great, and one time my 18-year-old editors actually scooped all the local papers on a big story. Our school was huge; I used to remind school board members that our school paper had a larger circulation than half of all Illinois towns...and that was true!
Right now, lots of hand-wringing continues among journalism folks. They say print media is dying, they moan about the Medill school at Northwestern changing their program to require "marketing" of all J-school grads, and when each old school guy who cut his teeth at the City News Bureau dies, they bemoan the fact that there aren't any journalists like that anymore. Should we worry?
Yes and no. No because finding out the truth in the world is a built-in habit of humans, who are competitive and hate to see people lied to and taken advantage of. No dictatorship, no politicians, no religious crazies, no school authority has ever stopped investigative reporting or whistle-blowing. Of course, fascists round up the journalists and teachers first, and a lot of them may then disappear or die for the truth. Still, journalists will always exist and always find avenues to report the truth.
Yes, journalism is changing. This piece is appearing on a blog. I could start a NING that reported and shared data on any one local or even national story of interest. I can read the Sun Times online (now that newspapers have figured out that profit online is about advertising, not exclusivity/subscriptions). Print media have had to remake themselves to appear more "bite" friendly, more like TV news and WIRED magazine. Hard news coverage has shrunk in number of words per story, and non-investigative stories are collected in new ways, and often in partnerships with electronic media. The days of the paid ambulance chasers and precinct reporters have passed.
I was reminded of the thing I worry most about regarding journalism today by, no surprise, a radio talk show host. He was complaining about how we get new slogans and labels pushed on us, so that they appear everywhere. His complaint was about the phrases "Black Friday" and "Black Wednesday".
Black Friday was a phrase only known to retail management and no one else fifteen years ago. It referred to the day when any retail company shows what kind of profit they are going to take in on the busiest shopping day...the day after Thanksgiving. Black Wednesday may be, although no one is sure, a phrase coined by bar tenders for the day before Thanksgiving, which is currently reported to be the biggest drinking day of the year...outdoing even St Patty's and New Years! The radio host said that he had bartended for years (having quit only recently), and he never ONCE heard any one in the bar business use that phrase. So, how do these phrases get splashed in headlines, and reported on TV news in Chicago this week?
My answer: the media invented them.
They have to. Why? Because in the digital/internet age, news media cannot nap. News media face the constant challenge, with even fewer staff and reporters, to fill up 24 HOURS, 7 DAYS A WEEK of non-stop "news." In order to do that across hundreds of newspapers and hundreds of cable channels and thousands of e-zines and print mags, they have to keep finding something -- anything -- to grab our attention. So, the day after Thanksgiving can't simply be the busiest shopping day of the year. It has to be a story, with some 'sex' and some 'legs'. It has to have a 'hook' and the coverage has to be pushed back to the week before and forward to the week after. Last week: "How are nervous retailers preparing for the dreaded black Friday?" Next week "Black Friday is all red for terrified retailers!" There will be side stories with a local spin: "Ma and Pa grocery weathers Black Friday" and "Black Friday may toll death knell for Quackenmeyer Discount!" News media have learned from Hallmark cards. Got a slow cycle for sales? Invent a new holiday that needs cards...like "Sweetest Day." And the news media themselves will jump on it because the internet is on the phone and the crawl is crawling on the bottom of the screen. The week before: "Are you ready for your sweetest?" and the week after "Sweetest Day not so sweet for Tinkleberry's Chocolates!"
Make something where there was nothing, slogan-ize it, sell it, report on it over a cycle, keep it alive, make people believe they should care, even if they can't quite recall if the thing ever even existed before. Market it, then spin it into niche markets (is grandma sweetest on sweetest day in area nursing homes???) It can fill, fill, fill up all the time we have to fill.
And, once we have filled, filled, filled it up, we can put the the news foxes in front of the cameras and keep track of our share. Don't worry if we can't cover the wars because the military won't let us (the one and ONLY thing the American military apparently learned from Viet Nam!). We've got Black Fridays and Sweetest Day. 'Now,... is 'reporter' Susie Q. doing the background interviews for our annual two week coverage of post-holiday stress syndrome? I think she's got a doctor who claims she was the first to recognize this awful 'syndrome.' We have former guests from Springer's show who claim that the syndrome made them have affairs at work, gain 33 pounds, and run away to a motel in Duluth. Of course some geeks in the Afghan hills died today, but nobody wants to hear about that....we've got 'em conditioned to hear about THIS.'
Barnum said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the [American] people. However, I see some hopeful signs of a more critical public. One is the recent election. Voters have been spun to death, and they are sick of it. Palin's handlers made a huge mistake believing they could 'market' associations with "known terrorists" to a nation who now knows more than ever what a terrorist is (it ain't Mr. Ayers, despite his count-cultural ear rings!) The young generations of bloggers and facebookers know what's bullshit online. They occasionally laugh at, but then always expose urban myths and made-up stories. To them Paris Hilton isn't news but a geek to be joked about. The older generation shows signs it has gotten over being niche-marketed-to; witness the responses to American auto makers whose businesses really died twenty years ago telling how they are competitive in the world market! I wonder if there's anybody left, except in a few church basements, who believe Fox News is really news.
My hope is that people in America have become much more critical of media ploys to snag their attention and invent news where there is no news. When the film "Wag the Dog" appeared, it frightened me; now, I am not so frightened.
Americans may actually be getting smarter; but wait, ...no they can't be because the media keeps reporting how awful ALL American schools are, right?
Wrong.
Right now, lots of hand-wringing continues among journalism folks. They say print media is dying, they moan about the Medill school at Northwestern changing their program to require "marketing" of all J-school grads, and when each old school guy who cut his teeth at the City News Bureau dies, they bemoan the fact that there aren't any journalists like that anymore. Should we worry?
Yes and no. No because finding out the truth in the world is a built-in habit of humans, who are competitive and hate to see people lied to and taken advantage of. No dictatorship, no politicians, no religious crazies, no school authority has ever stopped investigative reporting or whistle-blowing. Of course, fascists round up the journalists and teachers first, and a lot of them may then disappear or die for the truth. Still, journalists will always exist and always find avenues to report the truth.
Yes, journalism is changing. This piece is appearing on a blog. I could start a NING that reported and shared data on any one local or even national story of interest. I can read the Sun Times online (now that newspapers have figured out that profit online is about advertising, not exclusivity/subscriptions). Print media have had to remake themselves to appear more "bite" friendly, more like TV news and WIRED magazine. Hard news coverage has shrunk in number of words per story, and non-investigative stories are collected in new ways, and often in partnerships with electronic media. The days of the paid ambulance chasers and precinct reporters have passed.
I was reminded of the thing I worry most about regarding journalism today by, no surprise, a radio talk show host. He was complaining about how we get new slogans and labels pushed on us, so that they appear everywhere. His complaint was about the phrases "Black Friday" and "Black Wednesday".
Black Friday was a phrase only known to retail management and no one else fifteen years ago. It referred to the day when any retail company shows what kind of profit they are going to take in on the busiest shopping day...the day after Thanksgiving. Black Wednesday may be, although no one is sure, a phrase coined by bar tenders for the day before Thanksgiving, which is currently reported to be the biggest drinking day of the year...outdoing even St Patty's and New Years! The radio host said that he had bartended for years (having quit only recently), and he never ONCE heard any one in the bar business use that phrase. So, how do these phrases get splashed in headlines, and reported on TV news in Chicago this week?
My answer: the media invented them.
They have to. Why? Because in the digital/internet age, news media cannot nap. News media face the constant challenge, with even fewer staff and reporters, to fill up 24 HOURS, 7 DAYS A WEEK of non-stop "news." In order to do that across hundreds of newspapers and hundreds of cable channels and thousands of e-zines and print mags, they have to keep finding something -- anything -- to grab our attention. So, the day after Thanksgiving can't simply be the busiest shopping day of the year. It has to be a story, with some 'sex' and some 'legs'. It has to have a 'hook' and the coverage has to be pushed back to the week before and forward to the week after. Last week: "How are nervous retailers preparing for the dreaded black Friday?" Next week "Black Friday is all red for terrified retailers!" There will be side stories with a local spin: "Ma and Pa grocery weathers Black Friday" and "Black Friday may toll death knell for Quackenmeyer Discount!" News media have learned from Hallmark cards. Got a slow cycle for sales? Invent a new holiday that needs cards...like "Sweetest Day." And the news media themselves will jump on it because the internet is on the phone and the crawl is crawling on the bottom of the screen. The week before: "Are you ready for your sweetest?" and the week after "Sweetest Day not so sweet for Tinkleberry's Chocolates!"
Make something where there was nothing, slogan-ize it, sell it, report on it over a cycle, keep it alive, make people believe they should care, even if they can't quite recall if the thing ever even existed before. Market it, then spin it into niche markets (is grandma sweetest on sweetest day in area nursing homes???) It can fill, fill, fill up all the time we have to fill.
And, once we have filled, filled, filled it up, we can put the the news foxes in front of the cameras and keep track of our share. Don't worry if we can't cover the wars because the military won't let us (the one and ONLY thing the American military apparently learned from Viet Nam!). We've got Black Fridays and Sweetest Day. 'Now,... is 'reporter' Susie Q. doing the background interviews for our annual two week coverage of post-holiday stress syndrome? I think she's got a doctor who claims she was the first to recognize this awful 'syndrome.' We have former guests from Springer's show who claim that the syndrome made them have affairs at work, gain 33 pounds, and run away to a motel in Duluth. Of course some geeks in the Afghan hills died today, but nobody wants to hear about that....we've got 'em conditioned to hear about THIS.'
Barnum said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the [American] people. However, I see some hopeful signs of a more critical public. One is the recent election. Voters have been spun to death, and they are sick of it. Palin's handlers made a huge mistake believing they could 'market' associations with "known terrorists" to a nation who now knows more than ever what a terrorist is (it ain't Mr. Ayers, despite his count-cultural ear rings!) The young generations of bloggers and facebookers know what's bullshit online. They occasionally laugh at, but then always expose urban myths and made-up stories. To them Paris Hilton isn't news but a geek to be joked about. The older generation shows signs it has gotten over being niche-marketed-to; witness the responses to American auto makers whose businesses really died twenty years ago telling how they are competitive in the world market! I wonder if there's anybody left, except in a few church basements, who believe Fox News is really news.
My hope is that people in America have become much more critical of media ploys to snag their attention and invent news where there is no news. When the film "Wag the Dog" appeared, it frightened me; now, I am not so frightened.
Americans may actually be getting smarter; but wait, ...no they can't be because the media keeps reporting how awful ALL American schools are, right?
Wrong.
Monday, November 24, 2008
An Education
Instead of telling schools and teachers what to do, some Americans need to spend time learning from them. They would find that the roots of the current state of America were on clear view in any local middle-class high school trying to educate the children of 'Boobus Americanus' for the past 30 years. These roots had nothing whatever to do with secular humanism, sex education, dumbing down the curriculum, or low national test scores.
Starting in about 1972, we graduated a generation that learned from the media and their parents that getting high was a norm. The parents who already smoked dope generally thought the schools should stop getting all upset about stoned kids. For example (in my school at the time) the football player smoking a joint in the back of the team bus was a typical case. The coach suspended him; but,the parents got the suspension overturned so the team could try to win a big game. After all, kids will be kids! At about this same time, the Vince Lombardi crap that “winning...it's the only thing!” was invading the mentality of all high school sports. At this time, the contests of quasi-gladitorial professional football thugs had supplanted baseball as the 'national past time”. People were amused by, but apparently did not learn from the satire of George Carlin! Also at this time, my own generation began its romance with money, at the same time that my students' parents began making a lot of it. The new attitude was exactly the one that the military-industrial complex of the '50s and '60s had dreamed of creating. You see, they had lost the social revolution, but they had learned from their defeat... and from the mafia. “Can't persuade them? Buy them all! Every person has their price. Make them an offer they can't refuse!
I saw my first “he who dies with the most toys, wins!” bumper sticker at about this time. A new generation entered high school with a new attitude toward education itself: it's for suckers ! Life is about football, fucking, and free-time. The media fed this narcissism. “Animal House” became the portrait of why anybody would want to go to college. The “term” intellectual” stopped being heard in schools or in public life. The era of the glorification of the thug was coming: mafiosi, gang-bangers, super-heroes, and the super rich guy in the Bimmer with the trophy blondes. “Pretty Woman” was real, and nobody really liked Fredo after all... By the time it appeared, kids didn't even buy the message of the movie with Michael Douglas playing the Gekko tycoon. They envied Gekko, not the Capra-esque ending in which truly good guys won. They liked Darth far better than Luke. They giggled hysterically when Indiana shrugged and shot the sword-wielding Arab guy (and now, whose still laughing???)
In classes, these students had a new anthem: do as little as you can but get into college; and from there, get rich fast and retire at 40 or even 35. Computer technology fed the new reality: you didn't even need to go to school if you could do computers. I had boys with tech skills refuse to do anything in or out of class; after all, they were going to get rich without school. School became a sort of rigged game-show challenge that all the kids winked at. Who could cheat without getting caught? Who could con their parents into bailing them out of or buying them out of any jam? Who could fuck more girls and not get any of them pregnant? Who could fuck more guys without getting pregnant? Who could con their parents into getting them not just a car, but a really cool new car? Tastes in music swung from rock to gangsta rap, and Frank Zappa was vindicated in the end: “Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit 'em in the ass!” 'Bling' started to appear glittering in the suburban hallways, as foolish little white boys pretended they might be in a gang. Winners were bullys; winners took what they needed; winners didn't care about “collateral damage,” but cared for their “bros” at the expense of all others.
Meanwhile the parents had learned that school was about demanding special treatment for their children (never mind earning or deserving that treatment). They were both busy making 10% on investments and flipping houses. Furious mothers complained to the principal when a teacher didn't return a phone call within the hour; fathers prefaced conferences by literally saying “do you know who I am”....as though that should actually matter. The old houses in the neighborhood started to be torn down; a 3-bedroom bungalow was now unthinkable. Now the right homes had three car garages and cedar-shake roofs. If a new kind of wine cooler appeared on “This Old House”, the parents had to have it. Lawn furniture, barbecues, and upscale kitchen cabinets, joined shoes and dresses in fashion cycles and constant shifts in acceptable colors. Kids knew that they would always have the newest phones, the latest MP3, and the latest $200 jeans. It became a mark of maturity for kids to spend money, not to save it, and to hang out rather than work. In the go-go economy all things and all people were now markets that needed to be marketed to.
Gen X and Gen Y came of age in a world of mandatory Ralph Lauren, Mercedes Benz, and designer clothes. To get these things, they had to have more and more; and so, the “I'm better than you because I spend more than you” attitude got applied to the business world. Get it, get it now, get it any way you can; you only need to show a quarterly gain and leverage that into a raise. Find the loopholes in the system and cheat it to your advantage. Young bosses rewarded the cheating of ever younger workers who all confessed to each other over beers in the corporate skybox what a joke school had been and what chumps the WW2 generation were. They were tired of hearing the Boomers rag about Viet Nam and social conscience. To hell with 'em! Business was now really about gaming (the new marketing spin for gambling). Some win the game, some lose the game, but always its a game and the goal is to BE the house: Lehman house, Goldman Sachs house, Fannie Mae house, CitiCorp house. Move the paper through the loopholes and never mind the regulator (teachers?) since they only envy us anyway and want a piece of their own. Everyone wants to participate in gaming, lottery dreams, six figure raises for doing next to nothing. Don't go into education....you'll have to grade papers and actually mentor kids! No, get into finance and investment banking, the new holy grails. Don't worry about journalists finding out what you are really doing each day at work....after all, they envy you too, and journalism is not abut truth seeking but now about niche marketing, ...which is to say finance and banking.
And....should you get caught, or the whole thing go sour, make sure that with your last breath, while they are re-possessing the Bimmer, find a way to make sure those God damn teachers lose their middle class salaries and 'guaranteed' pensions. Then we can still say, curled up in an evicted little ball in the driveway of the house we can't afford anymore, that they were wrong, and we were right, we were right, we were right.
Winning...it's the only thing! Learning....well, that comes a little later on .....
Starting in about 1972, we graduated a generation that learned from the media and their parents that getting high was a norm. The parents who already smoked dope generally thought the schools should stop getting all upset about stoned kids. For example (in my school at the time) the football player smoking a joint in the back of the team bus was a typical case. The coach suspended him; but,the parents got the suspension overturned so the team could try to win a big game. After all, kids will be kids! At about this same time, the Vince Lombardi crap that “winning...it's the only thing!” was invading the mentality of all high school sports. At this time, the contests of quasi-gladitorial professional football thugs had supplanted baseball as the 'national past time”. People were amused by, but apparently did not learn from the satire of George Carlin! Also at this time, my own generation began its romance with money, at the same time that my students' parents began making a lot of it. The new attitude was exactly the one that the military-industrial complex of the '50s and '60s had dreamed of creating. You see, they had lost the social revolution, but they had learned from their defeat... and from the mafia. “Can't persuade them? Buy them all! Every person has their price. Make them an offer they can't refuse!
I saw my first “he who dies with the most toys, wins!” bumper sticker at about this time. A new generation entered high school with a new attitude toward education itself: it's for suckers ! Life is about football, fucking, and free-time. The media fed this narcissism. “Animal House” became the portrait of why anybody would want to go to college. The “term” intellectual” stopped being heard in schools or in public life. The era of the glorification of the thug was coming: mafiosi, gang-bangers, super-heroes, and the super rich guy in the Bimmer with the trophy blondes. “Pretty Woman” was real, and nobody really liked Fredo after all... By the time it appeared, kids didn't even buy the message of the movie with Michael Douglas playing the Gekko tycoon. They envied Gekko, not the Capra-esque ending in which truly good guys won. They liked Darth far better than Luke. They giggled hysterically when Indiana shrugged and shot the sword-wielding Arab guy (and now, whose still laughing???)
In classes, these students had a new anthem: do as little as you can but get into college; and from there, get rich fast and retire at 40 or even 35. Computer technology fed the new reality: you didn't even need to go to school if you could do computers. I had boys with tech skills refuse to do anything in or out of class; after all, they were going to get rich without school. School became a sort of rigged game-show challenge that all the kids winked at. Who could cheat without getting caught? Who could con their parents into bailing them out of or buying them out of any jam? Who could fuck more girls and not get any of them pregnant? Who could fuck more guys without getting pregnant? Who could con their parents into getting them not just a car, but a really cool new car? Tastes in music swung from rock to gangsta rap, and Frank Zappa was vindicated in the end: “Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit 'em in the ass!” 'Bling' started to appear glittering in the suburban hallways, as foolish little white boys pretended they might be in a gang. Winners were bullys; winners took what they needed; winners didn't care about “collateral damage,” but cared for their “bros” at the expense of all others.
Meanwhile the parents had learned that school was about demanding special treatment for their children (never mind earning or deserving that treatment). They were both busy making 10% on investments and flipping houses. Furious mothers complained to the principal when a teacher didn't return a phone call within the hour; fathers prefaced conferences by literally saying “do you know who I am”....as though that should actually matter. The old houses in the neighborhood started to be torn down; a 3-bedroom bungalow was now unthinkable. Now the right homes had three car garages and cedar-shake roofs. If a new kind of wine cooler appeared on “This Old House”, the parents had to have it. Lawn furniture, barbecues, and upscale kitchen cabinets, joined shoes and dresses in fashion cycles and constant shifts in acceptable colors. Kids knew that they would always have the newest phones, the latest MP3, and the latest $200 jeans. It became a mark of maturity for kids to spend money, not to save it, and to hang out rather than work. In the go-go economy all things and all people were now markets that needed to be marketed to.
Gen X and Gen Y came of age in a world of mandatory Ralph Lauren, Mercedes Benz, and designer clothes. To get these things, they had to have more and more; and so, the “I'm better than you because I spend more than you” attitude got applied to the business world. Get it, get it now, get it any way you can; you only need to show a quarterly gain and leverage that into a raise. Find the loopholes in the system and cheat it to your advantage. Young bosses rewarded the cheating of ever younger workers who all confessed to each other over beers in the corporate skybox what a joke school had been and what chumps the WW2 generation were. They were tired of hearing the Boomers rag about Viet Nam and social conscience. To hell with 'em! Business was now really about gaming (the new marketing spin for gambling). Some win the game, some lose the game, but always its a game and the goal is to BE the house: Lehman house, Goldman Sachs house, Fannie Mae house, CitiCorp house. Move the paper through the loopholes and never mind the regulator (teachers?) since they only envy us anyway and want a piece of their own. Everyone wants to participate in gaming, lottery dreams, six figure raises for doing next to nothing. Don't go into education....you'll have to grade papers and actually mentor kids! No, get into finance and investment banking, the new holy grails. Don't worry about journalists finding out what you are really doing each day at work....after all, they envy you too, and journalism is not abut truth seeking but now about niche marketing, ...which is to say finance and banking.
And....should you get caught, or the whole thing go sour, make sure that with your last breath, while they are re-possessing the Bimmer, find a way to make sure those God damn teachers lose their middle class salaries and 'guaranteed' pensions. Then we can still say, curled up in an evicted little ball in the driveway of the house we can't afford anymore, that they were wrong, and we were right, we were right, we were right.
Winning...it's the only thing! Learning....well, that comes a little later on .....
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Car racing...what's the deal?
I have some new young friends who are now, or have been, involved with car racing. They are mostly 20-something, and at least one seems to have a future in racing. I am keenly interested in them, and eager to be allowed into their world, because I have been a car nut since I was about three years old. I wanted to be on wheels early, and none other than the Mayo Clinic actually discovered (with some medical amusement, I might add) that I have a "hole" in my head due to the fact that when I was about a year old, I crashed my ride-in-car down the full length of the basement stairs and cracked my head pretty hard. I remember nothing about it, except the sound of my mother screaming and the feeling of riding in the car to the hospital. This "hole" in the head amuses my current wife, ...and probably causes my ex-wives to nod sagely, I am sure.
But here's the thing. This car love has always been there, even despite the nose-dive down the basement steps. I think it could be that Howard Gardner needs to add another kind of "intelligence", or perhaps add a sub-set of "kinesthetic intelligence," or maybe he should start a list of genetic oddities-- the first one to be called: car racing. It is not just "racing," by the way, because joggers and party game competitors and people running the Iditerod race do these things due to, perhaps, other genetic aberrations. Even these other "racers" are often just like all the non-car racing fan humans, who simply do not get why a person would watch a bunch of people drive fast...or even worse, drive fast in themselves. One hundred and fifty miles an hour into a 90 degree hair-pin turn? Not for them! When you try to explain to them, their eyes glaze over, as though you were trying to prove the existence of trolls in a forest.
Now, not all car nuts like car racing. Collectors, fans of artistic design, and state troopers might like cars for entirely other reasons. Only racing people like racing, except sometimes in Europe, where the cultural history of this small geographical region has tied Formula racing and rallying to people's national identity and pride. Even grandmas wave Ferrari flags in Modena.
Car racing is a hard thing to generalize about, because world of outlaw race drivers live in a separate world from open wheel folks whose world is not that of NASCAR folks whose world is hardly the same as vintage car folks. They give a nod to the other guys, but really don't want to go there to do their thing. Also social class distinctions exist among the different car racing crowds. Formula 1 fan-dom in America is supposed to like fine wine more than cheap beer; NASCAR fan-dom is supposed to drink ANY beer and wear lots of sleeveless T-shirts with messages like "MOPAR" and "MILLER LITE" and "I'm the guy yer wife knew before!"; the drag race crowd drinks 5W10 and talks to piston rings...you get the idea of class biases. However, the passion and level of interest in the details of car racing is shared by all by all of them.
Car racing is a hard thing to generalize because it is sometimes hard to like even for the fans. One challenge is that everyone knows it's all about who has the most money...either of their own or donated by people who will put a decal on your car and your hat. The money aspect makes it as American as apple pie,....and also corruptible, unfair, open to cheaters and idiots,and able to be slimed by corporate types and those laundering gang money.
Then there is the hard issue of death; all drivers know and all car racing fans know that there is deadly risk in racing. The long-time fans like me know that racing can reach out and bite you...hard! I liken it to the "steppenwolf" of drivers: the steppenwolf is ever and always out in the woods, just past your sight line into the apex of every turn. He waits. He can squander time measured in years, while racers sweat to save time measured in tenths of a second. If you are a fan long enough, you'll cry on account of his sudden bite. I listened as a kid to the announcements about Glen Roberts and Tiny Lund; later in life I witnessed the end of Lorenzo Bandini and Ayrton Senna in replayed video; I was washing my car when the radio blared the methanol inferno that took Davey MacDonald and Eddie Sachs. I loved these people just as people loved Carole Lombard or John Belushi. Why them? Why now? That's racing.
So why would you like car racing, knowing these negatives, these quirks, these boundaries?
First, speed is addictive. Some people will understand this when you ask them why they ride a roller coaster and, by doing so, actually trust their lives to an engineer and a fabricator and a maintenance crew who assure the machinery won't send them flying off to their deaths. Second, cars are works of art, created out of a shared psychological understanding of how speed should LOOK. People do tend to get the art idea, because they can look at a Bugatti and understand it's shape and the relation of its shape to its purpose. Third, cars are about control. True, control freaks come in all walks of life, but for racers it is a precious gift to be able to take this artwork/automobile, go exhilaratingly fast in it, and actually control it...not just by REacting, but through knowledge of the physics of it, the machinery of it, ... and having conscious fore-thought about what each piece of race track will require on this lap, at this time in the race, in this traffic, with this tire wear, under these temperatures, knowing my fatigue level, my skill level and the enticing likelihood that I could actually win this race or place in the ranks of the top drivers on this day. Fans of racing seem to be able to put themselves out there on the track knowing and feeling what the drivers know and feel. It is the textbook definition of "vicarious" experience.
Despite the power and "high" of all this, few racers get rich racing and all racers will also need rich friends/sponsors. The fans also pay dearly to see racing live, and all cable companies know never to offer the SPEED channel for free. The money always goes ultimately to somebody else, or back into the car, and the work of racing is not only low-paying but requires gypsy blood. I watch my new friends and wonder if they understand how lonely the life they are choosing can be. Like musicians, racing people are out on the road. It's very hard to take love with you, and equally hard to keep a lover in every city. Want to have kids...OK, but will they be on the road or will you be the parent the school never sees? Odd hours, bad food, endless interstates that all look the same, close quarters with people you may not like...whether you are sick or healthy. Arrive at the gig at 4 a.m., practice at 10. Then a nap, or practice some more? Show time, and it's pouring rain. The stage is like a furnace. Everything is being delayed. Maybe I'll take the uppers after all.... "Where do we gotta be next?" The trucks' await, but the weather does not.
To me, as I watch my young friends have oceans of fun racing, and dream about their futures as drivers, the very saddest thing is related to the money. Of course money is necessary and competitive cars are expensive. But all of us worker bees in other walks of life have faced the moral dilemmas of money and the need for it and its subsequent power over our behavior. In race car driving, it goes like this: once racing has got you, every next step will require more money; more money makes you more beholden and under more pressure to do well; more pressure to do well makes you maybe, just maybe,... stay in the higher gear longer, brake a tad later, or push the pedal just bit harder. The money knows that if you risk more and, especially, if you can win, the logos and decals are on the screen just a tic longer. So the money people love risk-takers,...and they always, always want more and more and more. And every driver out there doing it for a living is experiencing the same gnawing in their gut, just underneath their exhilaration. " I've got to...I've got to."
Meanwhile, no matter what race or how many are competing, the steppenwolf has all the time in the world.
"I can wait," he whispers from the woods.
But here's the thing. This car love has always been there, even despite the nose-dive down the basement steps. I think it could be that Howard Gardner needs to add another kind of "intelligence", or perhaps add a sub-set of "kinesthetic intelligence," or maybe he should start a list of genetic oddities-- the first one to be called: car racing. It is not just "racing," by the way, because joggers and party game competitors and people running the Iditerod race do these things due to, perhaps, other genetic aberrations. Even these other "racers" are often just like all the non-car racing fan humans, who simply do not get why a person would watch a bunch of people drive fast...or even worse, drive fast in themselves. One hundred and fifty miles an hour into a 90 degree hair-pin turn? Not for them! When you try to explain to them, their eyes glaze over, as though you were trying to prove the existence of trolls in a forest.
Now, not all car nuts like car racing. Collectors, fans of artistic design, and state troopers might like cars for entirely other reasons. Only racing people like racing, except sometimes in Europe, where the cultural history of this small geographical region has tied Formula racing and rallying to people's national identity and pride. Even grandmas wave Ferrari flags in Modena.
Car racing is a hard thing to generalize about, because world of outlaw race drivers live in a separate world from open wheel folks whose world is not that of NASCAR folks whose world is hardly the same as vintage car folks. They give a nod to the other guys, but really don't want to go there to do their thing. Also social class distinctions exist among the different car racing crowds. Formula 1 fan-dom in America is supposed to like fine wine more than cheap beer; NASCAR fan-dom is supposed to drink ANY beer and wear lots of sleeveless T-shirts with messages like "MOPAR" and "MILLER LITE" and "I'm the guy yer wife knew before!"; the drag race crowd drinks 5W10 and talks to piston rings...you get the idea of class biases. However, the passion and level of interest in the details of car racing is shared by all by all of them.
Car racing is a hard thing to generalize because it is sometimes hard to like even for the fans. One challenge is that everyone knows it's all about who has the most money...either of their own or donated by people who will put a decal on your car and your hat. The money aspect makes it as American as apple pie,....and also corruptible, unfair, open to cheaters and idiots,and able to be slimed by corporate types and those laundering gang money.
Then there is the hard issue of death; all drivers know and all car racing fans know that there is deadly risk in racing. The long-time fans like me know that racing can reach out and bite you...hard! I liken it to the "steppenwolf" of drivers: the steppenwolf is ever and always out in the woods, just past your sight line into the apex of every turn. He waits. He can squander time measured in years, while racers sweat to save time measured in tenths of a second. If you are a fan long enough, you'll cry on account of his sudden bite. I listened as a kid to the announcements about Glen Roberts and Tiny Lund; later in life I witnessed the end of Lorenzo Bandini and Ayrton Senna in replayed video; I was washing my car when the radio blared the methanol inferno that took Davey MacDonald and Eddie Sachs. I loved these people just as people loved Carole Lombard or John Belushi. Why them? Why now? That's racing.
So why would you like car racing, knowing these negatives, these quirks, these boundaries?
First, speed is addictive. Some people will understand this when you ask them why they ride a roller coaster and, by doing so, actually trust their lives to an engineer and a fabricator and a maintenance crew who assure the machinery won't send them flying off to their deaths. Second, cars are works of art, created out of a shared psychological understanding of how speed should LOOK. People do tend to get the art idea, because they can look at a Bugatti and understand it's shape and the relation of its shape to its purpose. Third, cars are about control. True, control freaks come in all walks of life, but for racers it is a precious gift to be able to take this artwork/automobile, go exhilaratingly fast in it, and actually control it...not just by REacting, but through knowledge of the physics of it, the machinery of it, ... and having conscious fore-thought about what each piece of race track will require on this lap, at this time in the race, in this traffic, with this tire wear, under these temperatures, knowing my fatigue level, my skill level and the enticing likelihood that I could actually win this race or place in the ranks of the top drivers on this day. Fans of racing seem to be able to put themselves out there on the track knowing and feeling what the drivers know and feel. It is the textbook definition of "vicarious" experience.
Despite the power and "high" of all this, few racers get rich racing and all racers will also need rich friends/sponsors. The fans also pay dearly to see racing live, and all cable companies know never to offer the SPEED channel for free. The money always goes ultimately to somebody else, or back into the car, and the work of racing is not only low-paying but requires gypsy blood. I watch my new friends and wonder if they understand how lonely the life they are choosing can be. Like musicians, racing people are out on the road. It's very hard to take love with you, and equally hard to keep a lover in every city. Want to have kids...OK, but will they be on the road or will you be the parent the school never sees? Odd hours, bad food, endless interstates that all look the same, close quarters with people you may not like...whether you are sick or healthy. Arrive at the gig at 4 a.m., practice at 10. Then a nap, or practice some more? Show time, and it's pouring rain. The stage is like a furnace. Everything is being delayed. Maybe I'll take the uppers after all.... "Where do we gotta be next?" The trucks' await, but the weather does not.
To me, as I watch my young friends have oceans of fun racing, and dream about their futures as drivers, the very saddest thing is related to the money. Of course money is necessary and competitive cars are expensive. But all of us worker bees in other walks of life have faced the moral dilemmas of money and the need for it and its subsequent power over our behavior. In race car driving, it goes like this: once racing has got you, every next step will require more money; more money makes you more beholden and under more pressure to do well; more pressure to do well makes you maybe, just maybe,... stay in the higher gear longer, brake a tad later, or push the pedal just bit harder. The money knows that if you risk more and, especially, if you can win, the logos and decals are on the screen just a tic longer. So the money people love risk-takers,...and they always, always want more and more and more. And every driver out there doing it for a living is experiencing the same gnawing in their gut, just underneath their exhilaration. " I've got to...I've got to."
Meanwhile, no matter what race or how many are competing, the steppenwolf has all the time in the world.
"I can wait," he whispers from the woods.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
