Hang Town
Mountain Democrat
There’ll be peace without end,
every neighbor a friend,
and every man akin
Suffering from Suffrage
"DIRECT DEMOCRACY-That phrase only" reads an index card for
one client at the press clipping bureau (PCB). This one’s a lobbying group
evaluating grassroots issues and activities so that it can selectively support,
if not direct, democracy. Unlike topics such as GANGS, SECURITY GUARDS, AUTO
EMISSIONS, and RENAISSANCE FESTIVALS, the subject is never featured and is
rarely mentioned in the daily press even though registered voters will be
demonstrating again this November.* [*FN: This piece was finished
before the electorate overwhelming approved the Republican’s anti-social contract
in 1994.]
The PCB invested nine months in me but I never learned how to read
the newspaper. There are thousands of accounts and a reader has to
memorize those that apply to his/her territory. The good reader learns
not really to read but to scan each article for proper names (corporations,
politicians, entertainers) and valued concepts like RECYCLING, AFFORDABLE
HOUSING, and YEAR-ROUND SCHOOL, mark it to the proper account(s), and surrender
the paper to an excruciatingly divided and repetitive labor process where
everyone works nonstop but remains behind the times. This is news: People
are blacking-out with methamphetamines, illegal aliens are stealing social
services, and petroleum "diluent" is oozing into the soil and ground
water, even on legal holidays, so half-days
on the Saturday following a holiday are often required to make up for lost
time.
Absorbing the bombardment of untruths, violence, disasters, and absurdities
hour after hour, day after day upon day is a consistently enervating experience.
At most previous jobs I was glad to have enough downtime to read the paper
but I didn’t read every article, obituary, letter
to the editor and activity calendar. The paper used to be a quasi-informative,
occasionally humorous, and usually frustrating means of killing time until
I had to read every paper published in San Luis Obispo County -- a cozy locale
on California’s central coast occupied by a lot of people occupied with fears
of second-hand smoke, drought, killer bees, and the likelihood that the economic
development their local representatives are pushing means becoming more and
more like L.A.. It’s the reader’s duty to read the same newsworthy items several
times since the facts are sometimes written or edited differently in the various
papers. I learned to appreciate that I wasn’t reading for the sake of comprehension.
I can't assess how much all the newsprint I literally absorbed has affected
me.
Unless you're Alan Greenspan or unemployed you probably hate your job
too, but I absorbed a lot at the PCB: the cramped environment at a small business
where the boss/owner is always present, and you always know it; understaffed
and underpaid -- I made $8.65/hr., with the understanding that once I could
produce more than 300 clippings in a day I’d start earning a piece-work bonus;
the woman who does payroll putting a pencilled check-mark (which I’d erase)
next to my name on the sign-in sheet each day when I was five minutes late.
Most of the staff seems obsessed with the well-being of this possible casualty
of infotech (this PCB has existed for over 100 years, and the workplace environment
and routines have changed little in the last 30), so the paranoia instilled
from reading the paper was heightened by the feeling that at any moment my
performance was being evaluated. In fact it was, since the number of clippings
a reader produces is tabulated. I never exceeded 200 clippings in a day and
was told that I was costing the PCB money.
No one there likes what they're doing -- it's not possible -- but they
have health insurance and their landlords are eating. Many readers eat lunch
at their desks (still reading) to bolster their clip counts. Except for break
periods there is almost no conversation; just the sound of the Cutters slicing
newspapers with x-acto knives, and an inordinate amount of sneezing due to
the paper particles in the air. The other newly hired reader and I never grew
inured enough to the news of the world not to laugh occasionally at the egregiously
ridiculous items we came across, which is something that the more seasoned
readers rarely if ever do at this point in their careers. For "Bill"
(not his real name, but he answers to it), I guess it's only a matter of
time. For me, it's back to the headlines
and classifieds.
The Sweet Smell
of Success
One of my tasks was to read the periodical American Banker every
business day: 8 AM, half asleep and a bit shaken because I can’t believe that
this is real. It was a trial to
have the concerns and Weltanschauung of these movers and shakers inflicted
upon me, although at times the Banker
which publishes straight-faced articles with lead-ins like "Banking lobbyists
rejoiced yesterday" and "Mortgage bankers’ prayers have been answered,"
and quotes sources who counsel: "The banker you know is harder to hate"
and "We’ve spent every year since the Great Depression trying to restore
the public’s confidence in the integrity of banks" -- helped me appreciate
that I could (and will) be worse off. This is the "I’m OK, We’re OK" publication for achievers with
enough common sense to make the most of the world as it is.
We’re all grown-ups now, although the Banker’s editorial staff and the suits they admire
are the stuff of a tame high school yearbook or newspaper. This time the reported
goings-on profoundly impact lives across the globe. This world, this multinational
market is for sale and the Banker’s
reader gets the latest about software for tracking credit card spending
patterns that may indicate fraud; the banking lobby’s efforts to fend off
government oversight of the industry’s practices; and investors’ activities
in increasingly salable territories like China, Mexico, and Vietnam. (Vietnam
has the potential to be an especially lucrative market since most of those alive there are under the age
of 20 -- young enough to learn new tricks. I learned this from the Banker where
no explanation for this improbable demographic is deemed necessary.)
And there’s always at least one large spread about some guy (it’s always
a guy, and his skin, if not his hair, is white) in the Midwest who took over
a failing "community bank," re-engineered operations, and brought
home a handsome bonus. The most lasting effect of reading this respectable,
institutionalized cognitive dissonance has been an increased appreciation
that the entire financial system is truly a hoax. This is known but, like
US aggression, is never publicly acknowledged [see sidebar]
since it’s an uncontrollably serious and deadly hoax that supplies and demands
regulators & winners & corpses.
Another of my duties was to read Public Notices in papers throughout
Northern CA for contractors and opportunists seeking Trustee's Sales on defaulted
properties, or the Notice of Public Sale of Personal Property. ("Personal"
property is not "Real" (land or a house -- something you can rent
out); in most cases it’s the haunted, confiscated belongings of another who
couldn’t pay the self-storage facility anymore.) Public notices are usually
buried with the funny pages and advice columns so I was exposed to the same
"Dear Abby" headline, horoscope (I'm an Aquarius), and "Family
Circus" countless times. I knew I shouldn’t do it but like an innocent
in Singapore I assumed it wouldn’t hurt to look. It still does.
The most ludicrous service I performed for a public notice client was
for a company that sells bar equipment and furniture. I needed to look through
all the Fictitious Business Names and use my best judgment to decide whether
the FBN most likely belonged to a bar. I was told to ignore "cafes"
since these days they’re solely trendy coffee houses for those who get better
returns from a caffé latte than a Pabst Blue Ribbon. But not all FBNs betray
the nature of the business; e.g., The
Memory Stop, Beyond Flowers, or Martini’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle might
be just the place to celebrate a workday’s evening or commiserate with the
inconsolable. When I was particularly tired and/or hangovered more and more
FBNs sounded like potential watering holes, and I apparently wasn’t very good
at discerning likely bar names since the client stopped the account.
The Big Carnival
The PCB classifies papers by point
of origin, circulation, and frequency of publication, so, e.g., the San Francisco Chronicle is a Major Met,
the Salinas Californian is a Large
Daily, the Paso Robles Daily Press is
a Daily, and the Carmel-By-The-Sea Pine
Cone is a Weekly and is of limited interest to most clients. The weekly
Soledad Bee is part of a chain of newspapers
throughout Monterey County, and most accounts only take articles "once
in chains," as the jargon goes, unless the account belongs to a politician
or corporate criminal estimating the number of eyes likely to have read about
his/her/its bad or good deeds.
Having lived in metropolitan areas the last 11 years I’d forgotten
that there are small-town newspapers publishing "Police Logs" recounting
arrests and reports of suspicious activities. Although some papers pick and
choose which acts to publish, and even edit the logs to emphasize the entertainingly
bizarre, it’s significant that the cops’ concerns are presented as the community's
concerns (a surprising number of 18-to-25-year-old Latinos get arrested for
DUIs in Monterey County). In places like NYC, Boston, or L.A., where the cops
are at best the lesser of evils and at least too savvy to invite scrutiny,
non-homicidal violence doesn't sell; in a place like Cambria, CA -- often
described in the weekly The Cambrian as "paradise" or "the Middle
Kingdom" -- a group of kids who aren’t bowling is a gang and you’ll read
all about it. Then
comes an in-depth exposé probing the alienation and despair of today’s
youth followed by letters to the editor calling for drug-free dances or
public floggings -- if not for rehab, then for rebirth.
Cambria is interesting because (at least from what I read) these folks
know they have it made, so of course they support
their local law enforcement. Everyone else is going to hell, but on their
way they should stop by the Middle Kingdom to admire its quaintness, locally
owned business, and relatively unsullied environment. It’s a nice place to
visit ‘cause you can’t live there, and the money you can’t take with you is
good for their local economy. You might even be lucky enough to get a snapshot
of a vacationing Hollywood icon.
One of the biggest reported controversies is the proposed construction
of a McDonald’s down on Main Street even though Cambrian kids and senior citizens
don’t need minimum-wage jobs, and there are already plenty of low-paying,
service-sector jobs supporting tourism. Op/Ed submissions and "Street
Scene" questionnaires stress public indignation toward the idea of paving
paradise for a fast-food corporate clown, while The
Cambrian, where the subjects of the Middle Kingdom exercise their First
Amendment rights, is published "by [Ohio-based] John P. Scripps Newspapers,
a Scripps Howard company."
I did learn to appreciate small-circulation newspapers when compared
to large-scale, 100,000-plus periodicals because the former tend to focus
on a world without professional sports, Washington, DC, or the week’s top-grossing
films. Most of the articles are written by newspaper staff members -- who
most readers probably know -- rather than AP, McClathchy, or Gannett newswires.
Then again it’s a given that the local reader has already been deluged with
matters of global significance thanks to larger papers, national magazines,
and their less-than-500 channel TVs.
Banished
Knowledge
Propaganda manipulates people; when it cries freedom it
contradicts itself. Deceit and propaganda are inseparable. A community in
which the leader and his followers come to terms through propaganda--whatever
the merits of its content--is a com-munity of lies.
Those shapes and
symbols, I know their meaning
The shameless riches of
another world
Most
of the clients are California based and they employ the PCB to profit from
destructive acts of God and other special events, (re)construction, pollution,
and statewide politics, while for the most part ignoring national/international
matters. A reader’s interests are limited to the clients’ needs and unlike
an editor or publicist you’re not making up minds. It’s your job to unquestioningly,
if not willingly, pass on what’s been circulated even though the client might
be trying to revive The Eagles’ career or promote "Three strikes you’re
out."
Reading the paper for the status quo uniquely accents one’s complicity
in the reproduction of an all-consuming system that reduces knowledge ("Information")
to the power to manipulate and prognosticate; the biggest-spending clients
use the service to stay on top of other big spenders by purchasing a more
faithful allegiance from those at the bottom. I’ve worked reading legal documents--arcane,
boring, soulless creations--but they aren’t produced for public consumption.
It’s legal-ease that even a lawyer can recognize as the bullshit it is. The
PCB reader serves a multitude of predictably venal interests mining public
space for private gain. That’s The Paper’s raison d’étre, and despite widespread
acceptance that the media are (liberally) biased and sensationalistic, and
general public cynicism about "politics," the paper and the PCB
still deliver a highly valued commodity -- the preemptive opinion poll --
to public servants and less conspicuous profiteers.
This is cheap tragedy without catharsis. The horror stories the paper
tells and the ad space it sells are debilitating because nothing else can
ever happen. The inexorable is that you’ll relive the dead-ends. If you read
enough you discover that anything may befall nobody you can know in the global
village -- over and over, without coherence, and not quite explained due to
limited column inches. Chances are it’ll never happen to you -- unless it’s
cancer, but that’s not news -- but it always could. The world is defined by
a jingle recurring in the fragmented unconscious of a paranoid but desperately
trusting chorus. Suffering, whether by chance or by force, is all there is
without the Help Wanteds, Services Offereds, and other broken promises.
--
Richard Wool
