Physical Movement

When I was about five, I was given the opportunity to travel to another state about a week ahead of my immediate family in order to get to know my grandparents better.

Aside from the little bit of designated time I was allowed every afternoon to cry over homesickness, I loved a great deal about it. Even destinations and activities where I was surrounded only by adults (I don’t think I’d ever been to a retiree buffet before) became educational and memorable… Like the time my grandfather taught me how to gamble and took all my money. Before giving it back, obviously.

Nothing about this environment – the habitat of another generation living a beautiful and full life but still arguably reeling after a World War decades before, was familiar to me. But the learning curve was worth it. I imagine my grandfather got some comic relief from my breaking it to him, because it seemed like no one else would, that all the “pretty pills” his doctor prescribed to him were not helping. And many of his comments and songs brighten my days even now.

There is almost no question that discomfort often begets learning and fruitage that could not be attained otherwise.

While by no means the same because my earlier experience was a positive one, during the period when I felt so trapped by the Larry King Live team, I held continually to the biblical promise that “you shall call your walls salvation and your gates praise,” hoping that there would be a time when I could view what I was experiencing as, actually, having been good, or, at least, redeemable for good; and I believed there was reason for such hope.

Inward Movement

During the pandemic, it has been tempting to think more about how much one can get done, just staying put – and quiet – knowing one is capable of reaching out in venturing further in order to reach her potential but recognizing, also, how easy it is to simply remain isolated. Like the birds at the mall.

It is easy to rely too wholly on inward movement even when, inwardly, one genuinely feels a particular action is appropriate to take. But I wonder whether sometimes you do just have to make a move.

Of course, outward movements are only effective when they grow out of an inward pull at one’s – and maybe many people’s – heartstrings – like the recent, ongoing women’s and racial justice movements.

Even so, although I hope I am incorrect, it does seem to me that the media sector’s simultaneous embrace of the much-needed racial justice movement and abandonment – even retaliation – against the women’s movement (rather than support for both) was much less about support for people of color than misogyny and, even moreso, a desire to maintain power.

I continue to believe it will be important to dedicate time – and soon – to pondering why so many seem to have adopted such a hostile posture toward women in the wake of the first stirrings of the modern women’s movement. This is as what was revelatory about this movement’s disclosures was not the nature of misogyny – a well-documented and analyzed form of scapegoating, harm and extraction – but where it was being observed. A – if not the – central feature of the women’s movement that felt most essential to address, to me at least, was that human rights abuses were proliferating within media organizations. A rush to abandon – instead of build on – this awareness, seems to me to have been, rather than a noble expression of solidarity, retaliatory against people who dared to talk about what could be improved upon in an industry that, while enormously valuable, is unqualified to rule the planet and seemed almost determined to declare legitimate journalism forbidden from that moment forward.

On Holding Patterns

It is the nature of zero-sum uncreativity, and the balloon animal called scapegoating, that when you squeeze one portion, another expands. And the converse holds. This was why I believed coverage of the women’s movement needed to include, and even principally focus on, proposed solutions.

Given that two of my most urgent concerns as a voter last year included, (1) the need for leadership willing to stand up to the evident dominance of an increasingly conglomerated media sector, and, (2) the need for leadership to more highly value social & environmental protections and those who champion them, it was challenging to see these priorities seemingly divvied between political parties. While, on the one hand, I agreed with a great deal of its platform, on the other, giving the proverbial reigns to the Democratic party again despite the nature of its relationship with the media sector seemed not unlike the scene in Apollo 13 in which the stranded crew recognized there was a need to shut down their command module as an emergency measure and drift for a time, trusting it could be rebooted.

Although I believe their motives were sometimes questionable, to remain dominant, media leaders have leveraged their pulpit to accomplish many good, and even essential, tasks in recent months. Unless they wanted to acknowledge women’s ideas, they hardly had a choice; and I believe it’s appropriate to thank God.

Virtual Movement

In navigating observed media, I feel it is important to remember its utility. While it still seems a terrible one for disseminating good ideas, observed media is an indispensable tool for identifying problems. (As mentioned before, wrongdoing within continues to generally go hidden, I believe.) But, to the degree that media organizations maximize profits and power above all, and especially as our appearances-based informational infrastructure has resisted evolution, does not much of the observed communications infrastructure on which many rely more and more closely resemble an artificial intelligence?

Aside from what I should acknowledge is a remarkable ability to predict my exact taste with regard to both running shoes and furniture upholstery, among many other things, AI has innumerable shortcomings as a world leader. It is, after all, a tool. Not king.

I, individually, continue to want my news from large, unbiased, and well-funded organizations with long-standing international bureaus (should such entities ever exist again). But I only and ever want opinion from independent individuals who, in turn, support my own independence. This is as, left to their own devices and unchecked by more powerful conscience, corporate AI forces always seem to land on, and even reinforce, the same message: there is nowhere to turn.

On Mobility & Dead Ends

While getting accustomed to working in media, I remember arriving at Hartsfield-Jackson one day and, for some reason, feeling struck by the sight of our network on airport televisions. Realizing my surprise was absurd, and reminding myself that, even though ever since beginning to produce television shows I had largely stopped watching them personally, many people did, I felt grateful. But, deplaning after traveling across country only to see the same channel playing practically everywhere I looked again, I do not remember ever being able to overcome a sense of discomfort about it.

While I continue to believe newscasts do an amazing job of uncovering wrongdoing and focusing attention on human rights abuses (which tend to be found at the core of virtually all of the world’s social and environmental justice problems) there is no one to cover human rights abuses within these organizations themselves, rendering their work increasingly invalid, I believe.

But does their current dominance render media blocs able to declare checkmate on the whole of entire societies permanently? Hardly.