Let the Slaughter Begin …

According to conventional mythology a new blog is born every second, each with an average readership of … one. I hope to do better than that, if only for the sake of Rake publisher, Tom Bartel, who, after months of brutal negotiations has finally consented to attach my idle, crackpot meanderings to his otherwise sober-minded publication … and who also owns a lot of guns.

My primary concern here is much the same as it was for the 15 years I played media reporter/critic at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. At its’ most basic it is this: Who is manipulating who, how and why? Not only is the influence of media pervasive and inescapable in modern America, it is in

a state of furious flux. Much of the so-called mainstream media, TV networks, daily newspapers and radio empires is suffering from their Faustian bargain with their investors. They’ve diminished the integrity and relevancy of their products, substituting — in my humble opinion — a lot of knucklehead pandering, also known as bullshit — for truth, accuracy and information useful to sustaining better lives and common culture. Very ironically, a lot of this heavily researched “entertainment” and “news” is also humorless and ponderously self-important. Come on folks, there is a happier medium, somewhere between giddy celebrity worship and homogenized, risk-averse corporate-speak.

In case you wonder, I owe the title of this blog, “Lambert to the Slaughter”, to local media luminary, Tim Sherno, whose name, (as I read the notarized memo he sent), “is synonomous in the Twin Cities market with Edward R. Murrow, William O. Douglas and John C. Holmes.”

The implications of sale of the Star Tribune, the new found reverence for the wisdom of Gerald Ford, and the visuals of the last minutes of Saddam Hussein are all topics I’ll get to before the banks open again on Tuesday.


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