The Prune of Miss Jane Brody
With remarkably little fanfare, the New York Times appears to have adopted new ethics policies requiring unprecedented personal disclosures by its most prominent and popular columnists. Top management at the paper has yet to comment on the matter publicly, but the nature and extent of the change became unmistakable, most outside media analysts seem to agree, with the publication last Tuesday of a landmark essay on constipation by Times "personal health" correspondent Jane E. Brody. Ms. Brody's August 2 story, "Looking Beyond Fiber to Stay 'Regular,'" is believed to represent the first time in the history of American journalism that a nationally syndicated writer has offered readers detailed information, dating back to infancy, about the frequency and quality of her own bowel movements.
"I've had a lifelong problem maintaining regular bowel habits," Ms. Brody's pathbreaking piece revealed. Her parents, "like many people" of their generation, were badly "misinformed" about gastroenterological science, and wished their daughter to evacuate her lower intestine "on a predictable daily basis." Ms. Brody, however, vigorously rebelled against this pressure--in a classic overreaction pattern once familiar to psychiatrists as the so-called Retentive Personality. And by the time she reached college, "things got so bad" that Ms. Brody routinely "suffered from bloating and cramps after days of no eliminations." It was only after an "astute physician" at the campus health clinic prescribed "bowel-stimulating fiber" and advised her to "establish a time each day to use the bathroom" that Ms. Brody was able "to form soft, bulky stools that are easy to pass."
Exercise, too, she found, can help counteract "poor muscle action in the colon." But enemas, Ms. Brody cautioned, "are a last resort and should be used only occasionally."
Ms. Brody's status as the first Times feature writer called upon to fully divulge her excretory history is thought to be largely arbitrary. The paper appears simply to be proceeding through its ranks in alphabetical order, which would make the putatively "regular" columnists David Brooks and Maureen Dowd next in line.
Gore TV
On August 1, former vice president and college journalism professor Al Gore--having ditched his wild-eyed, bearded, Bush-bashing man-of-the-mountains look for a clean-shaven face and a closet full of all-black suits--launched his 24-hour cable TV network, Current, from an office building in San Francisco.
The network reaches only some 20 million households; the bulk of them--14.5 million, to be exact--subscribe to DirectTV, the satellite cable network. How many will tune in is an open question--one of many unanswered questions about Gore's new venture.
"Is this a news network?" asks one of the "Frequently Asked Questions" on the channel's website. The answer: "Not exactly." Instead Current is "nonfiction." It's "the first national network created by, for, and with an 18-34 year-old audience." It's "the TV equivalent of an iPod shuffle." It's "something new: journalistic and relevant, but unencumbered by old conventions." Like being watchable?
All joking aside, The Scrapbook shouldn't jump to conclusions. Truth is, we haven't seen Current. It's not that we didn't try to. It's just that the channel isn't distributed by any local cable provider here in Washington, and there's no bar with a satellite hookup in walking distance that's quiet enough to hear the TV, and . . . well . . . you get the idea.
Besides, after reading all the press clippings, we kinda already feel like we've watched it. As the first cable channel for the Ritalin generation, Current breaks up its programming into hundreds of five to ten minute "pods," which recycle endlessly throughout the day. Every so often, a host tells viewers what people are searching for on the Internet. This segment is called Google Current. You will learn, for example, "Canada's Top Searches of 2004," the "Top 10 Disease Searches," and so forth. Hosts include a former contestant on Donny Osmond's Pyramid gameshow, a former castmember of MTV's Real World: Hawaii, a walk-on from Austin Powers: Goldmember, two recent graduates of the University of Miami, and the former host of the TV reality series Love Cruise.
In a fit of pique, or simply desperate to give him something to do, the editors of Broadcasting & Cable magazine had summer intern Rob Biederman watch Current's first day on the air and provide play-by-play commentary on the magazine's blog. Here's an excerpt:
2:30 pm: A jazzed-up version of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" accompanies a stream of hip graphics introducing . . . 2:30 pm: . . . Google Current! But the world is unwonderful when a graphic reads: Top Education Searches #1. Education 2:33 pm: Repeat of real estate segment from earlier. What's going on here?
Good question.
Barely Aloft
Full details having yet to be revealed, The Scrapbook has decided to withhold all comment on an emerging scandal involving massive financial improprieties at the Al Franken-headlined liberal talk-radio network Air America. Really, we mean it. That spring 2004 scheme by which the network's then-top executive appears to have diverted nearly $900,000 in New York City-funded social service grants from a Bronx-based charity to Air America's own desperately underfunded bank accounts? Mum's the word.
Meantime, though, we figure there's nothing wrong with noting the latest listenership data from Arbitron. "Now that it's possible to compare ratings for this spring to last year's start-up," the Philadelphia Inquirer's Beth Gillin reports, "it's clear that [Air America] has yet to climb out of the cellar." In particular, Franken's decision to schedule his show in direct competition with conservative talk-radio superstar Rush Limbaugh "was not such a good idea," it turns out. "Limbaugh . . . has squashed Franken like a bug."
At its flagship station in New York, Air America's audience is down 14 percent. In Philadelphia, moreover, Arbitron reports that the network has "fallen off the charts . . . meaning there were too few listeners to measure during the second quarter of this year."
In Memoriam
"Who am I? Why am I here?" For uttering such a peculiarly cosmological remark during a nationally televised debate in 1992, then-vice presidential candidate James Bond Stockdale got himself roundly mocked; "good question" was the more or less standard joke. That the joke wasn't actually funny--that its object was a Medal of Honor winner who'd flown more than 100 Naval air missions over Vietnam and then survived a legendary seven years of torture in a Hanoi POW dungeon--seemed not to matter at the time. Even, and especially, and characteristically, to Admiral Stockdale himself, who may have been one of the greatest military heroes in American history, but who thought of himself instead, first and foremost, as a philosopher. Other people's laughter meant nothing to him. He knew perfectly well who he was and why he was here.
As the seniormost U.S. officer at Hanoi's infamous Hoa Lo prison, his Medal of Honor citation reminds us, Stockdale was specially "singled out for interrogation and attendant torture." Nevertheless, "Stockdale resolved to make himself a symbol of resistance regardless of personal sacrifice," and he "deliberately inflicted a near-mortal wound to his person in order to convince his captors of his willingness to give up his life rather than capitulate," and to prevent them from photographing him for propaganda purposes.
"In politics the Stoic would love his country and hold himself ready to die at any time to avert its disgrace or his own," Stockdale would later explain. "But a man's conscience was to be higher than any law. A man has a right to be responsible, self-ruling, autonomous."
James Bond Stockdale, a great, brave man to the very end, passed away at the age of 81 on July 5, 2005.