Janine Wedel - Unaccountable - How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security

5. Dominic Boyer and Alexei Yurchak, “American Stiob: Or, What Late-Socialist Aesthetics of Parody Reveal about Contemporary Political Culture in the West.” Cultural Anthropology , vol. 25, issue 2, May 2010, pp. 179-221.

6. Ibid., p. 192.

7. Ibid.

8. Boyer and Yurchak add this example in an endnote: “In a famous episode of the political program ‘Crossfire’ on CNN (October 15, 2004) Stewart accused the hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala of performing political discussion in form only, at the expense of any real debate of issues: ‘You’re doing theater, when you should be doing debate, which would be great’; see Media Matters for America, “Jon Stewart on Crossfire: ‘Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.’” Media Matters for America, October 15, 2004 (http://mediamatters.org/research/200410160003), accessed December 10, 2009.

Boyer and Yurchak, op. cit., p. 216.

9. The quote from Boyer and Yurchak is from op. cit., p. 184.

Regarding viewership: The Daily Show ’s ratings average viewership hovers around the 1.5 million mark for new episodes; The Colbert Report , around 1.1 million. South Park ’s 2013 premiere pulled in 2.9 million, which was up 10 percent from the last season premiere. This 2014 tally is relatively consistent with other ratings: Sara Bibel, “Thursday Cable Ratings: NBA Playoffs Wins Night, ‘Vikings’, ‘Pawn Stars’, ‘The Challenge’, ‘Sirens’, & More.” TV By The Numbers, May 2, 2014 (http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/05/02/thursday-cable-ratings-nba-playoffs-win-night-vikings-pawn-stars-the-challenge-sirens-more/259696/). See also: Rick Kissell, “‘South Park’ Returns to Three-Year Ratings High.” Variety, September 26, 2013 (http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/south-park-returns-to-three-year-ratings-high-1200671493/).

An indication of Colbert’s popularity is that he is slated to assume one of the most-watched nighttime perches with the retirement of David Letterman from the Late Show .

10. Ibid., p. 208.

11. Both late communism and Western political culture of today produce formalized “repeatable genres of political performance,” Boyer and Yurchak write. And, in both contexts, “successful political messaging” equals “the circulation of formulaic political rhetoric” (Boyer and Yurchak, op. cit., p. 209).

12. The four trends Boyer and Yurchak cite as causing this state of affairs effectively all have to do with the decimation or mutation of the media caused by the rise of the Internet (Boyer and Yurchak, op. cit., pp. 206-209).

New information technologies are specified as a crucial transformational development and elaborated in Janine R. Wedel, Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermind Democracy, Government, and the Free Market . New York: Basic Books, 2009, Chapter 2.

13. Amy Mitchell, Tom Rosenstiel, and Leah Christian, “Mobile Devices and News Consumption: Some Good Signs for Journalism.” The State of the News Media 2012, Pew Research Center (http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devices-and-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/?src=prc-section).

14. Jesse Holcomb, Jeffrey Gotfriend, and Amy Mitchell, “News Use Across Social Media Platforms.” Pew Research Journalism Project, Pew Research Center, November 14, 2013 (http://www.journalism.org/2013/11/14/news-use-across-social-media-platforms/).

15. Political scientist Jeremy Mayer calls this “cocooning.” He writes (Jeremy D. Mayer, American Media Politics in Transition . New York: McGraw Hill, 2008, pp. 315-317):

The growth of technology’s role in American life may contribute to a sense of hyperindividualism as we cocoon ourselves away not only from politics but also from real-world human connections. . . . True believers can cocoon themselves away from troubling facts by surrounding themselves with websites that deny the truth. The mainstream media print corrections; many political blogs simply repeat their errors until they and their readers believe them.

16. Bill Keller of the New York Times is a prime example of someone made fun of mercilessly for being a dinosaur. See, for instance, Bill Keller, “Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?” New York Times, October 27, 2013 (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html); or Hamilton Nolan, “Farewell, Bill Keller’s Awful Magazine Column.” Gawker, July 25, 2011 (http://gawker.com/5824375/farewell-bill-kellers-awful-magazine-column). In February 2014, Keller announced that he was leaving the Times for a nonprofit news startup.

This article reflects the same view: Jack Shafer, “From Tom Paine to Glenn Greenwald, we need partisan journalism.” Reuters, July 16, 2013 (http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2013/07/16/from-tom-paine-to-glenn-greenwald-we-need-partisan-journalism/).

17. According to the New York Times , Greenwald portrays himself “as an activist and an advocate” (Noam Cohen and Leslie Kaufman, “Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate.” New York Times, June 6, 2013 [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/business/media/anti-surveillance-activist-is-at-center-of-new-leak.html?pagewanted=all]). Greenwald later told the Times : “It is not a matter of being an activist or a journalist; it’s a false dichotomy. . . . It is a matter of being honest or dishonest. All activists are not journalists, but all real journalists are activists. Journalism has a value, a purpose—to serve as a check on power” (David Carr, “Journalism, Even When It’s Tilted.” New York Times, June 30, 2013 [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/media/journalism-is-still-at-work-even-when-its-practitioner-has-a-slant.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&]).

18. Nick Confessore (https://twitter.com/nickconfessore); David Carr (https://twitter.com/carr2n); Jeff Elder (https://twitter.com/JeffElder); (https://twitter.com/thefix); Chris Cillizza (https://twitter.com/TheHyperFix).

19. John Clarke, “Performing for the public: doubt, desire and the evaluation of public services.” The Values of Bureaucracy , Paul du Gay, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 211-232.

20. Boyer and Yurchak, op. cit., p. 208.

21. This was sometimes at the expense of long-term wisdom. While “dynamic” CEOs were being (personally) rewarded with a pop in the stock price, the layoffs they were ordering weren’t necessarily wise long-term decisions for their companies.

Presumably to impress the board and warrant bigger raises, CEOs also seemed intent on appearing “bold,” as Linda Keenan writes. This became a central animating force in a CEO’s identity—and core identity is not easily changed. “That attitude brought a shift in how managers both treated and viewed their employees,” Keenan observes. “CEOs who slash payrolls might get called ‘dynamic’; ones who do not might be viewed as ‘lumbering.’” (Linda Keenan and Janine R. Wedel, “Shadow Elite: Wall Street Culture—They Still Don’t Get It [Except Their Bonuses].” Huffington Post , May 27, 2010 [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-keenan/emshadow-eliteem-wall-str_b_591537.html]).

Anthropologist of finance Karen Ho makes a similar point (Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).

22. The idea sounded good on paper: stock options tied an executive’s own personal fortune to his shareholders’ fortunes through the stock price, ostensibly making him more likely to act, as he should, in their interest. The result was different, Cassidy shows. In practice, top managers were tempted to mislead investors, and boards could play with option dates and prices to give senior management maximum personal gain (John Cassidy, “The Greed Cycle.” The New Yorker , September 23, 2002, p. 64 [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/09/23/020923fa_fact_cassidy]).