I Finished Reading The Sack of Rome

the other day. It's Alexander Stille's book about Silvio Berlusconi. It's a brilliant, entertaining, and only somewhat disturbing book. It leaves me convinced that Berlusconi is a terrific crook, but hey, that's not news. It also leaves me convinced of the political power of television. There's a long history of communication scholars in the US disputing the power of television. This is called the "limited effects model"; according to it, ordinary people are insulated from the direct influence of television by local opinion leaders and organic face-to-face groups. And this is true for some things and in some places and for some people. I can sit in a bar filled with fans of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, and even though everyone will be watching a telecast of a Chicago Cubs game with announcers paid by the Tribune Company, the owners of the Cubs, all the patrons in the bar will still hate the Cubs, and "read against the grain," so to speak. Sure. And I DO talk back to my television, even though no one listens.

But this has never been what the power of television is all about. On the contrary. Television has had great power because of all the LONELY people who watch it, and this has certainly been the case in Italy. Berlusconi's television channels have large viewerships of old and lonely people who don't have a bar full of organic community to tell them he's a liar. But moreso television has had great power because it REPRESENTS the people. In the absence of all the people speaking, television has been the delegated voice of the people. To be more precise, the empowered act as if television represents the people.

In the US, all of this is obscured because we don't yet have a Berlusconi. We have the ingredients. We have the demented power mad media mogul (Ted Turner used to be the best example, but Rupert Murdoch has taken his place); we have telegenic ambitious politicians; and we have celebrities who, for the life of us, we can't figure out why they're celebrities. But we don't yet have someone who's all three.

That doesn't mean we don't have the same system. Stille drives this point home admirably in his closing chapter.

My Daily Paris

Years ago a friend (Gil Rodman, for the curious) told me about his daily Elvis. Every day, in some medium or another, he would run across Elvis--a picture of Elvis in the newspaper, Elvis on the radio, and Elvis movie on TV, an Elvis impersonator in a bar, something. When he told me this (in the 1980s) I thought he was wrong, but then I realized that, yes, every day in some way Elvis was with me. A couple of years ago, though, I began to notice that I was no longer getting my daily Elvis. Apparently he's fallen off, or been getthoed in. I dunno.

But I do get my daily Paris, i.e. Paris Hilton. This without paying any attention to the media that seem to dwell on her, the supermarket tabloids (ok, I read them sometimes) or the entertainment news shows on tv.

Today's daily Paris comes from Josh Marshall at TPM, who notes that "Paris Hilton did more time than Scooter Libby." Indeed. Finally, someone who can make Paris Hilton seem like an ordinary joe. You'd think they were going to send him to Gitmo or something. (By the way, what does Scooter think of Gitmo? What does Scooter think of Abu Ghraib? Should we think of Scooter as a force for enlightened penal systems?)

As for Scooter's get-out-of-jail-free card, I find it hard to be outraged when Rove and Cheney are still in their jobs, but it does kind of miss the point of having a fall guy. He has to take the fall, see? This is the sublime self absorption of the establishment, who are happy to invoke the same "higher law" arguments as civil rights marchers and picketers and Solidarity and Thoreau, but who will never spend a day in jail. Again, that's the point of civil disobedience: You must do the time. Oh, I forgot. There was nothing civil about his disobedience. He lied for political advantage. Of course, that's a different rationale altogether. Who goes to jail, or gets impeached, for something like that?