Duly noted but perhaps a little dully…

This week has been exciting, driven, bandwidth consuming. In helping
my client Lightworks Enterprises launch their first internet channel I
have been challenged in juggling all the details of doing something for
the first time and have had very little time to study what was
happening in the media. What I did get came in short bursts when I was
on-line or on the subway, reading A.M. or METRO, two small dailies
devised specifically for straphangers and distributed at virtually
every subway entrance in New York.

In this blurry week which has been a wonderful bit of mad, this is what
I recall.

Hillary Clinton took top honors in New Hampshire and some pundits think
she pulled the trick by allowing her “Margaret Thatcher/Iron Lady” kind
of façade crack just a little – a quaver in the voice, a misting of her
eyes and many people saw a human being behind the political animal.
And Obama did well enough that he is still in the race and no matter
what happens with this one, someone is going to be the first – first
woman nominated for the presidency; first African-American nominated
for major office [unless, of course, Edwards does an upset].

I remember this week asking a friend who covers politics as a
profession why it was that everyone spoke of Obama as African-American
when he is actually mixed race; his mother is white, his father black
and he is definitely mixed race and I think the face of the future.
The melting pot of America is mixing together not just different white
nationalities, it is mixing together the races, blending us into what I
think will be the world in the future. This reporter’s response:
America isn’t ready yet to handle mixed race in a political race.

The most bizarre thing I remember from this week was a picture of a pig
that glowed in the dark. I am not kidding. Through cloning, there is
a breed of pig emerging that will glow in the dark and, for whatever
reason; this was really good news as it was another step in growing
pigs to give humans replacement organs. Which means that someday we
will have cocktail conversation that goes something like this: I feel
so much better now that I have my new pig kidney, heart, whatever.

President Bush made it to the Mid-East before I knew he’d left the
country. Now everyone is parsing his thoughts about Mid-East peace
while I think: damn, why didn’t he do this right after 9/11? The
United Arab Emirates gave him a pendant that has been described as the
most bling thing of any bling things – rubies, diamonds, and an
enameled American flag. Wonder how the Smithsonian is going to like
that?

Britney keeps imploding and there is no amount of work, avoiding the
media, whatever, that will keep this fact away from the American
public. It’s everywhere. Gag me with a spoon, as my students used to
say.

Steroids are moving from sports to general entertainment. Seems a very
tony New York gym has been offering a number of celebrities an
anti-aging program which includes steroids and growth hormones. Well,
you know forty is the new thirty, fifty is the new forty and sixty is
the new fifty, especially if chemically enhanced.

Kenyan violence continues. Bombs keep going off in Iraq. Afghanistan
is rocky. New Orleans is still a mess [excuse me: who is in charge?].
In other words, while I wasn’t looking, the world kept on going. Right
now there are standards: Britney, Iraq, Afghanistan, Election year
politics and all the ordinary wonderful things that go on, making life
what it is. It is the intensity of all of it that seems to have
ratcheted up as technology makes us more immediately closer and more
aware of everything that is happening minute by minute, even when we
aren’t necessarily looking to be kept up to date. Information is
ubiquitous.