RICK’S BLOG: WE DON’T NEED RUPERT MURDOCH TELLING US WHAT TO DO

BY RICK GRANT rickgrant01@comcast.net Posted Dec. 26, 2006

Recently, Time’s "Person of The Year" cover issue hit the stands featuring a computer monitor with a mirror, proclaiming that you, me, and everyone were the persons of the year. It was brilliant commentary on today’s rise of the individual as the free voice of journalism. Now, everyone is a writer or a videographer. I manage and write a webzine called www.rickatnight.com with a link to this blog. I’m also the Senior Writer for EU Jacksonville. Like millions of other bloggers and journalists, my writings are well published in print and on-line.

When publishing billionaire, Rupert Murdoch nixed the TV interview and book concerning O.J. Simpson’s hypothetical ruminations about murder, it got me to thinking about billionaire publishers/media moguls deciding what stories get published and what is killed. Of course, the O.J. blabber was a terrible idea, which would have caused further pain to the victims’ families, saying how he would have killed Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown–"if he did it." Hell, everyone on earth knows he did it.

The point is: However ill-conceived this project was, it could have been accomplished without Murdoch’s blessing. It may very well get into cyberspace if the writer can free herself from Murdoch’s contractual grip. It will probably get into cyberspace anyway. Everything salacious eventually pops-up on-line.

Today, if you blog or manage your own website, you are officially published. We don’t need some fat cat billionaire telling us what to do. The Internet is truly free speech in it’s most free flowing form. Justifiably, the better writers get more recognition than the hacks, but the editors at Time were absolutely right. It’s the era of the individual, plugged in to the vast matrix of the Internet. It’s a living, breathing thing, with bits of information pulsing through its arteries at light speed, and into its collective brain like billions of charged particles from the sun bombarding the earth.

Anchor person, Daryn Kagan left CNN. She thought to herself, "I don’t need a corporate suits telling me what stories to produce." So she split and started her own webcasting site, DarynKagan.com where she produces daily high quality human interest webcasts. In two weeks on-line, she started to sell advertising to make the site profitable. Go girl!

There are many other notable examples of people grabbing their piece of the World Wide Web’s pie .Our voices are saying to Murdoch and other bloated billionaire publishers, "You can take your publishing empires and shove it up your fat asses." We don’t need you to tell us what to publish. Let the on-line readers decide who gets rich and who doesn’t. In fact, we don’t need your newspapers or tabloid magazines. Just log-on and find out what you want to read or write your own commentary. It’s you, me, and everyone, baby. We matter. We are the people of the year!

RICK’S BLOG: CHRISTMAS IS A LOAD OF CRAP-- HUMBUG INDEED

BY RICK GRANT rickgrant01@comcast.net Posted Dec 24, 2006

Call me Scrooge, or worse, but to me, Christmas has become a commercial load of crap–skillfully marketed to make every man, woman, and child in America feel guilty if they are not out spending like drunken sailors. Every year, the retailers depend on the Christmas season to make their financial goals. Hell, even President Bush is advising people to go out and spend to rescue the economy and raise more money in taxes to support the Iraq War that is sucking 4 billion dollars a month into the black hole that is national debt. Hey, just print more money and soon inflation will get so bad, it will cost four thousand dollars to buy a loaf of bread.

Yes, the sophisticated marketing of the holiday season begins in September. That Lexus commercial implies that if you don’t buy your wife a 60,000 dollar Lexus you are a cheap son of a bitch and she won’t love you anymore. Buy, buy, buy is the fiendish subliminal program that is designed to loosen the wallets of the most frugal person.

This year, I decided to boycott Christmas. I was doing well, when suddenly, the deeply repressed guilt hit me like a heart attack. I quickly sent my grown up daughter and my grandson E-mailed gift cards that only take an hour to reach them. They like to get gift cards to spend as they please. It was painless, but I was going to resist the urge to give anything to anybody. Ah yes, this guilt is deeply imbedded in my consciousness. I didn’t want my offspring to think I didn’t love them, so I gave in, and sent them gift cards. However, I didn’t buy a Christmas tree, or anything that resembled the traditional celebration of this phony-baloney holiday.

Black Friday–the day after Thanksgiving-- was an orgy of wild eyed spenders lined up all night to get "once-a-year" bargans. People fought over places in line, and then when the doors finally opened to Mecca–Wal-Mart–people went crazy and acted like Jihadists running into battle to die for Allah. CNN was there to chronicle the sorry spectacle of people rushing the door to get 40% off a flat screen TV or whatever. This is consumerism run amok.

Retailers plan all year for their Christmastime marketing strategy. They flash the latest gadgets, game consoles, and flat screen TVs in their ads, tripping the people’s preprogrammed switch to run up those credit card bills as everyone’s patriotic duty. Then the poor schmucks spend all year paying off their Christmas spending binge.

My campaign to boycott this fiendish conspiracy to relieve me of my money almost worked. Still, at least I resisted the subliminal urge to spend, and didn’t go hog wild. I only spent what I could afford. And, I think my offspring understand. If not, well what have they done for me lately–nothing. But we know that we love each other despite my attitude toward Christmas. They say, yeah, dad is eccentric and cheap, but he did buy us stuff when we grew up.
Hey I paid my dues, now screw it, Christmas is just a load of crap and that’s that. My wife vehemently disagrees and has renounced this blog. I may have to buy her a Lexus to get out of the dog house.