Media Interviews On Voting Poll Addiction and Withdrawal – Part 1.

There is a flood of news stories on TV and in print about how people are reacting to the loss of something to do or think about or fret over now that the polls have gone into quiescence and Obama is the President-Elect and able to be blamed for the recession by Rush Limbaugh BEFORE Obama has even ascended to OFFICE. Talk about the hazards of being a Rock Star.

In the past week or so,as just one of many media psychologists and opinionators, I did three interviews on the subject: With Newsweek, with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and with the Connecticut Post. I had to pass on an on-camera interview with CNN because we couldn't find an available TV studio and satellite uplink in the small, southern Illinois college town in which I presently reside.

When I am called, the interview topic is framed as answers to the dilemma of filling up time and space now that there are no more polls to watch, polls which were taken every minute, somewhere in the U.S., looking and comparing one demographic group against another, groups varying with what the pollsters are looking at or for at that moment in time, be it impact of issues, running mates, lambasting the personality, ethics, dubious relationships, Americanism, past and nettlesome life misdemeanors, past votes, etc., etc., ad horribilis and nauseum.

Poll (or election) withdrawal -- Hot topic, hot topic! This psycho-analysis is just the most current example of something the media does when it runs out of road on one marathon topic, in this case the presidential election, and want to keep the fire burning and audiences coming back for more.

As you probably have noticed, before the election it's all about "the horse race." After the election we enter the realm of "beating a dead horse." But in this case the horse isn't actually dead, it's merely limping around the track.

After the inauguration (any of you throwing or going to an inauguration party [other than the main one in D.C]?), the election horse will mercifully be put out to pasture to stud, or laid to rest. But we're not there yet, so the search is for what I call "B-list" angles goes on.

B-List angles are those that are spin-offs of an A-list story. They can be color commentaries or smaller tributaries of discourse, all related to the big Kahuna story, in this instance, the election. Examples of other marathon, A-List event were, say, Katrina or O.J. which, respectively. spawned B-list angles including lost or found pet stories or the future of O.J.'s children's stories. (I hasten to add that, according to a Google search, Katrina and its aftermath actually took up less media space and time than did the O.J. murder/civil trials -2, 340,000- vs. 2, 540,000. Interesting, yes?)

In my past I was part of some A-List stories as an interviewed expert, commenting on recent or ongoing events. Some of the stories include the L.A. Hillside Strangler, O.J.'s White Ford Bronco "slow ride" down the San Diego Freeway, some research I did on O.J. pre-trial publicity and sentiments among L.A'.s three dominant racial/ethnic groups, and the O.J. murder trial. I was also asked to comment about the pre-trial and trial publicity surrounding the Robert Blake and Phil Spector murder trials, the L.A. riots, the L. A. earthquake (where I had to phone therapize an L.A. area journalist who called to interview me about the awe and shock of the quake while she was still in shock awe and emotionally quaking); and, of course, there was 9/11.

But over some 30 years of doing media interviews I was mostly B-list (or B-role in the film biz) go-to guy: I have effectively helped to string out the story and keep the TV ratings up and the newspaper or magazine sales high.

There is a C-List story angle, of course. It springs into life after the A and B list story angles have been beaten into desiccated submission and little is left but their archival lives. Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, some little frisson of news resuscitates one of the participants in the original story, like, hypothetically, the death of the owner of Vitello's, an Italian restaurant in Studio City California where actor Robert Blake had dinner with his late wife, Bonnie, just before she was shot to death in their car. This shooting took place during the time Blake reportedly had gone back to the restaurant to retrieve his licensed revolver, something which he had left on the seat in the restaurant

(I'm not making this up. That's how his story went down, as you may recall. . Bonnie was not liked. Blake was acquitted. Convict actors who are criminal defendants in a Hollywood trial? Pay for their crimes? "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.")

That's a C-List story. It's tangential but it allows a sensational murder and trial to be headlined and to retrigger the public's imagination and thirst for another brief, shining moment. Putting O.J. name in a story or headline has the same effect for many as putting the word Mafia in a story, or putting a swastika on a book cover. Somebody is always interested, always willing to shell out the money to feed the beast of sensationalism. Most O.J. stories now pretend to be A-list angles but are really C-listers because, in reality, in the Van Allen Belt of stories, O.J. is now the O. N. (Old News) story that doesn't want to die. Old news with N. J. (No Juice). Stories on the recent Vegas-related arrest, trial, and conviction of O. J. are no exception. They have A- and B-list tangles but are essentially and evermore C-list stories.

Generally, I'm a B and C list kind of expert interview, perfect for a story on Post-Election doldrums, withdrawal, or depression. When one does a print interview generally the smallest amount of what one says is in the publication. TV or radio interviews are often longer, especially if they're live-seconds, sometimes, if they're taped and edited. My shortest media interview appearance was in the Michael Moore documentary Bowling For Columbine. I was on camera for 2 seconds and didn't know about it until a waiter at a restaurant in the Los Feliz area of Hollywood came up to be and told me he'd seen me (I was a steady customer there). Later, some of my students also came up to me and told me about my theatrical motion picture debut. I went to the theater and, surprise, I almost missed my screen time. It was that fast. How did they recognize me in that microscopic span of screen time?

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What was funny about it was I was never actually interviewed for the film. Someone had taken a clip of me on a television show discussing the relationship of media violence to real life violence and had mentioned that someone had blamed a murder on listening to Marilyn Manson ("the music [movie, or TV show] made me murder" is a defense that has NEVER WORKED for juries). What was even funnier was that I had said that pop culture did not turn choir boys into killers and that Mr. Manson most assuredly didn't cause the defendant to kill. At worst, Mansion was simply was part of the self-hyping, adrenalin-stoking ritual that the defendant went through before the murder. So, my brief appearance in the film not only was not voluntary but presented a 180 degree reversal of my actual position on the subject. Life in the fast lane.

So, back to the premise of this blog: Did I think that the poll watchers, the news junkies, the impassioned Obama/Democrat supporters are now going through a withdrawal? Are they going through a depression, a let down, with the end of the election and the waning buzz from an adrenalin surge that tickled the brain and raced through the body after the realization that all the hard work, the contributions, the wishin', the hopin' actually did pay off? Not in a movie or a TV show. It paid off in the real world, the U.S. world, the world where hearts and dreams get shattered far more often than they get realized. Will that still produce a withdrawal? Was it all in the struggle rather than the realization?

Part 2 will talk to the details of election withdrawal and why this election is really quite different than previous presidential elections, at least in modern times, modern media times, in Obama time. (Yeah, you guessed it. I'm stringing this out.)