WCS 54: Above all else, remain entertained

If Presidential elections played out as they once did, would you even know what to do?

Of all people, it was Hollywood Boulevard power player Jimmy Kimmel who said aloud the quiet part about the America’s concentration of corporate media and its relationship to electoral politics.

“(Gov Tim) Walz and (Sen JD) Vance, they stuck to the issues. They showed each other a lot of respect. It was very boring,” the talk-show host said live on air, following Tuesday’s low-hype, traditional Vice Presidential debate. “I’ll be honest: I like these things better with Trump. I really do.”

On Wednesday night, Kimmel took a swipe at cleaning up that “joke,” as its ramifications certainly were being chewed on around town.

But, of course he deep-down adores our political shit show, and not just because negative attention from the biggest bully has turned the former Man Show host into a minor political player. The Walt Disney Company, payer of Kimmel’s ABC salary, loves it. The spectacle of Donald Trump takes ABC’s coverage dollar farther, clearing out the lion’s share of our other legitimate issues. Kimmel, meanwhile, gets to work less at his cultural commentary, focusing on the singularly popular concern that is the GOP nominee.

And our nervous energy keeps us clicking on content.

I used to say that Ta-nehisi Coates had nothing to teach me about being Black in America. That was the single most arrogant idea in a life-sized quiver of arrogant ideas.

The only development that capitalist media worries about more than boring, policy-focused Presidential election material is the prospect of one candidate taking a decisive lead.

Coming up next, from the makers of Palestine: Victims Without an Oppressor is Nailbiter, 2024… no matter how the polls have closed.

It’s all just programming. We are all just programming.

---

Oldster asked for my goals…

This week I answered The Oldster Magazine questionnaire. The work really made me dig down and think about issues I rarely consider. The questionaire and my answers should be published before Christmas.

One response that won’t surprise Body High readers explores my desire to compete in an 800-meter race at a future Senior Games event. Getting together that answer brought me to this world-record Sebastian Coe performance from 1981.

Coe was one of the great middle-distance runners and happens to be president of World Athletics. The grainy footage above is breathtaking. I’m more inspired to compete than before seeing it.

---

Are you capable of counting down with me?

10 Suge Knight was crazy right

The edgy, shoot-up-the club vibe was starting to die down a little when I moved from Hollywood to Brooklyn in 1998. Tupac and Biggie were already deceased young men. And even though the move was for the stated purpose of getting solvent and recognized via storytelling for a Manhattan sports magazine, it was hip hop that intrigued me more and more. Fiending for that culture is what turned me into a regular reader of F.E.D.S.: Finally Every Dimension of the Streets.

It was in F.E.D.S. that I read about the gangster father who got Combs status as a crime-world made man. The knowledge left me thinking that, despite a steady deluge of serious misdeeds, the music mogul would never get incarcerated, would never get shot.

Nearly 25 years later, Cassie’s lawsuit came and the walls around Diddy began to crash down, leaving him knowing that a fate less merciful than a bullet is headed his way. The turn helped me remember what Suge Knight said at the 1995 Source Awards.
YouTube