Eclectic News Brief ENB #46 Iraq War Special

richard@bluestein.com

Richard:

I only recently started downloading some of your video podcasts (via iTune), and only this week decided to grab them all if only the skim through them.

I tend to be acquisitive and hoard podcasts I like; I mention this as context for telling you that up to #46 I've kept just less than half of the previous casts. There were a few noteworthy moments where you generally scooped the mainstream such as when you specified that the housing bubble had burst and that the economy was sliding, and said so at least a couple of months before the mainstream dared to let the public in on the possibility that the economy was tanking. But I usually had trouble getting past your presentation of the material.

But I'm not writing to offer criticism (which I can do in an instance for most anything). I'm writing because with #46 I couldn't let go unremarked the moment when you finally found your own voice.

Recognizing that you've made snide remarks and side comments in the past, this was the first time I could hear you -- that is, that I could hear You, and not something predigested or kneejerk.

this is perhaps uncomfortable for some people to digest, and may even have happened because you were moved to a place of discomfort by the Democracy Now report of the IVAW news conference. But I think (IMNSHO) you need to return to this place more frequently. This is the real part, the difficult to ignore message coming from within you, the words spoken from the heart that humans pay attention to. It is key.

I realize you're probably not going to want to abandon doing what you've done and make from-the-heart statements only from now on - and I'm not suggesting that. But it was so much more worthwhile to hear you say what you think and feel than to hear you read the news, even the eclectic and under-reported news, as useful as that is.

I've made the same mistake myself, and I suspect you'll find the right balance in your own time. But this is a turning point for you, and I'd like you to take notice, so I'm writing.

Back when newsrooms in radio and TV stations used teletype machines to print news bulletins, and they'd come scrolling of the machine in one long roll of paper, the newsreading form of giving headlines and short news stories was known as "rip and read". Even with whatever TeleprompTer-like device you seem to use, and the content you're choosing, 95% of what you've said so far has been rip and read. But with #46 you've allowed yourself to present something with qualities head and shoulders above rip and read. Keep it up.

Thanks for letting this stranger be an opinionated fuck about your work.

Bill Stella
I have a somewhat out of date profile which fills in a little about what I've done over the years at www.myspace.com/bearealman