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AIR AMERICA RIP

2010-02-01T15:54:00.005-05:00

For information about my company Gold Village Entertainment and our clients, please go to Goldve.com. The following is a piece I wrote for the web site Downwithtyranny.com that also ran on alternet.org following the announcement that Air America Radio was going into Chapter 7 bankruptcy:

"AIR AMERICA RIP"
By: Danny Goldberg

I think that the New York Times got it exactly wrong on Monday in declaring that “the enduring legacy of Air America’s failure is that political media from either side of the aisle is more successful when run as a business instead of a crusade”

That very attitude is what has hobbled the growth of liberal talk radio but conservatives have never thought about media that way and they still don’t. The week before Air America shut its doors the Rev James Dobson announced that he was starting a new radio show with his son Ryan, a thirty-nine year tattooed surfer who shares his father’s ultra-conservative views. On Dobson’s Facebook page he asked his supporters to fund the new show “Your participation will be greatly appreciated, especially during this time when startup costs will be very expensive. The budget for the first year, including the costs of radio airtime, will be about two million dollars.“

Conservatives believe in doing whatever it takes to promote their ideas. Richard Viguerie, viewed as one of the architects of the modern conservative movement, wrote a book in 2004 called ‘America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media To Take Power” in which he explains how the right wing used talk radio among other tools. Viguerie stresses that conservatives understand that ideological change does not usually occur over night, that it takes patience and long term thinking to build a movement.

In the early nineteen seventies the Washington Post and New York Times were instrumental in helping expose the Watergate scandal and publishing the Pentagon papers. Conservatives felt that liberals had an advantage in setting the agenda because of the influence of New York and D.C, newspapers on the national media. In 1976 Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post and it has lost money every year since, the total loss estimated to be more than half a billion dollars. In 1983, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon created the Washington Times, which has also lost money every year. Widely published reports place Moon’s losses at over $1 billion on the Times and other political media including a purchase the venerable wire service UPI. These money losing properties have put dozens of conservatively slanted stories onto the national radar screen, altered the framing of every important political issues, and nurtured virtually every right wing pundit who now thrive as TV talking heads.

More recently, Phillip Anschutz bought the money losing Weekly Standard from Murdoch and announced plans to invest in more conservative media and his fellow billionaire and former Republican Treasury Secretary Pete Petersen started a digital news service called The Fiscal Times.

The fatal flaw in Air America’s genetic code was the pretense that liberal talk radio was a great business opportunity, that progressives could have their cake and eat it too, do well by doing good, make big salaries and get a great return on investment while also pursuing an ideological agenda. Sure, every once in awhile political media like Michael Moore’s movies or Rush Limbaugh’s radio show will make money, but for those interested in influencing public opinion, media in all venues is vital whether they make money or not.

Air America’s lesser-known competitor, Democracy Radio had a more coherent rationale. It was set up as a non-profit and it spawned the Ed Schultz Show and the Stephanie Miller show both of which survive but which may never have been launched were it not for Democracy Radio’s initial funding. (Democracy Radio folded in 2006 as a result of a lack of financial support from progressive donors).

Some blame bad management for the failure of both Air America and Democracy Radio and since I spent one unhappy year midway through Air America’s life as its CEO I suppose I am one of a dozen or so who are in that category. But if progressives really wanted to address talk radio they could have started competing companies with different management . Instead, most of the monied progressive community did the opposite of their conservative counterparts and bought into the notion that media should stand or fall based on media market forces.

It’s not that the left doesn’t have money to spend on communication. Labor unions, public interest groups, and Internet activists have raised and spent tens of millions of dollars on TV spots and digital marketing even during non election years.

138 million people commute to and from work in automobiles in which they can look neither at computer or TV screens .For around one third of them, or 48 million, AM talk radio is their entertainment of choice. Of the top 10 AM talk radio shows, 9 are hosted by extreme conservatives giving the right wing a captive audience of around 40 million listeners a week. at least 7 times greater than the combined audience for Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. Talk radio’s audience dwarfs that of every other category in the news political arena including the network news and Sunday shows, NPR’s public affairs shows, and political websites.

It was not pre-ordained that all of the millions of people who identify with the “tea-party” movement would believe the conservative narrative that the economic ills afflicting the middle class are the result of liberalism. But given that tens of millions of them had no alternative explanations or solutions, it is not surprising that conservative ideas and candidates are ascendant.

Many progressives blame the current political climate on the Obama administration, and I disagree with a number of Obama’s decisions including his Afghanistan policy. But why should progressives expect any President to lead the way on our issues given the nature of our political system? At the outset of the Obama administration there were dozens of columns reminding progressives that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had told the liberal activists of his day to “make” him initiative progressive programs by mobilizing public opinion. Instead, most of the modern left spent the last year talking to itself while conservatives convinced millions of people that global warming is a hoax, that torture in required to keep America safe, that non-millionaires in Canada and Europe have worse health care than their American counterparts. The right wing could never have convinced 45% of Americans that the Democrats wanted death panels if their outreach was limited to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page and the three million people a night who watch Fox’s highest rated shows.

Perhaps the major liberal donors have become confused because they became accustomed to focus groups and polling are very useful tools in predicting short-term public reaction to political messages. They can tell you if a particular TV spot will turn off swing voters two weeks before an election. But long-term political ideas have a more complex and uncertain creative path. Conservatives understand the need to focus on both long and short-term political communication.

Or maybe media advisors and consultants who advise labor unions and an assortment of progressive groups on media strategy are culturally uncomfortable with the crude language of AM talk radio and other mass culture, or are often so nervous about losing control of” their “message.” Whatever the reasons, the theory of leaving political media to the marketplace has enabled a status quo in which one third of the American public are never exposed to progressive ideas or even to facts that are incompatible with the right-wing narrative.

To be fair---the radio business has an idiosyncratic culture that is hard for outsiders to grasp. In 1987 when the Reagan administration ended the Fairness Doctrine the cultural landscape was such that many conservatives felt under-served by the mainstream media of the time and Rush Limbaugh was able to use his considerable broadcasting skills to attract millions of them as an audience and revive the economic fortunes of AM radio stations around the country. At the same time, as described in Viguerie’s book, conservatives focused on small market stations for religious and political purposes and helped create an infrastructure that continues to serve them well. Traditional radio stations attract audiences based on “formats” that grouped together demographic cohorts. Thus music radio is either R&B, pop, rock, country or various versions or hybrids of those genres. A listener to a country station would not want to hear a Metallica song programmed sandwiched in between Toby Keith and Sugarland. While liberals ignored AM radio, viewing it as a passé medium for troglodytes, conservatives honed their skill at talk radio and by the nineties, most liberal moderate talk hosts had been taken off the air because they did not fit into what was now the “conservative talk ” format.

Many of the radio executives who programmed the right wing radio stations of produced the shows did not agree with their politics but, like most business people, they gravitated to the easiest path to make the most money the quickest. These “radio people” understandably were not going to be motivated by an ideological agenda, even one that they agreed with. But activists and public interest groups are supposed to be motivated by ideology.

When Air America and Democracy Radio launched in 2003 they faced, not only a lack of liberal talent with the broadcasting chops to entertain radio listeners, but also a lack of stations on which to place programs even by someone with the celebrity of Al Franken. One of the main reasons a sizeable investment was needed (though nothing like the scale of the investment made by Murdoch and Moon in money losing right wing newspapers) was the need to create enough programming- to fill up the time of stations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so as to justify a “progressive talk” formatted station.

Conservative talk had a 17 year head start and so there just weren’t enough experienced broadcasters with progressive politics to create a format. Identifying, developing and marketing talent takes a lot of experimentation with a predictable amount of failures in order to establish successes. This is part of the reason it took even an ultimately successful company like Fox News years to turn a profit.

Another need for investment was to market a brand new format with lots of personalities new to radio and to give incentives for radio station owners in smaller markets to give the new format a chance.

There are some who claim that liberals are just not good at talk radio. Right-wingers accuse liberal talkers of being elitists who don’t understand radio entertainment. Some on the left feel that the talk radio audience demands a simplistic angry polarizing tone that is incompatible with progressive values. Both theories are nonsense. I am an unabashed Al Franken fan, but even if one disliked his style or politics, the fact is that his show attracted several million listeners a week on AM talk radio stations and because of the under-development of the liberal talk format, it could only be heard, at its peak, by around half of America’s radio listeners. Ed Schultz has reached a comparable number and he too has not been able to get broadcast in markets where “conservative talk” is the only game in town. The apex of Air America’s penetration was in 2005-2006 and it not only helped broaden the audience for progressive bloggers who were regular guests, but it gave activists like Cindy Sheehan access to Americans who do not listen to the Amy Goodman Show or read The Nation. Just as conservative investment in the intellectual world eventually produced legitimate conservative academics and writers, so would liberal investment in the populist media result in more Rachel Maddows.

In Viguerie’s final chapter he wrote that Air America “was the most ambitious effort by liberals so far to compete with conservatives in the alternative media marketplace. “ He nervously acknowledged Air America for “turning to articulate entertainers with liberal political convictions” But he was confident that it would not succeed because of what he called liberals “fear of long-term commitment,” adding “Conservatives didn’t build their alternate media empire overnight. It was the result of decades of hard work.” Viguerie presciently observed that Air America had “inadequate capitalization. Starting a network with clout will cost a lot more than the $20-30 million they claim to have raised. And to start to expect to make a profit in just four years in unrealistic. Ask Rupert Murdoch.”

Although the earliest and wackiest group of Air America owners overspent on a few items like studios and initial salaries, within months the primary characteristic of Air America was a lack of cash for marketing, for affiliate growth and for talent development. The pressure from wealthy liberals was not to create a long-term strategy as conservatives had done but to show a business model that would turn a profit in a year or two

Thus, several ill-fated iterations of Air America were driven by delusional projections of traditional business viability and consequently misled themselves and staff regarding what resources would be available and then inflicted onerous cuts on a business that was already underfunded. During my brief tenure I got thousands of hate mails form fans of comedian Marc Maron whose morning drive time show (the time when most commuters listen) was cancelled to move Rachel Maddow from the obscure 5 AM time slot into the morning drive. Given her talent and discipline it is likely that Rachel Maddow’s success was pre-ordained, but there is no question that the audience she developed in drive time was one of the assets she brought to MSNBC. However if there hadn’t been such a cash crunch, there would have been a way of developing Maddow and keeping Maron and also giving more talent a real chance.

By 2004, the radio business, after years of robust growth that made it a darling of investment bankers, was beginning to feel the erosion of its business model experienced by all “old media.” The idea that conventional investors would find a liberal talk syndication company a sexy investment was laughable. Contrary to published reports, there were and are numerous “radio people” involved in running various versions of progressive radio but they all found that it was not a particular good business based on pure economics. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t and isn’t a good political investment for progressives whose agenda is to battle conservative ideology.

Thom Hartmann, Bill Press, Randy Rhodes, Stephanie Miller, Ron Reagan, and many other liberal radio survivors deserve all the credit in the world for their resourcefulness and heir commitment. But the broader progressive community should not be leaving them to a Darwinian world while the likes of James Dobson continue to raise ideological money to further broaden the hold of right wing mythology on the minds of 48 million commuters who happen to like talk radio’s rhythms.

Gold Village Entertainment

2009-10-05T11:47:00.003-04:00

In 2007 I returned to management with the formation of Gold Village Entertainment (GVE), which initially consisted of myself, and Jesse Bauer representing Steve Earle and Allison Moorer. Since then we have added four more executives, Brady Brock, Cyndy Villano, Laura Benanchietti, and Toy Vano.

The company’s website Goldve.com has more info on the company and contains a complete client list and info on each of the artists we represent. As of October, 2009 this list consists of:

The Cranberries, just reunited. The group will be touring North America November-December,2009 and Europe starting in late February. GVE also manages Cranberries lead singer Dolores O’Riordon whose current album The Journey is out on Rounder Records in North America and Cooking Vinyl Records elsewhere.

Steve Earle who is touring worldwide in the wake of the release of his album Townes.

Allison Moorer recording a new album for Ryko Records, which will be released in early 2010. She also appears and sings in the forthcoming film We The People.

The Hives who are commencing writing for their next album, expected out in spring, 2010.

Rickie Lee Jones, just signed to Concord Records. Her new album “Balm In Gilead” will be released November, 2009. (co-managed by Peter Wark)

Tom Morello whose new group Street Sweeper Social Club with Boots Riley of The Coup is getting attention world-wide.

The Old 97s who will have a new album out in 2010. GVE also manages Old 97s lead signer Rhett Miller who will be touring in Europe with Steve Earle

Ben Lee, who recently re-formed his first group Noise Addict with Lou Barlow and released an album free on the Internet.

Care Bears On Fire whose first album Get Over It is out on S-Curve Records. They are about to appear in an episode of the Nickelodeon series “True Jackson” playing themselves and performing their song “Everybody Else”

Joseph Arthur who is performing regularly at the City Winery in New York and working on songs for a new album. (co-managed by Peter Wark)

David Broza (just finished recording an album of new songs David wrote based on previously unpublished poems by the late Townes Van Zandt. Steve Greenberg’s S-Curve Records will be releasing in early 2010.

The Grates an Australian group ,now touring North America whose current album Teeth Lost Hearts Won if gold in Australia and just been released in North America by Thirty Tigers Records.

Ian Hunter, whose current album Man Overboard has gotten great reviews .Ian has just appeared to adoring crowds at the Mott The Hoople re-union shows in London.

School of Seven Bells finishing an extensive world tour and beginning work on a new album, which will be released by Vagrant Records in early 2010. (GVE co-manages School of Seven Bells with Ryan Gentles company Wizkid Management).

A-Camp is a group consisting of Nina Persson former lead singer of The Cardigans, Nathan Larson, formerly of Shudder To Think, and Niclas Frisk. Their most recent album, Colonia was released in 2009.

Harry Klemfuss

2009-07-31T11:40:00.001-04:00

My father in law, Harry Klemfuss passed away last week at the age of 88. He was a doting grandfather to our children Katie and Max and his twinkling blue eyes were almost always accompanied by a clever, sometimes astringent commentary on whatever was going on in our house or in the world. Although we never talked much about it, in his younger days Harry was a prominent PR guy, a profession dear to my heart. His brother Richard Klemfuss wrote the following obituary for him:

Harry F. Klemfuss, a career publicist during the mid-20th century and credited as the male champion who gave inspirational birth to National Secretaries Day in 1952, died July 27 of natural causes. Klemfuss, 88 years old, had been hospitalized at Chilton Memorial Hospital in Pompton Plains, New Jersey, where he died.

His surviving wife Olga Yukich Klemfuss, a consultant with the national Girl Scouts of the USA, resides at the couple’s home in Ringwood, New Jersey. A daughter, Rosemary Carroll, an entertainment attorney in New York City, her husband Danny Goldberg, and their children Kathryn and Max Goldberg, are residents of New York City.

Klemfuss will be cremated and buried in a family plot in California. Memorials can be made to the Girl Scouts of the USA.

The year 1952 – before Betty Freidan had written the landmark book The Feminine Mystique, Klemfuss, a publicity man at Young & Rubicam Advertising, was assigned The Dictaphone Corporation account and quickly noticed national surveys which identified a growing shortage of secretaries in the burgeoning post-war economy. He also felt strongly the secretaries deserved a special compliment: these were the gender heirs of Rosie the Riveter and the auxiliary military women who had served valiantly in World War II and Korea. Himself a veteran of the Pacific War, he convinced U.S. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer of this view and registered National Secretaries Week and the Day in the national calendar. Klemfuss won the support of Mrs. Mary Barrett, President of the National Secretaries Association, and C.K. Woodbridge, Chairman of The Dictaphone Corporation, who agreed to head the first National Secretaries Week Council. Secretary Sawyer acclaimed the first National Secretaries Week and Secretaries Day in June of 1952. In the ensuing 57 years to the present, the last full week of April is celebrated as National Secretaries Day as the centerpiece of a week set aside to honor their skills and civilizing influence. It has metamorphosed in the Information Age to become Administrative Professionals’ Day, recognizing that the national memory has been fast-forwarded from that earlier time when there were fewer career opportunities for women.

From the very beginning the annual publicity campaign sold lots of Dictaphones. It also altered the collective consciousness of “I’m-too-busy-to-notice” executives. The new awareness suggested to the bosses resulted in an avalanche of floral bouquets and boxes of candy appearing on the desks of their newly discovered partners in business. Perhaps next to Mothers’ Day it continues to hold that special place among our national holidays.

Public relations efforts for other sponsors during his career included the introduction of aureomycin for Lederle Laboratories, and of Amtrak rail service; General Electric home products, the greater New York Red Cross, and tourism promotion for the Cayman Islands.

# # #

BUMPING INTO GENIUSES now in Paperback

2009-06-02T11:51:00.004-04:00

This website is set up as a reference point to my book Bumping Into Geniuses.
For updated information about my business Gold Village Entertainment please go to the Gold Village website. I am not a very disciplined of accomplished blogger but I am using this site to put up comments or links that connect to the book. I hope the visitor will forgive the ego trip of mentioning some of the reviews I was most flattered by:

My father Victor passed away the year before it was published. As long as I can remember he read the New York Times cover to cover to cover. He boasted incessantly about me, my brother Peter and my sister Rachel and I know he would have been proud of the New York Times review.

Nirvana biographer Everett True wrote the following for the London newspaper The Guardian
Although it says a few bad as well nice things about me I recommend Everett’s book Nirvana: The Biography.

One of my heroes, Paul Krassner, author and creator and long-time editor of The Realist was kind enough to review it for the Los Angeles Times, a quote from which graces the cover of the paperback.

No history of the nineteen sixties is complete without understanding the contribution of Paul Krassner. More on Paul at http://www.paulkrassner.com/pkbio.htm.

On my mini book tour I found that many of the signings were videotaped. This one at Google captures the vibe of such readings. And the questions the followed.

The most flattering response I got to the book was from Andrew Loog Oldham who managed and produced the Rolling Stones for the first several years of their career including such classics as "Satisfaction," "Play With Fire," "The Last Time," "Paint It Black," "Mother's Little Helper," and "19th Nervous Breakdown." Andrew spoke very flatteringly of my book on his Sirius Radio Show and was kind enough to send me his two riveting memoirs of the mid and late nineteen sixties Stoned and 2Stoned. More on Andrew at http://www.andrewloogoldham.com.

Bumping Into Geniuses available at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Borders
IndieBound

Lee Solters

2009-06-02T10:25:00.003-04:00

As I describe in "Bumping Into Geniuses" one of my early mentors in was Lee Solters. I wrote the following tribute to Lee for Billboard (which coincidentally was there I got my first job in the music business as a teenager in the Fall of 1968) .

"Heaven needed a great PR guy," said an email from Larry Solters announcing that his father Lee Solters has passed away in his sleep on May 16th,2009 at the age of eighty-nine. Born in Brooklyn as Nathan "Nussy" Cohen, Lee wrote about High School basketball for the New York Times , graduated from NYU with a degree in journalism and then embarked on a PR career than literally spanned seventy years.

In 1972 when I was twenty-two I became the token rock and roll guy at Lee’s company ,then called Solters Sabinson and Roskin which represented literally half of Broadway’s musicals, several Hollywood films, stars like Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra and Alan King, as well as The Four Seasons restaurant in New York, Cesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus .

I was part of an insular clique of New York rock writers but Lee disabused me of the notion that PR was about getting favors . Our job was to create stories . The key words in his lexicon were "angles" that could shape a lead paragraph, and "items" with news or jokes that could be serviced to the columns still written by the likes of Earl Wilson .

In his earlier days Lee had flacked for Cary Grant and Mae West. With his thick glasses, boxy suits and a pugnacious New York accent Lee seemed to have sprung out of a nineteen forties movie. I was initially intimidated by his gruff exterior, but I soon discovered that Lee was always the least cynical person in the room, a happy warrior whose frenzy to get press for his clients was rooted in an almost child-like enthusiasm . To Lee, publicity was end in itself. A good PR scam had a poetic validity independent of any particular client.

My first assignment was saxophonist Stan Getz who had a gig at the Rainbow Grill. Getz was long out of fashion with music critics and had no new record to talk about. At Lee’s morning staff meeting he impatiently asked me a series of questions and unearthed the fact that Getz had a birthday coming up. "So do a birthday party" he shouted as if I had over-looked the most obvious opportunity in the world.

Guided by more experienced colleagues, I stammered my way through a conversation with Getz, and fashioned a "birthday party" at the nightclub which was attended by Louis Armstrong’s widow Louise, and musicians Zoot Sims and Dizzy Gillespie. Of course it wasn’t a real party, but a photo-op scheduled in the morning for the convenience of local TV crews, two of whom, to my amazement, dutifully recorded Stan blowing out his "birthday candles."

As I was leaving the office that night Lee yelled out to me. Didn’t I want to stay and watch the coverage on the TV in his office? As he switched between the two channels the old pro beamed with satisfaction. The stunt had worked. Seeing that gleam in his eye, my life was never the same. He was a teacher not only of the craft of PR but of the art of enjoying every moment. Later in 1973 Led Zeppelin became a client of his firm and I was the day-to-day guy. When the band was robbed at the end of their American tour and the New York Daily News front page headline said "Led Zep robbed of $300g" he patted me on the shoulder approvingly and said "See if we hadn’t done our work these last few months they would have said "Rock band robbed."

Lee Solters kept working almost to the very end of his life having outlasted most of his partners, James O’Rourke, Harvey Sabinson, Sheldon Roskin and Monroe Friedman. In the last few years he worked with Jerry Digney. Occasionally I would run into Lee at big events where he would complain about photographers who tried to shoot Streisand from the wrong angle or recount the latest Michael Jackson drama.

In addition to his son Larry, Lee Solters is survived by his daughter, Susan Reynolds; his grandchildren, Jonah Reynolds and Maxie Solters; and his great-grandson, Elijah Reynolds.

Courtney Love

2008-09-25T15:48:00.000-04:00

Contrary to the wholly invented assertions on a few websites, I NEVER wrote anything to suggest that Courtney Love has anything to do with the "downfall of Nirvana." I said that when they became successful, sometimes Kurt asked her to articulate some of his professional concerns which changed after the band's explosive success. Thereafter, the band made several more successful albums and continued to tour. Nirvana was together and brilliant until the day Kurt Cobain killed himself. There was no "downfall," except for his death. As I write in the book, Kurt was plagued by demons that I believe were rooted in his childhood. He was prone to depression and was a drug abuser before Nirvana and long before he ever met Courtney. Everyone knows that both Kurt and Courtney had drug problems and like any couple, had their ups and downs. But the main thing I know about their relationship is that they loved each other and that Kurt hated it when people dissed Courtney. Kurt Cobain loved Courtney Love and so do I.

Danny Goldberg

BUMPING INTO GENIUSES

2008-09-12T13:00:00.003-04:00

The impending publication of my new book "Bumping Into Geniuses" made me reactivate this site. It is a memoir about the rock and roll business starting with the Woodstock Festival which I reviewed for Billboard when I was nineteen and ending with the death of Warren Zevon in 2004. It's my love letter to rock and roll and the rock and roll business which has sustained me all these years. The title comes from a story about Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun that David Geffen told after Ahmet died.

As a young man, Geffen had asked Ahmet how to get rich in the music business and was told "Keep walking around until you bump into a genius and when you do, hold on and don't let go." Among those I bumped into and was lucky enough to work with were Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Nirvana, Hole, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Earle and Zevon.

After having taken a year off from the music business to be CEO of Air America Radio , I returned to artist management in 2006. My company Gold Village Entertainment represents Steve Earle, The Hives, Allison Moorer, The Old 97s, Rhett Miller, Tom Morello, Ben Lee and Care Bears on Fire among others. For more information on Gold Village go to http://www.goldve.com.

My previous writing has mostly been about politics so I feel I should say: Plese support your local Democratic candidate unless they are a "blue dog" who votes like a Republican. Please vote for and contribute to you can to the Barack Obama for President campaign. http://www.barackobama.com

No matter what happens in the election it is important to protect our civil liberties so please support the American Civil Liberties Union. http://www.aclu.org.

EXCERPT FROM INTRODUCTION to "Bumping Into Geniuses"

"There aren't any secrets," Atlantic Records President Jerry Wexler growled at me, as if I were the dumbest person he had ever met. I was nineteen and it was the winter of 1969, more than thirty-five years before Wexler would be immortalized by Richard Schiff's portrayal of him in the movie Ray. I was writing a column for the weekly trade magazine Record World when Wexler had asked one of his executives to gather a group of young journalists who wrote about rock and roll. The real Wexler was far more imposing than the cinematic version. He was broad shouldered, with a salt and pepper beard and sunken eyes that gave him the look of an Old Testament prophet. He had a defiantly thick Bronx accent, an intimidating intellect, and the ultimate rock and roll and R&B pedigrees.
Some months earlier, at the storied Greenwich Village nightclub The Village Gate, I had seen a talented R&B singer named Judy Clay dedicate her hit, "Storybook Children," to Wexler who stood up and waved with an understated noblesse oblige.
I had no idea what a record company President did but I was stunned that such a soulful singer would publicly acknowledge a mere businessman. But I soon discovered that Wexler had also worked with Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, and Sam and Dave, and had been the person at Atlantic who actually signed Led Zeppelin.
My awe at Wexler's résumé was reinforced by seeing his house in Great Neck, Long Island, which had an entire room filled with gold records and a living room with original Legers. Amidst thick marijuana smoke, Wexler played records on his state of the art stereo, alternating an acetate of a forthcoming Delaney and Bonnie album with the Beatles Abbey Road. It was a relief to know that even an insider like Wexler was a Beatles fan. " Those guys sure know what they're doing," he sighed listening to the end of "Carry That Weight." During a moment between songs, in a lame attempt to enter the conversation, I asked Wexler if he was going to an upcoming conference on the music business. "I never go to those things," he snarled, "The premise is that you can go there and learn secrets. First of all there aren't any secrets." He paused dramatically and then with a wolfish grin concluded, "and second of all, if there were any secrets, we wouldn't tell them."
Over the next several decades I would come to understand what he meant. Although I never came close to equaling Wexler's historical contribution to the music business, I was lucky enough to find myself in many situations that would make rock history. I had a press pass to the Woodstock Frstival. I worked for Led Zeppelin from 1973 to 1976. I managed Nirvana when Nevermind came out and Bonnie Raitt when she won four Grammys. I did PR for Kiss and Electric Light Orchestra. At the peak of Fleetwood Mac's popularity I helped launch Stevie Nicks' solo career. And twenty-four years after meeting Wexler I was given his old job as President of Atlantic Records.
**
I can't be objective about the music business. I know it hurt a lot of people; artists were often lied to, royalties weren't always paid, bad people sometimes got promoted while good ones were fired. Drugs, misogyny, and death stalked rock and roll. A lot of shlock was produced. A lot of pretense masked shallow, materialistic quests for fame and money. It's not like I don't know these things and it's not that I mind writing about them. It's just that the part of the music business I know best, the rock and roll business, also produced and popularized a lot of music that I love. And it gave me and a lot of my friends a place in the world.
One nonsecret of the rock and roll business was that no one became a rock star by accident or against their will. Bob Dylan's memoir, Chronicles, begins not with a reference to Woody Guthrie or Allen Ginsberg, but with a meeting Dylan had as a young man with music publisher Lou Levy. Levy showed him the studio on the west side of Manhattan where Bill Haley and the Comets had recorded "Rock Around the Clock," which is widely considered the song that made rock and roll music a part of mainstream American culture.
Folk music did have an aesthetic that existed separate and apart from commerciality. But the very point of Dylan "going electric" was not merely that he was adapting a more complex musical backdrop for his songs but that he was consciously entering a world and a business defined, at the time, by the Beatles. One of the salient points about Dylan's rock single "Like A Rolling Stone" was that it went to number one on the pop charts. If it hadn't been a hit, it wouldn't have mattered anywhere as much. Members of the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, The Lovin Spoonful, and The Byrds all started as folkies. Far from selling out, they were buying into a rock and roll culture and business that from the very beginning had been as much or more about money and success than about the nuances of the art. The tradeoff was that rock and roll was a vehicle that could impact millions of more people and yes, make artists lots of money The contradictions between art and commerce were not something that took folk artists by surprise, but was in implicit in their decision to enter the world of rock and roll in the first place.
I was one of millions of rock fans who went to High School in the nineteen sixties and one of a thousand or so who figured out a way into the business of rock and roll in the years that followed. I had all of the contradictions of rock and roll. Like most of my colleagues, I soon got caught up in the sometimes grim reality of what did and what did not make money. And like most of them I never stopped being a fan.
At a memorial service for Ahmet Ertegun the founder of Atlantic Records and Wexler's partner and boss, David Geffen repeated one of Ahmet's aphorisms about the rock business. The way to get rich was to keep walking around until you bumped into a genius and when you did --hold on and don't let go. Of course no genius was likely to let you hold on very long if you didn't have anything to offer them. One had to know something valuable about aspects of the way the business worked. Some successful rock businessmen started as record producers. Some began as tour managers or concert promoters .Many offered financial expertise. I began in the subculture of rock criticism and publicity but, over the years, developed a reasonable number of clues about radio promotion, the workings of record companies and the dynamics of touring as well.
I was in tenth and eleventh grade in 1965 when the rock and roll business was in the middle of a dramatic expansion and reinvention that began with the launch of The Beatles the year before. Although The Beatles had initially come across like a turbo-charged version of the pop pin-up idols that had preceded them, they soon spawned an intensification of focus on rock and roll by both artists and fans. In March, 1965, Dylan released his first "electric" album, Bringing It All Back Home, a coherent and brilliant body of original material such as "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Gates of Eden" which was a dramatic contrast to disposable pop/rock albums that had one or two hits and lots of filler. (Even The Beatles' early albums had contained a number of "cover" versions of old songs to pad out the band's original material.) In July 1965, the Rolling Stones released Out Of Our Heads, much of it edgy and rebellious for the time (this was the album that had "Satisfaction," and the first ironic commentary on the record business itself "Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man"). Responding to the challenge in December 1965, The Beatles released Rubber Soul, which was widely considered their first "serious" album. These albums and others created and defined a new business. Previously, the primary rock and roll product was the "single," which sold for around a dollar. After 1965, the dominant creative and business product of rock and roll was the album, which sold for five to ten times as much.
To the new generation of rock fans like me, these albums were worth every penny. Every photo, every word of the liner notes, and every single song was another window into the minds of artists who were perceived by their fans as the coolest and most interesting people in the world.
Among the biggest and most talented rock stars I would meet when I got into the business, even those with the fiercest sense of integrity balanced their artistry with streaks of pragmatism.
In 1980, I worked with Bruce Springsteen in the context of making No Nukes, a political concert documentary that featured several live Springsteen performances. While waiting for the editors to cue up an edit one night, Bruce mused about how elusive a Top 40 hit single had been for him. (Born to Run was a press phenomenon, and the title song had been a huge album cut on rock radio stations, but Top 40 barely touched it.) I was amazed to hear that Bruce had recently met with Kal Rudman who ran a radio tip sheet called the Friday Morning Quarterback, filled with radio and promo hype. Rudman talked fast with glib high-pressure shtick. Although, like Springsteen, Rudman was based in New Jersey, he was the personification of the old school pop business hype that was the ultimate contrast to Springsteen's intense, poetic, unpretentious rock and roll persona. (In Rudman's tip sheet, a hit song was called a GO-rilla.) "Kal explained to me," said Springsteen in his urgent, hoarse drawl," that Top 40 radio is mainly listened to by girls and that my female demographic was low. And I thought about the songs on Darkness and I realized that the lyrics really were mostly for and about guys," he concluded, shaking his head ruefully. "So on this new album I'm working on-there are some songs for girls."
Just to hear the Boss utter the word "demographic" was a shock to my system, but then again why wouldn't he want to appeal to as many people as possible? Indeed, The River album was released several months later, and, in addition to its many poetic gems and macho celebrations that protected Springsteen's identity, the album included the first single "Hungry Heart," which featured a sped up vocal, a romantic lyric, and retro harmonies by the sixties pop duo, the Turtles, with the result that Springsteen did, as planned, finally have his first Top 40 hit.
Of course, the fantasy of rock and roll liberation was often dashed by the reality of the business. Drug and alcohol abuse were far too common. The tragic arc of Elvis Presley's career was a metaphor for the dark side of rock and roll: materialistic, druggy, and predictable. Kurt Cobain, the greatest rock artist I would ever work with, shot himself to death. He was only one of dozens of brilliant rockers who died decades before their time.
No one artist or group of artists can contain the sprawling and complex totality of rock and roll but I believe that between them the artists I write about here, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Hole, Warren Zevon and Steve Earle among others represent a broad and powerful portion of the psychic real estate of the rock and roll kingdom. I am not objective about any of them. I love them all.

To the visitors of this site

2006-07-26T11:27:00.000-04:00

This site was built for the publication of the paperback version of my book "How The Left Lost Teen Spirit" which came out in 2005 and the info on it pertains to that book. I never became as assiduous blogger although I periodically post at the Huffingtonpost.com and at tpmcafe.com My current business activities can be found in the near future at Gold Village Entertainment

Excerpt of new introduction from forthcoming paperback edition of my book

2005-01-10T11:39:00.000-05:00

Don Imus hated the title of the original hardcover edition of this book, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and urged me to change it to the subtitle, How the Left Lost Teen Spirit. "Dispatches sounds like you're a member of the Communist Party or something," the talk-radio superstar grumbled.

Besides being my personal homage to Kurt Cobain, I appropriated the phrase "teen spirit" to refer to the energy that a political movement needsï¿½not only to mobilize young people, but also to touch older people who make political decisions based on emotional and spiritual reasons rather than purely intellectual ones, and who are thus more affected by the language of popular culture than by the language of editorial pages. In the quarter-century since Ronald Reagan was elected president, Republicans and conservatives have understood such populist emotions better than Democrats and the political left.

This book is a rant in the form of a memoir. The rant is against a particular kind of liberal self-destructiveness that masquerades as pragmatism but has been, instead, one of the main causes of the decline of progressive political power despite widespread support for progressive political goals.

I have been in the music business for more than thirty years as a PRguy, a personal manager, and, for the last decade, a record-company president and owner. I have worked with rock legends such as Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, KISS, REM, Warren Zevon, and Nirvana, with pop icons such as Diana Ross and Madonna, with politically committed musicians like Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, and Steve Earle, and with gangsta rappers, singer-songwriters, boy bands, heavy-metal icons, classical tenors, country divas, jazz masters, and critical darlings, as well as with counterculture icons such as Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and CornelWest. I am fifty-four years old, a "baby boomer" and an "aging hippie." I am also a businessman. I live in New York now, which is where I was born. But for most of the 1980s I lived in Los Angeles, and when I visit there I am still a "Hollywood liberal," and have worked with such conservative targets as Norman Lear, Barbra Streisand, and Jane Fonda.

My wife, Rosemary Carroll, and I are parents of a girl and a boy, which, contrary to conventional wisdom, hasn't made us any more politically conservative. We have hosted fundraisers for, among others, liberal Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, and Ted Kennedy, and worked with independent progressive leaders like Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader (although not in 2004!).

To some establishment Democrats, it is people like me who have screwed up the party. I was against the war in Iraq, and I met with and supported Howard Dean in the early stages of the primary campaign, thinking that he was a strong vehicle for that opposition. I have been involved with political fundraising concerts, I'm an ACLU board member, and I'm a friend of Michael Moore. To me, it is the conventional wisdom prevailing in Washington, D.C. that has screwed up the party.

In November 2004, many Washington pundits began reviving the term "culture wars." Post-election polls indicated that "morality" was the number-one issue for voters. Of the 22 percent who said that issue motivated them, more than80 percent voted for George Bush. Democratic soul-searching began in earnest and focused primarily on three areas, all of which have long intrigued me: youth, spirituality and religion, and cultural positioning.

Recent Articles

2004-12-06T11:40:00.001-05:00

Hollywood on Trial
http://www.alternet.org/story/20567/

Looking Back, Looking Forward
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041220&c=5&s=forum

Advice to Kerry

2004-09-09T11:41:00.000-04:00

I dont blog much but post Republican convention I wanted to shares these thoughts:

Sept 6,2004 Labor Day

ADVICE TO THE KERRY CAMPAIGN:

The Clintonization of the Kerry campaign will not be enough to defeat George W. Bush .

Unlike the 1992 election where “it’s the economy stupid” was the right frame--- this year’s electorate is primarily concerned with security.

It’s safety stupid.

The Democrats already tried to run an election against George W. Bush in which they ignored security. They ran 2002 mid-terms on social security, jobs and prescription drugs and they suffered one of the worst mid-term defeats ever for a party not in control of the White House.

Bush’s decline in popularity 2003 and early 2004 had nothing to do with the economy it as the result of a huge and justifiable loss of public confidence about his conduct of the war on terror.

Some pollsters claim that their research shows that the economy is the biggest issue that comes out of their focus groups but it defies common sense to assume that the various colored alerts and the memory of the World Trade Center attacks do not dominate the psyche of American voters. Any research that tells politicians to ignore security is flawed and is failing to get at the core emotional issues effecting Americans.

Karl Rove knows this. The over riding theme of the Republican convention that created such a bump for Bush was related to September 11th and the war on terrorism . Tax cuts and other Republican issues were mentioned only in passing.

“Do you feel safer than you did four years ago?” The answer is “no.”

1.Bush was commander in chief on Sept. 11th. Richard Clarke’s book and testimony to the 9/11 commission makes it clear that the low significance Bush gave to the Al Qaeda threat made us less safe.

The 9/11 report itself says that America’s “domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction and they did not have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportations systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat. State and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI’s efforts. The public was not warned.”

As Thomas Powers points out in the New York Review of Books---“These things that were not done must have been not done by somebody and the somebodies reporting to them are not criticized by name” That is because the 9/11 commission was bi-partisan. The Democratic campaign need not be. George W. Bush was the responsible officer of the government who did not do the things that the 9/11 Commission said needed to have been done.

2.Bush was the commander in chief during the time of the prison abuses of Abu Gharib. Regardless of who is directly responsible—there is no question that the top level position papers of his legal counsel Albert Gonzalez and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld didn’t create the best climate for the command structure. Notwithstanding Rush Limbaugh’s assertions to the contrary, most Americans do not believe that this kind of humiliating and immoral conduct makes Americans safer.

3. Bush’s pre-emptive approach to foreign relations that led to war with Iraq, and that could lead to wars with Iran, Syria and North Korea….makes Americans less safe. We need governments and populations of other countries to help find and arrest terrorists. American workers and tourists around the world are now less safe.

4.Bush’s insistence on offending traditional American allies make sit far more difficult to get their help on the war on terror, and it makes the full $200 billion plus cost of the war
America’s burden. This reduced funds for domestic security, protection of our borders, better equipment for police and fire-fighters, etc. This makes America less safe.

5.Bush’s constant religious rhetoric about the war on terror, beginning with his reference to it as a “crusade” has needlessly converted millions of Moslems into anti-Americans. It’s bad enough that we have to deal with Jihadists like Al Qaeda, who indeed must be stopped by force. But making such fanatics sympathetic to extreme anti-American rhetoric—makes Americans less safe. Pakistan, which does have a real nuclear arsenal is less stable. These things too make Americans less safe.

In all of these areas, Kerry has policies that would make Americans more safe.

Reagan

2004-06-14T11:42:00.000-04:00

Ben Varkentine's blog points out that there is a great interview with Ron Reagan, the late President Reagan's son on the Salon.com site in which young Reagan excoriates the presidency of George W. Bush and makes is clear that he sees far more differences that similarities between his father and the current president. The interview was done a few months ago but it's highly relavent.Ron Reagan can make a huge conversation to the national conversation about leadership in months to come.

I wrote about Reagan a lot in my book because I feel that progressives can learn an enormous amount about how to communicate their ideas in an accessible, morally toned, emotionally meaningful way. As far the policy shortcomings of the Reagan administration, I again refer readers to the Nation whose issue this week has several excellent pieces, as well as to Paul Slansky's brilliant "The Clothes Have No Emperor" and Mark Green's "Reagan's Reign of Error." But none of Reagan's shortcomings obviate he accomplishment in making peace with Gorbachev when a lot of the neo-cons were against it.

Many of my progressive friends want to prod John Kerry . I agree that he needs to more clearly differentiate himself from Bush and he must not take for granted the votes of veryone fed up with the current regime. Young people and other undecided voters particularly need clarity or else they will be tempted not to vote or to vote for Nader.

However I cant help bt be optimisitc about Kerry. I think he has more of a common touch that his overly formal speaking style owuld indicate. I like the old photos with John Lennon. I like the emotiuonsl connection he has to many fellow veterans, and I thought his silent dignififed appearence at the Reagan library was exactly the right touch.

Nation

2004-05-26T14:54:00.001-04:00

Great issue of the Nation re punkvoter.com & youth vote issues.

Kerry, etc..

2004-05-11T14:54:00.002-04:00

May 11,2004.

This is my pollyanna blog--but it's how I feel today.

My book consisted mostly of complaints about how the political left and Democrats had screwed up in communicating with younger people and in using the popular American language. At this point in time, eleven monhts after it came out,(and eighteen months after I finished writing it) I think it's important to look at the positive changes
in the last year from the progressive standpoint.Part of being effective politically, part of speaking to young people and part of undersanding American culture is to understand the role of optimism and positivity. For progressives, things may still suck in many important ways--but things are much better than they were a year ago.First of all Kerry,whatever his flaws is a much better candidate than Gore was, and I believe at his core, is more progressive than Clinton was as well.Secondly, the war, and Bush's wierd stubborness about everything has created an environment in which there is much more interest than there has been in several election cycles. MTV execs have told me that at the peak of Clinton's schmoozing of MTV in 1992--the highest rating they got for a half hour program with him was a .6. Last month, MTV did a half hour with Kerry--with only very limited promtiion--and they got a 1.6--almost triple the
rating Clinton got at his peak...close to two million people.

Kerry's challenge is not to get overly influenced by pundits who pressure him to reach out to the mythical "center," and to focus--at least as much--on reaching out to the people who currently tell pollsters that would vote for Nader. Kerry need clear statements to distinguish himself from Bush in the minds of such voters. If he picked up the Nader vote--he'd be clearly ahead now.

Bush is anti-choice, Kerry is pro-choice.
Bush is for a consistutional amendment banning gay marriage, Kerry is against it.
Bush doe snot have a budget to fully fund Head Start, add police officers and fire fighters etc,Kerry is for those things.
Bush is for tax cuts for millionaires, Kerry is against them.
Bush is for cuts in environmental regulation, Kerry is for increases (not as much as progresives would like--but clearly better than Bush)
Bush support everything n the Patriot Act, Kerry is opposed to many of the most anti-civil libertarian provisions.Again not as much as I would like but far better than Bush.And its impossible to imagine Kerry appointing an Attorney Geenal who wouldnt be better on civil liberties than Ashcroft,even though its likely that ACLU types like myself will complain about certain policies of any government.
Bush is irrationally certain that his plan in Iraq is perfect--Kerry is rationally uncertain.Kerry needs to embrace the part of him that likes to think things over and contrast it with Bush's loony insistance on never admitting a mistake.Again, progressives may want a more accelerated exit from Iraq than Kerry will support--but there can be no quetion that Kerry could improve America's image in the world and would be less comitted to macho violent solutions to
a complex clash of civilizations than Bush is.

Meanwhile, Air Ameerica is up and running,proressive think tanks are being funded,Moveon.org has emerged as a populist progressive force, and the best seller list is filled with progressive books. Things could be better--but they could be a lot worse--and they have been...

Lack of Blogging

2004-03-15T14:55:00.001-05:00

Sorry I became such an unreliable blogger. With a "day job" as CEO of Artemis Records, (check Artemisrecords.com)being a parent of two school age kids, continued releases from RDV Books (upcoming Yossi Belin's memoir of the peace process) etc. I just havnt gotten back into the groove.

For what its worth, although I remain an admirer of what Howard Dean contributed to the Presidential race, I am an enthusiastic supporter of John Kerry. From a progressive point of view, he's the most exciting candidate to run in my lifetime.

I remain deeply committed to the political and cultural ideas in my book and I welcome correspondance at dgoldberg@artemisrecords.com.

Dean McGovern

2003-12-01T14:56:00.001-05:00

Dean is not McGovern

As so often happens in Washington, especially among would-be Democratic wise-men, the experts all agree about the popular favorite for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Newsweek's Howard Fineman wrote that many party insiders “ see Dean, as a disaster in the making: George McGovern Reloaded.” Columnist Bruce Bartlett wrote that Dean “is the most left-wing candidate to seriously compete for the Democratic nomination since George McGovern in 1972. “ On the Meet The Press Thanksgiving show, host Tim Russert asked half a dozen Washington journalists to reflect on the Dean/McGovern comparison.

Here are the logical arguments against this facile formulation:

1.America in 2004 is not America 1972, it is thirty two years later. 1972 really was in the wake on the nineteen-sixties and there really was a culture war going on in the country .Guys with long hair were still beaten up in bars in many parts of the country ,and not just in what we now refer to as “red” states. The Roe v Wade decision had not yet occurred and while abortion rights were every bit as divisive as they are today, only a small minority supported them. The legal by-products of the civil rights movement were less than a decade old and the anger and dislocation of suburban white because of school bussing,open housing etc was far greater than it is today. Profanity in entertainment had just been legalized by the courts. Thus the Republican epithet that McGovern stood for “amnesty ,acid and abortion” although untrue, had some resonance.
Today a pure anti-abortion position is more of a political liability than an asset. Trent Lott was driven from Republican leadership what was de rigeur for southern politicians in 1972. And in the new century, George W. Bush trades one liners with Ozzy Osborne and Republicans and , yes , southerners, are as likely to enjoy “Bad Santa,” or dance to rock and roll or hip hop as northern liberals are.

2.Geo W. Bush is not as popular as Nixon was and has a far weaker base. In the 1968 election, prior to 1972, the anti-liberal candidates combined, Nixon and George Wallace, got almost 10% more votes than the Democrat, Hubert Humphrey. In the 2000 election the left of center candidates, Gore and Nader got around two points MORE than the conservative candidates ,Bush and Buchanan.

3.McGovern took the left wing position on every issue. Dean does not.(Contrary to Bartlett’s assertion, there have been numerous more left leaning “serious” candidates than Dean in recent years including Gary Hart, Tom Harkin and Jesse Jackson). Dean is a centrist on economics(McGovern advocated giving $1000 to every man woman and child) and on gun laws where is to the right of Clinton and Gore. Dean supported the war against Afghanistan and the first Gulf war. Pundits who try to equate Dean’s having signed a civil unions bill for gays with the controversies of the sixties are kidding themselves. A recent Public Opinion Watch poll showed that the Vermont approach is supported by 52% of Americans .This is not the stuff of Willie Horton commercials. Although all such comparisons are primitive, Dean has far more in common with Jimmy Carter in 1976 than he does with McGovern.

Those who compare Dean to McGovern do so because both candidates were against anti-war and because they were both opposed by party insiders. However a reading of history shows that these were not the reasons McGovern ran so badly. According historian Theodore S. White’s “Making of The President 1972,” which is considered the definitive account of the campaign, writes of McGovern “the problem in the public mind was simply his competence.” McGovern mis-managed his own convention to the point that his acceptance speech was broadcast at three in the morning Eastern time and seen by only 3.6 million homes compared to the more than 20 million who would see Nixon’s. Most disastrously , McGovern selected as his running mate Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton who was soon revealed to have had electric shock treatment for depression. McGovern first backed Eagleton “1000 %” and then rapidly turned on him. He then publicly offered the VP slot to several Democrats who turned him down before getting Sargent Shriver to accept. White writes that McGovern was never able to recover from the perception of instability in his leadership style created during that crucial ,high profile period at the peak of his visibility. McGovern also alienated the AFL-CIO because of a blunder on a Senate vote and was the first Democratic candidate in twenty years not to get the union’s endorsement. According to White, McGovern, already well known as an anti-war candidate, had narrowed the gap behind Nixon to a mere 5 points prior to the convention. After McGovern’s fumbling of the Eagleton matter, the gap was 23 points.

So much for logic. Former Clinton aide Dick Morris got more to the emotional core of the Dean-is-McGovern crowd when he wrote :” Dean is to the Democratic Party what the Christian Right is to the Republicans - a force moving the party into territory which offends the values and views of the mainstream of America's voters. He threatens to make the Democratic primaries a killing ground where any candidate who can win nationally is eradicated.

This IS the view of many Democrats who believe that excessive passion is dangerous and unmajoritarian—a candidate who will drive “swing voters” away from the party. Dean is painted as the product of self-destructive lefties in the Democratic party who care more about venting their frustration than they do about winning power, a syndrome which is portrayed as having its roots in the pot-smoking nineteen sixties.

To win, say the so-called pragmatist “experts” Democrats should support the President on foreign policy , avoid divisive social issues, and focus on the economy. The problem is that this was the precise strategy of Congressional Democrats in 2002 with one of the worst results for in out of the White House party in history, and was essentially the strategy of President Gore in 2000.

Contrary to Morris’ implication, Republican strategist Karl Rove has had President Bush embrace conservative Christians at every turn. While Democrats timidly avoided the emotional rallying cries that animated the best of the nineteen sixties social change movements , New Gingrich joyously referred to his successful effort to take back the House as a “revolution” and his Budget Committee Chairman, now Fox TV host John Kasich makes approving public references to the Grateful Dead and Radiohead.

In a recent interview in the American Prospect, Bill Clinton said that the moderate posture he took in 1992 would not work today. But even Clinton at that time made sure to work closely with MTV, to bond with Rev. Jesse Jackson for the general election and during his presidency, and supported gays in the military. Clintonism stripped of Clinton’s charisma and his carefully crafted links with the Democratic base would create a Democratic candidacy such as those of Mondale or Dukakis.

Without the support of young people, the support of those whose primary language is that of the popular culture, not merely the OP-ED pages, with a high turnout and small donations from a passionate base, the Democrats don’t have a prayer. Maybe Dean can’t go the distance and under any circumstances is will be hard to beat George W. Bush.But so far, Dean is the only one who seems capable of getting Democrats excited. That’s undoubtedly why the intensely pragmatic Dennis Rivera delivered the Hospital Worker’s union endorsement.

And lets not forget that at least McGovern left behind a list of hundreds of thousands of activists who supported progressive organizations for the next two decades. Mondale, Dukakis and Gore left nothing but good intentions and the tongue clucking support of Washington “realists.”

wimping out

2003-11-17T14:56:00.001-05:00

I often have complained about politicians wimping out on national TV so I am somewhat mortified to have wimped out myself recently when I was interviewed by former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough for his MSNBC Show “Scarborough Country.”

The week before I had moderated a panel discussion at the New School on the occasion of the paperback release of the anthology “It’s A Free Country” which is about civil liberties in the United States since 9/11. I edited it along with my father Victor Goldberg and film and TV producer/director Robert Greenwald. Anyone familiar with our views will not be surprised to know that the book is a strong critique of Ashcroft justice. The panel consisted of Princeton Professor Cornel West, Newsweek investigative editor Michael Isikoff, ACLU Executive Director and Jeanane Garafalo.

Scarborough has long been obsessed with Garafalo, frequently using ,out of context excerpts from her public remarks as a point of departure for assorted forms of bad-mouthing and condescension. His show has a crew shoot the event , which was accurately described in a recent piece in the Observer by Lizzy Ratner.

Sure enough, during my brief interview, Scarborough played an excerpt of something Jeanane said –the excerpt and the dialogue went as follows.

GAROFALO: Neo-know-nothings in the White House now, the neocons, believe they can absolutely operate outside of the law.

SCARBOROUGH: Now, Danny, we've had a lot of fun with Janeane Garofalo, but there is a serious underpinning to it. And that is, there are shrill attacks from the left. There are shrill attacks from the right. Everybody is calling everybody else a liar or saying they're breaking the law.

Do you think that sort of talk, that sort of rhetoric, attracts young voters to the process or repels them?

GOLDBERG: I think robust, passionate debate, people who believe in what they're saying, resonates with younger people. I think people who only talk like lawyers and politicians tends to bore young people and make them anesthetized.

Here what I SHOULD have said is: Joe---Janeane Garofalo is an American hero. She cares enough about what’s happening to our country that she has been willing to take mockery from the likes of you. I only wish that Democrats had as much idealism—and if they do they will surely resonate with young people.

The reason , frankly, that I wimped out is that I suddenly got nervous when I heard the world “shrill.” And I realize that this is one of the main tactics that Republicans and conservatives are using….to try to psych out Democrats and progressives and make us nervous about being “shrill” or “negative.” Of course it’s absurd for Republicans to be complaining about “shrillness.” Where was Scarborough when
People on the internet made up a “traitors” list that included both Jeanane and me simply because we questioned Bush administration policies? And—WHERE was all this call for civility during the Clinton years!!!!!!!!!??????

Imus, etc...

2003-11-06T14:57:00.001-05:00

Don Imus has me on again this morning.I just want ot publicly say THANK YOU to him for his increidble support of my book. What a fascinating, unique figure he is in American culture.Many of my friends on the left despait at the mainstream media because,at times, it seems so monolithic in it's support of the a very narrow agneda. But I continiue to find that up close, there are various cracks and crevices in which contrarian ideas can make thier way.Last night I moderated a panel about civil liberties in conjunction with the papaerback release of "It's A Free Country" an anthology I edited along with Robert Greenwald and Victor Goldberg. The panel consisted of ACLU Excecutive Director Anthony Romero, Janeane Garafalo, Cornel West and Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Isikoff was very hard on Clinton. In fact he was the conduit through which Linda Tripp et al got the Monica Lewinsky story into the media. On the other hand, he's been unrelenting in going after the Bush administration on matters of secrecy.

And of course there's the world of books where,as I have previously noted, numerous progressives have been onthe best seller list recently including Al Franken and Michael Moore both at #1.

Liberal Media

2003-10-27T14:57:00.001-05:00

Cable News programmers claimed, over the last few years, that there is an audience for conservative pundits but not for liberals. Fox News was the supposed proof of this and the result of this perception has been shows hosted by the likes of Allen Keyes, Cal Thomas,
Jon Kasich,Joe Scarborough etc.

The demise of Phil Donahue's show supposedly proved that there as not an impassioned motivated cable news audience on the left. The best we can hope for is a representative in two-sided shows such as Bill Press vs Pat Buchanon, Allen Colmes vs Sean Hannity etc.

Like many conservative bromides--this is untrue.

The recent flurry of progressive best sellers proves that there indeed is a significant audience for left of center opinions: Al Franken, Michael Moore, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Eric Alterman, Joe Conoson, Arianna Huffington,and Paul Krugman, have joined Hillary Clinton on the best-seller lists.

Progressive should deluge cable news channels with demands that ONE person on our side gets to host a show. This would be a big breakthrough in terms of being able to put ideas onto the media agenda. Experience shows that pressure on the media works.

Arnold

2003-10-14T14:58:00.001-04:00

After Arnold Schwarzeneger's election the quesiton haunts me even more. Why didn't he run as a Democrat?

He is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, talks eloquently about his father in law Sargent Shriver's work for the Peace Corops and War on Poverty, and vocally opposed the attempot to impeach President Clinton. So he's a fiscal conservative---so is Howard Dean and many other Democrats.

The only answer I can come up with is that Republicans such as ex LA Mayor Richard Riordon and ex Governor Pete Wilson reached out to him, mentored him ,nurtured him and supported his aspirations whereas Democrats must have looked at him as another celebrity they could go to for fund-raising or photo-ops.

Dean, Israel

2003-09-30T14:58:00.001-04:00

Bad For The Jews

There they go again. Some self appointed Jewish-American “leaders” and some of the Presidential candidates who covet their favor hit a new low point last week when they beat up on Howard Dean, twisting innocuous and sensible comments he made about the Middle East and unfairly accusing him of insufficient ardor in his support of Israel. (see Salon )

These attacks are unlikely to seriously damage Dean who, in any case, can’t expect to become President without having to deflect such nonsense and worse. However, the supposedly pro-Israel demagogues not only tarnished their own credibility but they added to the odious trend of narrowing the space for much-needed creative thinking and dialogue in dealing with the Israel-Palestinian problem.

The contretemps was set off by an interview Dean did with the Associated Press in which he used the words “even-handed” and said that in the context of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which the U.S. mediates like those at Camp David, “it’s not our place to take sides”.

Several self-interested demagogues pretended that Dean was not simply referring to such mediations but that he meant that the U.S. shouldn’t “take sides” in terms of our general policies in the region.

It is worth noting that Dean’s wife Deborah Steinberg Dean is Jewish and their two children were raised as Jews. Dean's national campaign co-chairman, Steve Grossman, a former president of the ardently pro-Israel group AIPAC stated what was obvious to all concerned. "Howard Dean sees himself as a president who from day one will be deeply engaged and will build credibility with all parties to the conflict."

Nonetheless Senator Joseph Lieberman who has been badly trailing Dean in New Hampshire and Iowa, accused Dean of advocating “ a major break from a half a century of American foreign policy." Lieberman supporter former Congressman Stephan Solarz added, "It's a deeply disturbing expression of moral and political neutrality."

"Either he's not very knowledgeable or he's on the wrong side," chimed in Mark Mellman, a pollster for another Dean opponent, Senator Kerry. "Howard Dean is saying he wants to take American policy vis-à-vis Israel in a radically different direction than it has been under Democratic and Republican policy for the last 30 years."

Not only are these hysterical reactions totally unfair, it is almost certain that the people making the charges know it. He was talking about playing a role similar to that of President Clinton. In fact the main message of Dean’s interview was that President Bush should ask Clinton to play such a role now. To espouse anything other than Dean’s position would be to eliminate any role for the U.S. in a future Middle East peace process, which would be terribly damaging for both the U.S. and for Israel.

Dean’s second supposed transgression was even more ephemeral. Asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer whether he opposed or approved of Israel’s "assassinations of Hamas militants" Gov. Dean replied, "… there is a war going on in the Middle East and members of Hamas are soldiers in that war and therefore it seems to me that they are going to be casualties.” In other words, Dean was supporting Israel’s moral right to kill members of Hamas. Jack Rosen, President of the American Jewish Congress huffed on the Fox News show 'The Beltway Boys', “According to international law, as well as common sense, Hamas terrorists are not soldiers but murderous terrorists who kill children. It's clear Governor Dean didn't bother to differentiate between terrorists, murderers and innocent civilians that are being attacked by Hamas.“ Of course, Rosen knows that Dean had not been asked to make that particular distinction but whether or not it was okay for Israel to kill Hamas members. Nonetheless, the AJ Congress sent a hysterical email with the gleeful headline “Alert!!!! Alert!!!! Alert!!!! Dean Slips Up Again“ (and, yes, they really used four exclamation points after each “Alert!!!!”).

Desperate for traction in his lackluster campaign, Kerry entered Willie Horton territory when he shamelessly distorted Dean’s meaning by claiming that "In going out of his way to term members of Hamas as 'soldiers,' Gov. Dean insults the memory of every innocent man, woman and child killed by these suicidal murderers."

As if in acknowledgement of the intellectual dishonesty of their attacks, many of these same critics quickly shifted their criticism of Dean from substance to style. Implicitly acknowledging that Dean was no threat to Israel, they accused him on “inexperience” in using words that could be “perceived” that way. Of course no one perceived Dean inaccurately except the very same people who intentionally pretended to do so in order to attack him for their own political agenda.

Howard Dean may yet stumble and fall in his ambitious and unlikely race to become President, but he would have to descend significantly to disgrace himself as much as Kerry, Lieberman, Solarz, Rosen and others have who cynically play word-games about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a time of great peril for both Israel and the United States.

Teen Spirit Watch

2003-09-15T14:59:00.001-04:00

Following are some grades of Democratic Presidential candidates in terms of their recent effectiveness at expressing "teen spirit". Criteria include:

- Expression of issues that effect young people
- Use of pop culture
- Memorable, understandable language
- Moral inspiration

The group of voters effected by such behavior includes not only young people but older voters whose primary cultural language is "pop."

John Kerry (B)

John Kerry has been photographed on motorcycle and played electric guitar last week joining a local Boston band, Popgun 7, in a rendition of Bruce Springsteen's "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out." What's more, according to today's New York Times, he played on a 1961 album in a local band, The Electras, the liner notes of which called him a "producer of a pulsating rhythm that lends tremendous force to all the numbers."

This qualified Kerry as a bona-fide student of Bill Clinton's 1992 saxaphone playing on the Arsenio Hall Show. Of course Clinton already showed an affinity for old rock and roll eleven years ago and these are different times so the cultural statement doesn't mean that much.

I've got nothing against Kerry. In fact I think he'd be a terrific President and he's been more focused since he formally announced his candidacy than before. But Kerry is still fundamentally running as the guy who was a war hero. Not only will this rationale be dramatically undercut if Wesley Clark enters the race moreover, although George W. Bush and most of the hawks in his administration didn't serve in the Armed Forces, Bush still has, and will have, a lot of supporters in the military if for no other reason than that people in the military in recent years tend to be Republicans.

Richard Gephardt (B+)

Gephardt gets points on "language" for his repeated use of the phrase "miserable failure" to describe the Bush presidency. Although such repetition in recent debates and subsequent interviews does come across as a contrived, pre-planned "soundbite" it was nonetheless effective and re-positioned Gephardt.

Howard Dean (A-)

Dean still gets points for moral believability. He's handled the barrage of attacks on his minor political faux pas with grace and confidence and he still comes across as the only candidate other than Al Sharpton who has a mind of his own.

Al Sharpton (B+)

Sharpton is still the most entertaining candidate and the best natural speaker but he needs a more compelling vision if he's going to fill Jesse Jackson's shoes or more.

Wesley Clark gets an (A) for motivating a letter from Michael Moore, currently the definitive "teen spirit" arbiter... but this could quickly fade if he doesn't announce or if his announcement cycle doesn't live up to the hype.

Edwards, Mosley Braun, Kucinich get "incompletes" because at this moment I don't feel them in the game.

Lieberman as always, gets an (F), this time for petulant petty attacks on Dean for supposedly vacillating on support for Israel (Dean's position on Israel is, in fact , maddeningly conventional). Kerry lost some points for this too -- but he did it in a more pro-forma way whereas Lieberman's bitter satisfaction at "nailing" Dean had all of the intellectual dishonesty and pettiness of the worst High School Asst. Principal.

Young Missouri

2003-09-02T15:00:00.001-04:00

Follows is an email typical of many young organizers I've heard from around the country who are not currently getting the appropriate support from the Democratic Party:

Mr. Goldberg,

First, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to call me back, and listening to me prattle on. I'll try not to take up much of your time. Here's a quick list of things that the Young Democrats of St. Louis would do with contributions.

Our first concern is operating costs. We would not want to eat up a lot of capital on items like office space, phones and net technology, but it's something we will need in the coming months. We also want to purchase personalized business cards for our officers. If we don't buy union made, it's bad for our reputation. The Young Democrats are also active in recruiting candidates, and helping all Democrats to be elected to office. We will use a portion of the funding to go directly to campaigns, but our help usually comes in the form of people power. We make phone calls for candidates, and distribute literature as well.

Our second need is to have funding for advertising. This is my main goal at this point. The Young Democrats, and the Democratic party in general, does not do enough to market itself to the general public. If this were done on a regular basis, we would not have many of the problems that we are experiencing in today's political climate. I would use the bulk of funding to put together a campaign to raise our membership. I would buy airtime on radio stations who market primarily to the 18 to 34 demographic, and our main message would be for young people to lend their voice to ours, and to be the advocate for our generations. We are also interested in organizing events that would not be necessarily "Democratic" in nature, but would be to get the Young Democrat name out there. I would like to be able to book concerts for bands sympathetic to the cause, and have forums that focus on the issues of young people in Missouri. We also have to conquer the racial divide in St. Louis, and this won't be easy, but is possible with the right support. I believe that we can accomplish all of this with a marketing campaign that is done correctly, and we will be able to appeal directly to the self interests of the 18 to 34 demographic by opening the process up to them. We will use this to apply pressure to the hierarchy of the State Party to address the concerns of those who will inherit this country next, and to set up the young Democrat organization to be a force for the next generation of leaders as well. This should result in Democrats no longer being pigeonholed by the Republican Party's definition of issues in this state.

Here's an example of the ineffectiveness of the State Party, and what I would do differently if I had the resources to do so: President Bush is coming here today for a fundraiser for our Senior Senator, Kit Bond. He has been receiving free advertising from the local news at every news update they air. He has come to St. Louis 12 times since he was selected, and each time the news agencies give him half the coverage of the entire newscast each for each visit, and at the same time, they largely ignore the protesters outside these events. The state party has done nothing in the way of getting the word out, showing a presence at these events, or offering a counter argument to the media in any way. I feel they are making a huge mistake. I would fight fire with fire, and I would use part of the monies raised by you to mobilize Democrats with advertising on the radio.

Unfortunately, this will take a lot of capital, and since all of the State Party's resources are going to the Gephardt Campaign, (much to my chagrin) and our party's growth is being curtailed by this. It is exactly as you describe, that the Democratic Party is only focused on persuading the Lipitor vote to go Democratic. This is a short sighted strategy, and it's why I was motivated to call you.

I know I'm asking a lot, but we need the help. 11 electoral votes that will potentially swing this election, as well as the life and health of the Democratic party for the next generation, is counting on possible contributors like you. There are no limits on what the Young Democrats can receive, and the more money we can raise, the more effective we can be in taking the party from the entrenched, Good Old boy system, and reviving the Missouri Democratic Party.

Thank you once again. I hope to hear from you very soon.

Sincerely,
Joe Bruemmer
Press Secretary,
Young Democrats of St. Louis
(YDSTL)
(314) 565-6127

Criticism

2003-08-27T15:01:00.001-04:00

What's the point of having a blog if I can't respond to some of the criticism of my book? I promise I won't make a habit of this but two months after publication I can no longer resist a few comments.

In The Washington Post yesterday, Ann Hornaday wrote a very generous profile of me. I was amused by the response she got from the office of Senator Joseph Lieberman regarding my criticisms of his role in the 2000 Presidential campaign. I have written that Lieberman's incessant attacks on youth culture pushed millions of young people away from voting Democratic. Hornaday writes: "Through a spokesman, Lieberman said that he hasn't read Goldberg's book but doesn't "feel the need to respond to the political analysis of a record producer. Suffice it to say he shouldn't give up his day job." In other words, it doesn't make any difference what I say or that The Washington Post is doing the asking -- the mere fact that I'm in the music business makes me unworthy of any attention from the Senator. The arguments are not worth responding to -- but a snide remark is apparently meant as an example of Lieberman's celebrated "wit". (By the way, I'm not a record producer. Record producers are the people who direct the recording of albums. I am a record company executive -- the person who runs my company, Artemis.)

In the past I've also been a personal manager and a PR person but never had the talent to be a producer. This is not the only time that an attack like this has been made. If it was just me personally, it would be "ad hominem" but the kinds of attacks I'm referring to are really against an entire community.

Reviews in both the Washington Post Book World and In These Times suggested that my motives in defending popular teen culture such as Eminem were suspect because I made my living from selling records. What difference does it make whether or not I make money from rap music? If my arguments are weak, why not respond to the argument instead of a personal attack? The reason, I think, is that such critics cannot comprehend that any moral person would sincerely think teen culture is worth defending. To me, this only reflects on the generational bigotry and small mindedness of the critics and reinforces my premise that the middle-aged political culture, especially on the Democratic and liberal side, is terribly weakened by such biases.

For what its worth, I've never made a penny from any of the high profile controversial records that Lieberman et al have attacked such as Eminem, Dr. Dre, Marilyn Manson, etc.. Undoubtedly, over the years, I've released some records that William Bennett would think immoral, but those have only been a small portion of my business. Currently, for example, the big record for Artemis is the Warren Zevon album, "The Wind", which offends no one. In any event -- none of the attacks on rap or rock music has cost anyone in the record business a penny. They have had no adverse effect on sales. In a few cases, such as the Ice T / Body Count album "Cop Killer", (which I also had nothing to do with) such attacks actually increased sales. So if I were motivated by greed I would want politicians to attack my music. There has been only one effect of all of the attacks on pop culture by people like Tipper Gore, Joe Lieberman, etc: The alienation of some young people from politics.

The Post article also said that several people who work on registering young people to vote disagreed with my analysis that culture attacks had been part of reason young people didn't vote. I agree that there are other reasons, such as an excessive focus on issues like social security and little or no focus on issues that matter to younger people such as the drug war or scholarships. I have also written about the need for a moral construct for progressive politics instead of a shopping list of issues.

However, I would like to know, if not culture bashing, what IS the explanation for a dramatic decline in the Democrat margin from 19 points among 18-24 year olds in 1996 to ZERO in 2000 when Gore and Lieberman ran and emphasized attacks on culture in the campaign -- and UP to a 20 POINT margin for Democrats among young people in 2002?