mixed media daily, Year 2

Thursday, December 14, 2017

14 December 2017

We're all still clearly riding the Doug Jones victory high, and we're still talking about how incredibly united and motivated the African American women of Alabama were during this election. It's nice to have nice things to think about during the holiday season. But get ready for the repeal of net neutrality (as a side note, fuck you, Ajit Pai, you fucking fuck). And the steaming pile of pig shit known as the GOP tax bill. And hell, we're so late in the year, get ready for the 2018 midterm elections, when we can possibly turn this shit show around.

13 December 2017

Like many of the spikes on 2017's political seismograph, we owe this week's political moment to women---the courageous women who stepped forward and call out Roy Moore (pictured in the sauce pan) for his shitty, criminal behavior, and then for African-American women, who turned out in large numbers for Doug Jones, catapulting him into a deep red Senate seat. And, you might ask, why the hell are we referencing Steely Dan in all of this? Because it makes sense, that's why.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

12 December 2017

Well, well, well well well. It looks like the Senate will not have to worry about admitting a pedophile into their ranks. We'll get into more (but not Moore!) of this weird, wild special election tomorrow, you can be sure of that. Until then I would like to say, to the people of Alabama, thank you for your good sense.

Monday, December 11, 2017

11 December 2017

Well, Tuesday's special election in Alabama to fill Jeff Sessions' vacated senate seat probably won't end in sexy cyborg eagles carrying him off to his doom, but we can dream, right? Right? Anyway, do the right thing tomorrow, Alabama (hint: the right thing is to not vote for Moore, because he is a racist pedophile).

Sunday, December 10, 2017

10 December 2017

The California wildfires seem to be losing their hold on the front page (for now. let's just hope they disappear IRL too), thus making room for other local headaches, like misbehaving deputies, and more international stuff, like Afghan commandos and french rock and roll idols. It was one of those rare news days of 2017, the kind that don't make you seriously wonder if humanity can possibly survive until the end of the week.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

9 December 2017

What up, Dre? Below the fold, down past all the stuff about the wildfires that still dominates the front page, was a vintage photo of N.W.A., there to lead you back to the Calendar Section to read a piece about them. It's a classy, black and white image of the storied group. Hell, they look like they could be a band that was just starting out today. But then you notice Dre's acid-washed jeans and you're like, nope, this is a photo from long, long ago.

Friday, December 8, 2017

8 December 2017

I appreciate the Times offering a little distraction, in the form of an article about the newly minted world heritage site Okinoshima, from the unrelenting wildfire news. It helps a little. I mean, not as much as the story about the LAPD cadets who stole patrol cars, because that story is still hilarious. But serious! Don't steal cop cars, kids; it'll end badly.

extra extra

Well, hello. I’m a little surprised we’re all meeting up again like this. I’m more than a little surprised to be launching a project called “Mixed Media Daily, Year Two.” And, to be honest, I’m a little disappointed that the subtitle isn’t “Electric Boogaloo.” But I’ll get over that.

You know what I won’t get over? The way 2016 came to a close. Like the darkness around a sputtering campfire. Like a venus flytrap around a hapless fly.

Back in 2011, when I did the first round of Mixed Media Daily, I thought of the project as an experiment in portraiture, an homage to a style of media that was slowly slipping out of daily life and into the history books. In some sense it felt a like an early obit; I imagined that the death of any newspaper would occur only when they actually (forgive the hackneyed phrase) stopped the presses. Simpler times!

The Los Angeles Times, and newspapers in general, I’m happy to report, are still alive. What seems to have kicked the bucket is the desire of a not inconsequential number of Americans to digest hard news, to do the minimal mental work required to be able to call oneself an informed voter. Which may be the same thing as the death of the newspaper industry, but with one hell of a twist.

How did we get here? How did so many of our fellow citizens mutate into a pack of political rageaholics who rely exclusively on easily debunked garbage journalism to justify their vote? Who have such a white-hot mistrust of mainstream media that they’ll happily believe anything thrown up on the web by any random, anonymous domestic or international opportunist over a well-researched piece from a credible news source? There’s no simple way to unpack this sad, confounding turn of events. Some things we know are worth considering: Since the election many journalists have written about the profusion of fake news outlets, sites set up to turn a quick profit by playing to the latent (or overt) biases of their readership. Traditional news outlets---cable and network television, and of course, print media---also received a measure of blame for what some saw as their unfair equivocation of two clearly unequal candidates. More recently, post apocalypse---sorry, I mean post election---there have been reports of conservative politicians appropriating the term “fake news” to describe stories published by legitimate news sources that do not jibe with their agendas. It all adds up to a campaign of misinformation (hi, Putin!) that is designed to erode our democracy. That, fellow citizens, is unacceptable.

The saddest thing might be that the truth was out there, and easily accessible. I read plenty of well-written, well-researched stories that laid out the truly damning details of our shifty President-Elect’s shifty behavior in his business and his personal life. After reading each piece, I would think, should the country be crazy enough to elect this clown, they cannot say that they weren’t warned. And then the country went ahead and elected this clown.

So here we are. Our country is in serious crisis mode, but I’m not ready to give up on it. We need every weapon primed and ready for the coming four-year bar brawl. One of those weapons will most certainly be solid investigative journalism (Woodward and Bernstein, anyone?). Of course as much as we need good journalism, good journalism needs our attention. So I’m going to pay attention. Close attention, and with a critical eye. And since I’m going to be processing a lot of what will undoubtedly be fucked-up news, I’ll run it all through the old illustration filter, so it least it’ll be kind of fun to look at, and maybe I’ll be able to keep my blood below boiling point.

All of this adds up to a very different mission from the one I used to launch this project six years ago. The main focus will still be the Los Angeles Times, but in an effort to doodle a broader consensus of opinion, I’ll occasionally be working from other local papers (we publish a lot of daily papers here in the Golden State). If I go out of town, there might be an even farther-flung guest paper in the mix. That’s the plan for now. It’s sort of a loose plan, but we’re all just winging it at this point, aren’t we? We’re all stuck in the upside-down, where clowns become kings, homes become battlegrounds, and pens become swords. It’s a scary place, to be sure. Let’s not let it scare us into submission.