--- Well, he's gone.
Or at least he will be soon. The presidential campaign just got so
boring. It's turned into the battle of the Great White Hopes. What,
honestly, could be more boring? Watching a slug crawl across a patio is
more interesting than watching the Democratic presidential nominees.
Howard, however, just made his final misstep, though. The former Vermont governor, who went winless in 17 caucuses and
primaries after falling from leading contender early in the year, does
not intend to endorse either John Kerry or John Edwards, the aide said
on condition of anonymity. Dean has been impressed with Edwards and
suggested on the campaign trail that he would make a better nominee,
but Dean has decided to stay out of the Kerry-Edwards contest, the aide
said.
If this leak is true, well, Howard, you just pissed away your chance to
make some actual substantial change within the Democratic party. Not
that it was a good
chance that anyone in that group would take anything you said
seriously, but it was your one and only chance. By not endorsing
someone, by not pushing your agenda upon anyone as a quid pro quo
arrangement, well, you've relegated yourself to footnote status.
Neither Kerry nor Edwards is going to court your supporters. They don't
have to: they know that your supporters ultimately want Bush out of the
White House and they'll support anyone who will get them that result.
Your supporters, Howard, in other words, are Happy Meal toys. They come
free with the purchase of a regularly priced meal. Don't expect
strategy calls from Kerry. Don't even expect an invitation to speak at
the convention this summer, let alone an invitation to the convention
itself. They don't want you around Howard. They used you to get people
fired up. You were the warm-up act. Ok, now I'm officially done with my
one post about the Democratic primaries. Wake me up when Kerry and
Edwards pull on the little wrestling panties and decide to have a
Pay-Per-View smackdown. Until then...pffft. Who cares?
--- I'm tired of Lileks writing about how much The Bleat sucks.
I realize Lileks is the official nice guy of the blogosphere. He
doesn't like letting his readers down. He feels bad when he doesn't
have time to produce his screedy goodness. That's all well and good.
Very kind and considerate. But we understand, James. We know you write
other stuff besides The Bleat. You're a full-time writer. You get paid
for this stuff. How much you write directly affects how much money you
have in your bank account. You've got mouths to feed. There's no reason
why you have to explain to the freeloaders---those of us who mainly
read The Bleat and who won't chip out for The Gallery of Regrettable Food---why you're shortchanging us. We understand.
So, please, stop using the Bleat's suckiness as your theme for
Wednesdays. It's boring. And you're not a boring writer. You're not.
You're inventive. You have lovely prose. You can find subject matter in
the most mundane of tasks, but this, well, I don't have time to write a good Bleat, so I'm sorry, but you're getting a sucky Bleat attitude is getting SO OLD. So knock it off, ok?
Besides, if I could be as lame as you, I'd consider myself a lucky girl.
--- Oh, yeah!
The only beef I have with this piece is that it ignores the main
strategy behind the TSA's behavior: that all of the TSA's hustle and
bustle is about the perception of safety, not safety itself. As long as
the TSA screeners feel clearing out an airport well after the perceived
threat is gone, they're doing something about the problem. The system worked
we're no safer than we were on 9/11. This program costs the taxpayers
millions of dollars, not to mention how the flying public gets screwed
on ticket surcharges to pay for this program. And we're no safer today
than we were on 9/11. We're just not. I don't feel any safer now that
my underwire bra sets off the metal detector. It's all for show and
anyone with even the smallest amount of common sense knows this. Now,
what we need is for someone to write an article about how much money
the airlines are making from first class tickets and the people who get
a light checking from security because of this. --- Oooh, it's time for
a "Don Henley is an Idiot" fest.
"Artists are finally realizing their predicament is no different
from that of any other group with common economic and political
interests. They can no longer just hope for change; they must fight for
it. Washington is where artists must go to plead their case and find
answers. So whether they are fighting against media and radio
consolidation, fighting for fair recording contracts and corporate
responsibility, or demanding that labels treat artists as partners and
not as employees, the core message is the same: The artist must be
allowed to join with the labels and must be treated in a fair and
respectful manner. If the labels are not willing to voluntarily
implement these changes, then the artists have no choice but to seek
legislative and judicial solutions. Simply put, artists must regain
control, as much as possible, over their music."
Ah yes. It's not the music industry you need your troops to battle,
it's Congress. Congress has to come in and save you from being taken
advantage of by shameless music producers. Oh, fer chrissakes! What
exactly do you think the government is going to do about
it? Force the music companies to play fair? Pffft. It's called a free
market. If you don't want to participate in the free market, well, Don,
you should just pack it up and go home. As someone who hopes to be a
published writer someday I have researched the business realities that
hopefully will be a part of my life so I will be prepared when it does
happen. I can tell you right now that, compared to other artists, such
as a writer or an actor, musical artists get screwed by the companies that market their product. SCREWED,
I tell you. If I ever get published, the deal will go something like
this: I will sign the English language rights to my work over to the
publishing company for an upfront fee---which, depending upon how good
my work is and how well they think it will sell, will either be an
advance or an upfront payment. Out of that upfront fee, my agent will
take a percentage. Then the book goes to market. The publishing company
plans the marketing campaign. They will lobby for space on the front
table at Barnes and Noble. They will make deals with Amazon. They will
send the book out for quips from other writers who lodge under the same
publishing house to put on the back cover. And depending upon what kind
of publicity clause is in the contract I sign, I will go out and do
interviews and book signings, etc., to get the word out and to make
sure the book is sold. When the sales figures start being tallied, then
they will start deducting the advance I received from the sales. They
will turn the gross into net. It's quite simple. And after that,
industry standards dictate that for every copy of my book that is sold,
I'll get about seven percent of that money. This is why Philip Roth
makes very little coin in reality, but is also why John Grisham gets
paid the millions of dollars that he does: he moves product. Roth,
while the better writer of the two, does not move product. But the two
writers start all over again when the book is translated into other
languages and sold overseas. Same deal with the audio books. And then
there are the movie deals: options. Now, I love
the idea of options. It's frickin' fantastic. When someone in Hollywood
buys the rights to a book most often they are only "optioning" the
rights. They pay a fee to hold the right to use your book as source
material for their movie, but they only buy that right for a few years.
If they choose not to make a movie out of it, that option expires, and
then the writer can option their work to another buyer, and so on and
so on. Writers may not make millions of dollars, but when published,
chances are if they're working in a commercially viable field, like
popular fiction, they will make a decent living for the rest of their
lives. But they only make this money because they have many fields from
which to profit: they've looked for places to make money and they do
make money because of it---they spread their work out across the market
and they profit from it. Music artists, however, get screwed. It's
pretty much the same deal for musicians as for writers, but the
specifics are different. It costs more to produce a CD than it does to
produce a book. It also costs more to promote a CD than it does a book.
But the financial condition most musicians really get screwed with is
that they have this little word in their contract that writers do not: recoupment,
which means that for every dime the record company puts out on their
behalf, whether it be an advance or for a platter of cheez doodles, the
record company takes that dime back from the proceeds. Writers, in
other words, do not have to pay for the production of the book itself,
or the costs of promoting it: the publishing company takes that on.
Record companies also take all of the copyright rights. Writers can
pick and choose which rights they want to hold and to give
up---musicians can't do this unless they put out their own CD's. It
takes years, sometimes, before an artist will see any proft from their
work. And the only place musicians make money is from the sales of
their records. They don't have an audio book option. They don't have a
movie option. The music industry, in other words, depends solely upon
the sale of CD's to make a profit. Now, that's not a good deal. But
this is how the music industry has traditionally worked and they have
made money from it in the past, so they're loath to part with it. Add
into that agents and managers and producers who take a percentage, you
can understand why most musicians don't like the idea of file sharing.
They're not going to make any money if you're not shelling out coin for
a CD. Yes, there are tours and MTV and the like, but those are not
profit centers for them: those are geared toward promoting CD sales.
Any money they make from a tour is gravy to their way of thinking.
Their business model is flawed. This is why free downloads are a big
deal. This is why the RIAA is suing kids. Instead of adapting their
model to the possibility of a new profit center, they see it as a
threat to the old ones. And Don Henley wants Congress to get involved
because the music industry won't change. Well, as flawed as the music
industry is, Don, they're not going to change. And neither should they
have to. It's a free market and they're allowed to run their business
the way they want to. I'm sorry, but them's the breaks. What artists
seem to ignore, though, is the opportunity they have to make change
themselves. All it would take would be for some highly popular artist
to break the mold. To say, hey, we're going to do something radical:
we're going to change how the system works, come along with us. But
they don't do that. The big artists are the ones who are making money
on the system and they see no need to further the cause of music
itself. I don't see you going out and starting your own record company,
Don, and saying hey, we won't have recoupment. You'll actually be able
to make a living with us. No, it may not be as much as Britney makes,
but it'll be brass in the pocket for you. You want Congress to step up
and defend you from the big bad wolves. Well, that's not going to
happen, my friend. It's just not. I'm sure more than a few people on
the Hill got a good chuckle out of your op-ed, Don.