for any CBS/score/marketing people out there reading this: i wanna say that not too long ago (a 2-3/+ years?) b&b was appointment radio for me as i always wanted to hear what dan and terry thought about [chicago/sports event X] that i had just seen and wondered how it was going over with "my guys" in the industry.
but now after years of taking bold stances against child porn, raging against BIGOTRY, and all kinds of social justice alongside a veritable paradigm shift from saying what they think to saying what we need to think, it's almost an afterthought that this show is on. whereas i used to look forward to b&b at whatever given time in my day (i seem to remember they were 8-12, then 10-2 (ergo high noon in these first two shifts) and then later 2-6 and even later 1-6..... but now it's just kind of like "awww jesus do i need to tune in and have dan tell me what i ought to believe lest i be called some sort of [peJORRative] for not agreeing with the proper narrative???"
maybe it's just a product of me getting older (as the "glory days" were in my lower-mid 20s and the FOTS era started in my late 20s (with the demise of NORT.... #Rosemont) and now it's continued evolving into whatever you call the once "fun gay bad and weird" outpost in a sea of meatballism.
i mean this phenomenon is endemic to media/music/arts as a whole: when any plucky outsider/s eventually taste success by being adjacent to the system they often ridicule as they come up, their success and later them themselves eventually get embraced by "the system" or "the establishment" and then after a couple'a proper contracts and a change in marketing focus they become "the establishment" and that's often accompanied by a chance in ethos because once anyone gets a taste of serious $$$ (and their original success allowed them a platform to start and build a family, which becomes top priority as procuring maximum $$$ to support a lifestyle their original success afforded them becomes paramount) they will do anything in their power to hold on to it.... so in this case dan bernstein has become a warrior of the powers that be / the status quo, taking precious time out of all of our days to occasionally let us know that, hey don't be a numbnuts go get your kids vaccinated because THE. SCIENCE IS. IN. REALLY. SMART. PEOPLE. HAVE. SPOKEN. and etc etc
and when that happens it's easy to lose sight of that fact that i originally started listening to the fun bad gay little outpost that could because i needed daily escapism from the banalities of my day-to-day-life. and when the show itself becomes some sort of a big billboard for the establishment/status-quo/powers-that-be.... yeah i understand dan and the family have gotta eat.... but there comes a point where his whole schtick wears thin because i feel like in the year of someone else's lord 2014 if i turn on b&b i'm going to be yelled at and chastised because i possibly might not believe what THE. REALLY. SMART. PERSON. ON. THE. RADIO. tells me that i need to believe, and when that combines with the whole FOTStein phenomenon.... yeah, it's a rough listen.
so basically i've gone from having this show be appointment radio to something i might listen to only because i want fuel to have something to bitch about here. and i'm aware of the dave kaplan paradigm ("thanks for listening/watching" to any criticism cuz in the end it doesnt matter if i like you, only if i consume you) but still.... man.. is it too late to tell dan to chill out and embrace the overall triviality of the show that existed 10 years ago? can dan pretend he isn't the flagship face-of-the-station (FOTS) and therefore he needs to do REALLY. IMPORTANT. RADIO. and gentrify our minds in terms of how we consume not just sports but also society/reality as a whole?
i think if dan realized that he wasn't the be-all/end-all of his flock's cultural gatekeeping he'd perhaps embrace the hilarity of doing what he does for a very nice living.... cuz dan used to have his head screwed on right with the perspective that he had a totally bullshit job doing funny trivial stuff that was a distraction from the gravity/importance of real life for ~4hrs a day... and now that he sees his increased relevance/omnipresence as the means to upgrade his logos to embracing social justice and "making a difference" despite having a trivial job and all that.... well, it's just not the fun escape that it used to be. and i dont need amattacola to tell me that if i dont like the status quo PTFB, that is if i dont disagree outright in which case i need to listen twice as much and 10 times more closely because by paying 100% total undivided attention to their preaching i'll realize their unequivocal correctness on everything because THERE. IS.. NO ARGUMENT/DEBATE. --- REALLY. SMART. PEOPLE. HAVE. SPOKEN.
the weight/gravity of that drive in bernstein to gentrify his listeners is the part that's off-putting.... i want someone whose ideal is to entertain me, not gentrify me... cuz if i needed to be gentrified i'd go listen to hugh hewitt or whoever that preachy bible thumper is on late/weekends on 560AM. if i want fun/bad/gay/etc sports with a touch of quasi-sports-intellectualism, i'd ideally turn to bernstein.... however i'm convinced that he's shit in 2014 because
the subject matter of outkast's great song "roses" is lost on him and that sucks because.... shit, i wanna love this show and be one of its champions... but it's hard to do when dan is no longer the radio hero i had because he has a lot of important work to do as the FOTS.
taht said, sorry for the blather CSFMB massive.... you can go back to tossing me bouquets when 9/10 of my next posts are 200 characters or less (because by doing that you're basically telling me that my ideal course of action is shutting the fuck up (and being more like you =))
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Curious Hair wrote:
Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?
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