
Princeton University Press
Heather Hendershot, When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022)
Katherine Cramer Brownell, 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023)
What Winston Smith, the protagonist in George Orwell’s 1949 novel "1984," keeps trying to avoid in the book is the telescreen. It’s a screen, a speaker and a microphone all in one; it’s in every home and every workplace, every street and forest and park; it’s always on, always listening, always seeing. Finishing the novel on the remote Scottish island of Jura in 1948, as Stalin was ascendant, after we had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and seeing the national security and surveillance state forming, Orwell imagined it to be oblong, a “metal plaque” – something that looks like “a dulled mirror,” he wrote. This was before television and well before desktops, laptops, and cell phones had become omnipresent. In 2024, of course, we can imagine it as an endless Zoom call (Good G-d!) – always on, on every device beside and surrounding you. And connected to Google. And the people controlling Google are the government. And the main thing the government is interested in using it all for is – to Google you!
Orwell had figured out that what goes into our heads – all the sights, all the sounds, sensations from the other senses, too – determines our reality, and that we can be conditioned by the media we absorb, especially if we are forced to absorb it, to believe anything that producers of that media want us to. “If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality,” the novel tells us. And “reality,” Orwell writes, “is inside the skull.”
Orwell imagined a single Ministry of Truth, the “primary job” of which, he wrote, is not only to reconstruct the past but “to supply the citizens” with “newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programs, plays, novels – with every conceivable kind of information, instruction or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child’s spelling book to a Newspeak dictionary.” The Ministry in 1984 has “huge printing shops with their sub-editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs”; a “teleprograms section with its engineers, its producers, and its teams of actors”; a records department, with “armies of reference clerks” whose job it is to draw up lists of books and periodicals “due for recall.” The Ministry produces music, too – songs that are “composed entirely by mechanical means” (ChatGPT, anyone?) “on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.” But it’s the telescreen that’s the key instrument in dystopian Oceania for delivering what Orwell calls “reality control.”
Media scholars like Heather Hendershot (at MIT) and Katherine Cramer Brownell (at Purdue) do readers a huge favor in their work when they write extraordinary books like the ones above about television and look at its relationship to state power and control. These two books tell us how the national leaders we vote into power now are increasingly television, or telescreen, people. Kennedy was our first television president – the first to hold live press conferences in front of the cameras – and definitely our first telegenic chief executive. Lyndon Johnson’s family empire was based on broadcasting holdings across Texas; his wife, Ladybird, owned so many of them in her name, LBJ called himself the “broadcaster-in-law.” Nixon came out of the country’s biggest TV market – California. Reagan had been a movie actor on the silver screen and then a television spokesperson for General Electric. And Trump had been a TV star in NBC’s “The Apprentice,” one of our reality (reality-control) teleprograms, to use Orwell’s word, that portrayed him as a self-made millionaire and genius decisionmaker in front of millions of American viewers every week. With Trump, all this happened as Rupert Murdoch was building up a whole pro-Trump Teleprograms Department – Teledep, in Newspeak – at the Fox equivalent, replete with radio, internet, books, newspapers, a film studio, you name it, of a modern Ministry of Truth.
Control over media technology is never a quiet battlefield: it’s always the seat of warfare. Hendershot’s book – ostensibly about four days in Chicago – explores in extraordinary detail the fights – including the physical ones – over communications technology here. The Democratic Party set to nominate the party’s candidate for president at a time of war in Vietnam, violence against the Civil Rights movement, and the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and JFK’s brother Robert F. Kennedy, among others. There were three and only three television networks then, and all three covered the proceedings. It became the top-rated television event of 1968. Fifty-one million households wound up tuning in.
Mayor Richard J. Daley, the party boss of Chicago, wanted the cameras and print journalists to cover it only the way he wanted. He told the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to go on strike in order to limit the number of new telephone lines available to reporters for voice calls and the transmission of live images out of the city. He had pay phones near the convention jammed with dimes so journalists couldn’t call out. He made sure the phones in office buildings next to the convention site had their wires slashed, too. He denied parking permits for the networks. He sealed manhole covers with tar so that protestors couldn’t hide in the sewers. He threw barbed-wire around the convention amphitheater and put the entire police force of 12,000 men on 12-hour shifts. But he could not wield absolute control, and the extraordinary violence that erupted in Chicago that summer became the story that was broadcast live on our telescreens.
Brownell’s book is a fantastic read covering a much longer time period but also about reality control. People in charge – at the helm of media companies, the financial analysts, the politicians, even the journalists – sold us the coming of network television and then the coming of cable television as the answer to previous media systems that had failed democracy. But as Brownell puts it, the rise of cable, much like the rise of all the other media here, “was never about enhancing democracy.” “It was about making money and forging strategic partnerships between an industry and the elected politicians who wrote the rules in which that industry operated.” It was about “how to structure media institutions [. . .] central to political power.” It was Marshall McLuhan who said, “We shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us.” If that’s the case, we had better understand what’s coming next – and fast!
Peter B. Kaufman lives in Lakeville and works at MIT Open Learning and is the author of “The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge.”
Kaufman will discuss the award-winning book "Overreach, The Inside Story of Putin and Russia's War Against Ukraine" by journalist Owen Matthews on Saturday, Jan. 6, at 4 p.m. at Scoville Memorial Library.
Fans of fine art filed into the Sharon Historical Society’s gallery on Saturday, March 15, for the opening reception of student works from the Northlight Art Center in Amenia, New York.
Northlight was founded in Sharon by Pieter Lefferts in 2010 and later moved to Amenia. This is the 14th year of the annual student exhibit.
“It’s an invitation for people who may never have thought that they might be included in an art exhibit,” said Lefferts about the show that includes 34 works created by a dozen artists. Lefferts added that visitors will see a range of abilities and individual expression.
“I like to draw out innate expression,” Lefferts said. Lefferts said there were 34 pieces as he had hung them all the day before.
Several works on display were inspired by local subjects. For example, Kathleen Kulig’s “Grand Dame of the Orchard” depicts an actual old apple tree found at a friend’s home.
“I’ve actually picked apples from that tree,” Kulig said.
Kathleen Kulig with her “Grand Dame of the Orchard” painting.Leila Hawken
Artist Cathleen Halloran’s acrylic on paper painting titled “Eleven Eleven” is a loving remembrance of her dog, Maddie, whose death was imminent as Halloran created the painting, an expression of her subject’s magnificent spirit.
Variety is evident in artists’ ages, mediums, experience and subject matter.
“It’s always a pleasure to see how the artists grow every year, a fascinating variety,” said Historical Society President Chris Robinson as he dished out the wine and other beverages in the reception area.
A portion of the proceeds will benefit the historical society, although not all works are for sale. The exhibit will be open until Friday, May 9, during historical society hours. For additional information, go to www.sharonhist.org.
Coinciding with the gallery show, the Sharon Historical Society’s current exhibit is worth a visit. Titled “Family Collections,” the exhibit shows collective Sharon memories found in the artifacts left by ancestors, remembered now in part by what they left behind. Each is a clue to the town’s historic past, spanning two centuries.
Tess Marks as Little Sally and Jackson Olson as Officer Lockstock in the Housatonic Musical Theatre Society production of "Urinetown."
Last week’s Housatonic Musical Theatre Society production of “Urinetown” featured strong performances and superb choreography.
The remodeled auditorium at Housatonic Valley Regional High School made a big difference as well. New seats were a welcome addition, and the increased technical capability meant that the show was flawless from a production point of view.
The difference was so noticeable that director Christiane Olson thanked the taxpayers of Region One for supporting the recent school improvements project in brief remarks before the start of the matinee performance Saturday, March 15.
Katelin Lopes and Andy Delgado were powerful as the star-crossed lovers Hope Cladwell and Bobby Strong.
Jackson Olson got a lot of laughs with his deadpan take on Officer Lockstock, often in tandem with Tess Marks’ wide-eyed Little Sally.
The entire cast hit all the right buttons, not the easiest thing to do with a show that contains multiple layers of satire.
The orchestra, led by Tom Krupa, was rock solid.
And Amber Cameron’s choreography was seamless. The cast looked like they’d been dancing together all their lives.
Race Brook Lodge
Tucked away on Under Mountain Road in Sheffield, Massachusetts, The Stagecoach Tavern dates back to the mid-18th century and offers fine dining in an enchanted setting. It also serves as the portal into the Race Brook Lodge, which harbors unique spaces for entertainment, lodging and wellness.
Intimate outdoor gathering areas are illuminated by strings of lights. A cluster of mid-century bungalows can be rented by guests who come to spend the weekend and attend concerts and retreats, which typically take place in the barns farther back in the woods.
This magical vision springs from the mind of David Rothstein, who purchased the property in pieces between 1990 and 2000, a continuation of his idea to create a place where like-minded people can congregate to enjoy cultural happenings in an idyllic setting.
Before acquiring the Race Brook Lodge, Rothstein, now 90, managed The Music Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts, the premier outdoor music venue in the Berkshires during the 1970s, which he purchased with his former wife, Nancy Fitzpatrick, whose family owned the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge.
In its heyday from 1970 to 1979, The Music Inn featured a who’s who of iconic performers of the era like Ike & Tina Turner, B.B. King, James Taylor, Muddy Waters, The Byrds, Ravi Shankar, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, The Eagles, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Cliff, Toots & The Maytals and The Allman Brothers.
“Music Inn was the last outpost of the counterculture, which had evolved as a result of the groundbreaking evolution of jazz as the first integrated music genre that ultimately paved the way for Rock ‘n Roll,” Rothstein said.
Race Brook barn at nightLety Marcos
This history goes even deeper. Prior to the Music Inn, the buildings were known as the Berkshire Music Barn, and featured performers like Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Thelonious Monk and the Modern Jazz Quartet. The property also featured The Lenox School of Jazz, The Lenox Arts Center, Toad Hall Moviehouse, and The Great Riot Alley Memorial.
As a student of modernist architect Louis Khan, Rothstein absorbed Khan’s ideas of “open frame” or a space without barriers. It’s a concept he used at the Music Inn that carries on at Race Brook.
Race Brook’s music programmer, Alex Harvey recalls how he came to do a retreat with Qi Gong master Thomas Drodge and noticed a Louis Khan poster on the wall. He spent a morning and afternoon talking with Rothstein about art, performance and community in a way he’d been dreaming about for a long time.
“When I saw the poster, I asked David about it. He told me that he was one of Khan’s assistants, and he actually drafted some of the buildings I’d studied. So, before I knew he had the Music Inn, he was a superstar to me,” Harvey said.
Harvey also met the current proprietor Casey Fitzpatrick — David and Nancy’s son — and the two hit it off, realizing they shared a common interest in global music. Armed with a deep Rolodex, thanks to his many years as a performer and ethnomusicologist, Harvey soon began programming shows at Race Brook.
When booking, Harvey looks for artists who can offer something beyond the typical performance.
“We had Alash, who are one of the more renowned Tuvan throat singing ensembles,” Harvey said. “With their energy, they change the weather of the room. It’s a participatory feeling. I loved reading the reactions online; was it a concert or a ritual? That’s what we’re interested in.”
“We have Beausoleil coming up on April 5. When they start playing, you feel transported to a hooch house in Eunice, Louisiana. They create a sense of place, and that’s what really excites me,” he added.
Sunder Ashni singing at Dia de los Muertos.Lety Marcos
There are regularly scheduled programs, like Jazz brunches every Sunday, and at times Race Brook Lodge is open to other groups who book shows like the recent “Almost Spring Weekender” a DJ’d house party produced by Edo Moore.
Ideally, Harvey books fully immersive weekends with music, workshops, and enjoyment of the spaces, whether hiking nearby trails or inside the barns.
“One of my favorites is the Dia de los Muertos weekend which has an open mic to the dead,” Harvey said. “It’s art as a form of medicine and healing. It’s kind of like Brooklyn Academy of Music meets Esselin.”
For elevated musical and wellness experiences in an idyllic Berkshire setting, Race Brook Lodge offers something for everyone. See their site for information on all that they offer: rblodge.com