Get the Picture!!!

To: J.D. and S.D.
From: B.L.
Date: Right Now
Subject: Getting the Picture!!!!

As you know, J.D., Derek Jeter hit a baseball milestone on Saturday on  his 3,000th hit (or was it 4,000th?). I’m no baseball fan, but I saw the clip on the news. Did you? Did anyone in our company? Because I sure couldn’t tell by today’s company headlines!!

Was anyone paying attention to the still photograph? Did anyone, besides our friend Borenstein, bother to even look for it? My mother called me right afterwards to let me know about it, just as I was watching it on the news.

“Did you see that? Did you see Jeter’s ball go right over your company’s great big sign?” she asked.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Well somebody better DO something about it!”

“Yes, Mom.”

I did what I could. I immediately went to my Facebook page and there it was; Borenstein had shared it. You see, I’m smart. I know enough to put everyone from our area on my Facebook so that if it something important happens, especially visually, I’ll know about it right away.

I asked him who took it but when I looked at it more closely, I could see it was taken by a wire service. It’s a fantastic, one-in-a-million photo, with the crowd – including Jeter – running towards the outfield, their hands outstretched – and the fans in the seat directly above the sign reaching for the ball, which the photographer had conveniently halted right between the letters of our company name, dead center in the photo.

Isn’t it just too bad that we didn’t have our own photographer to take it!? Not necessarily me, but somebody! Where were our marketing people? Where were our agents? Everyone knew about the importance of this game for days and days beforehand. Plenty of time to arrange for someone with a camera.

Or as it happens, to ask this photowire service, which specializes in sports photography and will assign a photographer for a company or organization, to do the job. I called them this morning. They said they’d be more than happy to oblige us with permission to use the photo, undoubtedly for a fee, but for a photo that good, it’s well worth it.

Still, I had to call Debbie in Marketing who had to send a message to our MLB contact out in Corporate who has to make sure it’s okay with the MLB, who are famously fussy about permission to use pictures of their teams. Wasn’t THAT guy paying attention to the game? Didn’t HE see where the ball went?! Why wasn’t he on the phone immediately to our media people to find out if any pictures made at least into the broadcast media? Obviously, it did; that’s where I believe Borenstein found it. What were our social media people doing out there in the cornfields? Barbecuing?

Of course, we could count on the Media not to use that particular photograph, although I’m sure they could have. Why use a sensational, dramatic photo of a fan catching the ball, when you could use a photo of the batter which looks like him on just about any other day of the baseball week? Or better, yet the victory grip (gripping the ball that is) and grin that they did use of the fan that caught the ball?

Don’t tell me you were there at the stadium, J.D., and didn’t think to bring a camera? No – you don’t like taking photos. If you were there, you may have been in the wrong spot anyway (I wouldn’t have been). I had a little talk with our marketing about it, though. I think next time they know an important marketing event is going to happen they’ll be a little better prepared!#

And I’m not even a baseball fan, readers. But I do believe in telling your own story. Because no one is going to do it for you. That’s why Glenn Beck has launched his own internet TV show. The Media sure isn’t going to give Conservatives any airtime anymore than they’re going to give what they consider “free advertising” to my company. They’ll cut off their noses to spite their faces, and not publish a fantastic photo, rather than promote a “capitalistic” company.

I’m grouchy and grumbly, but even though I might be out of a job by January, I still support my company and believe in their story. They’re a VERY good company but they’re much too slow and diffident about promoting themselves. They don’t even have an office in NYC. Well not yet. We’re hoping that’s going to change soon.

I also believe in the Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Conservative American stories. The Liberal Media clearly does not. Right now I’m reading a book called Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How The Left Took Over Your TV.” [J.D. I’m finished with The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind; I’ll bring it into the office tomorrow for whenever you get back.]

Ben Shapiro talks about the new Hollywood Blacklist of Conservative writers. Their numbers are few and hiding in the shadows of the Hollywood sign. A conservative must be very daring to state their political views in public at all, at say, some Los Angeles bistro. If they’re working, they don’t dare openly debate politics in the writers’ rooms of the television shows. Writing their views into their scripts will get the script automatically rejected, and they’ll be immediately fired from the set.

Shapiro gives a history of liberalism in television from Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows to the current comedies (I’m just starting on the section about dramas). The Liberals are blatant about their intent to “lead” society rather than “reflect” and dismiss ratings as nothing more than chasing the almighty dollar.

What an insult to American television viewers. Shapiro makes a lot of excuses for the shows and why Americans watch them. He cites the classic line many Conservative writers whom he interviewed (incognito): “Some of their best friends are Liberals.”

Yeah. Right. Shapiro feels that, thanks to the First Amendment, no one can really tell Liberals that they can’t write about what they believe, but that Conservatives should have more equal time on the air. This was in the comedy section. What can you do if the shows are funny and witty, he asks? He feels it’s unrealistic to expect America – especially young America – to turn the shows off.

That’s probably so. But we can sure give it a try. I intend very soon (I’m getting up my nerve) to cancel all but my basic cable, which contains the news and weather stations). Shapiro advises us not to shut off our televisions and “read.” Rather ironic advice, since I shut off my television to read his book.

Maybe that’s exactly what we need to do, though. We need, at least to change the way we watch television and where and how we watch it. Glenn Beck’s GBTV is a good start. In fact, there’s a whole market of internet subscription television, most channels for a very nominal fee per month. A few channels are even completely free.

We say we’re not about to pay for television. But we are paying for it, in every product we purchase. Cable television was supposed to be free of advertising, but it isn’t. Our cable subscription money and our product advertising dollars mostly pay for subversive, anti-American garbage, morally corrupt, offensive and not even funny. I banned The Simpsons in my home when my nephew was a child and would come to visit. With so much garbage on so many channels, it’s not worth the $85 a month I pay past the basic cable to turn on the few shows I do watch.

The Internet television people know the tide is about to turn and are providing the service, for the moment, at a reasonable rate. More producers like Glenn may be able to tell their stories. Eventually, we might receive better programming. We need to tell our story. I don’t know anyone as of yet who’s better at telling that story than Glenn Beck. We can play it cheap and listen to the Liberal Show the rest of our lives.

Or we can support those who’ll tell our story; it’s not going to happen any other way. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, free television, or free freedom.