Wac6arts

Talking Heads Not Talking

Somehow, Harry Shearer intercepts satellite feeds of TV network news personalities as they sit waiting for the show to start or resume.

It's mysterious to me how he does this technically and how he clears copyright. Perhaps because the images captured are of public figures - Anderson Cooper, David Gergen, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, to name a few - statutory and common law rights of personality do not apply? –

In any case, each feed seems to loop longer than any typical break for commercials. And you get to see how each personality passes the time. Chris Matthews stares into the camera as though he were facing himself down in a mirror. Larry King presses his chin into his upturned fist, just as he does when listening to his guests. Then-Senator Obama languidly flips the pages of what looks like USA Today.

I find the "before and after" moments on C-SPAN to yield more insight on the political character, but these silent passages of Harry Shearer's curation - if you give them the same attention you would lend the pictured celebrities when they are talking on the air - do throw into relief how driven these people are. I imagine the average person would look restless and guilty, like she had better uses of her time.

To see things as they are not meant to be presented, that is a gift and that is an essence of art.

So it is fitting that you may see a collection of the Harry Shearer videos, running simultaneously, now at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. The show is called "Silent Echo Chamber."

This post is republished from William Carleton, Counselor at Law.

C-SPAN Kicks Ass

What I like most about C-SPAN is how they keep the cameras running and the mikes open after the event is (ostensibly) over. It's a subversive editorial stance, wrapped in the guise of a lack of a point of view.

But there is a point of view, and it is to catch what's publicly catchable, including those bits that everyone on camera knows will be edited out, or not even shot, by the other news organizations in tow. It's not that C-SPAN is showing you private conversation -- no, the public figures remain at all times aware that they are in public. But C-SPAN often catches them in a slightly less guarded "beltway" public space, something other than the national stage, if that makes sense.

Here's a bit edited together from three photo ops that the President's nominee for the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, gave with, respectively, Senators Specter, Schumer and Brown. In a quick 15 minutes, you glean:

• Sen. Specter really, really likes being a senator;
• Sen. Schumer is all about New York (you can imagine Sen. Specter switching policy, party or state, anything to be there; not so Sen. Schumer);
• Sen. Brown is intensely handled, although that may be self-imposed (notice who closes the door on the cameras).

Solicitor General Kagan is impossible to read. Which is what a lot of people are saying about her now.

Thoughts on the Final Episode of the Third Season of Mad Men

We're in the middle of the story. Conflicts have yet to be resolved. Characters represent alternative ways this could play out. 

Something unexpected is happening. Enemies find affinity more like friendship than anything known since school.

Paired glass doors of a certain make hum when opened. The lock is fixed at the base, so that the key must be worked from a squat or prone position. These design choices suggest that the general public must always be permitted between the deliberate hour of arrival and the languid improvisation of departure.