"Won't soul music change now that our souls have turned strange?"
What a year 2023 was.
This week’s soundtrack: Silver Jews - “We Are Real”
When 2023 started, I was cautiously optimistic about the way that the news and media worlds were moving, even with the immolation of Twitter under Elon Musk. I was cautiously optimistic about the way my career was moving. I started this newsletter by writing about the coverage of the Jan. 6 Committee and the ways that the news industry was maybe learning some of the lessons of the Trump era, albeit too late. I ended 2023 writing about perception v. reality in sports (and crime and gentrification) coverage
It seems like forever ago that I quoted Chelsea Wolfe in naming this newsletter, mostly because the globe has seemed to be on fire for for years. The COVID-19 crisis warped time and our perception of it; each January since 2020 has seen scores of online jokes and memes about still thinking processing two or three years before.
(Ironically enough, the Trump presidency preceded this by a few years for many journalists. Trump’s command of the news cycle made every day feel like a month and every week feel like a year. Time shifted in a different way, in less of a Groundhog Day/Edge of Tomorrow way like COVID-19 isolation, but rather in an overwhelming way.)
Most of the time, 2023 felt like more than a year. The Trump era numbed us to the horrors of having the main character of society be a bigoted, ultra-rich weirdo, but Musk’s Twitter saga bubbled up just as we had a respite from such a hellish reality. I now have to know about Musk’s politics, his various bigotries and the particular levers he can pull that change world events.
More than three years into the COVID-19 crisis, Aaron Rodgers, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and various other jerks and weirdos continue to try to get some traction in the media sphere (about it and other fake science). Thankfully, they are mostly forgotten. The pandemic has subsided insomuch as the vaccine rollout spread far and wide enough that infections continue, but deaths and hospitalizations are lower, though the psychological scars will remain on society’s body.
Trump’s influence has subsided somewhat in many ways, but his influence is as big as it ever has been in politics, media and government. Despite being under indictment, knocked off the ballot in Colorado and skipping the debates, he is a frontrunner to win the 2024 Republican primary. His manipulation of the court system, his outsized role in GOP politics and his cadre of protégés and imitators … he’s still the biggest influence on American politics today. Even his moving of the window of acceptability of bad ethics has been a factor. Legacy news organizations vacillated from avoiding him to platforming him, getting it wrong pretty much every time. Like COVID-19, Trump’s influence on our society is something with which we’ll reckon for decades to come.
To torture the phrasing that is the name of this whole newsletter, the proverbial bent world has not straightened out. Not even a little.
In the social media sphere, things got weird. While l'affaire Musk started in 2022, it came into focus in 2023. I wrote about it a few times here, both within the “online v. offline world” and about what Twitter’s slow death specifically means for information trust in an increasingly disinformation-soaked world. To fill the void, TikTok became a source of news for far too many people and I’m not sure I want to see whatever long-term consequences will come from that. Threads came and went.
Thankfully, we’ve still got the jokes. The Pop Tart really made everyone step up their jokes. Thanks, anthropomorphic breakfast food substance.
The legacy media didn’t fare much better, as that dumb rich guy submersible sucked up coverage for nearly two weeks over the summer. It was like the Chinese balloon, only way dumber and with way less import to the world; I am still aghast that it was such a huge part of coverage in media nationwide.
In a way, 2023 was the year of AI. While Dall*E gave us a series of cheesy AI images earlier than this year, the full slate of AI started to be an issue in and out of the media sphere. Once the landmark publication Sports Illustrated started making up reporters out of thin air (and AI), people started to really notice.
George Santos is not AI, but he kinda feels like it. I didn’t cover his end here in the newsletter, but I did analyze how we got here. He is now on Cameo, which speaks pretty poorly about my main complaint about politics being an avenue for entertainment and primarily that.
Overall, the year in the convergence of media and government has been a trying one. The problems that have plagued the television and post-television era – the Fox News lawsuit/partisan coverage, corporate garbage, the great man theory of politics (and media), false fairness, media bubbles, bad/unfair information, car chase-style ratings chasing, politics over governing, etc. – aren’t going away as we move into a year where the main news story will be Gerontocracy Bout V.2. I don’t know how we’ll get through it all, unless the Pop Tart is running for president. He’s got my vote.
On a personal note, 2023 was a trying one for me. I wasn’t able to take my semi-regular trip outside the U.S., having been laid off during the summer. That colored this newsletter, in that I took way more weeks off than expected (last week, for example) mostly because of the transition to a new job (I wasn’t unemployed terribly long, thankfully). But, I also now don’t have to follow the news in the same 24-hour cycle, so I hope the back half of this year’s newsletters were a little more big picture. They probably weren’t, but that was the hope.
I’ll likely deliver 45 or so newsletters in 2024 (this one counts, damnit), depending on my job, my life and such. Don’t worry. Lulu will still be a big part of 2024.
Lulu Update
My dog is ending 2023 just like she started it: Fat and happy.
Some Recommendations: My Favorite Cultural Stuff Released This Year
If Obama can release a year-end list, I can too. Damnit.
Favorite TV Show: Barry, which stuck the landing. I hope Bill Hader gets as many awards as he deserves.
Favorite Podcast: Double Threat, which is somehow the best possible way to spend 90ish minutes. The Mickey Rooney episode was my favorite of this year and a good entry into the show.
Favorite Album: MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO by KAROL G. In a year with a lot of great albums, MSB was the one I spun the most and the one that never left my brain. Its worldview – horny, fun, optimistic, etc. – is about the polar opposite of my own, but the thing just sticks to you.
Favorite Book: The Wager, by David Grann, of course. I’ve talked about my love for Grann in this space and his latest does not disappoint.
Favorite Movie: Oppenheimer was a near-perfect film and I loved it. I didn’t see a ton of new movies this year, but the ones I did see (Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Priscilla, Asteroid City, a few others) were all terrific. I’ve become very discerning in my middle age.