“The View From the Phlipside” is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY. It can be heard Monday through Friday around 7:30 AM. The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program. Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moment’s notice. WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed. You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com. Copyright 2013-17 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see and hear? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Programs from week of August 20, 2017
This Week’s Podcast
My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Driveway Antiques
I found an antique at the end of my driveway today. It sat there carefully wrapped in a plastic bag. I just shook my head in disgust when I picked it up.
It was a phonebook. Seriously, do these things still exist? And if so, why? I tried to remember the last time I looked anything up in a phone directory book. Can’t come up with an example. My bet is that it’s close to a decade.
So I thought I’d do a little digging. Turns out that there are plenty of phone directories floating around, they are still sort of profitable, and much to my surprise, people still use them.
Here’s the first thing I discovered. The name “Yellow Pages” was never trademarked by the folks at AT&T. So anyone can use it. AT&T markets their phone directory service as the “Real Yellow Pages”. Second, phone directories with yellow pages have been around for a long time. The first one was in 1883 in Cheyenne Wyoming. The reason behind the color couldn’t be more boring. The printer ran out of white paper and had yellow on hand.
While overall usage of the phone directory is way down, the publishers (there are four major publishers in the United States) all point to one group as continuing to use the physical directory. People over 50. Wait, I’m a people over 50. Haven’t used one in a decade. Hello, fellow 50-plus type people! Why? Everything you need is available online. And as much as the antique from the driveway claims “Easy to Read Print”, the books are smaller and so is the print. Easy to read, my butt.
Even the directory publishers know that they are dragging along a dying medium. One of the big four publishers looked at a survey from 2015. It showed that 71% of folks who needed to look up information on a business used the internet in some form. But 29% still preferred to thumb through a directory. They also know that it is the digital side of their business that is growing and generating billions of dollars in income. Yes, all of them are massively invested in making this information available online.
So if I never see another one of these antiques in my driveway again, I’ll be happy. There is a way for me to opt-out of receiving them. You do that online as well.
Double Loss
I am drawn to the deaths of two great comedians this past weekend. They could not be much more different and yet the similarities fascinate me. Dick Gregory and Jerry Lewis came from very different places and did very different things but both used comedy as a springboard to make a larger difference in the world.
By the time Gregory began his career as a comic while in the Army in the mid-50s, Lewis had been onstage for twenty plus years, having grown up in a performing family. While both gained fame as nightclub acts, their comedy was completely different from one another. Gregory’s was carefully crafted, cultural satire. He was a member of a new generation of black comedians who rejected the older generations comedic style. Lewis reached back into his vaudeville history for a broad, physical style of humor. Playing against the smooth crooner in Dean Martin, the Martin and Lewis duo became one of the biggest acts on the planet in the ‘50s. Beyond the clubs, Gregory made albums and wrote books, while Lewis became a movie star.
It is the second act for both of these men that stand out for me. There are plenty of comedians in the world, and lots of them do good things. These two men dedicated much of their lives to searching for profound change in the world. For Lewis it was almost sixty years with the Muscular Dystrophy marathon, every Labor Day weekend. He raised the profile of a disease that killed children and raised over two billion dollars for the Foundation. For Gregory, it was an easy step from comedy about civil rights and racism to activism on those same subjects. The transition was every bit as smooth as his comedy. He remained an outspoken social critic and writer for decades.
There is one other way that these two great comedians were alike. Both could be cantankerous and opinionated. Gregory espoused a variety of conspiracy theories later in life, while Lewis was notoriously acerbic and even acknowledged that he was difficult to work with and selfish. They were who they were, and neither man ever apologized for it.
In the end, none of that will matter. What will be remembered is their brilliant work as comedians and their important work as humanitarians. What should be remembered is that they made us laugh and think. Remember that they took the spotlight we gave them and turned it to shine brightly in more important places.
Jerry Lewis, born either Joseph or Jerome Levitch was 91 years old. Richard Claxton Gregory was 84.
Avoidable Mistakes
The older I get the more I believe that there are few if any truly “pure” things in the world. Not all good or all bad. Everything seems to have two sides at least. The best and noblest ideas can be turned over to reveal some truly profound evil. It’s not their essence to be either. It usually is the result of how we choose to use them that makes the difference.
The Internet is rife with possibilities in both directions. When it’s good, it can be an enormous change agent for that good. But when it goes bad, it can match every positive step with darkness.
There’s a term that jumped up into the news this last week again. You may have heard about “doxxing”. That’s the practice of revealing the identity of people on the internet who were anonymous to one degree or another. It’s a controversial practice and several major social media platforms have ruled it a violation of their community norms.
At it’s best, doxxing pulls the mask away from people who are doing bad things. The bully who hides behind an online identity. The thief caught on camera committing a crime. Using the tools available to pretty much anyone, it’s possible to track someone down if they have any level web activity.
The problem is that it never seems to stop at that point. Too often doxxing becomes a form of bullying itself. Private information is shared, address, phone number, employment information, whatever may be “lying around”. What happens next is truly ugly. Vulgar messages and death threats. Usually from people hiding behind their own online personas, so they don’t get caught.
In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, there was a mid-identification of a suspect. After the Charlottesville protests last week an engineer in Arkansas was identified as a white supremacist and his personal information revealed. Once again, the genius of the internet failed. The correct information was eventually shared but not before he and his family fled their home for fear of attack.
Doxxing is just a modern form of the pillory. It is a public shaming device. A form of punishment that we have moved away from in the law and order realm. What is particularly odious about this new form is that there is neither law nor order. The “doxx-er” gets to play prosecution, judge and jury. If they don’t like you or what you say or do, they will turn your world upside down. And always without bothering to accept responsibility for their actions.
Hiding in the weeds taking shots at other people is wrong. Taking out the wrong person is worse. As our mothers taught us, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2017
Theme music for “The View From the Phlipside” and “TVFTP – Podcast” is “Hustle”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Stories Are My Life 
Ever since we bought our house, we've been wanting to replace our torn up asphalt driveway. Since that's not going to happen anytime soon, I might as well dream. We'd like to do something like this. Concrete pavers with grass in between. You can see it here in a traditional type setting. aluminum fence
LikeLike