In the future, every single thing we see on the Internet is going to be fake.
Thus spake a major high tech investor on the PBS Newshour last Saturday. Early warning avatars surround us. On the smartphone application TikTok, you can make yourself dance like a cartoon or modify your body to look like JLo or The Rock. Or both. (Aargh!)
Harmless? Hardly. It means that Donald Trump can live forever. (Aargh!)
So spake the most notable futurists of our time: ABBA.
The legendary Swedish rock group has been with us for half a century in some form. “Mama Mia,” a Broadway show incorporating most of their hits, is playing Tahoe this month. It was made into a Hollywood film a few years ago in which ex-James Bond Pierce Brosnan, ahem, “sings.” (Aargh!) Made megabucks anyway.
ABBA’s latest incarnation hits the U.S. this week. It was a smash in its London debut last May. It cost $175 million and employed Star Wars guru George Lucas’ latest holographic technology.
The four singers, now in their 70s, became young again. They recorded music and moves for weeks enabling “ABBAtars” to be created using body doubles and computer animation magic. British audiences rose as one to dance and pretty much never sat down. The superannuated entertainers actually showed up at the premiere.
Great fun, eh wot? And pretty reasonably priced.
And unreasonably scary. People believe what they see. Decades ago, the late “Superman” actor Christopher Reeve, paralyzed due to an equestrian accident, made a TV commercial advocating better funding for neurological research. Therein, a virtual Reeve rises from his wheelchair and walks.
Doctors across the country were besieged with phone calls from those similarly injured: “I want the therapy Christopher Reeve got.”
Much of the sick success of Donald Trump can likewise be attributed to such desperate hope which makes people vulnerable to pimps and thieves.
In 1971, KOLO TV-8 reporter Thayer Walker interviewed a local mobile home salesman who announced his major platinum find near Topaz Lake. The shyster was, of course, seeking investors. Back then, TV-8 was a CBS affiliate and local news followed the most credible man in the country, legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite.
One viewer jumped out of his chair, convinced to invest a large chunk of his savings with the glory hole hustler.
“Grandpa,” warned his family, “we know that guy. He’s a crook.”
Gramps said they were wrong because he swore he saw Cronkite hisself conduct the interview and Uncle Walter would never have allowed anyone dishonest on his newscast. Alas, the power of media confusion. If it’s on TV it must be true. Grandpa, of course, lost everything and the mobile home salesman moved to Gomorrah South to mine more suckers.
Multiply that by billions and you begin to see the dangers of a mediasotted society, a dys-reality wherein everything has been faked, even reality itself. How many people have you met who “know” that the 1969 moon landing was a Hollywood production? (Hollywood naturally exploited the popular urban myth and made a movie about a faked moon landing. Art imitates life.)
How about the shuck that the World Trade Center was actually blown up by Americans, not Osama’s terrorists? Misplaced trust, a very human flaw, is Christmastime for crooks and dictators.
“Though we never thought that we would lose, there’s no regret. If I had to do it all again, I would my friend…take a chance on me.”
The ABBAtars have warned us.
DOROTHY’S JOURNEY TO OZ AND BACK. Groundbreaking Reno Municipal Court Judge Dorothy Nash Holmes has retired. Last week’s front page Reno GazetteJournal story glossed over her four years as Washoe County’s first and only female district attorney (1991- 94) and ignored her authorship of the 1995 grand jury report documenting how the Renown octopus stole our county hospital. (With a little help from three corrupt county commissioners.) NevadaLabor.com remains the only place on the web you may access the document.
The good ole boy network simply couldn’t stand having a woman DA. One of her yayhoo deputies even got drunk one Friday night and put a bullet through the office wall. (She showed me the damage.)
Her prosecution of corruption finally did her in, succeeded by Republican Dick Gammick. Other than constantly complaining he wasn’t paid highly enough, the ill-tempered Gammick’s greatest achievements over the next 20 years were infamous. He refused to meet with the NAACP and dismissed slam-dunk charges against a dozen execs of the Reno Chevrolet dealership for embezzling customer factory rebates.
Dorothy’s mother was longtime Nevada journalist Vickie Nash. You navigated the Yellow Brick Road very well, lady. You did your mom and all of us proud.
RENTVOLUTION. The North Las Vegas City Clerk has bounced the powerful Culinary Union’s rent control initiative petition. Stay tuned.
HUG HIGH2 RIBBON CUTTING next Tuesday, August 2, 3:00 p.m. If you attend, make sure to take in the Feemster Family Resource Center named after the late Reno-Sparks NAACP matriarch Dolores Feemster and her son, the late former Reno City Councilman Darryl Feemster, Sr. My dear friend and colleague Dolores was a fixture at the old Hug for decades where most of her children attended. She continued counseling students well into her retirement. School administrators knew that when all else failed, call mother Dolores. In that sense, she never retired all.
The new Hug is at 3530 Sullivan Lane in Sparks, north of McCarran and the Wildcreek Golf Course. Get there early. It’s a narrow street. Reservations strongly recommended. https://forms.office.com/r/ cTg04rnVp5
As Dolores and Darryl would advise, take care of each other and be careful out there.
Pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbano, a 53-year Nevadan, is editor of MississippiWestNV. org, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, Rentvolution. org and NevadaLabor.com. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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