C6


S


KLMNO Recipe for disaster: A big story that spills over from day to day


the Mr. Marathon of network anchors. Now we’re seeing it again. It


TOM SHALES On TV


D


o you think you have seen that gull before? You don’t suppose the TV news folks


are recycling oily birds from the Exxon Valdez disaster, do you? Or that they have video files bulging with stock pathetic pelicans, glum inky crabs and sad-sack oysters? Coverage of the BP oil spill has


certainly reached marathon status, the kind of thing still likely to lead on the evening newscasts — so likely that the networks risk evoking “oh not that again” reactions from viewers. It’s an unhappy fact of TV news life: the bigger the story’s significance, the longer it rules the newscasts — and the greater the danger the public will tune out. To keep the story interesting — and thus fertilizing to the Nielsens — TV news turns it into another story, or several other stories, with the gulf spill reduced to background, the same way pictures of oil-covered water become mere backdrops to the shocked correspondents who speak feverishly in the


foreground. And so it is, too, that the spill has become another chapter in the Saga O’bama, with yet more scorekeeping of how the president is doing, and what impression he is making in this impression-crazed culture. There’s a subtle racial angle, of course; isn’t the fixation prompted by Obama’s status as the first president of color enough to inspire the mostly white press corps to scrutinize him unduly, including his vernacular? He said “the


JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES


ANOTHER ANGLE:Florida Gov. Charlie Crist speaks to media outlets in Miami Beach about the gulf oil spill’s impact on tourism.


A-word!”


So it is that Obama this week made his fourth trip to the gulf, dragging the media along, and so it is, also, that Tuesday night he will address the nation. What will it accomplish? It’s not as if Obama is going to stick in his thumb and plug the leak himself. But it’s a ritual he’s compelled to perform, lest he appear to lack sufficient concern, a ritual that George W. Bush helped establish by failing to do it quickly enough. Bush’s disastrous performance after Hurricane Katrina carried the invisible cautionary sign, “Future Presidents Take Note.” Such rituals may have little to do with the main story — the environmental nightmare — but much to do with the sidebar: Can Obama win back the media smarties who seem to be deserting him?


One of the unkinder peripheral ironies of a calamity like this one: The longer it goes on, the more likely public outrage will turn to jejune ennui — what infuriated people when they first learned of it has devolved into a pesky inconvenience; of course, this is


only true of those experiencing it vicariously — even if on high-def TV.


People who experience it that


way, which is not really experiencing it at all, might stop seeing it as a menace to the environment and begin to view it as — mad though it sounds — an impertinence that disrupts their escapist TV-viewing. As such reaction escalates, blame shifts from the company that should have prevented the spill to the media companies whose employees dutifully report on its virulent persistence. At some stage, Ghastly Pelican


No. 204, or some poor gull or fish gone stinky as well as inky (the oil smells bad, correspondents have told us, even as they brave the malodorous gunk in their dry-cleaned jeans), serves as the tipping point at which outrage and umbrage give way to a world-weary sense of futility. We’ve seen it before in other long-running disasters, including the trend-setting Iranian hostage crisis — the one that started the genre and turned seldom-seen correspondent Ted Koppel into


gets less pretty with each new exposure, and that’s about as pretty as poor little Oily McDuck. The media will grade and judge Obama according to how well he comes across, applying the standards of a performance to his gesture, as if “gesture” is all it could possibly be. “Have we all gone crazy?”


CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asks in the Huffington Post, presumably rhetorically. Zakaria finds the preoccupation with “presidential emotion” to be borderline obscene and fundamentally absurd. Thousands of lives and livelihoods are threatened by an ecological nightmare-come-true, and the press wants to know whether the president is shedding real tears or the crocodile kind. It’s a kind of crock, all right, and a sign that when the public starts to show lack of interest in a story, and the press goes hunting for a new angle, even hero-worshiped presidents had better watch their tails. It’s another dilemma faced by a people living in a media-refracted and media-saturated environment, especially one that has seen a population explosion of information sources that hustle and scramble for our attention, then deploy the techniques of showmanship to keep us engaged and to battle the ever-threatening enemy. They see their enemy not as ignorance but as ennui, and they see their challenge not as spreading knowledge but as preventing you from getting restless and, God forbid, changing the channel. shalest@washpost.com


ONLINE DISCUSSION The Post’s Tom Shales talks


television and culture at noon at washingtonpost.com/style.


YouTubers get chance to shape Guggenheim’s world by Monica Hesse In the newest installment of


Prestigious Institutions Slum- ming It (remember when the Li- brary of Congress acquired Twit- ter’s archives?), the Guggenheim Museum has announced that a new exhibition will come from . . . YouTube. YouTube Play, which launched


Monday, is a partnership between the video site and the renowned art museum. It invites users to submit their short creative videos at youtube.com/play. The top 20, chosen by a jury of professional artists, will be on view this fall at Guggenheim museums around the world.


“Philosophically, things like this are very important,” says YouTube senior marketing man- ager Ed Sanders, who compares the effort to the 2009 user-gener- ated YouTube Symphony Orches- tra. “There’s a lot of video out there that has inspired. . . . We’re trying to bubble that content to the surface. The Guggenheim wants to be dazzled.” Nancy Spector, chief curator of the Guggenheim Foundation, calls the collaboration an oppor- tunity to see how new technology platforms might change the video art form. “We are, in a sense, in- viting people to raise the stan- dards” of YouTube, she says. “This


is aspirational for people who are interested in seeing their work be taken artistically.” Some of what’s on YouTube is undeniably artistic. Consider the whimsical stop-motion videos created by the animator PES, or the wall graffiti of artist Blu. But the gloriousness of You-


Tube has always been its random- ness — he fact that PES’s “West- ern Spaghetti” is virtually housed next door to Shane Dawson’s pot- ty-mouthed vlogs, or the kid with the ukulele. Elevating the content of You-


Tube might illustrate the creativ- ity that people are capable of when given opportunities. But might such validating opportuni- ties simultaneously change You-


Tube’s essential freewheeling YouTube-ness? Don’t users al- ready curate the works they find most valuable, through clicks and comments? In some ways, it’s strange to in- troduce a juried sensibility to a relatively new, user-generated world. The issue isn’t that one is valid and the other isn’t, but that the latter is still figuring out what forms and content it values. It’s as if a garden is being tended at the same time it’s being planted. At this stage in YouTube Play’s process, it’s impossible to evalu- ate submission quality — by You- Tube or Guggenheim standards. As of Monday evening, YouTube Play had about 3,200 subscribers and 800 comments, many direct-


ing viewers to videos already en- tered in the competition. Of these, there were things you might expect: a talking piece of citrus fruit named the “Annoying Orange,” a man ranting about the “piece of [bleepity-bleep]” cam- era he’d purchased on eBay. Most appeared to be already existing videos, but YouTube and the Gug- genheim hope that many of the fi- nal entries will be new creations. “Our goal is to have this be sus- tainable and long-term,” says Sanders, adding that YouTube Play would become a biennial event and a way to include a wide swath of participants. “The land- scape [of art] is being shaped by the people.”


hessem@washpost.com


takes a toll on all at home CAROLYN HAX


Caring for elderly parent


While I’m away, readers give the advice:


On bringing an ailing parent into your home, Part 1:


My father lived with my family for nine months, following the onset of Parkinson’s disease. His depression settled over the whole house. Dad clearly didn’t want to be there, and the kids, 16 and 8 at the time, avoided the living room, where dad hung out and slept in the chair constantly, refusing to take any interest in life. Both of the kids essentially quit inviting guests over. They were not immune to the depression and, not to be melodramatic, the feeling of death that surrounded us. I was driving home from work three or four times a day to check on him, feed him and monitor his medications. My husband was a saint about it, but eventually even he said, “We can’t keep this up. We are raising our children in a nursing home.”


Once his illness was diagnosed and he began medication, Dad was actually able to move for a year into an independent living facility, and I truly think he was happier there. He eventually had to go to a nursing home, and has since died. I guess what I am trying to say


is that in spite of our best intentions, we can’t stop the natural course of life, and that also we as parents have to be acutely aware of the effect on our children when a household changes so dramatically. And, too, it is not always the desire of an elderly parent to be in their child’s home. My father had been extremely independent all his life and it was almost more than he could take to have the balance of the relationship change so drastically.


M. Part 2:


My son was 12 when my mother came to live with us. By the time he moved out for good at 19, his grandmother was bedridden, incontinent and did not know who I was. She spent many hours a day calling for long-dead relatives. When she died two years later I had no tears left. I do not regret caring for my


mother, because I had promised to do so and I loved her. What I


Using blueberry bushes for borders and berries HINTS FROM HELOISE


Dear Heloise: We have a very small piece of


property and don’t have enough room for the fruit trees and large garden that we would like. A few years ago, my husband and I determined that we needed a hedge between our driveway and our neighbor’s. We decided that the traditional hedge was not our


style, and instead planted a row of blueberry bushes. They are not as formal, but create the needed border, and we get wonderful fresh berries.


Deb N., Raymond, N.H.


Dear Heloise: We received several beautiful


basket arrangements following a death in the family. There were no instructions on how to care for the plants or even what kind of plants they were. There are several types of plants in each basket. Florists should include a little information with them so we could know how to treat these lovely plant groupings. Kathy, Terre Haute, Ind.


B THEATRE B


“Shrieks of laughter night after night.” -TheWashington Post


B THEATRE The Studio Theatre EXTENDEDAGAINTHRU JUNE 27!


“One of the finest acts of theatre you’re likely to see this year!” —Washington City Paper


AMERICAN BUFFALO


Tonight at 8:00pm! directed by Joy Zinoman by David Mamet


A Studio TheatreVERY Special Event OPENINGTOMORROWAT 7:30PM Lypsinka and James Lecesne in


LEGENDS!


edited by John Epperson directed by Kirk Jackson


Pay-What-You-Can Performance Saturday, June 19, 2:30pm


studiotheatre.org • 202-332-3300 by James Kirkwood


Sunday in Arts. deadline:Wed., 12 noon Monday in Style. deadline: Friday, 12 noon Tuesday in Style. deadline: Mon., 12 noon


The Guide to the Lively Arts appears


Wednesday in Style. deadline:Tues., 12 noon Thursday in Style. deadline:Wed., 12 noon Friday inWeekend. deadline:Tues., 12 noon Saturday in Style. deadline: Friday, 12 noon


For information about advertising, call: Raymond Boyer


Rates: Daily H $134.28 per column inch Sunday H $187.44 per column inch


202-334-7006 FAX 202-496-3814 guidetoarts@washpost.com


Additional support is provided by Elizabeth and Michael Kojaian.


n Mon –Fri at 8, Sat at6&9,Sun at3&7 x Wed&Thu at 5


TKTS: 202-467-4600 www.kennedy-center.org/shearmadness June 15–20 Opera House


Arts Across America is made possible through the generosity of the Charles E. Smith Family Foundation.


The Kennedy Center Ballet Season is sponsored by Altria Group. B Added Shows:


Mon. June 28 at 8 PM Thu. July 1 at 2 PM


You are correct, and most florists do include instructions.


Call them and ask what plants are in the basket and how to care for them. The instructions may have been removed by mistake when someone was collecting the message cards.


Dear Heloise: I have read your column for


many years, and I love it. I have a hint that saves time, space and money. We kept losing opened packages of cheese and sandwich meat in the fridge. Iwent to a dollar store and


bought two plastic shoe boxes, and I labeled one “dairy” and one “meat.” They are easy to keep clean, and take up little space because they stack neatly. Using the boxes frees up the drawer that is supposed to be used for dairy for


PROGRAM A


TONIGHT* and TOMORROWat 7:30 p.m. Houston Ballet


Stanton Welch, Artistic Director Falling (WELCH/MOZART)


The Suzanne Farrell Ballet Suzanne Farrell, Artistic Director


Monumentum Pro Gesualdo and


Movements for Piano & Orchestra (BALANCHINE/STRAVINSKY) WASHINGTON DEBUT


NorthCarolinaDanceTheatre Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, Artistic Director


Shindig


(BONNEFOUX/TRADITIONAL BLUEGRASS) PROGRAM B


Thu., June 17* at 7:30 p.m. and Sat., June 19 at 1:30 & 7:30 p.m.


PROGRAM C Fri., June 18* at 7:30 p.m and Sun., June 20 at 1:30 p.m.


*


Visit kennedy-center.org for complete program information!


Explore the Arts: Free post-performance discussion with company Artistic Directors


Tickets from $29 at the Box Office or charge by phone (202) 467-4600 Order online at kennedy-center.org | Groups (202) 416-8400 | TTY (202) 416-8524


SEASON FINALE! Valˇ Conducts Koh cuha


JURAJ VALˇCUHA, CONDUCTOR JENNIFER KOH, VIOLIN


HAYDN, Symphony No. 85 “La Reine” SZYMANOWSKI, Violin Concerto No. 1 MAHLER, Symphony No. 1


Thu., June 17 at 7 | Fri., June 18 at 8 | Sat., June 19 at 8 The Blue Series is sponsored by


General Dynamics is the proud sponsor of the NSO Classical Season.


United Technologies Corporation.


Tickets from $20 at the Box Office or charge by phone (202) 467-4600 Order online at kennedy-center.org | Groups (202) 416-8400 | TTY (202) 416-8524


JENNIFER KOH


the kids’ snack cups and drinks. Barbara in Great Mills, Md.


Dear Heloise:


Here is a hint for those stubborn, tiny corks that are used to plug up shakers for salt and pepper. Often the corks dry up and shrink or get pushed into the shaker so far that it’s impossible to get them out. Soft, foam earplugs to the rescue! Squeeze an earplug and put it in the hole, and it will expand to fit.


H.N., via e-mail


Dear Heloise: When I am browsing the


Internet, it is very easy to stop by my favorite shopping sites and purchase something on impulse. I’ve found a way to stop this and


Send a hint to Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Tex. 78279-5000, fax it to 210-HELOISE or e-mail it to Heloise@Heloise.com. Please include your city and state. © 2010, King Features Syndicate


save money. When I want to make a purchase of, say, $30 for a blouse, $60 for a jacket or $100 for a pair of shoes, I write down that amount, plus the additional charge of shipping. Writing the number on a piece of paper makes it more tangible.


Then I transfer that amount,


which would have come off my debit card, into my savings account. Cha-ching! I won! I’m a saver!


L.S. in Illinois


TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2010


NICK GALIFIANAKIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


do regret is that it was so all- consuming that my very intelligent, kind and helpful son was shortchanged in ways that cannot be undone. If I had it to do over, I would


work very hard to find help and support such that I had more time for my boy, rather than just accepting that he was helpful to me, and mostly took care of himself, during those years when I was so terribly overwhelmed.


Vermont


On sharing responsibility for another’s care:


My mother has Parkinson’s and is a widow, and my sister and I carry the lion’s share of keeping her life straight. I write update memos about everything I do. Every doctor visit, every struggle with her insurance or Medicare, any change in the home, any major purchase, any financial decision. Printed copies go into her files. If I am hit by a truck, anyone can open a file and see the most up-to-date data. And I e-mail this info (less sensitive financial data) to about 10 adult grandchildren as well. No secrets, no surprises.


Careful


Write to Tell Me About It, Style, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or tellme@washpost. com.


ONLINE DISCUSSION Carolyn Hax’s weekly Web


chat is at noon Fridays at www. washingtonpost.com/discussions.


NORTH CAROLINA DANCE THEATRE, PHOTO BY JEFF CRAVOTTA


BEGINS THURSDAY!


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