Elsewhere in this issue, you'll see that all the Cosmik Regulars have been giving their Top 5s 2002. We're primarily a music magazine, so most of them have, understandably, written about their Top 5 Albums. Though I was once an actual working musician, I'm horrendously out of touch with what's going on in music these days, no doubt a by-product of my impending state of being a doddering old fool.
Nonetheless, since I get to feeling all squirmy and clammy when I'm left out of the group, I want to do my bit, so that I can revel in the comaraderie of my journalistic colleagues and partake with them some jocular colloquy. Or something like that.
And so, fellow media mavens, in the name of conformity and just plain fun, I now present to you my
Top 5 Media...ummm...Things of 2002
5. Advertising is everywhere.
Look around you at just about any time of the day. Someone is undoubtedly there, trying to suck money out of your pockets. This has been growing exponentially since the 70's, but seems to have kicked into ultra-high gear since the new millennium began. Advertising is becoming as ubiquitous as air. When will it stop? Probably when people start demanding to charge the product-makers for the free advertising that they provide as they drive and parade around with brand names plastered all over them. Will we someday see the "AT&T Presidential Elections"?
4. Satellite Radio.
This country isn't homogenized enough, is it? It's bad enough that every town and city that you go to now has the same restaurants and fast food joints, and that from the inside you can't tell one shopping mall from another. Go to another town and watch their local newscasts. Funny how it looks almost exactly the same as in your town, isn't it? Or maybe it isn't. Anyway, now you can drive coast-to-coast without ever having to interrupt the drivel spilling from your car stereo's speakers. Maybe we did this to ourselves by creating this "mobile society" where people re-locate so often. Now every city feels just the same as your hometown.
3. Network Television for people with actual brains!
The West Wing, the Law & Order franchises and NYPD Blue continued to give my brain lots of material for cogitation over the last year. I was especially concerned that the outstanding West Wing would become irrelevant in the wake of 9/11, but the ever-resourceful and very gifted Aaron Sorkin cleverly infused the threat of terrorism into the show with barely a seam showing. Rob Lowe has to be nuts to walk away from something this good. NBC seems to work especially hard to make sure that there are shows for people who want more from tv than watching someone gag on goat eyeballs. In light of what subscription cable can offer (see below), the broadcast carriers are doing everything they can to make their programming edgier and more challenging.
2. The Sopranos and Sex and the City.
I don't get HBO. I have basic cable, which provides me with something in the area of 80 channels, and that strikes me as plenty. But after hearing countless HBO-subscribing friends tell me about the great stuff there, I started renting these two series. I may be a Karl-come-lately on this, but like any good convert, I can't stop singing the praises for this newfound source of spectacular programming. The escapades of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and (purrrrr) Samantha, four New Female archetypes for the Millennium, are laugh-out-loud funny, but also touching, poignant and thought provoking. And I don't think that series television has ever provided characters as complicated, compelling and riveting as Tony, Carmella, Meadow and A.J. Soprano, to say nothing of Dr. Jennifer Melfi, Paulie Walnuts, Silvio Dante, Christopher Moltisanti, and all the other denizens of North Jersey that haunt my thoughts these days. Just PLEASE don't tell me about what happened in Season 4 of either series, since those haven't come out on DVD yet, and I haven't seen them. By the way, look for me to be saying these kinds of things again next year in this space, since I've heard that the first season of Six Feet Under is due to be released on home video in March.
1. The 2002 elections.
The national news media, particularly the tv portion, showed what meek little sheep they were in November. This was a travesty foisted on us by the Republicans specifically and the right wing in general. Follow this twisted "reasoning" if you dare: Back in 2000, the networks all got it right by declaring that Al Gore had won Florida and hence the presidency. Those exit polls are actually deadly accurate; the news organizations have worked for decades perfecting their methods for predicting how elections will go. But the Republicans knew that Dubya's brother had the fix in for the Sunshine State, so they acted all hurt and said that the networks had called the state too soon. After the election had been stolen from the American people, they stayed on the offensive (that's how you keep people from realizing that they've been had), 
declaring that the Democrats were "sore losers" of an election that they had, in fact, won. Just imagine if the tables had been turned - a Democrat elected without winning the popular vote, and a tainted "victory" (resolved with an astonishing lack of circumspection by the Supreme Court) in the state where the candidate's brother was the governor. We'd never have heard the end of it, of course.
The result is that the national news media have been so cowed by the right wing campaign to obfuscate their deep corruption that they have declared a Congress split nearly 50/50 to be deemed as some sort of mandate for the Neanderthal...er, I mean Republican agenda. Trent Lott showed just how cocky and full of themselves the Republicans are when he said one of the all-time stupidest things someone could have said in a public forum and thought that no one would notice.
Let's hope that the year to come brings us a little brighter picture (and I don't mean that we get a digital/hi-def tv) in the media, but I think that you and I all know that for the most part it's probably only going to get worse.