Radio Sweethearts

Bob gets a break this week, so this week, we get all Brooke all the time. Which is kind of cool, because she’s in China checking up on the branding of China on the world stage, especially in the leadup to the Olympics.

To be completely honest, I’ve kind of tuned out China coverage since the Sichuan earthquake last month. It was bad, as in hard to listen to, considering that I was about to move to the edge of the New Madrid fault line.

Thankfully, given the nature of “On the Media,” we don’t have to worry about being brought to tears by earthquake stories. We have to worry about being brought to tears by stories of reporters experiencing the earthquake.

But we don’t have to worry much.

Mercifully, Brooke seems to keep mostly to Chinese media’s efforts to identify the nation as, in Brooke’s words, “a modern player on the world stage.”

Maybe the most interesting example of this is the Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen, which, in 1979, was designated a “special economic zone,” or a testing ground for Chinese capitalism. As a result, the erstwhile fishing village has become what Brooke calls the “boomingest” of China’s boomtowns.

In fact, its metropolitan area, which it shares with Hong Kong, is the third largest in China.

In Shenzhen, Brooke talks with Xu Xiao Mei, a woman who moved to Shenzhen to make a living working at a mineral water factory, and who made the move from that job to hosting a mildly feminist evening talk show, the name of which translates to “At Night You’re Not Lonely.”

Xu Xiao Mei laments the changing of Shenzhen’s economic climate, as when she started, “There was no so called “elite audience” back then. People were pretty much the same. Then, people rode bicycles and took buses back and forth to work.

“Now more and more of them own private cars.”

As a result of this changing demographic, a show like Xu Xiao Mei’s, which catered to the average listener, doesn’t get the advertising budget it needs, because advertisers want to advertise to the ‘elite’ audiences who own or can afford their own cars, along with other luxuries.

Next is a story with the rather bland title “Journalism with Chinese Characteristics.” It starts with the fairly excellent transition of noting that the Communist government also laments the rise to power of a Chinese upper class.

Brooke notes the government’s response, saying “in 2002, Propaganda Chief Li Changchun announced a new approach to media control, called the Three Closenesses, namely, closeness to reality, closeness to the masses and closeness to real life.

“Maybe that’s why,” Brooke continues, “Yang Jinlin’s Hong Kong based TV news show is allowed to air in the Mainland.”

But he has to jump through hoops to keep himself on the air in the mainland. He may well get shut down if he mentions Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen, or Falun Gong.

But sometimes, the Chinese government knows how to surprise. Again, Brooke:

The Chinese authorities loosen and tighten their hold on the media in response to the diplomatic climate and the political wind. And every once in a while, the ground shifts right under them and they lose their grip entirely. That’s what happened last month.

Wait. I know I promised no earthquake. I didn’t pay enough attention. And I would have just glossed over it, but is that a Bob Garfield School of Metaphor and Cliché lesson I see? Let’s call attention to it.

And every once in a while, the ground shifts right under them and they lose their grip entirely.

But it’s not just Brooke saying stupid things about the Sichuan earthquake that are supposed to pass as clever.

The Kissinger Institute’s Joshua Ramo gets into the act, too, saying “And it was an earthquake not only in the physical sense of what happened in Sichuan but in the sense that it took everything up in Beijing and, like in any earthquake, it shook it.”

At least it’s not as bad as Elvis week here. I anticipate at least four phone calls from friends back in Indiana thinking it would be clever to ask me if the whole city is “all shook up” over the void left by Presley. I can feel the tears welling already.

One more note about this story before I get fed up and move on: When there is background chatter to set the scene of an editorial meeting at the Bejing-based business magazine, “Caijing,” the transcript notes it as “[HUBBUB/LAUGHTER/OVERTALK].”

I think I may have found a new idea for a tattoo.

There’s also the story, “China Vision,” about how the world sees China (a faded, backlit photo of the Great Wall taken during the Mao era behind the buffet, most likely), and how that’s probably wrong. There’s culture. There’s art.

I picture the entirety of China being a whiny, emo middle schooler at a party, arms crossed standing with a foot against the back wall. “If only they knew who I really was,” says China, “then the girls would like me and want to dance.”

I can relate, on a deeply personal level, to that vision of China.

And then, there’s Brooke’s discussion of the Chinese novel, “Wolf Totem,” which Brooke quite awesomely describes as “drenched in the blood of marmots, sheep, horses, of wolves that have been disemboweled, drowned and consumed by thick, sucking swarms of mosquitoes.”

When we first listened, Kerry and I could have sworn there was something in this story about teenagers having sex with wolves, in order to bring democracy and freedom. But, sadly, I couldn’t find it.

This week’s recap was written by Matthew and edited, very loosely and forgivingly, by Kerry, who, on our first listen to this episode, could have sworn “Wolf Totem” was about teenagers having sex with wolves in order to bring democracy and freedom.

Sadly, I couldn’t find anything like that in the transcript.

Also - Bob has two weeks off.  So Kerry gets her Bob-break, too.