According to the alt-media conventional wisdom, when TV and radio ratings decline, major-label CD sales slump, and major-studio movie ticket sales stagnate, it’s supposed to be a hopeful omen toward the impending demise of the “dinosaurs.” But when book sales show a similar slump, we’re all supposed to get outraged n’ frightful that those rubes out there in bad ol’ mainstream America aren’t consuming what’s good for ’em.

The truth lies elswhere.

High, low, and middlebrow content throughout the mechanical (print) and analog (broadcast) media have had to make room in the public “mindspace” for these newfangled digital media (Internet, DVDs, video games, et al.). It’ll all sort out eventually, leaving some investors (of time, energy, and/or money) into various of these media prosprous and others forlorn.

…believes Disney will inevitably ruin the Muppets.

…wittiest, right-on political bloggers these days just happens to also be one of the hottest women in film history.

…sees DVD supplements and commentary tracks as making film-studies courses at least partly obsolete: “In the same way that punk showed how it was possible to make music without the experts, so too DVD shows us how to learn about film without the expert professors.”

…the Rocklopedia Fakebandica, which claims to be the ultimate authority on fictional rock bands in movies and TV shows, doesn’t just include the obvious entries such as Spinal Tap or Jem and the Holograms. It even has the Beets (from the cartoon Doug), Lenny and the Squigtones (from Laverne & Shirley), and the notorious ’60s would-be hipster film The Phynx!

…today to veteran actress Ruth Warrick, whose career span ranged from Citizen Kane to Erica Kane.

…(not seen in print locally) The Straight Dope claims, “Somehow I doubt coming generations are going to get nostalgic about the great video rental stores of their youth.” I dunno ’bout you, but I sure as heck miss both incarnations of Video Vertigo, the pioneering Backtrack Records and Video, and the “Hypno Video” section of Confounded Books.

…in quite the same precise way as supposedly “wholesome entertainment” that’s actually creepy/offensive/horrific. I’m thinking right now of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, “Starving Artist Sale” mass-produced oil paintings, the old Today’s Chuckle front-page newspaper joke, Leave It to Beaver, The All-New Leave It to Beaver, and retro diners decked out in Fifties Fetishism.

Thus, I suspect I’ll love that new kiddie movie, The Polar Express.

First, it has Tom Hanks (my vote for the most overrated ham actor since Richard Burton) in not one but five roles, including Santa Claus and a ten-year-old boy.

On top of that, Hanks and the rest of the cast have been digitally transformed into hyper-realistic versions of the paintings in Chris Van Allsburg’s original book—figures that were haunting in an intentional, moody way.

The result, according to several reviewers and online essayists, is a “creepy” spectacle filled with “zombie-like,” “dead-eyed mannequins.”

And it’s in 3D at Imax theaters!

Sounds like entertainment to me.

I’ve been on a political-news fast since this morning. I’m refusing to get bitter, depressed, or frustrated.

I’ve been cleansing and renewing my mind with Looney Tunes and Doctor Who DVDs, with Comcast digital cable’s opera music channel, with the coffee-table book Playboy: The Photographs, and with the last two stories in my main man D.F. Wallace’s anthology Oblivion. And I’ve been trying to jump-start my one-month novel, to little success thus far.

Tomorrow, I’m likely to spend the day locked up with my yet-to-be-written novel. I might read only the sports and living sections of the newspaper. I’ll go out later that evening, but will instruct my schmoozing companions to stick to discussing personal and/or upbeat topics.

I’m sure that within a few days, I’ll have something to say about the national tragedies. Until then, let me remind you of a certain famous fictional political organizer, “Boss” Jim W. Gettys.

As played by future Perry Mason costar Ray Collins in Orson Welles’s film classic Citizen Kane, this “W.” is an admitted “no gentleman,” a crook and grafter. He’s the target of the egotistical-yet-populistic publisher Charles Foster Kane’s short-lived political career. (In the first draft of the screenplay, it’s clearer that Kane isn’t running for office directly against Gettys, but against Democratic and Republican candidates who are both in Gettys’s pocket.)

It ends badly. Gettys finds and exploits a scandal in Kane’s personal life. On election night, Kane’s right-hand man instructs the press-room staff at Kane’s New York Inquirer to use a pre-set front page headline, “Charles Foster Kane Defeated—FRAUD AT POLLS!.”

Kane wastes the rest of his life as a grumpy old conservative hermit, with no sense of humor and horrid artistic tastes.

Dear God, please don’t let me end up like that.

We like her. She made a monologue movie in Seattle. She also made a touring show with an election-year theme, which you can now view online.

…Fahrenheit 9/11 online.

…where you can watch Fahrenheit 9/11 online, if you have the right computer setup and broadband connection etc.

…the first “Hollywood president,” two decades prior to Reagan. (JFK was Marilyn Monroe’s pal; his dad founded the studio that became RKO; he consciously nurtured his own screen image.)

But NY Times arts-section vet Frank Rich we’ve now got another administration-as-screenplay at work:

“No president has worked harder than George W. Bush to tell his story as a spectacle, much of it fictional, to rivet his constituents while casting himself in an unfailingly heroic light. Yet this particular movie may have gone on too long and have too many plot holes. It may have been too clever by half. It may have given Mr. Kerry just the opening he needs to win.”

Rich contrasts this image with that of Kerry, whom Rich characterizes as a long-winded policy wonk who threatens to lull audiences to sleep. Rich doesn’t get that we’re on the cusp of what I’ve called the long-attention-span generation. Yeah, Kerry appeals to all-day C-SPAN viewers. But his nuanced, carefully-paced language might also appeal to those who buy the extra-extra-long Lord of the Rings DVDs, who listen to interminable guitar solos by “jam bands,” or who’ve embraced poker as the fastest-growing TV sport.

…has made 51 (count ’em!) short Net-videos, each starring a different ex-Bush supporter.

…asks us to view the election not as a referendum on Bush but as a referendum on Bush’s ace political strategist Karl Rove, whom Gabler calls “America’s Mullah”:

“Rovism is not simply a function of Rove the political conniver sitting in the counsels of power and making decisions, though he does. No recent presidency has put policy in the service of politics as has Bush’s. Because tactics can change institutions, Rovism is much more. It is a philosophy and practice of governing that pervades the administration and even extends to the Republican-controlled Congress. As Robert Berdahl, chancellor of UC Berkeley, has said of Bush’s foreign policy, a subset of Rovism, it constitutes a fundamental change in ‘the fabric of constitutional government as we have known it in this country….’Rovism is government by jihadis in the grip of unshakable self-righteousness — ironically the force the administration says it is fighting. It imposes rather than proposes.

Rovism surreptitiously and profoundly changes our form of government, a government that has been, since its founding by children of the Enlightenment, open, accommodating, moderate and generally reasonable.

All administrations try to work the system to their advantage, and some, like Nixon’s, attempt to circumvent the system altogether. Rove and Bush neither use nor circumvent, which would require keeping the system intact. They instead are reconfiguring the system in extra-constitutional, theocratic terms.

The idea of the United States as an ironfisted theocracy is terrifying, and it should give everyone pause. This time, it’s not about policy. This time, for the first time, it’s about the nature of American government.”