raging bullThe raging bull elephant of Ithaca television is on another rampage. It’s Thursday night again and the Pegasys studios echo with the soulless trumpeting of a shock jock with nothing to say but an hour to say it in. Mike Angley, the self-avowed Pirate of Channel 13, ex-CIA operative, Ladies’ Man and White Negro dons his dark glasses, adjusts some dials and launches into a rambling, hour long diatribe against an area businessman who stiffed him in a deal.
Angley takes no prisoners but mentions no names. His attack, while nasty, personal and relentless, falls just below the event horizon for the legal department. This hit man of the microwaves knows his broadcast law –he’s been through it all before with a previous arrest on obscenity charges back in the 90’s. Time Warner, host for Channel 13’s Cable Access studio, came to his rescue then by way of defending their own right to air soft core on the Playboy Network. Angley became a local cult hero and attracted a small viewing audience which he quickly proceeded to shed by boring the hell of anyone who expected lively, titillating monologues every Thursday night.
The five viewers who, by all reports, watch Angley regularly must be the guys on the graveyard shift up at Cornell’s Safety Department. Those poor dudes have to stay up past ten – someone might break in and steal some nanotechnology and shrink Ithaca – who knows? Back in his college days, Ez used to head over to the neighborhood White Castle and lug back to the dorm a bag of those tiny, individually wrapped rat burgers. Stack up your books and notes in the john, eat a dozen of those things and you’d be up most of the night, glued to the ceramic. That’s the trick to get in a good night of cramming for exams. Only folks who have nothing better to do with their time will last through the first five minutes of Angley’s rant. The ensuing mix of personal fantasy, status reports on his diet, attacks on anyone and everybody from the Pope right on down to people with Save the Whale bumper stickers just fails to engage viewers who are jaded on Jerry Springer. This is just a local yokel with a beef, not Dick Cavett qua axe murderer.
On this particular Thursday Angley is getting really worked up. He grabs his bullhorn and yells BULLSHIT a couple of times. How appropriate for a guy who’s having a bad attack of verbal diarrhea right there on the telly . We’re wading in it –like a brown tide swooshing against the inside of cathode tube –it’s going to short circuit our set for christsake!! Angley is really stomping on this dude’s head –accusing of him of cheating on his partners, cheating on his taxes, cheating on his wife and, last but not least, cheating on his 8th grade homework. Have some mercy!
Interspersed between repeated blows to his victim’s dignity and personal reputation are Angley’s reminisces of working undercover for the CIA in China when the tanks rolled into the Square, fantasies about being the Babe Magnet of all times, exhortations about Virtue and Integrity. Angley is off the hook, he’s on a roll but the ship might very well capsize from the dead weight of this guy's empty patter. Suddenly, if you’ve lasted through all this, you sit up bolt upright and wonder if this might not be a guy who’d blow his own brains out in front of a camera. Could this be the night he picked -- the finale of Angley Live, prequel to Angley Dead? Will the janitors be mopping up Angley’s own blood off the studio floor for a change?
Think again. Angley comes back the following week, a lime green t-shirt shrouding his beefy shoulders, to celebrate St Patrick’s Day and kick off another night of bloodletting, maudlin self-promotion and psychopathic babbling. This time the novelty factor has worn off. Anybody, absolutely anybody with half a brain could do this talk show thing better, you say – and make it more lively and interesting. You could show footage of Chihuahuas fornicating and make television more appealing. Why doesn’t someone do just that – take the orientation, learn how to push the buttons and adjust a few dials and produce a show with a little more, ah – we’re reaching now – ah --intelligence? Ezra still believes in a classless society so he couldn’t very well say ‘class’ to describe the opposite of what Angley is doing on the air.
Why was Angley voted Ithaca’s best talking head? Why have intelligent Ithacans abandoned Cable Access to lunatics like Angley, bible thumpers, holy rollers of every ilk, right wing Republican savants, Catholic Workers with Ego? Public access television is a wonderful way to build community, encourage dialogue, promote freedom of ideas. Why, in Ithaca, has it become the roost for madmen and self-promoters who bring a limited range of ideas and interests to the table? What happened anyway to the Left? Are radicals in Ithaca camera shy? Or is this the age of the Patriot Act? When free speech is stifled or repressed, nasty speech fills the void. Is that it?
Here’s a guy like Angley who, at least on the air, passes himself off as a down and dirty, no holds barred, street fighting dude. He looks mean, talks mean, But he never manages to go for the head. His clumsy, barroom style of verbal kickboxing, if you can even call it that, depends on the ankle shot. In one sense, Angley is Everyman, filled with displaced anger and spewing resentment against a society that is corrupt, petty, cruel, unsympathetic to the plight of the little guy. But Angley’s ‘rage against the machine’ act is transparent and gets him no points because he comes across like some narcissistic jerk with an axe to grind, especially against the people around town who have shut him out, ignored and failed to recognize his ‘genius.’ Angley passes up his chance to speak for all the little guys in Ithaca and fails to tap into that uneasy fault line where the classes and races meet. It’s obvious he’s only on the air to blow his own trumpet.
The camera is his mirror. Angley likes what he sees because the mirror is filled with his own image. What other viewers see is a portrait of Dorian Gray after a hard night at the Chanticleer, a handful of diet pills and a Gimme chaser.
Ezra should go down and get on the air. Haha! Never happen. You all know he’s camera shy, has a tattoo of Mikhail Bakunin on his forehead and smokes too much to last an hour in the studio, fiddling with the dials.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 8:24 AM
