I probably took myself too seriously during my communication studies. I stuck my nose in the books I was assigned; I spent too much time reading the research articles; and I doggedly followed the orders laid out by the professor. I recall that the majority of those falling into the Communication major were undisciplined cut ups but well spoken and fearless public performance artists, and they were almost all undisciplined in the art of reading, studying, and reproducing for tests. They played the rebels. They would get on my nerves because I felt they were playing fast and loose with with what could be described as a social pathology. They were imposing upon everyone's sonic space to varying effect. But most revealing of all, they had friends, high self-esteem, and were managing to maintain the center of attention. Maybe I was too serious about these things.
Enter this man from the field.
The man in the center of attention is Tony Patrico. Like me, he was a Communication major. I went to SLU. He earned his degree across the river at SIUE. I was on a communication theory track with media technology interests. This was the late 90s, and because Father Onge had taught at SLU as well as Marshall McLuhan metatheoretical approaches to communication technology were in vogue. Secretly, I aspired to be a creative writer in the most abstract, don't-tell-anyone-your-aspirations kind of way. That, in particular, was how I was raised: "don't reveal your hand kid."
I can't speak deeply upon Tony Patrico's background as I am not registered at Linkedin. But I learned through search that Tony earned a broadcast communication degree that equipped him with practical knowledge for the broadcast field. He's in radio now, which probably is the outcome of internships and an exemplary record that is the consequence of an industry-direct education. He's "obviously" talented at the one thing that matters, entertaining others, because the proof is in the pudding. This man has run crowd address at hockey games and is always present at public events where the radio station is present. I've listened to his broadcast off and on for years, mostly due to the fact that work trucks have radios and the men who decide what will play have specific interests, and those interests fall in line with this fat man lampooning himself in front of these beautiful women and his radio show crew.
What I recall from listening to his show is that it grated against me and my education in how the shows discusses categories of experience rife with bias and controversy in ways intended to evoke those very things via titillation and shock. Like most radio hosts he's built a loyal base of listeners who look forward to his show, its weekly highlights, and the worldviews that it confirms. I recall being at a very dirty steel mill driving to the location of our maintenance job while Patrico took calls from the public on the topic of white women who have dated black men, whether or not the sex was good, and whether or not they had large penises. The calls were mixed, and the topic quickly faded. In the recurring segments of his broadcast Patrico announced porn star birthdays or dived into amother category that mildly conformed to morality: stories about how dumb criminals got caught.
This man represents a success story in the field of mass communication. But he also reflects a core paradox of the intellectual pursuit of a field that is about the tools of mass persuasion. His success comes not from his intellectual ability but from a different set of native skills: being an approachable everyman whose adorableness comes from his ability to lampoon himself, not appearing any different than his average radio listener, and in some combination of these basic skills appeal to a wide enough audience of listeners in order to retain his job.
I had ideas, serious ones. I still have them, and they probably fit better on an Art Bell show than on a Friday morning alternative radio talk show at the high end of the FM dial. I listen to John Zerzan's curated radio show broadcasts from the University of Oregon and I get it. Zerzan, who is an intellectual trained in a field other than communication studies, has nowhere near the same listenership nor is he a male brand that consistently pleases crowds of mixed sex, age, and lifestyle. I recall the scene from "Talk Radio" where talk radio host Barry Champlaign is summarily booed during a promotional visit to a basketball game during his introduction and speech. Then a local woman confronts him and spills her drink on him. What initially won Champlaign's spot on radio was his personality, and what ultimately rubbed his listeners wrong were his liberal ideas and his Jewish background. For that he was murdered but not before he was mailed numerous anti-Semitic threats to the radio station.
I had ideas, serious ideas, and like a Karl Marx mine tended toward the gnostic discipline of showing others their false consciousness while uncovering some 'true' reality, whatever that may mean.
In reality I should have let myself get fat, developed a good physical humor routine, and simply stored up enough self-confidence in spite of all that self-effacing "kook branding" to persuade others to hire me in a very-hard-to-crack field of mass communication.
What bothers me is that a person like Tony Patrico, who is very much a product of the Saint Louis Metropolitan Region, is for most people a standard-bearer of the field of Communication. People like me, who often carried people who resembled Tony through the tougher aspects of the major, which wasn't really that hard anyway, ended up too proud to take any old job let alone go shirtless and fat as an entertainment brand for the region and ironically found themselves in occupations where they work among the generally uneducated and are exposed to the "raunch and circumstance," via radio, of those cut ups from my class who by hook, crook, skill, grit, and luck landed the jobs that I thought would be available to the "best" in my field. Straight A's, invitations to be the university news editor by a real, honest-to-goodness news editor, and a free ride through graduate school all ended up putting me in a rebar patch on the side of a road, working for an hourly wage that is ultimately secured as a yearlong career by doing the one thing I was too proud and defiant to do during my university years: make lasting professional ties, shamelessly network, and basically lying one's way through interview after interview. I don't work in Communication, nor do I work in Construction yearlong. That's a shame. I am a bloody wasted resource.
I am a shitty liar, a decent storyteller, a hard worker, and a loyal friend. But I also value myself and my time, so I refuse to allow myself to become a self-styled brand through communication skills. I refuse to be the overweight, shirtless man-child. I would rather lead by example, and be an example to which others should aspire. What would that make me, a Mengele? I am not, nor do I really have the self-esteem to maintain my composure among others with beauty, intellect, and self-confidence. I sit alone. I count what money I've been able to save. And I waive off what that older, wiser men tell me: "you're smart."--when what they determine to be 'smart' is merely achieving a zenith of selfishness as an independent consumer of one's labor rewards in a consumer society.
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