Comedian, musician, host of Chris Crofton's Advice King Podcast and former Nashvillian Chris Crofton asked the Scene for an advice column, so we gave him one. Crowning himself the “Advice King,” Crofton will share his hard-won wisdom with whosoever seeks it. Follow Crofton on Facebook and Twitter, and to submit a question for the Advice King, email bestofbread[at]gmail[dot]com or editor[at]nashvillescene[dot]com.
Dear Advice King,
I really want to study journalism, but there have been so many layoffs lately. Should I do something else? Thanks!
—Geraldine in Yonkers, NY
You should do something else. Let me think what other jobs there are…
This should be a recurring feature — “WHAT JOBS?!”
WHAT JOBS?!
- Uber
- Lyft
- Uber
- Barista
- Lyft
- Fracker
- Pundit
- Grubhub
Almost all news outlets rely on corporate sponsors to exist. In addition, most of those news outlets are OWNED by big corporations.
Corporations have no interest in journalism. Corporations have no interest in the truth. Corporations would drill for oil in your grandmother. After “fracking” your grandmother to death, the president of Shithead Oil would say that Shithead Oil had no choice because of “an obligation they have to their stockholders.” Any time I commit a crime in the future I am going to say I did it because I had an obligation to my stockholders, and they will let me go.
Corporations sponsor journalists for the same reason they sponsor politicians — so they will be able to influence their work. See: Sinclair Broadcasting.
The First Amendment is alive and well in Uber and Lyft, though, I’ll tell you that. I’ve had some of the wildest conversations in those things. As an alternative to journalism, you could drive for a ride service and talk to your passengers exclusively about the importance of overturning Citizens United and how universal health care is a moral imperative. Just for fun, I’m going to tell about some things I learned from an extremely lively Uber driver I rode with recently.
First, he told me that he had invented a new-and-improved MP3 player. I was like, “Cool.” Then he was like, “Do you wanna hear it go?” And I was like, “Sure.” I then heard The Doors song “Love Her Madly” LOUDER THAN I HAVE EVER HEARD IT. (I smoked a lot of pot in suburban 1980s Connecticut, so that’s really saying something.) He kept yelling, “Listen to the clarity!” while he was weaving all over the road. I thought I was going to die. There were probably worse ways to go, I figured. At least I got to experience the song “Love Her Madly” the way it was meant to sound — which is, apparently, loud as shit with a Greek man screaming “listen to the clarity” over it.
After he was finished demonstrating his new-and-improved MP3 player — the one that big corporations are trying to keep off the market because it is too good (which I 100 percent believe, btw) — he said he had immigrated to America from Greece in the 1980s. He said he came to America to FIND JIM CROCE. He was not kidding. Since that was before the internet, he had no way of knowing that Jim Croce had died years earlier. That’s what he said. Even without an internet, there must have been a way to find out if Jim Croce was alive or dead before you moved to another country to find him. (A private detective? People Magazine?) But ANYWAY.
He learned English from Jim Croce songs. And he learned to play guitar by playing along to Jim Croce songs. He asked if I would like to hear some of his original songs. I said yes, because by that point I was already in pretty deep. It turned out his songs were pretty good! Do you know how rare that is? He actually had talent. I told him his voice reminded me of Cat Stevens. That made him really excited. He fully turned around to look at me (on a highway) and yelled, joyously, “EVERYBODY TELLS ME THAT!!!” and started weaving all over the road again.
All of this happened in 15 minutes.
If journalists had half this Uber driver’s sense of urgency, we would have already addressed global warming, and begun redistributing the wealth.
Try to dodge the big corporations, Geraldine. Do what some friends of mine in Nashville have done, and start your own publication. Or do what my brother Gregory — himself a laid-off journalist — does, and run a cool website.
Or write a politically charged advice column for an amazing alt-weekly.
