"This Man In Cotroceni" Wished Gone By "The Wind"

Like the sleep of reason that abides it, Romanian media produces monsters. They don't take long in the making... One year of heavy exposure, and voilà! You've got your custom made Romanian TV star or political analyst.

Realitatea TV, the "news" TV channel owned by shady, transition-spawned "self-made-against-all-odds-millionaire", Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, (vantu translates as the wind) is fast becoming an expert at fashioning these media entities. It's a simple recipe Realitatea TV borrowed from ProTV. It involves, (besides other below-the-belt branding ingredients such as overexposure), outrageous promos featuring these simple folks as demi-gods in a world of pygmies. They are postured as helping poor audiences cross the street, make sense of the surrounding chaos, reach for the moon, make everyone's dreams come true, etc... Then these sick promos are looped on air like there's no tomorrow. As a direct result, the overly critical members of the audience quit watching (no problem, they are not wanted anyway) and the remaining inert couch potatoes give up resistance and just buy into it. Thus, the filtered down audience watch the "stars" they deserve.

One of these hastily manufactured media creatures, Andreea Cretulescu, hosts talk shows on the hot items of the day. Despite her unpleasant ways and her annoying pitch her guests are weirdly obedient and seem to think her job is to be loud and cheeky...

So what if she is *occasionally*... unprofessional? Nothing, rejoice! Her bosses must have promoted her knowing that her personal opinions are on the right side of the tracks. Shamelessly seamless.

A few days ago I watched Cretulescu handle a threesome of elderly analysts. I was aghast to hear her refer to the president elect of Romania as "this man in Cotroceni" ("acest om de la Cotroceni".) Moreover, she did so in a dismissive manner that she probably thought befitted the underlying issue of these days -- the president's (less than constitutional) impeachment. The gist of her intervention was "Why is this...(pause for lack of words) man in Cotroceni looking for more power than he is entitled to?" She sounded bloody irritated and impatient, like she was sick of even having to utter his name or function one more time on air. (Yeah, I mean you, the man in Cotroceni! You're just the president of this country, get it?! Whatcha doin' lookin' to mess things up? Who do you think YOU are? I'm the newly anointed "opinion maker", so I know these things! By the way, you're so right to target a job in television when you're done "ruling the country", because that's where the real power is, baby! Until then, just stay put behind that door, receive your guests and quit creating havoc, you... unspeakable, despicable man in Cotroceni!)

Her interlocutors didn't do a thing about it although they were all seasoned public figures. It gets even better: one of them was former Romanian president Constantinescu. A not so successful "man in Cotroceni" in timid search of the Holy Media Grail. (Andreea should explain: as a polite guest, he doesn't stand a chance. He needs to negotiate his own show and learn how to b-e a-g-g-r-e-s-s-i-v-e -- great FNM song, btw...) It was almost his duty to have taken offense at a president's being so scornfully handled by "objective" media. But then again, correcting her lack of civility might have been inelegant and, hey, it might have cut him off from further invitations to drag down President Basescu, which unfortunately has become his latest hobby / money making device. Plus, the old school gentleman might have considered Cretulescu a lady... (Nah, Mr. President, she's just Andreea from the block, can't you tell, "yo"!)

Talking of Retaliatea, ops, Realitatea's sickening ways of manipulating public opinion, notice the images they loop whenever the talk in the studio turns to President Basescu. Lately, they feature him as he places himself by an open door, in an desolate marble hallway of the Cotroceni palace. Through the door we see a big sedan slowly pulling over to drop someone the President is presumably receiving. Basescu is alone and unsure whether the guests have indeed arrived. It is an obvious moment of indecision, loneliness and, in a way, submissive posturing in the name of protocol. You know that feeling of waiting by the door, attending on guests. And on Realitatea TV they keep looping these images, over and over again, hundreds of times a day. I wish I were exaggerating here. An empty, awkward moment which some shithead decided must become representative of the Romanian President these days.

Little hints like that occur on most channels, on most shows... The "Ziua" newspaper (part of the same media trust that owns Realitatea TV) uses the President's image in an ad that pictures the latter in a presumed crisis over the return of Romanian emigrants, diminishing his chances at re-election! Pestilential attempt to engineer the minds of Romanians at home into thinking "the strawberry pickers" aka "the frustrated" (terms of endearment applied to us en masse back "home") would not back Basescu, or would even return massively just to end his rule...

And the list of abominations continues. But it's all so gripping, like a solid movie, with the bad guys and the good guys, the mafia that owns the media, the people who love their hero... I only wish there were a TV channel that would reflect it all properly, so I can eat my popcorn in awe and stop second guessing and googling who's paying whom for what.

I guess I'm just being lazy here since I don't dig this "interactive" part of the reality show.

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Pinocchio declared he doesn't watch TV anymore, he just does TV, get it? As in, he's not breathing in the polluted air, he just poisons it for others. I saw his face in a promo for Andrei Gheorghe's show. Yep. Cammo dude, a true warrior...

The simple, hygienic polarization rule applies: if you champion Pinocchio, you're a hack, so I'm neither watching, nor trusting you. So much for the Andrei Gheorghe media creature... "You ARE the weakest link, good bye!"

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In this rhythm, maybe I finish off everybody so I can FINALLY stop watching...