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Hollywood has Oscars, Broadway has Tonys, television has Emmys, journalism has Pulitzers, and so forth.
However, there is a major award which we don't hear about -- the Barnums, presented annually by the American Association of Press Agents, Publicists, Flacks, Handlers, Image Consultants, Spin Doctors & Media Advisors.
I happened to catch their ceremony because our TV wouldn't get the usual stuff the other night. I wanted the weather forecast, but thanks to a disturbance in the ozone layer, we caught part of the Barnum awards, broadcast live from Disneyworld in Florida:
For the benefit of you who just tuned in, let's recap
before we get to the big kahuna. Batman Returns
edged out Malcolm X
for Best Motion Picture
Publicity Hustle.
Granted, it didn't get as many
magazine covers, but remember that our judging rules are
based on the ratio of publicity to substance. Since there
was some substance to Malcolm X
and absolutely
nothing to Batman Returns,
the caped crusader wins
in a cakewalk.
And for Best-selling Book from a Celebrity,
our
consolations to Marilyn Quayle, co-author of Embrace the
Serpent,
and Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, author of It
Doesn't Take a Hero.
You're worthy contenders, but you also gained your
celebrity with accomplishments which largely fall outside
our judging guidelines. You weren't any real competition to
the big winner, a worthy successor to Millie the White
House Dog, a brilliant young lady who's managed to make
herself famous just for being famous -- Madonna and
Sex.
You'd hardly know we had a presidential election, the way that Madonna came through again and overwhelmed the national agenda. The way she's going, we'll have to rename the award -- looks like P.T. Barnum himself could have learned a few tricks from her.
As for Music Hype,
we're not giving an award this
year. It's sad. The Seattle sound slipped way. The Rolling
Stones couldn't even get arrested in 1992. Paul McCartney
is alive -- what a great scam that was, back in '69. No
fans crushed at a Who concert. No controversial album
covers or lyrics. No lawsuits based on heavy-metal suicide.
No Bruce Springsteen on the covers of Time and Newsweek the
same week.
What's wrong with you guys? No wonder music sales are way off this year -- you've lost the knack of hustling publicity for your acts.
Now we come to the Best Scam of the Year.
As in
other categories, nominees are selected on the ratio of
hype to substance. The more publicity and the less
substance, the more we like it.
We have two finalists:
1. The U.S. Postal Service, for Vote for your
favorite Elvis stamp.
2. D.C. Comics, for Death of Superman.
And the winner is -- D.C. Comics. The judges say that there is an intrinsic value in a 29-cent stamp, since you can use it to mail a letter.
But a comic book is as worthless as a baseball card -- our 1990 winner -- and you geniuses at D.C. are getting $2.50 for about a dime's worth of paper and ink. More to the point, you also got 81 national magazines, 538 daily newspaper front pages, all three networks and CNN, and thousands of local-TV reaction stories.
Brilliant work. Just fabulous. I've never seen more publicity for a more contrived and less meaningful event, and so it gives me great pleasure to present this 1992 Barnum . . .
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