Like We Care (2 page)

He lowered his eyes and discovered that he was bleeding all over various piles of homework. How was he going to explain
that
?

H
utch Posner had it going on because he had pulled off that most rare and spectacular early 21st century art form: the successful ante-upping concept rip-off. He had spotted a trend that was paying off handsomely for someone who had done the actualst hard work of breaking new ground. He had stolen it with such bloodless, chromium-sleek panache that even his competitors were awed—routinely offering him millions to come over to their side to work his magic on the network that he had learned and looted from in the first place.

Because Hutch Posner understood. Which is to say, he didn’t. Couldn’t have. Had no more foresight or boldness of vision than the guy who came up with the guy who came after Vanilla Ice. He had been just one more creativity-free heat-seeking scorpion who had idly suggested just one more crass exploitation to throw into the unquenchable maw that is public demand.

Just a jot on a notepad, thought #17 of 37 that he had brought with him during that first creative meeting following the acquisition of Decade Zero by MediaTrust, the cable colossus:

“Teens hate.”

Didn’t they? From the benign (I hate my parents, I hate my looks, I hate my brother, I hate my sister, I hate my school, I hate my town, I hate my life, I hate myself) to the lethal (pick the schoolyard slaying of your choice), wasn’t the average teen feeding off hate like oxygen, devoting nearly every conscious moment trying to turn idle, listless contempt into a lifestyle choice? Wasn’t this just the angriest, most pissed-off collection of brats ever to stroll this earth, happy only when consuming (whatever: drugs, mall effluent, those weaker than themselves), but otherwise dissatisfied, let down, denied?

Like there wasn’t a buck to be made
there
.

What Hutch had proposed—and, again, he was just spewing out this crap—was the next generation in music television, free of the divas and the boy bands and anything that struck the eye or ear as soft. Melodic. Kind.

Spike the vein of cruelty and naked aggression that informed most of what was passing for popular entertainment, and mainline it to American youth. Maximum hardcore. Balls out extreme. All savagery, all the time.

Take the sugar out of their older sibling’s MTV, which long ago had become a bloated and slick revenue-generator, eager to pimp to American youth whatever their jaded little souls desired, and just give with the nasty:

Nothing but seething skate punk thrash—the nü metal—with its breathtaking crunch-laden
Achtung!
, doing no less than transposing the goose-step into a pulsating, head-thrashing, fist-pumping white boy hootenanny.

And, of course, rap—the more gangsta the better. Take a white racist’s worst possible caricature of a dope-selling, gun-slinging, cracker-hating, poon-snatching pimp, throw him in the studio with some samples, a drum loop, and a rhyming dictionary, and watch the money fall from the sky. Let the brothers take the first taste off the top—they’re the ones, after all, selling out their culture with Stepin Fetchits for the new millennium. There’s plenty left over for The Man.

The beauty part was that despite the seeming chasm separating the two— the white metallers and the black gangstas—it was the hateful, simple-minded hooliganism of both which bound them together. That, and the fact that it was all being sold primarily to white, cash-flush teenagers in the suburbs.

That was the thing about hip-hop: for all the grammar-deficient speechifying about keeping the music real for the homies on the block, their act was largely subsidized by white teen poseurs who couldn’t have cared less about the hard street truths spun by these sons of Tupac, and who damned sure wouldn’t be living anywhere near or offering employment to any one of their black brothers when they inherited the world in a few years.

It was this dynamic, this market paradox, which got Hutch the second meeting. The next meeting up. The meeting at which a half-assed whim might actually solidify into a MediaTrust-funded development deal.

To make this happen, Hutch knew what was required—more than an embellishment of his initial concept, more than a demonstration of why he was the man to launch an entire new network in the venerated MediaTrust constellation.

What he needed was an icon. A graphic image. A brand-setting piece of eye candy that would crystallize his vision into a single, trend-defining logo with just as much credibility on a $45 T-shirt as when displayed proudly in a shareholder’s report.

In the world in which he traveled, you needed to sell neither the steak nor the sizzle. Make the
concept
shine and the public, in its endearing eagerness to constantly be boned up the ass by corporate hucksters, could usually be counted on to bend over.

At that second meeting, now nearly four years ago, the state-of-the-art projection computer whirred silently as he began his sell.

“I want to plant a flag in the youth market, a flag that will fly proudly and defiantly, bearing two things: a name and a logo. A logo and a name. A network identity rendered in a single graphic image that will be just as evocative as the name Tupac, as raw and indelible as the tattoos on Fred Durst’s arms. (Note: Fred Durst and his band Limp Bizkit mattered when Hutch sold the network; they do not anymore. They get to keep the tattoos.)

“Limited as we are by the three- and four-letter acronyms or quasi-acronyms that define the cable universe—CNN, ESPN, VH1, MTV—I want to break the form as much as possible and push the envelope like a motherfucker.”

(Hutch had been practicing this last bit for the past week while driving in the Beemer, knowing full that as a white man out of the Ivy Leagues, this patois had no business coming out of his mouth. But if he was going to sell himself as the godhead of this vulgar, inappropriate network, he was going to have to pull it off. Up until the words actually left his lips, he was prepared to employ the fallback “Push the envelope like a certified bad-ass,” but he sized up the tenor of the room and went for it. Judging from the wizened nods he received in return, he figured he had made the right call. Fact was, everyone gathered there fancied themselves ready to push the envelope like a motherfucker. What higher calling was there?)

“And to define this branding statement, to forge this network identity around which we intend to rally our desired demographic, I looked to an inspiration just a little outside the box.

(Hold for the dramatic pause.)

“I looked to the KKK.”

Uh-oh. Envelope pushed too far. Hutch felt the air sucked from the room as those around him instinctively readied to fire back with rote, politically-correct platitudes.

Which was the intent.

“Now, hold on,” Hutch urged with a sly grin. “I’m not talking about the KKK itself, which I’ll be the first to say is off the hook.
Totally
.”

Jeff Bradley, the only black man having reached this power tier, squirmed uncomfortably. Hutch had given Jeff a lot of thought, wondering how his spiel would play with this member of the team. But the fact was that if anyone present had much concern for the side effects of crass, improper behavior, they were in the wrong business. Hutch knew that Jeff would know that if his idea were to take wing, Jeff would be positioned to take a lead role in the hip-hop half of Hutch’s universe.

You make your compromises. You scoop up the gravy.

“No, I am talking about the KKK as a branding device,” he said, nodding to Brad Stein, who was entrusted with running the computer. Three stark Ks now filled the screen. Those who had been willing to hear Hutch out began fidgeting all over again.

“Think about it,” he soldiered on. “The Ku Klux Klan barely even exists anymore, just a handful of hate-filled crackers getting together in a mobile home down South a couple times a year to suck up the moonshine and bitch about the big, bad black man.”

Jeff Bradley stared a hole in his notepad.

“But the
power
of their name hasn’t diminished one bit. It still works. It’s those three hard consonants—
KKK
—that drive it all home. Right?”

Nobody knew quite how to respond. Jeff Bradley worried that this momentary pause in Hutch’s presentation was inviting everyone to recite the letters in unison, proving they had lost none of their luster.

John Viceroy, the MediaTrust liaison who would be crucial to Hutch’s success, cleared his throat. “We cannot call a network KKK.”

“That’s got to be trademarked,” added Jill Ebert, his beautiful, toadying Number Two. “Right?”

Hutch laughed, everything playing out as he had scripted it. “I don’t want to call my network KKK.”

“Good. Then I guess you can put me down for a box of T-shirts.” It was Jeff Bradley, chiming in with just the right mood-lightener at just the right spot. Hutch could’ve kissed him.

“I’m just talking about the importance of the right selection of letters. It got me to thinking of the dynamic power of those three hard consonants— KKK—but, frankly, nothing else has the same impact. BBB? TTT? DDD? I mean, forget it, right?”

The room stirred, getting caught up in the exercise.

“How about XXX?” This was Roger Viner, always the one to go for the most obvious, insipid joke. The year before, he had cleared 500K as one of MediaTrust’s most promising bright young thinkers. He was 22 at the time.

“You know what?” Hutch shot back. “Come back in eighteen months, and basic cable will be ripe for something that in-your-face down and dirty. The first network that can appropriate the illicit edge of hardcore pornography without the negatives is going to capture the entire market.

“We’re just not there yet.
Not yet
.”

Jill Ebert scrawled a note to
her
Number Two: “Poll and focus group ‘XXX’ as possible net and/or product name component.”

John Viceroy, spying her note, scrawled his own note: “Great note!”

“So I bagged the hard consonant construct,” Hutch continued, “but I wanted to maintain the triplicate, just for the cleanliness of the image.

“I started thinking about what this network would be about, what its focus and its mandate would be, and it wasn’t hard at all to distill it down to three words. (He met the eyes of everyone at the table, ending with Viceroy.)

“Rap.

“Rock.

“Revolution.”

As scripted, Brad Stein pulled the trigger and the screen blossomed with the genius payoff of Hutch’s presentation, a stark, undeniably riveting graphic of three R’s, rendered in a distressed, raw-edged font.

The first R was backwards, an inadvertent salute to the illiteracy of much of Hutch’s target audience. The third stood correctly, a jagged scar (Hutch originally wanted a bullet hole) portraying the hiply hardscrabble lives suburban teenagers fancied themselves living. The R in the middle jutted forward in an amazing 3-D rendering. The money Hutch had paid that uptown graphic artist had been well spent.

It was a masterful icon. You could instantly envision it on the backwards hat of a skate punk, brazenly proclaiming his individuality by sporting the same mass-produced corporate wear that all the other skate punks were wearing.

Hutch could feel the adoration in the room. He set for the kill.

“Meet the—”

“It sounds like a pirate.” It was Roger Viner, chuckling.

Hutch kept his cool. “What?”

“Ar-ar-
arrrrrrr
. It sounds like Long John Silver.”

The room began to titter. Hutch felt a needle prick between his third and fourth vertebrae.

“No, I don’t think—”

“Yeah, it kinda does,” concurred John Viceroy.

“Arrrrrrrrr! Avast ye scurvy dogs!” Mitch DeLong, Vice President of Why The Fuck Does He Have To Be In This Meeting?, picked up the merriment, squinting his left eye and growling like a grizzled sea captain.

The room dissolved into “Arrrrrrrrrrs!” These richly paid, cutting-edge seers of cable’s future were cutting up like a bunch of second graders.

All except Annie McCullough, Hutch’s assistant, who watched as her boss deflated, and with him her own chances for promotion.

She grabbed an art pad and started scribbling. She was ready for this.

“Okay, so the icon needs some retooling,” Hutch said through a forced smile, trying to be a good sport. “But let’s agree that my concept—”

“It’s strong, Hutch. It’s very promising,” John Viceroy said, the enthusiasm already leaking out of him like slime from a rotting tomato. The fact was that Viceroy, like most of those present, didn’t like Hutch all that much. And in the pack dog climate that defines men at this level of power, better to belittle and diminish than concede that a competing alpha male may actually be onto something.

Let it lie for a few weeks, Viceroy knew. Then he could revive it and grab some glory by plucking it from the discard heap.

“Let’s take it up next time.”

“No!”

Hutch knew that he couldn’t leave this room without a guarantee of the next meeting up, the face-to-face with the programming powers who could put his idea into active development. To “take it up next time,” to essentially have this same meeting twice, would spell the end of his dream. Momentum was everything when you flew at these heights.