In The Middle of Middle America

by David B Lyons

  “When you think of it,” I say as I continue to pace, back and forward on the worn carpet between the closed door of my classroom and my desk, “and do this when you go home, flick from network to network on your TVs. There are five twenty-four hour news channels. Five. Twenty-four hour. News. Channels. That means your TV is churning out over eight-hundred hours of news every week. Nationally. That’s before we even begin to look at local news networks.”

  “That’s literally the first thing I noticed when I moved over here. Why is there so much news on the telly?” Caoimhe says, without putting her hand up. Which is one of my pet peeves as a teacher. But because I love that she is showing so much interest in my class for somebody so new to it, I let it slide.

  “That’s always been my question, Caoimhe,” I say, smiling back at her and nodding my head; a positive way to invite inclusion to a student. “Why is there a need for us folk to consume so much news? Wendy,” I say, pointing to the first hand in the air.

  “Because there is more news than ever before?” Wendy says.

  “Is there, really?” I reply, shrugging.

  “Money,” Kai says, after shooting his hand up.

  “Money?” I say. “Explain.”

  “Don’t networks make money from all the commercials in between the newsy pieces?”

  I nod my head slowly.

  “They sure do,” I say, impressed by Kai’s input. He’s normally very subdued, so I love it when he gets himself involved in discussions without me having to prompt him.

  “And why is that a problem?” Caoimhe butts in.

  I purse my lips at her.

  “Caoimhe, if you don’t mind following the rule of raising your hand before you make your point.”

  “Sorry,” she says. And then she shoots her hand straight up.

  “Yes, Caoimhe?” I say.

  “Every channel, oh sorry, network you guys call them networks, right? But every other network that is not a news network has ads. So, what’s the problem with news networks having them, too?”

  “That is a great question. Caoimhe,” I say, clapping my hands once and then pointing at her. “And it is a question we are going to dive into during our next class together. In the meantime, over the weekend, I would ask you all to start thinking about just that... why is advertizing during these twenty-four hour news networks potentially dangerous? Though what I would like you to do is to take a look at these twenty-four hour news networks while you are flicking through your TVs this weekend and ask yourselves this as you listen to what they’re saying… why is it also dangerous for these news anchors to have an opinion on the news they are informing us of?”

  “Why shouldn’t they have an opinion?” Stevie says. Even Stevie puts his hand up before he mouths off.

  “Well.. that’s what we’re going to study this term. The history of American Media. And I want you guys to understand how our media operates today… then we’re going to go back in time, so you can see just how it has all evolved to the place we’re in now… a place where America feels it needs over eight hundred hours of live news broadcast to the nation every week.”

  The bell rings — as it always does in my classes — right on cue, and as the shrill pierces the classroom, the students groan. I never show it, but I love it when they make that noise at the end of one of my lessons.

  “Miss Decker.” Brody jumps up, stretching his hand to the ceiling as the other students return to their backpacks to begin repacking them.

  “Yes Brody?”

  “Can I have one of the forms for the trip to Europe?”

  I curl my finger at him, inviting him to my desk.

  “Here ya go,” I say. “Are your parents supplementing the four hundred dollars?”

  “Dunno,” he says, taking the form from me. “I’ll have to beg my Mom. My Dad’s still away…”

  “Of course,” I say. “Maybe your Mom will be happy to get rid of you for ten days so she can get some peace and quiet, huh?”

  “Very funny, Miss Decker,” he says.

  “Okay, well, she just needs to complete this form,” I tell him, “and then you need to return it with the four hundred dollars.”

  “Thank you, Miss Decker. Uh...” he says, turning away and then spinning back to me. “Miss, will we be studying Sarah-Jane Zdanski during this term?”

  I laugh.

  “What interests you about Sarah-Jane Zdanski, Brody? Her intellect? Her nose for news? Her blouse cut too low for day time TV?”

  “Miiisss Deckerrr,” he says, feigning shock by slapping his palm to his chest. “Sarah-Jane Zdanski ain’t my type. I prefer brunettes. Women more mature than Sarah-Jane.” Then he winks at me before spinning on his heels.

  Cheeky little shit.

  Three

  They were still sat under the bright lights of the studio—Sarah-Jane’s pert ass perched on the edge of her eleven thousand dollar leather chair, Howie leaning back on the cheap one next to hers—long after they had finished going through their notes on tonight’s guests. Well, Howie had long since finished, but Sarah-Jane still couldn’t quite let the irritation of the first two sentences she had to deliver to the camera leave the forefront of her mind. She didn’t feel they were appropriate. Though Howie tried to convince her, calmly, that, from his wealth of experience in live TV, he knew best. The rest of the script; what questions she should ask each guest; what each guest was likely to answer in return; the intros and outros to and from the seven commercial breaks, that was all boxed away—literally underlined, circled and boxed in red ink on the script that was staring up at Sarah-Jane as she began to partake in small talk with Howie.

  Phil was still standing in the shadows, Sarah-Jane’s purse resting by his feet, listening in with the bullish features of his jowly face unmoving. He wasn’t quite taking to Howie; assumed him to be somewhat a weirdo. Especially so as he touched Sarah-Jane on the knee too often. Way too often. Yet, despite that, Phil could plainly see why the flamboyant, bespectacled executive producer was regarded as one of the best in the business—just from how he guided Sarah-Jane through her debut script, making her feel as at ease as she possibly could before the biggest night of her life.

  Howie Laine had begun working in TV just over nineteen years prior—during the summer heatwave of 1978. He managed to land a job as a runner on Happy Days, when—because it was filmed nearby to the neighborhood he grew up in in Milwaukee — he begged, as a sixteen-year-old boy, one of the producers to let him help them out, only because he was desperate to duck behind the tape to experience, in real life, the magic television had to offer. Within a couple of months of working as a runner for no salary at all, he had proven so valuable that he was promoted to assistant researcher at seventy-eight dollars a week. Within two years, he was lead producer on his favorite-ever TV show—counting Henry Winkler and Ron Howard among his closest friends just as they were at the height of their fame, and earning more money than he had ever considered imaginable given his working-class roots. A director who worked on Happy Days found Howie so innovative in his vision for all things TV that he hired him to come work for him when he changed career lanes by diverting into the news division of MSNBC. Having helped — as lead producer — increase the network’s audience by three hundred percent over a six-year run, Howie was headhunted by Walter Fellowes, just as the famed media mogul was forming his CSN News network. He’s been Fellowes’s go to executive-producer ever since, becoming the strongest voice on any show the mogul felt needed an injection of innovation. He was Fellowes’s most obvious choice to executively produce Zdanski ever since the mogul first laid eyes on Sarah-Jane and knew instantly that he simply had to hire her and give her her own show. Fellowes even knew who the guests would be for that first show. And when he filled Howie in on the concept, they both agreed, without hesitation, that it would be a ratings smash.

  “Did you work on Matt’s show when he was here?” Sarah-Jane asked after Howie had told her he’d been, by now, at CSN for twelve years.


  “You bet.”

  “What’s he like... what’s Matt Lauer really like?”

  Howie looked around, squinting into the shadows either side of the studio, before leaning closer to Sarah-Jane so that he could whisper out of earshot of Phil—whom he’d only just realized was still standing in the darkness.

  “Matt should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for two reasons,” Howie whispered, holding two fingers aloft. “One, and I mean no disrespect to you or anyone else I’ve worked with, but Matt Lauer is by far the most natural TV host America has ever had the privilege of tuning in to see. He’s simply the best. Nobody’s ever made the art of broadcasting look so effortless.”

  Sarah-Jane’s eyes widened, and she smiled, simply because she loved to hydrate on this flavor of juice.

  “And... second?” she said, sitting even more forward on her expensive chair.

  “Second reason he should be in the Guinness Book of World Records…” Howie leaned even closer, “is ‘cause he’s a contortionist without measure. I have never seen no other man have their own head so high up their own ass.”

  Sarah-Jane sucked in a gasp.

  “Really?”

  Howie double tapped his nose, and then flamboyantly flicked back his sleeve so he could glance at his Rolex watch.

  “You…” he said, pressing a finger to the tip of Sarah-Jane’s nose, “need to get a move on. You’re due to have dinner with Walter in about half-an-hour... time to get you to wardrobe.”

  “Why the hell does he want me in wardrobe so early?”

  Howie stood, hugging the notes he had been scribbling on during their meeting close to his chest, then shrugged one of his shoulders.

  “Because he’s Walter Fellowes.”

  After Howie left the bright lights of the studio, by pushing open the double doors to the side of the stage, Sarah-Jane took a step down and walked slowly toward Phil.

  “Can you believe this?” she said, holding her hand to one of his biceps. “We’ve got our own show.”

  Phil huffed from his nose, then grabbed the hand Sarah-Jane had placed to his bicep before twirling her around so she could face the bright lights her sausage-shaped desk and eleven thousand dollar chair were shining under.

  “It’s not we,” he said. “The name on that neon sign up there… it’s Zdanski.”

  Sarah-Jane spun back around, and tilted her head.

  “You know what I mean. I may be front of camera and it might be my name all up in lights, but we’re a team, buddy. We made this happen together.” She slapped the bicep she had been placing her hand against just moments prior and then pursed her lips. “Anyway, I gotta get to wardrobe,” she said. “Walter Fellowes, for some reason, wants to see me in my outfit before I have dinner with him.”

  “I heard,” Phil said. Then he scratched at his patchy beard before they both walked toward the same double doors at the side of the stage Howie had left through a minute prior and found themselves back in amongst the dark maze of endless hallways.

  It took them five minutes to find out where wardrobe was, and when they eventually found it, Sarah-Jane knocked on a door that looked more like it would lead her into a prison cell, rather than the wardrobe department of the third most popular news network in the country.

  A woman — wise-looking, yet youthful — answered and immediately shrieked as she leaned in to hug her latest muse.

  “It’s so great to meet you,” she said, kissing Sarah-Jane on both cheeks as if they were long-lost European acquaintances.

  Isla Coyne had a rough-chopped blonde mullet and wore different colored glasses frames, depending on her clothing choices on any given day. On this day, her glasses frames were a rather characterless — by her standards, anyway — sky blue all over, similar in color to the denim overalls she was wearing underneath a long white cardigan that seemed to mop the floor of the wardrobe department as she glided along it. The pants of the overalls stopped half-way down her shins, as if the manufacturer had run out of denim, though that did allow her to show off her heavy Doc Marten boots that instantly looked, to Sarah-Jane as she stared at them, a nightmare to have to put on every morning.

  “You look so cool,” Sarah-Jane said.

  Wardrobe was brightly lit with floor-to-ceiling mirrors all along one side and two rows of clothing racks on the other that were bending in the middle due to the weight of the garments hanging from them.

  “Oh, are you ah…” Isla said when she had attempted to close the door, only for Phil to stop her by slapping his hand against it, “joining us?”

  “Oh yeah. He’s my producer. You can let him in,” Sarah-Jane called out.

  Phil didn’t acknowledge Isla as he passed by her, clutching Sarah-Jane’s purse to his chest.

  “Well, hello producer Phil,” Isla said as she shut the door.

  And then there was a silence in wardrobe, only broken by the sound of Sarah-Jane swishing clothes hangers as she flicked through the garments on the rails.

  Phil growled quietly in the back of his throat. He didn’t care much for his title of producer, though he had acknowledged how grateful he was to Sarah-Jane for including him on this ride on a number of occasions up until this point. Phil had fallen into his career lane when, as a seventeen year old graduating high school in Cawker City, Kansas, he was faced with the dilemma of either picking a subject to study at community college, or face the stigma of unemployment. Because it sounded like the least academic option, Phil chose to study photography and, having earned himself a certificate in the subject two years later, he landed himself a job at the local PBS studios where he was earning less money than he would have been had he chosen the option of unemployment and received state benefits instead. At first, he would help with the live recording of news bulletins, standing behind a large camera and holding it on a presenter’s face unmoving, until he was eventually promoted to the great outdoors; shadowing desperate reporters who went in search of breaking news just so they could land themselves a paycheck. He worked with a multitude of journalism graduates, each of whom thought him too quiet and too odd to befriend, until one day his station manager asked him to wait in his office while he trotted down to the lobby to welcome a new recruit. When that new recruit walked into the office Phil had been waiting in, he wasn’t as struck by her beauty like most red-blooded men are when they first lay their eyes on her. He initially thought Sarah-Jane to be just another pretty blonde who would be joining PBS thinking she would find fifteen minutes of fame, only to leave — like the majority of pretty blondes do — within a matter of weeks, simply because they found it too frustrating to get themselves on air.

  “So, where’s my little black dress?” Sarah-Jane asked, smiling at Isla.

  “Oh, it’s in the back hanging up. You wanna see it again?”

  “I have to put it on. Walter Fellowes has asked me to join him for dinner and I was told I had to visit wardrobe first.”

  Isla made a face, showing all of her teeth—even her crooked bottom row.

  “It’s not your dress Walter wants you to wear for dinner,” she said. “It’s this…”

  Isla walked over to where Sarah-Jane stood by the bended racks, and grabbed a red-colored garment wrapped in clear plastic.

  “It’s just come back from the dry-cleaners, so don’t worry about it.”

  She eased the garment out of the plastic while Sarah-Jane looked up at Phil, her eyebrows almost knitting together.

  “A cheerleader’s uniform?” she said. “Why the hell would I need to wear a cheerleader’s uniform?”

  Isla pushed the sky-blue glasses back on the bridge of her nose, then shrugged one of her shoulders.

  “Because he’s Walter Fellowes,” she said.

  Sarah-Jane glanced at Phil. He was standing with his fat hands stuffed inside the pockets of the double-breasted jacket she had bought for him the day prior, her purse resting by his sneakers. She had fought hard to ensure he would be part of her show; told the lawyers Walter Fellowe
s had sent out to negotiate her contract that Philip Meredith simply had to come with her to New York, and be offered a role as a producer. She promised he wouldn’t step on anyone’s toes; that she just needed him with her, so she could bounce ideas off him. Walter’s lawyers pretended to reluctantly nod their heads, agreeing to offer the cameraman slash producer an eighty-thousand dollar a year contract. Though that paled in comparison to the quarter-of-a-million deal Sarah-Jane was about to sign to greenlight Zdanski.

  “Really?” she said, digging her knuckles into her temples.

  Isla showed her crooked teeth again, then held the cheerleader’s unform closer to Sarah-Jane.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll give you an overcoat to wear over it when you’re going up in the elevator to Walter’s office.”

  An extended sigh released through Sarah-Jane’s nostrils and then she began to slowly unbutton her jacket, staring at herself in the mirror and noticing the worried expression creasing across her brow. By the time she was peeling off her blouse, revealing her pushed-together breasts packed tightly within the cups of a Wonderbra, Isla held her arm out, to use her long cardigan as a curtain.

  “Oh, don’t worry about Phil,” Sarah-Jane said. “Nothing he hasn’t seen before.”

  She shook herself out of her causal clothes while Isla let her cardigan go and then stood back, a note of confusion in her eyes. She didn’t look at Phil while Sarah-Jane was undressing. But she could also tell, through her peripherals, that he wasn’t staring at his boss’s flawless physique as she slipped into near-nakedness, and figured there and then that he must be gay.

  “So is wardrobe all good for tonight?” Sarah-Jane asked as she grabbed the cheerleader’s uniform.

  “Yeah, well, your little black number is hanging up in my office.”

  “Not just for me… what about the guests?”

  “Oh,” Isla said, “well the guests bring in their own clothes. They’ve each been told to bring in three outfits and I will choose one from those three for each of them to wear.”