Advancing Your Own Agenda

Two things about this recent post from Jim DeRogatis bug the shit out of me. First, there's the quote from his reader:

I know I won't be the only one bothering you with this today but I would like for someone to tell me how a 70,000 seat concert is sold out in 5 minutes.

Is 14,000 tickets a minute a good enough answer? Just because you refuse to believe it's possible doesn't mean it's not actually possible. As concert ticketing gets more concentrated online while getting less concentrated geographically, these sorts of rates don't surprise me anymore. I don't see conspiracy here, but I'm sure Jim attracts readers who are likely to reinforce that notion, since he likes nothing more than to will certain topics into existence. Which brings me to my second problem, in bold at the end of the post:

And still Bono hasn't deigned to offer any public comment on the merger.

While I'm as curious as the next guy to hear what the U2 singer thinks about the troubling combination of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, Jim has it in his head that Bono's silence on the matter is an egregious breach of the public trust or something. It's not. The man is free to speak or not speak on whatever topics he wants to, and just because he's taken up certain causes where he sees something as unfair, that doesn't mean he has to take up every single one. Especially when taking up said cause creates a fairly massive obstacle to Bono's day job, which is playing concerts in venues of a size that, for better or worse, are controlled by Live Nation and/or Ticketmaster.

And if the past is any indication, Jim is never, ever going to let it go. Every single thing he writes about U2 will make reference to it, and about half of the rest of his output will as well, especially when it's a story that can be somehow twisted into someone else stepping into the debate. It's a story simply because DeRo declares its a story, and quite honestly, I don't find that to be much of a compelling reason.