Today's NY Times reported
the death of Gladys Horton, lead singer of the Marvelettes, whose recording of "Please Mr. Postman" was Motown
Records first No. 1 hit. I
first heard the song in the Beatles' cover version (which ain't bad), but the
original is even better: sharp, urgent, and it's got that classic Motown groove
(courtesy of the immortal Funk Bros.)
There's something rather symbolic in the timing of Ms.
Horton's death, especially in light of what's going on in the Arab world. You don't see the
connection? Consider the lyrics of
the song:
Please Mister
Postman, look and see? (Oh
yeah)?
If there's a
letter in your bag for me? (Please,
Please Mister Postman)
Why's it takin'
such a long time? (Oh
yeah)?
For me to hear
from that boy of mine?
There must be some
word today?
From my boyfriend
so far away?
Please Mister
Postman, look and see?
If there's a
letter, a letter for me
I've been standin'
here waitin' Mister Postman?
So patiently...?
For just a card,
or just a letter?
Sayin' he's
returnin' home to me"
The song is an anthem to anticipation, uncertainty, and longing -- why
hasn't she heard from that absent
boyfriend? -- and the entire premise of the song depends on that fact she's waiting for an actual physical letter to
be delivered. It's back in the era of
snail mail, folks, when long-distance telephony was prohibitively expensive and there was no
email, no Twitter, no Facebook, no way for ordinary people to communicate
instantly on a regular basis over long distances. That also meant you were really dependent on whatever newspapers, TV, and radio chose to tell you.
I remember my first trip overseas in 1976, to study at Stanford's overseas
campus in Berlin. Correspondence with my then-girlfriend took a minimum of three weeks
(round-trip), and longer if one of us was slow in responding. Like the singer in the song: you
waited for a letter, and wondered
what no news meant. If a letter was delayed, you agonized over what it might imply. It was a world
where events moved more slowly, precisely because it took time for news to
spread. Today, my teenaged son and daughter are
surprised and irritated if a friend doesn't respond to a text in five minutes.
Now consider what we're seeing in the Middle East. Whatever the ultimate outcome of events
in the Arab world, the speed with which large numbers of people have responded to events far away is remarkable. Just
as audiocassettes of the Ayatollah Khomeini's sermons served as a medium of
transmission in Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979, here a combination of modern
mass media (Al Jazeera, the Internet, email, Twitter, etc.) has clearly played a
major role in driving the pace of events.
At the same time, we're living with a nearly unprecedented outpouring of
previously hidden information, via Wikileaks
and the "Palestine Papers." This is the wave of the future, I suspect, because the Internet is making it
impossible to contain a secret once it's out. Even if governments convinced some news agencies to suppress a secret, somebody somewhere else would release it and then we would all find it on the Web. That gives leakers a bigger incentive to release
classified information, precisely because they can be more confident that the
leak will get noticed and have an impact. This situation is bound to have significant second-order effects, as governments have to choose between supporting greater transparency, taking harsher action against leakers, or being more reluctant to speak candidly or to record confidential exchanges in ways that could be leaked.
In "Please Mr. Postman," the Marvelettes began by exhorting him to
"Wait!" In today's world, the
mediasphere isn't waiting for anyone.
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