By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Cracking Codes
The mugger who demanded “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” while assaulting CBS News Anchor Dan Rather Oct. 4, 1986, was only identified eight years later as William Tager.
Rather, having wrapped up another broadcast, was walking to his Manhattan Park Avenue apartment when Tager, mistaking Rather was “Kenneth” someone, assailed him seeking a secret code he didn’t have. “You’ve got the wrong guy,” Rather pleaded, to no avail.
Tager confessed eight years later after shooting NBC Today Show stagehand, Campbell Montgomery with a rifle in the back when he also didn’t — because he couldn’t — reveal the code his attacker needed to crack to uncrack his mind.
“The defendant,” said Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who had also examined Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer and would-be Ronald Regan assassin John Hinckley, “suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and had long believed TV networks were bugging his home in North Carolina.”
Tager’s suspicion of media, he went on, was motive for both attacks. Sound like anyone else whose 6-letter surname starts with “T”?
The defendant confessed then too to assaulting Rather, which the victim confirmed after looking at pictures of him. “There is no doubt in my mind that this is the person,” Rather said. But nobody trusted media, even then.
Months later in 1994, rock band R.E.M. released its album “Monster” with “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” the lead song, revisiting Tager’s inquisition. Singer Michael Stipe called it an ironic take on an older critic trying to understand what motivates today’s youth and failing utterly — a generational mystery to this day.
“Kenneth” was the first song to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart. Internationally, it reached No. 2 in Canada, No. 4 in New Zealand and No. 9 on the UK Singles Chart. In Iceland, it peaked at No. 1 for four weeks.
Back then when “Kenneth” came on the radio, it inspired 20-year-old me to floor my Chevy Chevette driving between work in North Muskegon and affordable rental shack ($200 a month!) just a two-track’s walk from Lake Michigan. For me, Peter Buck’s crunching guitar riffs
energize, heard on oldies radio frequencies, that energize to this day.
Tager did 16 years Sing Sing, two years later spilling to shrinks the real reason he jumped Rather was he (Tager) was a time traveler and felon from 2265, implanted with a brain chip by authorities who wanted to track his movements, jumped the media mogul because he looked like 2265 Vice President Kenneth Burrows. Otherwise, it could have been you or me.
On conditioned parole Oct. 10, 2010 Tager has mostly laid low since, though one enterprising dug up his name bearing credits as a compositor — one who fuses two or more picture elements into a single image — for one episode of the children’s cartoon “Hey Duggee.” Why just one is a mystery too.
Those who crack codes and write their own comprise a burgeoning class of billionaires aka Elon Musk and Sam Altman, now vying in court now to claim AI business rights, whose profitability seems uncapped but may end short.
It’s called capitalism — knowing when to be in the right places at right times to best show, tell and make your wares. Take awards with thanks and grains of salt; they are investments in your future growth providing their means for you to “get to,” reach your potential being their return. Make that “greed” generous as you can.
How much, if any, should courts crack down on these seed banks, which beg regulation or bad seeds, who have a field day sowing obligations advantageous to them in identifiable young talent thence grateful for incentive to return it at staggering profits. Should charity that generates so much good be damned? No, just the bad seeds be weeded out.
Not a task for the weak of mind or heart. We who take them on know our failings must be corrected to get it, whatever “it” is this time, right. Tick tock, TikTok, try again to bore us.
Boris Badenov was another. Natasha at least put up with him but he could never quite live up to Fearless Leader. Know anyone like that? Cut loose from the simple- and single-minded MAGA team, they can sing like canaries, so pay them off once more with strings attached. Call in an investment.
Which still doesn’t mean I am not a capitalist. Like Proteas, best practices are to shape shift to meet demand till your dominion over all souls makes you equally vulnerable. Just wait till pawns wake up and shape shift too. Here’s to Proteus and his/her heirs. To get anywhere, mutual trust’s a must.
So if Google and Microsoft wait on their vulture wings in the court wings eager to pick up the best scraps possible, it will be good for them for the time being. Someone has to clean up the mess.
Or does one (here we’re s/he for economy’s sake)? AI will be one more media Godsend sanctified and sacrificed by its so-called Creator’s greed, the Profit saith.
Damn right greed can be good. Begin with survival: that seed one baby bird needs not to go hungry is the other’s miss. The way of all things is scarcity so step up and grab your share before it’s all gone.
