The first question I got about my book when it came out in February, as I was going around the country talking about it, was, “Does your book explain Donald Trump?”
我的书在二月份出版 我在全国各地谈论它的时候 收到的第一个问题是“你的书解释了唐纳德·特朗普吗？”
So I had to come up with some sort of answer that addressed that issue.
所以我得想想要怎么回答这个问题
And the answer that I have is: Yes, the story of Donald Trump is the story of the Billboard Hot 100.
我想出的答案就是：是的 唐纳德·特朗普的故事就是公告牌百强单曲榜的故事
So the Billboard Hot 100, invented in the 1950s, is the official register of popularity in music.
公告牌百强单曲榜诞生于20世纪50年代 是音乐受欢迎程度的官方注册榜单
And for a long time it was essentially fake—it was fake news.
很久以来 它其实都是假的——是虚假新闻
They didn’t have live records of what albums and what vinyl was selling week by week,
他们并没有每周实时记录卖的都是哪些专辑或哪张唱片
so instead what they did is they surveyed the DJs and the record store owners, and both parties would lie.
相反 他们会调查DJ和唱片店主 而这双方都会撒谎

The DJs would lie because they were being paid by the studios and the labels, and the record store owners would lie because they had scarcity.
DJ撒谎是因为他们收了工作室和唱片公司的钱 唱片店主撒谎是因为他们资源不足
And once you’ve sold, say, all of your Bruce Springsteen and you have a lot of AC/DC,
比如说 你卖完了布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀的所有专辑 剩下一堆AC/DC
then it doesn’t make any sense to tell Billboard that Bruce Springsteen is selling,
那你完全没道理告诉公告牌布鲁斯·斯普林斯汀正在热卖
you need to sell more AC/DC so you tell them that that album is now number one in the charts.
因为你需要卖的是AC/DC 所以你会告诉公告牌AC/DC现在排名第一
So the charts were biased toward the taste of the white man at the labels and toward churn.
这样排行榜就会偏向白人品味 出现大幅波动
And then in 1991 all of that changed.
1991年这一切都变了
Billboard introduced new technology to measure point of sales data of records and to measure radio play, and immediately taste in music changed over night.
公告牌采用了一种新技术 来测量唱片的销售点数据和收音机播放率 于是大家的音乐品味在一夜之间就变了
Hip-hop and country, overlooked by white guys on the coast, soared up the charts and the churn of the Billboard Hot 100 slowed down dramatically—
被沿海白人瞧不起的嘻哈和乡村音乐迅速飚到了榜首 而公告牌百强单曲榜的波动幅度也瞬间慢了下来
such that I think that 20 songs that have been in the Billboard Hot 100 for the longest period of time have all come out in the last 25 years.
我觉得位居公告牌百强单曲榜时间最长的20首歌都是在过去25年间出现的
So essentially you could say that taste in music went from being dictated top-down to being generated bottom-up.
所以你基本可以说 人们的音乐品味从自上而下的命令而生变成了自下而上的创造而生
The exact same thing is happening in politics. For a long time there was this theory of politics called “the party decides”.
政治领域也发生着一模一样的事情 很长时间政治上都有一种叫做“由党派决定”的理论
And this said that the way that we choose presidential candidates or presidential nominees with the parties is not that the public dictates who will be the party nominees,
这就是说 我们和党派一起选择总统候选人或总统提名者 其实并不是由公众来决定谁会成为党派提名者
but rather that elites at the party level decide, and they distribute their messages through scarce media channels like television and radio and the public eats it up.
而是由该党派中的精英来决定 他们通过电视和收音机这样罕见的媒体频道来传达自己的想法 公众就直接照单全收
Not altogether unlike the way the labels could dictate music popularity and then radio listeners would just eat it up and like those songs because of familiarity.
跟唱片公司来决定音乐流行度 而收音机观众直接乖乖接受并因为熟悉而喜欢上那些歌曲是一个道理
But what happened with Donald Trump and Jeb Bush?
那唐纳德·特朗普和杰布·布什是怎么回事呢？
The establishment candidate that all of the party people liked did terribly, and Donald Trump—who had basically no elite party support—did terrifically within the Republican Party.
整个党派都喜欢的候选人表现很糟糕 而唐纳德·特朗普——他基本没有精英党派的支持——在共和党内则是极度糟糕
And so I think within the party structure you could also say that tastes, which used to be dictated top-down, are now being dictated bottom-up.
所以在党派结构内部 你也可以说以前自上而下的命令现在变成了自下而上
And I think we are seeing a groundswell of the bottom across the entertainment and political landscape that, because of the distribution of media channels,
我觉得我们正在经历娱乐界和政界翻天覆地的变动 由于媒体渠道的分布
is too difficult now for any gatekeeper to control the flow of information from a group of elite people to the masses.
任何人都很难控制信息从一群精英那里流向广大群众的趋势
Instead everybody has a blow horn, everybody can be a broadcaster, and as a result what you have instead is chaos.
而且每个人都有自己的发声渠道 人人都可以成为广播员 最后导致的结果就是一片混乱
And so I think that that is one of the more important phenomenon that we’re seeing,
我觉得这是我们现在看到的更为重要的一种现象
is this revolution of bottom-up that is powered by a technological revolution in distribution.
这场自下而上的革命推动者正是分配技术革命