If I were more generous....

I might believe that the events of the past week have nothing to do with a PR campaign to establish the current administration's "tough on terrorism" bona fides. I might. Since I'm in a credulous mood today, even with the primaries roughly 9 months away, surely it's only a coincidence.

All that was solid.....

It's gone. The execrable journalism in the week since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan has killed any residual credence or respect I my have had for the media. There is no information, only infotainment. I suppose this was never all that traumatic for me, since my connection with the ongoing events in the world has always been tenuous, at best. It wasn't a coincidence I worked as a history teacher for 32 years.

It's not information

We are told, and by no less an -authority- than CNN, about "lessons learned" from the Japanese earthquake / tsunami. The aftershocks continue, the cleanup has only just begun and relief efforts started, it's obvious that thousands more dead will be discovered, and we're already being lectured to by the media about "lessons."

It's only clear that it's impossible to learn anything about an event of this magnitude at this stage. This time next year, maybe. Some things that are clear:

1. As with hurricane Katrina in 2005, a natural event of sufficient magnitude is not controllable by mankind, not now, and not in any foreseeable future, and may only be marginally ameliorated by preventive measures.

2. A hard look needs to be taken at where people live, in countries that pretend to have the security of their citizens in mind. Sweeping legislation should perhaps be instituted to prevent future settlement in flood plains, along earthquake faults, on the slopes of volcanoes, and areas of coast likely to be affected by hurricanes or tsunamis. And maybe the building of ramshackle trailer parks in tornado alley.

There is little perspective possible, given our present means of "informing" ourselves, and at a time when we most need it.

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."

- Kay to Jay, MIB

Understanding what is commemorated

Today is -I think- the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden by the Allies in February 1945. Thanks to the historicism and just ahistorical opinions of those who were never lived through that awful struggle. I'll just commemorate it by posting the best quote I've ever read on the subject:

"My mother was a child in occupied Belgium. Unfortunately, her town had a factory that the Germans converted to make airplane parts, so the bombers came. The American bombardier mistook the elementary school for the factory. Officials laid the children's bodies out on the playground so their parents could come claim them.

I've told people this story a hundred times, but on a visit to Scotland 10 years ago, me and a friend of mine would go to a pub in Ullapool regularly, called "The Ferry Boat Inn". It was one of the last stops when you were going to the most Northern point of the English Isles. After Ullapool, there was nothing but lochs, moors and rocks.

One evening, an older man came to sit next to us on a barstool. We started talking and I noticed he had a pin on his vest that I couldn't recognise immediately. When asked, he calmly said "Oh, I was in Belgium you see. Lost a lot of friends then ... ."

Offering him a drink, which he refused, I told him "we had a lot to thank him for", while my friend opposite of me nodded (he was a history buff, with enough brains to know what sacrifices the fights around Ieper, or Ypres, had taken and what they had meant for our country and others).

Until today, I clearly see in front of me the blink in this veteran's eye, from the tears that were starting to well up, while he briefly stared in my face. He got up from the stool, saying "Thank you Sir, thank you very much" silently, almost whispering, opened the door and went.

As I read that again, tears well up in my eyes. People here still run the risk of getting killed by bombs, every winter there's a few that rise out of the fields, every summer there's one that rises up from the beaches, but the first guy that would complain about them Rednecks leaving bombs behind would be considered a nut. My grandfather spent time in Bergen-Belsen (be careful if you have a sensitive stomach) and escaped, while his then-girlfriend tried to hide from V1's and V2's. My best friend's grandfather spent time in a Norwegian concentration camp, escaped, and stayed hidden in the snow for months, thanks to a caring Norwegian family.

The city I currently live in was bombed and shot to pieces in WWII, it was phosphorized in WWI. At least two of my grandparents were "White Lions", a well-known resistance brigade. If I tell you that only two of them are still alive, then do you have a clue why I say "at least"?

Each and every one of my 30-something friends knows at least one of their family member's stories about " fourty - fourtyfive " ... . We also take care to try and learn about Dresden, and we know the images of the mothers and children, hiding in tunnels, burned alive because of the goo that came out of some bombs, or suffocated because the explosions drew the air out of the tunnels.

Every city, every town, every village, every major street, every god damned cul de sac in this country has at least one statue or plaque commemorating men and women who gave their lives, and we owe them our past, present, and future.

Now, if you know of a better way, that would have been more suitable to end the world's misery in those black 40's, then I suggest you go and tell those people, because whether they were up in the air or beneath on the ground, they surely didn't do it just for the fun of "pointlessly slaughtering kids".

My hat goes off to all who served. We are forever in debt."

First Nanny

Now, the new, improved First Lady has suddenly emerged as full-blown First Nanny in "Partnering with" -never say "scolding"- the restaurant industry to cut down on the portions it serves. This is typical of the top-down unrealistic idealism that pervades certain circles of our society, and the audiences it garners, who believe that celebrity somehow equals authority. There' s not the slightest reason to believe that Michelle Obama is any better informed on this issue than the next person, and yet she receives instant credibility from the media.

In fact, there are many very good reasons why this proposal is going to fail. Restaurants serve large portions of food in this country because food is a relatively cheap part of overhead, and the portions justify the amount the restaurants must charge. Many people who don't want large portions simply get a doggie box and take what they don't eat as leftovers, which helps with their perceived value of the meal. And people who are still hungry will probably just eat more, regardless of the portions being served.

And, last, the timing of such an initiative is extremely poor. The country is in a recession, which has cut into restaurant revenues, and the proposal is to do something that may cut into them even more. Push this enough, and it could precipitate the ultimate disaster.....people might actually learn to cook for themselves.

Is American information dead?

President Obama held a "town hall meeting" yesterday. While not inquiring as to how many people find the name ludicrous, I would be interested to know the percentage of people who believe that any -any- such things are not as staged and scripted as a movie. Does anyone believe that some 30 year old law graduate seriously and earnestly asked the President "Is the American dream dead?"

This is all quite preposterous, but the most difficult thing for me to believe is that a graduate of Princeton and some equally prestigious sounding law school (Indiana, I believe) would be enough of a dupe to participate in such a charade. Since I can't believe someone of his putative intelligence would do such a thing, I can only assume that he was performing from a memorized script.

Watching these things is more a waste of time than staring at the wall; the latter is more likely to produce thought.

A Fable for our Time

I can't really call this fantasy, because it isn't. Except for the last part (which apparently DID happen).

An obscure fanatic from a small town makes wild assertions and threatens to burn books.

His rhetoric is taken up by the news media and given national and international coverage.

He is given lavish attention by important government officials and agencies, thereby raising him from obscurity to notoriety overnight.

Attention is so acute that incipient hysteria and paranoia spill over and result in the chief executive of a nation of millions of people making a personal appeal to this individual.

A member of a major news organization wonders whether or not the media handling of the whole affair "-might have been reckless."

D'ya think?

Bibliography: See Adolf Hitler, rise of National Socialism, Beer Cellar Putsch, Hitler treason trial, etc., etc. You may end with the burning of the Reichstag if you wish....

Surviving Brilliance

I was regaled this morning by someone on a cable news channel informing me of the brilliance of the present nominee for SCOTUS . Anyone who's a candidate for any government position above Toilet Brush Inventory Supervisor seems to automatically merit the title of "brilliant" these days. Not sure we'll survive too many more of those....

This Will Not End Well

The History Channel has finally done what no one has attempted since the 1970's- to produce a comprehensive history of the United States. As with so many things these days, I'll read the reviews before I even consider watching any of it. Given current trends, not only on the Hysteria / History / Catastrophe Channel, I suspect that the series will be fatally flawed. I predict that the essence of it will be "Cover everything and attempt to please everyone, but explain nothing and satisfy no one."

The last series to attempt to tell the story of the United States was Alistair Cooke's America: A Personal History. It even appears as though THC has attempted to "borrow from" the title. However, there is a vast difference between what some may consider the same sort of program, and one need go no further than the respective titles to see it.

The strength of Cooke's America lay in the twofold nature of it being a personal viewpoint (and Cooke never claimed otherwise), and in Cooke being a transplanted Englishman (became a U.S. citizen in 1941, six days before Pearl Harbor), which gives the author an almost essential detachment from hewing to a particular native viewpoint or politics. In this, Cooke may be seen as a legitimate heir of Alexis de Tocqueville, still the most famous foreigner to write of this country in Democracy in America, (1835 / 1840), and in so doing, having written what many still consider the best analysis of this country.

The History Channel has entitled its opus America: The Story of Us, which I'm sure it will be. I'm sure it will be supremely earnest, with all sorts of "docu-dramatic" vignettes that purport to be historical, that technology will be portrayed as a deus ex machina, and that every effort will be made to place Abigail Adams on the same plane as John, and Harriets Tubman and Beecher Stowe on the same level of importance as Abe Lincoln. It will be very, very egalitarian, and very, very inclusive, irrespective of the degree to which it is very, very far removed from what may have happened. My prediction could be wrong, and I sincerely hope that it is.....but I'm sticking to it.

I will conclude with my favorite quote from Cooke's America (Episode 3, Making a Revolution) :

"That, too, is history- not what happened, but what people convinced themselves must have happened."

A little bit louder and a little bit worse...

I was treated to another of those glimpses of the COOTWH* yesterday, which, as usual these days, comes about while I'm working out at the gym. While I listen to music on the iPod, I watch one, or several of the large TVs, and in this case was able to see the dialog on the streamer below. Later, I was treated to the audio on the radio while driving home.

Without dialogue, the scene was something right out of Ronald Reagan, except that Mr. Obama was just in shirt & tie. He and the interlocutor (in a polo shirt) were walking down a path among some trees, very folksy, nice and casual. The attempt at simulating a casual conversation between two people was reinforced by the almost apologetic tone of the reporter and the low-key responses of Obama. Very nice until I recalled much of what bemused us when we were first treated to this type of interview when Ronnie came into office, and before it became obvious that the whole thing was completely staged and scripted.

The content was predictable in its absence. Mr. Obama: "We should be able to disagree without being disagreeable." Ignoring the hypocritical and mendacious things that are continually said any time Obama's opinions and policies are questioned, this was ostensibly a serious assertion, made over the debate surrounding the Health Care Bill. The only problem is that the statement ignores human nature. We have had disagreeable things said of presidents since John Adams (this would be 1796), such tone an inevitable consequence of the contentiousness built in to human nature. Surely Mr. Obama cannot be so naive as to believe he will be exempt. Conclusion: he is being deliberately disingenuous.

Another random statement (in paraphrase): "All the evidence indicates Iran is interested in developing nuclear weapons." This enables Mr. Obama to employ a double whammy in "avoidance grammar." He is now in a position to employ "I was misled" and "blame the evidence," as his predecessor did with Iraq, and to doubly deny that he said Iran was developing nuclear weapons, since he used the word "interested." As well for me to say "I'm interested in whether or not there are leprechauns in the bottom of my garden." I have thereby avoided asserting that there might actually be leprechauns out there, and having people question my grasp of reality.

Every time I see or hear anything about government or politics, it merely reinforces my determination to avoid it until the next time I'm accidentally exposed to it. Sort of like the flu.

*Current Occupant Of The White House

Talking About Things

We need to talk about things, make lists of things. Adjectives were a useful device for describing those things, back when our word-hoard of the most extreme of those parts of speech were not loosed within 30 seconds of talking about anything.

Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, end of days, zombie apocalypse -to name a few, but not to exclude wrecks, collisions, collapses, (multiple) shootings all now instantly provoke a list of all extant adjectives that can possibly pertain to (X).

Exciting, terrifying, horrifying, devastating, amazing......as with most types of words, English provides an abundant, but not unlimited, array of synonyms. Now they are immediately gone, employed as a compulsory litany whenever a qualifying event occurs. And the bar is set very, very low.

Thus, an F1 tornado that disassembles a trailer in an Oklahoma mobile home park is placed at the same level as a Chilean earthquake that kills 800 and moves a city ten feet, or an Indonesian tsunami that kills as many people as Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

It is as if some thoughtless egalitarian impulse is at work here, that in the end denies us what adjectives are supposed to provide- a sense of degree.

I propose a ten year moratorium on adjectives, a prescription which I will doubtless violate....with extreme prejudice.

It's All Right There.....

....in the media following the murders at UAH.

The relentless Monday-morning quarterbacks (even though they mention the fallacy) imply that something ought to have been done back in the day when the woman killed her brother. This, flying in the face of a lack of any details, and that every official (the officials whose job it is) declined to pursue charges in the case. Somehow, the enormity of what this person has done last week appears to mean she should be retroactively charged with her brother's murder....and the fallacy involved in this is not discussed further, of course.

Some elderly official, maybe the DA or sheriff, is interviewed and pressured to say he thinks "-maybe it should have been followed up more." Did he think so at the time? Interview doesn't ask that question. Why does he think so now? Ditto. This trails off into a series of nulls.

Now an assault case from the interim has been unearthed, in which our UAH shooter pled guilty to a simple assault (Note: no shooting or murder involved here!), and which immediately segues into the presumed failure (and thus presumption of a liablity) of UAH in not pursuing a detailed background search on the woman.

Even more interesting is the talking heads nibbling around the edges of the notion that this individual's whole life formed a pattern. What kind of pattern? We can only assume that the discovery of her previous life would have kept her out of UAH, so that she never would have gunned down her tenure committee.

But what if she were condemned by her record to wiping merchandise across a laser at Dollar General? What if, one day, being unable to get 40 hours and benefits, she brings in a box of poison donuts and feeds them to her coworkers? Presumably the death of people with only high school diplomas would not be as devastating a loss to society as the profs at UAH. Backward reasoning is called "backward" for a reason.

It can be taken even further. Such a pattern is clearly grounds for segregating this individual from society. Think of the children, for God's sake!

The media has already stirred up enough nonsense in this case that I'll allow only a 50% chance that she'll get the needle, even though it's in Alabama, and it's what her actions merit. A judgment of non compos mentis or some other mental disability, hauled from the turgid pages of DSMV-IV-TR, is much more likely. Then the blame can always be placed on some shrink for not diagnosing her, or for her not going to a shrink in the first place.....

Define "Prescient"

Well, this is one definition, written in 1978. Nineteen seventy-eight:

Lipidleggin' by Paul F. Wilson

And here's another, probably better known:

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut

This is where we're going, but it's hard to say exactly why. Since we have a representative government, I am forced to assume that in some fashion we've actually chosen to live out this nightmare, but that doesn't mean I understand it.

Whitman in jeans

A fascinating juxtaposition in the new Levi's ads is the poetry of Walt Whitman sandwiched with the consumerism of "We're funky; buy our duds!"

An even more fascinating element of the choice of Whitman's Pioneers! O Pioneers! as the audio track to gangs of mænads galloping over verdant landscapes, or rushing with torches through the night like some deconstructed Sturmabteilung.

In particular, I wonder how much flak Levi Strauss will receive for the use of the stanza:

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Whitman of course is now a darling to some because of the homosexuality that has been deconstructed from his work. However, given the intent of the Levi's ad, and its obvious political connections, one cannot help but wonder at the apparent advocacy of the ownership of firearms and melée weapons....although I approve of it.

Nasty Water!

The Weather Channel, which is now showing movies and fast devolving into something incomprehensible, calls the current Nor'Easter an "Atlantic Assault." Interesting how so many things involving inanimate objects or forces must be couched in anthropomorphically violent verbiage. Perhaps we should emulate King Canute and simply order back the waves (which he reputedly did in an astute demonstration aimed at his fawning advisors). Or perhaps we should institutionalize the punishment of inanimate objects, in this case a clearly criminal bell in a Mexico City church. It would be as relevant as some other things we enshrine in our culture.....

Disconnect

I go on vacation for 3 weeks to China; I come home to girls who can't stop sneezing. Give me one reason why I should spend any of my time watching or reading the news. One.

The last Race Card?

Jimmy Carter, the Greatest Living Failed President, arguably the worst since Harding, has sought to breathe life into a "story" that should have died aborning, accusing Congressman Wilson of racism without the slightest evidence other than his baseless opinion that any "excessive" opposition to Obama must surely stem from fear of a black POTUS. Another case of insignificant diarrhea of the mouth raised to hulabaloo by the media.

I haven't the stomach to begin to analyze Jimmy Carter's motives; I'll leave it with:

“You have been sat to long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

-Oliver Cromwell addressing the rump parliament, April 1653.

Probable Impact

The automatic media-machine furor over the Coast Guard daring to conduct an anti-terrorist exercise in Washington on 9/11 may well have one systemic effect. Administration officials will shovel crap downhill, which will have an overall result of reducing preparedness exercises -maybe just for the Coast Guard, if we're lucky- which means reduced preparedness. The media will have damaged us, once again.

Remember Journalism?

A soldier dies in Afghanistan. As someone remarked, "There are two rules in war, 1, that young men die, and, 2, you can't change Rule #1." Presumably, any adult understands that war, and its attendant casualties, cannot be prevented so long as the human race does business in any of its known avatars.

The role of journalism should be to report, basically, and do it clearly, unflinchingly, and with the bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs. So- what happend to journalism? In today's example, a U.S. soldier, Joshua Bernard, is fatally wounded in Afghanistan, serving his nation gallantly and in the best traditions of the United States Marine Corps.

The Daily Mail online reported, and I can only wish they were not typical of today's news reporting. Unfortunately, this kind of reportage can be seen on a daily basis, without even searching. The first sentence of the article:

"It is a deeply disturbing image which depicts the grim reality of war - a fatally wounded U.S. soldier lies slumped in the mud as fellow marines desperately try to save him as his young life ebbs away."

This, of course, is all too typical of much reportage, not only that coming out of Albion, but all too many -perhaps even a majority of news outlets. It's bad reporting, pure and simple.....and those "Limeys" didn't bother to capitalize "Marines."

The sentence, as it should have been written: "It is an image which depicts the reality of war- a wounded soldier lies in the mud as fellow Marines try to save him." All else is hype, gloss, dross, unwarranted hyperbole.

It is as if The Mail were attempting to construct an inflammatory and divisive article, instead of reporting on an event; to attempt to construct division through verbiage instead of providing evidence of such division.

Oh, America is divided, all right, but not about Marines lying in the mud. They're mainly divided over why the government can't afford all the things they want, why the recession won't go away.

It seems fitting to let the last word here go to some U.S. Marine graffiti in Iraq: "America is not at war. The Marines are at war. America is at the mall."

We're all about Teachable Moments

Bob Schieffer came across pretty well on the news the other day when he said that Mr. Obama was the one who clearly needed a "teachable moment," in this case when to button his lip. The written version of Schieffer's comments was in a curiously different vein- at least it's curious if you don't understand how things are classified in current media blame-jargon.
After reading this little piece, I am supposed to conclude:

1. Crowley, Gates, & Obama were all at fault (in that order?).

2. None of the players could really help themselves, only being human*.

3. When Schieffer writes "-my guess if they had said that is none of this would have even made the local news"** we're supposed to conclude that he either works for the media in another universe, or doesn't understand how the media manufactures news in ours.

*Note1: Since the principles of "everybody's a victim" must be applied, but isn't directly applicable in this case, this is implied as a close cousin.

**Note2: This quote applies only to Crowley and Gates, therefore additionally implying that if they had been more thoughtful and apologetic, they would have also spared their President the necessity of popping off and inserting both feet into his mouth.