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Over at Vox Nova, regular contributor Sam Rocha has posted a piece registering his disgust at the news. His post begins with the sentence, I’m sick of the “news.” And he concludes his reflections with, Sure, there are better and worse “news” outlets and we shouldn’t opt to live under a rock, but, in the end, the effect is the same for me today: nausea. How about you?
Well, since Sam asked, I made the following comments (very slightly amended here) in response:
What does it signify that reportage concerning events in “the news” is immediately susceptible to such a variety of slants, spins, analyses, and interpretations, both at the source (the media) and by its consumers (you and me)?
Is this because “the news” contains no Truth upon which you and I can agree? Or is it because you and I make use of the information conveyed to us through the media as raw materials, in order to construct the subjective pseudo-truths which serve to scratch our personal (and/or tribal) itches?
As a for instance, is President Obama taking heat over his response to the BP oil spill from many people because he is pro-choice, rather than because of his response to the BP oil spill itself?
As another, is organized labor in this country being systematically demonized and dismantled (despite its long history of struggle and sacrifice and its huge historical effect in raising everyone’s standard of living) because it has become somehow “unAmerican”; or is it primarily envy causing the rancor?
In short, do we now use news items primarily as brickbats to throw at the head of “the Other” rather than as reports on happenings in the world that may demand our attention as problem-solvers and agents of goodwill toward our fellow man?
Do we use “the news” primarily “against,” rather than “for?”
Do we seek out voices whose constant refrains are “con-,” rather than “pro-?”
All that negativity! No wonder we feel lousy!
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NB: Click here to hear Sam jam!
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Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Rants: Doubting Thomas?
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Would Helen Thomas, who has now retired under tremendous pressure, have suffered a similar fate at the hands of pussyfied American liberals if sometime in the early 20th century she had said that the British should get the hell out of India and go home, or later in the 20th century that the French should get the hell out of Indochina and go back to Europe? Helen Thomas was criticizing Zionism, which is a nationalistic, colonialist, political ideology. If you can't make a political statement--especially an unpopular, non-PC political statement--without losing your job, then the First Amendment IS being shredded. What she said is NOT--as has been oft-suggested--analogous to telling African-Americans that they should go back to Africa. The Israelis of European and American origin did not arrive in Palestine in the holds of slave ships, and the Africans who were brought to these shores did not dislodge, disinherit, or dismember either the indigenous people on this continent, or their conquerors.
What Helen Thomas said you can't say in "polite company." But that doesn't make it morally wrong to say it. If you're 200 years old and don't really need the work, I guess you can take the risk and expose the machinations of the thought police permeating the political life of this country. Chalk up another victory for the Likudnik fascists and their American neocon allies.
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Would Helen Thomas, who has now retired under tremendous pressure, have suffered a similar fate at the hands of pussyfied American liberals if sometime in the early 20th century she had said that the British should get the hell out of India and go home, or later in the 20th century that the French should get the hell out of Indochina and go back to Europe? Helen Thomas was criticizing Zionism, which is a nationalistic, colonialist, political ideology. If you can't make a political statement--especially an unpopular, non-PC political statement--without losing your job, then the First Amendment IS being shredded. What she said is NOT--as has been oft-suggested--analogous to telling African-Americans that they should go back to Africa. The Israelis of European and American origin did not arrive in Palestine in the holds of slave ships, and the Africans who were brought to these shores did not dislodge, disinherit, or dismember either the indigenous people on this continent, or their conquerors.
What Helen Thomas said you can't say in "polite company." But that doesn't make it morally wrong to say it. If you're 200 years old and don't really need the work, I guess you can take the risk and expose the machinations of the thought police permeating the political life of this country. Chalk up another victory for the Likudnik fascists and their American neocon allies.
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Sunday, June 6, 2010
The Reporter - Part 5: October 20, 1955
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We’ll just let that picture be worth a thousand words, remember what geography the Israelis acquired in subsequent wars, and move on.
The letters to the editor section includes missives concerning the article on modern jazz (that I criticized in Part 4) by two prominent writers on the subject—Nat Hentoff and Whitney Balliett—both of whom pretty much agreed with what I had to say about it.
Our common thread, Sidney Alexander, pans Norman Mailer’s new novel The Deer Park. I have to agree that The Deer Park is a piece of shit by Mailerian standards. The title of Alexander’s review is “Not Even Good Pornography”. While this leads one to wonder just what kind of pornography Alexander preferred, back in the day, I also found it amusing that a novel like The Deer Park could be considered quasi-pornographic. There’s worse on primetime TV in this day and age.
The final article from this issue that I’ll mention is a travelogue about Haiti by Sabine Gova. In the final sections of the piece, the author gets onto the topic of most probable interest to Americans—voodoo and (gasp!) zombies. She has met a talkative native named Justin Villefonte in the dining room of the pension at which she is staying. He turns out to be a lawyer, educated at the Sorbonne. He has (we learn) enemies among the houngans—the voodoo priests—a situation about which he will speak only guardedly. At one point in the discussion he offers this:
The first thing one might notice about this edition of The Reporter is that the cover art has no connection to the banner headline. The small print beneath the headline reads “The Troubles on Israel’s Frontiers", which accounts for the cover art.
"The Turning Point” in the presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower is explained by the opening paragraph of the title editorial by Max Ascoli:
What happened to the President and to the nation on that Saturday, September 24, can perhaps best be defined by the common-law term “act of God,” taken in its most literal religious sense. On that day a Power infinitely beyond our calculations stunned us all by affecting the beat of one man’s heart.
That is to say, Ike had a heart attack. The second paragraph goes on to say:
"The Turning Point” in the presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower is explained by the opening paragraph of the title editorial by Max Ascoli:
What happened to the President and to the nation on that Saturday, September 24, can perhaps best be defined by the common-law term “act of God,” taken in its most literal religious sense. On that day a Power infinitely beyond our calculations stunned us all by affecting the beat of one man’s heart.
That is to say, Ike had a heart attack. The second paragraph goes on to say:
It turned out to be no more than a gentle warning both to the President and to the people, but it has been enough to convey the notion that while the Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower may well run through its full course, it will surely not be continued into a second term.
Well, so much for that article. As we know, Ike not only finished his first term—weak ticker, or not—but he did run again, in 1956, and win. And he finished that term, too.
The following (and related) article, by Sidney Hyman, entitled “The Founding Fathers and Presidential Disability” goes on at great length concerning what should be done if Ike’s heart snapped again, disabling him without killing him outright. Constitutionally, who gets to make the call that the POTUS is mentally or physically unable to do the job? This had come up before; both Woodrow Wilson and FDR come to mind in that respect, and Eisenhower’s heart attack had raised the issue again. (But not that interestingly.)
As for Israel’s border crisis. The map of Israel embedded in the text of the article, coupled with hindsight, describes it pretty well:
Well, so much for that article. As we know, Ike not only finished his first term—weak ticker, or not—but he did run again, in 1956, and win. And he finished that term, too.
The following (and related) article, by Sidney Hyman, entitled “The Founding Fathers and Presidential Disability” goes on at great length concerning what should be done if Ike’s heart snapped again, disabling him without killing him outright. Constitutionally, who gets to make the call that the POTUS is mentally or physically unable to do the job? This had come up before; both Woodrow Wilson and FDR come to mind in that respect, and Eisenhower’s heart attack had raised the issue again. (But not that interestingly.)
As for Israel’s border crisis. The map of Israel embedded in the text of the article, coupled with hindsight, describes it pretty well:
We’ll just let that picture be worth a thousand words, remember what geography the Israelis acquired in subsequent wars, and move on.The letters to the editor section includes missives concerning the article on modern jazz (that I criticized in Part 4) by two prominent writers on the subject—Nat Hentoff and Whitney Balliett—both of whom pretty much agreed with what I had to say about it.
Our common thread, Sidney Alexander, pans Norman Mailer’s new novel The Deer Park. I have to agree that The Deer Park is a piece of shit by Mailerian standards. The title of Alexander’s review is “Not Even Good Pornography”. While this leads one to wonder just what kind of pornography Alexander preferred, back in the day, I also found it amusing that a novel like The Deer Park could be considered quasi-pornographic. There’s worse on primetime TV in this day and age.
The final article from this issue that I’ll mention is a travelogue about Haiti by Sabine Gova. In the final sections of the piece, the author gets onto the topic of most probable interest to Americans—voodoo and (gasp!) zombies. She has met a talkative native named Justin Villefonte in the dining room of the pension at which she is staying. He turns out to be a lawyer, educated at the Sorbonne. He has (we learn) enemies among the houngans—the voodoo priests—a situation about which he will speak only guardedly. At one point in the discussion he offers this:
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"I want to make known that we Africans have solutions to offer where the white scientists are still guessing. Psychiatric solutions, psychological solutions, even medical perhaps…they are in the hands of the houngans. It’s the houngans who know more about the so-called wonder drugs than the entire scientific world." Now, here come the zombies.
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He tells her of “the use of substances which do not kill but produce a cataleptic state” and of “the burying of a person treated with such a drug” whom the houngan later disinters to exist as “a mere robot without thought or will.” Villefonte hopes to make such things available to modern medicine. Thus, he has earned the wrath of the powerful houngan priestly cult.
Hm. ...whom the houngan later disinters... Can you dig it? X
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Saturday, June 5, 2010
Reflections: Mi Gaza, Su Gaza
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I saw a foreshadowing of the reasons for the growing condemnation of Israel while traveling there in 1979. I was traveling as an accompanying spouse with my wife’s modern dance company, under the auspices of the U.S. state department, in a “goodwill tour”-type situation. Because of the geopolitics of the region in those days, this was a very special tour. The company was to be the first group of individuals to cross the border with Jordan, over the Allenby Bridge (pictured above), since before the Six-Day War. In order to do this, each member of the dance company, as well as each fellow-traveler like me, had been issued a second U.S. passport. As I recall, the purpose of this special passport was to be able to present customs agents in the Arab nations with a passport which had not been stamped in Israel.
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In the aftermath of the homicidal attack made by the Israeli military on the “freedom flotilla” attempting to ship humanitarian aid into blockaded Gaza, there has been a lively discussion of Israel, pro- and con-, at Vox Nova. VN is relatively new-to-me daily read to which I was first led from Journeys in Alterity. Presented below is a revised and extended version of a comment of mine, pertaining to this post at VN. I have previously written more favorably about visiting Israel. These recent events have provoked memories of the dark side:
I saw a foreshadowing of the reasons for the growing condemnation of Israel while traveling there in 1979. I was traveling as an accompanying spouse with my wife’s modern dance company, under the auspices of the U.S. state department, in a “goodwill tour”-type situation. Because of the geopolitics of the region in those days, this was a very special tour. The company was to be the first group of individuals to cross the border with Jordan, over the Allenby Bridge (pictured above), since before the Six-Day War. In order to do this, each member of the dance company, as well as each fellow-traveler like me, had been issued a second U.S. passport. As I recall, the purpose of this special passport was to be able to present customs agents in the Arab nations with a passport which had not been stamped in Israel.
I was thrilled to be in Israel. It was a joy to walk the ancient streets of Jerusalem; to climb the slopes of the Mount of Olives; to pass from the blazing sunlight into the awesome obscurity of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. But my flaming enthusiasm for the visit was abruptly doused, on our last day there, by the treatment I received at the hands of Israeli officials.
To make a long story short, my billfold, containing traveler’s checks in the amount of several hundred dollars, as well as the equivalent in Israeli currency of about $250 cash, disappeared from a canvas bag stashed under a deck chair by the hotel swimming pool. This happened in the span of time that it took me to have a quick splash in the pool, just to cool off. My bag had been left under the watchful eyes of two of the “guides” assigned by the Israeli government to facilitate our visit.
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In order to be able to recoup the traveler’s checks, and to protect myself against the possibility that my credit card had already been used before the theft was discovered, I had to be taken to the local cop shop to make a report. With deliberate rudeness, the Israeli police spoke to each other only in Hebrew, although each of them showed that he was perfectly capable of questioning me in English. Throughout the interview they laughed amongst themselves, seeming to be greatly enjoying my obvious consternation. In the end, they shrugged and said, “Nothing we can do, Meester.”
The next morning, as we were packing to leave, having cancelled the credit card – an extreme inconvenience while on the road – I got a call from the hotel desk. They had found my billfold, so they said, in the bushes near the fencing around the pool. When I recovered it, I found that nothing – not even the cash – was missing. You do the math.
This is how Americans were being treated as guests of the state of Israel – a state that is able to survive only as an American client – in 1979, when Israel was still held in high regard by most Americans. By constrast, we were treated with respect and friendship by officials in both Egypt and Jordan. I had a particularly good experience in Jordan, also involving interaction with officials, which I may write about at some later time.
Incidentally, the hotel strip along the beach in Tel Aviv was literally swarming with hookers. I was several times openly solicited in broad daylight by young women on the sidewalks, or in cars parked along the sidewalks of the main drag, who exposed their breasts without shame and made enticing verbal suggestions—in pretty good English. On one of these occasions, I walking to our hotel with my wife! The beaches were covered in tar, so that one had to wear shoes while swimming or sunbathing in order to avoid having one’s feet semi-permanently blackened. And, although I loved being able to visit the Church of Holy Sepulcher, dealing with the money-hungry priest on duty (I’m not sure which of the several churches he was representing), was quite unpleasant. In the end, I was glad to be getting the hell out of Israel when the tour bus pulled up.
Incidentally, the hotel strip along the beach in Tel Aviv was literally swarming with hookers. I was several times openly solicited in broad daylight by young women on the sidewalks, or in cars parked along the sidewalks of the main drag, who exposed their breasts without shame and made enticing verbal suggestions—in pretty good English. On one of these occasions, I walking to our hotel with my wife! The beaches were covered in tar, so that one had to wear shoes while swimming or sunbathing in order to avoid having one’s feet semi-permanently blackened. And, although I loved being able to visit the Church of Holy Sepulcher, dealing with the money-hungry priest on duty (I’m not sure which of the several churches he was representing), was quite unpleasant. In the end, I was glad to be getting the hell out of Israel when the tour bus pulled up.
Bottom line: The Arabs can have it, for all I care. That would at least keep it out of the hands of the Southern Baptist Convention…
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Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Rants: LEGALLY BLIND!
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Q: What kind of man is this?
A: I dunno... Cro-Magnon?
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Update: new verb enters the lexicon:
Main Entry: joyce
Pronunciation: joy-sssssss
Function: intransitive verb
Date: 21st century
1 colloquial: FUCK UP BIG TIME
2 : a : derisive :
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Update.1: Anyone who would like to read something that is less adolescent, less emotional, and more fraught with goodwill is referred here.
Rants: WTF?
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Okay, I'll admit that I just don't get it. I mean, really -- how could squads of laser-guided underwater robots, armed with state-of-the-art diamond saws, so completely fail to accomplish a simple task that even Joe the Plumber -- despite the fact that his name's not really "Joe" and he's not really a plumber -- wielding only the primitive tools hanging on his belt... Oh. Wait...
....never mind.
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Okay, I'll admit that I just don't get it. I mean, really -- how could squads of laser-guided underwater robots, armed with state-of-the-art diamond saws, so completely fail to accomplish a simple task that even Joe the Plumber -- despite the fact that his name's not really "Joe" and he's not really a plumber -- wielding only the primitive tools hanging on his belt... Oh. Wait...
....never mind.
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Reflections: Out of My Depth
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The entry in my journal for September 10, 1991 which immediately preceded the one quoted in my last post was this:
I once had dreams of wading, following a beautiful, shallow river to the outskirts of a city. I had dreams of discovering in the ground of cache of coins – and more turned up in the sand the deeper I dug. I dreamed of being in a night city, down in the train yards, and finding there a deep pool full of beautiful, glowing fish that swam up near the surface, and then dove again for the inky depths. It does not seem now that the strange fish I encountered in the city when I had arrived there in reality were equivalent to those dream fish – but it could be that I’m wrong; that something is being overlooked. So far as I can remember, I never dreamt of a fish with a coin in its mouth.
Dreams of buried talents… subconscious a-boil with hidden beauty…
I once had dreams of wading, following a beautiful, shallow river to the outskirts of a city. I had dreams of discovering in the ground of cache of coins – and more turned up in the sand the deeper I dug. I dreamed of being in a night city, down in the train yards, and finding there a deep pool full of beautiful, glowing fish that swam up near the surface, and then dove again for the inky depths. It does not seem now that the strange fish I encountered in the city when I had arrived there in reality were equivalent to those dream fish – but it could be that I’m wrong; that something is being overlooked. So far as I can remember, I never dreamt of a fish with a coin in its mouth.
Dreams of buried talents… subconscious a-boil with hidden beauty…
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