Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Talkin' 'Bout My Generation
My generation like all generations is known mainly through a series of public misconceptions. For instance, my generation had absolutely nothing to do with the birth of rock and roll. Nada. Zilch. Not a single little thing. The generation that invented rock and roll is still around, though, but they’re known as the “silent generation.” Talk about a bum deal, huh? You invent a screaming new musical form and you’re known as “silent.” Nice. But who called these guys “silent” in the first place? Why it was the “greatest generation”, those brave young men who fought and defeated the forces of Hitler and Tojo and saved the world for inanity, that’s who? And who are they to be mislabeling a generation? They are, like my generation, a “dominant” generation, according to the theories of a couple of (boomer) authors named Strauss and Howe. Dominant? You bet. “Greatest Generation?” Moot, to be sure. “Silent?” Hardly, but the name stuck, which allowed my generation to think it had invented rock and roll because after all, the “silent” generation never did anything, did it? Ouch.
As to winning World War II, those brave GIs were to be sure some of the finest and most reliable soldiers ever put on a battlefield. But, and this is a look at another generation that never gets any credit, the war was won by the generation called “Lost.” You know, guys like Patton, MacArthur, Eisenhower, were not GI generation people. They were members of a generation surprisingly similar to the ones we boomers named “X”. Why X? Because it’s a name that relegates the poor suckers to the dustbin of history, which is where any generation not dominant belongs, to judge from the record. I don’t think that they belong there, but that’s where history keeps putting them. D-Day was planned by “Lost” people. The brilliant island-hopping campaign in the pacific was planned by “Lost” people. The grunts who followed orders so well took, and continue to take, all the credit. It’s the way of the world. So let’s move on to my topic; on to my generation.
Ever since I was old enough to figure out what was happening my generation has driven me nuts. I remember in high school a friend and I were talking about how someday our music would be the stuff played in elevators and dentists offices, but a large group of our friends insisted that we were wrong, that that would never, ever happen, because we were so different from the old folks. Actually, the famous “generation gap” was a gap because we were so damned much like the old folks in our certainty of being right. On a personal level there really wasn’t much of a gap. The world didn’t change any more than it does in any given twenty-year period (which is plenty) but we bought our own hype about how it was changing just then. Why wouldn’t our favorite music dominate culture in the future? Wasn’t it already doing that? Somehow my friend and I knew that we’d be 56 years old someday, but our other friends hadn’t caught on. We did listen to some good music, that’s true. The Beatles (Silent generation) and the Stones (Silent generation) and The Doors (silent generation) and Elvis Presley (Silent generation) and . . . well, you see the pattern I’m sure. All the anti-war movement, all the folk, rock, heavy metal stuff were products of the “Silent” generation. It’s great stuff to a large extent, and the times were really interesting to live through, but when you hear Boomers taking credit for any of it, know that they are lying, or more likely deluded.
As to the Silent generation, if you haven’t seen it, rent “Rebel Without A Cause.” It says all you need to know about the attitudes of that generation. I especially like the significance at the end, when young James Dean literally walks out wearing his father’s coat. We all do that, of course, but most of my generation has so far refused to admit it, because we’re “not like them.” Funny, I seem to recall my parents worrying about the exact same stuff I worry about, but then again I guess I’m not normal. Or am I?
We got most of the cultural iconography we brag about from the Silent generation. After us is a generation who failed to resonate so well with those silent types, to such an extent that we had to give them a name reflective of our lack of understanding of what they were about. X works so well, don’t you think? Yes, Generation X: mystery of the ages. Generation X has been denigrated as a bunch of slackers almost since they started getting born. They aren’t slackers at all, of course. Remember those “Lost” generals of WWII? They got that name from the generation that preceded them, a generation out to save the world and remake it in the image of high moral standards and democratic institutions. They were known as the “Missionary” generation because of their zeal to correct the errors of the world. When they found themselves without any enemies courteous enough to attack them, they used a boiler-room accident on the battleship Maine as an excuse to take of the last remnants of the once great Spanish empire. Glad we don’t do any such things, aren’t you? Heck, we had someone nice enough to actually attack us and give us the excuse we needed. You’ve gotta love service like that. Of course, the Missionaries’ real triumph was World War One, where they vowed to “Make the World Safe for Democracy.” Damn, but that has a familiar ring to it somehow. It didn’t do that, of course, which is why the Lost generation, slackers that they were, got to clean up the mess by promulgating World War Two. I for one am glad they did, and I wish they were around to do something similar. Except that they are, in spirit. Generation X, after we’ve screwed around long enough with this terrorism, Iraq, and whatever other idiotic stuff we manage to come up with, long enough, will be stepping up to the plate to clean up the environmental, economic, and social mess we are even now generating as fast as we can. They will use as their workforce the generation following them, the generation without a clear name yet, but I can tell you that the oldest are in their early twenties and the world better get ready. Strauss and Howe call these guys “Millennial” because they are coming of age as a new millennium starts. The Millennials will, of course, take credit for the solving of our problems, leaving Generation X, like the Lost Generation, tremendously accomplished but little acknowledged.
And my generation will be right in there, one way or another. In fact, generations like mine actually come into their own as they get old enough to be “elder statesmen.” FDR was a Missionary. He didn’t do a heck of a lot, but he sure was inspirational to others, so he managed to get a lot of stuff done by dint of intelligence, sensitivity and top-notch communication skills. The Boomer equivalent of FDR isn’t around yet, probably because he isn’t needed yet. Or maybe she isn’t needed yet. There’s no way to tell, but I am looking forward to watching the next twenty years unfold. I have no idea how those slackers are going to dig us out of the hole we keep digging, but I’m confident that they’ll pull it off. To you who are stuck with the clean-up, for my part, whatever it’s been, I’m sorry. And thank you very much. If you’re a Gen-X er, you might want to read that line again, as you’re unlikely ever to hear that a second time otherwise.
I’d like to go on about how awful we Boomers truly are, but the fact is that we’re just being what we were destined to be by the workings of a free society. So are Gen X, and the ones after them and the ones after them. Wait! Three generations after Boomers? Of course. Even now, the next “silent” generation is being born. They’ll wonder what’s wrong with the world, just like James Dean. In fact, although I may never know, I predict a surge in popularity for James Dean films in about thirty years. Stick around and find out.
If you’d like to know the basis for this, um, essay, check out Generations : The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, by Neil Howe and William Strauss, from Harper Perennial. The book was written in 1988, but it accurately predicts the general political tone of the country right up until this week. Fascinating stuff, and proof that my thesis that all Boomers are worthless is probably about as untrue as any other such generalization. Besides, there’s me.
As to winning World War II, those brave GIs were to be sure some of the finest and most reliable soldiers ever put on a battlefield. But, and this is a look at another generation that never gets any credit, the war was won by the generation called “Lost.” You know, guys like Patton, MacArthur, Eisenhower, were not GI generation people. They were members of a generation surprisingly similar to the ones we boomers named “X”. Why X? Because it’s a name that relegates the poor suckers to the dustbin of history, which is where any generation not dominant belongs, to judge from the record. I don’t think that they belong there, but that’s where history keeps putting them. D-Day was planned by “Lost” people. The brilliant island-hopping campaign in the pacific was planned by “Lost” people. The grunts who followed orders so well took, and continue to take, all the credit. It’s the way of the world. So let’s move on to my topic; on to my generation.
Ever since I was old enough to figure out what was happening my generation has driven me nuts. I remember in high school a friend and I were talking about how someday our music would be the stuff played in elevators and dentists offices, but a large group of our friends insisted that we were wrong, that that would never, ever happen, because we were so different from the old folks. Actually, the famous “generation gap” was a gap because we were so damned much like the old folks in our certainty of being right. On a personal level there really wasn’t much of a gap. The world didn’t change any more than it does in any given twenty-year period (which is plenty) but we bought our own hype about how it was changing just then. Why wouldn’t our favorite music dominate culture in the future? Wasn’t it already doing that? Somehow my friend and I knew that we’d be 56 years old someday, but our other friends hadn’t caught on. We did listen to some good music, that’s true. The Beatles (Silent generation) and the Stones (Silent generation) and The Doors (silent generation) and Elvis Presley (Silent generation) and . . . well, you see the pattern I’m sure. All the anti-war movement, all the folk, rock, heavy metal stuff were products of the “Silent” generation. It’s great stuff to a large extent, and the times were really interesting to live through, but when you hear Boomers taking credit for any of it, know that they are lying, or more likely deluded.
As to the Silent generation, if you haven’t seen it, rent “Rebel Without A Cause.” It says all you need to know about the attitudes of that generation. I especially like the significance at the end, when young James Dean literally walks out wearing his father’s coat. We all do that, of course, but most of my generation has so far refused to admit it, because we’re “not like them.” Funny, I seem to recall my parents worrying about the exact same stuff I worry about, but then again I guess I’m not normal. Or am I?
We got most of the cultural iconography we brag about from the Silent generation. After us is a generation who failed to resonate so well with those silent types, to such an extent that we had to give them a name reflective of our lack of understanding of what they were about. X works so well, don’t you think? Yes, Generation X: mystery of the ages. Generation X has been denigrated as a bunch of slackers almost since they started getting born. They aren’t slackers at all, of course. Remember those “Lost” generals of WWII? They got that name from the generation that preceded them, a generation out to save the world and remake it in the image of high moral standards and democratic institutions. They were known as the “Missionary” generation because of their zeal to correct the errors of the world. When they found themselves without any enemies courteous enough to attack them, they used a boiler-room accident on the battleship Maine as an excuse to take of the last remnants of the once great Spanish empire. Glad we don’t do any such things, aren’t you? Heck, we had someone nice enough to actually attack us and give us the excuse we needed. You’ve gotta love service like that. Of course, the Missionaries’ real triumph was World War One, where they vowed to “Make the World Safe for Democracy.” Damn, but that has a familiar ring to it somehow. It didn’t do that, of course, which is why the Lost generation, slackers that they were, got to clean up the mess by promulgating World War Two. I for one am glad they did, and I wish they were around to do something similar. Except that they are, in spirit. Generation X, after we’ve screwed around long enough with this terrorism, Iraq, and whatever other idiotic stuff we manage to come up with, long enough, will be stepping up to the plate to clean up the environmental, economic, and social mess we are even now generating as fast as we can. They will use as their workforce the generation following them, the generation without a clear name yet, but I can tell you that the oldest are in their early twenties and the world better get ready. Strauss and Howe call these guys “Millennial” because they are coming of age as a new millennium starts. The Millennials will, of course, take credit for the solving of our problems, leaving Generation X, like the Lost Generation, tremendously accomplished but little acknowledged.
And my generation will be right in there, one way or another. In fact, generations like mine actually come into their own as they get old enough to be “elder statesmen.” FDR was a Missionary. He didn’t do a heck of a lot, but he sure was inspirational to others, so he managed to get a lot of stuff done by dint of intelligence, sensitivity and top-notch communication skills. The Boomer equivalent of FDR isn’t around yet, probably because he isn’t needed yet. Or maybe she isn’t needed yet. There’s no way to tell, but I am looking forward to watching the next twenty years unfold. I have no idea how those slackers are going to dig us out of the hole we keep digging, but I’m confident that they’ll pull it off. To you who are stuck with the clean-up, for my part, whatever it’s been, I’m sorry. And thank you very much. If you’re a Gen-X er, you might want to read that line again, as you’re unlikely ever to hear that a second time otherwise.
I’d like to go on about how awful we Boomers truly are, but the fact is that we’re just being what we were destined to be by the workings of a free society. So are Gen X, and the ones after them and the ones after them. Wait! Three generations after Boomers? Of course. Even now, the next “silent” generation is being born. They’ll wonder what’s wrong with the world, just like James Dean. In fact, although I may never know, I predict a surge in popularity for James Dean films in about thirty years. Stick around and find out.
If you’d like to know the basis for this, um, essay, check out Generations : The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, by Neil Howe and William Strauss, from Harper Perennial. The book was written in 1988, but it accurately predicts the general political tone of the country right up until this week. Fascinating stuff, and proof that my thesis that all Boomers are worthless is probably about as untrue as any other such generalization. Besides, there’s me.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Movies
I write movies, so I thought it would be appropriate to talk about them a little bit. This isn’t a rant, so if you come for my idiotic ranting, you’re going to be disappointed. This is probably going to be a boring essay. Sorry about that. What I’d like to talk about is the apparent dearth of good movies, and the commercial aspects of the industry, an industry with which I’ve become increasingly familiar in recent years.
It isn’t necessary to be in Hollywood to make a movie. In fact, the most productive studios in the world are in Bollywood, which is in India. They crank out films like Hollywood did in the thirties, with a similar system of studios and stars. It is more than rumored that organized crime has a hand in many of the production houses there. That’s because organized crime likes to hide it’s income in difficult to track places, and there’s not much more difficult to track than the actual finances of a large movie studio. You can see the bottom line without any trouble, especially if the company is common-stock owned, but you can’t see exactly where the money comes from, or where the expenses go. The Mafia used to love Vegas for the same reason, but these days every nickel that goes through the gaming industry in Nevada is accounted for in triplicate at least. Give them your age, occupation, and marital status and they’ll tell you how much you’re probably going to spend when you visit. Good for the industry, bad for the Mafia. Anyway, my point is that movies have a lot of hidden costs and benefits that even insiders most likely don’t have any way to determine. That has led many to suspect a vast corrupt conspiracy against artistic expression, or some such hoo-rah. That’s probably mostly BS, but it does sound good to say. What the problem really is boils down to though is the extremely risky nature of film making, financially speaking.
The average price tag on a movie is just short of $100,000.00 US. That’s a lot of cash, which is why you see very few people simply making their own movies and getting them distributed. Of course, that’s always a possibility. Something like The Blair Witch Project cost very little and makes the producers a nice wad of cash. And of course there are lucky stiffs like Lucas and Spielberg who actually have enough money to put a big pile of cash into a production and know that they’ll get it distributed and make all their money back and then some. But mostly the industry depends upon investors, sort of like stockholders only with less legal protection. A hundred people putting in a million each can finance the average movie, or a million people putting in a hundred bucks each would work as well. Either way, you’ve got a bunch of folks who would like some assurance that their money didn’t just go down some rat hole into another dimension. Of sight, of sound, of money pit-dom, that is. So, what you want to do is make a block buster. A block buster movie is a sure thing to make your investors happy, your entire crew (which is hundreds of people) happy, your stars happy and yourself rich(er). So, how do you pick a blockbuster before it’s produced?
A couple of years ago, for a class in Project Management, I did a statistical study of all the movies produced in 2003 to see if I could find a relationship between things you know before you start and the ultimate success of the film. Does budget matter? Does the genre matter? It was a pretty comprehensive look at predictive factors in movie success. Guess which factor works best. Go ahead, give it a go, it’ll be worth it. You taking a guess? You about ready? Okay, here it is: the most fruitful way to predict a successful film before production begins is to flip a coin. Just call it “heads it makes money, tails it’s a bomb” and you’ll be fine. I am not making that up at all. There is no actual relationship between almost anything and the final success of the film other than intangibles that can’t be quantified, such as A-list stars, A-list directors, timeliness (impossible to predict, usually) and the mood of the movie-going public. Since it’s usually two to three years from green light to release, any of those factors can change and ruin your predictions. That is why you see the same old formulas, the same old plots, and the same old genres with the same old actors over and over. Do you have a hundred million you don’t mind risking on an unknown quantity? Well, neither does almost anyone else. This is the simple economic reason that it’s hard to break into Hollywood, it’s hard to get your script sold, it’s hard to become a successful actor, and it’s hard to get your movie distributed even if you do manage to make it yourself.
Is that bad? You bet it is. I have no idea what to do about it, of course. I imagine that the Impressionists in France in the nineteenth century had the same complaint about the art gallery scene, and I know the studios in the thirties talked about the same sort of issues. There’s a great potential for abuse in the situation: did the film make a profit or not? If not why not? Make something up, who will ever know better? So far as I know, there’s only been one case where an investor actually won the right to examine the real books of a big studio. He won his case and got his money, but in most cases, there’s no way to know if you’re being cheated or not if you’re an investor, which is why it’s so hard to get people to put money into films in the first place. Even if you’re not cheating them, you look like you are. For all of that, most people agree that the majority of the product coming out of Hollywood is pretty low quality. But hey, just think if you’re the new actor and you see your name in the credits for the first time? Or it’s your first job as a director and you get to put yourself right next to the film in the opening credits? Or you finally sold that script and you’re up there, right before the director and after all those producers? Is that worth shooting for or not? Yeah, it is, which explains why so many people keep trying to break into what is an amazingly frustrating way to make a living.
Oh, those credits? There is a set order for them. In the opening it goes: Title, Stars, Optionals, Producers, Writers, and Director, then the film starts. It’s popular to put them at the end lately, which means that they run in reverse order. Check it out, it’s a interesting bit of trivia. If the opening credits are at the end the Title follows the Stars, then the closing credits start. Wild, huh?
It isn’t necessary to be in Hollywood to make a movie. In fact, the most productive studios in the world are in Bollywood, which is in India. They crank out films like Hollywood did in the thirties, with a similar system of studios and stars. It is more than rumored that organized crime has a hand in many of the production houses there. That’s because organized crime likes to hide it’s income in difficult to track places, and there’s not much more difficult to track than the actual finances of a large movie studio. You can see the bottom line without any trouble, especially if the company is common-stock owned, but you can’t see exactly where the money comes from, or where the expenses go. The Mafia used to love Vegas for the same reason, but these days every nickel that goes through the gaming industry in Nevada is accounted for in triplicate at least. Give them your age, occupation, and marital status and they’ll tell you how much you’re probably going to spend when you visit. Good for the industry, bad for the Mafia. Anyway, my point is that movies have a lot of hidden costs and benefits that even insiders most likely don’t have any way to determine. That has led many to suspect a vast corrupt conspiracy against artistic expression, or some such hoo-rah. That’s probably mostly BS, but it does sound good to say. What the problem really is boils down to though is the extremely risky nature of film making, financially speaking.
The average price tag on a movie is just short of $100,000.00 US. That’s a lot of cash, which is why you see very few people simply making their own movies and getting them distributed. Of course, that’s always a possibility. Something like The Blair Witch Project cost very little and makes the producers a nice wad of cash. And of course there are lucky stiffs like Lucas and Spielberg who actually have enough money to put a big pile of cash into a production and know that they’ll get it distributed and make all their money back and then some. But mostly the industry depends upon investors, sort of like stockholders only with less legal protection. A hundred people putting in a million each can finance the average movie, or a million people putting in a hundred bucks each would work as well. Either way, you’ve got a bunch of folks who would like some assurance that their money didn’t just go down some rat hole into another dimension. Of sight, of sound, of money pit-dom, that is. So, what you want to do is make a block buster. A block buster movie is a sure thing to make your investors happy, your entire crew (which is hundreds of people) happy, your stars happy and yourself rich(er). So, how do you pick a blockbuster before it’s produced?
A couple of years ago, for a class in Project Management, I did a statistical study of all the movies produced in 2003 to see if I could find a relationship between things you know before you start and the ultimate success of the film. Does budget matter? Does the genre matter? It was a pretty comprehensive look at predictive factors in movie success. Guess which factor works best. Go ahead, give it a go, it’ll be worth it. You taking a guess? You about ready? Okay, here it is: the most fruitful way to predict a successful film before production begins is to flip a coin. Just call it “heads it makes money, tails it’s a bomb” and you’ll be fine. I am not making that up at all. There is no actual relationship between almost anything and the final success of the film other than intangibles that can’t be quantified, such as A-list stars, A-list directors, timeliness (impossible to predict, usually) and the mood of the movie-going public. Since it’s usually two to three years from green light to release, any of those factors can change and ruin your predictions. That is why you see the same old formulas, the same old plots, and the same old genres with the same old actors over and over. Do you have a hundred million you don’t mind risking on an unknown quantity? Well, neither does almost anyone else. This is the simple economic reason that it’s hard to break into Hollywood, it’s hard to get your script sold, it’s hard to become a successful actor, and it’s hard to get your movie distributed even if you do manage to make it yourself.
Is that bad? You bet it is. I have no idea what to do about it, of course. I imagine that the Impressionists in France in the nineteenth century had the same complaint about the art gallery scene, and I know the studios in the thirties talked about the same sort of issues. There’s a great potential for abuse in the situation: did the film make a profit or not? If not why not? Make something up, who will ever know better? So far as I know, there’s only been one case where an investor actually won the right to examine the real books of a big studio. He won his case and got his money, but in most cases, there’s no way to know if you’re being cheated or not if you’re an investor, which is why it’s so hard to get people to put money into films in the first place. Even if you’re not cheating them, you look like you are. For all of that, most people agree that the majority of the product coming out of Hollywood is pretty low quality. But hey, just think if you’re the new actor and you see your name in the credits for the first time? Or it’s your first job as a director and you get to put yourself right next to the film in the opening credits? Or you finally sold that script and you’re up there, right before the director and after all those producers? Is that worth shooting for or not? Yeah, it is, which explains why so many people keep trying to break into what is an amazingly frustrating way to make a living.
Oh, those credits? There is a set order for them. In the opening it goes: Title, Stars, Optionals, Producers, Writers, and Director, then the film starts. It’s popular to put them at the end lately, which means that they run in reverse order. Check it out, it’s a interesting bit of trivia. If the opening credits are at the end the Title follows the Stars, then the closing credits start. Wild, huh?
Monday, February 20, 2006
Advice Nobody Seems to Want
You want my advice? I don’t care, I’m giving it anyway.
What we all need to do in this country is let go of all the supposed idiocies that the “other side” has committed and get on with living in the present. I was moved to offer this sagacity when I read a short article about how awful it would be if Kerry and/or Gore were in charge since 9/11. Would it be? Well, who the Hell cares, anyway? They aren’t, and they never will be. I have no idea how honorable these two are, probably more than the person who wrote the article would admit to, but it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t win. How a pedantic intellectual and horse-faced depressive could fail to win the hearts of middle America is, of course, a mystery, but there it is. There is no reason at all to mention them ever again, unless they stick a foot in it (which everyone does once in a while) but even then, why drone on about their theoretical performance in Bush’s job? It really truly honestly doesn’t matter even the least little bit. Forget it. But wait, there’s more.
My brother sent me an email that was actually pretty funny detailing a fictional response to a fictional hearing in which Ted Kennedy gets lambasted yet again. Well, sure, it’s easy, but consider this: Ted Kennedy is probably a big fat jerk. The people of Massachusetts see fit, for reasons of their own, to keep re-electing him. (I suspect he does a good job for them, bringing home the pork like a good Senator is supposed to.) Therefore, except when he puts a foot in it as I said above, it really doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do to anyone outside of Massachusetts. They like him, I never voted for him, neither did you, so ignore him like you do the people on the street corner fishing for quarters and move on. The fact is, outside of his home state, he really doesn’t matter. He isn’t Joe Kennedy, he isn’t JFK, he’s not even on the level of his brother Robert. He truly does not matter, any more than do Kerry and Gore. (Sorry, bro, but it was a funny email.)
But lest it seem I’m hitting the right side of the aisle a little hard, consider George W. Bush as President. There are those still very bitter over the fact that the Supreme Court intervened in Florida. They say that the Supreme Court elected him. Actually, the Electoral College elected him, because that’s their job. They elect all of our Presidents. Aside from the debate about whether the Electoral College is a good or a bad thing, he was duly elected in 2000, and again in 2004. I didn’t vote for him because I figured him for just the dufus he seems to be, but I didn’t like my choices much either. Heck, I’d vote for Nixon again over any of the current crop, even though unfortunately he really was a crook. However, dwelling on Nixon, or on the election of 2000, isn’t accomplishing a damned thing other than keeping people unduly upset. Just as it doesn’t matter what Kerry would have done, it doesn’t matter about that election. Who you gonna appeal to after the Supreme Court rules? Exactly. They are the final court of appeal, per the constitution. Like it or lump it. The court is the court, W. is the President. Better we should get over it and move on.
I don’t mean all this to be taken as we should just blindly support the administration because they’re the administration. What I would like to see is some constructive criticism, maybe some effective use of PR by someone who isn’t friends with Jerry Falwell. Something with meat in place of stridency would be nice from either side of the aisle.
I don’t like petty obfuscation in place of explanations, but I don’t like “we can do better” in place of an actual plan any better. We have a nation that we invaded, rightfully or not, that we owe a rebuilding to. How are we going to do that? We have a master of spin for an enemy who uses our own good-natured American goofiness and lack of strong central control against us. What shall we do about that? For that matter, should we send an army into the Hindu Kush and rout the sucker out? What about the Patriot Act and its more controversial provisions? In Denver the library no longer keeps records of what patrons check out. Is that a clever preservation of freedom or an unfair thwarting of a legitimate investigation? Those are all things that really do matter, but I never see anything about any of them, or at least not much beyond sound bites. Here’s another thing that matters: many Americans have quit reading newspapers, if they ever did, and get their news from Fox or CNN. Many more don’t even go that far, and get their news from talk radio. Is this an informed electorate? You decide.
We don’t have to like each other all the time, but we do need to remember to respect each other all the time. It is possible to work through these differences, you know if we quit dwelling on each others’ supposed shortcomings and concentrate on figuring out how to handle the real problems we face now.
Or, we can just keep screwing around while Bin Ladin laughs at us in his cave. Our choice.
What we all need to do in this country is let go of all the supposed idiocies that the “other side” has committed and get on with living in the present. I was moved to offer this sagacity when I read a short article about how awful it would be if Kerry and/or Gore were in charge since 9/11. Would it be? Well, who the Hell cares, anyway? They aren’t, and they never will be. I have no idea how honorable these two are, probably more than the person who wrote the article would admit to, but it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t win. How a pedantic intellectual and horse-faced depressive could fail to win the hearts of middle America is, of course, a mystery, but there it is. There is no reason at all to mention them ever again, unless they stick a foot in it (which everyone does once in a while) but even then, why drone on about their theoretical performance in Bush’s job? It really truly honestly doesn’t matter even the least little bit. Forget it. But wait, there’s more.
My brother sent me an email that was actually pretty funny detailing a fictional response to a fictional hearing in which Ted Kennedy gets lambasted yet again. Well, sure, it’s easy, but consider this: Ted Kennedy is probably a big fat jerk. The people of Massachusetts see fit, for reasons of their own, to keep re-electing him. (I suspect he does a good job for them, bringing home the pork like a good Senator is supposed to.) Therefore, except when he puts a foot in it as I said above, it really doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do to anyone outside of Massachusetts. They like him, I never voted for him, neither did you, so ignore him like you do the people on the street corner fishing for quarters and move on. The fact is, outside of his home state, he really doesn’t matter. He isn’t Joe Kennedy, he isn’t JFK, he’s not even on the level of his brother Robert. He truly does not matter, any more than do Kerry and Gore. (Sorry, bro, but it was a funny email.)
But lest it seem I’m hitting the right side of the aisle a little hard, consider George W. Bush as President. There are those still very bitter over the fact that the Supreme Court intervened in Florida. They say that the Supreme Court elected him. Actually, the Electoral College elected him, because that’s their job. They elect all of our Presidents. Aside from the debate about whether the Electoral College is a good or a bad thing, he was duly elected in 2000, and again in 2004. I didn’t vote for him because I figured him for just the dufus he seems to be, but I didn’t like my choices much either. Heck, I’d vote for Nixon again over any of the current crop, even though unfortunately he really was a crook. However, dwelling on Nixon, or on the election of 2000, isn’t accomplishing a damned thing other than keeping people unduly upset. Just as it doesn’t matter what Kerry would have done, it doesn’t matter about that election. Who you gonna appeal to after the Supreme Court rules? Exactly. They are the final court of appeal, per the constitution. Like it or lump it. The court is the court, W. is the President. Better we should get over it and move on.
I don’t mean all this to be taken as we should just blindly support the administration because they’re the administration. What I would like to see is some constructive criticism, maybe some effective use of PR by someone who isn’t friends with Jerry Falwell. Something with meat in place of stridency would be nice from either side of the aisle.
I don’t like petty obfuscation in place of explanations, but I don’t like “we can do better” in place of an actual plan any better. We have a nation that we invaded, rightfully or not, that we owe a rebuilding to. How are we going to do that? We have a master of spin for an enemy who uses our own good-natured American goofiness and lack of strong central control against us. What shall we do about that? For that matter, should we send an army into the Hindu Kush and rout the sucker out? What about the Patriot Act and its more controversial provisions? In Denver the library no longer keeps records of what patrons check out. Is that a clever preservation of freedom or an unfair thwarting of a legitimate investigation? Those are all things that really do matter, but I never see anything about any of them, or at least not much beyond sound bites. Here’s another thing that matters: many Americans have quit reading newspapers, if they ever did, and get their news from Fox or CNN. Many more don’t even go that far, and get their news from talk radio. Is this an informed electorate? You decide.
We don’t have to like each other all the time, but we do need to remember to respect each other all the time. It is possible to work through these differences, you know if we quit dwelling on each others’ supposed shortcomings and concentrate on figuring out how to handle the real problems we face now.
Or, we can just keep screwing around while Bin Ladin laughs at us in his cave. Our choice.
Bin Ladin Owes Us Big Time
Osama Bin Ladin owes us big time, and here’s why.
We are fighting a war of public relations for the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East. Our opponent is doing exactly the same. If you think he gave a camel’s behind about the World Trade Center per se, you need a refresher course in thinking about PR. What he wanted was a really good symbol, which he got in those (actually pretty ugly while they stood) towers in lower Manhattan. Aside from what we hear domestically (like “they hate us for our freedom) what he got was one heck of a visual showing him bringing down a huge symbol of “the great Satan” (I’m still flattered by that) that made great evening news material all over the world, and better news fodder in Moslem countries. What a coup for him, huh? Of course, the fact that within months we had him on the run and living in a cave somewhere while we drove his troops out of Afghanistan was a bit of a blow. Truth to tell, we pretty much put the lie to his claim of great power against us. Until, that is, we hit Iraq.
Now, the truth is, Saddam Hussein is a lousy human being. He deserves worse than he’s gotten. But I could say the same about a number of people in the world, like that joker in North Korea for example. An important point about Saddam Hussein, lost completely on those not up on Middle Eastern history, is that he is a Sunni. Osama Bin Ladin is a Shiite. So what, you say? That schism was created when Mohammed died, in the eighth century. For a non-believer in Islam it seems silly: it’s a dispute over who is the rightful heir to Mohammed’s empire. That is, the Sunni say it’s one branch of the family (literally a branch of Mohammed’s descendants) and the Shiites say it’s a different branch. It may seem silly to me (and it does) but it was enough to ignite a civil war well over a millennium ago that is still going on today in parts of Moslem society. Not, interestingly enough, amongst American Moslems. They may give each other the hairy eyeball on the way to the Mosque, but they don’t actually attack each other in any other way. Not here, I mean. But, in the Middle East, the war is hot and active.
What I’m saying is that Hussein and Bin Ladin have an innate hatred for each other. This means that, bad as Hussein is, there was not any compelling reason to stir up a war against him until we had dealt with Bin Ladin. In fact, you could say that there was a compelling argument for leaving him alone until that time, since he was, in addition to doing all the evil stuff he was doing domestically, keeping Bin Ladin’s followers out of his country. Hussein started out pushing for a civil pan-Arab union, and even for a while was pretty much fair (so far as a guy like that is ever fair) to his Shiite citizens. I guess he figured they had the Kurds to pick on, so they could take it easy on each other in Iraq. (That the Kurds are suppressed is an interesting thing in itself. Saladin, the famous opponent of Richard the Lionhearted, was a Kurd. I guess the Kurdish stock has fallen a bit, so to speak.) But for whatever reason, the fact is that there were no Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to our invasion. For a while there we had taken away most of Bin Ladin’s operating theatre, and then we invaded Iraq and gave him Mesopotamia to use as a recruiting and training base. We were not so smart at just that time, and that’s the truth.
But beyond providing Bin Ladin with a new playground, we also played right into his PR campaign about how evil we were. We find some idiots torturing prisoners and, sure, it wasn’t sanctioned, and we’ve punished those responsible, but not by the lights of fundamentalist Islam. According to the laws as set forth in the Koran, those people deserved a lot worse than dishonorable discharge and maybe some jail time. No public humiliation, no lopping off limbs, no beheadings, I mean, from the point of view of the average oppressed Muslim, we slapped those people on the wrist and let them go. And, we were evil in doing what we did (through those people) in the first place. Now there’s the flap over Gitmo which, surprise, plays right into the same PR game. You can say all you want that we don’t torture, but when those Abu Gahrib photos are shown again on TV in Damascus, you look like a liar. Since that scandal happened in Iraq, there’s a big PR opportunity for the bad guys that would never have happened if we’d waited to take Hussein out until we had Bin Ladin in a cage in Times Square.
Sometimes you can’t help the PR disadvantage. Those controversial cartoons are not nearly as bad as some of the stuff you see aimed at Jesus or Christians, so as an American of course we say “what’s the big deal?” And that’s true. Screw ‘em, but it’s a PR blow all the same. Which makes all the more important to watch our other moves to make sure we aren’t simply multiplying the effect things like stupid editorial cartoons have on the situation. We say we like democracy, but when Hamas gets duly elected we state flatly that we’ll never deal with them. I guess Israel would be upset with us if we did, but there’s one heck of a PR piece for the other guys. The PR line is that we say we like democracy until the election goes against us. Boy howdy, it has all the look of truth doesn’t it? I’m not sure that fighting rigid ideology with an opposing rigid ideology is the way to go in a guerilla war, but apparently our government thinks so, because they are the ones refusing to deal with the duly elected government of Palestine.
Why is this stuff about PR wars important? Consider the American Revolution, a war we were destined to lose by any conventional analysis. The British army was the best fighting force in the world, and Britain was the richest country in the world. There was no way a bunch of ragtag American irregulars could possibly defeat the greatest fighting force ever assembled. Until they did, that is. And they did it not by winning most of the battles, because in truth they lost most of the battles. They won some big ones that tended to demoralize the British public, though, until the Brits finally simply lost interest and King George had to let us go. In fact, after Yorktown there was virtually no more fighting, although the Treaty of Paris that ended the war officially came several years later. The British lost the will to keep going in what they saw as an expensive and difficult effort in a distant land.
If that sounds familiar, it may be because of the similarities to the situation in Vietnam forty years ago. Once again the greatest fighting force ever assembled was sent packing by a ragtag army of irregulars. Once again it was the PR that did the trick. Many people still like to argue about loyalty, patriotism and sympathizing with the enemy to explain that defeat. Okay, that’s true enough, but the fact is that it’s true because the PR aspect of the war, that was the increasing appearance of futility and expense, wore down the foreigners’ resolve (we were the foreigners, remember) until they finally left the place to the guerillas. It didn’t help that the war started due to what has since been shown to be a plain lie, either, but we didn’t know that at the time so I don’t think it counts.
Now here we are, a foreign force facing an insurgency, which is just another way of saying a guerilla army trying to undo what we’re trying to do. The administration, bless their pea pickin’ hearts, is concentrating really hard on domestic PR, putting the best spin possible on everything, and maybe they’re even right a lot of the time. (Although when you talk about the “throes of the beginning of the end” or however they phrased it, one has to wonder.) The trouble is, though, that the real PR war is on the other end, in the countries where Bin Ladin gets his recruits. He’s got a sort of underground cachet going for him, and then we do things that make it easy for him to spin us as not just the agents of Satan, but as “the Great Satan” himself. Nice complement, but not one designed to get rid of many insurgents.
So, wise guy, you say, what would you do? Well, for one thing, I’d talk to Hamas. Frankly, after World War Two, the biggest reason Israel got established was a sort of guilty feeling about those death camps. The camps were among the worst atrocities of an atrocious century, but you know, America didn’t do it. Also, the Romans ran the Jews out of Israel in the first place. We didn’t do that, either. So, it’s a fair thing to contend that Israel is only there due to the support of the West, and not due to any inherent virtues of its own. That’s the basis for much of the anti-American PR that is prevalent in the Middle East. Today, I doubt that there’s any politically viable way to get rid of Israel. I’d hate to be the American politician to suggest it, so I’m here and now disavowing any such notions. But, I do advocate being realistic about the origins of modern Israel. The Zionists really did blow up some innocent people, in terrorist acts, prior to the establishment of their country. That’s not propaganda, it’s just the truth. If we don’t start by acknowledging that truth, we’ll never understand our enemies’ point of view, and we’ll have no chance of ever defeating them. Simply acknowledging that Israel was born of the Allies’ actions right after World War Two, and distancing ourselves from the ideological baggage surrounding Israel, would go a very long way toward deflating the claims of blowhards like Bin Ladin.
There are other ways we could help ourselves as well. Biting the bullet and spending the bucks needed to actually rebuild Iraq instead of pretending that the “democracy loving Iraqi’s” will do it as soon as we leave, for instance. Speaking simple truth instead of idealistic platitudes when discussing the situation over there is another. One thing is for sure, though, the PR tide at home is turning, even though it would be a pretty lousy (and bad-looking) thing to do to abandon Iraq at this juncture. Pulling out would not only let Bin Ladin have the place more or less to himself (or at least enough of it to give him what he needs) but would also give him a whole ton of ammunition about how we “hate Islam” and all that sort of rot. I hope that the next election will give us a choice besides the usual “blindly follow the ideology” crowd and the “we hate those guys so vote for us” crowd. I’m not really optimistic, but you never know. Otherwise, it looks like we’re going to forget the lessons of our own origins and get ourselves “PR’d” right out of another one.
Swell.
We are fighting a war of public relations for the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East. Our opponent is doing exactly the same. If you think he gave a camel’s behind about the World Trade Center per se, you need a refresher course in thinking about PR. What he wanted was a really good symbol, which he got in those (actually pretty ugly while they stood) towers in lower Manhattan. Aside from what we hear domestically (like “they hate us for our freedom) what he got was one heck of a visual showing him bringing down a huge symbol of “the great Satan” (I’m still flattered by that) that made great evening news material all over the world, and better news fodder in Moslem countries. What a coup for him, huh? Of course, the fact that within months we had him on the run and living in a cave somewhere while we drove his troops out of Afghanistan was a bit of a blow. Truth to tell, we pretty much put the lie to his claim of great power against us. Until, that is, we hit Iraq.
Now, the truth is, Saddam Hussein is a lousy human being. He deserves worse than he’s gotten. But I could say the same about a number of people in the world, like that joker in North Korea for example. An important point about Saddam Hussein, lost completely on those not up on Middle Eastern history, is that he is a Sunni. Osama Bin Ladin is a Shiite. So what, you say? That schism was created when Mohammed died, in the eighth century. For a non-believer in Islam it seems silly: it’s a dispute over who is the rightful heir to Mohammed’s empire. That is, the Sunni say it’s one branch of the family (literally a branch of Mohammed’s descendants) and the Shiites say it’s a different branch. It may seem silly to me (and it does) but it was enough to ignite a civil war well over a millennium ago that is still going on today in parts of Moslem society. Not, interestingly enough, amongst American Moslems. They may give each other the hairy eyeball on the way to the Mosque, but they don’t actually attack each other in any other way. Not here, I mean. But, in the Middle East, the war is hot and active.
What I’m saying is that Hussein and Bin Ladin have an innate hatred for each other. This means that, bad as Hussein is, there was not any compelling reason to stir up a war against him until we had dealt with Bin Ladin. In fact, you could say that there was a compelling argument for leaving him alone until that time, since he was, in addition to doing all the evil stuff he was doing domestically, keeping Bin Ladin’s followers out of his country. Hussein started out pushing for a civil pan-Arab union, and even for a while was pretty much fair (so far as a guy like that is ever fair) to his Shiite citizens. I guess he figured they had the Kurds to pick on, so they could take it easy on each other in Iraq. (That the Kurds are suppressed is an interesting thing in itself. Saladin, the famous opponent of Richard the Lionhearted, was a Kurd. I guess the Kurdish stock has fallen a bit, so to speak.) But for whatever reason, the fact is that there were no Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to our invasion. For a while there we had taken away most of Bin Ladin’s operating theatre, and then we invaded Iraq and gave him Mesopotamia to use as a recruiting and training base. We were not so smart at just that time, and that’s the truth.
But beyond providing Bin Ladin with a new playground, we also played right into his PR campaign about how evil we were. We find some idiots torturing prisoners and, sure, it wasn’t sanctioned, and we’ve punished those responsible, but not by the lights of fundamentalist Islam. According to the laws as set forth in the Koran, those people deserved a lot worse than dishonorable discharge and maybe some jail time. No public humiliation, no lopping off limbs, no beheadings, I mean, from the point of view of the average oppressed Muslim, we slapped those people on the wrist and let them go. And, we were evil in doing what we did (through those people) in the first place. Now there’s the flap over Gitmo which, surprise, plays right into the same PR game. You can say all you want that we don’t torture, but when those Abu Gahrib photos are shown again on TV in Damascus, you look like a liar. Since that scandal happened in Iraq, there’s a big PR opportunity for the bad guys that would never have happened if we’d waited to take Hussein out until we had Bin Ladin in a cage in Times Square.
Sometimes you can’t help the PR disadvantage. Those controversial cartoons are not nearly as bad as some of the stuff you see aimed at Jesus or Christians, so as an American of course we say “what’s the big deal?” And that’s true. Screw ‘em, but it’s a PR blow all the same. Which makes all the more important to watch our other moves to make sure we aren’t simply multiplying the effect things like stupid editorial cartoons have on the situation. We say we like democracy, but when Hamas gets duly elected we state flatly that we’ll never deal with them. I guess Israel would be upset with us if we did, but there’s one heck of a PR piece for the other guys. The PR line is that we say we like democracy until the election goes against us. Boy howdy, it has all the look of truth doesn’t it? I’m not sure that fighting rigid ideology with an opposing rigid ideology is the way to go in a guerilla war, but apparently our government thinks so, because they are the ones refusing to deal with the duly elected government of Palestine.
Why is this stuff about PR wars important? Consider the American Revolution, a war we were destined to lose by any conventional analysis. The British army was the best fighting force in the world, and Britain was the richest country in the world. There was no way a bunch of ragtag American irregulars could possibly defeat the greatest fighting force ever assembled. Until they did, that is. And they did it not by winning most of the battles, because in truth they lost most of the battles. They won some big ones that tended to demoralize the British public, though, until the Brits finally simply lost interest and King George had to let us go. In fact, after Yorktown there was virtually no more fighting, although the Treaty of Paris that ended the war officially came several years later. The British lost the will to keep going in what they saw as an expensive and difficult effort in a distant land.
If that sounds familiar, it may be because of the similarities to the situation in Vietnam forty years ago. Once again the greatest fighting force ever assembled was sent packing by a ragtag army of irregulars. Once again it was the PR that did the trick. Many people still like to argue about loyalty, patriotism and sympathizing with the enemy to explain that defeat. Okay, that’s true enough, but the fact is that it’s true because the PR aspect of the war, that was the increasing appearance of futility and expense, wore down the foreigners’ resolve (we were the foreigners, remember) until they finally left the place to the guerillas. It didn’t help that the war started due to what has since been shown to be a plain lie, either, but we didn’t know that at the time so I don’t think it counts.
Now here we are, a foreign force facing an insurgency, which is just another way of saying a guerilla army trying to undo what we’re trying to do. The administration, bless their pea pickin’ hearts, is concentrating really hard on domestic PR, putting the best spin possible on everything, and maybe they’re even right a lot of the time. (Although when you talk about the “throes of the beginning of the end” or however they phrased it, one has to wonder.) The trouble is, though, that the real PR war is on the other end, in the countries where Bin Ladin gets his recruits. He’s got a sort of underground cachet going for him, and then we do things that make it easy for him to spin us as not just the agents of Satan, but as “the Great Satan” himself. Nice complement, but not one designed to get rid of many insurgents.
So, wise guy, you say, what would you do? Well, for one thing, I’d talk to Hamas. Frankly, after World War Two, the biggest reason Israel got established was a sort of guilty feeling about those death camps. The camps were among the worst atrocities of an atrocious century, but you know, America didn’t do it. Also, the Romans ran the Jews out of Israel in the first place. We didn’t do that, either. So, it’s a fair thing to contend that Israel is only there due to the support of the West, and not due to any inherent virtues of its own. That’s the basis for much of the anti-American PR that is prevalent in the Middle East. Today, I doubt that there’s any politically viable way to get rid of Israel. I’d hate to be the American politician to suggest it, so I’m here and now disavowing any such notions. But, I do advocate being realistic about the origins of modern Israel. The Zionists really did blow up some innocent people, in terrorist acts, prior to the establishment of their country. That’s not propaganda, it’s just the truth. If we don’t start by acknowledging that truth, we’ll never understand our enemies’ point of view, and we’ll have no chance of ever defeating them. Simply acknowledging that Israel was born of the Allies’ actions right after World War Two, and distancing ourselves from the ideological baggage surrounding Israel, would go a very long way toward deflating the claims of blowhards like Bin Ladin.
There are other ways we could help ourselves as well. Biting the bullet and spending the bucks needed to actually rebuild Iraq instead of pretending that the “democracy loving Iraqi’s” will do it as soon as we leave, for instance. Speaking simple truth instead of idealistic platitudes when discussing the situation over there is another. One thing is for sure, though, the PR tide at home is turning, even though it would be a pretty lousy (and bad-looking) thing to do to abandon Iraq at this juncture. Pulling out would not only let Bin Ladin have the place more or less to himself (or at least enough of it to give him what he needs) but would also give him a whole ton of ammunition about how we “hate Islam” and all that sort of rot. I hope that the next election will give us a choice besides the usual “blindly follow the ideology” crowd and the “we hate those guys so vote for us” crowd. I’m not really optimistic, but you never know. Otherwise, it looks like we’re going to forget the lessons of our own origins and get ourselves “PR’d” right out of another one.
Swell.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Angry?
We just heard the other day that maybe Hillary Clinton is angry. Well, if she is, I’m glad at least it’s gotten to somebody. We should all have been angry right after the shock wore off from the World Trade Center, but instead we all decided to be scared instead. There were a few people trying to say that maybe being scared wasn’t the way to go, but unfortunately among them was Michael Moore, who has a way of pissing people off even when he’s right, and an idealist’s zeal in making sure the facts match his ideas. Not the best spokesman for a reasonable cause, even if, as I said, he’s right about that. I’ve said before that when you’re scared you don’t make the best decisions, which is why Osama and pals wants us to be scared. If we start looking at the situation calmly we might notice that we’ve got them 1) outnumbered, 2) outgunned by several powers, and also that 3) even Muslims who move to America seem to prefer it here for whatever reason (and I’m assuming it isn’t our built-in cultural respect for others’ beliefs, because we don’t have one of those.) If we noticed all those things, then we might realize that while he might hurt us a few times, the odds of him ever getting away with the sort of nonsense he pulled off in 2001 are right below slim and slightly above none.
Which begs the question of why our President, an Ivy League educated gentleman, is so insistent on telling us over and over how, “we’re still in danger.” Well, duh, George, so we are. Like I’ve ranted earlier, no matter what you do, you end up dead in the end. Given that, George, just what am I supposed to be afraid of? Should I be so afraid of despotism that I give up the freedoms that separate us from despots? Huh? I really would like to know the answer to that one. Just look at this wiretapping flap. It’s probably not a bad thing to listen in to phone calls between suspected al-Qaeda in America and their foreign friends. In fact, it’s reasonable enough that I’m pretty sure that the secret court set up for the purpose would grant the warrants almost without question. Wouldn’t you? I would, for sure. But, and this is the odd thing, why in heck, George old bean, do you say that you can’t operate your covert spying if you have to go to the court three days later to tell them what you’ve done. No one will complain about what you say you’re doing, so why not just tell the court, who won’t tell anybody else, they promise (and besides that’s the truth)? Maybe the NSA isn’t up to something they think they shouldn’t be. But my money’s on them putting their nose where it doesn’t belong, just because of the way we’re being told that the program is necessary. It is, if you’re telling the truth about what it is, folks. Trouble is, if you’re telling the truth, you might as well tell the court. Since you refuse to tell the court, well . . .
If it isn’t underhanded, it sure smells like it is. But maybe it’s just corporate middle management gone wild. I’ve worked in places where people with just about the apparent talent, and the speaking skills, of President Bush have been in charge of some pretty large departments. It’s not pretty when it happens, and it can bring down a company if it’s not kept in check. I don’t think it can bring down this country, because it has a term limit, but it can sure make us sorry down the road, and that’s just what I’m afraid we’re seeing here. Somehow, we’ve elected Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Boss as our Chief Executive. Somehow, in his pointy-headed way, he feels he’d be insulted (or something) if he had to tell the court what he was doing. He talks transparency while spinning everything like a dust devil in July. I’m not an avid Liberal, really I’m not. I don’t even dislike Bush on any personal level at all. I’ll bet he was a hoot at frat parties, even. But I think maybe, just like the P.H.B. and others I’ve known, he’s gotten to a point where the responsibility he’s been given has outstripped his ability to process the information he needs to do his job. Maybe. Or maybe it’s all an underhanded plot to make the rich richer while stepping on the backs of the rest of us. Whichever, eh?
Actually, I hope it’s the first thing. I can stand incompetence better than I can tolerate deliberate evil. Besides, I hear that’s Cheney’s department . . . ;-)
Which begs the question of why our President, an Ivy League educated gentleman, is so insistent on telling us over and over how, “we’re still in danger.” Well, duh, George, so we are. Like I’ve ranted earlier, no matter what you do, you end up dead in the end. Given that, George, just what am I supposed to be afraid of? Should I be so afraid of despotism that I give up the freedoms that separate us from despots? Huh? I really would like to know the answer to that one. Just look at this wiretapping flap. It’s probably not a bad thing to listen in to phone calls between suspected al-Qaeda in America and their foreign friends. In fact, it’s reasonable enough that I’m pretty sure that the secret court set up for the purpose would grant the warrants almost without question. Wouldn’t you? I would, for sure. But, and this is the odd thing, why in heck, George old bean, do you say that you can’t operate your covert spying if you have to go to the court three days later to tell them what you’ve done. No one will complain about what you say you’re doing, so why not just tell the court, who won’t tell anybody else, they promise (and besides that’s the truth)? Maybe the NSA isn’t up to something they think they shouldn’t be. But my money’s on them putting their nose where it doesn’t belong, just because of the way we’re being told that the program is necessary. It is, if you’re telling the truth about what it is, folks. Trouble is, if you’re telling the truth, you might as well tell the court. Since you refuse to tell the court, well . . .
If it isn’t underhanded, it sure smells like it is. But maybe it’s just corporate middle management gone wild. I’ve worked in places where people with just about the apparent talent, and the speaking skills, of President Bush have been in charge of some pretty large departments. It’s not pretty when it happens, and it can bring down a company if it’s not kept in check. I don’t think it can bring down this country, because it has a term limit, but it can sure make us sorry down the road, and that’s just what I’m afraid we’re seeing here. Somehow, we’ve elected Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Boss as our Chief Executive. Somehow, in his pointy-headed way, he feels he’d be insulted (or something) if he had to tell the court what he was doing. He talks transparency while spinning everything like a dust devil in July. I’m not an avid Liberal, really I’m not. I don’t even dislike Bush on any personal level at all. I’ll bet he was a hoot at frat parties, even. But I think maybe, just like the P.H.B. and others I’ve known, he’s gotten to a point where the responsibility he’s been given has outstripped his ability to process the information he needs to do his job. Maybe. Or maybe it’s all an underhanded plot to make the rich richer while stepping on the backs of the rest of us. Whichever, eh?
Actually, I hope it’s the first thing. I can stand incompetence better than I can tolerate deliberate evil. Besides, I hear that’s Cheney’s department . . . ;-)
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Fundamental Islamic Mistakes
I’ve kept quiet about recent events because better writers than me, maybe better people than me even, have said what I want to say better than I’m about to say it, but as a famous Englishman once said, this is something up with which I can not put. And I’m not ranting about phony grammar, either, although that’s not a bad idea.
I’m ranting about the entirely over the top reaction to some not all that brilliant cartoons (I’ve seen them) in a Danish newspaper. Even some right-wing pundits who I might not normally jump up and cheer for have gotten my attention by pointing out that the faction that would do us in has really blown it big time yet again. Most Muslims in America know that being the butt of blasphemy toward whatever you hold dear is one of the prices you pay to live here. If you’re a devoted liberal who believes in helping the poverty-stricken to rise above their origins, some conservative will be painting you as some species of idiot. If you’re a true-blue patriotic conservative who believes in self-reliance and good-old American ingenuity, some liberal will have you portrayed as a heartless small-minded prig before you can finish breakfast. If you’re Catholic, you’ll see some art that you’d pay to get away from. If you’re a Moslem, there’s no telling what you’ll see, but if you’re an American Moslem, then you know that, like it or not, it’s going to happen. It’s bad, for anyone, but it doesn’t call for threats and violence.
Unless, that is, you’re of the stripe of fundamentalism that actually lacks any real faith. I see it in American Christians who can’t tolerate the thought of Darwin’s theory possibly being valid because that might shoot a tiny hole in their view of the almighty. (The Pope thinks evolution is reasonable, but what does he know?) I wonder just how small the violent protestors think their Prophet is that they think Muhammed will be harmed by some stupid cartoons in Denmark? Cartoons which, of course, virtually nobody looked at until the protests started. I think somebody just wanted an excuse to stir up trouble, and they found a good one.
There is going to be a contest in Iraq for the best cartoon poking fun at the holocaust. Heck, Mad magazine did that in 1962, but I guess they can try for a better effect if they want to. “Will the West stand up for the freedom to publish such things?” they ask. Of course. Whatever they come up with will be silly, insulting, and stupid, and best seen in all its glory so it can be properly mocked. Once again the medieval purveyors of theocracy have missed an essential strength of our society: we thrive on mocking each others sacred cows. Mockery keeps you thinking about the cows and maybe repositioning your dearly held beliefs once in a while, which can only make you stronger over time.
I don’t judge Islam by those fundamentalist yahoos, any more than I judge Christianity by Torquemada. Torquemada was an evil man, and so is Osama Bin Ladin. In the end, Torquemada lost and his ideas were thoroughly repudiated. You ready for that, Osama? Good.
I’m ranting about the entirely over the top reaction to some not all that brilliant cartoons (I’ve seen them) in a Danish newspaper. Even some right-wing pundits who I might not normally jump up and cheer for have gotten my attention by pointing out that the faction that would do us in has really blown it big time yet again. Most Muslims in America know that being the butt of blasphemy toward whatever you hold dear is one of the prices you pay to live here. If you’re a devoted liberal who believes in helping the poverty-stricken to rise above their origins, some conservative will be painting you as some species of idiot. If you’re a true-blue patriotic conservative who believes in self-reliance and good-old American ingenuity, some liberal will have you portrayed as a heartless small-minded prig before you can finish breakfast. If you’re Catholic, you’ll see some art that you’d pay to get away from. If you’re a Moslem, there’s no telling what you’ll see, but if you’re an American Moslem, then you know that, like it or not, it’s going to happen. It’s bad, for anyone, but it doesn’t call for threats and violence.
Unless, that is, you’re of the stripe of fundamentalism that actually lacks any real faith. I see it in American Christians who can’t tolerate the thought of Darwin’s theory possibly being valid because that might shoot a tiny hole in their view of the almighty. (The Pope thinks evolution is reasonable, but what does he know?) I wonder just how small the violent protestors think their Prophet is that they think Muhammed will be harmed by some stupid cartoons in Denmark? Cartoons which, of course, virtually nobody looked at until the protests started. I think somebody just wanted an excuse to stir up trouble, and they found a good one.
There is going to be a contest in Iraq for the best cartoon poking fun at the holocaust. Heck, Mad magazine did that in 1962, but I guess they can try for a better effect if they want to. “Will the West stand up for the freedom to publish such things?” they ask. Of course. Whatever they come up with will be silly, insulting, and stupid, and best seen in all its glory so it can be properly mocked. Once again the medieval purveyors of theocracy have missed an essential strength of our society: we thrive on mocking each others sacred cows. Mockery keeps you thinking about the cows and maybe repositioning your dearly held beliefs once in a while, which can only make you stronger over time.
I don’t judge Islam by those fundamentalist yahoos, any more than I judge Christianity by Torquemada. Torquemada was an evil man, and so is Osama Bin Ladin. In the end, Torquemada lost and his ideas were thoroughly repudiated. You ready for that, Osama? Good.
Friday, February 03, 2006
Frekonomics Rules!
Freakonomics is a current hot-selling book by an oddball economist from Chicago and an odder-than-he-used-to-be (I’m sure) journalist from New York. It’s a book that makes me feel a whole lot better about Economics, since apparently at least a few, or some, well at least one, economist does keep his head up in the wind rather than, well, wherever most of those academic types stick their heads. Yes, this is an unpaid plug for a product that I don’t profit at all directly from the sale of, but what the heck, I have my reasons.
Those reasons being that this is a book that attempts to look at things as they are, rather than from a moral perspective, which, as the authors themselves point out, tends to look at the world the way it ought to be. I’ve written, I’m sure I have, about the dangers of looking at the world the way it ought to be and thinking you can simply wish it into compliance. Haven’t I? Yes, I’m sure of it, because that’s how I want the world to be so it must be so. Actually, of course, that’s a joke and it darn well is so. I like this book because it is the opposite. To me, the only way to make a good decision is to have good information, and the only information worth a hoot in this regard is what’s really happening, not what you or anyone else dearly wishes were going on. And I gotta tell ya, some of what this book finds out is a bit disconcerting to anyone. Yet, they manage to use numbers on even their most controversial findings (the lead guy is an economist, after all) and the numbers actually are, well, not what you might expect to see.
I’m not going to give anything away, but I will say that this book is a huge challenge to conventional wisdom. Further, the really interesting part has been perceived as horribly insulting and untenable by the right and left alike. Imagine that. To me that’s evidence of the truth of their conclusion, but I’ll leave that up to you. My favorite part is the last, which is entitled “Do Parents Matter?” Well, do they? You’ll just have to read the book to find out. (What, for instance, is the effect of the name you choose on your child’s future success? This book has the answer, precisely.) This is fun stuff, at least for a confirmed skeptic like me, so I highly commend this volume to anyone and all.
Read it. I know you’ll enjoy it.
Those reasons being that this is a book that attempts to look at things as they are, rather than from a moral perspective, which, as the authors themselves point out, tends to look at the world the way it ought to be. I’ve written, I’m sure I have, about the dangers of looking at the world the way it ought to be and thinking you can simply wish it into compliance. Haven’t I? Yes, I’m sure of it, because that’s how I want the world to be so it must be so. Actually, of course, that’s a joke and it darn well is so. I like this book because it is the opposite. To me, the only way to make a good decision is to have good information, and the only information worth a hoot in this regard is what’s really happening, not what you or anyone else dearly wishes were going on. And I gotta tell ya, some of what this book finds out is a bit disconcerting to anyone. Yet, they manage to use numbers on even their most controversial findings (the lead guy is an economist, after all) and the numbers actually are, well, not what you might expect to see.
I’m not going to give anything away, but I will say that this book is a huge challenge to conventional wisdom. Further, the really interesting part has been perceived as horribly insulting and untenable by the right and left alike. Imagine that. To me that’s evidence of the truth of their conclusion, but I’ll leave that up to you. My favorite part is the last, which is entitled “Do Parents Matter?” Well, do they? You’ll just have to read the book to find out. (What, for instance, is the effect of the name you choose on your child’s future success? This book has the answer, precisely.) This is fun stuff, at least for a confirmed skeptic like me, so I highly commend this volume to anyone and all.
Read it. I know you’ll enjoy it.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Catholic Muslims, Anyone?
Religion is a topic that you’re not supposed to talk about in public, because it causes so much ill feeling when you step on others’ cherished beliefs. Well, since I’m right and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong, I’m going to talk about religion, in a very specific way, and the heck (or wherever your beliefs send you) with the rest of you.
Specifically, I’d like to talk about the similarities between a Roman Catholic Christmas Mass in a small town in Mexico and an Islamic service in Minneapolis. My wife’s ex-husband, my step-daughter’s father that is, died suddenly a couple of weeks ago. He lived in Minnesota, and the service, and internment (more on that in a bit) were in the Minneapolis area. And yes, I mean Minneapolis. Sorry to anyone from the St. Paul side of town, but it was Columbia Heights and Burnsville, if you must know, so Minneapolis. Not that there’s anything wrong with St. Paul, don’t you know. Before I begin the main story, I’d like to report how I was really struck that this guy, who was born in the Middle East, raised in Syria, lived in Egypt and Iraq, ended up resting in the frozen ground of the Upper Midwest. Never assume anything in this life, I say. But, anyway, back to my main story.
On Christmas sometime in the late nineties we were in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora right at midnight, attending the High Mass celebrating Christmas. I’ve written about Christmas before and the basically secular way the USA has embraced it over the years, but to these folks in this small town there is nothing secular about the holiday at all. At least, not once the service starts. I really enjoyed it, and as I understand enough Spanish to catch the drift of a sermon, I enjoyed that, too. No weird crap about “God is punishing New Orleans with hurricanes” or any such drivel. It was Christmas, so the sermon was about Jesus and his message to the world.
Okay, sure, I hear you say. Yeah, yeah, that’s nice, but move it on. Okay, here I go. Some years later, about two weeks ago this coming Friday to be exact, I heard almost the exact same speech from the speaker at an Islamic service in Minnesota. Okay, this guy didn’t mention Jesus, although he could have, from what I understand of Islam. They take their lessons, though, from Muhammad, who, I take it, tells them to treat people justly. Treat people justly. Just like, as the Priest in Mexico said, Jesus said that we are no longer allowed to ignore the ill, the poor, and the downtrodden, that now that we have the word we must be kind and generous to all. “Do you treat your spouse justly?” asked the Islamic speaker. “What have you done for your less fortunate neighbor?” asked the Mexican priest. Other than the brief introduction, which consisted of “the good news is that Jesus came to live among us and tell us how to live” (more or less) the two sermons were right down the same theme. The service in Minneapolis was more methodical than the Methodist Church, but the message was the same as you’d hear from a Methodist minister or a Catholic priest. Not, says my cynical side, that anyone pays attention all that often, but the message stays the same. Come to think of it, Buddha’s Eight-Fold Path boils down to much the same message as well. I wonder, are those holy dudes wrong, or is everyone else, including me, just as dense as the concrete in Hoover Dam? Heck, I’ll never know, because I’m dense, but I do wonder.
To finish the funeral story, those folks were very loving with the dearly departed. They have burial customs that vary a bit from ours. Two days later and he was in the ground, as I can personally attest. Then his friends shoveled the dirt on personally, with much energy. Everyone should have such friends. And, as I’ve mentioned before, there did not appear to be anyone among them that had the least gripe about this country. They were mostly immigrant, and mostly too busy building their piece of the American dream to think about doing anything stupid. Islam will adapt to the USA. For instance, by tradition, women and men are separate at a service, but I’m told that such is not the case at the mosque where his widow worships. (I didn’t think that tradition could last around here.) Remember the Church of England? They adapted. Irish Catholicism? Ditto. Lutheranism? Same thing. Even Buddhism has adapted, as I’ll bet nobody in Buddha’s day played a single quarter of basketball, for example. (I know of some Buddhist basketball teams, honest.)
My point is that people should really quit worrying so much about the immigrants who are coming to this country. Their religions may look odd, but the underlying message is the same. And, as I said in an earlier post, absolutely anyone can partake of the Great American Communion of Free Enterprise. Who and when else you worship is, like much of life in these environs, entirely up to you.
Specifically, I’d like to talk about the similarities between a Roman Catholic Christmas Mass in a small town in Mexico and an Islamic service in Minneapolis. My wife’s ex-husband, my step-daughter’s father that is, died suddenly a couple of weeks ago. He lived in Minnesota, and the service, and internment (more on that in a bit) were in the Minneapolis area. And yes, I mean Minneapolis. Sorry to anyone from the St. Paul side of town, but it was Columbia Heights and Burnsville, if you must know, so Minneapolis. Not that there’s anything wrong with St. Paul, don’t you know. Before I begin the main story, I’d like to report how I was really struck that this guy, who was born in the Middle East, raised in Syria, lived in Egypt and Iraq, ended up resting in the frozen ground of the Upper Midwest. Never assume anything in this life, I say. But, anyway, back to my main story.
On Christmas sometime in the late nineties we were in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora right at midnight, attending the High Mass celebrating Christmas. I’ve written about Christmas before and the basically secular way the USA has embraced it over the years, but to these folks in this small town there is nothing secular about the holiday at all. At least, not once the service starts. I really enjoyed it, and as I understand enough Spanish to catch the drift of a sermon, I enjoyed that, too. No weird crap about “God is punishing New Orleans with hurricanes” or any such drivel. It was Christmas, so the sermon was about Jesus and his message to the world.
Okay, sure, I hear you say. Yeah, yeah, that’s nice, but move it on. Okay, here I go. Some years later, about two weeks ago this coming Friday to be exact, I heard almost the exact same speech from the speaker at an Islamic service in Minnesota. Okay, this guy didn’t mention Jesus, although he could have, from what I understand of Islam. They take their lessons, though, from Muhammad, who, I take it, tells them to treat people justly. Treat people justly. Just like, as the Priest in Mexico said, Jesus said that we are no longer allowed to ignore the ill, the poor, and the downtrodden, that now that we have the word we must be kind and generous to all. “Do you treat your spouse justly?” asked the Islamic speaker. “What have you done for your less fortunate neighbor?” asked the Mexican priest. Other than the brief introduction, which consisted of “the good news is that Jesus came to live among us and tell us how to live” (more or less) the two sermons were right down the same theme. The service in Minneapolis was more methodical than the Methodist Church, but the message was the same as you’d hear from a Methodist minister or a Catholic priest. Not, says my cynical side, that anyone pays attention all that often, but the message stays the same. Come to think of it, Buddha’s Eight-Fold Path boils down to much the same message as well. I wonder, are those holy dudes wrong, or is everyone else, including me, just as dense as the concrete in Hoover Dam? Heck, I’ll never know, because I’m dense, but I do wonder.
To finish the funeral story, those folks were very loving with the dearly departed. They have burial customs that vary a bit from ours. Two days later and he was in the ground, as I can personally attest. Then his friends shoveled the dirt on personally, with much energy. Everyone should have such friends. And, as I’ve mentioned before, there did not appear to be anyone among them that had the least gripe about this country. They were mostly immigrant, and mostly too busy building their piece of the American dream to think about doing anything stupid. Islam will adapt to the USA. For instance, by tradition, women and men are separate at a service, but I’m told that such is not the case at the mosque where his widow worships. (I didn’t think that tradition could last around here.) Remember the Church of England? They adapted. Irish Catholicism? Ditto. Lutheranism? Same thing. Even Buddhism has adapted, as I’ll bet nobody in Buddha’s day played a single quarter of basketball, for example. (I know of some Buddhist basketball teams, honest.)
My point is that people should really quit worrying so much about the immigrants who are coming to this country. Their religions may look odd, but the underlying message is the same. And, as I said in an earlier post, absolutely anyone can partake of the Great American Communion of Free Enterprise. Who and when else you worship is, like much of life in these environs, entirely up to you.
