BartBlog

February 27, 2011

Is Kalgoorlie Sydney’s lost twin brother?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 3:26 pm

(Venice CA) After traveling from Berkeley CA down to Los Angeles, this columnist sent an e-mail out to the posse to let them know that things went as planned. We attempted to use humor to convey the message and wrote: “L. A. is just like Berkeley only bigger with ocean beaches.”

Cities in close proximity can have very different personalities. Pasadena and Santa Monica are both in the same county. They both have the same state level politicians. They both are served by the same large members of the media. The locals watch the same local TV channels. The audiences for various radio shows in have fan/listeners in both cities. The Los Angeles Times has a large number of subscribers in both cities. It would be ludicrous to say that Pasadena and Santa Monica are twin cities.

Although the two are only about thirty miles apart, on a sunny summer day there can be a noticeable difference in temperature and that can have a psychological impact. It can be “June Gloom” cloudy along the beach in Santa Monica in early summer while Pasadena may concurrently be sweltering in a hot sunny cloudless day.

The smaller local papers cover different issues.

The two cities each have rival NPR outlets.

Santa Monica College and Pasadena City college are both highly regarded, but some Santa Monica citizens consider UCLA local while in Pasadena, that school is “out on the Westside.”

If these two relatively close cities in California can be distinctly different, it doesn’t take a sociologist to figure out that Kalgoorlie in Western Australia is quite different from being in the Kings Cross Section of Sydney.

It is extremely convenient for anyone who wishes to manipulate the citizens of a country to use the lowest common denominator factors to influence them.

Hence if there was some hypothetical fiend (Auric Goldfinger?), who wanted to subtly manipulate voters, would find it efficient, economical, and effective to use a generic pundit who worked on listeners all over the country on a basic level such as inciting jealousy. It would be easier to hire one guy to magically (like the miracle of the loaves and fishes) appear on a multitude of local radio stations around the country and tell all of his listeners that the unions were exploiting them as taxpayers. If a gullible audience became convinced that something unfair was afoot, then it would be easy to push them further and put it in more graphic terms: “The unions are stealing from your tax dollar.” All people in the Congressional Districts across the three time zones could be urged to call their Congressional representative and urge them to put a “stop to this robbery.”

If the hypothetical bad guy, Goldfinger, with ulterior motives, and the imaginary ubiquitous voice from the radio were able to bust unions so that Goldfinger could more easily reduce the pay of his workers and bank more money . . . oh well, caveat emptor should explain that bit of diabolical manipulation. Wouldn’t it be über-ironic if the voice was a union member decrying unions? Didn’t your grandmother always say that “All’s fair in love, war, and politics”?

Let’s imagine the USA as an old West Saloon. (Skimpy’s Bar in Kalgoorlie had the old fashioned double swinging doors when we were there in 2008. When was the last time you saw a tavern entrance like that in California?) Suppose someone plays cards in the saloon and suspects there has been some cheating going on to fleece the victim of all his cash. The sheriff asks you to tell him what happened and how it was done. He can’t arrest a winner just because you lost. You complain to the Preacher and he says you shouldn’t have been gambling in the first place. You complain to the editor of the Tombstone Epitaph (or whatever the daily paper is named) and the editor says: “When you have a choice of printing the truth or the legend, always go with the legend.” America, you’ve been had and the general opinion in the corporate owned media is that you should “suck it up” like a man.

You’ve been fleeced of your money. No one wants to hear your sad lament. You should have known better before you sat down at the poker table, eh?

The streets are filling up with homeless people asking for donations. Jobs are getting very scarce. Banks just make too much money from foreclosures so stopping them from doing more just doesn’t make sense to them. Look into foreclosures more closely and you will see that they make excessive amounts of money by foreclosing and asking them to give up a big profit just isn’t logical. If the home’s owner stops making payments how can they make money on that? Did Houdini really make the elephant disappear? Check it out, slick, just ‘cause you don’t know how to do it doesn’t mean the trick can’t be performed.

Why would conservative talk show hosts belong to a union and tell listeners that the political impasse in Wisconsin is the fault of unions? Check it out, slick, just ‘cause you can’t explain it doesn’t mean it ain’t happening.

Folks in Los Angeles don’t like the joke about how they are like a bowl of granola (it’s full of nuts fruits and flakes). Folks in New York City don’t like other people imitating a Brooklyn accent. People in flyover country (everything “down there” for people who do business in both L. A. and New York City) don’t even like to hear their area referred to in that flip manner.

When a young man from Western Australia said he was from Perth, we asked if he ever went to hear rock music at Mojo’s in Fremantle. When he realized that this columnist knows the subtle difference between those two cities (Fremantle is to Perth as the ‘bu (ie. Malibu) is to Los Angeles), he was happy to admit he was a Fremantle citizen.

The same thing happened more recently when a young lady raising funds for Green Peace in Berkeley had to admit that Fremantle is separate and distinctly different from the bigger city farther up the Black Swan River. Being a port city, Fremantle is to Perth as Long Beach is to Los Angeles.

People who live New York City are more likely to enjoy Sydney more than Fremantle, but that doesn’t mean that New York City and Sydney are “twins separated at birth” similar. Nor should Australia be considered “Canada without snow.”

If you think different cities are alike and you think that standup comedians spouting Republican talking points are Edward R. Murrow clones, we double dog dare you to get some news from a foreign based member of the media. Der Spiegel and Deutsche Welle both have English language web sites. Do you really think that conservative talk show hosts (who reportedly are union members) want you to get your news and information from any other source? If they don’t want you to do some “comparison shopping,” then you have to also recall that Germans during World War II were forbidden (under penalty of death) from listening to foreign radio stations.

If they don’t want “comparison shopping” for news, then you gotta ask yourself another question – No, not: “Do I feel lucky?” – you should ask “Why would they do that?” At this point in American history, you won’t risk death by dialing up some other point of view and to see what they have to say. What have you got to lose by taking the dare?

Do you think that the German voters passed a ballot initiative to give up that freedom?

Adolph Hitler, in Mein Kampf wrote: “ . . . never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” Doesn’t Uncle Rushbo unfalteringly follow that advice?

Now the disk jockey will play Sinatra’s version of “New York, New York,” and “Chicago,” and Randy Newman’s “I love L. A.” We have to go for yet another walk on Ocean Front Walk on Venice Beach. Have a “don’t do as I do; do as I say” type week. This has been the World’s Laziest Journalist reporting live from Venice CA.

February 23, 2011

Blogger battles bogus ballots

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:26 pm

rolls-dupe-frontal-crop

Just as we were noting a possible rise in the number of homeless people, we encountered a new worthy cause seeking donations. The Suitcase Clinic has been a “humanitarian student organization and volunteer community” which offers free health and social services to the underserved population since 1989. They are a source of items such as toothpaste, razors, safety pins, aspirin, and other such “household items” for the homeless. We offered to add some buzz boosting their efforts rather than donate an insignificant buck because isn’t that what being a Gonzo Bloger is all about?

According to Doug Brinkley (as quoted on pages 125 – 126 of “Gonzo: the Life of Hunter S. Thompson” Little Brown and Company hardback edition 2007): The Internet is full of bogus falsehoods propagated by uninformed English professors and pot-smoking fans about the etymological origins of ‘gonzo.’” Brinkley adds that it comes from Cajun slang in the New Orleans jazz scene and means “to play unhinged.” (Ibid.) This we know because we scored a mint condition copy of that book on one of our frequent book safaris in Berkeley CA, which we contend (mindful of the Golden Days when the Book Row of America was located in New York City) is the used book buyers Valhalla.

The legendary Cody’s Books in Berkeley is closed. That gave us an opportunity to write a column headlined “Memories of Cody’s Books,” which helped lure some Jack Kerouac fans into our realm of Gonzo blogging. There are other marvelous bookstores still available for the seekers of the great white whale of books.

Every time we go into the Shakespeare and Co. on Telegraphy Avenue, we wonder if the charming fellow who owned the similarly named store in Paris is still offering writers a rent free year in an apartment in the City of Light. We learned about that marvelous opportunity while visiting Paris in 1986. Do Gonzo Bloggers qualify as writers? We’ll get back to you on that.

Are the young folks asking for money on that Berkeley street aging beatniks? Kerouac and Ginsberg lived in Berkeley CA during 1955 and some familiar street names pop up in the “Dharma Bums” book. We refuse to take this opportunity to besmirch Berkeley’s image by speculating about any possible walking around DNA evidence of the “free love” philosophy those writers promoted. (We missed a great opportunity a few decades back when a coworker in Santa Monica claimed that his mother had been a member of Kerouac’s SF Posse.)

Sometimes when there is an anti-war demonstration in Berkeley, you have to wonder: which war are they protesting?

We scored a trade paperback copy of Rupert Holmes big band era mystery titled “Swing” and learned that students in Sproul Plaza had demonstrated in the Thirties against the FDR foreign policy which (they asserted) would lead to involvement in the war in Europe.

Living in Berkeley has taught us the futility of bragging. We recently stopped to chat with a young film-head photographer and when we tossed in the fact that Paul Newman had once asked for our autograph, the kid responded: “Who is Paul Newman?” (Look it up on the Internet, kid. Maybe he can’t if he isn’t into digital photography?)

Did you hear Uncle Rushbo make a reference to the World’s Laziest Journalist today? Me neither too.

We have recently asked some Berkeley students if they knew who Mario Savio was. A streak of negative responses quashed our enthusiasm for continuing work on that informal survey.

What was it that the kids at UCLA used to say (back in the pre-Bush era)? “If you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t really there.” That reminds us of a passage we found in our bargain bin copy of “Johnny Cash.” He wrote (HarperPaperbacks 1998 page 49): “Sitting down with pen and paper (or tape recorder and Microsoft Word), the words ‘I don’t remember’ and ‘I’m not sure one way or the other’ don’t seem adequate, even if they do reflect reality more accurately than whatever you are about to write.”

Getting up at 6 a.m. to bang out another blog column berating bogus voting machine ballot results is getting very boring, especially when it becomes obvious that should the predictions be judged to be very accurate in retrospect, the fact that all liberal media will have vanished in America will mean there will be no chance to post any “We tried to warn ya” columns and gloat.

Do readers of liberal blogs care if the first time a columnist sees a Rolls Royce in Berkeley CA it has a flame paint job? We double dog dare you to look at a photo of that and not think of the Beatles band member named John Lennon.

We’ve only seen one Ferrari in Berkeley CA. We can’t locate the digital file for the photo showing the time that we spotted two Ferraris sitting side-by-side at the traffic light at Windward and Pacific in Venice. In L.A., no one else noticed that co-inky-dink. Is Uncle Rushbo referring to our car-spotting efforts on our photo blog when he mentions the drive-by journalists?

It may be boring to be the blogger battling bogus ballots, but we becalm ourselves by the thought that we are on the brink of a boredom busting breakthrough.

George Noel Gordon (AKA Lord Byron) wrote: “I’ll publish right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be m song.”

Now the disk jockey will play the Blues McGoos “Psychedelic Lollipop” album, Johnny Bond’s “Hot Rod Linclon” album, and Molly Bee’s “Swingin’ Country” album. We gotta go look for the new Johnny Cash album featuring rarities such as the B-sides of his hit singles records. Have a “Biutiful” week.

February 22, 2011

Trend-spotting and the end of Liberal Media?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:19 pm

Two years ago while visiting Australia, one of the bits of cultural differences we noticed was that sports on TV was ubiquitous. Enthusiasm about cricket matches and rugby games was rampant. Monday night football games from the USA played well being seen live during the day on Tuesdays in Sydney. Fox Sports seemed to have a cash-cow with their corner on the sports fans market in Australia.

This columnist preferred to take the Ronald Reagan philosophy for giant sequoia trees when it came time to assess chances to spend portions of the excursion glued to the boob tube watching rugby or cricket: “If you’ve seen one match/game, you’ve seen them all.”

Lately we have noticed a new trend on the media horizon: The conservatives aren’t satisfied with the preponderance of their presence in the media world, they want to banish all vestiges of liberalism in contemporary American culture. They seem to regard a grain of truth with the same amount of tolerance as if seeing it appear anywhere, at any time, would be comparable to a doctor finding a case of the bubonic plague. Has any writer ever used a plague as a metaphor for the truth?

The Mike Malloy radio show is often preempted in the San Francisco area by basketball and on Presidents’ Day we heard Stephanie Miller note that in a Florida market, the station that carries her has gone all sports and she’s MIA.

On the Malloy program for Monday, February 21, 2011, he mentioned that his hours were being curtailed in the Madison Wisconsin area on the radio station there. He also had a caller who referred back to a call from “Blue” on Friday night, but we hadn’t heard that because Malloy had been preempted by Cal’s Women’s Basketball.

Could it be that the Republican philosophy will not be satisfied with a strong numerical superiority over liberal talk radio? Could the Republicans want to shut down progressive radio completely and are they willing to spend the money to get their way?

Back in the day, this columnist had a continuing debate going with a maiden aunt who stoutly maintained that the wrestling matches on TV were rigged. We did our best to refute her wild and irresponsible assertions and prove that she was subscribing to a conspiracy theory that was reprehensible because it attacked the veracity of a pillar of American culture.

We assume that if she were alive today, she would be reading some of the well known Internets sites for conspiracy theory lunatics and joining with them in the unpatriotic questioning of the elections which delivered a Republican landslide last fall and are presenting the Republicans with a voter mandate to eradicate collective bargaining for state employees in Wisconsin.

According to Ozzie Osborne, the “Wobblers” disorder manifests itself when small problems take on the aspect of the End of Time. (We heard about that bit of medical news on the aforementioned Stephanie Miller Show on Monday morning.) If you listen to any liberal talk radio this week, they are making it sound like events in Wisconsin are a union worker’s version of the End of Time events. Is it time for the liberal talk show hosts to call Dr. Ozzie and find what he recommends as a cure for the “Wobblers”?

We only heard our maiden aunt utter the word ********** (10 letter word meaning oral sex [Uncle Rushbo prefers to use the term “a Lewinski.”) once when the topic was Nixon’s “expletive deleted” mystery. We think we can guess what her assessment of George W. Bush would have been.

In the movie “Jaws” a brief reference was made to a horrible ordeal involving sharks suffered by some American sailors during World War II. The cruiser Indianapolis was on a top secret mission (delivering an atomic bomb to an AAF base in the Pacific) when it was torpedoed by the Japanese. It sunk rather quickly and the crew had no time to launch the life boats so they jumped into the ocean. Since their mission was top secret their radio silence was not questioned. The sharks attacked the guys one at a time and inflicted a high number of casualties. Would that obscure facet of naval history provide an adequate analogy for what is happening to progressive media these days? Some of the crew managed to survive.

Would the fate of the Americans who fought at the Alamo be a better example of appropriate symbolism? They were wiped out. So was the cavalry unit which fought at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

When will Mike and Stephanie see their heresy and recant so that they may receive absolution and attain the large monetary remuneration and throngs of adoring fans that await them if they (like the prodigal son?) begin to spout Murdock approved Republican talking points?

My aunt was a bit of a bigot. She wouldn’t acknowledge that folks with dementia had just as much right to be President as any of the other candidates. She refused to discuss the possibility of voting for St. Ronald Reagan for re-election.

Would my dear aunt maintain that Obama has done for the Republicans what a desperate boxer does when he agrees to “throw the fight.” Did he squander his legacy by taking a long time to write a law that was bound to flunk the Supreme Court test?

Did the weekend Teabagger rally in Madison Wisconsin evoke references to the concept of solipsism?

[Note: Uncle Rushbo (on his Monday program) declared that throat cancer is caused by “Lewinskis.” That’s good news for fellows who may have experienced one before Clinton invented that bit of perversion, eh, Rush? Uncle Rushbo ridicules “scientific” opinions about global warming and the possibility that the polar bears are in peril, but he accepts and disseminates the Lewinski story because of the scientific supporting evidence. Could that be an example of the Republican Philosophy that hypocrisy is one of the seven cardinal virtues, along with lying, cheating, stealing, etc.? ]

Bartlett’s attributes to Voltaire this quote: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Apparently that was amended to apply only to Republicans’ right to free speech. Democrats need not apply.

The disk jockey will play the “Jaws” soundtrack album, “Please Mr. Custer,” and “Eve of Destruction.” We have to go prepare to hear some Dons Basketball. Note: Berkeley’s Rugby team has escaped elimination via budget cuts (baseball didn’t) and so maybe we will soon have the chance to hear some of those games on Progressive Talk Radio in the SF Bay area? Have a “T-t-t-that’s all f-f-f-folks!” type week.

February 19, 2011

“This isn’t fair!”

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:26 pm

Getting a job in New York City in the mid Sixties presented a young man with a smorgasbord of delights and temptations. We were aghast to learn that a bottle of beer was three times more expensive there than in Scranton Pa. We encountered on enterprising fellow who had set up a gambling casino on top of a portable table. He was soliciting bets that you couldn’t keep up with the movement of the cards he was moving about. The Ace of Spades had a bent corner and it was child’s play to see where it had ended its wanderings. He wanted folks to bet on their powers of observation and he singled me out of the crowd for a personal challenge. Not wanting to take unfair advantage of the fellow, we offered to teach him a lesson for the symbolic wager of $1. He belittled us mercilessly and said we lacked the chutzpah (whatever that was) to make a substantial bet. Some other fellow in the crowd had the cajones to bet a double sawbuck. The tip-off flaw somehow failed to provide the intrepid soul with a windfall profit and the operator of the table top gambling casino reaped the rewards of his labor via some slight-of-hand magic.

When the fabled decade ended, we were living at Lake Tahoe and the greatest dog who ever lived (Baron Siegfried L. von Richthofen III [a sweetie when sober]) was a roommate. There were ample opportunities to play games of chance that were more closely regulated than the rouge operations we had seen in New York City, but as the Sixties came to a close, our efforts to duplicate the cynical W. C. Fields philosophy of life had taken firm root and we limited our gambling experiments to an annual loss of $35 and considered that an entertainment expense.

One time we walked into the office of a Public Relations official for one of the local casinos carrying the props for a photo which would illustrate a story about a local charity event. Since one of the props was a genuine shotgun, the PR official asked: “How did you get past security?” We told her “we just walked past.”

The other human roommate and I hosted weekly poker games. New decade; new vices?
There were some brief scurrilous rumors that Siegfried would eyeball the other fellows hands and then silently say what they were holding so that we could gain, via lip reading, an unfair advantage over our guests. It was one of the wildest conspiracy theories we have ever heard.

We were unaware of the FM revolution occurring in radio and since South Lake Tahoe is surrounded by a ring of mountains, the reception of AM stations was extremely limited. There were two stations in the basin and we could on good nights pick up clear signal KFI from Los Angeles and some station in Texas with a wild disk jockey with a distinctive voice who touted himself with the phrase “coast to coast, border to border, wall to wall and tree-top tall.” “They say” you could hear him in 38 states.

Times have changed. Things are different. Back then folks protested the Vietnam War. We understand that there will be a new protest for the latest war in Washington on March 19th this year. Is there a new war to protest or is it a display of sentimental nostalgia for the “usual suspects”? We presume that the artists will include Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and . . . perhaps the Kinks?

Some folks, who seem to be as naive and trusting as the aforementioned “rube” in “swinging” New York City was, think that only conspiracy theory nuts (Hi, mom!) distrust the results of the paperless electronic voting machines.

This columnist realizes that his efforts to emulate the jaded cynical paranoid attitude of the hero/victim in Hemingway’s “The Killers” is a tad maudlin, but the fact that the crimp in the corner of the card still bothers us.

If hustlers believe that only big stakes make displaying their talents worth the effort, then couldn’t one political party play with reckless abandon if they were playing with a marked deck? The marked decks in magician supply stores are sold for entertainment purposes only – but some Svengali types find it very entertaining to “separate the suckers from their money.” Don’t look now, but aren’t the efforts of the capitalists very similar to the mad scramble images conjured up by the phrase “Great Oklahoma land rush”?

If (subjunctive mood) one Party wanted to cheat, wouldn’t they try to lure the suckers (“a measly dollar?”) into playing for major bucks? Why go to all that effort just to win $10? If the stacked/mark deck guarantees a sure win, why not put abortion, collective bargaining, and tax breaks on the line?

We didn’t intend writing a new column today. Rather than get up at 6 a.m. we slept in until 7. We took some snapshots of the snow in the higher elevations of Berkeley CA. We put some old music on the sound machine and . . . well, what else is there to do on a cold and wet morning in a city where the local University will soon start their baseball team’s last season. Budget cuts make sports fans unhappy, but just think how happy the billionaires are this morning.

“They say” things will get tougher before they get better. To which optimists and preachers of self-reliance only say: “You can bet on that!”

Nelson Algren is credited with being the original source for this bit of folk wisdom:
“Never play cards with any man named ‘Doc.’ Never eat at any place called ‘Mom’s.” And never, never, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.”

Now the disk jockey will play Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Thirty-nine and holding,” “I wish I was 18 again,” and “Who is going to play this old piano?” We have to go see if we can score a pres pass to the Rolling Stones Concert (“what would you pay to hear a living legend sing?). Have an “abracadabra!” type week.

February 18, 2011

Unions in peril in Wisconsin

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:32 pm

Whether Obama realizes it or not, his political legacy will be at stake in Wisconsin next week because if a rookie Republican governor can cripple the union movement in his state, that will encourage other Republicans to make a similar effort to dismantle one of the last vestiges of the New Deal but if he manages to stop the Wisconsin facet of the continuing attack on his own political agenda that could provide him with a rallying cry for urging the Democrats to regain the political initiative in a way that might be compared to a key pass interception in a football game.

Sports announcers like to talk about the momentum in a football game and how one particular play in football can be (in retrospect) called pivotal. Since the President’s State of the Union Speech, the Republicans have continued their criticism of Obama’s health care bill, called attention in a negative fashion to the President’s response to the Crises in Egypt and will use any Republican success in Wisconsin as an indication that their dreams of completely dismantling the New Deal are attainable.

The fact that the Democratic strategy of hiding, which was also used by the Democrats in Texas some time ago, brings to mind the Schwarzenegger term “girly-men” isn’t very reassuring.

If a sports announcer were as continually biased as is the lineup of standup comedians at the entity called Faux News, the audience would feel duped. They would use the traditional lament: “Are you blind?” Conversely if things are not playing out as the Obama advisors had planned, then any harsh assessment would not be welcome in a group that craves enthusiastic liberal journalism. If the majority of Democrats prefer to avoid harsh analysis, perhaps future historians will see it as an attempt to avoid confronting reality and say that marked the point where the Party started to slip into dementia.

If Obama makes a speech and encourages the people of Wisconsin (and union member guests from other states?) to stand together and block the effort (a goal line defense for four consecutive downs?) future historians might well pick that as the moment when Obama “turned the game around” for the 2012 local, state, and national elections.

If the Republicans eventually “put points on the scoreboard” via the Wisconsin confrontation that will make Obama seem like a Democratic Party version of Vidkun Quisling or Marshal Philippe Pétain, which will delight the Republicans immensely.

Obama likes to portray himself as someone who goes the extra mile to extend the hand of bipartisan friendship to the Republicans. In war, executing civilians in retribution for the killing of troops is verboten. Lately Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Republicans has seemed like appeasement or perhaps a metaphorical attempt to negotiate the number of civilians who must be killed in retribution.

Political strategists think that in dire times, a strong candidate has the most voter appeal.

It makes things interesting if both candidates try to out-do each other on the macho appeal scale. (Did that bit of psychology work against Meg Witman?) How would a woman who shoots wolves from an airplane match up against a guy with (hypothetically) a PETA endorsement?

There is folk wisdom that advises the fastest and strongest don’t always win a competition but some smart-alecky guy added the codicil saying: “but that’s the way the smart betting usually goes.”

What would the next election be like if (hypothetically) next week Obama urges voters in Wisconsin to hold a “general strike” and additionally says that independent truckers should come to Madison and cause gridlock as a show of support?

What does it mean when a pro-union guy holding a baseball bat asks: “Which hand do you use when you urinate?” If they are really mean don’t they leave you with both hands in casts so that someone else would have to help you?

Pro-union people risked life and limb to get to their goal. Watching Obama piss away their efforts is a bit disappointing.

Back in the day, when a family member was killed in a mining accident, the company representatives who would leave the dead body on the front porch would often leave a note saying that their was a job opening and that the next oldest unemployed son should come to work the morning. It’s doubtful that Obama heard stories about that kind of exploitation when he was growing up. They just don’t mention things like that at Yale.

There is a story told by the people speaking at Horror Writers events about one of them, lady, who was traveling on a rural side road in Wisconsin (perhaps one of the major bridges had been washed out in a sever storm?) and got lost. She walked into a small general store and asked the man, who was busy stocking the shelves, for directions. A rather scary looking man turned around and advised her: “Run far, run fast.”

News from Wisconsin tends to have a difficult time getting onto the National News pages in newspapers published elsewhere, so we haven’t heard about what happened to Ed Gein’s farm after it was put on the real-estate market. Perhaps a New York Times reporter covering the union busing in Wisconsin next week, will try to impress his assignment editor by turning in an update on the fate of the Gein farm?

Didn’t one of the Boston based major league baseball teams move to Wisconsin about a half century ago?

On Thursday night, February 17, 2011, the ABC network evening news program used the plight of Wisconsin labor unions for its lead story.

If the events in Madison become the dominant story of the day (with the concomitant media circus presence), that will only increase the stakes for the workers and the President. Gee, if there’s a new chance to make the President seem weak and incompetent, won’t Rupert Murdock send his anchor man there for some “on the scene” broadcasts? They don’t do that do they? They just sit in New York City and do their impression of Jubba the Hut and send lesser personalities to do the remote reports.

Jimmy Hoffa has been quoted as saying: “I may have many faults, but being wrong ain’t one of them.”

Now the disk jockey will play Jerry Lee Lewis’s song “What made Milwaukee famous,” the Rolling (will their new tour ever get off the ground?) Stones’ “Rip this joint,” and Woodrow Guthrie’s “I’m stickin’ to the union.” We have to go check and see if Uncle Rushbo has to pay AFTRA dues. Have a “winner takes all” type week.

February 17, 2011

Talk radio and Existentialism

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:28 pm

Since the World’s Laziest Journalist’s home office is devoid of Internet access, a TV set, and phone, the staff winds up listening to the radio or playing old musical tapes when it comes time to kick back and chill out. Since there ain’t a hella (note to AARP site editor types: that may not sound right to you but that’s de rigueur jive for the young folks) variety of choices on the radio, we tend to go to extremes. Uncle Rushbo is fascinating listening because he keeps pushing towards the limits to gain the inevitable liberal media publicity. Every time he comes close to going over the edge, he winds up landing safely and thus brings to mind a segment of the movie “Rebel Without a Cause.” (“Where’s Buzz?”) On the other end of the spectrum is Mike Malloy who is just as fully committed to his beliefs as is the King of Oxycontin. (If you had to spout Republican spin all year long, wouldn’t you have an insatiable appetite for pain killers, too?)

Lately Malloy seems extremely distressed about the prognoses for democracy. He may need a refresher course on the philosophy of the guys who wrote for the underground newspaper, Combat, which was published in Paris during the German occupation.

Would it be too esoteric and arcane to assert that listening to both Uncle Rushbo and Malloy would be comparable to reading both the Paris Zeitung and Combat?

Recently we attended a screening of the film “Casablanca.” We knew that Humphrey Bogart’s role as Fred C. Dobbs in “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” had made a lasting impression (and had an influential effect?), but we had not been aware that his role as Ricky Blaine had also made itself felt long after we first saw it. Blaine was existentialism in action.

If there was a book title Zen and the Art of Existentialism; we’d recommend it to both those radio personalities. Ricky Blaine learned the laissez faire attitude in Paris (home of existentialist thinking) and, after that, pretty much kept away from partisan politics. When a group of boisterous members of the German military attached to diplomatic duty in Casablanca sang a patriotic song, Ricky tried to balance things out by advising the band leader to play the Marseilles just to keep things on an even keel.

Some of the best segments of the Malloy program occur when he and his screener/producer/wife Kathy quibble over fact finding bits of trivia. It’s obvious that their emotional relationship doesn’t impinge on their attempts for hair-splitting bits of factual accuracy. One assumes that they have read Robert L. Stevenson’s essay on how to conduct a stimulating but civilized conversation. Are they trying to become the modern equivalent of Tex and Jinx Falkenburg? Unfortunately that’s one bit of radio history we missed.

We might, if we had a phone, call Rush and suggest that he listen to the Malloys and then think about putting his wife on the air with him. Then we realized that wouldn’t work. Equality in marriage is a Democratic Party type thing and Rush would lose so much street cred, his ratings would plummet. Haven’t we read somewhere on the Internets that Uncle Rushbo’s audience is diminishing?

Some nights Malloy comes perilously close to being a Xerox copy of the fictional TV journalist Howard Beal. Recently he was lamenting the fact that there seems to be two systems of justice. One for über-wealthy Republicans (like Uncle Rushbo?) and another for “Just Us.” We were tempted to call Mike (if we had a phone) and suggest that it might be an appropriate time for his wife/producer to play the Waylon Jennings song that has the lament about “if I’dda killed her when we first met; I’d be outta jail by now.” The guy in the song mustta been a Republican, eh?

Since Malloy does repeatedly reference Mario Savio’s most famous quote, if we had a phone we’d call Malloy and suggest that he read Albert Camus’ “The Rebel” because Malloy would be sure to find a shipload of hand-dandy quotes. If the Republicans are going to rely on existentialism to bolster their program, it might be a good bit of self-defense preparation to read some Sartre and Camus.

His recent steak of pessimism would be the perfect opportunity to play the perfect example of nihilistic/existentialistic commingling contained in Howard’s speech at the end of “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Fate has played a practical joke on liberals. Get over it.

If Malloy did read up on the existentialists, wouldn’t he eventually encounter the cusp area where Zen and nihilism overlap? Didn’t Jean-Paul Sartre practice Nietzsche’s amor fati lesson i.e. “So Be It!” when he was a German prisoner of war and he used the time to write a new play?

Folks love to portray college professors as “pointy-headed” intellectuals with far left political opinions who bandy about references to obscure books such as “Nausia,” but didn’t all the teabaggers do a marvelous job of stifling their amusement recently when John Boehner snuck a crafty allusion to the amor fati lesson from Nietzsche into a press conference? Didn’t the teabaggers love it when he was paraphrasing the existentialists and the liberals didn’t even notice? What teabagger couldn’t savor the delicious irony of that?

[Note: for those intellectuals who quibble over the pronunciation of the name of the Speaker of the House, we have one question: Isn’t Boeotia phonetically bee-oh-shah? Do Republicans use the word Boeotian (bee-ocean) in it’s stupid or boorish person meaning to denote a Democrat? Shouldn’t the Speaker’s name be pronounce as if (phonetically) were bee-ner?]

If some teabagging existentialist troll has read this far, we will counter the objection that this column is a shameless example of a partisan attempt to “suck up” to Malloy, we would point out that it is being posted on Thursday, February 17, 2011, and that means that when Malloy broadcasts tonight, the audience in Berkeley CA will hear women’s college basketball and this columnist will be at the Berkeley 7 watching “The Fifth Element.”

In “The Rebel,” (Vintage Book paperback page 41) Albert Camus wrote: “In politics his (i.e. Marquis de Sade’s) real position is cynicism. In his Society of the Friends of Crime he declares himself ostensibly in favor of the government and its laws, which he meanwhile has every intention of violating. It is the same impulse that makes the lowest form of criminal vote for conservative candidates.” In the Republican Party, isn’t cynicism one of the seven cardinal virtues? Don’t most teabaggers recognize the fact that Boehner knows his Camus, while the liberals sit and listen to him with dropped jaw incredulity?

The disk jockey will now play: “Helter Skelter,” “Street Fighting Man,” and Waylon Jenning’s “Out of Jail.” We have to see if folks in Berkeley can pick up the XERB signal because we’d love to hear the Wolfman again. Have an “of all the gin joints in all the world, she had to walk into mine” type week.

February 15, 2011

Phony-spotting guide?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:26 pm

Imagine how exciting it would be to be walking around in Berkeley CA (excitement galore, right there) and you saw on the ground a dollar size piece of greenish paper that said “Fifty Dollars”? Your joie d’vivre might diminish considerably when you notice that the portrait on the front side is of a bearded fellow who looks like he might have been one of those misguided clergy men who wanted to make the Hawaiian natives put clothes on and is identified as “Hoffarth.” Then you notice the disclaimer: “for Motion Picture use only.” Drat!

This columnist has, many moons ago, on two different occasions, found a genuine 100 dollar bill and so the first thought when we laid eyes on the Hoffarth bill was to immediately take a picture and start to debate weather we should submit the item to the Berkeley Daily Planet or the Berkeleyside web site. They must have been filming a movie in Berkeley recently and that is the kind of hot news both of them like.

Is that name some kind of joke? Is it a phony name like the one used in a famous e-mail that faked-out a legendary stand-up comedian working for Fox News?

In the era of hit movies from the Jackass crew and the word Punk’d has slipped into the mainstream American vocabulary, who wouldn’t love the irony of finding a Hoffarth bill?

Don’t all Americans appreciate a good practical joke? Lately, we have noticed some political pundits are analyzing the new Obama budget proposals and slaping their own foreheads and saying: “Oy vey! We thought he was a progressive!” The joke that the Reagan Democrat fooled voters into thinking he was a progressive is another hilarious example of Punk’d-ing for fun and frivolity. Young Internets citizens might not remember the time when an American President and his pals concocted a clever ruse about something that had to do with aluminum tubes that were positive proof that a new war needed to be started.

The President went though all the effort to cook-up a clever reason never realizing that all he had to do was ask.

[We’ve heard an urban legend about an attractive young lady who had a very close male friend and when he had to move to a different geographical area he asked her whey they had never hopped into bed together and she responded: “Because you never asked!”]

Some pundits are groaning about the apparent buyers’ remorse factor that the far lefties are experiencing as the Reagan Democrat President reaches out his hand to the far righties in the Republican Party.

Cynics are asking: Shouldn’t a President who works so assiduously to be a one term President get what he wants?

This columnist tends to emulate the taciturn nature of saloon owner Ricky Blaine in the movie Casablanca and thinks that the Australian bandit Ned Kelly was spot-on when he said: “Such is life.”

Is it time to inject some obscure and esoteric (but relevant) items? Watching some newsreel footage from 1953 we saw and heard Adlai Stevenson chide his successful rival for the Presidency for being in charge of a political party run by businessmen. Wasn’t Harry Truman the last President with businessman experience?

We digress. Speaking of digressing, did you know that a bunch of writers from one very successful liberal web site have their own page on Facebook? Why isn’t Eric Hoffer one of that group? Wasn’t he big on liberal causes? Didn’t a famous communist coin the phrase “One for all; all for one.” Don’t the Hell’s Angels say: “A fight with one of us is a fight with all of us!”?

This columnist wishes he could contact that group of scribes because we’d love to ask them: “Is it better for a columnist to tell his readers what he wants them to think or is it better to throw some apparent contradictions at them and let them think it through for themselves?” It’s just like when George W. Bush said: “You teach a child to read, and he or she will be able to pass a literacy test.”

When dealing with writers like that Facebook group shouldn’t their boss ask them the classic question from the Fifties: “Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”?

Wasn’t “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” a famous communist slogan in WWII?

We’ve read: “In a Communist state a love of neighbors may be classed as counter-revolutionary. Mao Tse-tung counts it a sin of the liberals that they will not report the misdeeds of ‘acquaintances, relatives, schoolmates, friends, loved ones.’” Where did we read that?

In “The Ordeal of Change” (Perennial Library paperback 1963 p. 5), Eric Hoffer wrote: “Things are different when people subjected to drastic change find only meager opportunities for action or when they cannot, or are not allowed to, attain self-confidence and self-esteem by individual pursuits . . . . The substitute for self-confidence is faith, the substitute for self-esteem is pride; and the substituted for individual balance is fusion with others into a compact group.” Was Hoffer a founding father of the teabag movement?

If you see something suspicious report it. Buy War Bonds today.

Now the disk jockey will play “Stickin’ to the Union,” the “Cool Hand Luke” soundtrack album and Roy Orbison’s “Workin’ for the man.” We have to go and file a grievance with the shop steward. Have a “contract approved by a vote of the membership” type week.

February 14, 2011

Who are you callin’ “pseudologia fantastica”?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:19 pm

At first, the possibility that the latest hacking story might add another bit of evidence for use by the liberals to make the assertion that the Conservatives have gone completely mad, seemed to be just another routine incident indicating that the Conservatives had done something else that was vile and reprehensible; but then we took a closer look at it our blood ran cold. Not just very afraid like the moment when you realize that the car you are driving is going to do a roll-over and you are probably going to die, but the “scared silly” reaction a person would get when he realizes that he is dealing with a cold-blooded murderer who makes “Rudy the Red” seem like someone who engaged in frat-boy pranks.

We don’t mean intriguing like when AP in Reno asked if we could pull a head shot out of the negative used for a group photo that “ran a few weeks ago” because one of the people in the shot had been indicted for murder.

We don’t mean the “he really means it” moment when one of the guys, who was a high school classmate, threatens to arrest another member of the class on the family’s front porch because the new lawman doesn’t appreciate something that was just said.

We mean the “this guy your are being introduced to is subject to arrest in a foreign country for war crimes” type of moment.

The psychological implications of this new “e-mails reveal” scandal are truly of the “bone chilling” level if they are examined closely.

On Thursday, February 10, 2011, we scurried back to our writer’s hovel to hear the first hour of the Mike Malloy radio show because we wanted to hear what the substitute (Brad of the Brad Blog) host would say about the plight of the Teamsters. When he started to detail the facts for the United States Chamber of Commerce Dirty Tricks story, we thought that the basic modus operandi for the caper sounded amazingly similar to what the defenders of Dan Rather said when he was discredited. We only got to hear one hour because the San Francisco station cut away at 7 p.m. PST for a sports broadcast. (Could there be a conservative plot to buy air time on Green Radio for UCB women’s basketball games and thereby shut down the best liberal talk show for two hours or is that just another example of this columnist’s usual lunatic conspiracy theories way of thinking?)

According to Brad and other sources found online on Friday, the basic conservative strategy being employed now is to feed a liberal doctored evidence for a potential scandal that would have embarrassing consequences for the conservatives, and then, after the story is published, to reveal that the cooked up story was phony and the shocking revelation that the story is bogus thereby discredits the reporter, his publication, show, or web site in particular and journalism in general.

What if, we asked ourselves, the psychological phenomenon known as “projection” is in play here? Projection means that a person projects his personality onto everyone else. Thus if a person were a pathological liar he would assume that everyone else in the world was one too.

There is a disturbing stealth warning at work in the new revelations. If someone, who is a pathological liar manipulates a reporter into a vulnerable position and rigs the fact checking process to help the sting operation achieve its goal and relies on gullibility for “proof” that another person is dishonest; then why isn’t the conniving nature of the deception self evident to a person thinking rationally?

If the pathological liar is so thoroughly committed to the sting operation that he doesn’t see the basic dishonesty inherent in his ploy, he will fool himself and only paid teabag operatives will “act” as if they have been convinced by the charade. When it becomes obvious that they are fooling themselves, one has to ask what the successful self-deception reveals about their inner psychology. Have they completely lost touch with reality and, if so, what can be done to “treat the patient”?

[Note: How does a pathological liar differ from a compulsive liar? Hypothetical case: a young lady leaves the dirty dishes in the sink and goes out for an afternoon of shopping. When she returns the dishes have been cleaned and put in the drying rack. She asks her boyfriend, who has been there all the while, if he washed the dishes.

A compulsive liar will say “No.” and any questions about the illogical response will be ignored. A pathological liar, such as the husband portrayed in the movie “Gaslight” would say: “You did them! Don’t you remember that you did them just before you went shopping?” A compulsive liar lies because he has to tell fibs. A pathological liar uses lies to achieve an ultimate goal.]

Liberal victims will, like O. J. at a pretrial press conference, look like a poor example of amateur theatrics in their righteous indignation regarding the shoddy kindergarten level shenanigans. (If the glove doesn’t fit; you must acquit! Do you think that maybe the goddamn thing had shrunk while it was improperly stored in the evidence locker?) The histrionics will be denounced as a pathetic example of the manifestation of a desperate conspiracy nut seeking group acceptance.

Isn’t the “conspiracy theory!” rebuttal a variation of the “I’m not lying; you are!” line of reasoning? Doesn’t the conspiracy theory rebuttal work just as well as Monty Python’s debating tactic of contradicting everything?

What is the mental health of someone who will prey on gullibility to foster the perception that the prank’s victim is actually the liar? If they have convinced only themselves of the validity of their frat boy joke, doesn’t that indicate that they have completely lost touch with reality? Isn’t that another way of saying that they have gone TFI (i.e. gone totally bonkers) as in: “I’d like you to meet my friend who lives with his “family” out on the Spawn ranch. Say ‘how do you do?’ to Charlie Manson!”

Didn’t we see a news story asserting that Karl Rove is engineering the effort to “get” Julian Assange? Isn’t every man, woman, and child in Amereica supposed to think that Assange is a lying, cheatin’ double dealin’ guy who isn’t really entitled to a freedom of the press defense? Isn’t that the “I’m not lying; you are!” argument in action?

Where will this string of discredited journalist stings end? Isn’t the snide response of “at the Cathedral of Light ceremony” yet another example of the “you are a conspiracy nut, lying SOB if you suspect recent events are from a hypothetical Rove playbook for engineering a 2012 win for JEB” way lefties think?

Would Dr. Hannibal Lecter hesitate to weave a web of lies just to play an “April Fool” joke on Edward R. Murrow? Might that effort have to be a very elaborate sting? “Look in Raspail’s car” obscure clues in return for . . . a few innocuous jail house privileges?

Is it worth a journalist’s time to quibble over these “done deal” issues?
The definition of the word “rape”?
The problem with the Social Security Program?
The simultaneous belief that life is sacred and that abortion is murder and simultaneously advocate that death panels will become a proper “budget cutting” strategy because they would eliminate futile expenses for a sick people who will die soon anyway?
Is double think here or are teabaggers starting to emulate my friend who proclaims that the voices in his head have the “call waiting” feature?
If tax cuts for the rich didn’t produce new jobs during the eight years of the Bush Reign of Terror, then how can they be expected to produce jobs if Obama extends those tax breaks for two more years?
Did IBM really replace all those old “Think” signs with new ones that say: “Obey!”?
Did George W. Bush go AWAL?
Can teabaggers comprehend a column – chock full of obscure arcane and esoteric cultural references – that mocks their heroes? For that matter, can any of the Journalism professors at UCB?
Did poppy Bush deserve a court martial hearing for bailing out of his Avenger bomber?
Last, and certainly not least, what can be done to convince Republicans that Superman doesn’t maintain his John Boener type hair style by going to the barber regularly for a hair cut?

How can any discredited journalist be taken seriously when they address the Republican agenda?

If Republicans are guilty of being pathological liars (AKA pseudologia fantastica), then isn’t it quite logical to conclude that the comedians are correct when they say that to correctly understand what a Republican is saying, just assume that the truth is the exact opposite of what is being said.

Wasn’t the Republican mindset revealed when George W. Bush said: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . . won’t get fooled again!” Republicans are people who are fully convinced that they are compassionate, conservative Christians who can not (by Divine Commandment) lie. They can only be victims of disingenuous journalists. Would a compassionate conservative Christian cancel school nutrition programs for economic reasons?

Now the disk jockey will play Johnny Cash’s “The Long Black Veil,” the Rolling Stones’ notorious never released “contractual obligation” album (available only in bootleg editions) with the naughty title, and (speaking of getting fooled) “Sweet Transvestite” from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. We have to go and meet a secret source who has promised to give the World’s Laziest Journalist a clandestine copy of a coroner’s report that might provide valuable clues for the mystery surrounding the suicide of Geli Raubal. (How could she kill herself using a pistol that was always in the possession of her uncle?) Have a “psst, wanna have an exclusive on some secret material that will break a new scandal” type week.

February 13, 2011

Return of the hippie Philosophy of Life?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 4:29 pm

The fact that Arianna Huffington shamelessly exploited politically motivated liberal writers for her own personal financial gain is something that carries a strong déjà vu element for folks living in Berkeley CA because it echoes an episode from the city’s journalism history when the staff of the Berkeley Barb figured out that the publisher was making enormous profits from their efforts and paying them in a niggardly (that’s a legitimate word and not a racial slur-word) fashion to increase his personal savings account balance. The aggrieved reporters walked out and started their own weekly publication, the Berkely Tribe, to be run in majority consensus fashion and, according to one of the participants, also operated the newsroom/editorial boardroom in a hippie commune style house.

[There is a folk axiom that asserts that those who forget history are doomed to repeat what has previously happened. If that is a valid bit of wisdom, the folks who remember that Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Hosni Mubarak all came to power via service in their country’s military during time of civil unrest in a Muslim nation, will be among the few who find that the situation in Egypt has some very ominous implications.]

The fact that, to the best of our ability to discern, the recently sold Huffington Post website has not seen fit to cover the story about the U. S. Chamber of Commerce efforts to pay public relation specialists $2 million to discredit Brad Friedman (and the Bradblog, and other web entities), let alone even run a link to the Bradblog in their list of sites for fans of the liberal point of view, may give a big hint to her group of keystroke slaves just where the rollercoaster ride is going to take them. If they lived in Berkeley and were aware of the circumstances that facilitated the birth of the Berkeley Tribe publication, they might not take as long to figure it out.

At this point, some cynics might want to ask why would a columnist who has been a member of Teamsters local 229 and who was protected from capricious and arbitrary conduct by management at a nationally known news wire service in New York City by the Guild, which promised a strike in response to the shoddy treatment of “the last hired” guy, would object to labor issues at a website that doesn’t use his stuff, but will contribute material to other digital underground newspaper type websites.

There is a difference between breaking every rule you can bend and going “way over the line.” There is a difference between being exploited and willingly going along with program. Is there a difference between rape and using rough sex as a method of making love? Yes. Is the difference visual? No. We rest the case.

There is an urban legend in the journalism industry about the time a staff photographer for LIFE magazine spent a month aboard an ocean liner for an assignment and when he turned in his expense account, he had listed the spending of some money for taxi fares. The ever vigilant accounting department challenged that particular expense. When the photographer glibly responded “It was a big ship,” they let it slide. Does the term “gonzo blogging” convey a valid concept?

Getting up at O-dark-thirty, to write a column gratis can be rationalized if the writer can fulfill some personal needs, other than the monetary dependence one, such as getting the feeling that he is (in a very small echo way) walking a mile in Herb Caen’s moccasins or being given the chance to symbolically raise his middle finger in a gesture aimed at “the Establishment.”

Getting up before dawn to crank out a freebie column because the editor/publisher owner/operator of a website thinks “we have to work harder to help Democratic candidates” win in November of 2011, is a particularly galling experience if the writer happens to be convinced (by reading the Bradblog too much?) that the election will be a sham/fraud and that the results (the Inauguration of JEB) are a done deal. Just thinking about it makes the words of “Memo from Turner” (“you schmucks all work for me!”) reverberate in his head.

On the one hand, there is the Columbia Review of Journalism taking the position that the journalism industry could do better and on the other you have (here’s that word again) volunteers contributing to Project Censored producing work that proves that Lazy Journalism is alive and thriving in the USA.

While attending the Project Censored annual awards ceremony, this columnist got involved in a discussion about current cultural values and it was noted that a shift back to hippie values might deserve a trend spotting report story. We have observed that there is a noticeable increase in the fund raising efforts of the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Information about “running away to join a hippie commune” will bring a steady trickle of new readers to a personal blog.

Is it time to recycle some of the “back to nature” stories from the Sixties?

Recycling old issues, in turn, reminded this writer that we might extract a good column from the effort to read Rex Weyler’s book “Blood of the Land” (Vintage Books paperback 1982). That then reminded us that some hard nosed website plantation owners might think that only new books should be purchased, read, and reviewed. Does the Internets version of Charles Foster Kane think that just because the plight of the Native Americans isn’t given air time on Faux News, it doesn’t exist?

Doesn’t the idea that volunteer writers can be fired repudiate all the hard efforts of past pro-labor activists to establish a fair and balanced work relationship with management? Isn’t reestablishing superiority through intimidation of the workers, exactly what the Republicans want? Will the Rove-conservative gang owe a political favor to a “liberal” who helps achieve that goal at her website?

If a tyrannical publisher holds the threat of a pink slip over the heads of her staff (like the sword of Damocles?), doesn’t that mean that it will be up to writers for rival publications to express the grievances of the exploited folks on the content plantation?

Americans tend to think that the Native American and Muslim cultures are homogenized groups. Don’t they realize that the Native American culture ran the spectrum from the Sioux, who believed (like most Republicans) that women should be kept pregnant in summer and barefoot in winter, to the Cheyenne tribe which had women warriors?

Has the Huffington Post ever run an unbiased (let alone critical) story about the Pasqua Lama gold mining controversy in South America? Isn’t it only those gosh darn scientists who say that the gold mining process can produce toxic waste? Who wants to risk their gig by sounding like they are fellow travelers with the guys who compete for inclusion in the Mad Scientists Hall of Fame?

Rex Weyler, on page 185 of “Blood of the Land,” wrote: “The method that the FBI was using on prospective witnesses was to frighten them with serious felony charges; then offer them a deal if they gave information on other suspects.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Memo from Turner,” Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen tons,” and the Doors “Weird Scenes inside the goldmine” album. We have to go try to figure out how the Apaches lived in desert terrain without camels. Have a “toe the line” type week. If the Huffington Post wants permission to run this column? Request granted!

February 12, 2011

“We’ll always have Paris.”

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:24 pm

On Friday, February 11, 2011, the Paramount Theater in Oakland offered a program that looked like a prospect for a very pleasant evening of entertainment that was supposed to be the columnist’s opportunity to “take the day off.” Sitting in a single screen movie theater listening to a musician play the organ before the cartoon and newsreel are scheduled to start the show, was a déjà vu moment. When did movie theaters stop showing cartoons? When was the last newsreel made? The time travel thrill came to an abrupt halt when Ricky Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) made it clear that the Nazis were the bad guys because they would torture prisoners to get information about the good guys in the resistance. We wondered if the young American men who died in the European theater of operations during WWII would appreciate the irony of their own deaths if they could see their country now.

Before leaving for the movie, we had tuned into the Mike Malloy talk show program to hear what was happening to Brad Friedman of the Bradblog website and the vacation week substitute radio host. On Thursday liberal news websites had broke the story about how Friedman was being targeted by the United States Chamber of Commerce for some dirty tricks style attacks on his credibility.

During the day Friday, this columnist had zoomed around on the Internets to gather some material for a column about the phenomenon of the mindset that drives pathological liars to be used in a column that will be posted at a later date.

It seems that seeing Casablanca on the day when systematic attacks on newsmen looked like they were part of a premeditated plan to cripple the effectiveness of citizen journalists would only double down on the irony level contained in the patriotic message of the Academy Award (AKA Oscar™) winning film.

The film contains one of the few exceptions to the Hayes code ever seen on American screens. In the World War II era movie, patriotism trumped the rule that no movie must get away with murder. Whew! That must come as a great comfort to the folks who want to sidestep the treehuggers laments about civilian casualties as collateral damage in camel jockey country. Major Strasser has been killed? “Round up the usual suspects!”

Didn’t the bad guys shown in Casablanca make a point of stifling the publication of dissenting points of view?

Lately, both of the two biggest American political parties seem to be using the Nazi image for a reenactment of the old childhood wrangling titled “Your mother wears combat boots!” Heck, back then, most kids who participated in that Monty Python style debate had never heard the word “lesbian;” let alone understood the full implication of a mother who wore combat boots.

Like Ricky Blaine, this columnist prefers to sit on the sideline and make sarcastic observations rather than participate in political debates.

The Nazis style was: fight against communist. Use succinct short slogans. Tell lies so big that no one will believe the teller has the cajones to tell that big of a whopper. Shut down media that doesn’t use pre-approved propaganda. Rig or cancel fair elections. Make the message so simple to understand that a high school drop out can understand it. The Geneva accords were scraps of paper. It’s OK to use torture to find out what the enemy resistance is doing.

Heck, aren’t the Republicans and Democrats equally guilty of using that modus operandi at this point?

Brad’s website was disabled and unavailable all day Friday. Even if it wasn’t a major equipment failure (just like what happened to the Iran nuclear program hardware?), don’t most Americans say that all is fair in love, war, and politics?

If net neutrality rules are imposed on the Internets (just like the Hays code was forced on the film makes) does that mean that citizen bloggers won’t be free to spend their own money to go see the 24 hour race at Le Mans and write whatever they want? Isn’t the traditional headline for the World’s Laziest Journalist’s annual Columnist Day celebration: “I column as I see ‘em!”? Doesn’t that mean that no matter what, bloggers will always be protected by the First Amendment?

There are two styles of column writing; the Dionysian and the Apollonian. Which one would teabagger trolls say is used by the World’s Laziest Journalist?

The United States Chamber of Commerce might be willing to spend $2 million to stifle Brad because he insists on reporting esoteric stories, such as the one about the absent minded professor on the Supreme Court who misunderstood the complicated implications of putting a checkmark in the wrong place on an innocuous and informal office form, but it seems unlikely anyone would notice if the World’s Laziest Journalist writes a column comparing and contrasting the tourist destination ratings of Paris vs. Casablanca.

It’s just like what Ertha Kitt said about money. To paraphrase her: This columnist has been to Casablanca and Paris. I prefer Paris.

Won’t the Huffington Post always be an available venue for disgruntled liberal writers? Did some blogging curmudgeon make some crazy assertion about “First they came to get the Bradblog . . . .”? Don’t take those conspiracy theory nuts too seriously.

Oscar Wild said: “Good Americans think that when they die; they’ll go to Paris.” Why wait that long?

Now the disk jockey will play (you can see it coming a mile away – just like JEB moving the Bush Dynasty back into the White House in 2012) Dooley Wilson’s “As time goes by,” “The last time I saw Paris,” and “Le vie en Rose.” We have to go see when the Berkeley 7 Flashback series will be showing “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Have an “I was misinformed” type week.

February 10, 2011

Don’t mess with the Teamsters!

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:28 pm

On Tuesday, after posting a column which ruminated about the possibility that a group of exploited writers might want to consider using the labor negotiating tactic known as a “strike,” we tuned in to hear one of the episodes of the Mike Malloy radio program which featured Brad Friedman (of the Brad Blog) as the substitute host. One of his callers, that night, was a trucker who lamented the fact that since the deregulation spawned by St. Ronald Reagan (the patron saint of the Reagan-Democrats) independent truck operators have been exploited by management by a lack of increases in the per-mile rate and a 10% reduction of their mileage figures. Brad mused aloud about a need for a work action in the Washington D. C. area.

On Wednesday night, Brad’s main hope was that maybe sympathetic truckers could help him publicize his effort to focus attention on the financial shenanigans of the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas because of the fact that, according to Brad, crimes were committed when Thomas submitted some required paper work that mistakenly indicated his wife didn’t earn any money for the work she provided for a partisan political organization. Brad’s main concern seemed to have morphed from “what can we do to help the drivers” to “they have a chance to focus America’s attention on a potential crime.”

Quite recently politicians in Europe have seen the extensive effect a truckers’ work action can have on a country’s day-to-day existence. The truckers crippled France for a short duration.

If Brad focuses America’s attention on the exploitation of the group that was once represented by one of the most powerful unions (arguably the most powerful union) in the United States, then, since the teamsters were not politically naïve, they would return the favor and make the Thomas affair something that even the hens in the Fox house could not ignore.

Truckers seem to be rather conservative patriotic individuals who might not care to be involved in spreading an allegation about an American icon. Didn’t the Teamsters Union once trade a crucial endorsement for Richard Nixon for a legislative political favor in return?

The story that Jimmy Hoffa is buried in the end zone of Giants Stadium is an urban legend. His body was, a little birdie told us, disposed of via an industrial strength garbage disposal grinder at a (union of course) meat butchering plant. As far as the question of who ordered the hit, don’t look at this columnist. We ain’t gonna go there. If your curiosity about that question is insatiable, we recommend that you read pages 61 to 71 of Steven Brill’s 1978 book “The Teamsters” (Simon and Schuster hardback).

When this columnist was a member of the Teamsters’ local 229 (Scranton Pa.), there was a young lady, of the ordinary size and weight variety, in the office (no – the one where we worked not the TV series) who could beat all the guys at arm wrestling. At that time, this writer was working out regularly with weights and we never could figure out how the heck that happened.

The firm had previously provided office space in the Secaucus (gees, I can still spell it right on the first try) terminal for the two union guys known as “the two Tonys.” (One was the Tony Pro and we can’t remember the other’s name.)

Since the company had been owned by the man who founded the American Trucking Association and since his grandson was one of the fellows who became a member of the Humphrey for President posse in 1968 (has anything ever happened in any other year?), the level of political sophistication in the Scranton office was notably high.

[Did Humphrey really trade a promise that one particular airline would get the rights to fly to and from Hawaii in return for a $300,000 campaign contribution? How the heck is this columnist supposed to fact check a rumor that is more than forty years old? Everybody we could ask is dead.]

Wasn’t there one particular group of steel hauling teamsters who cause considerable distress if people tried to foil their strikes?

Columnist Victor Reisel found out the hard way that labor issues were a very vitriolic topic.

Back in the day, the teamsters were not a group that permitted their members to be exploited. If the caller on Tuesday reported his plight accurately, it would seem that the times they have changed considerably. Much to the delight of the trucking industry management team.

It seems quite reasonable to expect that if liberals help the truck drivers with a problem that has existed for almost thirty years, then those folks will owe some favor in return. If not, the Republican philosophy of “divide and conquer” has worked again.

In the last decade, this columnist stumbled across information online that indicated that the Trucking Music Hall of Fame is contained inside a trailer that moves about the country.

Brad’s engineer, Tony, has used C. W. McCall’s hit song “Convoy” to conjure up the trucking image.

Our favorite German musical group is named “Truck Stop” and we do know a thing or two about songs that truckers play. Our list of items, which we hope are featured in the Trucking Music Hall of Fame (hope Tony reads this), would (in alphabetical order) include:

Convoy but not Convoy goes to Europe
Eastbound and Down (from Smokey and the Bandit)
Forty Days on the Road
Forty Thousand lbs. of bananas (which is based on a true incident in Scranton)
Giddyup Go
Gimme Forty Acres (and I’ll turn this rig around)
I’ve been everywhere (by Johnny Cash)
Phantom 309 (We’d call that the Best trucking song of all time)
Teddybear and Teddybear with German lyrics version
White line fever
Wolf Creek Pass.
And the bonus track of John Wayne’s “Pledge of Allegiance”?

Teamster strikes are powerful medicine. Steven Brill (Ibid page 380) wrote: “His (Einar Mohn) problem with Nixon, according to Gibbons and another (union) vice-president who was there, was that the White House’s proposed legislation to prevent strikes in the transportation industry would, he thought, severely threaten the union.” In a footnote (Ibid page 381), Brill drolly notes: “The Nixon bill was suddenly withdrawn, much to the embarrassment of the Republicans in Congress who had sponsored it for the President and were not informed beforehand of the sudden policy reversal.”

Now our disk jockey will play a Truck Stop album. We gotta go check out the rumor that Che Guevarra was put in the witness protection program and was seen recently in Cairo.” Have a “you wanna screw that knob back on there, Earl” type week.

February 9, 2011

Religion and war crimes go together like . . .

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , — Bob Patterson @ 1:44 pm

The week following Super Bowl LXV is providing numerous examples of the new American morality that teaches that hypocrisy is one of the seven capital virtues. The string of new evidence started with the images of George W. Bush at the game. See, boys and girls, if he had done a bad thing (as the Reagan Democrats assert) he would be in jail, but he ain’t so he di-ent. (That’s hip speak for did not.) All week long Donald Rumsfeld was given plenty of TV time to spread the message that stupidity and incompetence are OK because, at the very worst, you’ll get a lucrative book contract and your peeps will see you on TV and not in a war crime trial court room. Comes next Sunday morning, America’s priests, ministers, and rabies will get a few minutes to deliver a sermon during Mass to convince the gullible Reagan-Democrat party’s kids that they should “Obey!” Meanwhile, the Republican kids will get an autographed copy of both the Bush and Rumsfeld books and can snicker while watching the Sunday morning talk show/spin rebuttal programs that send the subliminal “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” message that real men have big bank accounts.

Hitler wasn’t even tried in absentia for war crimes, but his posse was. Bush & Co. will never be taken into custody. (If Radovan Karadzic was scheduled to appear at a speaking engagement in Switzerland, do you think he would have gone and been arrested or do you think he would have gotten the traditional con men’s secret signal [watch “The Sting”] to cancel the trip?)

You don’t see Rev. Billy Graham denouncing George W. Bush do ya? Rev. Graham has never spoken harshly about America’s military adventures and thereby he became the White House clergy/mascot for nearly a half century. While many of America’s young Democrats were off to WWII, Graham was in Divinity School and starting his ministry. Gee, with all those young widows to console he must have been very busy. (Did someone just ask: “Did he get laid a lot?”? If so; you’re catching on to how this Republican Morality scam works.)

Getting back to Rumsfeld and the profitability of stupidity and ineptness, we know of one guy, who is both an ordained minister and a blogger, who was aghast at the stupidity of the Gaffer’s Tape and Plastic Sheeting suggestions made right before the Invasion of Iraq. He wrote columns about the hilarious aluminum tube “evidence” and even wrote a letter to the Editor of the New York Times about the possibility that the tape and plastic sheeting suggestion would lead to asphyxiations. He added that the dumb “be prepared for gas attacks” suggestion indicated that fools were at the nation’s helm and did not bode well for the long haul.

The day the letter was published [Feb. 14, 2003 (we can’t find it online)] Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon press conference that the tape and plastic sheeting idea was an instance of metaphorical speaking to convey the seriousness of the terrorism threat.

Doesn’t the suggestion itself indicate a binary choice: they were either being diabolically devious or they were stupid and inept from the git-go?

Doesn’t the fact that they used a glib “let’s move on” line at a press conference and then continued their efforts to marshal public opinion to favor the impending war indicate that they weren’t stupid? If so, then the binary choice in the previous paragraph means they were being devious then and are continuing the coy act today while promoting their disingenuous invasion and books?

Here’s an item for your consideration directed to the fans of the obtuse and esoteric references department: Rumsfeld’s adorable “didn’t know” shenanigans reminded this columnist of the opening of “The Big Sleep,” when Carmen Sternwood falls backwards. Philip Marlowe says: “I had to catch her or let her crack her head on the tessellated floor.” The mainstream media does for Rumsfeld what Marlowe did for Carmen by unquestioningly accepting his disingenuous explanations. “Good boy, Rover!”

The previously mentioned letter sent to the New York Times was published on the letters to the editor page (wasn’t that on Valentine’s Day in 2003?). The war? It’s going on to this very day and you can look that up on the Internets if you don’t believe us. Certain logistical support companies have enthusiastic annual reports that also substantiate that fact.

Rumsfeld got a lucrative book deal and the blogger? . . . He’ll have to apply for a writing grant from the Nihilism Foundation, if he wants to fulfill his dream of touring the famous auto museums of Germany this summer.

[Note: This columnist used to use the concept of the “Gonzo Journalism Foundation” as the imaginary source for money, but we have to drop that shtick because we have learned that Mrs. Hunter S. Thompson has started the real Gonzo Foundation. Now our new imaginary source for money will be called “The Nihilism Foundation” and let’s hope that’s not a real institution. Is there such a thing as “the Tree-hugger Foundation”?]

The journalists who heartily endorsed the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are still churning out “atta-boy” stories in support of the Bush/Obama war efforts, while liberal bloggers scramble for invitations to the Huffington Post weekly soirees at the publishers house (in O. J.’s old L. A. neighborhood, n’est ce pas?).

Do the children of Reagan Democrats want to become union members who buy a house that goes into foreclosure or do they secretly want to become bankers who own private jets, vacation homes in Tahiti, and have trophy wives while his peeps do the foreclosing paperwork?

Speaking of high rollers, we have learned that one bookie operation in Ireland can not accept bets originating from America on the possibility that the 40-1 long-shot candidate, JEB, will win the next Presidential election. Drat! Are we going to have to schmooze with a certain British Film Critic to get a three day crash pad stay in London, invitation, while on our way to Germany, to make the bet? Stay tuned to this columnist for further developments.

Speaking of Germany is there a bit of archeological irony in the WWII photos of the chaplain holding a “blessing of the bombs” ceremony?

Most Americans know who Hitler and Mussolini were. Can they name the guy who was Pope during WWII? Who was America’s leading clergyman during WWII?

O’Reilly wanted nothing but the highest respect for the war criminal George W. Bush, but he didn’t think all his interruptions of the President of the United States was anything other than a respectful interview in the Edward R.

One final irrelevant interjection: San Francisco columnist Herb Caen often used to point out people who had inappropriate names didn’t fit their jobs, such as a used car salesman named Bob Chetham. As we were completing this column, liberal talk show hostess Stephanie Miller and the mooks were obsessing about names with risqué double meanings. We should direct her attention to a plumber in Santa Monica who was named Dick Shaver.

Our last column probably shot to hell our chances of ever being added to the Huffington Post roster of regular contributors. It’s OK, though. This columnist wouldn’t have cut the mustard. The hypothetical job offer would probably have turned out to be like some of the snappy dialogue Raymond Chandler wrote: “I was fired. For insubordination. I test very high on insubordination, General.”

Now the disk jockey will play both the Beatles and Stones version (the only song recorded by both bands) of “Money (That’s What I Want),” plus “Fools Rush In” and Johnny Cash’s “I’m just an old chunk of coal.” It’s time for us to make like a shepherd and get the flock outta here. Have a “get on board” type week.

February 8, 2011

An Eddie Haskell style joke on bloggers?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:24 pm

Larry Flynt pays his writers well and delivers the checks promptly. He is one boss who doesn’t have disgruntled employees bad mouthing him behind his back. Current and former employees of Larry Flynt Publications always speak well of him. Hugh Hefner made Playboy magazine the highest ranked potential market for freelance writers and also made some remarkable profits with his philosophy about paying generously. Unfortunately, Hefner was so successful at making his magazine an attractive prospect for freelancer writers he had to close down the golden opportunity. Playboy articles are now all done on assignment (according to a reliable source who is a former boss) only basis. Neither freelance query letters nor submissions are accepted.

William Randolph Hearst assembled a remarkably talented posse of writers by offering them more money to work for him than other newspaper publishers could. Hearst was the source of the term “lobster shift” (AKA “lob-shift”) and caused his biographer W. A. Swanberg (Citizen Hearst Bantam Books paperback p-83) to write: “The Examiner office was a madhouse inhabited by talented and erratic young, men drunk with life in a city that never existed before or since. They had a mad boss, one who flung away money, lived like the ruler of a late Empire . . . and cheered them on as they made newspaper history.” Hearst was not a sexist. He did hire a red haired chorus girl, Winifred Sweet, who became a successful reporter.

Republicans, perhaps thanks to the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” believe that they should pay their workers as little as possible for the most amount of work they can ring out of their workers.

Wouldn’t it be funny if a famous conservative made a bet with a wealthy Republican owner of a word plantation that she would do better than get the prols to work cheap? What if she made a bet that she could get writers to clamor for the chance to work for free? She could pose as a liberal, start up something cheap, and then get talented tree-huggers to embrace her “you don’t need a paycheck” response to the idea of paying writers generously by giving them a big audience as an “ego-stroke.” Then to prove that she deserved to win the bet she could sell her publication for a shipload of money and “cry all the way to the bank” with her profit. She could collect on such a hpothetical bet she had just won.

What if her writers were true ballsy Democrats who believed in workers’ rights and they all went on strike during the same week she collected her sales windfall?

What if on the same day they all tuned in something that was in the public domain? Is the “Modest Proposal” essay in the public domain? Come to think of it, a strike did fatally cripple Hearst’s L. A. newspaper.

On the same day the sale was announced, a friend suggested that this columnist could improve the quality of his words if he would spend more time fact-checking and double checking for spelling errors. A good city editor can turn one spelling mistake into a mortifying city room ordeal, but if it takes a goodly amount of time to turn out a contribution to the Internets done in a slap dash fashion, why should any extra time and effort be made? Fox News’ personnel (Is Fox a farm club for the stand up comedian circuit?) are backed by a court decision that says they don’t have to report news that is “true.” If they don’t waste time and money on fact checking, then why should a rogue columnist do it?

It is one thing for a Hunter S. Thompson wannabe to spend some personal funds to go to Fremantle in the W. A. (Western Australia) and spread the Gospel of online Gonzo Journalism, but it is a different thing entirely to see a Berkeley CA based web site owner and operator urge his work for free keystorkers: “We have to go out and work harder for Democrats in the next election cycle.” As Tonto once said; “What do you mean ‘we’ . . . ?” Couldn’t an imaginative writer cook up a wild conspiracy theory about such an order?

We seem to recall an issue of Paul Krassner’s “The Realist” which proclaimed that the Republican and Democratic parties were twins separated at birth. At the time, it sounded absurd to us. It seems we may have had the opportunity to naively question Krassner about that belief in a composing room encounter in the early Seventies, but deadlines are relentless and we didn’t have time to seize that chance. We now believe that Krassner was “spot-on” with that Sixties assertion.

If the next election is a choice between a Reagan Democrat incumbent and JEB, then maybe it’s time to double check and see if we can still cross post our material on Digihitch because the extent of our efforts over the next two years will be along the lines of doing a random bit of voter trend spotting in the automobile museums of Germany. If that doesn’t help Obama very much . . . oh well . . . at least there will be photos in the e-scrapbook to remind the writer when he gets old of just how much fun it was to do the “Europe on 5$ a day” routine in the second half of Obama’s first (and only?) term in office.

This year Germany is celebrating the 125th year of automotive history. Sounds like a fun thing for this columnist to cover. Once, long before we sent our first news tip to Ray Wert, we talked our way into a top rate automobile museum on a day when it was closed. We’d like to think Mr. Hearst would give us a “well done” on that stunt.

W. A. Swanberg (Ibid page 57) wrote that Hearst regarded journalism as: “an enchanted playground in which giants and dragons were to be slain simply for the fun of the thing.” Wouldn’t it be funny if Hunter S. Thompson read that book before choosing journalism for his career?

Yeah, it was great fun the one time we saw our efforts mentioned on Mike’s Blog Report. It made us feel like we might some day get a membership card and bragging rights that we were “in with the ‘in’ crowd,” but it was more fun when Time magazine’s Reagan era White House correspondent entered our apartment in Marina del Rey (many years ago) and exclaimed: “My God, Bob, it is a hovel!” We’ll have to work that moment into our memoirs . . . if we ever get around to finishing that project.

Would it be funny if a TSA employee said “turn your head and cough” during a pat-down?

The Daily Curser used to plug good blog postings. They are long gone, but still listed on a list of other blogs at a certain high profile liberal pundit aggregator site. Did the Cursor ever mention our efforts? What blogger holds the record for “talking shop” with the most winners of a Pulitzer Prize? Is four a good number?

Swanberg succinctly captured the hippie commune non-judgmental democratic atmosphere of a newsroom (Ibid page 70) in one sentence: “The Examiner had drinkers of all categories, moderate, steady, intermittent and inert, and the staff was so flexibly arranged that when a member fell from grace another would take his place without comment.”

[Note: One night in late 1996 we saw Hunter S. Thompson appear at Johnny Depp’s night club on the Sunset Strip. He drank an amber liquid from a whisky bottle for three hours and at the end of the evening he wasn’t showing any of the three symptoms of intoxication, which are: impaired physical dexterity, slurred speech, or incoherent thinking. What up wid dat? Was it a hoax or a miracle?]

Nietzsche wrote: “Nothing succeeds if prankishness plays no part in it.” We have always wondered how that applied to the stodgy Huffington Post or if it was the exception to the rule. Now we know.

Now the disk jockey will play the Doors’ “Show me the way,” “See what the boys in the back room are having,” and “Pour me another tequila, Sheila.” We have to go and try to decipher the inside joke behind the word “Rosebud.” May you have a “Let’s celebrate the $315 million sale with a big party!” type week. This columnist is going to have a glass of A & W. diet root beer and then browse through the travel guide books to Paris (France not Texas) which are available at the Berkeley Public Library – after we check out the latest pro Egyptian student demonstration at Sproul Plaza.

February 7, 2011

What can we do to help?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:22 pm

The world’s laziest journalist approached Super Bowl XLV with great trepidation not just because the Super Bowls haven’t been as good since the days when Broadway Joe pulled a magnificent upset, but also because of a great sense of shame because the American Journalism community, which would flock to cover an earthquake in Indonesia and would send as many reporters to New Orleans as there were soldiers on the Normandy Beaches, doesn’t seem capable of running a blurb about the recent monsoon disaster in Australia.

Suppose the Australians have a Spartan’s pride and need help but can’t bring themselves to ask for a helping hand? Shouldn’t American Journalism be covering the devastation story as well as they are attempting to cover the crisis in Egypt?

The United States should be asking “What can we do to help?” Let’s not wait to be asked. America’s strongest ally shouldn’t have to ask for help. It should be being offered right now.

Australia loved Oprah. Isn’t she retired or retiring? Couldn’t she make an attempt to be the catalyst for an instant benefit concert and thereby show some love in return?

Do you think that if Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, and Mel “Mr. Road Warrior” Gibson (Maybe we should put Hugh Jackman’s or Cate Blanchett’s name in here, rather than reference the bad boy out in the ‘bu?) asked some musicians to perform one song, they’d get some positive responses? Isn’t Australia a farm club for Hollywood? (Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know that Crowe was born in kiwi land. His apartment is in the Wilamaloo section of Sydney [rather close to Harry’s on Wheels hot dog stand] and his production company office is [?] in Santa Monica.)

Do you know what the official name of Australia’s Border Patrol is? It’s called The Coast Guard and they use boats not horses and SUV’s. Dude, is there any country in the world with more beaches? If he were alive wouldn’t Patrick Swayze, who played Bodie – the ultimate surfer – in the movie “Point Break,” (Where is Bell’s Beach?) lend his name to an Aussie Aid Benefit Concert?

After British Prime Minister Winston Churchill offended Australians, during WWII, by insisting that they send Australian troops to defend the Suez Canal (the British Navy needed the oil that traveled through that strategic bit of geography), Americans won a considerable amount of gratitude when they won the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway and saved Australia from a planned Japanese Invasion.

The threat was so real that the Australian government officials worked on the details of a potential surrender negotiations. They were ready to sign a peace treaty that would have let the Japanese occupy most of the Northern half of the island continent.

During 1943, the Thomas Y. Crowell Company published a book by Corporal Thomas R. St. George, titled “c/o Postmaster,” which was a humorous look at the story of a Yank who was shipped off to Australia and sat there at a remote post in Australia laughing about the SNAFU. Reading that book after learning the importance of the early battles in the Pacific during WWII, while visiting the War Museum in Canberra, it is obvious that for generals expecting a Japanese Invasion, it was a wise strategic deployment of allies’ troops and not a paperwork blunder. Expectations of an impending Japanese invasion were best kept secret from America’s civilians.

Writers are always striving to convey a sense of place and so perhaps we can inject a few words here that illustrate how Australia today is comparable to the United States in the “Wild West” phase of its history. On a bright December morning, in 2008, after nighttime noise in the hallway of a hostel in Kalgoorlie indicated that an altercation had occurred, two of the fellows, who were good friends, were suspected of being the ones who had the scuffle. They looked “pretty beat-up” but both the Falcon and the Bishop would only respond to inquiries about the noisy encounter by saying: “I don’t know what you are talking about!” What made folks think it was those two good friends who had the fight?

If you go to Google News and scroll down to the links for other news pages, the one for Australia will deliver a much clearer indication of the recent disaster than you can find in/on American news media. Whatsamatta Rupert Murdrock? Is he also using the stoical “I don’t know what you are talking about” Aussie macho pose? Or is he more interested in helping a certain potential Republican Presidential Candidate by keeping America’s attention focused on the Egyptian Crisis rather than Obama’s domestic agenda?

The great Greek humorist Plato once predicted that someday every man would be sitting in his hovel looking at his computer screen thinking that he (OK- or she) was accurately perceiving the world outside the 99th floor of his block. So it is that most Americans spent Sunday, February 06, 2011, worrying about the entertainment value of a Super Bowl without Joe Namath rather than checking up on the news from America’s closest Ally.

Australia has sent troops to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. What the hell does the tribal bickering in two far away countries (one is completely landlocked and the other almost is) have to do with the welfare of the island nation that is famous for koala bears and kangaroos? The reason they are there is because the US said they need them and friends don’t balk when they are asked to help. Shouldn’t that be a “two way street”?

Speaking of conspiracy theories from insane bloggers, this might be a good time to slip in the question: “Where was Felix Rodriguez on the day Australian PM Harold Holt went for his last swim?” (We don’t think that certain files in Langley will ever be released by a Freedom of Information request.)

Here’s another almost incomprehensible full of bits of arcane, obtuse, and esoteric material that baffles teabagging trolls. This columnist is a big fan of the guy who does the Brad Blog and fills in for Mike Malloy on his radio program when he is sick or on vacation, but (there’s always a “but” in these columns, eh?) we would love to see/hear what would happen if one of Malloy’s most popular callers, an Australian called “Blue,” would be ever get the call to come in and substitute for Malloy. It seems to this listener that Blue would provoke Rush, O’Reilly, Hannity and a few regular liberal listeners more than Ann Coulter ever upset the liberals.

When the Internets opened and the pioneer bloggers wanted to “go beyond the black stump,” the most optimistic declared that perhaps the fad would generate some “unique voices.” Others feared it would limp along and eventually devolve into a homecoming/prom king popularity contest that would mirror the ratings races of the major media.

Gentle reader, please, if you agree with this columnist’s suggestion that an effort to send monsoon cleanup money and aid to Australia should be made, please send the link for this page to all your posse and suggest that they do what they can to increase a grass roots effort to hold an Aussie Aid Benefit Concert. They have also had a drought and a previous big fire, so maybe they deserve a good will gesture?

It’s obvious that it would be better to “go along to get along” and echo the daily cause and join the chorus in an internet version of the chase sequence in “Lady from Shanghai” rather than persisting in an attempt to follow Longfellow’s “I shot a column into the ether world . . .” example, but it kindda looks like the Crisis in Egypt is now so last week, why waste the time and energy doing a column that’s “a day late and a dollar short”?

Didn’t the lady who just sold her news aggregator site for $315 million, once say that bloggers don’t need to be paid? Were Murrrow’s boys in the union and getting union scale? Was Ernie Pyle in the guild? Will any bloggers see one penny of the proceeds from that sale? Isn’t the Ayn Rand philosophy of life so profitable? We digress.

The other day while walking among ghosts on Spoul Plaza, this columnist was approached by a young lady who asked: “Do you like vaginas?” It turns out that she was promoting a production of “The Vagina Monologues,” which will be held February 10, 11, and 12 at UC Berkeley. Can you just imagine her doing that in Australia?

In the book mentioned above, Corporal St. George, as he prepared to leave Australia and finally go to a combat zone, described it thus: “I amused myself with some morbid guesses on who, of these men in our truck, would be the first to “go.” Some online searches indicate he lived through the war, married an American nurse he met while stationed in Australia, and became a newspaper man in the Mid-West.

Now the disk jockey will play “Waltzing Matilda,” “A pub with no beer,” and “Dirty deeds done dirt cheap” (did you catch that bit about obscure and esoteric references?). We have to go find a news story about the fires near Perth. Have “Mad Max” type week.

February 5, 2011

Not again?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:30 pm

[Note: for this one column, the writer will forego the pose of being “the World’s Laziest Journalist” and use traditional debating form to address a possible explanation of the events in Egypt, which has seemed to stymie both liberal and conservative pundits.]

In 1980, the Republicans conspired with radical Muslims to use the Iranian hostages as pawns in the Presidential Election process, so it isn’t inconceivable that some Republicans might stoop that low again for the same reason. It could it even be that the same Republicans who negotiated with the Iranians for the release of the American hostages are again using stealth deals to influence American politics. Didn’t the Republicans use agreements with Muslim extremists to get the money to use in the Iran-Contra deal? Was that ever fully investigated beyond the level of sending some low level intermediaries to jail? Who gave the marching orders to those intermediaries?

Who were the Americans who worked out the details for clandestine money and weapons, in the late Eighties (?), to help the Afghan rebels repulse the Russian invasion? Since the White House was occupied by Republicans from 1980 to 1992, you don’t think they let any Democrats play a substantial role in that caper, do you?

What prominent American political family is known for its political ties to the House of Saud in Arabia? Who are the workers who help maintain that cozy relationship?

Did Republicans working on the Policy for a New American Century (PNAC) project express a hope for a “new Pearl Harbor” during the Clinton Administration? Did some such invigorating and inspiring event eventually take place and deliver a unified country into the hands of the people who expressed that wish?

Did George W. Bush use a photo-op moment to make a solemn pledge to the American people to deliver justice to Osama bin Laden (a member of a family that like his own was heavily involved in the Carlyle Group)? Did George W. Bush’s military make a deal with local Muslims to apprehend the culprit and didn’t that bit of delegating authoritiy “inadvertently” let the fellow slip into oblivion that all the best CIA efforts can’t penetrate?

Would there be enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that a deal was made to let the fugitive escape in return for a promise that no further terrorist attacks would be made inside the USA while the Bush family was in the Oval Office?

Was a heavy emphasis placed on the principle of spreading democracy to explain the need for sending the United States military forces into both Afghanistan and Iraq?

In the early phase of the coverage of the unrest in Egypt didn’t some reports say that the protesters might have been coordinated on the Internets with help from some CIA controlled personnel?

When “Departure Day” arrived in Egypt, was there any possible outcome which would bolster President Obama’s chances for reelection?

Events in Egypt had put the Democrats in a box canyon ambush situation because they can’t say that Bush was prescient about the invasion of Iraq causing a large increase in demands from Muslims for democracy in their home countries, they can’t say that the charges that the USA is an imperialistic country meddling in the internal affairs of another country aren’t true, and they sure as heck can’t say Obama looks ineffectual and impotent because that would sound like they were making the Republican talking points to be used in the next Presidential election.

Who stands to gain from the current crisis situation?

Consider this: If a Republican is elected in 2012, won’t most pundits point to this week’s events in Egypt as the turning point and say that from then on, Obama was doomed to be a one term President? No matter what happens now in Egypt, can’t all Republicans say that Obama botched things just as Jimmy Carter did with the Iranian Hostage Crisis? Won’t the Republicans be very happy to say that, thanks to the ruling on Health care by a Reagan appointed judge and the fiasco in Egypt, Obama’s record was a null set?

Now let’s ask another question: Who had more sway with the CIA; a former Senator who hadn’t served one full term or a family with two former Presidents (one of whom was a former CIA director) and a viable candidate in the next election?

Who has more clout in the Muslim world: A family that has close financial ties with the House of Saud and the bin Laden family or a protégée of Henry Kissinger? (Didn’t Obama’s mother work with Henry the K? Didn’t Kissinger help the young Mr. Obama get a job out in Chicago?)

The conservatives have two ways to refute this hypothetical explanation for recent events in Egypt: they can assume that they can just ignore a rogue pundit who isn’t a member of the “in crowd” of liberal bloggers and that his latest column will not be noticed even by members of his own posse or they can use the standard political response of an ad hominem rebuttal. If Charles Manson wrote this column, debating referees would have to consider the information in the column for use in marking their score cards and not be swayed by any effort to sidetrack their judgment on to the topic of the personality of the writer.

To either method, this columnist would respond: Use the Occam’s Razor line of reasoning to evaluate the hypothetical explanation suggested in this column and what do you get? Is there any other viable explanation of the Crisis in Egypt?

All the TV personalities seem to by stumped by the events in Egypt. Isn’t there a line in a popular song that imagines a fellow who spends his entire life locked up in chains only to find that he has held the key in his hand all the time?

This columnist will return to the role of the happy-go-lucky Irish guy soon with a column that asks: If Australia has stood shoulder to shoulder with the USA every time it has gone to war (i.e. they have sent their troops to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan) shouldn’t somebody (in the mainstream media or the “in crowd” of bloggers) be suggesting ways to help Australia recover from the recent storm devastation? If America can quickly arrange benefit concerts for Bangladesh, AIDS, American Farm AID, the September 11th attack, the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami, and the Hurricane Katrina disaster, then shouldn’t they also be able to make some kind of gesture of solidarity with the Aussies, now?

Until then, enjoy your Super Bowl XLV party and don’t worry about Mubarak.

February 3, 2011

Rememboring the Berkeley Barb (and other underground newspapers)

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:33 pm

Seeing a copy of Smoking Typewriters (by John McMillan Oxford University Press Copyright 2011) for sale over the weekend, inspired us to see if the Berkeley Public Library had that book available in its new releases section because we were curious about how far one would have to delve into it before encountering any reference to the Berkeley Barb. When we learned that the Library would be glad to take a suggestion that they acquire that particular work, we sped back to Moe’s Book Store on Telegraph Ave. and overcame the cheapskate aspect of our personality and bought a copy of the new book with the subtitle: “The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America.”

The Introduction compared and contrasted the coverage of the Rolling Stones free concert at Altamont which had appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Berkeley Barb. The Barb was mentioned in the first sentence.

Since the Chronicle was the flagship of William R. Hearst’s newspaper empire and the Barb was one of the first “underground” newspapers, the corporate viewpoint was very different from the work in the publication driven by the drive towards profits than was the reportage found in the alternative news source.

The basic business philosophy of those two publications was as different as that of Fox News and this website. It’s as if it is just a matter of history to see that the official government endorsed view of reality is engineered to perpetually spawn a market for media which was designed to subvert the distortion of reality by the unscrupulous businessmen hoping to curry favor from the politicians.

The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and their Port Huron Statement is credited with being the source of inspiration for the underground press movement. The Village Voice and Paul Krasner’s magazine, The Realist are acknowledged to be the prototypes from the Fifties for the underground newspaper movement of the Sixties. Passing mention is made of the role underground newspapers played during the German occupation of Paris (France, not Texas).

McMillan takes a close look at the stories about the start of the Los Angeles Free Press, and the Paper in the East Lancing Michigan area near Michigan State University (MSU), and the Rag in Austin Texas. The author itemizes numerous parallels and ties between the Paper and events in Berkeley CA.

In chapter three, McMillan looks at Berkeley’s association with a widespread belief in the late Sixties that smoking dried banana skins was just as important to enthusiasts of psychedelic experimentation as was the dreaded marijuana plant that spawned a nation wide panic over the concern that the youth of America were risking falling into the life of a drug fiend just for a few momentary feelings of elation called “highs” or “kicks.”

McMillan, in a book that is heavily annotated with scholarly references to provide a lifetime of work for at-home fact checkers, cavalierly quotes numerous efforts by the underground press to substantiate and validate the urban legend that the peels of the tropical fruit could, if dried and smokes like tobacco, produce a transitory feeling of bliss known as “Mellow Yellow.” In every case, the road test was declared to substantiate the claim, but then McMillan notes that the FDA declared the belief to be a “hoax.” He undercuts the work of the government agency by injecting an unverifiable line from a contemporary stage play that asks: “Now do you think a responsible government agency would mislead the American public?” McMillan doesn’t include the words “nudge nudge wink wink,” but he ignores the strong possibility that he may be responsible for possibly causing a number of young and gullible readers to jump to the conclusion that the “hoax” explanation was itself the real hoax and thus subsequently lures them into a “don’t try this at home” bit of fact checking.

Chapter four, which details the rise of the Liberation News Service (LNS) indirectly focus on Berkeley because the organization, which came to sudden prominence in the journalism industry because of its coverage of both the “Battle of the Pentagon,” which started on October 21, 1967 and the week long student strike at Columbia which erupted spontaneously on April 23, 1968, had one of its first three teletype machines in Berkeley, when the organization started using them in February of 1968 (page 103).

Since the students didn’t permit reporters from Establishment media into the building, journalism student Steve Diamond was one of the LNS personnel who acted as a human news wire network between the various occupied buildings and got a unique perspective on the evolving events. Diamond is quoted (page 114) as saying in September of 1968: “We’ve educated a generation that no longer buys or needs daily newspapers.” Isn’t that sentiment being echoed these days on the Internets?

The lively and entertaining events that occurred when the staff of the Berkeley Barb revolted and formed the nucleus of a rival publication that came to be called The Berkeley Tribe were glossed over quickly on page 122 and again in Chapter 6’s footnote no. 84 on page 239.

[Personal note: This reviewer, while covering a 2010 story, in Berkeley CA, of the cripple peoples’ rights protest known as “Arnieville,” heard a recounting of that bit of underground newspaper history and is of the opinion that that facet of the topic at least deserved a longer and more conspicuous place in the book’s main body of text. We learned later in the book that the squabbling at a fictional underground newspaper, the Back Bay Mainline, was the basis for the 1977 film Between the Lines, which was set in the Boston area.]

McMillan quotes Bob Woodward’s 1974 assessment of the situation: “The underground press was largely right about government sabotage but the country didn’t get upset because it was the left that was sabotaged.”

The chapter about the power struggles in the editorial offices across the USA ends with the transcription of Thomas Forcade’s statement presented to a Congressional hearing on May 13, 1970. The words would be a hilarious blast from the past if the subtle implications of the move to impose “net neutrality” were only a figment of the imaginations of the conspiracy theory lunatics.

For the underground press, the question of “who decides” was a matter of basic philosophy. Their debate established once and for all that no topic was off limits in a free press. Internet sites would later make the one essential exception for conspiracy theories, but essentially continued the “no holds barred” philosophy established in the Sixties.

The Liberation News Service, as the summer of 1968 drew to a close, split into two rival factions. One wanted to move the headquarters to a farm in Vermont and the other thought that staying in the country’s media hub in New York City made sense. The events that followed sound like the scenario for a Three Stooges episode. The press was hijacked and a late night confrontation at the farm had ominous potential endings.

It was the high water mark for the underground press phase of American Journalism. The Seventies saw the emergence of the “alt” era of the newspaper business.

In the book’s Afterword, McMillan points out the similarities and parallels between the Sixties underground newspaper fad and the new trend of writers expressing themselves via blogging, which raises the question: Will future media scholars write books about the early days of the Internets? McMillan’s book will leave hippies asking this question: “Other than new labels and slogans for old issues, does anything really change from one generation to the next?”

For someone who can remember getting details of the shooting of James Rector from copies of the Berkeley Barb that were “hot off the press,” and who remembers the opportunity for catching a free Stones concert at Altamont as being an invitation to participate in a traffic jam of historic proportions, reading McMillan’s book was an enjoyable preliminary means for gathering material for a new column, but as to the readability appeal of this book for someone who hadn’t yet been born when Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey for the right to a free squat in the White House, we’ll let you know if a friend in Concordia thinks about it if they send us a review after we send them our personal copy of this new book from Oxford University Press.

It is apparent that the lessons learned in America during the Sixties about gaining control of unruly mobs are well known in Cairo today.

(We are relatively certain that any Berkeley citizen who still has copies of the Berkeley Barb among the material in their personal archives will like this book.)

On page 76 McMillan quotes the editor of the Barb, Max Sherr, as saying: “We’d plant small articles in the paper saying ‘There’s a rumor that something is going to happen on Telegraph Avenue Friday at two o’clock.’ So people would show up on Friday to see what would happen, someone would say, ‘Hey, let’s close off the street,’ and something would happen.”

Now the disk jockey will play Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow,” Harry Belefonte’s “Banana boat” song, and Country Joe McDonald’s “Fixin’ to Die Rag.” We have to go over to San Francisco to check out an event that is being called a Neal Cassidy birthday party. Have a “groovy” week.

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