During the last half of the 1930’s, Europe was flooded with journalists from America, who were being paid to report on the ominous developments that indicated a trend towards fascism was occurring, and they, subsequently, became the subject for a trend spotting item for historians to unearth. Concurrently radio was in its Golden Age stage and Hollywood was about to release the movies that marked the high water mark. Critics agree that the films receiving Oscar™ nominations for 1939 were a remarkable collection of excellent movies that has never been equaled in the following years.
What makes 2013 different from 1939? How good is radio these days? In typical Irish style we’ll answer that question with another question: Was there more or less political propaganda on radio in Germany in 1939 or in the USA today? In the late Thirties in Germany, citizens caught listening to foreign radio stations were dealt with in a very severe manner. Why doesn’t the app that lets Americans listen to American radio stations on their cell phone let them listen to foreign origin radio stations?
Have the movies gotten better? An obsession with maintaining political correctness while attracting the largest possible number of paid admissions has rendered cinema moribund. How many Ten Best lists included “Killer Joe”? Is regimented thinking a bad symptom in a country that was founded on the principle of freedom of speech? Ja,wohl!
How much demand for foreign correspondents is manifest in American Journalism today?
CBS had a list of foreign correspondents in Europe in the Fifties that was on the “all star” level. Today about the only foreign correspondent working in Europe that we can name is Silvia Paggioli and she works for NPR.
Do the students attending college this year have any idea who Gerda Taro was let alone consider her a woman’s lib role model?
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat history but what happens when the young generation is discouraged from learning history at all?
Back when LBJ was in the White House, the current issue of the French language magazine Paris Match was sold on the newsstand in the PanAm building each week. (Where?) Recently Al Jazeera bought Current TV as a way of gaining entrée into the American media market. So far the response seems to be a cold shoulder reception. Copies of Paris Match are available in Berkeley Public Library each week, but due to postal delivery the latest issue may be a tad outdated.
Are foreign language magazines (and points of view) a superfluous, unnecessary expenditure in a country that has renamed French Fries as Freedom Fries? Has Freedom of Speech become an expensive, useless luxury in a time of austerity budgets?
Yes, you can use your Interenets connection to read foreign language web sites if you can read and understand sites using foreign languages or can fiddle with the “translate this page” option, but the few that do can easily be dismissed as unpatriotic conspiracy theory nuts.
Reportage in Washington has become a breathless scramble for spin rendering journalism into a copy of coverage of Hollywood luminaries. When was the last time you encountered news using the phrase “an investigation has revealed” rather than “according to a reliable source”?
Rogue pundits out in the boondocks have as much chance of uncovering a scoop as do the members of the in crowd in D. C. Neither group is going to get anything but announcements and news releases because everything that happens now in D. C. happens behind closed doors and journalists sit back and wait for the official press release to be delivered to their desk.
While the World’s Laziest Journalist was in the process of writing this column, we encountered a used copy of James Fallows’ 1996 book “Breaking the News (How the Media Undermine American Democracy)” for fifty cents. We have read that book before but our copy of it is still out on loan somewhere in the San Francisco Bay area so we bought a new used copy to refresh our memory.
If well educated Americans didn’t heed Fallows’ 1996 warning what would be the use for this columnist to finish writing this column in early 2013? On a cold day with rain in the forecast for Berkeley CA, it boils down to a line from “Rebel without a Cause:” “We gotta do something.”
On page 74, Fallows starts off chapter three by saying: “Any reporter born before 1965 did not go into journalism for the money.”
Was he trying to imply that Robert Capa got his self kilt for altruistic reasons?
Could stories about how the small coalition of military, bureaucrats, police, and clergy in Spain, who tamped down the demands for better condition from the farmers and workers in the mid Thirties, be a warning to the protesters wearing Guy Falk masks to the Occupy events?
Isn’t it enough for Fox News to run a quote from the President saying that holding the debt ceiling hostage won’t be tolerated and a quote from John Boner (from the codpiece party) saying “We’ll see about that!”? Isn’t that a marvelous example of fair and balanced journalism? Aren’t the buttinskis who inject any commentary way out of line?
Do the liberal pundits think that Americans have to be told that if an order doesn’t carry an implied threat, it is useless? If a fellow receives an order from a boss, a sergeant in the Army, or his girlfriend there is an implied threat behind the order. If you don’t follow the boss’ order; you will be fired. If you don’t follow the sergeants’ orders you won’t get a weekend pass. If you don’t follow a girlfriends’ orders . . . something bad will happen.
When a kid delivers an ultimatum and indicates that if the threat isn’t accepted, he will eat worms how much gravitas does it carry? How much serious consideration does it inspire? If the Republicans hold the debt ceiling hostage, will President Obama hold a press conference and eat worms?
If America has a debt crisis on Super Bowl weekend (or thereabouts) will anybody care? Will the Yankees finally win Super Bowl rings? Can the Super Bowl and Oscar™ events be compared to a chance to dance to “our song” on the Titanic?
Is Jim Morrison’s wish to see anarchy reign supreme in America about to be granted?
Recent news reports indicate that there may have been as many as 400,000 unjustified home foreclosures. (How many foreclosed homes were owned by journalists?) Does that upset journalists? Fallows quotes Michael Kinsley, of Crossfire, as saying: “Being paid more than you are worth is the American dream.”
Now the disk jockey will play “Born to lose,” Iggy Pop’s “I wanna be your dog,” and Frank Zappa’s “It can’t happen here.” We have to go see about joining the SF Press Club. Have a “the check is in the mail” type week.
Blonds, Bourbon, and Bullets
Robert Capa stepped on a land mine in French Indo China (AKA Vietnam) sixty years ago on May 25, 1954 and these two new books will help remind older readers of why Hemingway and Capa earned places in the War Correspondents Hall of Fame and explains to younger readers why the two are held is such high esteem by a new generation of wannabes.
The two new books work better in tandem much like Rudolph Nureyev and Dame Margot Fontaine were good dancers but weren’t they so much better when they danced together?
The naggingest question about the Spanish Civil War was (and still is): “Why don’t the Americans help us?” It runs through the book as a leitmotif. If Americans are so damn adamant about the superiority of the democratic way of governance, why did they quietly stand by and let a fascist military leader win?
Could it be that the one percent in the USA in the mid Thirties was convinced that via the concept of “interline courtesy” they owed their real allegiance to Spain’s one percent and that mouthing platitudes about “the people” was just a necessary bit of public relations that had nothing to do with the binary choice between fascism and communism?
Reading “Hotel Florida” makes asking the question “Why didn’t the Occupy movement succeed?” an exercise in delusional optimism.
Vaill paints a vivid word picture of Capa taking some photos of Taro while she sleeps. A tender vignette in the midst of the unfolding tsunami of carnage is a commendable writer’s feat, but it is also very handy to flip to page 65 in the “Paris Years” book and actually see one of the frames Capa shot.
The theme of war as a crucible for love is also explored in the recently published “The Love-charm of bombs,” by Laura Feigel, which follows the intertwined sagas of several couples in London, during the Battle of Britain at the start of WWII.
“What Soldiers Do (Sex and the American G. I. in World War II Farnce),” by Mary Louise Roberts, asserts that part of the process of getting the soldiers psyched up to face enemy fire on the beaches of Normandy was to use the promise of earthly delights that awaited the ones who would liberate Paris.
“Love, Sex and War (1939 – 1940),” by John Costello takes a scholarly approach to the premise that during war members of the clergy turn a blind eye towards fornication and adultery as a way of enlisting the rubes into being enthusiastic about fighting (and perhaps dying in) wars for the benefit of a nation’s one percent elite. This book was published by Pan Books of London and may not have had much of an effect on public sentiment in the USA about the possibility that cannon fodder is not a high priority concern when war is in the offing for the One Percenters.
“The Hotel on Place Vendôme,” by Tilar J. Mazzeo” includes the same cast, the same setting (a famous hotel) but a different city. Paris instead of Madrid.
“We Saw It Happen (the news behind the news that’s fit to print),” edited by Hanson W. Baldwin and Shepard Stone (the 1939 book from Simon & Schuster) is a surfeit of stogy and stultifying material that inadvertently makes the subtle point that it is better if the men and women who will fight, photograph, and report a war, have some jolly good times before they keep their appointment in Samara.
Hemingway, Gellhorn, Capa, and Gerda Taro did make it seem like the good times at the Hotel Florida were the war time journalists’ equivalent of the legendary exploits of the entertainers who were the rat pack in Las Vegas.
Vaill reports that Hemingway’s employer the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) was rather displeased with the first-person boasting aspects of the dispatches that Hemingway provided but that brings up a tantalizing question for literary scholars: Was Hemingway a prototype for the Gonzo Journalism trend in the Sixties?
Those who become obsessed with the Gellhorn and Heminway affair might also want to read “Gellhorn (A Twentieth-Century Life),” by Caroline Moorehead.
“Robert Capa (a Biography),” by Richard Whelan provides supplemental proof that Capa was a fearless, loveable rascal.
“The Hemingway Hoax,” by Joe Haldeman, will inspire some intricate Hemingway fan reactions. Why wouldn’t the World’s Laziest Journalist admire a book about counterfeiting Hemingway manuscripts?
George Orwell (nee Eric Blair) wrote “Homage to Catalonia,” which tells the story of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War as a volunteer soldier battling against fascism. It seems that Orwell didn’t enjoy enduring hardship and deprivation and then getting wounded for altruistic reasons. Hemingway makes it all sound like jolly good fun.
“The Women Who Wrote the War,” by Nancy Caldwell Sorel, provides a wide angle look at the niche topic of women as war correspondents. Why hasn’t a biographical film been made about the life and times of Dickey Chapelle? When Virginia Cowles was assigned to cover the Spanish Civil War, she packed only high-heeled shoes in her luggage. That was (to use Harry Lime’s term): “unwise.”
“Ernie’s War (The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches),” edited by David Nichols, shows just how different the war looked to the folks in the 99%, who had to cope with rationing, wounded veterans, and such. Of particular relevance is the dispatch titled “The Horrible Waste of War,” which starts on page 280.
Martha Gellhorn and Robert Capa both landed on the beach on D-Day (soon to mark the seventieth anniversary) while bureaucratic snafus caused Hemingway and Pyle to arrive a day or two late.
The 34th annual Hemingway Days Festival, which will be held in Key West Florida from July 15 to 20 this year, will feature a Hemingway-look-alike contest. Perhaps this year they should add a search for doubles for Martha Gellhorn and Robert Capa?
The “Hotel Florida” book has leaped on to our top ten list of favorite books of, by, and about Hemingway and real fans of his won’t need a recommendation from the World’s Laziest Journalist to be inspired to buy and read this book.
Trend-spotting reporters at the publication affectionately known as “the Great Gray Lady,” may want to skim through some of the other books listed above and suggest doing a feature story about the possibility that some people do find that war can be a “turn-on.”
Elliot V. Bell, on page 136 of “We saw it happen,” wrote: “Almost without exception the big bankers are the sort of fellows you’d be glad to take along on a trip to your favorite trout stream.” Just like the folks who died or were wounded in Iran and Afghanistan would have loved to have had George W. Bush attend their tailgate parties?
The disk jockey will play the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Civil War” and a song titled “No Pasaran.” We have to go see the film “Words and Pictures.” Have a “rebarbative” type week.