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December 6, 2013

Big Brother and the end of Liberal talk radio

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:21 pm

A two pound dog provides an image symbolizing Liberal Talk radio.

LIFE magazine would be the logical source for some classic photos of the attack on Pearl Harbor which occurred 73 years ago Saturday, but for a writer starting out to accomplish that chore on the day before that column is scheduled to be posted is an impossible assignment.  Time magazine and the New York Times newspaper both have staff members who are employed full time to handle such editorial needs but if an online pundit notices on Thursday, December 05, 2013, that the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor is a timely topic, it is too late to try to get permission to use a historic photo of that event.  Devoting an entire column to the “inside baseball” aspect of the task would run a high risk of boring readers and that provides an example of how and why the concept of “citizen journalist” is a red herring for those who want to reassure the general public that an alternative source for news is being formed in the realm of pop culture.

Ideally, glitzy photos accompanying a thoroughly fact checked article that has been quickly produced is possible on a one time basis but logistically doing that consistently  is like saying that a football quarterback can play an entire game with two minute drill intensity.

Initially when the Internet was in the formative stage, expectations were expressed that the new form of communication would spawn strong unique voices that would help provide citizens with the information they need to make competent choices when the elections are held.  The ideal of a rugged individual who can turn in a championship performance makes for the basic material of a wide variety of examples of urban legends such as the movie “Rocky,” and others of that ilk.

The fact that a lone wolf journalist isn’t going to consistently land interviews with the news making politicians is something that average reader won’t consider.  Then when a TV network shows a President’s wife answering a question put to the President, most folks won’t stop to think that there is some heavy duty game playing going on off camera.

An online pundit who points out that the sound byte provides an example of subconscious image building (or destroying?) that indicates the President is an example of the “hen pecked” syndrome will go as unnoticed as the sounds of a tree falling in the remote wilderness.  So why bother?

At 0600 hours on a Sunday morning, there isn’t much happening in Berkeley and running off to San Francisco isn’t usually going to provide a much greater smorgasbord of interesting diversions, so why bother?  It is, however, a good time to write a rough draft of the next scheduled column, if the writer has scoured the media and, on the preceding day, visited San Francisco looking for tidbits of information.

Why spend the time and money to go to looking for items in a column?

Do readers in London, Kalgoorlie (in Western Australia), and Concordia Kansas really care about a trend spotting item about the pizza at the Golden Boy bar in San Francisco?  Didn’t someone from Oakland land in Bartlett’s for saying “A trend, is a trend, is a trend!” or something quite similar?

The décor in the Golden Boy is heavy with slap art and it would take a considerable amount of work to expand that topic into column length but if we use it as an item, perhaps the assignment desk at the New York Times features desk will be inspired to assign that topic to one of the available writers and then we’ll just need to find and read the article to learn all about slap art.

Cold winter’s nights in Berkeley are an excellent time to read the classic novels that were assigned reading in high school and college many moons ago.  We might get a good column if we complete our reading of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.”  We fully intend on writing a column as a review of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” when we finish reading it.

On Thursday December 5, 2013, another aspect of the pathetic plight of the citizen journalist became apparent when it was announced that the supply of Liberal voices on the radio was being considerably diminished.

Is an online pundit criticizing Compassionate Conservative Christian propaganda on hundreds of radio stations a fair fight?  Did anybody bet on the rebels holding off the Mexican army in the Alamo or was that situation so lopsided that the bookies declined any attempt to make such a long shot wager?

Many moons ago the World’s Laziest Journalist facetiously suggested that eventually the effort to present the Liberal point of view on radio for Americans would eventually lead to a modern pundit doing a Wolfman Jack style of “voice in the wilderness” program on a very powerful signal being broadcast from outside the USA.  Our reasoning was that it did happen in Germany in the Thirties and it would happen again in the USA eventually.

If a fellow happens to be a digital hermit living in a pad without Internet access how will he be able to monitor Liberal radio?  It ain’t gonna happen.

We could still write about news that intrigues us such as the possibility that Tom Cruise will play Carroll Shelby in film to be title “Drive like Hell.”

We could write a column that features a “Twilight Zone” fan reading some forbidden Liberal Punditry about the Republican long range game plan and mutters:  “It’s a cookbook!”

We could (maybe) find a two pound dog and use an image of that beast to symbolize Progressive Talk in the dog eat dog world of the contemporary scene on the radio dial.

There was a comedian back in the day who did a routine speculating about what would happen if the only rule parents gave to their kids was:  “Don’t put beans in your ear.”  Maybe Liberal talk show hosts should hawk T-shirts advising:  “Don’t put clandestine radio ear candy in your brain!” and watch their ratings soar.

When will the Republicans learn the lesson Rev. Gene Scott taught the audience in L. A.  Shouldn’t some forward thinking radio station be using the old “Best of” trick to broadcast Rush Limbaugh 24/7 every day of the year?

Watching Progressive Talk radio do the Cheshire Cat disappearing act, we are reminded of the last two sentences in “1984:”  “He had won the victory over himself.  He loved Big Brother.”

Now the disk jockey will play Dave Van Ronk’s “Romping through the Swamp,” Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane,” and Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “The Cruel War.”  We have to go to a hootenanny.  Have a “Kumbaya” type week.

November 27, 2013

Remember Quality Journalism?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:23 pm

Watching the ABC TV news program on Tuesday November 26, 2013, it seemed like it was time to do yet another column about how Journalism is doing the Cheshire Cat disappearing act in the USA.  Their lead story was about the fact that a new snowstorm was snarling Thanksgiving Day traffic on the East Coast.  We just couldn’t picture Edward R. Murrow picking that weather item as being the lead story of the day.

Recently we have heard ads on KCBS, the all news all the time AM radio station in San Francisco, featuring the voices of some of their reporters.  We couldn’t imagine Murrow endorsing the idea of a journalist doing a commercial.  Isn’t that called “crossing the craft”?

ABC followed with a brief item about using birth control pills as a basis for yet another way to give the United States Supreme Court a second chance to veto the Obamacare legislation.

Where were the compassionate Christian conservatives when some Native Americans wanted a legal basis for declaring their use of peyote was a religious right?  Did any news organization do a sidebar story about the peyote dispute?

Some time ago, in Los Angeles, a man and a woman tried to establish a church that held that sex was a religious experience.  The police and the politicians teamed up to put a quick end to that issue using the laws against prostitution as a way of keeping society under strict control of the one percent.

Next, ABC ran a story saying that the Black Friday bargains might not be a real true bargain!  Stop the press!  There was a common saying (folk wisdom?) in Los Angeles that maintained there would be T-day weekend sales in Beverly Hills.  The punch line was:  “Yeah, everything will be marked down to retail price!”

Also on Tuesday, we encountered an axiom that advised that birds born in a cage thin k flying is an illness.  Do people who have read Ayn Rand and watch Fox News know who Murrow’s Boys were and what they did?

When Sunday night rolls around and folks head back home will the inevitable stories about the weekend box office take for the movie industry put the figures in context?  If a bargain matinee ticket in San Francisco cost about $8 and a film grosses $16,000,000 this weekend, does that mean that more people saw it than went to see “Gone With the Wind” on its first weekend of release?  If the price of admission soared to a half a buck and if (just for the sake of comparison) it did the same dollar amount of business its first weekend or release, wouldn’t that mean that 32 million people went and saw Rhett and Scarlet do their emoting?

A white Christmas in Australia would be a headline event because, since the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, the traditional way of celebrating Christmas down under is in your bathing suit on the beach (nice movie title?).

As we recall, on Thanksgiving Day in 1971, Scranton Pa. received 24 inches of snow.

Wasn’t that the same time that a guy, called D. B. Cooper, with a parachute and a bundle of money made headlines?

Are the reporters in the USA, who work on trend-spotting stories, just about to discover Parkour?  Can you do a story on that without mentioning some of the amazing stunts that Jackie Chan has done in his movies?  What?  You want a full explanation about what it is and how it works?  Can’t you look it up on the Internets?  Why do you think we are known affectionately as “the World’s Laziest Journalist”?

Maybe we should do a column that asks the question:  Who is getting shoddier treatment football players with concussions or wounded veterans?

Can a dedicated consumer buy his/her way to prosperity?

Recent news stories indicate that a majority of people don’t believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.  Most of the stories about the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy quickly glossed over conspiracy theories related to the shooting and people think we’re a lazy journalist.

Carefully examining the reasons why the World’s Laziest Journalist considers being critical of American Journalism,  in a column for people who are busy contending with the best meal of the year, to be as futile as formulating a magic bullet explanation for pesky laws of physics and it just doesn’t seem like a reasonable use of time as the buying season approaches.

Aren’t Republicans very enthusiastic about sending troops into Syria and/or Iran?

Can it be that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for the War in Afghanistan?  Will the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan, please turn out the lights?

The Republicans in Congress should officially adopt as their motto, a famous line from “Gone with the Wind:”  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

Now, the disk jockey will play Jimmy Clanton’s “My Own True Love,” the Revels’ “Church Key,” and Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussycat?”  We have to go buy some Christmas presents.  Have a “Only a few shopping days left” type week.

November 24, 2013

Tea Party Announces African American Outreach Program

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 7:57 am

November 22, 2013

Gonzo Jouralism = a verbal selfie?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:29 pm

A full color digital image of a Berkeley artist, after being photoshopped, appears to distort reality more than a selfie would.

French existentialist philosophers will probably find some deeply disturbing narcissistic meaning lurking behind the current American fad of taking self-portraits with a cell phone called “selfies.”  Didn’t they heap copious amounts of adulation on American writer Henry Miller for doing with words what kids are doing with digital images?  Isn’t “Tropic of Cancer” an example of literature as a selfie?

Selfies are limited in perspective because the camera’s point of view is restricted to arm’s length.  Photos take by another person are often taken from a point of view that is much further away from the subject and thus (ostensibly) provide a much more “objective” version of reality.  Photographer Cindy Sherman was known for taking photos of herself before the word selfie came into popular usage.  She used either a cable release, a self timer, or a studio assistant to click the shutter and thus distance her subject from the camera.

When Ernest Hemingway went to cover the Spanish Civil War didn’t the fact that Hemingway was covering the conflict become “the” story?

Is there a difference between a PR (Public Relations) HO (Hand Out) story, a traditional news story, and Gonzo Journalism?

The symbolism of a personality looming large in the foreground of an interesting scene is far different from a record shot of the artist “out among them.”

There was an amusing bit on the Internet this week that featured famous news photos doctored to appear to be selfies.

That in turn causes us to wonder if the journalists in Washington are producing journalism that is the verbal equivalent of selfie photos.  Yes, you could say that “Today we asked the President . . .” is a continuation of the Sixties era Gonzo school of journalism, but isn’t a constant torrent of such material just as stultifying as a tsunami of selfie pictures?

Edward R. Murrow went, saw, and reported, but he removed himself (as well as he could) from his stories while at the same time, Ernest Hemingway was insinuating himself into as many news events as possible.  Someday we may write a column addressing the question: “Was the better journalist Murrow or Hemingway?”

Did Hemingway inspire the Beat writers and didn’t they morph into Gonzo?  So is Hemingway the grandfather of Gonzo?  Are some of Hemingway’s stories the verbal equivalent of a selfie photo?

Was Murrow really the epitome of an objective reporter?  Some biographers portray Murrow as a fellow who was convinced that the United States would have to go to war with Hitler and so he shaped his narratives of the Battle of Britain to that end.

We know of one fellow in L. A. who was writing film reviews for a second level national magazine and was proud to be invited to lunch by a director.  The Hollywood personality made a concerted effort to flatter and entertain the white belt critic.  The rookie realized he was being played for a more enthusiastic review and drew a line in the sand.  He adopted the philosophy:  “No more fraternizing with the enemy.”Aye, lad, there’s the rub.  Compromise your principles or starve.

There’s a new book out by Michael Streissguth, titled “Outlaw,” that tells how Waylon, Willie, and Kris Kristofferson fought the music establishment in Nashville and won.

“The Rebel,” by Albert Camus, intimates that if society (AKA the 1%) encounters a formidable challenge from a revolutionary, they foil the movement by granting the malcontents membership in the world’s most exclusive club, know informally as “Fame and Fortune.”  Hence the strange phenomenon of The Rolling Stones Inc.  It is much more difficult to knock The Establishment if you have become an integral part of it.

Pundits pounding the political beat face a similar dilemma.  They can either be shut out or owe favors to sources.

It’s hypocritical to inform the audience “we report objectively; we don’t compromise with expediency” when in fact they are blatantly partisan.  Don’t the people who don’t catch on deserve to be fooled?  “We deceive; you owe us gratitude!”

A good game of poker would be impossible if the dealer delivered all cards face up.  The game of diplomacy demands chicanery, duplicity, and fibs.  If the President of the United States is going to deliver a shock to the members of his own party, it is unwise for journalists to think (or boast) that they can provide their audience with “the real story.”  It would be better for the well fed (and paid) reporters in the mainstream media to adopt the “I’m a patsy” philosophy the moment they arrive in Washington D. C.

Isn’t the journalistic ideal of “the gentleman in the grandstand” more attainable for a fellow out in the boondocks with no sources in Washington?  Doesn’t he make a better critic of the emperor’s new clothes?

Liberal (for lack of a better word) pundits attacked George W. Bush incessantly for his war policies.  When he was replaced by a member of the Democratic Party who continued most of the Bush war policies (with some minor adjustments), the Liberal pundits had a dilemma on their hands.  Should they suddenly become hypocrites and start lavishing praise on futile wars or should they start to criticize “their guy”?

Columnists who epitomized the H. L. Mencken axiom that there is only one way for journalists to look at politicians and that is “down,” have no problem.  They believe in being in attack mode eternally.

As the mainstream media trends more and more towards partisan bickering, the need for commentary from a gentleman in the bleachers recedes into irrelevancy.  If the trend to “one quote for and one quote against” becomes the Journalism norm, then an impartial observer becomes irrelevant but, perhaps, it will not become completely extinct because of the increasing novelty value of such verbal selfies.

Speaking of “mug shots,” a TV series titled “You’re in the Picture” was one of the monumental program flops of all time.  The initial episode on January 20, 1961, was so bad the series was immediately canceled.  The following week host Jackie Gleason used the time slot to apologize and produced a very memorable example of great television.

Wolf pack journalism will provide Americans with a massive amount of punditry on other topics this week and so we take the existentialist’s path and offer a look at something different.  We figure it is in keeping with the philosophy of a very famous (fictional) San Francisco philosopher (AKA Dirty Harry) who said: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Henry Miller wrote:  “How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician.”

Now the disk jockey will play Dick Dale & the Del Tones’ “Misirlou,” the Ventures’ “Perfidia,” and the Chantays’ “Pipeline.”  We have to go wax our surfboard.  Note:  The World’s Laziest Journalist’s End of the Week column will probably be posted on Wednesday of T-Day week.  Have a “kick on third down” type week.

November 10, 2013

Ye Olde Scribe’s VERY Inconvenient Truth

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 9:59 am

Courtesy dancensing14.blogspot.com

If Goldilocks HAD knocked, and the bears were home, under Stand Your Ground murdering her could be consider justifiable homicide.

But most likely only if she were Black.

November 8, 2013

The Long March to 2016 begins

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:29 pm

Is a distorted image better than none at all?

Over the first weekend of November of 2013, the Drudge Report ran a headline alerting readers to the possibility that Congress would pass a law requiring doctors to treat the new patients created by the Affordable Care Act.  There have been some muted hints about the possibility that all the new clients for doctors will provide gridlock in the waiting rooms of America and soon the mainstream media will take notice of the fact that a system that is operating at full capacity now, is going to have problems with the addition of a massive number of new “customers.”  The challenge of doing trend-spotting items is to be the first to notice and report them.

The Republican strategy, recently, has been to attack the strong point and since the Affordable Care Act seems to be the keystone for President Obama’s legacy, it would only be logical to conclude that for the next three years, the Republicans will produce a constant avalanche of criticism of the implementation and results of that program as the central issue for the 2016 Presidential election.

Since Republicans also tend to believe that snappy slogans are preferable to long and detailed explanations of complex topics, the fickle American audience might not have an insatiable appetite for three solid years of a series of unrelenting columns about health issues and so the World’s Laziest Journalist operates on the belief that information that is interesting and informative will trump approved talking points for the next 150 weeks and that efforts must be made to track down some facts with novelty appeal for the folks who have made up their minds about how to vote three years from now.

Occasionally we get a chance to chow down in a UCB cafeteria where there is a feature called Papers with the Professor that provides a copy of the current day’s New York Times to read.  Hence, the search for potential topics for a Friday column can begin on a Sunday morning with some pizza (warm pizza for breakfast is something that most students would endorse and that few restaurants are willing to provide) coffee, and the Sunday Edition of the New York Times.

When we first stumbled upon this modus operandi, it was an example of pragmatism in action to get to the table with the papers as fast as possible to get access to the Sections we prefer.  Our order of preference is:  Arts, Book Review, Week in Review, the magazine Section, and then the front news section.

We have noticed lately that there is no competition for the prize and we wondered about that until we noticed a student who was nearby fiddling with her hand held communications center.  The young people don’t have a nostalgic attachment to the physical sensation of flipping through a standard size newspaper.  Things have changed since the days of Mario Savio’s rant on top of a police car.

While talking to a young person about cinema we were surprised to learn that they had not ever heard the expression “double feature” and correctly guessed what it means from the context where it was used.

As a pundit who doesn’t have access to high level politicians, the challenge for online commentators is to:  find media trend stories early, find under reported stories, find interesting feature material first, and or to go Gonzo and describe the efforts to go and cover news without a press pass.

Twice the World’s Laziest Journalist has come close to getting mixed in with reporters who were detained by the police.  Once covering BART shooting protests, and once covering Occupy Oakland.  Since covering the Venice canal “riot” about forty years ago, our enthusiasm for getting close to the story has slowly morphed into the concept that Tom Wolfe called “the gentleman in the grandstand” style journalism.

Media trend spotting and second guessing the opinions of nationally known commentators can be done at home at a computer connected to the Internet but to get photos of the event and to get a “You Are There” viewpoint, the columnist has to leave the comforts of home and go where the action is, or was, or will be.

We have been reading Bill Bryson’s “One Summer America 1927” but once we state that it is like taking a time travel trip back to another era and is a very enjoyable read chock full of interesting facts, what else can we say to expand that assessment out to full column length review?

Last week, two new movies featured actors portraying the writer Jack Kerouac.  After seeing “Big Sur” in San Francisco, we went dashing off to the Beat Museum to trade film reviews and continue our discussion with Jerry Cimino on the topic:  “Was Hemingway a prototype for the Beat Writers?”

People who are Hemingway fans have read about the idyllic existence of ex-patriot American artists living in Paris in the Twenties, but the Bryson book reports that up until aviator Charles Lindbergh landed there in 1927, American tourists had to contend with anti-American sentiments.  Was the ex-pat community isolated from the trials and tribulations of the average American tourist?

Bryson relates that the public adulation of Lindbergh caused him to become aloof and since he was shy, more withdrawn.

The “Big Sur” movie portrays a writer who had to retreat to a friend’s cabin in the woods to escape the fans who were making live miserable for the newly famous author of “On the Road.”  The film “Kill Your Darlings” made the subtle point that at a certain level fame could be quantified and shared in a way reminiscent of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

Last week, we went to the de Young Museum to see the Hockney exhibit.  That sparked a debate with a fellow who had been an art critic columnist in the Denver area about which of the two exhibits we have seen there this year was the best:  Diebenkorn or Hockney?

The debate devolved into an assertion that since the other fellow had a degree in art, he knew what he was talking about and that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Diebenkorn exhibit featured the most talented artist.

That, in turn, reminded us that a continuing debate about the relative merits of writer Ayn Rand.  The World’s Laziest Journalist contends that since she is not featured in any of the comprehensive guidebooks of the “Philosophy fur Dummkopfs” style of overviews that proves she is a wannabe.  Our debate opponent says he used to be a newspaper editor and since it is his opinion that she was an inspiration and an insightful author that is conclusive proof that this columnist is wrong.

Bryson asserts that almost all sports enthusiasts agree that the 1927 Yankees team was the greatest baseball team ever.  (Brothers and sisters, can we get an “Amen,” on that?)

Three years from today, the results of America’s 2016 Presidential Election will be the top item on the weekend shouting match style TV analysis shows.  The folks in the mainstream media will expend a lot of time and energy promoting the run-up to that election.

Will the mainstream media devote a tsunami of material on the 50th anniversary of the Ford Mustang?  That seems quite likely.  What else will qualify to get the attention of the mainstream media between now and the Presidential Election?

Bryson makes a casual mention in his look at 1927 about a Wisconsin congressman (weren’t they all men back then?) who was a socialist.  If Americans like novelty and if talk radio becomes all conservative talking points all the time could it be that if people grow tired of it, the back lash would arrive in the form of an event that would cause talk radio host to have apoplexy.  Just think how the media would react if a member of the Socialist Party did get elected to Congress in the next three years.

Wouldn’t that be as noteworthy as a young lady in a bridal gown taking a tour of Alcatraz Prison National Park?  Didn’t that actually happen on Election Day earlier this week?

[Note from the Photo Editor:  A distorted image of a skyscraper in San Francisco can serve as a metaphor for reality in the age of talk radio and messages with a 140 word limit.]

In the 1927 movie “The Jazz Singer,” actor Al Jolson said:  “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”

Now the disk jockey will play the Zombies’ “Care of Cell 44,” the Kinks’ “Holloway Jail,” and AC/DC’s “Jailbreak.”  We have to go protest the jailing of the Pussy Riot band.  Have a “no trace of them was ever found” type week.

November 1, 2013

Facts + Imagination = Conspiracy Theory?

Filed under: Commentary — Bob Patterson @ 12:39 pm

Tree root or Gila monster?  Use your imagination!

Halloween, as celebrated in the USA, is the time when Americans take a break from subjecting themselves to a constant barrage of journalism that vigorously asserts that all of the conspiracy theories are the fictional product of an active imagination and that the tales of vampires and werewolves, and stories about Invasions from Mars are true.

If the hysterical ranting about the possibility that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was part of a plot is true, then the wider implications of that fictional horror story (substantiated by a second less known Congressional Investigation) would have to be that the scariest Halloween story of all is the possibility that all the best conspiracy theories can be fitted together to form one vast picture of a country that is being played as fools for the benefit of a select few.  Stop thinking that!  You are frightening the children!

Was Harold Holt the first national leader on planet earth to be abducted by aliens from outer space?  The only explanations of his disappearance are either vague and illogical official explanations or conspiracy theories.  Take your pick.

Being alone in an apartment in Marina del Rey, it was very disconcerting to see a fellow with a gun in the adjacent dressing room.  It was just the reflection in the mirror showing the World’s Laziest Journalist stuffing his wallet into his pants pocket.  The wallet, in the dim light, just looked like an automatic pistol.  A gunman suddenly appearing inside your locked apartment would make the start of a good Twilight Zone episode, though, wouldn’t it?

Recently Jim Romenesko’s “inside baseball” website for journalists ran a picture illustrating the fuss caused by a New York Times photo, which at first glance seemed to show John Boner carrying a pistol in the halls of Congress.

http://jimromenesko.com/2013/10/17/it-looks-like-boehner-pulled-a-gun-in-a-new-york-times-early-edition-page-one-photo/

Would you need a laxative if someone pointed a gun at you?

In the San Francisco Bay area, the citizens were very upset with a policeman who fired at (and killed) a kid who failed to follow the “drop it” order.  There’s a clever line in a Willie Nelson song about knowing when to run and when to “Freeze!”  How many of the folks who demonstrated against the policeman have ever had a gun pointed at them?  How many of them have ever been the target for a person using a gun?  Apparently the civilians were unfazed by the prospect of betting their own life on a chance to differentiate a fake gun from a real one in a split second.

There were some political ads on TV in California, many moons ago, asserting that the common image, used in a large number of films, of hiding behind a door from a shooter was a fictional misperception because a slug from a magnum gun could rip through two police cars and still have enough lethal force to kill a person.  Gee, did you know that movies disregard truth?  Didn’t one of the guys on the Tu Phatt team often used to say:  “I didn’t know that!”?  (Did that group morph into “the Watergate Burglars”?)

Last week, on the Stephanie Miller radio show, former Governor Jesse Ventura said that he had seen photos, taken at Dealy Plaza at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy, which showed one fellow who looked a lot like George H. W. Bush, who claims he can’t remember where he was when he learned that JFK had been shot.

Was the film “Apocalypse Now” an accurate representation of what had happened, or was it a precise prediction of what America would become?

Did the mainstream media exaggerate the effect seventy five years ago that Orson Welles’ “Mars Attacks” radio show had on listeners?  Is the perception that it caused mass hysteria just a bit of clever exaggerated boasting urban legend?

The Spanish Civil War came to a conclusion less than six months after the famous Orson Welles’ broadcast.  Due to a proliferation of labels, there was a great deal of confusion about who were the “Good Guys” in that conflict.  It seems to boil down to fascists vs. workers.  Which side was the Catholic Church on?  Which side would you support?

In many kung fu movies, a fight becomes a battle of the rugged individual contending with an array of bad guys.  In those movies the king fu expert dispatches the attackers one at a time like an overworked clerk in a busy deli.  Unfortunately in real life a gang of bikers would swarm all over the Bruce Lee clone and beat the living snot out of him.

Fascists like to project the image of a rugged individual who can, in existentialist (don’t the Republicans hate the poor people of Paris?) style, single handedly take on the bad guys and emerge victorious.  The greedheads would have voters believe that only members of the Communist Party spout the cliché that “We can negotiate together; or beg alone.”

In San Francisco, renters in low income housing are becoming alarmed that they will be evicted despite laws designed to prevent such ruthless possibilities.  Recently the Berkeley Tenants Union handed out fliers that assert:  “Policy Change Will Lead to Evictions.”  The Berkeley City Council is considering making changes to the Demolition Ordinance.  The flier states:  “The Sierra Club, NAACP, Neighborhoods Council, Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assn., and East Bay Law Center are also speaking out against these new drafts” of changes for the Demolition Ordinance.  (For those who want to fact check this item do a Google News search for “San Francisco evictions” and/or read up on the topic at berkeleytenants.org.)

Some (partisan?) online sources assert that in order to be able to make the claim that evictions are down, if all the tenants in one building are tossed out en masse, that adds just one to the total number of evictions.

If a renter had survived having his home foreclosed and then got evicted from a rental unit, would that person feel like one of the handful of survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima who went to stay with friends or relatives in Nagasaki?

The conspiracy theory folks, no doubt, would have folks believe that the austerity budget cuts that were made at mainstream media news outlets are making it easier for unpopular changes in the laws to be made because people (such as the citizens of Berkeley) are less well informed than they used to be when there was a local daily newspaper and the world famous Berkeley Barb underground weekly newspaper informing readers about all the latest efforts of “the Establishment” to exploit the people who were supposed to be well informed voters.

Ross Thomas wrote a mystery titled “The Fools in Town Are on Our Side” and we think of that title every time the boobs recite the talking point that Fox and Rush Limbaugh are the mainstays of the Free Press in America.

The folks at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory are anxious to get in on the ACA criticism trend, but they can’t decide if they will assert that the website troubles are due to hacking activity by the Chi-Com, the Ruskies, or some unscrupulous Republicans.

Wasn’t “The Man of La Mancha” a famous communist documentary film about workers being exploited right before the Spanish Civil War started?

While wandering around Berkeley, last weekend, we encountered the folks from Story Geeks.  We didn’t have the necessary time to expand that into a full length column but we thought they were worth a mention at Halloween time.

Could the vampire lore explain how a person, who claims to be a wild impulsive 28 years old journalist, could remember selling his first news photo more than 50 years ago?

[Note from the Photo Editor:  A Halloween Season photo of a tree’s root that resembles a Gila monster will illustrate our contention that a vivid imagination is needed to believe in ghosts, vampires and werewolves but it is a patriotic duty to believe official assertion that all conspiracy theories are the product of creative fictionalizing.]

Nietzsche wrote:  “A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Ghost.”

Now the disk jockey will play Sheb Wooley’s “Flying purple people eater,” Buchanan and Goodman’s “The Flying Saucer,” and the Byrd’ “Mr. Spaceman.”  We have to go check out the rumor that, thanks to a prototype experiment for the witness protection program, Enesto “Che” Guevara was given an identity that, ultimately, provided him with a chance to be a member of the city council at a small University town, in California and that he died peacefully there in his sleep, long after the Sixties were over.  Have a “bump in the night” type week.

 

October 22, 2013

Free Press or Ministry of Propaganda?

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

An interesting mural in San Francisco made for a good feature photo shot.

After the negotiations in Oakland collapsed and the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) strike was resumed, we heard an odd item on KCBS radio.  They informed listeners that they should not be alarmed if they saw BART trains running on the system.  The reporter explained that the trains were being run to keep the system and the equipment in running condition in anticipation of the resumption of service after a settlement.  There was something about that bit of news that caused a small skeptical reaction for us but we didn’t pay close attention and ignored any implications that heads-up for the listeners might have.  On Saturday, after we took a one day excursion to San Francisco on the AC Transit Bus System (which is under a 7 day strike delay cooling off pause), we heard a news report that two people had been killed that afternoon by a BART train and immediately our internal alarm system sounded.

Usually the news coverage of a major strike includes video or still photos of some equipment sitting idle.  We know this from personal experience because in the late Seventies the photo desk at AP in Los Angeles called us at home and asked if we would take a stringer assignment to go down to the Long Beach area and take a photo of some California Highway Patrol cars sitting in the area headquarters parking lot.  A photo of cars parked in a symmetric pattern isn’t very dynamic but it does illustrate the concept of “sitting idle.”

So why was that BART train running during the strike rather than sitting idle?

If the public is to believe the KCBS explanation some member of management must have come in on the weekend, just to run the train during a period when one of the local papers ran a headline indicating that negotiations between the workers and management were not being conducted.  The implication was that the public’s inconvenience was going to last a long time.

So why was that BART train runnin’ down the tracks on a textbook perfect example of a Indian Summer Saturday afternoon?

Was the Bay area mainstream media missing a big story?  They couldn’t have been testing the equipment because a settlement was close.  It seems unlikely that some member of management had come in to take his kid on a joy ride.

The death of two people is a tragedy but wouldn’t there be a much greater amount of news value to it, if (subjunctive mood speculation in lieu of a concrete explanation is covered by free speech rules) those two folks were killed by a scab worker who was being trained to be used as strikebreakers?

The KCBS Saturday afternoon story completely ignored the question of who was running the train and the possibility that there would be any police charges used against that person.

At 5 o’clock Pacific Time the CBS network news said that the two people who had died were not union members.  This contradicted something we had heard on the same station moments earlier.  When the all news all the time resumed local coverage, they said the two victims were union members.

The next morning, the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle used the Saturday accident for the lead story with a banner headline.  The sub-head informed readers that the train was operating on the status of “on maintenance run.”  In the 13th paragraph the readers learned that it might have involved a training lesson.

On Saturday night, it was announced that the National Transportation Safety Board would be the lead agency conducting the investigation.

By Monday morning, the Bay Area section of the Chronicle was headlining the Matier and Ross column with “Insider:  BART training workers when 2 died.”

By Tuesday morning, the strike was over and service had been resumed.

Over the weekend, the World’s Laziest Journalist started to do some fact checking for a news story from Alaska that seems to have gone missing.  Do a Google News search for Governor Parnell and Cook Inlet.  We saw an interesting story via such a search over the weekend.  The story seems to have vanished from the Internet by Tuesday noon Pacific times.  If it isn’t every day that a judge speculates that the governor may have broken the law, doesn’t that make it a news story for the various National desks in NYC, if they can find it?

We have repeatedly made references to the case of the Los Angeles County assessor in our columns.  We have done Google News searches and found a few scant details via links to some information provided to the public by the Los Angeles Times.  We have not been able to augment those few facts with any other information from any other source.

Usually, if there is a scandal developing in Los Angeles, the newspapers in New York pay almost as much attention to it as they would if it were happening in New York City.  To the best of our Googling ability we have not seen a single mention of the assessor’s case in the “Great Gray Lady” (AKA the New York Times).

If, during the age of austerity budgets and small staffs, the World’s Laziest Journalist can come up with three stories that should be getting coverage in the mainstream media but are not; isn’t it time to hold the wake for America’s Free Press and admit that Journalism in the USA is DOA.

If the World’s Laziest Journalist actually were as young as he claims (a happy-go-lucky, irresponsible lad of 28?) then one might jump to the conclusion that he is a driven man who is determined to come to the attention of a top notch assignment desk in New York City and subsequently climb the ladder to fame and fortune in the journalism game.  The truth is that the World’s Laziest Journalist runs around San Francisco taking photos and looking for nuggets of information to use in a weekly column and skims through various Internet web sites not as a desperate career establishing effort but simply to fight boredom.

We have been accumulating images of “slap art” and wondering if someday our coverage of the early phases of this story will be regarded as “historic.”  We have wondered if someday some art museum (in New York City?) will hold an exhibition of T-shirts.  In a book on the topic we learned that the fad may have originated with some silk screened undershirts from the Pacific Theater of World War II.  Why, we have wondered, if the New York Times in the past (yeah, you know that’s code talk for “in the Sixties”) printed a list of books being published that day, then why doesn’t Amazon spark impulse buying with a daily blog featuring posting of a list of new books of possible interest to the pop culture reports elsewhere on the Internet?

Recently, when the Project Censored team appeared at Moe’s Books in Berkeley CA, this columnist suggested the L. A. assessor story to them.  They replied that if the World’s Laziest Journalist wanted to write the story up and submit it to them, they would look at it.

To get the necessary details we would have to go down to L. A. and revive our police beat reporting skills (which have been dormant for many moons).  We are not about to subsidize a fact finding trip and work on that story on a speculation basis.

If we are able to successfully pursue a whimsical quest for a press credential for covering the Oscar™ Awards Ceremony that will be held early next year, we might rationalize the possibility of turning such a jaunt into a twofer.  We could grant our self a cash grant that would cover the costs of staying an extra two days (week?) to poke around and see if we can get the details about the assessor’s arrest and incarceration, and any future court appearances or trial.

The fact that no one will do the story if we don’t front the costs of doing the fact checking should be enough evidence to  validate our contention that the Free Press in the United States is now just a mainstream media mirage.

While the story of the BART strike and accompanying tragedy was unfolding, we learned some history of the “fair and balanced” tradition in Journalism.  We read in Volume one of Robert Heinlein’s authorized biography by William H. Patterson (on page 179) that while Upton Sinclair was running for governor of California in 1936, the Los Angeles Times’ political editor Kyle Palmer, in response to a question from a New York Times reporter, had said:  “We don’t go in for that kind of crap you have in New York of being obliged to print both sides.”

Rather than putting in the effort to write a column that will get a low amount of hits because it sounds like a goddamn term paper, the World’s Laziest Journalist would much rather be doing the research for a trend spotting story about the pizza at the Golden Boy in San Francisco’s North Beach area or doing an innocuous bit of rumor mongering by saying that we are trying to verify some facts surrounding the possibility that a new album of protest songs by a reunited famous rock band.  Apparently, after getting some legal advice, it will be titled “The Byrds get Angry” rather than “Angry Byrds.”

This column was posted early so that some maintenance work can be done later in the week.

[Note from the photo editor:  This column mentions the fact that the World’s Laziest Journalist would rather be combing San Francisco for feature shots (such as the one of a mural on the Ameba Records store) rather than taking grizzly accident photos.]

In his campaign to become the California governor, Upton Sinclair said (ibid page 182):  “The issue of this campaign is:  can they fool you with their lies, and get you to vote in their interest instead of your own?”

Now, the disk jockey will play us out with:  “Turn!  Turn!  Turn! (to everything there is a season),” “Eight Miles High,” and “So you want to be a Rock’n’Roll star.”  We have to go compose a letter to the Press Relations dept. at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science and find a copy of the seventy-five year old Orson Wells’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast.  Have a “ . . . and the winner is . . .” type week.

October 18, 2013

Zen and the art of “Frankly, my dear, I don ‘t give a damn!”

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:31 pm

” . . . to dream the impossible dream . . . ”

The real winners in this week’s national embarrassment will be the pundits.  The Tea Party got concession after concession.  President Obama got a walk-off last minute settlement.  The talking heads will get the chance to give their sages’ opinions to bigger than usual audiences this weekend even if they have to play the “too close to call” card when the host/croupier calls for a halt to the equivocating on the question of “Who was the real winner?”

Pundits employed by the mainstream media will ignore the fact that the Teabag Republicans attempted to go outside the Constitution to defund a law that had been passed by a previous Congress and concentrate on the idea that the Republicans will have a major challenge to reelection next November.  They will not go into territory where they might have to admit the possibility that if the Teabagers went outside the Constitution to attack Obamacare, they might use the electronic voting machines (with unverifiable results) to produce an undeserved win.

Competing with the well publicized and well connected pundits who refuse to consider anything but points of view that have been blessed by billionaire media owners (kosher-ized?) is an assignment for a columnist who is “the man” at on the La Mancha Times because, it would seem, the ultra rich are the unbeatable foes.

On the Columbus Day Holiday, the situation was:  The negotiation tactic of moving the goal line will be effective up until the clock runs out.  Then it will be time for both political parties to kick the can down the road and start the blame game as part of the preparations for the mid term elections in November of 2014.

Some cynical pundits (moi?) wonder when voters in the USA will realize that there is a vast credibility gap between the effusive patriotic enthusiasms the Republicans display when the military goes off to participate in a new quagmire and the hypocritical lack of attention they pay to the fiscal needs of the lesser known veterans’ programs.  Which group does the Tea Party love the most:  the disabled vets, the unemployed, or the hungry children?

Long before the Tweet fad started, the World’s Laziest Journalist noticed that the switch to the Internet media seemed to indicate that a digital version of the three dot journalism method of column writing might work well for the short attention span audience coping with the computer age.  Heck, the TV show “Laugh In” introduced the quick cut rapid pace to TV and changed that game many moons ago.  Since long reads online don’t seem to attract copious amounts of hits, it seemed like there would be a natural selection process that would favor the digital version of three dot journalism.  We forgot one aspect of the pop culture in the USA: it takes tons of publicity to provide a convenient short cut to success.

When book publishers discovered that their product sold better when the authors appeared on network TV talk shows, all of a sudden, they were ubiquitous on the Tonight Show.

When the proprietor of a Los Angeles book store was asked about the authenticity of a copy of “On the Road” that was autographed by Jack Kerouac and inscribed to Marilyn Monroe, he started doing his homework because the two had never been linked in Hollywood gossip.  Eventually he learned that when Jack Kerouac appeared on the Tonight Show (when Jack Paar was the host) to promote his new novel, one of the other guests that night was the famous actress who was (according to her PR agent?) an avid reader.  He authenticated the item which then jumped a considerable amount in value.

The accountants in Hollywood grew envious of the authors’ free air time and the trend of supplying Hollywood stars to talk shows to promote new movies was started.

If, in 1962 when “From Russia with Love” was being talked about, would anybody have believed a prediction that eventually the spy genre would morph into a tale about a rugged looking Chicano illegal alien who prefers a machete rather than a Walther PPK?  Has the lead actor, Danny Trejo, hit the talk show circuit yet?

German style potato pancakes are difficult to find in the Los Angeles area and so the World’s Laziest Journalist was very delighted to stumble on a place in San Francisco that listed that item on the menu.  We could write an entire column about that elusive treat.  Our third effort, on Columbus Day, to have a nostalgia laden foodie experience with that rare item was unsuccessful as the first two had been but it was a beautiful example of Indian summer weather and thus provided a pleasant setting for the futile effort.

Coffee houses are plentiful in San Francisco but the Cup-a-Joe on Sutter was notable because they also offer a choice of 10 brands of draft beer.  Their coffee and buns were very enjoyable but they didn’t have potato pancakes.

Ezekiel Tyrus, who is a clerk at the Beat Museum, had offered us a review copy of his new novel “Eli, Ely” and we decided that reading the entire novel and devoting a full column to a review was not our style, but a quick item in the column about him would work as a history hedge.  Wouldn’t it be remarkable if Tyrus eventually became more famous than any of the original members of the Beats?  Our effort to supplement a photo of Tyrus’ tattoo with a mug shot was unsuccessful on Columbus Day.

Five years ago when we went to Australia to satisfy our curiosity about that country (and scratch a visit there off our bucket list) we still harbored a desire to become a pundit with a vast worldwide audience.  After becoming a resident of Berkeley CA we began to reacquaint our self with the writings of our three most influential role models:  Ernst Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and Hunter S. Thompson.  We noticed that all three worked long and hard to become world famous writers.  All three were very uncomfortable with being world-wide fame when they achieved it. Maybe being an autonomous anonymous columnist isn’t so bad after all.  Invincible foes?  “Bring ’em on!”

We noticed this week that Jim Romenesko, who’s website caters to the practitioners of journalism, is featuring sponsored content.  In a world where Senator Dianne Feinstein maintains that real journalists draw a weekly paycheck, the paid content innovation could be a game changer.  Is that a newsworthy example of a precedence setting innovation on the Internet?  If so we could do a whole column about it.  We’ll keep that option in mind when we post our annual National Columnists’ Day.

On a day, such as Columbus Day this week, when we are laying starring at the ceiling and trying to decide if we want to award our self an all expense paid (one day) vacation in San Francisco, we don’t use the prospect of fame and fortune to motivate the effort; we use the possibility of getting some material for the column as an excuse (not a reason) for doing a walkabout in Fog City . . . if the BART and AC buses are running.  As of Friday October 18, 2013, a strike was complicating the choice.

What if an obscure pundit on the Internets suggested that commuters could show support for the striking BART union members by displaying a flower in their hair and that became ubiquitous on Monday morning?  (Armstrong and Getty would gag.)

Which is more work:  doing the research and fact checking necessary to expanding a topic out into a full column or gathering enough material to select the best items to fill three e-takes (a standard size sheet of typing paper was called a “take” in most news rooms back in the age of teletype, telephones and typewriters, so doesn’t that make a page in the Word program, an e-take?)?  It doesn’t matter because the World’s Laziest Journalist’s personality tends to function in what the Zen crowd calls “monkey mind” (going from topic to topic like Tarzan swinging on successive jungle vines) mode and three dot journalism feels more comfortable than a longer rant about a single issue.

For someone with a curious mind and a lot of time, a weekly column is a very convenient rationale for talking to people, investigating new places, and doing an extensive amount of reading to find interesting but innocuous facts.

During this week, it was mentioned in passing on the Norman Goldman radio show, that buried deep in the paperwork for the bipartisan agreement to extend the dept ceiling and end the shutdown was a provision that will change the rules and make it virtually impossible for the Teabagers to indulge in a similar exhibition of stunt politics again in late January of 2014.  The fact that such a change was made will make this weekend’s tsunami of righteous indignation by slave wage pundits irrelevant.  The change will be completely ignored. There will be more drama and bigger ratings numbers if the pundits can convince the audience that the Teabaggers might be giants.

The potential for the existence of unreported secret escape hatch clauses in new laws may give folks a hint at why Senator Dianne Feinstsein wants only wage slave employees to be regarded as journalists.  A maverick columnist can obsess on German potato pancakes or run spoiler items about hidden political news or both.  If he gets denounced as “not a genuine journalist,” he can take a cavalier attitude:  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

[Note from the photo editor:  Berkeley is the type of city where the hippie philosophy of “If you like this t-shirt; I’ll take it off and give it to you” still exists.  After we took the photo accompanying this week’s column, the guy did take it off and give it to us.  Groovy, eh?]

Adlai E. Stevenson once said:  “Your public servants serve you right; indeed often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve.”

Zombies are very popular with the young folks these days, so the disk jockey will play “She’s not there,”  “Tell her no,” and “Time of the Season.”  We have to fact check the assertion that Indian Summer is the best time of the year in Berkeley CA.  Have a “wear a flower in your hair” type week.

October 11, 2013

It seems like yesterday . . .

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:35 pm

A warning flag flew in Berkeley recently.

Something’s happening here but it isn’t clear exactly what that is.  There’s a group of nuts over there telling us we got to beware of spending limits.  The President isn’t providing effective leadership.  Congress isn’t legislating.  The Supreme Court seems to specialize in legislating from the bench.  You don’t have to read every word on every page of “Project Censored 2014” to realize that freedom of the press is displaying symptoms of  rigor mortis.

The people who died fighting in World War II were told the sacrifices were being made for the Four Freedoms (can you name them?) and Democracy.  They paid the ultimate price for Americans to have the right to vote and the clowns in Washington demonstrating their hypocrisy and cynicism couldn’t make their attitude more obvious if they went across the bridge and urinated on the graves in Arlington National Cemetery.

If LBJ were in the White House this week, he would have called the director of the FBI, gotten the dirt on Boner, and the shutdown would have ended by supper time.  Radio talk show host Norman Goldman asked his listeners last week if they had heard or seen anything in the mainstream media reporting that there are two stealth illicit love affairs that involving a leading GOP spokesman.  LBJ would have tracked down that information and used the threat of announcing it in a press conference to make Boner an offer he couldn’t refuse.

If a fellow who was known for charm and charisma was in the White House last week, perhaps he could have offered Boner the chance to trade his trials and tribulations for a chance to live in the Ambassador’s residence in Paris.  Who could resist a chance to have diplomatic immunity in the country that made wine tasting an art?

Folk wisdom teaches:  “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar” but Al Capone said “A kind word and a gun will get you a lot further than the kind word alone.”

There were news reports this week indicating that the shutdown had been engineered by two wealthy brothers and the mainstream media is doing a lousy job of reporting on the political motivation behind the charade.

We might just as well write a column about the pathetic spectacle of an adult human dragging an itty bitty dog on a sidewalk.  Baron Siegfried L. von Richthofen III was a combination Husky and German Shepherd who weighed more than 80 lbs. and if a person tried to drag him down the street, the effort would soon resemble two opposing rugby teams having a rope pulling contest.

Fifty years ago today, things were about to change radically in the USA but the man in the street didn’t have a clue and so went blissfully along without a care in the world.

The music industry wasn’t doing well.  Sales were off.  The folks at Capital Records were preparing to lay off all the workers at their plant in Scranton Pa.   Top secret.  Don’t let this get out!

The layoff notices were to take effect the day after Thanks Giving.  Folks in Scranton could start the Christmas Season (back then, boys and girls, it didn’t “Officially” start until the day after Thanks Giving) unemployed.

President Kennedy got shot and the mood got even more morose.

In anticipation of a TV event the following year, some songs by a British group who had long hair like girls’ began to get airplay and sell well.  The songs sold so well that right before Thanks Giving, every one of the layoff notices were rescinded.

In Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement hadn’t started.

A local newscast in New York City, that fall, carried dual leading stories.  Oakland beat the Jets and Heidi married the goatherder.

When the day of the TV event, in early 1964, arrived the CEO at the World’s Laziest Journalist’s HQ asked:  “Are they the guys who saved Irene’s job?”  When the answer was affirmative, the response was:  “Well, how bad can they be, then?”  Thus Scranton Pa. can claim to be the first place in the USA where that British band gained adult acceptance.  Some folks thought that the long hair was a symptom of deep psychological problems and found their catchy tunes completely unacceptable.

Beatlemania hit.  Conspiracy theories became a facet of the pop culture.  LBJ decided to send American boys to straighten out the mess in Vietnam.

Speaking of Conspiracy Theories, a new one is gaining traction in the R & D Department at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory (located in or near California’s “gold country”).  A radical faction is asking:  “Could Obama be a Republican mole in a long range plan that was subsidized by conservative money?”

The shutdown and default would not sound credible if the Republican had also won the White House in 2010, but with the “they hate Obama” angle added to the story, the rubes believe the charade and the actors can stick to the script.  So, it would seem, the reelection of President Obama was essential for the implementation of the showdown over the shutdown.

If, hypothetically speaking, the Republicans are expected to do poorly in the 2014 Mid Ter Elections but they, with some stealth help from the electronic voting machines that deliver unverifiable results, succeed in holding control of Congress, could the lackeys in the mainstream media keep a straight face while delivering the “completely unexpected” upset results delivered by the voters shtick (with the word “backlash” appearing multiple times) that has become a staple of the folks delivering the Election Night news?   They will if they value their weekly paychecks.

Could Obama have Boner arrested for Sedition?  This hypothetical question doesn’t matter because he wouldn’t do that even if he could.

Has the mainstream media said anything to reassure the citizens?  If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, there will not be any detrimental effect on the NFL season or the World Series.

If President Obama offered to cut the income tax rate for billionaires to zero percent, raise the retirement age to 70 (or 72?), and makes some cuts in Social Security payments, Boner could make the shutdown and debt ceiling issues go away in a flash.

Commuters in the San Francisco Bay area may have to put up with some inconveniences while Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) management breaks the unions, but just think how happy that will make the Bohemian Club posse.  The BART trains were operating on normal schedule on Friday morning but a 72 hour strike notice had been issued.

The politicians in Washington should be gone home for the weekend and therefore the truckers’ protest should only inconvenience weekend tourists.  Pay no attention to the issues, don’t worry about the absent politicians, focus your anger on the fact that the middle class tourists will be asked to bear the burden of the political protest.

Is it true that the State Department has issued a diplomat’s passport to former basketball great Dennis Rodman?

The news industry lackeys who had access to Washington personalities were being stonewalled on any actual news or insights this week.  They had to make it seem like getting a “no comment” sound byte was a major scoop.  The best a rogue pundit could do was to point out that the Republicans’ attempt at branding their party as the one for “conservative Christians” was beginning to make them sound like Col. Kurtz reciting a poem about the hollow men.

Eric Cantor was showing up towards the end of the week as a Republican spokesperson.  What up wid dat?  Is Boner about to be a goner at the Speaker of the House office?

For more on the decline and fall of the free press story do a Google news search for “Leonard Downie.”  Rogue pundits could be ahead of the curve and be the first hint that a tsunami of 1963 nostalgia (and conspiracy theory) stories are about to land on your computer screen.

 

[Note from the photo editor:  We would have preferred to use a publicity still from the Chickie run sequence in “Rebel without a Cause” as the illustration for this column, but we didn’t have time to track down the owner of that image to get permission to use it, so we selected a photo of a “fire danger” warning flag, taken recently in Berkeley CA, as the photo because we think a warning flag (or a white flag of surrender?) should be flying at the Republican Headquarters this week.]

In “Scoop,” Evelyn Waugh wrote:  “Only one thing can set things right – sudden and extreme violence, or, better still, the effective threat of it.”

To evoke that 1963 feeling, the disk jockey will play these albums:   “Introducing the Beatles,” Elvis’ “Fun in Acapulco,” and Cool, Calvin & the Surf Knobs’ “The Surfer’s Beat.”  (Surf Knobs?  WTF?  It was a tell-tale physical indication that a guy knew a thing or two about surfing.)  We have to go see if we can get tickets for “The Fantasticks.”  Have a “‘Perils of Pauline’ finish” type week.

October 4, 2013

Dionysian vs. Apollonian

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:31 pm

What’s not to love about a split window V-dub van that’s been convertible-ized?

The penalty for reading Combat newspaper was death.

The writers, who provided content for the underground newspaper that reported information about the Resistance to citizens in occupied Paris, if caught, were tortured in such a precise way that they would beg for a coup de grâce to deliver them from their prolonged agony.

Richard C. Blum was featured in a recent issue of the East Bay Express in a story titled “Going Postal” that was touted on the front page with this teaser:  “The husband of US Senator Dianne Feinstein has been selling post offices to his friends, cheap.”

That’s the same fellow who has been reported to be a driving force behind the Bullet Train that, according to recent polls, most California tax payers don’t want.

Since Senator Dianne Feinstein is currently leading a drive to define journalists as salaried people on the staffs of mainstream media and thus are on an “approved” list, (i.e. collaborators?) and since we don’t want to be appear on the lady’s s**t list, this column will be a review of the new movie “Rush,” which isn’t about the miracle working conservative pundit (soon to be officially canonized?) some folks call St. Rushbo.  It is a new movie about Formula One racing and that should be an innocuous enough topic for someone who doesn’t meet the Senator’s standards for superior journalism or, as some might call it, journalistic exceptionalism.

In 1966, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City held an exhibition that featured Formula One race cars.  The spectacle of art aficionados walking around the silent machines talking in reverent whispers was a travesty of racing and a parody of the concept of a museum exhibition.

One particular spectator had to struggle for self control and refrain from screaming:  “Gentlemen, start your engines!”  (In 1966, Danica Patrick hadn’t even been born yet.  [For all of October, her Go Daddy race car will be pink to help raise breast cancer awareness.])  Quite is for funeral homes.  Anyone who has ever been in the pit area of a Grand Prix knows that the noise is palpable.  There’s no whispering at a Grand Prix.

[If you are in a band that is generating an extreme amount of audience enthusiasm and you want to speak to your bandmate, don’t try to shout over the noise.  Put a finger (yes, the middle finger works best) behind you pal’s ear and speak in a normal voice.  The sound waves will travel through your bones and be transferred to his skull and inner ear and he will hear you perfectly well.]

Film director Ron Howard got it right.  The engine noise in “Rush” deserves a credit for supporting role.  (Is that a subtle way of saying the sound men deserve a Nomination?)

The question “Is this the best car racing movie every made” will be discussed for many years to come.  Obviously some hypotheticals will spice up the debate.  If (big hypothetical) Elvis could have played the role of Clay Regazzoni and added some songs to the soundtrack album, it would have been even better, but critics have to deal with what was on the screen and not the realm of woulda/coulda/shoulda.  Doesn’t Monte Carlo need a theme song that’s just as upbeat as “Viva Las Vegas”?

What about the folks who don’t go nutty over cars?  The book crowd might want to discuss the possibility that this film is a classic example of the literary device known as “twinning.”  The film raises an age old philosophical question:  which is better: the spontaneous (Dionysian) approach to life or the careful and methodically planned (Apollonian) method?  Who said:  “Spontaneity works well if it’s planned right!”?

In the film Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) and James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) battle for the 1976 world championship for driving.  Lauda’s whole life is channeled towards achieving his goal; Hunt believes that life is an opportunity to maximize the number of ways to have fun.  (“Take it easy baby, specialize in having fun  . . .”)

Watching the film we noticed that the cinematographer’s work might earn a Best Photography Oscar™ nomination, which, in turn, made us think that “Rush” may be a serious contender for several different Awards next spring.

That, in turn, made us wonder if the Oscar™ Awards ceremony had changed much since we covered the ones for 1974 and 1975.  Back then getting a press pass was a Herculean task of the myth of Sisyphus level of challenge.  Odds are, it is much more difficult now.

The “Going Postal” article, which is a condensation of a chapter in a new book of the same name by Peter Bryce, exemplifies the kind of journalism that is displayed annually in the series of books published by Project Censorship.

Censored 2014:  Fearless Speech in Fearful Times goes on sale this week and the Censored Team will appear at Moe’s Books in Berkeley CA on the night of October 5, 2013.

Doing an article comparing and contrasting the 2013 Oscars™ with the events we witness back in the Seventies would not get any serious consideration from the evaluating committee at Project Censored, but . . . it would be hella fun, “n’est ce pas?”

Do the writers, whose work will be presented in the next edition of the Project Censorship series, also get the Dianne Feinstein Journalism seal of approval?

Would a whimsical article examining a thirty nine year gap in Oscar™ history, as an example of nostalgia laden coverage of the movie awards, be more likely to get a prize from the Dianne Feinstein Journalism Awards committee than from Project Censored?  There’s one sure way to find out.

Some cynics will say that since James Hunt was both very wealthy and very good looking, it was almost inevitable that he would enjoy living and that others who were not dealt such a good hand would have grounds for envy, but the sad thing about that is that the people who most need to learn Hunt’s “go for the gusto” approach to life, are the ones most likely to be diverted by resentment instead.  Didn’t we read somewhere that Summerset Maugham’s father was an ugly fellow who was married to the most beautiful woman in Paris?

Since we covered the 1974 and 1975 events as a reporter/photographer for the Santa Monica Independent Journal newspapers, and since the guy who helped us get that job is now a senior editor at Playboy, perhaps we could augment a trip to L. A. to cover the awards ceremony with a chance to revisit the Playboy mansion and trade some journalism gossip with the former editor of the Marina Mail.

Heck, if we get back down to “Shakey Town,” maybe we could visit the Marina Tenants Association and find out what’s up with the Los Angeles County Assessor.  The mainstream media is ignoring that intriguing story.  Did we just hear Fienstein’s voice saying:  “Good boy!  Want a treat?”?  Aren’t journalists who can “heel!” on command, worth their salary?  How can we submit a story pitch for possible inclusion in Project Censored’s book for the overlooked news from 2013?

Question for both of California’s Senators:  Why haven’t the Democrats who live in Tea Bag Republican Congressional Districts already started recall petitions for their representatives who seem oblivious to the wants and needs of their constituents?

Will older pundits compare the shutdown to the Chickie run sequence in “Rebel without a Cause” rather than the mandatory (?) reference to the film “Thelma and Louise”?

Are the approved journalists and pundits giving the voters a heads-up about what will happen if the impasse lasts until the 2014 mid-term elections?  If the situation disintegrates into a prolonged Mexican standoff, will the paid lackeys in the mainstream media dutifully report that this is a marvelous example of a democracy in action?

If Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and the others who risked their lives to provide content for Combat got a paycheck wouldn’t the existence of that slip of paper have been the equivalent of a death warrant?  If they didn’t; wouldn’t Senator Feinstein dismiss their efforts as useless examples of pathetic amateur scribbling?  Since possession of a copy of Combat was a capital offense, we wonder how often a mint condition issue is available on e-Bay and how much one usually fetches.

[Note from the photo editor:  Over the years the WLJ photo library with quality images of Phil Hill, John Surtees, and Dan Gurney has slowly evaporated.  (Is it true that Howell Connant’s photo library was destroyed when the World Trade Center buildings collapsed?)  The best we could do on short notice was to use a photo of the 1966 VW van, seen recently in San Francisco, that was channeled, shortened, and convertible-ized by folks who wanted to promote Tillamook Cheese.  We wanted to use those photos for a story idea tip to the ruling junta at Jalopnik but maybe a link to this column will serve the same purpose.]

Famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle, in a book titled “Last Chapter,” wrote (on page 37):  “I’ve always felt the great 500-mile auto race at Indianapolis was the most exciting event – in terms of suspense – that I’ve ever known.  The start of a B-29 mission to Tokyo, from the spectator’s standpoint, was almost the same as the Indianapolis race.”

Now the disk jockey will play Elvis’ songs:  “Spinout,” “Speedway,” and “Viva Las Vegas.”  We have to go and start the arduous process of applying for press credentials for the next Oscar™ Awards ceremony.  Have a “Boh Chi” type week.

September 27, 2013

One hand washes the other

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:31 pm

Team Oracle teaches the “Never say Never” lesson

On Saturday September 21, 2013, film director William Friedkin was scheduled to do a book signing, for his new autobiography “The Friedkin Connection:  A Memoir,” at the Pacific Film Archive before a screening of “Cruising.”  Going there and taking some photos seemed like a relatively easy way to get some shots to use as the lead-in photo for this column.  After taking some paparazzi style arrival photos, our enthusiasm for the busman’s holiday work nosedived.  Instinctively we knew the frames we had were lousy and that to get “the shot” for this event we would have to go into the book signing and that could be accomplished only by paying the price of admission for the first film and we were intimidated by the prospect of shelling out our money just for the privilege of helping a guy who arrived in a limousine sell extra copies of his new book.  We balked at the opportunity but at least he got the lead position in this book wrangler’s wrap-up column.

Three years from now, there will have been three more World Series played and three more Superbowls will be in the history books, but the next American Presidential election will still be more than a month in the future.  Three more installments of the Oscar™ Awards TV special will have been broadcasted before the Election Night coverage goes on the air.

It seems to the World’s Laziest Journalist that even if any of our hero writers, Hemingway, Kerouac, and Hunter S. Thompson were still alive and churning out content, they would have a serious problem with the challenge of writing material from now until then that would hold readers’ interest and be worth the effort.

Fox will have no trouble churning out simultaneously criticism of both President Obama and the front runner, Mrs. Clinton, but could Hunter S. Thompson sustain the “game day” level of intense enthusiasm for that long?

Could a long sustained series of very discouraging news broadcasts cause a country to suffer a collective nervous breakdown?  Maybe by the time the 2016 Presidential Election is being held the “Top Forty” radio format will be experiencing a revival.

If a photographer with a blog had access to getting good close up photos of famous personalities such as the President and/or the former First Lady every day for the next three years, wouldn’t the hypothetical photog eventually run out of motivation to sustain the effort?

Obviously, if some potential aspect of pop culture is going to motivate a writer for one more week, or for three more years, there is going to have to be a great deal of indulgence for personal preferences as the explanation for various self appointed story assignments and topic selections.

For example, if a writer tried and failed to get press credentials to cover the 1968 Democratic National Convention it seems unlikely that a good connection between then and now will hold the writer’s or readers’ attention, but if that same fellow saw Jimmy Clark, Phil Hill, and Lorenzo Bandini compete in Formula One car races, then it is quite likely that he will find a flimsy pretext for slipping a plug (or a full length column as film review) into the mix when “Rush,” the new Ron Howard movie about auto racing, is released.  Heck, the mainstream media crowd seems content to use the horse race analogy every four years; maybe a column about the guys who drive Ferraris could be used as a metaphor for the 2016 Presidential Election.

Our friend writer Dennis Etchison is plunging into the Facebook world with some posts touting his new writing project, so why not help a friend?  The book “Mathison by Mathison” is the transcript of a two-and-a-half hour conversation Etchison had with Richard Matheson about his career.  It will soon be available from Bad Moon Books.  Their web site offers advanced copies autographed by Etchison and Mathison’s son.

“Turtle on the Fencepost Finding Faith through Doubt,” by Richard B. Patterson, has been mentioned in a previous column and, odds are, it will be plugged again before the results of the 2016 Presidential Election results are broadcasted.

“Eat, Drink, Vote,” by Marion Nestle gets a plug just for the clever title.

“Humboldt” by Emily Brady should be of interest to folks looking into the topic of marijuana.  Speaking of counties in California, Modoc and Siskiyou counties have voted to secede from the state of California and are starting the process of forming a new state.

Sunday, September 22, 2013, looked like it would be the day that New Zealand would win this year’s America’s Cup racing trophy and we considered going over to San Francisco and getting some grab shots that would help lure some new Kiwi eyeballs to the humble offerings of political punditry by the World’s Laziest Journalist, but then, once again, we suffered an attack of motivation starvation.  Even if we learned conclusively that the Prime Minister of New Zealand read our column about the inevitable victory . . . so what?

A sports editor taught young reporters:  “Never say never.”  We wanted to get a bet down on Joe Nameth and the Jets so much, but we couldn’t find a bookie.  The fellow at the desk next to us was reported to be a bookie who didn’t lay off.  We never saw him again.  Are there any books about Judge Crater?

If we write the first column that brings up a new topic and that topic (with no reference to where it originated) that goes viral . . . so what?  Has a book full of illustrations of “slap art” been published?  What art museum will be the first to hold a show spotlighting the “slap art” in contemporary culture?

Low level functionaries like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden used their ability to access all sorts of online information and then put that information online for what they perceived to be altruistic reasons.  We wonder when someone will resort to the good old American way of thinking and use their access to all things Internet to make some money.  Does Macy’s tell Gimbels’ what their game plan is?  Would the executives at Gimbels’ pay a fellow to help them read the e-mails of the high level management at Gimbels’?  You bet your bippy they’d fork over some big bucks for access to that material.

The New York Times Book Review Section tipped us to the new book “The American Way of Poverty” by Sasha Abramsky.  It would probably provide us with a basis for a good column but we won’t run out a buy a copy, we’ll wait and see if the Berkeley Public Library gets a copy.

The South Branch of the Berkeley Public Library does have a copy of “Deadline Artist – Scandals, Tragedies & Triumphs: More of American’s Greatest Newspaper Columns” edited by John Avlon, Jesse Angelo, and Errol Louis.

“Never Odd or Even” by O. V. Michaelsen features limericks and word play.  A revised edition is available by advanced sale on Amazon and we are looking forward to reading it because we know the author.

If plugging books written by friends is a human trait, what happens in Washington D. C. when nationally known journalists have to wheel and deal with powerful politicians to get access to personally delivered “no comment” responses to their questions?    Could it be that they trade in favors to achieve fair and balanced plugs?

The “On the Road” subgenre of literature is a personal favorite and so we were delighted to get a copy of Larry McMurtry’s “Roads:  Driving America’s Great Highways,” which is a transcription of some soliloquies he composed while driving on some of America’s best known highways.  We suggested that the Beat Museum stock that item in the bookstore section of their tourist attraction in San Francisco.

The management at the Cadillac automobile restoration firm run by Frank Nicodemus in “upstate” New York mentioned that they were sending a 1954 restored convertible to their client in California’s wine country but we missed out on a chance to collect some column material (and scratch an item off the bucket list) by getting a ridealong on the coast-to-coast road trip.

The San Francisco Public Library’s fall used book sale, where we were delighted to find a copy of Stephen Bates’ “If no news, send Rumors: Anecdotes of American Journalism,” continues through Sunday at Fort Mason.

[Photo editor’s note:  News photos taken this week at the America’s Cup Final will have a high stock shot value because the event (and the topic of subsidies provided by taxpayers) will be discussed for years to come and will be the subject for many books.]

In “The Best of Herb Caen 1960 – 1975” we noticed this passage about the arrival of Spring in 1964:  “At this time of year, I always remember the blind man on Market St. with a sign around his neck reading ‘It is Spring and I am Blind’ . . . .”  That made us wonder if Republicans pretended they didn’t see him?

The disk jockey will play “Tell Laura I love her,” “Leader of the Pack,” and “Deadman’s Curve.”  We have to rush out to see “Rush.”  Have a “checkered flag” type week.

September 20, 2013

Is the gangster saga a myth?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:30 pm

Good clean Sixties style fun in Berkeley in the digital age.

“The Family,” the newest edition to the gangster film genre, plays fast and loose with reality and that may explain the many tepid reviews, but in the future members of Joseph Campbell’s academic posse may point to this new flick as a noteworthy step in the mob saga’s journey from “based on a true story” to the realm of myth.

Joseph Campbell contended that the heroes in a culture’s folk stories took on supernatural qualities that manifested the group’s virtues and some skeptics may complain that gangsters and deities seem like an incompatible mix.  At first look having a kill-happy family as the heroes might seem inappropriate but cynical critics in other countries may see a connection as far as gangsters playing a role usually reserved for a diety as being a metaphor for American Exceptionalism.

Since a genre’s transformation from “based on a true story” to mythology is accomplished in slow stages, then a look at this gangster saga may, in the future, show the first stages of the change.

In the film the family of Giovanni Manzoni (Robert De Niro) is in the witness protection program and becomes the Fred Blake family living in the Normandy section of France.  The realistic details of the witness protection program are irrelevant to the myth of a mob boss who is trying to live anonymously in a foreign country.  The Blake family lives, as Campbell’s disciples would see it, on The Road of Trails and their handler, played by Tommy Lee Jones, would be described by the advocates of the myth interpretation of “the Family” by the words of Campbell:  “For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass.”

“The Family” makes a point of stressing the fact that saying a naughty word is much more vile than using a gun as a sacrament to deliver eternal punishment to a transgressor.  The same point was mentioned in “Apocalypse Now.”

The fact that Manzoni is given carte blanch for committing new crimes in return for his “ratting out” his associates is the first clue that reality has been abandoned.  Yes, a Boston mobster was given a similar pass in real life, but as myths tend to do the reality dial for “The Family” is twisted way into the unbelievable exaggeration red zone.

If guns and gangsters are in the process of being mythologized, some gun control nuts might soon start making dire predictions that the gun cult will raise the spectacle of mass shootings to the level of a sacred rite, which will mean that the topic of gun control will be subject to cancellation on grounds of religious freedom.

Are the debates between gun owners and gun control nuts more or less heated than the conflict in the Muslim religion between Sunni and Shiites?  Don’t all of them share the same level of commitment to their beliefs?

We had a chance to ask a fellow Berkeley columnist about the premise of this column and she voiced great skepticism about the idea that gun control advocates had become so inured to rounding up the usual suspect talking points for the mass shootings debate.  She refused to accept the idea that the advocates of gun control might only react to an extreme idea such as the possibility that shooting massacres will eventually become a religious ceremony, in the USA.  We tend to think that liberal talk radio schedules the third week of every month for the latest installment in the series of body counts outrage and gun control suggestions.

Perhaps some academic will take the premise of this column to the level of a doctoral dissertation and firmly proclaim that the gangster genre is entering the realm of myth in American culture.  The World’s Laziest Journalist would find such a tribute flattering and would hold the Legal Department in check as far as any law suite alleging plagiarism is concerned.  We don’t have the time or energy to expand this column into a book length treatise.

When film fans read a review they don’t want to get mired in a deep philosophical topic that uses terms such as “aesthetic arrest.”  They want to know if the flick is worth the price of admission or not.

Conflicted?  Giovanni Manzoni is the type of person that Travis Bickel tried to exterminate.

John Wayne won his Oscar™ by portraying a marshal who was a parody of the roles Wayne had played earlier in his acting career.  Nostalgia motivated Wayne’s award and so it is interesting to note that numerous reviews of this new film point out similar roles that Pfeiffer owned when she was younger.  Are the critics dropping subtle hints that a similar better late than never award for three time Oscar™ nominee Pfeiffer might be a good idea?

Apparently the World’s Laziest Journalist is the only columnist to note a similarity between Fred Blake’s speaking appearance in France and the one that Holly Martins makes in Vienna (in “The Third Man”).

Gangsters had refined the philosophy of a pre-emptive strike years before the births of the American politicians who would preach the redemptive benefits of the “bomb the bastards while they are still planning their first attack” philosophy that revolutionized America’s war policies.  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you; but do it first!”

It is more appealing for Americans to believe that Jimmy Hoffa is buried in the end zone of a sports stadium than to fact check the idea that he was taken to a union butcher shop and that an industrial strength garbage disposal unit destroyed all vestiges of a corpus delecti.  The 1964 film, “Goldfinger,” contained a delightful sequence illustrating a popular way of rendering a dead body unavailable for the medical examiner.  A copse inside a crushed automobile will be destroyed if the metal is melted to gain access to the evidence.  Gangsters knew this in the Sixties but Joe on Barstool mountain never stopped to think about that and preferred to believe the urban legend about where Hoffa is (allegedly) buried.  (The new San Francisco 49ers stadium will have an opening reception any day now.)

For a columnist desperately seeking column topics, this film was well worth the price of a bargain matinee.

[Note from the photo editor.  Ideally a publicity still of a scene from the new movie would be the ideal photo to accompany this column, but, since our legal staff always encourages us to err on the side of caution, we used a photo of a Sixties activity which attracted a great deal of interest from folks with digital cameras.  A photo of a Sixties era activity was deemed a way to use the image of something that is the antithesis of the gangster’s family values.  It was selected as a pragmatic and safer course to follow.]

Some poet advocated the theory that the saddest words are:  “It might have been.”  Somc comedian suggested that was wrong and that the saddest words you will ever hear are:  “Mr. Gotti says:  ‘Get in the ******’ (gosh darn) car!’”

Now the disk jockey will play “Gangster of Love,” “Stagger Lee,” and the soundtrack album from “The Godfather.”  We have to go find a news report on the Bouchercon being held this weekend in Albany, N. Y.    Have a “deus otiosus” type week.

September 17, 2013

A Simple Guide…

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 1:36 pm

…to ANYTHING or ANYONE the Right disagrees with:

Click HERE

September 13, 2013

An Ox Bow Incident with poison gas?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:27 pm

Seeing a Forty Ford arrive in Berkeley wasn’t the only Forties Flashback moment this week for one columnist.

Pops Finnegan, the legendary journalist, guru, and (amateur) philosopher from Scranton Pa., always taught his fledgling analysts to consider questions from all sides and all possible angles, so if he were alive this week and seeing the President urging the country to believe that an attack on Syria is not war, he would (hypothetically) roll a sheet of paper into his typewriter and begin formulating an opposing devil’s advocate point of view such as:

“The course of action that President Obama was suggesting regarding the allegation that Syria used chemical weapons came perilously close to fitting the definition of a crime against peace that was used at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial.”

 

Then he would include a relevant quote from the opening statement of Robert H. Jackson such as an elaboration of the hallmarks of a crime against peace:

http://www.roberthjackson.org/the-man/speeches-articles/speeches/speeches-by-robert-h-jackson/opening-statement-before-the-international-military-tribunal/

“(3) Attack by its land, naval, or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another state; and

(4) Provision of support to armed bands formed in the territory of another state, or refusal, notwithstanding the request of the invaded state, to take in its own territory, all the measures in its power to deprive those bands of all assistance or protection.”

Then he would challenge folks to do their own fact checking by providing a link to the full text of that speech.

The fact that Pops Finnegan lost a son fighting in the South Pacific in the early stages of WWII might have an influence on Pops’ respect for the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and any attempt to eliminate such material from a modern debate about national policy.

No one disputes that the use of poison gas is reprehensible but the Ox Bow question is:  Who did it?  Could Assad have used a tactic that was sure to draw international condemnation in a fight that he was winning?  Could the rebels have been so vile as to kill some of their own supporters just to bring outside intervention into their effort which seemed to be failing?

The World’s Laziest Journalist, who does not squeeze writing time into a schedule that is full of talk show appearances, has had time to read up on the Nuremberg Trials.

Citizens, who find and read a copy of “Justice at Nuremberg,” Robert E. Conot’s 1981 book about the historical legal proceedings that came after the conclusion of WWII, might find it disconcerting to contemplate the concept of crime against peace for humanitarian reasons.

When we asked a woman who had worked on gathering evidence during WWII for a potential War Crimes Trial involving the Japanese military, if George W. Bush was a war criminal she immediately snapped:  “Of course, he is.”

If her experience based opinion was correct, then it is rather ominous to see the current American President repeating the Bush foreign policy because that tends to indicate that experts on war crimes might be harsh in their assessment of the Obama speech this week.  Luckily for him, the number of living people who are available for sound bytes on the Evening News with such insights has dwindled to a small number.

On Sunday, September 8, 2013, a German magazine reported that the BDN (Germany’s Intelligence Service) has heard phone calls that indicated Assad may not have personally authorized the use of the poison gas.  This bit of news got very little notice in the media inside the USA.  Was the fellow who wrote “The Ox Bow Incident” embroiled in the HUAC Hollywood Hearings?

The World’s Laziest Journalist would prefer to write columns about other more innocuous and vapid topics such as the arrival this week of the Juice Box camper in Berkeley as part of their effort to travel the country and inform the USA about the connection between diet and health.  They are using a forty year old Winnebago and that, in turn, got us to wondering if Tom Wolfe or anyone else will be doing a fiftieth anniversary recreation of the famous Magic Bus tour of the USA in 1964 and if so how can we get a chance to cover that journey.  Wouldn’t a chance to get a ride-along on Willie Nelson’s tour bus make any journalist almost famous?  Heck we got all jazzed by a Forties Flashback moment seeing a Forty Ford in Berkeley, recently.

Pops Finnegan would probably stress that the fun feature work can always be done later and that writing a column about a historic sidebar aspect to the plans to deliver a pin prick attack on another country might have priority.

The Peaceniks are deluging their representatives in Washington with a tsunami of phone calls and e-mails strongly urging a “no” vote against military action.  They could, if they chose to, make a much stronger case if they drafted recall petitions and informed their representatives that a “yes” vote would automatically initiate the use of the recall petition before sundown on the day of the vote.

 

[Photo editor’s note:  The columnist interrupted a week of unfolding ominous history to indulge in some innocuous car-spotting.  It wasn’t the week’s only Forties Flashback moment for the writer.  Without a chance to get closer to history in the making in other cities, this mundane photo with a very tenuous link to the topic is the best that a citizen journalist can provide.  The news organizations that provide stealth propaganda get better photo ops.  Could that be an example of a quid pro quo arrangement?  Are some American media exceptional in their ability to please the Administration?]

At Nuremberg the lead prosecutor, Robert Jackson, said:  “Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions.”

Now the disk jockey will play the song that played during the opening sequence of the movie “Apocalypse Now,” Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkeries,” and Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.”  Now we have to go see a bargain matinee showing of “The Family.”  Have an “America Exceptionalism” type week.

September 6, 2013

War = jobs, jobs, and more jobs!

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:26 pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

San Francisco sentiment appeals to Democrats this week?

Americans are being duped by the cable experts into making two extremely dangerous assumptions.  First they are expected to believe that the launching of Cruise missiles will be achieved with sucker punch efficiency and second that Syria will disregard any opportunity to use their “stand your ground” philosophy to foil the attack.  Among all the hypotheticals, no one addresses the possibility that Syria may have access to weapons which could sink the American ships, the moment the first Cruise missile is launched.  If that were to occur, the idea of an iron clad guarantee for preventing boots on the ground scenarios would immediately be rendered irrelevant and invalid.  That, in turn, will lead the world to a nostalgic revival of the Bush era “no one could possibly have foreseen” line of reasoning, which always did seem a tad disingenuous.

After thirteen years and approximately a half a million words of criticism of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, President Obama made it apparent that our efforts have been irrelevant and ridiculous because he will, if he continues with his plant to attack Syria, soon compel all Americans, not just good Bushies, to adhere to the Bush axiom that folks are either with the Bush Dynasty or they are with the Terrorists which could be deemed patriotism via blackmail.

President Obama seems poised to either:  A. become a Bush clone or B. foil a neocon plan to resume the Bush master plan (which includes a new war in Syria) by some clever passive aggressive moves that will put the Republican Congress in a position where they must choose between ignoring public sentiment or giving Obama a chance to get off the hook by denying him a macho path to use American troops to save face. If they choose to let Obama off the hook, some Conservative analysts might interpret that as being an example of a humiliating vote of non confidence

If Obama is determined to become a Bush clone we will support whatever course the country is compelled to take, but, simultaneously, we will use our right to free speech to express disapproval and scorn for Obama the man in future columns.  If, conversely, he is indulging in some high level game playing to let Congress take responsibility for making an attack or preventing the President from making such a move, we will endorse whatever the country does, but we will also use our right to free speech to blame Obama for maneuvering the country into a position of extreme vulnerability for being run by a man who will be scorned and ridiculed by Muslim culture countries which revere macho conduct and a patriarchal form of governance.  Several columns may be needed to express our disapproval of such a poor foreign policy stance.

We submit to all readers both Republican and Democrats that President Obama should resign if he is repudiated by the vote in Congress.  If he gets authority to attack Syria and uses it, he owes his supporters, campaign donors, and especially the people who voted for the man who offered an alternative to the Bush program a resignation for fraud and dishonorable conduct.  The concept of conduct unbecoming for a politician is an oxymoron but it expresses the depth of his deception.

When we heard that President Obama was going to follow the Constitution and ask Congress for authority to deliver some of the old ultra-violence via some Cruise missiles, we hastily pulled out our 1965 copy of “Death in the Afternoon,” and prepared to write a column comparing the Obama move to that of a bullfighter who fools the bull, but then as the new week began to unfold in Washington, we wondered if it was the Democrats who were going to experience the moment of truth.  Later in the week, it seemed as if Obama might be the one to experience the moment of truth.

How will the Peaceniks in Berkeley, who were ebullient when Obama became the first American President of Pan-African heritage, respond to an invitation to attend a Support the Troops and Obama rally rather than any new anti-war protests?

Theoretically, by having a Democratic President take up the standard of the Bush Cheney foreign policy, it should mean that the last few holdouts to enthusiastic support of the Bush policy are compelled to make the change and unite the entire United States in the Bush camp, but there are some pragmatic considerations that might cause some problems.

Online some photos have been posted purporting to show American Troops objecting to providing support for Muslim rebels in Syria.  Is this stealth racism?  Would the troops be more enthusiastic if the Commander-in-Chief was a fellow named Bush?

If President Obama is sincere in his intention to lob some Cruise missiles into Syria and if he expects the World’s Laziest Journalist to recant and renounce previous columns that had a cynical tone regarding the need for an invasion of Iraq, we will be glad to provide some very enthusiastic propaganda but only if we get some very impressively large paychecks.  Otherwise, we will continue in our efforts to enjoy the right to free speech and voice some objections to the various gaps in Obama’s logic that we notice.

The Obama move to get Congressional approval for an attack on Syria has restored our faith in cynicism.

When he appears before Congress to Testify, should Secretary of State John Kerry, make a subtle appeal to patriotism by wearing his military medals?

Some journalists have suggested that the Saudis might subsidize the costs of a missile strike against Syria.  Could we have some lawyers look at the text of that vague verbal agreement to see if their offer covers any residual costs such as hospital care for wounded personnel or not?  Will patriotic Republicans have some objections to turning the American Military into a de facto mercenary force?

Some Administration folks have made the absurd assertion that the use of missiles against Syria is not war.  Didn’t a famous Democratic President make the argument that when an attack was made on Pearl Harbor, a state of war existed?

Has any of President Obama’s recent statements reminded his supporters of the dilemma faced by Captain Queeg’s crew?

Was this week, Putin’s equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crises?

A recent news radio news report stated that former President Jimmy Carter had said that the United States is no longer a functioning democracy.  Is Carter about to form a mutual defense treaty with Brad Friedman?  Friedman’s web site the Bradblog, which continually questions the accuracy of the results produced by the electronic voting machines, has earned him some mentions by mainstream media pundits who designated the computer voting critic as a certified member of the Lunatic Conspiracy Theory Association.

How long will it be before Jimmy Carter is predicting that those voting machines, with unverifiable results, will give JEB Bush an unfair advantage over Hillary in the 2016 Presidential Election?

During the week, Randy Rhodes and Mike Malloy mentioned a Bush era analysis that predicted that the USA would conduct efforts to destabilize the governments in several Middle Eastern countries including Syria.  America’s free press prefers not to give such information any consideration.

Mike Malloy is conducting a fundraising effort to pay for some improvements for his website and radio program and those folks who believe in fair and balanced commentary should be enthusiastic about keeping one of the few remaining Liberal voices active.

(We have warned Uncle Rushbo that when all Liberal voices have disappeared, there will be very little motivation for folks to continue paying him to provide the opposing Conservative point of view so maybe it would be a rational act of self preservation for Uncle Rushbo to surreptitiously help keep Mike Malloy funded and active in his mission of upsetting conservatives.)

While Obama asks Congress to sign a blank check, we tend to see it as a replay of the scene where Cool Hand Luke says he is standing in the rain talking to himself rather than a new chance for Obama to make an inspiring speech that evokes echoes of Churchill reassuring the Brits that “we shall never surrender!”

Richard M. Nixon resigned rather than subjecting the country to a Constitutional Crisis.  We urge Obama to drop the war or follow Nixon’s example.

[Note from the photo editor:  Those Democrats who are not teetotalers will be very likely to appreciate the sentiments expressed by a sign we saw in San Francisco recently.]

 

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