Commentary « BartBlog

November 30, 2012

Has the 2016 Election become a horse race?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Building 7, Hillary, Jeb Bush, Richard Nixon — Bob Patterson @ 2:37 pm

America’s journey to Election Day 2016 began with a single step in the form of a front page article in the New York Times on November 23, 2012, which effectively anointed JEB Bush as the Republican frontrunner. Since the World’s Laziest Journalist rarely gets news tips and doesn’t have well placed sources who will provide him with newsworthy inside information such as we read in a recent Tom Hartman column that described some astounding chicanery used by Richard Nixon in his second bid for the Presidency in 1968, we will have to continue relying on our usual modus operandi of occasionally attempting to point out the obvious in the “naked emperor” manner, ridiculing pomposity, while mixing in some obscure facts and names (which we call Google bait), and pop culture references, as a way to inform and entertain the regular readers while simultaneously conducting the search for topics which we (occasionally) manage to find before the mainstream media does.

For those who doubt that there are any “naked emperor” stories that journalists in America haven’t explored fully, we would ask: Why haven’t they asked these questions?:

Why did George W. Bush get a pass on Questions (Building 7, the vanished airplane wreckage near in and near the Pentagon, and the mysterious entities who profited from short sales of airline stocks) regarding Sept. 11, while President Obama is being held accountable for a full and immediate explanation of what happened in Benghazi?

Why did the press sit silent when George W. Bush expanded Presidential powers yet they join the chorus denouncing it when the Egyptian President makes a power grab?

Now that voices from the left are virtually extinct, where are the howls of outrage about the “liberal media”? In a country that says it values free speech, shouldn’t there be patriots asking: Where did it go?

Was coach John Madden serious when he suggested on his KCBS radio show that it was a good idea to slather mayonnaise on a peanut butter sandwich?

It is a bit too early for a rogue pundit to start assessing the likelihood of a 2016 contest between Hilary and JEB that will be compared to a horse race, so we will try to find some interesting and entertaining topics that are available to a pundit without “reliable sources” and let the mainstream media report the latest poll results.

On Black Friday, we encountered five young guys from Belgium whose quest for adventure had brought them to San Francisco. They were part of a group of artists calling themselves Harmony Street (which has a Facebook page) and they were selling hand made post cards to augment their finances to sustain their “on the road” lifestyle. If we run an item about the San Francisco phase of their journey in one of our columns, isn’t it likely that several of their friends back home will be sent some links which will provide an infinitesimally small bump in the total number of hits?

Later that same day we encountered a young man from San Diego who was interviewing people about their assessment of the annual deluge of holiday films. We told him that we personally were eagerly anticipating the arrival of the film version of “On the Road.” We managed to give him our opinion without having to forfeit our record of keeping the Internets clear of images of our face. To see it, click this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfIfyqZHoaY&feature=plcp

If a blogger can be considered a “digital Kerouac, then we have a reason to mention that postings have resumed on the blog that describes the “on the road” facet of life for “the Hitzels</a>.”

The road to the next Presidential Election Day is littered with hazards but there is one possibility that all political pundits both conservative and liberal are completely (until earlier this week) discounting: what if the Republicans want to drive the economy off the fiscal cliff? (Who will be the first pundit to compare the political showdown for the fiscal cliff to the game of chicken sequence in the film “Rebel without a Cause”?)

The Liberal pundits can not conceive of choosing to make that move so they use the psychological phenomenon called projection to assume that since they wouldn’t do that, then neither would the conservatives.

It would take a fair amount of work to write a column suggesting that the “please don’t throw me in the briar patch” strategy (from the Uncle Remos stories about B’rer Rabbit) might be lurking in the Republican leaders’ minds and neither liberals nor conservatives would give such a column serious consideration, so scratch that idea . . . but if that’s exactly what does happen don’t blame the World’s Laziest Journalist for not writing a tip-off alert column.

On Black Friday, we went to the Union Square in San Francisco to see how the convention of shoppers, political activists of the animal rights variety, protesters, office workers, tourists, police, and journalists was going. The contingent of police was augmented by mounted patrolmen who were riding horses wearing badges and Santa hats.

After a referendum in Berkeley CA to enact a sit-lie law was narrowly defeated, Mayor Tom Bates brought up a variation of the issue of who should sit where by requesting that the seating chart for the city council be adjusted so that his colleague and political opponent councilman Kris Worthington would not be sitting next to the Mayor.

When the local web site Berkeleyside asked the Mayor why, his quick quip answer (“So I don’t strangle him.”) brought renewed intensive journalistic scrutiny to the Berkeley City Council. Mayor Bates told a local TV crew “It was just a joke!”

In the Go-go era, would an independent citizen journalist have been able to report the possibility for an ecological disaster because of the gold mining efforts in the Pascua Lama area before the BBC ran a similar item about that business story from South America?

What about beating the New York Times with mentions of the 1939 BMW replica motorcycle, smoking bath salts, and pointing out that the opening statement by the lead American prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials crippled the Bush supporters “he didn’t know” argument? Do they count as “scoops”?

The famous, fictional San Francisco cop, Dirty Harry (Cling Eastwood) said: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” In the new era of overextended news staffs, rogue pundits who report information which will appeal to liberals has got to expect that conservatives will disparage any items that don’t fit the conservatives’ narrative and they will marginalize any such independent commentators.

Could the Myth Busters TV program be plotting an expose that makes the assertion that the World’s Laziest Journalist works very hard to maintain his laid-back, happy-go-lucky ersatz Gonzo style of column writing?

The conservative critics who think that the über-cynical World’s Laziest Journalist is being led astray on his path to an eternal reward will be glad to learn that he has been provided with an autographed copy of “Turtle on the Fencepost: Finding Faith through Doubt” (Richard B. Patterson Liguori Publications) and will read every word of it.

Back when Sean Connery was slipping into the role of James Bond and the Rolling Stones were trying to land a deal with a recording company, we were trying to improvise a plan that would deliver a life consisting of: meeting interesting people, seeing interesting sights, and witnessing interesting events. As this column was being written CBS radio news ran an item noting that the film “Casablanca” opened on November 26, 1942, and we were delighted to realize that would give us plenty of conversational opportunities to resort to this comment: “I’ve been to Casablanca and I’ve been to Paris – I prefer Paris.” Sometime between now and the 2016 Election Day, we will write a column that will go under the headline: “Raspberries, Jim Morrison’s grave, and the missing sewer tour.”

The road to the 2016 Presidential Election will be a tough slog so why should a freelance pundit bother to make that journey? Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream offer bumper stickers that advise “If it isn’t fun, why do it?” According to the philosophy of Ben and Jerry and the guiding principles of Gonzo Journalism, if it looks like fun then have at it.

Robert Louis Stevenson, in “An Inland Voyage,” wrote: “To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”

Now the disk jockey will play Dave Dudley’s “Six Days on the Road,” the Beatles’ “Long and Winding Road,” and Johnny Cash’s “I’ve been everywhere.” We have to go and prepare to attend the “Winter Pow Wow.” Have a “Why do we do this, Buzz?” type week.

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November 16, 2012

Nude protesters seek coverage

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice Davis, the Electric Prunes, the Profumo Scandal — Bob Patterson @ 1:35 pm

Demonstrators at San Francisco City Hall

Columnists who imitate Herb Caen’s style of three dot journalism wouldn’t be fazed in the least by one week that produced an opportunity to include the particulars of the Profumo Scandal, a chance to stand in the batter’s box at AT&T Park, a curious fashion note for political protesters, and the possibility of informing readers in the USA that Australia now has a TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party before the New York Times runs that bit of information.

Getting a photo that shows the view down the third base lane from home plate in AT&T Park in San Francisco CA was not what the World’s Laziest Journalist expected to accomplish on Saturday November 9, 2012. We had learned that the Red Bull Flugtag glider competition was going to be held at McCovey Cove (AKA China Basin) and we thought a photo of a failed attempt to glide away from the launch point would be an eye-catching stock image to have available when it comes time to write about the struggle between the President and the Republican controlled Congress over the “fiscal cliff” showdown.

AT&T Park, which is the home for the Giants baseball team which currently holds the “World Champion” title, is adjacent to where the Flugtag competition was scheduled to be held and the management for the baseball team, in a show of civic pride and hospitality, had agreed to open up the baseball stadium to make a greater number of observation points available to the public. They also were showing the event on the giant (pun?) screen in the bleacher section beyond center field.

The World’s Laziest Journalist arrived at AT&T Park about 11 a.m. knowing that the event was not scheduled to begin until 1 p.m., so we wandered around taking feature shots. Since the Park was open free to the public, we went in and immediately noticed that the public was being permitted to stroll out onto the playing field. We thought that a photo take showing the viewpoint of a batter standing at home plate would be good for use on our photoblog, if nothing else.

We did not know that one of San Francisco’s famous cable cars was on display inside the stadium so when we saw it we took some feature shots of it immediately. Folks who have attended a baseball game at that venue would know about it, but people living outside the Bay Area, who are not baseball fans, might find it amusing to see one of the cable cars in an incongruous setting. So we snapped several frames of that visual oddity.

Baseball fans who were informed ahead of time about the opportunity, were taking a large number of snapshots of themselves on the playing field, and in the dugouts.

Images take from far away and which are then tightly cropped have a sever quality challenge that makes the photos take from the media vantage points seem all the better in comparison. One such image was on the front page of the next day’s San Francisco Chronicle’s, which just happened to be the Sunday edition, which has the largest circulation numbers for each week.

We figured that an attitude of reverse snobbism could be implemented for a column that describes the Flugtag photo expedition and with a bit of chutzpah we could pull it off and let it go at that because we “had other fish to fry.”

If Karl Rove (or whomever) fully intends for the Republican controlled Congress to drive the USA off the fiscal cliff, which would be a better choice: A Republican in the White House or a Democrat whom many conservatives already despise? Wouldn’t having a Democrat to blame it on be better than having a Republican in office struggling for reelection in 2016? Maybe another column questioning the validity of the results obtained from the electronic voting machines would be a good column topic choice.

If a foreign country had hacked into the CIA files and exposed the director’s indiscretions, Americans would be livid but if the FBI causes the ruckus does that make it OK? Something fishy is going on and American media is directing their audience’s attention to the hanky panky aspect of the story and ignoring the nagging questions about how and why this scandal came to light. Knowing that “ya gotta go along to get along,” we will also skip over those questions as being inappropriate for use as a column topics.

Were Mandy Rice Davis and Christine Keeler better looking than the women involved in the latest scandal?

Speaking of British scandals, didn’t one of their most famous media moguls use a crack hack team to get dirt on politicians and then use that knowledge to manipulate them?

Could there be a stealth manipulation angle to the Petraeus scandal that the American media is overlooking?

We came across the information that a <a href =http://austeaparty.com.au/web/> TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party</a> is in the formative stages in Australia. Will they form a welcoming committee to greet the disgruntled American conservatives who threatened to move to Australia if President Obama got reelected? We sincerely hope the assignment desk at the New York Times reads this column.

The conservative who are griping about being taxed too much can sympathize with some of the protesters seen at San Francisco City Hall at noon on Wednesday of this week. The folks who want tax breaks so that they can increase the country’s employment level would probably make a reference to Lady Godiva’s famous tax protest and make the assertion that times are so tough now that protesters apparently can’t afford clothes.

The protesters were objecting to a proposed law that would take away their right to walk around nude in the city of San Francisco. The contingent of journalists on hand to cover that protest outnumbered the protesters. The amount of exposure in the media that the event got was minimal.

Why would so many journalists turn out to cover the nudist protest and then produce such a limited amount of coverage in the media?

The next day one well known web site which provides aggregate news content used a deceptive headline (“Nude protest turns ugly”) to refer to the Wednesday event to draw readers to a slide show that seemed to use images taken elsewhere earlier in the year. The Castro Theater isn’t anywhere near the City Hall and we did not see any protesters on bikes, Wednesday.

For those who think this protest exemplifies values that could only originate in San Francisco, we would suggest that they do some fact finding on the clothing optional policy for the metropolitan area of “Ile du Levant.”

One young lady tested the journalists’ power of observation with an ensemble that consisted of: an old leather aviator’s helmet, a pair of shoes, a red neckerchief, dark glasses, a bracelet, two socks that didn’t match, and nothing else.

A duck vehicle transporting tourists around San Francisco passed by the noon event as City Hall and seemed to gain approval of the cause from the passengers.

It was a difficult assignment for the still photographers and video crews because most publishers and managing editors insist that no frontal nudity be shown. When you have a group of nude people milling about, it takes a concerted effort to get images that don’t violate the media prejudice against any frontal nudity.

Readers of this column who want to fact check the effort by Supervisor Scott Wiener to criminalize nudity should do a Google news search for “San Francisco Wiener measure.”

Could the idea of pictures that many journalists want to take and many in the audience want to see, but which get “killed” by prudish (conservative?) media owners be used as a metaphor for the clever management of news stories and political commentary in American Journalism?

If journalists and citizens think that the rich should pay a fair tax and the good ole boys don’t see it that way, which group will the media owners seek to please? The politicians might well use tax payers’ money to subsidize a trip to a strip club but the newspaper and TV station owners damn sure are not going to run images with frontal nudity in the media they own. Perhaps more media hypocrisy will be on display at the next San Francisco City Hall nude protest which is scheduled (weather permitting) for noon on Saturday November 17, 2012.

Poet William Blake wrote: “The nakedness of woman is the work of God.”

Now the disk jockey will play The Electric Prunes’ “I had too much to dream (last night),” the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense and Peppermints,” and Scot McKensie’s “San Francisco (Be sure to wear a flower in your hair).” (Yeah all those songs are from 1967 – so is “San Francisco Nights” by Eric Burden and the Animals. So what?) We have to go buy a new Mayan calendar because our old one is about to become obsolete. Have a “Live for today” type week.

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November 12, 2012

Ye Olde Scribe Presents: Yet ANOTHER Slightly More Than Cracked Crackpot Theory

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 8:29 am

Courtesy The New York Times

BUYCRACKY NEWS ANALYSIS CENTER- The latest analysis from the YOS Buycracky Center for News Analysis has concluded that Chris Christie worked with Barack “I’m a Kenyan, Muslim, terrorist” HUSSEIN Obama after the storm storm troopered its way way through the northeast because he know that will help with his run for presidente’ in 2016. Here are the obvious “facts:”

1. As we all know politicians who defy their party line for the sake of doing what they’re SUPPOSED TO BE DOING, always succeed, become very popular, and win elections after their parties always admit they were wrong, the “traitor” was right. Think of Joe Lieberman, or Jacob Javits. There’s a long history of these icons being loved by their party and becoming presidents, like Joltin Joe won the presidency after shaking off Al Gore, who never won a popular vote in his life. Ever.

2. Helping a president of another party during a time of crisis, close to an election, is the best way to curry favor with the most foul mouthed, talking point pushing, people from your own party. (It also is the best way to chili powder, pepper, oregano, thyme and Basil Rathbone favor.)

3. The praise heaped upon cooperative with the other party politicians is deep, and thick, and very brown, and extra gooey. Despite the awful smell, it REALLY IS deep, and very brown, and extra gooey.

4. To believe otherwise is to buy into the “tinfoil hat” concept that Christie WAS DOING HIS #@!%^ JOB!

The Buycracky News Analysis Center is funded by the sale of bull droppings dropped by masters of the craft in the punditry and politicians. Said droppings are carefully collected by socially reject leprechauns who got caught collecting things that make you go pew in their pots of gold instead of gold. Collected from Matrix like farms where BS framers are carefully raised from little eggs planted by the flatulence that explodes out of the mouths of TV-based punditry posing as analysts, like those on FOX.

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November 2, 2012

Lies, smiles and unverifiable election results

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Gerald Nicosia, Jack Kerouac, John Allen Cassady, Mitt Romney — Bob Patterson @ 12:53 pm

cropped-of-john-cassady1
John Allen Cassady

The 2012 Election Day in the USA may well become known as the day that Journalism died because no matter what happens the actual results will be the subject for an eternal debate. Brad Friedman, who is the leading spokesman for the critics of the unverifiable results produced by the electronic voting machines, has, in a preemptive move, been labeled as the voice for a conspiracy theory and thus all skeptical responses to the final counts will have been neutralized before they can be printed in the next day’s newspapers.

If Mitt Romney wins, there can and will be no criticism of the outcome. Any Progressive voice who dares to contradict the news will be trashed as a conspiracy theory lunatic by the conservative noise machine just as Friedman was.

If President Obama wins, the conservative propagandists will discredit his win without in the least way casting any doubt on the electronic voting machines.

Either way partisan gridlock will ignore any attempts to let fully fact checked journalism play the roll of umpire or referee. Then on one side or the other major segments of the American population will have serious doubts about the validity of the next President’s right to occupy the White House.

If Journalism per se is DOA, what then will columnists, who don’t want to be a cheerleader for either side, write about?

Lucy, the building in Margate, New Jersey, which resembles an elephant, apparently escaped major damage in Hurricane Sandy. That fact may not be of much importance to readers in Western Australia, but anybody who flocked to the Jersey Shore during their formative years, will be glad to know about Lucy’s good fortune. Folks who have never heard of this bit of unique American architecture, will probably appreciate the chance to click on a link that will produce a photo of the storm’s photogenic survivor.
http://boingboing.net/2012/10/30/lucy-the-elephant-1881-novelty.html

The folks in France and Germany may possibly get some reliable journalism about the election, but will the people in Australia and Great Britain get unbiased reports in their national media which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch?

We could write a column that asks what happens to the personal belongings of people who lose their homes when banks foreclose. If the personal belongings and furniture are not moved, do the banks have a legal right to sell the items left behind? Are the people who buy those goods still known as shinnies or is the use of that word forbidden in the land that was built on the principle of freedom of speech?

In Berekley CA, the voters will decide about enacting a sit-lie law. According to information we received from a member of the city council, Berkeley has, in the past, enacted a sit-lie law and lost a sum of money when the ACLU took the municipality to court. Berkeley lost that past case and perhaps could become the target for some “those who forget the past” criticism if history repeats itself.

Has the national news media reported that California Governor Brown has stated that the California Highway Patrol may be used to supply some law enforcement services in the cash strapped cities that are struggling with smaller local police forces? Would using the California Highway Patrol that way be similar to sending members of nationally known baseball teams to substitute for the professional hockey players who have been locked out by the team owners? (Just asking.)

The debate in California over Prop 32 has us asking this question: If businessmen can not run ads which make fraudulent statements, why then can the people known as corporations run political ads which make fraudulent claims? If two political PACs run contradictory statements, wouldn’t one of those ads have to be making some false statements?

If Mitt Romney had been elected President in 2008, would FEMA already have been disbanded? If so, would America see the wisdom of cutting taxes for the billionaires while simultaneously dividing the job FEMA does among 50 different state levels of bureaucracy? What’s not to love about duplicating the miracle of the loaves and fishes using bureaucrats?

If Mitt had been elected President in 2008 would the government be sticking its nose into the management decisions of a Massachusetts pharmaceutical company or would a sincere apology to the victims’ families have already been issued and the matter dropped by now?

Has the Los Angeles county assessor finally raised bail money or is he still in jail? If so, why haven’t his campaign donors rushed to help him? Will his plight be used as leverage to put pressure on him to cooperate with Federal investigators in return for leniency?

San Francisco politicians are hinting that it might be nice if Superbowl L (what the hell is “L”?) is played in their fair city.

In a country where having a prominent political father was enough of a resume to make Al Gore, George W. Bush, and Mitt Romney qualified Presidential candidates, we were doing some prep work for a column that would ask if John Allen Cassady is a genuine Beatnik.

John Allen Cassady is named John because his mother had an affair with Jack Kerouac. He is named Allen because his mother had an affair with Allen Ginsberg. He is named Cassady because his father was Neal Cassady.

We were talking to Cassady at a recent event held at the Beat Museum in San Francisco and mentioned that we had read somewhere that Kerouac had met Hemingway at a party. A fellow who was listening to our conversation said: “Oh, that was in my book.” It turned out he was Gerald Nicosia, author of the Kerouac biography titled “Memory Babe.” He offered to sign a copy of his new book “One and Only: the Untold Story of ‘On the Road,’” which was for sale in the gift shop section of the Museum. We bought one, had him sign it, and then asked John Allen Cassady to sign it as “witness,” which he graciously did.

Nicosia’s Kerouac biography reported that the fact that the famous beatnik had met Hemingway at a party in the Greenwich Village section of New York City in the late forties had been supplied to him by Kerouac’s wife and he felt safe in putting that bit of hearsay evidence in the book. Kerouac fans can learn more about Gerald Nicosia at the Mill Valley Lit website.

For recreational reading, we have been perusing “The Wolves are at the Door: the story of America’s Greatest Female Spy” by Judith L. Pearson and the title reminded us of some liberal pundits cynical assessment of Mitt Romney’s quest for the Presidency.

Some cynical California pundits are promoting the easy way out by urging “Vote ‘yes’ on all odd numbered ballot propositions and ‘no’ on the even numbered ones.”

[Note from the Photo Editor: If citizen journalists have limited access to Presidential candidates for getting photos, then you have to go with the photos you can get. If photo op access for citizen journalists is very limited; does that same principle also apply to the facts available for pundits to use in their assessments of the candidates?]

John Quincy Adams said: “I can not ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong.”

Now the disk jockey will play Hank Williams Jr.’s “I’ve got rights,” Nancy Sinatra’s “Boots,” and Jacob Dillon’s song “War is kind.” We have to go over to Frisco to see the art exhibition, by Wes Anderson, at the Spoke Art Gallery, titled “Bad Dads.” Have a “just following a family tradition” type week.

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Ye Olde Scribe Presents: October Suuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrprise!

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 8:10 am

jimn
(Apologies to Jim, not a horse, NEIGHbors)

YOS is also upset at the October surprise: Sandy. How DARE the Obama administration conspire with outside forces to steal an election, especially an “outside force” who is supposed to be on OUR side, oh, fellow Teabag religiously whacked far Rightward wingnuts?
(more…)

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October 19, 2012

A fireman, the High Priest of CA, and a lying Bishop

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Bishop Romeny, Charles E Willeford, The High Priest of California, the single bullet theory — Bob Patterson @ 12:40 pm

Do Photographs need to be fact checked?

Is the UCB football team playing a home game this weekend?

At the next debate, President Obama should be accompanied by a guy in a full fire fighting outfit like George W. Bush was when he spoke at the World Trade Center because if the challenger, Bishop Romney, tells any more lies in the next debate than he did in the last one, surely his pants will catch on fire. The President should announce the reason for have that unusual escort before the debate begins. Is there an incongruous aspect to watching a bishop tell lies non-stop?

When Republicans ask their own children: “Do you use dope?” do they really want to see an example that their offspring can fib as blithely as the bishop does? Shouldn’t they just look for needle tracks on the inside of the elbow area of the kids’ bodies?

Did Mitt really win a Medal of Honor in Vietnam while serving a tour of duty under an assumed identity?

What’s not to love about a California ballot proposition that does the exact opposite of what it sounds like it will accomplish?

Charles E. Willeford’s novel “The High Priest of California,” was about a used car saleman.

Is it true that if he is elected, Mitt Romney will be the only President ever to have previous experience as a congressman, a Senator, and a governor?

After all the conflicting stories about polls, will the results from the electronic voting machines have any credibility? Hell’s bells if the news readers announced on the programs for the election results that JEB Bush had gathered enough write-in votes to be named President, would there be any recourse for skeptics?

Would it be ironic if Mitt Romney is proclaimed the election winner via electronic voting machines results that are one monumental lie?

Speaking of credibility will the arrest of the assessor in Los Angeles county have a direct affect on the (approximately) thirty-five year old effort of the Marina (del Rey) Tenants Association’s call for an investigation into the relationship between the Los Angeles County board of supervisors campaign funds and some real estate developers who provide large amounts of money for those re-election bids? Will this case revive the concept of “influence peddling”? For more on the assessor’s arrest, click this link:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-assessor-20121019,0,2209709.story

Who is better at proclaiming his innocence Gerry Sandusky or Lance Armstrong?

Arlen Specter, who died recently, was the author of “the single bullet theory.” Did you know that some of the crucial findings of the Warren Commission were contradicted by a second, less well known, Congressional investigation?

Oscar Wild may have set a standard for American politics when he wrote: “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.”

Now the disk jockey will play the Mills brothers’ song “Be sure its true,” Johnny Cash’s version of “Rock Island Line,” and Ronnie and the Daytonas’ song “Antique ’32 Studebaker Dictator Coup.” We have to go find the Liars’ Hall of Fame. Have a “testify to that under oath” type of week.

Note from the Photo Editor: We needed a photo to add eye appeal to this posting so we selected one we took which should make it evident we saw something interesting. Are photographs immune from the fact checking process? While wandering around this week (exploring the possibility of getting a press pass to cover a Giants’ World Series home game) we saw the University of Californian at Berkeley marching band (or part of it) traveling and playing music on one of San Francisco’s famed cable cars. We don’t know why that happened but doesn’t a photo provide irrefutable proof that we did see it happening?

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October 12, 2012

An illustration online is worth . . .

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Eddie Adams, Sidewalk Etiquette, The Blue Angels, The Loving Spoonful — Bob Patterson @ 1:29 pm

angeles-tight-crop
San Francisco was wowed by the Navy Blue Angels last weekend.
walk-to-right-cropped-verticle
Berkeley provides political activists with a smorgasbord of causes.

What was with the black spot on Mitt’s lapel pin flag?

Becoming a noteworthy protester in Berkeley CA is a formidable challenge. If a person selects a unique topic for his protest action, that might be a way to stand out from the crowd. A columnist who wanted to draw attention to such a noticeable cause could explain in words what was motivating the fellow, but a still photo that would let people read the sign that the folks see on Shattuck Ave. in downtown Berkeley would be a more visually appealing way of providing the information to the audience.

In our previous column, we mentioned that folks online were speculating about what the black dot on Mitt Romney’s flag lapel pin meant. Most folks who read that item had probably seen the debate on TV, but it would have been better if we could have illustrated the topic with a picture of the item that drew the comments. We had taken some photos of the TV screen but because of deadline considerations were not able to do all the prep work to get the photos online with the column posted on the Friday morning following the Wednesday night event.

LIFE magazine started publishing a weekly publication of top notch photojournalism at a time when newsreels of world events were ubiquitous. Some time back LIFE began to publish the best examples of the day’s photojournalism on their website. Then suddenly that aspect of their website was suspended.

The first time this columnist ever saw Eddie Adams’ photo of a guy being shot in the head by the Saigon Police Chief was right after it moved on the AP wirephoto network. A photo editor for a daily newspaper in Pennsylvania asked if we wanted to see the picture that would win the Pulitzer Prize next spring for best news photo. His assessment of it was spot-on correct and most folks will know what particular image we mean. Tracking down someone who could give permission to use that very photo with this column would take a lot of work and again deadlines indicate it isn’t worth an exorcise in futility to try to get that permission. We will assume people know the image we mean.

The Wall Street Journal website has a daily roundup of news photos. The Daily Beast website features one “best” newsphoto each day. The Bag News Notes website has a list of links for people interested in photojournalism and if we had home access to the Internets, we would probably spend an hour or more each day doing a quick reconnaissance sweep of those links. But we don’t; so we don’t.

Why doesn’t some website become the “go to” source for the day’s best images just like the Huffington Post has become for verbiage?

Aren’t college level courses in protests being taught at UCB? Berkeley CA is a smorgasbord of political issues. Peace is a perennial issue. This fall a new attempt to establish a sit-lie ordinance will be decided by the voters in Berkeley. Sidewalk etiquette has become the issue for one fellow. Perhaps he views our concern about the diminished status of photojournalism online to be very Don Quixote-ish.

When the first Presidential debate ended on October 3, we noticed that less than an hour later CBS News was reporting on KCBS radio in San Francisco, that Mitt Romney had received a decisive win according to a poll. They blithely informed listeners of the results but did not elaborate on details of how and where the poll had been conducted. It sounded like spin to this columnist and we were very disheartened to not that when the World’s Laziest Journalist is skeptical about the quality of journalism provided by Edward R. Murrow’s successors, then the death of “freedom of the press” in the USA is a moot topic.

Sadly, a column featuring a photo with a show business celebrity would probably draw more readers than a serious consideration of the future of Democracy in a country with a dead free press would get. We heard a report by CBS radio news’ Larry Maggot saying that anything online with an accompanying illustration gets more attention. We used to work with a fellow who became Time magazine’s White House correspondent. One of his favorite axioms was: “Monkey see, monkey do.” We like to think he would approve of using snapshots with a tenuous connection to our columns.

Do people out there in digital land want to read a column pointing out that President Obama seems to be ignoring the fact that if he doesn’t convince voters to vote not just for him but for the other Democratic candidates participating in attempts to win Congressional and Senate seats, then he might get a second term that will be a continuation of the current legislative gridlock and the net result for the citizens in the poor and middle class will remain grim? What happens to that topic if we can’t get a relevant photo to go with that topic? Would it be better to make the extra effort to get a snazzy photo to accompany a column on that topic or is it just a waste of time and energy?

When AP staff photographer Eddie Adams advised us (in the employee lunchroom at 50 Rock) to discard the ever ready case we were putting on a newly acquired Nikon F, he also provided us with a closing quote for this column: “It’s a Nikon; you can drive nails with it.”

Now the disk jockey will play the Grand Canyon Suite, the Loving Spoonful’s song “On the Road Again,” and Paul Simon’s song “Kodachrome.” We have to go on Coolpix patrol. Have a “regional split” type week.

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September 28, 2012

“Interception!” “Fumble!” Or “Touchdown!”?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Erol Flynn, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh — Bob Patterson @ 12:25 pm

Labor dispute in progress! This column has not been fact checked.

Good officiating is just as important in American politics as it is in the NFL and some curmudgeonly columnists will not be surprised if the Presidential Election ends with a call by the referees (or Supreme Court?) that gives the win to someone who was an ineligible receiver.

Rush Limbaugh early in the week was cackling with delight over the furor the poor officiating by the replacement referees over the weekend (and the Monday night Sea Hawks vs. Greenbay game) had generated among football fans. Uncle Rushbo was gleefully asserting that the dispute points out the underlying fault in the liberal argument that the replacements are equal to the referees with years of experience.

It is a clever way to make the central issue (for Uncle Rushbo) seem to be that inexperienced rookies make excellent examples for the principle of giving quota hires the same priority as more qualified job applicants.

That, in turn, is a slick way of diverting the focus away from the idea that (economic) might makes right makes sense to the one percent.

It seems quite likely that Uncle Rushbo wouldn’t want to read any commentary that makes the assertion that the team owners might (metaphorically speaking) wanted to do to football fans, players, and bookies, what the Republican politicians would like to do to America’s voters.

Since a goodly number of media owners seem to relish the opportunity to cozy up to Uncle Rushbo and the team owners, it could be that there was an unwritten edict is in effect in the mainstream media to ignore the arrogance and greed of the team owners and focus on the ineptness of the scab laborers. Didn’t Ayn Rand advise team owners involved in labor disputes that “winning isn’t everything . . . it’s the only thing!”?

Americans have traditionally supported the underdog and so folks like Uncle Rushbo derive a certain level of perverse pleasure when the conservative punderati have to defend the poor persecuted minority of people who own sports franchises against the unwashed rabble who are howling like a crowd at the gladiator games to see the team owners eaten alive by high tax rates. It is up to the likes of Uncle Rushbo and the Republican politicians to come to the defense of the one percenters.

The Billionaires for Bush organization has morphed into Billionaires for Wealthfare and is recording their antics for posterity online. Has a spokesperson for that group been a guest on Jon Stewart or the Colbert Report show? If not; why not?

Speaking of cash bonuses for debilitating hits, are the TV networks giving out any bonus money to the cameramen if they record vignettes of people reduced to tears? We have noticed that lately CBS Evening News does seem to be helping reinforce the conservative selling point that Obama has failed by showing someone crying each night because they can’t cope with the contemporary American economic situation. It kinda seems like the managing editors are specifically sending the news reporters into the field to get shots of weepy women saying they don’t know how they are going to feed their kids and pay for college. Did they show that kind of melodrama journalism back when George W. Bush was President?

Do network owners bother to get involved with the story selection process? Would it build ratings if we had Ed Murrow interview Marilyn Monroe on “Person to Person”?

Do Americans want celebrity gossip or do they want a full explanation of what happened to Harold Holt?

Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Wayne Swan, recently made a comment about the Republican Party in the USA being taken over by “cranks and crazies.” Did Fox News run any story about that bit of international criticism? If not, why not?

Stanford University released a study, titled “Living Under Drones,” that asserted that the American drone bombers were spawning a great deal of resentment in the Middle East because of the high number of civilian casualties they caused. The authors of the study seemed to be implying that the carnage would motivate future retaliation against the USA and thus prove that President George W. Bush was accurate in calling the conflict the “Forever War.”

President Obama was quoted as saying that the drones attacked high value military targets and that civilian casualties were “exceedingly rare.” Will Uncle Rushbo validate Obama’s claim or will America’s anchor side with the Muslims and dispute the President’s claim?

Didn’t Reich Marshal Hermann Goering assure journalists during WWII that the V2 buzz bombs were only used against military sites and that very few Brits were being sent to the hospital (or morgue) as a result?

President Obama went to the UN this week and delivered a speech that stressed the point that Muslim countries should use the “freedom of speech” principle to ignore a film that they say is offensive to their religion. Would he be just as tolerant of the freedom of speech principle if some Muslim clerics arrived in the United States and preached that NFL team owners should be permitted to have multiple wives harem style?

Is Religious freedom available to the Native Americans who believe that peyote should be used in some of their religious ceremonies?

Are any young Americans becoming enthusiastic about reforming the Lincoln Brigade and going to Spain to help the miners fight against the miserly mine owners?

Is there any talk about forming a new Lincoln Brigade and sending the boys to Syria to do for Syrians what Ernst Hemingway et al did for the Spanish people in the Thirties?

During the last week of September of 2012, Rush Limbaugh in a casual toss away line unveiled the concept of “media fraud.” It was his contention (has he been sipping the Coolade seved in the employee mess at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory?) that all the polls predicting that President Obama will steamroll over Mitt Romney in the November Election are part of a concerted, coordinated premeditated effort to cast doubt on the “upset” victory news for conservatives who “know” Mitt will get the most votes on the electronic voting machines.

Wouldn’t any political party that plans to use covert methods of election cheating be wise to launch a preemptive strike aimed at media credibility as a way of discrediting any subsequent voting results that defy logic? If the electronic voting machines are going to be manipulated to deliver an “upset” victory to Mitt Romney wouldn’t it be wise to start criticizing the media’s credibility now?

Isn’t the leftist media always goading the hoipolloi into selecting Barabbas?

Did Barabbas have a horse that could participate in a dressage competition or did he just ride a fast quarter horse (for quick getaways?)? Is there really a place called “Rose’s Cantina” in El Paso? Do you know where the only foreign military base inside the United State is located? Shouldn’t every American military base be named “Fort Bliss”? Speaking of the Museum for the U. S. Cavalry, isn’t it remarkable that Errol Flynn did such a good job of portraying General George A. Custer?

Speaking of a massacre, can’t Karl Rove invoke the Whitlam rule and replace Mitt Romney on the Republican ticket before he makes political history similar to that achieved by Alf Landon and George McGovern?

Ahhh, but won’t the concept of “Media Fraud” (essentially) lay the foundation for a counter-conspiracy propaganda blitzkrieg substantiating a Mitt win (via the electronic voting machines with no verifiable results) that contradicts all expectations? So it is that the results of the November election have already been rendered irrefutable and thus irrelevant. (Whatever!)

The People who expect honest results from the team that gave George W. Bush two disputed “Touchdown!” calls haven’t been paying attention. Do they skim read the Gospel of St. Ayn Rand?

The party that wins the White House in November will proudly proclaim that Democracy is alive and well in the USA. The party that loses will hold a press conference on the campus of the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory and label the election a fraud and a farce.

In “The Fountainhead” St. Ayn Rand wrote: “Don’t bother to examine a folly – ask yourself only what it accomplishes. . . . You don’t have to be too clear about it. Use big words. . . . The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it.”

Now the disk jockey will play Andy William’s “Hawaiian Wedding Song,” the tearjerker classic about football, “The blind man in the bleachers,” and AC/DC’s song “Walk all over you.” We have to go look for a good photo for next week’s column. Have a “Mr. Gotti says: ‘Get in the fuckin’ car!’” type week.

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September 6, 2012

Got rigged election results?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Cecilia Paredes, Clint Eastwood, Euthanasia Coaster, Lady Gaga — Bob Patterson @ 12:38 pm

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Are pop culture stories fading from the Journalism scene?

In the annals of Los Angeles Political History there is a half century old story about a fiery challenger who, in the best David vs. Goliath tradition, issued bold and provocative challenges to a powerful incumbent to hold a debate. The conventional wisdom at the time held that the fellow in office had nothing to gain by sharing the spotlight with an unknown underdog. Finally the exasperated hopeful bought some local TV time and debated an empty chair. This bit of extreme stunt campaigning helped deliver a stunning upset victory for the outsider.

Since Clint Eastwood, who was born in San Francisco in 1930, started a Hollywood acting career that was underway in the late Fifties, it could well be that he was trying to imitate that obscure, but successful, bit of political strategy when he spoke at the Republican National Convention last week.

The media storm caused by Eastwood’s speech may have been partisan payback for the “meltdown” allegations that were hurled at Howard Dean when he let out an enthusiastic yell at a primary election victory rally.

The fact that the critics of the Clint Eastwood’s empty chair shtick were supposed to be journalist and not partisan political hacks made the omission of a mention of the Los Angeles precedence, and its relevancy to last week’s event and the subsequent analysis, seem shoddy and inadequate. Some of the Eastwood speech did seem to be a bit rambling and disjointed and thus provide a basis for the comparisons to Grandpa Simpson but the L. A. connection with the chair was just too obscure to be appreciated by folks who were not well versed in L. A. political history. Repeated efforts to find out what L. A. personality successfully used the debate with a chair ploy were unsuccessful.

The first time this columnist encountered the phrase “a senior moment” was in a movie line delivered by Clint Eastwood.

As this year’s Presidential election draws closer the atmosphere in journalism is becoming very partisan and that makes the World’s Laziest Journalist reluctant to attempt to deliver snide remarks about either or both candidates.

A columnist who works with limited access to the Internets has to rely on instinct and personal preferences to select the material to be included. It could be that while pounding out the keystrokes for a column that mentions an obscure bit of political history in Los Angeles, people have been inundated with similar mentions of it among the vast variety of commentary available to them. Or not.

If the World’s Laziest Journalist stumbles across a mention somewhere (Muy Interesante magazine perhaps?) of the photos being made by South American artist Cecilia Paredes and they, in turn, remind us of some trompe l’oeil work featured in Popular Photography magazine a few decades back; would it be worth the effort to do all the work necessary to get permission to reprint some of her work plus examples of the images from American media past? Isn’t it easier to let interested readers do their own Google Image search? (Google Image hint: Cecilia Paredes Photography)

Form follows function and to produce a variety of items quickly, a columnist has to use the “put it on a bumper sticker” attitude to get the column posted and get the collection of material for the next one started.

If the readers of this column have had numerous encounters with the news stories about the “Euthanasia Coaster,” which is supposed to be a design for an extreme roller coaster ride that will kill the riders, and it is mentioned here; it is up to them to say “Can’t this columnist find something new?” or, if this is their first encounter with that news item, they can choose to do a Google Image search and “be the first on their block” to make a reference to it on their Facebook page.

One wag suggested that the Euthanasia Coaster could be a conservative scheme to give folks a cheap solution to use when the Republicans start using death panels to cut medical costs.

If Bishop Romney announced that his plan to solve the recession problem was to wave a magic wand, saying “Poof! Be gone” to unemployment, would that generate any skepticism among journalists with a national audience?

Since it should be obvious to this columnist that he will never deliver a column that is a tie breaker for a Presidential race that is continually reported to be a virtual photo finish race, we will settle for doing the work necessary for amusing a small online audience.

What if doing the necessary fact checking also provides a chance to cross an item off the columnist’s bucket list? It could be that writing columns is the excuse for the worker going out, taking pictures, seeing interesting things, having fun and that writing about the process and posting the results online is just a bonus for readers who want to enjoy the process vicariously. We like to think that Hunter S. Thompson would approve.

Eventually one photo op for pictures of protesters getting arrested looks like the next and so some weeks the columnist with a Nikon Coolpix may have to settle for getting one image that includes kink, pop culture, and a shopping destination for tourists. Is the pop culture scene being shortchanged by journalism because the smaller news staffs are often overworked?

We have written a column about walking around the ATT ballpark in San Francisco while a World Series Game was being played. Would a report on the hi-jinks going on inside the press room at a World Series Game provide some juicy reading for both the regulars and new arrivals in the audience? Maybe we should start to apply for a press pass for any AT&T Park World Series games this year?

Should we self-subsidize the expenses that would occur if we apply for and get a press credential to go back to the Oscars™?

Most Americans (both Liberal and Conservative) don’t want to read about the implications about the quality of the results that the electronic voting machines produce. No one seems concerned about the possibility that “they” might steal another election. If, as some people assert, “they” stole two, why the heck would they want to do it again?

The Conservatives don’t want to see or hear any reports that cast aspersions on Republican candidates or even on Ayn Rand.

The Liberals want to make a concerted effort to get out the vote and not be distracted by the possibility that the electronic voting machines may render their efforts ineffective.

Apparently the slim number of people concerned with the question of whether the Euthanasia Coaster or the Electronic Voting Machines has a better reliability rating means that those topics are only worth a quick mention. If the Euthanasia Coaster and the Electronic Voting Machines were important topics wouldn’t either one or both be mentioned on the Jon Stewart Show?

Do people in other areas of the world want to read about the debate in Berkeley this fall over a proposed sit-lie ordinance? Probably not.

Do citizens want to read a column about a new book that reports that the FBI got very involved in investigating the anti-war protesters at the University of California Berkeley campus in the Sixties? In the era of Homeland Security are over zealous security measures from fifty years ago important? Maybe not. (Google News Search hints: “Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power” and “Seth Rosenfeld”)

Recently we noticed that the Mediterraneum Café in Berkeley offers a beer float. Not a root beer float, but a regular brewski with a scoop of ice cream in it. We checked online and found a few mentions of the concept so we figure it is worth a mention.

That made us wonder about the news items about beer being brewed by the Obamas. How much does one bottle cost? Who gets the proceeds? Do any profits go to the daughters’ college fund? Are bottles sold at outrageously high prices to campaign donors? Does the Democratic Party profit? Are the answers to these questions available in print or electronic media or is quality journalism deteriorating that badly?

What topics are left for a columnist who puts a high priority on the “just for the fun of it” factor of fact finding and material gathering? That is the recurring challenge.

In a country that seems to be on the brink of electing Bishop Romney President, perhaps a series of columns about the general atmosphere in the USA in the fall of 2012 will be of interest to future historians who want material that wasn’t part of the wolf pack journalism produced at the two Political Conventions.

Samuel Johnson wrote: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” We have a suggestion for those ads for a certain credit card company because an “all access” backstage pass to a Rolling Stones concert would be (let’s all say it together) Priceless .

Now the disk jockey will play the Inconcevables song “Hamburger Patti,” The Daddy O’s “Got a match?,” and Hayley Mills’ “Johnny Jingo.” We have to check to see what effect sit-lie ordinances are having in San Francisco and Santa Monica. Have a “hurray for our side” type week.

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August 30, 2012

Occupy the Air Conditioned Nightmare

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: and Olga Nethersole, Bishop Romney, Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo — Bob Patterson @ 12:33 pm

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Would covering the Oscars™ (again) be more fun than writing political analysis?

FADE IN:
A grizzled tough old guy in a dimly lit room speaks: “You know what I want . . . what do you say, baby?”

Cut to: A very attractive young woman, who looks like the young Lauren Becall, responds: “As a Republican, I support a ban on all abortions with no exceptions. I’m a member of the National Rifle Association and support the concealed carry laws and back the NRA on their support of the Stand your ground laws, I also endorse the use of hollowpoint bullets.”

She pats her purse and continues: “If you intend on raping a fellow Republican, first you might want to tell me the answer to the question asked in the movie ‘Apocalypse Now:’ ‘How come you guys sit on your helmets?”

Cut to: the man who hesitates and then replies: “So we don’t get our balls blown off!”

Cut to: She starts to reach into her purse. “There’s another famous question from another movie: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ . . . what do you say, baby? . . . if you want this game to continue . . . just whistle . . . you know how to whistle don’t you?”

As “Ride of the Valkyeries” plays the announcer does the V.O. (Voice Over): “The American Women’s Sharpshooters Team urges all good patriots to vote Republican this fall.”

FADE OUT

A hip potential rapist, who knows the sources for all those cinematic questions, might also know that sometimes nothing is a real cool hand, but he might not be willing to bet his bippy, let alone his testicals, on what’s in the bag and what’s not.

If the fictional American Women’s Sharpshooters Team were ever to broadcast this hypothetical advertisement, a good many Republicans might wonder “Whose side are they on?” This supposed ad would only use Republican talking points so what’s for them not to like?

Liberals, who strenuously object to the idea of PACs and advertisements run by groups whose funding is a mystery, are unanimous in the idea that it is mandatory to do all the groundwork necessary to get the Citizens’ United advantage removed from politics. Could they, simultaneously, use the Judo principle of turning an attacker’s strength against himself to confuse and outrage the very people who wanted to expand the freedom of speech concept to include advocacy groups and the people known as corporations?

Obviously the long hard slog to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens’ United decision will provide leading liberal spokespersons with job security for years to come and we wish them God’s Speed.

In California, proposition 32, is being touted by backers as a remedy for the PAC problems, but many analysts are saying that the measure will give further legal backing to the very practice it is supposed to remedy. Who doesn’t think that’s a hysterically funny example of using lies to trick voters? Folks outside California can read up on the issue but they should look up both the “for” and “against” arguments. Some critics of the measure say that the proposition will only limit what unions can spend on political ads and not do anything to inconvenience wealthy conservatives who want to buy election results.

The Republicans, who want to prove that they have a sense of humor that will make people laugh, are also urging wage-earners to donate to a group that advocates passing the measure that some wags are calling “the Billionaires’ Bill of Rights.”

That, in turn, causes us to wonder if Republicans, when they ask their children if they smoke pot, want their kids to tell the truth in response to that question or if they are looking to get verification that conservative kids have learned the lesson of sounding very sincere when they lie or make campaign promises. What advice would Ayn Rand give to children who are being asked: “Do you smoke pot?” Is there a smoke-lie rule that applies? I.e. if you can get into trouble over pot, just tell a convincing lie.

Since the Republicans seem determined to blame President Obama for the deficits caused by the wars George W. Bush started but kept off the balance sheet, why didn’t President Obama proclaim that the “off the books” expenses had become a bipartisan American tradition and keep them off the books? When President Obama served his partial term as Senator didn’t he learn the old political legend that the Republicans spend like there’s no tomorrow when they are in power and then talk up balanced budgets nonstop when they are not in power?

Since Bishop Romney’s strategy of stressing his business record, which he won’t discuss, and giving assurances that his tax forms, which he won’t release, provide compelling reasons for electing him President have produced poll results which indicate a virtual tie; the World’s Laziest Journalist is beginning to think that political punditry has become superfluous and that it is time to start writing columns that are less partisan by tackling topics such as “Have the Oscar Ceremonies changed much since we took photos of Francis Ford Coppola with Mario Puzo?”

Columnists, who consider their mission is to provide snide comments about all politicians, might be more inclined to ask their audience if watching the Republicans try to ignore a major hurricane disaster reminded them of King Lear. Many people might not get the joke and ignore the source but when Ayn Rand advised her disciples not to vote for St. Ronald Reagan for President, didn’t she get ignored too?

The world’s laziest journalist has always been fascinated by picaresque adventures and the people who chronicle their travel experiences but it wasn’t until after posting last week’s column that we learned that Henry Miller had written a book about his experiences on the road. We were disappointed to learn that the Berkeley Public Library didn’t have a copy to borrow, but Moe’s Bookstore on Telegraph Avenue had a used volume of a collection of Miller’s work for sale. It included the text of “The Air Conditioned Nightmare.”

After living in Paris for almost a decade, Miller had returned to the USA because Europe was on the brink of a cataclysmic war and he wanted to write a book about the return of the prodigal son experiences he would gather while traveling around his native land.

Pseudo Intellectuals (moi?) will be delighted to find a cornucopia of very intriguing pre Pearl Harbor pop culture trivia in the book. Miller assumed that his audience would know who the writers Hermes Trismegistus and Kenneth Patchen and British actress Olga Nethersole were but we had to look them up. The names of these once famous personalities have become rather obscure examples of Google-bait.

For a columnist who has covered various episodes from the Occupy protests in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco, Miller’s laundry list of social complaints sounded very much as if they “were ripped from today’s headlines.”

If economic inequity was a topic for Henry Miller seventy years ago and if it will be a hot issue for activists seventy years in the future, what then is the benefit that will be derived from doing the work necessary to post columns online about the issues that are generating the news events that transpire as the United States prepares to celebrate the workers of the world on Labor Day of 2012? (Were the people who worked to establish Labor Day as a legal holiday, asked the HUAC question?)

If the prospect of providing reading matter for a bookstore customer seventy years in the future were very rational, then working to do some fact finding and providing some speculative comments about the personality of a Mormon bishop might be worth the effort, but if seeking fame and fortune are not valid motives for doing all the required labor, then the only reason left is: “Just for the fun of it.” If that’s the case . . . .

If Scanlan’s Magazine was open to sending a leading practitioner of the Gonzo style journalism to report on the festivities surrounding the running of the Kentucky Derby, then maybe (just maybe mind you) they might be willing to give the World’s Laziest Journalist a similar assignment and send him back to the Oscars™.

Other than giving permission to our self to use a picture we took at the Oscars™ almost forty years ago, we have no way to prove to Scanlon’s that we covered the awards program back in the mid Seventies but if Bishop Romney can convince America that his unavailable business history is just as valid as Nixon’s secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, then perhaps there is still hope.

Quote wranglers will be delighted with the assorted possibilities provided in the works of Henry Miller. We like this incomplete sentence: “A man seated in a comfortable chair in New York, Chicago or San Francisco, a man surrounded by every luxury and yet paralyzed with fear and anxiety, controls the lives and destinies of thousands of men and women whom he has never seen, whom he never wishes to see and whose fate he is thoroughly uninterested in.”

The disk jockey will play some music he thought might have been appropriate at the Republican National Convention: AC/DC’s song “Big Balls,” the Kiwi song “My father was an All Black,” and Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” We have to go over to Frisco to see “Vertigo,” which is the best movie ever made (according to some Brits). Have a “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” type Labor Day Weekend.

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August 23, 2012

“If you are going to San Francisco . . .”

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Ayn Rand, Elvis Christ, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, San, San Francisco CA — Bob Patterson @ 12:32 pm

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While tourists chase beatnik ghosts, they often ignore aspects of the current pop culture scene, such as graffiti artist Elvis Christ. Wouldn’t it be ironic if future tourists envied the folks in 2012 because of their opportunity to see contemporary San Francisco art history as it was being made?
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Elvis was hard at work in San Francisco, earlier this week.

Finding a story on the Hispanic Business website about a trust fund that the Republican Party’s presumptive Vice Presidential nominee had “forgotten” seemed like a good topic for a column but since the Republican Party’s “presumptive” nominee has based his campaign on his business record and has refused to release his tax records which would clarify questions about his qualifications for the Presidency, and since that clever bit of coyness seems sufficiently alluring to earn the fellow a virtual tie in polls; we deem the prospect of doing the work to produce a column that offers intelligent analysis of the implications of an overlooked trust fund an example of absurdity for inclusion in the Dadaism Hall of Fame.

The fact that this week’s polls show that the Presidential race is a toss-up, means that the only people who will question the final results that are produced by the electronic voting machines in November will be conspiracy theory lunatics. It also means that it is too late to present facts which might help informed citizens change their mind about which candidate will get their votes. As the croupier would say when the roulette ball hits the wheel: “No more bets!” The die is cast. It’s time to write columns about sailing ships (the America’s Cup competition has started in San Francisco Bay), sealing wax, cabbages, and kings.

Would people who doubt the existence of global warming because it is based on the opinions of scientists be likely to consider the validity of an effort to use Schrödinger’s cat as a metaphor that explains the three card Monty game Mitt Romney is playing with his tax returns? “Ah, hah, Mr. Romney. you have the Maltese cat? You are a card, sir.”

We sent a link to the forgotten trust fund story off to radio talk show host Mike Malloy because he has more media clout and a bigger audience.

People seem to find the fact that TMZ found and published a photo of Paul Ryan without a shirt more interesting than the forgotten trust fund (or the completely ignored story about Paul Ryan’s girlfriend while he was in college. [Google News Search hint: “Paul Ryan girlfriend college”] Keli Goff at The Root seems the reporter who got the scoop)

We have been intending to shift the focus of our columns to feature topics such as the effect the death of singer Scott McKenzie might have on tourism in San Francisco because that, at least, might lure some new readers from across the big pond, to this website.

Tourists from all over the world arrive in San Francisco and, equipped with maps, and then go walking around the various neighborhoods trying to imagine what it was like being there in the past during the Beatnik era.

Back in the Sixties, one had to dig deep to learn that the area around the Bus Stop bar had been called “Cow Hollow.” That was the past. The Beatniks had come (the location of the legendary Six Gallery was about three or four blocks away) and gone but who cared about the writers from the past when everyone was hip to Flip Wilson’s comedy routine about “The Church of What’s Happening Now!”

Learning to drive a stick shift V-dub on the streets of San Francisco at the time when folks were still chuckling because of Bill Cosby’s comedy routine on that very topic wasn’t funny because you could very easily get into a car crash whilst learning to make the deft maneuvers with the clutch pedal and the brakes. Yeah, forty years later it may seem amusing, but not when it was actually “going down.” There were laws governing how the front wheels of a car had to be positioned when parking on one of the famed hills.

Who cared about Beatniks when the cast recording of “Hair” was ubiquitous? Beats were from a different decade. Jack Kerouac was an old man in his forties reportedly living in Florida. The Mamas and the Papas, the Doors, and the Jefferson Airplane were young and most likely would be playing a gig at the Filmore West very soon.

Back in the Fifties, when the Beat Generation in San Francisco was a popular media topic, the beats would have been talking about topics such as: the Bay area disk jockey Don Sherwood, Herb Caen’s columns, and the arrival of the New York Giants at their new west coast home.

The beatniks had had their day and when the hippie era arrived it was time to enjoy KFOG and KABL radio, read Herb Caen’s columns, talk about Benny Bafano’s sculptures, see the Fantasticks, and voice an opinion about the War in Vietnam.

Young folks who stay this summer at the San Francisco Civic Center hostel will see a poster listing the lineup at the Filmore, for a concert on the 1969 Labor Day weekend. They can look at the poster and just try to imagine what it would have been like to be able to go see that show. About three and a half years ago, we were in that hostel, looking at that poster and thinking that very thing: “Wow! What would it have been like to be in San Francisco that weekend and have the option of seeing that show?” Then we remembered, we had been seriously considered buying a ticket to that particular show until we got the chance to spend that weekend going for a job interview at the newspaper published in South Lake Tahoe.

On Tuesday, August 21, 2012, while doing some fact checking in the Beatnik North Beach neighborhood, we noticed a local artist using masking tape to make some political statements.

The map wielding tourists were searching for Beatnik ghosts and ignoring a fellow who was doing some street art. We wondered if, forty years from now, tourists would be wandering around the same neighborhood wondering what it would have been like to stop and chat with Elvis Christ. Since we can’t rationally expect to have that opportunity in 2052, we decided to take some photos and asked about him and his work now whilst we had the chance.

When we started back to the Transbay Bus Terminal, we encountered a photographer named “Grant” who had been shooting an assignment at the City Lights Bookstore for Interview magazine. He had been taking photos of the store owner, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was also a poet, a book publisher, and a genuine member of the group of pioneers who started the Beat Era back in the Fifties.

It would have been a great photo-op if we could have gotten the chance to take some pictures of Grant and his subject, but it has always been a tenant of the World’s Laziest Journalist’s philosophy that (as they used to say in the Sixties) you have to stop and smell the (pop culture) flowers along the way. “Be here, now!”

Writing about the pop culture is similar to writing about horse racing. In the future, historians will look back on the summer of 2012 and focus on specific stories which will have become significant factors for inclusion in books about the election of the President in that year, but for a columnist trying to writing about the summer of 2012 as it is happening; an encounter with Elvis Christ will provide a desperation chance to solve the weekly dilemma “What will this week’s column be about?”

Ayn Rand has said: “Whoever tells you to exist for the state is, or wants to be, the state.”

Now, the disk jockey will play a Pussy Riot album, a Jefferson Airplane album, and Scott McKenzie’s “(If you’re going to San Francisco) Wear a flower in your hair.” We have to go check out the column potential of the Blackhawk Auto Museum. Have a “California Dreaming” type week.

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August 16, 2012

New campaign, old strategy?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: George H. W. Bush, Harry Treleaven, Joe McGinniss, Timothy Crouse — Bob Patterson @ 12:18 pm

In “The Selling of the President 1968” (Trident Press 1969), author Joe McGinniss described the trials and tribulations that the Nixon team had to surmount in that year’s Presidential Campaign, and since the challenges are quite similar to those being faced by the Romney Ryan ticket, we thought that simultaneous reviews of both that book and Timothy Crouse’s “The Boys on the Bus” (Ballantine Books paperback edition 1972) would be relevant as the Republican Nation Convention draws neigh.

McGinnis describes (on page 39) the difficulty of marketing Nixon eight years after he lost the 1960 battle with John F. Kennedy: “Trying with one hand, to build the illusion that Richard Nixon, in addition to his attributes of mind and heart, considered, in the words of Patrick K. Buchanan, a speech writer, “communicating with the people . . . one of the great joys of seeking the Presidency;” while with the other they shielded him, controlled him, and controlled the atmosphere around him.” Same problem, different Republican candidate, different year.

The star of the Nixon strategy team was a fellow named Harry Treleaven who came to the Nixon camp’s attention after he took a leave of absence from J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in 1966 to work on a congressional campaign in Texas. The incumbent was a Democrat named Frank Briscoe and Treleaven assessed (McGinniss’ book pages 44 – 45) the race this way: “There’ll be few opportunities for logical persuasion, which is all right – because probably more people vote for irrational, emotional reasons than professional politicians suspect.”

Picking Paul Ryan made liberals very angry, which, in turn, made conservatives very happy. President Obama’s initial reaction seemed to be the use of logical argumentation to change the conservatives’ emotional reaction. Wouldn’t seeing the dismantling of the Social Security program make liberals even angrier? In a world devoid of logical thinking, wouldn’t that make the conservatives even happier?

The 1968 Nixon campaign perfected the strategy of making some news just in time to get it placed on the evening network news programs, which meant that the Democrats would be left scrambling the next day to contend with damage control, while Nixon & Co. started the game anew. Adjusting the campaign to the timing of media news cycles was a breakthrough innovation.

The fact that Mitt Romney made his announcement early on a Saturday morning will be an irrelevant descriptive fact for most of the writers who wished to comment on the selection of Paul Ryan as the “presumptive” Presidential nominee’s presumptive running mate, but for the World’s Laziest Journalist, that example of odd timing looked like the metaphorical “kiss of death” for Mitt’s chances to win the fall election. In the Internet era of 24/7 news coverage, one time may be just as good as another so long as the candidate’s media advisors don’t care about the news cycles for more traditional media such as influential newspapers, weekend network shouting matches, and magazine journalism.

If the announcement occurred at breakfast time in the Eastern Time zone that means the candidate was willing to reduce his West Coast audience for live coverage of the announcement to a pathetic minimum of what he could have had by choosing the timing with a better regard for strategic planning.

The preview editions of the Sunday editions of both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times were on the delivery trucks heading for the Saturday advance sales market. No way to get free publicity about the announcement into those valuable assets.

The early edition of the New York Times Sunday paper was probably holding a news hole for a crash close on the story, but there was no way they would hold the Week in Review Section (and run up extensive amounts of overtime) for a Presidential candidate who treats journalists with the same sneering “that’s all your going to get” condescension that he delivers to the potential voters. Why should that attitude remind this columnist of Nixon?

Don’t some of the weekend round-up shouting matches tape their programs on Friday afternoon? In this cost conscious world, what made Romney think he could inspire a dispensation involving excessive amounts of overtime pay for the union workers?

Did Romney expect the networks to call in their Monday to Friday anchor persons to read the story on Saturday night’s installment of their network’s evening news program? What did LBJ say about “If we’ve lost Cronkite . . .”? Does a weekend substitute carry the same level of gravitas as Edward R. Murrow?

Did Newsweek hold the cover story for “crash close” coverage of the announcement?

Where are the adult Republican media advisors who helped write the book for the 1968 strategy described in Joe McGinniss’ book “The Selling of the President”? Why didn’t Karl Rove help avert this example of inept spin control strategy?

Timothy Crouse, in his 1972 book, “The Boys on the Bus,” (page 195) said: “Then Nixon decided to hide out for a year and stop feeding the press handouts. Instead he fed it George Romney.” Does History repeat itself? Could Mitt claim that he was brainwashed into making the ill-timed Saturday morning announcement?

Is there another Republican of Nixon’s stature standing in the shadows waiting for a dramatic call to unveil a secret plan to end the Vietnam War . . . or balance the budget . . . or whatever? Or are the Republicans going to be satisfied with replaying the Goldwater debacle or a 1968 style squeaker?

Over the ensuing weekend, did the TV shows, which love to promise their audiences a variety of behind the scenes insights into what is really happening, mention the hidden implications of the odd timing of the announcement?

Crouse (on page 322) describes the major innovation in news coverage of Presidential campaigns: “Here in 1972, with the new law that obliged contributors to make public their gifts, was a unique opportunity to follow the big corporation rats as they stole out of their holes to deposit a large bag of cash at the door of some candidate and – almost invariably – ask for some favor in return.”

One of the disadvantages of reading books more than forty years old is that some aspects of the text will leave the modern reader hanging in suspense. Treleaven’s 1966 candidate won, but how the heck will we ever satisfy our curiosity and learn what happened to the guy who beat Briscoe 58 to 42 in a traditional Democratic stronghold? What ever happened to George H. W. Bush? (Maybe we’ll get lucky and a reader in Texas can post an update in the comments section.)

On page 10, Crouse quotes newsman Karl Fleming: “So eventually a very subtle kind of thing takes over and the reporter says to himself, ‘All I gotta do to satisfy my editor and publisher is just get what the other guys are getting, so why should I bust my ass?’”

Does that mean that the World’s Laziest Journalist didn’t have to dig out a copy of Crouse’s book and track down a copy of McGinniss’ book, do some fast and furious reading, and then fire up the computer at 0600 on Monday morning? We couldda skipped most of the work and just churned out a few words about Mitt making a bold gamble by catering to the demands of the far right and then posting that anemic effort. Whatever.

Either one of these two books will provide a reader with a better basis for evaluating this year’s election process and taken together they provide conclusive evidence for proving the case for believing that America’s freedom of the press is rapidly approaching the final chapter for the history of an institution experiencing a terminal illness. If the voters are not going to make their decisions based on a well informed evaluation of the issues, then America’s free press is doomed to extinction.

Oscar Wilde said he wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t judge people solely on their appearance and Harry Treleaven believed (McGinniss book page 44) “Most national issues today are so complicated, so difficult to understand, and have opinions on that they either intimidate or, more often, bore the average voter .”

Joe McGinniss quoted (page 131) Richard M. Nixon as saying: “Let us remember, the main purpose of American foreign aid is not to help other nations but to help ourselves.”

Now the disk jockey will play the AC/DC song “Problem Child,” the Rolling Stones’ song “Sparks will fly,” and the 1968 Nixon campaign song “Bring Our Country Back.” We have to post this week’s Week in Review column a few hours early and attend to some administrative matters. Have a “Hidden Persuaders” type week.

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August 10, 2012

Sympathy, Schadenfreude and a Political Debacle?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Alfred M. Landon, General Erwin Rommel, Harry Reid, Mitt Romney — Bob Patterson @ 12:27 pm

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Smoke signals, seen Monday in Richmond CA, send the message: “Higher gasoline prices soon come.”

The Democrats have shown very little inclination to indulge in the delight of the misery of others (Schadenfreude) but they may soon grant themselves a dispensation if current trend in polling results force the Republicans into choosing between letting Mitt Romney precipitate some Custer style massacre election results this fall or the use of some nefarious parliamentary procedures to deny Romney the nomination.

A month from today, the Presidential Campaign season will be underway and that means it may be too late for the Republicans to start brandishing a threat to impeach Harry Reid for his assertions about Mitt’s shutout record against the taxman. When a Democratic politician is suspected of telling a fib, impeachment has to be considered to uphold the integrity of the American people, but if a Republican President sends his country into war because “he didn’t know” what he was talking about when he used possibility that WMD’s might exist to prove that war was inevitable, well then . . . give the guy a break because he meant well.

Only partisan Democrats think there is an inconsistency with giving Dubya a pass on his verbal gaff and then pushing for impeachment of both the “I did not have sex with that woman” guy and the “I’ll use Senator McCarthy approach to attack Mitt Romney’s tax forms” guy.

Once American journalists have printed the assertion “Harry Reid is lying” and Reid’s “No, I’m not” response, haven’t they fulfilled their obligation to provide the American people with fair and balanced coverage of the dispute? Isn’t providing any additional germane material tantamount to partisan punditry which will only serve to politicize the Presidential Campaign process?

During the week, the media carried stories reporting that polls showed that President Obama was ahead of the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in the crucial swing states. Could the large number of Republicans who were urging Mitt to release his tax forms be used to jump to the conclusion that there is a disconcerting level of concern about Mitt’s appeal to the voters (and the concomitant “coattails effect”) that is causing some buyers’ remorse before the Republican Convention has been gaveled to order?

Gort 42, a Pennsylvania based political blogger, was offering the phrase “swift yachting” to describe the tidal wave of concern about Mitt Romney’s tax returns and his cavalier rich playboy image. Are Republicans afraid that the image of an indolent wastrel might not be a draw for hard working tax paying American voters? Couldn’t they market him as a Reggie Van Gleason surrogate candidate?

On Wednesday August 8, 2012, the World’s Laziest Journalist bought a bargain used copy of Ferdinand Lundberg’s 1968 book “The Rich and the Super-rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today,” which asserts that the rich often use the concept of a Foundation to establish the image that most wealthy Americans are actually philanthropists.

On that same day, we found that a writer on the Daily Kos website was posting material hinting that the tax records of the Tyler Charitable Foundation and the Romney Foundation might provide the curious with valuable clues and insights into the financial secrets that Mitt deems too personal to release.

On Monday, August 6, smoke signals in San Francisco’s East Bay area were seen in the evening and according to some experts the message being sent out to all Americans was: “Higher gasoline prices soon come.” Won’t higher gasoline prices mean more jobs, less taxes, and general euphoria in the various oil company boardrooms throughout the world?

Earlier that same day, Uncle Rushbo was warning his listeners that the tree huggers were about to politicize Football. According to America’s anchor man, the liberals would use statistics (provided by the same scientists who have “proved” that global warming exists?) about brain concussions to outlaw that particular sport.

To make the issue even more alarming, Uncle Rushbo indicated that the team owners, who are mostly Anglo Saxons, were not the same ethnic group as were the players who were being injured. That, he indicated, would only serve to goad the goody-two-shoes citizens into injecting race into the issue, and that, in turn, would only cause an increase in the level of fanatical emotional commitment for the activists trying to “get ’er done” and eliminate a native American sport from the pop culture scene.
Did we hear him correctly? Did Uncle Rushbo say on Monday’s program, that some scientists believe that brain concussions can trigger an inclination towards child molestation? Do seminaries have football teams? Football is to firmly ingrained in American culture to be eliminate so that makes a potential threat to do so another perfect wedge issue.

Speaking of wedge issues, what are the chances of getting some new gun control legislation passed before this fall’s elections?

About the only development that could further exacerbate the level of rancor for this year’s political process would occur if some wealthy philanthropist, with extensive computer hacking resources, were to use illegal and immoral methods of obtaining copies of Mitt Romney’s disputed tax returns and then surreptitiously provide copies to Julian Assange’s posse to post for all the world to see.

Is Harry Reid playing into the hands of some diabolical conspiracy theory plot to use the Romney tax issue as an excuse for delivering the Republican Party’s Presidential Nomination to someone else? Isn’t the Republican bullpen is empty? Isn’t it true that there is nobody left on the bench? Is the Romney nomination a clever ruse? Is it in fact just a play fake?

Should the Democrats have played possum on the tax forms issue and waited until after Romney got the nomination before making them the subject of a fuss?

If the perception of Mitt Romney as a spoiled brat rich kid is accurate, then it seems quite likely that he will not suddenly develop a propensity for accepting defeat graciously. If he is given a chance to step down before the Republican Convention will the guy who has always been able to buy the toys he wants, prefer, instead, to do a “White Heat” finale that will provide Americans with a memorable TV “wipeout” moment?

That might be what Harry Reid wants, but what will happen if Romney is given a metaphorical “Rommel Option” ultimatum and does step down before the Convention? Then what? Is President Obama’s strategy flexible or is it designed to function with only Romney as the “presumptive” opponent? Could an alternative Republican nominee throw Obama’s game plan into complete disarray? As bullfight fans would be quick to point out; the moment of truth is rapidly approaching.

Alfred M. Landon said: “A government is free in proportion to the rights it guarantees to the minority.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Happy days are here again,” “When you’re smiling,” and “He’s a rebel.” We have to go do a Google search for ChipPac. Have an “aletoricism” type week.

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August 3, 2012

More war; less social programs!

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Andre Williams, Carl Hiaasen, Noel Coward, Warren Zevon — Bob Patterson @ 12:31 pm

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Is “more beer; less work” real philosophy or mad dog talk?
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St. Sithney, of Saighir, whose feast day is celebrated on August 4, was (according to an ecclesiastical urban legend) asked by God if he wanted to be the patron saint of unmarried women and he said he would rather be the patron saint of mad dogs. The lawyers will be quick to point out that the fine print stipulates that he was to be the saint for curing mad dogs and protecting folks from dogs with hydrophobia (rabies). Based on the consensus opinion of liberal pundits, the Democratic voters would do well to pray to St. Sithney for protection from the avid Republican candidates who seem, during this year’s election process, to be as logical and eloquent as mad dogs

Case in point: Ted Nugent is advocating the possibility that if some of people in the theater in Aurora Colorado had been carrying hand guns, and returned fire in the smoke filled auditorium that was an example of bedlam; one of them might have been a Ninja marksman with a magical bullet that could have sliced through the body armor like a hot knife through a cold stick of butter. To which we can only give the Hemingway response: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Liberals are still waiting for conservatives to give a coherent response to George Carlin’s objection to the birth control issue. Babies have a right to life until they are born and then the “rugged individual” philosophy kicks in and “You’re on your own, kid” becomes standard conservative operating dogma. Self determination is fine for middle class and poor kids, but for rich brats, “do you know who you are talking to?” is usually their first full sentence. Learning to talk, for rich kids, means learning to threaten someone with a tsunami of legal paper work for standing in their way.

An anecdote, encountered many years ago, related a story about a rich woman who was told about the problem of hunger that is a vexation for homeless. She replied “Why don’t they ring the bell?” In her world, if she needed food, she would ring a bell and a servant would appear and immediately attend to that need. She used the psychological phenomenon known as “projection” to assume that everyone else’s world was just like hers and that all a hungry homeless person had to do was ring the bell and a servant would stand by to take their order.

Democrats project their belief in voters’ rights for all citizens onto the Republicans and they (conversely) project their belief in a Republic where only qualified people (land owning males were specified in the American Constitution) could cast a vote. Naturally some “What we have here is . . . failure to communicate” misunderstandings often sabotage any attempts to reach a compromise. The purging of voters from the rolls in Florida would be a classic example of the consequences of the miscommunication surrounding this issue.

In the United States, the Democrats believe that the minute a person from a foreign country sets foot on American soil that person is entitled, by the doctrine of “all men are created equal,” to the some rights and privileges that the citizens (except for a vote) have. The Republicans consider the concept as being similar to obtaining a driver’s license. It is their contention that getting into the driver’s seat isn’t enough. You have to pass a test to get the driver’s license and prove your qualifications for possessing that driver’s license.

Do people with mental illnesses have a right to buy assault weapons? The Republicans seem to want to use the “all gun buyers are created equal” concept to prevent mental patients from being deprived of their rights. The Democrats seem to want to put some restrictions on the purchase of guns. Both parties do seem to be in agreement that people who are incarcerated in jails and prisons (such as Charlie Manson) don’t have a right to buy guns over the Internets.

A humorist once said that the law in its wisdom forbids rich folks as well as the homeless from living under a bridge.

Republicans maintain that extending the tax cuts for the rich will produce jobs. The Democrats reply that if that were true, then this question must be asked: why has the level of employment declined during the almost decade long period when the Bush tax cuts have been in place?

Compassionate, conservative Christians can always sanction cutting social programs to fund new wars. Democrats want to implement spending priorities that are the exact opposite.

The Muslim world has always been divided by two rival factions. It seems like the Sunni and the Shiite groups will never live in peaceful coexistence. The Republicans fully endorsed sending American troops into Iraq and now they seem to be ready to endorse a new military adventure involving Iran. Does simultaneously conducting military operations in both a Sunni and a Shiite nation make any sense? Should people be praying to St. Sithney for protection from such thinking?

Could two groups, who both adhere to the philosophy “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” temporarily suspend their mutual animosity and become united for a short time by the common objective of contending with meddling in their area of the world by some unwelcome interloping foreign country?

There a classic old back and white movie that shows, in a medium shot, some people struggling for control of a small boat. The camera pulls back in a long tracking shot that shows that the craft is perilously close to the edge of a gigantic water fall. Could that be a metaphor for what is happening with the struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans in Washington D. C.?

Do the Republicans really believe that the answer to all these problems will be provided by Mitt Romney? When will some responsible Republicans realize that it is time for an “Intervention” gambit and find a rationale for disqualifying Mitt and handing the Presidential nomination to someone who has a better chance of not precipitating four years of mainstream media ridicule of the Commander-in-Chief as a bungling buffoon?

If Conservatives are strict constructionists who do not believe that the Founding Fathers would sanction the approval of the right to vote for anyone but male landowners, could they endorse a policy of using computer hacking to adjust vote totals to automatically purge some of the “ineligible” votes from the final results?

Whatever happened to the pundit who was kicked off a popular blog aggregator site for predicting, in the summer of 2010, that JEB would win the Presidency in 2012? Did his posse direct prayers to St. Sithney asking to cure him?

The rumors that Oakland will be forced to accept Federal control of their police department percolated into the regional mainstream media this week. On Tuesday, KCBS news radio featured Chronicle reporter Phil Matier predicting that move, and further predicting that it will mean that Oakland will be required to spend more on the Police Department. If that happens during the current financial crisis, the money will be taken away from social programs, and that could cause a concomitant increase in crime which would then require even more increases in Police spending.

On Wednesday, August 1, 2012, the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper ran a page one story by Matthai Kuruvila reporting that after laying-off some police officers, Oakland purchased “nearly” $2 million worth of hardware that either didn’t work well or wasn’t used at all.

This week some news stories indicated that women are now entitled to free medical birth control advice. How are the conservatives reacting to that? Will they need some prayers offered on their behalf to St. Sithney? Will Conservatives need a prescription for sedatives?

Marcus Moziah Garvey said: “Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life.”

Now the disk jockey will play Noël Coward’s song “Mad dogs and Englishmen,” the song “Basket Case” (written by Warren Zevon and Carl Hiassen), and Andre Williams’ new release titled: “I gotta get Shorty outta jail.” We have to go get our tickets to see both “Killer Joe” (over in S.F.) and “Never give a sucker an even break” at the Pacific Film Archive this weekend. Have a “foaming at the mouth” type week.

[Using a photo of some San Francisco Bay Area slap art, by the graffiti artist called Broke, which echoes the conservative philosophy of “more work; less pay,” seemed like an acceptable solution to the column illustration challenge for this week.]

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July 27, 2012

Gun control in the liberal pundits’ cross hairs?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: Charles Guiteau, Ennio Morricone, K. C. Constantine, Leon Czolgosz — Bob Patterson @ 12:30 pm

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This shot is from the World’s Laziest Journalist’s photo morgue.
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How did they get to Berkeley CA?

The Hollywood recipe of sex, high speed car chases, and shootouts, used to attract large numbers of young men to movie theaters during the summer months occasionally boils over into real life and when it does it precipitates a cavalcade of clichés for both the pro and anti gun pundits who automatically proceed to the “round up the usual suspects” mode of operation. Attempting to write a remarkably eloquent example of argumentation for either point of view brings to mind a quote made famous by Inspector (Dirty) Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood): “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

American culture offers such an abundance of pop culture items for relevant allusions that it provides a book manuscript level of possible material and since this will be a quick read column meant to incite readers to do their own analysis rather than offer an “off the rack” set of tailored opinions, we will try to present something that is both unique and thought provoking.

One of the world’s laziest journalist’s recurring complaints is that regimented thinking has become too standardized in mainstream media and we noted with some satisfaction that our subjective reaction to the initial onslaught of news was to wonder how many of the pundits who tackle the subject will use the idea that the shooter obviously needed to get laid as the basis for a column suggesting that the fellow was a poster boy for the idea that prostitution should be legalized.

One of the victims, Jessica Ghawi, was a remarkable rookie sports reporter whose brother asked for a boycott of the perp’s name and so we will not use the name of the young man who methodically attempted to execute an entire movie audience. She was, according to several news reports, a vivacious and talented person who embodied what the French call joie de vivre (joy of living). We have been intending to write a column about that French philosophical concept and realize the poignant fact that the victim epitomized the philosophy that every day is a precious gift and should be appreciated accordingly. We will hoist a glass of our favorite non-alcoholic drink in her memory this weekend.

The kid who is now in custody and awaiting trial, it seems to this columnist, needed some love and sex to suppress his antisocial impulses. We wondered what would have happened if fate had supplied the shooter with a dynamic girlfriend instead of a compulsion.

Many of the news reports about the shooter’s first appearance in court noted that the fellow looked dazed and confused. None of the accounts specifically used the phrase “drug addled moron,” but that seemed to be the consensus opinion of the journalists. It made us wonder: since the fellow had been in custody since early Friday morning, did the District Attorney prescribe heavy sedation for the defendant to prevent the culprit from going berserk Monday as a way of providing a foundation for an insanity plea defense?

During the week, Ted Nugent speculated about how different things might have been if some other members of the movie audience had been strapped (i.e. carrying firearms). When Australian fugitive Ned Kelly was apprehended, he was wearing home made armor and he sustained more than two dozen wounds before he was subdued. Apparently Nugent’s speculation included a magical bullet with a mythological ability to be unencumbered by the restrictions of the laws of physics and would have sent the mass murderer to an early grave.

Could Chuck Norris have delivered such a hypothetical example of perfect marksmanship in the midst of the mass confusion?

Obviously Ted Nugent deserves a place on Mitt Romney’s short list of potential running mates.

Premeditated anonymity for the shooter, in accordance with the wishes of Ms. Ghowi’s brother, caused us to wonder just how many Americans can supply the name of the assassin (Charles Guiteau) who shot President James A. Garfield or the fellow (Leon Czolgosz) who shot President William McKinley. It would take a trivia champ to name the guy (Gavrilo Princip) who shot Archduke Ferdinand and precipitated the mass carnage of WWI.

That, in turn, reminded us that there was a second Congressional investigation to augment the Warren Commission Report into the shooting of President Kennedy and the lesser known study concluded that there was more than one person involved in the assassination in Dallas. Some conspiracy theory scholars suggest that the fellow who shot President Lincoln may have had some help from unknown people who were accessories to the crime.

Just about everything the world’s laziest journalist knows about snipers was learned while reading the novels of movie critic Stephen Hunter. That, in turn, inspired us to read the biography of Carlos Hathcock, a U. S. Marine Corp sniper who killed a Viet Cong general with a shot from 2,000 yards away.

His name sparked us to remember that a poker hand of aces and eights has a special significance for people who are fascinated by the history of the American West.
At this point while doing the keystrokes for the rough draft for this column, caroming off on a tangential topic about which shots are morally acceptable and which are not has a powerfully appealing aspect, but we will address that topic some other day in a future column and continue objectively assembling a collection of gun related items for this particular column.

It seems very unlikely that corporate media will permit any of their indentured propagandists to dwell on the fact that the shooter had a college degree and was overqualified to work the “want a side order of fries with your burger?” jobs available.
If the police found any books by Marx or Engels in the shooter’s apartment, Uncle Rushbo & Co. will be jubilant. Have the conservative pundits ever noted that the Tea Party movement in the USA strongly echoes the Black Hundred political movement in Tsarist Russia?

Some pundits have suggested that the shooter wanted fame and media attention and point out the culprit’s dyed hair as proof that the fellow was bonkers and willing to go to extremes to gain attention. Have any of these expert pundits walked around in a college town lately? If they have they will learn that the War in Vietnam has ended since they graduated and that some young folks these days sport hair dyed green, purple, or gray. Have any of the musicians who pioneered the punk rock genre and used the retro Iroquois haircut started to go bald?

After hearing some recent news reports indicating that a majority of young people want to be famous, we stumbled upon a curious link connecting Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and Hunter S. Thompson. Biographers indicate that all three considered being a famous celebrity a curse rather than a gift of fate.

[Both Hemingway and Hunter Thompson were avid gun enthusiasts. We can’t immediately recall any passages from Kerouac’s writing which mentioned guns. We have often wondered (word play alert!) if the inventory for Hunter’s private arsenal included a Thompson submachine gun.

Back in the day when this columnist was too young to qualify for a driver’s license, weekly magazines (such as Look and Colliers?) often featured an ad offering Thompson submachine guns which had blocked up barrels. Quite often those ads were adjacent to other ads which offered replacement parts (such as barrels?) for obsolete military weapons. We haven’t seen any of those ads recently and so we wonder if the Thompson submachine gun is now considered an assault rifle or not.]

Isn’t it rather poignant that the anti-Establishment rock bands from the Sixties, who warned their contemporaries about the dangers of commercialism, have come to epitomize the lucrative aspect of fame? Some day we will get around to writing a column that will convey our philosophy about how fame can be a double edged sword.

[The illusive mystery writer K. C. Constantine was once quoted as saying he wrote and avoided publicity because he had had his fill of fame when he played professional baseball. Our hunch is that the writer’s secret identity would be that of a former member of the N. Y. Yankees who had a subsequent career as a sports caster and lived in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.]

Is the anti-capitalism beatnik/hippie philosophy still being preached? A blogger who posts tips and hints about how to run away to join a hippie commune will get a constant trickle of visitors seeking information on that very subject. Maybe we’ll write a column on that topic.

Is it an example of hypocrisy to note that the conservatives who advocate availability of assault rifles for the masses often live in very secure compounds and fastidiously avoid malls and public movie theaters where they might encounter germs or stray bullets? Would it be an example of über-irony if the gift shop at the World’s Laziest Journalist World Headquarters were to offer a T-shirt reading: “I love hypocrisy!”?

After 9-11, people in the L. A. area who were being admitted to free movie screenings for critics and journalists, were searched for weapons, so is it another example of hypocrisy if people who see new films in a secure location condemn motion pictures for inciting violence at public theaters? Or is that an acceptable example of double standard thinking?

Speaking of cinematic violence, when we were an enthusiastic Three Stooges fan, a relative pointed out that the mayhem in those comedies was “play acting” and noted that the only time an uncle killed an enemy soldier (he was a Seabee who was going for water on Guadalcanal), he hit the fellow on the head with an empty bucket.

Are the journalists in the media suffering from sensational event deficit disorder? Do you expect to see/hear any gun control debate on the Sunday talk shows during the first weekend of the sports games in London? After a news event has been featured on the covers of the weekly news magazines, it becomes ancient history.

Didn’t President George W. Bush end the War in Iraq when he signed a peace treaty with Saddam Hussein at an event that was held on the deck of an aircraft carrier?

As this column was being written, the disk jockey was sorting through a mountain of material to select the best relevant music to play when the time to roll the credits arrives. There are so many songs about shooting that it would be difficult to select the top ten. Items like “Frankie and Johnnie” and “Stagerlee” are fixtures in American Pop Culture. Using the Gonuts song “Hot for Twinkies” would be too confusing for anyone who is not a trivia expert on San Francisco Political History. Is some of the best of Ennio Morricone’s music appropriate? If the disk jockey plays the Ride of the Valkyries, should the columnist say “Getcha a case of beer for that!”? Should he play the theme song from “High Noon”? “I hate Mondays!”?

American folk wisdom proclaimed: “God didn’t create all men equal; Col. Colt did.”

The disk jockey will play the “Annie get your gun” album, the song “America – Fuck Yeah!” from Team America, and the theme song from the TV series “Palidin.”

Roll credits!

V. O. (Voice over):
Since we have not gotten an assignment to go to London and extol the delights of the cavalcade of simultaneous sports events occurring there, we will be lucky to get to the Gilroy Garlic festival this weekend. Have a “wear garlic necklace” type week.

[TrustoCorp, which is described online as “a New York based artist (or artists) dedicated to highlighting the hypocrisy and hilarity of human behavior through sarcasm and satire,” put up an example of their work in Berkeley CA about two years ago. It expresses a macho Australian philosophy about guns. We used a shot of that sign (from the WLJ photo morgue) to illustrate this week’s column.]

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July 19, 2012

YOS: An Interview with God

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 1:39 pm

Courtesy wheregracesuperabounds.wordpress.com

Ye Olde Scribe, concerned with recent comments by George the “I wanna blow some punk away” Zimmerman, called God on his Deity Hot Line: an item he bought used from the Salvation Army and programmed it to reach the Almighty according to Sean Hannity’s instructions. Used to be the Bat Phone from the old TV series. Adam West sold it because there were too many calls to the pay per minute “I like boys” sex talk hot line by his partner and he felt someone was… ROBIN… him.
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