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November 24, 2013

Tea Party Announces African American Outreach Program

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

November 22, 2013

Gonzo Jouralism = a verbal selfie?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 20, 2013

Giants, fairies, Disneyland, war, archetypes: The role of mythology in our lives

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jane Stillwater @ 12:44 pm

I want to go back to Disneyland! Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to return to a time when the Middle East was represented by flying carpets in the “Small World” ride instead of all those sad videos of dead babies that we now see on the news. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW5D9PCWvOA

And even in today’s modern world, there are still myths and legends in our lives that motivate us, spur us on and keep us going — such as the myth of the Good War, the hero, the Patriot, the soldier and all those Marvel superheroes who stand between us and our worst nightmares.

And then there are the nightmares themselves.

But on the other hand, we also have many sweet, gentle myths and archetypes that enhance our world and bring us gifts of love — such as the good fairies who grant us three wishes, the Three Wise Men, and Glinda the Good Witch of the North. “You’re capable of more than you know…”

“Please read me another story from the fairy tale book,” says my granddaughter Mena every night before bedtime. She loves fairy tales. They help to explain a confusing adult world to her in a way that a five-year-old can understand. The wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel. Monster High’s cool DracuLaura. The town musicians of Bremen, the three little pigs. Parents as giants, towering over kids. Or even when Mena was a hero herself, during a deadly asthma attack last year. Fairy tales help Mena to understand that there are both good guys and bad guys in the world — and that the good guys sometimes actually win.

Then we have all those other myths and archetypes which are deliberately created by clever PR campaigns, ones that make us believe that if only we buy this fabulous 4G high-speed cell phone or that sexy high-speed car, we too will become a Hero. Not so, sadly. All we really are doing is speeding up the death of the Earth as we know it. And our deaths too.

And did I forget to mention the myth of War? That if you can just kill enough people, then Might will make Right. Where mass murder becomes sanctioned and even glorified. Where “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” becomes a tooth in exchange for a thousand cemeteries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2SLvkUE8B0&feature=c4-overview&list=UUucnzI3V8FZgfgIXkxMqiqA. What a bloody lie. I myself prefer the “Love thy neighbor as thyself” myth much better. Plus it’s far easier than trying to get blood stains out of the carpet once all those murderous Heroes have moved on to the next Good War.

And then, of course, there is the myth (and the reality) of our own evil twin. I just finished reading a book called “The Tools,” which advises us to harness the power of each person’s evil twin in order to make them our allies instead, and to help us do Good. Good luck with that one.

Bottom line: Legends and myths and fairy tales and giants and archetypes all come from somewhere deep within the dark reaches of our individual subconscious minds. And these myths and archetypes have an important role to play in our lives. I’m just saying. Ignore them at your own peril. Or else try to take advantage of them — before they take advantage of you.

PS: Am currently reading two fairy tales for adults: “Summerland” by Michael Chabon and “Stardust” by Neil Gaiman. Will let you know how they turn out. And am also trying to figure out how to win the lottery so I can go back to Iraq with Hinterland Travel next October http://www.hinterlandtravel.com/iraq_upcoming.htm, to see where they wrote “1,001 Nights”.

November 15, 2013

Triple J, Sky Rock, and Radio Caroline

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 2:26 pm

 

Many disk jockeys say that there is no “there” in Oakland but a columnist says otherwise.

[Note:  We leave it up to other pundits to write columns about the latest developments in the ACA political donnybrook.  A nostalgic look at radio may not be cutting edge commentary but that’s the way the cookie crumbles for this week’s installment of a column from the World’s Laziest Journalist.  Who knows?  Maybe a change of pace in the midst of a tsunami of facts about health insurance will be a breath of fresh air.]

Norman Goldman, the talk radio host who promulgates the philosophy that labels are inaccurate and confining, asserts that radio personalities are entering a new age when radios are superfluous.  Since we heard Triple J radio online long before we used a small battery operated Sanyo to tune in to the source for Australian music, we grok what he says but it was a much more visceral experience to hold the radio and work the tuner to listen to that unique blend of voices and music.

When we think of going to visit friends in close proximity to the Big Apple, our heart leaps up at the chance to hear Harry Harrison reassuring the audience that they live in the greatest city in the world but that Eastern Airlines (“The Wings of Man”) stand read to whisk them away to far away places with strange sounding names.  We have to take a deep breath and say:  “That was then; this is now.”

Armstrong and Getty boldly assert that they have “the hottest show on the West Coast.”  There was a time, though, when things were different.  Living at Lake Tahoe as the Sixties came to a close, radio reception was very limited because of the basin which meant that very few AM radio signals could be picked up.  The two local stations were on opposite ends of the AM dial and so it was that switching from one to another meant a sweep of the AM dial and in that process you would hear a third signal.  Fine tune it and you would hear a raspy voice claiming that his radio show was heard from coast to coast and border to border.  A signal wall to wall and tree-top tall was heard in 38 states.  The people who heard Wolfman Jack before seeing American Graffiti know what the true definition of “the hottest radio show” used to be.

How could Wolfman Jack possibly have been that popular if he never took a position on the Affordable Care Act?

Heck, now folks with Internet access can be in South Lake Tahoe and listen to Triple J in Australia, Sky Rock in Paris (France not Texas), and Radio Caroline.  It’s no wonder that Pan Am has vanished.  Radio fans don’t need to travel to hear those radio stations.

We did listen, whilst in Sydney Oz, to Skid Row Radio but we have not fact checked listening to them via the Berkeley Public Library computers.

When we went to Paris in 1986 (how can a 28 year old columnist remember a trip to Paris almost 28 years ago?  [Trade secret.]) we packed a comparatively bulky portable radio to enhance the “we are really there” aspect of the experience.

Some other time we may expand the question “Why do Internet sites aggregate only American radio broadcasts and not include ones from outside the USA?” into a full column but not today.

Norman Goldman uses sound bytes of politicians to punctuate his broadcasts and that often reminds us of the first time we heard the version of “What the world needs now” augmented by various sound bytes.  We heard it on WABC and they usually played only one song at a time and when we heard that version of that song for the first time, they quickly followed with another song.  We have always assumed that the DJ, like us, had been caught off guard and was knocked on his ass by what he heard and couldn’t say anything.  Is the Pan Am building still called the Pan Am building by old timers?

That was just about the time WICK in Scranton had changed to the talk show format.  We called in to ask Evel Knievel which of the many hospitals he had stayed in had the best looking nurses.  He said the one in Las Vegas.  I had stayed in the hospital in Carson City Nevada and the nurses their all talked about what a good patient Kenivil had been.

WICK had been a sensation when they were one of the first stations in North Eastern Pennsylvania to play “Rock’n’Roll” music.  They used some Polish language broadcasts on Sunday morning to pay the bills and more than a few Irish Catholic Democrats picked up on phrases in Polish while waiting after Sunday Mass for the format to change back to the usual new music.  What ever happened to Fats Domino?

Their arch rival WARM used the WARMland shtick to excess during the winter months.  WARM ridiculed sports news by giving the results of a fictional match up between the Honeypot Cheaters and the MacAdoo Stompers every week during football season.

Before Dick Clark’s American Bandstand was picked up by the ABC TV network, they expanded from their Philadelphia flagship station to one other area TV station, WNEP in the Scranton Wilkes Barrie area.

A Southern California high school football team with the Fighting Arabs as their mascot have been in the news lately and since there really is a town called Honeypot we wonder what their high school’s mascot is.  What about Intercourse Pa.’s high school’s mascot?

The mascot of the Whittier CA college is “the Poets.”

Lately with the ACA 24/7 marathon we have searched in vain for KFOG but can’t find that old stalwart radio signal from the Sixties.  Can’t seem to find KABL either.

We didn’t hear Don Sherwood until he got his gig up at Lake Tahoe.  They had called his radio program the “Will Sherwood Show?” show because more than once the city’s top disk jockey called in sick.

Then the “shock jock” era began.  Whatever happened to Don Imus?

Did Westwood One and the count down format really get started in a former rug store in Culver City?  The last time we heard Dr. Demento we were living in L. A.  We should try fishing around to see what station carries his Sunday night show in the San Francisco area.

Since political punditry from Uncle Rushbo’s clones seems ubiquitous on the radio, we think a new radio format or a resurrected old one might be like rain in the desert for listeners who have been pummeled by nonstop criticism of Obama and have nothing but more of the same to look forward to for the next three years.

Why doesn’t some intrepid radio format wunderkind implement a format that uses a bilingual approach.  Folks who want to learn English could learn English and the gringos who want to know what the Spanish speaking employees are saying could benefit from such a style of newscasts.  We had an Aunt in Santa Monica who knew enough about baseball that she could have coached a high school team so she learned Spanish by turning on the TV, turning down the sound, and listening to the Dodger games on Spanish language radio.  She got to be quite proficient at it.

We can remember working at a large University in the Westwood Section of Los Angeles and we picked up a fair degree of proficiency in Spanish.  Once when the head honcho’s lackey came into the room the manager announced to the room in Spanish:  Watch what you say because she’s the department head’s spy.  The interloper didn’t speak Spanish so the general announcement went right over her head.  Since our Spanish was good enough to know what was said we felt like we were “one of the group.”

In the Seventies, one L. A. radio station played only big band era music.  We loved the music but since the commercials were all about Depends, denture adhesives, and hemorrhoid medicines, we opted out.

If some San Francisco station went to all Sixties music, now, we’d be tuned in to them in a New York minute.  What if they played Sixties music and ran news from 50 years ago today?  Could they call it Nostalgia Radio?

A column about radio and nostalgia reminds us how annoyed a friend used to get when, in 1968, we would often say:  “Back in 1968 . . .” and he would get mad and say “Damn it!  It is 1968!”  He died several years ago.

[Note from the photo editor:  Is the gigantic “THERE” in the East Bay actually proof that there is a “THERE” in Oakland or is it actually in Berkeley and a confirmation of the folk wisdom that, in Oakland, there is no THERE there?  Ask your favorite DJ.]

Back in 1968, a one-liner that was ubiquitous went;  “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.”

Now, our disk jockey, who really appreciates good guitar work, will play us out with Link Wray’s “Rumble,” Henry Mancini’s “theme from Peter Gunn,” (that’s Duane Eddy on guitar), and Jody Reynold’s “Endless Sleep.”  We have to go buy some strings for a friend’s sitar.  Have a “we’ll do it live!” type week.

November 14, 2013

TV violence: America’s dark night of the knoll

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 11:35 am

I was watching “The Mentalist” on TV recently, where some guy was being tortured, had a finger cut off with pruning shears and his face caressed with an acetylene torch. Yikes! And even during that nice little detective show “Castle,” you can always count on seeing a whole bunch of blood and guts — not to mention the torture scenes and disemboweling now available on “Elementary” and “Body of Proof” and “Revolution” and “Person of Interest” and “Scandal”. And these are just the milder prime-time television shows. I’m not even going to get into the nightmare-producing horrors of “Criminal Minds” and “Law & Order SVU” — because I can’t even bear to watch those.

And then there are all those currently-popular “undead” shows too. How many times can you torture a werewolf or drive a stake through a vampire’s heart before he or she is truly dead? Apparently a lot.

I can think of at least eight TV series off the top of my head right now that face this very problem nightly in our very own living rooms: Dracula, The Originals, Vampire Diaries, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Sleepy Hollow, Beauty and the Beast, Supernaturals. And, again, that’s not even counting cable and “True Blood”. What are America’s television viewers THINKING! Are they that hungry for blood? Apparently.

But thank goodness I can’t afford cable TV because that would mean there would be 500 more channels with 500 more new and different ways to kill people off violently and with lots of blood and torture and gore. Good grief, no wonder hardly anyone blinked when the horrendous secret tortures of Abu Ghraib, Zero Dark 30 and Palestine were exposed to America by social media http://www.roitov.com/articles/policeterror.htm. “No big deal. We see that kind of stuff on TV every night!” Americans replied.

If one were to judge the American way of life solely by what its most popular television programs are, one would think that Americans were all murderous blood-thirsty psychopathic nut cases who dream only of blood.

To quote George H.W. Bush, “The American way of life is non-negotiable.” Makes you wonder about that.

PS: And speaking of TV violence and George H.W. Bush, wouldn’t you just love it if, on his deathbed, Poppy Bush suddenly decided to make one last attempt at becoming one of the most famous men in history (in the grand tradition of John Wilkes Booth for instance — or Marcus Julius Brutus) by finally confessing to his role in the assassination of John Kennedy. Wow! That would really earn Poppy a place in our history books for sure! http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/11/06/bush-and-the-jfk-hit-part-8-prepping-a-patsy/

But what I would really love to see would be Dick Cheney doing the same thing: In a fabulous deathbed interview with Olivia Pope herself, Cheney would finally “tell all” about what he had really been doing on the day that the Twin Towers fell. Hell, even Dracula himself would come back from the Undead to watch that TV show. Me too.

I bet there’s a whole long list of creepy “Patriots” here in America, just like those creepy Patriots in “Revolution,” who know exactly where all the bodies in recent American history are buried — and these creepy guys are all getting up there in age. So if any of these shadowy “Persons of Interest” should suddenly decide that they want to add to America’s “Body of Proof,” become an “Original” and create a huge “Scandal,” now is the time!

PPS: I have just one more thing to say about the mind-numbing violence of JFK’s assassination: If it had happened today instead of 50 years ago, every SmartPhone in Dallas would have posted that video on FaceBook in a nanosecond — a la the shooting of Oscar Grant. And that grassy knoll shooter wouldn’t have stood a chance in Hell of getting away. And there couldn’t have been any slimy Warren Commission cover-ups either.

America’s shadow figures and black-ops plotters can no longer get away with the low-life garbage they used to easily pull off 50 years ago, thanks to social media. And that’s “Elementary”.

PPPS: Overheard on a military base on Veterans Day: “You gotta love America. Even our gangsters are better-armed.”

November 12, 2013

Scribe Asks: If Feeling Threatened is All It Takes…

Filed under: Uncategorized — Ye Olde Scribe @ 9:16 pm

…and there’s a HISTORY of murders to PROVE they SHOULD feel threatened.

November 10, 2013

Ye Olde Scribe’s VERY Inconvenient Truth

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

Courtesy dancensing14.blogspot.com

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

But most likely only if she were Black.

November 8, 2013

The Long March to 2016 begins

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

Is a distorted image better than none at all?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 6, 2013

Big shots: Four best-selling crime-novel writers talk about death

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jane Stillwater @ 1:08 pm

There are seven billion people alive on the planet today — and it’s a sure thing that every single one of us will die eventually. Death is completely unavoidable. And perhaps this cold hard fact is one reason for our universal fascination with murder-mystery novels: That they deal with the subject of death, an event that all of us face 24/7 — but which no one really knows one damn thing about.

Who can you ask about death — who has ever returned from the dead? “What was death like? Did it hurt? Is it better now? Is there an after-life? Do you like being dead? Will I survive the process?” The Bible says that Jesus came back from the dead. But probably nobody else ever has, not really — near-death experiences aside.

Death is the absolutely most important event in all of our lives (besides birth). But it is a totally unknown factor. And so we watch CSI on television and go to zombie movies and read crime novels, searching for clues.

At the 2013 BoucherCon convention in Albany last month http://bcon2013.com/, four prominent murder-mystery writers got together to discuss their craft, at a seminar called “Big Shots”. Anne Perry, Steven Hamilton, Sue Grafton and Tess Gerritsen? Yes, they are all still alive. But they certainly know where the bodies are buried!

Sue Grafton was first to speak, and told us a really funny story about the death of (wait for it) her chicken Peggy Sue. “The vet gave me a very serious look and said, ‘This hen needs a hysterectomy.’ Yeah but… Isn’t the main purpose of a chicken to lay eggs?” Then the vet billed Grafton $250 but the chicken still died. Moral here? I guess that chickens aren’t immortal either.

But as Steve Hamilton pointed out, “That’s a pretty hard-boiled story.”

“I get a lot of plot problems solved while driving,” said Tess Gerritsen, “especially while driving across Texas.” Gerritsen also plays the fiddle in an Irish-music band in Maine and is a MD. She writes best-selling medical thrillers in her spare time. Death becomes her.

Anne Perry, who lives in a small village in Scotland where there are only 500 people, has to rely on getting “an endless supply of faces, ways of walking and gestures for my novels — from watching TV.” And I bet she gets lots of ideas on how to kill people too, just by watching TV. I bet that at least 600 people meet the Grim Reaper on TV on any given day spent in Televisionland.

Hamilton writes at night, after the family has gone to bed. “The idea of me getting up and working at 6:00 am is pure science-fiction.” But all four authors prefer to write when it is quiet.

“I have to listen to my characters’ voices,” said Gerritsen.

Hamilton was having a whole bunch of trouble writing about a hero who was an urban private investigator. And then,”I heard a voice in my head saying, ‘I live in a cabin in the wilderness and I have a bullet in my heart,’ and this character, Alex McKnight, just stepped out from my mind.” And murder-mystery readers everywhere are glad that Alex did.

“I identify with characters, envision them,” said Perry, “and find their vulnerabilities. And they all have some sort of vulnerability, even the villains.”

Gerritsen added, “When I can’t get started, I wait and listen; listen to the voices most different from myself. If I were to write from my own point of view, I’d get bored. My characters are never boring.”

And all of these writers are grateful for their readers. As Hamilton put it, “I still can’t believe that people love my books.” And Grafton sees her fans as friends. At BoucherCon, I watched Grafton stand and sign books for her fans for two and a half hours straight, without any breaks.

These four authors have sold millions of books about death. So what’s my point? Have I learned more about the Big Sleep by reading these books? Not really. But I have learned that the important thing about death is to realize that I am still among the living — and, until a whole big bunch more people besides Jesus (and possibly Lazarus) come back from the dead and tell me how much fun it all is on the Other Side, I would prefer to keep it that way.

PS: If, despite being a murder-mystery lover, you are still truly curious about death and what will happen to you when you die, just keep voting for RepubliDems. They and their pals on Wall Street and War Street will have all the rest of us joining the ranks of the dead sooner rather than later, years and years before our time.

According to one right-wing publication I read recently, the whole purpose of the government shut-down is to “DeFund Obamacare!” So between trying to defund ObamaCare and shutting down government services, that alone should kill off thousands of us. The plot thickens!

However, Single-Payer healthcare could save millions of lives in America, and over one trillion dollars as well — and do all this without any computer snarl-ups or sabotage. But no one in Washington appears to be interested in Single-Payer.

PPS: And in the immortal words of Dr. Richard Webber, “We’re all going to die. We don’t get much say about how or when. But we do get to decide on how we’re going to live. So do it. Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger, kinder, more compassionate? Decide.”

***********************

I also have photos of additional authors at the conference: Johnny Shaw, Cara Black, Lisa Brackman, Robert Kroese, Kelli Stanley, Rhys Bowen, Marcia Clark, Rebecca Tope, Peter Barus, Robin Spano, Lee Goldberg and Louise Penney at http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2013/11/big-shots-four-best-selling-crime-novel.html

November 1, 2013

Facts + Imagination = Conspiracy Theory?

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

Tree root or Gila monster?  Use your imagination!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

October 31, 2013

Fukushima: “If you knew sushi…”

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 11:20 am

OMG, I’ve just finished reading a really scary article about how even the seemingly-too-big-to-fail Pacific Ocean has become pretty much radioactive, thanks to a constant onslaught of 300 tons of nuclear-waste-contaminated water still pouring into it daily from Fukushima’s damaged nuclear reactors http://thetruthwins.com/archives/28-signs-that-the-west-coast-is-being-absolutely-fried-with-nuclear-radiation-from-fukushima.

Here’s a brief sample of power-points from that article, “28 signs that the West Coast is being absolutely fried with nuclear radiation from Fukushima”:

4. Something is causing fish all along the west coast of Canada to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.

7. Experts have found very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast.

8. One test in California found that 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna were contaminated with radiation from Fukushima.

11. Some experts believe that we could see very high levels of cancer along the west coast just from people eating contaminated fish…

18. According to a professor at Tokyo University, 3 gigabecquerels of cesium-137 are flowing into the port at Fukushima Daiichi every single day.

23. The immense amounts of nuclear radiation getting into the water in the Pacific Ocean has caused environmental activist Joe Martino to issue the following warning: “Your days of eating Pacific Ocean fish are over.”

However, as deadly-nightmarish and horrendously future-threateningly-scary as this article may be, I’ll bet you anything that it’s not going to make even a small change to Americans’ current thinking about the Pacific ocean, radioactivity in general or even eating tuna-fish sandwiches. Why not? Because whenever we Americans read about some sort of catastrophic generality like this, we tend to just shrug our shoulders and move on. “Nothing to see here, folks. Doesn’t effect me.”

This is the same kind of thinking that Americans have about climate change. We view it with alarm for about a nano-second generally — but don’t individually seem to mind a little warm weather in January as it applies to us personally. And then we happily continue to drive our gas-guzzling cars and let corporations pollute our air. “As long as it doesn’t effect me…” But the Fukushima disaster IS effecting us now. Personally. Apparently there is now even radiation in our own freaking sushi!
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/397-science/20136-how-science-is-telling-us-all-to-revolt

Americans also don’t seem to care if all those undepleted uranium bombs that War Street drops on Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Libya (and now Syria) cause horrible cancers and hideous birth defects on the other side of the world. “That doesn’t effect me either.”

But what if you love a good salmon dinner or some California rolls or a tuna-noodle casserole? Are horrible cancers and hideous birth defects going to follow you home now too?

And are you now going to have to bring a Geiger counter along with you whenever you go to the fish store to shop?

PS: Here’s even further bad news about radioactivity in the Pacific, from a recent article in CounterPunch:

“There are three major problems at Fukushima:

1. Three reactor cores are missing [!!!???!!!];

2. Radiated water has been leaking from the plant in mass quantities for 2.5 years;

3. Eleven thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, perhaps the most dangerous things ever created by humans, are stored at the plant and need to be removed. 1,533 of those are in a very precarious and dangerous position. Each of these three could result in dramatic radiation events, unlike any radiation exposure humans have ever experienced.” http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/25/the-global-threat-of-fukushima/

Holy sheep dookie! This means that the danger of an atomic explosion blowing up the planet is even greater now than it was way back in the 1950s! And the only difference between then and now seem to be that now it may actually be happening — and also that, nowadays, nobody seems to care any more.

PPS: And while we’re on the subject of slow and painful death, let’s also talk about the Reagan-Clinton-Bush-Obama administration and their one big interconnected Endless War. Exactly how are we paying for all this endless and unnecessary blood-letting? Let me count the ways:

1. War Street gets all kinds of money for drones — and that money comes directly from funds that should have gone to shore up America’s crumbling infrastructure.

2. War profiteers receive a bottomless budget allowance to blow up and gravely injure hundreds of thousands of women and children in the Middle East — and that money comes directly out of our budgets for medical care and hospitals here at home http://blackagendareport.com/content/beyond-spin-some-facts-about-affordable-care-act.

3. Wall Street sends American soldiers all over the world to act as its global corporations’ extortionists, enforcers and thugs — and this Mafia-like “protection” racket is paid for by drastic cuts to American veterans’ benefits.

4. Israeli neo-cons get billions of $$$ to endlessly reign white phosphorus down on school children in Palestine http://www.usslibertyveterans.org/files/Title%2018%20Chapter%20118%20War%20Crimes.pdf – and America’s budget for schools here at home shrinks drastically in order to pay for this illegal and brutal Occupation.

5. Oil companies steal oil routinely from other countries by using “preemptive war” — and Americans pay for these wars with $$$ cuts to our hometown fire department budgets and police funding. And now corporate lobbies are once again putting pressure on their (not our) Congressional representatives to make very serious cuts to our Social Security and MediCare in order to pay for even more endless wars for oil http://www.alternet.org/economy/nine-democratic-senators-side-gop-entitlement-cuts

6 thru 666. In the last 30 years, your lifestyle and my lifestyle have been greatly diminished in many many many other countless ways — so that Wall Street and War Street can live out their fantasy lives of aggrandizement and wealth beyond our own wildest dreams. And this sordid list of money-grubbing by the wealthy shadow figures who have their greedy fingers clandestinely dipped into America’s pockets goes on and on and on http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18278-let-the-young-and-middle-aged-tea-partiers-pay-their-own-cash-for-parents-medical-care-and-retiremnt.

But at no point, ever, do the American people ever come out on top. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/22/denmark-happiest-country_n_4070761.html

October 22, 2013

Free Press or Ministry of Propaganda?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 21, 2013

Murder mystery at the NY State Museum: A 9-11 whodunnit

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 12:33 pm

While I was in Albany, NY recently, I heard about a museum exhibit called “The Mystery of the Albany Mummies” and, according to the museum’s brochure, these two mummies have been put through every scientific test known to science so that we can now know everything about them that there is to know. Mystery solved.

And at the New York State Museum, also in Albany, there is also a huge exhibit regarding the World Trade Center and 9-11. But when I went to see that exhibit, I got more confused instead of being less confused. Two major questions immediately stood out in my mind. Or perhaps three. Or more.

First, one part of the exhibit stated that lots of personal items were found in the rubble — including jewelry, gold rings and even credit cards. Huh? Steel melted on 9-11-01 but credit cards didn’t?

Second, the exhibit made a big point about the Towers being held up by exterior steel beams, and also that the interior floors collapsed onto each other because of their weight. So the interiors of the buildings collapsed, according to the exhibit. But then why did the exterior steel girders collapse too? Under the pressure? Because they melted?

Then why didn’t the desks and toys and other paraphernalia at the exhibit collapse and melt too?

I’m confused.

Third, a lot of the items on exhibit were all covered by gray ash — but not the kind that results from burning office paper. So what kind of ash was it? The kind caused by thermite? We may never know. But some enterprising curator could solve this mystery for me in a New York minute — by just testing that freaking ash for traces of explosives. Sherlock Holmes would have done that. Or that guy from CSI. With all of those forensic crime-scene shows on TV, one would think that Americans would demand at least the same level of inquiry that Ted Danson would have delivered. But no.

Why haven’t the Twin Towers been put through the same rigorous scientific scrutiny as the Twin Mummies of Albany?

Darned if I know.

And also, if they had all those girders and fire trucks and photos on exhibit, why didn’t they also have the airplanes’ black boxes and the NORAD reports on exhibit too? And the NSA reports and the “chatter” from Dick Cheney’s war room? I wish they’d had a section devoted solely to “conspiracy theories”. And a section devoted to means, motive and opportunity as well! And why did this museum stick so closely to the “official story” even though the exhibits themselves contradicted each other?

There was also some verbiage at the exhibit about how the Twin Towers held up for an hour or so at first — until the heat from the fires melted the steel even though the jet fuel had immediately burned off. So the burning jet fuel didn’t cause the meltdown? Huh? What did I miss?

The museum’s graphic photos of the Twin Towers collapsing in on themselves showed what had to be a controlled demolition — because if even a few of the 237 steel girders holding up Towers 1 and 2 had melted even a fraction of a second faster than others, the WTC would have toppled over to one side like a child’s stack of blocks, possibly taking out the Wall Street stock exchange with it — or at least a bunch of churches, hotels, office buildings or banks. And we all know that didn’t happen. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-shutdown-of-the-u-s-government-and-debt-default-a-dress-rehearsal-for-the-privatization-of-the-federal-state-system/5354066

And then there were those horrible photos of people falling from windows, windows that would had been impossible to open by human hands but which had possibly been blown out by the explosion of the airplane fuel, taking hundreds of unwilling human beings with them too. But how many more survivors of the original explosions had been blown out through even more usually-unopenable windows when Tower 1 and Tower 2 suddenly pancaked down, evenly and synchronistically destroying 237 steel girders per floor as they went?

By this time I was almost in tears.

I finally left the exhibit sorely saddened by all those lives that had been lost — but also scratching my head in confusion.

Next I’m going to go visit the Twin Mummies — where there are scientific methods at work that I can actually follow and understand.

PS: What the freak would be the motivation for creating a “Second Pearl Harbor” and then covering it up? Perhaps it was six TRILLION dollars? That’s the amount of money that war profiteers have made (so far) from the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Egypt, etc. Means, motive and opportunity. No mystery here.

That’s $75,000 that has been paid to War Street by every single man, woman and child in America. Sounds like a huge incentive to me. And oil companies’ motives? The oil fields of Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc? And the bees still all buzzing around the oil in Iran? With Kuwait and Saudi Arabia next?

“But, Jane,” you might say, “Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are our allies. An attack on them would never happen.” You think not? Well. Saddam Hussein used to be War Street’s ally too and look what happened to him. And America used to be Big Oil’s ally as well but with six trillion dollars at stake, Big Oil clearly would have had no problems selling America out. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Anything’s possible.

PPS: By asking just a few simple questions, Paul Craig Roberts does a much better job than the NY State Museum of describing what happened on 9/11/01:

Question 1: “The national security state was defeated by a few rag tag Muslims with box cutters and a sick old man dying from renal failure while holed up in a cave in Afghanistan, and no heads rolled.” Why wasn’t anyone in our government ever held accountable for this spectacular failure?

Question 2: “Do you know what temperature self-cleaning ovens reach?” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36195.htm

PPPS: According to investigative reporter Russ Baker, “George H. W. Bush may be one of the few Americans of his generation who cannot recall exactly where he was when John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963.” And Poppy Bush had all kinds of reasons for wanting Kennedy dead. http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/10/02/bush-and-the-jfk-hit-part-3-where-was-poppy-november-22-1963/ Plus Poppy Bush was working for the CIA at the time of Kennedy’s death. And the CIA hated JFK! http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/09/16/part-1-mr-george-bush-of-the-central-intelligence-agency/

Baker also states in his articles that Grandpoppy Prescott Bush, that guy who chose being a cheerleader for the Nazis over cheering for America during WWII, also hated JFK. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

So. If Grandpoppy Bush had no qualms about apparently siding with the Nazis over his own country, and Poppy Bush had no qualms about participating in the assassination of a sitting U.S. president in cold blood, what makes us think that Baby Bush would suddenly develop qualms about assassinating the Twin Towers for fun and profit? The apple never falls far from the tree.

PPPPS: So. Twelve years later, what are we Americans finally planning to do about all these clearly still-lingering and strong doubts and suspicions? Open a new and impartial 9-11 commission scientific investigation run by Ted Danson, one that is not afraid to ask the big questions no matter where the answers might lead? A truly unbiased investigation that would finally put all of our minds to rest? Or should we just continue to do nothing and merely be grateful that we each got to pony up $75,000 to War Street — and not even more than that?

October 18, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 12, 2013

A World War II memorial in California has closed too

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — Jane Stillwater @ 4:16 pm

If there are any “Greatest Generation” vets on the west coast looking for a closed WWII memorial to protest at right now, boy do I have a good one for you. It’s the Rosie-the-Riveter National Park in Richmond, CA. Come out and protest that closing too. http://now.msn.com/betty-reid-soskin-furloughed-92-year-old-park-ranger-wants-to-get-back-to-work

During World War II, my father was in charge of the Fleet post office in the Pacific and he wrote many poignant letters home to us about what he saw and did “Over There” — and how much he missed his little family. And I in turn donated those letters to the Rosie museum. But I digress.

Like those vets that are protesting the shut-down in Washington, I too am truly pissed off that this national park is closed. And I’m also very angry that even after shutting down so many federal offices that actually benefit Americans, Congress still forces us to pay billions of dollars a day to kill women and children in the Middle East.

And we are also still allowed to pay outrageously huge salaries to those jokers in Congress who got us in this mess in the first place.

And we can, of course, still be allowed pay government welfare to agribusiness, oil barons, Monsanto — and even to loggers in our national parks (the very ones that have been shut down to us tourists).

It’s a rich person’s world we live in today. Can’t afford to buy a congressman? Then you are [poop] out of luck. Shut you down.

So here’s what we do. We take a lesson from what Rosie-the-Riveter did. We put aside our individual lives, feuds and agendas and we work together to save our country. We grow victory gardens instead of groveling to Monsanto. We reach out to each other — to the left and to the right — and we come together as a nation — proud, unbeatable America! And then we oust anyone in Congress that voted for this shut-down in the first place (and take away their elaborate pensions too!)

Because if we, the new Rosies, don’t stop this government shut-down now (and the greedy bustards behind it) then the next thing we know, these avaricious sell-outs will also be shutting down our Social Security, our MediCare (which should be for everyone, not just for the Greatest Generation), our infrastructure, our schools — and ourselves.

“But why do you work for a place that memorializes war,” I asked ranger Betty Reid Soskin one day while visiting the impressive Rosie-the-Riveter national park. And she answered that what this national park also memorializes to her is, “a whole country working together.”  http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2007/02/sidetracked-richmond-shipyards-rich.html

Moral here? “Don’t sit under the apple tree” with congressional representatives who don’t represent us! And also let’s “Accentuate the Positive” too. We Americans have been controlled by fear of “terrorists” and “the other” and “liberals” and even “wingnuts” for long enough. If our country is to survive, we MUST work together. That was Rosie’s whole message.

And now the Rosie-the-Riveter memorial in Richmond, CA, is closed too.

October 11, 2013

It seems like yesterday . . .

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

A warning flag flew in Berkeley recently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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