Getting a snapshot of the 2013 Zeitgeist
Living a week under the condition red alert was a flashback to the good old days when lefty pundits could criticize George W. Bush for his policies rather than having to exert some effort to defend President Obama for doing what Dubya did while he was in the White House. At least the week long condition red alert took the focus off the NSA’s (alleged) unnecessary monitoring of various means of communication.
If Obama is busy doing the same thing George W. Bush did, how can the people who criticized Bush defend Obama? Likewise, how can the Republicans who defended Dubya attack Obama? Isn’t there a kind of demon who suddenly becomes the exact opposite of what it was perceived to be?
Do the pundits who criticized the Bush plan to do some electronic snooping in the name of Homeland Security have any grounds for praising Obama for doing the same thing? Do the Republican propagandists have any logical way to denounce Obama for using the old Bush era “Red Alert” ruse to defuse the topic as a subject for a debate?
Journalism is (theoretically) supposed to fact check the politicians so that the citizens can make a well informed decision at the voting polls. Unfortunately, it is up to consumers of news media to do their own fact checking and now both parties seem to be willing accessories after the fact for the murder of quality journalism in the country that spawned Murrow’s Boys.
Doesn’t it make sense that a party of greedy capitalists, who endorsed the con man attitude of caveat emptor, would encourage journalism to morph from an obsession with truth into an endless source of doubletalk that bamboozles the rubes? We wonder what the Democrats’ explanation could possibly be.
If a pundit with access to the Timer Travel Machine were to travel back to 2006 and announce that in 2013 a Democratic President would be wrestling with the tantalizing possibility of adding Syria to the list of American quagmires, such a hypothetical columnist would be hauled off and forced to endure a cooling off period of psychiatric evaluation.
On Thursday, August 08, 2013, Uncle Rushbo was kvetching about the fact that Obama’s first nationally televised comments about the new Terrorists’ Threat came on the Tonight Show.
Uncle Rushbo can’t bitch about Obama doing what Dubya used to do because that might prove to be inconvenient in 2016 when JEB is running as the Republican Party nominee for President, so he has to use attacks on the personal level to criticize the President. Hence he was saying the appearance on the Tonight Show diminished the Presidency.
Rush specifically mentioned that John F. Kennedy did not go on the Tonight Show, back when Jack Paar was the host, to tell the nation about his assessment of the Cuban Missile Crises. Limbaugh either chose to forget or didn’t know that Fidel Castro did go on the Tonight Show, after deposing Fugencio Batista, to make overtures to Washington. Facts are just pesky details for “America’s Anchorman.”
Rush questioned Jay Lenno’s credentials for being a Journalist rather than a stand up comic. Limbaugh said “I’m not being critical of Leno at all. And I was not at all surprised that Leno would ask better questions than the White House press corps does.”
Quoting something that Chris Cillizza, wrote in the Washington Post, Limbaugh continued: “As we have written before in this space, the idea that a serious journalist can’t have fun is not one that’s broadly held by the people who, you know, consume our journalism. Leno’s interview with Obama proves that the opposite is also true; that a ‘fun’ person can also be serious.”
[Could the World’s Laziest Journalist humbly suggest that when journalism takes a break from being oh-so-serious, it should be dubbed “Leprechaun Jorunalism”? ]
When it seemed like Limbaugh was going to address the issue of what makes a good journalist, he veered away from that interesting topic. (We could do an entire column on that topic.)
Bringing the focus of the rant back to himself Uncle Rushbo continued: “ . . . I do something that you don’t find elsewhere in the media. I combine the serious discussion of issues with irreverent satirical comedy, with credibility on both sides.” Isn’t the both sides contention often contradicted when Uncle Rushbo abruptly cuts off a liberal caller?
Was Uncle Rushbo intimating that Journalism should be one sided rants that can (as Fox has established in court) tell lies with a cogent punch line thrown in to prove that Conservatives have a sense of humor? Fox tried to establish a Jon Stewart type of late night comedy punditry amalgamation of entertainment but failed to achieve acceptable ratings. (John Douglas, a pioneer FBI profiler, has said that a frequent hallmark for serial killers is a strange sense of humor that many folks “don’t get.”) Would Uncle Rushbo maintain that he is a better journalist than Hunter S. Thompson was?
We wonder what percentage of the audience for Uncle Rushbo, Hanity, and O’Reilly go to the bother of doing any fact checking about what they have heard. How many ditto heads have read the book “Out Foxed,” let alone make the effort to see the movie of the same name?
In 2006, to the best of our ability to discern, no American journalist had bothered to fact check what had been said at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial nor had any of the modern day versions of Murrow’s Boys bothered to ask a participant of the WWII War Crimes Trails if they saw any evidence to indicate that George W. Bush may have (inadvertently) been seen in a harsh light if the standards of conduct applied retroactively to the Germans were used to evaluate the legality of Bush’s war policies.
The challenge facing Republican strategy policy makers in 2006 was to find a way to get the Democrats to slowly accept and implement the Bush program without it seeming to be a sell-out of the Trojan horse school of clever political maneuvers.
Obviously any pundit who pointed out existence of such a deception would be denounced as a raving lunatic from the most recent graduating class in the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory training class for new employees.
According to Uncle Rushbo, President Obama, who was highly visible in the “hands on” mode of being the Commander-in-Chief when Osama bin Laden was being snuffed, went into stealth mode of operation on the night that the raid on the Americans in Benghazi was happening. Are the conservatives hinting that this could be Monica 2.0? Are the liberal pundits faking a lack of comprehension? “What, me worry?”
Attack the man, because the liberals can’t attack Obama for continuing the Bush agenda. If they did, that might be inconvenient when JEB get the nomination in 2016.
Are Americans supposed to believe a short radio segment riddled with unfacts and bumper sticker slogans rather than assiduously working their way through a complex and scholarly rebuttal? If that’s an accurate assessment how long will it be before they start thinking that they are oh-so-clever when they ask the question: “Sock it to me?”?
Uncle Rushbo gets very upset when lefty pundits use personal attacks on him, yet he has no qualms about attacking the President and charging him with demeaning the Presidency by talking to Jay Lenno.
When Uncle Rushbo is attacked personally, he usually responds with a counterattack that brings the lefty a fulfillment of Andy Warhol’s promise. Should an obscure online pundit who wrote about a chance encounter with a War Crimes Trials expert and an earlier analysis of the American lead prosecutor’s opening statement at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial launch a vitriolic personal attack against Uncle Rushbo in the hopes of getting a tsunami of negative publicity for his efforts?
As the summer of 2013 peaks, attempts to provide rational discourse for political issues is about as difficult an assignment as it would be to get a rabid Dodgers fan to go see the Giants host a three game home series with their archrival and convincing this fellow to “root for the home team.”
It ain’t gonna happen.
That, in turn, may explain why Jay Lenno and John Stewart are becoming more important to politicians than interviews on the network news programs.
When a hallmark Bush gambit becomes part of Obama’s repetoir of ploys, some pundits may realize that the situation is similar to that moment when the home team’s fans head for the parking lot in the 7th inning. At that point some mildly amusing (forget about perceptive and cogent) punditry has been put out of read.
[Note from the photo editor: A file shot of a man using an 8 X 10 camera seemed to illustrate our topic of looking for the Zeitgeist for this week. Quality Journalism has become a thing of the past, as have view cameras. Both are missed by aficionados.]
Ned Kelly said it best: “Such is life.”
Now the disk jockey will play the Speedies song “Let me take your Photo,” the Who’s “Pictures of Lily,” and Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome.” We have to go see if we can buy a West Coast Eagles t-shirt. Have a “your mother wears combat boots” type week.
“ . . . do you look in the mirror and wish you had hair? . . .”
Will next year’s defending America’s cup champ be New Zealand?
If the mainstream media is ignoring the plight of the Los Angeles county assessor, the story of how San Francisco taxpayers got hustled by the yachters, and any potential link between a California Senator’s husband and the bullet train that voters don’t seem to want, shouldn’t the World’s Laziest Journalist extend an example of interline courtesy and join with the big names in journalism by blowing off those topics? We won’t harp on the idea that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors seem to be envious of the situation in Marina del Rey that has critics of the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors alleging that the unique situation there handed the politicians a cash cow for their reelection campaigns. Mum’s the word. Why spoil the surprise for the voters in the San Francisco Bay Area if they are in for an expensive example of “getting blind sided” (again!)?
There is an old folktale (which we just made up) that tells the story of a columnist from the Leprechaun Journalism tradition, who is driving late at night in the industrial section of a large university town and sees an automobile accident occur. He rushes to the car which is starting to burn and pulls a beautiful damsel from the wrecked vehicle. Since she has magical powers and she doesn’t want to demean his integrity with offers of numerous writing awards, she makes him an offer that cuts to the very core of his being. She says he can either win the lottery but must never write again or he can have a very limited online audience which will include the newsrooms at the New York Times, the Columbia Journalism Review, CBS Evening News, and the Berkeley Barb. If he chooses the latter, he will see some of his most unique insights into national politics in rewritten form used by those august news media but he won’t get any royalty checks.
The World’s Laziest Journalist was reminded of that grim fairytale recently when he noticed that Jalopnik ran a story about taking a flight in the Goodyear Blimp and, a week later, another about a taking a flight in a B-17 G WWII bomber. We had written about experiencing both modes of transportation many moons ago while functioning as a staff writer for “Just above Sunset” online magazine.
It might seem foolhardy for a columnist, who can wonder if his newest offering will be read by folks at the Sydney Central Backpack Hostel, a film critic in Great Britain, and the 1961 SPHS Scranton Pa. guy, who is one of the Vice President’s best friends, and, if we send him the link, one of the top editors at Playboy Magazine, to mention the possibility that the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) may go on strike because they would have the Rhett Butler reaction to such a remote labor dispute. If, however, the columnist goes to extensive lengths to provide evidence that bolsters a contention that a continuing effort to bust unions and reduce wages is exemplified by that very local bit of labor strife, then such a hypothetical effort might, at least, get a closer read by the denizens of the New York Times newsroom.
Back when the pundits were discussing the possibility that President George W. Bush would order troops to go to Iraq, some wags mentioned “the Pottery Barn” rule. Now that things in Iraq are spinning way out of control again, we await the resurrection by the war hawks of that principle and a debate about urging President Obama to send some new troops back to Iraq to insure Democracy for the Iraqi people there and to uphold America’s commitment to that country’s freedom fighters.
After noting that Edward Snowden did not seem to reveal any information that was new and heather to, completely unknown by the American public, we have started to wonder if a pundit on the Internets could get into hot water by commenting on facts already known to the American public. There was a small item online that indicated that Snowden had accused America’s Free Press of complete dereliction of duty after 9-11. That story was ignored by the mainstream media.
With all that in mind, the World’s Laziest Journalist is starting to think that it might be prudent to search for other more innocuous tidbits of information that would be much less likely to instigate patriotic American Republicans to bandy about the word “traitor” and the phrase “war criminal.”
Would it be an example of irony if some over zealous American Patriot recklessly labeled Edward Snowden as a war criminal for doing what the lead American Prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trails, Robert Jackson, said must be done when an individual perceives that his country is perpetrating some immoral actions in world affairs?
Wouldn’t a columnist be much better off using items such as the information that the San Francisco Beard Papa outlet is a local franchise for a company in Japan that specializes in French pastry and that they are on the verge of expanding into the Hollywood section of Los Angeles?
Folks who regularly read the material produced by the World’s Laziest Journalist know that the columnist has a high regard for the events that took place 79 years ago when Ernest Hemingway and thousands of troops for the Allied Forces liberated Paris might expect that after he finishes reading Michael Neiberg’s new book “The Blood of Free Mena: the Liberation of Paris, 1944,” a full column review may follow.
This book describes the scoop columnist Alice Moats scored when she sneaked into Paris more than a month before D-Day. Hemingway got much more publicity for claiming that he arrived in the City of Light a day or two before the other soldiers.
Speaking of WWII, fans of the fifty year old novel “Catch-22” will want to consider reading the new book by Patricia Chapman Meder titled: “The True Story of Catch-22” (the real men and Missions of Joseph Heller’s 340th Bomb Group in World War II). The author was the daughter of Willis E. Chapman, who was “Col. Cathcart” and she provides the fact finding keys for the classic war novel romain a clef.
Fans of Heller’s novel may well want to learn all the background information knowing that this new book will increase their enjoyment of the half century old classic and, perhaps, inspire them to go back (to their college days?) and reread Heller’s book.
That reminds us, we should go back and search for the passage that explains how Yossarian bought eggs for a nickel each and sold them for three cents each but still made a profit.
The Occupy the steps of the Berkeley Post Office Building effort was still continuing as this column was being posted.
Recently, we bought a used bargain copy of “Beyond Coincidence” by Martin Plimmer and Brian King. Chapter two, which is a series of examples, opens with a story of a woman in Berkeley CA, who went outside her home and became locked out. While fretting about her dilemma, the postman arrived and handed her a letter from her brother in the state of Washington. He had visited recently and sent the letter to return a spare key he had been using.
Speaking of obscure but influential, one might think that there would not be an example of the concept “an obscure recording by Elvis Presley” but since these are the dog days in the news (and punditry?) business when the Congressional summer vacation means that there won’t be much political news and since Friday August 16, 2013, is Elvis Memorial Day, we’ll try to listen to the laughing version of “Are you lonesome tonight.”
While a performance in Las Vegas was being recorded, Elvis changed the lyrics and broke himself and the band up with laughter.
The musical group Daddy Yankee has posted a video on Youtube for their song about gasoline. Since the anniversary of the day Elvis Presley (supposedly) died will coincide with the publication date for the next World’s Laziest Journalist “the week in the rearview mirror” column, we found that the Elvis track, allegedly proclaimed by Paul McCartney to be the best recording ever by Elvis, had less views than the ditty about what makes cars go. The laughing version of “Are you lonesome tonight” was at the 70,000 hit level when we checked. “Gasolina” has racked up more than 38 million hits.
New words for 2013? How about “selfie”? It means a self portrait and usually referrs to something of the kind of tourist snapshot plus mug shot combined that are posted by young folks on Facebook. It seems like a gimme to think that this word will land on the list of new words for this year.
[Note from the photo editor: The sports world extravaganza known as the America’s Cup Yacht Races is being assessed as a fiasco for this year, but the media is overlooking one important aspect of the minor sports news story: taxpayers in the Bay Area, thanks to some contract lawyers who earned their fees, will be obliged to cover any financial shortfall. News photos of the sporting event may have some stock shot value for political pundits if the citizens ever decide to make a retroactive fuss over the fact they have been hustled.]
“Kim” Hubbard said: “Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.”
Now the disk jockey will play a song that tells the story of Elvis set to music in Bill Parsons’ (Bobby Bare) song “The All American Boy,” Elvis’ saddest song “Old Shep,” and the laughing version of “Are you lonesome tonight.”We have to go see if we can purchase a Kangaroos Football Club t-shirt. Have a “do you look in the mirror and wish you had hair” type week.