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January 2005
January 31, 2005
January 30, 2005
January 29, 2005
Slaughterhouse-Jive
Listen, George W. Bush has become unstuck in time. He is at the beginning and the middle and the end, all at once. The beginning was "pre-9/11" but he's not there. Nor was he at 9/11 (he was flying around Trafalmadore). Nor is he in the slaughterhouse that is the absurdist Iraq he has created. That slaughterhouse is, of course, the end for this dream-loving pilgrim - the grim end of failure and death and the lost American reputation.
But like the zoo dwellers on Trafalmadore in Vonnegut's world, President Bush lives in a cocoon of fantasy, a dream spun by handlers and keepers and neo-cons, a dream that pays lip service to freedom and liberty, a dream that weaves an obscenity upon our national history. The humans in Trafalmadore's zoo don't pay attention to the The Number anymore; it doesn't matter. As David Brooks writes today, they've moved on - to the past or the future? Doesn't matter, they're unstuck in time. "There's almost a springlike, postwar mood," writes the NYT's lone token Op-Ed conservative.
Like I said, unstuck in time - free of their Dresden and their absurdity. Free of 1,428 (The Number) and the legion of 10,000 wounded. Brooks writes: "One of the effects of this new attitude is that the administration is less fixated upon the Middle East. There is a much broader global perspective." Ain't that sweet? Why get dragged down by their own death-dealing errors? Why fixate on an ongoing civil war, a forced and flawed election, and the pseudo-freedom they've spun - straw into straw.
The new mood has also brought a resurgence of soft-power thinking. Administration officials are trying to think big about what institutions can be used to implement the freedom agenda the president sketched out in his Inaugural Address.
Soft power? (Well, soft intellect on the part of Brooks, soft patriotism, soft integrity). Yeah, the soft power play is working: tell it to the Marines, and the Reservists, and the Iraqi army and police, who die every day in growing numbers. Hey, but at least there are some cool Iraqi bloggers; a Trafalmadorian triumph if ever there was one. The "blog angle" to this story, at least, has a happy spin to in.
Whether this compassionate second-term agenda can really last is another question. Events in Iraq tomorrow and in Iran later on may make these days look like a sabbatical. But new beginnings are fun. They beat old beginnings every time.
Yes, Mr. Brooks they do. The present is the past is the future. It's the second term. Let's be compassionate again. Let's recapture the message. Skip around like Billy Pilgrim.
"Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim," said the loud-speaker. "Any questions?"
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?"
"That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything. Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"
"Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three lady-bugs embedded in it.
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."
Listen, George W. Bush has become unstuck in time. Second verse, same as the first. Forget the dead and dying. Let's move on. Freedom and liberty are on the march.
So it goes.
January 27, 2005
January 26, 2005
Buster's L-Word
My three amazing little ones have always enjoyed the Arthur series on PBS, based on the sweet but unsurprising children's books by Marc Brown. The cartoon deals with life's lessons from the point of view of a 10-year-old; pretty standard middle class stuff, but with some occasional wit. My favorite - forced upon me really by hours of accompanied viewing - is the guileless rabbit, Buster Baxter, science fiction fan, would-be detective, and big-time dreamer.
Unfortunately, as my friend Susie pointed out to me this afternoon, Buster has run afoul of the scarlett-letter-toting Bush Administration, specifically in this case, the newly-minted Secretary of Education (don't real Republicans want this department abolished). Buster, who is fictional after all, has his own spin-off - Postcards From Buster - which follows the roving rabbit around the world to various spots, where he sends back educative missives to the various aardvarks and moles in the Arthur crew.
But wait! One of those postcards comes from liberal Vermont! And the show is about maple sugar harvests! No wait - that's not what pissed off the lovely Margaret Spellings. Oh yeah, I remember now. It's the two same-sex couples who farm the maple trees. For shame! Wrote newbie SecEd Spellings:
“Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode. Congress’ and the Department’s purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television.”
Of course, PBS, with its Federal funding to match backing from the usual fraidycat foundations, immediately caved. PBS house flack Lea Sloan claimed that the Secretary of Education's statement had nothing to do with pulling the show:
“Ultimately, our decision was based on the fact that we recognize this is a sensitive issue, and we wanted to make sure that parents had an opportunity to introduce this subject to their children in their own time.”
Yeah, and it's never about the money when big athletes sign big contracts. Of course, it's about the money. And it's about the L-word, and Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, and the Christian right, and cowardice in the ranks of PBS, and a truly clueless embarassment in the Department of Education. In these, United States of America.
UPDATE: Good news. Our local PBS station, WNET, along with WGBH, originator of the series, refused to knuckle under. And some blogs are on the march against MissSpellings (I love that).
January 23, 2005
The Cool Cornhusker
There was a long time when television was considered a small, brief, and lesser medium. The tiny, flickering image and its limitations. Johnny Carson changed that, not with noise and pageantry, but with smoothe Burbank cool - and with an incredible presence and staying power. As Steve-o just IM'd me, "he was my first real glimpse into the grown-up world" for our generation. Well put, indeed. He was well-dressed, and witty in the west coast way by way of Nebraska - a path carved before him by Henry Fonda and later by Tom Brokaw. That reserved humor served them well. Carson died yesterday at 79. Wolcott's got a great piece of personal remembrance as a media critic on his blog; go read it - but this part I'll quote because it's so true:
Unable to let go, some entertainers hang around so long (too long) that they fade and enfeeble before our eyes, milking out guest spots and relying on the affectionate memories of the performers they once were. They overdraw on our memories until our memories become as tired as they look. Once death finally comes, it's the end-point of their diminishment, a drawn-out tapering-off from peaks reached in the grainy past. This didn't happen with Johnny. He decided not to let it happen, and stuck to his decision. After three decades as host of the Tonight show, Carson quit at the top and never glanced back or sideways, preserving the memory of a comedian in his silvery prime and making everyone who came after him look primitive.
Parsin' Bush
There was a great moment in Jon Stewart's opening on the Daily Show, Inauguration Day edition, when the comic held a running, scoreboard tally of "freedom" versus "liberty." Final score in the second Bush address: Freedom 27, Liberty 15.
Now, if this sounds like an old USFL score, maybe that's the point: a pale imitation of the big-time, a second-rate administration, unremarkable uniforms, and no long-term legacy, a league remembered only by a few hard-core fans. Herschel Walker, Jim Kelly, and a franchise owned by Donald Trump - anything else come to mind?
As a speech, this was more of a sermon about the religion of America. And as a sermon, it was a piece of rhetorical work of such a quality that only a minor league preacher would give it on his third-best Sunday. The greatest weakness is the reliance on words like "freedom" - as if such words were self-evident, as if freedom was defined from person to person, from state to state, from land to land as the same thing, the same place of being, the same approach to living. It called on universal belief in truths without calling for defining those truths in the modern world. It showed the simplicity - a scary simplicity - in the Bush mind. What else can account for such stunningly non-ironic words as these, uttered with 1,300 American dead and exploding IEDs and Fords throughout Iraq every hour, on the hour:
By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well as a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power; it burns those who fight its progress. And one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.
This President and his people seem wholly unconcerned with how the world views their actions, and how slightly less than 50% of the American voting public sees this Administration. To be honest, I got more practical real politick moral wiggle-room in my second grade Catholic catechism than the brains behind Bush allow in their world vision. In their world, and in this speech, and in the locked-down $40 million inauguration festival for wealthy donors, all is simple - simple words, simple images, primary colors. The brand is simplicity itself, the real Rovian creation and the reason Bush edged the Democrats in this year's squeaker. (Yes, it was close - does anyone remember?) They are the good guys, the white hats, like the white iPod headphones. Don't think another thought. (And if you do, you're a Democrat, you're French, you're an enemy of the state).
The woman known as the wordsmith behind Reagan weighed in - viciously - against the inaugural address in the Wall Street Journal. Hey Mr. President, Peggy Noonan seemed say, you're no Ronald Reagan (and your speechwriters are no Noonans, either). But she was right; Reagan now seems like a totally engaged Tallyrand type compared to his political heir. And it was about religion:
The president's speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul."
And it was a blindingly simple message, said Noonan:
It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy. The president told every nondemocratic government in the world to shape up. "Success in our relations [with other governments] will require the decent treatment of their own people."
And, says the Republican speechwriter of her generation, it bore little resemblance to the reality of today's world:
"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." "Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self government. . . . Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time." "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."
Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth.
Maybe, but not in the mind of President Bush - or those charged with channeling his mind in speechwriting. For them, he is always Parson Bush, speaking in generalities of red, white, and blue. It's all about liberty and freedom alright - liberty and freedom from nuance, from hard work, from negotiation, and from the truth.
My Dirty Life & Times
- Tom Watson is a journalist, author, media critic, entrepreneur and consultant who has worked at the confluence of media technology and social change for more than 20 years. This long-running blog is my personal outlet - an idiosyncratic view of the world. "My dirty life and times" is a nod to the late, great Warren Zevon because some days I feel like my shadow's casting me.
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