Perhaps my memory is faulty, but when I was younger it seemed like there were a lot of hurricanes in the Gulf Coast that people worried would be "The Big One," that wound up diverting just in time to spare New Orleans from a direct hit. That's the reason why, when Hurricane Katrina was headed towards the area three years ago, I really didn't take it as seriously as I otherwise would have as it was nearing landfall; part of me assumed that it would veer off-course at the last moment and New Orleans would be spared total devastation. It was only after Katrina made landfall that I realized that The Big One had struck, and what it meant for the millions of residents along the coast. Then again, I had only started my first teaching assignment less than a week before the hurricane hit, so it wasn't like I didn't have other things on my mind. (The fact that I didn't know how to integrate the hurricane, and news coverage thereof, into my classroom strikes me as one of my earliest mistakes in my teaching career.)
Now it looks as though Gustav will bring the same devastation to the area, long before it has had a chance to rebuild from Katrina. Yes, the political ramifications of this happening just as the Republican National Convention is starting are intriguing, but I'd like to write about those later; I think people need to focus more on the human element of this crisis than the political element right now. This time I'm keeping a close eye on the Weather Channel, keeping tabs on all the latest developments. I've always been a bit of a Weather Channel fan since we first got cable; being a weatherperson on local television was the first "What I wanna be when I grow up" fantasy I can remember having, although when we finally got cable in the mid-80s I think I was more in love with the computer graphics of the Weather Channel than with the human presenters. Even today I wish I could emulate the Weather Channel's graphics on my computer desktop to keep me apprised of the local weather and radar. (The Weather Channel's best desktop gadget is for Microsoft's sidebar, which I loathe because, well, it's Microsoft; do you need another reason?)
I also have to admit to a bit of a morbid fascination with broadcast disaster warnings. Earlier this year I got fixated on disaster notices posted to YouTube, starting with simulations of CONELRAD (our country's Civil Defence radio back in my parents' time, the precursor to today's Emergency Alert System) announcing the Russians were bombing, and then moving on to more modern disasters. EAS was never activated for 09.11 -- all the live news coverage on every channel kind of made activating EAS pointless -- but of course Katrina was something that was anticipated for a long time, providing for lots of spectacle. Weather Channel local forecasts from the coast in the hours before Katrina made landfall, such as this one, fascinate me to no end; there is something that is at once both highly comical and deeply terrifying about the computerized voice calmly pronouncing that "wind gusts could reach over one hundred fifty miles per hour." (I agree with the legions of other Weather Channel fans who say that the channel needs to bring back that music for hurricane season every year.)
To the residents of the areas in Gustav's path: Please be safe. We're all thinking about you.
Labels: television, weather
John McCain turns 72 today. Michael Jackson turns 50. Which would you rather trust with your kids? Which would you rather trust with your country? While you ponder those questions, let's do the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What was the last song that stuck in your brain and wouldn’t go away?
While I was getting lunch around today, Madonna's "Oh Father" got in my head and wouldn't leave for some reason. I'm horrible about songs getting stuck in my head, seemingly out of nowhere; I think it's from my training as a musician and my desire to keep things in my head to think about at all times.
2. What’s something that sticks around long after you wish it would leave?
My sister and brother-in-law. Ba-dump-bump.
3. To what use did you put your last sticky note?
I put it on something I asked my sister to drop off for me when she was on her way home. She didn't actually bother delivering it for a week and a half. Needless to say, this did not make me happy.
4. When did you last have Pixy Stix?
At least twenty years ago. Even at my young age, and with my love of sweets, I knew coloured, overmarketed straight sugar when I saw it.
5. What is something you are a stickler for?
You're honestly expecting me to pick just a single thing I'm anal about? It can't be done.
Labels: fridayfive
For all the possibilities I had in mind for how yesterday's session of the Democratic National Convention would go, I never thought that I would end up feeling sympathetic for Hillary Clinton's supporters, and that the sympathy would be engendered by the actions of Nancy Pelosi. The MSNBC anchors I was watching didn't make much of it -- not that they would, of course, but Pelosi refusing to pause even for a millisecond between asking for nay votes on Obama's acclamation and closing the vote was one of the most galling displays of Democratic power I have ever seen. I make no secret of my disdain for the Clintons and how they moved the Democratic Party, seemingly irrevocably, to the political centre and marginalized true liberalism within the party. That being said, there were a lot of delegates in Denver who came to show their support for Hillary -- I'm guessing they got a lot of face time on Fox News -- and they deserved to have their voices heard in that acclamation vote. There was never any danger of them making the one-third threshold to force the state-by-state tally to continue, and denying them the opportunity to make that one final clarion shout against Obama's nomination was unconscionable.
It's bad enough that the Democrats work so hard to silence the Green Party and Ralph Nader's campaign, but now the Democrats are turning this undemocratic, un-American behaviour on themselves like they never have before. I realize there is something to be said about a political party presenting a unified front, but when the leaders of a party act so overtly to silence its own members, it betrays the fears and the ill intentions not only of the party leaders, but the party as a whole. If Barack Obama wins this election -- and I do not believe that John McCain will be able to hold as close to Obama as he has these past couple of weeks, especially if Gustav hits New Orleans in the middle of the Republican National Convention -- then, just as the Democrats adopted Democratic Leadership Conference centrism after Clinton's election, the Democratic party will move even further to stifle dissent in the future. Political parties are supposed to be about ideas, not people, and the Democrats remolding their party so completely around Obama these past couple of months bodes poorly for the future of American democracy.
There have still been some moments of levity these past forty-eight hours, though. For a while there I thought that convention attendees were applauding Bill Clinton for so long and so loud last night because they were trying to keep him from talking before his alloted time had expired. I especially like Keith Olbermann taking the piss out of Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews live on the air; I think Olbermann, better than anyone else at this convention, understands the ludicrousness of the news networks using the convention to promote themselves and their talking heads more than actually talk about what is going on at the convention and what it means for the country. Olbermann is aware that he's one of those talking heads, and he brings the smarminess when it's expected of him -- he knows who signs his cheques and why they're so big -- and he'll be the first to admit that he has an oversized ego. Still, I appreciate that he's called Matthews and Scarborough when their pomposity has gotten out of hand. After how depressing the convention itself has been, Olbermann's provided me with a little chuckle every now and then to help keep me sane.
Labels: politics
By the time the night is over we'll already be halfway through the Democratic National Convention, and not a moment too soon. Don't get me wrong, I was as glad as anyone to see Ted Kennedy so strong and vibrant last night (well, at least anyone but the Sean Hannities of the world who respond to Kennedy's name with "Chappaquiddick" like some sort of nervous tick), and I thought that Michelle Obama delivered a fairly powerful speech after that. I'm not sure exactly what it was about the speech that moved so many in the crowd into tears, but I can respect that, unlike four years ago when I wanted to reach through my television screen and slap the face of every Republican who cried at that insipid Ronald Reagan tribute. The next couple of nights may hold a bit of interest as we all look to see just how desperate the Clintons get to draw attention back to themselves while still purportedly endorsing Barack Obama, but with the mystery of the roll call vote (allegedly) settled, little of genuine interest awaits. I now understand why the Democrats timed their convention to fall when it did: to show that the Democrats can trump Zhang Yimou and Zhang Jigang when it comes to choreography.
That was sarcasm. I did catch most of the Beijing Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies (but little of the games themselves), and I have to admit that I was kind of impressed in spite of my conscience needling me about all the nasty things the Chinese government does to its people. I'm a sucker for a good show, what can I say. There are two lessons I think the Democrats and Republicans could learn from Beijing. First of all, all of this "red white and blue" stuff has been taken to extremes at the political conventions for far too long now. Sure there was a lot of red in the Beijing ceremonies, and at the various Olympic venues, but they made use of all the colours of the rainbow to dazzling effect. A little green or yellow or purple every now and then wouldn't be such a bad thing at the conventions. Secondly, all of the performers flying about on wires really livened up things in Beijing, because we're not used to epic performances like that making such effective use of all three dimensions. Normally there are only two elements of height present at a convention: the raised podium the speakers elocute from, and the balloons and confetti that fall from the ceiling at the end of the last night. Obama's campaign won't even have that because he's giving his acceptance speak at an open-air stadium. If we're past the point of trying to ascribe any sort of intellectual importance to the political conventions and we're admitting that they're mostly a show the politlcal parties put on for the whole nation, can't they at least work at making it an interesting show?
The only thing more nauseating than how the political parties so carefully coordinate everything at the conventions is how much the news networks coordinate their coverage of the conventions. I still remember four years ago when Reverend Al Sharpton went a few minutes over his alloted time for his speech at the DNC, and Wolf Blitzer bemoaned that fact for ages, not because Sharpton's speech was bad (it was probably the second best speech of the convention behind Obama's), but because it meant less face time on CNN for poor old Wolf Blitzer. Last night I mostly watched MSNBC's coverage, and looking at the crowds they had assembled behind their various sets was nauseating. The crowd behind Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews was mostly bedecked with t-shirts featuring the two anchors, at a place and a time when they're not supposed to be the stars of the show. Yes, I've been a fan of Olbermann's going back to his ESPN days, and yes, I bought his recent books, but Keith Olbermann's face belongs on a t-shirt about as much as Paris Hilton's face belongs on a quantum physics textbook. The crowd behind their "panel of experts" was even worse, cheering whenever Rachel Maddow made a point and booing whenever Pat Buchanan said almost anything, to the point where I was having very painful flashbacks to watching professional wrestling. Things like this are almost enough to drive a woman to watch C-SPAN.
There is one thing I'll be interested in checking out, though. Four years ago at the Republican National Convention, not more than an hour or so after Bush gave his acceptance speech, John Kerry delivered a live speech at midnight, stealing some of Bush's thunder. It was a bold move that reeked of attitude, a challenge to the established way of conducting convention business, and it might have worked if it weren't for the fact that John Kerry's speeches were soporific enough to start with. Kerry giving a speech a midnight is so potent a sedative I'm surprised the FDA didn't step in to regulate how long Kerry could speak for fear of people going into comas. We already know that John McCain will be announcing his vice-presidential pick that Friday -- likely Mitt "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Romney, joy of joys -- so I'm curious to see if his campaign will use the same strike-at-midnight tactic the Kerry campaign used four years ago, especially since announcing a vice-president would pull a lot of focus away from Obama on his big night. Then again, Obama could turn around a week later after McCain's acceptance speech with some of his own mellifluous musings at midnight. Come to think of it, can we maybe try to pass a rule that the candidates can only speak after midnight? It'd sure make avoiding them a lot easier.
Labels: politics
She's 45 today. Not much more to say other than let's go to the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What’s something really, really stupid you’ve done that could easily have resulted in your own death?
You want me to name just one? I think the most recent one was when I tried to pass a car on a two-lane highway in rural Michigan during a pounding rainstorm. The car was going slower than necessary, but the rain was so hard I couldn't see the lights of the car in the opposite lane until we were too close for comfort. We were both okay, but it was definitely a bit of a scare for me.
2. What makes you feel stupid?
Everything I do. (Sorry, normally I do a better job of filtering the emo stuff out, but I am majorly depressed right now.)
3. What’s something that’s stupid in a very smart way?
I'm not sure if this is supposed to mean stupid in a positive or negative way, but I'll go with the easy answer here and have done: Monty Python.
4. What’s an example of a stupid idea working out in a way that solved a problem?
Hitting something in frustration in hopes that the strike will make that thing work. This has actually worked enough times in my life that, for things that I own, it's part of my fix-it strategy.
5. There is apparently a brand of packaged popcorn called Smartfood. What might be found in the package labeled Stupidfood?
Animal carcass. What, you were expecting something else from me?
Labels: fridayfive
According to some insiders, we are now less than twenty-four hours away from Barack Obama naming his vice-presidential candidate, and I've deliberately avoided the news shows today so as not to retch from all the speculation and hyperbole. I must assume that all the hosts on MSNBC must be buttoning their suits a little loose tonight to hide how erect their nipples are with anticipation. Come tomorrow morning, so the story goes, Obama will make his announcement, and instead of calling a press conference or leaking the news to a few reporters, the Obama campaign says it will communicate the message to its supporters first, in the form of a text message. A text message. Yes, one can imagine the millions and millions of Obama supporters not taking calls on their cell phones from anyone today, saving their batteries so they can be the first, tomorrow morning, to get the message "OMG OBAMA+BIDEN BFF!!!ONE" Actually, if that means people are going to be off of their cell phones tonight, this is quite a good thing; I don't suppose there's a chance that someone could talk Obama into sending a new message every day with, say, a cabinet pick? Just a thought.
All the talking heads I heard on television this past week say Joe Biden will be the pick. Back when the other Democratic nominees were dropping out of the race, everyone spoke of them doing so in the hopes of protecting a potential vice-presidential nomination. You could see something like that for a Bill Richardson or a John Edwards, but Biden was one of those candidates who seemingly everyone assumed was just going to go back to Capitol Hill for his weekly ten-second soundbite on the network news shows. Then again, some have pointed to Biden's foreign policy experience helping to fill in one of Obama's perceived weaknesses, plus Biden will help secure those all-important three electoral votes in Delaware. A state that hasn't voted Republican in a presidential election since 1988. (Then again, that was the last time Ron Paul ran for President, so maybe Obama's on to something here.)
Speaking of 1988, Bush Senior's choice of Dan Quayle as his runningmate is just about the only thing that's giving me hope that Obama might come totally out of left field with his choice, and when I say left, I mean left. I think the real reason Barack and Michelle Obama do that fist-bump thing is that Obama can't hug her because he's already got both arms firmly embraced around the political centre, and has been ever since the junior senator from New York conceded defeat in the primary (for now). I doubt that a vice-presidential choice will shake Obama's resolve to move towards the middle, but taking the stage in Denver with a progressive would at least create the illusion that he still cares about true liberals. If nothing else has been proven since the primary season ended, it's that Obama cares more about the illusion of caring for the left-wingers in the Democratic Party than actually championing their causes. That's "change" I was expecting, and I actually took my hands off of the kyeboard just now to make the "air quotes" gesture. I had to do it again just now when I put "air quotes" in those same quotes, and I just did it again when I put it in quotes again. There, now I can stop that and resume typing.
I suppose some might argue that Al Gore nominating Joe Lieberman -- who had been among the first big-name Democrats to castigate Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky mess -- back in 2000 was also somewhat of a surprise pick, which leads us to the possibility of McCain nominating him as his pick later this month. If Lieberman goes Republican, so does the Senate, although it would only do so until the start of next year since even the most stalwart Republicans are conceding that the Democrats will pick up several seats come November. Still, I suppose it would give Lieberman a way to stick it to the Democrats for not standing behind him after he lost the Connecticut Democratic primary to Ned Lamont. I don't think he'd be that petty, but then again some would say it was petty of him to put up his independent campaign in 2006, so we'll have to see. I doubt McCain would risk putting a pro-choice vice-president on his ticket, though, so maybe we'll get a couple of more months of Mitt Romney hair jokes after all. Joy.
At least by tomorrow morning one of the choices will be made, and the pundits on television can go from speculating about Obama's choice to second-guessing it. I think I'll sleep in late tomorrow morning.
Labels: politics
This past Friday's news dump was an agreement between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's camps that Hillary's name will be put in nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Both sides are trying to sell this as the last step towards bridging the gap between Obama and Clinton supporters, but the only way that assertion could be made more ludicrous would be to resurrect Neville Chamberlain and have him wave a sheet of paper in the air proclaiming this move to bring "peace in our time" for the Democrats. The possibility of this happening had been making the rounds for a couple of weeks before the announcement, particularly Hillary seeming to endorse such a move when speaking with supporters. A video of this endorsement made the rounds on YouTube, and was notable not just because Hillary seemed to be speaking to about twenty-five people in someone's backyard, but because she was using an audio setup that looked like a karaoke machine from around 1992. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Hillary's supporters have been pressing for this, apparently because losing to Obama once wasn't painful enough.
All the political talking heads are saying that Obama will win the roll call vote at the convention, but let's face it: it wouldn't exactly be entirely unexpected for Hillary to somehow win the roll call vote next week. Depending on your opinion of the Clintons, you can imagine them doing whatever might have been necessary -- begging, pleading, dealing, threatening -- to wrest away just enough delegates so that when the roll call happens, somehow Hillary winds up on top. You can even imagine Hillary with a fake look of surprise on her face -- or is that her natural facial expression when she's campaigning -- as she is announced as the Democratic presidential nominee. You might even be able to see her not-so-subtly elbowing a slack-jawed Obama into an awaiting refuse pile as she goes up to wave to her loving supporters on the stage, saying, "You like me, you really like me!"
This is just one of the ways in which our democratic process is so messed up. Although some states' delegates are legally obligated to cast their votes according to their state's primary results, many have no such obligation, and of course there's the whole insipid issue of "superdelegates" that we got pounded into our heads for so long this past spring. If Hillary gets more than 50% of the vote next week, she will be the nominee of the Democratic Party, regardless of the past several weeks of All Obama, All the Time from the Democrats. Heck, according to the Democratic Party's own rules, it is entirely possible that a week from this Thursday, Dennis Kucinich will be giving his acceptance speech for the presidential nomination in prime time. Yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that one either.
In theory, these little glitches in our political system could produce some very interesting situations, where a Carvillian or a Rovian figure could find the right combination of loopholes to exploit to rig the system and create a result that no one could possibly expect, which would, at the very least, be entertaining as all get-out. That's just in theory, though, and in practice these types of situations never end well, whether you're talking about the real-life pain of Florida 2000, or the even worse fictional pain of the Swing Vote screenplay. As annoying as these glitches are, though, I wouldn't have our electoral system any other way, if only because it creates a modicum of suspense for things like next week's vote on the floor of the Democratic National Convention, a bit of something to ponder over while fifty-plus states give the same old tired introductions for their states before they cast their votes. ("Ohio, the Buckeye State, the birthplace of presidents, the home of the national tractor pulling championships, the state where one out of every three residents has seen squirrels doing it in a public park ...")
This is as compelling an argument as I can come up with for people to vote for third-party candidates, because then we could be figuring out these loopholes for months on end. Imagine we took today's electoral college projection, but we gave Washington and Oregon to Ralph Nader, and one or two of those barely-red states to Bob Barr. Neither Obama nor John McCain would even come close to the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the nomination, and so we would go through a series of complicated steps familiar to all serious political scholars (or serious fans of The West Wing) to determine who would actually be our 44th president. November 4th would then become merely the first step towards choosing a president, and the news networks would be forced to pull focus a little from Obama and McCain and redirect it towards the various machinations that would ultimately determine the next commander-in-chief. Sure, it would circumvent direct democracy even more than the electoral college system already does, but at least it would be entertaining, and people need something to occupy their time now that they're done cheering for Michael Phelps.
Labels: politics
Today she would have been 96. Happy birthday, Julia Child, and thank you, however indirectly, for inspiring my love for cooking. (Julia was still on the air when I started watching Saturday afternoon cooking shows, but Jeff Smith and Mary Ann Esposito were my main influences there. Funnily enough I'm watching Simply Ming on PBS as I type this up.) Time for the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What did you last replace batteries for?
Yesterday I changed the batteries in a hair trimmer of mine, whose purpose I will not mention for fear of TMI. I had a really good trimmer my folks got me a few years ago, but earlier this year the motor wore out and I had to get a different model, which uses twice as many batteries and goes through them twice as fast as my old trimmer. I wish I could find another one of the ones my folks got me, but I haven't been able to find one.
2. What have you thrown away that you probably could have had repaired?
I honestly can't remember the last time I threw out something that was capable of being repaired. I guess that goes along with being a packrat and all.
3. Among items in your line of sight right now, what should probably be put in the trash?
A lot of things, the most prominent being an old spare shoelace that I'll probably never have a use for.
4. When did you last use disposable cutlery while dining in your house?
I've done it before, but it was at least fifteen or so years ago. I've done a good job of greening this house and everyone in it, and I was never one for cookouts.
5. Whose actions cause you to waste time you otherwise wouldn’t waste?
To be blunt, Mom has a tendency to get in my way when I'm trying to cook my meals. She doesn't get around that fast any longer, so I have to stand there sometimes for long periods of time while she cleans something out. It hasn't gotten to the point where she's caused me to ruin a meal yet, but that's something I'm concerned about.
Labels: fridayfive
A couple of weeks ago we dropped Skooter off at the Humane Society. It had been our hope to incorporate her into the house after Dad's death, but she was proving too difficult to get along with her. She wouldn't use her litterboxes, she kept getting underfoot, and she just never got along with Mom. I didn't like doing this, but I agreed that it was for the best. This means that, for the first time in over twenty years, there is not a cat living under this roof. (I'll count Spyder being with us at the hotel as "under this roof" during the post-fire period.) It's definitely an uncomfortable feeling to know that I don't have a cat to scratch whenever I'm feeling down.
This isn't to say that we're without cats, though. A couple of months ago a calico cat started coming by the food bowl on our front porch; Mom calls her Cali, Heather and Mark call her Hobbes, and I call her Mikeneko. Then, about a month ago, we had a bunch of kittens at our food bowl, and Mikeneko looked a whole lot thinner. (The presumptive father, who we've taken to calling Lion King, also pops around every once in a while.) She had two grey-and-white, one black, one orange, and one black-and-white kittens, although for the past few weeks only one of the grey-and-whites and the orange have been showing up here; we think they're the female kittens, and that Lion King took the males off and taught them how to hunt. Eventually we'd like to get them all to the Humane Society, but for now they're kind of filling in the hole left by Skooter's departure, even if we can't go out and scratch them.
This house will not be cat-less for long, though. It's been generally agreed that once Heather and Mark's apartment contract expires at the end of the year, they will move into Dad's old office. We still have to move out a lot of stuff from out of there, but it should provide Heather and Mark with all the space they need. More importantly, not only will they return with Skooter, but a few weeks ago they adopted a tiny black kitten. Her original name was Punkin, but this past weekend Heather renamed her Wavy Gravy. My sister has never done LSD in her life; I assume she's just doing it because she's such a big fan of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream (and because the kitten loves beef gravy).
On one last unrelated note, that lovely black glider I bought at Meijer a couple of months ago turned out to be a bust. First the back went out on me, so I couldn't recline it without going completely horizontal, and then it became very, very hard to turn. Finally the base just gave out on me, and I've had to go back to using the old cheap OfficeMax office chairs Dad bought some fifteen years ago or so. I wish Dad were here to look at the chair, because to my eye it looks like they used very thin metal and only used shoddy spot welds on it, instead of fully welding the pieces together. I certainly won't be buying another one of those chairs from Meijer, and I don't know if I'll be able to find another small, comfortable glider like that one. Maybe I'm just going to be stuck with this uncomfortable office chair for a while.
Labels: personal
I guess these same-number-date things stretch back further than I thought. It was on the date above that at Wrigley Field, for the first time, electric lights illuminated the field, for a game between the hometown Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies. The game was rained out after about three and a half innings, proving once and for all that there are, indeed, baseball gods.
I don't like the Friday Five this week, so I'll substitute a meme ganked from Poppy Z. Brite's LiveJournal instead. If you go for all that "tagging" stuff, consider yourself tagged.
1. You must answer yes or no.
2. You may not explain unless someone asks you to.
Have you ever....
Taken a picture naked? No
Made money illegally? No
Had a one-night stand? No
Been in a fistfight? Yes
Slept with your best friend? No
Had sex in a public place? No
Ditched work to have sex? No
Slept with a member of the same sex? Yes
Seen someone die? No
Run from the police? No
Woke up somewhere and not remember how you got there? No
Worn your partner's unmentionables? No
Fallen asleep at work? No
Used toys in the bedroom? Yes
Run a red light? Yes
Been fired? Yes
Been in a car accident? Yes
Pole danced or done a striptease? No
Loved someone you shouldn't? Yes
Sung karaoke? Yes
Done something you told yourself you wouldn't? Yes
Laughed so hard you peed your pants? No
Caught someone having sex? Yes
Kissed a perfect stranger? No
Shaved your partner? No
Given your private parts a nickname? No
Gone in public without underwear? Yes
Had sex on a rooftop? No
Played chicken? No
Mooned/flashed someone? Yes
Slept naked? No
Blacked out from drinking? No
Felt like killing someone? Yes
Had sex more than 5 times in one day? No
Been with someone because they were in a band? No
Taken 10 shots of liquor in a day? No
Shot a gun? No
Gone outside naked? No
Labels: fridayfive
The Olympics are coming up here in just a couple of days, and if you're like me then you already stopped caring about them a long time ago. In fact, I'm already getting a head start on not caring about the 2012 Olympics. Seriously, dealing with the Olympics is enough of a struggle in and of itself, but this time around we have the double whammy of an Olympics event marketed on the "special date" of 2008.08.08. I thought those kinds of date-marketing were okay back in the mid 1990s, but by 1999.09.09 I was sick of them. (Not just because Final Fantasy VIII was such a huge disappointment for me, either.) 2006.06.06 had some potential, but then Ann Coulter had to come along and screw that up with another of her sophomoric screeds.
Anyway, back to the Olympics. When I was younger I thought the Olympics was a big thing, but as I grew older I began to realize that I only thought the Olympics were big because the media had led me to believe that they were; it probably didn't help that I was eight years old when the Olympics hit Los Angeles, and of course there's always a surplus of marketing here in the United States when the Olympics come here. Finally I began to be around other people who didn't care about the Olympics, and I began to see the wisdom in their arguments. For some people the Olympics lost their lustre after the Munich Massarce in 1972; for others the Cold War-related boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 Olympics demolished their ideas of the Olympic spirit, that athletes should come together to compete regardless of the world political stage. For me it was the 1992 games, most notably for the inclusion of NBA players in the United States' men's basketball team. Nothing would please me more than to say that I took this stand out of principle that professional athletes making millions of dollars every year have no place in the Olympics, but in all honesty I was just pissed that no Detroit Pistons were named to the Dream Team. (Seriously, Chris Mullin over Isiah Thomas?)
I don't want to disparage the overall idea of the Olympics. I believe that the training and hardships that Olympic athletes put themselves through is nothing short of noble, and for those people whose lives have been dedicated to competing in the games, I wish nothing for them but the best of luck. For me, though, the combination of how absurdly overmarketed each successive Olympics gets, all the people trying to force me to care about them, and the sickening jingoism that crops up from nearly every competition, just drives me up the wall. (Not including baseball as a competition this year doesn't exactly make me happy, either.) I'm sure that I'll catch a little coverage here and there, probably on CBC since their coverage is so much more level-headed than American coverage, but the less I hear about the Olympics over these next few weeks, the better.
None of this, of course, is meant to diminish the fact that this is the time the world should have its more critical of eyes trained on the brutalities of the Chinese government. I thought that the whole idea behind giving Beijing the Olympics was that it would shame them into cleaning up both their environment and their disgraceful human rights record. Clearly the human rights situation hasn't been improved on any, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a marathon runner or two pass out from taking in all that toxic air for a prolonged time. For the past twenty years we were told that spreading capitalism in China, giving them most favoured nation trading status, and being nice to them would solve all the political problems over there, but that sure hasn't worked either. One has to wonder why this administration hasn't gone ahead and invaded China already; it would be supported by more countries than the invasion of Iraq was, and on top of that, China's got a whole lot of oil.
I'm being facetious when I say that, of course, but in all seriousness, it says something about our culture that we would send all of these reporters and cameras to China, but instead of looking into all the disappearances and killings of innocents, they're instead focusing on preteen girls swinging around on the uneven bars. If that isn't an apt description of the problems with America's corporate media, I don't know what is.
Even back before the United States invaded Iraq, some people on the left were pointing out how the current administration wasn't talking about Osama bin Laden that much. At the time, though, those voices were kind of on the fringes; the nation as a whole was still not far enough removed from the terrible events of 09.11 that it was all too trusting of the administration's words and actions. It's only been in the past few years that there has been widespread understanding that overthrowing Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden, and that nearly seven years since 09.11 we still can't catch a man who needs thrice-weekly dialysis treatments who was behind one of the largest atrocities ever perpetrated on American soil. It is, quite possible, one of the biggest lessons of our political age that the administration was able to conflate Iraq and 09.11 so successfully in the minds of so many people. It is also one of the biggest annoyances of our time that some of the people who first questioned that link so long ago, only to be silenced and scorned back then, won't shut up about how right they were back then whenever there's a TV camera trained on them. Yeah, you got it right, big whoop, now can we actually talk about solving these problems?
If making the American public forget about Osama bin Laden after 09.11 was the biggest accomplishment of the right-wing media machine, then making everyone forget about the post-09.11 anthrax scare was pretty darn close. Granted, 09.11 saw far more casualties than what happened with all that anthrax afterwards, but at a time when our national morale and certainty was at the weakest I can ever remember it being, the thought of someone sending a deadly powder through the mail only heightened our fears and insecurities. My maternal grandmother even got an envelope with white powder in it, although said powder turned out to be the colour-changing Kool-Aid that they were selling back then. (Yeah, the kids in my grandparents' neighbourhood are real jerks.) Although there were no further anthrax scares after the initial outburst, the inability of the administration and its officials to figure out who was behind the anthrax scare was another of those glaring deficiencies that should not have gone under our national radar like it did for so long.
The only way anthrax even made its way back to the front page was when the guy that the feds finally pinpointed as the likely culprit, Bruce Ivins, committed suicide just before he was about to be arrested. We'll never know for certain if he was behind the attacks, but given the details that are emerging about Ivins, it's pretty clear that he was a bad seed. (AP story) His therapist is saying that she was "scared to death" of him, and that he had previously attempted to kill people by poisoning them as far back in 2000, mostly in the form of revenge killings. Now, my pacifism is already well-established in these quarters, but I'm also enough of a pragmatist to realize that full pacifism is just not possible given the current climate of the world, and that our armed forces need people who are willing to kill other people should the need arise. However, there is a huge difference between killing others in the defence of one's self and/or one's country, and killing others out of some twisted sense of revenge.
For approximately eight years, the United States Army hired someone who, according to his therapist, "[had] been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic, homicidal killer," in a research laboratory where he had ready access to a large number of biological agents. I can understand his therapist, and perhaps a few of his co-workers, not saying anything out of fear of retaliation, but I find it impossible to believe that no one noticed that Ivins was just about the last person in the world you'd want to leave alone with anthrax and other biological weapons. For that matter, it seems all too convenient that this all would get resolved on a Friday afternoon, which even people who aren't political junkies knows is the best time to dump bad news so not that many people will read about it. Even by modern standards of government incompetence, this really takes the cake; now all we have to do is wait until Monday morning for the administration and its cronies in right-wing media to start their old tired dance of buck-passing and deflecting any and all responsibility.
I'll tell you what pisses me off the most about this right now. The Army has no problem hiring this nutjob, but it cut loose several of its top Arabic translators, in the middle of a large-scale campaign against Middle Eastern terrorist cells, because the translators were homosexual men. The regulations against openly gay men and women serving in the military have always been stupid, but never before have they looked this absurd. Apparently poisoning people who felt have wronged you in your spare time is okay, but not loving someone of the same sex. Perhaps it shouldn't be such a surprise that our military hasn't been able to find Osama bin Laden yet, given the ridiculous conditions they're operating under.
I can't pick the bigger contrast for today: Today is the anniversary of both the launch of MTV and the national launch of The Rush Limbaugh Show. It is also the birthday of both pioneering rapper Chuck D. and rapper-we'd-all-like-to-forget Coolio. Pick which one of the two you think is the funnier, then let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. Of television programs that aired before you were born, what’s your favorite?
If I were born a couple of years later then I might have to consider Soap for this question. I'm also going to disqualify Fawlty Towers because while the first season was created before I was born, the second season came after I was born. With those caveats, I would say it's a toss-up between Monty Python's Flying Circus and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Monty Python was pioneering and more absurdist, but Laugh-In was more political and, well, I had a crush on Laugh-In-era Goldie Hawn when I was younger. I don't think I could pick a favourite between the two.
2. What person of historical significance was from your neighborhood or city?
I come from the home of Jamie Farr and Katie Holmes, which isn't exactly a source of pride for me. There are some other famous and important people from Toledo, though, and I think that for this question I'll go with Gloria Steinem.
3. What’s a story that’s often been told about someone in your family in the years before you came along?
After Dad left Michigan State, he and Mom and Heather moved to Atlanta for a couple of years. For some reason, Dad's employer sent him to a mobile home convention, where he got interviewed by this newspaper reporter and said some really nasty things about the kind of people he felt lived in mobile homes. When the story got printed the next day, Dad was so reviled by the other people at the convention that he basically had to leave town in the middle of night. I think that's what caused him to be so worried when I developed my ability to speak very controversial opinions very loudly in my teens.
4. Which of previous generations’ dumb mistakes (in deed or thought) baffles you the most?
Slavery. What, what else was I supposed to answer?
5. What aspect of life in the good old days would you love to see a return to?
If I can call the nineties the "good old days," then I'd like to get back to the cynicism and the good music. I don't think that can be called "the good old days" by most people, though, so I have to say that my best answer to this question would be considered TMI, so I'll leave it to your imagination.
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