Friday, January 25, 2002 :::
“American Taliban” and other silly word arrangements.
The media is at it again with a new attempt to further homogenize our language into convenient, bite-sized terms for mass dispersal into a news-hungry market. Today’s example: John Walker Lindh, The American Taliban.
That name is rather silly. I know that it fits well in the news ticker. I realize it is generally descriptive of an American that embraced the ideology of our sudden enemy. These points are not lost on me. But in an effort to assign a catchy label of irrefutable association, the powers responsible for loading the pellets into the gerbil feeder just failed to make any sense this time.
I have come to learn two simple lessons since we went to war (term used loosely, falling down around your ankles loose).
Lesson One is that we are the good guys. We are the global crusaders fighting an incessant battle that has become, since the softening of global gung-ho support, thankless work. But that is what we do. We go to Somalia, to the Balkans, and anywhere else where the iron fist of justice is needed to {insert self-congratulatory, patriotic jargon here}.
Lesson Two came earlier on when we learned that the Taliban was our enemy. Many of us learned this at the exact same moment we learned what the Taliban was. And we learned this because they invited the boogieman over for a terrorist slumber party. They were our enemy not because the years of nefarious and inhumane treatment of women under the regime, or because of their contribution to the global herion trade that kills kids right here in River City (ya got trouble), but because they harbored a man who killed “our” innocents. It was all rather sudden.
It’s like being introduced to the new guy at the office, Bob we’ll call him, and then being told that Bob is the embodiment of all the malevolent savagery in the world and, as an added bonus, is diametrically opposed to your existence. That’s going to make staff meetings suck! So, if Bob is your new inter-office arch nemesis the chances of you identifying any part of your life in terms of The Bob are slim.
So, these two lessons having been learned, I find it a spectacularly erroneous to combine two competing and unlike descriptors that are the very antithesis of one another to enjoin thoughts of a specific and fabricated concept. It is just absurd. But it plays well in the press because it is a fast sticking label to get the rabble up in arms about the traitor in our midst.
John Walker Lindh…Traitor to America. John Walker Lindh…Turncoat for The Taliban. But John Walker Lindh…American Taliban? It just sounds so half-assed. He was a fighter (if you want to glorify his contribution to call him that) for the Taliban, yes. At some point, though, the press should have chosen to pass a verdict in the court of public opinion stripping his public identity of its citizenship, calling him the enemy, dispensing with the high drama of an American youth caught in the middle of a diplomatic crisis, and moved on to more productive matters…like Gary Condit, man eating sharks, Anthrax, or tribute poems/songs written by grade-schoolers or bartenders and dedicated to all the American Heroes.
SIDENOTE DENOTING MORE SILLINESS:
Why is it that sometimes when we encounter a figure in American culture that we want to vilify or scandalize it is necessary to use the full name? Examples:
John Wilkes Booth
Lee Harvey Oswald
James Earl Ray
John Wayne Gacy
John Wayne Bobbit
Mark David Chapman
::: posted by Mike at 3:27 PM
Friday, January 18, 2002 :::
How The Flame Broiled Whopper Cured My Case Of The Blues.
Let me advance two provisos to the statements I am about to make.
Proviso #1 - I am a white guy who grew up in the middle-class suburbs of a predominately white city, in the South, in the late 70s early 80s. I do not claim to have any insight into the meaning- whether presented or inferred- of Blues Music. Like George Carlin said, “White people got no business singing the Blues. It’s the job of the White man to give people the blues not sing them.”
Proviso #2 - It seems as if I have watching quite a bit of TV lately. I normally will watch about 2 TV shows a week and those are usually recorded for later viewing. This means I usually get to skip over the commercials. And the commercials are sometimes entertainment unto themselves. The commercials are the playbook of the America Hype Machine. I did an earlier post that was centered on commercials. I should be embarrassed about going to that well again in such a short period of time, but given the limited powers of observation I possess, I kind of have to run with what I got. I am not prone to apologizing for my shortcomings.
With that out of the way, let me talk about something I saw that was troubling.
B.B. King is recognized the world over as the ultimate example of a Blues Player. He has all the prerequisites that a man should have if he is going to bellow convincingly about being blue, having the blues, or getting the blues. He has a voice that sounds like he has told the story of his misfortune countless times, he has a trademark guitar named after an old lover (which no doubt gave him the blues), and he is a black man that looks as if he has been passed down in perfect condition from generation to generation as a spokesman for hard times upon his people. The whole package is inspiring, even to a dumb white kid like me.
All of these things, when acting in concert, amalgamate the intangible attributes of a man and a movement into a soulful and powerful expression. “The thrill is gone…the thrill is gone away.” When you hear it you can feel the thrill actually leaving.
Time makes you accept things as a given. I have learned in my life a few truths that travel down irrevocable paths. The Coyote, no matter what innovation or scheme employed for the task, will never catch the Road Runner. The Trix Rabbit will never, not even with his ability to speak the language, get a bowl of Trix. Mariah Carey and I will never share a meaningful bond. And B.B. King will always have the Blues.
Then a strange union occurs.
An advertising firm whose sole reason for being is to present to the world the message that hamburgers are the center of a well balanced universe, joins forces withan on-in-years Blues performer that realizes that the blues don’t pay as well as product endorsements. The offspring of this marriage is a commercial ad placement running nationwide.
In the commercial B.B. King strokes Lucille and sings a catchy, upbeat tune. Life is great. Alarm clocks are flying, B.B's smiling, disembodied heads is superimposed over a cartoon sun, BB sits in the bottom of a cresent moon, and everything seems hunky dory. It is as if the Blues are a thing of myth and fantasy. But to me it was a little sad. In a matter of a 30 second spot I got to see the Chancellor of Blues University sell out the integrity and bastardize the meaning of the cause.
Damn right I got the blues!
::: posted by Mike at 3:04 PM
Thursday, January 17, 2002 :::
A return to normalcy . . .
I was leaving work the yesterday and in doing so I walked past the big TV’s that line my path to the door. Perhaps IBM thinks that having its hallways lined with massive television screens keeps the workers informed, I don’t know, but they are always on and they are ALWAYS tuned to CNN.
Usually this is a good thing helping me stay in touch with the current state of activity in the country. The folks at CNN take the trouble each morning to paste up a banner above their churning news ticker that displays what America is doing at that particular moment. Never before Sept. has the attitude and activity of the nation been so easily summed into short catchy phrases that are picked up and shamelessly imitated by the media at large. First it was AMERICA UNDER ATTACK. Then, after said attack, we graduated to the level of AMERICA IN CRISIS, then we sent some soldiers to a region where the prominent suffix is “stan” and it became AMERICA’S NEW WAR, or its alternative AMERICA AT WAR. So you see, walking by these TVs does a lot for my general knowledge of current events.
Yesterday the BREAKING NEWS (words that had briefly replaced the latest descriptor of America’s engagement) was a school shooting. I only briefly saw the images before I was out the door but it looked common fare for that sort of thing: helicopter shots of the school from the air, throngs of people gathered about crime scene tape, flashes of crying teenage girls. I don’t intend to sound callous about this, but since Columbine this has proven to be the standard formula of production value devoted to the school shooting.
As I pondered this on my way to my truck I felt as if we are taking a much-needed step towards normalcy. That is not to infer that normalcy is a particular better thing, but it is a more comfortable thing. You see, when teenagers are shooting up the high school there is a stir of debate and condemnation of certain facets of our modern life, but at least we are not afraid. We vilify the culprits, we pity the victims, and by the next week we file it away under the heading “tragedy” and move forward.
My soon-to-be wife is a schoolteacher and a return to this type of normalcy is disconcerting to sat the least. I can say, however, that it is absurdly relaxing to know that her odds are decidedly better surviving the day against the threat of some heavily armed fifth grader looking to exact vengeance for imagined wrongs. Back when I thought her school could get hit by a 757 or taken out with a mid-range ballistic missile I was afraid. But this perceived cessation of terrorist hostility makes me feel better. And if the mentally unstable, low-achieving children of America have moved on enough to take up arms and resume their attack on kids who wear better cloths or get dates to the dance, then maybe we should all take the cue.
I never thought I would feel comfortable living in a place where to fear the children was a welcomed relief. But here I am.
::: posted by Mike at 1:46 PM
Tuesday, January 15, 2002 :::
Speaking of commercials that undermine your faith in a progressive society....
I was enjoying a much-needed break from my plans of global thought domination the other day. I must have been watching a TV station that derives most of it's advertising revenues from professional wrestling and re-runs of Hogan’s Heroes because every commercial that came on had subject matter that fell into one of three areas: Personal Injury - including but not limited to attorneys, chiropractors, and psychic faith healers-, Weight Loss, and Debt Management.
I can understand the Weight Loss ads. There is no question we are a fat society. We have all seen the news reports on the Dan Rather Comedy Hour. The ones that use as their backdrop a sequence filmed by a camera crew that was sent out into the wilds of America with the expressed intent of finding morbidly obese people so they could film them from the neck down. Makes for good shock television. This is a given.... a sugar-addicted, super-sized, drive-thru, sedentary nation that wants to lose weight while they sleep. No arguments of any weight (pun craftily intended) can be fashioned to battle this fact. Water is Wet, America is Fat. Next issue.
An area where repeated exposure has bred in me a sense of acceptance is the Personal Injury industry. I have become desensitized to that industry because it has never felt it necessary to build an image that contradicts the blood-sniffing, ambulance-chasing, doctoring-for-profit image portrayed in its commercials. There is one such commercial in my area where The Texas Hammer (formerly The Tough Smart Lawyer, formerly The Tough Texas Lawyer) promises that, without even opening your case file, he can tell you are entitled to money for your pain. There is no shame and no spin doctoring. It is simple. Someone hurt you, or came really close to hurting you, or maybe had a dream one night where they hurt someone that looks a lot like you, therefore you should not be penniless and in anguish. In fact, they are so singlemindedly indifferent to you that they don't even bother with that false bullshit sentiment that says they care about you. They don't even mention you unless it is in the context of litigation settlements. They have the doctors and chiropractors that are experts in the treatment of "soft tissue injuries" that sometimes take days, weeks, or even presidential administrations to develop. You have to wonder about an industry whose entire Equal Opportunity statement is made by flashing the words "Se Habla Espanol" on the screen. As I have said, I am used to it.
Now we come to the Debt Management portion of the program. I have admitted that we are fat. I have admitted we are susceptible to the shyster lawyers and the charlatan doctors. But I cannot admit we are poor. While a bulk of our economy is a lie propped up by credit debt and dependent largely on the opinions of the media, I cannot bring myself to admit that we are poor. We don't save. An embarrassing percentage of the population lives paycheck to paycheck irrespective of income. We are cash strapped. But we are not poor. The problem is and always has been the effective marketing of things we don't need but are convinced we cannot live without. Then we have our hobbies, and our obsessions, and finally our vices. Add it all up and we have five bucks in our pocket with 10 days until payday. People live way beyond their means and arrange to pay it out at loan shark rates. A dinner for two becomes equal to buying a controlling share in the restaurant. It is a ploy to keep the masses occupied. I know this, you know this, just about everyone knows this. But it doesn't change.
This commercial I saw the other day forged into new territory. It told the viewer that even though they were fiscally irresponsible, and even though they were criminally bankrupt, it wasn't their fault! They were not spendthrifts caught in the spell of mass-market commercialism: they were VICTIMS OF CIRCUMSTANCE. Can you believe this? Victims of circumstance? Perhaps my compression of cumulative terminology is lacking, but wouldn’t someone who went to work one morning and got caught in the crossfire between Catholics and Protestants be a victim of circumstance? Or what about someone who goes in to have their appendix removed and instead gets a honkin' new pair of tits, victim of circumstance? Unless that circumstance is permanent suspension of reality in all matters pertaining to real income and victimization is another way of saying bold and stupid self-affliction, I don't really see how someone who charges $30,000 worth of silly string and trips to Chili's could be coded as a victim of circumstance. In the name of a product that I cannot begin to ascertain from the vague nature of the script, this commercial is trying to convince people that their problems and burdens are not their fault.
So to sum up: we are fat, injured, and apparently poor, but only because of a mass societal conspiracy that feeds on our disposable income making us property in a new era of slavery.
I know, I’m not buying that shit either.
::: posted by Mike at 2:36 PM
Wednesday, January 09, 2002 :::
So I'm driving to work and I hear a comerical for a job fair, but it's not the normal job fair where the local supermarket is looking to get a fresh load of stock boys or a start-up dot com is looking for cheap labor to overwork and abuse. It was for (and I'm not kiding here) The United States Secret Service.
I would like to think that the men and women who protect the body of the most powerful man in the world didn't pick up the appication at the local Community College. If I didn't sleep durring the day I would go and pick up an application just to see what the questions are but I 'd also sit over in a corner and watch the caliber people who come up ( also I think this covert move would impress the guys working the stand). My predection would be a 60/40 mix of ex-milatary and underpaid cops, but also over zealous guys who have seen way to many action movies who would come walking up in the classic billy bad ass stance, slicked back poney tail and an issue of Balck Belt sticking out of the back pocket.
And that's another thing, what poor bastard low man on the Secret Service totem pole get stuck working this table. I bet it's the screw ups who were watching the Bush Girls last year.
But if any folks in the goverment come across this little posting can you please find some outstanding young people in the armed services who desirve a promotion rather than people who listen to late night radio and decide that they just can't stand another day of fliping burgers.
::: posted by Anonymous at 3:45 AM
Monday, January 07, 2002 :::
*sniff* *sniff* ...hmmmm. ...smells familiar. I haven't been around in a while but that doesn't mean that I don't care. I sit here at the computer table on a cold, windy January night, marveling at timing. It seems only fitting that I should be the first to inflict myself on this blog in the new year as I was the first to kick it off back in 'ought-one. Here goes.
Ruminations On New Years
Please note that I wrote new years, as in a year that is new rather than New Year's, as in Eve. Another year has clicked over on the calendar, but does anyone stop to realize that a new year clicks over every day? Every day is a year later than it was last year. For example, today is the new January 7th and tomorrow will be the new January 8th. Pretty cool, huh? Yet, I don't see anyone getting shitfaced and silly on January 7th eve. That's kind of a defeatest attitutde, don't you think? I mean, what if we welcomed each day as if it were a new year (which, as illustrated before, it is)? Admittedly, I wouldn't want to throw a party every night but I would like to have the same sort of good feelings every day that I do on New Year's Eve and Day (Goldschlager shots notwithstanding).
Believe me, I'm very aware of how un-MetalCat I sound. This is as odd to me as it is to you. I guess I can explain this differing perspective by the fact that the traditional "new year" for the calendar coincides with a new year for my life, too. My birthday is January 2nd so I'm getting birthday wishes before I've even written the date for the first time, usually. After one reaches a certain age, birthdays cease being all about selfishness, presents and drinking oneself into oblivion. ...and you, you know you're out there somewhere toughly disagreeing with me and saying, "...I still drink myself into oblivion and act selfish on my birthday - that's what it's all about!" You know I'm right. 2001 showed me my mortality in no uncertain terms. ...and I'm not talking about The Event, either, although it was sobering, to say the least. I'm a worrier, by nature, and I feel that 2001 brought me to a new level of maturity in that I'm not as concerned so much with other people - I'm concerned with myself. I feel like I did a lot of growing this year and in a weird, disturbingly perky kind of way - I'd like to feel like I grow a little bit each day now. ...or at least take stock each day and recognize the growth. 'Cause each day is a new year.
The next time you hear from me, I'll have something to bitch about so feel free to remind me about this growth that I'm talking about.
::: posted by MetalCat at 9:45 PM
