Month: October 2006

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Their Country

As a great sports talk show guy has been heard to say, it’s not my style to criticize. So I’m not going to get exercised by the Chevy truck ad campaign that’s airing during this year’s baseball playoffs. I’m not going to get upset by the campaign’s appropriation of iconic images from our recent history–Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, Nixon’s White House departure, a Vietnam combat scene and a Vietnam peace march, a Woodstock clip, New York firefighters, the shafts of light memorializing the World Trade Center, NewOrleans after the flood (which begins a sequence suggesting Chevy trucks have had a big part in helping New Orleans put itself back together). I’m not going to drone on about the irony in John Mellencamp, whose song “Our Country” is the ads’ soundtrack, praising G.M. as a company that looks out for working folk with the company in the midst of putting tens of thousands of people out of their jobs. I won’t so much as mention that Mellencamp is performing the song before Game 2 of the World Series, in effect giving G.M. a free ad for its trucks.

(I might do all those things, but others have beat me to it, including someone who put up a somewhat predictably but still sharp parody on YouTube.)

What I will do is suggest a few clips Chevy might want to add to its paean to itself; or better yet, use them to do a whole new ad.

–GM workers fighting cops and company goons as they sought to organize their plants in the 1930s.

–Street scenes from Flint and other towns GM and other automakers have abandoned. I’m sure Michael Moore would share some of his footage.

–Some film of the Corvair; maybe spliced together with some images of Ralph Nader when he outed the car as “unsafe at any speed.”

–Maybe shots from a GM board meeting where the auto geniuses plot their winning market response to Toyota, Nissan, Honda et al. You could have clips from the ’70s and the ’90s.

–Some beauty shots of the Chevy Suburban and the Hummer. Even better if they’re shown at a gas station. Mix in a satellite view of Hurricane Katrina and some pictures of that Antarctic ice shelf collapsing and maybe some grainy street video of people looking real hot in an urban setting.

–Footage of the aftermath of some of the thousands of fires in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s involving GM pickups with defective fuel tank designs. It would be extra realistic and downhome to see some amateur video of a funeral or two of the 1,800 people or so who died in the crashes.

Not sure what music would work best for this. “This Land is Your Land” is always a happy, snappy pick-me-up. And maybe close the ad with a statement from the company. Something simple, like “We’re sorry.”

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Silence

By way of Marie, a post from Chicago crime writer Sara Paretsky on the cost of going along with the war and the rest of it:

“I’ve recently returned from a publicity tour of Scandinavia, where my recent novel Fire Sale was published in translation. While I was there, 40,000 Hungarians—out of a population of 10 million—stood outside their president’s house in silent protest because he had lied about the economy to get elected. In almost every press interview I gave, journalists didn’t have any questions about my work, my deathless prose or my characters, or about me. They wanted to know why Americans weren’t in the streets, or some place, protesting what has been done in our names. They weren’t asking in an aggressive, or censorious way; they were asking out of anguish, because we are so powerful, and what we do affects the whole world.”

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Vietnam, Iraq

I joined the Organization of American Historians earlier this year, mostly to get access to its online journal archives; besides, you don’t have to be a real historian to be a member. One of the unanticipated perks is the quarterly Journal of American History. The September issue has a sort of roundtable discussion–it was conducted in email–among a group of scholars who have focused on the history of the Vietnam War. The subject is legacies of the war, and among the questions the journal posed to the historians was this: “Why or why not is Vietnam an appropriate historical analogy for thinking about current U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq?”

[The question is in the news, too. The commander-in-chief was asked the other day whether there was some parallel between the Tet Offensive of 1968 and the current bloodbath in Iraq. He allowed there was, then quickly added that since we’ve succeeded in turning Iraq into what it was not before we invaded–a 365-day-a-year, hands-on, post-graduate level training camp for ambitious terrorists–there is no way–no way!–we’ll leave before “the job” is done.]

Back to the historians. They all have much to say about Vietnam/Iraq parallels. But the one who sums them up best (and most dispassionately) is Christian Appy of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He says:

“There is a danger that any effort to compare current events with historical antecedents will badly distort both past and present. I agree that Iraq and Vietnam are vastly different … but surely there are commonalities, at least in a general sense, in the way U.S. officials justified their policies in the two countries, and these analogies can serve public debate. After all … one important connection is that U.S. policy makers then, as now, believed detailed local knowledge was largely irrelevant except in narrowly tactical terms (that is, where are the “bad guys”?) because Washington clung to the hope (in spite of massive contrary evidence) that U.S. technology and military firepower could hold the line long enough for modernization (or nation building) to draw each country into a stable global system amenable to U.S. economic and political power.

“At the risk of gross oversimplification, I’d like to list a few linkages. Then as now, the president claims:

—We face a global threat (Communism/terrorism).

—The enemy we fight is part of that global threat.

—We fight far away from home so we won’t have to fight in our own streets.

—We want nothing for ourselves, only self-determination for them.

—We are doing everything possible to limit the loss of civilian lives.

—We are making great progress, but the media isn’t reporting it.

—Ultimately, the war must be won by them with less and less U.S. “help.”

—Immediate withdrawal would be an intolerable blow to U.S. credibility and would only embolden our enemy and produce a bloodbath.

—Antiwar activism must be allowed but demoralizes our troops and encourages our enemy.

“Then, as now, the president does not say:

—The enemy in Vietnam/Iraq actually does not pose a threat to U.S. security, but we’re fighting anyway.

—We do indeed have geopolitical and economic interests in the region and will never tolerate a Communist/radical Islamist government.

—We are using weapons and tactics that don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

—We will stretch and break the law to spy on and sabotage antiwar critics.

—We won’t ask the nation as a whole to make a major sacrifice but will continue to send the working class to do most of the fighting.

—The progress we report is contradicted by our own sources.

—Troop morale is going downhill.

—Most of the people over there don’t want us in their country.”

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Just What He Appears to Be

Dumpnixon

Phil Angelides, the Democrat allegedly running for governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger, is metamorphosing from forgettable also-ran to oddball footnote. I’m sure he’s still out on the stump telling people about his middle-class tax cut and all the good things he would do if he’s elected. That’s the forgettable also-ran part, and too bad, because Angelides has earnestness to spare, some idea of what the state needs, and the willingness to try to get people to pay for the things they want the state to do (translation: he’ll talk about tax increases). Schwarzenegger, who reverted to form as an ill-spoken, bullying boor during the one face-to-face meeting of the campaign, continues with the fiction that the state can do everything it wants without ever raising taxes. Popular message, though no one is talking much about how Arnold managed to balance the budget after he took over in 2004: the state took out a second mortgage to cover a catastrophic deficit; eventually, someone’s going to have to pay that money back. But I digress.

So the handwriting’s on the wall for Angelides. He’s way, way down in the polls and headed for a repeat of Kathleen Brown’s humiliation at the hands of Pete Wilson in 1994 (she lost 55-41). In his darkest hour, though, he’s begun a TV ad blitz with a new spot. This is where he’s bidding to become an oddball footnote: The ad, which tells in 30 seconds about Angelides’s lifelong commitment to public service, is so off-key in conception and message it seems loopy.

It opens with a silhouette of a guy looking at a bulletin board with a big “Dump Nixon” poster. As the silhouette hurriedly scribbles notes, a voiceover says, “In 1972, a young man from California saw a sign that changed his life forever and inspired him to make a difference.” Then we go to a montage of Angelides’s career. Among other accomplishments, he “led school reform in his community and helped California make history.” The ad notes that he’s been called “the most effective and dynamic state treasurer in a generation.”

I’ll pause to let you catch your breath.

Then there’s the background music. As the empty phrases and pictures flit past, the Bellamy Brothers sing “Let Your Love Flow.” (If you need to remind yourself what that sounds like, you can play the ad on the Angelides site or on YouTube.) Maybe there’s a coded message in the lyrics (“There’s a reason for the sunshine sky/There’s a reason, I’m feeling so high…”). Otherwise, it sounds like something the candidate or his wife finds inspiring. That’s the kind of information I wish had been disclosed before I voted for the guy in the primary.

What you can say for the ad is that it takes the high road. It alleges that Phil will fight for me and that he’s always been on my side. It’s also sweet and sticky as treacle and doesn’t tell me one thing to get me to admit to someone else that I’m casting a ballot for this candidate or suggest to them that maybe they should think about doing the same. “Dump Nixon”? Who’s that supposed to win over? Are we supposed to be impressed that that lit a fire under him?

You wonder if people can make heads or tails out of any of it. You’d think the money could be better spent on ads or a Perot-style TV appearance to lay out what this guy would do for the state and why it might be necessary to raise taxes for Californians to have the state they say they want to have.

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The News from Iraq

Link: Number of Embeds Drops to Lowest Level in Iraq.

So, the news from Iraq is bad. But maybe we’re lucky we’re getting any news at all. The Associated Press has a story today on the number of journalists now "embedded" with U.S. troops in Iraq. From a high of 600 at the war’s glorious beginning, participation has dropped recently to 11. Eleven. Fewer than a dozen reporters and news organizations out with the troops to find out what’s happening on the streets and in the countryside. The rest of the news gets reported out of the Green Zone in Baghdad or secondhand through Iraqi stringers.

Not that the embed system is wonderful. It’s not. It puts reporters in an impossible position if their aim is to report events with some sense of independent clarity. As the AP story notes, the military doesn’t censor journalists’ work; but reporters whose coverage upsets commanders have been reprimanded or kicked off their embed assignments altogether. Unfortunately, the situation in Iraq–the omnipresent violence, the insurgents’ tactic of targeting reporters–makes embedding the only way journalists can do something akin to in-the-field reporting without committing suicide.

So: Why are so few reporters embedding now? The story offers three reasons: Declining public interest in the story; news organizations’ unwillingness to spend what it takes to get reporters into embeds; and the bureaucratic and logistical hurdles news organizations must overcome to just get a reporter into an embedded situation. (I find the "declining interest" argument unpersuasive; if people aren’t paying attention to Iraq, then why is Bush working overtime to persuade us all what a necessary thing it is? The other two reasons both hold water.)

Link: Number of Embeds Drops to Lowest Level in Iraq.

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Bush on North Korea: 2000

As related in Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial,” p. 12. The scene is Barbara Bush’s 75th birthday party in Kennebunkport, Maine, in June 2000. One of the guests was Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States and a close friend of the first President Bush:

George W. pulled Bandar aside.

“Bandar, I guess you’re the best asshole who knows about the world. Explain to me one thing.”

“Governor, what is it?”

“Why should I care about North Korea?”

Bandar said he didn’t really know. It was one of the few countries that he did not work on for King Fahd.

“I get these briefings on all parts of the world,” Bush said, “and everybody is talking to me about North Korea.”

“I’ll tell you what, Governor,” Bandar said. “One reason should make you care about North Korea.”

“All right, smart aleck,” Bush said, “tell me.”

“The 38,000 American troops right on the border. … If nothing else counts, this counts. One shot across the border and you lose half these people immediately. You lose 15,000 Americans in a chemical or biological or even regular attack. The United States of America is at war instantly.”

“Hmmm,” Bush said. “I wish those asshole would put things just point-blank to me. I get half a book telling me about the history of North Korea.”

I suppose there are several ways you can read that. A generous interpretation is that this shows Bush doing exactly what he’s criticized so often for not doing–broadening his horizons, going out and seeking information from someone who knows the score. That’s a falling-off-the-balcony stretch, though, if you believe the account (from a family friend, mind you) about his impatience for point-blank facts and his distaste for details like the history of North Korea.

But the damning thing about the story is that this conversation took place well into the presidential campaign and long, long after the Clinton administration had been engaged in negotiations with North Korea. Bush condemns the Clinton approach now, but back then, seven months before he became president, it sounds like he didn’t have a clue what was going on there.

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Random Sky Drama

Sunset101206

On a walk with the usual suspects in Chavez Park this evening. Above: Clouds running over the ridge between the Marin Headlands and Mount Tamalpais (Angel Island is silhouetted in the middle distance). Below: Mount Tam from the Chavez Park meadow (left) and from one of the trails in the off-leash dog zone (right). Over the past 10 years, we probably went down to this park about once or twice a year; most of my walking and local outdoor recreatin’ has been done in the other direction, up in the hills. Since The Dog arrived among us in May, we’ve probably been down there three or four times a week on average. The view is different every day.

Sunset101206ASunset101206B

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Dog vs. Geese

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Like just about everywhere else in urban North America, the Bay Area has attracted flocks of Canada geese that like to hang out here rather than fly away home to the north and have a movie made about them. That’s their prerogative. After reading a blog post about resident Canada geese in Louisiana, and after years of seeing them more and more frequently in and around Chicago and hearing about them becoming nuisances elsewhere, I looked online for some current information. My findings, briefly:

–There are at least eight subspecies of Canada geese (Branta canadensis), including the Giant Canada Goose (B.c. maxima), which appears to be a common city dweller, and the Aleutian Canada Goose (B.c. leucopareia).

–The Aleutian Canada Goose was listed as a threatened species for three decades or so but has made a big comeback, was delisted, and is now eating ranchers and dairy farmers out of house range and home pasture on the Northern California coast.

–Canada geese, including the Aleutian variety, are still protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. In short, that means you have to go to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and/or state officials before you hunt a Canada Goose or do anything detrimental to its lifestyle.

–Canada geese are highly adaptable creatures and highly tolerant of crowded urban situations.

–They love grass and pasture. Grass that’s been fertilized: Mmmm, good. They’re partial to golf courses and parks because those locales typically have lots of well-tended grass and the other staple they require, water. They prefer areas where there are clear sight lines between grass and water because they can move back and forth without predators surprising them.

–There are still plenty of Canada honkers–the term I remember from “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” for migrating Canada geese. But more and more populations of Canada geese in North America and Europe are members of “resident” flocks; they no longer travel back and forth between southern breeding grounds and summering sites in the north. The local geese still do the “V” thing when they fly, though.

–Why the shift from migratory to resident flocks? Food is plentiful in areas where flocks have settled (in many cases, people go out and feed them). They’re not hunted in these areas, and they have no natural predators beyond the occasional unleashed dog.

–Geese are really hard on pasture, and like most of us higher beings, they’re prolific excretory organisms. The combination often makes them unwelcome in the midst of Man, Builder of Sewers.

And that brings us to Wednesday, out at Chavez Park in the Berkeley Marina. I took Scout out there in the mid-afternoon. We generally cross the broad meadow from the access road to the off-leash dog area; there’s no path, and generally no people right there who might take exception, so I’m in the habit of letting him run off the leash. As we topped the little ridge on the south end of the meadow, we spotted about 20 Canada geese a couple hundred yards away. Until we got to about 100 yards, neither the birds nor the dog seemed to notice the impending encounter. At that point, Scout went into stalking mode and the geese stopped their random grazing and were paying attention to him. I tried to lead Scout around the flock, which I expected to fly up at any moment. Instead, he advance 10 or 15 yards at a time until he was pretty close–maybe 50 yards away. The geese all faced in one direction as he got closer–west-northwest, directly into the wind; I figured they did that because the extra lift they’d get from the wind would make it a little easier to take off (the same thing that pilots try to do when taking off or landing). At that point, Scout decided to go for it; he bolted toward the flock, which was into the air honking and flapping in an instant. Didn’t get a picture of that, though.

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