Category: Current Affairs

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Going Along with the Script

I don’t want to join in the national whine about mainstream media’s coverage of the presidential elections — how shallow it is, how devoid it is of really tough questioning of the candidates. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But there is something I’m hearing on the radio just about every day, nearly every hour — I don’t watch any of the national TV news shows anymore, though sometimes I hear PBS’s “News Hour” — that’s annoying as hell. On both NPR and CBS — where I have the dial tuned 90 percent of the time most days — the networks are making a habit of running straight-up reports on Bush’s and Kerry’s perambulations around the union, complete with soundbites of their boilerplate stump speeches, and treating the appearances as if they are news unto themselves, as if the thing listeners really need to know is where the candidates are today and the inflections in their voices as they repeat for the ninety-ninth time all the ways they are fit for the presidency and their opponent is not. The items go something like this: “President Bush was in Ottumwa, Iowa, campaigning for votes in this crucial swing state. [Bush soundbite: “Can you imagine being more liberal than Ted Kennedy? He can run from his record, but he cannot hide!” (Sound of cheering.)] Tomorrow, the president will campaign in Ohio, another crucial swing state.” The same thing — and the items from the Kerry campaign are largely the same — day after day after day.

What a waste of time. What a sad pretense of conveying useful information. Once you’ve reported that “he can run but he can’t hide” line, or Kerry’s “it’s the wrong war at the wrong time” line (though Kerry is actually talking about an issue, what’s the point of repeating it ad nauseum? Of course it’s easier to stick to the scripts the campaigns provide. It’s easier than trying to find something happening somewhere in the 50 states that’s really campaign news — I don’t care what it is: a speech from Nader or the Libertarian or other candidates, news on local disputes over voting machines, new poll numbers in the battleground states or Dick Cheney or John Edwards or some wacky senator of congressperson going spastic out there (actually, NPR in its latest hourly news update did have an item on Christoper Reeve’s wife campaigning for Kerry in Minneapolis. That was better than they usually do.)

If I were putting together a newscast or a news roundup, I’d say skip the empty theater the campaigns are presenting; make them actually say something real and meaningful if they want to get their message out on the public airwaves. Otherwise, use news of real substance and shrink the sterile, meaningless tidings from the campaign to an itinerary item: The president’s addressing preapproved, prescreened crowds of loyal Republicans in Ohio and Pennsylvania today. Challenger John Kerry will be talking to duck hunters in Oregon.

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The Scariest Thing …

… that arrived in my inbox today was the following, from a former colleague and journalist who often irritates the hell out of me because of his indiscriminate email distribution of what I view as paranoid, hysterical conspiracy-mongering from the left. Sometimes I delete his messages without reading them. Today I opened the email and read this:

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the
White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen
Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the
White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I
didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of
the Bush presidency.

"The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based
community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge
from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured
something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off.
‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re
an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re
studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again,
creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things
will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be
left to just study what we do.’ "

–"Without a Doubt," by Ron Susskind (or Suskind, when you spell it correctly), NY Times Magazine 10/17/04

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?pagewanted=1&oref=log
in

Pass it along…   Maybe people will wake up.

That’s the note. "Reality-based community." To indulge in what might sound paranoid and hysterical, it smells like something from people who think they’re building their own version of the Reich — enlightened, based on their interpretation of liberty and pursuit of all the best principles. And they’d love it if people just stood by and watched them do it.

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Out There in the World

What am I doing sitting inside instead of doing things like, for instance, riding in the Davis Bike Club’s fall century (looking at the site, I had the first twinge of regret that I’m not out there on my bike). Well, here are a couple of things:

–Listening to a great edition of “This American Life” from Chicago. This week, it’s all about a Chicago Public School that, with leadership from a great principal and imaginative work from a bunch of great teachers, turned around a failing school on the West Side, and how the arrival of new top-down thinking in the district has been killing the progress that’s been made. Heartbreaking stuff, and so similar to what Kate is going through in Oakland right now.

–Marveling at the spectacle, which led one of the local news shows here last night and is on the Chronicle’s front page this morning, of hundreds and hundreds of senior citizens lining up to get flu shots. So, yes, one of the manufacturers screwed up. But even so, how is it that the Number One wealthiest nation in the world (thanks, Visa and MasterCard and bond buyers in Japan and China!) forces its citizens to beg for such a basic treatment. The big local scandal, as the TV news reported, was the death of an older woman who fell and hit her head after waiting in line outside a drugstore for hours the other day. I also liked this bit: A credit-union manager in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, who had to turn seniors away after flu vaccine ran out handed out cans of chicken soup and packs of Kleenex instead.

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Small Expectations

By now, everyone agrees that the presidential debates, as well as just about everything else about the race for the White House and other high-profile political contests, are a matter of expectations. A candidate does well, or “wins,” if he or she meets or exceeds expectations; they lose if they fail to live up to what the world expects. In 2000, Bush triumphed in his public meetings with Gore because the world — the media, especially — badly “misunderestimated” him. He didn’t fall down or throw up or start barking while the camera was on him. He thus exceeded expectations. He won.

A key tactic in the contest of expectations is to put a damper on what people might hope for in a debate or campaign. “Our candidate — hell, we’ve tried to stop him from humping the other guy’s leg, but we just can’t get him to quit.” So when the candidate somehow makes it through the televised debate without exhibiting the previously advertised weakness for leg humping, it’s a triumph of character. Expectations: Exceeded! Debate: Won!

None of this is news and maybe it’s not even worth saying anymore. But the really troubling thing is the way we all come to buy into it and accept it. Reading some of the blog coverage of the Alan Keyes-Barack Obama coverage the other night (such as on Archpundit, expectations were a major theme (Keyes scored points by dropping his usual combative, hyper-righteous stance on everything while on the air). I’ve found myself doing it, trying to guess how the Cheney-Edwards debate would be viewed.

I was discussing this (online) with my brother John last night. The game is troubling because the process of diminishing expectations plays to people’s most cynical (or at least disappointed, resigned) feelings about the way the world works. “You know, they say this thing is supposed to get 25 miles to the gallon. Figures that it gets just 16.” So even people who. like me, feel it’s desperately important to try to steer the country in a different direction from the one Bush and company are headed, start looking at Kerry with low expectations, just hoping they’ll hear something, anything, to make them feel good about their vote.

Bottom line, I guess I say, ‘Screw that.’ Refuse to play the game. If we don’t demand the best from the people we’re giving our votes to, we’re not going to get it. It’s healthy to want more from the people leading us and to be disappointed when you don’t get it. But don’t expect less. Expect more and make noise about it.

So that’s my well-meaning screedlet for today.

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Smoke

Cimg2331Monday: A beautiful, clear, hot north-central California autumn day. The wind was up all day, coming over the hills from the northeast. About an hour or so before sunset, I was walking down to the store and saw this striking arc of thin cloud, billowing out to the southwest; almost an illustration of what the wind seemed to be doing on the ground. It was breezy well into the night. I went for another walk after 10 o’clock, and the warm breeze seemed to be gusting down the western face of the hills. This is the kind of condition — Diablo winds, the local cousin of Southern California’s Santa Anas and a variation on what meteorologists call foehn winds — that makes you think about fire in these parts (the hottest, driest, windiest episode of Diablo winds that I can remember since I moved here in the mid-70s kicked up the morning of the big Oakland Hills fire in October 1991). High pressure centers, usually well to the north and east of the Bay Area, help set up a wind from California’s interior out over the coast. The winds start out warm and dry, and as they rush over the various spurs of the coast ranges and descend the leeward side, they get even hotter and drier.

Cimg2346_1_3Tuesday: There was word late Monday that a fire had started earlier in the day up on the border of Yolo and Napa counties, a lightly populated area a good 70 miles or so north-northeast of here. Though the acreage wasn’t large when I heard about it — a few thousand acres — what got my attention was the number of tanker planes and helicopters the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection had already assigned to it — something like a half dozen planes and 10 choppers. That’s major. Those dry winds, which calmed down here overnight, apparently kept going up there, and now the fire has burned about 30,000 acres (almost 50 square miles, about the same area as San Francisco, if you’re wondering). By early afternoon, the air in the central Bay Area turned murky (the picture’s looking across to Treasure Island from the Ferry Building). Everything smelled lightly of smoke. It’s not expected to get better tomorrow.

(And before signing off, just want to acknowledge one of the best Web information resources I’ve ever encountered: the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology. Amazing.)

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The Bush Bulge

BushbulgeNever mind what the president actually says during his joint appearances with Kerry: Are the words really his? I have missed out on the fever of speculation about the humplet that appears on Bush’s back in some video from his first stammering, mumbling, slurring encounter with Kerry. The Washington Post points out 1) that Bush’s people only grudgingly give a straight answer to questions about the bulge and 2) that a new site, Is Bush Wired?, is dedicated to explaining the bulge.

My question: Does it really matter. What difference does it make that Bush has a voice in his ear telling him what to say, if he does? I suppose it would confirm the view of people, like me, who have come to believe he’s some kind of idiot (emphasis on “some kind,” because I persist in believing he’s not as stupid as he looks). But I can’t really think of anything that would make my opinion of Bush lower than it already is. People who like Bush — a species of citizen with whom I’m personally unacquainted — are going to be inclined to ask why it’s a big deal even if someone’s talking into his ear. Reagan fans don’t think less of Dutch even though he nodded off in public and had to be prompted by Nancy from time to time. So why shouldn’t W get a little help, especially when he’s up against a silver-tongued intellectual like John Kerry?

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Campaign Notes

BushMy friend Garth has an important and timely contribution to the national dialogue over the presidential election (see shirt, left). I couldn’t agree more. This is actually art for a T-shirt he just made up, and my very own size XL version is in the mail (though I know I may have to contend with passers-by, even here in Berkeley, who feel that this is a crude way to express one’s sentiments; and I’d probably hesitate to wear one to a Bush rally, say, or in the state of Kansas. (Speaking of Bush rallies and appropriate apparel for same, NPR did an interesting story this morning on how the president’s campaign is apparently using Secret Service agents and White House staff to hassle and intimidate people engaging in outrageous acts like wearing Kerry or pro-choice T-shirts and to keep such hooligans from attending presidential events.

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Into the Trenches

Salon.com ran an excellent piece Thursday (it may be a registration required kind of thing) by a jazz pianist from Oakland who decided to volunteer for Kerry in one of the swing states. He wound up in Pennsylvania, and spent a week calling undecided voters and visiting bingo games and senior centers to talk to people. What I like about the piece is partly the passion that drove him to make the trip in the first place and partly his empathy for some of the undecided:

“What is touching about some of these undecided seniors is the responsibility they feel about collecting all the information before making a decision. ‘Well, Al and I are planning on watching the debate and reading some more and then we will probably make up our minds.’ Or ‘we just don’t know enough.’ It is the older generation’s inbred sense of the importance of a vote. It is a precious thing, to be cast with care and deliberation. Most of the seniors are leaning toward Kerry, but most are not excited by him. …

“… Elsa is 90 and undecided, although it says on the phone list that she is a registered Democrat. ‘Well, I don’t really know. I don’t like Bush, I know that.’ I ask her what she is concerned about. She hesitates and I tell her about my concerns about the war and that our young men and women are dying in a needless war. Elsa starts to cry. Her voice breaks up. ‘That’s about it … that’s what gets to me. Oh my.’

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Luke vs. The Emperor

Cimg2234Saw just a little bit of the Edwards-Cheney joint appearance. The last half hour or so. Actually, Cheney wasn’t as Emperor-like as I expected. And Edwards was somewhat annoying — flagrantly ignoring the questions posed, offering generalities where specifics were probably available and would have been welcome (for instance, on a question regarding the government’s proper role in combatting the relatively rapid spread of AIDS among black women in the United States, Edwards started by talking about AIDS in Africa, apparently because that was what Cheney did). Without waiting for the quick poll numbers, I’ll predict Cheney is viewed as the “winner” because he didn’t hem and haw and stammer and grimace and flinch the way W did against Kerry; and because Edwards, whom the Republicans spun as the masterful trial lawyer and therefore intimidating foe, didn’t destroy Cheney.

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Bush in Berkeley

Interesting post by a friend who watched the debate on TV at the Berkeley campus last night. Gales of laughter greeted the most powerful man in the world:

“It was actually hard at times to hear the President’s replies to questions because the audience was laughing so hard. I don’t believe the President intended to be a comedian. But from the perspective of this audience, albeit a liberal leaning one, George Bush did not come across as presidential, nor did he succeed in sounding even as if he had serious answers to many of the questions asked.”

Of course, we laugh at this guy at our peril. He’s been laughed all the way into the White house. Hope everyone who was yukking it up is registered and will get out to vote.