Reissue of Memo: John Wayne is Dead and Arnie Has a Day Job

14. August 2011 · Comments Off on Reissue of Memo: John Wayne is Dead and Arnie Has a Day Job · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, General, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Rant, sarcasm, War

(In light of the current ruckus over President’s Obama’s very personal wet smooch from Hollywood regarding the proposed “get Osama” movie, I am reissuing my historic memo, from 2004 or so. Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette has the whole depressing, infuriating saga of the world’s longest proposed political advertisement, here.)
To: Providers of our Movie & TV Entertainment
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Lack of Spine and Relevant Movies

1. So here it has been nearly three years since 9/11, two years since the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a year since the thunder run from the Kuwait border to Baghdad, and all we get from you is a TV movie, a couple of episodes from those few TV serials that do touch on matters military, and a two-hour partisan hack job creatively edited together from other people’s footage. Ummm … thanks, ever so much. Three years worth of drama, tragedy, duty, honor, sacrifice, courage and accomplishment, and all we get is our very own Lumpy Riefenstahl being drooled over by the French. Where is the Casablanca, So Proudly We Hail, Wake Island, They Were Expendable? My god, people, the dust had barely settled over the Bataan surrender, before the movie was in the theaters. You people live to tell stories— where are ours? What are we fighting for and why, who are our heroes and villains, our epics and victories?

2. And it’s not like other media people have been laying down on the job: writers, reporters, bloggers have been churning out stories by the cubic foot: the brave passengers taking back Flight 93, the stories of people who escaped the towers, and those who helped others escape, as well as those who ran in, the epic unbuilding of the Trade Center ruins. What about the exploits of the Special Forces in Afghanistan, on horseback in the mountains with a GPS, directing pinpoint raids on Taliban positions, the women who ran Afghanistans’ underground girls’ schools? What about Sgt Donald Walters, Lt. Brian Chontosh, the 3rd ID’s fight for the strong points at Larry, Curley and Moe and a dozen others. There’s enough materiel for the lighter side, too: Chief Wiggles, Major Pain’s pet turkey, the woman Marine who deployed pregnant and delivered her baby in a war zone, the various units who have managed to bring their adopted unit mascots back from the theater. (Do a google search, for heaven’s sake. If you can’t handle that, ask one of the interns to help.) The shelves at my local bookstore are pretty well stocked with current writings on the subject, memoirs, reports, thrillers and all. Some stories even have yet to be written; they are still ongoing, and even classified, but I note that did not stop the movie producers back then: they just consulted with experts and made something up, something inspiring and convincing.

3. Of course, actually dealing with a contemporary drama in the fight against Islamic fascism would mean you would have to actually come down out of Hollywood’s enchanted world, and actually, you know … speak to them. Ordinary people, ordinary, everyday people, who don’t have agents and personal trainers and nannies, and god help them, they don’t even vote for the right people, or take the correct political line. Some of them (gasp) are even military, and do for real what movies only pretend to do … and besides, they have hold to all these archaic ideals like honor, duty, and country. (Ohhh, cooties!)

4. And since even mentioning the Religion of Peace (TM) in connection with things like terrorism, mass-murder, and international plots for a new caliphate is a guarantee to bring CAIR and other fellow travelers seething and whining in your outer office … ohh, best not. Drag out those old villainous standby Nazis, or South American drug lords, even the odd far-right survivalist for your theatrical punch-up, secure in the knowledge that even if you piss off what few remains of them, at least they won’t be unleashing a fatwa on your lazy ass, or sending a suicide bomber into Mortens’. Just ignore the three large smoking holes in the ground; cover your eyes and pretend it away. Never happened, religion of peace, all about oil, la-la-lah, fingers in my ears, I can’t hear you.

5.To make movies about it all, is to have to come to grips with certain concepts; among them being the fact that we are all potential targets for the forces of aggressive Islamo-fascism, that it is not anything in particular which we have done to draw such animus, and that we are in this all together, and that we must win, for the consequences of not winning are not only unbearable for us all — but they would be very likely to adversely affect you, too. I would expect an industry dependent on the moods and fashions amongst the public at large to have a better feel for what would sell … but I guess denial is more comfortable, familiar space, Sept. 10th is what you know best.

6. Still, if you could pass a word to Lumpy Riefenstahl, about getting signed releases, for footage, interviews and newsprint. It would be the courteous gesture towards all the little people for whom he professes to care, and save a bit of trouble in the long run.

Thanks
Sgt Mom

So…Didja Watch the Debate Last Night?

12. August 2011 · Comments Off on So…Didja Watch the Debate Last Night? · Categories: Media Matters Not, My Head Hurts, Politics, Rant, That's Entertainment!

Me:  Looking at calendar.  “Why?”

Them:  “You watched the finale of “So You Think You Can Dance?” instead didn’t you?”

Me:  Holding up my fist.  “Melanie RULES!  Michele Bachmann’s got nothing on her.”

On the Internet No One Knows You Are a Dog

19. June 2011 · Comments Off on On the Internet No One Knows You Are a Dog · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Geekery, General, Media Matters Not, sarcasm, Technology, That's Entertainment!

Yes, it would appear that the lesbians are actually straight men, the women are women, and the tween-agers are FBI agents, and a certain NY congressman with a slightly risible last name and a penchant for tweeting suggestive pictures of his body or parts thereof – is a bit of a perv. Honestly, I thought everyone had gotten a piece of Wiener last week, and there were absolutely no further possible ways in which the gentleman in question could embarrass his party, his constituents and his spouse, after the pic of him in the gym dressing room, clutching his ding-a-ling through a towel, but my daughter alerted me to this gem, courtesy of the UK Daily Mail. Seriously, I am wondering what possibly could top that for humiliating revelations, although now that he has resigned, perhaps that will stop any more from appearing.

The Gay Girl in Damascus and the Paula Brooks thing – honestly, it seems like the plot for a movie – something titled The Gay Deceivers just suggests itself right off the bat. Seldom in real life do we have such a delicious confluence of pretense . . . what is real, what is the real identity behind those pixels on a screen, and how much of what you put out there is really, really, really real. And I speak as someone who has been blogging under a not-terribly opaque nom du-blog since 2002, mostly because I didn’t want to put my real name out there. My daughter was still on active duty, my parents and brothers are listed in the phone book, and I had enough of demented devotion from eccentric fans when I was on radio, here and there among military radio stations. Yes, you have a million fans, if you are in the public eye in some manner, and a half-dozen really sick f**ks as enemies, all of whom have never met you, don’t really know any more about you than what you put out about yourself . . . and I didn’t really want to deal with it, or have my family deal with it.

There were often discussions, early on – about blogging under a real name, or under a nom-du-blog; questions of credibility, of standing behind what you wrote. I took the line that yes, for piece of mind or actual physical safety, there were excellent reasons for someone to blog under another name. One could establish a reputation for verity, and honesty, no matter what name you called yourself. Over time, your on-line reputation could be as solid as it was in real-space, congruent with your real-life experience.

And there are bloggers who have been doing that – under cover or by their real names in various countries, and some of them in physical danger: Salam Pax is one that comes to mind at first, mostly because of the blogosphere controversy over whether he was a real and credible person, reporting from inside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Hossein Derakhshan, the godfather of Iranian blogging may or may not still be imprisoned by the Iranian authorities. The Egyptian blogger who goes by the nom du blog Sandmonkey was briefly arrested in the recent past. They took – and still are taking risks by writing, and blogging. Creating a whole other persona and identity, at odds with real life, and claiming to bear first-hand witness in a blog to extraordinary current events, when you are actually hundreds or thousands of miles away?

When I do that, I call it a bit of historical fiction, and clearly label it such. Dunno why “Amina” and “Paula” didn’t think of doing it that way. Would have saved a bit of embarrassment, all the way around.

The Media Declaration of Independence

13. June 2011 · Comments Off on The Media Declaration of Independence · Categories: Geekery, General, Media Matters Not

When in the Course of media events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political shilling which has connected propaganda diretly to one ideological party with the information stream and to assume among the powers of the communications system, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Truth and Objectivity entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of non-radical leftists requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation from that source of propaganda, slander and lies.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all TRUTH is created equal, that it is endowed by its creators with certain unalienable properties, that among these are non-distortion, non-coverup, and the pursuit of facts and evidence.

That to secure the right to the truth, media outlets are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the recipients, — That whenever any Form of MEDIA becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute New Media, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect the obtaining of truth, through facts and evidence.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that media outlets long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Media Outlets, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these blogs; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of newsgathering. The history of the present mass media is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the information stream. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

They have refused his Assent to ethics, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

They have forbidden their minions and lackeys to pass along information of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in leftism; and when so traversed, they have utterly neglected to attend to them.

They have refused to pass along other information for the accommodation of “flyover country”, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the information stream, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

They have called together stringers, wire services and freelancing bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of actual information, for the sole purpose of fatiguing those in search of truth and into forced acceptance of slanders, lies and distortions.

They have dissolved Representative opinions repeatedly, for opposing with steadfast firmness their invasions on the rights of the people to obtain the truth.

They have refused for a long time, after such dissolutions of ANY opposing opinion, thought, ideology or concept, to cause others to be blackballed, isolated, removed, wherein the vile propaganda, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the information stream remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

They have endeavoured to prevent the control of the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to assist this land of ours to pass laws and to protect our borders and to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new invasions of Lands.

They have obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing to report upon the breaking of Laws and usurpation of rules, regulations and our very Constitution.

They have made radical and unaccountable Judges dependent on their Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount of interference with the adherence to the will of the people.

They have supported and assisted in the erection of a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of officious intermeddlers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

They have kept among us, in times of peace or war, standing orders to distort the reportage as being deflating when the “enemy” party is in power and wholly absent of facts when a leftist is in power, to the complete detriment of the People.

They have effectively assisted in rendering the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

They have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving their assent to the usurpation of the rights to self-govern this land of ours, by and through the wholesale distortion of our communications systems, and the rape of our information stream.

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any violence which they should commit on the TRUTH in this land of ours:

For cutting off our loyalty to Israel and with other allies of the world:

For advancing class warfare and hoaxes for the purpose of imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of fair access to the Court of public opinion:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences, through slander, distortion and the promotion of anti-free market libel:

For abolishing the free System of truth and objectivity in neighbouring outlets of academia, entertainment and new media, establishing therein an Arbitrary “truthiness”, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute falsehoods into these outlets

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable public forums for the gathering of facts, evidence and objectivity and replacing them with lockstep propaganda.

For suspending our own system of debate, and declaring themselves invested with power to make issues “settled” for us in all cases whatsoever, without the benefit of inspection.

They have abdicated honor and loyalty here, by declaring us out of their Protection and waging War against us if we dare to oppose rampant and unchecked leftism as our religion.

They have plundered our farms, ravaged our energy resources, burnt our flag, and destroyed the information gathering of our people.

They are at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of treason, treachery and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Slander & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the “papers of record”.

They have constrained the voices of our fellow Citizens taken Captive in the U.N. and for the purpose of creating a “world body” of opinion to bear ill will against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends’ beliefs, loyalties and opinions and our allied Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

They have excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and have endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless anarchists, small communists and tear down the system Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A fourth estate, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the supplier of information of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our meda brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their ilk to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Recipients of information in these United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these lands, solemnly publish and declare, That these united peoples are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent readers and viewers, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Old Media, and that all political connection between them and the mass media empire, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent readers and viewers, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent readers and viewers may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— commenter cfbleachers, in this PJ Media comment thread

Bye Bye, Bin Laden

15. May 2011 · Comments Off on Bye Bye, Bin Laden · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, War

So, not tacky or energetic enough to do anything to note Bin Laden’s sudden shuffling off this mortal coil save for my daughter and I polishing off a bottle of champagne on the Monday afterwards, and me noting that while I had never killed anyone myself, I had read certain obituaries with a great deal of pleasure. Anything more demonstrative would earn us a severe poo-pooing from the likes of German newspaper opinion columnists and the Arch-Bish of Canterbury, among others . . . which disapproval at this late date has all the effect upon me of a flogging with a wet noodle, or of having my ankles attacked by a toothless Chihuahua. This means a lot of slobber, some momentarily but earsplitting noise, but no lasting damage whatsoever. So, consider the poo-poo noted, and thank you very much for your support, such as it has been. The champagne was very pleasant, by the way, especially considering that I had waited nearly nine and a half years to drink to cold justice being served for Bin Laden.

What a pathetic man, he was by the end – and living in such a dump, to judge by the videos and the pictures. Seriously, his place looked like a cheap residential motel, of the sort where the sheets are as thin as Kleenex and the bedside lamp is chained to the wall. And the raiding SEALS took away stuff by the garbage-bag full – although from the secret squirrel point of view, perhaps it would have been better to be completely quiet about what, exactly was taken away. But even so, I’ll bet there have been a lot of hasty exits from various places in the last two weeks, a lot of stuff being burned/trashed/shredded, and a fair number of hitherto upright types hastily making a last deposit into a secret bank account and checking out the rental rates for upscale walled villas in Marbella. And that’s just Pakistan, or as the fine folks at Rantburg call it, ‘Paki-waki-land’. Oh, and among those items removed from the “luxurious villa” are reputed to be his very own porn collection. Seriously, people are having fun coming up with proposed names for Bin Laden’s stash – say, Fatima Does Dallas, Deep Goat, Brokeback Goat, etc.

Oh, dear, what do we have to do to the Paks – more than slap them over the pee-pee with a lead pipe, I would hope. What an ignorant, bigoted, treacherous dunghill of a country, and I only say this because I used to read the Guardian, on a regular basis. Lots of stories about women with acid thrown on their faces, about Christian persecutions, hysteria about vaccinations and other temptations of modernity. I know we were their best buds and Uncle Sugar Money-bags way back when, because India was flirting with China (or China and Russia by turns, depending on the wind direction) and that left us gingerly holding hands with the dregs of the sub-continent . . . but I think the time has come to sever that relationship and the income-stream. The most wanted international fugitive for the last decade, turns up having hidden for the past how-many-years in a town full of retired Pak military, not a stones through from a military academy? Someone’s got some explaining to do. Personally, I think one faction in Paki-Waki-Land was sheltering him and another faction dimed him out. So, cut off the income stream, and watch it all devolve. I know they say that we need them for support of our efforts in Afghanistan, but if this is what their support means . . . umm, maybe we should explore what their non-support would work out to?
And wonderful – our very own press creatures are trying to play ‘spot the SEAL’ in Virginia Beach. I am amused, though, at how our hapless and militarily clueless reporter is foiled at every turn; a word to the wise, to anyone else playing this kind of game in a military town? Don’t go in without a guide or at least a little bit of internalizing military thought about op-sec. Double-don’t think it, if you have to have op-sec explained to you. And a couple of words of reminder about making note of the names of various places reputed to be military hang-outs? Bobby’s in Glyphada. La Belle Disco in Berlin, the Rib House near Torrejon; places that military of a certain vintage recall . . . because they were eateries that American military personnel favored – in Greece, West Germany and Spain. People with a point to make via high-explosives, sussed those three places out as a place likely to kill American service personnel. And they did, with varying degrees of success. So – it should be any different here in these United States? And do you understand, that in making it known to the public at large – that these places in a relatively small town are reputed to be military hangouts, that you are handing some basic research conclusions to people who might not have the long-term health of American service personnel in mind? Yeah, thanks for your support. Duly noted; And again – thanks.

Shoot, Shove Overboard, and Shut Up

05. May 2011 · Comments Off on Shoot, Shove Overboard, and Shut Up · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not, Rant, sarcasm, War, Wild Blue Yonder

Ya know, at least Obama actually did a very good speech, announcing that Osama Bin Laden had been taken down, and he did have the stones in the first place to step up to the plate and give the order for the SEALS to take out the trash. No shilly-shallying around and voting ‘present’ on that one, even if there are reports that he chewed over the decision for 16 hours. Well, it was momentous decision; a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize authorizing a targeted assassination, within the sovereign territory of a nation frequently described as being an ally. The irony abounds – one can only imagine the political and media response to GWB giving the go-ahead. So, our boy-king has the advantage of being one of those with a D after his name, which – when it comes to this sort of thing pretty much affords all-over protection against blowback.

So, approving noises all the way around, all the day long on Monday and into Tuesday this week: OBL sleeps wid da fishes, and the most sycophantic media tools are crowing that he will be a shoo-in for reelection in 2012 on that account . . . never mind that gas will probably close on $5.00 a gallon by mid-summer, and joblessness is endemic and the prices for basic groceries are sneaking up. And then . . .

And then . . . oh, oh. Different stories: firefight with the SEALS . . . or not. Use of a woman – perhaps wife, perhaps not – as a human shield. Plain old down and dirty execution, or did the plan call originally for everyone in the house in Abbottabad to be taken away for leisurely interrogation? Video or still documentation of the whole thing – as well as that rushed burial at sea, proving that OBL did indeed go over the side of the Carl Vinson? And now, not releasing any of the pictures of OBL, pining for the fijords because of inflaming the Muslim street, or something? People, get a grip – the Muslim street is always inflamed over something or other. Besides, they are always telling us that OBL was a bad Moslem, that he hijacked the Religion of Peace . . . so, wouldn’t they also want to see visual proof of his demise. There have been enough bloody pictures circulating in the last ten years, and anyone who has ever watched an episode of CSI has probably already seen many scenes at least as bloody and stomach-churning.

And no one at the higher levels of the administration had any idea as to how to deal with this, as an important news event and public affairs challenge – other than the boy-king making a speech. It was as if that was as far as they could see it going; the Administration appears to have felt no need to work out an in-depth response. Just take their word for it, no need to work out a coherent narrative, backed up by pictures, video, carefully shielded witness testimony, et cetera. Just shoot, shove overboard, and shut up.

Not gonna fly, in this wired world, not with so many people wanting to see just a little bit more, within the boundaries of operations security. I’d guess that the pictures and video outlining just a few more answers to questions will leak or be released within days. Just too many people, who are just too damn curious and haven’t had that curiosity satisfied in the least. I’m a long-retired military media professional – and I am offering this feedback gratis. The Administration better start working out a better response to this, and any future-type events.

Later: Froggy and Blackfive thinking along the same lines…

Relatively Phidless

27. March 2011 · Comments Off on Relatively Phidless · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Two weekends, I went to uphold the morale of another indy- and Texas-history-obsessed author at a local signing, at a bookstore which shall remain nameless because I am quite annoyed with them and don’t want to give them the traffic and it’s over a relatively piddling amount and I really ought to be big and forget about it but it’s the bloody principle of the thing and why the heck should I who subsist on freelance editing jobs and a military pension and an irregular stream of royalty checks be expected to subsidize a bookstore located in a very trendy and very likely expensive location and if they are on the financial rocks through miscalculation and their own business practices . . . well, again – why the heck should I be expected to bear some of the brunt of their various miscalculations? Oh, yeah – because I’m an indy writer, working for a teensy local subsidy press, and this enterprise is just about the only indy bookstore in town.

Getting back to my main point; frankly, doing an event at an indy bookstore or big-box outlet is usually ego-death-onna-stick anyway, unless by some miracle of persuasion, you have managed to BS local media outlets into going along with the pretense that you are a big-name-arthur. Which is what I told my new indy-author friend – who has actually had some luck with this . . . Anyway, one may as well have some friends come along, to while away the desperate hours with sitting behind the dreaded author-table and watching customers come in through the door, studiously avoiding your eye as they slither through the immediate area, heading for the Stephen Kings and the Philippa Gregorys and the latest Oprah pick.

Really – as I told my fellow obsessive – you might almost have better luck at a Christmas craft show, if it weren’t for the iron-clad tradition of authors appearing at bookstores. I know another local author who has a cute little cookbook, very well designed and edited, and she takes a table at regular gun shows. She cleans up, BTW. Guys, guns, hunting apparel and accessories. Wives and girlfriends, feeling obliged to come along, are not really much interested in the guns, apparel and accessories. Drawn to her cute little table display like insects to a bright porch light on a Texas summer evening, they are. Marketing, baby – sometimes it’s all about sorting out an unconventional venue where there are customers with money and where your product stands out.

Anyway, there were enough of my fellow Texas-history-obsessive friends showing up that we had a good time of it – alas that he didn’t have the good time that I had at the fund-raising luncheon the week before, where I nearly got writer’s-cramp scribbling messages and a stylized initial in the front of what seemed like an endless stream of my own books . . . hey, that’s a problem that is nice to have. I can get used to it. I promise onna-stacka-Bibles that I will never be a witch about this, I will be pleasant and obliging and always have time to talk at least briefly to a fan, even if it’s not a convenient time or a welcome interruption – I will make it seem like it is. I have skills that way. After the requisite time-behind-the-table was done, my author friend, three of his friends, and Blondie and I repaired to a table at Sams’ Burgers, to replenish the inner person and to talk about Texas history, a mad passion for which is shared by all of us at the table save perhaps Blondie, and then only because she is dragged into it by my interest. At the age of five, she got dragged into every significant museum and location of historical interest between the then-Iron Curtain and Gibraltar, so she ought to be used to it by now.

A matter of wry amusement to me is that I don’t have any sort of advanced degree for this. S’help me god, all I have is your basic state university English degree and only a BA at that. I did all the classes towards a Masters in public administration, way back before Blondie was born – but I swear it was only because I was bored silly and that was about the only higher ed program offered at Misawa AB . . . and the education counselor must have talked a good game or I had no sales resistance at all, because I wound up taking all the classes . . . even though I had no interest what-so-freaking-ever in public administration. Still, a lot of the classes were interesting, in and of themselves, so I suppose I took something away from that educational experience. Not that any of it applied in a way that I can see to my eventual career of scribbling respectably well-researched genre historical fiction . . . but it’s just as well there is no entry-qualification for that. Nope – no licensing procedure for those who wish to trot out our creative works of fiction before a (hopefully) appreciative audience . . . yet, anyway. There is no end to the writing of theses and papers and that sort of thing by those possessing PHDs, but very few of them have the ability to make them gripping reads, appealing to the general public.

But I was thinking, as I was scribbling this – I’ve been able to hold my own, when it comes to those matters that hold my interest – with all sorts of people, and some of them are . . . ummm, academically credentialed well above and far above my own level. I’ve always liked the thought of being an autodidact, a person who basically educated themselves, a person who read voraciously and thought about . . . things, outside the mainstream of currently acceptable intellectual thought-processes. And I’ve been thinking – that when it comes to writing agreeable, interesting and accessible genre fiction – it may be more doable to start with someone who can write vividly and with some degree of competence and discipline, and who might have learned or be taught mad historical research skills . . . than it would be to teach someone with all the skills to be a good story-teller and writer.

You know, I am also thinking – for dramatic story-telling potential, this could be a great rom-com; a serious and academically credentialed historian, married/involved with a historical novelist. Hilarity definitely guaranteed to ensue. Plot – oh, I could come up with something. I’m a novelist, after all.

Negotiating the Price

09. March 2011 · Comments Off on Negotiating the Price · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

So, observing the current imbroglio with the leadership of National Public Radio being played like a fish on the line for a five-million dollar donation from a so-called Muslim Brotherhood front organization . . . well, my feelings are mixed. It’s about 95% schadenfreude-drenched pure pleasure mixed with a 5% sprinkle of regret. I once did like NPR very much and listened faithfully, donated regularly to the local affiliate stations in Salt Lake City and San Antonio, even went to work part-time as an announcer at the classical-music public radio station for nearly ten years. I never missed an airing of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, which I thought at one time was about as close to a modern Will Rogers-type comedian as there was.

Alas, in the run-up to 2008, GK chose to go mean-spiritedly partisan, fell down on his knees metaphorically in worship of the One, and went full-on rabid bigot with regard to Tea Partiers, Republicans and conservatives generally since then. Ok, fine – free country and all that, and I am free to take my fanship – and my pledges elsewhere, preferably to a news and entertainment venue which doesn’t feel the need to kick me in the face, morning noon and night, and three times that on Sunday. Which brings me back to NPR – and yes, I know the two NPR executives featured in the video are management materiel and not reporters or on-air personalities . . . but to appear not to know anything about the Muslim Brotherhood, to be apparently eager to curry favor with a big-money donor, and be so willing to trash Christians and Tea Partiers, not to mention a well-respected former employee like Juan Williams, not to mention appearing to go along with the whole –Jews-control-the-media meme . . . Words fail me on that one, at least the words that I can put onto a family blog. Yes, it’s one thing to gracefully appreciate a potential donation, quite another to look like you’re about to break out the kneepads and the Binaca. So – like the old story of the woman who would sleep with a guy for a million dollars, but not for ten dollars – now NPR is just negotiating the price.

Sheesh . . . at this point, I’m not only convinced that NPR and PBS ought to be de-funded – I want back every dime of every pledge I ever contributed.

BOHICA

01. March 2011 · Comments Off on BOHICA · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

All righty then – maybe the book that this inspired this upcoming TV series is as funny as some of the reviewers made it out to be – somehow I doubt it. Desperate Housewives set in Dallas? Erm, OK, then. Divorced mother moves back into town and gets treated badly by the so-called upper crust. This was funnier thirty years ago when it was called Harper Valley PTA. And I suppose it’s necessary to keep the title; gotta keep on kicking all those devoutly observant Christians in flyover country smack in the kisser. The Lords of the Entertainment Industrial Complex will show those no-class rubes who’s in charge, boy howdy! The upside is – they’ve probably pissed off at least a third of the potential audience before the show even rolls out. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if they do want people to watch their shows.

And speaking of discouraging people from watching shows – we used to like Glee. Enjoyed the heck out of it, actually: decent music, original concept and characters, a great deal of wit, a talented cast, and writing that sparkled . . . and then it all drained away, and somehow we can’t bring ourselves to watch the latest season. It all seemed to deflate gradually, but the episode where they all went ga-ga for Lady Gaga stuck the fork in it. (Note: is Lady G’s fifteen minutes of fame up yet?) Maybe the show became less about characters and situations and more about pounding home certain points with a sledgehammer, which brings to mind the rule attributed to movie mogul Sam Goldwyn: If you want to send a message, call Western Union. Or Sgt Mom’s version: Skip the pious platitudes and just entertain me, thanks. And now they’re going to finish off what is left of Glee’s audience by incorporating a Tea Party Mom/Sarah Palin type political candidate character and not in a nice way . . . all together with me now: Oh, that will go over real well!

Swiftly and efficiently alienating at least a half of the remaining audience, which leads me back to my original point – do they even want us to watch their damn shows?

For Dad

03. January 2011 · Comments Off on For Dad · Categories: General, Local, Media Matters Not

For Dad – The local semi-large newspaper guestimates a charge of $500 to run this in a print edition. Dad would be seriously pissed at that. So herewith… with some redactions

Page Hayden, long-time resident of Valley Center, died at Scripps Green Hospital after a brief illness, on December 26, 2010.

Mr. Hayden was born in Glendale, California, on January 3rd, 1930, the only son of Dorothy Simpson Hayden and Thomas Alfred Page Hayden, both of whom were immigrants from Great Britain in the early years of the 20th century. He graduated from Alhambra High School in 1948, and attended John Muir Junior College in Pasadena, before attending Occidental College, and pledging SAE fraternity. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology in 1952, and later earned a Masters in Zoology from UCLA. Upon graduation from Occidental, he served in the US Army, including a tour of duty in Korea at the end of the Korean War, rising to the rank of sergeant. (E-4). In 1953, he married fellow Occidental classmate, Kathryn Anne Menaul. He worked for UCLA’s Environmental Radiation Laboratory as a field biologist/ecologist specializing in desert mammals, participating in various projects for the DOD, NASA, BLM and the DOE. His last project was a life study of the California desert tortoise, for the BLM. He also completed required studies for a doctoral degree in Zoology at USC, but never obtained a PhD. Upon retirement in 1986, the Haydens retired to their property in Valley Center. There they commenced building a house, with a small orchard and xerioscaped grounds, doing the larger part of the work themselves. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary there in 2003, shortly before that house burned in the catastrophic Paradise Mountain fire. Undeterred, they rebuilt.

Page Hayden was active in the Valley Center Chuckwagon, in the Promenaders’ square dancing group, and together with his wife — an artist and teacher in stained glass – were members of the Valley Center Art association.

He is survived by his wife, four children, and four grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at 2 PM, Saturday, January 8th at House of Prayer Lutheran Church in Escondido. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Lutheran Social Services and specified for disaster relief efforts in Southern California.

Obama: Not Melting Down Yet

13. December 2010 · Comments Off on Obama: Not Melting Down Yet · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant

. . . But definitely starting to get a little runny around the edges, with last Friday’s presser. I speak of our present chief executive, of course; the one so fond of all the perks and parties – not so much the hard grind of actually managing something. Well, he had to learn about it sometime, pity it’s been at our expense. I swear, there are times when I would like to go back in time to the campaign season of 2008, extend a hand to the major media . . . and grab them around one massive throat, shake them and scream – “Get up off your knees, you morons! Can’t you see that he’s a flashy, empty, affirmative action fast-burner, effortlessly hoisted higher and higher above his level of expertise? Just do your job!” And then I’d like to likewise grab that portion of the electorate who put him there (the non-dead, non-imaginary portion thereof) around the one massive throat and scream “What were you thinking! He’s never run a business, a military unit or municipal entity! He’s never done anything but run for office!” So he got the highest office in the land so a portion of the American electorate could feel good about themselves voting for the Ultimate Diversity Hire. I blow a subdued Bronx cheer in the direction of those fools who thought everything would turn out just peachy.

Ah, well – and just as well. I wrote about the Fresh Prince of Chicago often enough then, and take no particular joy in being proved more or less correct. Pity he wasn’t the least particle of what everyone in the rarefied intellectual and journalistic circles were convinced he would be – a fine intellect, well-tempered, a soaring public speaker. Alas, he’s a Chauncey Gardiner-type celebrity without the intellectual self-knowledge. Observing various public intellectuals and experts reluctantly come to that conclusion has been grimly delicious – for me, anyway. Experience is a valuable teacher, even if the learning of lessons acquired thusly tends to be painful. Why some of these people even have any credibility after going so coo-coo for the faintly cocoa-tinged community organizer is a mystery for the ages.

Do have to admit, some of the pratfalls have been as amusing as hell; giving the Queen an Ipod loaded with his own speeches was a particularly cringe-making move – but bailing on a Friday afternoon press conference to go to a party, and because Michelle Antoinette would be mad . . . and then leaving Bill Clinton in charge. That’s a trifecta of disengagement. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.

Falling Out

24. October 2010 · Comments Off on Falling Out · Categories: Domestic, Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not

So the canning of Juan Williams from NPR can be taken as yet another example of the hardening of attitudes in what commenters on various centrist/conservative and libertarian blogs began calling a ‘cold civil war’ some years ago. Pity, that – and I used to listen to, love, and support local public radio and TV outlets, the minute I got back to assignments Stateside where such things were available. Listened to NPR in the morning and in the afternoon for my required news fix, never missed a broadcast of Prairie Home Companion, loved Car Talk and public TV’s Masterpiece Theater. Sent in my pledges during the annual fund drives, scored the occasional mug, tee-shirt and souvenir cookbook – heck, I even worked part-time as a classical announcer for the local public radio classical station for better than a decade.

And then it all went sour, and I am hard-pressed to pin it down exactly when and for what reason; the pull of the internet, and the push of Garrison Keillor going gradually, frothingly, gibbering bonkers having a lot to do with it. Nothing quite so disconcerting as a humorist who made his reputation doing gentle, affectionate ribbing of small-town flyover-country foibles suddenly ripping off the folksy persona to reveal the viciously intolerant, hate-filled bigot within.

(Note to Garrison K. Ya know, ya really lost a large chunk of yer audience, there with the incessant Bush bashing. I know, easy target and all that, but would it have killed ya to take an equal number a shots at John Kerry, dere – almost kinda like ya did with Al Gore? Whattabout der current prez? Ya know, with dis political humor ting, ya gotta be ecumenical . . . less’n you want yer audience appeal to be more . . . selective. Ya, that’s it. Selective. Gotta tell ya, Mr. K – conservatives pledge, too, or dey did . . . Maybe yer serious about this-ere selective audience ting.)

Anyway, the news began to sour on me too, once I began to notice that certain stories and controversies – which I had already been made aware of on-line – just never seemed to percolate up to the attention of NPR. Or if it did, the attention paid would be pretty one-sided – and since I had already read the story from various aspects and angles online, it would be very, very obvious to me. Listening became a frustrating experience, rather than an informing one: why wasn’t this question asked, why hadn’t the reporter followed up on this aspect, and why, why, why were the same old experts always being pulled out of the Rolodex to give the same old canned response to the same old questions? It got to the point that I could predict the NPR stance on any particular controversy, story or event. So, why bother? I faded away from listening to NPR news around about the 2008 election, which is probably a good thing, since listening to their coverage of Tea Party developments would have sent my blood pressure into the stratosphere.

So, Juan Williams – on the outs, not for what he said, particularly, but for where he said it; on Fox TV, which appears to have sent certain NPR listeners frothing at the mouth. Sacked by the boss, through a telephone call – doesn’t get more graceless than that. And he always struck me as one of those people with whom you could disagree on certain things, but that he would be reasonable. Weirdly enough, it’s the left-hand side of the political spectrum which is going all ugly about this, as if he had suddenly turned into some kind of untouchable. Alas, now it seems that the name of NPR’s major daily news program, All Things Considered should be changed to Only Some Things Considered, Else Your Ass Is Grass and I’m the Lawnmower. Maybe too long to fit into those teeny little blocks on the schedule, though.

Memo for NPR

15. October 2010 · Comments Off on Memo for NPR · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, sarcasm, Tea Time

(Shamelessly quoted entire, from commenter FordPrefect 1969, on this story at Big Journalism. Enjoy the delicious sarcasm, and thank you, Ford Prefect!!)

To: all NPR Staff

It has become exceedingly obvious that we are about to be forced to justify our existence to a group of people who to whom we have shown nothing but condescension and contempt for our entire careers here at NPR. I’m going to go ahead and continue to work on the assumption that they will be Buckleyesque whipping boys who will treat our apologies and sudden willingness to have a conversation with reciprocal honesty and forthrightness as sincere, rather than simply pulling the goddamned flush lever on us like someone with basic self-respect would. It is quite possible with influx of the Tea Party caucus that that will not work out, but since our lavish paychecks, benefits, and vacation time have always been dependent on revenue confiscated from the aforementioned group, and we have, frankly, been dicks to them 100% of the time, and have very much enjoyed the process of lecturing from a tax-funded ivory tower that they were forced to finance. It has that Orwellian tang to it that really makes it an authentic experience.

So, at any rate, you are, from here on out, to pretend that you think people who are not within the Progressive fold have the same rights good people like us have. Under no circumstances will you communicate to our new bosses that you would put a boot on their necks and make slaves out of them if only you could switch sides of the desk, which, frankly, is what we were really expecting after Dear Leader was installed. Now, it appears, we may all meet our Fryolators of Destiny.

Hopeychange Uber Alles,

Some Fascist Parasite

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

13. October 2010 · Comments Off on Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not

There are boys enough in the movies now, all dressed up in costume and mincing around, waving the prop weapons in a manner meant to be intimidating. Generally they look a bit nervous doing so. They have light boyish voices, narrow defoliated chests, delicate chins adorned with a wisp of beard, and sometimes they come across as clever, even charming company for the leading lady or as the wily sidekick to the first name on the bill, but as hard as they try to project mature and solid masculinity they remain boys, all dressed up in costume pretending to be men. Even when they try for a bit of presence, they still project a faintly apologetic air. Imagine Peter Pan in camo BDUs, desert-boots, full battle-rattle and rucksack. It’s a far cry from picturing John Wayne in the same get-up. Where have all the cowboys gone?

You could not really describe John Wayne as movie-star handsome; neither could you honestly say that Robert Mitchum, Humphrey Bogart, Steve McQueen, Charlton Heston or William Holden were movie-star handsome. They had something more – magnetic physical presence. They owned a room, just by walking into it. They had lived-in faces, especially as they got older, rough-hewn, weathered and individual faces, broad shoulders, strong and capable hands, and total confidence in themselves – even when the plot necessitated a bit of self-doubt. They had growly, gravelly voices, and sometimes didn’t talk much at all. They even had enough strength and confidence to be tender – at least, when not everyone was looking. They and their like – of whom John Wayne was the epitome – were capable enough that even an equally strong and capable woman could breathe a sigh of relief when they walked in. Because, no matter how bad it was, they could cope, and they wouldn’t see her as a threat – and afterwards, they would be perfect gentlemen, either pitching woo or walking away, whatever the situation called for. With the current crop, one always has the lingering fear that in a rough spot, the strong and capable woman would be carrying them, metaphorically if not literally. This would never happen with John Wayne.

He was just one of many leading men from the 1930s on, but for three generations and more of moviegoers, John Wayne established the standard. Although he could wear a suit and tie, he did not look particularly comfortable in it; better in an open-collared shirt and bandana, Levi jeans, boots, a working-man’s clothes with the sleeves rolled up, or battledress utilities – and a weapon to hand that one would be absolutely confident that he would use, if necessary. He would not be particularly eager to use it – but he would, when pressed to a certain limit. That was John Wayne in his element, no matter what the title of the movie or the situation called for by the plot. Sometimes a loner, quite often not being able to get or keep the girl – but always a gentleman, almost always unfailingly polite to every woman, no matter if she were respectable or not, or even in the case of Maureen O’Hara, estranged by reason of plot device. The kind of understated tension in heroes of the old-movie – that capacity for violence leashed and kept under iron control is strangely endearing, and even reassuring, or at least it used to be. No matter what happened, one was certain that he would protect those he loved, felt loyalty towards or pity for, or even . . . just because it was the right thing to do. Damn, do I miss John Wayne and his kind, after watching so many movies lately, starring the pretty, beardless boys!

The only solution I could come up with was to create a handful of characters in the John Wayne tradition, and write about them, in my own books: strong, capable, un-self pitying men, and the women who come to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

Freedom and Fear

16. September 2010 · Comments Off on Freedom and Fear · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not, Politics

So, what do you call it when you – theoretically speaking – have a certain designated freedom bestowed upon you, such as freedom of speech or thought . . . but you are afraid to exercise it, for whatever reason? What then, oh wolves; are you then truly free if you are constrained from exercising that right because . . . ? If honest discussion of certain topics is essentially forbidden because it is infra dig, or rude, or may cause hurt feelings to another, or offend a segment of society, then can we still claim that we have freedom of speech, or any sort of intellectual openness, even if convictions for sedition or blasphemy are relatively rare in the West? That speech is still unspoken, those thoughts un-aired are still un-aired, whether it is fear, social pressure or the rule of law what keeps them so.

Which brings me back to the matter of the Danish Mohammad cartoons – even after four years, the matter is still resonating: at the time I wrote this:

(It) depresses me even more, every time I think on it. For me it is a toss-up which of these qualities is more essential, more central to western society: intellectual openness to discussion and freewheeling criticism of any particular orthodoxy, the separation of civil and religious authority, and the presence of a robust and independent press. The cravenness of most of our legacy media in not publishing or broadcasting the Dread Cartoons o’ Doom still takes my breath away.

They have preened themselves for years on how brave they are, courageous in smiting the dread McCarthy Beast, ending the Horrid Vietnam Quagmire and bringing down the Loathsome Nixon – but a dozen relatively tame cartoons? Oh, dear – we must be sensitive to the delicate religious sensibilities of Muslims. Never mind about all that bold and fearless smiting with the pen, and upholding the right of the people to know, we mustn’t hurt the feelings of people . . . The alacrity with which basic principals were given up by the legacy press in the face of quite real threats does not inspire me with confidence that other institutions will be any more stalwart.

The latest iteration in this farrago of freedom of the press is the fatwah on American cartoonist Molly Norris, who originally created “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day.” The fatwah originated in Yemen, a place which I am sure a great many members of the American public would have difficulty pin-pointing it’s exact location on a map of the world. But the tentacles of the murderously offended reach a long way. She is now in hiding, and in various discussion threads, a dismayingly large number of commenters are blaming her for provoking Moslem ire.

But that is my point – what good is it to have brave principles about open, intellectual discussion, freedom of the press, of thought and expression, if in the end they are not exercised out of fear?
Here’s the thing – the other half of the intellectual freedom thing; there is no right of the individual never to be offended. In a free and open discussion, there will be differing opinions and interpretations, and there may even be people offended by the exercise of it. God knows, the artistic set have been cheerfully offending the bourgeoisie for decades, on the principle that it is good for us to be shaken up now and again, just to make us all consider or reconsider our preconceptions, or expand our consciousnesses or whatever twaddle they will use to justify themselves with. And the good bourgeoisie, even if offended, usually wasn’t motivated to do much more than grumble and write a letter to the editor; they didn’t go around chopping off heads. One might therefore have grounds for suspecting that in the case of the Danish Cartoons o’ Doom, and Everybody Draw Mohammad’ that a good part of this sudden unwillingness to offend is plain old fear.

Compounding the irony is the fact that those who are the most fearful of repercussions are also afraid to openly admit their fear in the first place – that some Islamic radical nutbag would come after them with a knife, or a car-bomb, or even just get their asses fired for ‘Islamophobia.’ So much easier to transfer the blame, and never have to admit that intellectual freedom has been stifled – not by law, but by fear.

Entertain-not

06. September 2010 · Comments Off on Entertain-not · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, That's Entertainment!

At the risk of being viewed as a skinless person in a sandpaper world, I have to admit that in the last couple of years or so, I have really added more and more actors, entertainers, musicians and writers to my own private boycott list – in fact, I have added more in the last year by a factor of twenty to one than I ever added over the last three decades. I still can’t decide if this is because my toleration of stupid celebrities mouthing off has just withered away to the thickness of tissue paper in recent years, or there are just more stupid celebrities who feel obliged to step up to the plate and make a demonstration of their general f**kwittedness in those intervals when they are not actually entertaining us.

Jane “Hanoi” Fonda was the first actress that went on my personal no-dice list, for historic reasons which should need no explanation here. Hasn’t made a movie in years, but I skipped the exercise tapes as well, just on general principles. Next on the list – Cat Stephens, following the 1989 fatwa issued on Salman Rushdie for the Satanic Verses. Mr. Cat publicly supported the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khoumeni. Frankly, the only output of Mr. Cat which merited my boycotting was his hit Peace Train– which had achieved the status of a Golden Oldie by that time. Eh – we had a library full of Golden Oldies, when I was working as a AFRTS radio dee-jay. I was happy to play anything other than Peace Train for all the rest of my time serving in this duty. I suppose I ought to add in Marlon Brando, post-Apocalypse Now, for general serious weirdness, elephantiasis of the ego and screwing up what could have been a fairly decent movie. And as much as I could, I avoided John Landis. Not for anything he said – but for directorial incompetence in setting up a film-stunt involving a hovering helicopter in the Twilight Zone Movie, which managed to kill Vic Morrow and a pair of child-actor extras. Basically, he skated away from manslaughter charges on that one. Call me Miss Judgmental, but I cherish my grudges.

Move on into this present century, and what riches there are, as far as Celebs Mouthing Off! Really, one is spoiled for choice. Induction into my personal hall of shame is reduced from something that would resemble Grand Central Station at rush hour through the happy chance of not being particular fans of certain directors, actors, musicians and writers anyway. Having never watched anything of Oliver Stone’s oeuvre after Platoon, and nothing at all of Michael Moore’s – eh. Is it really a boycott if you never watched them anyway? Or a star who never really appealed, like Barbara Streisand? On the other hand, it’s a bit of a mild wrench to walk away from actors and writers whom I really did enjoy watching, or reading, once upon a time; Susan Sarandon, Matt Damon, and Jane Smiley. (Hey, I loved Moo, and the Greenlanders.) Rosie O’Donnell once was funny; she had the best lines evah! in A League of Their Own. I suppose the biggest wrench of all was not listening to Garrison Keillor any more. I used to love Prairie Home Companion, and never missed an airing of the show on Saturday afternoons, or the repeat airing the next day . . . but GK just got too one-sided with the political comedy, too snide and mean-spirited, and finally it just got too much.

Really, I would have preferred to think of actors, singers and the like to be just another sort of well-trained, costumed, performing monkey. Put on the costume, go out on stage or on the set, say the lines, and then go the hell away; don’t lecture me about politics, religion, the environment, politics or nuclear war from the bully pulpit of your celebrity. The odds are that my opinions on any and all of those matters will probably differ, and in some cases, differ substantially from a large chunk of those in the audience – and presuming to lecture me from a position of presumed moral authority on your part will have the effect of seriously annoying me. It may seriously annoy me to the point of not going to your movies and shows, watching or listening to them on radio and television, and never buying any of your DVDs or CDs – ever again. Look what happened to the Dixie Chicks and think of that as a cautionary tale. I am sure that they felt all morally-superierly after kicking their fan-base in the teeth, but having an appeal which is becoming increasingly selective does translate to a smaller audience; not a good thing in the long run. Audiences do not remain around forever, Wayne Newton to the contrary. Encouraging them to head at speed for the exits – not a good long-time career move.

Which is not to say that celebs shouldn’t have opinions or take up causes near and dear to their hearts. Heck, save the whales, adopt an orphan, dish up meals for the homeless, come and help bail out a flooded area, convert to an off-brand religious sect, whatever. Just don’t beat us over the heads with it, ‘kay? Walk the fine line, keeping in mind that we’ve got our own causes and our own problems.

LOTR

23. August 2010 · Comments Off on LOTR · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, That's Entertainment!

The only times I ever got ahead of any particular zeitgeist was when I started blogging – which was in 2002, and for this blog. There may have been fair number of blogs in existence back then, in the Dark Ages of blogging, but you still had to explain exactly what it was, this mysterious thing called a blog – and god bless ‘em, people like my parents who were only barely aware of the internet, had to have the whole concept explained to them very, very, carefully. And I was way out there when it came to the Tea Party, but that was only because a person I knew and liked – through blogging – asked if I would like to get involved.
More usually, I am the one wandering along the well-trodden track, well after the herd has gone by, wondering vaguely where all the footprints were going, and then being distracted by butterflies or rabbits or something. So it was, when it came to reading Lord of the Rings – I didn’t actually read it until I was well along in high school, and all my friends had read it ages ago. For some reason – possibly because The Fellowship of the Ring was checked out of the library – I read The Two Towers first, and then Return of the King, before reading The Fellowship of the Ring. This had the advantage of kick-starting the adventure off in high gear. Anyway, simply everyone else had already read the whole thing, and in some cases, years before. (It was just one of those books that you read then, just like everyone had read Stranger in a Strange Land. You just did.) So, I read it all, and caught up with everyone else – and then, I did something a little radical: I read it aloud to my little brother, Sander, who was then about four or five. My parents did not believe in TV, you see. This is how people used to amuse themselves, back then.

They read books, and I had established a regular habit of reading a couple of chapters of appropriate kid-lit to my little brother. We had already read The Hobbit – so, one afternoon we launched into LOTR. At a chapter or two a night, it took most of a year, and he was absolutely enthralled before we had gotten very far, and would often beg for another chapter – because the end of most chapters is a cliff-hanger, you see. You simply have to start the next chapter to find out what will happen to our sturdy hobbit adventurers, and before you know it, here comes another peril. As I said, it took most of a year; and by the end of it, Sander could talk like Sam Gamgee. That Halloween, he insisted on dressing up as a hobbit, with a tunic and cloak (we had to fudge on the furry feet, though) and a little wooden sword and a shield with Tolkeinish runes painted on it. I have no idea what his various grade school teachers thought of all of this, by the way. He must have come to school with some very strange turns of phrase, during this period.

And then, when my daughter was four years old – I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings aloud to her, as well. We were in Greece then, and still without a television, VCRs had just barely come on the market and it wasn’t as if I could afford one anyway. So – back to the refuge of books. Blondie, the Daughter Unit became as enthralled as my little brother had been – again, it took the best part of a year. She began relating the latest development to her best friend, at nursery school, and the best friend begged her mother to begin reading LOTR to her. But Blondie was still ahead as far as the cliffhangers went, for we remained a few chapters in the lead, and she could still let her friend know what was coming next.
When the Peter Jackson movie version came out – of course, Blondie and I were so there; every year, when I came back to California to visit my parents for Christmas, we’d go to the big movie theater in Oceanside together; another one of those family rituals. And the last freelance project I finished, allowed me to indulge in some books and DVDs that I had always wanted, among them a boxed set (second-hand, naturally!) of the extended-version of LOTR; the one with all the extra scenes included. Just couldn’t stop at the end of each disc, by the way – had to go a little way into the next. What a visual feast of a movie; and how very curious that it all looked just as I had imagined it would look, all those ages ago, when I read it to my little brother.

News Blogging, Linky-Love and Righthaven

19. August 2010 · Comments Off on News Blogging, Linky-Love and Righthaven · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, sarcasm, Technology

I find three definitions of the term ‘barratry’ when I look it up – two of them are obscure, but the third is relevant, and if stretched a bit, can apply to the current blogosphere kerfuffle-du-jour – the Righthaven violation of copyright lawsuits. Well, that’s the politer term; a quick internet search on ‘righthaven’ also turned up qualifiers such as ‘trolling’, ‘extortion,’ ‘bottom-feeders’ and ‘barratrious a**holes.’ A more thorough search would, I am certain, turn up more pungent terms of abuse and a fair collection of lawyer jokes. (Sample – what’s brown and black and looks good on a lawyer? Answer – a Doberman.) Suffice to say, I went through five or six pages of google-search results before finding a single link to a post which made a feeble attempt at defending Righthaven’s practices – of searching out instances of copyright infringement on the part of bloggers and news aggregators and without warning, or demanding credit and a link to the original story – suing the bee-jezzus out of the proprietor – usually small enthusiast bloggers without deep pockets or institutional support. Adding fresh insult, Righthaven LLC also demands that the domain name of the offending website or blog be turned over to them, as well as fairly substantial payments. Yes, copying someone elses’ work off a website or blog and posting it on your own and taking credit for it. Quel tacky, and plagiaristic, and someone doing it probably richly deserves being served with a complaint, a cease-and-desist order, or just hunted down, smeared with honey and staked out over a fire-ant nest.
However: is posting the story with a link to the original source, with a plainly posted credit – is that plagiarism as well? What about a paragraph excerpt, or the ‘three line’ fair-use standard, with a link, a credit and a recommendation such as “Read this!” A discussion group, with members posting excerpts, and links and talking about it? Is that a violation of copyright also? What about just a link . . . urm, through those little news feed dinguses at the bottom of the page. A Facebook recommendation? News aggregate sites consist of constantly updated pages of all these variants, with links to the new, the weird, the newsworthy or just plain interesting, from a variety of sources, large, small, official, unofficial, regular media or whatever. Even blogs like my main blog which focuses on original writing – I’ve occasionally posted interesting links. Linking, promoting, tweeting and favoriting interesting stories has been the lifeblood of the blogosphere as I have known it for yea these many years; advantageous linkage is beneficial to bloggers and websites alike, guaranteeing a larger and wider audience than the unlinked story or post might have had. But the way that L’affiare Righthaven is shaping up, it appears that all of the above may open up liability among news aggregate and commentary blogs for legal action from the ‘barratrious a**holes.’
The Righthaven law firm has entered into a professional alliance with an enterprise called Stephens Media Group, which owns a number of local newspapers across the southern and western states. One of their publications is based in Las Vegas, a city large enough to generate a fair amount of national-interest news – and it appears that bloggers who excerpted or linked to stories from that particular newspaper over the last few years are now providing a rich harvest of copyright lawsuits brought by Righthaven. Righthaven’s method of operation appears to be either to search out those posted and linked stories, and obtain the copyright for the story from Stephens Media, or to have had the copyright in their sweaty little hand all along before filing suit. Give them credit – Righthaven has figured out how to monetize the blogosphere, and Stephens Media has figured out how to extract a few more bucks from their newspaper holdings. For now, at least – until bloggers and news aggregate sites begin acting on the principle that any content in any Stephens Media newspapers is about as toxic as radioactive sewer sludge. While a fair number of bloggers and websites have paid up just to make it all go away, others are fighting back by either ‘Righthaven-proofing’ their sites, or blacklisting Stephens Media through their site-posting rules. There are even Firefox and Chrome plug-ins to automatically exclude Stephens Media from your internet browser. Righthaven and Stephens Media may perhaps gain in the short run, but prospects for long-term gain seem pretty iffy.

Rantburg, my own favorite one-stop website for all things sarky and WOT-related, is one of those sites being sued. They are taking donations. A blog which lists the websites being sued is here.

Another Monday Miscellany

15. August 2010 · Comments Off on Another Monday Miscellany · Categories: Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Local, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, Tea Time, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

I am, praise be to certain workaholic habits of mine (the one which goes into hyper-space warp-speed drive when faced with an impending deadline) actually able to come up for air today. One large chunk o’impending deadline all but finished but for the polishing and tweaking, and the other all but finished save for the author getting back to me to answer some questions about her MS. Life is good. And so is that 12-ounce bottle of Shiner Bohemian Black Lager that I have drunk about half of, as a reward to myself. Nice burnt-sugar overtones. I’m writing this Sunday evening at about 5:45 PM Sunday, so no need to go all interventionish on me.

Of course, I still have about three other big projects hanging over me – but the largest are out of the way, so I can come up for air and take note of some of the weirdness around me.
OK, so it looks like America’s next top model . . . is six foot something and so impossibly thin that a man’s hands can span her waist: Which was a charmingly old-fashioned standard of feminine beauty in the 19th century, when it was achieved only by the use of a fierce whale-bone corset and a couple of strong maids, hauling away. Dear god, the girl looks like she is morphing into a praying mantis. So, if this is what the fashion designers want to hang their clothes on, just animate a wire hanger and be done with it, and leave the rest of us alone with our cellulite.

So, the same breed of statist limpd**ks that tried to launch the Coffee Party and are trying yet again, with yet an amazingly stupid tee shirt and mug with the logo ‘f*ck tea’. Apparently that’s all you have to do, to get a movement really going. Print up some tee shirts and get your friends in the juice-box mafia (aka whatever has taken the place of JournoList) to push the meme.
Hey, boys and girls, we can put on a show ourselves, around in back in the barn!

Apparently, they insist they are trying to bring about a serious discussion of serious issues and
the something like 54% of citizens who approve and support Tea Party principles should just . . . I dunno, sit down and shut up and be ruled over unquestioningly by the new aristos. OK, one more time: strict interpretation of the Constitution, fiscally responsible, free markets. The Tea Party is a distributed, leaderless insurgency, based on a few core principles, not one person. I don’t know how I can make it any more plain than that. Aside from that, boys and girls, if it looks like bought n’paid for Astroturf, smells like Astroturf, feels like Astroturf and is being rolled out there by the same ol’ Astroturf purveyors . . . then it probably is indeed, Astroturf. Here’s hoping that not too many of the ‘f*ck tea’ ‘tards don’t get stuck with a garage full of un-sellable tee shirts . . . oh, f*ck that – I hope they do.

So, the Mighty O’s approval ratings continue to crater. Time to take another vacation. Look, Mr. Hopey-Changey, coming out with support of a mosque/community/center/arms bunker whatever in the neighborhood of New York’s Ground Zero on one day, then walking back the next – not a good idea. Indecisive, duplicitous, or just plain old telling-the-audience-what-they-wanna-hear? I don’t know, I’m not a licensed political professional, or a mind-reader, but you are getting bad advice from someone. Or if you are getting good advice . . . oh, f*ck it . . . take the bad advice. No one will ever notice. Really. November is a little more than a month and a half away. Kick back, you and the wife and kids take another vay-cay. It’s all on us, I insist.
Yes, freedom of religion in America technically would permit the mosque/whatever to be built wherever . . . good taste and a sense of tact would argue that Ground Zero is perhaps a good place. Sorta like a museum of the Confederacy would not be a good fit in downtown Harlem. (But it might give Cholly Rangel a case of the vapors, so it wouldn’t be a wasted effort to suggest it.)

Ah well – enough of a rant. Blondie and I went up to Boerne yesterday, and brought back some smoked ribs and BBQ sauce from (I kid you not) a Shell gas station quickie-mart on the corner of Main Street and SH-46, which has a meat counter and a BBQ stand which has the best BBQ around. It’s called the Riverside Market. We stopped in for some soft drinks, and it smelled so enticing that we stopped in on our way home from Boerne Market Days and bought some for take out. Remember – Boerne, Shell Station, on Main Street, and SH-46, just as you cross the river. The place was wall to wall with local people. And the BBQ smelt like the food of the gods.

Michelle Antoniotte and Her Vacation in Spain

06. August 2010 · Comments Off on Michelle Antoniotte and Her Vacation in Spain · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, sarcasm, The Funny

Apparently, our own very dear royals are having a wonderful time in Spain. Kinda makes GWB chopping brush on the ranch in Crawford look positively plebian.

Found through Neo-neocon

The Shape of Summer 2010

01. August 2010 · Comments Off on The Shape of Summer 2010 · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, Tea Time

The first day of August, in South Texas. It’s hot. I should probably not have to reiterate this; it should go without saying, like the North and South Poles are cold, Saudi Arabia has oil, Russians drink a lot of vodka and NY Rep. Charles Rangel is as corrupt as the day is long.

Speaking of good ol’ Chollie Rangel, I guess that he is the next one under the Obama-bus, he and Maxine Walters both. What brought that on that spot of Capitol Hill Cleanup, BTW – a bit of pre-emptive housecleaning against a turnover in November? Ah, well – enjoy the view of the axles and transmission. Heck, there are so many others under that bus it must be jacked up like one of those monster off-road vehicles that you need a 16-foot ladder to get into.

I see – mostly through noting the Yahoo News cliplets which come up whenever I access my email – that Chelsea Clinton got married this last weekend, in a lavish, celebrity-studded, ultra-high end round of festivities at some grand estate in scenic upstate New York. Two or three million is the price-tag . . . which I presume has stimulated some segment of the economy, at least the bridal-industrial complex portion of it. Oh, and air traffic over that part of NY was cut off – security concerns, of course, and between the guests, their entourages, the news crews and the rubberneckers, I presume the related traffic has been a nightmare for the ordinary residents. Three million. On a wedding. While the peasants watch from the sidewalk, tugging their forelocks in obeisance to their betters. Look, I don’t mind weddings, and even wish the presumably happy couple the best, and all that . . . but wasn’t this exercise a little . . . I don’t know – vulgar? Unnecessarily ostentatious, kind of Marie Antoinettish, in time of severe economic downturn? Again, the two or three million wasn’t flushed down the john, I am sure a lot of people got a nice few days or weeks of work out of it, from the waiters hired by the caterer, the flower-arrangers, the owners of local hotels and motels, the limo-drivers and the extra security . . . but still – it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth – it smacks of royalty putting on a show. Jenna Bush’s wedding, and John F. Kennedy’s wedding just seem comparatively more sensible, suitable and tasteful.

Where in the world is Shirley Sherrod, the Mouth from the South – and are her fifteen minutes of fame over? Is she still planning to sue Andrew Breitbart – and on what grounds? You know, PBS could make a kid’s show out of this, a la Carmen Sandiego, with Shirley zipping around to racial hotspots, and dropping clues to the audience. Hey, they could even do an international edition. If any producers want to discuss this concept with me, drop me a private message.

And speaking of the NAACP – how come their president, Ben Jealous looks about as white as my brother JP? No kidding, he looks a lot like my brother – dark hair and eyes, gets a decent tan in the summer.

And finally – JournoList. So I wasn’t having a tin-foil hat moment, wondering why suddenly some news stories, such as that about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Fred Phelps of the Chicago area mega-church scene – just seemed to suddenly vanish down the memory hole during that 2008 campaign season. Here I was thinking that having listened to that nutcase in the pulpit for twenty years would surely have been the kiss of death for a candidate for any office, let alone the highest in the land. My bad – here came the JournoListers to save the day for their guy! Note to self – memorize the lists of members, and consider with a handful of fleur de sel anything they write which I happen to come across. Give them a ration of &$#@! in any comments permitted about having aided in the corruption of the newsgathering process – and the political process.

Seeing November from My House,
I remain,
Sgt Mom

Just a Note to Keep Everyone Up to Speed

22. July 2010 · Comments Off on Just a Note to Keep Everyone Up to Speed · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Local, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time, Veteran's Affairs

Posting’s been light, because . . . I have a platter full of work right in front of me. And three-quarters of it will be for pay. The remaining quarter is split between providing good a few spoonfuls of good bloggy ice cream, and trying to finish the next book. I was alternating between two – one set during the early days of Anglo settlement in Texas, and up through the Republic of Texas days, tentatively entitled Gone to Texas, and another set fifty years later, in the cattle boom and barbed wire days. Write a chapter or two on one, set it aside, write a chapter or two on the other. Kept from getting bored or blocked, y’see.

But – and that is a Michael Moore sized butt, right there – I had to pull full steam ahead on the Gone to Texas – which may wind up being called Daughter of Texas, having made a decision to have the official launch/release date on the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, April 21. The senior partner in the Tiny Publishing Bidness loves my stuff and we are setting up an account with the printer “Lightning Source” so we can do POD books, as an alternative to litho print. So – my book will be the test run for us. With luck I can scrape some local media interest, since that will be the start of Fiesta. A release date late in April means I have to start sending out advance review copies in late September. Working backwards from that deadline means I have to finish the five or six chapters in the next month, so . . . yes, the personal work schedule is full. I’ll set up to take orders in December, though – for copies to be delivered in early April.

With all this going on, I had to step back from certain other activities, including volunteering for the local Tea Party – but there are so many people getting into it all, I don’t think my absence will be missed. And I certainly will continue blogging about Tea Party matters, and perhaps even a little more freely, since what I now say will reflect only on myself, not the local org. Hey, I might even get to go to a rally or two, and not have to stay afterwards for hours, cleaning up!

I’d write something about the ongoing revelations about the JournoList . . . except that what I’d have to say boils down to two statements: “Yeah, I thought there was something strange about how some stories had legs from here to there and back again, and others vanished into a black hole,” and “Oh, boy – bring on the popcorn! This is gonna be fun!”

Monday Morning Linkage

19. July 2010 · Comments Off on Monday Morning Linkage · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time, World

Simply wonderful stuff bubbling up from other bloggers over the last couple of days – rich, creamy bloggy goodness that I simply have to share … that is, if you have not already found it yourself.

The pretensions of our new aristocratic class, dissected for your pleasure, here

I think what has happened is that over the past few decades, the more traditional forms of conspicuous consumption have become less and less effective for wealthy snobs who wish to ostentatiously parade their privilege. It used to be that the rich could be content with having lots of fancy toys and whatnot. But nowadays, when basically anyone above lower-lower class can head to Wal-Mart and pick up a plasma TV, drive a nice SUV, or even get a mortgage to ‘buy’ a McMansion somewhere (at least before ’07), it gets harder and harder for the wealthy to parade their specialness and privilege in front of the rest of us. So it’s only natural that they have increasingly turned to the realm of political postures as their method of choice for distinguishing themselves from the masses. Indeed, in this light it makes perfect sense that leftist policies would be the ones most likely to harm, constrain and impoverish folks who are merely middle class (but not upper middle class).

(link found, courtesy of Chicagoboyz )

Where our new aristos came from, and what they want. Power, basically. But you already knew that.

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

(Link found first through da Blogfadda, but this essay is now being linked everywhere, including a fascinating discussion at The Belmont Club)

From the Department of Take a Number and Get in Line – thoughts on hating Obama…

If anyone during the 2008 had implied, or even speculated, that Obama was capable of anything of the sort, he’d have been dismissed as a demagogue, a hater, even a lunatic. But today, after his abandonment of the state of Tennessee (also wracked by flooding), his betrayal of the Georgians, his pulling the rug out from under the Poles and Czechs, his dragging and cold response to the Gulf blowout, his insults to the UK, the GOP, the Supreme Court, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Dalai Lama, it scarcely raises a shrug. That’s Obama. That’s how he acts — with arrogance, superciliousness, and indifference. We can search the entire roster of American presidents, and we will not find a match. This is not the behavior of an elected chief executive; it’s the conduct of a divine right monarch, and a pretty inadequate one as well.

And finally, those poor, suffering, starving and water-deprived Palestinians of Gaza – they only just now got a new shopping mall.

In Turkey, life expectancy is 72.23 and infant mortality is 24.84 per 1,000 births.
In Gaza, life expectancy is 73.68 and infant mortality is 17.71 per 1,000 births.
Turkey has a literacy rate of 88.7% while in Gaza it is 91.9%. (It is much lower in Egypt and other Arab countries where Israel did not establish colleges and universities in the 1970s and 1980s.)
Gaza’s GDP is almost as high as Turkey’s and much, much higher than most of Africa that gets 1,000th of the aid per capita that Gaza gets from the West.
(Source for above info: CIA World Factbook)
World hunger organizations report that 10-15 million children below the age of 5 die each year, and 50,000 people die daily. One-third of all deaths in the world are due to poverty.
While famine kills millions of children in Africa, India, and elsewhere, life expectancy for Gaza Arabs, at 72 years, is nearly five years higher than the world average. In Swaziland, for example, life expectancy is less than 40 years, and it is 42 years in Zambia.
Meanwhile Western governments, misled by Western media, continue to pour more and more money into Gaza for people that don’t need it, while allowing black Africans to starve to death.
As the correspondent for one of Japan’s biggest newspapers said to me last week, “Gaza and the West Bank are the only places in the world where I have seen refugees drive Mercedes.”

Link courtesy of Rantburg

Memo: Racial Prejudice and Other Current Matters

15. July 2010 · Comments Off on Memo: Racial Prejudice and Other Current Matters · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, Tea Time, World

To: The NAACP and others
Re: The Events of This Week WRT the Tea Party
From: Sgt Mom

1. To the NAACP – Well, thanks. Just thanks. After god-knows-how-many years of being carefully schooled – by the public school system, the military and by the mainstream media (to include the TV and motion picture establishment) to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin – and obediently taking every word of four decades of lectures about racial equality to heart, now I confess to being rather whipsawed by the discovery that you all are just another squalid, money and vote-grubbing racially-based faction seeking political advantage, fearful about loosing what little control you have over events, and doing the bidding of one particular political splinter of one particular political party. So much for appealing to justice, honor, equality before the law, and all the rest of it; that rumbling sound you hear – that must be MLK revolving in his grave with sufficient RPMs – that if hooked up to a generator would power a small city. In my eyes, your crime this week is that you have basically bought into a Big Lie. You have essentially joined a political lynch mob, in accusing the Tea Party (a widely spread and officially disorganized popular insurgency based upon fiscal responsibility, free markets and strict adherence to the founding tenants of the Constitution) of being something akin to the KKK sans white sheets. Duly noted; I thought one of your own founding tenets was opposition to things like lynch mobs, inflamed by thin and unsubstantiated rumor and the bigoted vaporings of press reports with a naked agenda. How does it feel, joining the rush of easy and facile judgment – enjoy the nice glow of satisfaction? What fun, to join in on the wilding of an officially-approved target! Waiting for a pat on the head, for having been obedient to your master?

2. Which brings me to the second part of this rant; the folly of having joined your socio-political fortunes to someone whose skin is (at a squint) of color, but whose life-experience seems only distantly American, whose resume of actual managerial experience in any enterprise (military, commercial or governmental) is cobweb-insubstantial, and whose actual skill at what is required of him as POTUS and therefore ostensible leader of the so-called Free World (insert brutally skeptical quotes wherever you see fit) is sub-par. Heroically, mind-bogglingly sub-par . . . and what is the saddest part of all is that there were and are good solid candidates of color, with real-world experience, and undoubted abilities who would have been fairly able to excellent Chief Executives. How sad that you could not bring yourselves to examine the content of character rather than color of skin. Might have saved yourself the embarrassment of metaphorically chaining yourself to a political disaster.

3. As for demanding that a broadly based and distributed, leaderless, volunteer, non-formal-membership, non-dues-paying movement stressing fiscal responsibility and a strict adherence to the Constitution . . . well, what is it that you want us to do about so-called racists who might or might not be informally associated with us? Tell you what – you all formally disassociate yourself from the New Black Panther Party, and race-mongering bigots like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. You first. I’ll wait.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

Live by the Media

05. July 2010 · Comments Off on Live by the Media · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, sarcasm, World

… die by the media image. Fawning media coverage dragged Obama over the finish-line in 2008, so I am fairly sure that our Dear Leader knows very well the power of the image.
Link found through da Godfaddah – from Hot Air, the pictures of the Gulf Oil spill that ought to be front and center on our beloved national main-stream media.

McChrystal McMysteries

28. June 2010 · Comments Off on McChrystal McMysteries · Categories: Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, Military, Politics, War, World

So, as expected General McChrystal resigned last week; a terribly drastic way to get an instant face to face attitude adjustment session with the boss, I must say. I skimmed the original Rolling Stone story, and I have to also observe that I am still mystified as to how and why a freelance reporter with no particular track record of being a friend of the military even got let through the door – or even was allowed by the General’s Public Affairs officer/advisor to ingratiate himself so thoroughly that they seem to have forgotten that said reporter was there. I mean, there are reporters and there are reporters . . . and as a public affairs professional, I completely internalized certain things; like being always aware that the outside media was present, and anything he or she saw had the potential to be on the record. In fact, most likely would be on the record, so a certain degree of circumspection was required. I would have thought that anyone savvy enough to have made any rank north of light colonel would also have absorbed that kind of situational awareness. Officers who have been promoted to general rank most always are pretty sharp. The military is a ruthless meritocracy, perhaps the most so of any of our various establishments. Even the political generals, promoted on account of who, rather than what they know – usually possess a high degree of low cunning. Was General McChrystal just arrogant enough to think that he, as Obama’s chosen general for Afghanistan, could treat with a supposedly sympathetic media outlet and get away with it. Arrogance I could buy – but not stupidity.

I read some comments and posts on OS and elsewhere, where the degree of pearl-clutching shock and horror over the disrespect reflected towards the civilian element in the chain of command by those comments from General McChrystal’s staff – as quoted in the story got to be rather poisonously amusing. If a military officer lets fall a derisive comment in private about VP Biden – and no reporter is there to hear it, does it make a sound? See; there is a difference between the private sphere and the official, duty sphere, the one where you follow the legitimate orders given by your superior – even if you privately disagree. Granted, sometimes the border between the two is blurry – especially at the levels where historians and reporters might be expected to take an interest, but it does exist. Official is when you put on the uniform, when you go on shift or deployment, when you release statements or make speeches in your official capacity as a member of the forces. Everyone in service has had it pounded into them repeatedly, about not bringing discredit on the service in your public actions; so did McChystal openly disobey any such orders given to him in securing Afghanistan? Or does failure to closely police the private comments of your close subordinates and staff in the manner of a grade school teacher with a classroom of fractious third-graders constitute an offense against the UCMJ? Apparently, under this current administration it does, although I suspect under the previous one, the parties in question might have been lauded for their courage in speaking “troof to power, man!”

Frankly, this is not the first administration in my lifetime to be held in something less than complete affection and respect among the military, even as they followed orders and kept a stoical public silence about their personal opinions. Jimmy Carter’s inaction following the Iranian takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran had many of us grinding our teeth, and Bill Clinton’s games with interns excited considerable contempt – especially since any military officer or NCO proven guilty of playing hide-the-salami with a subordinate and lying about it would have been disciplined and discharged. One standard for me, and another for thee, y’see.

It has been suggested by a milblogger or two, and a neighbor of mine with a background in Special Forces – that General McChrystal spend a lot of his military career in sort of a Special Forces cocoon, doing – and developing the habit of speaking bluntly – rather than having to deal much with those on the outside. I could tentatively accept something of that hypothesis, save that Special Forces is a ruthless meritocracy on steroids. Certain milboggers are speculating along the lines of General McChrystal deliberately setting off the explosive bolts on his career. What if he was going spare with frustration at the constraints and his civilian counterparts in Afghanistan are operating under, with zilch support from the current administration. What if he could already see the writing on the wall – or the helicopters taking off from the roof of the American Embassy and came to the conclusion that the military was going to take the blame for ‘losing’ Afghanistan?

To this day that ‘other America of defense’ as written about by Arthur Hadley – is haunted by Vietnam. There was the losing of it by failure of the political machine to support South Vietnam logistically after the withdrawal of American troops, and also by the fact that there were generations (in military terms) of able and creative officers who served there, knowing very well what needed to be done, but felt their efforts were stymied at the very highest levels, to include the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. I began my own service when the services were still thick with NCOs and officers who remembered Vietnam vividly, but fairly quietly – and to a man (they were just about all men, then) they despised McNamara with a passion that fairly made them incoherent. McNamara had a toweringly high estimation of his own and his ‘wiz kids’ abilities when it came to overseeing the war in Vietnam, and relative contempt for the uniformed military; a contempt returned in spades. Now and again it was bruited about that it might have been better all around – that McNamara be brought to see the light about the true effect of his policies with regard to Vietnam, if the generals on the Joint Chiefs of staff, and those others who disagreed with him had resigned their commissions in protest. Interestingly, one of those officers who did spectacularly criticize the war – on Sixty Minutes, no less – was an army colonel named David Hackworth. Almost 25 years later, I edited an interview that he gave to AFKN-TV, where he cheerfully acknowledged that yes, he had indeed thrown himself on his own sword, over policy and accepted the consequences more or less gracefully. He finished up as a best-selling author, and military journalist for a major national magazine, along with the awed respect of the next generation of military, so it all ended rather happily for him.
Is the McChrystal McMystery a repeat of this? Same song, slightly different verse. Discuss.

Memo: The Simple Joys of Schadenfreude

19. June 2010 · Comments Off on Memo: The Simple Joys of Schadenfreude · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Local, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, Politics, Rant, Tea Time

To: Various
Re: Current Situation in the Gulf of Mexico
From: Sgt Mom

1. To our various house-broken major-media news-hounds: So, here we have a situation, producing an oil leak from a busted oil well in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, of such a copious quantities that it has been described as the equivalent of the cargo of the Exxon Valdez every four days, and this has been going on for . . . . 60 days and counting? Yes, I know the crisis has come on a little slowly, not nearly as fast as Hurricane Katrina – after which then-President Bush had about two days grace before being raked viciously over the coals for not swinging into the federal government into action instanter than instant and fixing everything immediately! Exacting standards for performance in coping with the results of man-made and natural disasters should most certainly be applied for other than Republican administrations – and we are looking forward to see you apply them. Not holding my breath on it – but definitely looking forward to it.

2. Gratifyingly, there are definite signs of this dawning on those who have an ambition of being more than Baghdad Bob Gibbs press pool lap-dog. Perhaps this new awareness may have come in time to save y’all from the general impression that you are as partisan a collection of hacks who ever lightly edited a government/corporate press release and knocked off early for an expenses-paid luncheon. Or maybe not. And speaking of Robert Gibbs, doesn’t he just remind you of the fat, smug authority-figure suck-up from high school, whom hardly anyone could stand except for a handful of other authority-ass-kissing sycophants? The one who was beneath contemptuous notice by the athletes – but that the bad kids once ganged up on, pantsed, painted a rude, rude word on his pallid buttocks in indelible ink, administered a swirly in the nastiest toilet on campus and then chained him to the flag-pole? With his trou around his knees so that everyone could appreciate their lack of spelling skills?

3. So, don’t tell me that y’all in the White House Press Corps haven’t had that fantasy float through your heads. I have my ways of knowing these things. When you do, get footage of it, even if only on cell-phone cameras, please, please post on YouTube anonymously. You know the drill.

4. To the innocent citizens of the locality formerly known as Great Britain; I am sorry, sorrier than I can ever say . . . especially as this affects pensioners and ordinary investors – of both our countries who had investments in BP. Me, I thought we still had a rule of law, which applied equally to individuals and entities. The so-called ‘Chicago Way’ I had thought was confined to . . . well, Chicago. And gangster movies. I know very well that many of you indeed are not fat-cat capitalists, in frock-coats and top-hats, lighting your cigars with $50 bills, or the current Euro equivalent. The remarks of the current resident of the White House, and those of certain of our own citizens, and our own national media with regard to dreadful matter are, to put it kindly, unhelpful. I apologize again for them. I will note, for the record, that I did not vote for him. Believe it or not, quite a good few of us did not, so if you would be so kind, don’t lump us in with those Americans who were too starry-eyed over Mr. Hope’n’change to think straight.

5. I do wonder, however – if the situation were reversed, and a wholly American-owned drilling company experienced a disaster of the same magnitude in, say, the North Sea, and the resulting oil plume threatened your coastline – what the tenor of public and media comment in your sphere would be, then. Just wondering – I’m deeply cynical, that way. BTW, from the tone of British and European media coverage of Obama in the 2008 election season, I was left with the distinct impression that his victory being welcomed with hosannas of happy joy by one and all. How’s that hope’n’change working out for y’all? Miss GWB yet?

6. You know, seeing how the offer of efficient Dutch skimmer ships was turned down, how an exemption for the Jones Act to permit foreign ships to assist with the clean-up wasn’t obtained in a timely fashion, and how permits for the construction of sand berms to shelter fragile Louisiana coastal wetlands were delayed, and then the deployment of barges equipped to suck up oil were sidelined while the Coast Guard ascertained that they had sufficient safety gear on board, and how the well is still gushing . . . well, one might wonder if the continuance of this crisis is an advantage to the Obama administration. After all, Rahm Emmanuel famously urged that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted. Shut down drilling for oil in the Gulf – which is a body blow for that industry – allow by inaction the fouling of the coastline, which affects tourism and local commercial fishing . . . My mother often cautioned me never to attribute to malice which could be easily explained by simple ineptitude, but in this case I might be persuaded to make an exception.

7. Finally, I would suggest that readers pick up some extra bags of frozen Gulf shrimp, the next time they are at Sam’s or Costco – the price is gonna go up, if it hasn’t already. But don’t forget – we can see November from our house.

Sincerely,
Sgt Mom

(Later – Found through Facebook link …

« Older articles
Newer articles »