Here is a follow-up to Captain Fog's article, Fox and Hounds, posted earlier this week. What U.S. audiences have not seen thus far are reactions from Canada, specifically how our neighbors to the north feel about this Fox insult.
How low did Fox go? In the same week Canada mourned four dead soldiers killed in Afganistan on a single day, Fox News belittled and mocked the Canadian military. Did other cable news channels cover this Fox abomination? Did Fox News apologize for this outrage? A begrudging but not widely publicized apology in Canada; nothing broadcast to a U.S. audience.
What a narcissistic, egocentric country we have become to have one of our major cable news networks so dishonor and disrespect Canada’s war dead and not even give more than a half-assed mea culpa.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Here and the Now of the Land of the Space of Today
Thought I might post a few Jurassic thoughts on our current Finnegans Wake-like national situation....
I think we're all liable now and then to point out the flaws in both political parties – one thing to consider, though, from a somewhat Aristotelian classificatory principle, is that all forms of government have problems "proper" to them. In the case of a republic like ours, certain amounts of short-sightedness, jockeying for position and influence, demagogic nonsense, and insider corruption are part of the beast. We might as well remind ourselves that there's no point in demanding that our pols adhere to impossible ideals of pure and disinterested government. It's good and even necessary to have ideals, but nobody is likely to live up to them anytime soon, if ever. (Wilde said that a map without utopia isn't worth looking at. As usual, "the Oscar" was right.)
It might be prudent to look at our form of government, then, somewhat in the manner of a biologist studying a wild animal – the critter may have some health issues (old wounds, pathologies, and such), but the question is, can said critter function well enough to get by and even thrive? If so, it's doing just fine. What many people seem to find frightening about the present is the possibility that we have indeed come close to the point of our form's demise. The near collapse of the financial system is a potential death blow to democratic rule. You can't have capitalism or democracy without a fair amount of stability, and we have been looking shaky in recent months.
Anyhow, I believe we can remain viable if we begin to deal with the simple facts that 1) we have been acting as if capitalism were a god-sent system rather than an imperfect vehicle for the satisfaction of unending human desire and 2) we want to denounce government and yet receive all sorts of good things from it, for which we expect to pay little or nothing. I'd like to keep the good things and add health care and improved education to their number, but we can't do all of it by borrowing trillions from China and elsewhere for unending decades. The only reason we get away with it, I suspect, is that everybody else is too afraid of us to let us suffer the consequences of our foolishness. (And of course those consequences would hit them, too.) And now we end up having to shell out astonishing amounts to the players in our broken financial sector. It's daunting, but we have tremendous potential and can get through this mess. President Obama's insistence on moving forward with some "big-ticket" initiatives makes a lot of sense: it's part of setting our house in order, arranging our priorities. We need to make our decision for Christ, so to speak, and figure out what really matters to us. If we can do that, the politicians will – after their messy fashion – follow suit.
Those who say that spending our way out of a depression/recession is irresponsible make a little point and miss a much larger one. We are already "through the looking-glass." To suppose that fiscal restraint will spur a return to normalcy is to suppose too much: if "the market" rights itself by its own means, it may do so in a fashion that does fundamental, unsustainable violence to those who are subject to its operations. Systems can be fiendishly viable while millions who depend on them go without: think "private health insurance." Allowing the economy to go into free-fall could yet render all talk about "returning to normalcy" pointless. Evidently, the ultra-conservatives who keep prating about fiscal restraint can't wrap their minds around this danger, mostly because they think whatever the market dictates must be right.
I think we're all liable now and then to point out the flaws in both political parties – one thing to consider, though, from a somewhat Aristotelian classificatory principle, is that all forms of government have problems "proper" to them. In the case of a republic like ours, certain amounts of short-sightedness, jockeying for position and influence, demagogic nonsense, and insider corruption are part of the beast. We might as well remind ourselves that there's no point in demanding that our pols adhere to impossible ideals of pure and disinterested government. It's good and even necessary to have ideals, but nobody is likely to live up to them anytime soon, if ever. (Wilde said that a map without utopia isn't worth looking at. As usual, "the Oscar" was right.)
It might be prudent to look at our form of government, then, somewhat in the manner of a biologist studying a wild animal – the critter may have some health issues (old wounds, pathologies, and such), but the question is, can said critter function well enough to get by and even thrive? If so, it's doing just fine. What many people seem to find frightening about the present is the possibility that we have indeed come close to the point of our form's demise. The near collapse of the financial system is a potential death blow to democratic rule. You can't have capitalism or democracy without a fair amount of stability, and we have been looking shaky in recent months.
Anyhow, I believe we can remain viable if we begin to deal with the simple facts that 1) we have been acting as if capitalism were a god-sent system rather than an imperfect vehicle for the satisfaction of unending human desire and 2) we want to denounce government and yet receive all sorts of good things from it, for which we expect to pay little or nothing. I'd like to keep the good things and add health care and improved education to their number, but we can't do all of it by borrowing trillions from China and elsewhere for unending decades. The only reason we get away with it, I suspect, is that everybody else is too afraid of us to let us suffer the consequences of our foolishness. (And of course those consequences would hit them, too.) And now we end up having to shell out astonishing amounts to the players in our broken financial sector. It's daunting, but we have tremendous potential and can get through this mess. President Obama's insistence on moving forward with some "big-ticket" initiatives makes a lot of sense: it's part of setting our house in order, arranging our priorities. We need to make our decision for Christ, so to speak, and figure out what really matters to us. If we can do that, the politicians will – after their messy fashion – follow suit.
Those who say that spending our way out of a depression/recession is irresponsible make a little point and miss a much larger one. We are already "through the looking-glass." To suppose that fiscal restraint will spur a return to normalcy is to suppose too much: if "the market" rights itself by its own means, it may do so in a fashion that does fundamental, unsustainable violence to those who are subject to its operations. Systems can be fiendishly viable while millions who depend on them go without: think "private health insurance." Allowing the economy to go into free-fall could yet render all talk about "returning to normalcy" pointless. Evidently, the ultra-conservatives who keep prating about fiscal restraint can't wrap their minds around this danger, mostly because they think whatever the market dictates must be right.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Fox and Hounds
The Impolitic, one of my favorite blogs, asks us why "conservative" humor isn't funny and little more than gleeful gloating at the misfortune of people we secretly feel inferior to: empty mockery based on ignorance or false information. I can't really answer that, but Red Eye, Fox's "Me Too" attempt at cashing in on the trenchant, cynical and wildly popular comedy of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, is a cornucopia of examples. Red Eye is little more than a Punch and Judy show for the kind of "conservatives" who at an earlier time attended public whippings and executions in order to enjoy the plight of others being more humiliated than themselves.
In the eyes of Fox Fans, the supply of whipping boys and scapegoats they desire can't fill a Colosseum as large as Fox's and so they have invented and exploited domestic "Liberals" and "elitists" and have tailored cardboard images of foreigners as liberal elitist fodder forwild beasts comedians to tear apart.
Fox, the primary cheerleader for every dubious battle and misbegotten military enterprise needs cardboard cowards and so we have the Fox French and the Fox Canadians to pillory along with any other "surrender Monkeys" who doubted the long disproved reasons for our Iraq war.
The Canadians are easy targets for Greg Gutfeld and his creepy chorus. They're almost French after all. To those who don't know that the Canadians are in fact fighting in Afghanistan, Gutfeld and his monkey house mob must be as funny as a chimpanzee ripping off someones face. But of course the Canadians are there and have lost well over a hundred soldiers. In fact on March 17th, as Gutfeld was calling Canada "a ridiculous country" and another of his "comedians" was saying
As funny as a bunch of apes sitting on a comfortable couch pretending to be mighty warriors and mocking the brave and the dead.
Of course it caught up with Gutfeld as these things so often do. Of course he gave a sneering "apology" and said, as people like him usually do, that he'd been "misunderstood" which is no apology at all, but an attempt to tell us that the people who misunderstood him need more of his mockery.
Of course Red Eye is a failure in progress. It isn't funny as much as it is creepy, embarrassing and to those with some awareness of reality, infuriating. If there is any humor in it at all, it's only the low and inadvertent humor involved in watching people grasping and gasping and drowning in ignorance and failure and too damned stupid to realize it.
See for yourself:
In the eyes of Fox Fans, the supply of whipping boys and scapegoats they desire can't fill a Colosseum as large as Fox's and so they have invented and exploited domestic "Liberals" and "elitists" and have tailored cardboard images of foreigners as liberal elitist fodder for
Fox, the primary cheerleader for every dubious battle and misbegotten military enterprise needs cardboard cowards and so we have the Fox French and the Fox Canadians to pillory along with any other "surrender Monkeys" who doubted the long disproved reasons for our Iraq war.
The Canadians are easy targets for Greg Gutfeld and his creepy chorus. They're almost French after all. To those who don't know that the Canadians are in fact fighting in Afghanistan, Gutfeld and his monkey house mob must be as funny as a chimpanzee ripping off someones face. But of course the Canadians are there and have lost well over a hundred soldiers. In fact on March 17th, as Gutfeld was calling Canada "a ridiculous country" and another of his "comedians" was saying
"I didn't even know they were in the war. I thought that's where you go when you don't want to fight. Go chill in Canada"4 more of Canada's brave youth were being brought home in boxes. It's funny - so very funny.
As funny as a bunch of apes sitting on a comfortable couch pretending to be mighty warriors and mocking the brave and the dead.
Of course it caught up with Gutfeld as these things so often do. Of course he gave a sneering "apology" and said, as people like him usually do, that he'd been "misunderstood" which is no apology at all, but an attempt to tell us that the people who misunderstood him need more of his mockery.
Of course Red Eye is a failure in progress. It isn't funny as much as it is creepy, embarrassing and to those with some awareness of reality, infuriating. If there is any humor in it at all, it's only the low and inadvertent humor involved in watching people grasping and gasping and drowning in ignorance and failure and too damned stupid to realize it.
See for yourself:
Monday, March 23, 2009
Same old, same old Party
What's more disgusting than CNN giving copious air time to Florida Representative Connie Mack this morning so that he can continue to demand the firing or resignation of Tim Geithner for reasons of complicity in a no strings attached, unsupervised AIG bailout under Hank Paulson and the Bush administration? Why, it was natty, nasty and nefarious young Connie Mack himself. Representative Mack, in trying to pin the tail on the donkey, seems to have overlooked the fact that it's an elephant's tail and wants us to buy the notion that the AIG bonuses were not only Geithner's fault, but proof of the incompetance of President Obama in fixing the Republican train wreck. The spectacular smugfest of Republicans acting as though oversight of Wall Street was their idea is just that -- spectacular.
Asked pointedly and repeatedly on CNN this morning however, Mack refused to comment on whether Geithner or the Obama administration should attempt to recover the funds, repeating again and again that they never should have been given and asking what Geithner knew and when he knew it.
I have to recall however that the Republicans waited two months longer to declare the Obama Administration a failure and disaster than they did when Bill Clinton was elected. Some couldn't wait for him to actually take office to begin the disinformation, investigation and sabotage and what can we call this but sabotage as they offer no practical alternative other than to attack, attack and attack?
One can never hope for contrition from any Republican it seems, nor can anyone expect their cooperation in any attempt to deal with their failures and misdeeds. It's just the Same Old Party and the Same Old Excuses.
Asked pointedly and repeatedly on CNN this morning however, Mack refused to comment on whether Geithner or the Obama administration should attempt to recover the funds, repeating again and again that they never should have been given and asking what Geithner knew and when he knew it.
"Quite simply, the Timothy Geithner experience has been a disaster."said Mack last Wednesday. Once again, CNN missed the opportunity to ask whether the huge disaster of the last 8 years was anyone outside the current administration's responsibility and whether the 8 years of mismanagement could reasonably be expected to have been rectified in a matter of weeks without the waste of a hundredth of a percent. Are we to have forgotten that the kind of oversight that would have prevented the mess was the devil himself to every Republican of the last several decades?
I have to recall however that the Republicans waited two months longer to declare the Obama Administration a failure and disaster than they did when Bill Clinton was elected. Some couldn't wait for him to actually take office to begin the disinformation, investigation and sabotage and what can we call this but sabotage as they offer no practical alternative other than to attack, attack and attack?
One can never hope for contrition from any Republican it seems, nor can anyone expect their cooperation in any attempt to deal with their failures and misdeeds. It's just the Same Old Party and the Same Old Excuses.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Mail order science
One might think that I would be on the side of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in opposing Texas House Bill 2800. It's effect would be to exempt any private non-profit institution from the need to be accredited by and receive a certificate of authority from the state. The entire idea is of course to establish "universities" that give science degrees without any requirement to study science. Normally attempts to Push the Christianist agenda by equating legend with science earn my contemptuous wrath and of course so does this one to a degree, but wait, there's more.
If, as would happen should this act of insanity be passed, one could simply dream up any curriculum and award degrees of any sort, the value of any Texas institution's degree program not funded by the State would be suspect. Of course the Libertarian in me might be inclined to ask why Acme Bible College shouldn't be able to confer a Doctor of Divinity on anyone they please according to their organized delusions, but not Bachelor, or Master or Doctor of Science. Thinking back to the mid 19th century however, when one could attend Acme Medical College with an unregulated, unexamined course of study and emerge with black bag and scalpel to treat the unsuspecting populace, I have to take pause.
What would the result really be if any charlatan could establish a school and anoint its graduates with advanced degrees in science with no other education but a literal interpretation of Bible Stories for Children? An extra headache for those institutions and companies hiring
physicists, geologists and such perhaps. An opportunity for me.
Fogg University of Christian Knowledge. It has a certain acronymical appeal, you have to admit, although Fogg U would be shorter and easier to remember for the kind of students it might attract. Prerequisites? What are you, some kind of Commieliberal intrusive government type?
Let market forces determine the value of unaccredited education, but for you, if you call in the next ten minutes, you can call yourself a Master of Science for $49.95 plus shipping, handling and framing charges. But wait, there's more -- the first 50 callers get a free Sham-Wow with the logo of our sham university on it. You getting this, camera guy?
If, as would happen should this act of insanity be passed, one could simply dream up any curriculum and award degrees of any sort, the value of any Texas institution's degree program not funded by the State would be suspect. Of course the Libertarian in me might be inclined to ask why Acme Bible College shouldn't be able to confer a Doctor of Divinity on anyone they please according to their organized delusions, but not Bachelor, or Master or Doctor of Science. Thinking back to the mid 19th century however, when one could attend Acme Medical College with an unregulated, unexamined course of study and emerge with black bag and scalpel to treat the unsuspecting populace, I have to take pause.
What would the result really be if any charlatan could establish a school and anoint its graduates with advanced degrees in science with no other education but a literal interpretation of Bible Stories for Children? An extra headache for those institutions and companies hiring
physicists, geologists and such perhaps. An opportunity for me.Fogg University of Christian Knowledge. It has a certain acronymical appeal, you have to admit, although Fogg U would be shorter and easier to remember for the kind of students it might attract. Prerequisites? What are you, some kind of Commieliberal intrusive government type?
Let market forces determine the value of unaccredited education, but for you, if you call in the next ten minutes, you can call yourself a Master of Science for $49.95 plus shipping, handling and framing charges. But wait, there's more -- the first 50 callers get a free Sham-Wow with the logo of our sham university on it. You getting this, camera guy?
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Engaging A Future Generation
Our dear SWASHZONE tends to be more than a little angst ridden on most days (& lord knows my own posts contribute to this!) so I thought I would post a feel-good post - yes - me! - Squid.
So the gist of this post is that I adore my students - or, at least, most of them. I truly do. They give me fits sometimes, sending me into head-clutching fits of despair, but through it all - I am genuinely very fond of them. Some of them cause me from time to time to ponder nervously the future of the world when it is run by people INCAPABLE of following simple directions or turning assignments in on time . . . but underneath all their slackery they are good-hearted delinquents - so perhaps the world will survive their air-headed slackness. And they are balanced by my wonderful students who put these slackers to shame - students who always go the extra mile towards academic achievement. Please may they be our future leaders!
Curiously - some of my personally favorite students tend to be the ones I give miserable grades to. At this point in the semester they start ducking into corners when they see me coming down the corridor - knowing that they are going to get an earful from me about their latest academic transgression. But they've learned to take my cussing at them as genuine concern and, to their credit, none of the students with whom I have developed a personal rapport has ever been fool enough to think that this meant they were going to receive preferential treatment. And this is to their credit. For the most part - they take responsibility for their abysmally low grades.
There are of course those for whom personal responsibility means nothing & everything is everyone else's fault & how dare I presume to think that I call the shots etc. - but in all honesty - these students are in the minority.
And on a final note - I find it fascinating sometimes to learn about how people 20 years or so younger than myself view the same world that we all inhabit. Their point of view is often fascinating (& scary!) but always important to consider. I consider myself privileged to be able to converse on a daily basis with our future. And hopefully they learn a bit from we old fogies as well. (I remember in a class discussion once about a piece of literature that contained sex one of my students making a comment about people over 40 not being interested in sex anymore - it was SO HARD to keep a straight face!) Yes their view of the universe is staggering sometimes.
Mine is such a terrific profession.
So the gist of this post is that I adore my students - or, at least, most of them. I truly do. They give me fits sometimes, sending me into head-clutching fits of despair, but through it all - I am genuinely very fond of them. Some of them cause me from time to time to ponder nervously the future of the world when it is run by people INCAPABLE of following simple directions or turning assignments in on time . . . but underneath all their slackery they are good-hearted delinquents - so perhaps the world will survive their air-headed slackness. And they are balanced by my wonderful students who put these slackers to shame - students who always go the extra mile towards academic achievement. Please may they be our future leaders!
Curiously - some of my personally favorite students tend to be the ones I give miserable grades to. At this point in the semester they start ducking into corners when they see me coming down the corridor - knowing that they are going to get an earful from me about their latest academic transgression. But they've learned to take my cussing at them as genuine concern and, to their credit, none of the students with whom I have developed a personal rapport has ever been fool enough to think that this meant they were going to receive preferential treatment. And this is to their credit. For the most part - they take responsibility for their abysmally low grades.
There are of course those for whom personal responsibility means nothing & everything is everyone else's fault & how dare I presume to think that I call the shots etc. - but in all honesty - these students are in the minority.
And on a final note - I find it fascinating sometimes to learn about how people 20 years or so younger than myself view the same world that we all inhabit. Their point of view is often fascinating (& scary!) but always important to consider. I consider myself privileged to be able to converse on a daily basis with our future. And hopefully they learn a bit from we old fogies as well. (I remember in a class discussion once about a piece of literature that contained sex one of my students making a comment about people over 40 not being interested in sex anymore - it was SO HARD to keep a straight face!) Yes their view of the universe is staggering sometimes.
Mine is such a terrific profession.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Flori-DUH
JESUS IS LORD AT
SHEFFIELD’S FAMILY DINING
ALL YOU CAN EAT CATFISH DINNER
SHEFFIELD’S FAMILY DINING
ALL YOU CAN EAT CATFISH DINNER
Declares the peeling, sun damaged roadside sign to highway travelers in the Sunshine State. I've never been tempted to stop and ask whether Yahweh is on the staff as well, perhaps, despite their not being Kosher, filleting catfish back in the kitchen.
I guess even the Godstruck of Florida have to admit there are places where exception is taken and of course you don't have to drive too many more miles to encounter billboards announcing your approach to Cafe Risque where we are enthusiastically assured that "They bare all." I doubt Jesus is even a busboy at Cafe Risque.
Despite the massive and daily influx of New Jersey exiles looking for the cheap life, Florida is still Florida, particularly in it's chewy, nut filled center. Whether it involves writing laws making it a felony to watch animals having sex ( only if you find it arousing of course) or making sure you don't kiss your spouse in the wrong places; Florida is still Florida no matter which lords are leaping at Sheffields and Florida still writes bills and passes laws the way the National Enquirer ( a Florida based tabloid) writes articles.
According to some legal experts, Florida is a state where you can wear a bathing suit to a restaurant, but only if you don't sing. It's a state in which by law one may not do anything "unnatural" which to anyone of a cynical bent would suggest that magic and miracle are illegal, but extra-Biblical sexual acts, being natural enough in the animal kingdom, are not. In fact it appears that taking your clothes off in order to shower might earn you a fine, should anyone notice. Thank God I have a bath tub and that my bedroom is on the second floor.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
SUNDAY SPACE SHUTTLE LAUNCH
Goodbye, Faux News. Goodbye, AIG. Goodbye, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and the Congressional Republicans. Octopus is hitching a ride on the space shuttle in search of inhabitable exo-planets. The cephalopods are massing; the Octocalypse is near!
Here is today’s question: A gaggle of geese, a school of fish, a pod of dolphins … what do you call a ____________________ of humans?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Guillotine! Guillotine!
It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. They report, you decide.
One doesn't expect the spokesmen for conservative interests to be using the French Revolution as a model for future action. Of course I'm no kind of cynic and so all the calls for blood, all the evocations of victims carted off to some public square to be guillotined or of some Supreme Court Justice bleeding to death in his bathtub like Marat aren't at all hilarious to me when I watch Fox News.
Charles Krauthammer, who like so many Fox denizens looks like he's overdone the Botox, told us all yesterday that we should hold public executions for AIG executives whose contracts include a bonus.
Ok, so it's hyperbole although with paralyzed faces like these guys have, one has to make some guesses as to what they really mean. But inflammatory rhetoric in such times as these is like flicking your Bic with gasoline all over the floor. Put them together with Ann Coulter who has advocated poisoning judges and with Rush who would rather have the country collapse than accept any offense to his "principles" and we have not only an assemblage of rogues but a perfect example of people who are not conservatives any more than were the Parisian mobs cheering as heads rolled in the Place de la Concorde in 1793.
One doesn't expect the spokesmen for conservative interests to be using the French Revolution as a model for future action. Of course I'm no kind of cynic and so all the calls for blood, all the evocations of victims carted off to some public square to be guillotined or of some Supreme Court Justice bleeding to death in his bathtub like Marat aren't at all hilarious to me when I watch Fox News.
"Whether it’s terrorism, international crises, domestic crime or, in this case, excessive corporate greed, some conservatives seem unable to see problems as anything other than a nail for which the only solution is a hammer."says Think Progress. Fox's solution is a Krauthammer.
Charles Krauthammer, who like so many Fox denizens looks like he's overdone the Botox, told us all yesterday that we should hold public executions for AIG executives whose contracts include a bonus.
"Have it in Times Square, invite Madame DuFarge. You borrow a guillotine from the French and we could have a party. If that’s what it takes to maintain popular support, let’s do it."Conservative Mort Kondrake just wants to boil them in oil.
Ok, so it's hyperbole although with paralyzed faces like these guys have, one has to make some guesses as to what they really mean. But inflammatory rhetoric in such times as these is like flicking your Bic with gasoline all over the floor. Put them together with Ann Coulter who has advocated poisoning judges and with Rush who would rather have the country collapse than accept any offense to his "principles" and we have not only an assemblage of rogues but a perfect example of people who are not conservatives any more than were the Parisian mobs cheering as heads rolled in the Place de la Concorde in 1793.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)