R.P. Barr

Dancing with Paranoia

I watch Dancing with the Stars.  This is one of those guilty pleasures that cultured people are not supposed to admit.  My excuse is that wife wanted to see it that first time.  I admired the scanty dance costumes, and then got into the sport and drama of it all.  Today, it seems part of a global conspiracy—but I get ahead of myself.

Over the years, I have seen things on the show that smacked of bias.  If you haven’t seen the show, the scores of the three judges count for half of the total, and votes by the viewers count for the other half.  The celebrity with the lowest count each week leaves the show  If you vote on line, you get multiple votes, one less than the number of contestants.  On occasion, the judges have seemed to single out a celebrity contestant for particularly harsh criticism.  I believe that this was their way of trying to influence the popular vote to get a not-so-good dancer out of the running and keep better dancers in.   The results of this tilting were mixed, and I haven’t noticed it during the last couple seasons.

 Meanwhile, the public has sometimes voted for favorites without regard for skill or talent.   A good example was Steve Wozniak.  He was pitiful, but as a founder of Apple, attracted the geek and nerd vote.  Or so it seemed.  He lasted well beyond what logic dictated.   Usually, contestants of this kind fall by the wayside as the competition tightens.  One year, the producers were evidently afraid that the favorite clod-hopper would go too far and had a special week in which the bottom two celebrities were eliminated.  None of these shenanigans were as shocking, or suspicious as what happened last week.

 Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was a celebrity two years ago.  He might have lasted at least a week longer, but broke bones in his feet through the stress of practice.  DWTS staff might say that this Republican politician was balancing season three’s appearance by Democrat Jerry Springer, who had been mayor of Cincinatti once upon a time, but that’s a stretch.  At the time, DeLay publicly campaigned against Springer the dancer, by urging people to vote for country singer Sara Evans. Ms Evans was married to a Republican politician at the time.  When her marriage ended midway through the season, Ms Evans dropped out.

That brings us to this season, the show’s eleventh, and Bristol Palin.  Ms Palin’s journey reminds me of   Kelly Osbourne from last season.  Both are daughters of famous parents, and neither has a typical dancer’s body or was given a snowball’s chance of winning.  However, both young women worked very hard and won over their own set of fans.  The major difference between them is that Ms Osbourne became a much better dancer.  Ms Palin has simply improved.  She is cute, though, and that counts for something.  I have thrown a vote or two her way in past weeks just to see if she really would get better.  She's young after all.

 From week one, the far-and-away best dancer was actress Jennifer Gray, followed closely by singer/actress Brandy and actor Kyle Massey.  None of the other nine starters came close.  Bristol Palin probably wasn’t the top talent of this lower tier, but she was good enough that no one objected to her progress. 

Last week, in the final four semi-finals, Ms Palin was clearly the one who was out of place.  The judges had ranked her at the bottom for six weeks, and last week was no exception.  But, Brandy, with her stage presence, long lean body, and exquisite lines, was the one who went home.  Many people cried foul.  Foul it was.

 The judges have been unnaturally kind to Ms Palin throughout the season.  However, they usually save their polite deference for large professional athletes and contestants over 60 years old.  Their true opinions are only reflected in their scores.  But, assuming that the vote counting is fair, I do not blame the judges or the show for last week’s upset.

 I do believe that Tea Partiers and young Republican guerrila activists have had a roll in the outcome.  And, neither Bristol nor mama Sarah were necessarily aware of this action. 

 The reason it is disturbing is because it is the latest example of a conservative effort to hijack the media.  Fox president Ailes charged this week that National Public Radio is run by “Nazis," albeit left-wing, liberal Nazis--the worst kind.  On the wider internet, I have looked up weather reports and seen comments attacking global warming.  Organized or not, there is a movement afoot.

Ultimately, who wins or loses a dance competition doesn’t matter any more than who wins the Super Bowl, but who wins the fight to control communications and public opinion does.  And, every battle is important.     

 

Words are not equal

On July 13, the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC broadcast standards for “fleeting expletives” was too vague to enforce.  I’m sure that it was.  Personally, I would like the burden to be shifted from the broadcasters to the explitive utterers, at least in some cases.  When an athelete or a soldier or a construction worker gets a microphone pushed into his/her face for a reaction to an expletive-laden event, he or she should be forgiven for a candid response.  When professional performers, however, are at televised awards shows, they should be able to control their remarks.

The whole thing brings up, once again, the subject of censorship and the morality of speech.  There was a time when profanity was avoided by educated people although it has always existed.  Mark Twain, for instance, wrote admiringly about the virtuosity of mule drivers concerning foul language.  But, even though Twain was self=publishing, he did not record any of the mule drivers’ actual speech.

 I think that the breakthrough for profanity came with Lenny Bruce.  He was a brilliant observationalist, although not a terribly funny comedian.  If the authorities had ignored his use of blue language in his routines, he might have faded into obscurity.  Prosecution, and repeated prosecution, made him a star for social liberals, the hip set, and the wannabes.  Maybe the best thing he did was prepare the world for George Carlin.

 Carlin was both a genius and truly funny.  Unfortunately, his use of profanity led a couple generations of comedians to believe that dirty words were an essential part of making people laugh.

Now, men, mostly, and some women who sit at desks in air conditioned offices use language that was once the province of those who actually labor for a living.  In some cases, it is because many Office Andy's think the abuse of language makes them cool (or whatever is the current equivalent).  In other cases, they think is makes them sound as tough as they wish they were.

 I don’t consider myself part of any camp, but I have known and worked alongside people who do rough and dangerous work.  I would not dishonor them by trying to imitate or pretend that I am the same.

 To be honest, from an early age, I did make an effort to be cool.  For me it is about knowing yourself and being true to that knowledge.  I am who I am, and I do what I do, and if there’s a price to be paid for that—and believe me, there is—then it’s mine to pay.  Language and clothes and music don’t conceal what is underneath.

 Words are neither moral nor immoral.  However, profanity is destructive to the language I love.  Early in Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words routine, he says that there are more words to describe dirty words than there are dirty words.  But then, he misses the point he just made.  That wealth of vocabulary is the beauty and strength of the English language.  It is something to celebrate and encourage.

If you haven’t read it, or haven’t recently, thumb through John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as Fanny Hill.  It is a book with a sexual adventure on practically every page.  That is not the point.  The point is the richness of the language he uses to describe our common and more vulgar body parts and their uses.  Cleland is not Shakespeare wrestling with great themes, but while sitting in a debtor’s prison, he adorned his prose with sparkling gems, and not a “dirty word” in sight.

 Profanity takes away that richness.  The four-letter word for sexual congress is almost never used to describe that delightful activity.  Instead, it is used to indicate abuse, but not only that.  It has gone from being a verb to also being a noun, adjective and adverb.  It is used in moments of surprise, anger, joy, etc.  It is an all-purpose word that replaces dozens, if not hundreds of more descriptive words.  Its use dumbs down society.  “Go [bleep] yourself” now passes for wit.  With acceptance of this practice, we are impoverishing ourselves.

 Yet, English is fast becoming the world’s language.  Native speakers should take care to preserve and nurture it, so that it remains something worth adopting.

Unintended Consequences

It’s funny how the internet works.  I was looking at Pravda.ru for more about something I heard on RT (Russian Television).  And, there I found a story that originated in my own back yard.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

 The news on RT the other day featured a man named William Engdahl who said, “The whole attack on Greece and the attack on the Euro originated from a concerted strategy of Wall Street and US Institutions to permanently cripple or try to cripple the only alternative reserve currency anywhere in the world that can challenge the dollar.”

Could there be any truth in that?  Maybe, if the process had decimated the U.S. economy as well.  Or was that part of the scheme so that stocks would fall and could be bought up for a song? 

Whatever.  It shows how loosening the rules on banking that allowed all sorts of hedging and risk insuring eventually—inevitably—made the bankers believe that making loans was risk free.  That belief inflated a bubble that imploded and ruined the world’s economy.  Not only that, there is now a growing belief that all those smart thinkers on Wall Street could not have taken the many steps they did—lobbied for new laws and everything--without knowing the outcome.  And, if they knew the outcome, there had to be a purpose in it all:  wrecking the Euro.  Conspiracy therorists unite.

 But, I didn’t find anything more about Engdahl and his theory at the Pravda site.  What I found was potentially more alarming.

 If you are old enough, you have a circular scar the size of dime on your upper arm like I do.  We were all vaccinated against smallpox once upon a time with a little bundles of needles.  Wikipedia says that as late as 1967, 15 million people worldwide contracted smallpox and 2 million died.  Then, the World Health Organization led an effort to do something remarkable.  For the first time in human history, a disease was totally eradicated.  It wasn’t easy.  Every person on Earth had to be vaccinated.  Health care workers went door-to-door in the cities, and walked dirt paths to remote shacks.  And, by December 9, 1979, virtually everyone was inoculated.  That is the date that WHO certified the planet to be free of smallpox.

 This week, researchers at George Mason University, Prince William Campus in Manassas, announced that the victory over smallpox may not have been as total as we thought.  The smallpox is still gone.  Nobody needs the vaccine anymore.  A couple generations are free of those little, round scars.  But, early research indicates that the vaccine may also have protected us against HIV.  Oops.

Not the only “oops” in the news.

 The oil companies figured out how to drill for oil thousands of feet under the ocean.  They developed shut-off valves to prevent spills.  Apparently, they did not figure out how to repair malfunctioning shut-off valves.

 A North Korean submarine fired a torpedo into the Cheonan, a South Korean naval vessel.  Was this action ordered by the North Korean government, or was it due to misunderstood orders?  Not likely it was an accident, but those things can happen, too.  It doesn’t matter.  Pyongyang has been unnecessarily belligerent, and now 46 sailors are dead.  South Korea and the U.S. are going to have to reply.  And, Kim Jong Il has promised a retaliation if he doesn’t like the South’s reaction.   Kim watches U.S. television, but apparently he missed the Sesame Street episode when they discussed the concept of what-happens-next.

 Meanwhile, the world is watching to see what happens next in Arizona, and looking for the unintended consequenses that are certain to follow their recent legislation. 

It all helps me understand the frustration of voters in the recent elections.  The world is going crazy and nothing seems to help.  Or, maybe, with the internet and multimedia communications, we’re just more aware of all the craziness that has always been there.  We should remember that elections have unintended consequences, too.

Backstabbing in Virginia: the governor's race

We just had an election here in Virginia, and I hear pundits all over the news babbling about the meaning of it all.  So far, everything I've heard is wrong.

 Democrat Creigh Deeds was not properly supported by the Democratic Party.  It is possible that Mr. Deeds does not know how to run a statewide campaign.  If that is so, the party should have provided him with advisors who could show him. 

 The fact is that most voters today make up their minds by watching television.  Newspapers are a dying media.  The internet and Twitter is not a good news source for state campaigns. One has to dig too much to find real news.  And only the faithful read the candidate's web sites.

 Republican McDonnell had at least three times the television ads that Deeds had.  And they were better.  McDonnell looked right into the camera surrounded by his family and said what a fine fellow he was.  Deeds had a couple anti-McDonnell ads, and one that showed newspaper editorials endorsing him.  Deeds never looked the voters in the eye.  He never talked about his vision for Virginia.

 He may have done that in stump speeches or in the debate, but I didn’t see those, and most other voters didn’t either. 

 I suspect that either during his long career of public service, or during the primary, Mr. Deeds ran afoul of some powerful Democrats.  The outgoing governor, Tim Kaine is Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and surely in a position to steer money toward one of the only two governors races that were held this year.  He should have matched the Republicans and seen to it that the standard bearer had at least an even chance.  He didn’t.

 Or else, the same idiots who planned Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidential nomination are now designing Democratic strategy.  Clinton lost because her campaign targeted major states and skipped over the smaller ones.  Obama won because he executed a full-on charge to get every vote he could, everywhere he could.  Maybe the general urban prejudice against someone from western, rural Virginia convinced the powers that be that Deeds couldn’t win, so they held on to their money and let him go down.

 That is cynical and unworthy of a party that is supposed to be big-tent inclusive.  By not providing a strong campaign, they’ve let down the voters.  And by letting McDonnell sweep the election, they’ve screwed over all of us here in Virginia and given the Republicans momentum for 2010.  Kaine and the rest of the Democratic leadership should be ashamed of themselves.

Quoting Lara Logan

When you hear the title “Chief Foreign Correspondent of CBS News” what image comes to mind?  A grizzled old man like Eric Severeid who looks like he’s been everywhere and seen it all, or a hot young blonde who could have stepped off the set of a daytime soap opera? 

  A couple evenings ago, Lara Logan, who is Chief Foreign Correspondent of CBS News, paid a visit to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.  Stewart regularly has serious guests sit across from him as he tries to find the fun in their subjects.  Most try to join in the merriment, and the few who miss the humor endure the interview in good graces.  Logan started off like that, light and friendly in her South African accent.

 But, her comments carried an edge of painful history.  Like many combat veterans, the 37 year-old Logan has seen what you have not, been where you have not, and understands what you never will.  However, where many vets simply lapse into silence, Logan’s job is to communicate.  The tension built up during their conversation and at last she shut Stewart down.  She did not do this with any pointed barbs, but by overflowing with the passion of her experience.

             Stewart responded to one anecdote by noting “fifty-one people were killed in Iraq today,” and wondering at how big a news event that would have been had it occurred in the U.S.  He asked, “Have we lost our humanity with this entire situation?”  I don’t think he was prepared for her answer.

        “Yeah, we have.”  

She elaborated, “You know, I was asked once, ‘Do you feel responsible for the American public having a bad view, a negative view of the war in Iraq?’ And, I looked at the reporter and I said, ‘Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier.  What does that look like?  Who in America knows what that looks like?  Because I know what that looks like.  And, I feel responsible for the fact that no-one else does.'  You know, that’s what I feel responsible for:  that no-one really understands.  And, the soldiers do feel forgotten.  They do.  No doubt.  From Afghanistan to Iraq they absolutely feel [forgotten].

            “We may be tired of hearing about this five years later.  They still have to go out and do the same job.  I was in Sadr City when it was just going absolutely hell—“  She shook her head.  “Sadr City was like Armageddon, and soldiers who had been in-country nine months had never seen combat like that.  Just thrown into it, you know.  You’re talking about convoys ambushed with five—six armor-piercing bombs, rocket propelled grenades, everything.  Nine—ten—fifteen hour battles.”

            Stewart, in a subdued and serious tone, tried to re-insert himself into his show.  “That’s something that we might just get a brief glimpse of on the news, or just a mention—and that kind of thing.”

            Logan wasn’t ready to give up yet.  “And more soldiers died in Afghanistan last month than in Iraq.  Who’s paying attention to that?  33,000—the highest troop level since the war began—seven years after we defeated the Taliban.”  Then, she ran out of steam and like the professional she is, shook hands with her host.

             You can watch the whole thing on www.thedailyshow.com.  It is as close to the attitude of a real combat veteran as you are likely to see—unless you talk to a real combat vet.  She has set herself apart from the rest of us, because we can’t possibly understand what it was like, yet she keeps trying to get through.

             It’s like lovers who think that they are the only ones to have every loved so deeply, or minorities who believe that no-one else can apprciate the suffering of discrimination.  Or, pretty much any other  extreme event, when you realize that those who weren’t there aren’t even speaking the same language as you.  The inability to communicate, and trying to contain emotions that are too volatile to hold in is a large part of what sets off Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

             I am not trying to diagnose Lara Logan.  I’m not a doctor and I don’t diagnose anyone, but I’ve seen enough people with the condition to recognize a warning sign.  Watch the interview and then watch it again.  This is what war does to someone who covers it.  Try to imagine what it does to those who fight it.