Hitting the Books

True Confession: I still read books - you remember, those old-fashioned, clunky, musty, bulky things that require page-turning and bookmarks rather than mouse-clicks and wheel-turns. And well yes, there is that need to remember where you left the damned things - oh for an equivalent of Net "bookmark"! Okay, your recollection is correct, some of them do tend to go on a bit, especially if you are the sort who chafes at overly-long sound-bites. A decently long book might last you for weeks (I feel your shudder), admittedly longer than many north americans at least seem to be able to sustain a train of thought.

Actually "devour" might be a better term than "read," as it properly invokes zeal and passion, at risk of exaggerating my true processing speed. I have taken to recording and categorizing my reading over the past decade or so, as personal goad and intrinsically interesting. For example, that record highlights an increase in current events/politics reading in the past 3 or 4 years as well as a decline in what I loosely categorize as "youthful" fiction (e.g., Lemony Snicket), as our offspring have fledged. Fiction versus non-fiction numbers tend to swing rather wildly, self-analysis yet to yield fruit on that score.

I bring this up in anticipation of at least a post or two on the subject of book-buying and related joys. While I buy and receive (and cherish) brand-new books, my personal book-hunting pleasure recently involves used books. I am not a bibliophile, collecting first editions or prized versions, merely a patron of the used-book trade and I guess a companion-in-arms to the garage-sale afficionado. If necessary I can fall back on a list of books of interest, but that crutch is rarely needed. Especially satisfying to me is finding something of interest in the discard pile out on the sidewalk. It's definitely in the category of treasure hunt. In a typical week I find at least a couple $2 prizes of the sort to make that mythical desert island sojourn much more tolerable.

In the meantime I need more bookcases.

A Memorial to Protesters - the Real Patriots

It's a special treat to encounter inspiring unpaid citizen-writing. Here's a terrific LTE published June 2, 2005 in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, brought to my attention by sharp-eyed co-worker. I believe the holiday is far enough behind us now to soberly and gently probe some of the PC aspects of that holiday:

We can thank protesters for what Americans enjoy.

After the usual hyperbole around Memorial Day has faded, perhaps we can take a short reality break.

The freedoms that Americans enjoy have been secured for us by protesters, not by the military. There may have been a time when the military actually did help secure our rights, but that was the late 1700s. Since then the military has been all about making the world safe for corporations, at the expense of human rights.

Our military, along with the British and Soviets especially, did save Europe and Asia from the ravages of Nazism. But that would not have been necessary if our government and business leaders had not helped to bring the Nazis to power in the first place. [Sir G: those businesses of course prominently featuring progenitors of the Bush dynasty, among other US plutocrats] So during the 1940s, the military was not protecting our rights as much as it was cleaning up the mess made by corporations and their puppet government.

But that was 60 years ago. Before that and ever since, the military has been in the business of oppression. I realize that some people do not want to believe this. But reality is not a matter of preference. We have rights because we have had protesters demanding those rights.

Let us not forget the brave souls who brought us the eight-hour workday, worker's safety protections, voting rights for women and people of color, an end to the Vietnam War and on and on. These are the people who have and are truly serving their country.

Those in the military are serving the military-industrial complex. President Eisenhower made this clear in his farewell speech. We would do well to deal with reality to face our problems rather than living the lies that corporate America shoves down our throats daily and hourly.

We should pity those in the military, trapped there by the poverty draft, dying to make the world more profitable for some. Let us honor their willingness to serve by ending the criminal war in Iraq and vowing never again to go to war for lies or for the profits of a small minority.

Richard Curtis
Seattle

Glad-handing the Press

I still occasionally encounter troubling complimentary noises to the effect that Tim Russert is the most "hard-hitting" of the major media journalist-interviewers. There may even be some truth in that, in the sense that most of his peers are even more sycophantic, fawning, and devoid of the gumption to actually risk making weasily, conniving politicians slightly uncomfortable than is Mr. Russert. But we need to attend much more carefully to calibrating our sense of where we are on the spectrum stretching from aggressive independent journalism to paid flackery of the sort the Bush administration has been indulging in. Russert, sadly, seems to routinely fall to the "flack" side of center (presumably under "volunteerism" - do you suppose it is tax-deductible?). Given daily evidence as to just how gullible, irrational, and/or plain stupid our species can tend to be, that is truly worrisome.

An article like this one by Ms. Huffington should probably be required reading before any viewing of Meet the Press, sort of like mandatory innoculations before visiting tropical jungles. There is some pain in excerpting, as the entire post deserves attentive reading:

As expected, the latest edition of Meet the Press, featuring RNC chair Ken Mehlman, was another classic example of why host Tim Russert is fast becoming journalism’s answer to the “E-ZPass,” those electronic tags that allow drivers to go through toll booths without having to stop. On the show today, Mehlman was allowed to distort, twist, manipulate, obfuscate and "disassemble" his way through every stop on the disinformation highway.

The key to the E-ZPass method, as HuffPost reader Paul Harry points out, is no follow-ups -- or lame follow-ups quickly abandoned. And Mehlman is a master at dealing with those. His technique? Just repeat or slightly rephrase his talking point, and trust that Russert will give up, wave him on, and proceed to the next prepared question.

To see a master in action, let’s go to the transcript:

Early in the interview, Russert asks Mehlman whether "the president has hit a wall with his domestic agenda… What's the problem?"

The RNC chair dances around the question so deftly his moves should be taught at Arthur Murray: "Tim, I don't think there's a problem," he responds, and then promptly changes the subject to Ronald Reagan before closing with an RNC commercial:

"Before we provided prescription drugs for Medicare, we were told it wasn’t going to happen. Before the president was able to move forward with No Child Left Behind, we were told it was stalled. We just passed class-action reform for the first time in six years and that, too, was predicted not to happen."

If Russert were doing his job, he would have countered with some well-aired problems with these three accomplishments: the Medicare prescription drug plan was promised to cost under $400 billion over ten years but now stands at $724 billion (and, in a stunning giveaway to the drug industry, the government gets no bulk purchasing discount); the No Child Left Behind Act has been such a massively underfunded disaster that 12 states are considering legislation to get out of it; and the class-action "reform" will just make it harder for injured people to get a fair day in court.

But E-ZPass Russert mentions none of the above. Instead, he waves Mehlman through and moves on to stem cell research… about which Mehlman says: “This is the first administration ever that has funded with federal dollars embryonic stem cell research.”

Does Russert bother to point out that this is not much of claim since this is the first administration ever to have had the chance to fund embryonic stem cell research? Of course not. Mehlman is in the GOP Express Lane. No need to slow down for little things like facts. Move right along.

Russert actually allows Mehlman to get away with saying, "So you have an administration that is unprecedented in our commitment to more scientific research,” without offering a spit take, a rim shot, or a “Please, Ken, not even I can let you slide on that one!”

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