For more wet elephants (in color!), check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon.
Posted tagged ‘Manicddaily pencil drawing’
Wet Day (With Elephant)!
August 22, 2010Double Standard re Constitutional Rights (Palin/Obama)
August 21, 2010
Double Standard Re Blessing America
August 20, 2010
(For those too young to know, Kate Smith was barrel-chested/voiced singer who helped popularize Irving Berlin’s now-perhaps-oversung ballad. For those too young to know, he – Irving Berlin – is the guy who wrote God Bless America.)
Business of News – the News Corp Business (and others)
August 18, 2010
"Conflict of Interest Wall"
I started today to write a post about conflicts of interest: all that business about the News Corporation (as in Rupert Murdoch’s empire and parent company of Fox News) and its $1 million donation to the Republican Governors’ Association–
I started to write about News Corporation’s protest that the donation did not represent a shadow on the “fair and balanced” reporting of Fox News. News claims any conflict of interest is nullified by the separation in its news division (the subsidiary company that didn’t make the donation) and its business division (the parent company that did make the donation).
This immense separation between the business side of the conglomerate and the news side is apparent even in the corporate name: “News” being one word and “Corporation” being another.
I included (in that not-published post) paraphrased jokes from Going Postal, the wonderful satire by the wonderful Terry Pratchett, in which Mr. Slant, zombie lawyer, explains the “Agatean Wall”, a barrier against abuse arising from conflicts of interest.
“‘How does it work exactly?” asked Vetinari.
“People agree not to do it, my Lord,” said Mr. Slant.
“I’m sorry. I thought you said there was a wall,” said Lord Vetinari.
“That’s just a name for agreeing not to do it.”
In that post, I had all kinds of witty jokes.
And then, I got too depressed to finish that post. Because the truth is that few of the people who go to Fox for their news will care about the big Republican donation. (If they know of it.)
The fact is that news is a business in this country; news organizations have constituencies of consumers; people tend to prefer reinforcement to challenge; in other words, they don’t mind biases in news, as long as the biases correspond to their own. Which brings me to the item that kept me from finishing my other post – today’s headline in the New York Daily News (ironically not owned by the News Corporation) which claimed that Obama was supporting the 9/11 Mosque but not health care for 9/11 first responders, the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. This, in spite of the fact that the Zadroga bill was defeated by Republicans in Congress, not by Obama or the Dems; in spite of the fact too, that Obama has not exactly supported the 9/11 Mosque (that’s been a source of complaint on other fronts) – he’s supported freedom of religion on private property in accordance with local law.
So this evening Obama has released a statement explicitly saying that he looked forward to signing the Zadroga bill, when passed by Congress. This, of course, is being touted by the Daily News as its personal victory. No where does the victory article mention that Republicans have so far killed the bill, not Obama. (I guess this level and kind of detail would not sell papers, even in NYC .)
Soothing/Smoothing Heartache
August 14, 2010
Back Seat
They call it heartache/heart break.
You can find references to it in any romance novel (any novel?): she/he felt as if her/his heart were breaking.
Even little children feel it. At one point when we were trying to train our oldest child, a toddler then, to go to sleep in her own bed, by herself (i.e. without mom), she sniffed to the emissary who’d been sent to comfort her: “tell mommy that my heart is full of tears.”
Okay, she was a poetic toddler, a toddler who had had a lot of classic books read aloud to her.
Still, even as a small child, she knew what scientists have only relatively recently confirmed–that grief actually manifests itself in the chest; that one’s heart really does hurt when one is sad.
What can be done about it?
Acknowledgement helps. Even in the moments I’ve sat here and written about it, the pain feels a little bit soothed.
I hesitate to call this writing “art”. But it is a kind of shaping, limning. In writing or drawing at any level, you become an archetypical portraitist, leaning back (at least a bit) from your subject–one arm extended, one thumb up–literally getting perspective.
“Shaping” – I think of a pair of hands handling clay–getting its dimensions, its contours, containing it, patting it. There is, in those manipulations, a kind of caress. Sort of like child’s forehead, in a mother’s lap now, in the backseat of a slightly old-time car (not particularly air-conditioned), the mother’s hands smoothing the forehead lightly, as the wheels turn.
My Own “Take This Job And Shove It” Moment
August 13, 2010
Should We Take The Guitar?
Thinking of Steven Slater brought me back to my own “Take This Job And Shove It” moment. It really didn’t have much to do with shoving a job (I was raised to be very very nice). It arose more in the context of seeking a job, and had to do with the Johnny Paycheck (the country music singer about whom I wrote yesterday).
This was back in my own country music days. They were also my law school days, but law school, as you may have heard, is not exactly scintillating, and my brilliant, beautiful, roommate, Cynthia, and I decided that writing country music would be a viable (and far more interesting) career alternative.
The problem with the music world is that it’s difficult to just decide to have a career in it. Especially if you are not all that talented. You need an “in”, a break, some significant help from the stars, both celestial and human; at least a hook.
Our hook came (we thought) in the form of the “Paycheck Song”, a song we wrote while interviewing for summer jobs.
It would be just perfect (we thought) for Johnny Paycheck, his next hit after “Take This Job and Shove it”.
But how could we get it to him?
We had the young and blonde part going for us; but we were far from Nashville. (We were in school in New Haven, Connecticut.) Our efforts at groupydom were going to be significantly mitigated (to use a good law school word.)
Our chance came when Johnny Paycheck came to New York, to the Lone Star Cafe.
The show was on a weekday, but hey! this was important. We took the train down in our best (in my case, only) Texas boots. Cynthia’s had tassles. Our hair gleamed, our eyes glommed, the lashes thick with mascara. Our hopes were crazily high.
So many decisions to make: should we should mention that we were in law school? (No. It would make us stand out, but might seem weird.)
Should Cynthia bring her guitar? (No. Her playing wasn’t that great, my singing worse.)
We would just give him the print version of the Paycheck song, with big smiles, a little enthusiastic crooning.
Johnny Paycheck was a short grizzled man back then; his skin had the slightly leathery look of hard living in hard weather–sun, wind, cigarette smoke.
He gave a great performance, but even in a small place like the Lone Star, the back stage was, well — way back. I remember a glimpse of the dressing room; black cowboy hats blocked the wedge of open door, a make-up mirror was overbright behind them. The people at the door didn’t seem all that interested in our page of sheet music.
Did we hand it to someone? I think so, but we couldn’t really wait all night to see what happened to it. We had a train to catch, class in the morning.
Revisiting The Past – Butting Up Against “Because”
August 11, 2010
Butting Up Against "Because"
Today, I had to go back to a neighborhood in which I lived for years, some years ago. (Important years.) I tend to really dislike this kind of journey. In my ManicDDaily way, I often wax glowingly nostalgic about old haunts (from a distance), but succumb to a terrible grimness when I actually have to go back to them. Such visits makes me revisit every road taken and not taken; also those roads that were somehow (seemingly unfairly) boarded up. In the ensuing self-castigation and resentment, all past actions (even those that turned out very well) take on the smudged hue of mistake.
Today, there was a news story that put these kinds of unuseful regrets and resentments into perspective: this was about a guy, James Fisher, described in an article in the New York Times by Dan Berry. Fisher was held on death row in Oklahoma for approximately 28 years during which the question of his guilt (for first-degree murder) was never truly adjudicated. After two trials were eventually overturned for for ineffective assistance of counsel, Mr. Fisher, though maintaining his innocence, instructed a third attorney to seek a plea bargain; on pleading guilty, he was released on the condition that he leave the State of Oklahoma immediately and never return.
Dan Berry’s article describes Mr. Fisher departure from Oklahoma, traveling, at one point ,with Stanley Washington, an aide from the Equal Justice Initiative, who himself served 16 years for non-violent drug offenses. Fisher, in the hot winds of Texas, “vented for a while about his banishment from Oklahoma. He asked Mr. Washington why they would do that, but seemed satisfied by Mr. Washington’s answer of: Who cares?”
Maybe not a just answer, but a useful one for moving on.
Why is what’s done done? Why is what’s past past? In The Thief of Time, the wonderful writer Terry Pratchett has another great answer to these types of questions: “as you accumulate years, you will learn that most answers boil down to ‘Because’.”
Tax Shortfalls – Tax Shortsightedness – Right Wrong – Krugman
August 9, 2010
In a wonderful opinion piece this morning, Paul Krugman writes of “American Going Dark” – state and local governments forced into budget cuts that are destroying all those things government typically provides –street lights, roads, schools. Although the Federal Government could help the states out, Krugman says it is strapped by deficit reducers and, worse, tax deniers – those determined to extend the Bush tax cuts for the top two percent of earners. Krugman believes that this is the natural result of a society that has decided (really since Reagan) that all government spending is bad; that it all just ends up in the pockets of “welfare queens.” (A society that ignores, for example, the government spending that goes into the pockets of Halliburton Kings.)
Actually, that last parenthetical probably doesn’t support my point (or my oversimplification of Krugman’s point), which is that government spending is necessary for a decent community and individual life, and that, in addition, by imposing taxes that allow the hiring of more service providers, government fuels the economy in ways that allowing more money to stay in the hands of millionaires does not.
Palin and others on the right insist that the end of the Bush tax cuts will hurt the “job creators” and further ruin the economic situation.
Once again you want to ask the question “where have these guys (on the right) been for the last ten years?” If the Bush tax cuts were so great for the economy, why was it in such a mess at the end of his tenure?
More importantly, the end of the Bush tax cuts will be the end of a rather special (and not distinguished for anything good) period of the U.S. economy. Allowing the cuts to expire is not a forced march into the withering desert of socialism, but a return to the tax regime in place during Clinton’s era–a time, if memory serves, of prosperity, peace, relative deficit reduction, and better employment.
Peace is an operative word in the last sentence; as Bush failed to understand, an ongoing war is not a justification for lowering taxes. The lowering of taxes in a time of two wars not only weakened us economically, it contributed to a certain blitheness about the wars, a notion that such wars could be maintained with no cost borne by the average American, but only by those GIs, reservists, and National Guardsmen (not usually among the group that profited from the tax cuts) who served tour after tour.
I don’t particularly like taxes. (I also don’t particularly like electric bills or rent. If we’re talking about lowering my financial burdens, I would put in a word for lowering the costs of fruits and vegetables, fine tea, and vampire novels.)
But I do like having subways that run on time, streets that are not infested with rats; an educated population; a national park system; culture which does not rely solely on high ticket prices; enforcement of clean food, water, air standards, and other environmental values; a medical system in which a health care provider will actually spend time with you; money that has a stable value; and protection, both at home and abroad.
Those on the “right”, and I hesitate to even give them that characterization, are simply wrong about all this.
More Pants on Fire – Palin on Taxes; Ahmadinejad on 9/11
August 7, 2010
Pants On Fire
I had been planning to write about Sarah Palin today – I dreamt last night of her scoffing at Copernicus with an aw-shucks smile and a “now, don’t go all helio-what’s-it on me.”
Only that didn’t seem truly apt. Copernicus’s theory of a sun-centered universe, as set forth in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was, in fact, revolutionary, hard for many to accept. (See e.g. what happened to Galileo.)
A better illustration of what I’m trying to get at would be Palin saying that the sky isn’t blue. (But even that’s not a great example – some could say that color is just an illusion of refracted light.)
What I’m looking for a flat-out lie. How about focusing on Palin’s statements that Democrats are now pushing the largest tax increase in history and that it will have an effect on every American who pays income taxes.
The Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact characterized this as a “pants on fire” statement. Poltifact details the various inaccuracies, but one of the basic points is that the Bush tax cuts expire on their own in 2010; the Democrats are not terminating them. If no one does anything – something this Congress is quite good at – the cuts will simply end.
More importantly, if Congress were to follow Obama’s and the Democrat’s plan – Palin says they don’t have one but that’s another flat-out lie – only the Bush tax cuts for high earners would be allowed to expire. This would result in a tax increase smaller than one passed by (hero of heroes) Ronald Reagan. Even if all the Bush tax cuts expire, and not simply those on high earners, the increase would not be the greatest in American History. (It’s also worth noting that the expiration of the cuts returns the country to the pre-Bush tax regime; it does not push it to totally new tax altitudes.)
My concern here, however, is not taxes, but political dialogue; the popularity of the flat-out lie. One would think that speaking in front of a camera would discourage lying, but the cameras just spread the lie farther, faster, even endowing it with a kind of authority, something Sarah well (shucks) knows.
So, I was going to write about Palin. And then I opened up the online Times to see Ahmadinejad denying the death toll of 9/11. “They announced that 3,000 people were killed in this incident, but there were no reports that reveal their names. Maybe you saw that, but I did not,” he blithely announced. (Where was he?)
I’m not comparing the substance of Ahmadinejad and Palin, or their general truthfulness. I hesitate to even put them in the same post because I don’t wish to imply that their aims or world view are in anyway comparable. I am struck though by the similarity of political tactic in this instance–the technique of just saying something that you think will resonate with supporters, even though you must know it’s untrue; an audacity of cynicism rather than hope.
ManicDDaily 
More On Mosques – Reverberations of Obama’s Remarks – Freedom Tower
August 16, 2010Freedom Tower - What Will It Stand For?
An article today by Victoria McGrane and Siobhan Gorman in the Wall Street Journal today discusses the reverberations of Obama’s remarks supporting the rights of Muslims to build mosques in the U.S., including in downtown Manhattan.
One conservative blogger, Pamela Geller, said that the President “has, in effect, sided with the Islamic jihadists.”
I understand that many are upset at the idea of a mosque near Ground Zero. For some, it feels almost immoral – like a murderer inheriting under their victim’s Will. That discomfort may stem in part from President Bush’s original and unfortunate characterization of the events of 9/11 as the opening salvos in a war involving foreign statelike entities rather than as a crime by heinous criminals with no independent statehood. That backdrop has become such a part of the overly simplistic body politic that for some Americans, anything that seems to favor (or even to not disfavor) Muslims is deemed to give aid and comfort to a broad and amorphous enemy.
Putting that aside (which, frankly, is almost impossible for many), the current attacks on President Obama just don’t make sense:
5. Some object to U.S. mosques, when what they truly oppose are Muslims in the U.S. But their ire is misspent – freedom of worship for Muslims already here is simply a different issue than immigration policy.
Categories: New York City, news, Uncategorized
Tags: 9/11 Mosque, drawing of Freedom Tower, Gary Berntsen, Gary Sterntsen, manicddaily, Manicddaily pencil drawing, mosques in U.S. Mosque near Ground Zero, Pamela Geller on mosque, President Obama on Mosques, Wall Street Journal re Obama's comments on Mosque
Comments: 2 Comments