The Librarian Syndrome

Posted on 8 April 2009 by scooterbird

poundAlright, okay.  I haven’t written here in eons.  Chalk it up to a perfect storm of soul-searching, personal drama, dwelling on some insignificant details like where the next meal’s coming from, and a well-deserved vacation from, to closely paraphrase Barbara Bush on post-Katrina New Orleans, “wasting my beautiful mind on something like” the news of the day.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the wherefores, because I have a different fish to fry right now.

I do not have extensive experience in politics.  Yes, I helped to lead a political party, but we weren’t exactly in the mainstream; there were many, many backrooms where true political power was exercised that I was not invited to, and I may not have accepted even if I was.  But I can safely say that I have more than the average joe, and from observation, I may have more than the dreadful excuses for punditry whose limp opinions dominate the interminable analysis that news is subjected to, thanks to the 24-hour news cycle.  (That’s a true misnomer, by the way: there simply aren’t 24 hours of news in a day, pretty much by definition, so much of what they say has no value.)  Even if one doesn’t buy that assumption, I would hope I’d be seen as possessing at least a different point of view, informed by different but no less valid information.

With that as prologue, I feel I can say two things are true about politics: Continue reading →

Filed under: politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

In a big country

Posted on 18 April 2008 by scooterbird

(Not a complete post, but what the hey, it’s been sitting as a draft for a long while.  Also, gives me a chance to tell everyone reading that the latest episode of my podcast contains an interview with a Presidential candidate, Mike Gravel.  Go have a look!)

George Carlin had a great routine (among many) where he described being a class clown.  The whole idea of the exercise was – he shifted into a grandly projected voice at this point – “ATTRACTING ATTENTION TO YOURSELF!  Yes, that’s the name of this game: ‘dig me!'”

This of course was also the whole point of the recent spectacle that my sister discussed on her blog.  Briefly, everybody used the event of the Olympic torch relay going through San Francisco to protest any number of causes, from those directly related to China’s hosting of the Games to those having nothing whatsoever to do with it – such as a bunch of nudists calling attention to the fact that many Olympic events used to be performed in the nude and they want to, well, bring that back.  (Given, as an example, women’s beach volleyball and sumo wrestling as two events, this could be considered a double-edged sword if there ever was one.)

The problem is that we are in a country of 300 million people.  Even if we didn’t have the problem of a massive concentration of wealth and power, getting heard would be extremely difficult; with it, it’s damned well impossible.  The Green Party is a perfect example: not counting how many usually vote with us, which is often from two to ten times as many as we have registered in a particular district, we are in fact the largest Green Party in the world in terms of membership – there are about half a million registered Greens.  However, in the grand scheme of things, according to the elite, that’s chump change.

Filed under: media | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Incorrect, but certain

Posted on 13 March 2008 by scooterbird

Recently I posted elsewhere on a disturbing phenomenon* in present-day political thought – that of the 180-degree political flip. Chris Hitchens, David Horowitz, Ed Koch…I suppose you could put David Brock in the going-the-other-way category, though in that case he had some pretty compelling personal reasons behind it; the others, who wrote the ad hominem hit pieces that went after Brock, just woke up one day and decided they were bastards. The referenced article concerns David Mamet, the no-bullshit playwright, who recently chronicled in the Village Voice a similar though perhaps not as dramatic conversion while listening to NPR. Read that through with me: the writer of Glengarry Glen Ross suddenly realized that people were complex and had more than one side after listening to the news on the radio. Pretty absurd when you consider it, but such are the nature of these “conversions”; Hitchens’s came after encountering a bunch of rifle-toting Afghani rebels carrying a picture of George W. Bush, the guy who got rid of the Taliban for them. Continue reading →

Filed under: politics | Tagged: , , , , | 8 Comments »

The mean streets

Posted on 6 March 2008 by scooterbird

My blogbuddy/homegirl K. Diddy beat me to this story, which makes me sad, because it’s just soooo delicious.  I mean, hey, I’ve been to Starbucks, too, and I’m right near the city where The Wire is shot – I can write a book about that!

I did, however, one-up kdiddy on this one.  Hah!  Link the Times in one graf – smack ’em down in the next!

And of course, we discover today that the firing of Marc Steiner from WYPR really didn’t have anything to do with ratings (which, you must admit, didn’t really cut the mustard considering this is a public radio station), but more that board members were just butthurt at having the progressive talker be the centerpiece of the station and not the wannabe-corporate money men.  (City Paper reported the same idiots were trying to can Steiner back in 2005.)

I have to wonder if journalism is really that difficult of a profession that writing actual news just doesn’t work any more.  However, if you look at it another way, the best news show out there is probably The Daily Show, so maybe there’s just a convergency happening somewhere in the mushy middle between news and Hollywood.

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Goin’ to the candidates’ debate…

Posted on 12 January 2008 by scooterbird

Before you ask the question, the answer is yes – I do in fact wonder if it’s all worthwhile, sometimes.

No one has heard of Jesse Johnson, the candidate that I’m supporting for President. Our Web page isn’t even up yet. The last candidate who ran for us, David Cobb, is still far from a household name, was ignored with malice aforethought in 2004, and ran on a budget that would have been more appropriate for a council run in a medium-sized city, such as Grand Rapids or Daytona Beach – and we, frankly, aren’t even on that scale yet. And yet here I go, crossing the country tomorrow to get him into the Green Party debate in San Francisco. Press coverage will be scant, and the mainstream sources will either give a single line blurb or might actually go to three or four lines if they find something they can ridicule. Of course, if I ever wish to feel better, I just watch the Republican or Democratic debates, and it reminds me of why I’m doing this.

(Had more to write, but WP just blew away half my post with this ridiculous toolbar. Clearly, I’m going to have to get used to this.)

Filed under: greens | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

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