Media Artifact

In the coverage of Dean taking the DNC helm, hardly a story is filed without reference to The Scream. These references make me scream.

There never was a Dean Scream. It didn't happen.

Not in real life, anyway.

Everybody knows the scream was a glitch, an event that happened on television and nowhere else. It did not happen in the room where Howard Dean gave his speech while hundreds tried to hear him. Everyone knows that the din of the crowd drowned out the sound coming out of Howard Dean's body. But the unidirectional microphone picked up Howard and excluded everthing else.

It happened on television, but not in real life. It was a media artifact, obscuring the truth, much like patient motion artifact obscures the data in an MRI test, making it impossible to know what is truly going on in the body.

The media artifact was a better story (so what if it wasn't true) so it got told. Decisions were made on the basis of it being true.

How many media artifacts obscure our body politic these days? How many decisions are being made on the basis of artifact rather than fact? How long can the body of democracy stand it?

The Iconography Has The Power!

oh, yeah. 

credits

what he/she said

well put

Something Wicked This Way Comes

I didn't really watch The Game, the Annual American Holy Moment. I like the commercials, though I expected drivel this year in the wake of the Gestapoization of Things.

Drivel, yes. But don't forget the drek.

I'm sure many will rave about the commercial with the very-good-looking actors playing soldiers coming home, and all the thank you, thank you, thank yous, dissolving with feel-good smarm into the Anheuser-Busch logo.

I was caught up in the emotion of it -- till I saw that corporate logo. It made me think: The country, The United States of America, is gone; the Corporation survives.

The Corporation thanks the soldiers for their sacrifice.

et et redux

I was right as usual. We are headed back to the days of pre-revolutionary France. Are there no honorable Republicans left in congress to stand up to the new Mussolini? Because the Dems are reduced (by the American People, rabble that they have become) to whimper and discomfort signifying less than nothing.

Ex Post Epiphany

A thought is bubbling in my brain and pushing on my fingers. What follows may be crap. I may be on a Bushian yellow brick road, I admit, but this just hit me:

The pro choice position is the only successful strategy available to the anti-abortion crowd.

What is the real objective for anti-abortion loonies?

Wait. That is just the attitude that stops dialogue in its tracks, huh?

What is the real objective of anti-abortion people? I used to think they didn't want women to have abortions, and I still think the majority of them believe that's their main goal. I also think a lot of careers have been made in the Anti-Abortion Complex (much like the Military Industrial Complex, etc). The institutionalization of protest makes it hard for some folks to go home when the game is over. What would some people do with themselves if they had to live a normal life?

But let's step aside from the loonies and the hatemongers. I want to speak to the rational anti-abortion person who sincerely wants to stop abortions out of some supposedly altruistic mindset. (full disclosure: I believe in abortion on demand, that a woman should not have to be pregnant under any circumstances if she simply does not want to be.)

In that event, pro-choice is the only anti-abortion position that works.

Women have had, do have, and will always have abortions -- because they really don't for some reason want to be pregnant . It doesn't matter if god will hate them, it doesn't matter if you will hate them. It doesn't matter. They will have an abortion. Or they will hide the pregnancy and become actual instead of theoretical murderers as they visit the Dumpster after delivery.

This last paragraph is a statement of fact, the same as "rain falls from the sky to the ground" or "Tuesday comes after Monday."

Women will have abortions.

Women will have abortions no matter what.

No matter what god thinks.
No matter what the law is.

No matter what the law is.

Women choose, whether "choice" is legal or not. Women choose.

You must stop fighting the fact that women choose. Too much energy and resources are used up in that fight, and what do you get from it? Smug mouthpieces guarding cushy talk-talk jobs is only a piece of it.

Embrace the choice! If you really care about what you say you care about, don't work for laws that say rain will fall up and Tuesday will come before Monday. Work for laws that support motherhood. Make the world a better place for mothers.

Make the world a place where pregnant women choose to become mothers.

It might be harder work. But you know what? It might not be.

Pro-Choice is the only Pro-Life philosophy that works.

Putting the Jesus back in Xian

I'm telling ya, those jokers over at UCC are liable to reclaim my wandering apostate soul (by their actions, too).

Dirty Old Lady Alert

A few laugh-out-louds and a payoff for the dirty old lady in me at Gracie.

Things That Make You Go :Snark:

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it to be true.

I of the poor white trash childhood who spent my summers in libraries and my allowance on books, who read Faulkner too early and L'Engle too late, who was told by my husband that he had "married down" --

I knew all along there were "lots of us stone folk everywhere" as the stone man said in The Point.

And I will read until I die though I'll never be as educated as the next fellow.

tee hee

Which is better, the covers or the comments?

Wounds Heel

Editor & Publisher online indeed.

He added: "I'm wounded now, but, guess what, wounds heel."

Boxer's Rebellion

Sorry for the bad pun.

I've been too depressed about the election to post in a while. But I want to record here some thoughts about today's events, I fear for future reference as things become even worse.

I have never been prouder to be a Californian. Barbara Boxer's act today, to join in with the House members in protest of the tainted Ohio electoral votes was not meaningless, despite
Tim Grieve's conclusions over at Salon.

The Democrats in Congress are, yes, powerless these days. Listen to the derision in the laughter of the "get over it" crowd.

Things are bleak, and the road ahead looks full of woe. The forces for virtue recede, and the righteous seem to have lost their way. Hope is alive only in those who rise to speak Truth to Power, the last, bright weapon Brain has against Brawn.

It is when the voices for the powerless are all, at last, silent that meaninglessness comes.

Brava, The Honorable Senator Barbara Boxer.

Rudy Rudy Rudy, this deep in Bush's doody

I am so glad to know that I am not the only one who cannot stand Rudy Giuliani.

And Another Thing

John Kerry doesn't seem to be the kind of man (I use the term purposively) to bear grudges or to indulge in smug personal comparison as a balm to setback.

But I am, (not the man part) and so in that spirit I offer this observation:

George W. Bush may have once again pulled the presidency of the United States of America out of his hat after running against a man better than him in every way, but he will always be rich white trash -- as you can see by how his daughters turned out.

More From The Writing God

"As for George W. Bush and his neoconservative helpers, they will go down in history as the grave diggers of the American empire."

And Now For Something Completely Different

For all writers, editors, book-creating people everywhere, a fun new blog to read. I love the tagline: Max Perkins, he dead. So what next?

The Onion Changes Focus.

The nation's leading source of social and political commentary based on farce has now apparently opted for irony.

Real Reporter Alive and Working in this Country Alert!

Keith Olberman, we salute you.

Another (not so blatant) Reflection on the Stupidity Theme

History has been supplanted by an imaginary past -- and no less by a bloodthirsty imaginary future.

Fear! Loathing! -- All Is Explained

I adore Simon Schama. I even own his BBC series on the History of England. In fact, there is a disc in there (or two) about the religious wars of the Charleses and the Jameses and the odd commoner, over more than a century rallying the masses to kill for God.

So are the Democrats the Catholics and the Republicans the Protestants in this meme?

{edit} oh foo I said "meme" -- forgive me . . .