In a certain plot contrivance in television serials and films the conscientious subaltern makes a fool of his pretentious jerk of a supervisor. The gimmick is overused to a fare-thee-well in such productions as the three CSI shows. What intrigues me about it is that, as so often in television scripting, it seems to appeal to a yearning in viewers to triumph over the stuffed asses who run our affairs.

Certain actors, even young ones, seem to enjoy careers playing the jerks we love to trump. My wife and I when watching television often say, We don’t like him, do we? We’re like the cop who can’t resist chasing a red Corvette. (more…)

The CNN crawl this morning declared the Flip-Flop Wars. Barack Obama had changed course about campaign finance, deciding not to limit himself to a federal contribution, and John McCain had decided offshore drilling is okay after all.

The more important issue is the press’ mindless acceptance of the received boobism that changing one’s mind, one’s position about issues, is bad. Anyone who embraces this mania du jour doesn’t hold out much promise as a leader. Anyone incapable of course corrections in response to changing circumstances is a meathead.

And yet the press maintains its ludicrous flip-flop watch as if it were a national security alert. If we elect those who never change their minds and never alter course we deserve what we get. The notion of flip-flop is bogus. It panders to ideologues. But insistence on inquiring and flexible minds in our leaders is essential. The press confuses integrity with ideology.

If Alexander the Great had not been what our feckless press is calling a flip-flopper he would have been Alexander the Loser. —DM

John McCain, who knows a thing or two about the Navy, thinks military recruits should be instructed in our foreign policy. But foreign policies fluctuate with our political EKG, while our national ideals, however soiled they may be by scare tactics, hold fast.

My most memorable experience in Navy boot camp in the early 1950s at Bainbridge, Maryland, was being shown the 1943 film The Ox-Bow Incident, starring Henry Fonda. Each and every one of us knew the United States Navy wanted us to know that a man may be unjustly accused and lynched and that it was up to each of us to stand, like Henry Fonda, against the terroristic atmosphere in which men may be wrongly accused and even executed. (more…)

Sexism, racism, agism, smoothies, bumblers, swift-boaters, dreamers—all  flavors in the great American apple pie. As we learn to avoid trans fats so we learn, ever so slowly, to wean ourselves from misogyny, racism, agism and all those other nasties.

The late Democratic primary had plenty of misogyny and racism to go around. It arose among the pundits, the voters and the candidates. But there were triumphs. As Senator Hillary Clinton said in graciously conceding the fight to Senator Barack Obama, there are now eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling, and none of us will forget it. Bless you, Senator. (more…)

(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 42, my regular pod cast for The Student Operated Press).

Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, has written a book confirming some of the public’s worst suspicions about the presidency of George W. Bush. McClellan (inset) says, among other things, the White House lied us into the Iraq war and covered up its role in destroying the career of a CIA undercover agent simply because she was married to a critic of President Bush’s war policies.

Self-righteous critics on the left and the right of the political spectrum immediately accused the once adamant Bush loyalist of being a day late and a dollar short. Why didn’t his conscience bother him when he foisted these lies on the public, his critics ask? Well, conscience isn’t always as hair-triggered as John Wayne in the movies. Sometimes it takes a lot of introspection to accept that you have been part of wrongdoing, that you are part of the problem when you have been posing as part of the solution. (more…)

It’s interesting how eager both the left and the right wings are to pull the trigger on Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, who has written a book confirming many of our worst suspicions about the Bush Administration.

If he knew his bosses were lying about Iraq and Valerie Plame, the CIA undercover agent whom they treacherously outed, why didn’t he speak up, save thousands of lives, dollars and damages? That’s what many of his critics of the left and right are yowling. (more…)

Do you remember The Gates (inset) in Central Park in 2005, that hydrology of orange banners installed by Christos and Jeanne-Claude? I don’t think anybody mentioned it at the time but it had a precedent among the Arabs. They used to hold great poetry competitions in which the poems were painted on vast banners. The banners were then carried onto fields, turning them into seas of calligraphy. (more…)

Greg Palast, the outré investigative reporter, claims the Iraq war and the subsequent surge are a global swindle— read about it here— a conspiracy of government and industry to pick our pockets and to hell with the future.

How much truth there is in this, if any, remains to be seen. But considering the sheer amount of inconsequential BS fed to us by the media—Barack Obama’s elitism, Hillary Clinton’s abrasiveness, etc—isn’t it a wee bit strange that nobody in the mainstream media even pretends to examine Palast’s contention? Reminds you of how they sat on their hands while the White House lied us into a catastrophic war, doesn’t it?

After all, media gasbags are perfectly willing to waste their time and ours entertaining stupid notions like the McCain-Clinton gas tax holiday or some ditzy celeb’s boringly bad behavior, so what’s their problem giving Palast’s theory a toss? Oh, that would be irresponsible journalism, right? Like yakking about John Edwards’ hair?

And why hasn’t Congress asked him to testify. After all, he was once a congressional investigator.

I don’t always know what to make of Palast. His hopped-up language worries his most serious reports. But we know Enron manipulated California’s power supply, so why is Palast’s notion so unworthy of inquiry? Is it unimaginable that Big Oil would con us? Or is it because the Big Media yakkers, while telling us what a great job they are doing, are doing a job on us? —DM

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing.

—Henry David Thoreau

One of the many blessings of growing old is a certain integrity of smile. There is an instant of delay between cause and effect in which we’re invited to wonder if an elderly person is going to smile at all. I admire this inordinately. The sheer amount of electrical energy required of the young to smile all too often and laugh all too loudly is appalling.

I suppose it’s rooted in desire to please, a disease which handles the elderly more gently than it does the rest of us. (more…)

If you’d like to look at the changing face of news, consider your own Google home page. Savor its interactivity. You can organize your news, weather maps, solar systems, art exegesis, you name it, and the list of “gadgets” grows almost daily. You can design your own newspaper.

But it’s no longer a paper, it’s news from the ether, and it’s being updated and reedited around the clock. More than all the words about the demise of the newspaper, your home page can tell the story. You can do with your cursor what it costs a paper-and-ink newsroom big bucks to do. (more…)