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My local newspaper had this article as the front page story:

“Obama speech causes nationwide stir”

Apparently, parents are contemplating keeping kids at home so that they will not be exposed to the president’s address.

What?

It’s not like Mr. Obama is saying “You should tell your parents to support the inclusion of the public option.” He’s going to talk to the boys and girls of this, the nation in which he functions as the chief executive officer, and tell them that education is important and that being part of the 30% of the high school population that doesn’t make it to graduation is a less-than-stellar idea.

What’s to complain about?

Obama is not Stalin (talk to me after you compare Obama’s pogram efficacy to Old Joe’s). Obama is not Hitler (talk to me after you compare their internment camp policies). He’s the president who won his position by a democratic process. Even if you don’t like what he says, even if you cringe at every word (as I did under the malapropism mudslides that came with the infrequent public addresses of GW Bush), to say that you’re going to prevent exposure to the ideas by plugging your years or keeping your kids home in protest is the height of willful ignorance.

For the record, other luminary organizations that engaged in this behavior were: Catholic Church on “does Jupiter have moons (15th-17th century),” recording industry (circa 2000), “should the testimony of this girl be used to hang women as witches? (late 17th c., Salem, MA). See how well those worked out?

I don’t know what misplaced sense of loyalty would encourage parents to “sick-out” their kid to avoid a “study hard, this country needs you” speech. Mr. Obama is trying to say “education is important as are the skills in critical thinking it engenders.” Putting a kid on sick-out says exactly the opposite to the child. When I was a child, the president (and his wife) frequently advised us to “Just Say No,” in an era where international competition is stronger, we’re up to our eyeballs in Chinese debt, and can only seem to grow our economy by inventing crazy debt instruments, having a president say “Just Say Yes to Basic Education” is needed and ought be heard.

Curiosity is a funny thing, and sometimes breaking the taboo verbally, by merely suggesting it, leaves us all astounded, uncomfortable, and immobilized for a short amount of time. In that daze, nothing changes, but the opportunists and innovators find ways to profit by the new zeitgeist. At just about the time the public thinks that the verbally-broken taboo has gone away, the work of these opportunists and innovators surfaces and gives us a tangible artifact that the way we knew, whose existence had effectively been banished by the mere thought of the world with this change, will not be coming back.

Doubtless someone said this when the MP3 compression produced a small music file: “Hey, we could move songs over the internet in an acceptable time length over consumer-grade broadboand” I don’t doubt that those who were paying attention to this algorithm then faltered: “You mean, we could write software to move music about for free?” And then, a breath later: “we could destroy (or save the recording industry as we know it.”

Other examples are innovation, radio, television, the destruction of the newspaper, etc.

With these models in mind, it’s with some trepidation that I consider the case of [WARNING: GRUESOME FOOTAGE] Neda, the brave Iranian woman who, during a protest, appears to have been killed…on film. The legend of the snuff film is nothing new, but there’s something about the immediacy and the ubiquity of a this woman’s cruel fate that scares and awes me.

Here we are in the breathless moment I mentioned above: “Are we going to live in a world where we, and thanks to the Internet I do me all of us, see death – live?” Will this serve as that first drop of blood to our inner Audrey IIs that teaches spectator bloodlust to our culture as once belonged to the Romans and Aztecs of yore?

Don’t feed the plant

How would our world change. Perhaps with such spectator-grade gore there would be learning experiences from showing the charred bodies of those killed in combat. We would understand the horror of battle more clearly. And perhaps, too, seeing the bodies of the fallen we would better understand the incredible practice made pro patriam.

But the world we live in is not one of gravitas, a BBC world. We live in a world of fluffier stuff, and I can see a world, the ravenous chasm of which we now stand before, in which spectator bloodlust becomes blood entertainment.

If you have the stomach for the clip, you can feel it there, that adrenal cortex response as the danger grows great to the woman. As she crumples. Your animal circuits rage to run, or to fight but your cerebrum calms you down and understands it’s “just footage.” Nevertheless, the jolt was there, was real, and was vaguely stimulating in your life of Jon and Kate, of Paris Hilton, of church and taxes. It was a pituitary hypodermic straight to your “stay alive” center. Suddenly that pagan eros shoots up, the world is brighter, you feel sexier, and all those secondary adrenal responses fire reminding you to live and spread gametes.

And just like the porn genie that the internet let loose, I wonder what happens when they (probably some of those self-same entrepreneurs as they already have a taste for “extreme” entertainment) start collating blood-footage and giving it away in 30-second teaser doses for $30/month fees. Will they turn to a generation raised on mixed martial arts, war, and social dissociation to provide the willing fodder for the burgeoning market?

Mortituri nos delectabunt

If you think blood spectatorship, ask yourself is it so terribly far from martial implosion spectatorship?

Dear Huffington Post,

I love you. I worked on Arianna’s gubernatorial campaign where she autographed one of her books for me. As the big-names of journalism and television news are becoming ever more farcical, you properly captured the zeitgeist of the Obaman age.

But I implore your copywriter to stop using the term “slam” as a verb. You use it for everything. To wit:

Note that this was today’s front page.

I was going to do a short video clip where I would need the visage of Ruby creator, and general nice-guy Yukihiro Matsumoto.

By Dave Thomas

So, I go to The Google and type in “matsumoto” singly because I’m lazy.

The top image results are of Matsumoto Rangiku LINK NOT ENTIRELY WORKPLACE FRIENDLY

In the words of Stephán Urkel: “Matsumoto, Bazooms!”

Gosh.

I really think Barack, excuse me, The President is really the coolest world leader.

Previously, my list was:

1. King of Thailand
2. Carla Bruni
3. Angela Merkel of Germany, for freaking out so stylishly when she got the Bush back-rub treatment

Now it is

1. Barack Hussein Obama, POTUS
2. King of all Cosmos
3. Carla Bruni
4. King of Thailand

It was a hard choice…

versus

In all seriousness, I recall my mom once saying that in her childhood, the Kennedy era, they thought that the government were “cool” guys. I remember her saying this to me and thinking, this is somewhere in the Bush I era, “you’ve got to be joking.” Something died between Vietnam, Watergate, and has, I believe, for my generation, been dead until the election of Obama. Not ever having seen it before, we didn’t know to miss it. Having seen it again, I don’t think that I could well settle for less again.

When I was in high school I was quite captivated by Ayn Rand and the philosophies she espoused in The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and The Romantic Manifesto. Miss Rand died in 1982 and I was therefore unable to appreciate her voice and presentation style. I recall my grandmother once told me that she remembered seeing Rand often on television and I was a bit jealous. In those medieval times, the 1980’s, we couldn’t just go and summon video forth on a whim. As such, for me, Miss Rand image et voix, was her books.

Youtube changes this. I watched the following interview of Miss Rand by Phil Donohue in 1979 shortly after the death of her husband, Frank O’Connor.

To be honest, I was absolutely stunned by these 8 minutes. I was surprised not because of the content presented, I’m well familiar with it. Rather I was bowled over by the exceedingly high quality of interview facilitated by Donohue. It felt completely foreign. Her philosophy, Objectivism, is explored by in a Socratic discourse by Donohue and its more contentious points are drawn out and put to the test of several what-if scenarios.

What was particularly notable to me was the quality of questions that Donohue asked, it was clear he was familiar with the work in a substantial way. He was not basing his questions on hearsay of some snippet that had come from some other show or some talking point. It also appears to have been understood, in general, that Rand was a “public intellectual”, someone with something to say and someone to whom people could respond with questions and requests for further clarification. I do recall Donohue on during the daytime in the early 1980’s and didn’t understand why he was regarded as a “big deal.” I get it now.

I look at my own times and see the great paucity of such figures, intellectual and interlocutor alike. Today we are awash in self-righteous intellectual gasconade by the likes of infotaining fauxlebrities ( and neologistic bloggers, ahem ) in awe of their own cult of personality. Those that would call their opponents pinheads and tell them to “shut up” continue to help race the quality of the public debate to its nadir are to be found on every channel, yet those that actually engage in a substantive exchange are few.

Can one imagine Oprah talking to an atheist, Russian, emigrée about Aristotle, the principle of non-contradiction, and welfare-state economics? I have a hard time belieiving such, having seen her promulgate the content of “The Secret” and “The Celestine Prophecy.”

To be sure, in the clip Rand certainly shows some of the truculence that marks the loudest of those who ringmaster cargo-cult hours on the “news” channels: in one of the sections she harangues an audience member in a way that felt entirely familiar to those who have seen Bill O’Reilly do his “poor me, it’s a conspiracy” bit when interviewed by another as to how he handles certain interviewees who have caught him with his intellectual pants down.

That there has been a consistent downward slide was confirmed by another interview of Rand, this time performed by a Bryl-cream and bravado Mike Wallace.

Reading up about this show, thanks to The University of Texas’ wonderful HRC, I see that it ran in 1957 and interviewed Dali, Eleanor Roosevelt, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Lili St. Cyr (va-voom!). If I turn on my TV right now, at 10 o’clock, I believe I should find nothing as captivating as any of these episodes. Another 30 minutes of “Ow, my balls ” has little allure for me.

In Holland the evening programming on Nederland 1 was also news-based, direct information targeted at an informed population. In such a tiny country the news that was made that day could be discussed, substantively, with the makers of that news that night in The Hague. Can you imagine evening programming on the IQ level of Charlie Rose; better, a panel of Charlie Roses?

I encourage you to watch these clips and see a time when we had a better calibre of news show, and a better calibre of interview.

My colleague, Kev, from the Midlands of UK said to me, as we had dinner last night, while watching the CNN coverage:

“It’s your Kennedy moment”.

When asked to expand he continued: “You know, that place in history and time that you’re always going to remember where you were and what you were doing.”

I shall always remember yesterday evening: the repudiation of the insanity of the Bush debacle, the fresh air of hope, the sense that an old way of doing things had come to an end. It was a wonderful day.

As i have cringed for the last 8 years every time the president started talking, as a promisory not on the mellifluous rhetoric that we shall enjoy for the next 4 years:

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. Watch Obama’s speech in its entirety »

It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he’s fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Gov. Palin for all that they’ve achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation’s next first lady Michelle Obama.

Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the new White House.

And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother’s watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you’ve given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best — the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod who’s been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn’t do this just to win an election. And I know you didn’t do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education.

There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can’t solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let’s remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those — to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That’s the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome.” Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves — if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Stunning, beautiful, eloquent. If he can lead, and we can do, with only a third that power, then this country will truly transform itself.

STEVEN and LAUREN are in the living room. The TV plays something they’re not paying attention to:

LAUREN : Hey I was thinking, I would like to see a movie.

STEVEN: Great, what’s playing

LAUREN grabs her computer and a few keyboard ticks later starts reeling off the names of movies:

LAUREN: “Eagle Eye”, “Burn After Reading”, “Knights of Rodanthe”

STEVEN: Whoa! “Knights of Rodanthe”, what’s that about? Horses and swords? I’m thinking like the “Knights of Cydonia” video by Muse.

LAUREN: No, “Nights in Rodanthe”: the movie with Richard Gere and Diane Lane by the beach.

STEVEN: Oh, uh, no thanks.

LAUREN reads off several other movies

STEVEN: Maybe we should just watch “The Adams Chronicles” instead.

LAUREN: OK.

-Fin-

Here is the “Knights of Cydonia” video:

I loved Ellison’s Invisible Man: a smart black man refuses to be the tool of American hypocrisy or Communist rabble–rousers and instead asks society to engage him in the most difficult way possible: as a man in himself.

Ellison’s writing has a stark, almost journalistic character, but you definitely feel his familiarity with the Southern Gothic’s sentimentalism.

In an absolutely beautiful sample of Ellison’s style I cite:

Materially, psychologically and culturally, part of the nation’s heritage is Negro American, and whatever it becomes will be shaped in part by the Negro’s presence. Which is fortunate, for today it is the black American who puts pressure upon the nation to live up to its ideals. It is he who gives creative tension to our struggle for justice and for the elimination of those factors, social and psychological, which make for slums and shaky suburban communities. It is he who insists that we purify the American language by demanding that there be a closer correlation between the meaning of words and reality, between ideal and conduct, our assertions and our actions. Without the black American, something irrepressibly hopeful and creative would go out of the American spirit, and the nation might well succumb to the moral slobbism that has ever threatened its existence from within.

America Without the Negro