Virtual, but permanent.
Missives from the most primitive place on earth.
The California wildfires of 2007 will rank among the greatest tragedies that the state has endured. The only positive outcome of this tragedy could have been the halting of the filming of some of the horrible shows that that pass for entertainment on American television. Alas, the producers of 24 managed to resume filming at their Los Angeles studio, instead. The Writer’s Guild strike is the only hope we have left.
KTLA anchor Hal Fishman dead at 75 | Los Angeles Times
It is an awful thing to rejoice in another human’s demise, and that is not the intent of this essay’s writer. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to feel a sense of relief at the demise of a mainstream newscaster who had made the spreading of ignorance the primary purpose of his life in his final years. Hal Fishman, the famed anchorman of the ten o’clock news hour on channel five in Los Angeles is the subject, and his death feels like a blessing for the utterly anesthetized citizens of Los Angeles.
Although the thinking denizens of this city had long ago tuned away from the inane commercial blather that has passed for local broadcast news in Los Angeles, Fishman’s presence was singularly vexing in this lanscape of stupidity because he refused to hold the line at commercial blather. He insisted on disseminating an altogether common and utterly senseless ignorance in the guise of news analysis–the acceptance and the repeating of which by many in the primordial soup has been a source of anguish for the thinking members of this city since September 11, 2001. Fishman’s manifest existence as an irresponsible news director, a horribly misinformed reporter and a man radically deficient in faculties of reason and compassion is missing from all the obituaries that have been written. Perhaps, this post will set the record straight.
The Channel 5 News at Ten was a venerable news program, until Fishman became the news director some twenty years ago. On his watch, world news was reduced from a quarter of the broadcast to a minute while Los Angeles became the most ethnically diverse city in the United States. Fishman greeted the influx of Mexicans, Chinese, Koreans, Persians, Japanese, Israelis, Armenians, Russians and countless other nationalities with a reduction in the coverage of global events. As the American and especially the Californian economy became ever more dependent on global politics, Fishman deprived viewers of the information they needed to understand their own city.
At the same time KTLA became a member of the new Warner Brothers television network, and Fishman spinelessly went along with corporate directives to promote the networks programming during the news hour. Consequently, the raw news content of the news hour was reduced to less than twenty minutes of news and nearly forty minutes of advertising posing as “entertainment news” and sports advertising masquerading as “sports news”. Naturally, as the foreigners were driven to the international channels to get international news, Fishman and the rest of the management justified this stupidity on grounds of ratings.
To compensate for this demise, Fishman elected to speak his mind on subjects as inane as Britney Spears and as profound as military strategy in Iraq. In the former case, Fishman exhibited unbelievable hypocrisy, and in the latter he displayed his prejudices and his ignorance as proudly and as conspicuously as a peacock.
Fishman was the consummate curmudgeon when he complained about all the attention that Britney Spears was receiving from the press. Yet, he allowed the prime time news hour to be hijacked for the sake of advertising by the CW network bosses. It was on Fishman’s watch that half of the News at Ten (and the entirety of the KTLA morning “news”) became advertising space for Warner Brothers products. Fishman complained, but he never complained about the corporate overlords to whom he had capitulated when he allowed his news program to be used in the service of people like Spears.
Fishman also never cared to reconcile his half-baked patriotic ideas with the realities of world and war. In one salient instance, when a New York Times article that the insurrection in Iraq had reduced some cities to virtual “ghost towns”, Fishman advocated the carpet bombing of these cities because this action would have minimal “collateral damage” and because carpet bombing of cities like Hamburg, Dresden and Berlin had won World War II. Fishman even went so far as to claim that such carpet bombing wins wars.
Apparently Fishman was unaware that historians (civil and miliatry) have assessed the indiscriminate bombing of German and Japanese towns as strategically useless in WW II. Germany ultimately succumbed because its production of munitions, fuel and soldiers was insufficient for a fight on two fronts. Similarly, Japan’s resolve was not weakened by the firebombing of the country, but by the specter of the atomic bomb. No historian has ever claimed that indiscriminate bombing of civilians win wars. Why would they? The strategy had no effect in WW II and disastrous effect in Vietnam.
Nevertheless, Fishman felt emboldened to speak something that was completely and utterly false on the air. One can offer a great many reasons for why he did so, but it is difficult to ascribe such comments to anything other than ignorance born of misplaced patriotism and arrogance.
These elements suffused nearly every commentary Fishman ever made. He never bothered to correct the record, or to make his remarks more considered. When I corrected him by bringing to his attention that his remarks regarding Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction had been thoroughly and absolutely refuted by the WMD Commission years prior, he only responded by saying that he may take those findings into consideration. In as much, Fishman spent his later years not just as a lousy commentator, but a decidedly incompetent reporter.Â
What a shame that the man felt compelled to forego the legacy he had built through many good years in the seventies and eighties. May Hal Fishman rest in peace, and may his legacy be defined by the good years he had; not the miserable final years. People should not forget, however, what an instrumental role he played in the destruction of the news service in Los Angeles.
The West Hollywood Book Fair is not by any means the largest in the country or even in LA. The largest book fair in the primordial soup is indisputably the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which is held annually at UCLA. The West Hollywood Book Fair is a very small and civilized affair held in West Hollywood Park. (The term “park” is used liberally here, for the actual plot of land allotted to the public under this designation is astoundingly paltry. Public spaces in the primordial soup typically are astoundingly paltry.)
The WeHo Book Fair is composed primarily, naturally, of gay and new age literature. A healthy contingent of writing groups are also well represented because this is the city where nearly 50% of the population (yours truly excluded, for now) are writers. And, last, though by no means least, are the various political groups: the ACLU, Pacifica Radio and other fringe groups. Especially radical groups were pleasantly and conspicuously absent.
I was surprised to see John Dean‘s name listed on a panel that was about to start in five minutes, so I lingered to hear what he and the others were going to say. The other panelists were Dennis Loo and Susan Estrich, who neglected to show up.
It proved to be an instructive panel to attend primarily because of the juxtaposition of an eminently rational man like John Dean against a polemicist like Dennis Loo. (The juxtaposition would be instructive were it made with any polemicist, even with Bill O’Reilly.) Such a juxtaposition is the perfect means of demonstrating the intellectual deficiencies of the political fringes. Whether it’s the radical right or the radical left, placing either one next to a man who coolly and civilly advocates the boring, fair and historically proven method of due process vanquishes all doubt regarding whom people need to support politically: the boring guy.
Lest one be tempted to dismiss the boring guy, one must bear in mind that the boring guy here, John Dean, brought down the entire Nixon Presidency. Hence, it is absurd to think that such men are ineffective or otherwise useless in the establishment of an effective government. Quite the contrary, history and the cabal of fanatics that has been in control of the US government since 1994 clearly demonstrate that it is the fanatics that invariably destroy governments and subsequently nations. Hitler, Mussolini, Khomeini, Pol Pot, Karadzic, Mugabe and countless others have proved the destructive force of fanaticism beyond the shadow of any doubt. Yet, we are stuck with fanatics.
And, what do we do against fanatics? Dean admirably argued for the restoration of the processes that have kept fanatics out of the political system and have kept in check the fanatics who managed to enter politics. Loo argued for buying and wearing orange colored products in order to advocate impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
Dean argued that the processes that assert the will of the people and that advocate the interests of the nation need to be restored. Loo asserted that we need a “hero” to fight this battle against the titans of evil who are governing our nation. Dean advocated a practical focus on winning elections. Loo simply asserted that elections are hopeless, and that we have no remedy, though he did offer hope in the form of his book.Â
The moderator gave me the microphone, and I asked these men what we, the disenfranchised public, can do to reverse the nation’s course? Loo suggested that I buy orange personal decorations, because it was his brilliant idea to start an “orange campaign” for impeachment. Dean reasserted the fact that the Republicans understand the importance of process enough to have modified it heavily in their favor. He, therefore, advocated that Democrats erase these imbalances while they wield power. Loo did not disagree with this, but all he could advocate was wearing orange and protesting.
Loo also employed fear tactics for no apparent reason. He insisted that the US will attack Iran, that electronic voting machines are hackable and will be hacked, that impeachment is the only answer even if diverts resources from worthwhile causes. Naturally, he offered no real remedy to these doomsday scenarios. An ostensibly educated man, Loo could not offer so much as a notion of a process by which electronic voting machines could be challenged. Fear of the devices was apparently enough for him.
And, that is where I lost my faith in the “left” in American politics. The American “left” differs little tactically from the radical right in American politics. Its tactics consist of fear. Practically, the difference is like night and day. The right, as Dean correctly noted, understands process. It understands power, and it has the desire to wield it. It will go far in corrupting the process, as Hitler did (Dean’s comparison, not mine!), in order to wield absolute power. And, the American “left” responds to this corruption of process with a symbolic orange campaign. In insisting on a “hero” it was almost as if Loo was begging for another Martin Luther to start a new movement, a new government, a new nation.
Heroes are the desire of the hopeless. I have no heros for I have some confidence (still) in my abilities. Dean asked for no heroes because he has been in politics enough to know that process has a far greater impact than the impact that any one “hero” can have. After all, the only difference between democracy and fascism is, in fact, the process.Â
Perhaps it’s in keeping with the American tradition of creating a new religious sect or movement when one is not satisfied with one’s innate religion. The American left’s fantasies of revolution (a mantra repeated ad nauseum by the left and the right), however, can never become reality. Freedom of religion enables new religions. The Constitutional system provides little recourse for change outside the Constitution itself. Hence, Dean is absolutely right when he says that it is important to restore and repair the processes of governance, and Loo and his fellow “leftists” are little more than egomaniacal fear mongers who are far more content with selling orange clothing than they are with advocating action. “Turn on, tune in, drop out” is a message that many baby boomers are happy to propagate, albeit from their comfortable tenured positions. And, somehow, they are mystified by the (good) fact that they wield no power.
Ahhh, to be free to think and to act. Neither the left nor the right will ever advocate freedom of thought and expression, for this freedom is inimical to the stupidity that both sides advocate under the headings of objectivism, neo-conservatism, liberalism, communism and, yes, even conservatism.Â
Today’s morning walk went far to clear my head. At 10 a.m., I passed by the Belmont Cafe on La Cienega. On their beautiful patio, David Spade was engaged in a rather heated and emotional exchange with an absolutely stunning waitress. It is difficult to posit any reason other than hubris for a celebrity to be bothering a common citizen at her workplace at ten in the morning.
Then again, in the primordial soup, the title of “celebrity” seems to be sufficient license for many to do as they please. The tacit acceptance of such license is the reason why so many wish to be celebrities, and why the rest wish nothing to do with them.
Online NewsHour: America’s Infrastructure Needs Crucial Repairs — April 4, 2006
Ever since one of the major bridges connecting Minneapolis to suburbs across the Mississippi river spontaneously collapsed, considerable time has been spent on the discussion of the state of the American infrastructure. In all of these discussion, little mention was ever made of the bipartisan report commissioned by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The results were released over a year and a half ago, and the commission endorsed the findings of the Association of Civil Engineers’ estimates.
What the association of civil engineers has done — and they do this every two or three years — is they do some kind of a balance sheet of the nation’s public assets. And they give it a grade, about A, B, C, D, on the level of being adequate.
And they’ve come up — their latest figure is that it would take a $1.6 trillion dollars to bring the infrastructure of this country up to an acceptable level of decency. We’re falling another $300 billion every two or three years behind because we don’t provide adequate support to this problem.
Now, I can also tell you that it’s very difficult to do this if you religiously think that you can’t raise taxes, and that you can’t raise revenues, and that fees are a problem, and, certainly, taxes are a problem.
Future failures of the sort that unraveled so dramatically in Minnesota in August of 2007 should therefore come as no surprise to anyone. We were all adequately forewarned, it would seem.
Technology News: Music: SpiralFrog Hops Into Digital Music Pond With Free Downloads
Undoubtedly, the greatest challenge to Apple’s dominance of the digital music market has come from the Russian pseudopirates allofmp3.com. Fortunately for Apple, allofmp3.com was shut down recently by a Russian court responding to international charges of piracy, but unfortunately for Apple, another Russian court recently ruled that allofmp3.com’s operation are legal, and allofmp3.com will be operational again, soon.
In the meantime, the American record industry has been wasting its resources with perhaps the dumbest idea ever to emerge from this industry: www.spiralfrog.com. According to the article linked above:
Once downloaded, the user can play the songs via a PC through Windows Media Player or a portable player that supports WMA files. SpiralFrog doesn’t support playback on Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPod line or even Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) Zune, nor does it provide a solution for Mac OS X users. The service only works via Windows XP or Vista PCs.
Furthermore, the user must remain active on the web site while songs are downloaded one at a time.
In other words, the recording industry has elected to challenge Apple’s service–which is functional and portable on Mac and Windows platforms–with a service that is functional only on the Windows platform and portable on no platform: the songs cannot be transported even on Microsoft’s Zune player. Spiralfrog.com seeks to challenge Apple by offering none of the features for which iTunes users are willing to spend hundreds of dollars (on an iPod, iPhone or other media player), and then charging the users by taxing their time in front of the computer.
Virtually all economic systems–barter, capitalism, communism, etc.–are based on the principle of quid pro quo, exchanging this for that. In total ignorance of the centuries of economic development that have resulted from the acceptance of this principle, the American recording industry is putting its weight behind a system that gives users absolutely nothing in exchange for their time and trouble. If spiralfrog.com is to be in anyway construed as a symbol of American capitalism, then heaven help the United States. The country will collapse under the weight of such stupidity long before any terrorist group can dream of executing another well coordinated attack.
As long as Apple’s iTunes Music Store is countered by such moronic efforts, buy Apple stock. 🙂
PS Universal Music has an inkling of business savvy left in its brain trusty by virtue of the Gbox service that it started in collaboration with Google. Unfortunately, this service is still for the Windows platform only, but it does sell DRM-free music in mp3 format. So, it may well become a viable challenge to Apple. PNM
Greenspan Is Critical Of Bush in Memoir | washingtonpost.com
The meaning is quite unmistakable. The implicit comparison between Clinton and Bush (W) made by Greenspan in the following paragraph (page two of the article linked above) necessarily leads to the conclusion stated in the title of this post.
However, he calls Clinton a “risk taker” who had shown a “preference for dealing in facts,” and presents Clinton and himself almost as soul mates. “Here was a fellow information hound. . . . We both read books and were curious and thoughtful about the world. . . . I never ceased to be surprised by his fascination with economic detail: the effect of Canadian lumber on housing prices and inflation. . . . He had an eye for the big picture too.”
In the rest of article, of course, Greenspan lambastes every Republican official from Bush down to Hastert and DeLay. His acerbic language (in the context of Greenspanese like “irrational exuberance”) leads one to think of how incredibly poorly these politicians must have acted in order to draw the ire of the most stolid man on the planet. Greenspan’s reaction is not just extreme by Greenspan’s own standards. It is unprecedented in American history.
Is it not?
YouTube – Miss Teen USA 2007 – South Carolina answers a question
There is little doubt that this young woman’s public humiliation is being exploited by the neanderthal institution of “beauty contests” to gain free publicity for an event that hardly gets any attention anymore. Women will feel vindicated. Men will drool over a woman who is clearly beautiful and manifestly dumb and pliable. And, the entire ruse might actually work.
One question is, will she get her fair shake? Probably. The other question is, what does this do to the credibility of the “smart is the new sexy” billboards that have cropped up all over the skyline of the primordial soup?
Best (and worst) beaches in the U.S. – Today Show – MSNBC.com
The primordial soup prides itself on being a heavenly place, a paradise of a big city by virtue of its location on the Pacific coast, its eternally sunny climate and its “casual” attitude.
Look closely, however, and you will see that the “casual” attitude is a ploy to hide the aggression that roils inside everyone, and that the city’s largest tourist attraction and crown jewel, Venice Beach, remains one of the nation’s filthiest. Considering the fact that, after 50 years of operation, the Hyperion Treatment Plant has not managed to remove this stigma from the promordial soup’s beaches, one begins to grasp neglect that the prevailing “casual” attitude has cultivated in this city.
And, just to think that it used to be worse.
Interesting news about the office workaholics | Oddly Enough | Reuters.com
This fact alone can potentially explains so much about the primordial soup: the long work hours, the unnerving sexual frustration that everybody exudes, the practice of sexual predation that passes for “dating” in this city and the emergence of the largest pornography industry on the planet. Yes, people work very hard in the primordial soup because hardly anything else ever works here.