This is the media’s Hurricane Katrina

Posted on June 1, 2010 by 40andover

I believe the Gulf disaster defies analogy.

But we need to pigeon hole this one for the 24 hour news re-cycle. Hmmm. Hurricane Katrina. Yeah, that’s it! Let’s exploit another episode of human suffering for the sake of ratings. That’s why the media asks, “Is this Obama’s Hurricane Katrina?”. Because that was the most recent large scale disaster. We can’t remember back almost 10 years to ask if this is “Obama’s 9/11”.

And it feeds our need, in a situation out of control, for symmetry with past events so we can pretend to understand the event and its ramifications and then go back to watching Britney Spears. The pathology of fear symmetry.

Let’s not make this about President Obama, although it would make it easier if it were. It is about greed and reckless indifference to our earth. It is about a problem of unimaginable scope causing imponderable calamity for all living beings.

We elected President Obama because he is unflappable, at least in public. Now, we are pissed because he doesn’t express constant outrage to satisfy CNN, FOX, and MSNBC and our own fear symmetry pathology.

Everyone, listen up:

Rule 1 of disaster reaction: If the only people with the machinery to solve the problem are the ones who caused the problem, don’t piss them off. If you make it so they can never get out from under the liability, they will take their marbles and go home and then all is lost. Sometimes it feels good to yell at a given moment, but it hurts you in the long run (ever hear the old saw, “don’t cut off your nose to spite your face”?).

Rule 2 of disaster reaction: There is no easy resolution to this problem because no one prepared for this disaster. Not BP and not the United States. Preparation would have required years of research and development by top scientists and hundreds of millions of dollars. So, blame Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. Even throw Carter, Ford and Nixon under that bus while you’re at it.

Rule 3 of disaster reaction: Everyone wastes time pointing figures at others. And take out the mirror. All of us. We are the problem, too. Consume too much? Vote for the Drill, Baby, Drill ticket?

Rule 4 of disaster reaction: DON’T TELL THE PUBLIC THE TRUTH. WE CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH (Jack Nicholson was right in “A Few Good Men”). We also expect that everything will get fixed for us, preferably within a day’s trading session at the New York Stock Exchange.

Rule 5 of disaster reaction: The media feeds our ridiculous expectations and our hubris. So, Anderson Cooper, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Maureen Dowd, Jack Cafferty, Wolf Blitzer and whoever else: stop with the comparisons and come up with ways to heal our earth, ways to help our fellow Americans, our wildlife, etc. Set up a disaster relief fund.

Reality No. 1 of Disasters: The man in charge — President Obama — wanted this gusher plugged the minute it happened. You think he wants to go down as the president who screwed up this disaster response?

Reality No. 2 of Disasters: Everyone is an armchair quarterback. If you can help, then help. If you can’t, then shut up.

Reality No. 3 of Disasters: If there weren’t a disaster, the media would create one. So, for the 45th President of the United States of America, what will be your Gulf Oil Spill Disaster?

This Blogger’s No. 1 Fear: If it is ever over, we will forget about it in a New York minute.

Don’t cry for me, Argentina . . .

Posted on May 12, 2010 by 40andover

No, not “Evita!” the musical sensation of the 1970s about Eva Peron.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is living out loud and proud, trying to patch things up with his girlfriend. It was all a misunderstanding — when we heard Appalachian trail, he said “Argentinian tail”. [see http://40andoverblog.com/p?120]

But, at least he isn’t lying anymore and he maintains contact with his government on his weekends away. If only other “family values” candidates would be open about marital issues, gay issues and the tough stuff of life that affects all of us, maybe we can re-calibrate expectations of our politicians and ourselves. I am not saying that infidelity and lying are ok. I am saying live the truth so you don’t have to lie. So many less lives get shattered that way.

He behaved like a child but he is trying to live as grown-up now. It is a good start.

The Health Care Debate

Posted on March 27, 2010 by 40andover

Let’s just hold this space for my rant, once I get it under control. Setting aside what you believe, there are people in the country who have behaved so abominably in the tactics they used and the violence they unleashed. And they are maybe worse than unpatriotic, because what they did undermines our system of government and our society. I believe that these people are traitors to our nation and its government because they want to win at all costs, without thought to the preservation of the union. In contra-distinction, those opposed to government action under the Bush-Cheney years did not physically and verbally attack lawmakers who put us in debt for generations, have rifle scopes put on where lawmakers live, and say things like, “you’re a dead man!”

Sen. McCain wants to repeal some of the very things that were part of his platform, until he changed with the direction of the wind. Some maverick.

Many of our representatives have breached their oaths of office. And in the process, they have stoked class warfare and racial distrust and enabled fringe groups to deny the legitimacy of Barack Obama as president of the United States.

But, still, I haven’t gotten my thoughts together yet, so stay tuned.

The Worst Job in the World goes to . . .

Posted on December 3, 2009 by 40andover

President Obama. Poor guy.

Imagine if the size of your ears were scrutinized.

Imagine if the guy who had your job overspent, took too many vacations, broke the law, got some of the neighbors’ kids killed, made all your lenders angry and now some are threatening to come after you with a shot gun. Oh, and he forgot to tell you, the building is in foreclosure and the vending machine is busted.

Imagine if your words parsed for meaning. A mere, “Good morning,” could cause hours of “news” commentary on your inflection, your eye contact and whether or not you smiled. Hey, with such tough audiences, I would read from teleprompters, too.

Imagine if you couldn’t take a walk without it being, literally, an issue of national security.

Imagine if every morning you had to deal with two wars, bankers, a psycho in Iran building nuclear weapons, Israeli settlements, global warming, souring health care reform, joblessness and an economic crisis du jour.

Imagine if everyone feels entitled to have an opinion on your private life.

Imagine if you could never make a mistake. EVER.

Enough Polling, Please

Posted on November 18, 2009 by 40andover

What I have learned by being sick at home watching news shows in between naps and flu-induced coma like behavior:

There is a “just released” poll for everything nowadays. There are instant polls and twitter polls. There are online polls and telephone polls. While the actual number crunching may be scientific, there is nothing scientific about the responses.

Let’s say my commute took twice as long as normal and my boss was angry that I was late to a meeting and all of a sudden because of the economy I am a little more nervous about job security than I might have been two years ago. Now someone calls me tonight and asks, how am I feeling about the economy. My answer may be “lousy”. The day before I might have said, “stabilizing”. The poll measures how you feel at that moment which isn’t right or wrong — it just isn’t the whole picture.

Also the way the question is asked often leads to a more optimistic or pessimistic answer. “Do you feel the country is on the wrong course?” “Do you think that President Obama is indecisive on Afghanistan?”

Or if you use a measure of 100 days or 1000 days or 5 minutes, it gives immediate legitimacy to the notion that these are relevant time measures for progress on incredibly complicated and pervasive issues. Go figure.

Maybe a better poll would ask, “over the past 6 months, has your outlook changed on [insert crisis du jour]? And how has your outlook changed?” And even that can be corrupted if you use a benchmark date. “Since Labor Day, how have you been feeling about [insert crisis du jour]?” Chances are that that question will elicit a negative response because end of summer is bittersweet. Ask people on Thanksgiving Day and the answers may be more philosophical.

I am of course exaggerating, and I must confess that I am unencumbered by fact, information and background in poll taking. But I can’t imagine that these things don’t have an effect.

The biggest danger is that instant polling, first 100-day polling and second 100-day polling cement these arbitrary time frames and in a time where instant gratification and diminishing attention spans are prevailing social disorders, this is frightening indeed.

Just the G-d-Awful Flu

Posted on November 17, 2009 by 40andover

Since Friday, I have been felled by the flu. I don’t have mad sow flu, or H1N1, as it is supposedly called.

I am now recovering from the usual, seasonal, G-d-awful flu. It happens. The non-designer, non-pandemic one. I even had a flu shot which I have to say probably made it less horrendous than it could have been.

My sister the doctor was concerned that I was dying of the plague because I didn’t blog for days. Yes, I had to have been pretty hard hit not to blog, or, for that matter, to pay a shiva call to my friend whose mother’s funeral I attended last week (see prior blog entry).

The flu, once medicated, is the moral equivalent of a stubbed toe. Yet, I longed to hear my mother say, “my poor tsakele, if I could have it for you I would,” as she looked into my eyes and caressed my cheek in that way that mothers do that make you feel better just by having them there.

POB, partner of blogger, has been in the trenches with our son, getting him from place to place, while I lied in bed doing the least I could do. Really, the least I could do. And she is a trooper (who is now coughing, because I share too much).

I took a walk yesterday because I was becoming self-radicalized watching CNN and MSNBC in between naps over the last few days. I was woozy and thought it would be a great idea to go to the gym. (I need a personal attendant.) I went to the gym and did nothing except watch the people who are able to go to the gym on a Monday at 3:30pm, while I scrubbed with Purell. Luckily the medication dried me out so much that I neither blew my nose or coughed much. One general observation: the beautiful, the buff and the young don’t go to the gym in the afternoon. The older, schleppier and grayer do.

I left the gym having not sweat or done anything to shore up my sagging self and walked south for no reason (ok, no sane reason). I went into PC Richards and Sons and looked at Plasma TVs. I thought maybe if I bought a big plasma TV, I could tell POB that it was the delirium that did it. Even in my delirium I knew that was stupid, yet wishful, thinking.

Friends tried to make me feel better by emailing me stories of the weird and blog-worthy. My old friend started out his email by writing: “My dear son didn’t really do anything wrong (that’s what every parent says).” Followed by, wait for it . . .

“Gotcha!!!”

Walk-weary, I took to my bed and resumed doing the least I could do.

Dr. SOB (Sister of Blogger), are you satisfied that I am on the road to recovery?

Three major states of being: Alive, Dead & — in Hollywood — UnDead

Posted on October 19, 2009 by 40andover

Michael Jackson has been dead for months now. Or has he?

He is coming out with a new movie.

So, Michael is in that fashionable Hollywood state of the “Undead”.

The Undead can do what living people do — make movies, have digitally produced voice-overs, sell your clothes to the highest bidder, be immortalized in rare and just-discovered footage. In order to stay undead, there must be mystery and intrigue and controversy swirling around the person, enough to keep conspiracy theorists thriving.

And that means more coverage on the newsertainment channels, like CNN, which brings the Undead back to life for years at a time.

The 24 hour news REcycle can take a small story national

Posted on October 18, 2009 by 40andover

The kid with the balloon. It won the hearts and minds of schnewscasters and newsertainers all over 24 hour “news”.

Then it was a hoax. Now it is a national disaster, a mark on our national pride. More time was spent on the kid in the balloon story than on health care reform, gay march on Washington, even the 9/12ers for Goodness Sakes. The only thing that got more coverage was the three week “Breaking News” headlines that Michael Jackson was dead.

For Serious News, Turn on Comedy Central

Posted on October 13, 2009 by 40andover

Last night, Jon Stewart skewered CNN on its coverage of the health care debate. I love Jon Stewart because he points to the idiocy of the 24 hour news cycle and the schnews (schmooze plus news) or newsertainment that passes for pertinent information about our cities, our country and the world.

All the networks do is talk about finding out information, but they don’t really. They ask us what we think and then read from the Twitter responses. Fact-checking Saturday Night Live skits and not fact-checking what the politicians are saying is sheer idiocy. Spending more time on whether SNL is a bellwhether for Obama than the issues is a disservice to viewers.

Other than Jon Stewart and Bloomberg News, I don’t know where else on TV to get pertinent information. If I want comfort TV, I watch Rachel Maddow, because I agree with her views. But for cold, hard, factual news . . . Comedy Central? What an irony.

Well, Kanye West acted like a jackass

Posted on September 16, 2009 by 40andover

It is ok to poke fun at No Drama Obama for getting caught on an open mike. Always a problem for politicians. But fall-out and outrage at his comment? Outrage is an outrageous response.

And, “jackass” is better than George Bush’s reference to a reporter as an “asshole” or Reagan’s joke about bombing the USSR.

And, the truth is an absolute defense. Kanye West deserves to be called an arrogant, impolite, egotistical jackass. So, Obama was tame.

Still it is fun to rib the President about the gaffe, but let’s not create a “Curser Movement”.

40 — oh wait, yikes!! 50 — andoverblog

Aging and living in urban US

Tag Archives: 24 hour news cycle