Tag Archives: Journalism

H.L. Mencken

Posted on by

0

MY LIFE AS AUTHOR AND EDITOR

Salient in the life of this journalist with a name is asking what type of American he was. Mencken came from Germany and during World War One and World War Two he was pro- German and pro-Hitler. He lost his newspaper job with the Baltimore papers in 1941. Apparent German actions again other peoples were dismissed because they were not Germans. Carrying on with that antiquated thinking (feudalism or before) into the Twentienth Century makes Mencken an unexplained throwback, and given the quality of writing in the book, a throw away.

The book presents an autobiography of part of Mencken’s life. I have no idea how much he drank, womanized, or contributed to established art and literary politics. The book describes some of this editorial activities, but does not set human beings in business except to say this happened that happened and the reasons for any disagreements – the other person was Jewish, or was a woman, or would not do what Mencken advised. Mencken dismissed film and California completely without realizing it dramatized American short stories many times better than the writer could put it on a page.

The book was Mencken’s final writing effort with time qualities reflected in the writing. It tells its story sloppily, if at all. It appears Mencken chained himself to a typewriter and merrily typed. There is no sense a wordsmith was at work, edited or believed the manuscript needed further work. The book’s editor, Jonathan Yardley did his best, but elementary flaws flow throughout the writing.

A few observations early in the book should be noted:

“…I am convinced that writing verse is the best of all preparations for writing prose.
I makes the neophyte look sharply to his words, and improves the sense of rhythm and tone-color – in brief, that she of music which is at the bottom of all sound prose…” Page 5-6)

“Under the influence of my father…I emerged into sentience with an almost instinctive distrust of all schemes of revolution and reform. They were…only signs and symptoms of a fundamental hallucinations…the hallucination that human nature could be changed by passing statutes, and preaching gospels – that natural law could be repealed by taking thought.” (page 34)

“…my interest in Roosevelt 1 was always born of delight in the mountebank, not of belief in the prophet.” (page 34)

Work at home: “We … wondered why none of our colleagues had hit on the device of staying way for their offices…we escaped the burden of listening to countless visitors who infest such places – mainly authors trying to sell their manuscripts, not on the merits

thereof but by selling talk. Virtually all our business was done by mail, and it was thus possible for us to do it at our own convenience, and with expedition. On my trips to and from New York I read more manuscripts than the average editor could get through in ten times the time in his office. It was not until long afterward that I discovered that a number of English magazine editors had practiced keeping clear of their offices before we thought of it.”(Page 50)

Paying writers: The Saturday Evening Post’s “…editor…not only paid much higher prices for manuscripts…but he also paid off once a week. As a result [he] got first whack at virtually all the better fiction of the time…” (page 51)

Personal responsibility/memory: “After [Zoe Atkin’s] removal to New York, she let it be known that [Reedy] had not only discovered her but also seduced her, and in the course of time she pushed back this catastrophe back in time until in the end he was depicted as her undoing when she was but sixteen years old. This, if true, put it in 1902, when Reedy himself was forty.”(Page 68)

1920’s Greenwich Village: “…the Village, like the Paris Left Bank, was much less literary artistic than sexual, and most of its male denizens lived on women. The typical menage consisted of a widow or spinster from some small-town in the Middle West, come east to spend her dead husband’s or father’s money and see life, and a bogus painter or pulp- magazine fictioneer who let her feed, clothe and love him.”(page 95)

Any sort of writer putting together an autobiography would have given thought to organization. Little does Mencken’s story at the typewriter evince such expansive thinking – just put together antedotes loosely. What lacks is the potential for an authoritative description of the literary artistic scene on the East Coast i.e. the market Mencken was involved with. Mencken should have stepped back to write the Big Picture. But he could not escape his profession, journalism and its need to advance facts (and Mencken’s opinions) in detail without describing the setting, or telling any reasons. Influences (other than getting drunk), the environment (Mencken did not believe important) and competition (society) – did not writers know one another? As an editor did he not know writers talked and exchanged ideas, concepts and reactions?

So this book falls short in its organization and in its writing.

BROTOPIA

Posted on by

0

EMILY CHANG


This lengthy piece of journalism chronicles deeds and misdeeds against women in administration, electrical engineering, software programmers, games and venture capitalism, all in Silicon Valley. When each set of acts occurred is not always in the text. The book lacks an index and a bibliography.
A value of the text is in ANTITRUST analyses. Author-Chang outlines the market and some forces affecting technology. An obvious “barrier to entry” is the adolescent male manias discouraging technology, innovation and competition. Most persons and businesses in the first paragraph hold and promote after hours sex gatherings – cuddle puddles – compelled sex because women have to join (not be a voyeur) or be absent. Women were degraded or dismissed whether they were involved (easy reputation) or not present (not one of the boys).
Little incidents can trigger antitrust analyses. Women were not excluded because they had abilities but because they had standards and scruples. This party coercion and settings approach criminality. Indeed, before there were Antitrust Laws in the nineteenth century, competitors frequently committed crimes against each other to gain advantage and to suppress businesses of competitors. Silicon Valley seems no different.
Brotopia becomes much more interesting when reading takes the subject beyond specific incidents into a comprehensive understanding of the greater picture.

BAD JOURNALISM – MIKA BRZESINKI

Posted on by

0

Mika, the golden girl of Morning Joe, does not know how to ask a string of questions to get a story.

Witness her interview of Joe Biden, an embarrassment to the program and to journalists everywhere. Mika asked about Joe Biden’s papers at the University of Delaware. Were employee records and papers at the University? Biden answered employee records were with a federal agency. How did Biden know employee records were where? That’s where employee records are sent. How did Biden know the University did not have employee records. Because employee records go to the federal agency.

Mika could not get by her short list of questions. Biden said employee records are confidential. They contain private information, not open to the public. Mika did not understand what almost every American knows. An individual’s employee records do not belong to Biden or any other employing senator. The employer is the United States government. Papers at the University belong to Biden, not to the government.

If Mika had asked, I’m sure Biden would have explained that in his Senate Office employee records were kept separate from Biden’s papers. Employee records, including tax information and everything else, may have gone to the federal agency before the employee left Biden’s office. We’ll never know. Mika did not ask.

Mika’s next big question was, where was the complaint the accuser filed against Biden. Biden said he learned about the complaint recently; he did not know about it in 1993. A New York Times investigation said there was no complaint, and no one in Biden’s Senate office heard about the complaint, or had ever heard the accuser complain within Biden’s office. By persistently asking about the complaint, Mika implied that Biden had the complaint, or a copy of it. NONSENSE. The accuser never gives copies of accusations to the perpetrator. Copies of the complaint would be in a federal agency, or in an agency with investigative oversight. Biden answered that he asked the primary Archive to produce anything resembling a complaint against him. Note that the complaint may be procured without also producing the employee records which Mika has initially stumbled over. Biden and all Americans await a response from the Archives.

On this issue of the Complaint and the papers at the University, in an aftermath rescue plan, Joe and Willie tried to salvage Mika’s interview. If Biden opened his papers at the University, journalists might find an interoffice memo where the accuser’s accusations was discussed: Biden wasn’t being honest. If pigs had wings, they would fly. If Americans drank bleach, they could kill the virus. Don’t believe The New York Times. Don’t believe staffers who said nothing like that ever happened. Just speculate like is done on Fox.

Biden said during the interview that the allegations should be believed and investigated until resolved. Biden denied the assault ever happened. The New York Times investigated and disbelieves. Whatever investigation remains should carry on. The election is in November, six months off. Biden has always supported investigations in these matters.

Parallels with Brett Kavanaugh? Brett was accused during confirmation hearings. About a week of news, a FBI quickie investigation of three days, and Kavenaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Reaction: At the time I considered the Eastern Establishment was protecting Brett and like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, its was time use a flamethrower to burn the Establishment down. Other persons claimed there were other incidences involving Brett at Yale and elsewhere; they were going to write books. Today, some people want to impeach Brett – I’m not sure why: Bad legal decisions or further evidence proving bad-behavior.

Mika needed rescuing following the interview with Biden, but Willie and Joe were hamstrung: uncertain in facts, sloppy in analyses and unwarranted praise for Mika who could not ask anything beyond three questions.

Mika ought to read more. Like her colleagues at Fox, she has to know that being blonde, having pearly teeth and clean skin does not make a journalist. 

POOR LANGUAGE

Posted on by

0

When I read and hear language today to describe one politician or another and actions, in or out of office, I realize America has not learned from its heritage. Everyone writing and speaking is inept, ineffective and inexact. They are uneducated; they are relaxed; they are polite.

At the height of the Sixties Hunter Thompson and Rolling Stone magazine ran severe articles about anything. Some of Thompson’s words appear in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972, and The Great Shark Hunt. Upon reading the 1972 campaign book Pat Buchanan relieved his friend Thompson by telling the author, “I thought it was funny.” If one did not like the contents (comments about everything and everybody), it was difficult to disagree with the quality of the writing.

What has happened in the 50 years since Thompson and Rolling Stone opened up? The quality of writing has fallen. Everyone thinks they are either Woodward or Bernstein; they got degrees from a school of journalism without much newspaper experience; they know how to use word processing and the Internet. They haven’t read many books so don’t know much about writing (anyone read Ernie Pyle?); they know little of the times of their early lives. I doubt if many know what the CFR is. (Code of Federal Regulations). How many have seen, picked up and read (very small print) the Federal Register. (Daily publication of new and proposed Federal Regulations)

Many reporters today likely know people elected to and serving in government but do they know them as well as Bob Woodward knew Mark Felt, Deep Throat. All today’s reporters can talk as though always sitting before camera on live TV. Their comments, Left and Right, are poor, unknowledgeable and ill-expressed. They talk like robots, hooked up to a word processing program with proper political views using language as colorful as the programer’s.

Comedians might meet the standard of language variety, if they wrote their own stuff. But a comedian likes to speak one or two lines and get relief: funny, funny, funny, Hardy – Har – Har. To have impacts comments must be longer and better expressed. Who is prepared to talk about approaching Don Trump’s event horizon and leaving existence forever?

MEGYN KELLY SHOW

Posted on by

1

Brenda Starr has returned. She’s covering the big issues of the day.

One issue is demystifying self-proclaimed truths repeated by people who are mentally ill. In Megyn’s recent interview of Alex Jones, he claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was perpetrated in conspiratorial fashion in part, by the parents of the victims.

A program with such headlines and ramifications would be definitive, if the sources were identified and verified, like once-upon-a-time happened in the newspaper world. It was Ronald Reagan who advanced the standard: Verify and trust. Americans have to learn whether Brenda Starr ignores all that and goes for the exclusive.

For himself, Alex Jones said he “looked at all the angles of Newtown.” What was the view from one hundred eighty-three degrees? Jones also asserts, “Thirty years ago they began creating animal-human hybrids.” Do you think it’s true? I’ve heard countless women describe Don Trump as a Neanderthal.

Perhaps Alex Jones cannot help himself. He is photographed wearing a tin-foil hat. He looks sad, a pouty face like a kid at a birthday party who didn’t get a piece of the cake. I notice, though, in another photograph while he’s talking, he looks like he has eaten the whole damn cake.

Reactions of the Sandy Hook parents are predictable and justified. If Jones gets to spit out his conspiracy theories and Brenda Starr only argues with him, the parents have a mighty point. If Jones is one of 300 such people spewing these theories, is Jones the most representative spokesman? Why? Ask him to distinguish facts which make his presentation better. Ask about his experience and depth of knowledge. Ask, ask, ask. Most of those people do not have the background to answer. What they know are the cliches and catch phrases known by their audience and followers.

Brenda Starr is correct about one thing: The more that is known about these people – how they collect their facts, conceive their opinions, rely on biases and prejudices, believe intuitions, chose the correct or inflammatory word, and depend upon instinct – the better for the American people. The American people should judge the TV program based upon reason, logic and common sense, as well as common decency.

And Brenda Starr, herself, should strive for a newsworthy program, not one that is entertaining: A “riveting exchange,” she is quoted.

WINCHELL

Posted on by

0

Neal Gabler

Winchell was an entertainer, and primarily uninteresting. During the 1920s he came up in the newspaper world (columnist) and made most of his money and notoriety (not fame) in radio. Winchell never had the substance, education and discipline of an Edward R. Murrow or a William L. Shirer.

What Winchell had was gossip, “making smart chat,” initially about persons involved in Broadway plays and shows extending to Hollywood, New York City, crime, and into politics. A fact is found this biography telling about Winchell’s wife, June:
“She read novels, saw movies, listened to records and radio
programs for Walter and delivered her opinions, which then
became his opinions.” (p. 357)
Apparently Winchell great observer, critic and commentator did none of those things. He collected and organized gossip, having a string of runners whom he usually did not pay. Much of the slang he developed and used then does not live today.

Winchell had no background for what he was doing. He was an empty suit. At the end of his life he wrote an overlong autobiography (in manuscript) pulling no punches, punching down, kicking shins and elsewhere else. It is hinted, though, that therein Winchell told the truth.

The author quotes a member of the Smart Set: “If all the Armenians were to be killed tomorrow” that would help establish the decade’s tenor, “and if half of Russia were to starve to death the day after, it would not matter in the least. What concerns me alone is myself and the interest of a few close friends. For all I care the rest of the world may go to hell at today’s sunset.”(p. 47) This book tells the relationships and activities of Walter Winchell and a few close associates and colleagues who lived in New York City and Washington D.C.

At the end of life Winchell was defeated and bitter. His family’s life had collapsed: A daughter had died when young; his wife (somewhat estranged) saw him a week or two a year; she died before him. A daughter with grandkids was unhappy and not productive. A son had committed suicide. For the final fifteen (15) years of life (60-75 years) his health was no good. All the while his professional career of gossip was disappearing. His was a name many knew, but he was from a profession and a time that no longer existed. He was a hanger-on, has-been, once-was.

From gossip around New York City in the 1920s, Winchell moved toward circles in Washington D.C. New York City might tolerate the fluff, insults and revelations. Almost everyone would not hold grudges. However, Winchell held grudges for years or decades to the point of being vile and evil. I had to rethink Ed. Sullivan who adamantly opposed Winchell for a quarter century. Sullivan was not intimidated. Unlike the person most Americans remember, Sullivan was very athletic when young. Winchell did not want to tangle with him.

The Washington D.C. world pegged Winchell, and held him to his words. He was initially anti-Nazi and against racial discrimination. He was on “the New Deal” team and opposed to conservative forces in the Democratic Party. He was B.F. F. with J. Eager Hoover – died two months apart in 1972.

Those persons and organizations presented forces and influences on Winchell that he could not handle and did not have the ability to dismiss. Personally, he was a raving lunatic when it came to his column; He mostly had the blessings of his sponsors of his radio broadcasters, but not his employers. Everyone liked the expanse of exposure and advertising Winchell provided, but there were no controls, no discipline, no education and no restraints on Walter Winchell. He was a master and manipulator of his world, gossip.

His failure to recognize and abide by limits, to observe times were achanging, and to be introspective brought failure. Josephine Baker entertained in New York City and dined at the Stork Club, owned by a good Oklahoma friend of Winchell. The unstated policy at the Club was no riffraff and no minorities; the place was for white snobs only. In the early 1950s Winchell was in the restaurant when Baker and her guests were served drinks but left for a movie premiere. Baker later was not served the dinner she ordered. Everyone wondered what Winchell thought. He did not explain the facts as he knew them and next say he was awaiting the results of the Civil Rights investigation. Instead, Winchell treated the incident like it was part of his column, an item of gossip where he did not have to take responsibility for missing or added facts. He tried to protect the Oklahoma friend and the Stork Club, although he disagreed with the policy. As the sides hardened, Winchell attacked Baker for several years. It is wrong to say Winchell was a racist, but it is right to say he was an idiot bordering on imbecility.

Winchell was anti-Communist, and once again he got caught up on the extremes of Washington D.C. and a national issue. Winchell backed Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn (whom he introduced to the Senator). The grand finale which Winchell did not perceive coming or realized while it happened on television, was followed by Winchell trying to protect McCarthy and slamming organizations and individuals as communist-oriented, leaning left and pink. In the 1960s Winchell still called John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy communists.

Would anyone ever believe Walter Winchell could be so uneducated, ignorant and thick? He never understood, When the horse is dead, get off. He had to opportunity (like Ed Sullivan) to make the transition to Television, but did not fully understand the medium. [This thinking came from a guy who was in vaudeville for a dozen years and never forgot stage work.] Apparently, his life was so perfect – none of it was – that he was incapable of change. A New York celebrity dined with Winchell at the Stork Club, and opined in his diary, “Winchell was a bore, a vanity of all vanities.”(p. 257) Late in life he got a press pass and observed the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention street riots. Like most reporters Winchell did not and could not know the full story, but he chose anyway.

The strength of this biography tells the life and times of the man, how he fit in and his methods of surviving. The surprising fact is that Winchell did not change. In the end he sought television exposure, a further failure of business opportunities accompanying bad health and a disintegrating family. The times of Walter Winchell are not as complete as they can be because primary sources are likely not yet opened or available.

If the biography has problems they are absence by inference. Winchell’s shortcomings. It is a New York City behavior revisited on the American people every week now. He was usually nonsensical and unmeritorious on the attack, always blundering through trivia; the points made were off-point, scattered and offensive. That was Winchell’s doing in his column and on the radio. And now Americans have to hear that sort of tripe, petty, crybaby stuff everyday.

Winchell was not a celebrity. He received no respect and no love during his lifetime and afterward. He did not deserve it. Winchell preyed upon people’s fears until the last decades of life when opponents began beating Winchell up with their words. Winchell was notorious, an outlaw to entertainment and to society, one of the sorts of figures today who get arrested before a concert tour as part of a publicity campaign.

A final point: The Burt Lancaster movie, Sweet Smell of Success, (1957) was representative of Winchell’s career and life. Winchell was the target. It is an ugly, dark movie and a classic. But His Girl Friday is also about Winchell. Gary Grant, editor, plays Winchell. The character and the target share a first name, Walter.

REVIEW: NEW YORK TIMES

Posted on by

0

Delivered to the house was the magazine WIRED (March 2017). I’ve perused it and have comments.

On the cover is a photograph of A.G. Sulzberger, editor/publisher/owner of the New York Times. He appears to be middle age, is bald, mediocre posture of an undead person, and wearing dark clothes he is ready to conduct funerals. It looks very Nineteenth Century – pose, distant vision, presentation of person, but that’s it. None of that works today, 2017.

Inside Sulzberger says that everyone appear and be normal human beings. Nothing about Sulzberger suggests he is a homo sapiens sapiens. He looks like an android sent from another planet to scout out prospects on earth. He is less threatening than Arnold Schwarzenegger, but looks built by the same machine-owned firm that put Arnold together for those movies. Trying to soften Sulzberger’s image, they have him wearing eye glasses, circa 1935 frames.

There are many problems with the New York Times, the most basic ones are not identified in the article. Indeed, one paragraph in the article presents New York Times’ major flaws:

Four books after the election, Times chief executive Mark Thompson
told an industry conference that subscriptions had surged at 10 times
their usual rate. To Thompson, the likeliest explanation wasn’t that
the times did a bang-up job covering the final days of the election –
like everyone else, they failed to anticipate Trump’s victory – that that
readers were looking to hedge against fake news. He suggests a simpler
reason: “I think the public anxiety to actually have professional,
consistent, properly funded newsrooms holding politicians to account
is probably bigger than all of the other factors put together.” In other
words, the president’s hostility to the press and the very notion of facts
themselves seems to have reminded people that nothing about The New
York Times – or the kind of journalism it publishes – is inevitable.

This passage, page 53, like most most journalistic writing is overwrought. 1) It can be cut: ELIMINATE “In other words” and everything after it. 2) Another explanation (third line) is most likely: Democrats and anti-Trump persons believed they missed something, which The New York Times picked up. They ended subscriptions to other newspapers and started up with the gorilla on the block. 3) The admitted failure of The Times and everyone else to predict a Trump victory suggests a grave issue. The Times was believing its own press, it’s own sources, all its fans, it’s own wave. 4) Journalists are supposed to talk to the other side, which many people, Left or Right, have difficulty doing. One wonders if The Times talks to people on the right, or if their reporters have shut their mouths now that new immigration policies are being put into effect. Polls suggest those are popular measures among Americans. [Remember, don’t conduct any penetrating political polling in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania before the election.]

Other than who is being talked to and reported, what are the facts – misstatements, misconceptions, pure truth. No knows what that is sitting in New York City wondering about an Internet site at the New York Times offices. [This segment is greatly shortened.] All journalism comes from excellent writing, and that is where the Internet and word processing becomes a hinderance. Everything is spelled correctly; words appear to be in the proper order. There are too many words – say eight words where two will do. The Internet has space to waste, not the usual newspaper adage. All those reporters who grew up and got an “A” in eighth grade English, have pyramided that excellence into a newspaper career. They’re still writing at middle-school levels, with the juvenile, horrifying reactions to the unusual, the absurd and the foreign.

Every immaterial, irrelevant reaction part of perceived fad-culture is presented in an article. That is not journalism. What may be journalism is the fact that people believe such temporary moments as important, where as in the long haul, they are not. Newspapers hire journalists for their perspective, but most journalists hooked onto the Internet truly believe in these cultural misunderstandings – it might be 5,000 people without tickets to a concert and they are disappointed. Time to riot. Let’s feel sorry for them? [Is the story about the 5,000 standing around outside waiting for the concert to end? What else is on their mind? Is this the best thing any of the 5,000 can do with time?]

Are journalists trained and do they understand everything? The easiest thing to do is hand them a straightforward story, and learn how many cliches are included in the proffered article. The more cliches, the less understanding.

Keep reporters away from the two-pager in Wired. How to grow your own pot. That will kill initiative, except to cultivate and smoke, and wither away brain cells the user never knew were present. It’s not called dope for nothing.

This final most significant point in the Wired New York Times article suggests doom for the newspaper. It’s not that the Ploughkeepsie Times is stealing advertising dollars. It is not competition from the ankle bitters like the Huffington Post take a few bucks. The big player in the room came in a few years ago, new to newspapers but forever familiar with the internet. Jeff Bezos of Amazon bought The Washington Post, lock, stock and barrel, and likely The Post does not have the Internet issues complicating life at the NY Times. Instead, Bezos must only work to cultivate writing and writers, the most important part of any newspaper. If the Internet is presenting a new way at looking at the world (needs color, illustrations, pictures, cartoons), do it! Recognize newspapers are competing against the Super Bowl, World Series, the Best Voice, Great Dancer shows, Wiccan Conventions and every musician to touch a fiddle.

TO MIKE BLOOMBERG

Posted on by

0

Dear Mike Bloomberg,

This open letter to Mike Bloomberg was necessitated by the recipient having no email and no mailing address. I did not want to make my thoughts public, but here they are.

I write regarding your Television Network which I see in Los Angeles on Charter. Overall and generally your financial reporting is better than found on CNBC and Fox, although not measurably and consistently. I do change channels. Overall, the Bloomberg female reporters are excellent or improving. Bloomberg men seem lazy except the guy with the bow-tie.

In the morning your British crew comes aboard, and some do not speak this language in a “genteel” fashion. They come from Lisen Grove; they could not work in a London flower shop. That has been the touchstone for hiring Britons for 110 years, since George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalion.

There are hints of babooism in their field of expertise, television journalism. One frequently calls the 9:30 a.m. open, the “cash open.” How quaint. It might be colloquial. Do you really think no money changes hands on trades before 9:30 a.m.? Occasionally, one of them will say, “Let me ask this question?” or “Do I have a question for you?” I hope all the problems of the world will be solved with the question and answer but never are. Finally, they like to preface questions with a paragraph or two of text to set up a question. This Bill O’Reilly journalism is not acceptable.

Another subject is Bloomberg Magazine TV Show. I suppose the program serves to advertise Business Week. Most of the teasers don’t work.

December 31, 2016. Article on the Chinese Ecological Destruction in the South China Sea when they build their military bases. The reporter came on. The hosts and reporters yuked it up about where the Spratley Islands are. I am reminded of a contemporary who looked at an outline of the Country of Vietnam, and she did not know what it represented or what it was. I mention her failing memory because Vietnam and the Sprately Islands are close to one another.

Same date, the hosts brought on an artist or someone from the art department to explain a puzzle or a game in the magazine. The reason these people excel in a visual medium is they have no facility with words. Like previous interviewees, this artist fellow could not explain much; he gestured toward the graphic. I don’t know if he was aided by any substances. The hosts smiled and laughed. They understood little or nothing except this weekly segment is the joking portion of the Business Week program.

There was a story about Apple. There have been few updates to the Mac hardware for a long while. The reporter looked like he had just left the joint after six months with Buba. He (and apparently the hosts and the article) did not answer the question: Are updates needed? It seems improbable that more than a decade ago people realized hardware did not need updating: Software could take that place. Hence, apps. Did that happen? What are the pitfalls? How is security? Is Apple successful or has it boxed itself in?

I mention the Apple story because Apple may have made a choice, after considering, evaluating judging and concluding. The Mac computer is an old system. Can it survive the way it is, just like can Business Week survive the way it is? The know-how to fix the magazine and its related TV program are well within the human experience. although few would know that today: Someone must demand excellent journalism.

I wish you well in your pursuit of excellence.

RADS, TOM BATES, 1993

Posted on by

0

This excellent book recounts anti-War and anti-establishment activities at the University of Wisconsin (`1965-1971), including the bombing of the Army-Math building on campus causing one death and five severe injuries. They used a fertilizer bomb costing less than $100.00 packed into an Econoline Van. It was a smaller version of the Oklahoma City bomb in 1995. Divisions of various academic subjects were destroyed including decades of work in physics, mathematics and in other disciplines unrelated to Army Math. Army Math which dealt with a bunch of transitory subjects was inconvenienced.

An amazing fact was the location of Army Math in a building on campus. There had been protests and riots, some close to the building. Yet, there was no security, except a guard with a time clock. The building was a convenient open target.

The individuals made unrelated events the basis for the bombing in August 1970. The individuals and friends were moronic; no one broke any IQ records. Within 24 hours of the bombing law enforcement had the names and identities of the four suspect. The FBI’s arrogant attitude screwed up immediate arrests which led to manhunts which brought three bombers to trial. It is postulated the fourth bomber was a police informant who either did or did not alert anyone about the bombing. Either decision he made plus the bombing of the building was a death sentence for the fourth bomber.

The three remaining bombers were pleasant, not threatening, socially capable and able to light a joint, take a suitable toke and graciously pass on the remainder before it became a roach. That may have been their most admirable social quality. Intellectually, they knew Castro was in Cuba, Che was bleeding somewhere, Ho had something to do with Vietnam, and Mao was good on Sandwiches. These sorts of persons were par for the course in leftist, youth, culture and riots. No one else in their right mind would suck in that much tear gas and pepper fog emissions.

For good reason the book lacks discussion of a theoretical basis for the bombing. Instead it presents a robotic quality of the trio. These people did not read, ponder, conceptualize, intellectualize theory and discuss it. They heard a cliché and but it into action. These bombers were incapable of doing otherwise. Many Leftists like to supply the theoretical basis which never existed. No one could ever explain why it was reasonable to get the little people, ants, greasers, women and stooges to act.

On a personal note the book returned me to attitudes I once had. Exchange glances with someone, and have a gut reaction: Do I trust that person? NO. I would not trust any of this trio, and certainly none of the leaders who preached hatred, violence and death.

There are reactions to facts in the book. Page 101, “police provocateurs” in Chicago were dressed in “Al Capone suits.” Page 239, meal of “vegetables and brown rice.” In Berkeley add bean sprouts and wonder why more of the boomer generation did not die of arsenic poisoning (the rice) and salmonella poisoning (bean sprouts). Page 220, First Earth Day in Berkeley was set [and upset] on April 22(23?) 1970, not April 18, 1970.

Page 138, Fred Hampton, Black Panther killed in Chicago, December 1969, “denounced the Weathermen as ‘anti-people.'” Hampton agreed with SI Hiwakawa who said, “I can talk to the Black militants; they want to get something done.” It was the white radicals were wanted to destroy everything.

Page 131. “Affinity groups.” In a riot five to seven people would move and act as a unit; they would care and look out for one another. Later in Rads the cops began using “anti-affinity” groups.

My first year at Berkeley I was surrounded by 30 days of street rioting. Occasionally I participated, but usually I was just passing through – going to and from class or appointments. I saw friends and acquaintances in the action. Carrying a book meant I was a non-participant. I have never heard of an “affinity group” until reading Rads.

Page 407. “The visitors reminded [Tom] Hayden of his previous support for Karl [one of the bombers], and for a moment he weakened. “Don’t worry, in public I’ll back Karl to the hilt. I can’t let Jane say anything though.” The “Hanoi Jane” label had become a drag on them both.”

This realization was known to Jane Fonda in the autumn of 1973. Six months before, [Spring 1973] she was in her pride and glory, being quoted about North Vietnamese treatment of American prisoners of war: “Walking through the streets of Hanoi with their heads bowed in front of a woman with a bayonet might be torture.” Daily Californian, April 12, 1973, p. 1; Berkeley Barb, April 10, 1973 for more Jane Fonda statements on the torture of American POWs. See also Holzer, Henry, Mark and Erica, Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, McFarland & Co; Hayden, Reunion, p. 455, “Either Tom Hayden or Jane Fonda said about the time of the 1973 Peace Treaty, ‘the POWS were liars, hypocrites and pawns in Nixon’s efforts to rewrite history.'”
Continue reading →

ONE MAN’S MEAT IS NOBODY’S WRITING

Posted on by

0

ONE MAN’S MEAT, E.B. White

If the author sounds familiar, he authored Elements of Style. At a library sale I found this paperback book and put it into my dollar bag. Hence, the cost was perfect, $.03, plus inside the cover was a bonus, a note from girlfriend to boyfriend: “Dear Dayton [wonder if he races cars] – I enjoyed this very much this summer. White has a way with words! Merry Christmas! Love, Sally”

The book had been read once; there were pages turned down. I wonder if Sally did anything cheesy like give Dayton the copy she had read over the summer. She uses entirely too many exclamation points. If so, I don’t think he read it. I wonder if Sally and Dayton ever married. Probably not. The book was given after 1978. They would be in the late fifties now, and this book would be a keepsake. Divorced? Probably not. Dayton or Sally probably would have removed the note. It’s easy; it’s in there with scotch tape. Dayton had the book, never read it and this year gave it to the library.

Most of the book is properly written, but it is not well written. There is no sense the writer knows how to dramatize a point, an event or a description. He is a poor journalist. Of 304 pages about 30 are engaging and a few are excellent. The remainder is dull, a lot of the writing is about seed crops and animal husbandry (the animals have no names). Examples: 

1) “Removal” is about moving. White’s line should be, “I didn’t like the old mirror. Each time I looked at it, I appeared tired.” INSTEAD, White described his toils trying to rid himself of the mirror and ended the paragraphs with: “A few minutes later, after a quick trip back to the house, I slipped the mirror guiltily in a doorway, a bastard child with not even a note asking the finder to treat it kindly. I took a last look in it and I thought I looked tired.”

2) “Progress and Change,” an article about the El Sixth Street train removed circa 1938. White describes veterans and visitors’ reactions to the train coming into a station. EB mentions the suddenness of the training stopping, and the visitors always being unsettled. But EB does not write it: EB’s spotlight is on the New York City residents who feels superior because he does not wince, but he does not give enough facts to allow the reader to understand why wincing is not necessary.

3) White had very bad hay fever, throughout his life. He went to the New York World’s Fair in 1939 while suffering a bout of hay fever. He wrote, “When you can’t breathe through your nose, Tomorrow seems strangely like the day before yesterday.” Tomorrow is the theme of the fair, but “seems strangely” is a seemingly strange verb and adverb combo. White should complete the simile with a direct verb – “is”, “smells”, or since he’s a mouth breather that day, “tastes.” 

I’ve read most of George Orwell’s essays; they are impossible to remove from my memory. I will say EB White’s writing about totalitarianism is wrong and childish. He reveals he is absolutely ignorant, and poorly read and out of step with thinking and knowledge. Before his death in 1935 Will Rogers told America about Hitler, We’re going to have to watch this guy. ON THE OTHER HAND, White is engaged by The Wave of the Future, Anne Lindbergh, circa 1940. The Lindberghs were pro-Nazi until the United States had to declare war on Germany on December 10, 1941; they then shut up forever. The Lindberghs received medals from the Nazis; they overlooked Crystal Nacht; they disregarded reports of plunder and murder in recently German occupied countries in Europe. Nothing the Lindberghs wrote was worth reading, yet White devotes an article to Anne although is slightly uncomplimentary. In 1941, White gets around to reading Mein Kampf. 

The best article White has in at the beginning, “Removal,” and only part of it: (Written in 1938)

“…Radio has already given sound a wide currency, and sound “effects” are taking the place once enjoyed by sound itself. Television will enormously enlarge the eye’s range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote. More hours in every twenty-four will be spent digesting ideas, sounds, images – distant and concocted. In sufficient accumulation, radio sounds and television sights may become more familiar to us than their originals. A door closing, heard over the air; a face contorted, seen in a panel of light – those will emerge as the real and the true; and when we bang the door of our own cell or look into another’s face the impression will be of mere artifice. I like to dwell on this quaint time, when the solid world becomes make-believe, McCarthy corporeal and Bergen stuffed, when all is reversed and we shall be like the insane, to whom the antics of the sane seem crazy twistings of a grig”

White is entirely correct that television has contributed to depersonalizing human society, and that it will allow broadcasters and governments to be and promote dishonesty: “…sights may become more familiar to us than their originals.” One would expect that human beings with less intelligence would have the most difficulty determining what is “the real and the true,” and what “will be of mere artifice.” HOWEVER, White himself {Ivy League, Eastern Establishment} amply demonstrates in One Man’s Meat that he is completely befuddled. He is dwelling “on this quaint time,” but neglecting to use his powers to examine it. 

White quotes excellent passages from Somerset Maugham, Summing Up, about the weaknesses and annoyances of the spoken word, but upon reading Mein Kampf, White writes and quotes in “Freedom,” 

“…it is not the written word but the spoken word, which in heated movements moves great masses of people to noble or ignoble action. The written word, unlike the spoken word, is something which every person examines privately and judges calmly by his own intellectual standards, not by what the stand standing next to him thinks, ‘I know,” wrote Hitler, ‘that one is able to win people far more by the spoken than the written word…’ Later he adds contemptuously, ‘For let it be said to all knights of the pen and to all the political dandies, especially of today: the greatest changes in this world have never yet been brought about by a goose quill. No, the pen has always been reserved to motivate these things theoretically.'” 

White properly reports what others have said about the spoken versus the written word, but where is the further analysis from the  Eastern Establishment, Ivy League great mind? White says of himself in the same article, “Luckily, I’m not out to change the world…” The best that could be said of White is he is lazy and vacuous. The worse justifiable conclusion is, White is intellectually dishonest. He complains about mass media changing human behavior and society, yet he is unable to cope with the confusion, so sticks his head in his salt water farm on the Maine coast.