Real Reality TV

I spend significant time everyday following stories of journalists and bloggers across the globe who have been arrested, harassed, imprisoned, tortured, or murdered for simply doing their jobs. Some of them I have met personally or online. Others I know of because groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders make their cases known. Because of these journalists who risk their lives every day, I believe the profession of journalist is one of the most noble.

Except in America.

It makes me sick to see the state of journalism in America these days. Sensationalism, fluff pieces, clickbait headlines, and hastily written articles that read as if they were generated by a computer seem like the norm rather than the exception. This happened because the seasoned journalists have retired or were pushed out due to "budget constraints," and they were replaced by a generation that was taught formulas for writing a news story rather than how to write well. The internet was a convenient excuse by the media corporations to get rid of their older journalists and to decrease the size (i.e. costs) of their newsrooms. Media executives with MBAs and no newsroom experience began making decisions that focused on readership/viewership rather than the press's traditional role as the fourth estate in this country, the keepers of truth, and media was consolidated to the point where only six corporations control 90% of the media.

The good journalists have tried to protect the integrity of the profession. Some have started independent digital news sites. Others are pushing investigative news courses in an effort to fix what is wrong with younger journalists. A couple of the more successful are Poynter and Knight Foundation. But most seem to be losing the fight. They're up against editors who tow the corporate line and younger journalists who are only in the profession for the spotlight. We've seen a deluge of journalists accused of plagiarism and Twitter superstars who get in trouble for posting something outrageous. News outlets think that showing a video from YouTube is newsworthy and make otherwise talentless people famous. Professionalism in the newsroom seems to be dying.

The media has created a monster. Two people died today at its hands. Ironically, they were journalists.

There are a lot of evil forces at work in this world right now. Somehow, Islamic terrorism is the big news while far more American citizens die at the hands of deranged fellow Americans every year. Every day. Gun violence is an epidemic in the US and is shrugged off by sociopaths as perfectly normal. As I'm writing this, breaking news is reporting another shooting in Louisiana. Then suddenly sensationalist CNN and famous journalist Wolf Blitzer go back to the shooting of the Virginia journalists. No more details on the shooting in LA (must be a black guy who died.) They're only talking about the Virginia shooting this much because it happened on live television. They are giving the gunman exactly what he wanted: attention. By sensationalizing violence and by dwelling on the same awful stories, the media are telling deranged narcissists like today's shooter that they can be famous, that everyone will know their names.

Americans love to rail against "The Media," but the reasons for their dislike often have little to do with reality and more to do with the fact that things they don't want to hear are reported on, that bad things happen in life. I suppose they do have a hunch that something is very wrong. But the state of the media is how it is because of them, because Americans demand sensationalism and fluff pieces and poorly written articles. If they didn't want that stuff, media corporations wouldn't report it. If they wanted to have to think, they'd demand that.

Sadly, too many Americans hear news they don't like and dismiss it as being politically slanted, none moreso than gun violence apologists. Already we hear them complaining about anti-gun violence activists using the journalists' deaths as political opportunism.

Bullshit. BULLSHIT. You're only paying attention to us now because it's a high profile media story.

Let me ask you something: why is it that only so-called liberals want to end gun violence? Why do the rest of you accept it as ok? Where is the political will to change this insane gun culture that takes the lives of 30,000 Americans every year? Why are we not calling this genocide? It is, after all, perpetrated by a political group that has its hands on the reins of congressional power in the form of campaign contributions.

One last thought: One of the many flaws of the #BlackLivesMatter movement is that they don't touch on the gun culture. It's always "blame the police" or "blame white people" but never "blame the NRA." Maybe they're afraid to touch the subject. Too many people are afraid of the NRA.

How long are we going to let this insanity go on?

Congress Loves Bacon

"Instead of attacking anti-poverty and education programs, libertarians and fiscal conservatives should be working on cutting the pork out of Congressional bills. Taxes wouldn't seem so evil, nor would they be so high, if more money was spent on healthy, effective social programs rather than pet projects of Congresspeople who care more about votes than the good of this country. The money for that bridge [to nowhere] could and should be going to such projects as education reform or health care reform. Or strengthening levees"

I wrote this in 2005. It was about Don Young's infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" pork project. Nothing ever changes, does it?

You'd think that the devastation of Katrina would have made this country take a good look at its crumbling infrastructure, wouldn't you? Nope. Ten years later, our roads and bridges are falling apart more than ever, and the GOP Congress cares more about taking health insurance from poor people than anything else. Besides, Katrina only really hurt black people, so who cares, amirite, white people?

I just read a study that said most white people in New Orleans think the city has completely recovered from Katrina, while most black people think that nothing has gotten better. Speaks volumes about suburban isolation. And racial isolation. And just plain stupidity.

How about we stop all this white cat/black cat he-said/she-said bullshit blame game and start caring about things that matter? You want to make America "great again?" Trumpet? How about we get Congress to stop hating poor and minority people long enough to repair our infrastructure before a large number of people die in some kind of collapse?

Lessons from Athens

"The great philosopher Plato gives prominence to Justice in society. He was highly dissatisfied with the prevailing degenerating conditions in Athens and viewed the Athenian democracy as on the verge of ruin. [He was right. Athens had become a strong military state whose interest in empire (called the Delian League to make it sound democratic) led to the Peloponnesian War and the ultimate downfall of Athenian democracy.] Plato was disgusted by societal meddling and excessive individualism of Athenian society, and Justice was the means to correct these wrongs. According to Plato, Justice is a human virtue that makes a person self-consistent and good; socially, Justice is a social consciousness that makes a society internally harmonious and good."

 I wrote this in 2005. It's a warning worth repeating.

(Please note: justice and vengeance are two different things. Most Americans mistake justice for vengeance.)

The parallels between the downfall of Athenian democracy, the basis for our entire system of government and culture, and today's America continue to mount.

For whatever reason, movies like 300 glorify the Spartans. Sparta was a military dictatorship. Sparta conquered Athens and then Greek life for most people was hell, with war happening more often than not. Spartans terrorized everyone. Athens was devastated and feel into destitute poverty. They brought it upon themselves, because they stopped paying attention to things that mattered.

History repeating.

“I find no basis for a charge against him.”

Every aspect of art has gone through a modernist era where brilliant artists challenged the old school and created ingenious works that are as relevant today as they were when they were first revealed. Literature had Joyce, painting had Picasso, sculpture had Rodin, music had Debussy, and architecture had Gaudi. These artists and their contemporaries were inspired by the times they lived in, as technology was changing everything around them and the world seemed to be spinning faster. (Sound familiar?) Advances in transportation, communication, and the media they used shaped their art.

In creating their works, they succeeded in destroying their fields. Maybe art.

By no means am I saying that good works haven’t been created in the last 100-150 years. But post-modernism followed the modernists as a “movement,” focusing on style over substance, and we’ve been suffering ever since.

There’s this pretentious question that gets thrown around a lot by people who think they are smarter than they are, a question that wasn’t really thought about until the nineteenth century, at least not in the way we think of it. “What is art?” I liken someone who asks that question to Pontius Pilate asking Christ in his trial, “What is truth?” and people who think everything is art are the Pharisees who are further from the truth than most.

Let me pause to ask you this: would you be happy with a baseball player being hired to play on your team simply because he wanted to be a baseball player, though he hadn’t spent years training to be a Major League Baseball player, or a quarterback in that same scenario, or a goalkeeper, or whatever is your sport of preference?

So why do you think it’s ok when an untrained person does this for art?

You can see when a baseball player is bad at his job because you can see that he can’t get a hit. You can see that he shouldn’t be playing the game at the Major League level. But you can’t see that a pop musician is bad at his job because you don’t know anything about music and you can't see the result of his playing.

Music may be the only industry in the history of the world where the best at their jobs are often scorned and they aren’t paid the most or even at all for being the best. In fact, they can’t even make a living from it. They work for the EPA or the local hardware store or any restaurant or office in America. They should be revered. But – style over substance.

Here’s the thing – the modernists and those who came before them captured the spirit of their times. They are as indispensable to history as an actual history book. If someone from the future looks at these works, they are a good indication of how life was like and what people valued. If someone listens to Irish music, they’d understand the history of Irish hardship. If someone looks at Picasso’s Guernica, they understand the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War. Even if someone from the future looks at the Beatles, they would understand the sixties.

The post-modernists weren’t defined by what they represented but by what they were against. It’s like the negative space of a picture, that which surrounds the subject rather than the subject itself. But at least the post-modernists were defined. If someone from the future looked back at Taylor Swift, would they think everyone was walking around crying because their boyfriends broke up with them? What does she represent? Nothing. She stands for nothing. She is no artist. She’s simply an employee in a consumer industry.

This stuff is garbage and the more prevalent it becomes, the less I get it. Taylor Swift didn’t spend years training to be a singer. She was barely even an adult when she became popular. And I use her as an example. This is not a “kids-these-days” issue. There are scientific studies of algorithms that prove today’s music is dumber and simpler and the songs sound the same than in the past. (Google them. It takes me long enough to write anything these days.)

There’s this Radiohead song on their first album Pablo Honey – “Anyone can play guitar.” By sounding like any generic rock song, it mocked the people who think they can pick up a guitar and become a musician. It mocked people who think anyone can be an artist just by singing or drawing or coloring. (As an adult coloring book ad claims in current late night commercials.) Radiohead has since become a mockery of itself after putting out one of the most defining albums of the nineties, one that succeeded in capturing the spirit of the times. It was a bleak spirit, but at least it lived.

Today’s pop, country, rap, even classical (movie soundtracks) are peas in a pod, but what’s funny is that fans of any of them would go ballistic if you said that to them. Style over substance. Anyone can play guitar. Ask a fan of any which album from 10 years ago they still regularly listen to and they won’t be able to answer. Songs are seasonal and then they go away. Show me a participant in any of these genres who has years of musical training. LOL. You may find a couple, but for the most part, it’s paint-by-numbers music. (And spare me the Lady-Gaga-can-sing thing. Yeah, she’s actually a decent singer. Decent. But she chooses mindless pop. Meanwhile, fans of all forms of pop music will agree that they hate opera, an art that takes years of training to succeed, because they know nothing about music and are just marketing tools for music corporations who stopped investing in real musicians years ago because it took too long to develop them and they just want the quick buck. But I digress.)

Now look, there’s nothing wrong with a good pop song. Sing it. Play it. Write it. Think about it. Think. Make art, not profits. Art has soul. Truth has soul. What would Jesus do? He sure as hell wouldn’t listen to today’s vapid popular music.

Style over substance. It has taken over all aspects of our culture. It explains why Apple products became so popular, why American Idol controls the radiowaves, why people will stand in line a block long to go to a trendy restaurant. We don’t like the best things. We like the flashy things. We like things that don’t last. We throw things away. And then we wonder why we are depressed in midlife.

This was supposed to be a post about the morons who stand in a block-long line outside Rosa’s Luxury, a restaurant in Eastern Market, because it’s the place to be at the moment. These are the same people like the hipsters in that Sam Adams commercial who are blown away when they find out that the beer they raved about in a blind taste test was Sam, a beer they’d claim was bad prior to the test because it’s too “mainstream.” I’ve talked to people who said the food at Rosa’s is nothing special. Too many restaurants spend more time on décor than food. But this post turned into an art thing because, well, because. Because I’m tired of the vapidness, the oblivion, the ignorance. Actions have consequences. We have a clown running for POTUS who is using the same language against Latinos as Hitler did against Jews, and his fans are beating up Latinos now. We have a new euphemism for racism, “passionate,” which is used to describe the candidate’s fanbase. This is no accident. We live in times when people with no skills become famous simply for being assholes on television. We live in times when our stories are just retold rather than written anew, resulting in classic movie remakes and not many new ones. We live in vapid times. Something something Weimer something something.

Someone once said “Art imitates life.” (Ok, it was Oscar Wilde, a brilliant writer but one who probably focused on style over substance in everything but his art. And he knew it. That’s why he wrote “The Portrait of Dorian Gray.”) It does. And it’s a very interesting thing that there is so little meaningful art in today’s American culture. It says volumes about our insipid lives.

I hope the internet destroys the music industry and that real musicians take music back. But the music industry seems to be winning in the courts.

Btw, the title of this post is Pilate’s declaration after Christ’s trial. The Pharisees, the corporations of their time, furious that Christ threw the merchants out of the Temple, called for his death anyway. Pilate could have changed everything. He simply didn’t care. It was too much of a headache for him to get involved. And the rest, as they say…

No recognition for their service - World Humanitarian Day

Today is World Humanitarian Day. The day was created to commemorate the deaths of 22 aid workers in Iraq in 2003, but it honors aid workers and human rights workers across the planet.

You won't find flagwaving ceremonies at baseball games to honor aid workers. You won't hear patriotic songs or find an aid worker who is the special guest at a game, nor will you see the son of an aid worker reunite with his father who has been away in dangerous lands. No, you won't hear any thank-you-for-your-service or any kind of thank you at all.

Aid workers risk their lives to make this world a better place, and they do it without guns and tanks and all of the deadly things that a soldier uses in his service. They help people get food, education, and healthcare. They build houses and schools instead of destroying them with bullets and bombs. Aid workers clean up the messes that soldiers make in their destructive wars.

Despite the propaganda, most soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are NOT heroes. Despite no propaganda, most aid workers ARE heroes.

The families of aid workers are left behind when they die. There are no funds for them. There are no Gary Sineses setting up foundations for them. You don't hear anything from celebrities honoring their work, their courage, or their service.

Instead, you hear Americans whining about "foreign aid" spending, as if feeding and curing people is evil. And they do this with no knowledge of the miserly spending levels that we appropriate for foreign aid, the less than 1% of our budget, this, from the richest country on the planet. God, this country takes so much from the rest of the world; you'd think we could throw them a bone.

We need to reset our values. We have our morals out of whack. War is good and helping people is bad? And you think GAY MARRIAGE is immoral? Geesh.

The Spaghetti Warehouse

I spent most of my childhood in Englewood, Ohio, a suburb of what I thought was the thriving metropolis of Dayton. I still remember how I felt at seeing the "skyscrapers" of the city on the occasions we went there. It seems funny to me today, having been to many of the world's great cities with skyscrapers that seem to go to the moon. I'm also reminded that most people don't shed the impressions of the surroundings of their childhood; there are people in the suburbs of Dayton today who still consider Dayton a big city. They should get out more.

As children of the suburbs, it was a special treat to go to Dayton. We didn't know that it was a post-industrial wasteland; it had tall buildings and a lot more people than we were used to seeing and it had a sort of magic to it that only a child can see in such a place that has seen such economic trauma. In the eighties, remnants of Dayton's finer days were still around: Rikes, the Arcade, and yes, the Spaghetti Warehouse.

It lives.

Yesterday a guy on Twitter posted that he ate there. I was very happy to learn that it still existed. My grandparents would take us there for special occasions like birthdays and we always loved to go, not just for the spaghetti, but for the trip to Dayton and for the candy sticks. I don't remember much about the place, but I do remember the candy sticks at the checkout. I always got the root beer flavor. Jars of candy sticks like they had back when candy was simpler sat there as enticing as the spaghetti itself. We always got to take some home.

I don't know if the food is any good; I haven't been there as an adult with an experienced palette so for all I know it could be like Chef Boy R D. But if it's still there are these years later, it must be pretty good.


I mean, how can you not love a place called "Spaghetti Warehouse?"

Suburban Isolation is Killing Americans. Literally.

I sort of stumbled into digital marketing and now it's what I do.

I had been in international development, which got me to Lebanon, and in Lebanon the only NGOs worth working with (because they lacked sectarian dimensions) seemed to be the ones involved in the digital sphere. So I learned from those circles and have subsequently been a social media/digital marketer for the last five years or so.

I'm bored to tears. I should be out in the world, seeing and doing things and interacting with people. And writing. Instead, I'm commuting three hours a day to a windowless office and staring at a computer screen until my vision is blurry, typing out 140 character statements and staring at a bunch of numbers that don't have meaning for me. I've been on my current project since March but I've worked for the company for eleven months. It's unlike anything I've done before and I miss a lot about my old field, especially working downtown around people and some semblance of vivacity and life.

One thing I've learned, or at least confirmed, in those eleven months: I hate the suburbs. I hate what they stand for - isolation, distance, individualism, strip malls and chain stores and the cold, White bubble.

But that's what the burbs are about - isolation and fear. Their largest growth happened with "white flight" during the tumultuous years of racial integration in the middle of the twentieth century, and the segregation hasn't changed. This has had a detrimental affect on the idea of community, and though you'll find many suburbanites who wave their flags and Support the Troops(TM) and sing "God Bless America," the truth is, theirs is a false patriotism, built upon the shoulders of their isolation. The state of our political system and the circus it has become is a direct result of suburban isolation. Suburbanites are the ones who support the murder of black men at the hands of the police or private citizens who "fear for their lives." They're the ones who think that people who are on government assistance don't work and are "lazy." They're the ones who think that someone who speaks Spanish is in the country illegally, that we need to build a wall to keep immigrants out, that all Muslims are terrorists, that anything foreign is "bad." They're the ones who think that doing something for the betterment of community and the country is "socialism," who shove all of that religious nonsense into politics, who raise their kids to think they're special and entitled and better than everyone else.

They're the ones who have destroyed the idea of community in America.

Have you ever wondered why the school shootings and theater shootings happen in the suburbs? What makes a person so detached from other human beings that he has no qualms about destroying lives?

Isolation.

The truth is, studies have proven that suburban life causes depression and mental illness. Suburban environments do not provide sufficient opportunity for positive social life. There are no central meeting spaces, no town squares, no market places where people go to interact as well as to buy their wares. Sprawl has created an America where children have fewer friends than ever before, where social interaction is usually prompted by adults who make "play dates" or who compete with each other to have the biggest birthday parties for their kids. Pickup games are a thing of the past; now sports have to be played in organized leagues, where games, not socialization, are the focus.

It hasn't always been like this. You used to see neighborhood parks full of kids who didn't need an adult breathing down their necks for fear of some boogeyman around every corner. Now you drive through the burbs in the middle of summer and see empty playgrounds. Some of this can be attributed to new media, of course. But parents aren't sending their kids outside anymore. Now they are ok with letting their kids spend hours a day staring at screens, "safe" within the walls of their mortgaged castles.

Kids aren't exposed to much of anything outside of the suburban lifestyle. I know people who grew up in the burbs who won't go to a restaurant or stay in a hotel if it isn't a chain. I know a woman whose kids have never been to Washington, DC despite having lived in a suburb of the city for all of their lives. Talk about isolation.

I feel isolated in my job. I don't like this feeling and don't understand why people accept this as normal. It is not. It is not normal to take anti-depressants like you take vitamin supplements. It is not normal to drug your kids for "hyper activity" when it is the very controlled suburban lifestyle that is causing such a "disorder." It's not normal to spend all your time indoors in front of a screen.

America has a gun problem, yes, and we need to address that. But we also need to address the entire suburban lifestyle and quit accepting that it is "normal." It is not. It isn't healthy, and it's killing Americans. Literally.