In our most recent posting on "Pretexts for War," we used a widely cited quotation from President William McKinley. George Mason University has posted it with this framing note, followed by its canonical source citation. "In an interview with a visiting church delegation published in 1903, President William McKinley defends his decision to support the annexation of the Philippines in the wake of the U.S. war in that country.
When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know what to do with them. . . And one night late it came to me this way. . .1) That we could not give them back to Spain- that would be cowardly and dishonorable; 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany-our commercial rivals in the Orient-that would be bad business and discreditable; 3) that we not leave them to themselves-they are unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's wars; and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died. Source: General James Rusling, “Interview with President William McKinley,” The Christian Advocate 22 January 1903. The meeting had occurred on November 21, 1899.
A passerby to Myths_Americana observed that Lewis Gould's The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1980) disputes the accuracy of the religious portion of this quotation (p. 141), expressing suspicion toward James F. Rusling. Wikipedia has popularized this doubt with a section labeled Disputed Quotation. Its authenticity is important to history writing, because it has been cited in this form so often on nothing more than Rusling's authority. While I can't really prove that McKinley said it, I believe that there are persuasive circumstances surrounding it and an independent confirmation that Gould ignored. I divide the issue into (a) the contestability of the "president on his knees" report, and (b) the evidence regarding the the quote's language.
Two Presidents on their Knees in Prayer?. Gould is rightly suspicious that Rusling would print stories of two different presidents--Lincoln and McKinley--praying for divine guidance about their wars and then reporting it to Rusling. Rusling, who had risen to Brigadier General during the Civil War before he became a historian, wrote about Lincoln in the first chapter of his Men and Things I Saw in Civil War Days (1899). This book is now, but Google's project has rescued Men and Things, so that we can study what Gould found to be the source of suspicious parallels. Rusling does not in fact assert that Lincoln made the disclosure to him alone, but to General Dan Sickles, whose leg was shatered by a cannon ball at the Battle of Gettsyburg. It was Sickles himself, recovering from his amputation, who posed a question to Lincoln about his thought process during the Gettysburg ordeal. Rusling happened to be present. Since Sickles was a famous/notorious person, the story likely circulated often after the 1863 hospital encounter. Sickles later became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, living until 1914. As regards the authenticity of the account, Rusling's Men and Things includes an Appendix relating to , and it includes correspondence with Sickles himself, who cannot confirm that Rusling had the exact words right. Sickles after all, was still suffering from the recent amputation of his leg in 1863, and Rusling's initial published account in 1892 came 25 years after the event. (See pages 355ff for the various confirmations that Rusling offers as well as the earlier published version.) In an important qualificaton to his skepticism, Gould notices that McKinley himself had used the Lincoln-on-his-knees-in-prayer story in a speech he gave in 1892 (note 36, p. 266). Could it be that McKinley had received his version from Rusling, enjoyed it, liked its effect on his audience--and then used the heart of the story later to give a religious stamp to to his account of meditation on the Philippines. In seeing the matter that way, McKinley leans on Rusling, rather than Rusling leaning on his earlier story to recast McKinley.
The Religious Context. Gould's book is not attentive to religion or to the significant role of the Methodist Church in McKinley's life. In this regard, Gary Scott Smith's essay "William McKinley: America as God's Instrument" is far more instructive because he pays attention to McKinley's life a man solidly grounded in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Beyond quoting Rusling's Christian Advocate article to call it into question, Gould did not include the Methodists' own history of their relationships with McKinley as president. J. Tremayne Copplestone's History of Methodist Missions, Vol. IV: Twentieth Century Perspectives (The Methodist Episcopal Church, 1896-1986 (New York: The Board of Global Ministries/The United Methodist Church, 1973) tells a decisive story here. The Methodists, like other groups in American society, experienced the expansionist/imperial fever. Matthew T. Herbst has described how one Annual Conference acted in the heat of the imperial moment in his well documented essay "Michigan Methodism and Aggressive Christianity." Once the war with Spain was underway, Methodist foreign mission advocates saw the Philippines as both fertile target and a kind of beachhead that could be used for more effective launches of evangelism into Asia. The Methodists began to lobby McKinley early and often for the right to missionize the Philippines, which was dominated by the Catholics prior to its annexation by the United States. As the Methodists put it, they wanted "complete religious toleration" (Copplestone, 174, citing a Sept. 6, 1898 letter from the Missionary Society of the Methodist Church ) and the freedom for competition with the Catholics, who were linked in their minds with heathen superstition, idolatry, and political tyranny. As relates to the authenticity of the quotation, Bishop James M. Thoburn, prior to the famous August 21, 1899 meeting of the Missionary Comittee with McKinley, had a private audience with the president to plead the Methodist case for permission to evangelize. and this session supplemented a White House reception for the Committee in the Blue Room with Admirals Dewey and Schley. (Copplestone, p. 187) Three days later the delegation from the Missionary Committee, which included Rusling, came to the White House to thank the president for the encouragement given to Bishop Thoburn for their ventures. In that session the Committee members read to McKinley a statement saying: "The Methodist Episcopal Church believes in the dignity, the dignity and the destiny of this Great Republic as a Providential institution among men--to uplift, and civilize, and christianize our fellow men." (Copplestone, p. 188) This written statement and details surrounding the meeting appeared in the "Minutes, General Missionary Committee" for November 9, 10, 15, 18, 21--the last being the exact date of the meeting with McKinley. (Copplestone's source notes, p. 1217) It has often been observed that no member of the committee ever contradicted Rusling's account. Why would they, since McKinley was simply repeating the language read to him? They were all Methodists with a shared missionary purpose and spoke the same language to one another. It's true that McKinley in his public rhetoric spoke more vaguely about "the duties of civilization" and that is doubtless why Gould could not believe that McKinley would have spoken so fervently about a world religious mission for America. McKinley was sensitive about his public audiences and could politically tune the level of secularity/religiosity in his rhetoric. In this case of the disputed quote, with documentary evidence that he was merely repeating the language brought to his private chamber by his religious peers, there seems little reason to question it.
In my opinion, it is not the quotation that should now be disputed, but the doubt about its authenticity. One could go to those same archives that Copplestone drew upon as he wrote the history for the Methodist Church. It is always possible to learn something new from a second look.
John Shelton Lawrence March 8, 2007 |
REIGNING IN WAR BY PRETEXT
by Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence
(1/23/2007)
Recent signals from President Bush suggest a willingness to expand the Iraq War into Iran. The movement of aircraft carrier groups and Patriot missiles suggest both air attacks and the protection of American allies from possible Iranian retaliation. Walter B. Jones (R, NC), suspicious about a drift toward pre-emptive attack on Iran, introduced House Joint Resolution 14 on January 12, stipulating that there was no prior authorization for it and that any such action would only be justified in the event of an “attack” or a “demonstrably imminent attack by Iran.” Other sponsors from both parties quickly joined him. While it is easy to focus on the president-of-the-moment, official scrutiny is also warranted by a tradition of public permissiveness toward American presidents who manipulate situations and information to launch new wars or to expand old ones.
Consider James Polk’s Mexican War, William McKinley’s Spanish American War, and LBJ’s use of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. In each of these episodes, crusading features of what we call the "Captain America Complex" were factors. Threatening circumstances were viewed as conspiracies centered in enemy nations stereotyped as evil. An opposing stereotype of America’s perfect innocence led to visions of "unprovoked attacks" that justified violent responses. And in contrast to the illegitimate violence of others, American violence was considered redemptive, making the world "safe for democracy." Victory was to be assured because our motivations were allegedly pure and, of course, because God was supposedly on our side.
I
James Polk was President in a period when many citizens were eager to see the country expand. Attempts to purchase Texas had been rebuffed so Polk, without congressional or other public discussion, set a course of action that would eventually bring both Texas and California under U.S. control. He secretly sent John Slidell to Mexico with a diplomatic mission of purchasing the two territories. As backup to the anticipated rejection of his offer, he secretly dispatched General Zachary Taylor to a zone in the Texas territory that he could confidently predict that Mexico would treat as a challenge to its sovereignty. Colonel Ethan Hitchcock, one of Taylor’s officers, immediately saw the point: “It looks as if the government sent a small force to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of the country as it chooses.” However, in his account of how the military engagements in Texas had begun in May of 1846, Polk presented a picture of complete innocence and self-defensiveness. “We have tried every effort at reconciliation. The cup of forbearance had been exhausted.”
Congressman Abraham Lincoln exposed Polk’s deceptions in a precise speech on January 12, 1848—eighteen months after the beginning of that advertised-as-easy war. While Lincoln had logic, law, and a nose for hypocrisy on his side, Polk played to America’s sense of “manifest destiny” and its crusading zeal to civilize adjacent parts of the world. Like a neoconservative ideologue offering millennial promises for democracy in Iraq, the New York Sun opined that Mexico “is accustomed to being conquered and the only new lesson that we will teach is that our victories will give liberty, safety, and prosperity to the vanquished.” The public followed Polk and at the next election, threw Lincoln out of office. The results satisfied the hunger of many Americans for a larger and more connected nation. Masking this vast and expensive grab as a defensive action sweetened the victory.
II
By the end of the 19th century, the U.S. looked on impatiently as Europeans powers enlarged their imperial holdings. An inviting pretext to enter the colonial game came from the nearby Cuba. An insurgency against Spain was being promoted by Cuban Americans who lived in the United States. President McKinley quietly schemed to enter a war that would give America parity with its imperial rivals. He pre-positioned Commodore Dewey’s fleet in Hong Kong so that the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay could be quickly destroyed. As agitation increased to fight Spain in Cuba over the issue of autonomy, he sent the battleship Maine to Havana Harbor, where it sat for two weeks until it exploded—most likely as the result of coal dust.
Hoping to avoid war, Spain began to make concessions, but McKinley continued to ratchet his demands so that Spain could not meet them in time to evade losing big chunks of its wobbly empire to the U.S. Rather than asking congress for a declaration of war, McKinley asked them “to declare that, since Spain had broken off diplomatic relations, a state of war already existed.” He sent the message to Dewey for an attack on the fleet in Manila Bay, a task accomplished easily two days later. Hundreds of Spaniards were killed or injured without a single combat loss among Dewey’s forces. Then McKinley quickly demanded annexation of Hawaii—needed as a service bridge to our new Philippines--and the seizure of Puerto Rico, since it was a Spanish possession. Although the U.S. had liberated the Philippines from Spain, taking assistance from the insurgents led by General Emilio Aguinaldo, it ended up fighting an anti-American counterinsurgency that eventually claimed several hundred thousand Philippine lives. Aguinaldo himself became a prisoner of war held by the Americans. Ultimately the U.S. used the same tactics followed earlier by Spain in Cuba: burning villages and forcing survivors to live in concentration areas where they could be separated from the guerillas that depended upon them. When a group of Methodist clergy came to remonstrate, the President presented a pious form of the Captain America Complex that is worth quoting at length:
Before you go I would like to say just a word about the Philippine business. …The truth is I didn't want the Philippines, and when they came to us, as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them. . . . I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me ….that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.
McKinley was rewarded for his pious work in the increase of American empire. He was relected to a second term. As much as any American president, McKinley illustrated the power of cloaking material intentions while creating the circumstances for popular military action. Moving beyond Polk, he merged God, the claim to civilize barbarians, and U.S. material interests.
IV
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is a classic episode of using a minor military event as a pretext for a larger war. By 1969 Joseph C. Goulden had written Truth is the First Casualty, the Gulf of Tonkin Affair; and many other books have continued to explore the deceptive pretexts that allowed Lyndon B. Johnson to widen the war. At the time of the Tonkin Incident in August, 1964, President Johnson’s reelection campaign faced a belligerent Barry Goldwater, who was proposing to use tactical nuclear weapons against adversaries in Vietnam—even delegating to field commanders discretion about whether to use them. While most voters were repelled by Goldwater’s bellicose rhetoric, Johnson felt urgency about creating a reputation as a defender of America’s national security—even if the danger to it came from a very distant location. To Doris Kearns, he remarked that “if I left the war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser, we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe.”
Johnson chose an incident in the Tonkin Gulf as his pretext. The United States, collaborating with South Vietnam, was running several types of operations above the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in North Vietnam’s coastal waters. The South Vietnamese were raiding coastal facilities while the U.S. navy’s destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy were conducted electronic surveillance. The North Vietnamese concluded from the proximity of the navy’s destroyers that they played a supporting role for the attacks, which were a violation of the Geneva Agreements of 1954. There is consensus that the North Vietnamese made a retaliatory attack on the Maddox in international waters on August 2, firing torpedoes that missed their targets.
Johnson’s team sensed an opportunity to “assert the right of freedom on the seas” and ordered the destroyers to return to the North Vietnamese waters in concert with additional raids by South Vietnamese commandoes. On August 4, in the midst of a storm at night, Maddox sonar readings led it to believe itself under attack. Some 22 torpedoes were counted on its sonar, leading it to fire at three attacking boats, which were presumed destroyed.
Reports went to fleet command and were conveyed to Washington. However, by daylight the Maddox crew had second thoughts about the presumed attack. They found no debris from the attacking vessels they thought they had destroyed. Captain John Herrick, suspecting sonar distortion, hesitated to launch retaliatory attacks. Alexander Haig, Robert McNamara’s Assistant, indicates that the Pentagon decided within two weeks that nothing had happened on the night of August 4—except confusion about what had actually happened. But the White House machinery for the manufacture of pretext had already been flipped into production.
LBJ spoke to the American people on television and announced the first aerial raids by the United States on North Vietnam. Although characterized as “limited,” there were 64 sorties that destroyed 24 patrol boats and an oil depot. He also sought a congressional resolution “expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in Southeast Asia.” That resolution, without indicating the provocative circumstances leading to the real attack of August 2 and with no hesitation about the phantom attack, assigned all the blame to the communist side. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed with an overwhelming majority on August 10, 1964, and it uncritically mirrored the president’s construction of what happened:
Whereas these attacks are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression that the Communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom.
Displaying the kind of trust in the president that surfaced again in the congressional authorization for war in Iraq, the resolution stated that “Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” The measure passed the house unanimously and the senate with only two dissenting votes. As Stanley Karnow describes the congressional manipulation by Johnson, “It had not been deliberately faked, but Johnson and his staff, desperately seeking a pretext to act vigorously, had seized on a fuzzy set of circumstances to fulfill a contingency plan.” The Tonkin Gulf Resolution stood until 1970, when it was officially revoked by a congress that was furious about Nixon’s expansion of the war into Cambodia. But the war continued—under Nixon’s mantle of “peace with honor”—until 1973.
V
Since the pretexts that led to the Iraq War are so widely known, it suffices to point out that their rhetoric conformed to the crusading paradigm evident in these earlier episodes and that the level of congressional and public support was commensurate. The war was clearly part of the campaign against terrorism, ordered by the president shortly after the 9/11 attack, and later justified on the basis of suspected WMD and involvement in terrorism, as the president’s own words reveal in Bob Woodward’s recent book. Only as the pretexts have been exposed has support begun to diminish, unfortunately too late to avoid the deadly quagmire that a more realistic public could have prevented. But it is not too late to look ahead, however, and to contemplate how to avoid the next mad rush to judgment. If the Jones Resolution passes, Congress and the public will need to exercise vigilance, because the history of pretexts tends to repeat itself.
Fantasies are not limited to those who support a continuing or widening war in Iraq. Demoralized people in the peace movement may be quietly hoping that the war will collapse in a mess of lies, atrocities, and spiraling costs that the country will no longer tolerate. In this scenario, the blood-stained bills for military overreach will restore prudence and a sense of obligation to international law and opinion. Others may be motivated to take more direct action to shock the country into a precipitous withdrawal.
In this precarious season, when so many have idealistic motivations to employ undemocratic means to achieve goals that they present as democratic, it is appropriate to mobilize the peaceful resources in our culture, to trust in the slow process of inquiry and public debate, and to respect the sanctity of the law—both domestic and international. Having been burned repeatedly by propagandistic employment of pretexts for war, it is time we became more wary and used our common sense.
These historical incidents help us to give up the crude stereotype that we are pure while our enemies are “dastardly,” and may encourage us to remain under the equal jurisdiction of our constitution and its larger framework of international law. Perhaps it is time to sustain Lincoln's hope in the wisdom of the democratic public conveyed in these words attributed to him: “You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time..”
Robert Jewett, of Heidelberg, Germany and John Shelton Lawrence, of Berkeley, have coauthored Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil (2003), and The Myth of the American Superhero (2002).
==================
ENDNOTES
1. House Joint Resolution 14, “Requirements Concerning the Use of Military Force against Iran,” 12 January 17, 2007
2. The treatment of the topics in this article draws upon Jewett & Lawrence's books, The Myth of the American Superhero (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) and Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003)..
3. Barnet 196.
4. “Message of President Polk,” May 11, 1846.
5. Quoted in Richard J. Barnett, The Rocket’s Red Glare—When America Goes to War: the Presidents and the People. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 102.
6. Walter Karp, The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Life of the American Republic (1890-1920). New York: Harper & Row, 1979. 98.
7. From Rusting, J. F. "Interview with President McKinley." As reproduced in The Christian Advocate, vol. 78 (New York: T. Carlton & J. Porter, 1903), 137-38.
8. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President: 1964 (New York: Athenaeum Publishers, 1965), 311.
Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983), 311.
9. Karnow, Vietnam, 368.
Karnow, Vietnam, 369.
10. Alexander Haig, Inner Circles (New York: Warner, 1992), 122-23.
11. Karnow, Vietnam, 373..
12. Robert Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 1-4.; see also the interviews with Woodward in the Washington Post (Sunday, April 18, 2004), A01.
13. Cited in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th ed. (CD Rom version) from Alexander K. McClure Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories (1904); also attributed to Phineas Barnum. |
Why I Wrote A Fair Use Bill of Rights—and Sent it Into the Blogosphere–by Bernard Timberg
“When it comes to profound technological interventions—whether by steam or steel, books or bytes, electricity or elections—we consistently overestimate their transformative power in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. Only when a new technology is mature enough to be almost completely invisible to the majority does it really start to alter society.”
John Perry Barlow, California Magazine of the California Alumni Magazine, March-April, 2006arch/April 2006 | VOLUME 117, NO. 2
As someone who struggled with, and would not give up, a long and ultimately unsuccessful effort to get clarification and support for my own fair use (it comes under item 8 in the brand new “Fair Use Bill of Rights” that I will begin to cite, even though—and especially because—it is my own creation) I can safely say that I learned the difference between having a “right” theoretically and being able to practice it. I know, I know, we all have our own sad stories of our copyright struggles. Some of us give up. Some of us get angry. Some of us write statements.
I went to lawyers, of course, but looking back, I feel it is long past the moment when we can rely upon lawyers to do what needs to be done--even the kindest, gentlest, wisest, and most progressive among them.
As a product of the sixties and feel the need of being involved with something larger than myself, you know, change that obdurate world out there.
And so for my part I am directing my efforts toward words. I am trying to re-direct words like “defense,” “privilege,” and “loophole” that have been applied to fair use, and spin them (yes, we too can spin) in another direction. I say, and will act as if, fair use and free speech are one phrase and one word, and that they both together, these days, form the basis of our rights to quote words and images—discuss them, take them apart, mock them, and re-combine them in parody and tribute.
“Fair Use” by itself is, of course, eminently reasonable. It refers to a “rule of reason” in the law. Dry. Boring. Now the “First Amendment” has a certain ring to it. A “free press” and “free speech”? Noble emblems of a bygone time and arching, aching dreams toward “democratic expression.” But “fair use”? How do we make a dry and worn out legal phrase, a “rule of reason,” a little more “wet”?
And another problem. We have inherited the rather clogged pipes of copyright legal education, such as it has been. Despite some very enlightening and exhilarating conferences and statements, for many, inside and outside the university and legal community, a great deal of confusion, uncertainty, and fear that has been generated in recent years, and “rather successfully,” as Edward R. Murrow might add. We see the “piracy” spots in our movie theaters. No “fair use” spots balance them.
But what if the issue itself were not so complicated? What if it could be communicated in a clear and even entertaining fashion? What if we decided, jointly, with many like-minded others, that the pendulum of copyright law had swung too far?
In the first decade of the Digitial Millennium Copyright Act, some of us, a lot of us, have begun to feel a kind of weirdness in the pit of our stomach when we read or hear about efforts to “lock down” the images. And we get a feeling of surrealism, or a little shudder down our backs, when serious trademark actions are taken to limit the use of phrases like “fair and balanced” in the news (Fox Television), or “super hero” (Marvel Comics, pursuing to limits the use of this phrase through its trademark of 1937). Or when we hear that documentary filmmakers are forced to pay for the privilege of using a commercial logo from a public billboard in a public place that appears in part of a frame of a film. Or when a documentary filmmaker is required to pay $5000 to the owners of the “Happy Birthday” song for the “privilege” of recording a Happy Birthday at a family gathering.
And so, with this kind of reduction ad absurdum at my side, I launch my own “Fair Use Bill of Rights” into the blogosphere. There it joins John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” 1996, and many other statements and manifestos. And I have decided to “publish” my own commentary montage, with or without lawyers, in that same blogosphere.
I have to believe that these expressions, and actions, add up. That though it will take time, all of us, samplers and re-mix parodists, teachers and researchers, moving image artists and the kid next door, will at some point feel free to say whatever we have to say about the media imagery that bombards us daily, in words, in moving images, and not feel it is a “cause,” simply what comes to hand in the modern world in which we live.
Bernard Timberg for Myths_Americana, April 7, 2006 |
[Yesterday Bernard discussed a couple of stupid corporate tricks--Marvel/DC trying to nail down the use of the words "super" and "hero" when they appear in any competing commercial context and Fox's attempt to copyright the words "fair and balanced." Here's a follow up on the rights to discuss moving images along with a call for action and a more detailed rationale for it. A more extensive statement of rationale is available by request from Bernard.--JSL]
A Proposed Bill of Rights for Fair Use by Teachers, Scholars, Librarians and Artists of the Moving Image--
by Bernard Timberg
Draft of April 4, 2006 for Review And Comment (264 words)
We the undersigned reaffirm our rights to the fair use of moving images under Section 107 of the Copyright Law of 1976.
These rights refer ultimately to the fair use of all images, copyrighted, uncopyrighted, public domain or “orphaned.”
Though we speak as individuals, we urge our places of employment and professional associations to publish best practices statements that clarify these basic rights.
We refer here specifically to the right to:
I. Play back or screen clips in a classroom or educational setting.
II. Play back or exchange clips in a distance education extension of a classroom setting.
III. Exchange clips with a colleague in a complementary process of teaching, scholarship or research.
IV. Copy a moving image document to preserve it for future study.
V. Screen clips at scholarly conferences or presentations.
VII. Disseminate clips to publicize or inform the public about an exhibit in a museum or educational presentation.
VIII. Combine clips to disseminate or publish a commentary montage that makes a thematic or critical point to further discussion.
IX. Disseminate clips to inform the public about the holdings of a permanent moving image collection, a specific part of a collection, or a theme from the collection presented as a commentary montage.
X. Combine clips to share with others in personal or artistic experiments that have no ascertainable commercial purpose or value.
These are basic rights as scholars, teachers, researchers, writers, moving image artists, documentarians, and consumers of media images in our modern world. We pledge to support these rights in whatever ways we can--for ourselves and for others.
for suggestions, follow through–>
Bernard Timberg
508 North Tryon Street, Apt 305
Charlotte, NC 28202
Phone (cell): 704-965-5342
Email: btimberg@carolina.rr.com |
|
(a Guest Appearance by Bernard Timberg) Last week the LA Times (March 26, 2006) published an editorial entitled “Set Our Superheroes Free.”
Well, we’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again. Emboldened by their successes, legal representatives of entertainment copyright holders are, well, over-reaching? My first awareness of this goes back some forty years now when I learned that an obscure popular culture scholar named John Shelton Lawrence (now more well known in the field of popular culture studies) was being denied access to a photographic image of the Lone Ranger because, in the manuscript of the book he and Robert Jewett were writing, which had been requested by the Lone Ranger copyright holder estate, they had described the our culture’s revered masked rider as a, gulp, “vigilante” That certainly would not do, the Lone Ranger’s legal representatives decided, and the request was denied until the message about “the Lone Ranger” property was massaged a bit. A $500 fee—about 1500-2000 in inflation adjusted dollars--had to be paid to reproduce a single comic book frame.
More recently, in a well publicized case, the lawyers for Fox Television filed papers asking for an injunction against Al Franken for using Fox’s trademarked phrase, “fair and balanced” in the title of his book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” Al Franken and Bill O’Reilly later squared off at Book-Expo America, an annual convention for booksellers and publishers where, as USA Today put it in its article on the event on June 1, 2003, “authors are not known for shouting insults at each other.” Backstage, before the main event (which was later broadcast for the edification of audiences around the country on CSPAN-2), O'Reilly said his photo was used without permission. Franken said it was in the public domain. Later, O'Reilly said, "Fox lawyers will handle this." The result: Franken’s book shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. And Fox lawyers retreated to their lairs to refine their strategies for the next time… Kleenex, linoleum, cellophane, bandaids, the Lone Ranger, superheroes… Same difference. For a new breed of entertainment lawyers, the words we use, pictures of news celebrities we might put in books or articles, the very cultural air we breathe, is ready to be staked out for exclusivity and market domination. I have just completed a “bill of rights” of fair use for teachers, scholars, librarians, and moving image artists who might possibly want to use words like “super hero” and “fair and balanced” in their critiques or exchanges—maybe even (gasp) images plucked from their TV sets or off the Internet—in their critiques. It is based on the work John Lawrence and I did two decades ago on the problems scholars, archivists and creative artists have had “quoting” popular culture imagery in their work. The problems have of course, increased, and in the cases cited above reached the “reduction ad absurdum” state. Do we need a new “bill of rights” to quote the images that bombard us daily and surfeit our culture. Sadly, yes. It will appear as a “premiere exclusive” in a future issue of Myths_Americana. Watch for it. Bernard Timberg |
[This is a guest piece by Bernard Timberg, an old friend of mine with whom I have written articles and edited books.--JSL]
Journalist – one whose business it is to edit or write for a public journal. (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English, 5th ed.).
It is fashionable today to lament the loss of Edward R. Murrow and his legendary team at CBS. But the spirit of Edward R. Murrow remains with us alive and well today, I would suggest, and in even more places. We just need to know where to look for it.
At the 2006 Academy Awards, for example--example—with, of all people, Jon Stewart, the dean of faux news, presiding. It’s no accident, I think, that the Academy Awards went with a cable television star who has a limited audience but critical reputation to handle the hosting duties of this year’s ceremony.
Issues tackled this year by nominated films include: Murrow’s own battles with the broadcasting establishment during the height of McCarthyism (Good Night and Good Luck); state terrorism and targeted assassination (Munich); gay love as an enduring value (Brokeback Mountain); transgender transformation as a human right (Transamerica); the sexual harassment of mine workers in Minnesota (North Country); the brutality and boredom of war (Jarhead); stereotypes of race and crime turned on their head (Hustle and Flow and Crash); international pharmaceutical companies testing deadly drugs on Africans (The Constant Gardener); and finally, in one of the more complex films of the year, an examination of a celebrated writer and a cold-blooded killer locked in a strange embrace within the truly American fascination with murder, violence, capital punishment, and 15 seconds of fame (Capote). Nor have critics failed to notice that the three of the leading films at his year’s Academy Awards feature “non-traditional” gender roles (Capote, Brokeback Mountain, and Transamerica--Transamerica—last year’s Mrs. ) as churches and civil society has been divided by “gay marriage” and abortion and right to life issues, and the borders between entertainment, news and politics on television have been so constantly bridged recently as to become, after a while, almost meaningless).
These Hollywood films come at a time when the "straight news" daily journalism itself has been severely compromised. Each week a new revelation occurs about how the news we receive is shaped by the carefully managed photo opportunity, the skillful publicity plant (the equivalent of a “product placement” or “product integration” into film story lines), the staged press conferences, the audience-stacked public speaking event, and the authoritative news release carefully timed to knock other, more disconcerting news, from the front page. The old guard of TV News has gone now. Cronkite, of course, but even the “young men” two generations down from Murrows’ boys: Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel. Dan Rather hangs on, bruised after attempting to deliver a Murrow-like piece, soon after the groundbreaking Abu Ghraib story on Sixty Minutes II, on a CBS that no longer has Murrow as protector and shield.
No, the straight news on television may continue to exist, seeming to gain new impetus with 24-hour news channels, but it may also be going the way of the hard copy letter as email gains more and more adherents, or celluloid film in the digital age. A more precious and prized and also less frequently used commodity.
Yes, I think Murrow would see this, note the decline of network news and the new emergence of social issue journalism in Hollywood film.
But Hollywood films, however well researched and however powerful the actor’s performance, are still fiction. The true legacy of Edward R. Murrow the news man, echoing in a program like See It Now’s “The Case of Milo Radulovich” or his classic documentary, Harvest of Shame, has come to us through the independently produced feature documentary.
Among last year's hard-hitting news analyses and investigative reports were: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, The Control Room, The Corporation, Outfoxed, Why We Fight, and Street Fight.and The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club, God Sleeps in Rwanda, and The Murshroom Club. Some of the new documentaries don’t have convenient news pegs. They deal with cultural rather than political issues: Grizzly Man, Murderball,Penguins Spellbound, Rize, and Mad Hot Ballroom, to name five of the most distinguished. These films get theatrical releases, but also play on television and are distributed on VHS and DVD. Some did not get much exposure at the Academy Awards, but played repeatedly on cable (as Grizzly Man did on the Discover channel). But they invariably probe, deeply, the human condition. I think Murrow would have celebrated them all.
And Murrow, who had a good sense of humor and infectious chuckle, would also have been watching the late night news parodists on television as well? How would Murrow have reacted favorably to the comedy journalism of Al Franken and Dennis Miller, Janeanne Garafola and Michael Moore, Bill Maher, Larry David, Wanda Sykes, Dave Chappelle, and, of course, the dean of “faux news,” Jon Stewart? Would he have enjoyed it or lamented it?
Though he would lament the slow demise of the network news, he would I think Murrow would have understood and commented upon the rise of the more recent forms that bridge the entertainment/news divide and attempt to explore the truths of our times.
He would have reminded us, however, that being aware of social problems is not enough, however we come to that awareness. There is a limit to what Hollywood liberalism and hard-hitting documentaries can do. The quote that most forcefully expresses Murrow’s conviction in this regard occurred in hist last documentary for CBS, Who Speaks for Birmingham? 1961. It was completed just at the time the freedom riders were coming to town, and a number of them were visciously beaten to a bloody pulp as the Birmingham police conveniently absented themselves from the scene. With the elections of 2006 and 2008 approaching, Murrow would say, as Howard K. Smith did quoting Edmund Burke and speaking as Murrow’s surrogate, ended by saying, of the nonviolent civil rights struggle that had just so explosively begun, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Something to remember in our own times. Good night and good luck to us all.
Biographical Note: The author is a freelance media critic and journalist living in Charlotte, North Carolina, who has taught film, television and media studies for over twenty years. His book, Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Show (University of Texas Press) won the American Library Association’s CHOICE award in 2004. Next year he joins the journalism/documentary faculty in the College of Communication at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. |
Lynne Cheney and her husband Dick are quite a political item. She doesn't quietly stand by her man as Laura Bush does but often gets out there and yells at people. Before 9/11 drew her into monitoring subversive academics, one of her long time projects was to turn America's school back to the classics and away from intellectually frivolous and politically noxious themes like multi-culturalism.
I thought of her and the veep when I sat down this week and re-read Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac (1949). It's a great book on the ecological world vision that ranks with Thoreau's Walden (1854). Measuring him by Cheney type standards, Leopold had pretty good conservative credentials. Like the veep, Leopold had Yale U. degrees under his belt, graduating with a Master's in Forestry. And his book is filled with clues that he's a guy's guy--no latte, limousine transported liberal he. He smokes cigarettes, shoots wolves, ducks. grouse, deer, and other moving critters. And he has that conservative bias that older is better, and that civilization is on its way to hell.
But does have some remarks about hunting (p. 176) that may speak to the character issue.
"The disquieting thing in the modern picture is the trophy-hunter who never grows up, in whom the capacity for isolation, perception and husbandry is undeveloped, or perhaps lost. He is the motorized ant who swarms the continents before learning to see his own back yard, who consumes but never creates outdoor satisfactions. For him the recreational engineer dilutes the wilderness and artificializes it trophies in the fond belief that he is rendering a public service.The trophy-recreationist has peculiarities that contribute in subtle ways to his own undoing. To enjoy he must possess, invade, appropriate. Hence the wilderness which he cannot personally see has no value to him. Hence the universal assumption that an unused hinterland is rendering no service to society. To those devoid of imagination, a blank place on the map is useless waste: to other, the most valuable part."
Cheney's errant pellets, had they hit their targets, probably would have fallen on penned animals released just for the killing pleasure of portly old men who have to be wheeled around with their guns. The Humane Society complained about his style of the kill several years ago. This may be the deeper issue embedded in this event--after we have separated out the rights of hostile journalists to know all the most embarrassing news instantly.--JSL |
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In the matter of the Dubai Ports World controversy, George W. Bush has taken the position that it's all about security and competence and that Dubai has been a trusted partner of the U.S. since 9/11. As for the self-interested stakes of anyone in his administration, it would be outrageous to even acknowledge such a possibility. The high ground of Bush here is like a helicopter fluttering over the deep waters of Katrina. Do you remember the disaster that NOBODY could have anticipated--except all the people who did? And the efforts to clamp down on what the administration actually knew because that was a pretty big fib?
In addition to listening to GWB's well crafted and seemingly sincere speeches, a good supplementary rule is to follow the smell of corporate money. David Lazarus is just one Beagle-nosed journalist who has done it for the San Francisco Chronicle. His article "It's just another blurry line" takes us through the money trail at the Treasury Department, which gave the green flag. CSX, whose former CEO is John Snow (Secretary of Treasury) sold its port management operation to Dubai Ports for 1.15 billion$ a year after Snow came to Treasury. Although Snow divested himself to the tune of 33 million$, he picked up 8 million$ in deferred compensation and still picks up a 78,000$ per year pension from CSX. I don't know what kind of equity stake, if any, CSX preserved when it sold its operation to Dubai. But Snow of course brought some CSX people to Treasury, and we don't what their stake is.
You'd have to be pretty cynical to think that government officials would allow their personal interests and that of their economic class to influence their judgments about national security. You would also have to cynical to think that Condi Rice as National Security Adviser had a weapons corporation interest bias when, prior to 9/11, she downplayed the urgency and up-played the vagueness of Richard Clarke's warnings about a terrorist attack by bin Laden. Let's give her this thought bubble: "Thinking about stateless threats doesn't cost enough. Let's start doing contracts that pay back the people that helped put us in office." (I plead guilty. Invented quote. Bob Woodward does and he gets paid big money. I have a Paypal account.)
Anyhow, if Bush finally exercises a veto over legislation to prevent Dubai Ports from operating in our big transportation centers, the money angle is another way to think about what he will say about his principles.--JSL |
Jeff Greenfield has already discounted much of what's been said/will be said about the Veep's hunting episode in his "A Political Rorschach test" at CNN.com. Agreed. In evaluating Cheney, we will likely see his behavior as one more confirmation of what we already thought.
Cheney-despisers (ouch, that's me) will see the delay as one more performance of Cheney's shtick. Do what you do, get out of there and claim "executive privilege, national security" if any one wants to know more. Cheney despiser-haters will focus on the media scene and call it feeding frenzy. I'll have to concede that you could have stuck some of those reporters biting Scott McLellan yesterday in the shark tank at Marine World and they would earn their sardines. So I can see both sides. I am qualified to behaviorally reshape Cheney's by giving him a speech for prime time TV. I promise--
I will be constructive.
I will give him a new character if he will only be sincere.
I will restore the dignity of the office for the duration of his tenure.
Vice President Cheney. Do you hear me? Repeat these words!
I carelessly shot my friend. Guns don't kill people, people kill people as that truthful bumper slogan says, and I almost did.
I pray for my friend's reocovery with genuine caring for him--despite the fact that I will benefit greatly if he doesn't die and never shows the face that I defaced with my bird shot.
I did not buy my Texas hunting stamp because I thought I was special.
I did not take my NRA hunter training because I thought I was pretty old and smart. I am merely old, arrogant, dumb and seemingly nasty to many.
Please forgive me. I will only last a few more years in the role that so many of you have come to loathe.
God bless my friend, God bless America, and dear Lordy, please bless me more than I deserve!
That felt good, didn't it. We need more leaders who will take the character cure--JSL |
Insults to Islam are in the air now, as is the smoke from the burnt Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria. Looking at it opportunistically, I wish there were an outrage futures market, where I could buy shares and profit from the indignant angers of the future. Because the desire to offend is so prevalent and the tendency to respond hypocritically (how often has the official Islamic press defiled Judaism?), you can probably count on mor fury than reconciliation. Rather than speculating about the economics of harms that arise out of intercultural religious insults, I would like to call your attention to an American master of the sly cartoonic insult--Don Asmussen of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Saying that someone has a manic imagination is a cliche'. So I'll just have to say that Don is more-than-manic. He takes on everything. And rather than being thunderously self-righteous like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly--even after being exposed, convicted and successfully litigated), Asmussen doesn't take himself so seriously. He calls himself "the Bad Peporter" just to prepare you for his rendition of the news: "The LIES behind the TRUTH, and the TRUTH behind the LIES that are behind the TRUTH." Got that!! He never said which parts are true.
A sample? His most recent is a series of panels, appropriately, about lying. In the first frame we have a sweaty man facing "Enron's Books" and the headline is: "SKILLING ADMITS ENRON'S BOOKS WERE ONLY 'INSPIRED BY REAL EVENTS'" THEN "WE NEVER CLAIMED THIS WAS AN ACCOUNTING MEMOIR." From there he riffs to Bechtel and Exxon.
If you look, you get the idea. Like most good cartoonists, he weaves together what's hot in culture at the moment (Jeff Skilling, Oprah, James Frey) and tosses a wonderful omlet. And he didn't really say it, so the Chronicle is off the hook and so is he. So much more soothing than having Rush shouting in your ear. He's worth a bookmark in your browser--JSL |
| » I like the Rules of Decorum in the House |
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Everybody has heard about the two women arrested at the President's State of the Union Address on January 31, 2006. Now Cindy Sheehan and has been un-arrested and apologized to as has the troop-supporting wife of Congressman Young. But aren't you curious about the rules that presumably justified the ejection of these women?
Prompted by friends Bernard Timberg and Pam Martens, I looked up Decorum in the House and in Committees on the government server. Here I quote:
Under section 370 of the House Rules and Manual it has been held that a Member could: - refer to the government as “something hated, something oppressive.”
- refer to the President as “using legislative or judicial pork.”
- refer to a Presidential message as a “disgrace to the country.”
- refer to unnamed officials as “our half-baked nitwits handling foreign affairs.”
That seems pretty nice to me. However, there are these restrictions, which say that a House Member may not: - call the President a “hypocrite.” <ouch! that one really hurts>
- describe the President’s veto of a bill as “cowardly.”
- charge that the President has been “intellectually dishonest.” <ditto!!!>
- refer to the President as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
- refer to alleged “sexual misconduct on the President’s part.” <Bill, we are so sorry we forgot the rules!!>
Anyhow, these rules don't apply to the gallery visitors, don't say anything about messages of support or opposition to war. The next time I get my pass to a State of the Union, I will wear a T-shirt that says, "The Presidential Message is a disgrace to the country.--Sec 370, House Rules and Manual." I believe that would apply to just about any State of the Union, so it could be used almost annually. If I don't like what I hear, I will unveil it, like Superman coming out of the phone booth in his lycra.--JSL
Feb. 2nd, 2006 @ 08:52 am
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| » Understanding Yoor Rights under President Bush |
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John Yoo is a Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, who, unlike most professors, has a Wikipedia entry. If you have followed the controversies about the president's inherent powers as commander-in-chief, Yoo pops up frequently as the reputed author of expansive interpretations of what the president can do just because he is president. Since he is not a typical Berkeley professor, he is often called upon around the campus to justify the doctrines that he authored and continued to defend. It's rather hard to tell whether checks and balances or individual rights have any meaning at all for him.
Jon Carrol, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle who lives in the UC neighborhood has heard enough of Yoo's theories so that he has figured out what our situation is. There is a logic to the reasoning, which goes like this little snippet from the longer dialogue.Carrol's hypothetical questions and the Yoo-ian answers. Go to Carrol's site (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/01/02/DDG5TG01E31.DTL) and read the rest, which will make you rejoice that cunning people in Washington have found a way to make us safe within the rule of law.
Why does the president have the power to unilaterally authorize wiretaps of American citizens?
Because he is the president.
Does the president always have that power?
No. Only when he is fighting the war on terror does he have that power.
When will the war on terror be over?
The fight against terror is eternal. Terror is not a nation; it is a tactic. As long as the president is fighting a tactic, he can use any means he deems appropriate. Why does the president have that power? It's in the Constitution.
Where in the Constitution?
It can be inferred from the Constitution. When the president is protecting America, he may by definition make any inference from the Constitution that he chooses. He is keeping America safe. It can be inferred from the Constitution. When the president is protecting
America, he may by definition make any inference from the Constitution that he chooses. He is keeping America safe.
Who decides what measures are necessary to keep America safe?
The president.
=======
And so it goes. Some people make their marks through dogged advocacy for those who have great power. Condi Rice, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzales. Now add John Yoo, a smart tailor who can make the democratic rule law fit the shape of any emperor. --JSL
Jan. 3rd, 2006 @ 03:18 pm
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| » Living in the Republic of Spite |
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Are we merely stupid, perhaps accidentally stupid? Or stupid as a matter of spiteful principles? I sadly conclude the latter. We, the people, are officially opposed to the very existence of the Cuban goverment, so you might think that we have an obligation to pursue that policy--right or wrong--with a bit of savoir faire.
And we even have a baseball president, as we know. In fact baseball may be the subject in which he has the greatest knowledge. How did he apply that little bit of knowledge he is suspected of having? He allowed his Treasury Department to quash Cuban participation in the World Baseball Classic. According to ABC Sport, Cuba would not have even played a game in the U.S. This comes on the heels of the U.S. bumbling during Katrina and the refusal of Cuba's offer for humanitarian assistance using its notably effective public health services. Better leave suffering humanity in the hands of Heckuva Job Brownie than let a commie get credit for the relief of suffering.
People vary in their political opinions regarding whether the U.S. should eliminate Castro or whatever remnants of his government survive. The blowback from the elimination enterprise can be intimidating, as JFK learned when Lee Harvey Oswald of Fair Play for Cuba sent the bullet through his head. Not that Oswald was Castro's hired gun; he was just an outraged American sympathizer who noticed that El Gringo was persistently attempting to overthrow Castro's government.
Richard Rapaport at U.C. Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies has now convinced me that Cuban participation in the baseball tournament would have been a gentle way of loosening the dictatorial control of Castro. In his scenario, published yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle, he suggests the following: "Within a month of opening day, baseball delirium would sweep Cuba like bird flu. Farmworkers would sheathe their machetes and catch the next train to Havana to see if they could snag a ducat to the hottest game in the entire Caribbean. It would take no time at all for scalpers to be out in front of the stadium teaching the most succinct lessons about capitalist supply and demand. The ugliest term of opprobrium in Cuba, "Yankee imperialist" would take on a whole new (if not necessarily more pleasant) meaning."
That would have been conservative heaven, you would think. But spite is better. Spite on!!!--JSL
Dec. 21st, 2005 @ 10:22 am
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| » 80 Gigs a Year for Brubeck at 85 |
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I ordinarily turn off all my channels of reception for celebrity birthday announcements. But Dave Brubeck at 85 is different. Today's story in the SF Chronicle ("Dave Brubeck: Take 85") reminds us how important Brubeck has been to American social history. A gentle man who loves his audiences, he has undoubtedly made more friends for the U.S. than the globe trotting governmental flacks who massage world opinion with fork-tongued messages.
A significant dimension of Brubeck's history is his long term commitment to civil rights. As a member of the U.S. Army, he played in 1945 with an integrated group ("The Wolf Pack") at Nuremenberg--stepping out in the front of the army he served. "Jazz is the voice of freedom," he said,and backed it up by refusing to accomodate gigs at venues where he met demands to push Eugene Wright, his black bassist, off stage. The Chronicle article reports that in a one year period he refused 23 gigs at southern universities that demanded all white performers on stage. He refused a high paying gig in South Africa for the same reason.
A person with integrity and staying power is a wonder to behold. I hope that we shall see an 86.--JSL
Dec. 5th, 2005 @ 04:58 pm
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| » The Philosopher Who Didn't Get It in Iraq |
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NPR recently ran a profile on a military officer, Col. Ted Westhusing, who committed suicide in Iraq this past June. Westhusing, who had taught military ethics as a professor at West Point, had volunteered for Iraq and was assigned oversight tasks for military contractors operating there. He had become distressed by what he saw as prevasive criminality in the management of the American projects there. He thought he saw significant financial corruption and human rights abuse. The report, based upon an interview with T. Christian Miller of the L.A. Times is still posted at the NPR Web site for listening.
His suicide note read as follows: " "I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. Death before being dishonored any more."
How sad that we have lost such a man! An unnecessary waste, when so much hope was offered by our own President Bush. If only Westhusing had sat in one of the "hoo-ah sessions" at a military academy or camp! He could have relearned the arts of diverted guilt. Assign responsibility to others. Emphasize the innocence of your own motives. Ignore results. Stay the course. It is the way of the more comfortable life, that permits restful sleep and long vacations.-JSL
Dec. 2nd, 2005 @ 08:33 am
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| » Seeing Our American Selves as We Really Are |
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Not really. Who could ever speak intelligently about such a vast topic? Yet we claim to do it on the 4th of July and other occasions. And compared to such oratorical traditions, there are some significantly enlightening alternatives. One is living and traveling abroad--but such experiences date very quickly. Another is listening to others speak when they focus on U.S. national behavior and interpret it.
Until April 2004 the Stanley Foundation subsidized a fine print publication called World Press Review, which compiled and translated significant articles and editorials--often ones commenting on the U.S. Thematic issues immediately after 9/11 and prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq were especially good for grasping other nations' reasons for rejecting our leadership. One feature of World Press that helped readers was a classification of the characteristic political bias of the sources as independent, conservative, liberal, etc.
Fortunately, the publication has survived in electronic form. If you have been disppointed not to hear more from U.S. papers about Bush's alleged proposal to Tony Blair for the bombing on Al Jazeera in Quatar, Worldpress.org will take you to the liberal Observer for their account of Bush's obsession. Since we rather quickly bombed Al Jazeera in both Afghanistan and Iraq, there's a smoking gun pattern already there. The March to Freedom sure takes a lot of bombs.
A more amusing site that is totally America-centric and completely volunteer on its editorial side is WatchingAmerica.com. There you can find several articles, for example, on the proposal to bomb Al Jazeera. Some of the articles are machine-translated into English. Which means that you may not know exactly what was said, but you do get the benefit of reviewing the state of the art in zero cost translations. Here's a sample from a Tunisian (French) article on the decline of George W. Bush.
"The surveys are followed and do not resemble the United States where Bush, voted by plebiscite by 70% of favourable opinions, three years ago to lead to the hussarde its unjust war against Iraq, sees its popularity being reduced like a skin of sorrow to fall to 34%! It is about a score among low of the history of the American heads of State."
By chance, this article had been translated by a person as well, which yields for the same material:
"Three years ago, Bush enjoyed an approval rating of 70% in pursuit of his unjust, crudely-conducted war against Iraq. Today, current polls show his popularity to have shrunk, like so much untanned leather, to a mere 34%! One of the lowest approval ratings of any president in the history of the United States.This dramatic drop - which bodes ill for the White House's current occupant - is primarily due to the deteriorating situation in Iraq, where GIs have been caught in the quagmire of guerrilla warfare, suffering heavy losses to both personnel and material. Besides, each week brings with it further developments which only serve to further darken an already bleak media landscape."
I think I will vote again for people as translators this year. In the meantime, there are many English language original and well translated pieces out there that help us see how we are affecting the world and how we are regarded there.--JSL
Nov. 27th, 2005 @ 03:42 pm
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| » Feeling Sorry for the President on Thanksgiving |
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President Bush is a man who uses self-pity as public policy. "It's hard work being president," is a remark he has used a few times to encourage us to excuse his world class bumbling.
But there's another part of Bush's life where we should consider cutting him some slack. I am thinking about life among the female canines who experience a strange attraction to his unique pheromones. There's Harriet Miers, White House Counsel, described by the president himself as "a pit bull in high heels;" then there's Condi Rice--can we call her "a chihuaha in pumps;" and Karen Hughes, a Saint Bernard in running shoes (she wrote A Charge to Keep when he was deciding to run); Laura seems to me like a fine cocker spaniel of a woman, gentle and smart in everything except love, apparently. In the spirit of sympathy on this Thanksgiving day, and in quest of a finer truth than we shall hear from Scott McLellan, Mark Morford at the San Francisco Chronicle has given us the story of the Bush Thanksgiving.
Read it and weep for him and for our country. At a time when the country needs nobility of character in leadership, supportive acquaintances for the president, just look at what he got and we got instead. Merry Thanksgiving.--JSL
Nov. 24th, 2005 @ 04:06 pm
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| » California's SuperGovernor |
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The same people who put Governor Schwarzenegger in office two years ago have spoken. There was never any kind of ordinary reason to think that he would be successful. I know that he's pose-pretty (if you like steroidal lumpiness); after all, posing was his profession before he developed his mythic on screen persona as a relentless destroyer. He ran on this charisma, occasionally staging some version of screen heroism. He was determined to eliminate the Democratic governor- reinstated car tax--called for by a provision signed by Republican Governor Pete Wilson. It had been meant to provide revenue in the event of a fiscal crisis. The crowds loved it when he and his stunt pals staged a car smashing with a wrecking ball. It was like a movie!!!!!
And true to his word, one of the few that he actually kept, he did eliminate the car tax--thereby making California's fiscal crisis worse. Since then he has swindled stake holders in the state budget process, extracting concessions, promising restorations, and then welching on the deals. I can't say that I told you so, because I could not foresee the details of how our experiment would work out. But I--and I was hardly unique--saw the intoxication of a particular kind of myth with voters and felt that it would turn out in disappointment for everyone. Film and History League asked me to do an analysis of the prospects two and a half years ago. I'm not embarassed to bring up my then written essay "Will California Elect a Superhero," which still hangs there in the ether.
Beware when actor-saviors promise to blow up Evil. They won't be as pure as they claim to be, and the results will be much messier than advertised. Maybe this all means--Hasta la Vista, Terminator!--JSL
Nov. 9th, 2005 @ 09:56 am
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| » The Deeper Meaning of the R2D2 Cheez-it Box |
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Myths_Americana has been away for a while, working on the deep meaning of some big problems. If you edit a Star Wars book, as I am currently doing with Matthew Kapell, you need to understand a lot of stuff that you ordinarily neglect. Here's my latest conundrum. A relative of mine was kind enough to give me a Limited Edition Star Wars box for Cheez-it crackers. With only two UPCs you can order a menacing Darth Vader poster for $2.99. It's no secret that Star Wars is, among other things, a massive merchandising machine that sells licenses to other corporations for the commercial use of Star Wars imagery and characters. Lucasfilm Ltd. even maintains a kind of promotions billboard for all the forthcoming products.Even if the product is a consumable, like a cracker, the package itself may have an afterlife as a collectible. This sort of licensing has been around for a long time. George Lucas walks in the footsteps of Walt Disney, the Lone Ranger, and others.
But this commonplace knowledge doesn't answer my metaphysical question. Is there some deeper connection between the Cheez-it and R2D2? Is there a subliminal message that I would become as cute and clever if I eat the product? That R2D2 is not all battery juice powering mechanisms but is himself a cracker nosher? There are hundreds if not thousands of those products out there. What does it really mean? Is the question absurd, if the selling is all there is?--JSL
Oct. 9th, 2005 @ 10:22 pm
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| » War is Sweet, Peace is Hell |
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It's pretty awful, how much worse Peace is than War. And that is Katrina's grim lesson. I wish we could defeat the damage of Katrina as quickly as the president posted the "Mission Accomplished" message on the Abraham Lincoln, but the problems of peace at home are so much harder than Rumsfeldian Blitzkriegs against Evil.
I think that we shall never see a domestic disaster as lovely as a war abroad. Let us count the ways.
War is an opportunity to pursue objectives without being so fastidious about who gets hurt. If they're dead, they're terrorists. But if the deads ones are provably not terrorists, they can be written off as unlucky victims in history's grand "March to Freedom." We, the citizens of the Hooah-nited States get to decide that their lives don't count enough to stay our liberating trigger fingers. If some benighted Iraqi objects about callousness to their suffering, they have little effective way of speaking to us. An occupying force decides whose life counts enough to be really careful about and whose life counts less. We imprison thousands on the announced reasonable suspicion that they are terrorists--and then we let a thousand out of Abu Ghraib at one whack. And this is called " a significant event in Iraq's progress toward democratic governance and the rule of law." Get it? If you're not in prison, you're participating in democracy. You can say anything you want to in a battle zone, and it takes a lot of body bags and mutilated service people to matter to the folks at home. War has an ingenious logic. The worse you do at it, the more justified it becomes. Because everyone who dies (in vain?) must be redeemed by someone else who comes to take their place. War is sure the best bet. That was the cunning of George W. Bush's diversionary trip to the San Diego military base during the early stages of Katrina--to denounce Bill Clinton for making the War on Terrorism necessary. As James Sterngold of the SF Chronicle summarized Bush's August 31 speech, he said that Bush "saved some of his most stinging, if slightly veiled attacks, for his predecessors in the White House. He characterized the failure to respond with force after the killing of 18 U.S. soldiers by militiamen in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998, which left 258 people dead and more than 5,000 injured, and the attack on the destroyer Cole in 2000, which killed 17 U. S. sailors, as signs of weakness that encouraged the terrorists to strike on Sept. 11, 2001." And he got to say to this to people who are required to salute him as Commander in Chief. Finger pointing, blame game is what it was and he could get away with it. Clinton sort of spoiled it later in the week when he defended George W.'s disaster performance.
As for Katrina, our big problem on the peaceful domestic front, it's much easier to see who gets hurt. And there is that nagging Constitution, whose Preamble talks about "promoting the general welfare"--not the welfare of the political hacks brought in to manage FEMA. And all the picturesare so terrible. American citizens these dead and suffering are, not some foreign Other whose rights can be minimized by presidents or field commanders. And then there is the damnably difficult business of reconstructing what might have been less damaged if we had not chosen to malign neglect as policy or placed the incompetent in responsible positions.
It's easy to see why smart politicians choose war every time. So much glory, so many salutes to the leader even when things go badly, so much shared grief when our service people fall. War can bring us together. But disaster on the peaceful domestic front? Enough. On to the next tax cut, the next agency waiting for renewal/reduction and patronage appointments--JSL
Sep. 14th, 2005 @ 08:54 pm
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