Matt Taibbi, the journalist who inherited Hunter S. Thompson’s seat at The National Desk for Rolling Stone has written the introduction to the 40th Anniversary Edition of Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72. I particularly like his take on President Barack Hussein Obama and the Thompson’s take on The Great Shark.
The Village Voice: You wrote that Hunter reminded the American public that we are supposed to have high expectations for our leaders, maybe even impossibly high expectations. Do you think the American public, today, views their leaders in that way?
Matt Taibbi: I think there is a lot of idealism. I think a lot of what Occupy is is disappointed idealism. A lot of the people who thought, in Hunter terms, that Obama was the “Great Shark” who was going to come and right all the wrongs. And then they realized that he was very much, for all his good qualities, a conventional Democratic party politician, and all the negatives that that comes with. I think people were extremely disappointed, and that’s why they’re all out on the streets right now. There’s a tremendous cynicism embedded in mainstream American politics right now, where people who are in Washington and live on Capitol Hill really don’t think they have any obligation to be truly honest. They think that everything is a compromise. They’ve lost touch with what people actually want. And they really do want somebody who is idealistic.
I disagree with Taibbi here. I don’t think Americans want somebody who is idealistic. I think Americans want someone who represents their ideals and that is a very different shark.
I’m angry. Really upset. I was going to take a deserved week off from this non-paying job of writing about what the conventional media simply ignore or distort. Now I can’t. They did it again. I have to work.
Today, Monday, as I write I’ve read the morning Plain Dealer and Crain’s Cleveland Business, articles by Joe Crea and Joel Hammond, respectively. I’m disgusted.
They are reporting about the Cleveland Browns teaming up with chefs at the Browns Stadium, owned by the citizens of Cleveland. The citizens of Cleveland have nothing to say about this and their mayor and city council members apparently don’t give a damned. Or are too lazy or stupid to care.
What we get from these two journalists is press release blather disguised as news.
First, they don’t tell us one thing about who pays for the new food outlets their stories boast about. Shouldn’t that be of interest to readers? Especially since the public may be paying the bill.
Neither tell us the cost or who is paying. Thanks!
So, the Cleveland Height/Universtiy Heights Library online presence has a feature that allows patrons to share lists of books. This afternoon, while in the process of ordering two books by Kitty Burns Florey, I spied a list titled: Books Parents Shouldn’t Let Kids Read.
I was not the least bit surprised to read:
These books, although the ALA and most librarians want us to believe, have NEVER been banned in the US. They can be purchased in any bookstore or the Internet. While pushing borderline pornography to minor children—the ones they should be protecting!—and accusing parents of “censorship,” the ALA and librarians don’t say a word against countries that really censor literature. In Ohio, teachers and librarians, among others, are protected by law and can expose minor children to age inappropriate literature. Don’t believe me? Do the test: approach a kid in a mall, for example, and show him “Deal with It.” You might find yourself being escorted by policemen: what you did is child-abuse—well, so long as you are not one of the protected “professionals,” that is! Some info on these books and the ALA techniques can be found here [Links to an organization whose mission is: to promote and defend the right to life, marriage, traditional family values, small government within the Constitutional boundaries of the Founders, personal responsibility, and American sovereignty. JH]
My question is this: is there any value in attempting to engage this person is a meaningful dialogue in the hope of swaying their point of view and helping them to realize that they cause real harm to real children?
The clear implication [of the difference between page-a-day writers and binge writers] was that the best advice for young writers and aspiring professors is: write every day. Use your self-control to form a daily habit, and you’ll produce more with less effort in the long run. p. 159
Change happens in three steps and, this is the important bit, they are three distinct yet interdependent steps. The hierarchy of actions is important; step three, causing the change to manifest, cannot happen unless preceded by step one, being the change and step two, communicating the change.
Step One is embodied in the words of one of my personal heroes, Mahatma Gandhi: You must be the change you want to see in the world. I firmly believe that the vast majority of dysfunction in our civic and political lives arises from the basic failure to take this first step, whether it is the family-values touting Republican in the closet, or the environmentalist preaching from the front seat of an SUV, or the Occupy Wall Street activist dressed in designer clothes, we must be willing to demonstrate our personal commitment to a change before we can ask others to change.
Step Two involves committing to the conversation. One person cannot change the world. Never has, never will. Margaret Mead, however, nailed Step Two, when she wrote: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. If you can’t convince one other person to change, based upon your example, then change is not possible.
Step Three, causing the change to manifest, is a matter of persistence, of tenacity. In the mythical words of Sir. Winston Churchill, Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, give in. Never give in. Never give in. Never give in.
I still struggle with Step One and I’m making forays into Step Two. In part of that struggle, I started a conversation on the Civic Commons last evening with Jason Russell who made an appeal to find a new forum for personal democracy.
I repost the beginning of that conversation here for two reasons: first, to broaden the discussion and two, to clarify. The second is important to me because the Civic Commons platform remains clunky and does not allow for editing. I do prefer to have better control over my words.
Before I discuss any of your ideas, I want to clear up a serious error in your conclusion: we do not live in a participatory democracy, the founders created a representative democracy, and the difference is critical.
In the first case all citizens would gather, discuss, debate and then vote directly on all issues before the nation; technologically feasible, but difficult and even dangerous on many levels (consider how a vote might have gone on 12 September 2001 on whether or not to slag Afghanistan with nuclear weapons). In the second case we annually gather to cast ballots selecting some portions of our representative, executive and judicial bodies to represent our views and trust them to govern in our collective best interests on all matters of local, state and federal governance. The rise of the ballot initiative has either thrown a monkey wrench into the system or taken back some small part of government depending upon which ox you support, but in the grand scheme of politics, such initiative have not yet significantly modified the basic structure.
While technology creates the illusion of citizen participation and furthers the myth that individual voices, not supported by significant amounts of cash, can make a difference – “I take part in government, I signed seven petitions and emailed my congressional representative and senators five times this week” – what I have seen and continue to see is that emails and online petition drives only raise the noise level and our representatives consider them only if they perceive a threat to their re-election or the noise provides them with support or cover for an agenda they have already chosen to pursue.
If a citizen cannot rely on a sizable campaign contribution to catch the attention of their representatives, then they must seek to standout in some other way. Omar Ahmad gave a TED talk back in 2010 that detailed the anti-technology solution: pen and paper. Because so few of us write letters any more, when a politicians gets hand written snail mail, they actually sit up and take notice because writing a letter demands time and energy that Internet petitions and emails don’t.
Put down the keyboard and pick up the pen. Even the president pays attention to his real mail.
Yet the pre-Internet novelists had an advantage over their successors in terms of textual output. Their supplementary writing — the journals and, in particular, the letters — complemented the novels and short stories in a way tweets and posts and even e-mails don’t.
The explanation isn’t necessarily in the content of great writers’ letters. Readers hoping to find reflections of wondrous art in the letters of the likes of Thomas Hardy, Marcel Proust or Joseph Conrad have come away disappointed. The relationship between the novel and the letter is more one of medium than content. In a sense a novel is a letter, and by writing letters in the days before the Internet and widespread telephony you were practicing the act of novel-writing over and over again.
The novel is written, like the letter, to one person. This might seem an odd thing to say; novelists would, on the whole, prefer to have as many readers as possible. But it is the peculiar focus of the novel that no matter how many times the event is repeated, the writer must imagine his or her story being delivered, like a letter, for the attention of a sole recipient — not an actual person but an idealized reader, who is able to make herself believe that this message, this story, is for her in particular.
In terms of humanities written forms, the novel is brand new. Writers penned (and penciled) letters and diaries (which are really just unmailed letters aren’t they?) for centuries before the first novels made their appearance, so it might be decades in this faster paced world we inhabit before we discern what must necessarily emerge next from phone calls, blogs, tweets and texts.
Maybe this is why I still journal. On paper. In ink. With a fountain pen. (But not by candlelight (too often).)
Meek goes on to touch upon what may be at the heart of my dissatisfaction with Facebook:
I have no beef with Facebook. At their best, Facebook posters will be witty, outré, ingenious, scandalous, wise. Yet the medium, by its nature, encourages writing that is not writer-to-reader personally but writer-to-readers generally. The intensity of one-to-one communication is attenuated by the desire to offend with care and not to give too much away: a press release from a corporate self.
A number of times I’ve contemplated not blogging because I felt as if I were simply writing into the abyss. Try as I might to encourage comments, they are few and far between and the sense that I am being read is tenuous. I blame myself, of course, for not writing well or clear enough to be worthy of comment.
At the end Meek offers a possible glimpse of the novel to come:
Another of the ways the letter resembles the novel is in its untakebackability. Once posted, the letter’s gone, finished. It won’t be changed or updated. The Kindle route to publishing suggests the tantalizing possibility of writers being able to offer their readers periodic upgrades to the novels they wrote years earlier — a subscribed-to novel that, in theory, advances ever closer to perfection, loses baggy paragraphs, accepts new characters.
The idea is not totally new. Charles Dickens wrote serially, publishing chapters in the magazines of his time and I imagine that he made some revisions when his stories were finished and gathered entire between two covers, but would Tolstoy, given the chance, revisit Anna Karenina or Pierre Bezukhov? I think not. A serial may be transformed into a novel, but I don’t’ think the process would work well back to front.
Upgrades notwithstanding — Tolstoy did rework War and Peace between the first and second printings — at some point the novel, like a painting, or a letter, must be finished, else the writer, and the reader, may never move on.
[Julian] Assange’s resolve to avoid extradition to Sweden has nothing to do with a reluctance to face possible sex assault charges there. His concern all along has been that once he’s in Swedish custody, he will far more easily be extradited to the U.S.
In general, small countries are more easily coerced and bullied by the U.S., and Sweden in particular has a demonstrated history of acceding to U.S. demands when it comes to individuals accused of harming American national security. In December, 2001, Sweden handed over two asylum-seekers to the CIA, which then rendered them to be tortured in Egypt. A ruling from the U.N. Human Rights Committee found Sweden in violation of the global ban on torture for its role in that rendition (the two individuals later received a substantial settlement from the Swedish government).
If I had to point to a single aspect of the past three years of the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama that has disappointed and angered me more than any other, if I could wave the political straw that broke my voting-Democrat back, in the face of all those asking me to re-elect President Obama out of fear of what a President Mitt Romney might do, this is that straw: our nation of Law has succumb to a star-chamber mentality where our terror of terror drives all that we do.
I noticed a small blurb in the Plain Dealer the day after the state legislature passed the so-called Jackson Plan (really the foundation/corporate plan). It said seemingly innocently: “City schools vacancy filled.” Innocuous enough.
The appointee will take the position vacated by schools boss Eric Gordon.
I thought it deserved more attention.
What should interest readers – and especially Cleveland teachers berated by the media for not taking more money cuts – is the salary given Michelle Pierre-Farid. She’s from D.C. and getting a D.C. salary.
It’s about as close to $200,000 as you can get. $199,800 salary. Annually.
How many teachers will be laid off to meet that salary?
Are we going back to the good old days of Barbara Byrd-Bennett?
You may remember that the Cleveland and Gund Foundation and Cleveland Tomorrow (now Greater Cleveland Partnership) provided a private stash for her to entertain and amuse others so that public money wouldn’t be used, nor would there be public accountability.
It’s the way the foundations ingratiate themselves with supposed leaders. Really bought and paid for flunkies.
I remember that the corporate bosses ruled out a levy at that time. And Byrd-Bennett remained silent. Why? Because it would interfere with another corporate desire of the period. A convention center. They got it, didn’t they?
Of course, the foundations and the GCP will be steering the November levy. No doubt about that. With the help of the PD, also of course. What a cabal!
This is also about the time when the orthodoxy police in the commentariat begin their efforts to discipline their ranks. They will chastise anyone who they think should be on their team who criticizes their candidate for anything. People who are perceived as being on the liberal end of the spectrum will be repeatedly told that although Barack Obama may have disappointed many of the people who expected more of him, Mitt Romney would be far worse and that we should thus mute our criticisms of Obama because that only benefits Romney. We will be told that should keep quiet for the next few months until Obama is re-elected.
When you see Steve Litt’s smiling face on the Plain Dealer front page you know you can expect another glowing pitch for huge public subsidies for Public Square.
These days – since the foundation crowd has its school plan passed and a levy plan ready, the casino up and operating, tons of money rolling for the medical mart – it’s time for a push for new downtown money.
Why not spend millions of dollars on Public Square. Where else are there deeper needs?
If it upsets the Regional Transit System and adds a million or two dollars to its budget plus inconveniencing thousand of RTA riders, so what? People who don’t own cars probably should stay home.
The blindness and crassness of Litt, Mayor Frank Jackson and the Greater Cleveland Partnership and County Executive Ed Fitzgerald to keep demanding public investment downtown while so much of the rest of the city and its people suffer disinvestment and disregard should disgust us.
I recently read that Cleveland is losing 190 people a day, according to the U. S. Census Bureau. That’s almost 70,000 people a year. Not good, GCP, Mayor Jackson. In fact, very bad.
The Plain Dealer and the visiting news media can talk all they desire about the growing population of downtown Cleveland. That’s not the whole city.
So those who can leave are telling our leaders, go to hell. We’re through with you. It’s a message that has been just as clear for decades.
But we do have a new casino. So this town is booming for some.
[L]et’s say that you and I are trying to influence the results of an election, and we each set up a soapbox on a particular corner in Marietta on a daily basis. We appear on our respective soapboxes regularly and speak to whatever citizens of Marietta will listen.
Now that is really about free speech, and it also fits well with democratic ideals.
But when you bring money to the equation, everything changes. Let’s say that I have a lot of money, and I buy ad time on national TV that gives me 20 spots each day of highly dramatized three-minute ads. You, on the other hand, have very little money and your ad campaign consists of regular letters to the Marietta Times. Okay, we’re each running for president of the United States: who do you think is going to win?
It’s clear that adding money to the situation changes the game entirely. Obviously, I am able to exercise much more “free speech” than you are. In other words, you don’t have a snowball’s chance.
Where there’s a carcass it is very difficult for vultures not to feed on it.
Last week I talked about the demise of the Cleveland Press. Too bad. It was hard to lose it. Looking at today’s state of newspapers surely we wouldn’t still have the Press around. Hell, we hardly have the Plain Dealer around.
But the end of the Press was a lesson in the cannibalization of community assets for profit.
The saga continued beyond what I stated last week.
The old Press property still kept giving to our duplicitous political/business syndicate.
In the summer of 1987 a well-dressed short, intense man walked into Cleveland City Council offices demanding, “Where’s George Forbes’s office.”
It was Joe Cole. Fannie Lewis told him that George, in a finance committee meeting, was too busy. Cole went away. Clearly unhappy.
He should have been happy. It was the same day the U. S. Justice Dept. – despite plenty of evidence to the contrary – dropped its indictment in the sale of the Press. Cole was home free.
Indeed, Forbes in the meeting, as I wrote that June, was “punching holes in the deal that would allow Cole and his partners to build a 1,000 space parking facility on city land behind their new Press office building.” The building was called North Pointe.
Yes, the dealing never stops. And everyone wants a piece Continue Reading »
I honestly don’t know why I waited this long, but this morning I removed myself from the MoveOn email list (I’ve been sending the emails to my spam file for years) and just got back what the fund-raising organization for the left-wing of the Republican Party (aka Democrats) promises to be my final email. (I’ll believe that promise when I don’t see it.)
Dear Jeff Hess,
You’ve been permanently unsubscribed from the MoveOn list — if you take no more action, this’ll be the last email you get from us. But please don’t go!
MoveOn gets its power from its members — we’re just 7 million people working together to change the world. But we know some folks are too busy to follow every last email.
So, we’ve developed a once-weekly newsletter to keep those folks informed. We’ll only send you the most critical messages, and we won’t email you more than once a week in any case. Want to sign up? Just click here:
And if you didn’t mean to unsubscribe in the first place (we hope so!), you can re-join the full list at:
Thanks for everything you’ve done as part of MoveOn,
The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved. —Marge Piercy, For the young who want to in The Moon Is Always Female
* * * *
At day’s first light, have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that “I am rising for the work of man.” Must I grumble at setting out to do what I was born for and for the sake of which I have been brought into the world? Is this the purpose of my creation, to lie here under my blankets and keep myself warm? “Ah, but it is a great deal more pleasant!” Was it for pleasure, then, that you were born and not for work? —Marcus Aurelius
Let me respectfully remind you, life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken-- Awaken! This night your days will be diminished by one. Take heed. Do not squander your life. —Zen Evening Gatha
Take an ax to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now. —Rumi, Quietness
