WEDNESDAY,
May 15, 2013
Pogo.
Like
many my age, I learned my early politics from my father and the
comics. Dad was a lifetime employee of the local Meadville
Tribune and
I was a newspaper delivery boy, so the paper was free and there was
always time to read after the morning paper route. Then, too, on
those special mornings when I got to ride with dad as he delivered
papers to local rural post offices, there was time to mull over the
day/week's news. Whether in the car or the kitchen, politics were
discussed quietly. Dad loved and introduced me to Pogo's (i.e.Walt
Kelly's) sometimes not so subtle political satire.
Anyway,
as Pogo was wont to note, especially on a slow news week, “Friday
the 13th,
comes on ___ this month.” Today I often read a news story and am
forced to remember Pogo's other, still oft quoted witticism, “We
have met the enemy and he is us!”
As
I occasionally reminded students, back in my day the newspaper was
essential to “keep up”. In those long ago dark ages, after the
introduction of moveable type, but before the internet (now Tweets,
etc.), imagine my surprise at finding out on the front page ot the
Tribune
that the US was involved in a “police action” in Korea – and,
thanks to the Associated Press story, there was even a map. This was
the first of many “scoops” I delivered to my classmates who were
not early risers/readers.
There
was also the morning when my college international relations class
destroyed the early morning lecture of a much admired Penn State
professor. Dr. Albinski, lacked a car radio in his ancient VW, and
was blindsided when someone in the class pointed out that his
response to a well thought-out question was incorrect, this according
to a morning radio bulletin. The good professor, who never
came to class without having read (cover-to-cover) the morning's NY
Times
and London
Times, promptly
corrected this problem, as many of us noted the next morning: there
was a small battery powered transistor radio hanging from the
rearview mirror mount in his battered VW. The lesson from this
story: always listen to NPR while driving to school, especially when
coming to Mr. Abell's first period class!
A great read from the past. I found the 50th anniversary edition on the local library shelf. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. A two-part story about tribal life in Nigeria and the first interactions of the Nigerians and the missionaries who had come to “save” them. Mr. Achebe is revered as a writer who brought African writing to the western literature forum.
The
Cleveland kidnappings. History: Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped on
June 5, 2002, and reunited with her family on March 12, 2003. A
comparison of the 2003 media coverage with 2013 will no doubt
illustrate the huge difference accorded the three young women in
Cleveland. What is surely true is that today's mass media will
stampede to the money to be gained by securing as much coverage as
possible, most probably to the detriment of these newly freed women.
Ms. Smart and her father were among the first to point out how
absolutely necessary privacy is to allow these young women to
re-adjust and re-insert themselves with their friends/families.
Unfortunately, the victims's privacy earns no
$$$
for the media.
The
western world's fear factor.
An article in the upcoming Nation
magazine, which seeks to analyze the rise of Britain's UKIP (United
Kingdom Independence Party), notes that,
Across
the Western world, a sizable section of the white working and middle
class is terrified. Their wages have stalled; their welfare is being
slashed; their jobs are emigrating [leaving them unemployed, even
unemployable]; labor, skilled and unskilled, is immigrating [at best
reducing their wages]. A 2010 New York Times poll showed that more
than half of self-described Tea Partiers were concerned that someone
in their household would be out of a job in the next year, while more
than two-thirds said the recession has been difficult or caused hard-
ship and major life changes.
It
seems safe to assume that a current poll would yield similar.
results.
For
the unthinking/uncaring among us. From
Tolstoy's last novel, Resurrection.
If
once we admit...that anything can be more important than a feeling of
love for our fellows, then there is no crime which we may not commit
with easy minds.... Men think there are circumstances when one may
deal with human beings without love. But there are no such
circumstances....Only let yourself deal with a man without love….
and there are no limits to the suffering you will bring on yourself.
Syria,
a part of the “new” Middle East.
From an article in the Boston
Globe,
May 8, 2013:
History
possesses a remarkable capacity to confound. Right when the path
ahead appears clear — remember when the end of the Cold War seemed
to herald a new age of harmony? — it makes a U-turn. The Syrian
civil war provides only the latest indication that one such radical
reversal is occurring before our very eyes. For Syria bears further
witness to the ongoing disintegration of the modern Middle East and
the reemergence of an assertive Islamic world, a development likely
to define the 21st century.
Recall that the modern
Middle East is a relatively recent creation. It emerged from the
wreckage of World War I, the handiwork of cynical and devious
European imperialists. As European (and especially British) power
declined after World War II, the United States, playing the role of
willing patsy, assumed responsibility for propping up this
misbegotten product of European venality — a dubious inheritance,
if there ever was one. Now it’s all coming undone. Today, from the
Maghreb to Pakistan, the order created by the West to serve Western
interests is succumbing to an assault mounted from within. Who are
the assailants? People intent on exercising that right to
self-determination that President Woodrow Wilson bequeathed to the
world nearly 100 years ago. What these multitudes are seeking remains
to be seen. But they don’t want and won’t countenance outside
interference...Americans have long entertained the conceit that we
are bigger than history. We provide the drumbeat to which others
march. Sorry: Not so.
Andrew
J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at
Boston University.
A
friend and student of the Middle East had this to say about the Bacevich article, “I
agree with the essence of his article but think he overgeneralizes
about what "Washington" knows, understands and anticipates.
The fact is that Washington is not a unitary actor. Many in
Washington would strongly agree with Bacevich and are fully aware of
the historical, political and social realities in the M[iddle]
E[ast].”
America's
drive against (?) empire.
In
an impressive collection of excerpts titled Against
the Beast, a Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire,
edited
by John Nichols, the [late] eminent historian Chalmers Johnson had
this to say: “.
. .where U.S.-supported repression has created hopeless conditions,
to U.S.-supported economic policies that have led to unimaginable
misery, blowback reintroduces us to a world of cause and effect.”
Enjoy
your week! Next week's musings will “be out” on the 22nd.
No comments:
Post a Comment