TRUE BEAUTY

 
To me, the most beautiful person and creative artist in the world, for a while now.

SOME OLD FAVORITE QUOTES (HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY JACK)

 from The Scripture of The Golden Eternity:

"While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light."

"...it's impossible to miss your reward."



from a letter to Don Allen, Fall 1957:

"I have been writing my heart out all my life..." 

"I would like everybody in the world to tell his full life confession and tell it HIS OWN WAY and then we'd have something to read in our old age, instead of the hesitations and cavilings of 'men of letters' with blear faces who only alter words that the Angel brought them...."



from Vanity of Dolouz:

"...all life is but a skull bone and a rack of ribs through which we keep passing food and fuel just so's we can burn so furious (tho not so beautiful)..."

"If you don't say what you want, what's the sense of writing?"

"—who's going to come out and say that the mind of nature is intrinsically insane and vicious forever?



from Visions of Cody:

"(but I've known the world, it's all happened before, why do I kid myself with these artificial newnesses)"

"—I must write down books too, story-novels, and communicate to people instead of just appeasing my lone soul with a record of it—but this record is my joy."

"All you do is head straight for the grave, a face just covers a skull awhile. Stretch that skull-cover and smile."

"Time is the purest and cheapest form of doom."



from Visions of Gerard:

"My heart is where it belongs."

HOPE IT'S TRUE (remembering similar expressions back in 1966-73)

PS

Another highlight of The Golden Globes was Awkwafina, who is the highlight in anything she's a part of. But the fact that they had to keep saying she's the first Asian-American actor to win a Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture —Musical or Comedy (we won't even get into what/how movies get into this category) just compounded my deep disappointment that in 2020 we're still dealing with "firsts" in any category (in the GGs "first solo woman" to win for best score, in this season's The Nutcracker ballet "first African-American" in the lead girl role etc.)!

LYRA MCKEE R.I.P.

I didn't know her, but wish I did. Another tragic victim of gun violence gone too soon. This time an Irish journalist LGBTQ activist. This shite is so unfair, it dwarfs the supposed and warped politics behind most gun terror, whether personal or group inspired. Too feckin' sad.

MIDDAY MINI-RANT

I see a lot of friends on FB (including poets and academics who have no trouble with the most difficult passages in literature) ranting and/or laughing about this section of a speech the con artist gave, as if—or perhaps actually meaning—they can't interpret it. But his supporters get it, and it isn't difficult for me to decipher. He's saying he can break audience-size records without playing a musical instrument or a sport, just using his brain and his mouth.

It's garbled and almost inarticulate to many, including me initially, but listen to people talking these days or read their comments online and it's clear the language in daily use is becoming more and more garbled and inarticulate by our old standards, and he represents the worst of that, and yet he is communicating his meanings to many, by repetition, gesture, cliche, innuendo, symbols, shorthand, etc...

I got angry during W's first four years as many friends on the left laughed and made fun of his apparent lack of intellect, while he was strengthening his support and carrying out policies that hurt poor and working people and helped the richest among us, the standard Republican agenda since Reagan (and before in milder ways). And then many leftists and liberals acted surprised when W won another four years of doing even worse damage.

RADIO INTERVIEW WITH E. ETHELBERT MILLER ON DC'S WPFW

www.wpfwfm.org

Click on archived shows and then
scroll down to April 26th and
ON THE MARGIN at 9 am.

TRUTH

This movie got some bad reviews, including some by critics I often agree with. And I can see some of the flaws that caused some of that. Part of that might be attributed to the fact that the director/screenwriter is young and most of his experiences are as writer and/or producer. This is the first film he directed and he makes some of the mistakes of a first-time director, including being a little overzealous in getting the point of a scene across.

I went to see TRUTH, because I've always admired Robert Redford's acting, even when he was still just considered a pretty boy by most. I recognized, from my own experiences acting in films, that Redford's minimalist acting style was unique in many ways and worked well with almost all the projects he chose to do. He was originally an artist and as a film-acting one, he uses very few brushstrokes to create an impact.

So I wasn't disappointed to watch Redford play Dan Rather in this story about a seminal moment in the history of mass media news. Rather's and his producer Mary Mapes's (whose book the film is based on and who is aptly played by Cate Blanchett) reporting about George W. Bush's special treatment in the U.S. military when many of us had friends dying in Viet Nam because their parents weren't wealthy and politically powerful, was attacked for details that didn't change the truth of the story but changed the focus of the media.

The success of the Bush family and their political machine in changing the subject from the then president's lies about his service and his having behaved in a manner that would have gotten the rest of us who served in the military and didn't have his connections court martialed and probably imprisoned was a turning point in TV journalism.

The film dramatizes the moment when the right won the battle of media focus. No longer would stories be about the facts but about conceding to the right's demands to have the news framed in ways that took attention off their misdeeds and failures and crimes and put it on opinions and attitudes and the idea of misinformation deserving equal time with the truth. The tactic of attacking any reporting that made them look bad won the day and continues to, a la the recent CNBC Republican debate and the reaction from the candidates to the moderator's questioning based on facts etc.

The story is a necessary one and I'm grateful it's been made into a movie, though the power of movies or media in general has been greatly diminished after the shift this movie chronicles. Still, it's worth seeing, worth having younger people see it as well, even if at times it's tries too hard (including the music soundtrack). Redford doesn't. He captures Dan Rather's awkward charm without imitating him—no accent, no strange metaphors, just the self-conscious smile and the deep rooted integrity.

WEEKLY BERNIE QUOTE

[said this before the debate and proved it in the debate]

AIN'T THIS THE TRUTH (GOTTA WATCH TO THE END)

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

The question in the title of this post doesn't refer to the cover of the latest TIME magazine, though it could (as in how come they chose such a threatening unflattering mean-looking photo of Ruth Ginsberg, one of my heroes and worthy of at least the gentle photographic treatment the Kanye version of this issue's cover got (you can look it up).

No, the picture I'm questioning is the whole idea of an issue devoted to "The 100 Most Influential People" not only because as usual it's mostly "Americans" and mostly "white" (somehow Canadians and Central and South Americans aren't considered "American" to many in the USA including incredibly many so-called "journalists") but because TIME chooses in some crucial cases to drop any aspect of actual journalism and just bends over for the rich and famous.

For instance, to write about how influential the Koch brothers are, they chose Rand Paul! That's like asking the prostitute to write why her pimp is so great. Is it a surprise this happens again and again when the subject is a powerful right-winger? (E.g. John Boner gets to write why Mitch McConnell is so influential.) But it's not just TIME catering to powerful right-wingers and ignoring the damage people like The Koch brothers and Mitch McConnell have caused this country and the world over the past decades, it's just the mostly ass-kissing back-cratching nature of too many of the pieces in this issue and in too many other versions of this kind of media genuflecting to the powerful.

When I was a kid and began reading TIME it was a very conservative publication that supported mostly conservative Republican politicians and political agendas and justified the domination of politics and society by the white Anglo-Saxon male elite that basically ran the country and big business then. But at least the reporting though biased was based on actual factual events and statements and a modicum of research (of course ignoring facts that disputed the mag's biases).

But the 1960s changed all that and afterwards TIME began including more of the liberal side of politics and political agendas, based on facts and decent journalistic research. More recently, with the loss of readers and revenue due to the digital revolution and the influence of the Internet etc. TIME has begun to cater to celebrity journalism, covering mostly "celebrities" and using celebrity "journalists" or wannabe journalists or not-even-pretending-anymore-to-be journalists.

It's like the inside-the-beltway and other bubbles of elite incestuousness that focuses the few media conglomerates that dominate the media on fellow elite (i.e. the 1% and their mouthpieces) have so taken over the USA on so many levels that they can't even see what fools they are or how no matter how talented they may be Oprah Winfrey writing why Lee Daniels is so influential and great is totally self-indulgent jive, or fluff if you prefer.

The whole idea of "most influential" as a TIME yearly concept (the party seemed even more back-scratching and ass-kissing than the Hollywood, I mean White House correspondent's dinner) is just another way for the elite to congratulate each other on being fellow elite (with just enough of a small percentage of actual achievers thrown in to have someone new to talk about each year).

STORM OF THE CENTURY, UM, YEAR, UH, WEEK

Just another January snowstorm it turned out. But because it seemed it might be worse, a lot of friends didn't have to go to school or work today, so a little mini winter vacation was had by all. Not a bad outcome. And, as always, better safe than sorry.

[PS: Friends in the Boston area and on the cape got slammed with what NYC was supposed to get, so here's to a quick recovery from the storm damage for all of Eastern Mass. and much of New England...]

DEBLASIO NAILS IT

JOHN HOCKENBERRY VS. CHARLIE ROSE

Just a short late night judgment. I haven't watched Charlie Rose in a while until tonight when I caught an interview with Jeff Koons. I never really liked Rose's interview style. He somehow got this reputation as a great interviewer because his show is set up in a way that makes it seem almost pure in its approach (around a table with iconic cultural figures and supposed intellectuals etc.) and quiet minimalism.

Despite the  fact he uses notes like everyone else, he seems to either quickly become redundant, like he forgot he already posed that question or one almost exactly like it, or fails to follow up (or through) on an interviewee's statement that raises interesting questions never asked...etc. Also, I met him once at a TV awards show in L.A. and he was sloshed and I can't help when I see him on TV wondering if he's a little bombed and that's why he's repeating himself or just stating the obvious.

Whereas with John Hockenberry, I listen to his public radio show, called "The Take Away," on WNYC in New York pretty much every day and consider him the best interviewer in contemporary media. He always seems to immediately grasp what the person he's interviewing means and restates it in a way that any listener can understand—in case they didn't get it—and then asks a follow up question that either challenges that or takes it to the next level, and keeps doing that until the segment's over where he draws it to a conclusion that either summarizes the main point or draws his own insightful conclusion that's "the take away."

I wonder if he hasn't been asked to have his own show on TV only because he's in a wheelchair (and has been as far as I know his whole life) or has deliberately chosen NPR for the latitude it gives him to shape his show the way he wants and to do the kinds of swift, informative and smart interviews that always leave me informationally and intellectually satisfied.

HYPOCRISY HATH I EVER OFFENDED THEE?

TIME TO ORGANIZE

HMMMM...

So the storm that just whipped through the Southwest was another "historic" one breaking all records in some areas and some weather folks didn't even know how to name it because of how erratic and unusual some aspects of it were.

And there's still not just wing nuts but their political leaders and mouthpieces arguing against climate change, or that global warming has contributed to it.

Meanwhile even lefties are condemning Obamacare wholesale, forgetting how much of it is already working well, like not letting insurance companies deny you if you have a pre-existing condition, or covering your kids until they're twenty-six or covering previously uninsured and uninsurable children, etc.

It seems sometimes like the Facebook like button, or the Internet in general along with contemporary news bad habits (and contemporary bad news habits) (except for Al Jazeera America, which though a lot less flashier often covers news old style, in depth and with reporters covering a story, not talking heads commenting on one or manufacturing one) has created an environment where only generalities and blanket statements get heard...or seen...

Just another redundant hmmmmmm.... moment.

WORTH REPEATING

I know others have pointed this out, as have I, over many decades, but still, how come old white men continue to get away with stuff young black men would be thrown in prison for and end up destroying their lives over.

I'm talking about that Republican Senator from Florida who voted to force anyone on welfare to take regular drug tests, and now has been caught buying and using cocaine in DC and only gets a slap on the wrist and sympathy for his addiction problem. (Remember the same for Rush Limbaugh after his decades of demanding drug addicts be prosecuted to the full extent of the law blah blah?)

The double standard for a drug that is used way more (the statistics are there) by whites than blacks (so-called, I hate both terms as they are so stupidly inadequate for the many shades skin comes in etc.) and yet black persons, especially men, get sentenced to prison way more than white ones.

Jim Crow is alive and well in the criminal justice (so-called) system, and especially in the for-profit prison system. Young white people need to protest widely and massively about this, 'cause they'll get much more media attention that young black people doing it, unfortunately ('cause Jim Crow is also alive and well in the mass media)...

THIS SAYS IT BEST

Alec Baldwin (who does happen to be an old friend) says in this Huffington Post blog entry what I would have said in his defense had anyone asked me.

IN A WORLD WITHOUT BRAINS

It's starting to feel that way. It's not just the Sarah Palins and Glen Becks, the Hannitys and oh basically everyone on Fox News and speaking out for the Tea Party etc., but what bozos do the Dems get to run their media connections...

This whole Obamacare thing has been handled first by denial and then by strained and piecemeal and fragmented complicated stutter start explanations that comes across as either gobbledy gook or jive.

If the Koch brothers money was running the Democrats' show and they had the think tanks talking heads and strategists, Obama's people would have been making it clear all along that there'd be a rough start, a la Social Security, Medicare and the original Obamacare, i.e. Romneycare.

They all had the same kinds of confusion, minimal participation and glitches that eventually got worked out and now a majority participates and supports those programs, just as they will Obamacare unless the right succeeds in reversing it—with enormous help from the media.

I can't even watch NBC News anymore on this shite, the adjectives used sound like my teenager when he gets emotional, like there has never been any greater mess up than this, when just a few weeks ago we were in a government shutdown that cost us all 24 billion dollars!

But Obama and the people he surrounds himself with have blown the message on this one. Someone should have been immediately out front about how a single payer plan wouldn't have all these problems, and how the insurance companies were the ones causing the trouble in the first place, and how this plan, originally created by Republicans depends too much on outside contractors to do the computer set ups.

The best defense is to say hey, if we had a government agency doing this, like the ones that handle Medicare or Social Security, we wouldn't have had these problems. They were caused by privatization! Corporations! Surprise surprise!

Too tedious that a lone old man sitting at his computer can come up with a better media strategy than all those thirty-five-year-old administration minions running around blocking access for people like, well not me, I'm past it, but friends who are still in the political game and on the Dems side.

Another late night rant I'm afraid. Sweet dreams.