#97 – Dick Bernard: Killing a civil society

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On the afternoon of November 4, 1995 – it was a Saturday – I was on the way to afternoon Mass at my then-Parish, St. Peter Claver in St. Paul MN.  Nearing the church, an announcement came over the car radio: Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been shot.  I passed the word along to the Parish Priest Kevin McDonough, who blanched, and as I recall, I was allowed to announce to the congregation what I had just heard on the radio.
At the time of the announcement we weren’t certain of any details, including who had shot the Nobel Prize winner, or even if he had died.  By the time Mass was concluded we knew Rabin had been assassinated, and soon learned that his killer was a radical right-wing Israeli Jew, at the far fringe of those incensed that Rabin was working for a durable peace with Palestine.
As it happened, two and a half months later I was with a group that visited Rabin’s still-fresh grave in Jerusalem.  I still see it all.
This vignette comes to mind because of a September 29, 2009, column by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times.  The NYT column headline is “Where did “we” go“, and opens recalling Friedman’s visit with Rabin in Jerusalem shortly before the assassination.  He says, early on, “extreme right-wing settlers…were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin…They questioned his authority.  They accused him of treason.  They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shoulted death threats at rallies.  His political opponents winked at it all.”
Of course, the story ended with a righteous crazed zealot killing Rabin.  A single murderer, but endless accomplices who in effect encouraged the insane act.
Friedman goes on at length in his column to raise the parallels he sees in today’s United States of America.
We see hate speech being legitimized in our country, and outlandish behavior being sanctioned as simple political free speech.  All of this is duly reported (if not encouraged) by news media, legitimate and not so legitimate.  And unlike in Rabin’s day, the means of technology for disseminating hate and outrageous and deliberate lies is much more sophisticated than it was only 14 years ago.
One can only wonder what Rabin and others could have accomplished in Israel/Palestine had he lived.
The merchants of hate won, and everyone (including the hate merchants) lost.
If you can, read Friedman’s column.  For a limited time it is available on the web. Here’s the link: #mce_temp_url#
If you’re one who’s amused by, or admires, the politics of hate and deceit, get over it.  If you despise this kind of behavior, call ’em out whenever you witness it.
Change needs to happen person-to-person.

#96 – Dick Bernard: "…above average"?

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Likely since Garrison Keillor’s fertile imagination invented Lake Wobegon in the 1970s, he’s had the mantra: “where all the women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are above-average.”
On has to wonder where those “above average” children end up….
Today’s paper reveals that my local Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, is to be Miss November on a national conservative groups 2010 calendar.  Presumably plenty of people will pay $25 for the calendar.  I won’t be among them.
Cong. Bachmann  has a talent for getting her pretty face on television…and now calendars…and for getting soundbites quoted, and being an on-air guest on all manner of right-wing talk shows.  But beyond that gift, I often wonder what is behind the facade, and the latest honor she receives has caused me to remember some other sound bites from previous conversations.
For instance:
More than once I heard a guy who frequently testified on this or that matter before U.S. Congressional Committees note how little collective brainpower he witnessed on the other side of the table.   There was very little there, there, he observed.  Of course he flattered the people with the good hair-do’s and mellifluous voices – that was his job – but beneath the facade he saw little or nothing.
In an unguarded moment, once, a veteran and highly respected Catholic Priest made essentially the same comment about the collective Catholic hierarchy (those who are Bishops and on up the ladder).   They are not intellectual giants, he suggested; rather, they have figured out how to move up the hierarchical ladder.
And more than once I’ve heard retirees or other refugees from major corporations comment on the relative lack of ability the big-shots far up their food chain possess – at least in so far as monitoring major corporate decision making is concerned.  Their ability was to achieve the pinnacle of power, by whatever means necessary.  But their vision rarely was beyond the next quarter profit and loss statement.  We saw plenty of evidence of this stupidity during the last 12 months (and, unfortunately, seeming to continue) in the virtual collapse of the U.S. economic and industrial titans.  Even after the bail-out, disturbing reports suggest they haven’t learned anything of value.
So, where did these “above average” children Garrison Keillor go, or have they never existed?
That we’re led by too many bumble-heads is pretty obvious (Rep. Bachmann is also a new bobble-head figure).
If we the public end up in a disaster, which is again likely, be it economic, climate, or the like, it is because we seem to insist on mediocrity in our leaders.  We actually vote for these dunces, or if we don’t vote for them, we defer to them because they seem more powerful than we are.
We vote for people to represent us who look or sound good but often are know-nothings; then once they are elected, we go back into our hole and assume no responsibility for keeping them informed or honest.
Too many of us dismiss science or a rational look at future consequences of our actions, preferring to believe fantasies.  (Scientists have known for years of the problems ahead with climate change, but until Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, there was hardly a public listening…and of course the bobble-heads then ridiculed Al Gore, and continue with their fantasy views of a future filled with climate and weather like we’ve always known…or dismissing the future as someone elses problem.)
We buy stuff we don’t need based on fantasy of advertising…like lemmings to the ocean and certain death, we believe the pitches and the clever word and image-smithing.
We seem to delight in cleverly told lies which manipulate us; and we celebrate division and conflict, when such values are more negative than positive.
We cannot eliminate stupidity in our elected, religious and corporate leaders.
But the big majority of us who are average and above-average can certainly do a great deal to temper the stupidity which surrounds us.
To accomplish this goal, however, takes much more than complaining about it.
What have YOU done, lately?
What will YOU do, today, tomorrow, next week?

#91 – Dick Bernard: Photo-shoppe

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Years ago, in some unremembered periodical, I recall seeing two seemingly identical black and white photos.  Both were of some stern looking Communists during Stalin’s time: all men wearing suits.  The casual observer would have seen no difference in the photos.  But the caption pointed the reader to a particular place in the photo.  In the first photo, a man occupied the space; in the second, that man had been disappeared.
Somebody with the Stalinist Russia version of Xacto knife had modified an official photo, simply removing some errant  comrade who had been purged, possibly liquidated for unremembered sins against the Party.  It was cheaper and more efficient to simply modify the photo, than to regather the group and take a new one.
It was my introduction to a primitive Photoshop.
I can remember many subsequent examples of the same tactic:
In the mid 90s, one of my colleagues at work retired, and there was the usual fete. His work colleague, a guy a bit more technologically savvy and interested than the rest of us, had purchased a home version of Photoshop or equivalent, and had placed Roger’s head atop a photo of a magnificent slam-dunking Michael Jordan’s body.  Roger was a fit guy, but no Michael Jordan.  The hatchet job was done pretty well, and the projected work of art got a lot of good laughs.  Welcome to the world of manipulating images.
The most dramatic example of the art of manipulating information through photos came, for me, during the early Iraq War in 2003.  It is the famous film footage of the statue of Saddam being toppled by supposed hordes of grateful Iraqis, happy that the dictators term had come to an end.  Most of us can remember this iconic piece of film footage: the supposed triumph of freedom over tyranny.  It was really nothing more than a military psychological operations tactic to manipulate both the Iraqis and ordinary Americans.
Fewer of us remember, because it takes some work and interest to find this out, that the particular piece of news film did not portray reality at all.  In a pretty obvious piece of collusion between media and government, the film shown on television focused tightly on the statue falling, and it was only later that it was found that there were only a handful of Iraqis actually at the site to watch Saddam take his fall from prominence.
Democracy had triumphed over evil.
But had it?  What difference was there between the excised communist in Stalin’s Russia; and a dishonest piece of photography in 2003 United States of America?
No difference, I would submit.
When it comes to technology, 2003 is long ago and far away, as we all know.  But many of us come from the old Kodak-moment days when you were stuck with what you got on that photo you took in Grandma’s back yard.  Most of us have gone digital now, but we are not familiar with the many and sundry ways that perfect lies can be concocted simply by manipulating images.
Most recently, the obvious lie of the photo of millions of people at the 9-12 event, was quickly replaced by less obvious lies which can be fashioned through not only the way pictures are taken these days, but which of these photos are used, and how the photographs are manipulated through means such as the ever more sophisticated photo-editing devices.  A skillful practitioner can make a crowd of hundreds look like tens of thousands….  CNN carried an interesting after-the-fact commentary on the manipulation of the event by Fox News  #mce_temp_url# .
In the past, a photographer was limited by how many photos he or she could take with the old Nikon; today’s digital technology potentially gives the “news” photographer tens of thousands of images to pick from, so today’s American version of commissars need to be well-trained in attempting to avoid embarrassment from not only unpleasant edits of their image, but covert and malicious photography as well.
We can’t go back to the past, but the prudent consumer is skeptical.
Caveat emptor.

#90 – Dick Bernard: Glenn Beck and the "Mythical marching millions"

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Note responses section at end of this post.
Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in a clinic waiting room while one of my kids was having an eye appointment.
I happened to pick up the latest issue of Time magazine (Sep 17, 09), whose cover story  is the right-wing flamethrower (he and his large following would refer to himself quite differently) Glenn Beck of Fox News.
The three page article is very well worth reading, and reading carefully.  Here’s the link: #mce_temp_url#
For the few who’ve never heard of him, Beck is the hot commodity in the crowd which gathered in Washington DC on 9-12-09 to supposedly restore unity by sowing hatred and division against all things represented by President Obama (but without casting aspersions on people or policies of the previous administration which created or at minimum severely aggravated the problems the current administration now has to deal with).
In such a crowd, there is no need for consistency.  What’s right is right; what’s wrong is wrong.  Period.
Beck is a hot item, of that there is no doubt.  Within his constituency, he is very popular.  I seem to recall $23 million as his total anticipated revenue from his radio, television and publishing this year.
His weekly audience numbers in the several millions each day.  His market share might be 1 or 2% or so of the U.S. population.  He was compared, in the article, to others of similar ilk in our past history: Father Coughlin, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the “Know Nothings”, etc.  He is a gifted entertainer, able to emotionally move his audience.
In other words, he is a force to be reckoned with.
But there is another side to this story as well, part of it said in the article, part of it only implied.
In today’s incredibly fragmented media market, Beck has a relatively huge audience market share.  But it was pointed out in the article that a much greater viewership of comedian David Brenner in 1987 was judged to be so insignificant that his show was cancelled for lack of viewers.  In those pre-cable years, of course, there were few media outlets, and people couldn’t segregate themselves in “birds of a feather” ghettoes like we can today.
Beck simply looks to be larger than life, but in real terms Beck is not nearly as major a figure as he appears.
Even Beck’s large revenue stream belies the reality.  To quote the article, “extreme talk…like Beck, squeezes maximum profit from a relatively small, deeply invested audience.”  The $23 million doesn’t come from 23,000,000 givers of $1 each; a much smaller group pony up $50, $100 or maybe even more for his books, etc.
His audience, however, is a mass of people with different kinds of negative passions.  They are not a cohesive whole.  About all they share is what message makers have identified as a single common thread shared by many Americans: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  Problem is, they’re “mad as hell” about assorted different things, and coordinating their outrage is a problem.  They’re just “mad as hell”.
Though relatively small, Beck’s is, however, a shrill and even dangerous audience.  They have learned from the likes of Beck that angry outbursts and generally outrageous behavior are effective.  Who enjoys being shouted at?
The dangerous part is that somewhere in the bowels of such a movement are the certifiably crazy people who will assassinate or blow up a building or in other ways create mayhem.
For this reason, and this reason alone, I think the Beck crowd needs to be taken very seriously, and confronted whenever and however people like ourselves have the opportunity.  We have much more power to moderate than we exercise.  We don’t need to be terrorized into silence.
I think we also have to look inwardly as well.  Like the Beck crowd, most advocates tend to associate only with like-minded people, and come to feel that there is only a single way of looking at a situation, and that the entire rest of the world is crazy.
Not so.
Do read the full article.  It’s now on the newstands or in your library.  Or the link is earlier in this post.

#85 – Dick Bernard: A gathering of the news community

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Overnight I had a vivid dream, which usually means something has been on my mind.
This one was in a large room, filled with many people, many “mad as hell” about the descent of their local newspaper into (they felt) irrelevance.  In my case, the dream was about the newspaper we subscribe to and read every day, a metropolitan daily that still has a Sunday circulation of in excess of 600,000.
This was a rational, orderly kind of crowd, and the speakers were trying to make sense of the change that they were observing, as readers, employees, past employees…
Of course, one wakes up from these dreams, and what made so much sense while dreaming, no longer makes as much sense, if you can even remember what you dreamt.  But this one stuck with me.
I solicit brief opinions on this topic to be added to the body of this text. There is no deadline, though it is probably best to write it now rather than wait for several months.  I would hope that they be brief, and hopefully somewhat positive and solutions driven, but I won’t judge.  I will print the name of the writer.
These should be sent as e-mails to me dick_bernardATmsnDOTcom.
I know what my brief comment will be, but I won’t post it till there are ten other comments (so it may never be posted.)
If this is the only comment, so be it.    The topic is important.  I hope a few feed in.  
It’s now on line, and your turn.