Category Archives: Rants

Third World Bail Bonds

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I was watching some YouTube videos about the housing crisis in Detroit and I noticed a recurring theme among commentators that the situation there resembled that of a third world country. I have spent some time in third world countries, and I think that the comparison could not be further off. While third world countries are poor and people there often appear to be living in squalor, their villages and neighborhoods tend to be vital and teeming with activity. In my Uzbek village where I first stayed, other than the main street, the rest of the roads were dirt. Chicken and cows were more or less everywhere, and many of the homes were quite crude. Nevertheless, there was a feeling that the little village was a place where people lived and transacted the business of daily life. The images out of Detroit (which are strikingly similar to many areas of New Orleans,) lack this vitality of place.

Americans’ bandying of the term “third world” is most often done so from a place of ignorance. My issue is primarily semantic; though the term may no longer be politically correct, I am particularly bothered by the meaning that it is meant to convey. Third world is shorthand for: abandonment, neglect, blight, danger and decay. While each of these conditions may apply to certain third world communities, they by no means define the totality of circumstances of life in such places. Third world communities are often developing, and more often than not, the people who live there take great pride in their communities; one doesn’t need a green lawn in front of a McMansion to convey pride of place.

While the third world is developing, Detroit, and many other areas in this country, are regressing. This regression is painful and shocking; formerly middle class neighborhoods reduced to blighted ghettos does not make a pretty picture. But let’s quit with the presumptuous fiction that our society’s failures resemble those of the third world. The conditions that we have created are distinct and must be analyzed in context. Racial tensions, economics, education, drugs, cultural values… these are our fault lines. Let’s be outraged at what’s happened and let’s be motivated to do something about it. But let’s also be honest about that fact that our problem is distinctly American, and as one video ominously noted in closing, “coming to a city near you!”

BREAKING

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Cable news will be the downfall of civilization. As I was working out today, the day after MJ died, programming on CNN and FOX was captioned, “BREAKING NEWS: MJ something or other…” Sorry, but this sad event was breaking news yesterday. Camera shots of crowds waiting for a statement from police or old stock footage of MJ throughout the years does not constitute breaking news. Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK, and 9/11 were breaking news; developments in a day old story do not constitute breaking news. I have no problem with captioning the unfolding of further details here as “Ongoing Developments.” However, the misuse of the “Breaking News” tag is a cynical ploy by corporate media to capture our attention in an age where that very media has been instrumental in shortening our collective attention spans and fostering a culture of ahistoric sensationalism.

Do somethin’ crazy!

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I had a good conversation with a friend before he left recently for a summer internship in Africa. The theme of our discussion was the need for some fundamental changes in our culture.

I’ve also had this dream twice in the last few days. I am on a charter bus coming from northern Vermont heading to Boston. The landscape begins with a drive down a typcial New England town’s Main Street, with shops and apartments on either side of the bus. As we exit the town the terrain becomes more hilly, and soon the bus is climbing a large hill. As busses are wont to do, it slows and the engine is working hard. Though the hill is steep, there is never a feeling of danger, like we aren’t going to make it. The first time the bus was at this hill it was daytime, the second time, it was night as a full moon hovered in the primal and mountainous distance. On the right side of the road, the hill sloped down revealing a college campus. On the upward incline one could see the academic buildings, a recreation center and a chapel. Before the bus reached the apex, it had to make a sharp left turn. Then as we began to glide down, the buildings clearly became dorms, each with a small balcony and double rocker swing. During this whole trip, there is a feeling of great calm and wonder among those of us on the bus. The college is a magical place to which we would all like to return.

Until my membership expired a few days ago, I’d been a regular at the Reily student recreation center here at Tulane. Though certainly not a facility to rave about (as is the case with pretty much everything at Tulane,) it had a fairly nice weight room in which I had become a regular. The music in the weight room, which I presume came from a cable music channel, was usually of the pop culture variety and was the same feed that was piped throughout the building. Though I was there to work out, I enjoyed the fact that there was music; indeed, the right music can really enhance a workout.

However, the music started getting a little stupid. The first song that raised my hackles was 3oh!3’s “Don’t Trust Me”. In this song, the protagonist talks about his feelings for women. The song’s most notable refrain reads:

shush girl,
shut your lips,
do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips.

The next annoying song was “Take Me On The Floor” by The Veronicas. The female vocalist, who appears to be in a heat of passion, sings:

I want to kiss a girl
I want to kiss a girl
I want to kiss a boy
I wanna…
…
Take me on the floor
I can’t take it any more
I want you I want you I want you to show me love
Just take me on the floor

The third, and most annoying is a more recent entry to the vapid lineup, Asher Roth’s “I Love College”. In a celebratory style, he recounts a great party he attended the previous night and his plans to repeat the debauchery again the next day. First the refrain:

{Redacted}
I danced my ass off and had this one girl completely naked
{Redacted}
{Redacted}

The stanzas are not much better. Among my “favorites”:

{Redacted}
…
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{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}

{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}

{Redacted}
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…
{Redacted}
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{Redacted}

Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!
Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!
Freshmen! Freshmen!
Freshmen! Freshmen!

Do something’ crazy! Do somethin’ crazy!
Do something’ crazy! Do somethin’ crazy!
Keg stand! Keg stand!
Keg stand! Keg stand!

I mentioned my college on a Vermont hill dream because I think it has something to do with my frustration over the idiotic nature of American pop-culture, as demonstrated by the above popular songs. What’s really irked me was the fact that as these moronic lyrics were blaring away in the weight room, nobody really seemed to mind or be paying attention anyway. This, I think, is our problem. What now passes for popular entertainment is crude, base, and ignorant (none of these songs even remotely classify as satire). These songs glorify quick cheap sex, gimmicky sexuality, misogyny and seriously misplaced priorities.

As we look around and see our once giant corporations declaring bankruptcy, a woefully poorly educated student body, and the ongoing degradation of our infrastructure and environment, perhaps we should, as our former chief executive was so fond of saying, attempt to connect the dots. Maybe kids growing up listening to the “I Love College” song will get the wrong idea about what it means to go to college. Maybe kids listening to “Don’t Trust Me” will feel somewhat less inclined to behave respectfully towards women.

Like I said before, music has a powerful impact on us. When I was in high school, my swim team coach would put on a meditation tape (with ELO’s Fire on High in the background) to get us mentally prepared for a coming meet. When I sought to teach my students about the 1960’s counterculture, I used a lot of music, and they listened. It’s a fact that we take in things that we see and hear; with televisions and music constantly blaring everywhere these days, we are inundated with messaging. Most of this messaging comes from corporate channels, such as cable television, advertisements and popular music.

This music, even if we don’t actively seek it out, seeps into our collective psyche like a poison slowly growing in potency from repeat exposure. Radioactivity is inevitable. It’s hard to know where this will lead, but I think we are seeing its effects already: selfishness, insecurity, decreased civility, increased violence. In short, we have been collectively dumbing ourselves down and teaching ourselves not to pay attention.

Looking back at my dream, though, I think that it is hopeful. After all, the bus made it up the hill both times and the college was still there. While sometimes I get depressed about our cultural waywardness, I still hope that we might once again be able to aspire to greater things. My current vision of the cool beckoning stone of the college on a hill reminds me that the great promise of mankind is still out there, even if illuminated only by our dreams.

Misnomer

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On the front page of the New York Times an article about Obama’s economic policy states: “Barack Obama is drawing on techniques from his campaign and lessons from predecessors as he seeks to shape public attitudes about the economic downturn.”

Economic downturn? What we are facing is not a “downturn.” Such a term might be appropriate for a decline in sales of, say, one video game console following the highly anticipated release of a competing system. The current state of the economy is in more than a downturn; it had been stagnating for years (approximately 8, arguably many more,) and has recently been in precipitous decline.

Let’s move away from this milquetoast and disingenuous language. While I don’t doubt that Obama is fully aware of the gravity of the current crisis, I’m frightened about the extent to which our public discourse has become debased; when our paper of record defaults to such delusional and dulcified disquisition, one can only wonder if this is done in fear of frightening we the consumer. I guess that in an era of “premium” everything, we have become so inured to the bastardization of language that we accept such euphemisms with barely a second thought.

Disgraceful Media

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I was looking forward to tonight’s debate between Clinton and Obama. For those of you who watched it, as I did, I’m sorry. I’m sorry because you probably feel like you wasted two hours, but I’m also sorry to see that this bullshit passes for debate. The ABC News website has a blog with thousands of comments, most of which express great anger at this travesty. I’ll defer to one such commenter:

Our country is engaged in unlawful war, our military is breaking, our economy faces severe recession, our moral standing in the world has collapsed, our currency has lost nearly half its value, our infrastructure is disintegrating, our citizens cannot afford to stay in their homes though Wall Street moguls make billions of dollars annually, our current adminsitration condones and encourages torture – and lies to us about their actions, our borders cannot be adequatley policed for unlawful entry, our school sytems are so underfunded as to be barely above ‘third-world’ standards, our major auto manufacturers refuse to create vehicles that achieve even half the mpg of European manufactures, our minimum wage is slightly above poverty levels, our health care system operates to benefit the pharmaceutical industry, our veterans are ignored; their physical and emotional suffering trivialized, our energy conglomerates purposely stand in the way of advancing alternative energy, our citizens believe elections have been manipulated and stolen – and that our government has manufactured terror to maintain the facade of protecting us, our constitutional rights and responsibilities have been abridged and decimated, our access to meaningful ‘news’ is stymied by corporate media interests, our government spies on us by unlawful means under the guise of protecting our freedoms, our military commanders present disparate assessments of our ‘success’ in the middle east, our citizenry argues about gay marriage and flag burning while congress postures about life-saving possibilities of stem cell research, our airwaves are filled with hate speech spewing from commentators more interested in shocking us than being truthful….. and you waste our time at this most crucial period in US history asking a man as intelligent and insightful as Senator Obama why he doesn’t wear a flag pin on his lapel? This? This is the best we can do to elect a president?####.Bitter in Seattle

Indeed. Given the multitude of issues that are dogging threatening the very soul of this country, it is shameful that an hour is spent discussing flag pins, tenuous connections to some ex-radical from the 1960’s and other crap. When they “cut to video” to show a concerned midwesterner (who’s hair and home, by the way, looked straight out of the early eighties) ask about flag pins and patriotism, I felt like kicking her head in. I wonder how life is for her… does she have health insurance, a good job, college savings for her children? When she was given the opportunity to address the nation, all she could ask about is a meaningless symbol. I bet she has a magnetic ribbon made in China expressing support for our troops on her Ford Taurus.

But there will always be people like her. The real travesty is the fact that ABC sanctioned this garbage. It should come as no surprise to the older generations, after this debate, that very few people my age (25) watch network news. It has reached the point where the whole packaging of the news is so biased as to render it meaningless. There’s a lot of talk over at Kos about boycotts, etc. and I’m all for that. We need to cut ourself out of this destructive cycle:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html

We need big picture talk in these big picture times. Bush will soon leave office, but the damage done to our national institutions, including the media, will take a lot of work to repair. To hear it straight, check out NovaM Radio, home to Mike Malloy, and now, Randi Rhodes. Voices speaking truth to power are out there, but we must actively seek them out. Candidates must do the same and insist upon issues-based debates. If our national networks can not handle this, then let bloggers team up with PBS. No more.