June 5th, 2008 |
There’s a slang term that used to show up in those old gangster movies, the ones with Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, George Raft, and Humphrey Bogart. Perhaps some of my readers are old enough to remember it.
When some crook decided to spill the beans, rat on the mob, squeal to the cops, turn state’s evidence, it was said that he was going to “sing like a canary.”
I thought of that term last week when White House Secretary Scott McClellan was in print and on television promoting his new book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”
I haven’t read the book, and probably won’t. I don’t need to because the interviews with him on television, followed by a flood of punditry, tell me all I need to know. In fact, tell me what I already knew.
George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and a whole flock of administration neocons, have lied to us and deceived the nation into a war in Iraq that should never have been fought.
And don’t tell me it’s of no concern how we got into a war in Iraq because we have to look ahead and not look back. Sure we have to look for a way out, but remember that people who choose to look forward without searching out lessons from the past, are people who will inevitably be tricked into another war.
In those old gangster movies, the canary would often wind up with a pair of cement booties and a trip to the bottom of the Hudson River.
In this case Bush devotees (there are still a few around, believe it or not) were quick to mix the cement and push McClellan into a bog full of discredit and shame for having been disloyal and self-serving.
This bird, chirping away on all the television talk shows, along with those who discredit him, made me think about the plight of truth-tellers, no matter how slimy they may be.
A familiar Bible verse advises folks to consider the birds of the air. What better place to start than with this newsworthy canary who managed to fly free from the cage at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
To Fly The Coop
When Judy and I lived on the Delmarva Peninsula, back in the days when I was focused on chickens and the workers and farmers who put them on our nation’s table, the sky overhead brought another bird into sight—the goose.
Scores of migratory Canada Geese would darken the sky in their familiar V formation. They became for me a prime example of discipline, a metaphor for the kind of collective teamwork necessary to fulfill a common mission.
According to Dr. Bruce Batt, chief biologist for the conservation group Ducks Unlimited, there are two reasons why birds fly in formation. “One is to conserve energy by taking advantage of the upwash vortex fields created by the wings of the birds in front. The other is to facilitate orientation and communication among the birds.”
Following Batt’s lead, one can surly understand McClellan’s willingness to fly behind the big goose in the Oval Office. The power residing in that office is like the sweet nectar that lures all the little humming birds toward the bloom. It’s not hard to see why McClellan would fly energetically following a leader hell-bent on righting 9/11 and pursuing the utopian mission of bringing democracy to the rest of the world.
And, so far as facilitating “orientation and communication among the birds,” McClellan certainly did a bang-up job of articulating the message of the Commander in Chief, and his neocon flock. Good enough to con Congress and send us to war.
When McClellan resigned his post back in April, 2006, Mr. Bush said this: “One of these days he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas, talking about the good old days and his time as Press Secretary. And I can assure you I will feel the same way then that I feel now, that I can say to Scott, job well done.”
Oh, yeah!
Well Bush’s old friend didn’t fly off to a furniture store to purchase a rocking chair. He went to a publisher with a tell-all manuscript about the Deceiver President and his cuckoo compatriots. So I doubt that there will be any rocking together at the Bush ranch after Mr. Bush is airlifted back to Crawford, Texas.
Scott McClellan has been described by those who knew him in the White House as a quiet little man, a shadow in the room, very capable, and, above all, loyal to the president. That is, until this little chickadee went public with his own song rather than parroting the administration’s party line.
While Dr. Batt seems to have a grip on why birds fly in formation, he gives no explanation as to why a bird would dare fly out of formation.
Since I seem to be dabbling in birdy-slang, let’s just say that Scott McClellan took it upon himself to “fly the coop.” He decided, for whatever reason, to leave the White House gaggle of geese and fly out of formation.
This business of flying with and then flying away from deserves serious attention precisely because it calls into question the human desire for freedom and the boundaries associated with loyalty.
Our Own Personal & National Narrative
“Why the hell didn’t McClellan spill the beans while he was there in the White House? Why didn’t he resign?”
It’s the same question that was asked about Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense from 1961-66. Why didn’t he come clean with the nation, even resign, when he came to the conclusion that the Vietnam War was un-winable and that we should get out? Think of the names that could have escaped being carved into the Vietnam Wall!
Think of the dead American troops that would be here at home and not buried in graves across this country, if McClellan had refused to utter White House talking points and lies, and had told the truth about the deception of this administration while it was going on and not after it took place.
Think of the millions of Iraqis who would be alive and in their homes rather than being refugees.
I would suggest that Scott McClellan, just like the rest of us, didn’t come clean with the truth because he was invested in living out his own narrative—a narrative linked to his job and self-defined loyalties.
Think about it. Each one of us has a narrative—a life story—out of which we define ourselves. That narrative takes years to construct and it is not easily deconstructed.
What makes human beings so interesting is the fact that we all have stories to tell about ourselves and how we got to be where we are in life. Like a jigsaw puzzle, we connect pieces of ourselves in a way that lets other people know who we are. Other people help to define us as well. Without a narrative, a story to tell, we don’t really know who we are.
Each one of us has a screen play, a constructed autobiography, a scenario, a series of tales-waiting-to-be-told, which define where we came from and who we are. Sit with a friend, even a stranger, and listen to their narrative, and chances are good that you will walk away from that encounter appreciative, even amazed, surprised, touched, and delighted by the complexity of that person’s life story.
So what do you do when you come to realize that the life story you are living out is an unhappy one, not in keeping with what you want yourself to be, even a lie? And what keeps a person from confessing what’s wrong and starting down a different path?
The answer seems simple to me. Confession brings with it a certain anxiety, a fear, over what the consequences might be if we fly free from the flock in order to tell the truth about the narrative we have been living. We might be seen as an odd duck.
Breaking ranks from the folks you travel with most often causes pain and alienation. Truth has a way of doing that. When I began to acknowledge and challenge the lies told by the boys in the locker room about women, gay people, and African-Americans, and what it means to be a man, my loyalty to them and that way of life was called into question.
When, as a former marine, I began to join hands with pacifists and antiwar folks in testimony to the imperial and militaristic passions of my own nation, I was seen by some as no longer a patriot but an enemy of my country. Telling the truth—a new awareness of truth—can be painful and costly.
Over the years, I have come to know that what may start out as an honest loyalty to a person, cause or country can so easily become idolatrous and, therefore, become a deceptive avoidance of the truth. Being unwilling to fly free from the justifications of ones own misguided loyalties inevitably results in a tragic loss of a person’s integrity.
Yesterday I attended a conference for folks eager to discover how they, as people of faith, can be of help to returning veterans and their families who face serious problems as a result of this senseless war. Beneath their shattered lives, many of these veterans will have to encounter a personal and national narrative that led them to battle, and which now defines them. Defined, after 9/11, as a noble and just war, the story has changed. The cause they gave themselves to, for so many, will now be defined for them as a war that should not have been fought—a battle they should not have been sent to fight—a cause not worthy of even one death.
The repair of the body, mind, and heart of returning veterans—not to mention the cleansing of their souls over the killing of so many people—will only address half the task at hand. It must be matched by the healing and cleansing of the soul of this nation—those of us who sent them off to this war.
Flying On Air Force One
A couple of summers ago, Judy and I took a continuing education course at the Alumni College at Washington and Lee University. The subject was the media.
Mike Allen, a graduate of W& L, and then White House correspondent for The Washington Post, was one of the instructors. The five day course took place over the period of time when President Bush was in Africa.
When asked why he was teaching us and not on an important Air Force One trip, Allen smiled and said it wasn’t worth the trip, since Mr. Bush, in his usual manner, wouldn’t leave the front of the plane to converse with reporters.
McClellan, in his new book, talks about how the “liberal press” avoided asking the hard questions when he presided over the White House press conferences. Reporters, he said, “are complicit enablers” by not having aggressively questioned the president as to why our nation should go to war in Iraq. Sad but true.
That observation was a stinging indictment of the folks who we think will be able to penetrate the bubble that has existed around this president. But the simple truth is that Mr. Bush has been impenetrable to real press scrutiny and hard staff critique. Watch him when he is interviewed by the press corp. He doesn’t like reporters. They intrude upon his arrogance. He fears the kind of transparency required in a democratic country.
Mike Allen has since left the Post. He is now Chief Political Writer at Politico—an internet news service. I smiled the day that the McClellan book story broke. Allen gave the first scoop on television. Today he is up online reporting that Barack Obama, unlike John McCain and so many politicians, will open his fundraiser events to the press. On top of that, he will no longer accept checks from federal lobbyists or political action committees.
Fly free, Mike, as free and as high as you can. You deserve it after having spent time in the press cage at the White House.
A Yellow Bird? No. A Yellin Bird Out On A Limb
CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin has just recently gone out on a limb by saying that while at MSNBC covering the war in Iraq she felt pressure from senior producers and corporate executives who “wanted coverage to reflect the mood of the country.” She felt squeezed to depict the war “in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”
Get the narrative? A vice-president, straight from Halliburton, hell-bent on taking our country to war—a war from which Halliburton would reap huge profits. Supported, of course, as I wrote in the last issue of Notes, by retired military analysts with ties to the Pentagon; delivering talking points to the media on the necessity for war, and the progress of the war; and while pocketing money from their association with companies profiting by the war.
Keep Your Eye On The Sparrow
Last year, while conducting a press conference in the Rose Garden, President Bush was paid a visit by a sparrow flying overhead as he defended his Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales.
The bird, perhaps a reincarnated bombardier pilot, let go with a delivery which landed white upon his dark suit.
Dana Perini, the then Deputy White House Press Secretary, did a neat spin job on the poop. “It was a lucky day,” she said, “everyone knows that’s a sign of good luck.”
In the last issue of Notes, I spoke about playing the role of Morrie in the Charleston production of “Tuesdays with Morrie.” I’ve loved doing it and the audience has been most appreciative.
Morrie, dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) is asked by Mitch, his former student who has come to reconnect with his mentor, “How can one be prepared to die?”
Morrie’s answer: “Do what the Buddhists do. Everyday, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day?’ Am I ready? Am I being the person I want to be?”
Words from the Gospel hymn: “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” Perhaps God’s eye is in the sparrow, looking for a perch to ask whomver is president: “Is today the day you send troops to kill and die? Are we being the nation we were intended to be?”
June 5th, 2008
May 16th, 2008 |
I am about to die, and I want my readers to be the first to know about it.
If you’d like to pay a visit before I depart this world, come see “Tuesdays with Morrie,” performed here in Charleston the last weekend in May and the first weekend in June.
Just when I thought I had moved out of the age range for a community theater role, lo and behold, I was invited to try out for the part of Morrie. I did, and now I will be Morrie Schwartz for four nights in a local church that has been converted into a theater.
Years ago, I played the part of Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons,” a part where I had my head cut off. So, I know something about dying on stage.
Departing this life, via the guillotine, was difficult, but after two weeks of rehearsals, I am convinced that dying from Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS) is even more difficult. Suffocation is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an easy way to die.
“Tuesdays with Morrie” was a bestselling book and a television movie starring Jack Lemmon as Morrie. It was written by Mitch Albom, a former student of Morrie’s. Mitch, after being reunited with Morrie, spent every Tuesday with him up until Morrie’s death. It is a story about life and death and it is laced with laughter and tears.
In Shakespeare’s comedy, “As You Like It,” the characters provide voices for such subjects as aging, love and death. Lord Jacques may be an unmitigated cynic, a depressed soul and a wet blanket at the party, but Shakespeare makes this character more than that.
One writer says that Jacques “is a constant reminder that in the real world time is not suspended, and grief, sorrow and death provide a counterpoint to all human joys.” And Shakespeare has given Jacques these memorable, oft quoted lines:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…”
With that in mind, I will share a few thoughts about the stage, human joys, and the counterparts of grief, sorrow and death.
A Sanctuary For Theater—Mother Courage & Father Berrigan
In 1964, just out of seminary, I was given a job on staff at St. Anne’s Church in Annapolis, Maryland. That’s when my theater-in-the-church experiences began.
The divisive war in Vietnam made it very difficult to preach or talk about war in a town where tiny liberal arts St. John’s College was dominated by the huge Naval Academy “yard.” Since a large portion of my work in those days was with students from both institutions, I turned to theater as a vehicle for communication and discussion. The church sanctuary became the stage.
In the context of an Evening Prayer service, followed by a discussion, Bertolt Brecht’s play, Mother Courage, became the sermon. Considered to be the greatest anti-war play of all times, this powerful play engaged the congregation in a wonderful way. The performance gave folks some room—the space between the performers and the audience—in which to engage their passions and fears surrounding the subject of war.
Not far from that sanctuary, another theatrical event was staged—an event closely linked to the subject of war and the spiritual exercise of resistance.
Just down the road from St. Anne’s Church in Annapolis, is Catonsville, a suburb of Baltimore. In high school, I used to go there for youth meetings at an Episcopal church. Later, in 1968, an office building, just down the road from that church, became the scene of an event that captured the attention of the media.
May 17 will mark the fortieth anniversary of that event. On May 17, 1968, nine antiwar activists, led by a number of Roman Catholic priests, the most prominent of which were Philip and Daniel Berrigan, broke into the draft board center and burned over 600 draft records. They became known as the “Catonsville Nine.”
Daniel Berrigan later wrote the play, The Catonsville Nine. I never saw it performed, but an old, yellowed and well-marked copy is in my basement library alongside of a number of plays I have collected and read over the years. I have pulled it out and thumbed through it in order to remember those men and women who put their faith on the line.
Berrigan had been to Hanoi and had seen the devastation, the flesh burned by our napalm. Back home a high school student in Syracuse, New York, in despair over the war, had gone into the Catholic cathedral there, doused himself with kerosene, and set himself ablaze outside. Visiting the boy in the hospital just before his death, Berrigan connected the smell of burned flesh in Hanoi with the smell in the hospital room. That smell drove him, and the other eight, to take their “religious bodies” to Catonsville.
I read Berrigan’s words from the play: “So I went to Catonsville and burned some papers because the burning of children is inhuman and unbearable…I knew at length I could not announce the gospel from a pedestal. I must act as a Christian sharing the risks and burdens and anguish of those whose lives were placed in the breach by us…I was threatened with verbalizing my moral substance out of existence. I was placing upon young soldiers a filthy burden—the original sin of war…Although I was too old to carry a draft card, there were other ways of getting in trouble with a state that seemed determined upon multiplying the dead, totally intent upon a war, the meaning of which no sane man could tell.”
Last week I said a prayer at a luncheon honoring volunteers who do good work for the poor and the troubled in West Virginia. It was a joyous occasion. A woman, ninety-two years old, was honored for thirty years of service feeding the hungry at my old parish.
Conversation at my table drifted to the high cost of gas. No talk of the burned flesh of civilians in Iraq, or our men and women who have been ordered to go there on our behalf and kill people. Merely talk about the price of burning fuel—the substance that sent us off to war, and keeps us at war.
Remembering Even More About May 17
May 17 is also an important date in our nation’s struggle over racial justice.
On May 17, 1896, the Supreme Court, in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, ruled that “separate but equal” status for blacks and whites was to be the law of the land.
Fifty-eight years later, on May, 17, 1968, the Brown v. Board of Education ruled that “separate but equal” public education was unconstitutional under the fourteenth Amendment.
Given all the discussion about race that is taking place in this primary election, I thought about another play performed at St. Anne’s in those troubled days when racial tensions were high.
The play, Dutchman, by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), involves two characters—a white woman named Lula, and a black man named Clay. The setting for the entire play is a subway in which they sit next to one another.
Jones has said that the play is about the difficulty of a black man becoming a man in white America. In the play, Clay has found no place—no home—within his skin. Trying to conform to the white world in order to be accepted, he has lost touch with his own African-American heritage. Lula, in brilliant, yet ugly, dialogue with Clay, embodies white racism. The play ends with Lula stabbing and killing Clay, while other white people on the subway stand by and watch as detached observers.
The Bible passage chosen for the Evening Prayer service in which Dutchman was performed was the Cain and Abel story—that ancient story depicting the capacity of human beings to live at the expense of other human beings.
In those days, outside the doors of the church, right there on Church Circle, Urban Renewal, known by people as “Negro Removal,” was gobbling up the properties just off West Street. African-Americans in that neighborhood were being squeezed out of their property.
Catonsville, the scene of protest by the “Catonsville Nine” has its own history when it comes to race. Once inhabited by members of the Piscataway Indian Nation, this part of Maryland was colonized and evangelized by Christian missionaries. By 1685, these tribal members were driven off their land and hunted by slave catchers. Many of them died as a result of being exposed to smallpox and other diseases contracted from the colonists.
The West Virginia Primary
Barack Obama has gone down to a stunning defeat in West Virginia. Hillary Clinton pulverized him at the polls. Yes, the Clintons are popular here. Yes, Obama is having trouble connecting with some working class folks. And yes, I regret to say, race was a factor. (One out of five voters stated that race was a factor in casting their ballots.) But there was more than Clinton-mania, workers and race involved in the Obama defeat.
Jonathan Tilove, in a Cleveland Plain Dealer article, makes an interesting observation about Obama’s message of hope. He quotes Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a political strategist who worked on John Edwards’ campaign: “What people don’t understand about Appalachia is that we’ve heard all this ‘hope’ and ‘change’ stuff since the English kicked the Scotch-Irish out in the 1700s. We’re ‘hoped’ out. Nothing ever changes out here.”
Virginia Senator Jim Webb, is also the author of “Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.” He grew up in a military family, descended from Scots Irish immigrants from Ulster (northern Ireland) who emigrated in the 18th century to the British North American colonies.
Obama got himself in trouble saying that rural folks cling to their guns and religion. Tilove writes: “They don’t cling to guns; they proudly pass them on to their young sons as a rite of passage Webb likens to a ‘Redneck Bar Mitzvah.’ Webb’s father gave him his first rifle when he was 8 and his first pair of boxing gloves when he was 6.”
Webb’s daddy also passed this advice along to him: “Never start a fight, but never run away, even if you know you are going to lose. … And whomever you fight, you must make them pay. You must always mark them, so that the next day they have to face the world with a black eye or a cut lip or a bruised cheek, and remember where they got it.”
Have you seen folks wearing boxing gloves at Clinton rallies for Hillary to sign? They’re a sure sign that Hillary knew what she was doing when she courted West Virginia.
John McCain is now in West Virginia—his first stop, a gun shop. He also knows what he is doing. It’s enough to make me cling to my religion.
Honest Worship & Lively Theater
Last year I went to Chicago to visit Howard McKee, a man born in West Virginia and married to Kennon, my distant cousin. He had cancer and was hospitalized. I say “had” because Howard died in December and I conducted his memorial service in Chicago, and his internment last weekend in Aberdeen, Maryland.
Howard asked me if I would work with him on preparing the liturgy for his memorial service. He was not a churchgoer, but a man with a deep spiritual center that blossomed in his love of the environment and the work he did as an architect.
For months, Howard and I constructed the service. He sent me writings and images, thoughts and ideas, which found their way into my writing. I heard stories recollected from his life journey, like how as a child he had fashioned mud bricks and built make-believe buildings in his West Virginia backyard, long before attending Columbia University.
The finished product was an eclectic liturgy composed of Celtic, Native American, Christian and secular elements. The ancient Christian labyrinth, so loved by Howard, was incorporated into the service to mark those important and reflective times and places on his journey from birth to death—a colorful montage.
Only days before Howard died, I returned to Chicago with the memorial program in hand. I placed it in his hands and read him the words. I also placed in his hands the pottery vase made by an artist friend—the vase which would contain his ashes. It might seem strange to some, but those moments together were full of grief and joy.
Over the years, I have written many liturgies. I love doing it. It is a creative activity for me. Shaping a worship service, whether it be a vigil outside the prison on the night of an execution, a peace demonstration, a wedding, a blessing of a home, or a church worship service, is a spiritual exercise—a form of prayer and revelation.
Working with Howard was precisely that. Sitting with him and talking about his life and death was, as it always is in my encounters with people dying, a review of my own life and a preparation for my own death. Stories told become what they are—grand theater.
I’ve just recently discovered Dean Seal on the Internet. Once the producer of the Minnesota Fringe Festival—a theatrical festival—and a writer for Comedy Central and A Prairie Home Companion, he is now a seminary graduate and the author of the book, “Church and Stage.” He understands the link between Bible stories, our stories and the church liturgy—the connection between spirituality and theater.
In a recent interview, Seal says that “the creative process is spiritual. If we are made in God’s image, and God is our creator, there is nothing more holy, more sacred, more spiritual than creating, whether it is a funeral service or a blues lick.” I agree.
Danish theologian and philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, was critical of the ritualism of the 19th church. He saw the link between good worship and good theater.
He wrote that church was too often like a theatrical performance in which the preacher and choir were performers, God was the prompter, and the congregation was like an audience being entertained at the theater. Unfortunately, a lot of worship is like that in churches that have become entertainment centers. (I am not fond of churches where the choir performs and the congregation sits close-mouthed.)
Kierkegaard challenged the church to change. In worship, he said, the congregation is the actor, God is the audience, and the preacher is the prompter.”
Passionate sanctuary worship and lively theater on stage are alike in that they both capture and connect people to a common earthly reality and a heavenly quest for hope. Congregants and theatergoers, when the liturgy and drama are right, feel the passion of pain and joy associated with being human in a world larger than their own existence.
Outward & Visible Signs Of Grace
One last connecting link between the religious quest and a night at the theater.
The 16th century Anglican divine, Richard Hooker, defined a sacrament as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” I learned that as a kid in catechism class. Later I connected it with such things as a kiss, which in my mind is a sacrament.
The great actor, Sir Laurence Olivier, wrote: “I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.”
May 16th, 2008
April 26th, 2008 |
The earth has turned into a painter’s palate—green, red, yellow—every color under the sun.
Eggshell blue robin eggs are being laid in nearby nests close to neon-lit tulips.
Bloody Redbud and stigmata-marked Dogwood splatter the mountainside with color.
God must have called upon the master of color, artist Henri Matisse, to help splash paint on a drab white-winter canvass.
Good choice, don’t you think? In 1917, as ignorant armies warred in Europe, Matisse reached his peak with explosive colors. Described as a “man of peasant fears, well concealed,” his anxious temperament refused to be dissuaded from splashing paint while men splashed blood.
Matisse must have to rescue God from the despair of watching a created world continue to imitate the blood-killing of Abel by his brother Cain.
White Space
Amidst all the color, I want to pay homage to white space—the distance on a written page between words and columns and paragraphs.
In laying out a written page, like I do every three weeks with these Notes, I sometimes worry that I don’t offer enough white space.
White space deplores word-clutter. It gives words room to breath. Relief for weary eyes. It pays respect to succinctness.
It weeds-out adjectives and adverbs, allowing verbs and nouns room to grow. White space is a writer’s prophylactic against pregnant paragraphs. It saves crafted observations from obesity.
White space is concise but hardly glib.
Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, said all that need be said about the subject in 15 words: “Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.”
In that spirit, look for the word count in this issue of Notes to be less than you have come to expect (or dread). More white space.
Flag Pin
Speaking of conciseness, have you noticed how love and loyalty to our country have been reduced to wearing a flag pin? If you, like Barack Obama, don’t wear one, consider yourself a relative of Benedict Arnold.
Here’s what I say to folks who make a lapel flag pin a litmus test for good citizenship: “Be careful when you put your flag pin on in the morning. Don’t stick yourself. You might let the hot air out.”
White Noise
“White Noise” is the title of Don DeLillo’s 1985 prize-winning book.
The technical definition of white noise is: “A random signal of every frequency in the audio spectrum, all of which have an average uniform power level.”
White noise, for DeLillo, is a metaphor for all the noise, clutter, chatter and static—the waves of meaningless informational sound that fills our brains and sucks at our souls.
You know about white noise—America’s soundtrack. It includes the bold print of newspapers and tabloids, and the blinking images beamed through television screens.
Television, says a DeLillo character, is ”the primal force in the American home, sealed-off, self-contained, self-referring . . . a wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness, the coded messages . . . like chants. . . . Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it.”
Jack Gladney is the hero of the novel. A professor of Hitler Studies at a Midwestern university, he attempts to explain to his daughter how the white noise in Nazi Germany turned responsible human beings into a mob of passive receptors, receivers, consumers of Nazi propaganda.
“Some people,” he tells his daughter, “put on a uniform and feel bigger, stronger, safer.”
Sitting in my doctor’s waiting room, the overhead television set is tuned to Fox News. The talking-head says America is making progress in Iraq. The “surge” is working.
White noise, sucking at my soul, just moments before I have my blood drawn.
A New Way To Vote
The polls are now open here. Yesterday I voted, along with about 75 Obama supporters.
Given the white noise saturating television with images of candidates claiming Daniel Boone-like hunting skills, bowling and throwing down whiskey and beer (a boilermaker), maybe there’s a better way, an easier way, a less expensive way to choose a president.
A shoot-off. The candidates deer hunt. The one who bags the first deer wins. Or, the one who pulls a “Cheney” and—like in paintball—splatters his or her opponent first.
A bowl-off. Ten frames per candidate. The winner gets to be the Commander in Chief.
A drink-off. On-your-mark-get-set—go! The candidate who can toss-down the most
Boilermakers, without falling to the floor, wins.
Problem! If the red phone rings in the White House, will the newly elected president be in the woods hunting, out at the bowling alley, or too drunk to answer the phone?
24/7
In the early days of television, I could fall asleep in front of the set and then wake up in the middle of the night to a blank screen—white, snowy and soundless.
Today the white screen has disappeared. But the white noise hasn’t. It has only increased.
As they say today—24/7. Day-in and day-out, the talking heads selling, promoting, and representing political candidates who have become consumer products themselves.
We need a blank channel—empty space—to escape from this endless caffeinated presidential primary chatter. Reruns and replays. Repetitive analysis. The “breaking news” syndrome. The same faces morning, noon and night. Does Chris Mathews ever sleep? Does Tim Russert have eye lids? Does Pat Buchanan have a double?
James And Mary
While smearing a cracker with peanut butter, I flick on cable television.
James Carville (a.k.a. “Rajin’ Cajun”)—Bill and Hillary Clinton’s hyperbolic surrogate— is on CNN. He’s the dude that called Gov. Bill Richardson “Judas Iscariot” for having escaped from the Clinton compound in order to throw his support to Barack Obama.
When last heard, Richardson, unlike Judas, hadn’t chucked his money and hung himself.
I think Carville has been taking dancing lessons. He’s learned to do the Obama-Bash.
I click the white noise flicker.
I’ve switched over to “Hannity and Colmes” on Fox Network.
Lo and behold, there’s Mary Matalin—former assistant to President Bush—staff counselor to Dick Cheney—colleague of Karl Rove—a member of WHIG, the White House Iraq Group that sold the American public on going to war with Iraq—and, lest I forget to tell you, James Carville’s wife!
Guess what? She’s also doing the Obama-Bash! She must have taken classes with James.
Remembrance of things past: Dick and Jane in my old grade school textbook.
James loves Mary. Mary loves James. See James attack Republicans. See Mary attack Democrats. James writes a liberal book. Mary writes a conservative book. See James attack Obama. See Mary attack Obama.
What? Both James and Mary attacking Obama? What’s going on?
My guess is that both Democratic and Republican party insiders are afraid of what Barack Obama represents.
Both parties have become accustomed to the James and Mary dance, where the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant step on one-another’s feet. A hoot.
But for more and more Americans, it’s just dancing in place. Same old same old.
But the dance has changed. Look at the upcoming North Carolina primary.
Republican and Democratic factions are both doing the Obama-Bash. Both know that something new is happening and it scares them.
Makes me want to go dancing with a new star, to a new tune.
Chimera
The New York Times—I’ve been reading it faithfully for 50 years. The downside? No comics and not enough white space.
While the white noise surrounding the Pennsylvania primary thundered on, the Times tried to get our attention with a front-page headline. It read: “Behind Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.”
Many people may not have read the article because it was intimidating. It was three-and-a-half pages long, with 753 lines, 182 paragraphs and 7,570 words.
Not enough white space.
So, here’s the boiled down version for folks intimidated by too much ink. And be sure to notice the Orwellian Language used by the administration and the Pentagon to sell us the war with Iraq—convince us we are winning the war—and point us to more war with Iran.
Knowing the power of the media, the Pentagon wanted “information dominance” within a spin-saturated society. So Rumsfeld and company recruited retired military men as paid “military analysts” to be “key influentials,” as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” (“talking points”) to the public, as if they were their own opinions.
Meeting at the Pentagon, these “military analysts”—some 75 of them—were Power-Pointed with administration propaganda. Then they were sent off to infiltrate television and talk radio programs (mostly Fox Network,) newspaper op-ed pages and editorial offices, and magazines, in order to convince us that we should go to war, and stay at war.
In Greek mythology Chimera is a monstrous fire-breathing beast with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. In Dante’s Inferno, Chimera’s tri-body represents hypocrisy, fraud and deception.
These retired “military analysts” are Chimera reborn.
They embody a lion-goat-snake alliance—a three-in-one oily incarnation—a trinity of incestuous copulation between the military, business and media.
For you see, as the article outlines in detail, these retired “military analysts” worked for the Pentagon, had ties with businesses profiting by the war, and had established access to powerful radio and television networks.
Exorcising Milbusedia
Jesus once healed a man living among the tombs in the country of the Gerasenes. He was full of demons—multiple personalities—and made lots of white noise. Totally out of control, he refused to be bound. He roamed free and scared the hell out of everyone.
When Jesus asked this monster his name, the raving, demon-possessed man said, “My name is Legion. There are many of us.” (The Message translation reads: “My name is Mob. I’m a rioting mob.”)
We are told that Jesus exorcised this man—cast out the mob that dominated his life, and the life of the community.
Exorcism is a lost prophetic art in this day-and-age. It would do all of us well—individuals and political and religious communities alike—to organize for the work of exorcism.
And why? Because Legion is among us. The name I give him is Milbusedia, baptized out of the polygamous union between his ancestral progenitors whose names are Military, Business and Media.
Our land, and the world as well, will not be whole and safe as long as Mibusedia dwells among us and is allowed to roam free throughout the earth.
Out Of The Whiteness of Norway
“I went and sowed corn in my enemy’s field that God might exist.”
Those words are written by the great Norwegian novelist Johan Bojer.
They help keep me sane in the midst of this presidential election.
They keep the dream of the Peaceable Kingdom alive in my soul when white noise threatens to overwhelm me.
Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, to show how cute he is, sings, “Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran” to the Beach Boys tune “Barbara Ann.”
Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, to show how strong she is, threatens the Middle East with an American nuclear attack.
Thank God for the snow-covered, white fields of Norway.
April 26th, 2008
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