Ever since the Democrats took control of both the White House and our national legislative branch, then proceeded to run healthcare reform right back up the national flagpole, the rhetoric coming from inside AND outside the Beltway has been elevated to levels not seen since the Pulitzer vs. Hearst yellow journalism days of the late 19th century. I have to admit, in sort of a voyeuristic way, watching all this from a distance at times is pretty amusing, until, that is, I realize that there are boatloads of my neighbors out there who buy into all this crap.
"Yellow journalism, in short, is biased opinion masquerading as objective fact. Moreover, the practice of yellow journalism involved sensationalism, distorted stories, and misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sales and exciting public opinion." This is an excerpt from an educational article on the Oracle Education Foundation website, ThinkQuest.org. The article goes on to explain that this type of sensationalistic journalism tended to appeal to the "shorter attention spans and interests of the lower class." (Gosh, remind you of anyone?) It also goes on to explain that following this dark period in journalistic history, generally considered to have ended around 1910, newspapers and journalism were never the same. Now there's a revelation!
Fast forward to today and we find that yellow journalism is no longer the exclusive domain of newspapers, and hasn't been for a long time. The so-called 24-hour news cycle is now driven electronically by cable television and the web. Newspapers simply aren't as relevent as they once were, just prior to the start of the 20th century when 98% of the population - that's right, 98% - got their news from newspapers. Being all things yellow also now seems to be the bastion of the right (although the left can lay claim to a few fact-benders too). My problem is not so much with all the truth-stretching and yellow shading going on on both sides. Rather, I'm disturbed by the fact that waaaaaayyyyyy too many of my fellow citizens get their information exclusively from these sources. They form their opinions based soley on what they are being told from a narrow and extremely biased perspective. People are lazy. They listen to whatever suits their own proclivities. They will not proactively seek out opposing viewpoints. They won't search for truly factual, objective information in an effort to form a more educated opinion. What's worse, when challenged, they become defensive and combative, rather than being open-minded.
The electorate, my friends, is largely ignorant. We, are largely ignorant. (Not stupid, but ignorant. If you don't know the difference, look it up.) Oh yeah, and apathetic to boot. How else can you explain voter turnout of only 64% in the 2008 presidential election - virtually unchanged from 2004. For all the hullaballoo about voter registration and electing a black president, the fact is, the percentage of registered voters who voted did not change. It was the makeup of the voters that changed: 2 million more black voters, 2 million more Hispanic voters and 600,000 more Asian voters made up the lion's share of the 5 million-voter increase from 2004. And for whom did they vote? Go on, take a wild guess.
So, all you WASPy right-wing haters out there, keep rattling your yellow sabres and spewing your yellow misinformation. It served you well in last year's elections didn't it? Until you can give your ignorant, apathetic constituents truly compelling reasons to get off the couch and turn out at the polls, the GOP will continue to be the party of exclusion, not inclusion. Oh yeah, and just to make yourselves even more appealing, why don't y'all line up alongside my obviously-doesn't-have-enough-to-do-in-Washington, fellow Floridian, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite. In unison insist that Pres. Obama must ask Congress for permission to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. That should make you a lot of friends. You Republicans, you're a funny lot. And Ginny, keep trying to be controversial, if not relevent. You fit right in with your fellow GOPers - loud, proud, grasping for straws and still completely clueless.
Ya know, when all this yellowness gets to be too much, I find myself . . .
. . . Wishing I Was Fishing.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Sleepless in Tampa Bay
So, what keeps you awake at night? The possibility of another terrorist attack? Can't pay the mortgage? You're afraid your kid's smoking God-knows-what or ingesting God-knows-what and headed for rehab like Amy Winehouse? You think the wife/hubby might be doing the wild thing on the side with a tattoo artist from Seattle? How many interns did Dave really have sex with?
Maybe you're worried that that little nest egg you've been salting away for the past umpteen years, in the hope of bailing for a double-wide on a picturesque hillside in North Carolina, will end up a Bernie Madoff-type casualty? Or how about simply wondering whether come Friday you'll be called into the Poobah's office (or worse, the HR director's office) and told to turn in your office key, your key-card and have your desk and/or locker cleaned out by the end of the day? (Oh, and by the way, you'll have to sign this waiver that says you won't sue us. Otherwise we won't be able to pay you the disgustingly, insultingly paltry excuse-for-a-severance we have so generously awarded you for your many years of selfless service. Oh yeah, and your e-mail access has been cut off. Best of luck, and, oh, I almost forgot, if you want a recommendation, our company policy requires that we merely acknowledge that you were employed here.)
OK, let's see a show of hands. You been there? There now? Got any kin in Michigan? How about California, where you get a promissory note instead of a paycheck (Hey, Ah-nold, did Vons accept your promissory note for payment when you stopped to buy milk and eggs on the way home?)? If you're sleeping easily these days, (and I'm not sure I'd admit that openly in mixed company) then I would suggest you're in the minority - or an already-successful dermatologist in Florida who just hit a $181-million PowerBall jackpot, or taking 1,500 mg of Ambien nightly. Either way, you're one of few (or in the good doctor's case, the only). In the interest of full disclosure here, I do fall asleep fairly easily each night. I just don't stay asleep. It's what happens a couple hours later that's pertinent to this discussion. Now that I've passed 50, I find myself waking up pretty regularly in the middle of the night, needing to drain my bladder. (One could argue that in my case this has less to do with my age and more to do with the numero de las cervesas I've consumed over the course of the evening, but I would contend that it's both - A&B - Age & Beer!)
Regardless, once awake, my mind begins to race with the Mount Everest of issues I will contend with come morning light. Bills to pay; fires to put out at work; fires to put out at home; the house repairs I've put off for months and months because the money's just not there; the "I should have known better" penny stock I bought on a "tip" that tanked within 48 hours of buying it and has yet to rebound, thereby reducing the value of my already-diminished retirement account; my aging parents who are 1,000 miles away and in ill health; the what-used-to-be-manageable-but-now-seems-Jabba-The-Hut-size house payment coming due; the Russian Roulette I'm playing with our family's vehicles (not to mention my loved ones' safety!) - all of which are approaching 100,000 miles (the vehicles, that is) - as I allocate scarce resources to repairs. Sleep, you say? What the hell is that!? After two hours-or-so, of tossing and turning and ruminating and fretting, I'm lucky if I conk out from sheer lack of sleep for a few glorious minutes before the dreaded alarm goes off (just as I'm in the middle of a rather disturbing dream featuring Martin Sheen and Sigourney Weaver, with Martin handcuffed to a bed and, . . . oh, never mind).
The point is, as the pundits repeatedly use terminology like, "not since the Great Depression," the cold reality is that thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of well-meaning, hard-working, tax-paying, home-owning, business-owning, used-to-put-$50-in-the-envelope-at-church-every-week, won't-ever-happen-to-me people - YOUR NEIGHBORS AND FAMILY MEMBERS - are not just struggling, but are on the verge of financial collapse.
Now, it's easy - and I would add, convenient - to suggest that we all had it coming to us. We borrowed when we should have been saving. We bought on credit when we should have paid cash. We leveraged when we should have been more conservative. We speculated. We got complacent. We ran up the market. We got greedy. Etc., etc., etc. But let me ask you, who is the "We" I refer to? Us? You and me? Couldn't the word be just as easily changed to "They." They, as in those mercenary-to-a-fault, won't-stop-'til-I-have-my-Ferrari-and-my-house-in-the-Hamptons Wall Streeters, and their myopic, insulated corporate C-level cronies who nearly drove The Big Three off a cliff and nearly flushed B of A and AIG down the sub-prime toilet.
While we - you and I - lay awake at night wondering how the electric bill (which, by the way is 25% higher than last year) is going to get paid, our Wall Street bretheren are simply gearing up for another round of yearly seven-figure bonuses. After all, we are approaching November. Year-end will be here before we know it, and I've had my eye on that luscious little Aston-Martin coupe with the leather ashtray! Bailout, shmailout. Didn't you see the Dow crack 10,000 again the other day? It's biz-as-usual here in the land of Bears & Bulls. After all, we have to pay these bonuses if we have any hope of attracting and keeping the best and the brightest, now don't we? Jesus, these guys make Gordon Gekko look like Mother Teresa!
Tell me again, what real value are these folks creating as they gaze out over the Manhattan skyline? Traders. There was a day in this country when a trader was someone who exchanged a tangible piece of property with someone in return for another tangible piece of property - or currency. You know, like fur traders, and spice traders, and silk traders. Now, traders are on Wall Street, and they are not so much trading tangibles as much as they are simply buying and selling the electronic equivalent of the future value of something we can't even touch in the first place - a stock (when was the last time you saw, or held, an actual stock certificate?), or a derivative (can anyone really tell me, in terms that I will actually understand, what a derivative is?), or a future (is that your future, my future, or the future price of the ear of corn my cousin grows on his farm in Ohio?).
Like two of the three little pigs, in many respects, it seems we've built our economic house out of straw and sticks. And in the process, we've ceded the oversight of our now-fragile economy to men and women who cut their teeth in the very halls of commerce they have now been tasked to oversee and regulate. At first glance, it would seem to make sense that someone with first-hand knowledge and experience in the industry he or she has been hired to oversee would make the best choice, but when he or she was previously the beneficiary of the same outsized bonuses and perks, how can he or she then rule with a firm, objective hand? The heck with the big bad wolf! The damn fox has been in the hen house for years, while we were too busy sucking the equity out of our homes to finance that Carribbean cruise or that shiny used Lexus or that beautiful 1/16th-acre lot in Ashville, NC!
When the Feds chose Elliot Ness to bust Public Enemy #1, Al Capone, do you think their list of required credentials included, "Must have stolen copious amounts of money. Must have wiped out numerous competitors (literally). Must possess a total disregard for collateral damage. Etc, etc." This romantic idea that it takes a thief to catch a thief is a crock. Think like a thief, maybe - been a thief, I don't think so.
What's my solution to all this? I don't have one. I'm just a guy in the middle, wondering about things and occasionally spotting the inequities that seem to separate the haves from the have-nots a little more every day, and wondering how this is all going to shake out. And losing a little more sleep every night. And as my head begins to ache, from all this inequity-spotting, I start to think, man . . .
. . . I Wish I Was Fishing.
Maybe you're worried that that little nest egg you've been salting away for the past umpteen years, in the hope of bailing for a double-wide on a picturesque hillside in North Carolina, will end up a Bernie Madoff-type casualty? Or how about simply wondering whether come Friday you'll be called into the Poobah's office (or worse, the HR director's office) and told to turn in your office key, your key-card and have your desk and/or locker cleaned out by the end of the day? (Oh, and by the way, you'll have to sign this waiver that says you won't sue us. Otherwise we won't be able to pay you the disgustingly, insultingly paltry excuse-for-a-severance we have so generously awarded you for your many years of selfless service. Oh yeah, and your e-mail access has been cut off. Best of luck, and, oh, I almost forgot, if you want a recommendation, our company policy requires that we merely acknowledge that you were employed here.)
OK, let's see a show of hands. You been there? There now? Got any kin in Michigan? How about California, where you get a promissory note instead of a paycheck (Hey, Ah-nold, did Vons accept your promissory note for payment when you stopped to buy milk and eggs on the way home?)? If you're sleeping easily these days, (and I'm not sure I'd admit that openly in mixed company) then I would suggest you're in the minority - or an already-successful dermatologist in Florida who just hit a $181-million PowerBall jackpot, or taking 1,500 mg of Ambien nightly. Either way, you're one of few (or in the good doctor's case, the only). In the interest of full disclosure here, I do fall asleep fairly easily each night. I just don't stay asleep. It's what happens a couple hours later that's pertinent to this discussion. Now that I've passed 50, I find myself waking up pretty regularly in the middle of the night, needing to drain my bladder. (One could argue that in my case this has less to do with my age and more to do with the numero de las cervesas I've consumed over the course of the evening, but I would contend that it's both - A&B - Age & Beer!)
Regardless, once awake, my mind begins to race with the Mount Everest of issues I will contend with come morning light. Bills to pay; fires to put out at work; fires to put out at home; the house repairs I've put off for months and months because the money's just not there; the "I should have known better" penny stock I bought on a "tip" that tanked within 48 hours of buying it and has yet to rebound, thereby reducing the value of my already-diminished retirement account; my aging parents who are 1,000 miles away and in ill health; the what-used-to-be-manageable-but-now-seems-Jabba-The-Hut-size house payment coming due; the Russian Roulette I'm playing with our family's vehicles (not to mention my loved ones' safety!) - all of which are approaching 100,000 miles (the vehicles, that is) - as I allocate scarce resources to repairs. Sleep, you say? What the hell is that!? After two hours-or-so, of tossing and turning and ruminating and fretting, I'm lucky if I conk out from sheer lack of sleep for a few glorious minutes before the dreaded alarm goes off (just as I'm in the middle of a rather disturbing dream featuring Martin Sheen and Sigourney Weaver, with Martin handcuffed to a bed and, . . . oh, never mind).
The point is, as the pundits repeatedly use terminology like, "not since the Great Depression," the cold reality is that thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of well-meaning, hard-working, tax-paying, home-owning, business-owning, used-to-put-$50-in-the-envelope-at-church-every-week, won't-ever-happen-to-me people - YOUR NEIGHBORS AND FAMILY MEMBERS - are not just struggling, but are on the verge of financial collapse.
Now, it's easy - and I would add, convenient - to suggest that we all had it coming to us. We borrowed when we should have been saving. We bought on credit when we should have paid cash. We leveraged when we should have been more conservative. We speculated. We got complacent. We ran up the market. We got greedy. Etc., etc., etc. But let me ask you, who is the "We" I refer to? Us? You and me? Couldn't the word be just as easily changed to "They." They, as in those mercenary-to-a-fault, won't-stop-'til-I-have-my-Ferrari-and-my-house-in-the-Hamptons Wall Streeters, and their myopic, insulated corporate C-level cronies who nearly drove The Big Three off a cliff and nearly flushed B of A and AIG down the sub-prime toilet.
While we - you and I - lay awake at night wondering how the electric bill (which, by the way is 25% higher than last year) is going to get paid, our Wall Street bretheren are simply gearing up for another round of yearly seven-figure bonuses. After all, we are approaching November. Year-end will be here before we know it, and I've had my eye on that luscious little Aston-Martin coupe with the leather ashtray! Bailout, shmailout. Didn't you see the Dow crack 10,000 again the other day? It's biz-as-usual here in the land of Bears & Bulls. After all, we have to pay these bonuses if we have any hope of attracting and keeping the best and the brightest, now don't we? Jesus, these guys make Gordon Gekko look like Mother Teresa!
Tell me again, what real value are these folks creating as they gaze out over the Manhattan skyline? Traders. There was a day in this country when a trader was someone who exchanged a tangible piece of property with someone in return for another tangible piece of property - or currency. You know, like fur traders, and spice traders, and silk traders. Now, traders are on Wall Street, and they are not so much trading tangibles as much as they are simply buying and selling the electronic equivalent of the future value of something we can't even touch in the first place - a stock (when was the last time you saw, or held, an actual stock certificate?), or a derivative (can anyone really tell me, in terms that I will actually understand, what a derivative is?), or a future (is that your future, my future, or the future price of the ear of corn my cousin grows on his farm in Ohio?).
Like two of the three little pigs, in many respects, it seems we've built our economic house out of straw and sticks. And in the process, we've ceded the oversight of our now-fragile economy to men and women who cut their teeth in the very halls of commerce they have now been tasked to oversee and regulate. At first glance, it would seem to make sense that someone with first-hand knowledge and experience in the industry he or she has been hired to oversee would make the best choice, but when he or she was previously the beneficiary of the same outsized bonuses and perks, how can he or she then rule with a firm, objective hand? The heck with the big bad wolf! The damn fox has been in the hen house for years, while we were too busy sucking the equity out of our homes to finance that Carribbean cruise or that shiny used Lexus or that beautiful 1/16th-acre lot in Ashville, NC!
When the Feds chose Elliot Ness to bust Public Enemy #1, Al Capone, do you think their list of required credentials included, "Must have stolen copious amounts of money. Must have wiped out numerous competitors (literally). Must possess a total disregard for collateral damage. Etc, etc." This romantic idea that it takes a thief to catch a thief is a crock. Think like a thief, maybe - been a thief, I don't think so.
What's my solution to all this? I don't have one. I'm just a guy in the middle, wondering about things and occasionally spotting the inequities that seem to separate the haves from the have-nots a little more every day, and wondering how this is all going to shake out. And losing a little more sleep every night. And as my head begins to ache, from all this inequity-spotting, I start to think, man . . .
. . . I Wish I Was Fishing.
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