Category American Values

Windsor not

Pat Ryan 5 Comments

Look, since I’m kind of on a cranky roll anyway (see two most recent posts, below), here are a few unkind words about Americans’ obsession with tomorrow’s royal wedding.

The one in England…you heard about it, right?

God, who around here hasn’t!?  Honestly, have you thought about what has brainwashed American TV networks—hell, local stations even—into thinking that we care enough about this spectacle to justify their overkill?  Well I have, and the answer is: nothing.  They don’t really care whether we care or not about some royal wedding; it’s just an event—one completely absent any real significance (except for the participants and their families, I assume)—that they can turn into “An Event!” that will attract a lot of eyeballs, which is what they need to sell overpriced advertising.  Have storyline, will hype.

And even at that I wouldn’t be bothered enough to complain, except for one thing.  I have no qualms about a TV company that promotes and broadcasts an event with the intention of making a boatload of money; that’s what they do, whether it’s the Super Bowl or “American Idol” or the last episode of “M*A*S*H.”  But I have significant-sized qualms when they prostitute any credibility they may still enjoy by dressing up this sales opportunity as coverage of serious news when it is without a doubt nothing of the sort, and when we let them get away with it.  By “we” I mean the Great Unseen Unwashed American Tee Wee Viewing Audience, and by “let them get away with it” I mean act like we don’t know or care that they’re blowing sunshine up our collective skirt.

Oh, here’s some good news: television ratings indicate interest in this pseudonews is less than expected…I hope that carries over into tomorrow, too: schadenfreude is best served with tea and biscuits.

And on a related subject: this keen interest from Americans toward a royal wedding seems a bit disloyal, inasmuch as we fought a whole war and everything to make the point that we don’t much care for fancy pants nobles and royalty because "all men are created equal."  So what’s up with that?

The gentleman from Pearland yields…

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…for some great insight on yesterday’s topic.  First, Wayne Hale, a former NASA flight director and, among other things, a one-time manager of America’s Space Shuttle Program (the big boss!), who has retired from government service, is also a wonderful writer.  And he has a great post today on why Houston didn’t get a space shuttle—because Houston takes having the space program here for granted, and assumed it was in the bag.

…with the level of interest that our citizens and leaders have in JSC, I soon expect to see that facility in the hands of a different federal agency.  Soon the National Park Service will be leading tours through the historic – and empty – halls of the Johnson Space Center National Historic Site.

I have a suspicion Wayne is trying to stir the troops to action; good for Wayne.

Those same troops got a different message today from Kyle Herring, a NASA public affairs officer for more than 20 years.  He sent along a reminder that not having a shuttle come to live in Houston shouldn’t be the end of our love affair with the program.

These space shuttles will have ended their flying careers, but not their inspirational ones. That career will live on forever in places where so many people will see what we have lived for much of our adult lives and our careers. We now can allow those who aren’t really sure what we did to see what miracles of spaceflight the space shuttle orbiters really are.

(snip)

As we travel around the country in a year, two years, five, 10, 20, our paths will take us to these museums.Discovery on SLF We’ll pass through the doors of a hangar, or round the corner of a cavernous hall and suddenly look up and see Enterprise, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour representing our work, our commitment, our dedication. Our forearms will sprout bumps knowing that these spaceships are there because we protected them through years of flight in an environment not friendly to Earth-built machines.

(snip)

…when we are standing in one of the four locations each orbiter finds home, we can watch the visitors stand in awe of these remarkable spacecraft and tell them about the Space Shuttle Program. We can tell them about what it meant to support such a great vehicle. We can spread the meaning of space – and the space shuttle in particular – to them.

April 12

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

1633, Galileo convicted of heresy; 1777, Henry Clay born; 1861, America’s Civil War began; 1878, Boss Tweed died; 1947, David Letterman born; 1954, Bill Haley and the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock”; 1961, Douglas MacArthur declined an invitation to become baseball commissioner.  Oh yeah, and a man flew in space.

For the first time.  Ever. Gagarin

I’ve never felt the significance of that.  I understand the significance, but I can’t feel just how earthshaking that must have been to anyone who was more than, let’s say, 20, at the time: people old enough to have an understanding of how things are, who lived in a world where people didn’t leave the planet except in flights of fancy.

Fifty years ago I was four years old, the oldest of three kids living in Birmingham, Alabama.   I knew nothing about Yuri Gagarin or the Soviet Union, or the Redstone Arsenal just 50 miles away in Huntsville, where Wernher von Braun and his team were developing the heavy lift rocket that would make the moon landing possible.  (You had three TV stations to choose from (not counting educational television), if you were lucky, telephones had dials and many lived in booths, cars as well as fish had fins, the prestigious post-season college basketball tournament was the NIT, and there were only 16 big league baseball teams.)

Today I’m 50 years older; I live outside of Houston, and I work in the American space program, for the public affairs office at the Johnson Space Center.  Today I interviewed the astronaut who will command the last flight of the space shuttle, which is planned for this summer.   Just a regular work day.

If I can’t imagine the amazement that people felt 50 years ago, can I imagine what the world would be like if we had never left the planet, even for brief periods?  Would we have had any incentive to create semiconductors (and then faster semiconductors), to miniaturize computers, to put geostationary satellites in orbit?  Would we still have put a powerful telescope in orbit that would revolutionize astronomy, or have figured out a way to fix it once it got there?  Would Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas still have been inspired to create other worlds that in some ways have come true in ours?  Would the Colt .45s still be in the National League?

1965, first National League game at the Astrodome (Phillies 2, Astros 0; oh well).  Less than two months later Houston became the Mission Control Center for U.S. manned spaceflight on Gemini 4, the flight that featured the first American spacewalk.  Then we went to the moon—for that, I was old enough to feel the amazement.  Then we stopped going to the moon, or anywhere else in space.

1981, first space shuttle flight.  It was amazing to watch that launch—it was so much different than other rockets we’d seen—and I remember being very skeptical about that thing making a soft landing when it came down.  Then it started pulling off missions that the Mercury 7 only ever dreamed about: retrieving and repairing satellites, supporting all kinds of advanced and (to the layman) esoteric science research, staying in space for weeks at a time—weeks, I tell you!  Then docking to a Russian space station, then building one of our very own in a successful partnership with most of the Western world.  Now that’s amazing!

2011: the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight, the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle mission, and NASA announces where Enterprise, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour will spend their retirement.

April 12, 2061: Boy, I wish I knew…

If you know anything, thank a reporter

Pat Ryan 7 Comments

Is it funny-strange that a blog that comments on reporting and journalism has a category for Woeful Journalism but not one to sing its praises, or is it just funny-sad that there hasn’t been a need to have one?

People who came to journalism post-Watergate and later, like I did, have a lot of complaints about the state of the art/profession/trade as it exists today; I suspect our elders have their own hit parade of infamies that we committed.  But my complaint has never been about how the digital revolution is changing the way information is presented to the reader/listener/viewer/consumer/custo-mer, because to my mind the delivery method is a tertiary concern.  The primary concern should be the content, with a little preserving-and-protecting-a-free-and-independent-press as a secondary.

I’m fine with electronic self-publication (duh!), and there’s not a damn thing wrong with everybody expressing their own beliefs and opinions.  But I don’t ever confuse what I and thousands and thousands of other people do at our own private keyboards with what real, professional reporters do out in the world every day.  Today I ran across two great examples of why that job is hard to do, and why it can be dangerous to do.

When the Earth quakes and the ocean covers the land and nuclear reactors split open, real reporters go to the danger because that’s where the story is.  When a dictator sends his army against its own people to suppress their expression of a desire for freedom, real reporters go to the danger because that’s where the story is.  Real reporters leave their comfortable homes and go where the news is happening, to observe real events and talk to real people, to report, so the rest of us can know what’s going on.  The biggest risk we stay-at-home bloggers take is suffering a fragmented hard drive.

The next time you hear someone complain about the biased news media, remind them that it’s real reporters, working for all kinds of publications, who provide us all with the raw data that pundits and demagogues misconstrue to suit their own purposes, and that sometimes they risk their lives to do it.  More times than you probably imagine, they lose their lives doing it.  We owe them our thanks and our respect.

→UPDATE Mar. 21: Times reporters released by Libya

The Extent of Pandering-ization in the American Political Community

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

What’s causing me a good bit of non-specific discomfort about Rep. Peter King’s hearing today ("The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response") is the premise that we should investigate if Muslims are cooperating with law enforcement in the fight against terrorism.  Why isn’t he investigating the cooperation of Baptists, or Buddhists?  Or the Unitarians or the Wiccans or the Scientologists?

Because they didn’t attack America on September 11?  No, they didn’t; a few adherents to a twisted interpretation of Islam did.  But “Muslims” as a group did not, and certainly Muslim Americans didn’t.

First, King has only a handful of anecdotal examples of Muslims not cooperating with the FBI or other law enforcement agencies in investigating homegrown terrorism; certainly nothing to justify this hearing, which could actually have been something constructive if it had been used as an opportunity for Muslims in America to talk about what they really believe.

Second, he’s wrong: research shows that law enforcement’s biggest source of help in fighting domestic terrorism comes from Muslim Americans and Muslim organizations (page 6).

Third, it shows the rest of the world just how stupid we can be at times, and might help Al Qaeda convince a few feeble-minded individuals that America really does hate Muslims.

That’s not to say that no Muslim Americans hate America or sympathize with Al Qaeda; crazy people belong to every religion—religions don’t test for crazy when they you sign up.  But this hearing targets people for suspicion because of their religion, and that’s just not right.

People are not the groups they belong to.  As Harry Reasoner put it, labels only lump me in among people with whom I have one thing in common.  Granted, it’s much easier to stereotype…once you understand that all Irish are drunks, all Mexicans are lazy, all Hindus worship cows, and all Muslims want to kill Americans, then no hard thinking is required.