Category History

Star Wars analogies, girls in bikinis, and the spirit of journalism

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

I’m not the most cynical person around when it comes to the practice of journalism today…really, I’m not. If I was completely cynical about what passes for a lot of the journalism being published these days—if I believed it was a lost cause, a total sellout to the evil forces of what David Shaw called “the four horsemen of the journalistic apocalypse: superficiality, sensationalism, preoccupation with celebrity, and obsession with the bottom line”—then I wouldn’t bother talking about it at all; there’d be no point. I feel there’s still some good in there, or can be, perhaps in the way that Luke Skywalker could feel the Anakin Skywalker that still remained within Darth Vader. I must still try to turn it back to the good side of the Force.

Many of my contemporaries in the post-Watergate generation went into journalism with an idealized and inflated vision of what journalists could do, and we really did (and do) believe in the vital importance of the role of journalism as a watchdog over government power, a role that was understood and respected by the Founding Fathers to a far greater extent than it is by today’s civic and government leaders and a growing percentage of the general public. But without doubt, the excitement of being a reporter was part of the attraction, too.

Jim Romenesko linked to a recent Brain Pickings post highlighting a 1940 Encyclopedia Britannica film from the Your Life Work series, which called the film an “idealistic manifesto for the deeper ethos of journalism as a calling.” Yea…and it’s funny to see how they were selling it to the pre-World War II student body; enjoy…

While you’re at it, take a look at this video that fights against itself trying to disprove the idea that a pretty girl in a bikini is not necessarily a distraction to effective instruction.

And when you’re done, nose around Brain Pickings…some interesting stuff there on the notion of creativity.

You wouldn’t mind if we just arrested you a little bit, would you, since you look like you might hate America?

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Did you ever run across something that’s so bizarre, so out there, so freakin’ weird, that you think you must have heard it or read it wrong?  I did recently, when I read the story that the Congress of These United States was ready to pass a law making it perfectly legal for the government to use the Army to arrest American citizens here in America and hold them in custody, indefinitely, without charges or trial, if in the government’s wisdom that person was a terrorist threat.

Wait, what?

Yes.  Apparently still shivering with fear over the possibility of another September 11-type attack, Congress was ready to pass an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would authorize the use of the military as a domestic police force and give clearance to arrest and detain citizens on the mere suspicion of terrorist complicity; there would be no messy and time-consuming need for formal charges to be filed, or for due process or habeas corpus to be respected.  Congress seemed confident that the American sheeple either wouldn’t notice or were so scared of terrorists that they would happily line up to trade in some of their Constitutionally-protected liberties for an unkeepable promise of safety in the future and the warm confidence that comes from thoughtlessly submitting to government authority over their lives.

(When, please, are we going to stop being scared of terrorists?  I’m not saying we should ignore threats, or even that we should demand to keep our shoes on at the airport, but living our lives in quaking fear of possible terrorism isn’t much different from looking over your shoulder all day every day just in case there’s a tornado following you.)

But Congress didn’t pass that law, because enough people saw what was coming and made enough noise to shame the members into backing off.  They approved an additional amendment that specifically disallows the arresting-American-citizens-here-in-America-without-charges part.

What in the wide, wide world of sports were they thinking?  Seriously: what drives the thought process of supposedly mature and rational adults to think it’d be OK to do this, even though the Constitution expressly forbids using the military as a domestic police force and forbids indefinite detention without charges?

One of the richly ironic results of this misadventure is that it caused political enemies and philosophical opposites to unite: the “Say what?” reaction came from liberals and conservatives and moderates, who all recognized a ham-handed attempt to take a big bite out of the personal liberties that America promises to all of its citizens.  And they rose together—as Americans—to emulate Buckley and yell “Stop!”.

The lesson?  Keep your eyes and your ears open, because someone will try something like this again; they always do.  It’s up to us—all of us—to see that they don’t get away with it.

OK, now that you’ve eaten all your vegetables, here’s dessert:

3338df600dac012f2fc600163e41dd5b Thanks to Tom the Dancing Bug and his friend Ruben Bolling.

The war (that never should have been fought) is over

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

OK, I’d really like to put aside for a minute the ideological arguments about the beginning of the U.S. war in Iraq, in order to focus on good news: the war is over. Brave young Americans who have sworn to serve their country will always be subject to the whims of corrupt politicians, but today the war in Iraq is over and I’m thankful that those men and women are coming home.

There’s nothing contradictory or hypocritical about opposing the war while also supporting the men and women who were called on to fight it; we’ve learned that lesson since Vietnam. Driving to work this morning I teared up listening to this story about the return of soldiers of the 112th Cavalry 3rd Brigade First Cavalry Division to Fort Hood…this is what today is about.

Thank you all, and welcome home.

The surest sign of the season: the return of the War on Christmas on Fox News Channel

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Those first few strands of garland on the shopping center signpost the week before Halloween could be innocent enough, and the early signs that the local nursery is saving space for a lot of trees can be misleading.  But there’s only one explanation for the sudden glut of reports of controversy over “holiday” trees at the statehouse and proposed changes to the lyrics of Christmas carols: Fox News Channel has cranked up its reports on the War on Christmas.  And I do mean crank.

Jason Linkins notes that FNC is reporting a major victory on behalf of Christmas in this on-going clash, a phantom battle that is high high high on the list of the stupidest things ever to be the cause of wasted breath.  It’s another asinine cry for attention from a pampered majority of Americans who inexplicably feel threatened by any attempt by government or business to recognize that there are Americans with other beliefs that deserve respect, too.

For most mainstream Christians, the Yuletide season is one in which enormous accommodations are made to those who practice the Christian faith. You get time off from work, and schools get out so your kids can visit family, and on every block, there is an illuminated reminder that Christmas has arrived. You’ve probably noticed that this began about mid-October.

No holiday is as well accommodated in America as Christmas. It is perhaps one of the best celebrated religious holidays in the history of mankind.

Yet these people are peeved because some choose to wish others “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” even if only for crassly commercial reasons.

…the continuing use of the term “war on Christmas” to describe the reaction of people who do not receive full validation of their religious beliefs from cashiers 100 percent of the time is still a grievous insult to people around the world who are legitimately persecuted for expressing their religious faith, and who look to the way religious freedom is accommodated in America with envy.

And well they should, for they recognize that the Europeans who settled America were people who fled religious persecution in search of religious freedom.   Of course, the fine folks at FNC like to pull that plum from the pudding and stick it in the eye of the Christmas-haters, claiming that “religious freedom is on the rocks” in the land of the Pilgrims.  I leave it to Jon Stewart to set that straw man on fire (click the pics for a two-part pertinent and amusing holiday-themed retort):

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That’s one small step for the Pentagon, one giant leap for the U.S.A.

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Today is the first day without the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, which since its  implementation in 1993 forced more than 13,000 gay Americans out of the armed forces and multiple tens of thousands more to hide their homosexuality to keep from being discharged.  In a direct, businesslike, very Pentagon kind of way, after certifying to Congress and the president that the change will not impact military readiness or unit cohesion, and after training more than two million troops about what is now expected from them, the rule simply ceased to be.  No longer do the regs support the immediate discharge of any American soldier, sailor or Marine solely over the gender of the people for whom they have sexual and/or romantic feelings.

Congratulations, America: today we took one step closer to living up to our professed ideals of justice, equality and fairness in a tolerant, secular society.

Previously on this subject: