Scarabus
Crawling toward the sunlight
Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
Faux News: We (Mis)report, you decide!
Tuesday, May 14th, 2013Just where is Darrell Issa’s head?
Tuesday, May 14th, 2013
The May 20 cover Time really wanted to run!
Friday, May 10th, 2013
The editors at Time Magazine had already chosen the cover for their May 20 edition. Somehow word leaked, however, and several of Lindsay Graham’s BFFs showed up and bitch-slapped them into agreeing to withdraw it.
Not surprisingly, the original design was leaked several more times, and before long it went viral on the internet. You won’t have to search for it, however. For your convenience I’m including here the design they ran, on top. On bottom, naturally, is Lindsay Graham… featured on the cover they really wanted to run.
Titania has retired!
Friday, May 10th, 2013
Here’s the evidence! Queen Titania is definitely toast!! Not physically, maybe, but certainly in respect to status, power, wealth, and – most of all – magic.
As everyone knows, in Oberon’s kingdom fuchsia is by far the most valuable element; so of course that’s the element Titania negotiated for the bail-out parachute she’d need in case of a forced resignation or voluntary retirement. We don’t yet know why or under what circumstances she took recourse to the parachute, but we do have concrete physical evidence that she did so.
What she didn’t realize is that when one reality-warps from Oberon’s realm to Bottom’s, much more than mere “atmosphere” transmogrifies. She didn’t foresee the sad ruin we see here: A glowing, incandescent fuchsia treasure has been reduced to a worthless, faded decoration from a waaaay overpriced cocktail, discarded along the side of a road.
One assumes Titania must by now have been seized by a human/former-fairy trafficker for unspeakable purposes … or, mercifully, squashed like a bug beneath some right-wing extremist’s jack-boot. Very sad.
This is all just dreamy speculation, of course. In reality Titania probably continues to reign as Oberon’s consort in their alternate reality.
What!?!
You don’t believe in alternate realities? Then please, please begin watching Faux News, subscribing to WorldNutDaily, and checking regularly the websites of Congressional Republicans. What you’ll find there is an alternate universe so bizarre that Titania, Oberon, Bottom, and even Shakespeare would find too implausible to credit … to credit, not just the fantasy, but the mere suggestion that some rational being would take it seriously.
[First episode. Many more to follow, number depending on how long I remain functional.]
no redemption for the great deceiver
Wednesday, May 8th, 2013
Paul Krugman wrote this:
No Redemption for George W. Bush
Tuesday, 07 May 2013 14:11 By Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co. | Op-Ed
I’ve been focused on economic policy lately, so I sort of missed the big push to rehabilitate President George W. Bush’s image in the run-up to the opening of his presidential library in Texas recently; also, as an anti-Bushist who pointed out how terrible a president he was back when everyone else was praising him as a Great Leader, I’m kind of worn out on the subject.
But it does need to be said: Mr. Bush was a terrible president, arguably the worst ever, and not just for the reasons many others are pointing out.
From what I’ve read, most of the pushback against pro-Bush revisionism focuses on just how bad his policies were, from the disaster in Iraq to the way he destroyed the Federal Emergency Management Agency; from the way he squandered the budget surplus to the way he drove up the costs of Medicare, the health insurance program for older Americans. And all of that is fair.
But I think there was something even bigger, in some ways, than his policy failures: Mr. Bush brought an unprecedented level of systematic dishonesty to American political life, and we may never recover.
Which inspired me to do this:
(To be sung to the tune of The Pretender 
Follow-up re Political Discourse
Tuesday, May 7th, 2013
Last night I read myself to sleep, as I usually do. This time I read Edgar Allan Poe’s A Cask of Amontillado (in Italian translation, making it more fun).
Probably the best known line from the story is its very first. Here it is, in contextt:
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. AT LENGTH I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled — but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
So, what revenge does Montressor, the narrator, choose? Taking advantage of Fortunato’s vanity about his wine connoisseurship, and of his inebriation, Montressor lures him back to the deepest part of his catacomb/wine cellar, ostensibly to get his opinion on a cask of Amontillado wine. Suddenly he slams the drunken Fortunato to the wall of a niche, and fetters him there with hand irons and a chain. Then?
”The Amontillado!” ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.
“True,” I replied; “the Amontillado.”
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.
So how’s this relevant to contemporary politics? Start with the fact that Montressor feels so aggrieved, so certain that Fortunato has wronged him, he’s willing to commit murder. Murder by a particularly cruel means.
Montressor says that Fortunato has “injured” him a thousand times. After all these injuries, what finally pushed him over the edge? that Fortunato “insulted” him. Say what? Yes, the final injury that pushed Montressor to commit a horrifying murder was a perceived insult. I say “perceived” because he doesn’t say how or about what he was insulted. Perhaps most others would never have considered the act or comment insulting.
But if he won’t allow us to know or judge the final “insult,” then what about the other thousand injuries? What were they? Suppose we stipulate that Montressor wasn’t just lying, but honestly perceived whatever happened as a series of “injuries.” If he had actually specified what happened, would others have perceived that as a series of legitimate, meaningful “injuries”?, let alone truly significant, injuries?
Now…
You’re the kind of person who cheers Glenn Beck at the NRA convention? the kind who blows up the Oklahoma City federal office building? the kind who kills and injures members of a congregation of Unitarians or of Sikhs;? the kind who insists President Obama should be impeached? the kind who insists that the U.S. Congress (or the faculty of Harvard Law School) is dominated by “communists”? the kind who sees the Benghazi incident as evidence of a vast conspiracy? the kind who thinks the U.N. wants to seize our golf courses? the kind who thinks the “feds” are buying up ammo and plan to confiscate your guns? etc…?
Then obviously you must feel you’ve suffered a thousand or more injuries from _____ (fill in the blank with your particular bête noir). Will you spell out and document those injuries so that the rest of us can assess the validity of your claims? Will you name names? name specific acts? provide the “footnotes”?
If you can provide such specifics and documentation, then we’ll take you seriously. If not? We might consider you personally dangerous (like Montressor), but we’ll have no reason to take seriously your knowledge, your reasoning power, your fears, or your charges.
Trolling, trolling, trolling. Rawhide!!
Monday, May 6th, 2013
Over at BagNews Michael posted some pictures of Mark Sanford’s victory celebration at the Republican primary. His point was to note the sadness of seeing Sanford’s children on stage with his mistress. A conservative “troller” responded in a predictable comment:
Michael:
The photos are really painful, Sanford’s two sons on that stage not only having to emotionally contend with the fiancé[e] and the cameras but Sanford praising his God, then his flame back-to-back.
Troller:
aSouthernMan • an hour ago
As dumb as the Sanford debacle is/was, the new low will come on Wednesday when the formal accounting of the Benghazi coverup is finally shown. The President’s directive lie to the entire country on the 4 major networks by Susan Rice, in the face of the deaths of 4 people including a US Ambassador is treason, not just embarrassing. I hope that will be covered here as well. That story will definitely provide much more important photo ops than the titillating story of a buffoon forsaking his state and family for a piece of ass, then trying to ‘re-invent’ himself just as the sexting Anthony Weiner is (also) doing… Or will that be ignored, too?
Remember Joe Biden’s witty comment about Rudy Giuliani, that essentially everything the guy said could be boiled down to this: “Noun, verb, 9/11″? About the far right these days one might boil down most of the talk to “noun, verb, Benghazi.”
“Wow, Rufus! Look at that beautiful sky!”
“Yeah. Reminds of how the sky over Benghazi must have looked on the afternoon when Obama murdered four brave Americans, and Clinton put in place the huge cover-up now destroying our constitutional democracy.”
“Come along, now, Rufus. You don’t really believe such nonsense, do you?”
“Damn right, I do! Rush said it; Glenn said it; and Sean said it. That means it must be true. Those good ol’ boys all have secret inside sources. They never lie, and they’re never wrong!”
In the image below I’m not comparing Republicans to enemies who tried deliberately to cripple us. I’m just suggesting that we should try to learn from history; and saying that assaults based on hubris, with incomplete consideration of likely consequences, can be destructive to everyone — both those who are attacking and those who are being attacked.
This is not a game, or a “major movie.” This is real life, right now. Actions have consequences. “Victories” can seem sweet. But their consequences are often quite different from what the gleeful attackers anticipated. Ask your favorite medium to summon up the shade of Pyrrhus, and ask him.
The Fox Noise Effect
Sunday, May 5th, 2013
What makes these loonies tick?
Friday, May 3rd, 2013
Ideology – religious or a-religious – can inspire hatred and even violence. Granted. But the question here is focused and specific, not floating in the gauzy speculativeness of Cloud Cuckoo Land. If a “person” (flesh and blood, corporate, institutional, ideological, or whatever) can be known by his/her enemies, then what does Islamophobia teach us about those consumed by it?
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
“Cognitive mapping” — biological predisposition shaped and reinforced by nurture — is obviously a factor in Islamophobia. So is fear, of course. The question is whether morality — or, beyond that, something one might even call evil — is also a factor.
Wait!
I’m not a religious believer. I’m not a believer in paranormal or extraterrestrial influence on human character. I don’t expect to find a logical explanation. I’m just looking for some kind of concept … or at least phrase … I can grasp as an anchor.
Tentatively I’ve embraced a concept offered by Herman Melville. The articulation is found in the novella Billy Budd, chapters 10-11. Here’s the key passage, expressed by the narrative “voice” or “persona” at the very end of chapter 11.
What defines the man characterized by “natural depravity”? That,
though the man’s even temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in his heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational. That is to say: Toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of malignity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgement sagacious and sound.
These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their lunacy is not continuous but occasional, evoked by some special object; it is probably secretive, which is as much to say it is self-contained, so that when moreover, most active, it is to the average mind not distinguishable from sanity, and for the reason above suggested that whatever its aims may be — and the aim is never declared — the method and the outward proceeding are always perfectly rational.
Got that? We’re talking about the kind of person who keeps a calm, controlled demeanor while using rational means to accomplish irrational (and often wantonly destructive) ends. In other words, we’re talking about evil.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Bryan Fischer – Suspend Muslim immigration, Muslim military service, building of mosques
Posted by Bryan Fischer – May 02, 2013Of course, the majority of Muslim immigrants do not want to kill us, but they are not the Muslims we have to worry about. The problem is we have no way of distinguishing the Muslims we do have to worry about from the ones we don’t. And we can’t watch them all.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
In essence and in most manifestations, Judaism is a religion of peace, compassion, and service. Same with Christianity. Same with Islam. Fundamentalist fanatics of these faiths and of many others often promote hatred and exclusion and even violence. Aberrant, “naturally depraved” individuals like Osama bin Laden of current history and Melville’s fictional John Claggart might prove destructive, on whatever scale.
Essentially, though, people like them are rogues, outliers, fanatics. Theirs all are religions of peace. The rogue fanatics should be rejected and the faiths they profess acknowledged for the positive forces that — at their best! — they really are. Aberrations who preach fear, hatred, and violence should be acknowledged, obviously. But they should be acknowledged and dealt with as the dangerous aberrations they are, not as exemplars of the faith they claim to represent.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Think of it in terms of perspective. We know how matters look from our position. How might they look from another part of the table? (The table is a subtly rounded polygon, not a rectangle. Facets can merge, blend, overlap almost imperceptibly.)
What do we lose by hating one another? by fearing one another? What might we gain by accepting and understanding one another? We cannot allow terrorists to rip apart our nation, let alone our world. The more we listen to and heed “naturally depraved,” hate-driven false shepherds like Bryan Fischer, the more we allow terrorism to control us. We hate and fear? Then the forces of evil win. We accept, tolerate, try to understand one another? Then what’s best in humanity wins!
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
I really don’t like the “winning/losing” analogy. It’s late, though, and I’m tired. I might edit this tomorrow.
Chris Matthews’ tunnel vision
Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
The movie Rosemary’s Baby was directed by Roman Polanski and photographed by William Fraker. Fraker tells a story about the set-up for one particular shot. The actress Ruth Gordon, one of the “bad guys,” goes into a bedroom to make a phone call. The camera “watches” from outside, framing the shot like this:
Fraker had originally set it up so that Gordon’s entire body and the phone were visible. Polanski kept moving him to the left until he got what’s shown here. Fraker thought it was a mistake, Polanski said, “Just wait.” Sure enough, at the first public showing, when this shot came up, the entire audience leaned in unison to the right. Subconsciously, they were trying to see around the corner and find out what was going on.
Later on Marcel Duchamp brought this subconscious reaction to the fore in a way no one could deny. The vehicle was his very last work, titled Étant Donés…, on which he had worked for many years. The work is a kind of sculpture/assemblage hidden behind a wooden door in a brick wall. Well, not entirely hidden. There’s a small peephole in the door. Easier to see than describe (which I mean as a complement):
On the bottom here I show two examples of visitors looking through the peephole. On the top I show a reduced opacity image of the door, superimposed on the view the visitors are seeing as they gaze through the peephole. Human beings really want to see faces. But, obviously, there is no sightline from peephole to face.
In other words, no one peering through that peephole will ever see the face! Which is fedorkingly frustrating!! … I know this from personal experience, because my wife and I visited the museum in Philadelphia and made sure we saw the Duchamp collection. (A surreal visit to the Surrealists – “surreal” because we both were suffering big-time from a 24-hour bout with gastrointestinal disruption.)
Continuing…
I totally cop to being insatiably curious. So of course I wanted to see that face! Of course I leaned to my right, just like the audience at the first showing of Rosemary’s Baby.
Politically, it’s a strength of conservatives that “they know what’s right; they know all important issues have already been settled; they know that any new issue or application of principle that might come up with have no more than two facets – the correct one and the liberal one… They need not devote any energy at all to reflecting on alternative facts or viewpoints. They need not even listen to what anyone with sufficient temerity to disagree might have to say.
Now this the strange part.
That’s a perfect description of MSNBC talking head Chris Matthews! Yeah, not conservative Joe Scarborough, but Tweety, the self-proclaimed “moderate liberal.” I’d recommend considering him in the context I provide above. The audience for Rosemary’s Baby leaned to the side because they wanted to know more about the situation than the narrow visual perspective they’d been given offered would provide. Same for the visitors to Duchamp’s Étant Donés…
And then there’s Tweety Matthews. He asks a question of a guest, and then interrupts the guest to provide his own answer. He talks incessantly, in a kind of shout. He listens rarely, if at all. He knows the answer already, so why would he bother seeking additional information, or considering alternate perspectives. He’s the opposite of what we saw in the first two instances. Here’s how I visualize it.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
I have lots more info I could share, but I’ll save it. A sample? Don’t forget that Matthews is a Philadelphia guy. You know? The city whose museum houses Duchamp’s work.