Essaying an Opinion Archives
I was all set to do my normal weekly news roundup today, but my desire to do so was destroyed by the main news story that greeted me this morning: Daniel Pearl is dead.
An innocent dying is always a tragedy, but as a member, to sound pretentious, of the journalistic community, hearing of an innocent journalist dying hits closer to home. In this case, sorrow over the outcome of the weeks-long ordeal becomes further amplified by the bizarre senselessness of it all.
Usually I can understand why a reporter died – even if that reason is simply “fate.” For most slain war correspondents, death comes from being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, hanging around the wrong people. It’s an accident, basically, the type of thing that the law of averages causes to happen every so often. That doesn’t make their deaths any less tragic or any easier for their loved ones to bear, but it does provide a context: Journalists wandering around war zones will, sometimes, die.
Pearl’s murder seems more heinous because it was more pre-meditated and, at the same time, provides even less of a rational than random wartime violence. Pearl wasn’t killed because he was unlucky, standing where the shrapnel flew. He wasn’t killed because he was a daredevil who was pushing his luck. He wasn’t killed because bad things happen in war.
He was killed because fanatics wanted to make a point – and to heighten the tragedy, they haven’t even done that.
If their goal was to get the Western media out of Pakistan, they’ve failed: reporters, including Pearl’s wife, are still risking their lives on the ground there to get the facts the world needs. If the kidnappers wanted to draw attention to the plight of Pakistan, they’ve failed miserably: Reporters — especially ones like Pearl, who through his stories and (as demonstrated by the interview he was setting up at the time of his kidnapping) his willingness to talk to those on the outskirts of civilized society – are less likely, and less able, to communicate the message of militants. If they were hoping to provoke the United States into rash movies against their country, they were deluded: The U.S. government isn’t (and shouldn’t) act militarily in retaliation for the death of a reporter.
I’ve never met Daniel Pearl, although when I heard of his kidnapping, I recognized the name from occasional readings of the Wall Street Journal. The fact that he was a dedicated reporter, creative writer and talented journalist makes his death a blow to his newspaper and to the profession of journalism. The fact that he left behind a wife and unborn child, as well as family and friends who loved him, makes this a crime against humanity.
A crime done for nothing.
Another good thing I’ve discovered about living in Germany: They all but ignore Valentine’s Day here. Not, let me stress for those who were planning on air-mailing me flowers or something, that I have a problem with the holiday. The constant barrage of pink-tinted advertisements does have a tendency to send me around the bend, however, so it was nice to skip it this year.
So, that said, I wasn’t able to summon up the either the angst or the sturm und drang necessary to write a real Valentine’s Day screed. Instead, I will leave you with this link and the following essay, which I wrote last year.
Enjoy.
A shower of schlock
Who’s actually looking for gourmet body paint? Sure, regular body paint — that makes sense — but there’s actually somebody out there who sees an ad for gourmet paint pop up on the Internet and says, “Well, the plain stuff is too low-class. But this – this is gourmet!”
You know people are buying it, though. While Cupid, in anticipation of Feb. 14, busily makes sure his quiver is filled, mere mortals are stocking up on less pointy gifts: chocolates, flowers, lingerie and, probably, all sorts of body paint.
Not because they want to, but because they must. The rules of Valentine’s Day have been laid down and those who value their relationships must comply: Buy, the gods thunder from Olympus. BUY! Banner ads clog the Internet. Gorgeously glittering diamonds sparkle from the television screen. Chocolatiers, vintners and chandlers tout their wares in a succession of newspaper and magazine spots.
The consumer culture has taken over Cupid’s celebration, turning what should be a chance to express the most heartfelt of emotions into a shower of schlock, warping Valentine’s Day into a relationship chore.
Make no mistake: The holiday is wonderful in theory, providing a day in which the fullest expression of love can be shown. In practice, though, Valentine’s Day is more akin to New Year’s Eve, the Superbowl and Backstreet Boys concerts: a whole lot of hype, a huge amount of excitement — and a slightly icky feeling afterwards when things don’t live up to expectations.
And it’s not like they ever do.
Like all over-hyped events, so much energy and planning are required for Valentine’s Day that there’s no room left for fun. Instead of enjoying the holiday, celebrants act like they’re running through a checklist, buying anything red because their overlords have instructed them to.
This cycles back, of course, to the importance advertisments have trained us to place on the holiday. If he really loved you, implies the DeBeers ads, you’d be wearing more diamonds. If you really cared about her, Victoria says secretively, she’d have more nightgowns.
By using Valentine’s Day to gauge how well a relationship is going, the sense of joy and lightness that marks any true celebration of love is sucked out of the occasion. Men don’t flock to florists and clamor at candy stores because they want their women to be happy; they do so because they dread being the topic of conversation at her office on Feb. 15.
Like Pschye lighting her candle to get a look at Cupid, lovers push too hard at Valentine’s Day, looking for too much information. The holiday becomes a relationship barometer, with every action plumbed for meaning, every gesture scored and rated, every nuance replayed over lunch with friends the next day.
True joy comes in spontaneity — the flowers delivered to the office out of nowhere, the note tucked in her purse to let her know you’re thinking of her, the dinner at a favorite restaurant “just because.” When they focus on living up to the holiday, Valentine’s celebrants will, at best, meet expectations, buying the cliched gifts and fulfilling the stereotypical roles.
But don’t mistake the shower of heart-shaped boxes and ribbon-entwined vases as a true display of affection.
Doing something nice on Valentine’s Day doesn’t show you care. It just shows you’re bright enough to pay attention to a month’s worth of advertising.
“Civil liberties activists said they fear the system could be the beginnings of a surveillance infrastructure that will erode existing privacy protections. When told about the system, Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it would be “a massive complex system of surveillance.”
“It really is a profound step for the government to be conducting background checks on a large percentage of Americans. We’ve never done that before,” he said. “It’s frightening.”
Some critics also worry that law enforcement authorities will be tempted to use it for broader aims, such as snaring deadbeat parents or profiling for drug couriers.
“If you can profile for terrorists, you can profile for other things,” said Richard M. Smith, an independent computer security and privacy specialist. “The computer technology is so cheap and getting so much cheaper, you just have to be careful: Turn up the volume a little bit, and we just use the air transportation system to catch everybody.” “
Civil liberty concerns like this always fall through an odd loophole in the libertarian framework of my political beliefs — namely, that I don’t mind if the privacy of criminals is invaded. I understand the slippery slope problems with this idea: you don’t want cops to use evidence obtained illegally, for example, even if the people it was obtained about really are criminals, because it encourages the police to violate everybody’s privacy rights. But it seems to me that a large-scale database that can help pick out criminals actually helps protects everybody else’s rights by cutting down on cruder forms of profiling.
The way it happens now, airlines pick on people who fit some vague definition of suspicious: i.e., I got yanked out of line when I was flying to Germany ‘cause I was wearing a black leather coat, had a broken pair of nail clippers in my carry-on and looked nervous (which I was … mainly due to the traffic jam that resulted in me getting to the airport just an hour before the flight took off.) To broaden the example, people of Middle Eastern descent are more likely to be “randomly” searched, because — based on the relatively small amount of data available to the airlines — such people have a greater statistical likelihood of causing problems. So, given more data, more precise forms of profiling can be done, meaning that those targeted for Mr. Rubber Glove are more likely to actually be criminals.
Fighting such databases out of concern over privacy rights seems to be misplaced. No one is complaining that the system would be used to arrest those who aren’t criminals, just that criminals other than terrorists would be more likely to be caught in the web.
The problem isn’t that innocents will be violated, it’s that too many criminals will be arrested. We fear such systems because we don’t really like all the laws; we don’t actually want to catch all the deadbeat dads and drug couriers that might be flying the friendly skies. It’s similar to our feelings about speed limits. Most people would be aghast if the gubmint set up a highway monitoring system that automatically ticketed anyone who sped. Such a thing wouldn’t be any more of an invasion of privacy than the current system: It’s just with the current system, we know we have a chance of not getting caught.
Society carries out a sort of cost/benefit analysis of breaking certain laws. We speed, and we don’t mind some other people speeding — but civilization would break down if everybody could go 80 mphs and not have to flinch every time they passed a white Crown Vic. We don’t want drugs to flood the country, so the cops should stop some couriers, but they shouldn’t get all draconian or anything: some drugs are OK. It’s as though laws come with various comfortable enforcement rates: Murder - 100%; drugs - 80%; deadbeat dads - 60%; speeding - 30%. When enforcement rates climb too high, we complain about the methods.
That’s going about it backwards. If we don’t like the laws, we should get rid of them. If we’re concerned that such systems will catch too many criminals, maybe we shouldn’t have laws that create so many criminals.
If we don’t want profiling to pick up drug couriers or deadbeat dads, then we’re really saying that we’re not too concerned about those activities after all.
I really don’t get this. I don’t understand their thought processes, I don’t understand their publicity-grubbing ways, and I really don’t understand their hatred of Harry.
The only thing I can understand is their motivations: the typical rationale behind such activities is a desire to “please God by getting rid of things that don’t please God.” What absolutely confounds me is the thought process that leads to the belief that tossing Disney videos, Harry Potter books and items containing “witchcraft things, the paranormal” on a bonfire is the way to meet this goal. If you don’t literature dealing with fantasy themes, fine; don’t buy it. (And just to make sure you’re never offended, don’t get anything by Christian authors and scholars such as, say, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien or Stephen Lawhead.)
So what do you think about book burning?
Who’s actually looking for gourmet body paint? Sure, regular body paint — that makes sense, but there’s actually somebody out there saying, “No, the plain stuff is too low-class. I need it to be gourmet.”?
While Cupid makes sure his quiver is filled up in anticipation of Feb. 14, others are stocking up with less pointy gifts: chocolates, flowers, lingere and — hey, why not? — gourmet body paint.
Not because they want to, but because they must.
Banner ads (like the one for body paint seen on Salon) clog the Internet, gourously glittering diamonds sparkle from the television screen and choclotiers, vinters and chandlers tout their wares in a succession of newspaper and magazine spots.
The consumer culture has taken over the celebration, turning what should be a chance to express the most heartfelt of emotions into a shower of schlock.
Valentine’s Day is wonderful in theory, providing a day in which the fullest expression of love can be shown. In practice, though, the day of love is like New Year’s Eve, the Superbowl and Backstreet Boys concerts: a whole lot of hype, a huge amount of excitement — and a slightly icky feeling afterwards when things don’t live up to expectations.
And it’s not like they ever do.
By making Valentine’s Day a relationship barometer, the sense of joy and lightness that marks any true celebration of love is sucked out of the occasion.
Valentine’s Day has become a relationship chore. Like Pschye lighting her candle to get a look at Cupid, lovers push too hard at Valentine’s Day, looking for too much information. The holiday becomes a relationship barometer, with every action plumbed for meaning, every gesture scored and rated, every nuance replayed over lunch the next day.
True joy comes in spontanity — the flowers delivered to the office out of nowhere, the note tucked in her purse to let her know you’re thinking of her, the dinner at a favorite restaurant “just because.” When they focus on the day, Valentine’s celebrants will, at best,
Doing something nice on Valentine’s Day doesn’t show you care. It just shows that you’re bright enough to pay attention to a month’s worth of advertising.
Nobody likes oddballs. Still, you’d think a planet, even an oddball planet, would be safe.
But not in New York City.
In New York, a city so proud of its welcoming history, of its diversity and differences, of its arms open to all sorts of strangeness, being odd is enough to get a planet dethroned, simply because its orbit is a little unusual and its surface rather ice encrusted.
As recently reported, the city’s American Museum of Natural History kicked Pluto out of its Hayden Planetarium, unilaterally deciding that the 1,413-mile-wide body isn’t worthy of planethood. Now, the Rose Center for Earth and Space, which houses the planetarium, says Pluto should simply be considered “king of the Kuiper Belt,” a ring of more than 300 chunks of ice, strung like a dirty diamond necklace in the vastness of space beyond Neptune.
The move shouldn’t surprise anyone: New York’s demotion of Pluto seems like the next logical step in the city’s gentrification, its eradication of everything that wanders from the path of conformity. Getting rid of the squeegee men wasn’t enough, nor was ridding the Big Apple of strip clubs. Now the city has to pick on poor little Pluto, just because — as one scientist said — “it’s a bit of an oddball.”
It’s not like it’s ever been easy being a Pluto. Pluto the planet was discovered relatively late, astronomically speaking, and since its discovery (in 1930) scientists have questioned its strange orbit and made mocking comments about its size. (Pluto is about a quarter the size of Earth, but three times larger than Ceres, usually considered – by everybody save New Yorkers – to be the largest of the minor planets.)
And life for Pluto the god — Hades to the Greeks — wasn’t exactly a romp through the Elysian Fields either. One of the three gods to overthrow the Titans, Pluto came in last when the war booty was distributed, ending up ruling the underworld while his older brothers snatched the realms of the sea and heaven. Consigned to a rather dank, miserable existence, Pluto got to hang out with folks like Thanatos, the god of death, who was hated even by the other deities. When the god of the underworld tried to spice up his life by marrying, he wound up with Persephone, a woman who cheerfully fled his cold embrace for eight months every spring.
As for the third famous Pluto — the Walt Disney dog creature — well, what’s up with him? Disney had no problem with sentient ducks, mice and chipmunks, but Pluto remained consigned to animal status, communicating with barks and eating kibble.
Ex-planet Pluto’s demotion – at least in New York — points to a hardening of society’s heart, a lacking of compassion for anyone who might be a little bit different. “Pluto does not have a family,” explained Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson, director of the planetarium, “except for the icy bodies in the outer solar system.”
Well, then, of course. It doesn’t have a family, so give it the boot!
Do the Hayden scientists have no concept of a slippery slope? First we get ride of Pluto because its orbit is a bit funky and then — what, get rid of Mercury because it doesn’t have an atmosphere? Pink-slip Venus because it doesn’t have a moon and spins the wrong way? Fire the Earth because it has a wacky wobble (known as the Chandler wobble) in its rotation?
The world — indeed, the universe — needs oddballs, needs those who march to a different drummer, needs those whose orbit might be a bit erratic. Losing Pluto as a planet deprives visitors to Hayden of a celestial role model and teaches field-tripping students that being different is bad.
Visiting children, said a worker at the planetarium, often ask what happened to Pluto. “Some even say, ‘Did you forget my friend Pluto?’” the worker said.
No, little ones, Pluto wasn’t forgotten. It was given the boot, simply because it’s different.
Large poodles worry me.
It’s not that I’m frightened of them. As with most dogs, I tend to adopt a live-and-let-live attitude: they don’t bother me, I don’t bother them; they don’t bite me on the leg, I don’t hit them upside the head with a large shovel — that sort of thing.
But poodles are different. It’s not that they’re ferecious or anything; I’m sure they’re great dogs to play with. Unlike most breeds with a reputation of meanness, though, large poodles, I think, have a reason to go wild — in a word (or two): toy poodles.
I’m walking down the street the other day and see a man walking a giant black poodle, a magnificant beast whose head reached above my waist. On the other side of the sidewalk, a woman ushered along a toy poodle the size of a coffee cup, its curly white coat all decked out with ribbons and frills.
The larger dog had such a look of disdain on his face that I almost thought he was going to start cursing. He realized how degrading it was — and pretty soon I bet he does something about it.
The Revolution is coming, make no mistake about it. And when you find yourself against a wall, pondering if you want that last cigarette or not, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Beware the fuzzy ones.
So I took a month off from the website, focusing my attention on, oh, little things like schoolwork. But I’m back now (with a redesigned site! yipee!) figuring that there’s just not enough commentators talking about the election results. There’s a clear need for my voice to be added to the cacophony – if for no other reason then I stayed up ‘til 3 fricken a.m. listening to everyone else blather.
First, the full disclosure part (a la Slate): I didn’t vote for either of the two main party suits. Having quite foolishly changed my registration from Florida to New York when I moved here, it didn’t matter who I gave my nod to for president, leading me to waste it on a third-party candidate. (If you guess which one, you get a lollipop …)
That being said …
I don’t understand the calls to abolish the Electoral College. Sure, I can fathom somebody wanting to change the system for the next election (they’d be wrong, of course, as I explain below), but everybody went into Tuesday’s contest knowing how the race would be run. To now say, ‘oops, the electoral vote and the popular vote are different; let’s go with the masses’ is insane, unconstitutional and wrong.
As would, of course, going with the masses in future elections.
Forget whatever reasons the Founding Fathers had for coming up with the Electoral College. We should keep it now for two reasons: we’re a republic, not a democracy; and we’re a collection of states, not a monolithic body
Somebody (Lazarus Long, perhaps?) once said that a monarchy is one man saying he’s smarter than everybody in the country, while a democracy is everybody saying they’re smarter than everybody else. The idea of a republic is to corral the excesses of such a system through representation, rather than letting the largest mob run things. In this case, the representation is done through the states: as citizens of a state, we decide who wants to be president, and then, as a state, we cast our ballots.
Which leads to the next reason to Keep the Kollege (coming soon to a bumper sticker near you.): Despite the outcome of the Civil War, the U.S. is still a collection of states, not just a national group of people. The Electoral College provides a check on the populations of the larger states running everything while also insuring that state and regional issues gain national importance. One of the reasons Social Security reform was such an issue in the election was because of Florida’s importance
Without the College, the election will come down to a fight over the New York-Washington Corridor and California, cutting the smaller and more rural states out of the picture entirely. Sure, some states – such as New York – are entirely ignored by campaigners now. But that’s because the voters have already made up their minds, not because their minds don’t matter.
Oh, and one last note: as much as people might complain about American politics, you have to give the citizens and the systems some respect. As the television stations flipped back and forth on the results, viewers eventually headed to bed instead of taking to the streets. Whoever ends up losing is sure to complain – but for the 43rd time, the nation will see power peacefully slip from one leader to another.
That’s a good thing.
They kill the unicorn!
Everyone has seen the picture of the captive unicorn, the medieval depiction of the magnificent beast penned in a garden. The seven-part tapestry that scene is from is housed at the Cloisters, and while visiting the museum today I discovered that panel was a late addition to the piece. The original final scene shows the unicorn, after a long hunt, being slaughtered.
I became fascinated with unicorns while a youngster — not the unicorns decorating adolescent girls’ school binders, but the unicorns of Marco Polo and Thomas Malory: war beasts, whose fearsome horns were weapons of the deadliest sort.
In truth, the portrayal of the unicorn killed in battle seems more true to the spirit of the beast than does the picture of the captured animal. And make no mistake, it is a battle: soldiers trying to pierce its flesh with halberds, dogs harrying the animal as it runs, the unicorn fighting back — tearing through flesh with a serious and melancholy look on its bearded face.
But all the unicorn’s magic, all its weapons, are not enough in the end.
There’s a lesson there. I’m just not sure what.