Well, I Woke Up to a Nightmare

I stepped into the dark foyer, as I do every morning, though this was one of the last times. In no unfamiliar scene, a swarm of baby strollers blocked my path, as did a heavyset woman struggling to put down her young child as the carriage she held dangled precariously on the stair's edge. A tiny girl with wispy locks of blonde, the child looked up just as I was peering down, closely minding the obstacles in preparation for my ascent. Her eyes locked on mine for what must have been a split second too long because, without refrain or warning, she giggled (a little too sharply for the dreary dawn) and squealed "Daddy!" I looked behind, confused, only to find an empty doorway, and when I turned back the little creature was still staring and smiling, repeating, even after I walked briskly past: "Daddy!"

I ran.

And So Ends a Great American Political Institution

America is Awesome

"Take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."

People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"

And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care" [Bill Maher].

Tomorrow

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My Industry's Self-Righteous Suicide

I impetuously attended one of those Big Swingin' Dick journalism conferences in Baltimore last week. The atmosphere was predictably self-congratulatory, but among the well-groomed broadcasters, ragged newspapermen, seasoned muckrakers and doe-eyed dilettantes lingered a palpable sense of despair. It took an old schooler, who now trades in fiction, to aptly explain why aspiring reporters are (largely) fucked:

"When newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, their industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street money. We know now--because bankruptcy has opened the books--that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly 100 editors and reporters in an era where the paper was achieving 37 percent profits. In the years before the Internet deluge, the men and women who might have made the Sun a more essential vehicle for news and commentary...were being ushered out the door so that Wall Street could command short-term profits in the extreme.

Such shortsighted arrogance rivals that of Detroit in the 1970s, when automakers--confident that American consumers were mere captives--offered up Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins without the slightest worry that mediocrity would be challenged by better-made cars from Germany or Japan. In short, my industry butchered itself and we did so at the behest of Wall Street and the same unfettered, free-market logic that has proved so disastrous for so many American industries. And the original sin of American newspapering lies, indeed, in going to Wall Street in the first place."

Wall Street and free-market logic, having been a destructive force in journalism over the last few decades, are not now suddenly the answer. Raw, unencumbered capitalism is never the answer when a public trust or public mission is at issue. If the last quarter century has taught us anything--and admittedly, with too many of us, I doubt it has--it's that free-market capitalism, absent social imperatives and responsible regulatory oversight, can produce durable goods and services, glorious profits, and little of lasting social value. Airlines, manufacturing, banking, real estate--is there a sector of the American economy where laissez-faire theories have not burned the poor, the middle class and the consumer, while bloating the rich and mortgaging the very future of the industry, if not the country itself? I'm pressed to think of one" [Simon].

I work in non-profit journalism, which seems to be an expanding model. But I doubt it's any more sustainable than the paradigms of yore.

Mean Ole' World

There is something inherently serendipitous about Washington. On a sticky Monday evening I wandered down from the hill to watch the ragged old men and riotous young punks play chess in Dupont Circle. The competitors tickle the board with movements so fluid they might have been orchestrated, if not for the visible furrow of the loser's brow when he has no other refuge but to turn to the side, palms outstretched in quiet incredulity as I, the unassuming observer, mimic his futile gesture. A more deliberate person speaks emphatically into a microphone and garners a modest ripple of applause, followed by another whose string of succinct verses stagger on until I'm sure he hasn't a single breath left. I suppose the poetry slam, like the chess match, offers encumbered souls solace inside the solace of the taxpayer-funded recession-proof bubble that is the nation's capital.

Word.