I'm taking the opportunity of summer break to knock out a few books that have been on my shelf for some time now. The trouble with being a student is there is precious little time to read books or articles of your own choosing, so I really look forward to breaks to explore subjects that interest me personally but are hard to work into a regular college course.
Trouble is I get scatter-brained when it is time to pick sources on my own. I have Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: A history of CIA on audio but without having to commute there are few opportunities to listen to it. But two books by Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University, have really caught my attention. The first is a pioneering work called A People's History of the United States that examines the overlooked majority throughout American history. The second is Passionate Declarations, a collection of essays on war and justice, the sort of philosophical discussion of personal beliefs that one can pen after a lifetime of building a portfolio of serious scholarly writings.
Professor Zinn breaks all the rules that I was taught about historical methods. He eschews the pretense of objectivity that professional historians are taught to strive for, however he is honest and forthright about having an agenda. I can only speak for historians in that research and interpretation is a balancing act, good writing has a definite argument but also a balance. The commentators to watch out for are the ones who pretend to objectivity when they actually are pushing an agenda. Zinn is one of the few members of the intelligensia who tells it like it is, that the rich and powerful have been waging war on working people throughout history, war is neither human nature nor sought out by the working class, and those same workers deserve the fruits of their labor.
Hopefully someday the wingnuts who've been brainwashed over all these years will one by one realize what a raw deal they have been getting by fighting on behalf of the rich by parroting their elite taskmasters, and for no benefit whatsoever. Then, perhaps, they could pick up A People's History of the United States and not squeal right away that it's "so Liberal", rejecting all the common sense the book contains because it doesn't say America is perfect and our leaders love us, etc.
Yeah, and some day all the corporate pirates who caused the current collapse will pay for their crimes instead of getting more welfare to bail them out.
Friday, June 26, 2009
MJ's demise
I wanted to post about the different realms of media coverage yesterday when the networks picked up the story the Michael Jackson was sick but now the focus shifted because of his death. This blogging thing is gonna be hard, I can only imagine how many holier than thou types started ragging about how irrelevant he was and then boom, he's dead. I will start off by saying that MJ's music was a big part of my life as a kid and while I agree he got weirder and weirder as time went on, I am not convinced he really was the serial molester the media made him out to be. Suddenly, the butt of all kinds of jokes is remembered as a ground-breaking musician and activist for social justice at a time (the '80's) when nearly 100% of the zeitgeist was about greed and screwing everybody for a percentage.
Guys my age will probably need to ask our dads what all the hubbub was about Farrah Fawcett, I heard Mark Belling talk a little about her yesterday and he gave some insight about it. And in surprisingly tasteful terms too, the way I understood it she was this enormous sex symbol in the '70's epitomized by that poster but Belling glossed over the cruder aspects of that. It was the first time I actually cared what that guy had to say.
What I really wanted to talk about though was the overload of media coverage in general. News seems to be broken down into well, three categories: important things that actually affect our lives, complete distractions and something that can be best described as "oh, that's interesting". These are quite arbitrary and what ends up in one column for one person goes into a different one for someone else. I don't religiously watch the news but I try to keep up so here are my categories for the week.
Important: President Obama's weak and watered down health-care reforms and the frantic attempts by insurance companies and their conservative commentator flunkies to suck as much substance out of it as possible.
Distraction: This Sanford clown who traipsed off to Argentina to get laid or something while pretending to be hiking. This isn't worth our time for two reasons, one: most of us don't live in South Carolina and two: no matter how many instances of Republican officials in sex scandals rise up like swamp gas out of the bog it will never break the frame of how "moral" and "family-values orientated" they are.
"That's interesting" or trivia goes to the celebrity deaths, and I'd have to posit the Iranian protests because even the most hard-core neocon has to come to grips with the fact that we're not going to invade that country. And there may be just the slightest admission by the elite that we do not have the right to interfere with other countries' business. These things will be an "oh yeah, I remember that" but little else. Like a sports event, it happens, we notice and then move on. Does it really matter who won a game last year? But it does matter that we're shedding half a million jobs a month and so forth.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna watch some more MJ video clips.
Guys my age will probably need to ask our dads what all the hubbub was about Farrah Fawcett, I heard Mark Belling talk a little about her yesterday and he gave some insight about it. And in surprisingly tasteful terms too, the way I understood it she was this enormous sex symbol in the '70's epitomized by that poster but Belling glossed over the cruder aspects of that. It was the first time I actually cared what that guy had to say.
What I really wanted to talk about though was the overload of media coverage in general. News seems to be broken down into well, three categories: important things that actually affect our lives, complete distractions and something that can be best described as "oh, that's interesting". These are quite arbitrary and what ends up in one column for one person goes into a different one for someone else. I don't religiously watch the news but I try to keep up so here are my categories for the week.
Important: President Obama's weak and watered down health-care reforms and the frantic attempts by insurance companies and their conservative commentator flunkies to suck as much substance out of it as possible.
Distraction: This Sanford clown who traipsed off to Argentina to get laid or something while pretending to be hiking. This isn't worth our time for two reasons, one: most of us don't live in South Carolina and two: no matter how many instances of Republican officials in sex scandals rise up like swamp gas out of the bog it will never break the frame of how "moral" and "family-values orientated" they are.
"That's interesting" or trivia goes to the celebrity deaths, and I'd have to posit the Iranian protests because even the most hard-core neocon has to come to grips with the fact that we're not going to invade that country. And there may be just the slightest admission by the elite that we do not have the right to interfere with other countries' business. These things will be an "oh yeah, I remember that" but little else. Like a sports event, it happens, we notice and then move on. Does it really matter who won a game last year? But it does matter that we're shedding half a million jobs a month and so forth.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna watch some more MJ video clips.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Inaugural blog
It's about time I did this. I've wasted an awful lot of energy blogging on some social networking sites that only "friends" can read and therefore almost nobody does. This will (hopefully) give me exposure to people who are, pro or con, interested in the same things I am. Might be fun, might be hell but I know I always have lots to say on all kinds of things so at least I'll be able to write them down for a change.
About the title, I am an historian by training and I start graduate school in the fall for my masters in that subject. I love to study the past and write scholarly papers on obscure subjects but I think I also need an outlet to comment on current events. Particular authors like Kevin Phillips, Noam Chomsky and others are a joy to read because they write as though the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket if you'll pardon the pun. My wife and I love disaster movies, she for the way characters are always portrayed as coming together to work towards fixing the problem and me for the sheer morbid facination at watching the wheels come off the wagon. So I'm a "doom and gloom" kind of guy in my worldview, but not personally. Heck, I'm one of the happiest people I know when it comes to this little corner of America I inhabit.
Posts to this blog will therefore probably be pretty heavy, lots of ugly politics and angry commentary. The kind of opinion mongering I cannot put in my regular work, if that makes any sense. So, if that interests you; welcome aboard! My only request is to think for yourself in comments, I love to debate things but hate talking points and pre-packaged pablum from the elite channels. Please keep me honest, if I start spouting fluff I hope someone calls me on it.
Oh, and I guess the last thing would be that politics and the things we discuss in cyberspace should stay here. I will try not to hold a grudge if you won't.
About the title, I am an historian by training and I start graduate school in the fall for my masters in that subject. I love to study the past and write scholarly papers on obscure subjects but I think I also need an outlet to comment on current events. Particular authors like Kevin Phillips, Noam Chomsky and others are a joy to read because they write as though the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket if you'll pardon the pun. My wife and I love disaster movies, she for the way characters are always portrayed as coming together to work towards fixing the problem and me for the sheer morbid facination at watching the wheels come off the wagon. So I'm a "doom and gloom" kind of guy in my worldview, but not personally. Heck, I'm one of the happiest people I know when it comes to this little corner of America I inhabit.
Posts to this blog will therefore probably be pretty heavy, lots of ugly politics and angry commentary. The kind of opinion mongering I cannot put in my regular work, if that makes any sense. So, if that interests you; welcome aboard! My only request is to think for yourself in comments, I love to debate things but hate talking points and pre-packaged pablum from the elite channels. Please keep me honest, if I start spouting fluff I hope someone calls me on it.
Oh, and I guess the last thing would be that politics and the things we discuss in cyberspace should stay here. I will try not to hold a grudge if you won't.
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