How can directly quoting a man's words be misconstrued as an instance of racism? "Racist"-link. That was the beauty of Edward R. Murrow's See It Now special on Senator McCarthy, the turning of "Tail-gunner Joe's" own words back upon him. The really interesting bit here is the journalism professor who teaches her pupils to "fix people's grammar, because you don't want them to sound ignorant." Kindly bear with me as I follow a short sequence: Journalism students are taught to misquote their subjects. Why? So that those subjects won't "sound ignorant." Why? Presumably, to give the subject more credibility, to give the subject's words more weight in the public discourse than they would have if the subject "sounded ignorant." Does that not seem like something other than journalism? Isn't journalism about presenting the facts as they are, not the facts as the writer might wish them to be? Presenting an altered account is P.R. work, isn't it, & not journalism? It is very seldom that I've encountered such a frank admission of how far contemporary American journalism has drifted away from its own ideals. In a way, I find that frankness almost refreshing ("almost" because the professor is, after all, talking about inculcating disingenuousness into the impressionable minds of her pupils).
Also, regarding the headline, when I see "C.B.C." I don't think of the Congressional Black Caucus but the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Speaking of the C.B.C., Hockey Night in Canada was on this weekend, but 'twas only an exhibition game.
Project MERCATOR
The weekend just passed failed to live up to its promise, ending with a whimper rather than a bang. Of six initial invitations of varying quality& reliability, only one came to fruition. I played Friday's aforementioned game of Risk, but didn't meet up with Jojo for dinner (& who knows what beyond). I still don't know where The Loose Ties were playing on Saturday; once The Most Dangerous Game called off the debate team shindig she'd organized for late in the evening (citing illness), I could not muster the enthusiasm to attend the nerdy frat party scheduled for the earlier evening (I was going to use The Game's shindig as my excuse for making an early exit). The Impossible Ingenue's Sunday birthday party was rescheduled to next weekend, when I will be unavoidably out-of-state. What is the lesson here? Easy come, easy go? Never count your chickens before they're hatched? There might well not be a lesson to be learned, beyond Friday's reminder to play Risk to win, really to win, because playing not to lose is the surest way to guarantee defeat. Who dares wins!
Vote For Kodos
A brief note on politics. I am not saying that I necessarily applaud the kerfuffle around the emergency funding of the F.E.M.A., et al., nor that I agree with the G.O.P. hardliners' demand to offset F.E.M.A. funding with one-to-one reductions in other spending: power of the purse-link. But I do wish to respond to this one specific line, which is not a creation of the B.B.C., but echoes a sentiment I have heard coming out of the mouth of, for one, Senator Schumer (D., N.Y.): "Democrats said it was unprecedented to insist that spending cuts accompany badly needed emergency aid." Ladies & gents, "unprecedented" is rather the point. Precedent has been for ever-increasing levels of public debt, both federal & state. Precedent has been for the Congress to promise to be misers only to be spendthrifts. Precedent has been for calls for austerity to be met by ever-greater levels of profligacy. The overturning of eighty years of precedent, as concerns federal expenditures & revenues, is precisely what the 112th Congress was elected to do. Mine own experiences with Project RADIANT have taught me that it is arduous to pull oneself out of debt, but as a nation our current levels of expenditure are simply unsustainable; we have no choice but to end our year-on-year deficits & work to lighten the load of our accumulated debt lest it remain a milestone around Columbia's neck. The sooner we begin the work, painful as it is, the better off we will be as a body politic. The longer we wait, the more painful the work will be. "Unprecedented," you say? We could do worse for a watchword.
Exitus in dubio est.
This Week in Motorsport
Formula Fun!
The Singapore Grand Prix was thrilling! Reigning World Champion Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull (Renault) won his third race in a row, his ninth victory of 2011. The other twenty-three cars in the field have a grand total of five victories between them. Vettel has not mathematically wrapped up the World Drivers' Championship, but he need only score one more point to do so. One point is awarded for finishing tenth; in this season's fourteen completed grands prix, Vettel has finished no worse than fourth. There is still a fierce battle for second place behind Vettel, with seventeen points covering the second- through fifth-place drivers: '09 World Champion Jenson Button of McLaren (Mercedes), '05 & '06 World Champion Fernando Alonso of Ferrari, Mark Webber of Red Bull, & '08 World Champion Lewis Hamilton of McLaren. (The points scale: 1st place = 25 points, 2nd = 18, 3rd = 15, 4th = 12, 5th = 10, 6th = 8, 7th = 6, 8th = 4, 9th = 2, & 10th = 1.) If, as seems highly likely, Vettel goes on to win the World Championship, his back-to-back titles in '10 & '11 will make him the youngest double world champion in F1 history.
Webber finished third at Singapore, the final place on the victors' podium; he began the race from second & might have challenged Button for that step on the podium were it not for his terrible start. For whatever reason, Webber's starts have been rubbish all year. He spins his wheels & doesn't get off the line as fast as the other "big hitters." He has yet to win a grand prix this year, though he has finished in the points in every grand prix but one (the Gran Premio d'Italia a fortnight hence), contributing mightily to Red Bull Racing's massive lead in the Constructors' Championship standings. Webber came within a whisker of winning the Drivers' Championship last year, entering last year's season finale, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, just a few points behind Alonso & several points ahead of Vettel, the eventual race- & title-winner. Mark Webber is one of those chaps who performs best when he's being pushed, when he's got a chip on his shoulder. Vettel has been so dominant this year—eleven pole positions to Webber's three (no other car but a Red Bull has started a race from pole in 2011), nine victories to Webber's none—that Webber just isn't the same hellbent-for-glory pilot he was last year. He's still a damned good F1 driver… except for the lousy starts. He's hoping everyone's favorite grizzled Aussie will find his way out of his standing-start woes.
Rally Monkey
Rally Australia (run Friday-Sunday, 9-11 September) was wicked fun; it holds true that the more I see of the World Rally Championship (W.R.C.) the more I like what I see. Both of the Citroën factory team's drivers, Frenchmen Sébastien Loeb (the seven-time World Champion) & Sébastien Ogier (the arrogant upstart), crashed on the first day of the rally, allowing the Ford factory's "Flying Finns," Mikko Hirvonen & Jari-Matti Latvala, to cruise to a one-two finish, propelling Hirvonen to second in the Drivers' standings, splitting Citroën's feuding Sébastiens (trailing Loeb, leading Ogier). Beyond the competition there is just the stark raving glorious madness of rallying. These chaps are the best drivers in the world (& I sense I am remiss for not mentioning the co-drivers, but the on-screen graphics give the standings by driver, not driver & co-driver), but as Loeb's, Ogier's, & a variety of other crashes prove, not even they can drive down those roads as swiftly as they do without driving themselves right off the road (& usually into a tree). It's madness! I love it!
I'm not yet prepared to recommend the W.R.C. to you the same way I recommend Le Mans or F1, but we're getting there. I am ever so glad I discovered motorsport.
The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Vampire Weekend, "Oxford Comma" from Vampire Weekend (From Russia with Love)
Commentary: The path to nominating an R.B.D.S.O.T.D. is sometimes so sinuous that "nominating" really should be placed in quotation marks. Such is the case with "Oxford Comma," a song that opens with the infuriating lyrics, "Who gives a #@%* about an Oxford comma?" Comrade Coquettish would certainly not agree with that sentiment, as indicated by the following cartoon, which she kindly brought to my attention.
Beholding this, what other song could possibly have come to mind but "Oxford Comma"? She nominated nothing, not consciously at any rate.
It is irksome that the cartoon, so insistent on the necessity of the Oxford comma, is so slipshod elsewhere: "we invited the strippers, jfk, and stalin." Really? "…jfk, and stalin"? Not "…J.F.K., and Stalin"? So close & yet so far.
No comments:
Post a Comment