U2-Vertigo Tour-Opening Night

bono once said u2's greatest fear when they embarked on their journey to rock and roll immortality was that they would grow up and suck. well guess what, even after all these years and their advanced age, u2 still does not suck. (but they may be working on it. . .)

i want to establish my authority to review u2, which is tricky business. i don't have the authority of a press pass or a gig writing for some rock mag. i am neither a friend nor an enemy of the band. i don't want to give the typical adam sandleresque rundown of the shows i've seen etcetera but, i have followed them since the early part of their careers.


*adam sandleresque rundown of shows*

• first saw them at the long beach civic auditorium in support of the unforgettable fire, (i think.)
• saw them twice more in la at the sports arena, same tour.
• (missed them touring for the joshua tree as i was in japan.)
• ended up not going to mann's grauman's chinese theatre for their impromptu show on the street at the hollywood opening of rattle and hum.
• saw zoo tv tour indoor broadcast at the same san diego sports arena i saw them open the vertigo tour at last night. clutched hands with bono during until the end of the world. i had great seats-they had a tiny stage thrust out about 15 rows into the crowd.
• saw zoo tv outdoor broadcast (w/ the sugarcubes and public enemy,) at dodger stadium.
• saw popmart at jack murphy stadium in san diego, mile high stadium in denver, and the coliseum, in la.
• saw all that you can't leave behind tour at arrowhead pond and at staples center, in la.
• counting monday, march 28th at san diego, that's nine times i've seen them live.
• i own some u2 memorabilia which has increased in value from when i purchased it by 2,000%.
• you get the picture, i'm quite a fan.
• but i'm not loony. it is not as if u2 can do no wrong in my sphere. while i am forgiving, i like to think i am fair in criticism, even when considering some of my favorite artists ever.
  
  so let me tell you about monday night. 91x, the only san diego radio station worth listening to, played only u2 songs on monday and touted the fact they would not be repeating any version of any song. i was able to listen for several hours during the day and those songs helped me get excited about the show. (i even heard a couple of songs i had not previously heard, thanks to the ipod release of their every track.)
  
  they opened with a song from how to dismantle an atomic bomb, (i think it was city of blinding lights,) then rolled right into vertigo. i think vertigo is a great song. thanks to u2's marketing campaign with the aforementioned ipod, i have little desire to hear it these days but i still like the song. (market saturation sucks-u2 does not.) to me the song is about vertigo, it's about the loss of equilibrium and balance in the age of information and sensation overload. it is brilliantly crafted so the music and the pulse of it, (along with the lyrics,) contributes to the overall message/feel of the piece of art that is the song. it would fit on radiohead's ok computer only where those songs speak of the isolation of the age of technology, of the chill of the confrontation inherent in solitude, of the confusion of media, vertigo admits those possibilities but suggests you may dance anyway. (and let's face it, i'm all about dancing.) when bono sings, "i can feeeeeeeeeeeeel!" it is typical u2, ever hopeful and positive in the face of confusion. the ad campaign for which u2 did not accept any royalties beyond the countless kids brought into the fold of u2 fans, seems to have discounted the real value the song merits.
  
  soon after vertigo, u2 fired up the time machine and went back to boy in conjuring stories for boys and an cat dubh/into the heart. wow. this portion of the show was easily the highlight for me. i didn't expect such a treat. and u2's sound and those songs stood the test of time in so much as they sounded like they could have been played on any alt-radio station last week. in fact, (speaking of radiohead,) u2's sound was as it really was back then, atmospheric and moody. i remember the days of the unforgettable fire when critics would describe u2's music as ethereal and spacey, these words seemed to be a denouncement of their ability to make a pop song or a love ballad or something that was truly radio friendly. boy, october and the unforgettable fire were filled with songs that evoked similar descriptions. and this inability to reach the masses so early in their tenure was likely a blessing, (because i believe they would have if they could have.)
  
  to be honest, the show never really went south. i could listen to u2 play live for as long as they could play live-i'm pretty sure. but when it ended, i was disappointed. in the course of their set, they played some great songs. they played bullet the blue sky and where the streets have no name. they hit, all the hits, (mostly.) beautiful day, elevation, one, sunday bloody sunday, pride (in the name of love,) zoo station, the fly, new year's day, etc.
  
  two songs stand out as having sounded exceptionally good. u2's rhythm section took new year's day and drove it right into my chest. it thumped and pumped and edge's guitar fill just sort of loomed over the whole thing and bono intoned the lyrics in a heartfelt way without seeming overwrought. listening to it i was reminded of bono's story about how he imagined lech walesa's reunion with his wife upon release from prison when he wrote the song. when u2 played the song, i was transported to that cell walesa lived in. i imagined the moments he must have longed for his wife and felt like the world would stop when they reunited and he would be with her, (be with her,) night and day. and to me, this is where u2 slays all other bands except the beatles. their lyrics are better. period. bono is a poet on par with bob dylan. running to stand still was also outstanding. gone were the theatrics of bono puncturing his arm with a heroin-laden syringe but what was left was what was always there: a tender and moving rendering of a person stuck in a moment of weakness. and it sounded like we all knew the song and we all sang along; "hah-la-la-lah-di-day, hah-la-la-light-o'-day, hah-la-la-di-day. . ."
  
  a couple of non-musical moments were nice as well. first, they opened the show with slow-falling, glittering confetti dropping from the center of the arena, and second, they had an interlude featuring the text of the united nation's declaration of human rights with an entreaty to fans to go to www.one.org to help create global equality. bravo to u2 for fighting for social justice.
  
  this is really just one of many reasons why i adore u2 but they tend to have themes and causes they promote and lend their support to, from record to record and tour to tour. from bono's recent efforts on behalf of jubilee 2000, (all that you can't leave behind,) to the band's campaign to increase the membership for amnesty international, (joshua tree,) to their seminal days raging against the violence that ripped families apart in ireland, (war,) u2 recognizes their position and status and they do not back down from it-in fact, they are responsible with it.
  
  in many ways, i feel like i have journeyed with u2. when i was a teenager, i was drawn to u2 because they were positive. it's that simple. i liked bands in those days like the cure, who were dark and seemed pessimistic. i liked the eurythmics and depeche mode who seemed more stylish than substantive and for this reason precisely, i championed u2. i told everyone i knew about this band, carried their cassettes around with me as if i was the u2 evangelist. and yes, i was something of an evangelist and that did play into the equation. when bono sang on tomorrow, (off of october,) "i want you to be back tomorrow, i want you to be back tomorrow, will you be back tomorrow. . .open up, open up, to the lamb of god, to him who made the blind to see, he's coming back, he's coming back, i belieeeeeeeve, jesus is coming!" i rejoiced. when on the zoo tv tour the band played running to stand still and bono began singing hallelujahs with outstretched arms and head tilted back, twirling in a circle under the spotlight, it felt more pure and worshipful then anything i ever experienced in a church. it was a celebration.
  
  in the late 80s, when i was living in japan, it seemed everyone was listening to bon jovi. i remember a friend coming back from the states, (from arizona, specifically,) telling me u2 was blowing up stateside, on mtv every 20 minutes, contests and radio airplay galore. . . i went home weeks later and sure enough, u2 was hitting it as big as i had always predicted. i felt like the preacher who had predicted christ's return on so many sunday afternoons and finally witnessed the rapture. well, those late 80s years were the worst i ever encountered musically. after u2, (and the pixies,) it was difficult for good bands to get airplay because the airwaves were clogged up with trash like poison, warrant and skid row.
  
  years later i was fortunate enough to hear and enjoy nirvana, pearl jam, radiohead, jeff buckley, and of course there were a lot of other great bands or artists along the way but u2 had the rare ability to retain their dignity, act responsibly and be commercial. in being commercial, it could be argued that they "sold out," in any number of ways but what being commercial really means is reaching a wider and larger audience. i suppose selling out can be a valid term if the process involves somehow not being true to oneself and/or lowering one's values in some way. but u2's quality of product has always been high. they're lyrics are second to none. their humanitarian efforts are more effective than others. (have a concert and send food to ethiopia and feed the people for a day. get ethiopia's debt forgiven and increase the value of their currency and you practically teach them to fish.)
  
  so while i enjoy some dark bands, (surely there is no better 2am music than leonard cohen,) i love u2's commitment to positivity. here's an encapsulated version of some of the messages i heard u2 sending over their life span as artists:
  
• "i can't change the world, but i can change the world in me." (rejoice - october)
• "i will follow." (i will follow - october)
• "In te domine...exultate...miserere." (gloria - october)
• "a new heart is what i need, oh god, make it bleed. . .let the bells ring out." (like a song - war)
• "if i want to live, i got to die to myself some day." (surrender - war)
• bono, on u2's charity/activism efforts: "it's anything you can do, if you can just do it with a bit of dignity."

there are many biblical references and much biblical imagery in u2's lyrics, (not unlike leonard cohen.) right up through pop, these references abound. after pop, (all that you can't leave behind and how to dismantle an atomic bomb,) they seem to become more overt, (almost as overt as on october, at which point in time their obscurity as a band tended to mask their would be credo, especially from the listener who is backtracking.)

u2 may have shown a dark side when they wrote surrender, (for war,) or running to stand still, but in those days their dark side wore a halo. they were the innocent observer of darkness, writing their poems about friends and acquaintances who succumbed to addiction or worse, but it wasn't until achtung baby that they actually showed their own ability to delve into the pit of sin or destruction. maybe silver and gold from rattle and hum showed a glimpse of the grittier side of life they were approaching? in that song they seem to recognize the nature of currency and perhaps, capitalism.

"the warden says the exit is sold, if you want a way out, silver and gold."

if they were remarking on or exploring an aspect of societal inequality or expressing any iota of outrage, who knows, but in achtung baby u2 can be heard as men, finally. corporeal, sage, balanced, men. zoo station is about a subway station in berlin where people can be seen shooting up drugs in public. in this way, it is said berlin is a 48-hour city-many people, (especially in the inner city,) stay up for 48 hours at a time, (for obvious reasons.) the band went to berlin because history was occurring, (also in public.) they thought the events of the day and the place would infuse their work with an energy and creativity perhaps they had not previously known. (i recall these things from being a fan, from reading the articles in the various magazines, from reading bill flanagan's u2 at the end of the world and eamon dunphy's unforgettable fire books, and perhaps from being on the u2 wire fan club thingy in my earliest days of surfing the internet. i haven't the time to cite quotes or even research or fact check but i believe i am accurate in the essence in these things.) and it did. actually, i would guess their age and circumstances played a greater role in the final product achtung, but it all played. edge went through a divorce and bono wrote about it/imagined it. axl rose called one the greatest rock ballad ever written, (this from the band who couldn't. . .) and i concur with his estimation. one is sublime in its grip on the pain and vertigo of love relationships.

"you say, love is a temple, love the higher law, you ask me to enter but then you make me crawl, but i can't keep holding on to what you got, when all you got is hurt."

in its simplicity, ("one heart, one life, one love. . .) it conveys basic human emotion and it is like the water of rock songs, it is for everyone. in its complexity. . .

"have you come here for forgiveness?
have you come to raise the dead?
have you come here to play jesus to the lepers in your head?
did I ask too much?
more than a lot?
you gave me nothing, now it's all I got.
we're one, but we're not the same. we hurt each other, then we do it again."

it is achingly poignant. in one you can sense the dance of lovers and leavers. why did he or she come to the other? when nothing is offered and nothing is what is retained, it fucking hurts, man. you know what i mean? can you feel it right there. bono grew a pair of sarcastic nuts on this song. while one ends positively enough, ("we get to carry each other. . .") three songs later he's stroking his sarcasm again on so cruel. (i'm certain i remember bono specifically saying he imagined edge's perspective when writing this song.)

"we crossed the line, who pushed who over? it doesn't matter to you-it matters to me. we're cut adrift, but still floating, i'm only hanging on to watch you go down, my love."

bitter. bitterly beautiful and poignant and real.

"i disappeared in you, you disappeared from me, i gave you everything you ever wanted, wasn't what you wanted."

i knew this girl, (and i don't mean edge's ex-i think her name was aislinn.) i mean the prototype. this is the same girl who reappears in tryin' to throw your arms around the world. she is never satisfied. she thinks there is always something out there bigger and better and brighter and louder and more exhilarating in every way and of course, she's a dumbass. and that is my point about this song and this record, it translates. bono is a master of basic imagery, (hence, the biblical references galore.) but he never got it better than on achtung. he once referred to that record as "a heavy mutha," and he was right. it's so heavy it can't be my brother. it's so heavy the cool british rock press always (correctly) ranks it up there with sgt peppers and a couple others as best rock albums ever. it's so heavy, not even u2 can surpass it.

"the men who love you, you hate the most, they pass right through you like a ghost, they look for you but your spirit is in the air, baby, you're nowhere."

okay, okay, i'll stop already but look at that. this is a universal feeling. if we haven't all known someone who exemplified these passages, we've felt like we did at one time or another. one more thing, bono can't really be sexual. he doesn't seem to have it in him. i guess it is likely because he never wanted to write rock and roll songs about sex in the back seat of a chevy, but sex is obviously another catholic area in the panorama of human experience, fertile area to write about and explore. while he can refer to "the orbit of your hips, eclipse. . ." for the most part, his self image/dogma/messianic complex/ideals do not allow him to write crappy lyrics about sex that end up coming off like a 14-year-old boy fumbling around in the dark for his penis. the closest he came though was on this album when he conjured a dream within a dream of the encounter between judas and jesus in until the end of the world.

"in my dreams, i was drowning in sorrows, but my sorrows they learned to swim, surrounding me, going down on me, spilling over the brim, waves of regret, waves of joy, i reached out for the one i tried to destroy and you, you said you'd wait, until the end of the world."

now doesn't that sound a lot better than "you make a grown man cry?" despite the fact the best sexual imagery he ever conjured was meant to address the age old christian doctrine question about the possibility of judas obtaining salvation, this is a sort of intelligent sexual allusion.

i suspect as u2 ventured into dance music and made zooropa and pop, they figured a diversion would best sustain them from a typical obsolescence, (perhaps the stigma of sting's five good records theory.) the lyrics remained strong, the music was good, pop, in particular, was a really good record. however, they're status on the charts waned.

as an aside. . . (i swear this happened to me. one day, i heard thom yorke being interviewed for a french radio station and he talked about how when he heard some record or another by some other band, [maybe it was air?] he felt ill. it took me a second but i got it. a month or so later, u2 was on kroq suffering through an interview with jed the fish, [or maybe it was a breakfast with kevin and bean when they drank the guiness and champagne concoctions,] and i heard bono say exactly the same thing but about the new oasis or rem records. hmmm. . . i love this guy; bono, but perhaps sometimes he doth protest too much. er, i mean, perhaps sometimes he does seem a bit contrived in his messages to the public. maybe it was sheer happenstance, coincidence. maybe.)

anyway, at that time they were promoting all that you can't leave behind. they really screwed up the titles on these two records, by the way. pop should have been all that you can't leave behind. they couldn't leave behind the disco balls of zooropa, the underground parties of nyc with all the hipsters and cross-dressers, the rock star image of macphisto and the glitter guy. (he just morphed into the muscley t-shirt guy or the unabomber.) all that you can't leave behind should have been pop, because that's what it is. some of the best pop i've ever heard, too. the songs on that record can be played on easy listening stations as well aor stations. some get airplay on alt-rock fm channels, (walk on, in a little while,) some make pop radio execs drool, (beautiful day, wild honey, in a little while.) and then there are peace on earth and grace. there are not more than about six or seven u2 songs i actually dislike, (okay, okay, i'll list them for you:)

• 
  a room at the heartbreak hotel
  even better than the real thing
  peace on earth
  grace
  yahweh

while grace is somewhat less off-putting than peace on earth, they are both trite pieces of steaming crap. (wow, crap twice in one piece and i never use that word. must be bono.) i can see where bono may have thought he didn't care how trite these songs seemed, the point was to reach milling masses of human life with a basic humanist message and maybe there is something to that. maybe in using the vertigo/ipod marketing putsch thereby expanding u2's reach to another generation, they can somehow elevate on a grand scale. why not? (and screw bob dylan for getting in bed with victoria's secret.)

the ultimate question is, can you promote belief in god and christian values and retain your relevance? if u2 is humanist, how can they also be christian? differences in opinion of religion have wreaked a greater amount of death, destruction, havoc and carnage on the human species than any other. u2, (and bono in particular,) are extremely careful when they discuss the topic of religion. if a question is posed to the band relating to religious beliefs, i have actually heard bono say something to the effect of, "ooh, that one's on religion, i'll take that question." reading between the lines, i believe their goal is to avoid associating themselves with a particular doctrine or sect but at the same time, to identify with all who believe and who consider their belief systems to be at the core of their fundamental values and/or, that which restrains them from the pursuit of evil.

(i will try not to digress into this topic too much but. . .) i struggle with religion and religious people. on the one hand, i have friends who are devout christians. they are the salt of the earth-nicest people you would ever want to meet. one practiced jesus-style christianity years ago when he let me live in his living room because i needed a place to stay. (rent free.) on the other hand, there are people out there like jerry falwell who are as intolerant as the day is long, blaming homosexuality for terrorist attacks and things like that. there is osama bin laden out there, believing america and americans evil to the core. there are peaceful sunni muslims and there are more radical shiite muslims. there are mormons in utah who believe in polygamy and there are christians in the united states who believe those mormons will spend eternity in hell, weeping and gnashing their teeth.

so given the potential for religious ideas to cause such great division amongst humans, why embrace those images and ideas at all? can they really be seen as humanist? when bono was running around the stage with a white flag, wasn't the flag meant to represent an absence of division? perhaps it represented the idea of surrender in some positive light but the absence of colors on a flag was clearly an absence of division. it stood for brotherhood. it contrasted with the religious warring ever present in northern ireland. religion in this world is all about division. religion causes brother to take up arms with one another. little else has the power to cause such strife amongst humans and yet, u2 has become increasingly overt in their zeal of late.

i didn't like when my rock concert turned into a church service. u2's encore consisted of pride, where the streets have no name, one, all because of you, yahweh and 40. yahweh means god in hebrew. like the entire record and despite the guitars and drums, it is a soft singsongy sort of tune you might have sang with a group on a hay ride at church camp. it is not a terrible song. it's just, who needs a u2 song called yahweh? perhaps it's a metaphysical new-agey positivity thing. still, who needs that? who needs to delve into the religious? is it possible bono thinks we might all still get on the same page some day. (and if so, would he condone the war that caused it to come about?)

40's lyrics come from the psalm of the same number. on monday night they ended their show as they did several times when i saw them in the 80s. as the crowd sang the chorus along with bono,

"i will sing, sing a new song. . ."

bono left the stage waving goodbye. next edge took off his axe and departed as well. soon adam followed and eventually, as the crowd continued to sing the chorus, larry stopped drumming and left 15,000 people singing and swaying.

when i was a young christian, devout as anyone, intent on spreading the gospel and happy to spend a worhipful evening singing songs and studying the bible, i adored this ending. i used to look down my nose at the fans of other bands thinking, 'they just don't get it.' this camaraderie evident at a u2 show pulled me in and if only for an evening, made me feel all those things i looked to christianity for in the first place: a sense of belonging and communion and brotherhood, a sense of purpose and destiny. this may sound overblown but to a degree, this was what it was all about. i would call them, u2; the positive rock band, but that would sell them short since they are so much more. they are artists, exercising and inspiring the imagination. so there is contradiction. it was good then but not now?

and the truth is, losing my faith was the best thing that ever happened to me and u2 played a role in that. through their work and their words, bono encouraged me to think for myself. it's true that i read nabakov's lolita because of sting's line in don't stand so close to me. i often read books because michael stipe said something about one that piqued my interest or some such thing. and bono did this as well. salman rushdie became one of my favorite writers in the world in part because bono mentioned supporting his cause, (and of course, bono supported his cause by putting him up at his house for the better part of a year.) i don't suppose i necessarily understood many of the implications of the satanic verses as they relate to islam but i know an epic novel when i read it. (it is also interesting that while living at bono's house, rushdie wrote the ground beneath her feet, a novel about an imaginary, indian rock band. rushdie wrote the words for the u2 song of the same name and i highly recommend the novel, which is likely rushdie's most entertaining and accessible [for westerners,] work.)

so perhaps it feels to me, upon listening to yahweh there in the ipay1 center, (whatever that is,) like i have grown and evolved but u2 has not? 40 sat better with me if for no other reason than nostalgia, but this entire record rankles me a little. rock and roll is about getting people moving, making them jump up and down and dance and flail about. every band i have ever known or seen who went soft was rejected after a season. (anyone remember journey?) there's a million of those groups. they weren't necessarily hard rock to begin with and this is not an endorsement of harder is better but it is the band that retains that ability to make someone get out of their seat and move around that thereby gains staying power. u2 always seemed to know that. with or without you was followed by bullet the blue sky. for every stay or if god will send his angels, (i know, i know...) there was zoo station and mofo. and the pop record all that you can't leave behind was a quality softening and it had up tempo songs. how to dismantle an atomic bomb seems to seek the same formula but it just misses and it misses most clearly on songs like yahweh.

u2's fate could be worse than the slide the stones took if they don't alter their course. yeah, i feel like darth vader in saying it, but those boys need to move towards the dark side. it's not like conjuring satan at their concerts is required but the fans they are attracting now are as fickle as can be and they're the same ones who bought records from brittany spears and ashley simpson. the encore on monday night sounded a tiny bit like a knell, signalling a descent into irrelevance or obscurity.

i left the show with two thoughts on my mind. one, if i could direct their next action, bono would discard the freaking costume and return to wearing jeans and t-shirts and portraying himself as a regular guy, and two, it sure is nice when you stumble on a new band like mars volta.

it is really a strange thing trying to write about u2. i seem to have wandered all over the place.

the latin from gloria? i think it means something like: in you mister/father, i exult, take pity on me. . .

propaganda

it amazes me more that we, as individuals, seem to think ourselves immune to the sway of propaganda, than it does how well the actual propaganda works. maybe education plays a role in how we view it and how susceptible we are to it?

marketing is a form of propaganda, right? the idea of it all is to color the opinion of the individual, (preferably en masse but this discussion needs to be personal,) in a preconceived way. i have a friend who believes he is immune to marketing. (silly-i know.) but he believes it. and he is not someone who just goes with the flow on everything, which is precisely why he is deluded on this point. because he detests the suv or more importantly, our reliance on oil, he fancies himself an independent thinker and to be fair to him, he is an independent thinker. but to think this industry that spends countless trillions of dollars (seemingly daily,) to affect our perceptions, thoughts, tastes, notions, etcetra, does so in vain, is pure folly. my friend thinks he exists in a niche outside of where marketing campaigns tread. (that place might also be known as fantasyland.)

i am targeted. daily. further, i succumb. who am i to stand up to this juggernaut? it's kind of like that laura branigan song from the '80s: gloria. remember that one? (of course you do-it was on pop radio every 40 minutes for about a 4-month span.) "gloria! gloria! i think they got your number. gloria! i think they got the alias, that you been livin' under!" i hated that song. i detested it. seriously. but here i am 20-something years later and i still remember the lyrics? seems more like i loved it. the truth is, the only radio station i could get at the beach was one called the mighty 690, an a.m. station, and they played it constantly. they played it till my ears bled.

al franken's air america radio recently requisitioned the #5 preset on my a.m. dial in my car. since i've been listening, i've noticed there are investment companies who are: "the right company for the socially conscious investor," (or some such poppycock.) npr is brought to me by companies that want my business. mother jones magazine and the new yorker contain ads from companies who have literally targeted me; the consumer. and guess what? they all win. i do spend some money. more importantly, i have no illusions that i am in some enlightened class who exist outside of the reach of marketing ploys and techniques. my goal, in this context, is to allow as little sway over me as possible, to maintain my values and to be true to myself.

when i see all the erectile dysfunction advertisements in the sports section of the la times, i like to think i'm not sucked into, (er, rephrase,) lured into that sense of insecurity that sells so many things. in that way i perceive myself as savvy. (somewhat. i mean, by comparison to the newly upright cro-magnon types who are running out to have surgery to increase their penis length or girth.) but in subtler ways, i know the marketers get me. they have my number. they know the alias i've been living under. ("socially conscious, left-leaning, tree hugger type with serious authority issues," might be a moniker they use?) they sell me npr for chrissakes, (which in turn sells me on shopping at whole foods or bristol farms or trader joe's. . .gets me thinking about the hybrid car and dyes in diapers.)

marketing and propaganda have been around forever. many war efforts have turned on which side better sold its message. in our current war effort, the u.s. has dropped thousands of leaflets on various parts of iraq. these little notes tend to suggest we are the big brother who has arrived in the nick of time to fend off evil dictators and unfriendly neighbors so the good reader can increase his quality of life by participating in democracy, etc. the point is simply that propaganda exists and it works to varying degrees. and i say all that to elucidate the idea that we are all subject to the effects of propaganda.

for an intellectual discussion of propaganda, how it works and how deeply entrenched our democracy is in it, see: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9103-media-control.html (therein, chomsky explains how propaganda is not simply socialist slogans and maoist songs for schoolchildren. he speaks of how it has effectively been used in our society ostensibly to change public opinion.) (i thought this quote was interesting and poignant: "Propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.")

despite my admission of vulnerability, i admit, i want to know when i am being manipulated. i want to recognize the tools of marketing and propaganda when they play upon me. i'm a regular guy. answering the college degree question all i can say is, "some coursework completed." but i don't want to be duped or taken advantage of. that's why these stories in the new york times over the last few days caught my eye.

this first one is about ken lay, the creepy friend of bush who engineered the enron debacle, (or at least must be held accountable for it,) and how he used propaganda at enron.

FRANK RICH
Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's Fake NewsPublished: March 20, 2005
Just when Americans are being told it's safe to hand over their savings to Wall Street again, he's baaaack! Looking not unlike Chucky, the demented doll of perennial B-horror-movie renown, Ken Lay has crawled out of Houston's shadows for a media curtain call.
His trial is still months away, but there he was last Sunday on "60 Minutes," saying he knew nothin' 'bout nothin' that went down at Enron. This week he is heading toward the best-seller list, as an involuntary star of "Conspiracy of Fools," the New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald's epic account of the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme anointed America's "most innovative company" (six years in a row by Fortune magazine). Coming soon, the feature film: Alex Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a documentary seen at Sundance, goes into national release next month. As long as you're not among those whose 401(k)'s and pensions were wiped out, it's morbidly entertaining. In one surreal high point, Mr. Lay likens investigations of Enron to terrorist attacks on America. For farce, there's the sight of a beaming Alan Greenspan as he accepts the "Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service" only days after Enron has confessed to filing five years of bogus financial reports. Then again, given the implicit quid pro quo in this smarmy tableau, maybe that's the Enron drama's answer to a sex scene.
The Bush administration, eager to sell the country on "personal" Social Security accounts, cannot be all that pleased to see Kenny Boy again. He's the poster boy for how big guys can rip off suckers in the stock market. He also dredges up some inconvenient pre-9/11 memories of Bush family business. Enron was the biggest Bush-Cheney campaign contributor in the 2000 election. Kenny Boy and his lovely wife Linda flew the first President Bush and Barbara Bush to the ensuing Inauguration on the Enron jet. Even as Enron was presiding over rolling blackouts in California, Dick Cheney or his aides had at least six meetings with the company's executives to carve up government energy policy in 2001. Even now what exactly transpired at those meetings remains a secret.
But never mind. The president himself gave his word when the Enron scandal broke that Kenny Boy was really more of a supporter of Ann Richards anyway. Feeling our pain, Mr. Bush told us of his own personal tragedy: his mother-in-law lost $8,000 she had invested in Enron. Soon stuff was happening in Iraq, and the case was closed, or at least forgotten.
Yet the larger shadows linger. Revisiting the Enron story as it re-emerges in 2005 is to be reminded of just how much the Enron culture has continued to shape the Bush administration long after the company itself imploded and the Lays were eighty-sixed from the White House Christmas card list.
The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda. Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain and whose source of profits was an utter mystery - and yet it thrived, unquestioned, for years. How? As the narrator says in "The Smartest Guys in the Room," Enron "was fixated on its public relations campaigns." It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany McLean, asked one question too many). In a typical ruse in 1998, a gaggle of employees was rushed onto an empty trading floor at the company's Houston headquarters to put on a fictional show of busy trading for visiting Wall Street analysts being escorted by Mr. Lay. "We brought some of our personal stuff, like pictures, to make it look like the area was lived in," a laid-off Enron employee told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. "We had to make believe we were on the phone buying and selling" even though "some of the computers didn't even work."
If this Potemkin village sounds familiar, take a look at the ongoing 60-stop "presidential roadshow" in which Mr. Bush has "conversations on Social Security" with "ordinary citizens" for the consumption of local and national newscasts. As in the president's "town meeting" campaign appearances last year, the audiences are stacked with prescreened fans; any dissenters who somehow get in are quickly hustled away by security goons. But as The Washington Post reported last weekend, the preparations are even more elaborate than the finished product suggests; the seeming reality of the event is tweaked as elaborately as that of a television reality show. Not only are the panelists for these conversations recruited from administration supporters, but they are rehearsed the night before, with a White House official playing Mr. Bush. One participant told The Post, "We ran through it five times before the president got there." Finalists who vary just slightly from the administration's pitch are banished from the cast at the last minute, "American Idol"-style.
Like Enron's stockholders, American taxpayers pay for the production of such propaganda, even if its message, like that of the Enron show put on for visiting analysts, misrepresents and distorts the bottom line of the scheme that is being sold. We paid for last year's phony television news reports in which the faux reporter Karen Ryan "interviewed" administration officials who gave partially deceptive information hyping the Medicare prescription-drug program. We paid Armstrong Williams his $240,000 for delivering faux-journalistic analysis of the No Child Left Behind act.
The administration cycled the Ryan and Williams paychecks through the PR giant Ketchum Communications. Ketchum was also one of the companies hired to flack for Andersen, the now-defunct Enron accounting firm that shredded a ton of documents. We don't know what, if any, role Ketchum is playing in the White House's Social Security propaganda push, though we do know the company has received at least $97 million from the government, according to a Congressional report.
That $97 million may yet prove a mere down payment. The Times reported last weekend that the administration told executive-branch agencies simply to ignore a stern directive by the Congressional Government Accountability Office discouraging the use of "covert propaganda" like the Karen Ryan "news reports." In other words, the brakes are off, and before long, the government could have a larger budget for fake news than actual television news divisions have for real news. At last weekend's Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how "most" of his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and the Washington press corps yukked it up. The joke, however, is on them - and us.
USA Today reported this month that the Department of Homeland Security, having failed miserably to secure American ports and air transportation from potential Al Qaeda attacks, has nonetheless shelled out $100,000-plus to hire "a Hollywood liaison": Bobbie Faye Ferguson, an actress whose credits include the movie "The Bermuda Triangle" and guest shots on television schlock like "Designing Women" and "The Dukes of Hazzard." She will "work with moviemakers and scriptwriters" to give us homeland security infotainment - which is to actual homeland security what the movie "Independence Day" is to an actual terrorist attack.
Another propagandist with a rising profile is Susan Molinari, the onetime CBS News personality who appears regularly on news shows like "Hardball" and "Capitol Report." As she bloviates from the right about Social Security or the fake newsman Jeff Gannon, she is invariably described as "a former Republican Congresswoman" or a "CNBC political analyst." But her actual current jobs remain mysteriously unmentioned: C.E.O. of the Washington Group, Ketchum's lobbying firm, and president of Ketchum Public Affairs. Were the Ketchum link disclosed, perhaps some real NBC reporter might find the nerve to ask her what other Karen Ryans and Armstrong Williamses might be on the Ketchum payroll. Or not.
The Bush propagandists have been successful at many tasks, from fomenting the canard that Iraqis attacked on 9/11 to deflecting moral outrage from Abu Ghraib and toward indecency as defined by its Federal Communications Commission. But Social Security may be a bridge too far even for propaganda machinery of this heft. Polls find that an ever-increasing majority of the country rejects the idea of letting Wall Street get its hands on its retirement savings.
Americans do have short memories, but it's the administration's bad luck that not just Kenny Boy but a whole brigade of bubble plutocrats have lately been yanked back into the spotlight by their legal travails: WorldCom's Bernard J. Ebbers, Tyco's L. Dennis Kozlowski, HealthSouth's Richard M. Scrushy, Global Crossing's Gary Winnick. No one is glad to see them. The public knows that the economy has not fully mended, and that there remain different economic rules for insiders than for the panelists drafted for the presidential Social Security roadshow. The new bankruptcy bill embraced this month by Republicans and Democrats alike throws Americans paying usurious credit-card interest to the wolves even as wealthy debtors remain protected.
You can catch the public mood in the reaction to Martha Stewart's homecoming. Despite the news media's heavy-breathing efforts to hype her emergence from jail as the heartwarming comeback of a born-again humanitarian, the bottom line shows that few in the audience are buying it. The Martha Stewart Omnimedia stock price started tumbling the moment she was back on camera, in line with the cratered circulation and ad sales of her magazine. Handing out hot cocoa to reporters at her Bedford, N.Y., estate did not turn the tide, and her spinoff of "The Apprentice" may be arriving just as the country is getting sick of C.E.O.'s again. Coincidentally or not, ratings for the existing "Apprentice" are off in tandem with the filing for bankruptcy protection by Donald Trump's casino empire, the saturation coverage of his lavish nuptials and the introduction of a Trump fragrance.
It's against this backdrop that the returning Mr. Lay - completely unrepentant, still purporting on "60 Minutes" that he's an innocent victim of others - could be the Democrats' new best friend. A Texas tycoon who helped create the political career of George W. Bush only to be discarded when scandal struck has re-emerged at just the precise moment when he might do his old buddy the most harm.

if you were there, as a reporter or a wall street investor, would you want to recognize the fact these enron people were trying to pull the proverbial wool past your eyes, over your mouth and into a straight-jacket of propaganda?

in this next piece, we see how insidious our own tax-dollar funded propaganda is.

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV NewsBy DAVID BARSTOW and ROBIN STEIN Published: March 13, 2005
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the "reporters" are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration.
Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.
Some of the segments were broadcast in some of the nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism.
It is also a world where all participants benefit.

by the way, the yellow is meant to represent the color of journalism evident. i went to school for journalism and my experience was that there were a few people who were conscientious and who would make fine journalists. the majority were lazy, hazy or just trying to get some course credit. but i was at a community college. based on the "news," i see on tv, based on lies even in this cornerstone paper i've been pasting here, based on that guy who made up all those stories at the nation, (was it the nation?) i assume it was no different at columbia u or the ohio state university.

this next piece is an example of how our president treats all this kind of stuff. he pooh-poohs it. that's his own form of propaganda. he says it as if an logical person would recognize it's business as usual and who the hell are these paranoid conspiracy theorists anyway who think there's harm around every corner, geez he's just a good texan and a good american and damn it he's steering the course in a mean angry world for all of our good. i remember him complaining about liberal hollywood back in his early days and how the right had to harness that propaganda machine that reaches people. this has got to be at least partially why arnold ran in the first place and certainly why this administration is spending through the nose on propaganda.

Bush Defends Offering Video News ReleasesBy RICHARD W. STEVENSON Published: March 17, 2005
WASHINGTON, March 16 - President Bush on Wednesday defended his administration's practice of providing television stations with video news releases that resemble actual news reports, saying that the practice was legal and that it was up to broadcasters to make clear that any of the releases they used on the air were produced by the government.
Responding to a question during his news conference in the White House briefing room, Mr. Bush said he expected cabinet agencies to abide by a Justice Department memorandum circulated last week that concluded video news releases were legal as long as they were factual and not intended to advocate the administration's positions.
"This has been a longstanding practice of the federal government to use these types of videos," Mr. Bush said. "The Agricultural Department, as I understand it, has been using these videos for a long period of time. The Defense Department, other departments have been doing so. It's important that they be based on the guidelines set out by the Justice Department."
Mr. Bush said it would be "helpful if local stations then disclosed to their viewers" that any portions of the releases they used were produced by the government, but he added that, "evidently, in some cases, that's not the case."
The New York Times reported on Sunday that at least 20 government agencies have made and distributed hundreds of video news releases in the last four years. Many of them were broadcast on local news programs without any public acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
Pressed on why the government does not require that broadcasters identify the material as being government-produced, Mr. Bush said that "there's a procedure that we're going to follow," and that if there is a "deep concern" about the releases appearing on the air as if they were journalistic reports, then local stations "ought to tell their viewers what they're watching." The administration's use of the video news releases paid for by taxpayers has drawn criticism from some Democrats in Congress, and Democrats are also raising questions about the way in which television stations use them. In a letter sent on Monday to Michael K. Powell, the departing chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, the senior Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, asked the commission to investigate whether stations were misleading their viewers.
"Until now, attention has largely focused on whether certain V.N.R.'s created by the federal government violated the restriction on using appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda," Mr. Inouye said in the letter. "However, equally as serious is growing evidence that certain broadcasters are editing government-created V.N.R.'s to make it appear as if such information is the result of independent news gathering."

Here's more of the same. the gao comptroller does his job and bush makes fun ofhim like he showed up at pistol duel with a swiss army knife.

Administration Is Warned About Its 'News' Videos By ANNE E. KORNBLUT Published: February 19, 2005 WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - The comptroller general has issued a blanket warning that reminds federal agencies they may not produce newscasts promoting administration policies without clearly stating that the government itself is the source. Twice in the last two years, agencies of the federal government have been caught distributing prepackaged television programs that used paid spokesmen acting as newscasters and, in violation of federal law, failed to disclose the administration's role in developing and financing them. And those were not isolated incidents, David M. Walker, the comptroller general, said in a letter dated Thursday that put all agency heads on notice about the practice. In fact, it has become increasingly common for federal agencies to adopt the public relations tactic of producing "video news releases" that look indistinguishable from authentic newscasts and, as ready-made and cost-free reports, are sometimes picked up by local news programs. It is illegal for the government to produce or distribute such publicity material domestically without disclosing its own role. Mr. Walker, who as comptroller general is chief of the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm, said in his letter: "While agencies generally have the right to disseminate information about their policies and activities, agencies may not use appropriated funds to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed by television audiences that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials." "It is not enough," he added, "that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable." Mr. Walker's letter was made available late Friday afternoon by Democrats on Capitol Hill. Asked for a response Friday night, the White House had no immediate comment. The two best-known cases of such video news releases - one concerning the new Medicare law, the other an antidrug campaign by the Bush administration - drew sharp rebukes from the G.A.O. after separate investigations last year found that the agencies involved had violated the law. Those cases were followed by disclosures that the government had paid at least one conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote the administration's No Child Left Behind education measure and had put two other conservative writers on the federal payroll to help develop programs. These episodes have prompted calls from Democrats for stricter oversight of the administration's publicity practices, which have cost millions of dollars of federal revenue. In the Medicare case, a video made in the style of a newscast featured a spokeswoman named Karen Ryan who claimed to be reporting from Washington on Medicare law changes strongly backed by the administration but opposed by many Democrats, who consider them a windfall for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. In part of one script, she said that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending." Often there is an intermediary in the process: a public relations firm hired by a government agency to produce a polished video and direct other aspects of a publicity drive. One centrally involved firm is Ketchum, a giant in the public relations industry whose representatives arranged for both the Medicare video and the contract with Mr. Williams, a pact that is now under investigation by three government agencies. Ketchum has received $97 million in government public relations contracts since 2001. The G.A.O. letter did not caution agencies to curtail their publicity practices, telling them simply to adhere to disclosure requirements. "Prepackaged news stories," Mr. Walker wrote, "can be utilized without violating the law, so long as there is clear disclosure to the television viewing audience that this material was prepared by or in cooperation with the government department or agency." But Democrats said they hoped the letter would lead to tougher scrutiny of what they describe as an aggressive publicity machine within the administration. "The G.A.O. is sending a clear message to the Bush administration: shut down the propaganda mill," Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey said in a statement on Friday. "The G.A.O. is simply telling the White House to stop manipulating media, stop paying journalists and be straight with the American people."

while i think there is a fat chance that will happen, i still can't help but think since i recognize people trying to pull the wool over my eyes, since i recognize the propaganda in my own society, (in our democracy,) others can to.

i saw some grass roots advertising (propaganda,) recently from an aircraft manufacturer. (i think it was northrup.) i thought to myself, does northrup really care that much? are they protecting the environment and making the communities they are located in happier, more peaceful, places to live? and why is this ad on during csi? aircraft buyers are known to watch ridiculous crime dramas? or does northrup need a shot in the arm of public goodwill to ensure a certain legislation passes which will affect their business, or something similiar to that? did a republican controlled congress trot out the famous baseball players to discuss the well being of america's children as it relates to steroid use all the while taking photos and collecting autographs "backstage," in order to distract the public from a certain alaskan wilderness drilling the american public has said no to so many times in the past? it seems to me propaganda comes in many forms and guises-sometimes it is merely distraction.

lastly, i offer a couple quotes. . .

"i believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the rights of the people by the gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-James Madison

"The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government."
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

jesus gets head

so korn gave head to jesus, eh? and i just saw footage of cat stevens on pbs singin' peace train which made me wonder about these rock stars that go religious. kerry livgren of kansas went christian back when i was a campus crusader for christ. phil keaggy left glass harp. kendall jones left fishbone. we all know about the reverand al, hammer and little richard. i'm pretty sure bob dylan has tried every religion at least once and i'm left wondering, what's it take to get someone to invite justin timberlake to church?

so rock stars are just like the rest of us. some join cults, (then accuse their sane band members of kidnapping them when they were just trying to really save them.) i could care less about this head guy since korn is my least favorite vegetable in the rock garden but damn that allah for snapping up cat stevens and making him change his name to yusuf islam. seeing him as he was back then i am reminded of how christians often characterize new converts. cat looked like he had a certain joy inside of him that just expressed itself when he sang. his moppy head bouncing from side to side embodied the peace and love ideals of the hippie movement. his songs were all about peace and love, (and understanding.) seems such a shame.

i wonder if people, who grow up without a religious background then arrive at a celebrity status, react to excess in such a way they feel untethered and in need of some sort of a lifeline. whatever one is denied as a child, seems fertile ground for overindulgence or abuse when access is granted as an adult. how many pastor's children have gone astray, succumbing to the temptations of the flesh? how many who grew up outside of a loving environment end up as cheaters in relationships because they can't get enough love as adults? is cat stevens just the opposite? i don't know his story but i wonder if he, (or this "head," guy, from korn,) grew up with parents who did not instill religious values or ideas in them as children.

hmmm. if prince is all about love, love, lovin' you up 24/7. . .would it make sense if his parent's relationship was abusive? since elvis wanted to numb himself constantly with drugs, were his parents religious zealots? since bono has this huge rock star persona would it follow that his parents were working class irish contented with the day to day grind of life? (dang. this just gets easier as i go.) since eddie vedder reads a lot and is politically active does that mean he grew up in a single parent environment and that parent had no time for such pursuits? if natalie cole hopped a train in chicago at 3:30. . .ah never mind. (i won't even try kurt cobain.)

well, this is how it goes sometimes. you start off thinking about musicians who feel guilty and next thing you know, you're off on a tangent about how we all want to kill our parents by becoming their anti-doppelgangers. i'm sure korn won't miss head. and since head is not incarcerated, i'm still trying to figure out how he found jesus.

from run to rage

so a friend of mine wrote a piece about run dmc and how they affected him and how rap music looked and sounded to him back in the day. in turn, i took a stroll down memory lane myself, conjuring my own thoughts on run dmc and rap.

run dmc crashed onto the scene when i had just signed up for uncle sam's air force. i remember being in the air force firefighting academy, near the university of illinois in champaign, when i first heard it. autumn, 1985.

"cuase it's like that, and that's the way it is!"

that is the single line i really remember. i remember them introducing the world to the beastie boys and their ill communication record. i was in my dorm-style room on an air base in japan when my friend art burst into the room to tell me i needed to go down to his room with him real quick to hear this new rap group. he played brass monkey for me first and we danced around the room mocking a girl we had seen dancing in an aomori disco. despite the energy that came from this record, and the run dmc records and many of the early rap records, i resisted rap.

looking back i remind myself of john oates in that mtv round table discussion where madonna is talking about video adding to the art of music and oates is complaining that it takes away from the musicianship that could have made it to the record. . . (what a maroon.) but i looked at rap similiarly. it bugged me these artists were sampling the works of others to compose their song. i thought there was a low talent requirement as rap consisted of poetry spoken to a beat. yeah, i enjoyed sugar hill bunch's rapper's delight. i can rap most of that song myself, to this day. but i looked at it initially as a novelty song. i enjoyed looking at it that way and at that time, i could not imagine an entire genre springing up as rap. (there is something liberating about discovering the errors of one's own thought.)

later that year i bought the very special christmas release because u2 had it's christmas (baby please come home,) on it and i got a large shot of

"it's christmas time in hollis, queens, mom's cookin' chicken and collared greens!"

i still wasn't buying rap records, not the beasties, not run dmc, but i could enjoy a rap song here or there.

when i wasn't wearing enlisted green, i wore black on the outside 'cause black was how i felt on the inside. at that time, my world was exploding with discontent, the good kind of discontent that reminds you you are alive, the kind that allows you to overcome dominating adult figures of childhood, the kind that exposes the multitude of lies proffered throughout adolesence, the kind of discontent that urges one to question everything. i was listening to the smiths, (and u2 and the cure. . .) i identified more with morrissey crooning,

"i know i'm unloveable, you don't have to tell me,"

than the records i saw as party/good time oriented. and that's why the first rap act i really embraced, (read: "bought their records,") was public enemy. while my little brother got into nwa and hung posters of eazy e in my bedroom, i tried to persuade him to switch, (to no avail.) chuck d is still one of the most down, righteous, badass artists on the planet. and it was the political bend that drew me in.

"elvis, was a hero to most, elvis, was a hero to most, elvis, was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me!"

now that's the kind of rebellion i wanted. the rebellion that went right to the core of the establishment, of white, corporate america. later de la soul caught my fancy, and pm dawn, and then came rage, (or, ratm, if you will.) fuck all the other rappers and rap acts. i get into a 'whose the best rapper ever,' conversation with friends and i always say zack and they always laugh. it's like they don't think him a real rapper. but what rap does, where it has that ability to make you jump out of your seat like your ass is on fire, the way it makes your body contract and coil and flail about involuntarily because the rhythm of the rhyme is rhythm2, pounding beat2, funkify2, well, when the element of real rage, over real important things, is added to the equation, it's just that much more powerful. so when zack raps,

"i'm rollin' down rodeo with a shotgun, these people aint seen a brown-skinned man since their grandparents bought one,"

and tom morello follows on the guitar with those rythmic, scratching sounds, eh-enh, enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh, eh-enh, enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh. . .it represented the penultimate power of rap for me. and i adore this now defunct band. i love the way tom morello shared his harvard education with zack de la rocha and as a team, they constructed these wild-ass, angry diatribes against injustice. where dj jazzy jeff and the fresh prince made fun saying

"parents just don't understand,"

rage against the machine were a bit more direct and serious about what they had to say:

"fuck you i won't do what you tell me! . ."

when doug e said,

"lahdy dahddy, we love to pahdy,"

it was fun. you couldn't help but chime in about calling up your mother. but when zack said,

"fear is your only god on the radio-turn it off,"

it was a mantra for survival in this fear-stricken, corporate greed marketing overrun, society. it was a rapping, musical manifesto and if you were fortunate enough, as i was, to be in the hollywood palladium, right in front of the stage in the pit, when they kicked out the jams live, you would know the power of all rock and roll, of all music, and certainly of rap. i remember being in this crowd of sweaty bodies. i remember it at coachella, in the dry, hot, night-time desert air. i remember rage against the machine outside, post rain storm, at alpine valley for the tibetan freedom concert. (i remember looking back at a sea of white faces behind me bopping ever so slightly to the beat but seeming bewildered by these angry politicos.) i remember three times one summer seeing them open for u2: in denver the reception was cool but rage was in great form, in san diego they were typically good but in la, 100,000 people at the coliseum seemed more familiar and open to their tirades and for me, it was a love-in. u2 and rage. . . (all props to u2 by the way. thanks to them, [and opening for them over the years,] i have seen: lone justice, the pixies, public enemy, the sugarcubes, and rage against the machine.) still, it was in the parking lot of staples center for the 2000 democratic national convention where it was best, with al gore and a host of cronies inside. it is simply an amazing thing to pulse with a throng of would be combatants, in the pit for rage against the machine, che guevara peering out at us from morello's shirt, generallisimo marcos and the zapatiste rebellion in chiapas on our minds, hammering our weight back to the earth in time to the bass drum, fists pumping in the air in the name of causes, aggressive camaraderie, whispering at first.

"Brotha, did ya forget ya name? Did ya lose it on the wall Playin' tic-tac-toe? "

louder.

"Yo, check the diagonal Three million gone Come on Cause they're counting backwards to zero Environment"

ticking.

"The environment exceeding on the level Of our unconciousness For example What does the billboard say Come and play, come and play Forget about the movement "

screaming.

"Anger is a gift Freedom, Freedom, yeah right"

there never would have been a ratm had their not been a run dmc. i suppose it can be traced back further, to sugar hill bunch or blondie, just like the beatles and stones built on top of the bluesman of old, (and i'm sure they borrowed too.) (it's a bit like bono said, "every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief, all kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.") anyway, this conjuring run dmc takes me on a journey of my own, through my own memories of yore, that i so adore.

just before the end of the century i took a trip to wisconsin via chicago to see that tibetan freedom concert. (i think it was year 2?) it was a parade of excellent bands really, but when run dmc showed up on stage, i think the place was more rambunctious than when their protoges cum benefactors, the beastie boys, followed them. it was all right there for me. run dmc, the beastie boys and rage against the machine. i guess it came full circle. and rap is spawning its own genres now. i suppose this is the way of rock and roll. in the absence of new technology, without a discovery of another wavelength for our ears to hear on, there can only be fusions and variations for now. and there will always be cannibals and thieves.

"Killing in the name of. . ."

blog this

why do i have a blog? someone asked me at the outset if it was because i was lonely.

it is because i want to write. it is because i consider myself a writer despite the fact i am not a writer by profession. ever since i got off the path towards a career in journalism, i've continued to write. often my writing habits have been poor and my output amounts to a collection of autobiographical essays and some poems, but as miller said, writing is its own reward.
if i could find my way to gainful employment as a writer, i would do it in a second, even if it meant enduring a pay cut. here is what happened.

as a student in my late 20s i was renting a room from a friend, living with his budding family. it was not ideal for newlyweds with a baby and it amounted to survival for me as i went to school. after about a year the family needed space and i needed to pay rent.

i worked as a csr by day and tried continuing school at night but i fell out. i guess it was just too much for me. i needed a life. so in my position as a csr i made a decision: as long as i worked in this call center i was going to do the best job possible in order to advance. i figured the time i spent there would be the same regardless of what i was actually doing so i wanted to make as much money as possible. and i saw a mass of, (for lack of a better word,) borderline idiots above me on the professional ladder. so i kept my head down and took as many calls as i could. i gave the best customer service you ever heard. i was utterly professional. i impressed the people above me without even trying to impress. i just tarried on under the presumption my hard work and perseverence would pay off, which it did. in about a year i was moving up and in about two years i moved into a role training others. soon after i was the trainer. using scraps of materials pre-existing me, i wrote the training manual for this call center. i worked with my boss to put together a training agenda and went about training hundreds of new csr's per year. i administered advanced training. i used multimedia in my efforts and i was effective.

after five years of training i moved into a supervisor role managing employees. my salary arrived at a comfortable place and here i am today, still managing employees in the name of customer service. i am good at my job and it takes a great deal of common sense-not much more. now my professional writing consists of yearly reviews, memos and emails. i'm quite a note passer. as a result of all this, i do not get to write creatively unless i find the time to do it on my own and that's hard. it takes a lot of energy. and so this blog is a labor of love, a means to rediscover the writer within, the man who wants to rage against injustice and embrace my kind.

i had a teacher once critique an essay i wrote criticizing a short story by either lawrence or melville. (it was either the rocking horse winner or bartleby the scrivener-i'm not sure.) in my essay i raged against capitalism and the teacher suggested i meant to rage against utilitarianism. my response is this; isn't one the byproduct of the other? i don't want to talk keynesian economics or anything. (i'm definitely not qualified to do that.) but, in our capitalistic society where everyone seems to be reaching for the golden straw, isn't the result utter utilitarianism?

these people who find meaning in jobs like mine kill me. i think their lives must be dull, colorless, odorless existences, as devoid of real joy as they are of common sense-that or they're just liars. a new boss at my call center recently proclaimed for all 150 or so representatives in the center, at a 6am introductory meeting for him, that he loves call centers. he proclaimed it with pride, suggesting to all that this thought may seem strange to us but we too could find one day that it is truly a rewarding thing to discover the joy of running a call center. (in the ultimate stroke of pure irony, the person he replaced called him a buffoon though i think she loved call centers too, so go figure.) i suppose he expected to be seen as a bit of a nerd who just enjoys tinkering with machine-like, social structures? oh that. that's cool. (whatever.)

would you agree that a business, as such, has a person or group of people who essentially run it? i would suggest that person or group has the only possibility of finding, a. any reward in related tasks worth having, and b. anything interesting about their work. it's not just the taking orders and answering to people, which any man would involuntarily reject by nature, it is the tedium of assigned tasks. even if ordered to write every day, a part of me is going to squirm and writhe like a snake in an acid bath. (although, compared to today, it would be utopia.) and business requires specialization nowadays. i knew an engineer once who made tuna cans. where i work, virtually everyone there would prefer to be somewhere else. my former boss would rather be on broadway. there are people who would like to retire but the $14 an hour dissuades. my current boss has a planned escape route, i'm pretty sure. others would rather follow the dead or stay at home with a brood. i'd prefer to be writing. this is the norm but in a job interview people will talk about what great interest they have in managing people and how rewarding a career with budweiser is, how driving a truck satisfies them or how marketing stimulates them. order breeds tedium. these people lie.

so this is what capitalism has wrought for the masses. especially as it relates to business, only those at the top of businesses could conceivably have truly rewarding work lives. the rest merely obey the business.

what i've learned in the belly of capitalism is its ethics check is weak. since a business is fundamentally inclined to seek profit for shareholders, lately even to the point of committing crimes, the only ethics check imagineable is the people who work in it. as globalization grows, mainstream tried and true businesses are being gobbled up by monolithic megacorporations. these corporations are not punished but rather rewarded for misbehaving. the ethics of the corporation is to make a profit at all costs. the unsaid maxim is: the shareholders can't take a loss. when they do, the business will quickly collapse as other businesses, (with wider profit margins,) sleek businesses who are willing to cut corners and be unethical, (if only in so much as it subjects the teeming masses to tedium,) race past it in a perpetual sprint of the fittest.
by and large we think we should be happy in our professions. no wonder everyone seems to be on anti-depressants these days. we seem to be a puritanical society except when you consider how quickly we'll resort to erection meds and uppers of all stripes and downers too. if we can be judged on what provokes public outcry or on our common examples of marketing, we have no problem with vanity. we want larger breasts or more hair on our heads so that we will be seen as more attractive in this competitive world? our culture says, "thumbs up!" (or something.) but if you struggle with working the jobs that seem to be available to you, your recourse is anti-depressants because something must be wrong with you. this is life. you gotta work. you don't find being a supermarket checker for 40 hours a week a rewarding career? you had better get some prozac. don't like your job at the foot locker? perhaps a milder form of crack, (legal, of course,) will help you see. . .things. . .our, way. . . ? MOOOOOO-HAHHHH-HAHHHHHH-HAHH!!! (well, i jest but sometimes i hear evidence of discontent and i swear hear that devlish laugh coming from somewhere.)

trouble sleeping because all you can think about is your asshole boss at the bank you work at? valium anyone? can't get a hard-on because you've literally ingested so much porn and hookers and deviation it takes nipple clamps, a rod through the tip of your penis, a live working girl and hot, girl on girl action on a screen in front of you to get any blood, whatsoever, pumping towards your organ? cialis. your stomach is all messed up because you worry about paying the rent constantly because every day you go to work is a day you worry you may quit on the spot in a rage of temper? vioxx.

look, the fact is, this is our system and it aint going anywhere anytime soon. i suggest we infuse elements of socialism at every turn we find it possible. (health care, social security. . .) but more importantly, i suggest we stop running around acting like we like our utilitarian, capitalistic jobs. they are not careers. they are jobs. if we can at least admit to ourselves they are what they are and we do what we do to pay the rent, etc., then i think we can look ourselves in the mirror each day with greater self-respect.

remember vonnegut's character in slaughterhouse five who while imprisoned at dresden heard the german soldiers mocking the american pow's because of how they adhered to pecking orders based on their jobs before the war? the germans laughed at the americans because they believed no sensible german would allow such a pecking order in their culture as, an honest job equated to a level respect for all, without regard for any income strata. i think that is how it should be, our mindset, that is. this is something we can only institute on a personal level. we must view people this way if we want others to and if we want our society to as a rule.
why elements of socialism? because we the people can have the power. and by socializing, we admit the nature of our jobs and we agree to lean on one another and be leaned on by one another. this is brotherhood.

make no mistake this is a complicated idea and/or task. it involves virtually every facet of society. the kind of change i would endorse is not likely to be seen in my life time. but for whomever might read this, i say endorse socialized medicine. retain social security. maintain a strong federal government as the protector of the people. don't be fooled by the double-speak of those who would take advantage. look, i'm not calling anyone a fool. i have been ignorant of virtually everything until i learned it. but in the day and age of leaders who don't represent our values and propaganda as art form science, when marketing has run amok and the legal system serves itself instead of the people, it is time to stand and be counted and take responsibility to inform yourself and make choices in favor not only of your community but of your species and your home (planet.)

i am not embarrassed i do not write in some capacity for my wages. i think it unfortunate. i recognize many write and want to write while few aim to be customer service managers.
how does one end a mini-diatribe against the current state of things without sounding trite or naive or like just another propagandist? maybe by pointing out that an idea can be found anywhere, even on an obscure blog by some nobody who just seems to be spilling his guts pellmell.

trailing the number of dead. . .

on my way to pick up a blt and some fries today for lunch, i found myself trailing a black volvo with a sign in its back window. (i thought it was interesting too, the car had no bumper stickers whatsoever but did have this sign scrawled on a square of cardboard and wedged into that space at the rear window.) it said, (ominously enough. . .)

1,509 Dead
11,220 Wounded

i assume this is the number of american casualties in iraq, (because there has to be more dead iraqis than 1,509.) and i've heard it on news programs recently, "the number of americans dead in iraq climbed over the 1,000 mark today. . ." so what remains is this question: how do i feel about 12,729 american lives permanently affected by this war? (rilke said i should love the questions but this one really puts that idea to the test.)

well, i don't feel good. i was 20 and stationed overseas once. i was not called into action, thankfully. in fact, i considered becoming a conscientious objector at one point but decided living up to my commitment was important too. i sat down with a friend who happened to work in our civilian base personnel office and we talked about why i was opposed to making war as well as what my role, should i enter a combat zone, would be. i was a firefighter in the air force so i would have been involved in putting out fires and, as an emt, scooping up the injured more than putting them in that position. i had two years to go-i stayed at it.

i'm thankful i did not see war. at the time, i was reading the bible and just felt like war was not of jesus. he said turn the other cheek. i was in the world's largest war-making machine. he said be ye in this world but not of this world. i had joined uncle sam's forces and was stationed 5 minutes f-16 flying time from russia's largest naval port.

when i first understood we were going to war in iraq i was getting ready to welcome my first child into the world. i imagined if the baby had been a boy and if this was all happening 18 years in the future, my family would be moving to canada. i am not in the slightest bit ashamed of saying that. our reasons for going to war were beyond poor. not only was iraq not a threat, they were the easiest target available. despite the presence of the proverbial despot, there were other tyrants at large in the world. the way i saw it, any man with a modicum of wisdom could see our reasons for going to war were first, not what our leadership proclaimed them to be, and second, not righteous.

none the less, we went to war. hundreds have died because of this conflict. at this point it is difficult to discern if those who continue to oppose the us do so from a need to self-determine or if they are trying to regain a power lost. as for us, we claim to be there out of altruism, to nurture democracy and establish the rule of law and order. those things are surely worth fighting for but based on how all this got started, it is impossible not to recognize we could have gone into niger or east timor or colombia or haiti to thwart sinister powers and establish law and order. add into the equation the long history we have with saddam hussein and the whole oil theory becomes more and more likely.

all these casulaties to keep us in oil? seriously? it seems to be true. i read recently malnutrition is at an all-time high for iraq's children, worse than burundi or haiti. i think the numbers in the window of that volvo represented but a fraction of the ongoing tragedy and i, for one, do not feel good about it at all.

million dollar baby

(while i have not yet seen the movie, this sentence should serve as a disclaimer that i have read enough about it to herein give the plot away.)
i want to see this movie. you know why? because i think it might be powerful enough to challenge how someone thinks about a thing.
movies have certainly challenged me and helped me on some path towards something positive, self-actualization, i suppose. it is the art form of the day. if picasso and van gogh had their days, scorcese and eastwood are having theirs now. a movie's ability to affect so many of our senses places it above other art forms of our day.
i remember sobbing in parts of salles' central station. having grown up with my mother in prison, i identified with the josue character in that movie on such a level, i cried for every person who has ever had this feeling. this movie made the character so real, so humanly flawed but perfectly imperfect, it made me realize i was not alone. and i don't guess i ever truly considered myself alone, really, but i don't guess i realized the sheer number of people whose circumstances in this world are at times and in degrees, dreadful.
my circumstances with my mother represented a season with much horror and pain, then later, an aspect unfulfilled. certainly as i became an adult much changed and the level of control over my own circumstances increased and, well, all things considered, i can't complain.
central station made me think about all those who suffer poor social structures as children. it made me think about them and feel for them. that, (the movies,) is a powerful medium. beautiful, too.
what can happen as a result of someone feeling the way i did that day in that movie theatre is an infinite spring of possibility. positive possibility.
so i like the idea of million dollar baby because i understand it will challenge people's conventional viewpoints about the right to die. i understand eastwood's character assists swank's character in dying and i assume there is a question of quality of life brought into the equation. i hope this movie does challenge the way people view this issue.
but will it? perhaps i am entering a season in which i have become jaded. lately it seems to me no one wants to change how they view anything. perhaps public discourse has become so rough people have become more stubborn.

(just saw the movie. it's a week since i started writing this blog entry, which i haven't been satisfied with whatsoever, but now i've seen the movie and feel like maybe it will be interesting to go ahead and finish this, somehow.)
despite this season of mine pessimism, i am renewed. what a movie. i am inclined to give the lion's share of credit for this film to the writer who imagined the story. he is the one who created vivid, likeable characters and placed them in a moral conundrum for our age. after the movie i saw a woman crying and realized, this movie will touch people. i am an optimist all over again.
months ago i loaned bowling for columbine to some friends of mine. they never watched it-i got it back last week. i can only conclude they do not want to change, do not want to be challenged. (and i'm not even saying these things would occur. in fact, i doubt the movie would have any effect at all on how they view guns or americans or capitalism or marketing or the nra or dick clark or k-mart or anything. [by the way, kudos to kmart!]) i imagine many will not see million dollar baby in much the same way.
the one thought i came out of that matinee today with was this: those groups that came out publicly against clint eastwood might be brain-dead. one of those groups, survivors, (i think,) claims to be friends of terri schindler schiavo, a woman who has been in a vegetative state for 15 years. apparently her husband won a court order to let her die by not force feeding her while her family opposes such action but has lost the court battle.
it is difficult to understand these people because i can only think of how i would feel if thrown into similar circumstances. i do not want to exist in a vegetative state. my people are clear on that point, in case it ever matters. i accept that i will die some day. i assume i will go kicking and screaming to some degree, but if thrown into a state where i am unable to sustain a quality of life i deem worthwhile, i do not want to be forced to live on by my family, the courts or anyone. in fact, i think it is rude to do such a thing to someone.
what is the motivation of these groups? i know some of the activists against this movie have been wheelchair bound people. i suppose they have a high quality of life and feel like others can and will too. that's positive and i certainly appreciate these are, for the most part, good people. the thing is, it should be the individual's choice. self-determination should be an inalienable right.
quality of life is relative and people who can't communicate how they might self-determine their outcome certainly put their loved ones in a quandary. in that case, i would the decision went to the next of kin. . .
it seems many of the christian groups have come out against million dollar baby. i guess because they believe in god and they feel like it should be his decision. personally, i don't mind if a person stays alive for 15 years in a coma. but i would prefer to make the decision for myself if it affected me. that seems reasonable. right?
million dollar baby is a great movie. it will make people think about this question. through one set of possible circumstances it sheds a sympathetic light on a person who would wish to die. bravo.