Roger Green: a librarian's life, deconstructed.
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Brian Williams on the moon with Neil Armstrong.
It was a Wednesday night. I was at our Dad’s group at church, and the pastor was reading this excerpt of the book Jesus for President, about, in retrospect, the obvious buildup to the Iraq war, featuring folks such as Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush.
It reminded me of something CBS News correspondent Bob Simon had said in January 2003 on the Sunday Morning program. The exact words I don’t recall, but it was, in effect: The United States and its allies are now occupying Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, allowing the inspectors to look for those “weapons of mass destruction” we were supposedly so sure existed.
There was no reason to go to war; the status quo is the way we should pursue things. Of course, the US ignored his counsel, and we’re still dealing with the effects to this day (e.g., ISIL).
Bob Simon knew something of the region. “At the beginning of the Persian Gulf war in January 1991, he was captured with colleagues by Iraqi forces. The team spent 40 days in a prison of Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein. He was interrogated, beaten with canes and truncheons, and starved by his Iraqi captors. He would later recount his story in the book Forty Days.”
I got home that evening and discovered that Bob Simon was dead from a car crash. He was described as a “reporter’s reporter”, winner of 27 Emmys and four Peabody Awards, covering a wide range of topics from Vietnam to making instruments out of rubbish to how elephants communicate.
This news upset me far more than I would have anticipated.
Maybe Bob Simon was the kind of old school journalist/war reporter that Brian Williams, the suspended NBC News anchor, had hoped to be. Watch how his accounts of his time in Iraq had changed since 2003, which is a recurring pattern for him.
As bad as his six-month suspension, and loss of $5 million in salary, must be, what is worse is the public humiliation. He’s a Twitter hashtag, #BrianWilliamsMisremembers. Brian Williams on the moon with Neil Armstrong. Someone took the iconic picture of John Kennedy, Jr. saluting his father’s casket, and superimposed Brian Williams’ head, which, I admit, made me LOL.
The defense of Brian Williams seems to take two forms. One is that other news networks lie all the time. A quote attributed to Chris Rock read: “Fox News lies unapologetically for 20 straight years = #1 cable news network. Brian Williams embellishes one story = worldwide controversy.”
The other is that Cheney/Bush et al. lied about the reasons for going into the Iraq war, and Williams is the only one punished?
Frankly, I’m convinced that possible apology tour will not work, that his predilection for fibbing, which former anchor Tom Brokaw told him about, will do him in, even though he may well have begun to believe his own narrative, putting himself in the story, rather than a deliberate lie.
In the same news cycle, Jon Stewart announced he’d be leaving The Daily Show, Comedy Central’s faux news broadcast, which many critics think is far more substantial than the “regular” news.
As many are, I was saddened by the news; as a friend of mine said, Stewart had a way of expressing his own thoughts, but in a more coherent way. Here are some of his best bits.
Lots of speculation about who will replace Stewart. Some suggest Jon Oliver, former Daily Show contributor, who’s got a gig on HBO. Tina Fey or Amy Poehler both hosted the Weekend Update segment on Saturday night Live, are other names being bandied about.
Why not Brian Williams on The Daily Show? After all, he had wanted to be the Tonight Show host. Comedy Central might be a step down, but if Williams did some of the real news Stewart did, it just might raise Williams’ credibility to Jon Stewart level, which is quite high. Whereas he’ll be tainted for NBC, CBS, and ABC for a long time.
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I’ve only recently read the columns of David Carr, “who wrote about media as it intersects with business, culture, and government in his Media Equation column for The New York Times.” He died at his office last week. He was only 58.
I was reading this Facebook chat with someone I knew and his friend, who suggested that the world was black and white until the early 1960s.
There’s some online game in which you name ten films that heavily influenced your way of thinking, or world view, or whatever. They need not be GOOD films or your FAVORITE films. If I picked Annie Hall, which may be my favorite, it would be selected, as I noted before, because of my hatred of going into a movie after it starts, just like Alvy Singer (Woody Allen). But let me look elsewhere.
Being There (1979) – Can a guy uttering stuff he’s heard on TV be embraced as a wise and profound leader? Seemed ridiculous at the time, save for televangelists, but now reality-show “celebrities” often drive the national dialogue (see: Jersey Shore, Duck Dynasty, The Real Housewives of Topeka, et al.)
Field of Dreams (1989) – While I LOVE the baseball talk, especially as espoused by the James Earl Jones character, for me, the key is the relationship between Ray (Kevin Costner) and his late father, which ALWAYS gets to me.
King of Hearts/Le roi de coeur (1966) – Blurs the line between who is sane and who is not.
Long Night’s Journey Into Day (2000)- After apartheid fell in South Africa, there was a Truth and Reconciliation Commission designed, not to punish, but to have people own up to the abuses that took place. (A similar action took place in Rwanda, to great effect.) If only the United States had had something similar after the Civil War, instead of a brief Reconstruction, followed by years of Jim Crow segregation.
Midnight Cowboy (1969) – one can find friendship in the most unlikely places. Plus a pedestrian should assert his right to cross the street.
Pleasantville (1998) – I was reading this Facebook chat with someone I knew and his friend; the latter suggested that the world was black and white until the early 1960s. I suspect that perception comes from photographs and television largely being in b&w until then. The conceit of this movie is that once someone becomes really engaged in life, they turn from b&w to color. (Notice in this Pentatonix video, Evolution of Music, it segues from b&w to color in the early 1960s.)
The Truman Show (1998) – To his surprise, a guy’s whole life is actually a television show. Now, it seems, there’s no end of people who are willing to be on television, spilling intimate details, in exchange for counseling, money, fame. There’s even drama in going on those home rehab shows on HGTV. EVERYBODY is a star, for the requisite 15 minutes, it appears.
War Games (1983) – I didn’t think at the time that someone playing video games could almost start World War III. Since then, I’m less convinced of my initial convictions.
West Side Story (1961) – The movie looks a little dated, last I watched it, yet the music is timeless.
Woodstock (1970) – Music groups I was introduced to, such as Santana, plus groups I saw in a different light, such as Sly & the Family Stone. Someone on Facebook wrote last month, “The New York State Thruway is closed, man,” and right away there was a whole dialogue about brown acid and kosher bacon.
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5 Famous Movies That Shamelessly Ripped Off Obscure Ones.
Q: Has the gun with which Oswald shot President Kennedy been returned to the family?
President Calvin Coolidge was designated Chief Leading Eagle of the Sioux tribe when he was adopted as the first white chief of the tribe at the celebration of the 51st anniversary of the settlement of Deadwood, South Dakota, August 9, 1927. This designation came as a result of Coolidge signing the Indian Citizen Act on June 2, 1924, which granted “full U.S. citizenship to America’s indigenous peoples.”
The bill happened in part as a result of World War I when “The Indian, though a man without a country…, threw himself into the struggle to help throttle the unthinkable tyranny of the Hun.”
I was unfamiliar with this picture until I saw it on the news around Christmas 2014, when it mentioned the risk of Chief Executives wearing things on their heads other than hats, and cited the headdress that the current President was wearing recently, pictured below.
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Speaking of World War I, from Now I Know:
One of the more positive aspects of American presidential politics is the relatively orderly, entirely peaceful succession process. Every four years, on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, voters across the nation go to the polls and cast their ballots. Those votes are translated into votes for… electors, and a few weeks later, those electors cast the votes which actually determine who is going to be inaugurated into the office of the President… Even though the campaign can be acrimonious, to date at least, no sitting president has ever attempted to disrupt this process.
But there was, almost, an exception. In 1916, incumbent President Woodrow Wilson faced a challenge from Republican Charles Evans Hughes…
Which US presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize?
Secretaries of State who became President:
Thomas Jefferson (3) under George Washington (1)
James Madison (4) under Jefferson (3)
James Monroe (5) under Madison (4)
John Quincy Adams (6) under Monroe (5)
Martin Van Buren (8) under Andrew Jackson (7)
James Buchanan (15) under James K. Polk (11)
And none since unless Hillary gets elected President.
From The Weird, Embarrassing, Fascinating Things People Asked Librarians Before the Internet:
Q: Has the gun with which Oswald shot President Kennedy been returned to the family?
A: No. It’s at the National Archives and Records Administration building in College Park, Maryland.
Lyndon Johnson was a civil rights hero. But also a racist.
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I’ve wondered why Bill Clinton, only the second President in American history to be impeached, got to be so popular by the end of his second term. I think Dan Savage of Savage Love hit upon it:
Here’s the takeaway from the Bill and Monica story: An out-of-control special prosecutor appointed to investigate the suicide of a White House aide wound up “exposing” a series of [sex acts] that President Bill Clinton got from a White House intern. Problematic power differential, yes, but consenting adults just the same. Politicians and pundits and editorial boards called on Clinton to resign after the affair was made public, because the American people, they insisted, had lost all respect for Clinton. He couldn’t possibly govern after the [detailed sex acts], and the denials (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”). Clinton refused to resign and wound up getting impeached by an out-of-control GOP-controlled Congress…
But guess what? The American people weren’t [ticked] at Clinton. Clinton’s approval ratings shot up. People looked at what was being done to Clinton — a special prosecutor with subpoena powers and an unlimited budget asking Clinton under oath about his sex life—and thought, “…I would hate to have my privacy invaded like that.” People’s sympathies were with Clinton, not with the special prosecutor, not with the GOP-controlled/out-of-control Congress.
Presidential Libraries and Museums for every President from Herbert Hoover through George W. Bush
Handsome Franklin Pierce by Nik Durga
Behind the Presidents: at Mount Rushmore
The youngest Presidents: 26, 35, 42, 18, 44, 22, 14, 20, 11, 13
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Lots of different “worst” lists:
Indian-Killer Andrew Jackson Deserves Top Spot on List of Worst U.S. Presidents
10 reasons why Ronald Reagan was the worst president of our lifetime
The Worst Presidents, which includes all the Presidents between #9 and #18, except #11 and #16; plus three 20th century picks
My near-relative Arnold linked to several versions of Strange Fruit, including one by Billie Holiday,
I groaned when an Austin, TX public relations firm used “Strange Fruit” as part of its name before changing it last year. The headline said that “some say” was was “racially insensitive.” I’d say so.
As Wikipedia notes, the song Strange Fruit “protested American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans.”
The Equal Justice Institute (EJI) released a report in February 2015 about lynching in the United States between 1877 to 1950.
Their research indicates that “hundreds more of African American men, women, and children were lynched during that time period than previously thought, bringing the number of victims to nearly 4,000.”
At some point, I may have linked to this 2012 story of the man behind the song. Here are the lyrics.
Annie Lennox did a cover of Strange Fruit which caused some controversy in 2014, though I was not bothered personally.
My near-relative Arnold linked to several versions, including one by Billie Holiday, with whom the song may be most associated. Listen also to Cassandra Wilson’s take.
Surely, the song The Hanging Tree, from the movie The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, borrows thematically from Strange Fruit.
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The EJI data fueled this New York Times map of 73 Years of Lynchings from 1877 to 1950 in 12 Southern states.
From the EJI report:
Lynching was a form of terrorism used against Blacks during that time period, where mobs of Whites would hang, burn, shoot, and beat Blacks to death as a form of intimidation and control.
One of those who lost their lives was soldier William Little.
An excerpt:
“The year 1919 was a time of resurgence by the Ku Klux Klan. Seventy-six Blacks lost their lives to mob violence in southern states that year. One of them, Private William Little of Blakely, Ga., was apparently lynched precisely because he was wearing his uniform.
“The accounts of the time state that a few days after being mustered out, he took a train home and was beaten by local Whites for wearing his uniform around town.
“The mob made him remove it.
“A couple of days later, he was caught wearing it again — Little protested that he had no other clothes — and was beaten to death and left at the end of town.”
The lynching and torture of blacks in the Jim Crow South weren’t just acts of racism. “They were religious rituals.”
A Black Mississippi Judge’s Breathtaking Speech To 3 White Murderers. The murder of “a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson in a parking lot in Jackson, Miss., one night in 2011. They were part of a group that beat Anderson and then killed him by running over his body with a truck, yelling “white power” as they drove off.”