2000

Media critics have it wrong – the problem with the 24-7 news cycle isn’t the need for instant news, it’s the need for instant history, the occasion to loudly announce that what happened will appear on the cover of history books for generations hence.

My own retrospective on the mess just passed has to do with my own political identity. Identity crisis, actually. I am a Nader voter who favored Gore over Bush, living in an area that predominantly wanted Bush in a state that went for Gore. 

That’s right, West Michigan is an awkward place to be a left-leaning Christian. I share deep religious Protestant roots with fellow Grand Rapidians, but realize our common beliefs lead 9 out of 10 of them like Bush, and lead me to detest him. 

Never mind the Quayle part about him – that’s harmless and humorous. The scary thing is the dents he will put in Clinton’s environmental accomplishments (meager as they are). And the fact that 9 out of 10 African-Americans voted for an Ivy League elitist who is hardly a champion for civil rights rather than Bush should give Republicans a hint. They need to change not just their cosmetics in the cabinet, but their values that tend to make life better for the rich, more of whom are white, and worse for the poor, more of whom are black.

I care about these things because I am a Christian. I believe Christ cares more about the state of the earth and the state of the poor than the state of Bill Gates’ wallet.  If I were smugly apathetic like many of my fellow college students in this nation, I would go for the dud – Bush. Ironic that deep religious beliefs are considered synonymous with vibrant Republican support.

My identity crisis, though, comes from the increasing number of Republicans I respect. My political science professor admittedly leans right, but this past semester, right through the election and fallout, ran the most balanced class and listened so intently to my views that I listened harder to his. My district’s representative to the U.S. House, Vern Ehlers, is one of the best people in his line of work, period. I watched Bill O’Reilly the other night, one of the few conservative talk show hosts on TV, and while I don’t always agree with him, he raises points his liberal counterparts condescendingly ignore. It’s true that the media will only bash the Clintons and Gore as personalities, not politicians, and try to pass that off as objectivity.

Ideologically, I’m more ambivalent than the next Nader voter. It’s true that this nation was designed to be a loose connection of states, and not have the imperial central presence it has in D.C. FDR changed this, and while he’s idolized, he really didn’t have much of an effect during the Depression (World War II got us out of it). Sure he put the nation in a better mood, but so did Ronald Reagan, and I go around saying Reagan was one of the most overrated presidents in history.  And I still can’t accept the narcissism that surrounds the pro-choice movement – the disbelief that a woman’s will could possibly succumb to the sanctity of life. 

All right, I’m scaring myself. In the end I lean left, not right, and the overall values of affluence of the Republican party will always make me feel like a stranger among them. But it’s more complex than the right-left food fight the press frames all politics as. At least it is for this religious moderate Nader voter.

Of pet monkeys and T-shirts
November 28, 2000
Overheard on the Web and on NPR today:

• First, the inevitable election items. Maureen Dowd, as usual, puts it best: "We will have a president. But we will never have a winner." And: "Al Gore wants the presidency more than the Democrats do. And the Republicans want the presidency more than W. does."

• Last word on the election from Scott Ostler: "I just noticed something, glancing at a map of the United States. Florida is a hanging chad."

• On Todd Mundt’s general interest NPR show: The price of domesticated monkeys went up 1,000 dollars when a pet monkey spent the season on “Friends.”

• From Britannica.com, a regular stop for its “Annotated Dennis Miller” feature: Alfred Hitchcock was known for appearing in cameo roles in his horror films. Eventually, he got so popular that he had to insert the cameos earlier in the script, or audiences wouldn’t pay attention to the plot – they would just be hunting for Hitchcock.

• And finally, my own and only organic thought for day: Is there a more American icon than slogan-emblazoned T-shirt? I thought of this while hearing how well T-shirt vendors are doing with party-line apparel outside courtrooms in Florida. Why is there always such a cottage industry of slogan shirts at, well, everything, to the point where the term “cottage industry” should be retired and replaced with “T-shirt industry”?

I’m glad America doesn’t have rioting in the streets, but just what sort of substitute is the talking T-shirt? Is the best form of discourse we can come up with? Thomas Paine wrote pamphlets, we write on polyester? 

It’s a heck of a statement, really: I feel so strongly about the slur slapped across my chest that I will forego holding a sign that says it or toting a megaphone and shouting it – I’ll wear my opinion. We were the first culture to communicate with clothes; the others around the world that do it now are just copying us. 

I say it’s American because of the attitude. It takes attitude in your fibers to wear words on your fibers. Steve Rushin said he saw one in the Deep South that for him summed up such swagger.  “Jesus loves you." Then in smaller letters, “Everyone else thinks you’re an asshole.”

Cereal by the byte and 
other online oddities
November 20, 2000
Spent way too much time wandering around the Web today; meager attempt to justify this with a report follows.  Scary that this is about the best of what I found. Still, not without moments of tickling the curiosity bone.

• After reflecting on how former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Howard Wolpe’s last name spelled backwards is E-Plow, and what wintertime snow removal technological advances this may foreshadow, I came upon another technological breakthrough that may come to munch on our daily lives: www.mycereal.com. If you liked car sites, this one’s really going to turn your milk pink. Members at the site can click on ingredients and assemble a tailor-made breakfast cereal. Question is, who won’t be tempted to fiddle around with the clickable menus – summon, say, raisins in a bowl of chocolate O’s and corn flakes. Day is coming, you know, when all cereal will come on downloaded disks – and/or we'll need a built-in flake drive. Part of your complete Internet.

• If you watch hockey at all, and way too few people in this country do (it’s ten times as interesting as figure skating since there are ten times as many skaters, and besides, what isn’t artistic about a body check?), you may have noticed the letters “CCM” on players’ helmets. Maybe this just stuck out at me because, many moons ago, I subscribed to a magazine so titled about contemporary Christian music – and my reflections on once reading a magazine that kissed the Amy Grant’s CD’s and called them ice cream are comparably strange to Ronald Reagan’s 1980’s reminiscing on his mid-century days as a Democrat. But I digress. ESPN The Magazine’s highly entertaining “Answer Guy,” who resloves to "stuff the ballot boxes of chicanery with the ballots of forthrightness,"got the scoop (that ice cream metaphor is still fresh in my mind) on the monogrammed helmets. Turns out, he reports, the Canadian Cycle and Motor Company came to figure out that bicycle sales take a dip when it snows (the sleuths), so they added hockey gear to their repertoire. Eventually they came to decorate all the pros. 

• I hope I don’t sound like I dislike living in West Michigan, just because of the piety that passes for meaningful living around here thanks to the area’s religious tradition, but I do think it’s interesting to go behind enemy lines as I ended up doing at www.atheists.org. It’s so cool to see atheists "uncover" both Al Gore and George W. Bush as
dangerous religious influences - if only because the religious community can be just as intrepid in "exposing" false scourges of humanity. The article I came across was about both quasi-presidents' friendliness with evangelist T.D. Jakes, whose new laptop-equipped megachurch (at whose dedication Gore spoke after shaking Pat Robertson’s hand – presumably prompting atheists to declare: there is no God) I wrote about for my class on consumerism and culture. Jakes lives in a palace worth 1.7 mil and, well, doesn’t drive a Ford. OK, he brings people to Christ left and right, but if I were an atheist, don’t think have something to pipe up about when seeing yet another visible preacher living it up while soliciting dough from poor widows.

I’m no atheist – seeing the face of God in the beauty of the world evokes a reaction of resonance something like a couch-dweller might have when seeing Al Roker interviewing a shivering friend on TV: Hey, I know him! Still, sometimes it’s people like Jakes who seem to do only slightly more pointing God out than blurring our view of him.

Dear Mr. Vice President
November 11, 2000

To: algore@igotscrewed.com
From: me@dontwantbush.com
Re: Use the College, not the courts

Dear Vice President Gore,

As much as I tried to stay condescendingly disgusted with this year’s presidential campaign, I have to admit getting flared up when the election results got tight. As Florida was prematurely given to you and then Governor Bush before being recalled again, some of the issues most important to me, like the environment and gun control, flashed before my eyes. I began fiercely rooting for you to pull this one out.

Now that you’re taking the election to court, however, my enthusiasm is dulled. Nobody wants to see this decided by a judge, even if 19,000 people did try to vote for you on a crummy ballot and were disqualified. 

Yes, more Americans want you to be president than want Governor Bush, and so do more Floridians, however much things got screwed up. But plunge us into months of lawsuits and the authority of the president, whoever it ends up being, is in even worse shape than it is now.

I’m not, however, asking you to give up. Trees and guns are still dancing through my head, even as the Governor goes ahead and picks his cabinet. 

I’m just asking you to get to the White House a different way. A better way. The Electoral College.

That’s right, the very institution that’s standing between you and the moving trucks, despite your popular vote victory, represents an exit sign out of this quagmire.

The Electoral College doesn’t vote for over a month, until December 18.  Assuming you hang on to Oregon and New Mexico, who are doing recounts of their own, and lose Florida once the absentee votes come in, the Electoral count is 271-267 in favor of Governor Bush. That means you just need three electors to cross the aisle to become president, fair and square, no questions asked. 

I know, no elector has ever switched parties before, although some have swapped candidates within their own parties. But we’ve never had a mess quite like Florida, before, either. And while electors are chosen for their party sentiments, they’re not party officials, either. Some are political science professors, for example. In half the states, there’s no law saying they have to toe the party line.

Don’t you think you could find three political science professors among the dozens of potential crossovers to whom you could say:

More people in this country want me to be president, including people in Florida who weren’t heard, but instead of dragging the nation through months of lawsuits, I look to our Constitution. The Electoral College isn’t mandated to be a formality; it can make an adjustment when the popular vote doesn’t go right. Now I ask you to do what’s best for the country.

Should three people agree to switch, there will no doubt be howling about how the Electoral College works. But the beef will be with our white-wigged founding fathers who penned the Constitution, not with you. By the time the College is reformed, if it is at all, you’ll be orchestrating your re-election, not worrying about election in the first place.

Granted, it’s a risk to hope three people will make the unprecedented switch. But taking this to court is a risk as well. By prolonging the crisis you blow the surprisingly good chance you now have to win the favor of your party and your nation four years from now. If you get into the White House through the back door, the public’s confidence in your office, or at least your occupancy of it, will be in tatters.

It must be tough to release your grasp from the fading hope that your life’s ambitions are going to be fulfilled. But you don’t have to. You have an even better shot that will leave more meat on the presidency you crave. Nobody wins if this languishes in the courts. But it’s not too late to let the Constitution pave your way to the White House. 

No apologies for voting Nader
November 7, 2000
I wanted to vote for Al Gore. I really did. 

I wanted to help send a deserving public servant to a job he is far more prepared, able, and eager than his opponents to do. I wanted to keep the executive branch stable after an era of economic prosperity. I wanted to continue my holdout, as one of the too few fervently Christian voters not to collapse to the right out of habit, against the cheap moralism of the Republicans, who use issues like abortion and gay rights to look pious all while facilitating the proliferation of guns, the appeasement of big business, and the injustice of the poor. The most direct blow would have been a vote for Gore.

There’s also a small part of me that feels a bit sorry for Gore. One of his biggest shortcomings as a politician is that he has to so laboriously toil to communicate into the camera – the very lubricant of President Clinton’s fluid political life. For all our dislike of Clinton’s disingenousness and our longing for the genuine, we sure gave Gore a lot of heat for not playing the TV game with enough song and dance. We punished Gore for not being a campaigning animal, even though we supposedly despised Clinton for being one. 

Public opinion wanted him to expose Bush’s ineptitude in the first debate; he was castigated for being too mean. He took a much more charitable tone in the second debate; he was called a wimp. He was tarred and feathered for miscounting the desks in a Florida classroom while Bush was given a free ride on foreign policy statements so disastrously erroneous it got the Russian prime minister hopping mad. 

So I wanted to go with Gore as president. Problem is, Nader is the candidate who has best captured the minds and the mood of America. His agenda is to find and solve problems, not to play games. He has no adulterous political relationships to keep him from pure, delicious authenticity. He’s the first politician in a while to not treat politics like a business. He’s the first politician in a while to actually get me enthused about politics. 

The problem with that was, I live in Michigan. Michigan is one of four or five pivotal states in the presidential election. My support of Nader sapped Gore and strengthened Bush.

For a while that bothered me. But not today. Not anymore. When I strode into that voting booth I realized how silly my fear was. Voting for Nader has nothing to do with the horse race. It’s about establishing a social movement. Nader’s running to get some legs under a genuine reform movement, one that will shape the nation years after the dust is settling on the next president’s memorial library. 

To vote for Gore is not only to play within the rules of a lousy system, it’s to vote for the politics of baby steps, the logrolling, the compromising, the rush toward centrism, the mediocrity that defined George Bush Sr. and Clinton, and will define the presidency of George W. Bush or Al Gore.

So I’m rooting for Gore today. But either way, I know I voted for the right man. And I know the candidate I voted for is right in saying that there is no great difference between how Bush or Gore will govern as long as certain outside interests keep running as much of the show as they do. My vote was part of a long-term effort toward changing that. It’s nice to walk out of the voting booth knowing that you were a part of something truly American, truly great.

Nader an enticing forbidden pleasure
October 30, 2000
I profess to be so disenchanted by politics as to leave no room for enthusiasm for any particular candidate as a whole. Ralph Nader is quickly changing that. I had a hard time keeping my seat yesterday as he went toe-to-toe with Sam Donaldson and actually got the best of the falsely-follicled foghorn. 

For starters, how many presidents can say they mopped the floor with a guy like Donaldson (and not just played successful defense), and doesn’t that automatically qualify him for the Oval Office in a way no one has been since the advent of television?
The session is well worth a read at ABC’s Web site click here

I especially liked Nader’s point about Social Security. There sat Donaldson, who is all but waving a “Gore-Liebermann 2000” pennant in Nader’s face, incredulous that Nader says the difference between Bush and Gore on the issue is superficial. Nader responded with the poignant question: will either Bush or Gore’s opinion have much to do with anything given the power of the AARP? It’s a concrete example of what he means when he says corporate interests are running the show. It sounds so exaggerated and it’s passed off as cynicism, but Nader in fact paints a portrait of practical reality – the AARP is the chief player on the subject of Social Security in Washington.

Being in the crucial state of Michigan, I almost feel a civic duty to do what’s best for my country and elect Al Gore, who so outqualifies Bush for the job, it’s no contest. For me, though, voting for Nader is a forbidden pleasure in which I’m tempted enough to indulge myself. 

To the tube with the 
Reformed worldview?
October 27, 2000
For a while now I’ve had my eye on getting into television news. Sports, specifically. I’m fairly convinced it’s not the idolatrous ego boost that’s luring me – there are far less grueling ways of getting your self-indulgence fix than sacrificing a normal semblance of a family life, working hours and work environment to be on TV. 

No, I honestly think I could bring something to it – a little sincerity and substance. That’s what I believe Christians are supposed to be doing, after all – going into the dark recesses of culture and redeeming it. There are few darker areas in American culture than television.

Problem is, the more I see television news behind the scenes at my internship and read about its flaws from communication scholars, the less I can imagine my role being anything but an internal satirist. I would go on TV and try to shed light on its problems, all with the cameras rolling. It’s what Keith Olbermann set himself apart by doing – commenting on the superficiality of speedy segues and dumbed-down material with smart, quick quips that made him the iconic antithesis of a brainless, plastic-smiled, cookie-cutter anchor. 

The more I envision it, however, the less this strikes me as a healthy career; after all, few misanthropic anthropologists or claustrophobic spelunkers get very far, would I be doing the most good as a television-hating television guy?  I don’t know, what do you think? Is there a place for a satirist on television, or is TV a trench where creativity by necessity dies like a bug in a freezer?

Bush getting away with Gore-isms
October 20, 2000
Al Gore is getting a raw deal. It’s the unreported scandal of the election – the media’s bias against Gore. Of course, most reporters personally will vote for Gore, but that doesn’t stop them from demonizing him for his slipups while cutting George W. Bush a lot more slack.

And Dubya has indeed laid some major eggs that have not been widely examined. In the foreign policy-heavy second debate, he said we need to pull our troops out of Haiti, when it turns out all of a few dozen soldiers are left there.  He said we need to convince Europe to commit ground troops to Kosovo, when most ground troops there are in fact European. He got the Russian prime minister so upset about his unfounded charge of pocketing IMF loans, the prime minister said “Mr. Bush Jr. should be getting ready for a trial.” 

Then there’s Gore, who is vilified for reporting the wrong number of desks in a Florida classroom and the like. In this and other cases what we have are not outright lies but sloppy half-truths – bad enough in themselves but not, you would think, approaching the level of Bush’ gross misrepresentation of foreign policy. 

The Internet myth, for example. Gore is accused of saying he invented the Internet. What he actually said - “I took the initiative in creating the Internet” – is something the actual Web founder and even Newt Gingrich, citing Gore’s Congress record in areas of technology, say he did. But of course it fits the stereotype to paint know-it-all Gore as delusional, while the press has no doubt lost interest in making Bush look incompetent.

Time’s Margaret Carlson, talking about the media’s “double standard” for veracity for the two candidates, lists all of Bush’s debate gaffes and observes, “Residual disdain for the teacher’s pet makes it satisfying to catch a smarty pants like Gore in an error, while it’s no fun to go after the class cutup.” 

Too bad, because the fact remains Gore is head, shoulders and elbows more qualified than anyone else to be President. His occasional fudges do not rise to the level of Clinton’s outright lying and Bush’s apparent cluelessness. I don’t know if I’ll vote for him – I like Nader’s ideas better – but I do know a man getting a raw deal when I see one.

When SUV's rule the world
October 16, 2000
I love Jeep ads. They tend to be clever and artistically coherent, unlike the vapid production that passes for the majority of television advertising.

The latest spot comes with some baggage, though. It features a dirty Jeep coming to a stop in front of an elegant home, spilling out two elegant passengers. All the elegance comes to a muddy end when the presumed inanimate car begins shimmying to eject its foulness, promiscuously sending splatters of mud all over the place. When the wet dog routine is complete, the Jeep is spotless, the people and house are far from it. The narrator steps in to assure us that, as refined as the Jeep is, it hasn’t lost its “animal instinct.”

My question is, which concerns did “animal instinct” leapfrog on the list of importance to warrant a 30 second spot? Has there been an influx of potential buyers inquiring about a potential purchase’s bestiality? Are automakers so satisfied with the number of cupholders, decibel level of speakers and other more practical matters that they have turned to a car’s consciousness? Is this type of demented prioritizing to blame for the current tire fiasco? 

We are truly an SUV culture. Not just because we buy them and drive them, but we find our identity in them. They overexert themselves to display their style, they make a lot of needless noise, they abuse the earth they drive on. And in turn, so do we. We want them to be animal-like, and we want them to make us animal-like. I thought machines taking control of humans was supposed to be scary, not the premise of a blithe commercial. 

Better than a birthday binge
September 26, 2000
It I had this plan for my 21st birthday today. I was going to put some of my counter-culturalism, the staple of a true Calvin student, into practice, and fly in the face of one of the granite monuments to today’s gratification culture – the 21st birthday binge. I was going to strut up to the bar, tell ‘em to put on the game, and order a tall mug – of root beer. 

I was tempted for several reasons. For one, my peers all assume that a binge on beer is the only proper commemoration of a 21st. For another, I’ve sampled beer before, and I like root beer better. What’s more, with no tolerance built up, a binge would sear my stomach walls.

Most importantly, a binge would be a celebration of freedom from something to which I recognized no previous bondage. My birthday would be no blessed release, since I had no lament about my ineligibility to drink thus far. 

I ended up neither wildly conforming to culture nor brazenly flying in its face – I had a screwdriver at dinner. Very unremarkable – basically orange juice with a slightly sweeter aftertaste. Just one. Big deal. 

I find our culture’s celebration of the 21st birthday strange. I think 20 is a much bigger deal. It marks a decisive end to adolescence, and, like all that Y2K hype, has the magic of the complete odometrical number change. It’s a symbolic stride into adulthood. With a little more sense in the world, one year ago today would be my highly hyped day. Today would be an afterthought.

The Forgotten Promise of 
'The Cosby Show'
September 20, 2000
It was 16 years ago today that “The Cosby Show” debuted on NBC. I mention this not only to lament how far prime time TV has plunged - today the gem of NBC’s mighty Thursday nights is “Just Shoot Me” – but to briefly look back at what the show accomplished. Or, more importantly, what it didn’t. 

I read a brilliant book chapter recently by an NPR commentator called “The Forgotten Promise of ‘The Cosby Show.’” He explained how the ardently upbeat program was designed not only to delight everybody with its homely, apple pie values, but more importantly to show that African-Americans could speak for a piece of that pie. The iconization of a middle, no, upper class black family could in part get Americans used to the idea that, during the me-first and money-first decade, black people wouldn’t make odd fellow passengers if they were along for the ride. 

Notable for its absence was any race-based hostility; people of different races filed through Cliff Huxtable’s front door without an ounce of unease. This just years after Richard Pryor’s antics on his variety show that included a satirical telethon whose telephones lit up once the emcee, played by Pryor, solicited support for the “Back to Africa” fund. 

This NPR author says that the show’s abysmal fate in syndication – its struggled to catch on even while the proliferation of cable channels has given the most forgettable 80’s shows new life – reflects its “forgotten promise.” He says how sad it was for the Rodney King race riots to erupt on the night of the show’s finale on a Thursday in 1992 – and how symbolic

Now, in 2000, many of Cosby’s aspirations seem as distant as they did sixteen years ago tonight. Black people are still associated with the lower class. Racial tension permeates the workplace, the school, the sports arena, sometimes erupting violently. How odd it must seem to Cosby today that for all the dominance his show had late last decade, its central themes are ignored less than a decade later.

Feeling down about 
corporate downsizing
August 1, 2000
For five months I poured all my Web energy into the Web site for the sports radio station where I work. I designed it, helped launch it, and wrote most of the content for it, and for a while I was having a blast. I wasn't a professional webmaster, but I thought the page was better than most radio station sites because a) it had much more original content and b) it was regularly updated by someone in tune, so to speak, with the ins and outs of the station.

Now the station and the site have been bought out by Citadel Broadcasting in Nevada, one of those faceless national conglomerates. Just look at their new site, and you've got a front row seat for one of the biggest problems in commercial radio. It's called vertical integration. The thinking is, with TV and the Internet, individual radio stations aren't worth squat by themselves, so why not merge a whole bunch together and make at least a few bucks? 

This was illegal back in the good old days before 1996 - there was a limit to how many stations one company could own. Then the Telecom bill hit, one of the main things I still hold against my hero John McCain. The frenzy was on; now Citadel owns 200 stations nationwide.

The danger is obvious - how can a higher-up in Nevada who sees nothing except the bottom line on the fax in front of him, know what's best for, for example, Grand Rapids, Michigan? But this is the trend in modern communications - the person calling the shots is increasingly detached from the community. This is hardly unique to broadcasting, but the stakes are higher because broadcasting has a unique role in defining a community, one it cannot as easily fulfill with a national boss looking over its shoulder. 

The result:cookie-cutter radio stations across the country, all sheared of much individuality so as to better fit a national machine. And now WBBL has a cookie cutter Web site - one with a set format of links to sponsor news, weather, and prize sites. The site looks nice, but there is no link, so to speak, to the station. And there's no longer any reason to go to the site, since its sole aim is to imitate countless others.

I will soon post a sample of the old and news sites, so you can see for yourself.

Wednesday, February 2
In the interest of good sense, I have got to stay away from the student book sale.  You wouldn’t think an affinity of a college student for books would be a great crisis, but in my case it’s scary. 
Today I walked into the sale with a list of the books I needed for my classes this semester. Never mind that not one ended up being available at the sale; I couldn’t make it out the door without a biography of Queen Elizabeth I, an analysis of Mozart, a book on sports and American culture (possibly my life’s calling) and a book on popular culture by one of favorite professors
here at Calvin, Bill Romanowski. 

Of course, since I’m just a sophomore, these superfluous purchases might prove to be serendipitous, as when I bought two books last semester out of interest that turned out to be
required for a course I started this semester.  Still, gratuitous reading of non-fiction is one of the
paramount staples of my childhood I pray never abandons me. Especially if I embark on a career
in media, as I currently intend – it is a world of emaciated thinking that cries out for a broad base
of thinking.  Maybe it’s just an occupational hazard of being 20 years old and open-minded – a
curiosity as strong as a horomone. 

I came across a letter on a newspaper Web site from a woman explaining how she benefits
from a more soothing alarm clock, rather than the typical obstreperous devices.

I happen to absolutely LOVE my alarm clock! It also wakes me with noises, or I can fall asleep to them if I want. I have the choice of ocean waves (my personal favorite); a summer night -- which is crickets chirping; a babbling brook; rain forest -- which is birds singing, or a waterfall
(my least favorite). I love falling asleep to the ocean waves, and waking up to them is so much nicer than some annoying beeping sound. Find one like this and I bet you'll be much happier too!

That’s nice for the writer, but I know it would never work for me.  I can’t be cajoled out of bed; I must be violently extirpated. I need volts of morning cruelty pumping through my body like electricity in an execution.  Thus my blissful slumber is ended daily with an alarm as shrill and unwelcome as Richard Simmons on caffeine and in a bad mood. And it idles on a piece of furniture far enough from my bed that I have to get up to silence it. Failing either of these
provisions, I’m snoring till 10:30.

Babbling brooks are fine to fall asleep to, but I can’t wake up to anything I don’t have a love-hate relationship with.  The cynic would say I’m all set for marriage. 

ELECTION 2000 SCRAPBOOK
And the winner of New Hampshire is....American politics. In the first primary, voters took back the system that had been seized by the parties' establishments with their coronations of Bush and Gore. McCain's landslide and Bradley's near miss provide a breath of fresh air in a stale process.
• New York Times story
• CNN.com story
• Manchester Union-Leader story
• McCain2000.com

On January 10 I had the chance to go to the Republican debate here at Calvin as well as to meet national reporters in the media center.

After rushing from the auditorium after the debate back to the media center for the press conference, I positioned myself near the door the candidates would be entering from, eager for a possible chance to meet John McCain, one of the few people I respect in the whole world of politics.  When he approached, flanked by his entourage, I jammed my hand in front of him, expecting nothing more than a quick shake before he rushed on.

As soon as he took my hand, I said, "Mr. McCain, you're the reason I'm excited to vote in my first election."  He stopped. His whole enturage stopped. For a moment I had his full attention, the same attention campaigns constantly pull in three different directions.  But he looked me in the eye and thanked me, saying it meant a lot to him.  He introduced me to his wife, and had I not been so dumbfounded by his willigness to pay me such mind I would have told him more about how I follow politics closely but am jaded by what I see, and that he lifts me out of my discouragement. After he thanked me again he finally moved on, back to the bath of lights and herd of cameras. For a moment, the prognosis of one college student's attitude toward the whole political circus rose above pessimism.

This after I declined an invitation to greet George W. Bush at the airport.  The LA Times ran a story the next day headlined "Small crowd greets Bush at airport."  Connect these facts however you wish.  Here are some other articles about the debate:
• New York Times story
• CNN.com story
• Washington Post story
• Calvin debate site
• LA Times: Small crowd greets Bush
• Debate transcript
• McCain2000.com

Thursday, January 20
It’s official – rumors of America’s prosperity have been greatly exaggerated. Is it possible to not be in favor of our current economic boom?   Well I am, and I encourage other Christians to follow suit.  A new study out this week proves that while income for the rich is burgeoning in this happy-go-lucky time, the income of the lowest bracket is either falling stagnant, or only inching upward. 

See, for someone bent on having compassion for the poor, it’s tough for me to celebrate the milk and honey of the NASDAQ world when it’s just the rich getting richer.  This is why I especially get frustrated when prosperity leads to national complacency – why get all hot and bothered when things are going so good? Why fuss over social justice, the environment, and
international issues so long as my cell phone still chirps? It’s maddening myopia.  As the study,
which you can read about here from the Sacramento Bee, shows, prosperity is just one side of
the story.

My latest conspiracy theory: advertisers for microwave popcorn and hair restoration are in
kahoots.  Have you seen the ad for the former, which alludes to the latter?  There sprawls the husband, snoring self-importantly, muzzled with a chip bag clip by a wife minding her own popcorn.  The irrefusable smell of Orville Redenbacher sends the clip flying off hubby’s nose, of course, and he crowds her on the loveseat, stuffing his face.  I’m not worried about the popcorn  here. I’m wondering why the husband has to be bald.  Why is hair loss equated with popcorn
harassment, or, more broadly, character flaw?  Make no mistake, bald men are never, ever, portrayed positively to sell a product – the smiling pitchmen all have forests of follicles. 

I noticed it too on that over-played spot for e-something, where the articulate woman shows up the man – the bald man – with a well-versed catechism of e-commerce.  Bald, here, equals dumb.  My question is, do we not already have an abundance of bad messages we send adult males about their
inadequacy?  Is there no consequence of such ubiquitous reminders of how one’s worth palpably recedes with one’s hairline, or do cultural insults exist in a vacuum?  And why, for crying out loud, must baldness help sell e-commerce and microwave popcorn?

Thursday, January 13
False advertising from CNN: The middle letter of its name stands for "news," but tonight's primetime lineup was chocked full of olds -- Jeffrey Toobin on Larry King plugging a book about the Clinton scandal, and the approximately 3,167th news magazine on Columbine Memo to Toobin on his new book: When we said we were sick of Monica, we weren't pulling your leg. And on Columbine, there simply is no more story left to tell. We do wackos too much dignity with our assiduous analysis.

- I like the Web site www.GeorgeBush2000.com, not on any grounds of its coherency (which it lacks) but because it has the depth perception to examine the guvna's phony side. (Come to think of it, does he have any other side?) Again, bashing is ignoble, but seeing a bigger picture than the bloodlusting Republican establishment has in its swoon over W, is welcome in my book. As the site points out, Bush's pledge to "make sure that government is not the answer to people's problems" might qualify as "the only time a candidate promised not to solve any problems.  The last word: Gerald Ford's summary of politics, which rests on W fairly easily: "Candidates without ideas hiring consultants without convictions running campaigns without content."

Wednesday, January 5
Finally got around to watching "The Matrix." My roommate was right; I was overdue. Far from the computer playland I had been advised it was, the film wove engaging complexities of metaphysics, and yet somehow kept it within reach of a Sandler-saturated movie-going crowd. I loved the Cartesian themes of deceptive reality, the computer tricks that were as surprisingly smooth as they were unprecedented, the redemptive themes (hey, I'm a Calvinist), and the rock solid acting. I could have done without the movie's dependence on violence as an aesthetic crutch -- it seemed an ironic flight from complexity, as the film simultaneously scoffed at simplicity. I guess you have to keep the Sandlerites watching somehow. Overall, a film whose quality far too many lazy moviemakers avoid.

I was awake for 20 hours yesterday, thanks to my part time radio gig that had me up at 5 in the morning and kept me from my bed till 1 the next (major bowl games endure longer than the weaker-willed leftovers in my fridge). Don't get me wrong; I love radio, even my part time taste of it, but I am getting a sense of just how much broadcast media is by necessity produced in a parallel universe from the 9 to 5 world. Man, I really did like that movie...