Irreconcilable Differences. Some thoughts about grief, malice and public discourse

[snooper]

As a non-American I find this, and other equally introspective threads, fascinating.

Just a thought:-

I (the generic I) is not called the first person for no reason. The instinct of self-preservation means that I come first.

You, the person close to me whom I am addressing, is the second person, and the person whom I protect provided I have protected myself first. When we go further than that it is called "altruism" or "selflessness" or "bravery" and is exhibited in its extreme by parents, who will sacrifice themselves for their children.

Third, and last are them, the great majority of people whom I have never met, and with whom I feel little affinity when compared with you.


From the perspective of several thousand miles away, I too find it difficult to distinguish between dying in the Trade Centre and dying in a bedroom in Faluja, provided the Faluja case is not a combatant.

In the case of combatants, I find it difficult to distinguish between combatants wearing different uniforms, and fighting at the behest of different politicians.

Of course, when it comes to the deaths of my own family members in the Armed Forces, that is a different matter, and my personal feelings make it impossible for me to be rational. I never have, and never knowingly will, work for, or buy the products of German or Japanese companies. At an intellectual level I know that is irrational, but it is me.

 

[oggbashan]

What continually worries me is the absence of foreign news in the US media.

In the UK it is possible to buy tabloid newspapers that have most of their coverage on the manufactured 'scandals' of soap stars or reality shows yet except for one which only deals in 'tits and bums' there will be several items of foreign news.

Our TV news, whatever channel, will report events in the US, in other countries and our domestic news. Most newspapers will inform us in detail about wars, disasters, political changes and events in a large number of countries.

We can buy English or original editions of foreign papers and watch foreign TV channels.

We can (and do) visit foreign countries as a matter of course. More local children visit EuroDisney in Paris than Disney in Florida but many do both. Except for the sick and infirm, visiting France is no big deal, just like driving to a shopping mall slightly further away than the one we normally visit.

We hear foreign languages spoken in our streets. If we visit Canterbury during the day in summer it seems unusual to hear English.

I appreciate that it is difficult for US citizens to have the same exposure to foreign cultures but it seems that the US media does not even try to inform and educate.

Many people in the UK, even those who are not particularly interested in politics, are still aware that some people in some countries hate us for, among other things, supporting the war in Iraq.

I wish the majority of US citizens were better informed than they currently are.

Og

 

[shereads]

I appreciate that it is difficult for US citizens to have the same exposure to foreign cultures but it seems that the US media does not even try to inform and educate.

National Public Radio, which isn't dependent on commercial sponsorships, does devote time to other cultures. They also broadcast BBC News highlights. The first and only time I heard a range of un-edited views from the Middle East regarding the U.S. in Afghanistan and the threat of an upcoming Iraq invasion, was when NPR organized a telephone call-in show and solicited opinions from that other hemisphere you people apparently have going over there. (Congratulations, by the way. An impressive find!)

Commercial sponsors buy advertising based on the popularity of programming, and since the 1980's news broadcasts have been under the same pressure to make money as TV sitcoms. The technology that measures popularity is becoming sophisticated enough to indicate how many people tuned out at a precise moment (TiVo).

This goes to the heart of another ongoing argument over here, which is the accusation that there is a liberal slant to the media. Anyone who's worked in marketing knows that television networks, magazines, newspapers, radio stations, billboard companies, the suppliers of inflatable giant clowns that wave you into used car lots, and every other means of communication I can think of except for the internet, make money by competing for advertisers, period.

In the boardrooms where decisions are made, the measure of success is the value to advertisers of a thirty-second spot during the evening news or a quarter-page in the sports section. The validity of a political viewpoint or the importance of educating Americans about the wider world, is meaningless unless it causes a quarter-point bump or drop in ratings.

If you as a viewer object to the lack of foreign news on NBC, you'll get a nice letter back from the Public Relations department.

If you organize a massive letter-writing campaign to Toyota, threatening a boycott of their product unless they pressure NBC to give more air-time to cross-dressing geishas, Tom Brokaw will be wearing a pink kimono and clogs faster than you can say "contract buyout." But only if a number-cruncher at Toyota determines that the cross-dressing geisha market represents a substantial portion of its U.S. sales. It's all about the benjamins.

Why do Americans tend to watch and read so little news that isn't American? For one thing, there's so much of it. If you look at each of 50 states as the equivalent of a country in Europe, with a few centers of commerce and cultural influence, and North Dakota as Lichtenstein, you can imagine the job facing a national news editor who has a few minutes each day to determine which event is worthy of a few minutes during the evening news broadcast or the front page above-the-fold at the newsstand. If ratings drop or newspaper sales go down by 1% the next day, it means you screwed up. Now add the rest of the countries in the world to the 50 you're already covering, and unless the Queen of England adopts a Maori tribesman as her son, good luck getting us to notice.

Then there is the fact, as you pointed out, of our geographic isolation. We were relatively self-sufficient for a long time before intercontinental communications and trade became viable.

From a purely practical standpoint, we didn't need to know what was going on elsewhere in the world until it affected us. In Britain and throughout Europe, you've always had to keep a close eye on your neighbors, because they lived next door and they coveted your stuff.

I don't think we are a less curious, more disinterested people than any other, or that we are any more resistant to other cultures. On the contrary, we've never had a mono-culture except in isolated pockets, and Americans who are uncomfortable with diversity are running out of uncrowded places to hide. We're related to most of the world's cultures, and there's nothing unique in our nature that makes us want to dismiss them as irrelevent.

I just think we're seeing a time-lag: within the space of a couple of decades, the world shrank to a size where not even an ocean on each side of us can really isolate a country. It's bound to take time for a culture that developed in isolation to adjust, particularly since our ancestors came here to get away from there.



There ought to have been a better reality-check than the one we got on 9/11. A surprise party would have been a nice way to announce to everyone in the USA who hadn't noticed, that there are foreigners out there whom we know little about, and that our geographic borders are no longer impermeable. Americans might have embraced our a global culture more readily, if the event that made it real to us hadn't been a mass murder broadcast live on the Today Show while we were having morning coffee with Katie Couric.

I'm afraid it will take a long time for people who don't watch or read a lot of news to begin with, to perceive the global culture as something positive. The knee-jerk reaction is the predictable one that you're watching now in Iraq: the urge to Americanize the most alien of you foreigners, as if we can put things back as they were.

 

[oggbashan]

The reality check on 9/11 ought to include those non-US citizens who were killed including some Muslims.

There are other countries forces in Iraq. UK soldiers died there, some by US 'friendly fire'. The UK soldiers are still there and will stay as long as they are needed.

Og

 

[Somme]

My '.' for the day.

 

[shereads]

Og [/B]

We do get news of UK casualties in Iraq, alongside our own. That, at least, isn't something that gets ignored in the newspapers.

We identify with you Brits because you've begun to learn our language.

 

[shereads]

My '.' for the day.

You still haven't considered softening your stance on this? With a comma, maybe?

 

[Somme]

You still haven't considered softening your stance on this? With a comma, maybe?

No, madam, I bloody well havn't an' I assure you......(if I can keep my face straight under the circumstances)...that I bloody well won't.

 

[Somme]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/071804J.shtml

 

[cantdog]

Thank you, Somme.

 

[shereads]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/071804J.shtml

Yes, thank you.

"What we need is a mass movement of people like you. Get mad, yes - there's plenty to be mad about. Then get organized and get busy. This is the fight of our lives."
~ Bill Moyers

 

[shereads]

And from the other end of the spectrum...

"But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's going to happen? Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Barbara Bush, interviewed on "Good Morning America," March 2003

 

[Edward Teach]

Re: And from the other end of the spectrum...

"But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's going to happen? Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Barbara Bush, interviewed on "Good Morning America," March 2003

Barbara isn't wasting her beautiful grandaughters on the war either.

Ed

Ps. What ever happened to the video of Jenna attending the nude frat party? Sandy Berger must have stolen it.

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: And from the other end of the spectrum...

Barbara isn't wasting her beautiful grandaughters on the war either.

Ed

Ps. What ever happened to the video of Jenna attending the nude frat party? Sandy Berger must have stolen it.

Please don't confuse me. I thought the Cubans did the actual burglary.

 

[rgraham666]

A quick word on voting.

I've probably voted about fifty times in my life on things as small as mayor to big things like the federal elections.

Twice has the person I voted for won. One turned out to be a real yutz. The second is doing OK so far.

But I'll never stop voting. Too many people paid in pain and blood so we might have the right to vote.

It's my duty. Just as paying taxes is.

Went the day well?
We died and never knew.
But well or ill,
Freedom, we died for you.

Epitaph from a WWI grave

 

[shereads]

A quick word on voting.

I've probably voted about fifty times in my life on things as small as mayor to big things like the federal elections.

Twice has the person I voted for won. One turned out to be a real yutz. The second is doing OK so far.

But I'll never stop voting. Too many people paid in pain and blood so we might have the right to vote.

It's my duty. Just as paying taxes is.

I like your brain, rg.

 

[Pure]

Karen said, about a child victim of the Iraq war,

And I wonder what that child would say if he saw what we have all become[i.e. enraged, lacking compassion].

Whenever I ask my daughter what should happen to a wrongdoer or mean person--even what a teacher should do to a misbehaving child-- she usually prescribes something incredibly dire.

And she hasn't even had a bomb dropped on her, like the child mentioned.

 

[Pure]

rg said, "But I'll never stop voting. Too many people paid in pain and blood so we might have the right to vote."

I partly see your point. But in a election that *really matters* to someone, they should get out and work--say, frontline, door to door-- for the candidate of their choice. Or even simply drive on election day. That may have a hundred or a thousand times the impact of the someone's vote.

 

[Somme]

'.'...............................

 

[Clare Quilty]

I posted a link to the Faces of the Fallen, accompanied by a political statement, and was accused of somehow having insulted our war dead, as if I had posted not a link, but pictures and names that you were tricked into looking at. It was said that I used these fallen kids for my political agenda. You're right about one thing, I do have an agenda.

The fascist right would prefer to sweep our war dead under a rug. They objected even to honoring them by the showing of pictures of their flag-draped coffins. As a combat veteran of the United States Army, I find this the height of ignobility. Additionally, I'm sickened that the co-opted media outlets haven't given sufficient coverage to the many thousands of American soldiers who are returning home maimed and disabled. It pains my soul to consider how these boys have had their lives irreparably derailed on the basis of lie after lie from the mouth of a traitorous and incompetent president. This is worse dishonor than was visited upon Vietnam era disabled soldiers. They were forgotten. The Iraqi conquest disabled haven't even been acknowledged by the blood thirsty neo-con trash who were so eager to send them into battle.

 

[Somme]

'.'

 

[shereads]

'.'

Are you still having your perXXXX

No, I can't. It's tempting, though.

 

[Somme]

Are you still having your perXXXX

No, I can't. It's tempting, though.

Damn right I am, when I can.

'.'

 

[doormouse]

Just a question shereads.

Do you ever post a non-political thread?????

I read the title and expected a really good bitch session... should have known

Really disappointed.

 

[Somme]

'.'