Sunday, January 02, 2005
Stop, Hey, What's That Sound?
Gotta give up more love to Frank Rich of the New York Times. In his latest column, he talks about the annual Kennedy Center Honors. At that December event, Elton John, who had previously gone on record criticizing Bush and the war, was happy to make nice with him. Rich uses the event as a place to start thinking about the disconnect between Americans at home and the war in Iraq. We are asked to do nothing, suffer nothing, sacrifice nothing, while the war takes place out of sight. Rich contrasts that with World War II, when FDR encouraged the sale of war bonds, mostly to give Americans the sense that they were sharing in the burdens of the war. One of the things that made World War II "the good war" was that sense of sacrifice. Ask anybody old enough to remember, and they'll tell you about it.
When entertainment icons swallow their political opinions and share the stage with Bush, the disconnect only strengthens. Rich doesn't get into the Vietnam Era, but in those days, entertainment figures were often involved in the antiwar effort almost by default. Even if you didn't care about what was happening in Vietnam, if you had a radio, sooner or later you were going to hear somebody singing about war and peace and revolution and justice. In the end, it was damn near impossible to avoid having an opinion about the war. Not so today. By skillful programming of your TV remote, CD player, and/or iPod, you need never let the war intrude on your private sphere--and so you're not required to care, let alone do, suffer, or sacrifice anything.
You can argue that the protests of the 1960s, although they drove LBJ from office, didn't do a great deal to end the war--after all, it went on full-blast for almost five years after Johnson's decision not to seek reelection. But at least they helped do that much. It's hard to imagine public outrage reaching a similar kind of critical mass in today's America.
This half-baked philosophizing is a result of my head being in 60s mode as the new year begins. I've finally gotten around to reading They Marched Into Sunlight by David Maraniss, about the 1967 Dow Day protest at the University of Wisconsin, and a bloody attack on an American battalion in Vietnam that occurred on the same day. So you can probably expect a return to this topic in the next week or so.
Quote of the Day: from Matt Taibbi in the New York Press, about Time magazine's sycophantic Person of the Year issue, praising the Dear Leader, George W. Bush.
Gotta give up more love to Frank Rich of the New York Times. In his latest column, he talks about the annual Kennedy Center Honors. At that December event, Elton John, who had previously gone on record criticizing Bush and the war, was happy to make nice with him. Rich uses the event as a place to start thinking about the disconnect between Americans at home and the war in Iraq. We are asked to do nothing, suffer nothing, sacrifice nothing, while the war takes place out of sight. Rich contrasts that with World War II, when FDR encouraged the sale of war bonds, mostly to give Americans the sense that they were sharing in the burdens of the war. One of the things that made World War II "the good war" was that sense of sacrifice. Ask anybody old enough to remember, and they'll tell you about it.
When entertainment icons swallow their political opinions and share the stage with Bush, the disconnect only strengthens. Rich doesn't get into the Vietnam Era, but in those days, entertainment figures were often involved in the antiwar effort almost by default. Even if you didn't care about what was happening in Vietnam, if you had a radio, sooner or later you were going to hear somebody singing about war and peace and revolution and justice. In the end, it was damn near impossible to avoid having an opinion about the war. Not so today. By skillful programming of your TV remote, CD player, and/or iPod, you need never let the war intrude on your private sphere--and so you're not required to care, let alone do, suffer, or sacrifice anything.
You can argue that the protests of the 1960s, although they drove LBJ from office, didn't do a great deal to end the war--after all, it went on full-blast for almost five years after Johnson's decision not to seek reelection. But at least they helped do that much. It's hard to imagine public outrage reaching a similar kind of critical mass in today's America.
This half-baked philosophizing is a result of my head being in 60s mode as the new year begins. I've finally gotten around to reading They Marched Into Sunlight by David Maraniss, about the 1967 Dow Day protest at the University of Wisconsin, and a bloody attack on an American battalion in Vietnam that occurred on the same day. So you can probably expect a return to this topic in the next week or so.
Quote of the Day: from Matt Taibbi in the New York Press, about Time magazine's sycophantic Person of the Year issue, praising the Dear Leader, George W. Bush.
One even senses that this avalanche of overwrought power worship is inspired by the very fact of George Bush's being such an obviously unworthy receptacle for such attentions. From beginning to end, the magazine behaves like a man who knocks himself out making an extravagant six-course candlelit dinner for a blow-up doll, in an effort to convince himself he's really in love.Maybe we need a new feature called "Apt Metaphor of the Day."
