Nature is always nearby…

Just walked out to get my mail, and was rewarded with a splendid view of the tree in front of our house.  The colors are gorgeous.  I wanted to share it with you, so here it is…

Journalism R.I.P.

I have been bemoaning the slow death of newspapers, “serious” magazines, and journalism for quite some time now.  Things keep getting worse and worse.

I just read a timely article on the subject by Michael Gerson of the Washington Post.  The saddest part is that today I finally concluded that there is nothing that you or I can do about it.  Here are a couple of illustrative paragraphs from Gerson’s article:

But a visit to the Newseum is a reminder that what is passing is not only a business but also a profession -- the journalistic tradition of nonpartisan objectivity. Journalists, God knows, didn't always live up to that tradition. But they generally accepted it, and they felt shamed when their biases or inaccuracies were exposed. The profession had rules about facts and sources and editors who enforced standards. At its best, the profession of journalism has involved a spirit of public service and adventure -- reporting from a bomber during a raid in World War II, or exposing the suffering of Sudan or Appalachia, or rushing to the site of the World Trade Center moments after the buildings fell.

By these standards, the changes we see in the media are also a decline. Most cable news networks have forsaken objectivity entirely and produce little actual news, since makeup for guests is cheaper than reporting. Most Internet sites display an endless hunger to comment and little appetite for verification. Free markets, it turns out, often make poor fact-checkers, instead feeding the fantasies of conspiracy theorists from "birthers" to Sept. 11, 2001, "truthers." Bloggers in repressive countries often show great courage, but few American bloggers have the resources or inclination to report from war zones, famines and genocides.

Frank Rich – way above average

Frank Rich is one of my favorite columnists.   It’s true, not all of his stuff is top-notch, but then Willie Mays didn’t have a life-time average over .400.  In other words, even Willie could not get a hit 4 out of 10 times at bat.  I’d say Frank gets a hit about 7 out of 10 times.  His latest is definitely a long home run.

~  Tom

Back in the saddle!

Hey chilen’s, I was dark a few days because I got a very cool new computer and was transferring programs and data to it from my old computer.

Having gone through this before,( only after a hard drive failure), I was determined to make it easier on myself.  So, I bit the bullet and shelled out $60+ for “PC Mover” (a one-time use piece of software) to migrate my old computer to the new one.  Pretty much everything went perfectly, to my surprise and relief.  However, wouldn’t ya know it, my Microsoft Office programs threw up when I tried to run them, so i had to spend an hour on the help line with them to get them functioning properly.  All is well now.

Anyway, I love my new computer.  It is a Velocity Micro “gaming quality” machine, which I had built to my specifications.  It is super-fast and very, very sexy looking.  It has a plexiglass side panel, which lets you look into its “private parts,” and the three separate cooling fans it uses are all lit up with blue lights.  Here is a picture I took just now showing the window feature:

Oh my, I can hardly keep my pants on! 

So, I’m back and raring to post.  Hope you all are well and happy.

~Tom

Heather and the Mad Men

I probably watch more television than I should, but these days it is hard not to. We have the full-blown Comcast subscription, which gives me a panoply of choices that I can never fulfill. Perhaps on a later post I will list my current weaknesses, but today, I want to laud one show, and then give huge props to the best TV critic in town.

First, the show: Mad Men. Folks, it absolutely does not get any better than this. Last night I watched my DVR’d HD version of the season finale of year three, and I was blown away. If you have not seen this show, rent the DVD’s and catch up. I guarantee that you will not regret the commitment.

But, as much as I want you all to get on the Mad Men bandwagon, the real impetus for this post is to pull all your coats to Heather Havrilesky, by far the best, (and most unknown, underrated) TV critic on today’s scene. If you do not already know about her, by all means check her out here. If you are a fan of Mad Men and have seen the season finale, go here, to see one of the most thoughtful, and cogent, ( with lots of the usual “Heather wit & elan”) reviews you will ever read.

I just love this lady.

Trust me on this one.

~ tom

A deep, lurking unease…

Hi all:

This blog has been dark of late because I was testifying as an expert witness in a trial.  I’m finished with that and ready to address a topic that’s been on my mind ever since I read this book review in the San Francisco Chronicle.  This quote from the review will set the tone for my troubled thoughts:

As Goldhagen argued in his controversial book on the Holocaust, "Hitler's Willing Executioners," the leader's decision is not enough. He must have plenty of willing murderers who take up the eliminationist cause. Goldhagen shows in a wide variety of contexts - from the Germans to the Khmer to the Hutu - that when tyrants give their followers the opportunity to "solve a problem with murder," enormous numbers of volunteers lend themselves to the task. The perpetrators believe their victims deserve it: "Mass murder begins not in abstract structures or inchoate psychological pressures, but in the minds and hearts of men and women."

While the book review is very critical of the author in certain aspects, it was the thought of “followers” who could, if given the real opportunity, kill their fellow citizens, based upon fears and hatreds whipped up by evil leaders, that got me thinking.

I look at what has been going on in this country since Bush II, and particularly since Obama’s election and get chills.  Hundreds of thousands of “followers” are blindly parroting mindless hatred, not even realizing that the very interests they are “defending” are objectively NOT in their best interests.  If you don’t believe that many, many of those people at the Sarah Palin rallies would actually kill their “enemies” if the climate degenerated to the point where killing is sanctioned by leaders, then you need to think again.  I actually heard people yelling out “kill him” (meaning Obama) at those Palin rallies and neither she, nor anyone else condemned such thoughts.

What really has me concerned is that the power that Palin and her crew wield appears to me to be growing or at least solidifying in their followers.  It is becoming more strident and scary each day.  You may say, “well everyone knows that Palin is a brainless nitwit  who could never get elected,” but that brings to mind my story about Ronald Reagan.  It was at the time when Reagan had announced his run for governor of California.  I was in law school at Boalt Hall then and was at a party at Sanford Kadish’s home (Sanford was a great law professor and later dean of the law school).  I distinctly remember standing  on Sanford’s deck with him and a bunch of my fellow law students looking out over the beautiful view of San Francisco across the bay.  We were all derisively laughing about this “second rate actor” who had the audacity to believe that the sophisticated people of California would elect him.  “Not a chance,” we scoffed.  Well, you all know the story.  It ended up with him becoming President in 1980, which marked the beginning of the systematic dismantling of our democratic institutions,  leading up to our present sorry state.

My point is, do not sell this Palin woman short.  Fear her and her followers.  Be vigilant and reactive at all times.  Things are going to get much more ugly and scary.

~  Quaking Tom