Tag Archives: journalism

Green Venom

A Short History of Willful Failure

　

    Second half of 2011 I wrote numerous posts about my former employers, the Mugwumps. They were the biggest fools I ever met. It’s no stretch stating they embody the American Nightmare.

    Not an American Nightmare, the horror. So unique, theirs make the rest recoil. These people aren’t Snopeses living down in Dog Patch, but an upper middle-class clan anchored in one of the tonier Gold Coast Connecticut enclaves.

    Who didn’t expect better from them?

    On the plus side, without the Mugwumps there never would’ve been a “Rex Merritt.” He’s their creation. Continue reading A Short History of Willful Failure →

Quarropas

Let Us Escalate


    Herewith a routine enough American story.

    The police are alerted and respond to a call. What ensues is someone shot dead. An incident, at best run-of-the-mill, balloons into a life and death cycle. And as is common in these United States, the Reaper scythes another citizen inadvertently caught up in procedure gone awry.

    If the public is lucky any subsequent anger is brief, intense, then interrupted, curtailed and supplanted by another urgency elsewhere. Should bad luck befall the police, that being focus of the short-attention span society remaining fixed, questions get more pointed while demurrals harder.

    The latter befell the Quarropas police department. In a strange way. The initial furor subsided, almost as if it entered winter hibernation. However, on the cusp of spring it all burst stronger. Continue reading Let Us Escalate →

South America

Fulfilled Women, Empty Men

　

    Several years ago, the Brooklyn Museum extended the bounds of good taste by exhibiting pulp magazine covers. For those too young, pulps supplied literary thrills and adventures from the late 1920s into early 50s. Labeled “pulps” because the editions guts were printed on coarse paper, the appellation could’ve extended to the covers as well.

    Although glossy, the wraparounds didn’t bother teasing prospective readers about the contents. Rather, lurid covers promised all sorts of dicey situations filled with malevolence. Be assured rare was the denouement that promoted uplift and redemption.

    Some chapters might’ve aspired to The Four Feathers, but none ever neared that level of daring-do.

    The stories were turgid and churning. The covers reflected that assiduously. The Manhattan-based Society of Illustrators just wrapped up its own retrospective of pulp magazine covers. Dames in distress, gunsels, hop heads, fortune seekers, and space aliens were displayed.

    Unlike our contemporary criminal chronicles which mine present-day fears, those long ago entertainments made no effort to hold mirrors against then-society.

    Skip reflection or deep-seated introspection. Just the thing committed for the basest reasons. Which is why I’m so enamored with Argentine crime. Continue reading Fulfilled Women, Empty Men →

Agitprop/Propaganda

Funhouse Mirrors

　

    Miss crushing deadlines as I do, there is one benefit being a newspaper racket casualty. No need to fake objectivity. I can now voice opinions without caring who’s offended.

    I didn’t grovel before and I’ll damn well clean clocks now.

    During March, too many journalists have jumped on the Libyan War bandwagon. Somehow the United States’ North African involvement constitutes our third conflict with a Muslim country.

    Has it come to that? Dropping ordnance and enforcing internationally recognized sanctions against a rogue nation count as war? It’s an intervention. Libyans themselves are doing the real fighting and killing. American press misinterpretation crosses between lax writing and lazy thinking.

    Since President Obama’s installation, there’s been way too much brain-dead, knee-jerk, pack-following. Compare Libya and Kosovo, and see Barack Obama as a darker, cooler Bill Clinton and the word “war” never enters circulation.

    Unsurprisingly, I support this administration. Adults are in charge and they’re behaving in a conscientious manner. Americans haven’t enjoyed such high-level contemplation since the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations. Continue reading Funhouse Mirrors →