pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SLURPING WORD SOUP IN THE CULTURESPHERE 291. Rachel Neumann, in an end-of-the-year AlterNet story, laments the fact that conservatives won the 2005 war on frames�"how we talk about the big news and big ideas in the culturesphere"�by using effective catch phrases such as War on Terrorism and Intelligent Design and the ever-popular War on Christmas, and suggests a few phrases that progressives can adopt tbefore the next elections: Debacle in the Desert, the Great Mistake, the Iraqi Quagmire, and Plamegate. They don�t exactly turn my head but I do hope that Christianism catches on. Meanwhile I've been thinking how pathetic it is that US citizens require a clever phrase to tell us what is purportedly going on (a song Marvin Gaye really needs to update for 2006. I mean, think about it. He could just start the chorus with illegal, illegal and see if anyone looks up from tthe football finals to notice that the CIA played a role in a killing at Abu Ghraib and has secret Eastern European prisons.Doctors and psychologists participated in Guant�namo Bay tortures and the Pentagon paid the Iraqi press to publish pro-USA stories. And it infuriates me no end to know that the New York Times waited till after the elections to inform its readers that the boy emperor authorized the NSA to spy on ordinary American citizens�Quakers, people!�without warrants). We sound so much more like a third-world country with a greedy despot who makes people disappear than we do like the cradle of democracy, and, if I were teaching this semester, I would make Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians and Forch�'s Against Forgetting and Ariel Dorfman required reading. I'm not teaching right now though but I am listening intently. So here�s what I�m thinking: If we must rely on clever little soundbites to get people to stand up and take notice, then there are certain words that ought to pepper our conversations in 2006. First, a phrase that Jesse Jackson, not I, should have created: Lost Your Home? Just Live in the Dome (to end with mo fo in the right circumstances). Or. really, we can just play the word-association game: Faith-Based Giving. Holy Mission. Christian Taliban. Body Armor. Escalating Gas Prices. Mass Destruction. Cindy Sheehan. Broken Levees. Brownie. Abu Ghraib. Illegal Wire-tapping. Sanctioned Torture. Corruption. Recessed Appointments. Abramoff. Cronyism. Boy Dictator. Brownie. Brownie. Brownie. Makes you think Neumann's Destruction of Democracy is an apt phrase indeed. I did read today that at least four groups comprised of military families are actively opposing our self-proclaimed emperor�s Great Mistake. Amadee Braxton, a member Veterans against the War, says "Veterans of the Iraq war and those still serving are the ones most capable of explaining the differences between the war the Bush administration portrays and the reality of the war on the ground.Most ... veterans realize, when they're over there, that they're viewed as an occupying force; not as liberators but as target practice. Americans were lied to, and Iraqi veterans are uniquely qualified to describe the disastrous consequences of that lie." Her group emphasizes the connections between spending billions on the Debacle in the Desert and domestic cuts at home. A good message indeed but the working-class voters hurt most by domestic cuts still support Shrub, despite torture and disregard for poor people and the recent New Orleans apartheid, because he has somehow convinced them that he is a moral man. Why isn't helping the poor and seeking peace and justice considered moral? I just don't understand but suspect that, if we find a way to get beyond soundbites and speak heart-to-heart with people, most people will recognize the difference. But how to do that when the headlines are focused on Brangelina adopting a baby or Ted Kennedy having a secret love child or Eminem and Kim tying the knot again (well, he did clearly still had strong feelings for her).And I now know that those two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders who were making out in that bathroom got fired for embarrassing the team (because planting a kiss on a beautiful woman ranks right up there with murdering your pregnant wife or drag-racing down Charlotte highways in your Masurati or Porsche or Spyder or whatever luxury vehicle it was those players were driving when one of them ate the gravel biscuit. � So yeah. Here it is 2 AM and I am on yet another political rampage and still wide awake (goddamnit to Hell and Stillwater Texas). I cannot sleep this week and have resorted to alcohol tonight in an attempt to exhaust myself into slumber, but even this incredibly dysfunctional approach is not working.Why? Well I�ll sound like a ho hum broken record if I list the obvious reasons here but here goes: first, I read that a musician who plays here a lot was murdered (along with his wife and two children) in a home robbery invasion and I cannot block the visuals: please please tell me that they killed the parents first so they didn�t have to watch their children die. And please please tell me that they killled the husband first so he didn�t have to die knowing that he failed to protect his family because I know men well enough to know that his father�s voice was chastising him for failing to protect the ones he loves as he died. And please please tell me that the stupid-ass teenagers who killed four people for a few lousy bucks at least used silencers so that the last one to die didn�t have to listen to the first three executions. And please please please help me quit envisioning their teeth chattering in terror and the kids screaming Daddy..... So yeah. I�m a visual person and know that I will have nightmares if I go to sleep, and so I am resisting it. Other reasons? Well, I have definitely entered the hot-flash zone and feel as if I'm roasting alive right now even though I dropped the heater down to 62 degrees. And my current sleep pattern is to catch up on it when Pottergrrrl and I are together (which is when I least want to sleep, damn it, since our time together is so limited). But probably the biggest reason is the one that makes me sound like a dumb-ass broken record�I am fretting about money. Again. I made so little for so long and spent so many years paying off my student loans and finally got myself out from under all that and even managed to sock some money away, but then I was too dang stupid to realize that the Ginger was fucking Dickboy and now here I am paying our damn mortgage payment alone, plus I'm paying off her stupid credit card debt because I am stupid stupid stupid and divorce laws do not apply to gay people. But I am whining again and it�s after three already and I really ought to just go to bed now, since I have to get up at seven and GODDAMMIT I just lost wireless access just when I was trying to wrap this up, so I guess I�ll just post it tomorrow. Whimper.10:53 a.m. - 2006-01-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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