Gun Play

So, there's this retro-50s-type theme park in northern New Jersey called Wild West City. A large part of its appeal is its unselfconscious lack of political correctness. There are "shootouts" in the street, saloon fights (the liquid in the whiskey bottles is tea), Virgil Earp smokes a cigar during the Gunfight at the OKCorral skit. It's wonderdul. But some uptight-types object to it as a class trip destination for urban youngsters who are already obsessed with firearms -- like suburban and rural kids aren't? I asked one of these chaperones how many class trips teach kids about the historical contribution of people who look like them -- people of color. WWC has a black marshal. And black and Hispanic cowboys. She admitted it was the only one.

Deny-Ability

There is no shortage of groups of people I don't understand: people who think they are the only ones with God's ear. people who keep ferrets as pets, people who eat sushi. But, the people who really confound me are people who deny the Holocaust. I mean, there are PICTURES. This didn't happen during an era when the only way to disseminate information was Alan-a-Dale and his mandolin, or lute, or whatever it was. How can people deny all the evidence? And how can they explain all the people with missing relatives? Don't they know people with no grandparents or aunts and uncles? Talk about living in denial. And, what is even more scarey is that people in Iran actually voted for somebody who thinks that way. Note to Iranians voters: he's wrong and if he's wrong about something that big, think about what else he's wrong about.

Don't mess with this stuff

The new version of Casino Royale was on TV the other night. They should have stuck with the David Niven parody. This one was a parody, too, but not conscious (apparently) and not very successful. Ian Fleming is doing some serious haunting right now. Daniel Craig is a good actor, but he is not Bond on so many levels. For one thing, he's blond and doesn't have enough hair on his chest, but that's just superficial. The writers did both Craig and the public a disservice by turning Bond into a thug and asking Craig to play him that way. My son says today is the age of the anti-hero. Ok, so stop making James Bond movies until the times are ready for a hero again. Don't desecrate Fleming's A+ grade B-novel writing. Actually, I don't believe we are no longer in need of heros. I believe that suave, sophisticated Bond would still bring people in to the movies -- a lot of people just watch them for the gadgets anyway. And women watch them for the guys who play Bond. And guys watch them for the latest Bond girl. So why change the image so drastically? It was a dumb move. It may have netted some serious change. But, it was a dumb move.

Gloom and Doom

I am getting very tired of all the doomsayers. Newspapers are dying. Life as we know it is going to end. Good grief. Can they be any more annoying?
Instead of insisting that kids don't read anything, maybe they should stop by a library or a bookstore and see what kids are reading. Instead of lamenting that all information will be electronically transmitted, why don't they check out a real book? Or buy one?
If these folks who see the end of the printed world spent more time reading printed material and less time kvetching about it, maybe the printed word would last longer.
So, I'll cut this short and let the kvetchers get on with real reading.

Happiness is a warm gun

One of the reasons John Lennon's "Happiness is a Warm Gun" works is the juxtaposition against Charles Schultz's "Happiness is a warm puppy." The other reasons is that we are a gun-crazy culture, but I'll deal with that in a later blog. Puppies are soft and cuddly and always warm. Guns are only warm when they have recently been fired. Sort of like the difference between a book and a Kindle. Amazon recently introduced a new, updated version of the kindle, but it's still solid and hard and you can't cuddle up to it. Even if reading from a screen doesn't give you an Excedrin headache, it seems awkward. You can hold a book in a wing chair, curled up on a corner of a couch, on the beach. Books are made to be comfortable with. I can't see someone comfortable with a kindle. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think it will be a long time before books printed on dead trees are totally replaced by books on a kindle. Because happiness is warm and cuddly.

Typhoid Perry

So here at the Daily Planet, Editor Perry White (picture the late Lane Smith in the Lois and Clark TV series) assigns the medical desk to research the possible impending pandemic.
Of course, we don't know how serious this swine flu is going to be. So far, it looks like the precautions are a little over-the-top, but I'm not sure I want to get on an airplane right now.
That's the thing, really, when it comes down to our own safety and that of the people we love, we are willing to look a little silly in the name of safety. When we see other people doing it on the television news, we snicker. Human nature.
Is the press exaggerating the epidemic? Quite possibly. There is a certain adreniline rush that comes with a story like this. Does that sound maudlin? Of course it does. Nobody is surprised when the press is callous and unfeeling, cares more about the story than the people injured. But there is a difference between getting a jolt about a story and making the story bigger than it is. Today, there are too many news outlets tripping over each other to tell the story.

If it's Tuesday, we must be in. . . .

In much of the world, publishers need a license to publish.
Think about that.
A license.
One of the laws the Framers discarded when they wrote our amazing Constitution was the one that licensed publishers. They understood the necessity for free speech and a free press, which means, they appreciated dissent.
Of course, it was a little easier for them to appreciate dissent, since they were professional dissenters themselves.
A country formed from a revolution may belikely to be a little more free, but that doesn't give us the right to be complacent about it.
Free speech is the right from which all other rights are derived.
If that matters as much as it should and, especially, if you teach others for whom it should matter, read Charles Glasser Jr.'s International Media Law. The book describes the variations of law in many countries of the world, but the bottom line is, this is the best place to be a member of the press.
Even now.