I. Drinking Water from the Toilet George Will has a Pulitzer Prize. During the Bush years, I used to wonder how and why he got that award. His columns were the Republican talking points du jour. His style manual was Roget’s Thesaurus. When defending an indefensible Bush administration position----say, for instance, “California
deserved to be price gouged by Enron, because the state is home to a bunch of pinkie commie fags”---he would create a labyrinth of words every bit as confusing as the Minotaur’s home in ancient Crete. Almost as if he did not want the reader to discover the point, because the point was so monstrous.
And then, Bush and Co. nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Will’s next column was inspired. He detested the choice, and his piece conveyed that message. It was clear. It was succinct. It worked.
Five years later, I finally understand the man’s pain. Political writing just is not fun right now. As a lifelong Democrat, I refuse to take part in adog-pilee that targets an elected member of my party. But, the thought of defending positions and actions that are indefensible fills with me the kind of nausea that inspired the French existentialists. What is a political writer to do? I consider myself lucky that I am amateur. My day job is fulfilling, and it pays the bills. I have a lot more time to write fiction. But what about those whose salaries depend upon the atrocities of others? Paid political writers and pundits exist to criticize. Each day, they pray for the political equivalent of a train wreck. What happens if they own stock in the company that runs the train?
There is only one thing worse than not writing. That is writing crap. During a writer’s block, you are like a man in the desert searching for water. When you find it, you are so happy that you want to shout for joy. The writer who has to turn out a piece every week without fail even if he hates what he is doing is like a man who is locked in an apartment with a broken faucet. All he can drink is toilet water. He will survive, but he will not enjoy it.
II. Christmas Eve in the Bob Cratchit HouseholdIn 2000, a bunch of journalists who were absolutely sick of writing about cum stains on a blue dress decided that Bush, the Village Idiot from Texas would be a lot more fun. So, they all got together and portrayed poor old boring Al Gore as a Liar and Bush as the Breath of Fresh Air the nation needed.
You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and get out your calculator, or you look at his record in Texas," Time magazine columnist Margaret Carlson told radio morning man Don Imus at the height of the campaign. "But it's really easy, and it's fun, to disprove Gore. As sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us."
The Press versus Al Gore, Rolling Stone
http://www.factormyth.com/media/PressVsAl%20Gore.htmTurns out that girls aren’t the only ones who want to have fun. W. was a real asset---for people who made a living writing about the misery of others. Every day in America was Christmas Eve in the Bob Cratchit household. It was truly the best of times and the worst of times----the best of times if you liked to criticize the government and the worst of times if you relied upon the government for your health and welfare.
Watergate was the best thing that ever happened to the journalists of this country. And yet, the fact that Watergate happened and continues to happen again and again should shame us all. With so many reporters winning so much acclaimm for covering the scandal, how did our nation fail to learn
any meaningful lesson from that assault on democracy?
III. Don’t Quit Your Day Job So, what’s the worst that could happen if a professional decides to write what he feels and not what his readers/party/corporate masters want? Our nation’s first superstar paid political writer, Tom Paine wowed them with
Common Sense and struck a cord with
The Rights of Man. But when he wrote
The Age of Reason ----a diatribe against organized religion that is still so controversial than when I wrote a DU Journal about it a couple of years ago, the thread got locked----he got shot down. Here’s a sample:
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistentt that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
Paine, The Age of Reason
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/part1.htmlWow. No wonder Mark Twain said "It took a brave man before the Civil War to confess he had read the Age of Reason."
A couple of centuries later, Edward R. Murrow hit the big time with his on air indictment of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunts. A few years later, he turned that same critical eye on the news media, and he learned that there are some things in America you just can not say. Not if you want to keep your job.
William Blake may have been the first and (possibly) greatest Romantic poet, but he paid the bills with his art. That’s because the late 18th century world was not ready to hear
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
Blake Marriage of Heaven and Hell
http://www.gailgastfield.com/mhh/mhh.html
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