Arizona Burning

Being Red, Day One? My first day as a red went okay, I guess ... we poisoned the apple of knowledge at the school teacher's desk and I shouted her down when she told us about the census. I tossed a rock at her on the way home from school ... Then, at football practice, we were given a rousing speech to hold our ground. Coach Boehner, too had been especially incensed about the new social contract being passed around Funny, he'd been so quiet for nearly a decade ... Shit, we are going to hafta, like, take care of each other now. Later, we went home and watched bully pulpit teevee and it lit up the oven in our eyes. They were high sock days, white cleats, hard rock days, daze of football glories when I could sail over their eyes, duck around their walls since getting tackled was well ... inconvenient, hurt like a sucker, yes, so I learned to run in fear ... At homecoming assembly, Coach Boehner cheered us on, Lombardized and lobotomized since winning was everything ... Yeah, the kid's mind went squish in that game at the U.S. Capitol Sugar Coated Sugar Candy Pill Complex, and yes, we do teach our kids to tackle like torpedoes. It's just a wink you know. O, certaintly yes it's unAmerican to aim to kill. He just stood there, the tragic suited one, at the kickoff, he did, and there was violence and a collateral cry across the field and the kid stumbled toward us, in a daze: Fortunately, Coach told us later, his dad was a brain surgeon. But now my broken knee has been plowed into ploughshares, my swords, cow-pastured, thirty years from that yesteryear believing in that gridiron dream imagined into a pre-existing condition of crunching bone and graal ... Now we cry "Marshall, Marshal, Martial" ...

As anyone who watched Wallace and Ladmo knows, Marshal "Martial" Good died jumping through the window of the Twin Towers holding the last known photocopy of the Fourth Amendment. Which is why now in the Verde Valley the toothless methheads just wave their rights before the dogs arrive. Yeah, check their records. Superman search has rendered search and seizure asunder. Which is why Dick Cheney can bring his shotgun into the Pink Pony and steroids are the drug of choice before Sarge says, "Let's be careful out there." Marshal Law: He Big Man! Him law provides cover to the car part store of the mind. Him Law, Marshal Law, martial law ... is broadcast behind pulled-in blinds, spitting out Bible black blurbs ... just ask your doctor, Marshal law is so grisly in Meachamite-glories, the Constitution hardly matters anymore. Martial law is punishment society. And as anyone who laments for Marshal "Martial" Good, that good old gawd abidn' Lone Ranger of Justice, (Dang!) ... as big him he might remember, we adore our enforcement with a tinge of tragi-comedy. Which is why the photo radar captures images of Sheriff Joe out breathalyzing tonight so breathless and bluesy... Which is why soon Big Him Marshal Law will battalion the border with snow ...

Meanwhile, Momma def poppa returned from their red, white and black road racer rally car trip to Nevada dehydrated from drinking too much tea. On the way back they discussed checking the brakes at the East India Trade-In Company, then stopped off at the Wal-Mart to buy a Krate of Klassic Koke, an eighty-four percent share in Monsanto korn seed, Kool Aid for the kids, got home (paid for), checked the U.S. Mail, tested the Teev-Ho for the latest on the NFL draft, and any new instructions from Poppa Bear on how to resist socialism and thought control.
Unlike the usual church sermon, they still had visions of posterized black-faced Obamas dancing in their heads and their bull eyes kept konjuring the kulars: Black, white and red ... They found the kids at home, waiting, playing Monopoly ... They were playing with their children, and the children of their children ... Momma def Poppa had just missed the debate about the rule about the rule about the rule of how and when ... you simply toss the board and start over again when nobody has any money. Reshuffle the deck ... Good game theory .... Despite the appeal to those eeking it out on Baltic Avenue, too many remained unconvinced the gig was up, and they klung like bees at the bank window to their paper money hearts of reds, black and white, to their pixilated imaginations of digitized seas of more time, more money waiting to appear if they just pray and work hard enough. Meanwhile, Pablo sat out on his porch listening to Norteno way too loud into the night since it was a full moon and he could still dream of amnesty and learning how to read Thomas Paine ...

~ Douglas McDaniel,

Meteor Crater,

(Just to the left

of the Contention Mine),

Arizona

Why the cable news media failed us this week

Terrorism, in terms of market share, proved to be the only winner for this ... one terribly turbulatin' week of news.

Maybe the media declared a "system worked" tag on this week's Times Square terrorism spectacle, but it was an "all systems failed" day for the media itself. Anytime a poorly fabricated fireworks display pushes back time for a story on a global oil catastrope ... as well as the sudden sinking of a great American city like Nashville ... something is really off.

Within minutes of this posting you would have found the same thing happening.

A bag of books and a bottle of water were found on Times Square. For yet another day, every major cable news media eye in America is focused on one block in NYC ... capturing the view of dazed onlookers. One of the on-screen monitor readers gasped about how "it takes a village" to catch the terrorists, in terms of cops and citizens pointing out the potentiall explosive devices. But in that same gasp, we can see how the very sense of the "Global Village" of media is being broken down. We can see how the media can only care as far as the viewer lens of local concerns. We can see how a decade of degrading, ever centralizing media is just dumbing every damn mind in America down ...

Meanwhile, the Gulf of Mexico is being transmuted into black tea worthy of biblical tales of Wormwood, in places literally burning, and not too much time is spent broadcasting shots of the tragedy in Nashville, re-awakened volcanoes in Iceland closing down airports in Ireland, soul-sucking stupidity on Wall Street ... and so on.

Last night, Anderson Cooper on his 360 show finally made it to Nashville, Tennessee four days after the storm that claimed at least 30 lives in the region. He agreed that the national media failed in its duties as an emergency responder. Indeed, all of the usual media front-runners to the catastrophic storms were missing. So were the usual rescue angels. As of last night on 360, well into a show that included a spastic attempt at a music telethon for victims of the catastrophe, the ground total had yet to reach a half a million bucks.

"We should have been here sooner," said Cooper, whose show featured Tim McGraw and Faith Hill as recognizeable guides to the disaster. "I didn't cover this as much as I should have this week."

In terms of values ... the point makes sense. As a life or death issues, in Tennessee, 30 people have died in the flooding, and many, many people need immediate help ... Haiti-style assistance. But where is the attention of the media eye focused? At Times-Square, the only thing that died was civility and sanity.

Yeah, it was a New York-centric story, which explains the passion and interest focused on the local threat. But hey folks, as the news media proved this week, that part of the system isn't working. If anything was a success this week, as opposed to a disaster, it was for the terrorists themselves ... both for the apparently lone suspect (oh yeah, that word "alleged" doesn't seem to exist anymore in terrorist plot vcoverage), who scared the life out of any journo with walking range of New York's Times Square ... and for of course whose who make a living on selling fear.

How did the media machine ever become such a tool?

Fear certainly is a mind killer, Yoda might say. Hardly a source for education, enlightenment, understanding ... or good civic-minded decisions.

For example, who are these crazy sheeple running the machines all dialed into the New York Stock Exchange, jittery heartless folks capable of sending the index down 1,000 points in say, 15 minutes? Willing to sell out the whole planet's economy over a riot in a European city? Jeez, good thing we didn't have a machine mind like that in 1776. Riots in European cities during those days were common, but even more, to have a device such as the daily Dow Jones average, a kind of mad media indicator for the general health of, what, a way of Capitalist life, is another simple metaphor for what is wrong in the media, in general, on all topics related to panic and fear.

The media itself needs to do a more conscious look in the mirror about how it handles terrorism. When real violence appears on the fields of sport, for example, I think the NFL does a much better job than hockey, in taking the viewers eye away from the melee, rather than profiting from it. Acknowledge it, warn us yes, but don't go on all day using your contact lists of the same old talking heads to spend the day mooning on what might be in the minds of these nutbags, on how amateur their bomb-making seems to be, and why Oh wny Oh why didn't we learn something this time.

Because, face it, news guys in New York. Though ye may be blocks away, these highly effective if crude weapons are intended for you.