Category: Blithe Spirit

Read it and weep

Toy Monster: The big, bad world of Mattel, by Jerry Oppenheimer, is scored by reviewer Eric J. Iannelli, in the 9/4/09 Times [of London] Literary Supplement for its triteness.  (On-line only for subscribers)

“As befits such a seedy, tabloid-style expose, the writing is cliched and hyperbolic,” writes Iannelli, giving some juicy particulars:

Investigators are “hard-nosed”.  It is the “tired,poor, huddled masses” who immigrate through Ellis Island.  Japan is “the Land of the Rising Sun,” Germany is “the Fatherland” and Hollywood is “La-La Land.”

Etc.  A main character in this non-fic account “always got what she wanted” and “never took no for an answer.”  Her rise is twice described as “meteoric,” she “goes ballistic.”  And especially good are the verbs used instead of “say” or “said”:  “Very few . . . say anything. . .  they observe, maintain, intone or opine.”

Ianelli still found the book “engaging,” even if “sensationalist” and “one-sided,” because it raises “legitimate concerns” such as “lavish executive bonuses . . . in the face of scandal and falling profits.”

And nobody kept inserting “you know” in the middle of sentences or between them.  If you heard them talking live, ah, that would be a different matter, I’m sure.

Mass transit misunderstanding

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

Bruso is a 67 year-old  Vietnam veteran, who apparently has some history of mental illness. While riding the bus in Oakland, he was talking to someone about getting his shoes shined for his mother’s funeral and a black man named Michael—whose last name is unknown—managed to get offended because the words “shoe shine”, “boy”, and “brother” were used in the same sentence. He confronted Bruso, who initially misinterpreted the man as offering to shine his shoes. Michael yelled “Why a brotha gotta spit-shine yo’ shoes?” and “Why a white man can’t shine his shoes?”

The rest is on tape.  This blog reports, you decide.

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Trip down academic lane: Boccacio vs. Chaucer vs. church

At Dominican U in RF last night, Robert Hanning from Columbia U. on confession in the middle ages.  Title led me to expect a socio-cultural explication but he was about close reading of Bocaccio and Chaucer. 

I found the former heavy-handed in his slashing attack on church practice, producing cartoon characters — opera boffo? — none of them credible or noteworthy.  The latter — dear Geoffrey — produced memorable people and made same points with relative understatement.  Subtlety, thy name is not an Italian one.

Considered a q. during post-lecture q&a, where was holy mother church during all this?  Besides indexing Bocaccio.  But H. was not attuned to that, or seemed not to be, or had simply ruled that out a la monograph-style, not to mention journal-ready text with references and attributions right and left.

Appropriate, in that he was keynoting a joint meeting of the Illinois Medieval Assn. and the Midwest body of medievalists, this in DU’s near spanking-new Parmer Hall on west side of burgeoned if not still burgeoning campus. 

From which I exited on Thatcher, by the way, using the easement much disputed by tree-huggers and forest preservers.  The trees did not cry out at me as I hung a left and headed south.

A nice evening, for $10 that included a sip of wine and bite of something beforehand, sitting and watching medievalists chatter in clumps.  A look at the ivory tower, you might say, without prejudice. 

But I had to think about what Ezra Pound would say, he who moved ever in the mainstream of (literary and other) life and preferred jumping to (fascinating, engaging) conclusions.  Takes all kinds.

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Opus pokus

Yesterday an editorial about Opus Dei hosting lib RC (“heterodox”) Cokie Roberts at its DC bookstore led to cancellation of said talk-diva.  But old-world defensiveness delayed things:

The Washington Times called the Catholic Information Center on deadline Tuesday seeking comment and asking if the Cokie Roberts event had been cancelled, but we were repeatedly sent to voicemail. Putting someone on the line could have clarified the situation.

That is, Wash Times publicized the much-protested near boo-boo but would not have done so if it only knew.

This long-ago religion reporter had a similar no-talk response from Chi Opus D people in the 70s, when they were much newer kids on the block, followed by letter of correction after the story had run, about what I do not recall.

Look.  Talk and ye shall be saved at least a little embarrassment.  You might be anyhow.  You could make things worse, of course.  This guy in Pittsburgh threatened to sock me over the phone.  Speaking for the diocese. 

Had he succeeded, it would have been a story that wrote itself: easy to write but hard to research.

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Bi-Dem, bi-Republican, buy partisan

Reporters were barred from a meeting of the full Illinois senate this morning, so that “bipartisanship” might be achieved, explained Oak Park’s Don Harmon, an assistant senate majority leader and Democratic committeeman.

Harmon said the meeting was closed solely to avoid “political posturing” on the issues of the state’s finances and budget deficit.

“There was virtually no posturing, as we often find in open meetings,” he said, adding: “It remains to be seen what people do in public.”

Those damn open meetings with their posturing.

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Trib on Sunday vs. Sun-Times

Chi Trib on Sunday turns its page one over to features.  Eds. want you to cuddle up with them over your coffee and rolls.  Come into our (and maybe your) comfort zone, they say.

So we have this:

Delivering hope

Lauren has a rare genetic disease. On Friday, she welcomed a new sister whose cord blood could cure her. But it isn’t that simple.

I’m sure it isn’t.  Trouble is, I do not know Lauren, nor have I ever heard of her, and cord blood has not been on my radar since our first child’s, first seen in our Oak Park apartment quite some time ago. 

And the five after that maiden voyage into child delivery, especially that of #2, who in our first house preceded the arrival of the tyro M.D. and his more experienced nurse helper.  I left the cord for them to handle, leaving the newcomer on Mama’s front until they arrived minutes later.

Lauren’t is a great feature story.  Women’s page stuff if there still was one?

Nothing like it in early pages of Sun-Times, just one tightly written news story after another, including one about the Maywood public school teachers being asked for their money back after they were systematically overpaid for four years, with its telling quote from one of them, now at a charter school, who

said he wasn’t surprised. “It was the most dysfunctional place I ever worked,” he said.

Go Maywood, I guess.

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This guy’s bad for the party

“The Obama administration has failed miserably in trying to solve the [jobs and foreclosures] problem,” says Democrat Dennis Cardoza, running for re-election in California.

He’s not the only Dem trying to distance himself from the president, “with the back-channel blessing of party officials,” says LA Times.

His district “went heavily for Obama,” but it’s the economy, stupid.

It would be too soon to decide Obama made matters worse if it weren’t for his agenda,

including the partisan trillion-dollar project masquerading as a stimulus bill and the deficit-busting budget.[or if he] had not worked early to support agenda-driven omnibus pork bills, job-killing cap and trade schemes, and union assaults on workers’ rights, to name just a few of his priorities.

He came in trailing clouds of glory — apologies to Wordsworth — but, with no apology, “Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”

Back in Hyde Park on Chicago’s South Side?  Bill Daley wants a bigger tent, but Obama don’t like no big tents, and he’s looooooooosing . . . .

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A headline to barf at

Sun-Times hard copy p. 2, at top, two lines, inch-high type, extra black:

DANGER AT TRACK HAD BEEN KNOWN

In the AP story, 12th ‘graf of 14:

The danger of the Whistler [B.C.] track has been talked about for months — particularly after several countries, including the United States, were upset with restrictions over access . . . by nations other than Canada, some noting it could lead to a safety issue. [italics added]

Talk about, could lead to a . . .?  Nothing known, except by headline-writer, and he ain’t tellin’.

Had to type it out because nowhere at S-T site is the story, much less its egregious head.   Instead, there’s a different AP story, with this about safety, which is not a dead issue, screwy headlines or not:

It was unclear how fast Kumaritashvili was going, although many sliders have exceeded 90 mph on this course. The track is considered the world’s fastest and several Olympians recently questioned its safety.

More than a dozen athletes have crashed during Olympic training for luge, and some questioned whether athletes from smaller nations — like Georgia — had enough time to prepare for the daunting track.

This story goes on about safety, quoting two sliders, including Australia’s Hannah Campbell-Pegg, who said memorably,

“I think they are pushing it a little too much.  To what extent are we just little lemmings that they just throw down a track and we’re crash-test dummies? I mean, this is our lives.”

None of which excuses that hard-copy headline.

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Talking the talk

Pat Cassidy moved from WBBM radio to WLS, both AM, after 31 years of straight news reporting, now may be returning to the latter, again at WBBM, where he will have to “relearn how to keep his opinions to himself,” per Lewis Lazare, Sun-Times media columnist.

Indeed.  I see the man or woman in the middle at Fox News, when the evening panel expatiates — almost always with C. Krauthammer on the right (appropriately, though he has had no use for S. Palin) and most often with the also well-informed Steve Hayes of Weekly Standard on the left (inappropriately).  This middle talker is often a news-teller and is often unwilling to call the spade by its proper name.

Mort Kondracke of Roll Call is painfully unwilling, forced lately into a defensive mode largely because of Krauthammer, so is A.B. Stoddard of The Hill, though she is a columnist.  Juan Williams of NPR is painfully willing, but that’s another story.  Mara Liasson, also of NPR, is blithely willing but almost always several degrees off the main point and rarely veers from realpolitik.  Always the horse-picker, she seems surprised that any judgement of right and wrong is in order.

That said, it’s good to see Lazare, an old hand at columnizing about how things work in media, putting the distinction into so many words: the newscaster or reporter is supposed to keep opinions to himself.  Indeed, Cassidy was a fish out of water in his recent talk-show stint, paired with the appropriately named Erich “Mancow” Muller, who gives new meaning to the word “excited.”

And happy birthday to Abe Lincoln.  Thank God for log cabins!

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