Category: History

Harry Potter and the Last Space Shuttle

As any four-year-old (or Rupert Murdoch) will tell you, it’s easy to shut things down.  All you do is say, “It’s over!” and quit doing whatever it is you’re doing.  Fait accompli!  For example, last week we saw the end of a couple of things.

There was the end of the Harry Potter movie franchise.   After what seems like 35 years and 8 (or is it 10?) movies, Harry and the gang finally faded to black seriously.  For a while there, I thought they were doing Hogwarts on the instalment plan and were going to end up graduating with Archie and Veronica: Hermione pregnant and the Weasley boys all looking miserable.  Don’t get me wrong: I love Harry Potter, but in literature, he can remain a student forever; up on the big screen, he aged noticeably.  Once Harry and Ron started talking about liability insurance and mortgages, I lost interest.  Besides, unlike the original stories, the movies have a sameness that defies description.  The Goblet of Fire looks remarkably like The Half-Blood Prince, and, I assume, are both enlisted in The Order of the Phoenix.  I just got totally tired of the constant dickin’ around.  Unlike the books (which naturally follow each other) the movies run over the same ground, 8 (or is it 10?) times.  From the beginning, everybody and his muggle knows who the bad guy is, so why was it left to three rapidly aging adolescents to piece together the mystery?  And how come Dumbledore didn’t just round up Hagrid and the rest of the faculty, grab a few dragons on the way, and go kick Voldemort’s ass?  Luckily, 100% of the kids who watch the movies have already read the books because the franchise never bothers to explain these finer points.

J. K. Rowlings wrote some wonderful books that brought adventure back to children’s literature.  The books are fun for kids, and adults can read them, as well.  They aged along with their readers.  The movie franchise, however, disregarded what Rowlings was doing and struck out on their own.  They decided that — instead of adventure — they’d use some dark-and-stormy-night shenanigans to tell what is essentially a kids’ story.  I’m glad they’re over, and in a couple of years, when I get the bad taste out of my mouth I’m going to read the books again and enjoy them.

Last week we also saw the end of NASA’s Space Shuttle program.   After thirty years and 135 missions, when Atlantis touches down on Mother Earth next week, that’s it: no more shuttles.  I’m not really sure how this is going to work, given that they left a couple of folks sitting up in the International Space Station.  Honestly, if it was me up there I’d have my suitcase packed and be saying something like, “Hey, guys!  Where ya goin’?”  Apparently, it’s all good though.  The US is just going to pay Russia to haul their astronauts back and forth, at least until Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic gets off the ground — literally.  Personally, I’m overwhelmed by the irony.  The nation that once shot billions of dollars into the air — just to make sure the first boot on the moon was Neil’s and not Nikita’s — is now asking Nicky to drive the bus!  The old comrades who worked on the original Soviet Soyuz program are probably having a couple of vodkas and a few high fives over this one.  “Who is doing the laughing now, running dog capitalists?”

The thing is some people are blowing this all out of proportion.  They’re saying things like this is the beginning of the end of the American Empire or it’s the high water mark of Western influence over history.  Although I fear for the end of the American Empire, I doubt if the death of the shuttle program marks anything.  In reality, NASA is finally getting out from under a huge mistake they made after they quit going to the moon in 1972.  At that point, they should have abandoned the process of putting people on top of a ballistic missile and gunning them into space.  Instead, they should have developed a vehicle that could both take off and land from the relative safety of terra firma, just like Branson is doing (even as we speak.)  If they had done that, today, ordinary billionaires would be taking their mistresses on vacations to the Sea of Tranquillity, and Moon Base One would probably have a Trump Hotel and casino.  Unfortunately, NASA was so locked in to rockets in the 70s they wasted billions of dollars and 40 years.  Now they have to play catch-up — just at a time when Obama and Congress have to start watching their pennies.  Oh, well!  Better late than never.

Finally, last week marked the end of the News of the World and although everyone applauded, it didn’t actually end; it just changed its name to protect the guilty.  You can read about it here.

Endings are easy.  It’s beginnings that are hard.  The people of South Sudan, the newest nation in the world, are about to find that out.

Wednesday: The nuts and bolts of nation-building in South Sudan.

The End of the News of the World

I remember a time when journalism was an honourable profession.  I’m even old enough to remember Edward R. Murrow’s boys, albeit at the end of their careers.  These were the folks (Sevareid, Cronkite et al) who came home from World War II determined to change reporting from the William Randolph Hearst school of half truths and outright lies to something better.  I used to read the columnists who followed after them: Mike Royko, Buchwald and Safire.  They reported what they saw, what they investigated, what they could prove, what they knew to be true.  When Cronkite said it on the 6 o’clock news you could believe him.  In those days, journalists were an important part of our society.  They had one simple, extremely difficult job: cut through the spin and tell us the truth — and they did it, or at least tried their best.  Woodward and Bernstein were the last of their line.  So how the hell did we get from there to Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World?  The short answer is we didn’t.  Responsible journalism (as I remember it) was just a bump in the cycle; as Murrow’s boys culture died off, so did their brand of integrity and journalism.

In case you’ve been in a tunnel for the last twenty years, News of the World is a despicable British newspaper.  You can read about it here. It is so sordid and tawdry that, in a land known for contemptible tabloid presses, it has no shoddy rival.  In an international sleaze-off contest, the News of the World would beat The National Enquirer without breaking a sweat.  And for those of you who think this is Rupert Murdoch’s doing, no, the News of the World has always been disreputable.  Here’s a quote from a book written in 1950 about an incident that took place in the 1890s.

“Frederick Greenwood, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, met in his club one day Lord Riddell, who died a few years ago, and in the course of conversation Riddell said to him, `You know, I own a paper.’ `Oh, do you?’ said Greenwood, ‘what is it?’ `It’s called the News of the World—I’ll send you a copy,’ replied Riddell, and in due course did so. Next time they met Riddell said, ‘Well, Greenwood, what do you think of my paper?’ ‘I looked at it,’ replied Greenwood, ‘and then I put it in the waste-paper basket. And then I thought, “If I leave it there the cook may read it — so I burned it!’ ”(J. W. Robertson Scott, The Story of the Pall Mall Gazette (1950), 417—as cited in Wikipedia)

There is nothing good to say about the News of the World and when it announced its impending suicide nobody, except the dregs of humanity who worked there, shed a tear.  Are we clear?

What we call “yellow journalism” or sensationalism has its modern roots in the mid 19th century.  (Incidentally, the News of the World got its start in 1843.)  Believe it or don’t, the industrial revolution actually created leisure time for whole segments of our population.  Meanwhile, as we inched towards universal education, rudimentary literacy became the norm.  In other words, most ordinary people could read, and after about 1850, they had the time to do it.  It was the golden age of the penny dreadful and the dime novel.  It was also a time when the only news available came from newspapers.

As newspaper circulations began to increase, a few enterprising young media people — including William Randolph Hearst, a guy by the name of Joseph Pulitzer and a few others — discovered an interesting phenomenon. The newly literate social class much preferred exciting stories about fires, robberies, murders and corruption to ordinary daily news.  They learned that sensational stories and even more sensational headlines sold newspapers.  It was a no brainer; they gave the people what they wanted.  By the 1880s, sensationalism was firmly established in the print media – all it needed was a name.  In the 1890s, an all-out media war in New York between Hearst and Pulitzer provided that.  As the newspaper headlines got wilder and wilder, the result was the international expansion of “yellow journalism.”  The other side effects were the de facto death of truth in the news and, quite possibly, a media generated conflict — the Spanish American War in 1898.  Plus, the battle proved one thing that everybody already knew: the public was more interested in sordid details, true or not, than factual reporting.  To be fair, not all newspapers of the time were sensationalist rags, and even the sensationalist rags covered hard news stories sometimes, but, in general, murder usually got the front page in even the most respected papers.  For example, one of the biggest stories of the early 20th century was the titillating love triangle murder in 1906 of Stanford White, by jealous husband, Harry Thaw with ex-chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit coyly posing in the middle.  At the time it was called The Trial of the Century.  It was followed immediately by the murder trial of silent film comic Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, and the murder convictions of two anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti: both trials equally dubbed The Trial of the Century.  Soon after that there was the Lindbergh kidnapping and subsequent trial of Bruno Hauptmann which satirist H. L Mencken mockingly called “the biggest story since the resurrection.” It’s pretty plain that the O.J. Simpson Trial of the Century in 1995 doesn’t hold a candle to what the media was doing decades before.

In less than 48 hours the News of the World will cease to be, thank god.  Of course, its brand of journalism will still ooze out of the pages of a dozen other British tabloids.  Enquiring minds will still buy millions of National Enquirers every week.  Lindsay Lohan’s picture will still guarantee magazine sales and Casey Anthony will get enough ink to drown Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy combined.  The world might not have changed that much since William Randolph Hearst took over the San Francisco Examiner from his dad in 1887 but for one brief, shining moment, after World War II, there was honour in journalism.  Mike Royko, clearly a man of his time, summed it up best when he wrote, “No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch paper.”

Wit and Wisdom

Believe it or not, there was a time before “awesome” was the only acceptable response in the English language; a time when conversation was an art form and wit was its paint brush.  People talked to each other in those days; they didn’t just have face time.  I don’t harken back to the good old days; today (right now) is way more awesome than they ever were (despite the claims of most people over 35.)  However, sometimes, I miss the quips and jabs of a good conversation. Here are some dead people (except Yogi) who used words like magical tools that could turn a phrase — and sometimes even bend it.

Wilson Mizner (1876 – 1933)
These days, very few people have heard of Wilson Mizner, mainly because many of his business practices were either disreputable or illegal.  Mizner tried his hand at nearly everything to make money — including writing, gambling, speculating on Florida real estate, and marrying one of the richest women in America.  It’s strange that Mizner’s underside look at life both gave him his scathing wit and keeps him largely ignored.

Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
Don’t talk about yourself; it will be done when you leave.
If you steal from one person, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.
Life’s a tough proposition, and the 1st hundred years are the hardest.
A critic is a person who surprises the artist by informing him what he meant.
A fellow who is always declaring he’s no fool usually has his suspicions.
The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn’t been asleep.
He’d steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke.

W.C. Fields (1879 – 1946)
On screen, William Claude Dukenfield portrayed a somewhat obnoxious drunk whose mean-spirited attitude generally got him into trouble.  In real life, he was exactly the same.  It’s been said that the only difference between W.C. Fields on screen and off was that off camera he drank less.  Yet he was very popular, both with his fans and his friends, because he was funny and had an acid wit that he plied, not like a rapier but a broadsword.

Start every day with a smile and get it over with.
A blonde drove me to drink, and my one regret is that I never thanked her.
If a thing’s worth having, it’s worth cheating for.
If, at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.  Then quit.  There’s no use being a damn fool about it.
Mae West is a plumber’s idea of Cleopatra.
Anyone who hates dogs and children can’t be all bad.

Samuel Goldwyn (1882 – 1974)
In the Golden Age of Hollywood’s powerful studio moguls, Samuel Goldwyn was one of the most powerful.  He ruled MGM with an iron hand and produced such film classics as Wuthering Heights and Guys and Dolls.  Today, however, Goldwyn is most remembered for his ability to recognize what ordinary people wanted to see at the movies — that and his absolute butchery of the English language that resulted in such famous “Goldwynisms” as these:

Anyone who goes to see a psychiatrist should have his head examined.
Include me out.
A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
All this criticism – it’s like ducks off my back.
Directors are always biting the hand that lays the golden egg.
So, how did you love the picture?
I am willing to admit I’m not always right, but I’m never wrong.
I don’t want yes-men.  I want you to disagree with me–even if it costs you your job.
The most important thing in acting is sincerity.  Once you’ve learned to fake that, you’re in.

Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
In Britain, where eccentricity is considered normal, Oscar Wilde was considered eccentric.  His outrageous dress and behavior made him one of the most flamboyant figures of the Victorian Era, and his success as an author made him a public one, as well.  Unfortunately, a conviction on morals charges cut his career short.  Although much of his writing is ignored today, his gigantic, entertaining wit has made him immortal.

I am not young enough to know everything.
Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.
Men always want to be a woman’s first love; women like to be a man’s last romance.
A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
Ambition is the last refuge of a failure.
Duty is what one expects from others.
I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.

Mae West (1892 – 1980)
It has been said that Mae West out-Gaga-ed Lady Gaga fifty years before that child was even born.  In the days of movie censorship, West’s on-screen persona of a sexually avaricious female, bubbling over with double entendres, frequently got her into trouble.  She was sexy when it was still against the law and was once arrested for it.  Even though West was the original “blonde,” off screen she was intelligent and witty and wrote much of her own material.  Here are some of her wittier moments, both on and off screen.

He who hesitates is a damned fool.
It’s better to be looked over than overlooked.
To err is human — but it feels divine.
Whenever I’m caught between two evils, I take the one I’ve never tried before.
He’s the kind of man who picks his friends — to pieces.
Are you happy to see me or is that a gun in your pocket?
It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don’t break any.
It’s not the men in my life but the life in my men that counts.

Yogi Berra (1925 – )
Lawrence (Yogi) Berra was part of the mighty New York Yankees team that dominated baseball in the early 50s.  He was named Most Valuable Player in the American League 3 times.  He hit 358 home runs (long before steroids) and anchored the Yankees behind the plate.  Yet Yogi Berra will be remembered for something more than his athletic accomplishments — his amazing use of the English language.  Yogi Berri could certainly turn a phrase.

It’s not over ’til it’s over.
If the people don’t want to come out to the park, nobody’s gonna stop them.
I want to thank all the people who made this night necessary.
Better make it four pieces.  I don’t think I can eat eight. (on being asked how he wanted his pizza cut)
No wonder nobody comes here — it’s too crowded
You can observe a lot just by watching.

Yeah, Yogi!  You sure can!