Buy a newspaper

There was a depressing, if not surprising, report today that newspaper circulation continued to drop like a rock, with major daily papers, on average, experiencing a more than 10% decrease in the past year. The San Francisco Chronicle led the way with a 25.8% decline, but there were no real bright spots. In the few cases where there were small gains (Seattle and Denver) they came as a result of one paper folding in a formerly two-paper market, with the surviving paper picking up some of the dead paper’s subs – a net loss of readers. This is bad for consumers and bad for America.

It’s bad for consumers for two big reasons. Clearly, getting news and information online or on a cell phone is irresistibly efficient for some people. You just tell Google or Yahoo the subjects that interest you and whenever there is a mention of those topics you will receive an email with a daily abstract on your selected topics. It requires no maintenance; it’s free, fast and reliable.

But does that make you well informed? Hardly. The system is predicated on asking, in advance, for what is important. So to get the right stuff every day you need a crystal ball and if you had one of those you wouldn’t need either the Daily News or Google.

And what about the stuff you didn’t know you wanted to know? There is a surprise with every turn of the broadsheet when you read a daily paper, and that’s how you expand your own horizons; a provocative headline, an engaging photo, or a well-selected pull quote and the next thing you know you’re reading about neuroscience, viticulture or the education system in rural China. A great opening sentence got me to read Bob Herbert’s column today and it was excellent.

The second reason the demise of newspapers would be bad for consumers is that the “free” news they are getting today, in many cases, originated in a newspaper or a magazine or some other “old” media source. Therefore it was paid for by the subscribers, but once they go away, so does the “free” online version that was along for the ride. Then you’ll be left with nothing but people sitting around in their underwear blogging away for free media, and trust me, it will not be nearly as good.

More importantly, no newspapers would be very bad for America. Newspapers and magazines are the only real counterbalance we have against powerful, moneyed interests. Those BVD-wearing bloggers aren’t going to take on politicians or the drug industry. To do that takes resources that go way beyond a home computer and a blogspot account. It takes teams of reporters, editors, and researchers, and very often, lawyers, to challenge the powerful. We need newspapers and magazines.

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Thomas Jefferson

Dear Congresswoman Lowey

October 22, 2009

Hon. Nita Lowey
U.S. House of Representatives
2329 Rayburn House Office BuildingWashington, DC 20515-3218

Dear Congresswoman Lowey:

I’m writing to announce my new strategy for voting in Congressional elections. It was born of my frustration with Congress’ general inability to deal with the many serious problems facing our country.

Reviewing your web site, your constituent emails, or similar communications from either New York Senator, reveals thoughtful and rational policies for addressing these problems, and given the dominant position your party now holds in Congress I was expecting dynamic and creative action to combat the financial, educational, environmental, foreign policy and social tribulations bedeviling us.

Instead we are getting financial service industry reforms that fail to address the specific problems that got us in our current mess, health care reform that looks more like a band-aid than major surgery, the corruption of the past administration replaced with an unwillingness to remove a tax cheat from the Chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, and general disappointment for those of us who had hoped for genuine reform.

The problems we face as a nation can only be solved by a bipartisan commitment to find solutions. Instead we get a never-ending war between the political parties and weak legislative action that gives the appearance of problem-solving without actually doing anything.

While you are almost certainly not the problem Congresswoman, from here on I am holding you (and Senators Schumer and Gillibrand) responsible for the actions of the entire Congress. By this I mean that unless there is real progress by next November I shall vote for your opponent regardless of your particular actions, or how closely your positions match my own.

Sincerely,
d’blank

Fear & Loathing in Retirement

Work is many things, most of them good. Work offers social interaction, a sense of purpose, intellectual stimulation, health care and a paycheck. Not many things do as much for us. But work is also a form of tyranny. It imposes restraints on our time and our range of self-expression. It imposes deadlines and de facto curfews. It imposes dress codes, modes of behavior and adherence to countless rules of its particular culture that are unwritten and unevenly applied to members of its tribe.

I’ve been retired for two weeks now and it’s all good, but it’s going to take more than a few weeks to adjust to my freedom from the tyranny of 35 years in the harness. When you throw in commuting, I just got an extra 50-60 hours a week given to me and I haven’t quite figured out how to use them yet. There’s a little voice in my head that speaks up 3-4 times a day telling me I’m not making enough progress on my list of things that need to be done, and it takes a few seconds to remind the voice that there’s plenty of time, and that I’m the one setting the timetable now.

For now I’m happy just completing my farewell tour of lunches, dinners, golf and cocktails with assorted pals and business associates who mostly seem happy to pick up the check. I don’t know why golf on Tuesday is so much better than golf on Saturday, but it is. Cocktails remain a joy on all days ending in “y.”

What’s next? Beats me. I feel like I’m still finishing a really long book. It’s about a 1200 page work of non-fiction; alternatively fascinating and tedious, with about 50 pages to go. If it was about someone’s life other than my own I might be tempted to set it aside now and find something more fun to read. But I need to finish it, which will probably take another couple of months. I’m enjoying the journey. Mrs. d’blank and I attended the Metropolitan Opera the other night and enjoyed Il Barbiere di Siviglia (above). Who knew it was a comedy? There’s a lot of New York City I never had time to explore, so boredom is not on the horizon.

I only have one rule at the moment: do an absolute minimum of things I don’t want to do, and fill my days with things that matter to me, while I’m deciding what book to read next.

Hate crimes

America is the only country on earth that could invent a concept like “hate crime” and I hate this invention of the politically correct. Congress, which of course has nothing better to do, just extended the crimes covered to those committed against gay people. Racially motivated crimes and crimes against Freemasons were already covered. I have nothing against gays, other races or Freemasons, but I hate the law because:

First, by increasing the penalties for hate crimes, it diminishes the seriousness of a plain old crime of similar nature. If someone beats you to death just to steal your wallet are you any less dead than if you were beaten to death because of your race, and does your murderer deserve less punishment?

Second, it requires the prosecutors and the jury to be mind-readers. We’re already executing people for murders that had eye-witnesses who turned out to be wrong; isn’t this putting an awful lot of pressure on an already stressed legal system?

Third, it perpetuates and encourages the whole “victim culture” in America. I’m not going to go into this any further because it tends to make anyone who feels this way sound like Glenn Beck. I don’t want to sound like Glenn Beck, but I don’t like this crap either.

Finally, it is a classic political cop-out. The kind our Congress performs so well. Instead of doing something constructive like giving gays full rights under the Constitution, as many people feel they should, they enact this essentially meaningless statute so they can beat their chests and claim to be both pro-rights and anti-crime, while accomplishing nothing.

Retirement. Well, I just completed my first week of retirement, and I plan to write about it and get back on some regular publishing schedule soon. However, if next week is anything like last week I may have to spend 45 days at Hazeden first. I’ll be back to you soon. In the meantime – talk amongst yourselves.

David Letterman is a pig

If you ran a business and used your HR director as a pimp to procure women, who would serve as both your employees and concubines, you’d most likely end up in court and probably on the front page of the local paper, held up as an example of how the rich and powerful exploit their positions.

This is exactly what Letterman has done, but it’s only the foundation of his complete pigishness.

Not only did he show no shame or remorse, he used the story of his serial exploitations of his staff as fodder for an on-air, smarmy, wise-ass comedy bit that was cleverly constructed so as to reveal his behavior late within the story of the alleged blackmail plot against him. He had his audience laughing and applauding in sympathy before they knew the real story. He made the average politician turned adulterer look good by comparison.

And let’s add stupendous hypocrite to the list of Letterman descriptors. Who told more Elliot Spitzer jokes than Dave? At least the Governor hired a professional who could have walked away from her gig with him at any time, without fear of losing her job or being blackballed from her chosen industry.

Does anyone still find Dave’s jokes about Sarah Palin’s daughter funny? Maybe he was planning to offer her an internship as a peace offering.

Even Don Imus called him “a mean-spirited creep.” Letterman is just another rich prick who uses his power to exploit those he can.