I LIKE IKE
In the early House Organs, my dad used to write about things like President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address in January, 1961. It’s best known for his oft-quoted and prescient warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex.
But, no less significantly, Ike was also an early-warner about some other controversial ideas in that speech:
As we peer into society’s future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.” Full text
Eisenhower loved trout fishing near Fraser, Colorado. His refuge was the clean Rocky Mountain air which I also love and have gone back to at least ten times, in every season. He loved the outdoors and respected nature. Even 53 years ago, he was sensitive to how the ecology and balance was threatened by human disregard and growth. Those remarks about plundering resources of our grandchildren were spoken long before popular environmental awareness. The first Earth Day was in 1970, nine years after Eisenhower’s global warning.
NOW, IT’S ADBUSTERS
In the intervening decades, the spirit and leading edge of that planetary consciousness has gone from the Whole Earth Catalog (starting in 1968) to Greenpeace (1969) to today’s high-consciousness organization/publication, ADBUSTERS, which started in 1989. I think it’s probably today’s most globally-aware and original publication—print and online (but better in print). I look forward to reading every issue.
Adbusters calls itself “The Journal of the Mental Environment.” Though many of you might think the ideas and orientation about global warming and the apocalypse are alarmist and many of the pieces are ultra-lefty, the original graphics and the unusually thoughtful weaving of the shreds of seemingly unrelated parts of our world can’t be seen in any of the “mainstream media.” ADBUSTERS started in 1989, examining/attacking the consumer culture and has gotten more intense and deeper all the time. In politics and economics, (the first for a protest the 99%/1% dichotomy that Occupy stood for started in Adbusters.) The current ongoing message is that it’s entirely possible that we have developed and are continuing to ravage the planet beyond the place of no repair. Scary, but we must pay attention. Let’s hope they’re wrong!
DEATH BY HEROIN
While focusing on shortcomings of mainstream media, I must say that the early coverage of the shocking tragedy of the great Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death by heroin this week focused on the drug, its current surge in use, domestic marketing and effects, and its use as a cheap substitute for more expensive addictive painkillers. I don’t claim to be an expert on heroin or the global flow of drugs (thankfully), but I was immediately struck by three factoids that almost never seem to get emphasized in our media:
1) the United Nations reports that over 90% of the non-pharmaceutical-grade opiates originate in Afghanistan;
2) Iran has by far the highest rate of opium and heroin seizure of any country in the world; and
3) In the decade+ that the U.S. military has been involved directly in Afghanistan, poppy cultivation there has just about doubled and Afghanistan still grows and supplies more than half the world’s opiates, a huge amount of which eventually reach and are consumed in the USA.
What’s all that mean? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s not what we generally hear or read or is focused on in most of the media we are exposed to on a daily basis.
“THAT’S A LIE!”
When our daughter Anna was about four, someone at least 40 years her senior was talking at the dinner table to the family, telling a story of something that had happened that day. Immediately little Anna blurted out, practically screaming, “That’s a lie!” She went on to explain her version of the story of what had happened. We can never know whose version was more accurate, but “That’s a lie” has been a family expression for 20-something years since.
It got me thinking that no mechanism exists for that kind of process as it relates to TV. We’re getting closer with blogs, simultaneous tweets and comments on streaming video, but, there’s no spontaneous BLURT track available to most of us. Not being able to blurt forces us to talk back to our TV’s. I must admit, I do it all the time—especially at FOX News, umpires and refs.
Maybe someday it will be formalized as ELECTRO-BLURT-THERAPY.
FOODIES, BAH HAMBURGER!
I have never gone on a diet. I can’t stand the fads that keep selling books and capture huge audiences online and on tv (or how people are constantly blah-blahing about their current eating thing). Now, it’s kale-heads, vegans, and whatever gluten-free is spozed to do for us. My grandfather lived to be 101. He ate two eggs every morning with bacon and buttered rye toast and avoided spices for about 75 years.
Who knows the answers? Mark Twain, for one:
Be careful about reading health books.
You may die of a misprint.
— Mark Twain
IT’S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL
Here’s something I was really surprised to find out last month. Look at the generally-accepted Mercator projection of the world. It’s totally familiar…we’ve seen it all our lives. In fact, Gerardus Mercator created it in 1569! It was designed to maximize Europe (and later to put the USA at the center) and distort its size/importance. For instance, Greenland has always looked bigger than Africa or South America. In fact, dozens of countries would actually fit inside Africa. Check out the link. Maybe you knew that…I didn’t. Amazing, huh?
SELFIES AREN’T TOTALLY NEW
OK, back to something I know a little bit about: TV and screens. Something I’ve discovered after working and playing with screens for more than 200,000 hours in my life is that most people really like seeing themselves on tv or computer screens. Selfies are the latest testament to that. Here’s the essence of it from another short excerpt from Media Burn, my book that’s still a work in progress.
BOOZE ON THE BOX
As Valentine’s Day approaches, it reminds me that just about every holiday has become a candy and alcohol fest. Don’t get me wrong…I love dark chocolate and eat a bit almost every day. And I have my share of drinks, but my problem is that we are blasted with ads, propaganda, and expectations for booze and sugar. I resent the imposition, especially liquor ads on tv that are designed to appeal to young people.
Actually, I think the alcohol and bingeing problem is a horrible part of our culture now. It’s almost a given with a huge number of people 18-24 that they’ll get hammered just about every weekend. TV ads for rum, whiskey, vodka, tequila and billions of dollars for beer spots are major contributors to the alcohol culture—they’re at least decadent , maybe prosecutable.
At least we don’t see any spots for cigarettes any more (except on mediaburn.org) though some of them were the most fun of anything on tv.
Have I become an old fogey? Am I a reactionary? Have I become intolerant…the very thing we in our 60’s hated most about adults when we were in our 20’s. Tough questions, but some stuff is just plain wrong for our society and survival. I really believe that commercials for cigarettes and booze definitely are over that line. I don’t have an easy formula for who should regulate it and how can they control it but, regulation can work for some matters…including, I’d say for regulating banks that have crossed the line and whose practices have forced all of us to pay for their losses. But, that’s all for another House Organ.
Thanks for tolerating my long-windedness this time.
…AND THANKS TO READERS LIKE YOU…
I‘m really am grateful to the literally dozens of you who responded so positively to the first revisited Weinberg House Organ. It has kept me on target to do a new one every month or so. Only one guy wrote back an email telling me what I was full of…but he found me out years ago and just can’t give it up. I do love hearing from you whatever your reactions.
Again, I close with deep intellectual poetry from Ogden Nash:
Candy is dandy;
But liquor is quicker.
Enjoy the rest of February… we’re on the upswing, at least in Chicago: on average, it’s warmer by a couple degrees with less precipitation, more hours of sunshine and fewer snow days than December or January…but it still can be pretty horrible.
We all do the best we can.
PY-O-MY 
Yes, Ernie Kovacs. The first video artist.