Freedom Riders

Two recent news stories have got me thinking about big government and the inevitable degrading of our freedoms.

The TSA Gate Rape Drama: Your choice -- either be imaged nude with potentially harmful radiation or submit to a stranger groping your private areas. And, once selected for extra screening, you can't even walk away and miss your flight, unless you want to face the additional burden of an $11,000 fine! Sure, it is nice to have "safe" skies, but I don't think the TSA's approach will achieve anything but increased humiliation and anger.

The Artisan Cheesemaker VS the FDA: A small artisan cheesemaker (Kelli Estrella in Washington State) was ordered to shutdown her operations after she refused a complete product recall mandated by the FDA when it found some listeria bacteria in a subset of her cheeses (fyi, no one has become sick from her cheese). The article I read in the New York Times has a quote by another artisan cheesemaker: "The F.D.A. comes from an industrial, zero-defect, highly processed, repeatable perspective, and she comes from a more ancient time of creating with what she gets".

In both these cases, the government is taking a heavy-handed approach to ensuring the safety of its citizens. Yet, to achieve that safety, we lose freedoms, we lose our humanity. Going out in public is inherently dangerous. Terrorists can strike anytime and anywhere, not just in the skies. It isn't hard to imagine these sorts of security measures being extended to any public place where people gather ... concerts, sporting events, schools, etc. And eating food is always inherently risky, being that we are placing foreign substances inside our bodies.

How much are we willing to give up in the name of safety? For me, the cheese story really hit home. I love good cheese. It is living, edible, sensory art. I say: Fight for your right to remain free, to live life simply, without the fear that big government is monitoring and controlling everything. It is all a question of balance.

NotNews Dribble

I remember when the first Gulf War started in 1991. CNN had amazing and continuous coverage. This was really the defining moment for CNN and changed the way major news events are reported and legitimized the concept of a 24/7 news-only channel. Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett covered the war live from a hotel room and they kept going via audio even after the telephones went dead, which effectively shut down the other networks and gave CNN exclusive coverage. It was the first big US war in a long time and it was live and it was riveting to watch (even though I HATE war, but that is another story...).

That was cool and all, but flash forward to today. The news shows on the cable channels are mostly uninteresting and repetitive dribble. They go on and on and on about nothing, speculating about what someone (the president, whomever) is going to say five minutes before he says it. They speculate about what someone important might speculate about. They strive to create fear and urgency and a sense that you need to stay tuned in. I think the real problem is a general lack of news that is new (war has become boring to most people and there aren't any gripping modern stories that justify continuous coverage). Combine that with nearly 24 hour coverage on competing networks and you get a lot of crap.

My (least) favorite thing in recent times is that nearly everything they report is listed as a "breaking story" or "this just in" or some such. Sort of reminds me of the "boy who cried wolf" story. After a while, it loses all meaning and any sense of urgency.

And who came up with the wonderful idea of teaser spots. Where they have something that might actually interest viewers, like a look at the new First Dog. They show about 10 seconds of an upcoming interview, say "stay tuned for that and other stories next" and cut to commercial. When they come back from commercial, they put on other rubbish and then tease you again with another mini-segment. Finally, at 3 minutes till the end of the show they run the segment, which by now is boring because you've seen most of it in the teasers (just like when you go to a movie but you've seen all the best parts in the previews).

The talking heads of today's TV news are so full of themselves and they simply aren't very good, spending more time on their looks than their delivery skills. Yech. Makes me miss the good old days of Walter Cronkite. I read something about him recently where he trained himself to deliver the news at precisely 124 words a minute so he could be clearly understood. And Barbara Walters was kind of cool. Even Katie Couric had her moments, before she morphed into something I can't look at anymore.

As you might guess, I don't much like TV news. I don't like newspapers either (too messy and too many ads). I like my news on the Internet, where I can scan and skim and surf from one story to another in microseconds. And, when something is really interesting or well written, I can dive in the deep waters and go off on learning tangents, clicking from hyperlink to hyperlink, fact-checking on the spot, hearing from as many different sources as I desire. It is news when I want it to be and doesn't bother me when I feel like tuning it out. And it isn't so flashy and annoying. And, if something interesting actually was on TV, I can quickly see the specific segment on Youtube, when I want, without extraneous noise. Nice.

Oh, since I dissed newspapers above, I should note that I subscribe to the Kindle edition of the New York Times and thoroughly enjoy reading the paper that way. No dead trees and no piles of clutter. I wake up in the morning, reach for my Kindle and read the morning's paper, which was wirelessly delivered sometime in the night. Yeah, there is no nostalgia-generating feelings of putting on slippers and walking outside to retrieve the paper and hoping the plastic bag over it kept it dry from the pouring rain and then stepping inside and grabbing a cup of coffee and starting to read the paper, occasionally turning to a housemate to see if they are done with the next section so you can read it. To be honest, I can find better ways to experience nostalgic yearnings...