I’m absolutely fascinated by how ideas move around the web. I’ve been basically news-free for nearly three weeks now and I have to say that I’m feeling much better now, thank you. See, there’s a noticeably weird phenomenon that happens when The Girlfriend and I go on vacation: stuff happens. And I’m not talking about little stuff either, but big, Earth-shaking stuff — like the time we took a long weekend to go to a B & B in the Shenandoah Valley and some idiot bombed the Olympics — either that, or some one dies. This vacation around, we got a little bit of both.
First off, let’s talk about Deep Throat for a second. Am I the only one who finds it amusing that such an important figure in American journalism was given a pseudonym from a ground-breaking porn film which, in turn, took its name from a particular way to perform a particular sexual act? And in the case of Woodward and Bernstein’s career-making figure, who got the blow-job, them or the American people? Based on the way the mainstream media have been treating the so-called Downing Street memo, I have to say that if it’s the American people on the receiving end it’s got way too much teeth in it for comfort.
According to a story in the Style section — yes, the same part of the paper that obsesses over Michael Jackson’s courtroom wardrobe and Paris Hilton’s latest puppy accessory — in Tuesday’s Washington Post the memo was really no big deal:
On May 2, the day after the story hit Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, the New York Times dealt with the memo in a dispatch from London on the final days of Blair’s reelection campaign, beginning in the 10th paragraph.
Asked why the paper did not follow up for weeks, Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman told the Times’s public editor, or ombudsman: “Given what has been reported about war planning in Washington, the revelations about the Downing Street meeting did not seem like a bolt from the blue.”
Gee, it might have been nice if we’d gotten a chance to decide that for ourselves back at the beginning of May when the three year-old memo first surfaced in the public sector. It might have been nice if we’d been allowed to form our own opinions…oh, wait, right, I forgot. We’re talking about the same American public that will continue to vote for and support politicians that consistently and provably lie to us yet we’ll disregard every single thing a witness says if that witness can be shown to have lied any time in his or her past.
But I digress. Things have a tendency to happen while we’re gone. Or someone dies. While we were in Las Vegas in February, Hunter S. Thompson died. This vacation we came home to find that the incomparable Anne Bancroft had left the land of the living. I still remember seeing her on stage at the Kennedy Center during a field trip in high school. It was that trip that made me understand the beauty and magic of live theater. Remember her for more than Mrs. Robinson. Remember her for the humanity of 84 Charing Cross Road; remember her for the insanity of Silent Movie and To Be or Not To Be.
These are some of the things that happened, and are some of the memes that have been moving around the blogsphere while I’ve been news-free. There are a couple of others I want to consider here more in depth, including bloggers promoting themselves and the people they read, and a little place called hope.
Until then, I think I’m gonna go watch a movie.