Thursday, January 4, 2001
12:17 a.m. I've been
uncovering and cleaning things out and in the process I
found a bunch of old newspaper images like this one that I'd
scanned into the computer for one of our books. You can
never have enough drawings of rigid men in suits, I say.
Particularly now.
I have a good-sized box of old newspapers, brittle as
stale potato chips. I have to go through them very carefully
each time because each time a little more flakes away along
the careless creases of yesterday and yellowed bits flutter
into the air like mealy moths.
Yellowed journalism. Those great stories from the war to
end all wars, which it most definitely didn't. I was
listening to an older broadcast on the radio yesterday about
the state of journalism in 1991 and the sorry PR campaign
that passed for news in the Gulf War.
It seems that the days of intrepid reporters following
the action and taking candid shots of soldiers and civilians
-- wounded and wounding -- is over. Both Bush presidents
favor the "press pool" approach. Only the right guys (and
gals, of course!) with the right credentials and the right
attitude will be allowed to write the story for the rest of
us.
You won't have to worry about any more of those
disturbing photos of little girls running naked from burning
villages toward the camera. Remember the vivid images from
the Gulf War? Those pretty fireworks displays of tracer
bullets and sensible, surgical rockets? That's all we'll
ever need to know. That's all we're ever going to know.
We're in good hands now. All the older gentlemen are
moving back into power positions and dignity and honor are
going to be restored to the White House. The men are in
charge and things will now be done by the book.
I, for one, am going to stay calm. I've begun to eat up
my old Y2K supplies of Dinty Moore, just to show how
confident I am. We've nothing to worry about now that the
people who know how to govern have wrested the controls.
Yes, I'm slipping into bitterness again. Must watch
that.
The one thing I do wonder about is -- this internet
thing. How are they going to control it? (And control it
they must ... else people will start disseminatin' all sort
of folldela.) It's probably going to be a heck of a
hydra-headed thing to hack, what with new pipelines and
trunks and all that dark fiber springing up everywhere you
turn, but one way or the other, I'm sure the new
administration is looking into it.
Anyway -- it's late, I'm tired, and I'm going to call it
a day. I might as well, since it's been a day by any
measurement known to man: 24 hours, a nice dose of sun in
the middle, cotton clouds rouged with sunset, that twilight,
the works.
Some things never change.
|