Robert A. Mills, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Robert A. Mills
MILQUETOAST HEADLINES 6/26/2010 4:28:19 AM
General Stanley McChrystal has what he wanted: Out. When you have 4-stars you can insult the Commander-in-Chief in a third-rate magazine article and wind up with a stupendous lifetime pension, family health care, guest appearances, speeches and a book deal worth zillions (maybe even a movie deal; I hear Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford are sniffing around.) And the best prize of all—no further responsibility for a lose-lose situation in the Middle East. A retired general working as an occasional analyst on TV can make an additional quarter-mill. As Lt. Col. Paul Yingling wrote last year in Armed Forces Journal “a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”
Great country, America. From the bad dream of Vietnam to the nightmare of Iraq/Afghanistan in less than fifty years. You’d think the Fourth Estate would be having a field day.
It may be. I was watching Jon Stewart on TV’s DAILY SHOW the other night when he said, in his usual comic manner referring to a newspaper headline in the New York Times, “and they wonder why print is dead!”
The article in question had to do with some remarkable innuendo about certain political goings-on, and the headline was a bland and vapid synopsis that would not prod the most rabid anti-conservative to inquire further. I wish I could accurately recall the words of callow appeasement, but I cannot. I was too busy mentally reconstructing the milquetoast headline above an article I had read in the same publication a day or two earlier.
I can’t remember that actual banner, either, written also by the NYT, but the first sentences of the story stated, “Republicans were for President Barack Obama's requirement that Americans get health insurance [long] before they were against it. The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that's been around nearly four decades [actually Nixon promoted it in his State of the Union address on January 22, 1971 saying: ‘As a fourth great goal, I will offer a far-reaching set of proposals for improving America's health care and making it available more fairly to more people. I will propose a program to insure that no American family will be prevented from obtaining basic medical care by inability to pay. I will propose a major increase in and redirection of aid to medical schools, to greatly increase the number of doctors and other health personnel. Incentives to improve the delivery of health services . . . and to slow the alarming rise in the costs of medical care.’] It was once trumpeted [by the GOP] as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton's failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach [or Obama-Reform or some other derisive designation.]”
The headline should have been like GOP SUPPORTED HEALTH CARE REFORM BEFORE OBAMA DEMANDED IT, but they came up with something dull and dreary. I wish I could remember it. I read the piece anyway because I read everything. I even sent it out with proper attribution to a number of people I felt might profit by such exposure.
The point, of course, is that Jon Stewart is right: our print media is dead. When was the last time you actually looked inside a newspaper except to clip coupons? Or browsed a magazine outside of a doctor or dentist’s office? Even the ‘funny papers’ are neither funny nor cleverly sophisticated. Tombstones are often more humorous: I’d Rather Be In Cleveland But My Wife Laid Me Here.
I canceled our subscription to the Atlanta Journal & Constitution in 1994, as soon as the “introductory freebie” expired. I still keep up with TIME, but mainly because of their fabulous premiums (they make wonderful Christmas gifts)—I also like their cheap price and easy bathroom storage (what else so effectively diverts guests’ curiosity away from the medicine cabinet?) The only part I read, though, is Joel Stein’s column, and then sometimes even it gets overlooked.
NEWSWEEK, thanks mainly to Jon Meacham’s erudite editorial acumen, will be sorely missed if Mr. Meacham is a casualty in their ownership swap; likewise, a day without George Will, now that the New York Times’ Bill Safire is gone, will be a day devoid of genuine linguistic expertise.
“Jeez,” say some of my less perspicacious contacts, “where you get your news an’ stuff from?”
I have to be honest. Most of whatever awareness I have comes from TV, radio and the Internet. For diversity and amusement, I rely on conversation and e-mails from my peers—as well as junk mail from the U.S. Postal Service (who really cares if they stop Saturday deliveries?—they can stop Monday through Friday and come by on Saturdays only, for all of me.)
When I really want the Outside on the Inside, I listen, for chuckles and belly giggles to Neal Boortz, Sean Hannity and the Fox News Network. In the absence of month old National Enquirers, I dial up Rush Limbaugh or read other people’s forwarded emails to find out what pablum Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin are spewing.
My biggest concern, in all seriousness, is the state of books per se, be they novels, biographies, texts, anthologies, blogs or even coffee table monstrosities that are rarely looked at but occasionally dusted (especially if company is coming.) The problem seems to be that no one under thirty-five reads much anymore—particularly novels, biographies, texts, anthologies, blogs or even coffee table monstrosities. Short stories, sadly, are an endangered species, as evidenced by the paucity of magazines employing fiction editors and sections once devoted to miniscule literature. This lost art is a disappearing chunk of our national literary treasury.
As most astute agents and publishers will attest, the best writing today comes in “over the transom” and is often buried in the “slush pile” of hopeful manuscripts that clutter up their doorways. Publishing is first and foremost a business; its secondary role, as a commodity, is to showcase new and extraordinary talent. But what the world needs—here in the U.S. particularly—are readers. Unfortunately, this country suffers from a population that cannot read and does not care that it never learned how—as a result very few can enjoy one of the great gifts of growing up. Perhaps that is why fewer Americans have library cards than illegal aliens have driver’s licenses.
Publishers, however, do have stockholders and corporate investors to satisfy, and these, with some justification, are interested primarily in “best sellers” or whatever enhances the bottom line. Who can blame them? Pulitzer Prizes are seen only through eyes focused on dollar signs.
Serious writers write because that’s what serious writers do: we write. Acceptance and recognition are the chief rewards we seek, although it’s always nice to get paid for one’s labor; unless you are a political hack, a medical marvel, a chef with his finger on others’ taste buds, or a Dan Brown, John Grisham, James Patterson, et al, your chances of getting between the covers and producing a requisite “best seller” are only as great as your celebrity. Look at the drivel currently heading the Best Seller Lists—they are, for the most part, written by people who on their best day would have difficulty passing a 6th grade English exam (come to think of it, most 6th graders have difficulty passing 6th grade English exams.) These glossy entries are bought in quantity, given as gifts by unsuspecting people who live for the supposed notoriety attached to handing out books they think others might enjoy—and are seldom read past the Prologue.
We, as a modern consuming public, seem to have a distorted sense of priorities when it comes to book buying. We simply don’t know what to do when confronted with decisions that rely on the political and historical insights of, say, a Doris Kerns Goodwin as opposed to, say, a Glenn Beck. The popular thing, however, is to follow the money; maybe, in the final analysis, that’s the safest, if not necessarily the proper thing to do.
After all, as one of our greatest penmen once said, “Do as you please; as for me, I scribble for the gelt.”
Good point. Some have suggested I should charge as much as $40 as year for a Blog Subscription, and based on current readership I would see two grand or more a month. Or, with the economy being what it is, it’s possible I might earn a scant handful of sheckles—thanks to a few relatives feeling sorry for me, plus admirers (if any.)
No, I think I’ll continue these scribblings gratis—at least until the Webmaster tells me nobody’s out there anymore.
