General posts

Intro.
First section: A Routine Science Expedition.
Second section: Holodeck Baseball.

   Captain Harrison moved briskly from the turbo-lift to his captain's chair, ousting Lt. Langley; he was followed in by Lt. Mann, Ensigns Ciam and Siler, Jennifer--who sat to the Captain's left--while Mr. B brought up the rear and sat in the recently-installed commander's chair.
   "Position," Harrison demanded.
   "Coordinates R-714 at A-755," Ensign Siler said.
   "Speed?"
   "Impulse."
   "All stop! Damage?"
   "Minor buckling of the ship's outer hull," Lt. Mann said. "Not life-threatening."
   "What caused it?"
   "There are metallic scrapings at the point of impact. The mixture of tartanium, lisolyte, and benzorm would seem to indicate..."
   Captain Harrison nodded. "Romulans!"
   "Shields up!" Mr. B declared.
   "Maintain yellow alert status," Captain Harrison ordered. "We don't know what's out there yet. Counselor?"
   Jennifer leaned forward. "I sense...a kind of muted fear. But whether this is coming from out there or from inside the ship I can't tell."
   "Captain," Lt. Mann said. "Given our speed, and the minor buckle at the point of impact, what we ran into--or what ran into us--couldn't have been very large."
   "A conjecture," Mr. B stated. "Could the Romulans be sending cloaked space debris towards our side of the neutral zone?"
   "For what purpose? I doubt the Romulans would go to so much trouble--and risk breaking the Treaty of Algeron--in order to seem...pesky."
   "At warp speed, cloaked space debris could destroy a ship rather effectively," Lt. Mann reminded the Captain.
   "True. But how would they monitor it? How could they make sure that the debris didn't drift back towards Romulus and Remus?" The Captain shook his head. "No, that doesn't smell right. The Romulans never nickel-and-dime anything." He cupped his hand over his mouth and lifted his face in thought. After weighing the alternatives, he executed a smart half-turn and settled back into his chair.
   "Ensign. Turn the Brock around and retrace our steps. Lieutenant?" He turned towards Don Mann. "I want you to send out tachyon emissions. Let's see if we can uncloak whatever might be cloaked out there. On my mark."
   Just as his pointed finger was raised in the air, the ship's inter-communication system beeped, and the voice of Doctor Failor filled the bridge. "Captain?"
   "What is it, Doctor?"
   "I just thought you'd like to know that G. Nickulls is doing fine. He's fully cognizant--or at least as cognizant as a Nausicaan can be." A light laugh floated through the intercom system. "Hey! My, how rude! I should add that Mr. Nickulls is also restrained and guarded, so further shenanigans from him will be unlikely. By the way, I think that was a wonderful idea of yours to--"
   "Doctor," Captain Harrison interrupted. "We're in a bit of a situation right now."
   "You are? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I just thought that since your ball game was over, now would be the best time to fill you in on Mr. Nickulls' condition. But if you're busy..."
   "We're busy."
   The Captain inhaled with consternation; his forehead vein became pronounced again.  
   "Ensign? Don?" Harrison's arm came down like he was pitching lackadaisically. "Engage." The Captain then turned toward his first officer. "Isn't the doctor aware of inter-ship protocol during a yellow alert?"
   "I'll remind him, Captain," Mr. B stated, and seemed to be furiously chewing on his moustache at the thought of the future encounter.
   Ten minutes elapsed before the double tactic of backtracking and emitting tachyon rays struck paydirt.
   "Romulan scout ship revealed on the port bow, Captain!" Lt. Mann cried urgently. Confused, he added, "It appears to be drifting."
   "Flood the area, Lieutenant. I want to know as much as possible about this ship before we board her."
   An away-team was assembled of Mr. B and Security Ensign Rodgers. Together they marched into Transporter Room Two and climbed onto the platform, while Transporter Chief Kim stood ready at the controls.
   "Ensign," Mr. B said. "Activate your emergency transporter armband. Mr. Kim. I don't need to tell you what a tricky business it is transporting aboard a cloaked vessel. If there are any fluctuations in our signals, bring us back with all due haste."
   "Aye, Sir."
   Mr. B nodded. "Energize."
   The bright lights, cool temperatures, and hospital odor of Transporter Room Two slowly shimmered away, replaced by the bitter red warmth and claustrophobic tightness of the Romulan scout ship. A haze of old smoke filled the bridge. Rodgers' face grimaced.
   "This place smells of Romulans."
   Mr. B tapped once on his communicator.
   "Captain? The ship apparently holds only two Romulans. Both are slumped over their chairs. One appears to be pressing against something on the control panel. I can't make out what it is..."
   Rodgers leaned over. "It's the cloaking device."
   "You read Romulan?"
   "There's an old Klingon saying: Know your friends well but your enemies better. Romulan--unlike English--is a required language in Klingon schools."
   "Captain," Mr. B continued, "it would appear that one of the Romulans is maintaining the ship's cloak even though..."  Mr. B felt for a pulse. "...even though he is dead. We will now attempt to decloak the vessel."
   "Careful, Number One," the Captain cautioned. "They may have protocols to prevent such an undertaking."
   "Agreed."
   Carefully Mr. B lifted the Romulan's hand from the panel, noting its lightness and shriveled quality, and then lifted the Romulan himself out of the way. Ensign Rodgers sat in the Romulan's place and surveyed the navigational equipment before punching in what he assumed were the appropriate commands.
   From the viewscreen aboard the Brock, the Romulan scout ship wavered into visibility.
   "My God!" Ensign Ciam cried.
   Half of the ship was gone; what remained was pockmarked with burns and laser blasts.
   "Mr. B!" shouted Harrison, rising from the Captain's chair. "Do not instigate a search of the Romulan vessel.  Repeat: do not search the Romulan vessel. You might just walk through a door into space."
   "Affirmative, Captain." To Ensign Rodgers, he ordered, "Look for the ship's logs. Let's see if we can't find out what happened here." He put his hands under the second Romulans arms. "I'll get this--"
   At that instant, the Romulan he was holding reared up, gasping for breath.
   "Yaaah!" Mr. B fell back against the other Romulan and slapped at his communicator. "Captain! One of the Romulans is still alive!"
   "Place your communicator on him, Number One!" Captain Harrison shouted. He stood up and tugged on his tunic.  "Captain Harrison to Doctor Failor! You're about to receive a visitor. We'll beam him directly to Bed Two."
   "G. Nickulls is in Bed Two, Captain. Of course, I could--"
   "Bed Three then! Chief Kim! Lock onto Mr. B's signal and beam it directly to sickbay. Bed Three! Energize!"
   The Romulan was transported away from the Romulan scout ship. Alone, Ensign Rodgers suddenly smiled.
   "So how are you getting back?" he asked the now communicator-less first officer.
   Mr. B looked confused. "I figured I'd hitch a ride on your signal."
   "Uh uh," the Ensign teased, still working the control panel to release the computer log. "I figure this is my way toward promotion. You know: eliminate those above me."
   "Great." Mr. B tossed his hands in the air. "I somehow wound up in the mirror universe."
   "Got it!" Rodgers examined a small, shiny disc in his right hand. "It appears to be--"
   At that moment there was a sensation of intense heat and a feeling of breaking apart, before, startlingly, the two were back on the platform of Transporter Room Two; Rodgers, whose chair had not transported with him, fell onto his back. Their hair was singed and smoke wafted from their bodies but otherwise they appeared unharmed.
   Chief Kim breathed a sigh of relief. "Got them, sir."
   Captain Harrison's voice resounded around the room's bare walls. "Good work, Chief."
   "What happened?" Mr. B asked.
   "The Romulan ship just blew up," Chief Kim responded.
   Five minutes later, Mr. B, Ensign Rodgers, and the Captain rendezvoused in sickbay; they were met by a dour Doctor Failor and a worried-looking Simon Tarses.
   "There was just...too much internal bleeding," the doctor said. "I know so little about Romulan physiology. Mr. Tarses here tried to help, but..."
   "Did he say anything before he died?" the Captain wondered.
   Doctor Failor looked over at his assistant. "He did say one thing..."
   "What was it, Mr. Tarses?" the Captain asked.
   Tarses, seemingly frightened, swallowed once. "He said Mj'cra souft."
   "Molok!" Ensign Rodgers cried.
   The Captain looked from crewmember to crewmember. "What does it mean?"
   "It means..." Simon Tarses began, before his voice caught as if on an exposed nail, and he shook his head wearily.
   Ensign Rodgers finished for him. "It means 'The Borg'!"

Intro here. First section here.

In order to become better acquainted with his crew — and in order for the reader to be introduced to them  — Capt. Harrison institutes a baseball game on the holodeck, and the following results. Ensign Siler, a Vulcan, and Ensign Ciam, a Ridlian — a species I believe I made up — are the captains of the two squads. As a side-note: The HOLODECK? No wonder the "Star Trek" universe required a reboot. 

   The venue chosen was Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York, circa 1990. It had taken the two ensigns a week to sign up the necessary amount of teammates, but there was enough enthusiasm that the grandstands were filled not only with holographic images but real-life crewmembers who, while declining to play, still wished to watch. The two teams, dressed as the 1939 Kansas City Monarchs (Siler's) and the 2024 London Kings (Ciam's), shaped up like this:

   Although the majority of the participants were humans from earth, it was still one of the most diverse group of ballplayers ever assembled. Jennifer, for example, was Betazoid, and a protest was lodged when she led off the first with a single; Ensign Ciam claimed she was using her telepathic powers to figure out the pitch before it was thrown. She claimed innocence, yelling from first that Mr. B “threw shit.” Simon Tarses, a doctor's assistant with Romulan blood in him, sacrificed Jennifer over to second and into scoring position.
   "Logical move!" Ensign Ciam yelled good-naturedly from second base.
   "I am not...Vulcan," Simon Tarses answered confusedly, trotting toward the dugout.
   "Yeah, yeah," Jeff Rodgers shouted from third. "We know all about you, ya Romulan bastard!" Rodgers, while human, had grown up on Qo'noS and had adopted many of the more confrontational Klingon ways. Simon Tarses' head visibly shrank into his shoulders at the insult.
   "Ignore him," Mr. Siler comforted the young Romulan in the dugout. "His insults show no cool."
   The Monarch dugout had the last laugh when a sharp grounder from Jason Lamb bounced off Rodger's glove and into left field. Sensing the error, the Betazoid Jennifer scored from second. Don Mann was then called out on strikes (Umpire Harrison, in keeping with the Japanese tradition, widened the strike zone for the stocky slugger), but the Bolian Bill Abelsaan kept the rally going with a sharply-turned double that scored Lamb. Unfortunately, the unfortunately-named Jim Bourg, a human from earth, quickly went to an 0-2 count ("Resistance is futile!" Rodgers shouted down from third) before popping out to second base, ending the half-inning.
   The first batter for the Kings was Allman Karen, a Bajoran lesbian, who promptly grounded out to short.
   "Don't hit it there!" Rodgers cried from the dugout.  "Mann's got the area covered like stink on a Romulan!"  
   Young Kim, a human of Korean extraction, strode to the plate; he strode back three pitches later.
   "She's got a wicked low fastball," he said, shaking his head in the dugout and eyeing Biernat on the mound.
   The inning was kept alive by the foul-mouthed Rodgers, who looped a single to center; but G. Nickulls, the first Nausicaan to serve aboard a Star Fleet vessel, struck out looking, and lived up to the short-fused reputation of his species by trying to brain the umpire with his bat.
   "Captain!" Jennifer cried from second base.
   Everyone froze as the tall, bearded creature raised the bat high in the air; everyone, that is, except Captain Harrison, who covered the distance to the Nausicaan with one quick step, spun to his left, and swiped the bat from the big man's hand.
   "Clubbing your commanding officer is a mutinous offense, Ensign," Captain Harrison mentioned matter-of-factly, tossing the bat towards the on-deck circle, "even during a pick-up baseball game."
   "Hurgh?" Nickulls' eyes narrowed, and his rage grew. 
   "Watch out, Captain!" Jennifer cried.  "He's going to--"
   The Nausicaan charged: all 340 pounds of him at the 110-pound Captain. At the last instant, the Captain executed a deft side-step to his left, and then, gently, swept his right arm over the back of the Nausicaan as it roared past. The Nausicaan's steps slowed, and, without looking around, it suddenly, heavily, crumpled to the ground.
   "What did you do to him?" Rodgers wondered from first base.
   Gaiai, a green-skinned Orion animal woman (and the catcher at the time), lifted her face mask and said admiringly, "He incapacitated him."
   "Yeah," Mr. B echoed, looking around slyly, "and he knocked him out, too."
   "Aren't they the same thing?" Mr. Siler wondered, looking down at Mr. B.
   "It was a joke," Mr. B admitted. He held out his hands. "Incapacitated? Knocked him out? Hah? Hah?" Several nearby people dismissed the first officer with a wave of the hand. "Aw, come on!"
   The Captain removed his umpire's mask, and, under his breath, muttered something about the idiocy of attacking a fully-protected adversary, and what kind of training were they giving these new recruits anyway, and maybe he should have conducted a martial arts seminar rather than a baseball game. With his shirtsleeve he wiped sweat from his brow, and then tilted his head up toward what appeared to be blue sky. "Harrison to Doctor Failor."
   The only response came from the fans, who, although theoretically neutral, were in a rage over the sudden loss of the home-team clean-up slugger. In true New York tradition, they voiced their concern in an increasingly vituperative manner. Umpire Harrison's vision was questioned; his mother was insulted; his lineage was considered dubious.
   "What exactly is...vaseline?" Harrison asked his first officer.
   "A 20th century emulsifier made from water and chemicals. It was used to soften skin."
   "The ump takes it up the ass? No vaseline?"
   Mr. B turned to the holographic fans chanting this phrase. "I am confused, too. I think they are implying that you prefer same-sex activities."
   "Which would be...?"
   "Pejorative in this time period, yes."
   "Barbarity," the Captain muttered, and then, louder, and again at the sky (as if he were Job pleading with an absent God), "Captain Harrison calling Doctor Failor."
   The voice that answered was a mixture of the long, drawn-out vowels of the upper classes, and the skittishness of the frequently mistaken. "Failor here, Captain. Did you call earlier? I'm sorry if I didn't answer but I'm in the middle of a fascinating text on Lord Bumperfield and lost complete track of time. Is there a problem?"
   "We have a fallen Nausicaan on our hands."
   "Oh my. Is it G. Nickulls by any chance?"
   "Yes, Doctor."
   "Then I would suggest beaming him to sickbay right away. Unless of course you want me to come there. Are you on Holodeck One? Yes, that's right, the day of the big game. I'm sorry I couldn't attend, but I did want to get to Lord Bumperfield. I'm at that moment during the British Class Wars of 2063 when he dressed as one of his servants in order to--"
   "Doctor. The Nausicaan?"
   "Oh," Dr. Failor replied, bothered. "Beam him to me in sickbay, I suppose. Can you do that?"
   The Captain raised a sarcastic eyebrow towards Mr. B, who shook his head in commiseration. "I think I can manage, Doctor."
   "Fine. That would be the best plan of action, I think. By the way, what's the matter with him?"
   "He struck out."
   "Pardon?"
   The Captain smiled. "He was felled by a Grj'albuut."
   "That's equally incomprehensible, I'm afraid."
   "A Tellarite maneuver."
   "Well. That doesn't sound very nice. I hope the rapscallion who did this to him has been locked up in the brig, as it were."
   The Captain nodded. "He will be dealt with appropriately."
   "That's good. Well then, over and out, I suppose."
   "Over and out, Doctor."
   Harrison called over his security chief. "Put a man on Nickulls. I don't trust him with the good doctor."
   "Want me to go?" Lt. Mann asked.
   "Are you kidding?" the Captain answered with mock-surprise. "Your team needs you."
   "Not with the strike zone you're giving me," Mann muttered.
   Meanwhile several players had gathered around the fallen Nickulls.
   "So much for the great Nausicaan experiment," Jim Bourg lamented.
   "One incident between two disparate personalities does not necessarily extinguish decades of diplomacy," Mr. Siler commented.
   "Is he conscious?" Young Kim wondered, laying his hand close to the Nausicaan's back.
   "I feel he's in stasis," Jennifer answered. "Neither conscious nor unconscious."
   "That clears things up," Jason Lamb commented.
   "What about the game?"  Jeff Rodgers pounded his fist into his glove. "We're a man short. We lost our clean-up hitter! Kahless!"   
By this time, the New York crowd, angered over the loss of Nickulls, and even moreso by the delay, began tossing items at the players: scorecards shaped like airplanes, popcorn, ice cubes, hot dogs, beer. When a small battery whizzed by Jennifer's head, the Captain shouted, "Computer: freeze program!" A vein, roughly in the shape of the coastline of California, throbbed in the middle of the Captain's forehead. It was a sure sign, Mr. B knew, that he was about to blow his top.
   "Who constructed this program?"
   Ensign Siler stepped forward. "I'm afraid that would be my fault, Captain. I didn't know much about baseball during this period. I simply assumed that one of the more famous ballparks would be an appropriate site for this grudge-match."
   "That's fine, that's fine," the Captain said. "That's good. But couldn't you have programmed in, if not a more docile crowd, then at least one less inclined towards interference?"
   "This is the most docile New York crowd the computer would allow," Mr. Siler admitted.
   "Really?"
   Lt. Mann, who grew up in New York City, gazed around the stands. "About right," he said.

  ...

   The Monarchs lengthened their lead in the sixth on a 2-run homerun by Don Mann; but in the bottom of the ninth, leading 4-1, Brenda Biernat began to tire. Mary Singer led off with an opposite-field single, and when Ciam walked, the crowd, long since unfrozen, but tempered by an extra contingent of holographic police officers, went crazy.
   "Uh...can't we re-program this?" Jason Lamb called futilely from center field, as hot dog wrappers and paper airplanes rained down on the field.
   "Time!" Ensign Siler jogged in from right field; he was met at the mound by the catcher, Gaiai, and Will Abelsaan, the Bolian first baseman.
   "How's your arm?" Siler asked.
   "Fine." Biernat was big-eyed and tight-lipped.
   "Is there any chance you have three more outs in it?"
   She nodded; but in her tight-lipped worry one could sense the game slipping away.
   "I have a plan," Gaiai mentioned cheerfully. 
   "Nothing illegal, I hope," Ensign Siler said.
   She turned a flirtatious shoulder towards her manager. "It wouldn't be me if I didn't at least skirt the edges of illegality."
   Ensign Siler put a hand on her shoulder. "Just don't hurt anybody."
   The meeting was broken up and everyone made their way back to their respective positions. Gaiai, however, did not walk back to homeplate so much as sashay, her hips swinging like a bell in full motion. The public address system, to taunt Biernat for her recently-surrendered base-on-balls (her first of the game), was playing the 20th century rock 'n roll classic, "Wild Thing" by the Troggs, and the green-skinned catcher began to move her body to this beat. Ten feet from homeplate she tossed her glove at the next batter, Mr. B, who caught it, bobbled it, and then secured it tightly to his chest by dropping his bat. She smiled with a mixture of sympathy and lasciviousness as her hands slowly, languorously, traveled upward from the middle of her waist and disappeared behind her neck; her head kicked back, and, as her baseball cap flew off, a profusion of orangish-green hair spilled forth. She bent her body backward and then rolled forward again, eagerness flashing in her eyes. The crowd, suddenly quieted, followed these motions as if they were dazed ship-board passengers swaying to the motions of the sea. Her rhythm led her in an ever-shrinking, teasing circle around the batter, until she dropped to her knees, and, with her hands suggesting a whisper of a touch, slowly rose up the length of his body, past his moustache drenched in sweat, and placed her lips ticklingly close to the reddening, fleshy lobe of his ear. "You ready?" she whispered.
   Mr. B struck out on three pitches.
   Ensign Ciam, as if waking from a trance, objected from the dugout. "Hey! What's that? You can't do that!"
   Gaiai tossed the ball back to Biernat and raised her hands innocently in the air. "Captain, I'm just doing what comes naturally to me. Do you deny the Vulcans their logic? The Ridlians their laughter? So how could you deny from me what I do best?" 
   The Captain exhaled slowly. "I'm sorry," he said, "but the rules of inter-gender baseball, circa 2021, specifically state that flirting in order to gain strategic advantage is strictly prohibited."
   "But Captain," she pouted. "You're interfering with who I am. What about the Prime Directive?"
   "The Prime Directive is all well and fine," the Captain stated firmly, "but this is baseball." He fit his umpire's mask snugly over his face and pointed at his first officer. "Mr. B, you're out. Gaiai, no more sexual shenanigans. Everyone else: play ball!"
   Allman Karen, perhaps equally distracted by Gaiai's dance routine, popped out to short; but with two outs Young Kim lifted a short fly ball that fell in-between Simon Tarses and Don Mann, and with Singer and Ciam running with the pitch, both managed to score. Kim stood proudly on second, representing the tying run. The fans stomped up and down in their seats, hooting and hollering, and clapping their hands in rhythm; Jason Lamb was almost lost in a blizzard of paper.
   Another conference was held on the mound; Rodgers stared sternly from the on-deck circle, taking practice swings.
   "That Orion animal woman shit ain't gonna work on me!" he shouted.
   "Yes," Ensign Siler responded, "I hear you prefer targs."
   With Barry Busick on-deck, Mr. Siler determined it would not make sense to pitch around Rodgers, and, after asking for advice, tossed the ball into Brenda Biernat's glove. "High heat," he said.
   The first two pitches were indeed high and fast, and Rodgers grew increasingly frustrated trying to keep up. With a quick 0-2 count, Biernat wasted two pitches before coming back with another high, hard one that Rodgers managed to lay off of. Now the count was full. The crowd was on its feet.  The infielders were on their toes. Rodgers rocked back and forth in the batter's box as Biernat nodded, wound up, and delivered. Another fastball. Right down the heart of the plate. Rodgers swung and there was a loud crack and the ball soared in a high arc toward dead-center field. Jason Lamb raced back. At the warning track he leaped...and the entire stadium suddenly rocked sideways, sending fans and players alike sprawling. For a moment the stadium flickered, revealing the exo-skeleton design of the holodeck. Several virtual fans in the first row of the upper-deck bleachers fell over the railing.
   "What happened?" Ciam shouted.
   "Get our crewmembers out of the stands!" Captain Harrison instructed Lt. Mann, who corralled Saunders and Abelsaan to help him. Captain Harrison then contacted the bridge.
   "Report, Lieutenant."
   Lt. Langley's voice filled the stadium like an old-time P.A. announcer. "We appear to have run into something, Captain. Or something has run into us."
   "Explain."
   "There is damage to the forward hull as if we just collided with a large object; yet sensors do not reveal anything in our immediate vicinity."
   "I'll be right there. Go to yellow alert. Harrison out." The Captain waved his arms to gather his crew together. "It would appear that our game has been...postponed."
   "That ball was gone!" Jeff Rodgers shouted. "So we win."
   "I don't think this is the--" Captain Harrison began.
   He was silenced by Jason Lamb, who raised his glove, revealing a small white ball tucked firmly in the webbing.
   The Kansas City Monarchs cheered and patted their center fielder on the back, while, above this sound, louder even than the noise of the holographic fans fleeing for safety, Klingon curses rang through the stadium. 

I'm pretty bad at this. I often think, “I should link that,” but never get around to it. But here's a few articles/posts over the last few days from the usual suspects that are worth reading —or, in one instance, not:

• David Carr returns to form with his post-Oscar analysis, particularly this necessary reminder: “Despite all the planning and guile of production executives, directors, producers and marketing executives, movie magic is still something that occurs in the space between the audience and the screen at the front of the room.”
• Andrew Sullivan stays in form while live-blogging Pres. Obama's speech.
• I missed some of the speech — I was in French class — but heard bits of it on the radio and TV afterwards and may watch the whole thing when I get the chance. In the meantime, I love the way he finds the greater truth between two intractable extremes: “Living our values doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger.  And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.”
• I read Oliver Willis a lot during the campaign, but he's floundered a bit since, and he's got some pretty ugly ads on his site now. Can't blame him much for that — we live in tough times. But he either needs to stay out of the movie business or dig deeper as to why he feels what he feels. Particularly if he feels, as he says he feels, that “Casablanca” is overrated. To me, he's just showing his youth.
• Researching an article at work, we came across this site about William Henry Harrison, our 9th president, and the etymology of the word “booze,” which is a lot of fun.
• Leonard Cohen returns.

Last minute addition:

• Forgot Tim Arango's great piece on the killing of a newspaper editor in Oakland and how, in an age of cutbacks, a team of investigative journalists was formed to do what the police hadn't done. Someone call “The Wire” guys.

Apologies. Server problems. This is a bug not a feature and we're working on ways to correct it.

Some recent New York Times headlines:

• MCCAIN IS TRYING TO DEFINE OBAMA AS OUT OF TOUCH
• MCCAIN CAMP SAYS OBAMA PLAYS ‘RACE CARD’
• NAZIS PLAN ‘RETALIATION’; TREATMENT OF GERMAN PRISONERS BY ALLIES IS CRITICIZED

Oh, sorry. That last one I came across while researching another topic a couple of months back on the Times Web site. It’s from May 29, 1940, and it merely confirmed what I already knew: If you accuse somebody of what you yourself are guilty of, it makes it doubly difficult for them to respond. Also the accusation, regardless of its truth, becomes the story.

So it didn’t matter the way the Nazis mistreated its prisoners and citizens. It didn’t matter that McCain is the one who is playing the race (or racist) card. It didn’t matter that McCain, who’s never used a computer, and has never held a non-government job, is the one who’s out of touch. Accusation becomes story. End of story.

When will the mainstream media wise up? When will they refuse to let a political campaign’s talking points become the headline?

And after The New York Times did McCain’s bidding on its front page, day after day after day, what does McCain do? He attacks The New York Times. For its editorials. Accusing him of, you know, taking the low road and playing politics with race.

Those should have been the headlines.

UPDATE on the post below: Here's today's New York Times headline: “McCain Camp Says Obama Plays 'Race Card.'”

Live and don't learn, that's the New York Times' motto. They give major play, and huge quotes up front, to idiotic charges. Why idiotic? Obama warned that Republicans would try to scare voters by various nefarious means, including the fact that he “doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” Then the Republicans do exactly as he says, using the quote as an example. But the story is the Republicans charge. Why?

Let's face it: The Republicans have been playing the race card, and playing it well, since 1964. Apparently they plan on doing it again. Apparently the New York Times will let them.

Here’s the headline in yesterday’s New York Times: “McCain Is Trying to Define Obama as Out of Touch.” Here’s the unspoken subhed: “And we let him.”

Not that I don’t sympathize. It’s a tough gig being objective these days. The Republicans learned long ago how to use the mainstream media, always striving for objectivity, to their advantage: Pin what you want on your opponent and that becomes the talking point.

If I wrote, for example, that John McCain has no genitalia, merely a ball of fluff between his legs, and this rumor gained enough momentum, then that would become the story. Refutations, denials, headlines. “McCain: ‘I Have Genitalia’: But Refuses to Drop Pants for Media.” News cameras would focus on his crotch and news anchors, with resident experts, would analyze what we saw. “I believe there’s something there, Paula. Now whether it's actually genitalia...” The late night comedians would have a field day. Op-Ed columnists would opine that, even if the rumor were true, how does that relate to the act of governing? We’d get the European reaction, the Chinese reaction, and analysis of what this might mean for the War on Terror. Can we fight al Qaeda if our president literally has no balls? And no matter how many times the rumor was denied, and no matter from how many angles it was refuted, still, on election day, many voters would vote against him with this reasoning: Well, that McCain feller, he’s just got a ball of fluff between his legs.

So how do you fight this? How do you write about the process of the campaign without playing into one side’s strategy? How silly does it have to get before you throw up your hands and refuse to let the candidates dictate talking points?

At the least, Obama’s response to the lastest McCain attacks is exactly right: “Is that the best they got?” Hopefully, when Paris and Britney are mentioned during the rest of this campaign, most of us will simply be reminded of how trivial McCain and the Republicans want to make it all while the world burns.

That said, allow me to be enthusiastic again. Here's part of Obama's speech, as reported in the New York Times, before an estimated crowd of 200,000 in Berlin yesterday:

“Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world?” Mr. Obama asked in his speech, then added pointedly, “Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law?” The huge crowd applauded and waved American flags.

Waved American flags. Wow. It's been a while since I've seen a U.S. politician address crowds that large and enthusiastic. Have I ever seen it? In my lifetime? Here's the accompanying picture, which made the front page, too:

Last Friday I was in the middle of Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker piece on Obama’s early days in Chicago when Patricia took the issue to the hairdresser’s and left it there. So I bought another copy at the local Bartell’s. The guy behind the counter saw it and said, “Getting the souvenir issue, huh?” I smiled. What the New Yorker has to do to become a topic of conversation.

I tend to like Barry Blitt, the cover artist whose drawings often accompany Frank Rich’s column in the Sunday New York Times, but this one didn’t do it for me. It could be I have no sense of humor about Obama, or racial matters, or the politics of swiftboating in the Bush era, but, more, it made me think back to Philip Roth’s essay from the early 1960s, “Writing American Fiction,” about the difficulty of making credible — even then — an American reality that always seems to be outdoing the best efforts of any novelist, let alone satirist. I’m surprised more people haven’t brought this up. Is it a satire if you’re merely expressing in cartoon form what others are expressing verbally or via mass e-mails? Sure, what they’re expressing is a lie, but lies work. Lies are taken seriously — often by the mainstream media. It’s built into the system. If the goal of the media is to be objective, to be a kind of he said/she said forum, then the more outrageous the lie the better. It moves the markers of the debate. The swiftboating of John Kerry is a classic recent example and Michael Dobbs’ piece in the Washington Post in August 2004 is a classic recent response from the mainstream media: “But although Kerry's accusers have succeeded in raising doubts about his war record, they have failed to come up with sufficient evidence to prove him a liar.” The lie becomes the debate. That’s the danger.

Can you even satirize a Fox News correspondent calling the Obama greeting a “terrorist fist bump”? That feels like a satire on its own. Since knocking fists is the main source of congratulations in Major League Baseball, which, the last time I checked, was our national pastime, you could do a many-paneled cartoon called something like “More Terrorist Fact Findings from Fox News,” with, in separate panels, a baseball (“Terrorist Danger Orb”), a referee signaling a touchdown (“Terrorist Victory Dance”) and an apple pie (“Terrorist Goulash”). Like that, but funnier. Blitt’s cover? It can just go in those mass e-mails still being sent out with the heading: See?

Hendrik Hertzberg is generally right: Those who will be influenced by the cover wouldn’t have voted for Obama anyway. But that doesn’t mean the cover’s good satire.

Lost in the discussion is Lizza’s article, subtitled “How Chicago Shaped Obama,” which is recommended reading: a reminder that Obama is less the second coming than pure political animal. It’s also a good primer on the history of politics in both its Chicago and racial forms.

I was surprised a few weeks ago when, in his Monday media column — this one on the dirty tricks Fox News pulls on rival reporters — David Carr wrote about being called a crack addict on Bill O’Reilly’s show, then added, “which at least has the virtue of being true, if a little vintage.”

Carr? A crack addict? I didn’t know. I shrugged and moved on.

This morning, rifling through the Sunday New York Times, I glanced at the cover of the Magazine — not my favorite section lately — which displayed a series of three mug shots and the title “My Years of Living Dangerously.” I assumed the mug shots revealed the subject’s regression, the awful affect drugs had on someone, but, no, the third photo didn’t look much different than the first: Just a curly haired guy, slightly overweight. In fact, only two years separated first and third photos. So what was the point? Then I saw David Carr's byline. Whoa. I didn’t even recognize him. Which is the point.

The article, an excerpt from his upcoming memoir The Night of the Gun, is Carr’s attempt to reconcile his two selves. He writes: “Here is what I deserved: hepatitis C, federal prison time, H.I.V., a cold park bench, an early, addled death. Here is what I got: the smart, pretty wife, the three lovely children, the job that impresses. Here is what I remember about how That Guy became This Guy: not much.”

So he becomes investigative reporter of himself. He interviews the people he knew and examines the gap between their stories and his. You don’t have to be a former crack addict for this to be worthwhile — we all have our stories and most of us stick to them — but, as Carr says, addicts are particularly good at storytelling and mythmaking: “You spread versions of yourself around, giving each person the truth he or she needs — you need, actually — to keep them at a remove.”

There are many (and no) answers to how That Guy became This Guy, but I was particularly intrigued by this section:

    Eden House was a long-term therapeutic community, the kind of place that brimmed with slogans. This was the main one: “The answer to life is learning to live.”
    This is the point where the knowing author laughs along with his readers about his time among the aphorisms, how he was once so gullible and needy that he drank deeply of such weak and fruity Kool-Aid. That’s some other story. Slogans saved my life. All of them — the dumb ones, the imperatives, the shameless, witless ones.
    I lustily chanted some of those slogans and lived by others. There is nothing romantic about being a crackhead and a drunk — low-bottom addiction is its own burlesque that needs no snarky annotation. Unless a person is willing to be terminally, frantically earnest, all hope is lost.

I spent the morning in bed with Robert Graves. Since I liked I, Cladius so much I borrowed Good-Bye To All That, the autobiography he wrote in his late 20s, from my father, but the last few days were busy ones and I'd lost the thread. I wanted to pick it up again with a bout of sustained reading.

At the moment Graves is in the trenches of northern France. Volunteered. Raring to go. At school he was an iconoclast who didn't get along with the bullying sportsmen but as soon as war was declared he wanted to join the mass. Along with many others. Once they realized what it was they shifted to survival tactics, which might include a “cushie,” or flesh wound, that would take them away from the lines and maybe back home. One wonders about this desire to go to war. It's probably less patriotism than a wish to be where the action is; a wish to be involved in something greater than yourself. Once the action is revealed to be what it is, and the “something” not so great, other instincts take over.

There’s a great vignette about being stationed in Vermelles:

The old Norman church here has been very much broken. What remains of the tower is used as a forward observation post by the Artillery. I counted eight unexploded shells sticking into it. Jenkins and I went in and found the floor littered with rubbish, broken masonry, smashed chairs, ripped canvas pictures... Only a few pieces of stained glass remained fixed in the edges of the windows. I climbed up by way of the altar to the east window, and found a piece about the size of a plate. I gave it to Jenkins. “Souvenir,” I said. When he held it to the light it was St. Peter's hand with the keys of heaven. “I'm sending this home,” he said. As we went out, we met two men of the Munsters. Being Irish Catholics, they thought it sacreligious for Jenkins to be taking the glass away. One of them warned him: “Shouldn't take that, sir, it will bring you no luck.” Jenkins got killed not long after.

Much of the book is like this. Beautiful writing. Worlds contained in a paragraph.

I was reminded of our trip to France last summer and all of the memorials we saw in the small towns. In a church vestibule in Capestang: A la memoire del nos heroes morts pour la France: 1914-1918. Then 120 names. Outside a chuch in Manigod: Aux Enfants de Manigod Morts Pour La France. Then 56 names for World War I and five names for World War II. Something to be said for blitzkrieg.

One of my favorite New York Times writers, David Carr, has a great piece on news organizations dealing with Fox News' organization — particularly its PR apparatus — and the “fair and balanced” network comes off fairly paranoid and vindictive. Nixon's dirty tricks come to mind. Roger Ailes, Nixon's advisor and Fox's chief executive, comes to mind.

You write something they don't like, they won't talk to you for 15 months. You report the facts, they photoshop your face so it looks weathered, haggard, or, in the case of NY Times reporter Jacques Steinberg, virtually unrecognizable — or recognizable only to a Joseph Goebbels. Carr writes, “In a technique familiar to students of vintage German propaganda, [Steinberg's] ears were pulled out, his teeth splayed apart, his forehead lowered and his nose was widened and enlarged in a way that made him look more like Fagin than the guy I work with.”

See their photoshop handiwork here. 

See the video from “Fox & Friends” here. 

Throw up here.

From Robert Graves' I, Claudius, page 467. As a writer, I laughed out loud at Claudius' thoughts when he suddenly became Emperor of Rome:

“So, I'm Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now. Public recitals to large audiences. And good books too, thirty-five years' hard work in them. It won't be unfair... My History of Carthage is full of amusing anecdotes. I'm sure they'll enjoy it.”

My current interest in ancient Rome, about which I know nothing, began with a Sunday afternoon at the Seattle Art Museum's exhibition “Roman Art from the Louvre,” after which, in the museum gift shop, I picked up Graves' book, read the first sentence and bought it. From there we began watching the '70s BBC miniseries, “I, Claudius,” starring Derek Jacobi (nine episodes in now), and from there we watched Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar (1953), which was much better than I thought it would be. The three leads are great. Brando stuns. He certainly stunned Patricia, who forgot how good-looking and sexy he was as a young man. I was surprised, not having read the play, and particularly after watching HBO's “Rome,” that Brutus turned out to be the least calculating and most honorable of all the characters in the play. Shakespeare himself makes the argument:

All the conspirators, save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought,
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the word, This was a man!

I knew the speech but didn't know it was for Brutus.

A curious thing about I, Claudius: Claudius is one of those Romans who wishes to restore the Republic, and the actions of the Emperors, particularly Tiberius and Caligula, certainly strengthen his argument. But the Senate is so weak, bends so willingly to those in power, that one wonders what good a restored Republic would be. 

UPDATE: My friend Jim Walsh, who's also together and uninhibited, has written about the “Where the hell is Matt? 2008” video, and the people behind it, for MinnPost. It's great. Read it here.