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“A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.” Thomas Pynchon

 Why Pynchon?

Because he appeals to the intellect.

And because it’s literal.

There is a screaming across the sky, a constant shrill chorus filling the air. And it has been there before, but not like this, never like this.

The discordance filling the ether is an anti-intellectual symphony. It’s not new. It’s almost as old as the nation itself. Thomas Jefferson felt the dull arrows of anti‑intellectualism, and there can be little doubt the rest of the founders would find themselves listed as enemies of these New McCarthyites. (Richard Hofstadter wrote about this brilliantly in his 1963 work  Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.  Susan Jacoby equals the task in her recently published, The Age of American Unreason. Both works are essential to understand the long history of anti‑intellectualism in this nation.)

Ours is not a broad Heideggerian screed about “flight from thinking” in an exponentially expanding technological age, where the entire population suffers from some form of Cyber Attention Deficit Disorder, spread by the World Wide Web, leaving each of us completely alone yet somehow connected to everyone and everything at the same instant. (Martin Heidegger, “the essential philosopher”, used the phrase, “flight from thinking” in his 1955, Memorial Address.  In that speech he warned his fellow countrymen – and the rest of us – that technology will, in a persistent, and “uncanny” way insert itself into our lives, and lack of vigilance concerning such will lead to…well, I believe we’ve already been led.)

There are, of course, other small truths to be found  in this “flight,” and one explains why no single voice can be heard on the subject of our national acceptance of stupidity, or any subject – because all voices are heard. There are simply too many voices constantly shouting. Those with some pretense toward a more honest life of the mind are not without blame in all this. We more and more sit back and shake our heads and gnash our teeth, rather than entering the fray in this viral age of unreason, and not without cause. However, the celerity with which any idea spreads world wide, and the equal speed with which thousands – if not millions – of responses are piggyback atop it, precludes thoughtful consideration. Thinking takes time, and we less and less seem to take the time to think.

The focus here will be narrow by choice: right-wing media in general and Fox News specifically. It’s Fox News that constantly assaults and insults thinking people with its skewed reporting (hardly the appropriate word when thinking of journalism, perhaps dissemination is a better choice) and inane reason.

The ironic tributary feeding the river of  Fox’s mis/dis/non-information is the postmodern structure propping it up. Postmodernism is the always vilified and equally misunderstood execration of anti‑intellectuals. However, it is the postmodernism idea of the shattered the grand narrative that allows numerous interpretive contact points and grants legitimacy to alternative viewpoints – even the absurd and blunt ones coming out of the mouths of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. (It is the postmodern condition that allows Fox News to be unconcerned with due diligence when reporting; they know there will be someone watching who believes Fox just because the other channels aren’t telling them the story they want to hear the way they want to hear. Eventually, this telling becomes the truth…always with a small ‘t’.)

What will become history is the always random movement of time and peoples, which only gain coherence when looking backward. What perspective will give us when gazing, flinchingly, back over the first years of the new millennium, is the unfortunate ascension of George W. Bush – who, despite every attempt to make him seem more, is a stupid man – and the explosion of the 24 hour news cycle. (It is the continual and practiced refusal of ideas other than one’s own that defines stupidity. We need only look at the countless bad choices – Iraq, Russia – and the substandard minds he surrounds himself with – Harriet Meyers, Alberto Gonzales – to see the intellectual bankruptcy of the Bush Administration.)

The almost unfathomable broadening of reportage – which seemed to come from nowhere, yet always be here – has led to an uncanny metamorphosis where, in many instances, the news became ‘news’. Once this conversion took hold, mutations quickly appeared, and news with an agenda became practically de rigueur.

This is not to say ‘mainstream’ media – whatever that may still be – is not complicit in this surge against reason. Either through vanity, avarice or condescension, Burkes’ once “important” fourth estate has become a self-important parody that rarely gives the public a chance to chew on meaty issues. There are a handful of grist-filled programs on either Public Television stations or found far into the double digits on basic cable, but if this ‘wonk TV’ gets more than a million viewers on any given night, someone has turned water into wine earlier in the day.

Most of what is proffered is ‘infotainment’ like, The View, who’s multicultural façade doesn’t mask the garden variety stupidity of Elizabeth Hasselbeck and her one dimensional weltanschauung, nor does it explain the continued employment of Sherri Shepard, who has set both feminism and thinking back 500 years by insisting that she not only doesn’t know whether the world is round or flat, but doesn’t care. This kind of aggressive ignorance is part of the trickle down effect of having a man in the White House who only sees in black and white, but it doesn’t point to a concerted effort to shout down reason and intellect.

Rupert Murdoch has laid claim to that land, and his employees at Fox News are his Templars.

They actively campaign against the very idea of intellectualism. They denigrate any idea that is not their own. They are to honest debate what they are to intellectual curiosity, a proud stupidity, which has metastasized across the broadband into a perfect storm of arrogance, irresponsibility and indifference.

In fact, ‘Arrogant, Irresponsible and Indifferent’ would be a much better slogan for Fox News than their absurd and cynical “Fair and Balanced.” It is Fox News who is leading this new witch hunt. What is most despicable about their anti‑intellectual McCarthyism, is they do it simply for the sake of doing it. They throw up their hands in mock horror at the prurient and salacious stories they broadcast daily, but never, do they attempt to rigorously – let alone honestly – discuss them.

Anti-intellectualism has a lengthy tradition in America. Ours is a nation founded by intellectuals. Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, men of letters, men of science, men of deep and broad interests; the very definition of an intellectual. Men, who, were they living today, would be the subject of countless editorials by Patriots-for-pay like Bill O’Reilly,  Sean Hannity, daddy’s boy Bill Kristol (whose father may have had some legitimacy as a social observer, but all the son has is the name) and Fox’s lapdog, the pseudo‑academic fraud, David Horowitz. Men who are truly the opposite of Americans, the antithesis of patriots. Men who happily crush any opposing view with bombast and talking points instead of reason and logic. And because they are either incapable or too corrupt to see more than one side to any argument, they will never grasp this simple truth: their claims of lineage to the founders of this nation is a sham. They are the very thing which the founders decried and revolted against.

Paradoxically, Fox News constantly stumbles blindly into one of the pits it usually prepares for the ‘wrongheaded intellectuals’ they target; the expert. While bullying experts who do not agree with them, they embrace their own ‘experts.’ These are men and women, who never insist on the honest intellectual exchange of open ended ideas, but instead serve a very specific and very limited agenda. And their experts are always second raters.

David Horowitz is the worst of these dull knaves. Regardless of what he pretends to be, he is a virulent anti-intellectual posing as its opposite. Horowitz’s thinking is not the studied, complex reasoning one expects from a true man of reason, but the belligerent small mindedness of an anti‑intellectual fascist. He doesn’t allow for the exchange of ideas, only the limited discussion of his own half-baked ramblings. He’s taken a page from the O’Reilly manual when approaching an idea he doesn’t agree with or understand – demonize it and shout it down. Like most McCarthyites, he is far more interested in the sound of his own voice, than the substance of anyone else’s words. (To be fair this is really just ‘McCarthyism Lite’; in spite of the damage it may do in the moment, it has limited political impact in this age of fractured loyalties and scattered thinking . The fracture exists in spite of what must be Rupert Murdock’s fervent desire to buy the world and put it back together in a way that would suit him and him alone.)

Perhaps this is unfair. Let’s suppose they’re not stupid, soulless men. Let’s suppose they’re bright, insightful and worst of all, purposeful men. That they are posing as defenders of the common man against the infection of intellectualism because it makes good TV, because it gives them their niche with white men 55 and older. True, this is horrifyingly callus, but it would indicate a mind at work.

But where is that purposefulness. Spend any time watching these modern day ‘Tail-Gunner Joes’, and one sees how shallow and intellectually weak they are. There doesn’t seem to be any long term plan but market share, they’d rather sell cars and soap than ideas. This is no ruse to light a fire under the hoi polloi, but a genuine inability to grasp subtlety – they are, quite simply, simple.

There are hundreds, possibly thousands of examples of  Fox News and their lumbering anti‑intellectualism, but is was never my intention to detail them here, no desire to state “I have here in my hand a list of 205…” as did the senator from Wisconsin did back on February 9, 1950. But make no mistake, the bully pulpit brooks no dissent, and men like Bill O’Reilly, who regularly brandish lies and an egregious lack of historical knowledge, continue to pose as  men of intellect, defenders of the rights of the common man. How absurd; they’ve never been the former, and if they ever were, they have long forgotten the latter.

“Bread and circuses” is nothing new. What is new, is our government no longer seems to care about bread, and Fox News is only interested in the circus…and they only want us to see the clowns.

In the Bush/Cheney era of  ‘I’m right and you’re wrong, so f#%* off and die’ of political dialogue (and Dubya was worried about his legacy) I’ve found people are rigid and calcified and there is no room for discussion and certainly none for compromise.

Over the years I’ve heard from many readers; many in support, many seething at what I’d written. But precious few were actually interested in dialogue. Most were far more interested in calling me everything from a ‘comic genius’ and a patriot’ (my ego is grateful to you all) to ‘commie’ and an ‘idiot.’ (One of the brain trust who reads me actually called me a ‘Nazi’ – proving the history challenged are everywhere.)

In the end though, all I’ve become is part of the noise that is the Internet. The great democratic experiment of free access, which is still in its infancy, has become not a marketplace for honest debate and exchange, but an electronic Hyde Park, where anyone can jump up on their soapbox and rant. And because it is so expansive – and so anonymous – it’s an easy rant, and easy to find others who want to rant right along with you. It seems no one is interested in honest debate or forthright exchange of ideas.

The Internet is the great postmodern souk, where any ‘truth’ you want can be found and ‘verified’ by non-vetted postings written by people who agree with you. I’ve tried to have civil debate with a few of my readers who disagree with something I’ve written, but they’ve never been all the interested in discussion, they just want to be Limbaugh or Hannity and yell at me. Initially I ignored them, but more and more I found myself yelling back…and that was never my intent.

I consider myself a court jester. Someone, as my British friends might say, to ‘take the piss out of ‘ people in high office. I bashed Bush plenty – not as much as he deserves – because he’s the guy in the big chair, but I’ve done my share giving it to the Democrats as well. (Interestingly enough the people who write me and tell me I’m a ‘hater’ when I write about the Idiot-in-Chief, are silent when I call the Democrats ‘sackless wimps’.)

The level of discourse in this country is appalling. The few institutions left who should be defending it – newspapers – are in fact joining it. We see all manner of journalistic embarrassments every day. Network news is a joke, and cable ‘news’ networks are either shills for a political party (as Scott McClellan revealed about Fox News and the Bush administration…and here I was thinking they were “fair and balanced”) or shamelessly seeking ratings. There are of course exceptions to this, but, quite frankly, no one cares, and more importantly, nor do they, when shown the exception, choose to believe it. (Please refer to: ‘I’m right and you’re wrong, so f#%* off and die’.)

So I’m f*%#ing off. I have not intention of dying however. I’m going to back to writing for a smaller, thoughtful, quieter audience and leave the ranting to others.

I want to thank the folks at Today.com for giving me a hunk of cyberspace and wish them the best.

…and in the time it took for the few of  you who read this piece to the end, someone has already taken my place

However, the Bush Administration has made not remembering into an art form – or a virulent disease.

The latest  presentation of this Executive epidemic is found below:

AP June 29, 2008 – DUJIANGYAN, China – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised China’s post-quake recovery efforts during a visit to the disaster zone on Sunday, saying that it contrasted with Myanmar’s reluctance to allow in aid after a cyclone devastated the country.

Yes, even classical pianist and third rate Sec of State, Condi Rice, has fallen victim. (Although her behavior over the last seven years shows she waved off every attempt at inoculation.) Here’s a bit more of her praise for China:

“I can see that the Chinese government and officials have been attentive,” Rice told reporters after the tour. “I can see how much effort has gone into the recovery. But with a disaster of this magnitude, no one can do it alone…”I can see that the Chinese government and officials have been attentive,” Rice told reporters after the tour. “I can see how much effort has gone into the recovery. But with a disaster of this magnitude, no one can do it alone.”

Now, the only question I have is, where was she when Katrina devastated New Orleans?

Did I see North Korea voluntarily destroy one of their nuclear cooling towers?

Did I hear what I heard?

Not one shot fired?

No one invaded any sovereign nations who didn’t invade us?

No bunker busters?

No fortified Humvees?

Not even a single water boarding approved at the highest levels?

What kind of foreign policy is that?

This is the George Bush Administration.

The George W. Bush Administration, not to be confused with that sushi pukin’, “read my lips” talkin’ other George Bush – George H. W. But to his credit, he also invaded Iraq, but wimped out and did nothing when the wall fell and all of eastern Europe was ripe for the taking.

I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

That’s right, I’m calling you out Dubya – you’re a candy ass.

You used diplomacy. We have warehouses full of nukes and you’re chatting-up other countries.

When did we start making deals with dictators?

What are we, France!?

We didn’t elect you to talk. Hell, after almost eight years, we all know you can’t.

Where’s the man of action, the guy who didn’t think about what he said or did, he just said and did it? Where’s that flight suit? That’s what we want; not some pansy who cuts deals with hard core Commies.

What’s next, have Hezbollah to the White House for lunch?

We’ll become an international laughing stock. We’ll have a president who people think can actually be reasonable. He’s given up golf and now he’s talking to other countries. Is that the image you really want for the leader of the free world?

This just wont do.

So man up, mama’s boy, and take out Iran before you go…at least you’ll save some of your legacy.

A bold step.

However, before going further, let’s go over his most recent suggestions for relief from high gas prices: off-shore drilling and $300 million for a battery. Neither a particularly good or original idea, but at least one idea better than his new BFF, Dubya.

However, after a few days of pimping these half-assed plans he admitted to one and all that neither would have an immediate impact on gas prices, but we’d all feel better because of the “psychological” impact of such forward thinking.

I feel better already.

And now to the jewel in the McCain energy plan crown – energy independence by 2025.

History – you know, that thing that’s going to be quite unkind to George Bush and friends – can give us a bit of insight into this idea.

Back in the late ‘70’s Jimmy Carter presided over the country during our first big oil trouble. Gas lines, rising prices, enraged public; all the stuff Santayana said would happen again because we didn’t learn from it the first time. As we muddled through Carter, (a good man in a job way over his head), proposed energy independence by the year 2000. He had extensive plans for solar and renewable energy sources, as well as conservation.

When Ronald Regan and the “Republican Revolution” found it’s way into power, they gutted the Carter energy plan, and every other idea about conserving or using something other than oil. Under Bush it’s just gotten worse, and every day McCain sounds more like Bush, except when it comes to energy where he sounds more like Carter.

So a vote for McCain is a vote for Carter, except McCain said in response to Obama saying a vote for McCain is a vote for four more years of Bush, that a vote for Obama is a vote for four more years of the Carter, except McCain wants what Carter wanted twenty years after Carter wanted it, but McCain wants us to think Obama is Carter…I’m confused.

“Long-in-the-tooth” John and his band of radical 19^th century thinkers has proposed a Kremer like prize for the lucky American who invents a better battery for an electric car. (Let’s forget that GM had EV1’s running all over California more than ten years ago, before they, and their oil company buddies killed the car and destroyed all the prototypes.)

Now, the man who swears he is not Bush (except for on the war and taxes and torture and drilling and F.I.S.A and fake terror alerts and…) wants to find $300 million to give as a prize for electric car advances.

Never mind that Toyota alone puts about $8 billion into the same idea, and they’ve actually come up with a few good ideas already.

$300 million pays for about fifteen minutes of your war in Iraq.

$300 million would insult your pals at the oil companies.

I’m pretty sure we’re already – that’s we as in American taxpayers who are subsidizing GM and Ford and Chrysler – forking over a few bucks here and there so the geniuses that ran the American auto industry into the ground can develop better, more fuel efficient cars.

Oh, that’s right, every time a piece of legislation comes up mandating better, more fuel efficient cars, you vote against it.

Probably because those dang “au-to-mobeels” are scaring your horses.

Why don’t you campaign in that Conestoga wagon you have out back at the ranch – you could show us all how to really conserve…and you’d be helping your pals at the Conestoga wagon lobby.

DOES THIS DRESS MAKE ME LOOK STUPID?

Every now and then I worry we might elect someone smart. We might put a man or woman in office who will actually say something thoughtful and intelligent.

Then I take a breath and smile because we have Senator Lindsey Graham; and if South Carolina remains its consistent, stubborn self, they’ll keep electing this rug buying dimwit, and I’ll continue to have good stuff to write about.

Lindsey’s latest foray into the land of dolts was his appearance on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press.”

He was there, shilling for Bombin’ John as usual, getting his ass kicked by Joe Biden in their mini-debate. (That isn’t to say Biden is Stephen Douglas – hell, I have a chinchilla that could out-talk Graham.)

It was during that little tête-à-tête that the South Carolina simpleton busted out this bit of brilliance when commenting on Obama:

“This guy wants to win.”

How’s that for genius?

Barack Obama wants to win the election.

Shocking!

How can anyone with a conscience vote for someone who wants to win?

Let’s vote for losers like lamebrain Lindsey Graham, who’s up for election this November; apparently he’s just running for the exercise.

Makes you feel bad for Dubya who didn’t want to win so badly he lost…so he had to be installed as president.

That’s right, Wrongway Bush blamed the Democrats for high gas prices. This is the guy who came into office when gas less than $1.50, the guy who campaign-promised to use his office to get the Saudi’s to “open the spigots,” the guy who let the oil companies write the energy policy resulting in no energy policy, the guy who killed every alternative energy bill that came his way, the guy who caused a major disruption in the oil supply with his war, and the guy who continues to be oblivious to everything – except how it’s the Democrats fault we pay so much for gas. (We’ve all forgotten the Republicans had control of Congress for twelve years, six of them with failed oil-man and failure of a president Bush.)

Granted, I’m one of only a handful of people who actually heard this as no one is listening to this boob anymore, but still, there he was, playing a full Homer Simpson.

Not to worry, Dubya, we believe you. I mean, your credibility is beyond doubt…

Well, I just heard it again as Democrats and Republicans argued about whose fault the current oil crisis is.

The only thing they agreed on is that a large part of the problem can be laid at the feet of  that great improvisational dancer, failed oil man, and current president, George W. Bush.

Everyone agreed his “no energy policy but oil” has lead to America’s particular plight, but there are certainly added pressures with emerging nations like China and India whose oil consumption is likely to go up ten to twenty times in the coming years.

Back at home:

 Dems moan Repubs block ever attempt at passing alternative energy legislation.

Repubs howl Dems don’t want nuclear or to help the oil companies drill our way out of this problem.

This is what I know; current energy policy (which has yet to be revealed to the public), was written by Drillin’ Dick Cheney and a bunch of oil guys.

Dubya and thieving pigf#$%er Ken Lay were close pals.

Jimmy Carter passed a solar energy bill way back in 1979 that would produce 20% of the nations energy by 2000 – Ronald Regan killed it in his first year in office.

I’m not choosing sides here, but facts are facts.

Not that anyone has ever paid attention to the facts.

Look, I’m the first to admit I tend to over-react now and again, and there have been times when I may have read a bit more into something than was really there and shouted the end of the world was nigh. (I’m not giving up on Bush yet, he still has until Jan 20 to bring about Armageddon, so if you have real estate in Tehran, you might want to think about selling.)

Granted, this entire political season has thrown all of us off our games a bit, and yes, I was pretty sure when the Democratic race came down to a black man and a white woman, things were getting a little weird, and when the rich white woman called the black man an “elitist,” I started looking for those four guys and their specifically colored ponies.

A black man is now the presumptive nominee for the presidency of the United States, yet, somehow, the world has not become one all cleansing conflagration, so I might have overstated things…a bit.

But now I have irrefutable proof that the end of days is right around the corner, so don’t go shopping for bottled water and Spam because I already bought it all. (Although I’m not sure how Spam can save anyone from acts of divine retribution.)

The sign that tells me the sword of Damocles is about to fall is this ad that showed up in my mailbox yesterday: “A symbolic display of devotion…THE MEN’S STERLING SILVER NAIL CROSS. Artisans have taken a symbol of Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice, the nails of the cross, and fashioned them into a sterling silver cross pendant.”

The ad is on an 8”x11” piece of heavy stock, complete with return, post paid replay card, the rest of the text is a combination of salesmanship and evangelizing (yes, I know they’re the same thing.) On the whole it’s no cheesier than those mailers trying to sell you commemorative plates or NASCAR bobble-heads.

The reason the Sterling Silver Nail Cross flyer is a portent of a bad end for us all, is it came packaged in the wrapping with my monthly copy of PLAYBOY.

Yes, PLAYBOY.

I’ll give you that PLAYBOY is pretty tame, actually lame stuff these day. (I can spend 30 seconds on line and find porn that would make even the most perverted centerfold blush.) So, as the old joke goes, I really do get it for the articles.

But that’s not the point.

The point is, PLAYBOY, icon of the sexual revolution, the magazine that used to sell those dopey ‘man sign’ necklaces, is shilling for a company that wants you to spend $100 bucks on your faith. The ad is placed on top of the magazine, you see the cross before you see the cover.

So you tell me, am I over reacting, or do you want to trade me two cans of peaches for a can of Spam.