Peter Krupa

Big ups to the LA Times for running a story on Cuba and the internet with the following by-line: “This article was written by a correspondent not authorized by Cuba to report there.”

Editors at the Times have apparently finally grown a pair and decided to mix it up with the last non-democratic country in Latin America. The Miami Herald has been doing this for years (sending reporters as tourists), and it’s amazing to me that more media outlets don’t do this. Journalists, who are supposedly dedicated to speaking “truth to power,” should be chomping at the bit to get in there.

Who knows? Maybe they are, and editors were just afraid to run by-line-less stories out of legalistic loyalty to journalism ethics. Maybe. Wait and see…

I haven’t been on top of things lately because I spent the weekend in Philadelphia behaving responsibly. I will attempt in the next few days to bring myself up to speed, but in the meantime I recommend you watch this deeply disturbing video of a bank manager singing his heart out about credit card policies to the tune of U2’s “One.”

Also, Slate.com media critic Jack Shafer has written a delightful essay about the demise of the so-called “Bus Plunge” story, the little filler pieces that the New York Times used to run every time a bus in a third-world country plunged off some precipice or other:

… the elements of a definitive bus-plunge story: Plunge should appear in the hed; the piece should be only a couple of sentences long; and it should “include the number feared dead, the identity of any group on board”—a soccer team, church choir, or students—”as well as the distance of the plunge from the capital city.” The words ravine or gorge should appear.

Race and culture played a big role in bus-plunge story’s placement, too. Miller quotes foreign correspondent Mort Rosenblum’s equation: “A hundred Pakistanis going off a mountain in a bus make less of a story than three Englishmen drowning in the Thames.” By and large, if an American plunged on a bus, the news was always more likely to run as a free-standing story in a U.S. newspaper than as filler.

It’s a very fine essay. Read the whole thing.

Second Life is the new media tech obsession, a la blogs, iPods, podcasts, Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, etc. The Economist and Wall Street Journal recently ran pieces on it, and the dog-pile is beginning in earnest. Just over the horizon are stories on how Second Life hurts children/destroys our society/encourages recreational drug use, etc. etc.

You know the drill.

Posting has been thin yet scandalous lately, and that trend is likely to continue as a reflection of what I am definitely not doing in my day-to-day employment. Today’s post brings you double the licentiousness for half the price: to wit, the Rockettes, and a wee spot of bestiality.

I know you’re anxious to get to the barnyard cavorting, but first things first. The Rockettes are in town! And they’re kicking their legs in synchronization! And wearing short little faux-Santa outfits! And somehow this is fun for the whole family! I hadn’t thought the Gray Lady capable of sounding breathless about anything, but, braid my hair and call me a hippy, she’s done it! Maybe it’s the emphysema:

Mingling tradition and novelty to a festive fare-thee-well, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular has taken up residence through Dec. 30 in the 6,000-seat Art Deco auditorium. And what a show it is!

In her debut as the first female director and choreographer of the show, Linda Haberman has brought forth a spectacular Spectacular, tweaking and polishing perennial numbers and introducing a new one that would have surely warmed the heart of Russell Markert, who created the Rockettes as the Missouri Rockets in 1925 to dance, kick and “knock your socks off.”

And the audience of wide-eyed children and adults responds with cheers and uninhibited applause.

Wide-eyed children because, as a consequence of New York City’s new, progressive approach to gender, that eighth girl from the left is swinging around more than just her legs.

And speaking of voyeurism, that venerable old publication on the other side of the pond - The Sun - brings us a textbook example of how to write a lede. Journalism students: study this story! The lede:

AN asylum seeker had sex with a ewe as its “male partner” looked on, a court heard.

This lede is perfect: brief, punchy, to the point, plus it touches on important issues that concern the discerning readership of The Sun: issues like immigrant-baiting, bestiality, kinky bestiality, and, of course, the rule of law.

The offender was, for some reason, sent to jail for six months. Perhaps I’m the only one who thinks this sounds like the 15th century, but I guess it shouldn’t be surprising if we remember that the Brits still have a monarchy.

And yes, I know the US keeps such laws as well, on the grounds that people who have sex with animals are hurting them, but come on - in a society that has no qualms about keeping chickens in boxes for the duration of their natural lives, and then turning them into nuggets, are we really being intellectually honest?

And who’s to say these bestiality people are that bad anyway? The Sun’s story notes that on at least one occasion, the human half of the couple stuck around to smoke a post-coital cigarette.

Maybe they were, you know, cuddling.

(Hat tip to Bob. He’s always on top of those late-breaking bestiality stories.)

Sorry to be racy two posts in a row, but you know what they say about “raining” and “pouring.” This paragraph in a New York Times article about Web 3.0 (an effort to construct artificial intelligence applications using the vast human database that is the World Wide Web) caught my attention:

Separately, I.B.M. researchers say they are now routinely using a digital snapshot of the six billion documents that make up the non-pornographic World Wide Web to do survey research and answer questions for corporate customers on diverse topics, such as market research and corporate branding.

Emphasis mine, of course. I’m just a little surprised that researchers - scientists! - go out of their way to make this distinction. I guess that now whenever we do create Web-assisted artificial intelligence, we’ve assured it won’t just lay around all day fantisizing about teenage girls. Or cocks.

A University of Colorado student will not be punished for self-publishing a newsletter that some considered offensive, outrageous, yadda yadda.

The Yeti, which Karson distributes for free on campus every other Monday, is filled with such controversial statements as: “Women generally prefer that you jam your penis into their vaginas as quickly as possible during sex, ideally before it is wet at all, so they can really feel it. They will express their appreciation for this by saying, ‘ow.’”

Though Karson defends his newsletter as satirical, many feminists were outraged.

Of course they were. But even they would have to agree that “The Yeti” is the best name for a publication. Ever.

Narrative #1

Latin America has always been oppressed by the rich, and the rich have always been white and privileged. First it was the Spanish with their land-owning aristocracies, then it was the gringos, with their banana plantations and oil companies. The good-hearted, brown-skinned working class needed land but didn’t have any, and so one day there was a revolution to fix all the problems. The revolution brought The People to power, and it would have worked if it weren’t for the CIA/the embargo/Ollie North/the Washington Consensus, etc. One day, the revolution will come again and fix everything for good.

Narrative #2

Latin America was doing just fine until the Marxists fucked it up. They took everyone’s land, nationalized industries, oppressed their people, and started a bunch of wars backed by rubles and Soviet arms shipments. The Left has done horrible things to Latin America, and threatens to squash economic growth with out-dated policies. Why can’t we just get rid of the Marxists and go back to the happy, pre-Marxist Latin America?

***

So, which is it? One or the other? Come on, don’t sissy out, you have to pick sides here. You have to pick sides because, for the last 100 years, our western political consciousness has existed on a single, finite, horizontal line, and all thought has to be categorized relative to the midpoint of that line. So which side are you on, girly-man? Left or Right? The clock is ticking.

See, this is how our country thinks about Latin America - an endless tug of war between linear foes, shouting each other down at cocktail parties because the one guy read an essay in the American Prospect and the other guy read a column in the Financial Times. Meanwhile, the joke on everyone is that neither author of said journalistic articles spoke enough Spanish or knew enough history to have even the vaguest idea what was going on. Instead, they read a bunch of articles by other journalists who neither spoke Spanish nor knew history, then did a little bit of reporting, then fit all the information onto that aforementioned neat little line so that our cocktail party foes would know where to stand during the mêlée.

And somewhere in the hash that is being made of the histories and cultures and languages and peoples and topography of two dozen different countries, things probably get swapped around a bit. Oh, it was Honduras with the banana plantations and Bolivia with the ruling whites. And Costa Rica - which someone accidentally placed on the Right - has universal health care, and Argentina - which escaped the Marxist dictators - had a decades-long dirty war perpetrated by oppressive Right-wingers. And what if Pinochet stepped down from the presidency - voluntarily! - after losing an election? And what was Mexico’s PRI all about? If they were the “revolutionary” party, why are Leftist Mexican politicians accusing Rightist Mexican politicians of acting like the PRI?

You see, it’s all too complicated, and educated people are so very busy these days, it’s best just to give them a choice of narratives so they can have thoughtful-sounding opinions while living their busy, educated lives.

So which is it? Left or Right? Black or White? Good or Bad (or Bad or Good)? Come on fancy-pants, choose quickly or someone might choose for you. Because in Latin America, if you’re not with us…

Ban tag?

At big schools like Van Buren, which has 720 students, having masses of kids careening off each other as if they were errant billiard balls presents a genuine problem. Kids playing tag interfere with organized physical education classes, he says, and the games sometimes degenerate into kids running up and poking or hitting other students.

Oh my God, kids hitting each other, say it ain’t so. And if we’re ever going to get kids into good physical condition, we must eliminate this “running around” business.

Meanwhile, New York City is foraging ahead with progress and whatnot. The latest plan is to let people decide their own gender, without letting pesky little details like chromosomes and genitals get in the way.

Never before in the history of the world has having a penis meant so little…

The volunteer pulled back the Wizard-of-Oz-like curtain to reveal not the man behind it but a truly massive mechanical marvel: A huge metal panel covered in little knobs with a name next to each, and in front of it all an enormous red lever, designed, it appeared, to be grasped with both hands and pulled with all one’s might, as if “casting a vote” were a literal expression that described the kinetic, sweaty act of suffrage.

“You just pull the lever to the right, turn a knob for Democrat or Republican or whatever, then pull the lever back,” said the volunteer.

“What if I don’t want to vote a straight party ticket?” I asked.

“Huh?” he said.

“What if, you know, I want to vote some Democrats, some Republicans…”

He looked confused. “Hold on a second,” he said, and hurried out of the room. He came back with his supervisor. “Tell her what you just told me.” So I did, and she explained it to me, and I said fine, thanks, and went behind the curtain.

There I was, alone with the beast, mano a mano, and I wasn’t sure if I was voting or driving a submarine. I pulled the big red lever to the right, CHA-CLUNK! Then I turned a knob and CLICK! a little X appeared in the glass window next to a name. This was fun. I turned the knob for State Senator (I forget which party) and CLICK! another little X appeared. Full speed ahead!

Now I was moving, fast, Eliot Spitzer for Governor, CLICK!, “Flooding torpedo tube #1!” Jeanine Pirro for State Prosecutor, CLICK! “Flooding torpedo tube #2!” Someone I’d never head of for a judgeship I didn’t care about, CLICK! “Starboard engine stand down!” Hillary What’s-her-face for US Senate, CLICK! “Prepare to fire!”

And I grasped that red lever with both hands and looked over the X’s dotting my “ballot,” and I thought to myself, “What the fuck am I doing here?” Oh well.

FIRE!

I pulled hard and there was another CHA-CLUNK, and all the little boxes were blank again, and all was quiet.

I walked out from behind the curtain and said thanks to the volunteer. There was a little line outside the booth, and I wondered how long I’d been in there playing submarine captain. I thanked the ladies at the front table and walked off down the street in the crisp fall air, the dappled morning sunlight glinting through golden leaves. There was a smile on my face.

Who did I vote for? I wasn’t completely sure. But I got out and voted, and that’s what matters.

God bless America.

My dad always said, “There’s a time and a place for everything.” Normally he said this when I was doing something in the wrong time and/or place, and so the aphorism typically functioned as a veiled “Cut it out.” But I think my dad’s wisdom can legitimately be applied in certain (though not all) situations.

Which brings me to the topic of capital punishment.

Today, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging, something that wouldn’t have happened if he had been tried by an international tribunal of some sort. While I normally come out against the death penalty, for a variety of reasons, I applaud the Iraqi court’s decision to finish off Saddam.

The reason is that political leaders who do really bad things are in a whole different class from your average mass murderer. When you lock up a mass murderer for life, there’s almost no chance of escape. By contrast, locking up political leaders - people who are often well connected, wealthy, and powerful in certain circles - is an extremely risky business, especially because if they do get out, they can cause all manner of harm.

The international community got such a scare recently when it looked like Charles Taylor, the Liberian warlord, had fled his exile in Nigeria. The fear was that he would return to Liberia and re-connect with his former partners in crime. He was eventually re-captured and is now awaiting trial at The Hague, but since they won’t execute him, his influence in Liberian politics will always be looming.

Not so with Saddam, or some of the Nazi war criminals convicted during the Nuremberg trials. One quick snap, and Saddam will be relegated to the history books, end of story. Powerful people who commit awful war crimes should be eligible for execution, not for reasons of revenge or bloodthirstiness, but because it is in some cases the only way to erase their bad influence on their countries’ politics.

As another saying goes, dead men tell no tales. Neither do they start civil wars, stage coups, or lead rebel groups.