You become what you behold

That ominous insight is from cultural guru Marshall McLuhan, and if true we are in big trouble. Our television and movie fare is red in tooth and claw now. Time magazine says that TV dramas have become addicted to blood. It is drowning in dumb, mindless violence. Cinemax's “Strike Force” has already stacked up 208 corpses in one season. Time also diagnoses the creative ways of the grim reaper: impaling, knifing, poisoning, stabbing and in “Game of Thrones” strapping buckets of rats to prisoner's chests, stolen from Orwell's torture scene in “1984”. The NY Times says that gore flows freely in both broadcast and cable. It also points out that it is absurd to pretend that a gun culture is unrelated to popular culture. Is this how we escape from boredom? The late Neil Postman said we were “amusing ourselves to death”. We're not amused. This is our living rooms we're talking about and I, for one, have disinvited these monsters into our home. The Times says that Americans love to watch death, even when it's real. “Some can gaze and not be sick, But I could never learn the trick. There's this to be said for blood and breath, They give a man a taste for death.” A.E Housman

A nicer sort of murder

In Orwell's essay “Decline of the English murder” he details how murder seemed to be changing and becoming an “ordinary” event. Murders had moved from poisoning, mainly by the middle class (see Agatha Christie) to murders done with the utmost callousness and brutality. No more deeds done for insurance money or marital affairs or just good old fashioned envy. In another essay “Raffles and Miss Blandish” he chronicles the descent from Raffles, the charming jewel thief, to poor Miss Blandish who is raped and killed in a cold-blooded way. He attributes this to modern events such as mass killing of innocent civilians, hostages, torture, flogging and treachery as normal and morally neutral events. Today these events are seen as admirable when done by the CIA. We now live in a country that worships guns, especially the weapons of mass destruction used in places like Newtown. They're consecrated in the Constitution, the same document that offers the pursuit of happiness. If you watch television today you are treated to a visit to the morgue or a ghastly autopsy with your dinner or late night snack. Too many corpses; too many sex crimes, too much Freud and Krafft-Ebbing without the redeeming things Orwell said these plots should be about such as real social wrongs, economic injustice and plain decency and justice. On the nightly news 6 year olds are gunned down and a pimp firing shots on the Vegas Strip kills 3 innocent people. I have found an escape from this dreadful drivel to a foreign language channel called MHZ. It features a cop named Brunetti in Venice, Maigret in Paris and DeLuca, a tenacious policeman who has to do his job in WWII Italy. There's even a detective priest named Don Matteo whose only weapons are compassion and human insight. The writing is better because the stories are from literature and always have a moral point of view, not the stuff the overhyped TV hacks serve up today. And the narrative is not constantly interrupted by commercials. These men have to walk down the same mean streets as Phillip Marlowe and Harry Bosch but the boulevards and canals are a lot less mean. These men have charm, intelligence and dedication to justice and they very rarely carry firearms. It's just a safer, saner place over there. So, if you hear an Englishman say, “I could murder some Chinese”, don't take alarm, it only means that he'd like to attack a plate of Moo Goo Gai Pan.

New national symbol to replace American Eagle

Both houses of Congress as well as Fox News and MSNBC agree: our new symbol is the Carp. Yes, it's a large Asian fish who lives in sluggish waters and is often raised for food. But the real meaning is more political. To carp means to find fault and complain. Some Tea party people wanted the mastodon or sabre tooth tiger but it was pointed out that they had died just before Republicans were created. Speaking of outspoken creatures, there is now a comic strip named Mallard Fillmore, a right wing duck who carps about Obama and Hillary. After the funny and witty Donald and Daffy, this is a lame duck indeed. And a quack. This started with W in Texas with his inane figures of speech and his lethal call to arms. It has continued with the tongue-tied Governor Rick Perry and the blithering neophyte senator Ted Cruz. Their limitations are boundless. What's with Texas anyway? It reminds me of my favorite doctor joke. A doctor tells a colleague his patient has had a stroke, slurs all his words and nothing he says makes any sense. “Well,” the other doctor says, “he can always move to Texas”. At least we now have a President who is a real orator, maybe not Lincoln, but Lincolnesque. Do I carp? Probably. Long ago Mort Sahl said that a politician's safest statement was, “The future lies ahead”. Oh yeah? Who says?

The NRA and controlled insanity

There is a vast system of mental cheating in the US. It starts with a misreading of the 2nd Amendment, completely ignoring the phrase “a well-regulated militia” into guns for everyone including nuts. What we get is more gun deaths in America than in any other civilized country. The term “controlled insansity” is from the thesis for Orwell's “1984” called “The theory and practice of Oligarchial Collectivism” by Emanuel Goldstein. I read it last week. It's a thick and detailed treatise that leads from doublethink to Ignorance is Strength. The people you can trust with guns are the police and maybe some hunters (although Dick Cheney hits people as well as ducks). I grew up in Canada so I don't understand guns. I've never owned one and the only time I've ever used a rifle was to bring down clay pigeons. I suppose there'll be an effort to control these lethal automatics that can spray enough bullets to kill 20 innocent kids in a few minutes but the NRA is locked and loaded for anyone who challenges them. Homer Simpson, that everyman savant on Fox, summed it up with his remark when he joined the survivalist movement: “If Jesus had had a gun he'd be alive today”. Amen.

Actor Depardieu follows Napoleon into Russia

Eta ekonomicheskiya zadacha (It's an economic thing), using his new language to renounce his French citizenship and join Putin's brand of Liberte, egalite et fraternite. Gerard objects to the tax rate in France. Why didn't he just go to Montreal where taxes are low and they speak a rough form of French, and it's a whole lot warmer than the Russian Riviera. Actually the Russians I've met are a lot friendlier than your average waiter in Paris. I would also put any ballerina from the Bolshoi against any woman in France. Well, maybe not Catherine DeNeuve or Marion Cotillard or...you know what I mean. Usually it's artistic Russians like Stravinsky and Nabokov who head west to France. Still, we might get a new artistic combination. Scho idyat vi kino cevodnya vecherom? (What's playing at the movies tonight?) Gerard Depardieu in “Tovarich Mon Amour”

Fiscal follies? It's a no Boehner.

Yes, death and taxes are inevitable even for Republicans. Luckily we have a President and a Senate to protect the people and do the right thing. Frankly I'm sick of all of it. The NHL is on strike and baseball season is still months away. I'm certainly getting plenty of reading done and that's a plus. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization”. You can look it up.

A Christmas Quandry

December 25th is more than a birthday: it's the most important day of the year. I mean it's more imporant for the US economy. The celebrations start with door busters the day after Thanksgiving, maybe even intruding on Thanksgiving, and ending with bargains well into January. Now, here comes Pope Benedict with the news that the 25th has nothing to do with the birth of Christ. It was a blunder of a 6th century monk who got mixed up with the calendar. And that's not the only error Benedict points out but let's not go there and instead concentrate on the important issue, when was Santa Claus born? Santa has no cross to bear, he's resurrected each and every year. When you listen to Eartha Kitt singing “Santa Baby” you're already in heaven. Still, there are mysteries to clear up. He visits every home in every town. He always came to my town on the Canadian prairie. We didn't even have to dream of a White Christmas, it came to town with Santa. Every year he makes a list and checks it twice because he wants to know who's been naughty and nice. How does he deal with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: he's on both lists! Better give him what he wants.