What we're seeing is manufactured rage

That's the astute phrase Salman Rushdie used on the Charlie Rose show this week. He usually knows what he's talking about. Many years ago Salman and I worked for the same ad agency in London. He would pop into my office from time to time to hold forth on world events and expound on US history, which he knew far better than I did. Unfortunately he couldn't write an ad to save himself. He was promptly fired clearing the way for him to become one of the world's foremost authors. Growing up in India he knew the Muslim world but he didn't foresee that he would be the object of their hatred and lose eleven years of life in hiding from the Ayatollah's fatwa. Ambassador Chris Stevens lost all of his life to Muslim terrorists. Chris was the perfect emissary to Libya. He spoke the language fluently and the people there loved him. It didn't matter to the thugs. He was a lifelong friend who went to my alma mater, UC Berkeley, where he learned, as I did, that it is better to be rich in experiences than material things. I've been to the middle east as a tourist and found it awesome (Karnak, Jerusalem and Santa Sophia) and scary ( a snake charmer in Marrakesh chasing me with the snake because I didn't pay him $1 for snapping his picture). If you want a safe middle east experience, don't' go to Egypt, go to the Luxor in Las Vegas. It's clean, friendly fun in a pyramid, and you may even meet Cleopatra. Rage is the Muslim metier de jour. So stupid. So hopeless. Millions of guys who need a shave and a job, and no chance of ever getting either. Or go to the zoo where the wild animals are kept behind bars.

Chris Stevens, a brave American

“How do these things happen”?, said Hilary Clinton in her announcement that Ambassador Chris Stevens had been killed by terrorists in the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. I think this happens when a person puts his own safety second to the cause he is fighting for, a cause he believes in. Orwell did it by going to fight for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. He escaped, just barely, with a bullet wound to the throat. Chris couldn't escape the relentless barrage of bullets and rockets aimed at his Consulate. He lived a life of purpose, not settling for a life in an air-conditioned office in Washington writing memos. He served in the Peace Corps in Morocco and in the Foreign Service in many middle east postings. He was fluent in Arabic and could mingle with the people. He wasn't into palace intrigues and big power posturing he was a soldier for democracy. I'm especially grateful to his father, Jan, for his very deft introduction to my wife Peggy. We celebrate our 55th anniversary September 14th. I have pictures of Chris and our son Tony when they were three years old, along with our daughter Alison who was just an infant. Chris was a classmate of Alison's at UC Berkeley. Through the years we saw him grow and mature to be intelligent without being pedantic; handsome without being vain and dedicated without being arrogant. Now he belongs to the shared history of our country. In the words of the poet Phillip Larkin: All the uncaring, intricate, rented world begins to rouse...the sky is white as clay, with no sun...work has to be done”. As Secretary Clinton reminded us: “We need more Chris Stevenss”.

Pinocchio Paul Ryan

He fibs, he lies, he exaggerates and his nose grows longer and longer but what can you expect from a wooden dummy. You can't see who's pulling the strings but it's probably that arch-enemy of the truth, Karl Rovespierre. Of course he's only a hired hand working for the people who own the tent: casino clown Sheldon Adelson and the shadowy Koch brothers. Lord Acton said that power corrupts and in America that means too much money corrupts. Something comes to mind from the distant past. When famed criminology professor Orlando Wilson was appointed Chicago Chief of Police his main job was to clean up the bribery and corruption. In a meeting a cop asked, “How do we stop corruption?” Wilson said, “Start by paying for your cup of coffee on the beat”. All the money pouring into the political commercials is subject to the two parts of the message: concept and execution. Anyone with money to burn can do the execution but without a real, energizing, thoughtful concept it's just million dollar wallpaper. So, as the great Republican, Sonny Bono, said, “The beat goes on”. We shall see what works on November 6th. When our little wooden boy sings “there are no strings on me”, and falls flat on his face, Jiminey Cricket says, “OK, make a fool of yourself, then maybe you'll listen to your conscience”. After he twirls and spins and the audience claps, Jiminey says, “They like him, he's a success”. Sure, but only in cartoons.

America is rough and lacks the interesting

A refined, upper class English woman told me that years ago in London. If you drive up the middle of Nevada, as I did last week, you might agree. There's nothing to see except the odd McDonalds and a few Shady Lady brothels. Of course when you swing over to California you are entering a verdant paradise of orchards, lakes, mountains and oceanfront an Englishman can only dream about. And the people are very interesting and well educated. We spent an evening dining al fresco on one of those soft summer nights discussing art, music and literature. Not too rough. We even devoted an evening to watching a video of “Swan Lake” by the Maryinsky Ballet and since we had all been to St. Petersburg and some of us spoke Russian, we could enjoy it about as well as the average bloke in Basingstoke. Dickens also complained in “American Notes” (1840) that the Americans he met were boring businessmen and traders. Well, they weren't as exciting and devious as Bill Sykes, Fagin and Abel Magwitch. DeToqueville understood us best, but then he was a Frogie Frenchman, wasn't he? I happen to love England but I do prefer a cold beer on a hot day to a warm one on a cold day. The one who understood England best was Orwell. He wrote in his diary in June 1940 about an item in the Tory Telegraph lamenting that the rich would have to give up their cooks during the war. He wrote, “apparently nothing will teach these people that the other 99% of the population exist”. Make that 100%.

The greatest race never run.

I could have gone to the 1948 Olympics in London when I was 13. I don't say I was Bob Mathias or Emil Zatopec but I ran my kind of race. I could probably be in the 2012 Olympics in London even though I'm 77. Unfortunately my event has never been sanctioned by the sanctimonious. arrogant elites that run the IOC. I'm referring to The Three-Legged Dash. You know, the one where they tie the inner legs of two people together and send them hopping off to the finish line. Today's Olympics are a television event or how would you describe beach blanket bikini volleyball, BMX motorcycle races and synchronized swimming, diving, schlepping? Even the time-honored Triple Jump seems like a form of aggressive hopscotch. I don't say they have to go as far as the Monty Python group that put on women's clothes for Drag Racing, but there has to be something for the non-steroid viewer. It's all politics,isn't it? Backroom arm twisting and blackmail. Greece is bankrupt and so is the Olympic Committee. In Orwell's “Animal Farm” the motto of the triumphant animals over the farmers was “Two legs bad, four legs good”. Well, I say, “Two legs boring, three legs thrilling”.

Facebook! Farcebook! Fleecebook!

I'm an adult so I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account. I don't believe in them because I believe in privacy. They are just Big Brother on your computer screen. Don't kid yourself, you are under constant surveillance around the clock. One of the aspects of Orwell's “1984” was “Facecrime”, the dangerous condition if your thoughts were deemed suspicious in a public place. Dossiers are being compiled on you right now by some service that is tracking your capacity to buy and spend. Harmless you say, well, read Andrew Keen's book: Digital Vertigo-how today's online social revolution is dividing, diminishing and disorienting us. Facebook has nearly one billion “users” so I am just a lone voice pleading for reason. Well, I'm not totally alone. The late Gore Vidal said, “It's of no consequence what people think of you, the only thing that matters is what you think of them”. I don't often quote Ayn Rand, but in The Fountainhead she has the villain, Ellsworth Toohey ask the hero Howard Roark, “What do you really think of me?” and Roark replys, “I don't think of you at all.” So we now have this mighty company that began trading in May at $100 billion valuation. It's now about $60 billion and heading south daily. Of course the underwriters and Mr. Zuckerberg have banked their proceeds and the public is left holding the bag. I'm not sure you can sell “liking”. It's an unreal product and not very essential to everyday life. And advertising doesn't fit comfortably into the popular mobile format, probably why GM and other advertisers are dropping out. Only time will tell but it's good to remember Prohibition's speakeasy queen, Texas Guinan who traditionally greeted patrons with a hearty “Hello suckers”. Hello Zuckers!

Mitt Romney, Nowhere Man

Although I won't be voting for Gov. Romney let me say I think he is a good American. But golly Miss Molly he sure can put his foot in his mouth. He had the misfortune to question arrangements for the London Olympics. Nothing really serious but the Brits are, how shall we say, a little brittle these days. The PM extolled London and said, “it's not like putting on an Olympics in the middle of nowhere”. I agree, but those Mormon souls in Utah were not amused. Sigh. What's coming on his next two stops; in Israel he might say that some of his best friends are Jewish; in Poland he can tell jokes like: What does it say on the bottom of a Coke bottle in Warsaw...open other end. I think the problem is that he is a rich guy and there is no one to fire him or reprimand him so he tells it like it is (for him). I only wish he were funnier like James Watt, the Secy. Of the Interior who was asked a few years ago if he backed Indian rights and he said, unequivocally “Without any reservations”.