“I know it don’t thrill you, I hope it don’t kill you,” as the old (very old!) song goes!
Well, Historiann is back from vacation. (Why can’t famille Historiann just rent a beach house somewhere like normal vacationers, instead of doing the Indianapolis 500 from southern New England to Northern New England and back again, from the Green and White Mountains to Narragansett Bay?) But, it was lots of fun, and full of family and old friends, so who’s complaining, eh?? What did I miss while I was drivin’ fishin’?
- I watched from afar, far far away from my own New Yorker subscription and wireless connection, as “covergate” exploded this week. Diary of an Anxious Black Woman explained it all nicely here and here–after all, what can you say about such colossal cluelessness about African American history and the history of how the white media portray black people? Do you think that if The New Yorker staff writers included more than just their overwhelming majority of white northeastern men over the age of 50 that somebody might have pointed out that there is more than one way to read those “satirical” images than the way that David Remnick and the rest of his sheltered band of naifs read it? As always, le dernier mot goes to Bob Somerby, who derides Remnick’s “High Gotham Clueless” response to the outcry.
- Driving home from the airport, I heard that the horrible Bill Clinton is in the news again. Typical! You know, the Clintons will do anything, absolutely anything for power, even try to cure a disease that disproportionately afflicts children under age 5 and pregnant women living in developing countries! What will this evil genius think of next? Oh yeah–his loser Vice President will probably do something else ridiculous and self-aggrandizing, proving once again that you’d have to be crazy to want to have a beer with him! Why won’t these exceptionally competent, smart, and compassionate individuals go away when the Democratic National Committee and the corporate media tell them to? Why can’t they just hit the links and stick to the for-profit lecture circuit like Republican ex-Presidents?
- La famille stayed in a hotel with cable television (supreme luxury!) last night, and I awoke dumbstruck to the never-ending train wreck that is “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. In every way, the show is a worthy successor to Don Imus, whose “nappy-headed” insults to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team got him fired last year. “Morning Joe” has better production values than Imus’s show, which was essentially watching him do his morning radio show, but it’s still a production that more resembles a “morning zoo” in the local AOR radio station than a proper news program. (What was I thinking, looking for news in the vast wasteland of MSNBCNNFOX?) Seriously–who watches this stuff? They had REO Speedwagon and the Eagles for bumper music (I think I turned it off before they played Styx), and of course, a woman on the show they can patronize and talk over constantly who goes by the name of Robin Quivers Mika Brzezinski. I don’t usually watch this crap, but perhaps those of you with better cable packages can enlighten me: does she ever not get interrupted, talked over, or all-around patronized? The camera work supports the frat house atmosphere that the titular host Joe Scarborough encourages–when Brzezinski makes her ineffective and inarticulate interjections–usually to the effect of “no, no, I just…I mean…no,” the camera continues cutting back and forth between the male regulars and the reporters they invite on as guest experts on a given topic. Even when they need to break for the news–Brzezinski’s apparent job is to be the resident newsreader–she had to make several starts at reading her news script this morning, because she was still being talked over!
- Mmmmm…Dunkin’ Donuts! (We don’t have them in Northern Colorado, so it’s always a treat to visit the land of 3 Double-D’s on every corner!) I even got to hear a local order a “regulah” this morning–it brought tears to my eyes! (You New Englanders know that that’s a DD coffee with two shots of cream and two spoonsful of sugar, but you must know that that’s just a regional thing, right?)
- I’ve been getting offers to monetize this website. Do any of you fellow bloggers have thoughts about this? (I’m not really interested, but then, when do I have the chance to monetize anything I do, or even to use the verb “to monetize?”) Is this just the kind of thing that happens when you have more traffic than just your mom and your friends (and maybe your mom’s friends) reading your blog? Please advise.
Historiann 
Money is the new poverty. Even google started to tank in the last quarter, and Swiss banks are going to stop taking American clientmers. What would be the point of having any? I’d keep the thing here in the old commune!
I don’t have any t.v., but when school is in I have no choice but to watch Morning Joe from the top of an eliptical maching, with the sound turned off. It’s not bad that way. You can make up your own banter. Did we ever get final results from that Texas caucus yet, by the way, or are they still counting? What a spring it was, I’m already nostalgic!!!
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Hi! Glad to see you back here – I missed ya.
Sometimes, I’ve just gotta step a huge ten yards back from everything because I realize “the world” has started to affect my mental health. Really. I’ve found the news of the last few weeks just wrenching. I’m trying to figure out if that’s because it actually has been worse than usual or if it’s just because I’m losing it. Wev. It’s awful.
The week started with that New Yorker cover and me saying out loud several times, “WTF?”
So I stepped back my ten yards and let everybody else do the work. At a certain point, I guess I was “back” so far that I began to find it funny. No, not the cover, but the responses of all the supposedly “intelligent” people. Those who complained were without wit, without a sense of humour, too sensitive, allowing themselves to be sidetracked by an issue that wasn’t THAT important. And so forth. I laughed because people have been saying that shit to feminists as long as there’ve been any and, from a distance, it all sounded just pathetically. funny. I’ve adopted the word “asshat”. I really like it.
As for monetizing, I can’t speak from the POV of a monetizer. But as one whose reading life is increasingly monetized, may I just say I find it such a relief to see a nice clean blog that isn’t covered with blinking lights and advertising copy. And quite often, the ads are blaringly inappropriate for content of the blog. However, why should it not be Historiann whose getting some of da dough? No reason. I’ll keep coming back, whatever you do.
See ya soon.
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Hi, hysperia–never underestimate the inclination and ability of the U.S. corporate media to inflate trivia to a critical election year moment. I mean, it’s not like we face global climate meltdown, two f’d up imperial occupations, a shrinking dollar, or a screwed-up economy, or anything important like that. Look over there–Michelle Obama crossed her eyes and pursed her lips disapprovingly during one of her husbands speeches!
It’s just too bad that half of all Democrats have only recently awoken from their peaceful nap in which they dreamed of fair or reasonable media coverage of the issues.
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Wow! The DD has not yet invaded Northern Colorado? What do you have up there instead? Don’t worry, it won’t be long before they have them there too — I’ve seen them as far north as Halifax, Nova Scotia.
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I’m really hoping–it’s the only chain joint I can stand. (And speaking of N.S., I could settle for Tim Horton’s too, but alas…) There are some donut chains here–one called Lemars, I think, from Iowa, and a California chain whose name I forget, but their donuts are cloyingly sweet.
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