You know the Vandals, they say, weren't any more destructive than the other invading tribes back in the Roman days. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. Maybe they just got blamed, popularized, if you will, for their particular bent of chaos and destruction:
particularly the defacing of artworks that were completed with great effort
Works of Art.
Right.
Is Huckleberry Finn a work of art? I know I think it is. I think right up to and including the point Huck says "I'll go to hell" the book serves as the exemplary masterpiece of American art in general, American literature, specifically.
True art breeds the sincerest form of flattery, does it not? When you see James Dean gazing off into the horizon, his windblown hair harnessed only by an intentionally off-set cowboy hat, a lit cigarette dangling off his pursed lips, isn't that "I'll go to Hell" at it's pop-culture zenith? I think it is.
When Elvis swivels his hips, when Salinger refuses accolades, when Bobby Fischer goes into to hiding, that's All-American rebellion.
Lenny Bruce, rebel. John Stewart, rebel. Clarence Thomas, rebel.
Rebels all. Americanism is Rebellion. Think about that for a minute, Mr. I-love-the-Founders.
So what's not Americanism? If we were to host a sociological HUAC in 2011, who would we hunt?
Conformists?
I don't know, maybe.
You know, when I see graffiti, I see art. Maybe you don't, I allow for subjectivity to some extent--and heck, I don't know what true art really is, but I know what sucks.
Sure, I'm opposed to going around spray-painting whatever you want wherever you want it, but there's something wretchedly American about it. Isn't there? In a way, yes. But there's also a very vandalistic side to tagging. It's not the pictures and murals taggers convey on pedestrian bridges and freeway overpasses that bothers me. It's the language.
That language vandals use, you can't read it. You have no idea what it says, without a translation. They're hiding something. American art is not about hiding things. We have no patience for hidden things and we are "a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, secret oaths and secret proceedings." [1. From JFK's "The President and the Press" speech at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on April 27, 1961.] Salinger didn't get famous for hiding things. Neither did Palahniuk, Roth or Twain. They are revealers. True American art reveals something in a language everyone can understand about something they've previously hidden or ignored within themselves their whole lives--for whole generations--or, in Twain's case for the entire duration of a nation's existence.
That's what separates American art from American vandalism. Revelation.
American art is that grafitti mural on the subway wall. American vandalisms are the incoherent, territorial spray-paint pissings that cover that mural up and conceal it with words you know just don't belong there.
In a way, the First Amendment is so ingrained in our subconscious that we have an almost preternatural resistance to expression that is incoherent, truncated or---and this is the crux of it--censored. That penchant for straight-forwardness and our hatred of secrets, these are the brushes our artists use. Always have. We want to know. If there is magic ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence, we want to know. If Jesus bedded down a prostitute and procreated with her, we want to know. Truthers. Birthers. Bilderbergers. NWOers. Alien-ers. You name it, we're on it.
Why then wouldn't we want to know if Mark Twain used the words "nigger" and "injun" in a book? Will we really sit by, we the people who wrangle against international conspiracies of every order, and allow ourselves to be deceived, lied to and vandalized?
Isn't removing a word, replacing it with an alternative, the very antithesis to what we stand for? Isn't that vandalism? Isn't that simply scribbling illegible graffiti over great art? Isn't that the very vandalism from which our definition of the word derives?
particularly the defacing of artworks that were completed with great effort
Here we are, witnessing not the advent of a Secret Society, but the instigated, elaborated plan to build a society with secrets--the VERY THING TWAIN WAS REELING AGAINST.
New South Books, the publisher of this up and coming edition of Huck Finn, justifies their censorship thus:
At NewSouth, we saw the value in an edition that would help the works find new readers. If the publication sparks good debate about how language impacts learning or about the nature of censorship or the way in which racial slurs exercise their baneful influence, then our mission in publishing this new edition of Twain’s works will be more emphatically fulfilled.
In other words, "yeah, we're lying, but we're doing it for your own good". In some warped, monomaniacal way they've convinced themselves that white-washing "nigger" and "injun" (They plan on replacing the former with "slave"---I'm sorry, that's not the same thing) will get more people to read Twain. But...it's not Twain, now is it?
No. It is vandalism.
Go to New South Books and tell them to stop this madness. Tell professor Gibbens (agribben@aum.edu) we won't be lied to. And tell your friends that censorship is vandalism--Vandalism from within.
Her middle name is Aurora, so this little girl's discovery was destined to happen, I reckon. Way to go girl. And way to go press, for "blowing" it way out of proportion. Let's try to cap it to 15 minutes of fame, shall we? /evilgrinchiness
Speaking of Grinches, who still has a tree on their compost heap? These boys can help. Can't tell for sure, but I think those boys'll be around a lot longer than 15 minutes.
Something I'm sure you're glad you didn't buy for your grandchildren this Christmas. I guess that marketing degree really isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Here's one that's so totally not cool you cannot let me read if I'm within 100 yards of other living beings. More on this later. I promise. This aggression will not stand.
These two old dudes are going to get themselves killed on a mountain--which is fine, but what's that about a Russian Silicon Valley and why is Arnie...oh never mind. None of our business. Lathspell.
Apparently, Baby Boomers are a bunch of whiners. Welcome to 40 more years of entitlement hell.
And hey, the sky is falling--maybe not now and maybe not everywhere, but it is some weird places--places where the sky should be firmly in place at all times. Apparently, the sky falling brings out the best in some of us. That's ok. No matter how trashy things get, everything is going to be just fine.
Hey, what is it called when you're trying to fix something that was broken and make it worse? It's called an "overhaul". Like injecting sulfur in an atmosphere that really doesn't like having sulfur injected into it.
Well, everyone else is doing their "decades' best movies" lists, so I'm going to do one, too. Mainly because all the other lists are either too long (100 movies!? Jeez, 2/3 of those have to suck simply due to the law of averages) or they are just wrong (Gigli is NOT one of the best movies of anything. ANYTHING.) And hey, maybe you'll find a movie on here you always wanted to catch but never did.
I won't be putting any documentaries on this list, although I suggest two right off hand that could EASILY be on any top ten list for this past decade in film: Man on Wire(James Marsh, 2008) and The Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005) are must sees.
So what makes a great movie worthy of my list? Well, I have to like it. Duh. A movie, however critically acclaimed or how many box office records it smashed, is not going to get my vote if I yawned while watching it. Other prereqs might include things like direction, acting, and all the technical mumbo jumbo that goes into production. But then there's the impact equation. Did the film do something in the world? Did it make a statement or introduce an avenue of delivery we haven't seen before--or at least for a long time? Hopefully every one of these movies did something-something-besides just being entertaining. But...entertaining is good too, in fact, it may be the number one prerequisite.
So, here ya go. One guy's opinion on the ten--well, twelve, but I'll explain that below--best movies of the years 2001-2010.
As you'll see, 2002 was a great year for movies, both foreign and domestic. And anything I could say about this instant masterpiece has either already been said, or wouldn't do it justice. I will say, however, that fluidity is key in film-making and this decade (as you'll also see below) challenged the limits of how far a director can go before losing his narrative, plot or storyline and with the loss of any of the above, the audience. City of God drives home a message we could all use a little reminder of. What is it? Go watch it and you tell me. I'm convinced you'll get a knock in the head--or the heart. It's just that damned good.
Best Line: Oh hell, I don't know. The whole movie is rife with quotables. How 'bout this one:
"Fuck! I'm dead!"
2. The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy--although, I'd say The Two Towers was the best made)
We're Tolkien fans. We read all the books. We read all the supplements. Hell, we even took Tolkien classes in college. Dorks. So, needless to say, we were all really concerned when we heard some no-name director was going to make these films. Oh great! Something must be done! We joined the fan club to keep an eye on things. We bitched and moaned when we heard Glorfindel was out and Haldir was in. We even chuckled a little bit at some of the line-switching that got leaked. They were going to screw this up beyond all hope. No question. Then, the day came. We stood in line. We sat in awe. We walked out speechless. Kudos Mr. Jackson. Kudos.
Best Line: John Rhys Davies: "Nineteen! Twenty! Twenty-One!"
Mwahahaha!
3. Lost in Translation(2003) Sofia Coppola
So, when the "find the X" theme is utilized successfully, any writer can spin the yarn, any director knows how to spin the reel and any actor knows how to spin toward toward the X. X marks the spot. Unless, the 'X' happens to be one's place in life. No one quite knows how to do that. Enter Sofia Coppola and her all star cast and crew. Wow. Unbelievably done. I'm not saying anything else about this movie. Watch it. Watch it again. You'll never see Murray better than this, unfortunately. It just can't possibly happen. Can it?
Um, did you know that Sofia Coppala is Nicholas Cage's cousin? Loves me some Wikipedia.
Best line: "My name is Kawasaki. Nice to meet you."
"I've heard of you. Thank you."
So all the talk is about Javier Bardem, right? Who the HAY is Javier Bardem? Well, now we know. Damn, do we know. I'm not sure what Bardem was in this film, the angel of death, a deranged sociopath, a...whatever. I don't know. But he scares the shit out of me. It's a movie about age and death in an age of death. Sick. Twisted. Coen.
Ok, so I'm kind of cheating here. This movie came out in 2000, but...BUT! It didn't have time to make anyone's best of the last decade list, so it's going here. Critics, when they speak of this film, are always alluding to it's global marketing strategy. I'll note, it was an amazing endeavor that involved everyone from the Wu Tang Clan to college professors, but there had to be a reason why they fell in love with this movie, right? Right. Because it's freaking awesome! I mean...jumping off leaves and flying around like some shen/god/badass? We're there, dude. Beautifully choreographed. Epically spun story of love and betrayal entrapped in that pristine once-was world of virgin magic and grace--wow. Just wow. It's hard to even get to the point where we notice the actors in this film for what they did, but we have to. Yun-Fat Chow, Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang, are the trifecta of everything that is "mastery" and the coalescence of the universal, silver-screen love-triangle.
Jen Yu (Zhang): You want to know who I am? I am... I am the Invincible Sword Goddess, armed with the Green Destiny that knows no equal! Be you Li or Southern Crane, bow your head and ask for mercy! I am the dragon from the desert! Who comes from nowhere and leaves no trace! Today I fly over Eu-Mei. Tomorrow... I topple Mount Wudan!
Ok, I'm cheating again. But this is the last time, I promise! Again, this is a 2k movie that didn't nearly have enough time to garner enough support for wowieness. And it has that. A ton of it.
Every once in a while, a movie comes along and changes the way we view cinema, if not our own world. This movie, for myself at least, did both. I actually run into people all the time who have not yet seen this Nolan work of genius (by that I mean both Christopher and his brother Jonathan who wrote the story), so I'll not give anything away. If you do see it or have seen it, you'll understand how some other movies came to the fore a little later on in the decade. Both Guy Pearce and Joe Pantoliano deserve a lot of credit for their roles in leaving a beautiful scar on movie history's rosy cheek. Suberb.
Best lines: Leonard Shelby(Pearce): [running] OK, so what am I doing?
[sees Dodd also running] Leonard Shelby: Oh, I'm chasing this guy.
[Dodd shoots at Leonard] Leonard Shelby: No... he's chasing me.
I have to say, when someone first told me to see this movie, I was like "what, that sounds stupid. Donnie what? Darko? Dumb."
I was wrong.
Being a fan of horror and of good writing both, I can't not like this film. The direction, of course, is what makes it stick, but the story itself demands fragmentation in the same way Memento, Moon and Eternal Sunshine attempt to harness. And while Memento was the linchpin of the decade of fragmented movies, this one is sewn together the best. Are there things I don't like about Darko? Sure. And that's why it's below Memento on the list. But there are plenty of goodies to love about this neo-noir-horror-slash-thriller-slash-what-the-hell-is-going-on-here-flick. Darko is the shroud that blanketed the decade in cinematic muck. It was the muck movie makers ensconced themselves in until about the time Little Miss Sunshine came along and tried to take it all away. Was there a glimmer of light at the end of the Darko tunnel? Go see for yourself, if you dare.
I don't care what anyone says about me putting this movie on the list. It is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. And if I'm a fan of horror, I'm an uber fan of science fiction. Go suck a Gerty if you disagree.
Let me ask you this: If you were going to cast an actor to play a monotonous robot who better could you get than Kevin Spacey?
Answer: No one on God's green Earth.
Let me ask you this: If you wanted to make a soundtrack that was spatial, eternal, and intrinsically isotropic, who better could you get than Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream)?
Answer: No one in the Universe.
Let me ask you this: If you were going to cast a guy that would be the only character in a basically one-man cinematic event of Epic porportions, who better could you cast than Sam Rockwell?
Answer: ABSOLUTELY NOT ONE PERSON IN THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE.
Answer: I'm not telling. I'll let Moon tell you. You be the judge, but I absolutely fell in love with this guy after this role. Unreal--and that's the trick. Kudos Mr. Rockwell. If I were an academy judge, you would have won, big time.
Being a huge fan of Philip K. Dick, I would recommend this movie to anyone of kindred affinities. You can thank me later.
And you will.
P.S. Don't think Duncan Jones is a PKD fan? Think again. From IMDB: Duncan Jones is planning a follow-up film, which will serve as a semi-sequel to Moon. "Sam has agreed to do a little cameo in the next film," says Jones, who plans to shed some light to the fate of Sam-6 after XXXX---SPOILER---XXXX. At Cannes Film Festival, he mentioned that his next movie would be the spiritual descendant of Blade Runner, set in the same universe and timeline as Moon. It is not clear if he's referring to the same planned movie or not.
Best Line: Sam Bell (Rockwell): "Listen, why don't you relax. Why don't you take a pill, bake a cake, go read the encyclopedia."
That's actually a curiouser question than you might think.
This was a no-brainer for me. I'm a fan of the big Pan-Asian classics so going into this one I was pleasantly surprised that the spoilers I'd come into contact with were totally off-base. Don't get me wrong, I loved Ran and Yojimbo both, but that had been done. Ya know?
I'll be the first to admit that Jet Li, much like his American bad-dude counterparts (Stallone, Norris, what-have-you) can absolutely not act. I think if you go in with that in mind, you're in for a major surprise. In Hero, Li is up to the task, handles brevity and longevity both very well, and, in my humble opinion left to shame our American heros of decades past.
Hero is as much a film about color as it is about swordsmanship and calligraphy. Pay attention to how Yimou Zhang uses colors in this movie and you'll never look at film, real film, through the same old gray-scale action lens again. Everything is a character in Zhang's world. Depictions, be they swirling leaves or the desert itself are creations--actors even in this film. These are the pictorial glue that indelibly bind this film and all it's fragmented parts as whole. Life, death, wont, sorrow, peace--everything is a bold, gliding stroke of a calligraphers brush, animated and illuminated in living color.
10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Michel Gondry
When I said Memento was going to set the precedent for this decade, I wasn't fudging even a little bit. Almost every movie on this list incorporates fragmentation to some degree, possibly none more than this one. And, like Memento, Sunshine takes the fragments of memory to an extreme--except this time, the memory loss is on purpose!
One of the things that most impressed me about Gondry's direction in this film was his ability to separate the action in the uh...real world from the action in memory. That kind of trite, fake, concocted dreamworld we step into when we drudge up memories--Gondry's got it.
Both Carey and Winslet are great in the film, sure, that is to be expected, but the pleasant acting surprise for me came from Kirsten Dunst. I was never sure if Dunst could act or was just lucky to have been cast in a major role when she was knee-high to a vampire. She can act.
At any rate, here's a movie you'll not want to forget.
Best Lines: Joel (Carey): Is there any risk of brain damage? Howard (Wilkinson): Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but it's on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you'll miss.
A night of heavy drinking? He's obviously doing it wrong.
Um.
Nevermind.
11. Batman: The Dark Knight(2008) Christopher Nolan
Think of the worst movie you've ever seen. Go ahead. Give it some thought.
Got it yet?
Well, whatever that movie was (probably not Troll 2, but something close, amiright?), this movie is the complete polar opposite of that. Guaranteed. The movie you hate was boring, silly, asked no questions of humanity, posed no questions to God or the Universe and made no statement on the teleological nature of humanity's shadowed, yet ever-evolving propensity toward abject oppugnancy. This movie, from beginning to end, stretches those questions into philosophic excogitations of the steepest order.
Bah! It's just a super-hero flick!
Right, but with everything that happened on the set and off, on the screen and in our own minds, it got us thinking. We're still thinking about it to this very day.
12. O brother, Where Art Thou?(2000) Joel and Ethan Coen
And no, this is not cheating. The movie premiered just before the stroke of 2001, so it's in there for this decade.
The Odyssey, hillbilly style. Yeehaw! I honestly don't think I've laughed harder and thought longer about a comedy since The Big Lebowski (Also a Coen Bros. flick).
Highlights:
John Turturro. The more you see this guy, the more you find it hard to ignore his capacity to fill a role completely. One of my fav's.
The Soundtrack. Man, whodathunk that old timer music would catch on fire in 21st Century America? Dunno. But it did. I still listen to it from time to time.
Really, if you haven't gotten around to seeing this movie, do yourself a favor...immediately!
Best Lines: Delmar O'Donnell (Nelson): Care for some gopher? Ulysses Everett McGill (Clooney): No thank you, Delmar. One third of a gopher would only arouse my appetite without bedding it down. Delmar O'Donnell: Oh, you can have the whole thing. Me and Pete already had one apiece. We ran across a whole... gopher village.
Honorable mentions:
This is how people who do top 10's and can't manage to get only 10 on the list make up for it. It wouldn't be so bad if my top 10 didn't have 12 in it already, I know...
Finding Nemo(2003) Stanton and Unkrich
There's really no reason why this movie couldn't have made it on my top ten list except that I've been subjected to seeing it about a million times. Kids, amiright? Pixar did an excellent job from pre-production to delivery on this instant classic tale of "find the X". Just so happened the 'x' in Pixar's equation was a lovable little fish we can probably all relate to.
I don't know anyone who hasn't seen this movie, but if you haven't, welcome to Earth. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the film as a whole (I know the critics loved it, but meh...) But there are parts, scenes and little glimpses of greatness throughout the entirety of the film. You just have to watch and pick them out for yourself. So why is it here? Easy: Daniel Day Lewis is the greatest actor what ever lived. And if you argue with me on that, there WILL be blood. See the film, Lewis makes any film worth watching at least fifteen times. /mancrush
I admit I have a love/hate relationship with Polanski. No matter how much I hate his last movie--whatever movie that may have been(*cough* The Ninth Gate *cough*)--the next one is a usually a work of art. The Pianist is that art at its zenith. Adrian Brodie may have won an Academy Award for this, but it's Polanski that composed every nuanced note in this excellent film. There's something about the reconstruction of destruction that serves as the perfect canvas for film art--especially when Beethoven is echoing through shattered walls and across mounds of rubble. Chaos and Beauty. That's what this film is all about.
Best Line: Moonlight Sonata. Hands down, as it were.
Alright, so, leave the effing monkeys alone, will ya? Yes, I am a huge horror film buff from way back in the Killer Tomato days. I am a sad specimen of humanity. All true. But Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) unleashes a titan with this masterpiece. This film could arguably be the greatest horror film ever made ('happy' endings aside) and probably should be on the top ten for the decade--I didn't put it up there because, well, horror is an acquired taste, especially when zombies are involved.
Best Line: Naomie Harris, "I was wrong when I said that staying alive is as good as it gets."
Now here's a little tale you have to see for yourself. I'd give it some association like "Karate Kid meets Hero" but that wouldn't be too fair. If you want some serious ass-kicking coupled with a superb "Find the X" theme, this movie should be at the top of your list. Jackie Chan and Jet Li. 'Nuff said.
Here's a movie you must see for one reason and one reason only: Renee Zellweger. You know, I'm not a fan of the 'tough chick' representation on the big screen, they never get it right and there always seems to be way too much acting involved. Zellweger doesn't act in this role. She is that bad-ass, roughneck character. What surprises me is how that little glint of femininity never escapes her persona and in effect, highlights her true grit. Amazingly done. Much like D.D. Lewis in just about every role he's portrayed, Zellweger latches onto something here. This certainly is a work of art and genius. Besides Zellweger, the story's a good'n. The cinematography is great. Everything is fine, really. But it's simply not top 10 material-apart from Zellweger.
We're working on our new site and will be closing this one down. If you're a fan of small government and individual liberty, make sure you check back here for the URL, which will go live and have daily content added after January 1, 2011. I'll post it here in the next few days.
Good luck and Godspeed.
Here's one last ditty, before I go...
Dear distinguished editor,
Thank you for recently publishing the article entitled “Oregon loses jobs, and it’s our own fault”.The article was an insightful and refreshing adventure into the no-holds-barred journalism of old.Rare indeed is the celebratory occasion in which your loyal—yet dwindling number of—subscribers have the pleasure of seeing the fourth estate’s investigative prowess on display.The Oregonian’s coverage of the economic melt down in this state has been par excellence and markedly distinguishable from all other papers of local bent in this nation.
No.
No, it has not.
And you can stop the LexisNexis search for the above-mentioned article. You should know it does not exist.
In fact, one might say (and one is, now) that your paper truly, truly sucks.I don’t care who your new hoity-toity yellow-belly-in-chief is or how many Roman numerals he has in his name.No one does.What people—readers of local daily papers—want is news that answers just a few simple questions:“What” and “Why”, for example.Your paper does a pitifully mundane job at the “what”, and has always been shockingly unengaged in the “why”.There is a third question that should be reticently obvious and automatically answered by the papers’ own name:The Oregonian.
Far too often, I see national goings-on on every prominent page of this supposedly local newspaper…save the quaint little stories about bicyclists who can’t ride a bus because there is no room to put their bikes.Usually, all we get are constant and incessant macaronic bloviations on national health-care reform, the wars in Afganistan and (until recently, for some reason) the war in Iraq.Locally we are enlightened by ramblings and musings of our non-existent clean energy industry, bloggishly simplistic entries mentioning, but never detailing the decline of our fledgling “Silicon Forest”, and maybe, if we’re lucky, we get some Pulitzer prize winning journalism—which is code for “Did what an even worse newspaper (i.e. the San Fransisco Obstacle) couldn’t seem to do.’’ One article on your OregonLive.com site suggested that our economy is “veering away from the abyss” by stating federal spikes in certain corners of the economic equation while suggesting that “Even in Oregon, optimism is growing.”Really?So, it is okie dokie for your journalists to spike opinion pieces with national stats and in turn apply those stats—none of which apply to Oregon—to Oregon?Unreal.But not unbelievable.
The “what” question is really quite simple, to be sure.Anyone can say what just happened.A building burned down.An international truck manufacturer picked up and left town.The carpetbagging “creative class” seeking a “green-friendly” home-city scuttles out of Oregon as quick as they come here.Unemployment skyrockets in just a few months’ time.No one shops downtown anymore.Crime is at an all-time high on MAX lines.No one is hiring.No one is creating new business.Nothing is happening and no one at The Oregonian knows the answer to the more important question:Why?
Just one example of The Oregonian’s failure to answer the question “why” occurred in a story regarding the departure of Freightliner and the impending loss of 900 Oregon jobs. The reasons why Freightliner left weren’t particularly obscure:it came down to profitability.The “why” question was in this sentence:
“Oregon officials expressed their disappointment, but said there was little they could have done to change the conditions that led Daimler to shift all its truck-making operations to the Carolinas and to Mexico.”
Ok…why?Why? Why? Why? Why?Now, certainly, 900 jobs lost is not the entirety of Oregon’s economic bloodstream.But it is arterial to the endemic of lost jobs in this state.Furthermore, if government officials are involved, which the article suggests, then they must have been able, at least theoretically, to do something about the loss of these jobs and this industry.So, why didn’t they?Or, granting them the benefit of the doubt (which The Oregonian forces its readers to do):Why couldn’t they?The newspaper, in over twenty articles on the subject (sorry, I don’t have access to LexisNexis’ entire search capacity. I’m only an unemployed college student, with three little girls to try to feed or I would have found more, trust me.) never once asked any “government official” any “why” questions.The reporters, along with the editors and the newspaper as an entity consistently refuse to ask lawmakers and officials the right questions—if they ask any questions at all.And even if they know the answer, this paper lets more pro-active, under-circulated rags break real news.Which leads me to the fourth question all respectable papers should be at least trying to answer:How?
How can this be?
Far be it from me to question the majesty of the mighty Oregonian, entirely.Honestly, only a handful of people are to blame for not allowing stories to accentuate the “why” and “how” of certain stories.I have been in those offices and have seen the hard work those producers of news task away on daily.And I know the clock cannot be stretched.But how can it be that every other medium including radio, radio for Hirsch’s sake, is killing print journalism?I’ll tell you how:they ask “why.” They ask “how.”“Why” and “how” are the reasons Fox news, its publications and conservative radio and its publications consistently lambastes traditional print media.Bloggers, as well, have learned the gift of asking “how”, and their popularity waxes ever upward.This is not to say that Fox or e-magazines or bloggers are correctly answering the pertinent questions, but simply to say that they are asking the questions with numerous panels, talking heads and, most importantly, members of the national government.But even these organizations, for the most part, are asking softball questions design to re-book government officials, not to offend them or stir up any real controversy.
So where has the Oregonian lined up
So, you see, Oregon is losing jobs and it is our own fault.Or rather, it is your fault.That’s right, it’s the Oregonian’s fault.You refuse to answer the pertinent questions of prominently involved public officials regarding our over-inflated housing market, our double-digit unemployment rate, our inability to attract and retain industry, our constant coddling of an overbloated, second-rate tech industry, our refusal to train and educate entrepreneurs of the future, and our over-all disdain for what makes great cities great: namely, an employed, productive and intuitive workforce that excels, nay, dominates any competition from anywhere else.We’re too busy relegating our masses to waiting for the next bus, hoping there’s a rack on which to mount our eco-friendly rosary beads of the 21st century.
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? "When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil? "Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth. "But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.' "To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil? "But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind. "Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil? "Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil? "Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money? "Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money? "Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it. "Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. "Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun. "But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves. "Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter. "Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. "Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.' "When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are. "You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists. "To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist. "If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality. "Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will. "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
