The Stupid Economy
We're in the midst of an economic collapse in the United States. Everyone's talking about it, been talking about it, and yes, will continue talking about it. Under the umbrella of this recession, which the "experts" say began in December of 2007, is a countless array of topics to suit all people's tastes. Whether it's food prices, the cost of education, gas prices or the cost of living, people everywhere have money as the main focus in their lives. Not really sure what's changed since all this recession talk started, but here we are: here and now.
What's been on the news lately (the past couple of weeks) has been the auto industry. United States automakers are scrambling to see where they went wrong, and what's worse, what they need to do to turn a profit. Last month the CEOs from the big three, GM, Ford and Chrysler, all went to Congress to ask for bailout money after showing up in their own private jets. Congress said no. The CEOs then threatened that if their companies went under, then this country will sink through a mere recession and into, yes, a depression. Congress still said no. Congress, like myself, would like to see not only the outstretched hand of the auto industry, but a plan within that outstretched hand that will guarantee that this "crisis" won't happen again.
Let's face it: when it comes to designing cars, the United States have floundered severely. For brevity's sake, I will not go into why I think they've floundered. All I'll say about it is this: I used to drive a Chevy, and now I drive a Honda. If the big three expect people to buy their cars, if they expect bailout money from me and all of you, then they're going to have to remember 2 important words: fuel efficiency.
CNN Coverage of the Mumbai Attacks
I was in Buffalo for the Thanksgiving holiday last week. Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite days of the year. I've always loved flying home to Chicago from New York to be with my family and friends, lounge on the couch, watch football, and gorge myself with a spread of the best food I'd probably have all year. This year, however, since the economy is so tight and i can't afford a 400 dollar plane ticket, I decided to go up to my girlfriend's hometown to visit some of her family and see where she came from. I arrived, and her family was warm, gracious and accommodating.
We arrived on a wednesday, which was the first day of the attacks on Mumbai. Now, I'm not going to call these men terrorists, even though they fit our country's media's perception of a terrorist to the 't' (pun intended). If a kid who shoots up a college classroom isn't going to be considered or labeled a terrorist by the news stations, then I am not going to perpetuate the double standard that George W. Bush has created by calling these men terrorists either. Instead, I'm going to call them what they are: gunmen. Anyone care to dispute me on this?
By the third day of the standoff, these gunmen combined to kill over 180 people, and injure over 300 more. While a couple of the gunmen were apprehended or found dead, many of the remaining were said to have escaped by starting a fire as a diversion. Whether I believe that or not is another story for another blog. On Friday night, after my girlfriend and her family had all gone to bed, I stayed up and watched Larry King Live on CNN. Yes, I know, it's not a legitimate news source, but it's all I had at the time. Regardless, I watched with horror the pictures that came onto the screen. Bodies covered in bloody sheets, a marble corridor pooling with red puddles. Crying women. Men with guns. An older woman is dragged by her ankles out onto the street; she's dead. As I watched the pictures, the voice of one of the people who had been inside the hotel kept saying, "There is blood all over! Blood all over!"
By this point in the ordeal, police didn't even know if they could go in to give assistance to those who were in need of it. Several explosions were still going off. Imagine: 3 days of being trapped in a hotel, and not knowing if this group of younger-looking, irrational and unreasonable religious fundamentalists was going to take my life. I tried to imagine, and it was awful. I imagined being there, barricading the door, hiding under the bed, crying for my mother. I thought of my girlfriend and how sad it would make her if something like this had happened to me. I imagined experiencing the account of a man who was in the building at the time he saw several people drop dead right in front of him. It was difficult enough to try and recreate those accounts, but I knew that my imagination could never do justice to the first hand experiences of those victims. Larry King then said that his time was up, but that CNN would be returning in two hours with extended coverage of the developments there, and that I should not go anywhere. For two hours until then, however, CNN would be airing an encore presentation of Anderson Cooper's Heroes award ceremony... "Wow" I thought to myself. These people really don't give a shit about what they're reporting, or how their reports may affect its viewers.
Needless to say, I was feeling a little bit scared; a little bit vulnerable. I went upstairs to try and wake my girlfriend up and tell her how much it scared me to think of something like that happening to me, but all I did was sort of piss her off. Unable to sleep, I returned to the very thing that induced me with such great anxiety to now deliver me with mindless banter and nonsense: the television.
Just a few channels down from CNN was Conan O'Brien. He was doing some skit about holiday gifts for this year: a vomiting Kermit the Frog and a masturbating Grizzly Bear. The skit, with one absurd gesture leading to another, made me laugh out loud in the exact same spot, where, just minutes earlier, I teared up at the thought of being violated by religious fanatics. This is why I'm writing about the Mumbai attacks: not necessarily because of what had happened, (which was terrible) but the way in which the news media uses words, pictures and gestures in order to conjure up ideas in people's minds. These ideas, however heavily laden they may be with graphic images and the like, are fleeting. All one has to do is flip the channel to be affected from the opposite direction. Such is the nature of our culture and our existence. We watch the news, we hear what is said, we feel for the victims for a moment or two, and we converse over the implications of the unfolded events. We do all of this, and then we flip the channel to laugh at a spring-loaded masturbating bear.
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