Heads Up, incoming

As an American I can’t help but be thrilled, as I am sure you are, by Lance Armstrong’s incredible win, for the seventh straight time, of some French contest or game or something, in their Frenchy country. But, I wonder, is that news I can use? Or not?

What the heck is news we can use, anyway? This is supposed to be a community newspaper. But what is community news, anyway? Is it just news that happens around here, in the local community? Is it news that makes our community feel good, like the Lance thing? Or is it news that tells us something that we can really use, such as an announcement of “heads up, incoming?”

I say it’s the “heads up, incoming” thing. Let’s take an example. About two weeks ago some terrorists set off three bombs in London, a city in another one of those unpatriotic countries where they don’t recite our Pledge of Allegiance. In fact it’s just above France on the map. Anyway, a week later, on account of those bombings, you had New York police randomly searching the bags of subway users.

Now, I don’t know much about geography. I don’t know the price of tea in China, now that their currency is no longer pegged to the dollar. I don’t know how much wool they mine in Australia, or whether or not they use modern synthetics instead. I’m a good American, so I prefer to mind my own business. But I can look at page 5 of my Funk & Wagnall’s Hammond World Atlas, as I’m doing right now, and I can tell you that Seattle is only an inch from New York, while New York is a whole inch and a half, about, from London!

What that tells us is this: the effects of three London bombings were able to travel, uh, three-fifths of the way here in just one week. So: Heads up! Incoming! You’re only two London bombs away from random searches of your own! Run and hide!

Let’s take a related example. Since the bombings the London police have taken to wearing all black, going around like ninjas, carrying guns, and shooting foreign looking guys who run away from guys that look like ninjas with guns. I would like to say it can’t happen here, but, HOLY-MOLY, our cops ALREADY carry guns, so ANYTHING could push them over the edge! Heads up! Incoming!

If you don’t believe me you should watch your local TV news, like Channel Nine and a Half News at Nine and a Half or whatever. Some guy named Greg or Steve will be talking to some woman named Nancy, say, and he’ll say, “So, Nancy, say, is there something the viewers here in Seattle can do to avoid being shot by men who look like ninjas with guns?” And Nancy, who plays the smart one, will say, “Yes there is, Greg or Steve. Experts around the world all agree that if you are confronted by men who look like ninjas and if they appear to have guns, you should NOT look foreign to them, and whatever you do, do NOT run away.” “That’s good to know, Nancy!” “It sure is, Greg or Steve!”

In fact the House of Representatives, a legislative body that often meets 3000 or so miles from here, has just decided it wants to renew the PATRIOT Act for another ten years. That could help pay for those cool all-black ensembles for our local police, not to mention more guns. I’m betting this is important to my homeless or formerly-homeless, mostly foreign looking, poor to middling-poor, already kicked-down & beaten-around community.

And for those of you who don’t look foreign, I want you to look around you at the foreign-looking people and say, out loud, so loud they can hear you, “There but for the Grace of God go I,” because I’m an incorrigible trouble-maker.

News I Can Lose

So. Do any of you people out there read this paper? How about a show of hands?

OK then, what have you thought of that graphic at the top of page four, the News You Can Use graphic? What's been up with those guys? Why have they been reading the Dallas News all this time? What do you think they're up to? I think the guy on our right has been showing the other guy a personal ad he wrote about him. I think they're a hip, swinging, Texan couple. But we're in Seattle, which is nowhere near Texas, so why has the caption below them always said "Close to Home?"

Being on the editorial board of this august rag, I am part of the very body of individuals who has decided each two weeks to continue using the graphic of the hip, swinging Texan guys. I would in fact be the individual who insists most loudly that we keep it. I think the hip, swinging, Texan guys are cool. But the voice of Dissent grows ever louder with each issue we print. The voice of Dissent will eventually get her way, if not in this issue, then in the next, she'll get so loud. So consider those guys history.

All of this must be a metaphor for my mood. After all, all events everywhere and at all times are metaphors for the moods of me, Copyright Dr. Wes Browning. This particular event, the change of the News You Can Use graphic, is specifically a metaphor for my specifically current mood. I know this, because I am a Poet, and that's how we Poets are. This is one of the things I have learned from many valuable conversations with Cindy, Muse of Other, my Muse of Few Words.

I would be sitting around, just like now, with a deadline in two hours, whining that I didn't feel like writing. And Cindy would ask me what's going on and I'd tell her the first thing that would come to mind. Like right now I'd say that the graphic for News You Can Use is changing, and she'd say "Ah." And I'd say, "What do you mean, 'Ah'?" And she'd say, "So you've been reading News You Can Use." And she'd be right. What a smart Muse.

Of COURSE I don't want to write with all that depressing news tumbling down around me. Especially lately since we've been printing news from all around the US and Canada. Yeah, that's it. I don't want to write because the news reports I have to work from are getting too disgusting. I mean, I'm supposed to be lightening things up, that's my job, but how do you lighten up a fleet of Sherman tanks, you know? (I'm speaking metaphorically again. Get it? Sherman tanks are really heavy.)

Just to pick one example: last issue we carried a story dealing with the video "Bumfights: a cause for concern." The video is said to depict actual homeless people, "bums", engaging in drunken fights among other things, in return for such things as food and clothing. How do I lighten this up? Now you know why I'd rather go on about the Texan couple.

What we ran in the story was only a hint of how disgusting the video is. According to a report by the BBC, in addition to showing homeless people fighting each other, there are scenes of people induced to injure themselves, scenes of people pulling their own teeth out with pliers, others of a man ramming his head against walls.

Other homeless advocates have been condemning the video on the grounds that it exploits the people depicted. As an ex cab driver and former teacher, I know from personal experience that you don't have to be homeless to be exploited on this planet, and I worry a lot less about the condition of the "stars" of "Bumfights" than I do about the part of the public that considers such garbage entertaining. It's the ignorant, bored, brain dead audience that's most being exploited.

Well, that wasn't very lightening of me, was it? Still, I feel lighter for having raised the subject. I've gotten a Sherman tank off my chest.