Sunday, April 27, 2008

GAMES VS. LITERATURE IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA


DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
The newest version of video game "Grand Theft Auto" comes out Tuesday, and experts say it should sell at least 6 million copies the first week. Amazon lists the game at $49.99. Most copies will be purchased by young adult men, some of whom will line up outside stores Monday night.
If they decide to vote, their vote is as good as yours. So is the vote of the 10 percent of Americans who think Barack Obama is a Muslim and the millions of Americans who voted to re-elect The Decider in 2004.

Fact: If you can sell thirty thousand copies of a novel within a few weeks -- that's one-half of one percent of 6 million -- you'll almost certainly hit the best-seller list. Hardbacks sell for about $25. Find the right literature and it can change your life forever. You'll relive that awakening over and over with delight and understanding. Did you know that back in Dickens' time thousands of readers waited at the New York docks for the latest installment of his novels?

Short stories are dead, buried alongside poetry, and literate novels are expiring. The stuff is being written and sometimes even published, but readers are dying off and younger minds prefer to anesthetize themselves with video games, sitcoms, and sequels to films written for the least aware minds in the Western world..

The link between literacy and clear thinking was mapped out precisely by George Orwell in his great essay "Politics and the English Language." The spike in the games industry, the ascendancy of moronic political ideas, the American Idolization of the news media, and the deterioration of schools well serves global corporations that buy what they want from our politicians without being asked too many questions.

Friday, April 25, 2008

TAKE CLOSE LOOK AT CLINTON DYNASTY ISSUE

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Thursday, April 17, 2008

HILLARY'S FOUND CLEVER WAY TO GET NOMINATED AFTER ALL



DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Anyone else notice in the last Pennsylvania debate that Hillary's angling to be McCain's running mate? How else do you explain her strategy of trying to spray Obama's candidacy with such heavy toxic poisons that no one will ever touch him again?
Who'da guessed that Barack's a Weatherman who hates America, white people, and especially White Americans? Served on a board with a Weather guy? Gimme a break. Anyone ever check out who served on the union-busting, small-business-destroying, Communist China-loving Wal-Mart board with Hillary for 15 years? She stepped down only when hubby ran for President in '92.
ABC even assigned one of the Clintons' favorite pooches, George Hairball Stephanopolous, to chew up the black man along with one of George's hyena friends. While they're at it, why not resurrect one of Bull Connor's police dogs? You can't let major news media "moderate" these debates. They're deeply entangled in Medici politics and peculiar corporate angles. They're out to create phony explosions, not explore real issues. Did they ever examine the fact that an oil guy and a defense industry guy ran on the same ticket and started a war that benefited nobody but the oil and defense industries (plus al Qaeda and Iran, but whose counting?)?
I used to think Hillary's running her '12 campaign against old man McCain now, figuring that even though everyone will hate her for wrecking the Democrats' chances in '08, she can make them all forget that in '12 by completely distancing herself from the '08 Hillary the same way she's distanced herself from the 2003-06 Hillary that was crazy about invading Iraq. Now I see the truth. She's looking to run on McCain's ticket against Commie Mau Mau Obama who's gonna hand us over to the Muslims.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

DISSEMINATING THE TRUTH: SO WHAT?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
I used to think it was vital to communicate to the public just how much harm our Iraq adventure is doing to this country, not to mention Iraq. But after five years of madness seventy percent of Americans and seventy percent of Iraqis want our forces out fast. So changing attitudes doesn’t appear to have any effect on the lack of any policy because the “surge,” at least in a mutated form, goes on even though the Army is having a nervous breakdown and all the generals minus Patraeus say this just can't go on. Clearly there’s a systemic failure within our democracy.
Multi-millionaire John McCain, the son and grandson of admirals, married to a beer heiress, and working hard to destroy the middle class while making the rich richer, calls self-made Barack Obama elitist. Corporate news media, failing to notice the irony, act as though there’s some substance to Bittergate. What about McCain's Let-Them-Eat Cake-Gate?
And it’s pretty clear that neither Obama nor Clinton would pull out of Iraq, not really. Try to pin them down and they talk about “trainers,” use the word “residual,” and recite a “withdrawal” rate, that, if pursued, would leave many thousands of U.S. troops there for many years to come.
Meanwhile, the dollar has collapsed, and Americans failed to notice.
Our educational and news-presentation processes are so broken that politicians and their corporate employers can get away with just about anything they want. The immigrants that Lou Dobbs and his ignorant legions scream about are actually key gears that keep our wheels turning.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

CATCHING UP

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
No, I don't mean I think Hillary will catch up. I'm talking about what's going on in my life. But as long as people are actually for some reason asking my opinion on some of what's going on in these politically tumultuous times, it's this:

Hillary knows she has almost no chance to win the nomination but hopes to damage Obama to such an extent that he'll lose to McCain and she can run against the 100-year warrior in 2012. A dangerous strategy, because it will increase the number of Hillary-haters, but she figures she has nothing to lose because if she can't be president then what does anything matter? So what if the Republicans put a few more crazies on the Supreme Court who won't even hear the case of the lady brain-damaged by a truck accident who has to pay Wal-Mart back its $400K for her medical bills? It's of no consequence compared to achieving the dream of restoring the Clinton dynasty to the throne.

And while I'm rambling, allow me to point out that I'm in Costa Rica for 2 weeks and like lots of turistas I sometimes turn to CNN in my hotel room, where I see it repeats the story over and over of Hillary uttering a line written by her handlers that likens her to Rocky Balboa. Plus we learn -- wow! -- 2 people and counting have asked Princess Chelsea about Monica!

Meanwhile there's nothing on, for instance, the terrible descent of the Republican Party into right-wing lunacy thanks to crippled campaign reform laws that have put Republicans officeholders on the side of their paymasters -- the minute slice of Americans who can grab $100 million parachutes and bid for Picassos. And screw health care and the more humane practices of the Western democracies minus our schizo-monarchy that loops around from Bushes to Clintons and back again. The rabble can wait in emergency rooms if they need help with their ongoing illnesses. If they need pharmaceuticals, they can always turn to Christian Science. And CNN is supposed to be the moderate 24-all-day-and-night news channel. Hey, in all those 24 hours can't they dig up and interview the political scientists who have no doubt researched what's really going on in the world and why our republic is crumbling as we speak?

I heard Lou Dobbs pronounce the domestic policies of Clinton, Obama, and McCain as practically identical. The man's out of his fucking mind. Don't they have executives over at CNN who can at least demand he read a book once in a while? He spoke with a maddening combination of ignorance and assertiveness. Where did they get this sonofabitch? Kick his ample butt over the border with nothing but ten bucks and a serape. Maybe it would educate him.

Anyway, back to catching up. I haven't been around my own blog because I'm concentrating on writing fiction. My novel The Barfighter will be out from Permanent Press in April '09. It will be followed around December or January by my novel Exit Blue from Black Heron. They're both small but respected publishers. The first deals with Vietnam, boxing, remorse, the power of love, and of course other issues. The second is a political satire set in the near future. Both these novels make excellent presents. Send them instead of Christmas cards.

Meanwhile, I haven't forgotten the cheated families tossed out of their homes, the hopelessly indebted unemployed who are no longer able to declare true bankruptcy, the disabled veterans who go home to nothing, the service people who get stop-lossed into the funeral pyre of our Iraq policy, the hungry semi-employed citizens who aren't eligible for food stamps because they've managed to hang on to their homes or cars. I know you haven't forgotten them either.

Peace.