Okay, you've been really, really warned. I'll return to domestically oriented Bleats tomorrow, but below it's just dull & bloody.

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Newspaper quiz. Story: 100,000 or so rally in DC in support of Israel. You’re the headline writer. Which one do you use?

1. 100,000 rally in DC in support of Israel

2. Bush official’s remarks booed by thousands at pro-Israel rally

Very good! You’ve a future in this craft. But let’s make sure. Do you:

1. Mention the crowd estimates, or

2. Make no mention of the crowd size whatsoever

Well, promotions all around, then. Final question - do you end the story on the rally with

1. A heartfelt plea from an old Jewish woman who saw the madness that engulfed Germany and begs the world not to let it happen again, or

2. Three paragraphs on a counter-demonstration in the newspaper’s home town in support of Palestinians, including this quote: “For me, it’s horrendous to see the millions of dollars being used to massacre Palestinians,” said Sanna Towns of St. Paul. “We can’t even put that kind of effort into funding our inner-city areas, our schools, for job training.”

You’re hired.

I am, alas, describing a story in my own beloved Strib. I had a conversation about this story today with our paper’s ombudsman, a fair and decent man who has the worst job in show business today. YOU spend your day talking to pro-PLO and pro-Israel callers and see how you like it. He’s right; no one is ever satisfied, and in a sense an equitable amount of dissatisfaction is proof that the paper’s doing the right thing. But the story and headline I used above are examples of how things look to people who know more than the paper has the space to say.

To those of us who followed the story via mainstream press reports and blog updates, the story of the rally was the rally itself - its size, its tenor, the quickness with which it was assembled, and the lack of foaming hatred. Was Wolfie’s boo-fest the most distinguishing characteristic? No - unless you believe that conflict determines the story’s angle. And most reporters think that’s the case - not because they agree with the dissenters, but because they’ve been trained to look for the story in the dissent. Thus if a rally of 100,00 people is largely peaceful but has a brief skirmish with police at the margins as the crowd disperses, the headline and lede graf will be “Arrests mar hopes for peaceful rally.”

It’s the stupidest rule of journalism, and one of the most devoutly believed: The detail that contradicts the general impression often contains the truth of the event.

II'm sure the pro-Israel callers wanted the story to mention how the rally's contrasts with pro-PLO counterparts elsewhere. No placards that showed Arafat with a swastika on his forehead, no speakers praising suicide bombers, no mosques trashed afterwards. True. News stories, however, rarely concern themselves with what did not happen. Nor are they written with the assumption that the reader knows everything about everything. This is fair; this is necessary - but the cumulative effect omits the details essential to understanding the story. That picture of the young girl with the faux explosives is widely known to people who augment their news diet with blogs, but it’s unknown to people who simply read the paper. Might that picture have provided a contrast to the DC rally? Sure. Would it have been a simplistic comparison? Maybe, to some - and some readers would have found the juxtaposition inflammatory, and demanded the paper run the picture of the incinerated Palestinian boy. And if THAT picture ran, the other side would demand that the paper note how the PLO terrorists lived and hid in residential areas, etc. etc. etc.

If every story was 100 inches long, it would spawn 200 inches of corrections and amplifications.

So: when you have a pro-Israel rally, what do you do? Find the conflict within the rally, of course, and seek out the other side for “balance.” One might think that “balance” could consist of comparing the rally to its European pro-PLO counterparts, and there’s a case to be made for that. What our paper did was just what most papers would do: find the local angle. Which brings us to another problem. (Again, I'm speaking not as a representative of the paper - just a concerned observer.)

Sometimes it is not the job of newspaper to print what is true, only what people think. It’s not the job of a paper to fact-check the utterance of every person quoted - alas. If people think that aid to Israel starves education and urban development, well, report it; that tells you how the opposition views the world. There’s rarely space in the paper for details like this:

Minnesota spending on education in 2002-2003: 8.76 billion.

HUD budget FY 2003: $31.5 billion

US aid to Israel 2001: $3.5 billion

Indeed, just adding these facts - simple facts, laid out without comment - would seem to be tilting the article against the protester. Which tells you a lot about journalism these days.

Now let’s delve a bit deeper into the protesters’ background, just for fun.

According to the Strib article, “the protest was sponsored by the Coalition for Justice in Palestine, Women Against Military Madness and Al Aqsa.” Upon reading this, I was somewhat surprised to discover that Al Aqsa had a branch in Minneapolis. But it would appear that WAMM has appended “Al Aqsa” to their name, giving them the Cramdenesque name of WAMMAA.

I went to their home page, the rather aggressive sounding worldwidewamm.org, and discovered no such embrace of the anti-Al Aqsa cause. There is the WAMM statement of principles: “Women Against Military Madness opposes the design, manufacture, and distribution of military weapons by the U.S. government and corporations.” Well, go right ahead; you’re a non-profit, and volunteering to be irrelevant is a proud American tradition. But there’s absolutely nothing on the main page I can find that protests the design, manufacture and distribution of explosive belts to young women.

There is a Camus quote, proudly displayed: “It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”

Indeed.

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Amazing Gnat moment of the day: having torn the head off a small goose, she wandered over -

Let me rephrase. After opening up one of her pop-up books, locating a goose and removing its head, she wandered over, held it up and said: Beek.

What? I replied.

“Beek. Goose. Beek.”

Another word I don’t recall teaching her. I’m still impressed she knows that mice is the plural of mouse, or that she knows all her colors including brown. That just doesn’t even seem to be a color to me; it’s a failed color, a color that didn’t pass the exam and earn color status. It’s a coler. (Puce is another coler.) But she knows it, as well as black, white, yewow, owanj, boo, pinq, puhpul, red, geen, and aqwamawine.

Just kidding about that last one. Give her a day, though.

We went to the Mall of America today, because I wanted to look at a new laptop. Not buy one, just look at one. As soon as we got in the Mall Gnat said “Amals,” referring to the animal petting zoo in the middle of Camp Snoopy. It was closed, but she enjoyed strolling around on her own - no holding Daddy’s finger, no sir. She sat in a little car and turned the wheel and made vroom noises. She pointed up at the roof above and said “uhpie.” Interesting, that - it’s a quote from the Rolie Polie Olie song, which commences “way up high in the Rolie Polie Sky . . .” She amuses herself by singing this song, but she only sings “Way uhpie . . .” and lets me sing the rest, chiming in with “he’s Wolie Polie Olie,” and falling silent until the line “and in his world of curves and curls,” which she has condensed to “cuvs.” So it goes like this:

Way uhpie
HEES Wollie Polie
Cuvs

But she understands that way up high is up there, above. Why not? Every day I am amazed, like all parents in my situation I suppose, at what this 21-month old creature understands. When I have my cap on, it’s Daddy’s Hat. When I put it on her head, it’s Baby’s Hat Big. She knows that pees means please, peas, and what she does in her diaper. I gave her the daily ration of the juice box - which was purple-hued - and she said “Pooh joos. Puhple! Puhple Pooh Joos.” She knows that Dorothy is the name of Elmo’s fish, Mr. Nool is Mr. Noodle, and she can count backwards from 10 to 1 as well as forward. She likes curry, too.

To put this in context for people who don't have kids, but have beloved pets: imagine if your dog or cat began to talk. Imagine if you had rudimentary conversations. You'd love your pet if they didn't speak, but man! Imagine if they could! That's what it's like.

The other day I found a website for people who are childless by choice, and I read the message boards with sadness and dismay. I’m not one of those people who regard the childless with smug sympathy - ah, if they only knew, the poor, barren, pitifully selfish souls. You don’t want kids, fine. I was never opposed to children on principle, but I was never a zealot on the notion, either. Now I don’t understand people who don’t want children - just as people who have 12 kids don’t understand why I don’t want a dozen replicants. Experience changes perspective. But you can’t give that perspective to others, nor can you judge the character of someone simply because they’ve not yet shared your experiences. (Except on Vulcan, where mind-melds do the trick quite nicely.) I used to bristle at the pro-parental bromides people gave me in my 30s.

That said: As I read the messages on BBS I was saddened by the naked dislike of children these people had. Not bad children, not lousy parents, not snotty tantrum-pitching brats, but children themselves. The very concept of. They delighted in describing how much they hated those little shopping cards some grocery stores provide.

The general consensus seemed to lean in favor of cats.

I’m well aware that I’m missing much in life because we have the Gnat. Travel, freedom, money, salty lingo - all are curtailed now. My car still smells like vomit from the time Gnat did the heave-ho of a spaghetti lunch last week. My interests are now quicksilver streams that dart between, and are frequently dammed by, the immovable rocks of naps, meals, bedtimes and bubble-blowing sessions. I don’t think these recitations of pedestrian domestic matters elevate my days above the concerns of those unencumbered by spawn - I hate that snooty Brittney-uber-alles attitude of many modern parents. I just mean this:

Those of you who have kids understand why these simple days are so precious, and those of you who don’t have kids should take my advice. I spent my 20s and 30s without a wee biped clinging to my leg. And it was wonderful. The places we went, the things that we saw. Four words: Happy Hour In Mexico. You want to spend the rest of your life that way? My hat’s off; send me a postcard; grab life by the beans, as the old coffee commercial put it, and give my regards to Angor Wat, or wherever life takes you. I’m the last man on earth to suggest you should stay home and shovel squash into a toothless maw just because that's the thing you're supposed to do.

But. Those of you who think that kids will come along some day, and wonder what that might mean, how it will change things - I can only note a moment today in the Mall of America with my Gnat. We always end our trips to the Mall with a cookie. A rare treat, since we don’t have cookies at home. (Jell-o Fat Free Pudding for Daddy, yes, but that’s another story.) We sat on a bridge over a stream aas we snacked, alone in a leafy glade in the biggest mall in America. Gnat beamed as she chewed her ration.

“Num,” she said, grinning. “Nice. Cookie nice." Pause, chew, swallow, smile. "Daddy nice.”

I have never been happier in my life, or loved anyone more.


Mail is unhosed. Got a call from my host the other day; he’d heard my plea. THAT’S service, friends. Turns out the problem was not with the host, but was indeed the result of those godless jackals at MSN, may their flesh bubble and split in the pits of hell. I used an alternate ISP, rejiggered ten dozen settings boxes, and voila, an entirely new set of problems:

1. The email program on the laptop was completely fubared - I was able to reconstruct the database, but every letter was gibberish. I attempted to delete the entire 2900+ letter database in one control-A chunk, and it froze the program. Force quit. Reboot. Delete in groups of 30. Realize this will take forever. Trash database. Boot mail program. Discover that the messages still live on as zombies despite the fact that the message db was destroyed. No explanation.

2. I decided to use the OS X mail program, which is simple and straightforward. Enter settings, connect - success!

MESSAGES TO BE RETRIEVED: 896

Jumpin’ Judas. It took an hour, because some well-meaning folk had sent along image files so large I thought someone had scanned the Oxford English Dictionary and sent it one page at a time as a TIFF.

3. After using the OS X program for a while, I realized that it truly, honestly, madly, deeply bites the wax tadpole. It’s the worst mail program I’ve ever used that wasn’t preceded by the words “You’ve Got Mail!” Glaring FUBAR point #1: if you read and reply to 100 letters, and the program hangs - which it does, constantly - then you force-quit. And when you start the program again, all 100 letters will be marked as unread. That’s right! When you quit the program, it flags & compacts & deletes & flosses, because I’m guessing it’s reading the mail on the server. It’s not really downloading it. When I call up a letter that has lots of images, for example, the program scurries off to the server to get them, and now and then it hangs trying to get some useless graphic from some RUSSIAN ZOO-SCROO PRON SITE. Grrrrrrrrr

FUBAR point #2: There is no “send later” function, as far as I can tell. You can send now, or save as a draft, and the draft folder does not offer the option of sending all the drafts at once; there’s no “send later” function. Oh joy: hitting the send button 896 times.

FUBAR point #3: The program called up mail I’d gotten, and responded to, the previous night on the other Mac. It’s bad enough to have 1,600+ letters - the current total - but when you realize you’re responding to some of them twice, you just weep.

So: apologies, apologies. I am working my way through the stack, and I feel stupid just sending a one-line “thanks! etc” to these marvelous missives, and some will get two stupid replies while others get none.

And don’t tell me to switch to Eudora! It’s ugly, or at least it was the last time I looked. I have a new program called PowerMail! that has the aesthetic lines I want and the support I need.

Got a package today from Amazon: two of the most amazing, indispensable, retrolicious books I have ever seen in my entire life. I’m not kidding. This is the jackpot, the mother lode: All American Ads 40s and 50s. (Pardon the clunky link - it’ll take you to my book’s home page, but from there you can find the book I’m talking about. Enter “All-American Ads” into the search function. Yes, I get a miniscule cut, but it costs you nothing.)

The books are huge, affordable - $40 for 750 full-color pages, and the pictures are extraordinary. (Everything, I suspect, got a +10 in the saturation slider to compensate for the Ravages of Time, so the images just pop off the page.) You can skip the introduction, which not only reads like a college freshman essay but appears to have been subjected to a Transition Removal process that makes the essay read like a steamer trunk falling down the stairs. Each section ends with an ad chosen as the most peculiar example of its genre, with annoyingly smug commentary. Why, some of the ads in the 40s had racial stereotypes! Gasp! Did you know in the middle of WWII they actually used the word “Japs” in ads? Imagine! And look at this - a pesticide ad ignorant of the dangers of pesticides! And so forth. I beat up on these ads back in the Gallery, of course, but it’s done with love, and the remarks in this compendium seem curdled and self-congratulatory.

From the publisher’s catalog: “Surprisingly, not too many of these ads would make it past today’s censors.” Nonsense. “Politically incorrect more often than not -” again, nonsense - “these ads touting the glories of the all-America, squeaky clean persona and the white, nuclear family often hint at the sexist and racist mentality of the time.” Oh, blow it out your wienerschnitzel, Hans. That’s right: the publisher is Taschen! Krauts! Huns! Kaiserites! You want to lecture us about the racist character of our culture in the 40s? Bring it on, Horst.

Just kidding. (Sort of.) Taschen is a great publishing house, and these books are fabulous, but the tone of the writing is typical for those who approach commercial culture determined to show us sheep how we’re really being led by wolves. (Vampire wolves. Vampire Republican wolves.) What’s often missing in these tedious sermons is the fun of these ads, the ridiculous enthusiasm and vivacity, and an appreciation for the artistry evident in every ad. (Much more so than today, alas. Photography was the death of Advertising’s High Renaissance period.) And let us not forget that these are not propaganda posters designed to coerce; they are illustrations designed to entice and persuade. For some reason this makes them seem deeeeevious to their critics. Help! I am powerless before the scented entreaties of an aesthetic appeal! It’s a mystery, frankly. These ads make you PROUD to be an American. Of course they’re fiction, but by our fictions as much as our facts are we defined. Smiling healthy Hitler-whippers with tabletop TVs, underwear that doesn’t ride up, Coke for all and beer for most, ten-ton cars and orange juice in January.

We rule.