|
|
The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
Oh My God, the RSS Feed Actually Works!
Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
"The Blah is becoming a daily destination for me." - Richard Marsh, Playwright
"I like it, and I don't." - Fiona Hogg, Teacher
"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen ... lend your ears to these people. I come not to bury them, but praise them.
Arik
Bill
Dan
Cole
Emily B
Emily G
Helena
Jee
Jewelz
Kaila
Kathryn
Mac
Robin
Slim
Souris
Mr. West
My TIME articles
All magazine articles (subscription required for older stories)
Online column index
|
|
|
|
|
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Two Minutes Hate, Redux
Today's reappearance of The Evil One, albeit in audio tape form, sent me scurrying back to my favorite -- and most feared -- novel of all time, 1984. It seems ever more evident that bin Laden is our Emmanuel Goldstein: a bugaboo, an Aunt Sally, a monster we habitually throw up on the telescreen to terrorize ourselves into ever tighter (and more costly) knots of security. (Funny word, security. It often seems to make people feel less secure). If he didn't exist, the U.S. military and homeland security establishment would have had to invent him. Or as Orwell had it:
As usual, the face of the Enemy of the People had flashed onto the screen. There were hisses here and there in the audience ... long ago he had mysteriously escaped and disappeared ... The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure ... Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies; perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- it was occasionally rumored -- in some hiding place in Oceania itself.
Chillingly prescient, no? Strange how we got past 1984 with a sigh of relief, and started to feel quite smug about Orwell getting it wrong (even though, in a prime example of doublethink, we simultaneously knew he meant the book as more an ever-present warning than a specific date-based prediction). Then came 2001, and we're slap-bang in a Two-Minutes hate situation. Goldstein and bin Laden, both perfectly crafted TV enemies, down to the last detail:
[Winston] could never see the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard -- a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose ... it resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheeplike quality ... the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically.
Automatically: a good choice of word. You see bin Laden's face, you hate him automatically. There's no thought process going on. You're a hating machine. What's worrying me is the more I get into this, the more parallels suggest themselves. Does the following sound familiar?
But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day, and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were -- in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his direction were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the state.
The telegraphed and telescoped existence of which, of course, is very useful to Big Brother. Or in our case, Little Son. Just as it is important for BB and the Party to encourage the belief that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, so GW would have us imagine America has always been at war with bin Laden and Saddam -- despite coddling up to both with bags of cash and weapons in the 80's. Many of us seem to have dropped those facts into our memory holes.
The more you think about it, the more GW becomes a terrifying modern version of BB. Both are figureheads; there's nothing there of substance behind the reassuring eyes and the Newspeak-like mangled language (anyone who's seen the candid documentary Journeys with George, now screening on HBO, can attest to that). He's a cipher for members of the elite Inner Party: Cheney, de facto head of the Ministry of Truth, Rummy at the Ministry of Peace, and John "O'Brien" Ashcroft over at the Ministry of Love. GW's existence, a reassuring distraction that looks good on the telescreen, allows for the acquisition of power for power's sake, not to mention the corporate boot on the human face, forever. Oh, and in the absence of any effective opposition, perhaps the GOP ought to drop the first two words of its name -- and become, simply, the Party.
|
|
|
|
