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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.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
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.
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, March 11, 2003
You Want Freedom Fries With That?
Now here's a story to sink your teeth into. A couple of Congressmen have censored the Francophonic output of the Capitol cafeteria. "Freedom fries" and "freedom toast" are now on the menu, lest our poor impressionable representatives be influenced by any reference to those European peaceniks.
On the surface, it sounds like a moronic publicity stunt -- the sort of thing those chicken-livered, helmet-haired philanderers in Washington are doing all the time to save them from having to come up with any real policies. You could brush past it, shrug, and hope they grow up one of these days. Go a little deeper, though, and the implications are frighteningly Orwellian.
Orwell knew what a powerful tool language was. Consider what's being done here: because the French oppose official U.S. administration policy, anything that bears their moniker is to be replaced with the word "freedom." Things that are free are now diametrically opposed to things that are French. Now I'm no scholar of human rights, but it seems to me that one very essential freedom is the right to oppose official U.S. administration policy. (I oppose official administration policy; evidently my name should be erased from the phone book and replaced with "Freedom Freedom.")
Sadly, there's more of this sort of thing going on in America today than we realize. A father and son in Albany, New York went to the mall and had T-shirts printed up with antiwar slogans. They wore them to the food court and were asked to leave. They refused. The son took his T-shirt off. The father did not, and was arrested. Yes, actually arrested! Luckily, the guy turned out to be a lawyer and charges were soon dropped. The next mall-based protestor may not be so lucky.
Remember the tautological slogan from 1984, pasted in enormous letters on the Ministry of Love? FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. It's the kind of phrase with a hundred layered meanings, but the one I like is this: redefine freedom, and you have none. The redefinition, in this instance, is support for a U.S.-led attack on Iraq. You can have any outcome to the current crisis you like, to paraphrase Henry Ford, as long as it's war.
Besides, as the French ambassador sniffed, the origin of french fries is Belgium. And where I come from, they call them chips.
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