Poetry: “Before the Fire-Scarred Land”
May 12th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
by Christopher Raley
Oracle speaks in the living room while wind
beats huddled houses with her fury.
Thelonious: Again now tell us of peace you find
in misery’s laughter, humiliation’s pride.
But can you speak beauty as bare-skin light of dawn
unveils valley parchment its smear of sight?
Or is yours only for laughter at the south road
shining its golden rush between winter fields brown and fallow?
The river has a mischief too, its course slowly
to bend and upset orchards carefully squared.
Far hills like wrinkled canvass spread their jest below
blue silk torn of edge and splotched by the white hand.
Are there any here you can voice
through the urban angles of your ironic malice?
The oracle has no need but a faint breath of harmony.
For he too will rise east—and the fire-scarred land
where pines stretch charred bones for no song or shade,
and manzanita are the frozen black frenzy
of muttering old women who’ve only themselves left to hate.
Miss California and the Lions
May 7th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
For a long time, evangelicals have seen big media as a key to cultural influence. Such icon-creating events as Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, the nomination of Sarah Palin for vice-president, and the current fracas over Miss California’s views on gay marriage have enticed evangelicals into believing that media attention is a significant opportunity.
Such attention is an opportunity — to get eaten alive. In all three of these instances, the principals have become part of the tabloid culture.
The old culture of journalism, back when journalists were collectively known as “the press,” had a liberal arts sanctity about it. Objectivity was the gold standard, and certain subjects were beneath notice. The New York Times was in every sense the gray lady: All the news that’s fit to print.
The news that wasn’t fit to print got picked up by the National Enquirer.
Over the last 25 years, old-school journalism has been eroded by the tabloid aesthetic. Low-brow shows like Entertainment Tonight gave rise to a new style of reporting perfected by, among others, Bill O’Reilly on Inside Edition, a tabloid show that would report in sensationalistic style on anything. The news departments of the major networks held their collective noses, but they also catered more and more to tabloid aesthetic in their magazine shows, adding music to their reports and using edgy graphics.
A large part of the hostility between the old networks and Fox News has to do with Fox’s wholehearted embrace of tabloid culture. The red graphics, the blonds, and of course the tabloid reporters themselves: Bill and Geraldo.
We now have a fully assimilated tabloid culture in mainstream journalism, with bloggers, entertainers, and “personalities” operating as authority figures. Old-school journalism is hopelessly compromised.
In this new media culture, political figures have to treat the tabloid appetites carefully. They can use the entertainment reporters, the bloggers, and the “personalities” to soften their images. (Think of Barack Obama’s deft use of Oprah.) But if they step too far into the tabloid zone, they become embarrassing.
Sarah Palin aspires to lead Republicans. But she failed the critical test of old journalism, the one-on-one interview with a heavy. Charles Gibson annihilated her. She thought to rescue herself by performing well on Saturday Night Live, deliberately stepping into the entertainment world, the tabloid aesthetic’s all-you-can-eat buffet. She succeeded there.
Today, she and her family are owned by tabloid culture. It’s Bristol and her ex-fiancé from now on.
(Rule: if you have gravitas, you can do an SNL turn. If you don’t, run away.)
Mel Gibson wanted to a make a deeply Catholic art film. But he filled it with his signature stomach-turning violence. Tabloid culture continued to own him, and he ended up with a DUI ornamented by anti-Semitic ramblings.
Over to you, Miss California.
Was Carrie Prejean asked an unfair question? Maybe. Was the blogger who asked it cruel and crude? Yeah. Has the leaking of old photos been cruel and crude? Certainly.
But this was a beauty contest, people! There is no pageantry more suited to tabloid culture than a beauty contest, a wrestling match of vanity. And in tabloid culture there is no such thing as a fair fight, or a low blow, or a civilized discussion. There is only one way to end a tabloid event: the walk of shame.
If you’re going to take a stand on conviction, you can’t do it in the mud.
When are evangelicals going to get it through their heads? Media grandstanding is nothing more than trotting into the Colosseum, smiling, inviting the lions out, and praying the Lord will use the spectacle for his glory.
It’s not martyrdom. It’s folly.
“Firebird” by Stravinsky
May 5th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
by Matthew Raley
The North State Symphony is performing, among other things, the Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky, on May16-17. Here are videos of Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra sent out by our conductor, Kyle Wiley Pickett.
Poetry: “It’s Hard To Resist Him”
May 4th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
by Christopher Raley
It’s hard to resist him in the tiled shower
where water beats closing crease of mouth
(and storm beats doors of the house)
and etchings are hieroglyph of memory.
It’s hard to ignore his empty desk and
absent tools of pastime tagged and marked,
or his laugh at the table, a deaf old man
who echoes off tiles and shuttered windows.
Or it’s his bitterness growling in rain gutters
while the headlands all are dark like primitive man,
and wind beats gloomed houses and square,
and rain is a bestial hand risen from the ocean.
Tomorrow we will see his ghost in the forest where we walk
and keep an eye on the water for a shadow of storm.
