Thursday, January 4, 2001

 

12:17 a.m. I've been uncovering and cleaning things out and in the process I found a bunch of old newspaper images like this one that I'd scanned into the computer for one of our books. You can never have enough drawings of rigid men in suits, I say. Particularly now.

I have a good-sized box of old newspapers, brittle as stale potato chips. I have to go through them very carefully each time because each time a little more flakes away along the careless creases of yesterday and yellowed bits flutter into the air like mealy moths.

Yellowed journalism. Those great stories from the war to end all wars, which it most definitely didn't. I was listening to an older broadcast on the radio yesterday about the state of journalism in 1991 and the sorry PR campaign that passed for news in the Gulf War.

It seems that the days of intrepid reporters following the action and taking candid shots of soldiers and civilians -- wounded and wounding -- is over. Both Bush presidents favor the "press pool" approach. Only the right guys (and gals, of course!) with the right credentials and the right attitude will be allowed to write the story for the rest of us.

You won't have to worry about any more of those disturbing photos of little girls running naked from burning villages toward the camera. Remember the vivid images from the Gulf War? Those pretty fireworks displays of tracer bullets and sensible, surgical rockets? That's all we'll ever need to know. That's all we're ever going to know.

We're in good hands now. All the older gentlemen are moving back into power positions and dignity and honor are going to be restored to the White House. The men are in charge and things will now be done by the book.

I, for one, am going to stay calm. I've begun to eat up my old Y2K supplies of Dinty Moore, just to show how confident I am. We've nothing to worry about now that the people who know how to govern have wrested the controls. Yes, I'm slipping into bitterness again. Must watch that.

The one thing I do wonder about is -- this internet thing. How are they going to control it? (And control it they must ... else people will start disseminatin' all sort of folldela.) It's probably going to be a heck of a hydra-headed thing to hack, what with new pipelines and trunks and all that dark fiber springing up everywhere you turn, but one way or the other, I'm sure the new administration is looking into it.

Anyway -- it's late, I'm tired, and I'm going to call it a day. I might as well, since it's been a day by any measurement known to man: 24 hours, a nice dose of sun in the middle, cotton clouds rouged with sunset, that twilight, the works.

Some things never change.