Soundbiting the News They Feed Us

America cannot stand by and let Saddam Hussein massacre his people -- we reserve that right for ourselves.

If stun guns were outlawed, only outlaws would be cops.

There are no bad policemen, just bad victims.

The People camcorded will never be defeated,

Stalin: socialism in one country. Gorbachev: no socialism, no country.

How many Poles does it take to restore capitalism? One to hold power, ten million to be unemployed.

To incur debt is human. To forgive it, executive privilege.

If I accept capitalism, will they forgive my debts too?

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Lessons of the New War Order

Never have so few killed so may with so much.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilanteism.

We would have won in Vietnam too, if we'd all worn yellow ribbons and the enemy hadn't fought back.

The Mother of God beats the Mother of All Wars, when deployed in a Hail Mary play.

Former allies makes the best enemies. Former enemies make the best financial contributors.

Hell hath no fury like a president slipping in the polls.

Americans support just causes -- just the causes, not the consequences.

The Republican Guard is easier to defeat than the Republican party.

You can fool all of the people all of the time.

The world should have listened when Kurt Waldheim met with Saddam and said, "I knew Hitler. I worked with Hitler. And Mr. Hussein, you're no Hitler!"

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A Pax on Both Choices

"I am and am not for and against the War, and I believe the majority of the American people share my opinion," said Leona Tolstoy, a long-time war-and-peace activist.

Wearing a black armband and a yellow ribbon, Ms. Tolstoy was one of several thousand people who gathered last weekend for a meeting of Ambivalents Not Not Against the War. "We aren't against being for the War, but we aren't not against it either. There are two sides to every issue and we ambivalents try to take both of them."

We spoke with Ms. Tolstoy in the lobby of the Howard Johnson Motor Hotel where she prepared to chair the plenary session. "Ambivalence is as American as apple or cherry or blueberry pie," she informed us. "Ever since our slave-owning forefathers brought forth freedom upon this continent, we've wanted to have our cake and eat Ultra-Slimfast too. We want to run the world to make it free. We go to war to ensure peace. We're ready to sacrifice our youth, so long as we don't see their blood. . .

Her diatribe was interrupted by a sudden outburst from the crowd. "What do we want?' a voice bellowed.

"Something!" shouted the crowd.

"When do we want it?'

"Soon!"

Placards reading "Casuistry, Not Casualties" and "Vacillate Now!" waved in the air. The chanting continued until many of the protestors changed their minds, breaking up into small discussion groups to deny what they had just said.

"Looks like the Gulf War has got your organization pretty agitated," we noted.

"Alot of us miss the Cold War. We were at war and at peace simultaneously. We could be as hostile and aggressive and kinder and gentler as we wanted without disrupting our lifestyle. This war is different. We may actually have to fight! We believe in patriotism, 'kicking ass,' and Kuwait's democratic right to live under the monarchy of its choice. But we also believe in Oprah, EARTH Day, and the security of small furry animals. We're afraid we may have to choose between our inconsistencies."

"So you disagree with the way things are being handled?"

"Yes and no. So far this has proved to be a short winnable war that will take a long-time to win, in which we have and have not established air superiority, having wiped out all the Scuds except for those still being fired the night we decimated the enemy's still functioning command control, assuring that we will and will not have to fight an all-out limited ground war in which casualties will be kept to a very heavy minimum. The administration has done a superb job of maintaining ambiguity in the heat of battle. But there's always the danger that something decisive might happen and force us to take a stand."

"For instance?"

"Casualties. Soldier moms crumpled in the sand. Incinerated pen pal partners. Unsightly burn victims on city buses. The preempting of baseball by special reports. A surcharge on taxes. Anything that brings us face to face with the consequences of having done the things we're in favor of doing. As Americans we like to support just causes -- just the causes, not the consequences. .. ."

"So how can we keep the war's consequences from affecting our opinions of it?"

"That's the job of the media. As long as we can represent ourselves as ready for the sacrifice whether we are or not, we'll be okay. As Ted Turner didn't say, 'Television is reality by other means."

"But if the networks fail, it could be the sixties all over again with an unpopular war and mass dissent."

"The coming era will be another 1960's, and another 1930's with a collapsing economy, and another 1940s with global mobilization for war, and another 1914 in that war's potential for carnage, and another 1890s in its fin de siecle stirrings, and another 990s in its millennial fervor.... These are heady days for ambivalents. So many pieces of history to not learn the lessons of at the same time. Unlimited positions not to take on every issue. The hour of indecision is approaching Hopefully our leaders will have the good sense to keep putting it off till tomorrow.”>

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Let Us Now Praise Downwardly Mobile Men

And their spouses, such of them as still have jobs and such as have lost them, such as were partners and such as merely associates, such as whose firms are failing and such as whose firms having restructured their debt must yet endure unhealthy levels of stress, not having received a year-end bonus, forced to commute by subway in the cold and car-serviceless dawn carrying their lunches, their brave little lunches, in the obscenity of brown paper bags ...

Let us praise their Children, never to know a nanny's love, the fitted grace of Baby Dior designer kidsware, the thrill of overachievement with a Fisher Price developmental plaything, trust funds frozen to pay off VISA charges, Aprica strollers rusting no less than prospects for a fast-track pre-school, replacing hopes of Harvard with the bitterness of Nintendo with last year's games....

Let us praise their power ties and Rolex watches, hands sweeping time's pitiless face unbroken by appointments, praise also their designer logos, Izod and Polo Western pony flapping from the frayed all-cotton fibers of a once defiant breast, linen crushed like expectations, Peter Pan collars forever young while dreams grow old, blunt cuts that cannot blunt the pain, Reeboks worn thin on pavement pounded not in preparation for the marathon but in search of work....

Let us praise their cuisinarts and croissants, and the tortellini salad days of youth, the red of their radicchio, the extra-virgin olive of their oils, their wild porcini and the sticky running of their Brie, conspicuously consumed in lingering brunch beneath a firmament that sun-dries all tomatoes, days of white wine and mimosas so swiftly turned to nonbalsamic vinegar of grief; oh Haagen-Dazs for umlaut the bell tolls, praise these who yet can summon courage to grind the beans for their espresso, to eat of foods that have not been reviewed, to face plates whose minute portions signify starvation not nouvelle cuisine ....

Let us praise their health clubs, and their bodies aerobic, misled by Stairmaster to an ever upward climb, going for the bum and getting burnt: Lifecycle's programmed karma coming due, sweatsuits become the slothful signs of unemployment, daily workouts replaced by days spent out of work ....

Let us praise these simple time-share croppers, Information Age Arrivistes, Postmodern Proletarians, who tilled the soil of our supply side with the sleight of their hand and the sweatbands of their brow. Salt-free of the Earth, Turners of the Rolodexes, Makers of the Mergers, who brought forth profit from junk, co-ops from tenements, nutrition from Tofutti. Broke but yet unbroken. Credit poor but infinite in self-worth. The mesquite grill still glows within their hearts. They have not lost their faith or self-esteem. The Chapter Eleventh hour may yet issue in the dawn:

Networkers of the World Arise!

You have Nothing to Lose, but your Stocks and Bonds!

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Marginal Notes

I am a marginal man. An office temp. Proofreader. Word processor. I make my mark between the lines and at the page's edge. I take my cues from messages scrawled outside the text. Additions. Revisions. Deletions. The better I do my job, the more I disappear, the place in which I toil becoming empty space.

I am a marginal employee. A midtown migrant. I make my living in other people's places. I do the same thing in many locations. I go to different offices on different floors of different buildings. Each one does something different. Each one has a different view. I have many views. But none of them is mine.

Every morning I call the agencies to say I am still available. Sometimes they have jobs. These days, more often they do not. They always have reasons. Usually it's "the holidays.' The Jewish holidays. Christian holidays. Ground Hog's Day. Secretaries' Day. Day of the Dead. Holidays frame time like margins. The agencies are running out of holidays. Some of them have begun to substitute the word 'recession."

Recessions happen when the profit margin shrinks. A few years ago the profit margin was expanding. Corporate entities were as fluid as the words on their computer screens. Capable of infinite reprocessing. They merged and divided, invaded, revised, and deleted each other. Each shift produced profits and documents. There were many margins to work in. And there were many shifts. Nine to five. Five to twelve. Weekend and graveyard.

In those days there were many marginal people. Some of us called ourselves artists. The margins provided us with space in which to develop. We did things to documents in order to do the things we really did. The margins also equipped us with a blank spot. What we really did is what we would do in the future. Therefore what we did now was not real.

To finance the present against a future profit is called 'buying on a margin'. We, who lived on the margins bought time on them as well, used them to invest in a future where everything would pay off. We invented the slash / to secure our speculation. "I am a proofreader/writer, /screenwriter, /actor-drector , /performance artist, /independent filmmaker," we said. The left side of the slash was definite, rooted in the world, the right side another name for marginality.

We were not the only ones who borrowed from the future. The people who created margins, profits and documents balanced their accounts against the future as well. Eventually they lost their balance. The left side of the slash crashed into the right. "I am a proofreader/unemployed attorney, word processor/former investment banker," we began to hear. Displacement displaced marginality.

The margins continue to contract. All space enclosed within the corporate stanzas. The slashes have come out of our identities. Either proofreader/proofreader or unemployed proofreader/unemployed writer. Our employers demand unity. Codependent no more, they tell us as their documents repossess the page.

I am a marginal man and can no longer depend on an economy's dependency. Marginal without utility. I must turn myself inside out to avoid disappearing.

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Through a Glasnost Darkly

First came Reagan, the actor. Then Havel, the playwright. In 1992, as Glasnost swept America, Swifty, the agent, became the 42nd President of the United States. How well I remember his inaugural address:

Friends, citizens, members of the motion picture academy, I did not seek to stand before you, but the people called upon me and after many weeks of evasion I returned their call.

Four months ago I was confined to an office, denied the simple dignity of a car phone or fax machine. My name was unknown beyond a small group of celebrities and entertainment lawyers. Society slumbered beneath a system that vested all power in the hands of the rich and famous, while those who supplied them with ratings and audience share toiled in obscurity.

How quickly things have changed. The viewers have awakened. They demand better treatment. They seek the leadership of ideas. And we, who know a good treatment when we see one, whose commerce is the free market of ideas, have been summoned to lead. Democracy is hot!

I come to you as living proof that ideas matter. Ideas are our most treasured properties. Properly developed they yield multi-media packages -- blockbusters, tie-ins, sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and ancillary merchandise. Ideas provide us with options. Ideas tell us what to think.

Not long ago the world was divided between two camps -- those who made history and those who watched it. But in our age of global media, governments derive their just consensus from the polling of the governed. Leaders can rule only insofar as the people will buy it. And what the people will buy is what we promote.

It is uncivilized to live in a society where some people do not have development deals simply because they do not know anyone in the business. My fellow Americans, of the left coast and right, every time I take a cabinet meeting you have a friend in the business. The pitch stops here! Let me make this perfectly clear: You’re beautiful. Don’t change

In the Sixties it was said, "the whole world is watching." And what the whole world is watching is up to us. We, the producers. We, the publicists. Editors. Executives, be we cable or broadcast. We can never abandon our public responsibility, and what the public gets is ultimately our responsibility.

We hold these concepts to be happening; that all properties are created commercial; that they are endowed by their salability with certain contractual rights - among them development, production, and the pursuit of points. Come let us do lunch together, so that programming of the people, for the people, by the media shall not vanish from the surface of our tubes.

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Grand Mall Couture

It's about time that fashion victims came out of their cramped closets. Unlike substance abusers, sex addicts, and women who love too much, the plight of the style-dependent has not yet been recognized as a Disease. Without the benefit of made-for-TV prophylaxis and celebrity support groups, the untreated trendy must turn the other chic and suffer in silence. In hopes of correcting this deplorable situation, I offer the results of my clinical research in the wards of Manhattan.

Tie-Dye Shock Syndrome - Neoplastic mutation resulting from Sixties Cell Anemia. Endemic to late stage adolescents with a history of affluenza and MTVenous feeding. Inflammation of joints and loss of textile sensation through acid-washing. Progression to peace signusitis, sequestering in Grayful Dead Matter. Emergency head bandectomy required to prevent outbreak of Cerebral Paisley.

Euronary Trash Infection -A Parisitic infestation potentiated by overproduction of Bergdorfins. May present as Comatose Des Garcons depending on body type and credit cardiac history. Thickening of shoulder pads and other Epauleptic disorders during latency. Ponytails and Cartier-vascular arrythmia in secondary stage. Eruption of Bennetomas culminating in full exposure of designer labels in tertiary. Early detection through Armaniocentesis.

Open Bar Virus - Opportunistic eating disorder induced by underlying Boholemia. Leads to hardening of the art galleries and Tompkins Square Parkinson's Disease. Characterized by chronic fatigues syndrome, distressed denimentia, prefrontal Tenex formations, and streptococktail inversion. Sufferers complain of nonspecific existential pain and performance space anxiety.

Permatitis - Swelling of moussecous membrane resulting in big hair. Transmitted through secretarial staff infection of PATHogenic Train origin. Can be contracted from subway seats under rush-hour conditions. May subside with onset of wedding ringworm, Degenerative strain produces Down Town syndrome, an excess of Tama Globulin resulting in brain death. Presents in males as Bon Ginjovitis, an early warning sign of metalbolic dysfunction.

Hip-Hopatitis - Type B-Boy infection originating with Bronxitis and culminating in hysterical defness. Freshtrogen imbalance eventuates in full-body sweats, gold sores, and baseball capillary inversion. Coronary verbosis. May lead to FADES. Epidemic among inner city youth due to Run-DNA; spreading to politically occluded Caucasians in need of Public Enema. Don't believe the hypochondria.

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