there is no typewriter
by Mark Hunter Mulvey
Published: August 4, 2008
“To write this sort of thing you need a typewriter. To describe, to narrate, to make funny cracks you need a typewriter. To fake along, to stall, to make light reading, to write a good piece, you need luck, two or more drinks and a typewriter. Gentlemen, there is no typewriter.”
-Ernest Hemingway, April 1934
McCain Has Spot Removed. Repairing Bridges Pricey. Space-Tourism Has Mothership. Beijing is Scared.
An amalgam of colorful events dance across the slipstream of our media feeds daily, with the most nonsensical and irrelevant among them pitching the world as a delightfully manic drop of paranoia and wonder. But this quilt has no sense of territory. No real filter or organizing principle. Events spew forth under the pretense of news, and their status remains unquestioned as long as the narrative colors are bright.
I’m aiming for a political point here, inspired by this bit of journalistic sputter: “Did McCain flip on affirmative action? Not exactly.” This headline on CNN.com teeters obnoxiously on a thread of indecision, and the piece itself outlines a base account of McCain’s historical opinion of affirmative action, a topic just inane enough to be headline news on a slow day.
In the cocktail of colorful forecasting that Google tosses us every morning, the McCain piece seems legitimate enough to pass as high brow information. But it’s not. The subject matter simply highlights the problem at large: any statement, made at any time, by a presidential candidate is more likely than not to change completely over the course of their campaign. Any candidate. Any party.
Politics is the art of changing one’s opinions as fast as policy and decorum allow, all in an effort to secure a position of power over others. The campaign process is a slow churning of stances, with highly polarized and passionate views being pummeled into homogeny and generalization. The public demands it. The desire to please everyone inevitably results in a boring melange of monotonous policy. The opinion of a presidential candidate goes from technicolor to taupe, right up to when the brown leaves fall in early November.
This should be welcome news to voters. It proves that the barrage of nonsense in the slipstream can be enthusiastically ignored, tossed into the pile of miscellany that Shia LaBeouf shares with the new car smell. The ability to independently filter information is a required skill if one intends to vote properly. Every voter, Democrat or Republican, needs to strain the slipstream and pick out only the pieces of legitimate humanity, passion and personality that happen to narrowly escape taupe.
There’s not much, but it’s what we must go on. Always remember that no one is steering our feeds, and the slipstream is constantly swirling.
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August 4th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I totally agree with your wax on wax off elegance description of media driven propaganda,,,,, but yes I think i see a thread of self interest,… organizing principle,…and that beats policy enforcement for the special interests,….so maybe Hemingway was ahead of his time,..read keyboard for typewriter,…u think it was the lead in his filling or the lithium,…..did i say i like Ron Paul.
August 5th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
I think I’m becoming Socialist.
or at least Libertarian…
August 12th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Excellent.
We definitely have to look beyond what we are being fed and sensationalism to facts. Sure, people can lie and twist facts even about themselves. But if you want to know about a person ask them.
What do Obama, McCain, or anybody think? Ask them by listening to them. Not their speechwriters or polltakers or even critics. Ask them by listening to their words unscripted and by watching their actions ungroomed by their advisors. And always remember they are people just like you and me.
Hopefully learning more today than they knew yesterday and evolving into a more capable individual, not just a stagnant program repeating the same rhetoric year after year, but learning from their mistakes and changing for the better.
I’ve said for years, I reserve the right to change my mind anytime I get more information and can make a better decision. Shouldn’t we want our leaders to do the same?