Mucking About in the Middle

(First published in Bali Advertiser, July 20, 2005)

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. – Revelation 3:16

The middle of the road may be appropriate when dealing with ice cream flavors, but it's completely misplaced when dealing with questions of war and civil liberties. – E-mail from a Bali Advertiser reader

I’m in a muddle this week, mostly of my own making. My last column sparked two dissimilar responses. To the woman who harangued my wife for thirty minutes for my attack on President Bush and America: I think you misread the column. I was criticizing the easy assumption of the standard Bush caricature, not endorsing it. To the reader who emailed saying I had gone light on the president and ignored, among other things, the Bush administration’s violations of civil liberties in conducting the “war on terror”: You are partially correct. I tried to write about a serious subject with flippant humor, didn’t do it justice and ended up in “a quicksand of tripe.”

(The reader’s initial e-mail on the column appears in the Letters to Bali Advertiser section. Some of his comments I refer to come from a subsequent e-mail.)

My intent wasn’t to attack Bush or defend him. In a sense, the column wasn’t about Bush, but about how people come to form conclusions about him. Bush provokes an instinctive reaction from people that makes it easy for them to dismiss him with a shake of the head. Bush becomes the cartoon cowboy, and some people, even reporters writing news stories, interpret every new fact or development in a way that enhances the image.

It was and is the same with the Clintons. Supposedly serious pundits and commentators still trot out as fact the most outlandish allegations: Bill and Hillary killed Vincent Foster and Ron Brown; worked and are working as closet socialists (communists, Marxists, leftists) to destroy America and establish one world government; launched cruise missile strikes whenever the Monica Lewinsky affair got too hot for Bill; and conceived Chelsea only after Bill raped Hillary in the Bahamas. Bill and Hillary are controversial enough that it’s hard to see why people would also want to delve into the purely imaginative.

The reader who e-mailed, though, said he believes his visceral reaction to Bush is fed by facts, not by sensational reporting. Most sensational reporting, by the likes of “FOX and the lily-livered generality of the American press,” favors Bush, he says. He gets his facts from the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and the New York Review of Books. The problem, though, is that people just as intelligent as my correspondent believe the exact opposite: that the NYT, the IHT, the Post, and the NYRB are the sensationalist, biased press, that FOX gives the straight scoop, or if not FOX, then the more straight-laced, straightforwardly conservative Wall Street Journal.

The American press has been divided like this into the “leftist liberal media” and the “organs of the rightwing conspiracy,” with people reading only publications that reinforce opinions they already hold, denigrating the rest as unbalanced and unfair. The fact is, no paper, no reporter, no editor, no publisher, can completely achieve the goal of journalistic objectivity, assuming that they try. The views of the reporters, editors, and publisher always creep into the pages, no matter how honestly the paper or publication strives to keep them out. I happen to think that the NYT usually does a respectable job of keeping the opinions of its staff and writers confined to editorials and commentary. My e-mail correspondent and I have to accept, though, that many Americans, perhaps even a majority, would scoff at the notion that the NYT reports only objective fact.

I do have concerns about Bush, Iraq, and the violation of civil liberties; I just can’t be as confident as the letter writer that I have a complete picture of what’s happening at any given time. In following any news story, I often come across contradictory presentations of the same set of “facts.” The alternative to reconciling the contradictions into the best obtainable version of the truth is to accept only those “facts” that fit my preconceptions and to abuse the intelligence and question the motives of anyone not reaching the same conclusion. The alternative is what seems to happen every Sunday on the US news analysis shows. For me, I sometimes spend a long time trying to struggle through to a reconciliation of the contradictions.

I still haven’t completely made up my mind about the Iraq war, for example. Many people believe that the search for weapons of mass destruction and regime change were nothing more than cover for a US grab for oil. Yet, a friend in Iraq with the United Nations says Bush made the right decision to invade and remove Saddam. Saddam had been ignoring and skirting UN resolutions and ultimatums for more than a decade, and the US, United Kingdom, and “coalition of the willing,” had to put teeth into the UN rulings, WMD or not. And regardless of the mess that’s been made, Iraq is better off than it was under Saddam, he says. It all seems so much more complicated than that, and I’d like to disagree with him, but it’s hard to argue with someone who’s under the threat of mortar fire in Baghdad and not end up looking foolish.

Copyright © 2005 Lee Roy LeRoi

Rollers, Shakers, and Snorters

(First published in Bali Advertiser, July 6, 2005)

I am, surprisingly, in favor of shutting down Gitmo. I firmly believe all prisoners held there should be taken out immediately and executed for their crimes against America and humanity. With no prisoners left in the cells we could respect the wishes of those who want Gitmo closed. Problem solved. -- David R. Burkett, in a June 21 e-mail to the editor at www.worldnetdaily.com, a conservative Web site that hates to be called conservative

Bush is an idiot. Iraq is about oil. The Republicans stole the elections. America is getting scarier. That outlines the political convictions of most expatriates in Bali, based on an eyeball test I’ve been conducting the last three years. I mention the U.S. President to someone I’ve met in a bar or at a party, and the higher the eyeballs roll, the higher the person scores on the Bush-is-an-idiot scale. Anytime more than 50 percent of the iris ascends behind the upper lids, I know we’ll get to the America-is-getting-scarier part of the conversation.

Rabid letter-writers such as Mr. Burkett aside, I can’t buy the “Bush is an idiot.. America is getting scarier” scenario. For one thing, Bush can’t be both idiot and evil manipulator of the media and public opinion. And if Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are the real powers behind the Oval Office, wouldn’t they have chosen someone with more polish as their front man? I don’t believe Bush is a savior out to make the world safe for freedom, democracy, and family values either. But any suggestion from me that he is more than his cowboy caricature - or even that he may not quite be an idiot – leaves me feeling like Arlo Guthrie sitting alone on the Group W bench. (“And they all moved away from me..” – Alice’s Restaurant)

I admit it is difficult to keep from eye-rolling, headshaking, nose-snorting disgust when reading yesterday’s talk show transcripts on www.rushlimbaugh.com, Ann Coulter’s latest excretions of bile, or the most recent pronouncements from Cheney and Rove. It isn’t any different, though, when I shift to the anti-Bush diatribes at www.counterpunch.com. It’s easy to blame President Bush and his for-us-or-against-us attitude for dividing America into traitors and patriots and all issues into dichotomies. However, I don’t see any logic in complaining about the simplification of the world into black and white and then turning around and painting Bush black.

Some Bali expatriates have decided simply to ignore the news. It must cut down on strain to the eyes, neck, and nose. “I don’t follow the news,” is a boast, not a sheepish confession. Maybe they want to tend their Bali garden and let the rest of the world take care of itself or rot. Somehow, though, despite making no effort to sift through the many voices and views heard on a typical news day, they are still certain that Bush is the doltish consort of demons.

They should know news at a distance seldom matches reality. On how many occasions have friends and family at home contacted them, worried that something - tsunami, earthquake, riot – had got them? Usually, they were nowhere near the event, or the “riot,” prettily telegenic on CNN, lasted as long as the cameras were rolling. It should be harder for them than it is to get hysterical about warnings of Bush leading an American descent into McCarthyism. It just may not be so. Or maybe the news has been magnified by the lens of a camera, a reporter’s imagination, and an editor’s insistence on something sensational. Editors are funny that way.

Once, when I was on assignment in Jakarta, I was asked for a story on demonstrations in front of the American embassy after the US started bombing Afghanistan. Editors in Hong Kong were upset to hear that students were resting in the shade and Indonesian soldiers were using water cannons only to relieve the “rioters” from the Jakarta heat. They wanted a story to match the images they had seen on TV. What I saw was more street party than riot, with only drinks and snack sellers making a killing.

So, rollers, shakers, and snorters, spare me the vein-popping displays. And if you just have to declare Bush an idiot, at least be armed with the latest quotes from www.dubyaspeak.com. I might not have had a chance to look at them that day.

(The eyeball test has great entertainment value when conducted as a game to see who can get the most roll out of a target. Players can devise a point system based on the height of the roll, or play until someone provokes a full, whites-only roll. Canadians, as the “other Americans,” usually give the best responses, perhaps proving something about familiarity breeding contempt. If a point system is used, bonuses can be given for headshakes and snorts.)

Copyright © 2005 Lee Roy LeRoi