David Goodloe's Open Salon Blog

A Note to OS Readers

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:10:08 -0400

The problems with importing my posts from my original blog continue. For the second time in the last few days, I have disabled my RSS feed and re-imported it.

I don't have time to do that every three or four days. So this is it.

If you don't see any more current posts from me here, you may assume that the problem has not been resolved and you should visit my blog.

Because I will be writing.

Whistling Past the Graveyard

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:10:00 -0400

I guess I've become numb to all the forecasts this year (and late last year) that erroneously suggested that the end of the recession was at hand — or at least in sight.

Consequently, I am not terribly impressed today with CNNMoney.com's report that "U.S. companies are planning to hire and invest more in the near future."

That conclusion is the result of a National Association for Business Economics survey.

Hold on for a minute or two! Don't start popping those champagne corks just yet.

CNNMoney.com also says the survey revealed a conviction on the part of the economists that "another 175,000 jobs were lost in October." That seems like a key component to me — even though CNNMoney.com doesn't mention it until several paragraphs into the story. I know I'm not an economist, but if the economy is still losing jobs, how is the jobs situation getting better?

The jobs loss may be less than anticipated, but haven't we been down this road before? On at least a couple of occasions this year, jobs losses were lower than expected — and there was much rejoicing. But the economy more than made up for it the following month.

In short ... it may well be true that jobs losses won't be as severe as had been expected/feared when the next jobs report comes out next week. But, at this time of the year, that could be due to employers hiring seasonal workers in (perhaps unduly optimistic) anticipation of the holiday shopping season. So let's be patient this time and wait a couple of months before we proclaim that the economy has turned the corner.

We all want things to get better. But many members of the press seem far too eager (to me) to embrace any modest tidbit of seemingly good economic news as evidence that Barack Obama's policies are working and the recession is over.

Sometimes it seems to me that these things are balanced precariously against other opinions on an invisible scale.

The best example I can think of is an e–mail message I received from a friend. Faced with these optimistic reports, my friend told me that she has always believed that America would face another Depression in her lifetime and she thinks this is it.

So which is it — a recession from which the economy may now be emerging or a Depression that will suck up even more lives and dreams?

Crimes of the Century?

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:10:00 -0400

TIME has compiled a list of the top 25 "crimes of the century."

Such a list is, of course, bound to spark arguments because people always believe something obvious has been left off the list.

I don't have too many qualms about TIME's list, but there are a few things that didn't make the list.

And their absences are conspicuous enough that I don't think I would recommend regarding TIME's list as the last word.

Before I get to that, I'll point out that I think most of the entries on the list do deserve to be there. Like, for example, the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. And the Manson family murders. And the Patty Hearst kidnapping. And Ted Bundy. And John Wayne Gacy. And Jeffrey Dahmer.

Likewise, the Unabomber case belongs on the list. So does O.J. Simpson.

And I definitely feel that the Columbine massacre belongs on the list. But if Columbine is there, why isn't the Virginia Tech massacre? Is it because Virginia Tech actually occurred in the 21st century? Well, the theft of Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" took place the year before the shootings at Tech (2006), yet it made the list. And Andrea Yates killed her children in 2001, but those killings made the list, too.

If notorious killings and their perpetrators qualify as crimes of the century, why didn't the Boston Strangler make the list? Or the Hillside Strangler? Or the Night Stalker? Didn't all of those killers terrorize entire cities? How about BTK? Or Charlie Starkweather?

How about Aileen Wuornos, the female serial killer who was executed a few years ago and was the subject of an Academy Award–winning film starring Charlize Theron?

Any of them would make more sense to me than including Andrew Cunanan's murder of Gianni Versace in 1997 ... or the still unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

I'm thoroughly baffled as to why the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which took 168 lives, wasn't on the list.

And shouldn't the September 11 terrorist attacks be on the list?

If the list is expanded to include foreign events, the murders of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics deserve to be recognized.

For that matter, it seems to me that the Watergate break–in should be on the list, given all the things it put into motion.

Here's one that definitely took place in the 20th century but did not appear on the list — the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Nearly half a century later, that event still seems to call out from the recesses of history — never satisfactorily resolved, drawing renewed attention to unanswered questions.

Last week, I watched the premiere of a new documentary on The History Channel about the 24–hour period immediately following the shooting. It capped a week of Kennedy documentaries on The History Channel. I haven't seen any viewership numbers, but, folks, TV channels simply don't devote a week's worth of primetime programming to anything unless their programming directors have a pretty good idea that it's going to attract a lot of viewers.

As I watched that documentary, I was reminded of how that assassination changed TV broadcasting and the way it covered breaking news events. TV news coverage was still somewhat primitive six years later when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, but, if you compare footage of the JFK assassination coverage to footage of Apollo 11, you can see how much things had changed since the Kennedy assassination.

Everything was different after Kennedy was killed. Doesn't that make it one of the crimes of the century?

I'd like to think that it would. I'd certainly like to think that it ranks ahead of Mary Kay Letourneau and her forbidden love — which, by the way, did make the list.

Nearly a Year of the 'PDQ Presidency'

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:10:00 -0400

Jonathan Alter contends, in Newsweek, that Barack Obama's presidency actually began early last November, when the election results confirmed that he had beaten John McCain, not in late January.

The "PDQ Presidency" began on Nov. 5, 2008. In Obama's eyes, Alter writes, that was "another workday — or, more precisely, the first day of his presidency." Alter acknowledges that Obama could not "sign bills or issue executive orders. He and his family couldn't sleep in the White House. Having resigned from the Senate, he was technically a private citizen — a man with no constitutional authority. But these were formalities. For the first time in modern American history, an incoming president made some of the most important decisions of his term."

I think most Americans can sympathize with the task Obama faced — and the sense of urgency he felt to take on everything.

"But the breakneck pace carried a price. Many so–called shovel–ready construction projects often weren't actually ready to go. Had Obama taken a bit more time, he might have been able to think harder about job creation, which has become the big economic challenge of late 2009. During the transition, Obama officials failed to persuade congressional Democrats to offer tax credits to employers for each new person they hired. And his economists rejected WPA–style government hiring programs out of hand. So when unemployment later approached double digits, they were caught without a backup plan."

Jonathan Alter

Maybe Alter is right. Maybe the tax credit plan got the kibosh from congressional Democrats, not Obama. But it's a promise Obama made when he was running for president. And PolitiFact.com classifies it as a broken promise, whether Obama or congressional Democrats were responsible for breaking it.

That's a distinction, frankly, that is lost on long–term job seekers.

It's extremely frustrating, as Anthony Balderrama writes for CareerBuilder.com, when job seekers don't hear back from employers.

It's understandable, of course, that, with so many people looking for work, hiring managers easily can be overwhelmed by applications. I sympathize with their situation.

But how are job seekers supposed to react to the sense of rejection that comes with this scenario? Especially now that so many unemployed people are losing their jobless benefits. The lifelines that keep them and their families going. I've heard that 7,000 Americans are losing these benefits each day.

I have to wonder about the logic — not to mention the sanity — of a culture that cares so much about health care but not, apparently, about whether people can pay for it.

I have often asked others a simple question for which no one has been able to provide a satisfactory answer — if I am in the position of having to choose whether to pay for my rent or my health insurance, which one do you think I will choose?

A Mystery That Remains Unsolved

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:10:00 -0400

I had high hopes for the movie "Amelia" that opens today in theaters across the country.

I've always enjoyed a good "biopic," as such films are called — as long as they have something meaningful to say or to contribute to discussions about their subjects. And Amelia Earhart was probably one of the first historical figures I heard anything about. But I never learned as much about her as I would have liked.

I have a vague memory from my childhood of luggage that belonged to my grandmother that bore Earhart's name. In hindsight, I suppose the luggage was some sort of line that was marketed for women. In my grandparents' day, that may have been what luggage makers did — perhaps there were other luggage lines that were named after pioneering pilots.

For all I know, Granddaddy may have had luggage that was named for Charles Lindbergh. Or the Wright Brothers. I don't know. I don't recall looking at his luggage. I might have more of a memory of that if he hadn't died when I was in first grade.

But my vague memory includes a brief conversation I had with my grandmother. I was about 8 or 9, I guess, and she had come to visit us. I remember looking at the label on her suitcase, and I asked her who Amelia Earhart was. I probably thought it was the name of the person who designed the luggage.

Grandmother simply replied, "She was a pilot." Nothing else was said because, at about that moment, my mother appeared in the doorway to tell us that dinner was ready. And I don't recall ever discussing it with her again.

When I got older, the name came up in history class but only briefly. And I was never able to get any of my teachers — whether in high school or college — to say much more than Earhart disappeared while flying around the world. It's been 72 years now, and Earhart's disappearance is still a mystery.

Anyway, when I heard that a film about Earhart was going to be released this fall, my curiosity was aroused again. But I realized that anything that the movie had to say would be speculative in nature. I'm certain that, if the filmmaker had uncovered some information that could answer the enduring question of what happened, it would have been the subject of numerous articles and documentaries. But nothing like that has happened.

Speculation is OK with me, though. If it makes people think about what may have happened and they start asking questions, that's fine. "JFK," after all, didn't definitively answer the questions that have swirled around the Kennedy assassination for decades, but it prompted people to ask them.

Unfortunately, from what I've been reading, "Amelia" doesn't seem to contribute anything to the discussion of what happened when she disappeared in July 1937.

Earhart's destination on July 2, 1937, was a sliver of an island in the Pacific Ocean called Howland Island. There are plenty of theories about what happened:

One theory, which has been popular with quite a few researchers, is that Earhart's plane ran out of fuel and was ditched at sea. The "crash and sink" theory certainly would explain why no wreckage has ever been found, although many deep sea expeditions have tried to locate the plane.

Another theory holds that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, landed on another island and eventually died. Searchers on the island never found any plane wreckage, but they did discover some items, like improvised tools, an aluminum panel and a piece of plexiglas, that encouraged none other than Earhart's stepson to believe the mystery of her disappearance had been solved.

Other theories, which have been mentioned in documentaries, have suggested that Earhart was a spy who was captured by the Japanese and either executed or forced to make propaganda broadcasts as "Tokyo Rose." It has even been suggested that Earhart survived, returned to the United States and assumed a new identity, but that claim, which originated in a book titled "Amelia Earhart Lives," was refuted.

An exploration of an existing theory — or, perhaps, the presentation of a new theory supported by new technology — would have been an acceptable reason for a film about Earhart.

Lisa Schwarzbaum of EW.com writes that "Amelia" is a "frustratingly old–school, Hollywood–style, inspirational biopic."

"The mystery we ought to be paying attention to is: What really happened on the legendary American aviator's final, fatal flight in 1937?" Schwarzbaum writes. "But the question audiences are left with is this: How could so tradition–busting a role model have resulted in so square, stiff, and earthbound a movie? Why present such a modern woman in such a fusty format?"

Similarly, Manohla Dargis writes, in the New York Times, that the movie is an "exasperatingly dull production."

And Claudia Puig writes, in USA Today, that "it's too bad that a film about a daring and audacious woman taking on staggering challenges plays it so safe."

Of course, those are critics' opinions. And I'm usually the first to say that people should form their own opinions and not take a critic's word for it.

It may well be an entertaining film. Hilary Swank certainly bears a striking resemblance to Earhart. So perhaps there are worse ways to spend a few hours.

But I think I'll pass on it. If The History Channel chooses to take this opportunity to show some documentaries on Earhart, I'd like to see some genuine footage of her achievements.

She was certainly a remarkable figure, and her accomplishments are worth retelling — even if we don't know what became of her.