2004/01/27

CBS wants to keep you in ignorant bliss
I borrowed the following from John Battelle's Searchblog. No point in rewording what he has said quite well.
Loads of folks have commented already on this, but I wanted to add what I could to the meme, if only to insure one more protest is lodged in this particular record in the database of intentions. It boggles the mind how deeply lame CBS's decision to deny MoveOn's ad is. CBS claims "the network has had a long-term policy not to air issue ads anywhere on the network." Uh huh. Lessig comments that somehow a War on Drugs ad from the Bush White House, a blatant piece of "issue advocacy", made it through the CBS filter. Not to mention all the presidential advertising lucre CBS will be happy to suckle over the next 10 months. You're telling me an RNC- or DNC-funded attack ad won't be an "issue ad"? Did CBS refuse the Willie Horton ad back in 1988? What the fuck is going on here?
Close quote. I (Geoff Fox, not John Battelle) just called Les Moonves, President of CBS, at (323) 575-2345; the receptionist transferred me to a "comment line" (attached to a tape recorder? Who knows?) where I could spout off. MoveOn asks that after you call (please do) you let them know by going here.

Getting the news from poetry

David González, an excellent reporter on the struggles of ordinary people facing crushing problems and a writer of more than ordinary talent, has a poetic report in today's NYT on one of our great reporting poets, Pedro Pietri, who alas is ill: When Life Is Art, Dying Is Simply Not an Option I've known David since he was a reporter in Philadelphia and contributing to a newsletter I was editing years ago, Hispanic Monitor, then he was in Newsweek (not a good place for a creative spirit), and now has found more space for himself to say what really matters in The New York Times, lately as Caribbean correspondent. I know he feels kinship toward Pedro Pietri, who has always said things that really matter. Somewhere I still have one of Pietri's visiting cards, announcing him as chief reverend of the "Church of the Tomatoes."

The far more conservative NYT columnist, Clyde Haberman, also waxes poetical on the same page, reporting on and quoting from Wall Street lawyer and poet Eugene Schlanger on the proper memorial to the dead of September 11 (New York's September 11, 2001, not Chile's in 1973, which Wall Street lawyers can't be expected to remember). Schlanger's verses show that even Republicans can have human feelings, at least within the patriotic range of issues. Who'd have thought?

William Carlos Williams was right: It is hard to get the news from poetry, but sometimes, that's the best place to find it.

For a very short sample of Pedro Pietri: Telephone Booth Number 905 1/2
For info on the coming Tribute to Pedro Pietri (to raise funds for his treatment), February 12 at Taller Boricua, Julia de Burgos Cultural Center, 1680 Lexington Avenue at 106th Street in Manhattan