I'm long been a big fan of Monty Python, so I was delighted when my niece pointed out this sketch, which I had never before seen. After you get through the preliminaries, you'll see that it features two bored airline pilots. Sadly, in some ways, this skit reminds me of U.S. Homeland Security.
The air is still, holding now the beauty that was nascent in the sublime fury of yesterday‘s blizzard. It is seven in the morning, and I’m driving to town to get bread and eggs for Christmas breakfast. The third convenience store I come to emerges from the pre-dawn darkness with its bright lights and full shelves, and it is open! The clerk behind the counter welcomes me warmly. I find eggs and bread, buy them and then head back to the car, but not without first thanking the clerk for working on Christmas Day. I remember her smile as I drive back home along the icy country roads. This is the darkest time of the year, yet light emerges from the darkness and not just the neon brightness of a pre-dawn, convenience store sign. True light lies nascent in the smiles of friends, loving family and hard working convenience store clerks. [More . . . ]
Matt Taibbi gives us a bit of hope that some justice will be done:
[T]he lead auditor reviewing one of the world’s largest investment banks [Lehman] had no idea what a series of regularly-occurring billion-dollar transactions committed by her main client were, and apparently wasn’t interested. It also didn’t seem to bother E&Y that Lehman was not disclosing any of this to its investors in its SEC filings. My guess is that this suit is the beginning of the end for Ernst and Young and, who knows, may be the beginning of a series of investigations that ultimately take down the auditors and ratings agencies that made the financial crisis possible. Without accountants and raters signing off on all the bogus derivative math and bad bookkeeping, a lot of this mess would never have happened.
John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney have put together about the best description that I've ever seen of the what ails us. Look, if we can't elect unbiased representatives and if our media can't fairly report the events of the day, what chance do we have of peacefully reforming the corrupt system we have? It turns out that these two problems are intimately connected. Here are a couple excerpts about ourMoney & Media Election Complex, which appeared in the November 29, 2010 edition ofThe Nation:
[I]t's not just corporations and consultants who are setting the new agenda. The most important yet least-recognized piece of the money-and-media election complex is the commercial broadcasting industry, which just had its best money-making election season ever. Political advertising has become an enormous cash cow for it—roughly two-thirds of the campaign spending this year flowed into the coffers of TV stations; the final figure is likely to be well above $2 billion. Whereas in the 1990s the average commercial TV station received about 3 percent of its revenues from campaign ads, this year campaign money could account for as much as 20 percent. And station owners are not missing a beat; thirty-second spots that went for $2,000 in 2008 were jacked up to $5,000 this year, according to the Los Angeles Times. Much of this money will go to stations owned by a handful of Fortune 500 firms. No wonder station owners oppose campaign finance reform; their lobby role in Washington is similar to the NRA's in battling bans on assault weapons. Yet commercial broadcasters receive monopoly licenses for their scarce channels at no charge from the government under the condition that they serve the public interest. By any account, the most important role of our media is to make the electoral system serve the voters, who, as surveys continue to demonstrate, rely on local TV as their main source for news. However, local TV covers far less than it did two or three decades ago; according to the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, a thirty-minute newscast at election time has more political advertising than campaign news. Even when politics does get covered, the focus, increasingly, is on "analyzing" ads. And the cumulative effect of endless advertising overwhelms what little remains of independent on-air coverage. What incentive do commercial stations have to cover politics when they can force candidates and players to pay for it? Nice work if you can get it.Are we lacking in options? Hardly:
Gathering the data and grilling the guilty players will make the case for fundamental reform, which must come at multiple levels. The FCC could require stations to grant equal advertising time to any candidate who is attacked in an ad paid for by corporations, with the free response ad to immediately follow the hit job. The FCC should consider requiring free TV ads for every candidate on the ballot if any candidate buys his or her own spots. This would allow wealthy candidates access but would prevent them from shouting everyone else down. Let the stations jack up rates to cover all the time, if they want. We suspect the appeal of TV ads will decline if the result is simply to open an equal debate rather than allow one side to dominate. And of course there is the long-overdue matter of providing free airtime to candidates and requiring debates to be broadcast. Radical ideas? Hardly. Much of what we're talking about was outlined in the original version of the McCain-Feingold bill of the 1990s and in other proposals advanced over the years. It's time to renew them.
I am a doubter and a religious skeptic. A few days ago I shot video of a Presbyterian Christmas service. As I entered the church with my equipment I was greeted warmly by many in the congregation. I returned their greeting in kind. Truth be told, I was happy to be there because the officiant was a friend of mine and this video was going to help her get ordained. It was a very moving service, different from the Catholic Mass I grew up experiencing. There was a time for people in the congregation to ask for prayers or give thanks for good fortune. There was beautiful music and many moments of good humor and laughter. Topping it all off was a Christmas pageant in which the children of the community dressed as the familiar biblical characters and recited lines from the Nativity story. Much of it brought a tear to my eye, I am not ashamed to admit. As a well-known doubter you might think that I would have found all of this distasteful. Not at all. The warmth and love in the room was something to be celebrated and I was glad to be a part of it. But, also being the filmmaker that I am, I couldn't help but notice that the moments in which the people in that room glowed most brightly were the moments of interaction between them. As I have noticed in my own Catholic upbringing, the reading and analysis of scripture is often met with polite attention, if not actual boredom. And this seemed to be the case here as well. The moments that were most moving to everyone, and the moments which brought little gasps of joy from the people there, were not the reminders of Jesus' birth and suffering but the little things that people did for each other. [more . . . ]