Apparently nothing is safe from the global makeover. For instance, take the Real American Hero, G.I. Joe. Strip him of his American character, add brawny sidekicks drawn from the world’s exotic hotspots and voilá, you’ve now got yourself a violent international special force that will appeal to the lowest common denominator worldwide.

And, let’s face it, the message is not that different from the motto one Armed Forces branch (in this case, the Navy) fashioned for itself: “A Global Force for Good” and the perorations of a Commander in Chief from nowhere in particular who views himself as a Messianic postmodernistic antidote to national identity.

So, is what’s good for Hollywood, good for the United States? It all depends on what you mean by “is” and of course what you mean by “the United States.” If it’s the bigger, better, and badder borderless one envisioned by the new international media oligopolies, it’s plenty good and profitable to boot. If it’s the distinctive North American republic that George Washington warned in his farewell address to avoid “foreign entanglements,” it’s pretty much the end of the line. And, if you don’t particularly like that situation, the new G.I. Joe will see to it that you do.

Join the Army. Visit exotic places. Meet strange people. And, bill them.

Over a political career of nearly eight years, I probably encountered a dozen or so similar incidents: trash dumped in the yard after a fluoridation vote (probably the closest we ever came to mandating universal health care coverage), anonymous letters and e-mails with hateful messages, a few taunts, and one threatened punch-up. After my resignation, I received a lovely little thank you card that read on the outside “Thank You” to reveal upon opening “for leaving” signed by the pseudonyms of a dozen or so malcontents.

All in all, you learn to take the occasional insult, veiled threat, and gesture of ill will in stride and recognize that it comes with the terrain of political representation. You’re never ever going to satisfy everyone. Moreover, people often have strong reactions to public policy issues. Some citizens can even be a little cantankerous. But it never escalated to the level that it required publicity or law enforcement action. End of story.

Beginning of story for some Congressional politicians who would have us believe that they’ve never been on the receiving end of an insult or taunt. In the past week, a dozen or so Congressmen have come forward with stories of harassment surrounding their positions on recently passed health care legislation. Some serious. Most not. Whether revelations of the latter are just peculiar demonstrations of political thin skin, lame attempts to gain sympathy, or coordinated efforts to demonize public demonstrators is still open to question. What is quite clear, however, is that many of the incidents either didn’t happen as told or involve ordinary, run-of-the-mill insults of a kind that merit no public controversy whatsoever.

As evidence of the latter consider the following. Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak charged that one constituent lectured that “You will rue the day you did this, Mr. Stupak.” Not to be outdone in the victimization department, a Republican Congresswoman retorts that she received an ugly call wishing that she had broken her back in a recent accident. And, of course, there were the “really gross expressions to young, Congressional staffers” telephoned to Congressman Anthony Weiner’s office. For goodness sakes, folks, call in the Marines.

And, then there is the spitting incident. Exhibit Congressman Emmanual Cleaver. In headlines that evoked images of the Selma to Montgomery marches, news headlines blared that a black congressman, Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, was subject to racial taunts and spat in the face by an angry and vindictive teaparty activist in a tumultuous crowd. Fortunately, the entire incident was captured on video. What the tape clearly shows is a rather orderly crowd of demonstraters and a gentleman cupping his hands, shouting, and inadvertedly releasing a spray.

Fortunately too, Americans long ago became inured to conspiracy theories involving saliva projectiles. We can thank Jerry Seinfeld’s debunking of Cosmo Kramer for that.

Since the proposed highway would require no local match, one can certainly understand the attraction of a gigantic public works project like this one, especially during these recessionary times. If it ever comes to fruition decades from now (assuming that there aren’t revolutionary technology developments in the transportation industry like travel pods), it would temporarily pump hundreds of millions in construction monies into the area and create hundreds of jobs, though many of the jobs would be filled by non-resident workers for outside contractors. Once the highway opened, it would have a marginal impact on local employment. You’d see some rearranging of the economic geography with retail establishments clustering closer to highway exits. You’d see more residential sprawl. For an investment of $1 billion or so, the affected counties might experience a net impact of a few hundred permanent jobs, mostly in low paying service and retail trade sectors.

Another economic development dead end

Why? New highways and expanded highways have their largest economic impacts where existing capacity bottlenecks and agglomeration economies exist. But, let’s face it: Route 220, which runs in the direction of the proposed corridor is not experiencing any bottlenecks. It’s a lightly traveled thoroughfare. When you get past Rawlings, MD, you can often drive for miles without encountering an oncoming car. Thus, a new highway would have very small total user benefits. That’s why Wilbur Smith Associates found that similar highways built in lightly populated areas as part of the Appalachian Highway System have a negative ROI. We’ve known these things for decades. Former ARC Executive Director, Ralph Widner, who oversaw the planning and construction of much of the ARC highway system acknowledged the mistake years later in a pensive 1990 article in Economic Development Quarterly in which he faulted the ARC for placing too little emphasis on developing human resources.

When the numbers don’t add up, expect the proponents to reach elsewhere for support. They’ll tout the improved highway safety and potential for reduced accidents (without acknowledging the increased pollutants and deleterious effects on, for example, asthmatics). They’ll assert that it will improve national defense, citizen evacuation, and police mobilization (without acknowledging that it improves criminal and terrorist movement and is associated with increased crime as well). They’ll hold aloft a few advocacy studies with poor research designs purporting to show how the areas will thrive economically as a result of the new asphalt. They’ll argue that the Marcellus shale discovery changes the entire economic rationale.

Who are the biggest losers in this economic development equation? First, the local public who fall for yet another economic development whopper, and lose valuable time in developing worthwhile economic development projects created through publicly engaged planning which focuses on the area’s assets, including human and natural resources. Second, everything else. The proposed corridor would cut through another fairly intact forest area, inducing a pattern of fragmentation that will render an entire swath of wilderness reaching several miles in each direction useless as an environmental asset, devastating ecological services, and destroying biodiversity.

A terrible thing to waste

Ezekial 38:20 warned us of what a wrathful god could do:

So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.

Turns out that we are quite capable of doing ourselves in without any heavenly ire.

You don’t need to buy that new Twitter for Dummies book. Way too much filler. It is redacted to fewer than 1,600 characters on eQuotient.net.

Done. It took only 117 or so characters, which means that I was far more frugal than required to post on the Twitter social networking and microblogging system, which allows up to 140 characters. That’s the first thing you need to know in order to use Twitter. The next is to register your account on http://www.twitter.com. But, not too many people are tripping up on this last part because there are purportedly over 24 million registered users at the moment.

Here’s the rest:

Killer apps

Twit and nittwit on Twitter @joebiden

That's twellow, not gold.

Tweet dreams.

That’s gone now. In its stead we have a hyperprocessed Madison Avenue product. It’s still vaguely rural or rather ex-urban but there’s no discernable place. It’s been deracinated. Also, no more drinking and carousing. The forgetable themes seem to be chosen by focus groups and increasingly celebrate different aspects of politically correct consumerism. The melodies are often recycled from older songs and given a pop beat. A procession of perfect blonde twenty-something singer-models strut around in music videos to sexually titillate. In sum, it’s been so thoroughly mainstreamed that it’s practically been absorbed into the global monoculture.

Therefore, it was pleasure to see George Jones in concert last night at the Charlottesville Pavillion. Simple alliterative name. Two syllables. The young waitress at The Nook couldn’t fathom who was performing that evening: “Just some old guy from the 70s.” Seventy-eight years old in September to be precise. He sported a paunch. He missed the high notes.

But, he lived the lyrics that he wrote and the songs are a spontaneous reflection on the challenges and passions of life. Here in the real world.

Or, as he tells it in “The Grand Tour”

Step right up, come on in
If you’d like to take the grand tour
. . .
I have nothing here to sell you.
Just some things that I will tell you.

Ladies and Gentleman, Mr. George Jones.

Round up the usual suspects

Clearly, this is not the citizen engagement that was promised. Instead, it’s fairly noxious stuff and seems designed to cause irreparable harm to civil discourse, squelch public participation, and even foment violence. I’m looking for a precedent in recent U.S. presidential history, but can’t find it.

How did we get to this point? Before anyone makes the unsubstantiated assertion that the audiences coming out to these events are “rent-a-mobs” organized by special interest groups who are interested in squelching serious debate about health care, let’s make one thing clear. If you don’t have basic ground rules in place and create an environment where everyone feels comfortable, it doesn’t matter. The meeting will get unruly without any outside efforts or ill intentions.

How do I know? As a two-term councilman, I’ve seen the dynamic in action and even stirred the pot a little myself. Eventually, the mayor and council needed to revise the ground rules, and I needed a little attitude adjustment. It made an extraordinary difference to the tenor of the meetings.

So how do you combat meetings turning ugly? Here are a few suggestions:

(1) Don’t come to a public meeting with your mind already made up. There’s nothing that makes citizens angrier than going through the motions of public meetings when it is clear that the official will not entertain any other possibilities. The race to pass health care bill before adequate public input was received solidified in many citizens’ minds that the town halls were mere exhibitions.
(2) As a public official, choose your words carefully. Definitely no name-calling. Don’t make allegations about peoples motivations (anyway it’s is a logical fallacy). Don’t make messianic claims about your own unique talents and ability to solve all the problems. Also, make it clear that you value citizen input. Demonstrate good listening skills.
(3) Have an organization with no stated opinion on the issue organize the meeting. Often it will be a local civic organization. Don’t allow partisans to organize and control the meeting.
(4) Make sure that the venue is large enough to accommodate the expected audience size. Err on the size of caution. Better for the facility to be too large than too small.
(5) Distribute a copy of the ground rules, including expectations of citizen and public official behavior. You might use Robert’s Rules of Order. You might supplement Robert’s Rules with something else more specific.
(6) Have a sign in sheet where citizens can register their intention to speak, and have a neutral party chair the meeting and select the citizens from that list.
(7) Assign a time limit of, say, 3-5 minutes for each citizen on the list to speak. If they have more to say, ask them to provide their remarks in writing and make it part of the public record.
(8) Summarize the remarks of citizens at the end to make clear that you understood them, and demonstrate that you will give them serious research and thought.

Hope you realize the mess you've made

If these suggestions don’t work, it’s time to go into a new line of business.

Next, Slate magazine reports on Burger King’s unappetizing entree, the “Super 7 incher,” and an advertising campaign that must have been inspired by the feats of Linda Lovelace.

A different kind of Manwich

And, now the rest of the industry is trying to get in on the act. If you haven’t heard it yet, T.G.I. Fridays is airing a radio advertisement in many media markets that takes sex in advertising to an entirely new low. The ad features callers who leave what at first appears to be a series of sexually explicit messages on the T.G.I. Friday’s cook’s answering machine, complimenting him on his prowess. The cook proceeds to play back each message but halts right before it is revealed that they are actually alluding to his food and not foreplay. And, in an alltime media low, there is even a veiled reference to getting grandma in on the hot and heavy.

Where's the beef? You don't want to know.

You would think that the restaurant industry, of all businesses, would steer clear of the derriere for at two reasons. First, a sizeable portion of the public is going to be turned off by the use of sexually provocative themes in advertisements. I don’t just mean the prudes at Dr. Dobson’s Focus on the Family, but garden-variety people who seek a safe and family friendly atmosphere for dining with their children, parents, and friends. Second, nobody needs to be subtly reminded of the constant stream of news reports about rogue chain restaurant workers adding bodily fluids to the ingredients of the recipes as this scene from the movie Road Trip demonstrates.

Bon Appetit!

Unfashionably late and overhyped, again.

Bottom line. Not only is there light at the end of the tunnel, but we’re emerging from the tunnel. However, it’s going to take some time to adapt to the sunlight after nineteen months in the cave.

And, for accuracy’s sake, we should remember that it’s a panel of experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research that calls the troughs and peaks of business cycles, not Newsweek or anybody else. They use a dashboard of economic indicators and gut judgment. So, a few consecutive quarters of robust Gross Domestic Product growth followed by anemic growth and continued job losses do not mean that the recession is over. Consequently, it may be years before any “official” declaration is made, if a declaration is warranted.

“It’s been said that community college is a ‘halfway school’ for losers, a self esteem workshop for newly divorced housewives, and a place where old people go to keep their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity. Well, at Greendale Community College…that’s all true.”

And, here’s a link to a trailer (warning: television commercial inserted):

All in all, not bad stuff. On an ordinary sitcom grading scale (where Seinfeld and The Beverly Hillbillies are “A” material), this would probably garner a “B.” But, heck this is community college and the TV sitcom competition is amazingly weak these days. So we’ll use a grading curve, hand them an A+, and let them waive the final.