CSotD: Other Voices
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I'll start with the fun, easy one: Bliss.
I don't know Harry Bliss (though he lives right next door in Vermont), but this has the hallmarks of a comic drawn from life.
For one thing, another cartoonist has long since confessed to me that he used to sing the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" to his baby, so I'm not the only person with a history of crooning dubious lyrics to helpless infants.
But, as a new dad, I quickly realized that it was the voice, not the content, that mattered, which sounds like one of those public service announcements for foster parents: You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be there.
Allen Sherman sang, "the head coach wants no sissies, so he reads to us from something called 'Ulysses,'" but I actually did read Joyce to my firstborn, not because I thought he would understand, much less benefit from, the wanderings of an ad salesman, but because Joyce's language was so rich and rolling and rhythmic and satisfying.
Later, he enjoyed regular readings of a colorfully illustrated poem he called "Ruby Bop."
But the comical payoff came in early 1973, when he was about seven months old and caught meningitis from a young friend.
It was necessary to start treatment for the viral type while we waited for the test results (which turned out in his favor), so he spent a few days in Children's Hospital, Denver, one of the first to allow parents to stay with their kids around the clock.
I was taking a turn on nights and the poor little fellow — an IV in his forehead, his arms swaddled to keep him from reaching for it — was restless, so I held him and read aloud from the book I was reading anyway, and the sound of my voice comforted him and let him sleep.
Around 3 AM, a nurse came by and said, "Oh, that's so sweet! What are you reading him?"
And I turned the book so she could see: Dostoevsky's "The Possessed."
Fortunately, it was a lot harder to get your name put on a mandatory registry in those days.
Speaking of hospitals
Jack Ohman on Aetna's announcement that it will follow through on its extortion threat over the government's reluctance to allow an anti-competitive merger with Humana.
Aetna isn't sold on a single-payer system but they're very much in favor of a single-collector system and they want to be it.
I'm not surprised by that, but I'm shocked that the threat would be made in writing and not simply conveyed verbally over dinner or a round of golf or perhaps while looking at a prized thoroughbred horse.
Granted, if a man invites a woman to a fancy restaurant, he may have an expectation of how the evening will turn out, and perhaps she is naive or even dishonest to accept the invitation without a tacit understanding of the implications, but – Egad! – you don't say it out loud, directly.
The impact on national health care and on the tattered remains of anti-trust laws aside, the lack of subtlety is an insult.
You don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you ask me to do murder for money.
And comments on social media include a lot of "well, they need to make a profit" justifications, which makes you wonder what Theodore Roosevelt's trustbusting would have sounded like, if it had taken place with the railbirds able to shout out their opinions.
Speaking of whom
Railbirds, that is, not TR.
Vladimir Khakhanov, via Cartoon Movement, notes a Russian move against online anonymity, which I guess is internal, since I couldn't find any specific proposals, though China has long sought to force people to post under their real names.
But I liked the cartoon without specifics, in part because of the notion that attempting to dislodge anonymity will cause a brick to fall on your head, and, on a larger scale, because the use and abuse of anonymity has, itself, become an issue.
To start with, I wonder if there really is something called "Anonymous," or if it's like the Yippies, where, yes, there is a core group, but the concept is undefined, such that anyone who claims to be part of it is thereby part of it.
There is some safety in that, of course: When "Anonymous" threatens to hack an enemy or expose information, who are you going to come after? That's the point at which the brick falls on your head.
On the other hand, as the Black Panthers discovered, if you don't keep some control over these boastful wannabes, they can bring down a lot of heat on you.
The Guy Fawkes mask is like the Che Guevara T-shirt: An attractive logo that does not bind the bearer to understand or follow any particular set of goals or strategies.
However, memberships and affiliations aside, it's become plain that the cacaphony of online opinionating makes online conversation futile, a whisper in a hurricane.
NPR has announced that it will no longer allow comments on its own website, though its postings on Facebook and elsewhere will still be a place where a handful of people can gather to scream at and insult each other. (Here's an interesting response.)
Some other media outlets have switched to Facebook or Disqus to avoid anonymity, which, first of all, assumes that Facebook and Disqus are not full of pseudonyms and sock puppets, and, second, assumes that people won't post hateful garbage if their names are attached to it.
Which is apparently not the case.
There is a value in allowing anonymous postings, and I'd hate to see a crack-down that ended them.
But the abusive, depressing, sociopathic swill that follows most online articles makes undemocratic, anti-press-freedom measures appealing. And that's not a good thing.
Never mind "Don't feed the trolls."
Don't feed Big Brother.
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