The 2011 Thing We Won't Forget Award

The first award bestowed by iBlogAmerica

I took it all pretty seriously this year. I found I couldn't even finish most of my ideas because I couldn't stop trying to be The Best Blogger You've Ever Read. Sigh. Waste of time, really.

It's all retrospectives in December. Why? Because everyone wants to know what we're supposed to remember from 2011. Well, in order to do our civic duty, we here at iBlogAmerica offer: The 2011 Thing We Won't Forget Award.

Let's get to it. What were the best fashion disasters? Dancers for Dancing Amongst the Stars? Viral Videos? It's been a huge year, to be sure. But mostly for weather, politics, and business.

WEATHER

These are a few of my favorite things, of course. We got an East Coast earthquake, a NYC hurricane, and three solid blizzards (including one on Halloween). Pretty awesome-- if problematic (because while natural events are awesome, people's lives get ruined. Like in Joplin. No smiles about that-- or about flooding in Vermont or New Jersey. Awesome weather events often are terrible ones-- and that's problematic. And an earthquake isn't weather, technically.)

POLITICS

Osama dead, gay marriage in NY, the Occupy movement, and the GOP presidential carnival are all huge events from this year. Union busting and tenure ending in education (as we predicted in this blog)-- that'll be big in the years to come, for sure.  The ten year anniversary of 9/11 will stick with us, for sure. The embarrassing US Congress will be hard to forget.  The Arab Spring, of course, the death of Qaddafi (or Gaddafi or Xaddafi or whever), the Russian winter. Kim Jong Il died. That's big in North Korea. The Axis of Evil had a terrible year! And who can forget the End of Days by Harold Camping. Oh, right: probably most of us. But I'm still excited for the Mayans in 2012!

MUSIC

But for art, my other other favorite thing, it was a pretty lousy year. Think about music. Gaga? Perry? Tyler the Creator? Beyonce? Kanye and Jay, Lil' Wayne or Wiz? Not much there. I liked Gaga's drag at the Grammy's (or was it American Music Awards). “Born This Way,” even though it's a naked ripoff of Madonna, is an awesome tag for our time. I'm glad Gaga did it. The biggest music story of 2011 may have been that Amy Winehouse died-- but she was so quickly replaced by the much-less-dangerous-to-herself-and-everyone-else-Adele that no one seemed to notice much after a month went by. The point is: there were few truly huge ideas or styles that will likely survive to next year.

MOVIES

Movies? Um. Harry Potter? Dragon Tattoo? The Tree of Life? Hugo? Melancholia? The Artist? Moneyball? Midnight In Paris? Shame or Guilt or whatever. Gosh, I don't know. Where's the unforgettable stuff? Dragon Tattoo seems like it might affect female stereotype model in Hollywood.  That would be cool.  As for the piece you can't imagine missing? I guess I missed it.

THEATRE

Broadway had Warhorse. That's pretty amazing. Big puppets, like in Avenue Q, but without the irony. Certainly an analogue standout in a year of such digital-tech development. Sleep No More has got to be the most successful installation/theatre piece of many years (all time).  I think it has more to do with shooter-perspective video games than anything else-- but that's a whole other blog.  I guess that I should mention Spider Man and Book of Mormon-- but it's hard to see how either will move theatre very far forward.

TV

I hear that there are tons of awesome shows this year. I don't really watch them-- but I should. Mad Men? American Family? Boardwalk Empire? 30 Rock? I've seen a few episodes but certainly not enough. They're all supposed to be amazing.  Memorable?  Well, Tina Fey is the most important female writer in entertainment.  That's not a small thing.

BOOKS

I read The Submission, by Amy Waldman. You should read it. It's an awesome portrait of race, religion, and politics of our time. I am so glad to have read it in the shadow of the constantly growing World Trade Center. Keep growing, building!

TECH

Siri is big. We will all be talking differently forever. Mark my words (add echo effect here). You wait until the 4 and 5 year olds of today are 14 or 15. They will not talk like robots or anything, but they will be deeply changed by the voice interfacing which is sure to be the greatest thing that Steve Jobs is leaving us all. No, he didn't invent it-- he just made its hardware platform a global phenomenon about 8 years before his company made it standard on the iPhone 4S. Yup, we'll be changed by that one.

AND THE AWARD GOES TO...

2011's biggest contribution to world history: the Too Big To Fail Movement in Business. Politically, no one is too big to fail. Look at all the toppled world leaders, Republican presidential candidates, and Anthony Wiener-- but don't look too long.

In Business, being Too Big To Fail is the winning strategy. It spawned the Occupy Movement, remains an albatross around Obama's neck, and and will likely lead to all kinds of political and class conflict in 2012. Go BP! JP Morgan! Bank of America! Congratulations to you all.

The idea “Too Big To Fail:” iBlogAmerica's winner of the 2011 Thing We Won't Forget Award.

Let me know if I forgot anything.

Thanks for the attention, gentle readers. We here at iBlogAmerica (me) wish all of you (you) a happy, prosperous, and risk-filled new year. Go get 'em in 2012, marshmallow.

Your Life Is My News

commentary on Bin-Laden's death

So, Bin-Laden is dead. Pretty big news turned into four or five words.

And his name is now spelled “Usama.” Ok. Too bad I never got to use it while he was alive.

In our 24 hour news cycle, it seems like this happened months ago. We metabolize news so quickly now, it's hard to keep an eye on how long ago things happened. The Royal Wedding, earthquake in Japan, shooting in Arizona-- there is no shortage of significant but easily neglected events.

But Bin-Laden's death seems different than so many of these countless stories that just go by.  Take the Bin-Laden victory parties of a couple of weeks ago.

Last week, a student at Boston College sent me a video of himself and fellow students celebrating the night the President announced that Bin-Laden was dead.

It's quite a scene. The first couple of minutes are frantic, hand-held shakiness of kids running through what must be BC's campus, late at night. It's impossible to watch without getting a little woozy. The last couple of minutes of the video are easier to watch because the video is more stable, but harder to watch, too, because of the content.

Hundreds of college kids, mostly white males, are standing on tables and pajamas on tables in a large room of the school library. It's around midnight and these kids are going crazy. They are yelling and singing, waving American flags. It sounds like a party after a big sporting event and the kids look incredibly elated and wildly happy. They are singing together. They begin with the classic “na na na, goodbye” chant but, at some point, they segue into The Star Spangled Banner.

I had mixed feelings watching it. It was great to see so many college kids energized by something so purely political and patriotic. I'm used to seeing kids roll their eyes when saying the Pledge of Allegiance, so it was nice to see kids genuinely show some American pride. But it was also kind of scary. This wasn't just a celebration of America. This wasn't outside the White House. This looked a lot like a bunch of kids who had something to focus all their untapped energy on. And the thing they were focused on was the sweetness of revenge.

I thought to myself, “is it ok if they celebrate revenge?”

Then another thought occurred to me.

I wonder if American kids of a certain age aren't the most affected by this news (apart from those who were directly affected by the tragedy that day). Those who were from 2^nd or 3^rd grade to 12^th grade in September of 2001 must've had a unique perspective on the attacks on 9/11. They were kids grappling with the first major attack on the American homeland in the history of our country. Bin-Laden wasn't just a bad guy. He was the WORST guy, the opposite of Santa, the scariest dude in the world. His death is a paradigm shifting, world-remaking event for these kids. It's a huge deal.

Big enough to dance on a table, I'd say.

The death of Bin-Laden is a strange news event because it affects so many people in such different ways. For most, it's a big deal for a few days. But for few, it's a turning point, a milestone, an incredibly significant event.

But, then again, it's not really all that strange.

Every news story is this way. Turn on the news tonight or skim your favorite news website and there it will be: an astonishingly personal event for few and a "just another headline" for everyone else.

And that's what makes all news so complicated, so fragile, and so valuable.

Every life has a story. Every story has a life.

Mosque-a-rade

James Madison said it would be better if we fought with ourselves.

In order to replace the centralized power of a king, emperor, or simple majority, Madison supported a system of warring factions. The irritating arguments on the TV and internet grow directly out of this idea. Because the writers of the Constitution built a system in which shifting partisanship replaced autocracy, we often find ourselves in rather Jerry Springer-like exchanges.

“These supporters of the Mosque are unAmerican! It's like the Nazis putting an ice cream parlor at Auschwitz!”
“Those who would deny the right of believers to build worship houses are unAmerican! How can anyone be so disgusting as to use this as a political weapon?”
“I don't know who my baby daddy is! And I don't care! I'm in love with my grandmother!”

The recent media kerfuffle over the so-called “Mosque at Ground Zero” affords the perfect cross section view of how the rich and lively politicization of our culture can unfortunately distort even our most simple values.

Madison's colleagues, the Constitutional Framers, made absolutely no bones about the importance of the separation between Church and State. These complicated men saw Tyranny (with a capital T) as the bane of civil stability, freedom, and growth. These people knew the Bible intimately; they also knew the writings of Locke and Rousseau. Almost all were churchgoers.

But they knew of the political obstacles of religion. The colonies represented an escape from religious intolerance and State-imposed beliefs. When Ben Franklin, that old charmer and partier, proposed that the Constitutional Convention should begin daily meetings with a prayer, the Framers voted it down. This isn't a legend. I saw and read Franklin's proposal, in his own handwriting, at the Library of Congress this past weekend.

(You have to go to the Library of Congress. It is so cool-- seriously, you will freak out. They have the most amazing stuff. Goosebumps, man. Not the book series-- I mean actual goosebumps on your arms. And neck.)

Wary of the monarchs and aristocracies of Old Europe, the Framers wrote and ratified a document that ensured that certain personal freedoms would be held as our most valuable. The First Amendment of that document identified the principal and preeminent of freedoms: liberty to think, believe, imagine, communicate, and protest.

The Framers sought no byzantine legal system of overseeing religion. They intended the government to simply stay out of personal spiritual business of the citizenry.

This separation between Church and State has provided no shortage of political division in our country-- and yet the most hardened partisans agree on the core idea. The government is to offer no special treatment or bigotry towards any religion. If one follows the civil laws of our country, then one can believe anything one wants.

Our government, therefore, may have no legal position on methods, or places, of worship other than on those that violate the law. It's astonishingly simple.

Those who call for the government to act on the “Mosque at Ground Zero” are, in effect, asking for the government to act in a “extra-Constitutional” manner. Keep this in mind the next time such a call comes from a voice from that also claims to support “smaller government.”

It's hard for me to imagine a better way for the “terrorists to win” than for us to depart from our most cherished values in the name of security or “sensitivity.” The reason “American values” infuriate the Islamic extremists is that, as the Framers knew, personal freedom dismantles the tools of tyranny. Freedom is contagious.

Bin-Laden has publicly decried the “godlessness” of America. His argument against the West is fundamentally religious in nature. He rallies extremists against the malevolent insensitivity of the Americans building military bases in Saudi Arabia. Al-Queda's stated goal is to expel American influences (bases, markets, churches, etc) from the sacred land of Islam.

How ironic that some in our culture would use the same argument to expel an Islamic prayer room from the sacred site of Ground Zero.

Conversely, how powerful for our country to remain steadfast to its Constitution, and the Church-State separation, even at our most sensitive and vulnerable underbelly.

To paraphrase Madison, "Father of the Constitution" and orchestrator of partisan bickering: may the better argument win.

Sigh. Indeed.