For the next 8 weeks, professional singer David Archuleta becomes one of the guys going through his Mormon Rite of Passage in one of the South American Missionary Training Centers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
At one point, I thought his decision might produce bad consequences on his career trajectory and on his singing voice. Not necessarily. Remember -- Elvis Presley at the height of his young-heart throb period got drafted into the US Army, did a tour of duty in Germany, and came back to a bigger more lucrative career in the 1960s.
I do hope the Church’s Public Relations / Missionary Department will stifle their unholy urges to
harness his fame and heart throb potential as an advertising medium. I can almost picture his face, complete with white shirt, tie, and badge looking out over Times Square with the label “and I’m a Mormon.” Mormon.org
This sort of elder will require a South American mission president out of the ordinary. Most elders are just guys with varying degree of potential and promises. Archuleta has proven himself in The Forcing House of Showbiznia and turned himself into one of the hotter musical commodities on The American Scene. No LDS Mission would want to be branded forever as The Mission that Ruined the Archuleta Brand.
David’s serving a mission anonymous of his fame will be problematic if even possible. I do wonder and worry about David’s fitting into LDS Mission Kulchur, though. Despite Raising the Bar and Preach My Gospel, a mission is still classic guy stuff, which accounts for one reason why elders outnumber sisters by some quantum factor. It is a guy atmosphere of junior companions, senior companions, trainers, district leaders, zone leaders, assistants to the president. Highly stratified, competitive, sometimes with a hazing atmosphere. Rituals. Traditions. In the mission where my friend served 15 years ago, the guys burned an article of clothing at the end of each quarter.
One of the reasons I did not serve a mission in the mid 1970s was the reputation that proceeded missions: Two Years of Gym Class. Just how the regular guys in David’s mission will react to A Real Artist is anyone’s guess. The chemistry might get compounded by jealousy at David’s stature as A Real Artist who has already made more money than 75 percent of the rest of them will ever make in their whole wasted lifetimes.
I wonder if David in his heart of hearts worries that The Companions / Elders / The Guys will hate him as a singing star, not whether he is or is not any good as a missionary? I wonder if David worries that the sister missionaries will want to associate with him as a highly valuable potential catch – not as a person? How will his mission president ever know if the people Archuleta baptizes truly converted to The Gospel and not to the cultivated charisma of Our Boy Wonder?
We wish David well on his mission, but we should hold few if any illusions about the difficulty of the whole enterprise.
Here is an article that appeared in the 28 March Deseret News
David Archuleta tells fans on YouTube about leaving for his Mormon mission
Preserved from the Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765563815/David-Archuleta-tells-fans-on-YouTube-about-leaving-for-his-Mormon-mission.html
Preserved from The Official Archuleta YouTube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N5b7LFX5JI&list=UU75d1FNP1qR0lCY1usRKQEw&index=1&feature=plcp
Published: Wednesday, March 28 2012 1:09 p.m. MDT
David Archuleta is about to leave on his two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and on Wednesday posted the following statement along with a 7-minute video on his YouTube channel:
"Just one more vlog from home for a while before I leave on my mission. It has been an emotional week with family and friends. Just wanted to thank all of you for the support you have giving me for the last 4 years. Will see you all in 2 years."
Read ksl.com's report from Josh Furlong: David Archuleta begins 2-year missionary service
Related: David Archuleta announces haircut, spends time with family pre-mission
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
SUBJECT A: UTAH SEX EDUCATION PROMPTS AN EDITORIAL
Friday evening, 16 March 2012 10:00 p.m.
News reports indicate that Governor Gary Herbert of Utah vetoed HB 363, a controversial bill dealing with Utah’s sexual education law.
Whenever one assesses the possibilities of sexual activity with another person, one should always gauge that person’s attitude about sexuality in general. Does that person think it is good, that it is necessary, that it is necessary but disgusting, that it is just disgusting. One gets the impression, listening to Utah’s Republican legislators and to the Republican presidential candidates that they prefer that the unwashed masses of people should not engage in Subject A.
PART ONE
Dr. Andrew Weil in his landmark book on natural health entitled Natural Health Natural Medicine observed in his chapter on sexual addictions that despite its central place in human culture and our obsessing about it, sex remains fairly mysterious. Science still knows remarkably little about its psychological workings. Whether our sexual advisors are married or not, single or coupled, the chances are high that most information we get about sex is misguided or wrong.
A major problem in public school sexual education results from teaching the subject like health. Instruct students how to be healthy, teachers think, and they will act in healthy ways. We know how misguided that attitude can be among the foibles of the human animals. Teaching health that way does not work well; teaching Subject A in such a way does not seem any much wiser.
I find it grimly amusing many Utah conservatives will have teachers instruct their kids how to use guns without contemplating or worrying that the kids will go out and kill. Yet, they will not teach kids about sexual methods and birth control technology for fear that they will become sexual active and use them. One way or another, most of our kids will eventually become sexually active -- whether we want them to or not.
I have monitored my politically active neighbor-friends for 40 years: I sometimes wonder how many parents actually know enough about sex to teach the subject to their progeny.
THE CALLS TO ACTION:
The kids deserve to at least hear about technological advancements to prevent unmarried unwanted pregnancy and to prevent sexual transmitted diseases.
Abstinence-only sex education might work if we accompanied it with a thorough regime of medications to remove the teenage male sex drive from the teenage males.
PART TWO
An article in the Salt Lake Tribune quoted Senator Reid of Ogden:
“To replace the parent in the school setting, among people who we have no idea what their morals are, we have no ideas what their values are, yet we turn our children over to them to instruct them in the most sensitive sexual activities in their lives, I think is wrongheaded.”
This assumes that parents know what they are talking about on Subject A.
Some legislator could have said:
It is also wrongheaded for the legislature to replace the school setting with parents – people whom the legislature has no clue about their values and knowledge. Yet the legislature gives our children over to parents for instruction about health and the most sensitive sexual activities in their lives.
Legislators should understand that the above point is just as valid.
The Tribune quoted Dalane England, Utah Eagle Forum vice president of issues as saying,
“I think that our children are so important and we cannot afford to tell them anything but the truth…and the truth is the only way to protect yourself physically and emotionally is to abstain from sex until you are married and to be faithful in a relationship. When you have the truth and the whole truth, you don’t need anything else.”
KUER Radio news also quoted Senator Dayton as saying something along the same lines.
Ms England is quite wrong on this particular point. Abstinence and fidelity might be the best way. [though I have my doubts] – drs. It is certainly not the only way.
It would also be interesting to know the exact number of marriages that were ruined by introducing sex into the institution.
Obviously, teenage kids should not be having sex, though in 19th and 20th century Utah, kids as young as 14 and 16 could have sex if they were legally married.
Teenage kids should not be having sex. However, I have monitored my parent - neighbors for 40 years, especially the political activist neighbors: I sometimes wonder if they know enough about sex to teach it to their kids.
Teenage kids should be beaten by their parents or anyone else.
Teenage kids should not drink alcohol – not even a little, not to excess. {Neither should the parents for that matter.}
Teenage kids should not smoke cigarettes. [Neither should their parents for that matter.]
Teenage kids should not smoke marijuana. [Neither should their parents for that matter.]
Teenage kids should not get addicted to cocaine or crack or meth. [Unfortunately, I once lived across the street from drug-addicted parents. They were not exactly the best teachers on that subject.]
We know just what parents can and will do and their levels of hypocrisy.
Parents should teach their kids, but they can use all the reenforcement assistance they can get. The schools have their place in teaching about health and tools.
The truth on this subject appeared in a Salt Lake Tribune letter the other day. Since we are all adults about this, I reprint it for you in full:
Sex also awesome
Preserved from the Salt Lake Tribune
Letter to the editor
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/53615080-82/sex-marriage-awesome-front.html.csp
Published: March 4, 2012 11:25PM
Updated: March 4, 2012 11:25PM
Of sex education in Utah, Rep. Bill Wright, R-Holden, recently said: “Why don’t we just be honest with them up front that sex outside marriage is devastating?”
Well, if we’re going to be totally up front, Bill, we’ll have to tell kids that sex outside marriage is also sometimes awesome. If I were a teacher, and had to “just be honest,” I would have to tell kids that sex outside marriage — for me — has been fun, moving, steamy, spiritual and completely disease-free (also child-free!). I’d also have to tell kids that sometimes it’s been boring, a blow to my ego and less good than masturbating.
I’m flummoxed by Wright’s sense of “honest” and “up front.” Clearly, his understanding of those words doesn’t include the experiences of his constituents. Sex inside of marriage can also be devastating. It depends how you’re doing it. A few married people I know are currently devastated by their sex lives, and a few are overwhelmed by the results of sex without a condom.
Sex with multiple partners can be dangerous, yes. Herpes? Never awesome. Or so I hear. I never got it, which I owe, in part, to my eighth-grade sex education class.
Matthew Ivan Bennett
Midvale
© 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune
IN CONCLUSION –
Leaders give people what the people need. Politicians give people what the people want. This may account for why on any given election year the number of politicians to leaders is about 10 politicians to 1 leader – on a good day.
Yes, parents should not leave education to the professionals. However, professionals with knowledge can be useful, especially with technological knowledge on the subjects of health, sex, and sexual health.
News reports indicate that Governor Gary Herbert of Utah vetoed HB 363, a controversial bill dealing with Utah’s sexual education law.
Whenever one assesses the possibilities of sexual activity with another person, one should always gauge that person’s attitude about sexuality in general. Does that person think it is good, that it is necessary, that it is necessary but disgusting, that it is just disgusting. One gets the impression, listening to Utah’s Republican legislators and to the Republican presidential candidates that they prefer that the unwashed masses of people should not engage in Subject A.
PART ONE
Dr. Andrew Weil in his landmark book on natural health entitled Natural Health Natural Medicine observed in his chapter on sexual addictions that despite its central place in human culture and our obsessing about it, sex remains fairly mysterious. Science still knows remarkably little about its psychological workings. Whether our sexual advisors are married or not, single or coupled, the chances are high that most information we get about sex is misguided or wrong.
A major problem in public school sexual education results from teaching the subject like health. Instruct students how to be healthy, teachers think, and they will act in healthy ways. We know how misguided that attitude can be among the foibles of the human animals. Teaching health that way does not work well; teaching Subject A in such a way does not seem any much wiser.
I find it grimly amusing many Utah conservatives will have teachers instruct their kids how to use guns without contemplating or worrying that the kids will go out and kill. Yet, they will not teach kids about sexual methods and birth control technology for fear that they will become sexual active and use them. One way or another, most of our kids will eventually become sexually active -- whether we want them to or not.
I have monitored my politically active neighbor-friends for 40 years: I sometimes wonder how many parents actually know enough about sex to teach the subject to their progeny.
THE CALLS TO ACTION:
The kids deserve to at least hear about technological advancements to prevent unmarried unwanted pregnancy and to prevent sexual transmitted diseases.
Abstinence-only sex education might work if we accompanied it with a thorough regime of medications to remove the teenage male sex drive from the teenage males.
PART TWO
An article in the Salt Lake Tribune quoted Senator Reid of Ogden:
“To replace the parent in the school setting, among people who we have no idea what their morals are, we have no ideas what their values are, yet we turn our children over to them to instruct them in the most sensitive sexual activities in their lives, I think is wrongheaded.”
This assumes that parents know what they are talking about on Subject A.
Some legislator could have said:
It is also wrongheaded for the legislature to replace the school setting with parents – people whom the legislature has no clue about their values and knowledge. Yet the legislature gives our children over to parents for instruction about health and the most sensitive sexual activities in their lives.
Legislators should understand that the above point is just as valid.
The Tribune quoted Dalane England, Utah Eagle Forum vice president of issues as saying,
“I think that our children are so important and we cannot afford to tell them anything but the truth…and the truth is the only way to protect yourself physically and emotionally is to abstain from sex until you are married and to be faithful in a relationship. When you have the truth and the whole truth, you don’t need anything else.”
KUER Radio news also quoted Senator Dayton as saying something along the same lines.
Ms England is quite wrong on this particular point. Abstinence and fidelity might be the best way. [though I have my doubts] – drs. It is certainly not the only way.
It would also be interesting to know the exact number of marriages that were ruined by introducing sex into the institution.
Obviously, teenage kids should not be having sex, though in 19th and 20th century Utah, kids as young as 14 and 16 could have sex if they were legally married.
Teenage kids should not be having sex. However, I have monitored my parent - neighbors for 40 years, especially the political activist neighbors: I sometimes wonder if they know enough about sex to teach it to their kids.
Teenage kids should be beaten by their parents or anyone else.
Teenage kids should not drink alcohol – not even a little, not to excess. {Neither should the parents for that matter.}
Teenage kids should not smoke cigarettes. [Neither should their parents for that matter.]
Teenage kids should not smoke marijuana. [Neither should their parents for that matter.]
Teenage kids should not get addicted to cocaine or crack or meth. [Unfortunately, I once lived across the street from drug-addicted parents. They were not exactly the best teachers on that subject.]
We know just what parents can and will do and their levels of hypocrisy.
Parents should teach their kids, but they can use all the reenforcement assistance they can get. The schools have their place in teaching about health and tools.
The truth on this subject appeared in a Salt Lake Tribune letter the other day. Since we are all adults about this, I reprint it for you in full:
Sex also awesome
Preserved from the Salt Lake Tribune
Letter to the editor
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/53615080-82/sex-marriage-awesome-front.html.csp
Published: March 4, 2012 11:25PM
Updated: March 4, 2012 11:25PM
Of sex education in Utah, Rep. Bill Wright, R-Holden, recently said: “Why don’t we just be honest with them up front that sex outside marriage is devastating?”
Well, if we’re going to be totally up front, Bill, we’ll have to tell kids that sex outside marriage is also sometimes awesome. If I were a teacher, and had to “just be honest,” I would have to tell kids that sex outside marriage — for me — has been fun, moving, steamy, spiritual and completely disease-free (also child-free!). I’d also have to tell kids that sometimes it’s been boring, a blow to my ego and less good than masturbating.
I’m flummoxed by Wright’s sense of “honest” and “up front.” Clearly, his understanding of those words doesn’t include the experiences of his constituents. Sex inside of marriage can also be devastating. It depends how you’re doing it. A few married people I know are currently devastated by their sex lives, and a few are overwhelmed by the results of sex without a condom.
Sex with multiple partners can be dangerous, yes. Herpes? Never awesome. Or so I hear. I never got it, which I owe, in part, to my eighth-grade sex education class.
Matthew Ivan Bennett
Midvale
© 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune
IN CONCLUSION –
Leaders give people what the people need. Politicians give people what the people want. This may account for why on any given election year the number of politicians to leaders is about 10 politicians to 1 leader – on a good day.
Yes, parents should not leave education to the professionals. However, professionals with knowledge can be useful, especially with technological knowledge on the subjects of health, sex, and sexual health.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
DON'T BELIEVE IT
The other day I wrote on Facebook something to the effect that a person who does not believe in God is likely not to believe in just about anything.
I based my epigram – sort of – on a line Oscar Wilde once wrote: a woman who will tell you her correct age is liable to tell you anything.
Both witticisms are perfectly true as far as they go. Both are expressed well-enough for everyday conversation, particularly on Facebook.
The philosophical reverse is also true as far as it goes: a religious person who does not believe in the secular institutions is also likely not to believe in just about anything.
Once a person starts to disbelieve – seriously disbelieve, disbelief can carry a person in any number of faithless, negative directions.
Many people fancy they act based on their principles and in what they believe. In other words, they believe they act for positive reasons. Some do, and huzzah for them. However, many if not most people act based on what they do not believe.
Often, we read obituaries listing things that The Dearly Departed believed. I would find it interesting to read the list of things which the Departed did not believe.
For example, my obituary [some day far off] might note that I do not believe in California or Vermont or Delaware or the Dakotas and did not live in or support outdated internal boundaries. I did not believe in alcohol or tobacco. I did not believe in the Vampire Diaries. I did not believe in Martians, Kris Kringle, or Star Wars.
The concept of Belief in politics evolved not from a swamp but into The Swamp. Voters have always found a candidate’s belief in God and belief in specific brands of God a hot issue in American politics. This has become especially true in the Republican brand in the last 25 years where a good candidate can get a lot in both money and power by capitalizing on a conservative siege mentality.
Only a few certain places in America will voters elect a professing atheist to office. Only in certain places in America will voters elect a Mormon to office. Hardly anywhere in America will elect a Muslim into office. Furthermore, as we have seen in Winter 2012, primary elections in The South demonstrate certain hypocrisies among the evangelical voting set. Some of them prefer a serial adulterer to a monogamist Latter-day Saint.
We should not regard Politics as a world of its own. It reflects native culture. In American culture, if a person wants to generate a very angry discussion very quick, he or she should start discussion on the subject whether we believe in God or believe in Atheism.
Atheism has a lot more to it than just the non existence of God. My experience over the years suggests when a typical person becomes a typical atheist and loses faith in God, the lack of faith usually starts as losing faith in one of God’s commandments or doctrines, not necessary in God itself. Usually, the person tires with a religious regulation that has to do with either sex, control, or money. The professed Atheism become the excuse or diversion from abandoning one practice and taking up another practice. Form, in less fulsome words, follow function.
My experience over the years also indicates that when a typical person becomes a typically orthodox believer in God, that person’s belief usually starts as a reaction to some sort to experience or to a belief in a doctrine or commandment. Again form follows function.
Someone once said that it is easy to get what you don’t want. It is also easy to shapes our lives and characters by we disbelieve. No amount of compounded negatives can achieve positive.
I based my epigram – sort of – on a line Oscar Wilde once wrote: a woman who will tell you her correct age is liable to tell you anything.
Both witticisms are perfectly true as far as they go. Both are expressed well-enough for everyday conversation, particularly on Facebook.
The philosophical reverse is also true as far as it goes: a religious person who does not believe in the secular institutions is also likely not to believe in just about anything.
Once a person starts to disbelieve – seriously disbelieve, disbelief can carry a person in any number of faithless, negative directions.
Many people fancy they act based on their principles and in what they believe. In other words, they believe they act for positive reasons. Some do, and huzzah for them. However, many if not most people act based on what they do not believe.
Often, we read obituaries listing things that The Dearly Departed believed. I would find it interesting to read the list of things which the Departed did not believe.
For example, my obituary [some day far off] might note that I do not believe in California or Vermont or Delaware or the Dakotas and did not live in or support outdated internal boundaries. I did not believe in alcohol or tobacco. I did not believe in the Vampire Diaries. I did not believe in Martians, Kris Kringle, or Star Wars.
The concept of Belief in politics evolved not from a swamp but into The Swamp. Voters have always found a candidate’s belief in God and belief in specific brands of God a hot issue in American politics. This has become especially true in the Republican brand in the last 25 years where a good candidate can get a lot in both money and power by capitalizing on a conservative siege mentality.
Only a few certain places in America will voters elect a professing atheist to office. Only in certain places in America will voters elect a Mormon to office. Hardly anywhere in America will elect a Muslim into office. Furthermore, as we have seen in Winter 2012, primary elections in The South demonstrate certain hypocrisies among the evangelical voting set. Some of them prefer a serial adulterer to a monogamist Latter-day Saint.
We should not regard Politics as a world of its own. It reflects native culture. In American culture, if a person wants to generate a very angry discussion very quick, he or she should start discussion on the subject whether we believe in God or believe in Atheism.
Atheism has a lot more to it than just the non existence of God. My experience over the years suggests when a typical person becomes a typical atheist and loses faith in God, the lack of faith usually starts as losing faith in one of God’s commandments or doctrines, not necessary in God itself. Usually, the person tires with a religious regulation that has to do with either sex, control, or money. The professed Atheism become the excuse or diversion from abandoning one practice and taking up another practice. Form, in less fulsome words, follow function.
My experience over the years also indicates that when a typical person becomes a typically orthodox believer in God, that person’s belief usually starts as a reaction to some sort to experience or to a belief in a doctrine or commandment. Again form follows function.
Someone once said that it is easy to get what you don’t want. It is also easy to shapes our lives and characters by we disbelieve. No amount of compounded negatives can achieve positive.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
MITT IN THE SOUTH: A POLITICAL OPERA IN TWO NASTY ACTS
Primary and Caucus dates and election results
Bachman Gingrich Huntsman Paul Perry Romney Santorum
Date location type delegates candidate and percentage of the vote
B G H Pl Pr R S Others
January
3 Iowa caucus 28 5% 13 1 21 10 24.6 24.5 0.1
10 New Hampshire primary 12 0.1% 9.4 17 23 0.7 39 9.4 0.7
100 years ago, the presidential candidates had names like Beauchamp, Eugene, William Howard Taft, Judson, Oscar, Robert, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas, Woodrow Wilson.
This year’s presidential candidates insist on going by nicknames like Newt, Ron, and two! Ricks. It sounds like a company softball team roster. Mitt Romney’s name really is Mitt Romney. Willard Mitt Romney. I assume his middle name is a family name – or George had an obsession with baseball in that period. Does Mitt have a brother named Batt? It would be darned interesting to find out why Romney became “Mitt Romney” instead of “Will Romney.”
THE INSULT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
Romney won the Iowa caucus barely. Then he won the New Hampshire primary by a 15 percent minority. He is the first Republican candidate to do so.
Romney lives in New Hampshire (and in California). The result means 61 percent of the voters voted for someone other than Romney. That is really insulting considering he and his family campaigned in New Hampshire for five years. What do the New Hampshirites want – free coupons?
HUNTSMAN VS ROMNEY
I will admit the only Republican presidential candidate that I can stand is Jon Huntsman. Here in Utah, the highly orthodox iron rod Republicans regard him as a hippie. He played in a rock band when he was a teenager. Today his beliefs remain in basic ways consistently conservative.
Romney is good looking in that really good looking sort of way. He went through well-known moderate to liberal political periods, and if he has done it once, he can do it again. Romney’s father ran for the presidency back in 1968. Despite his reputation for political indecisiveness, George Romney would have made a better president than Nixon, Romney, at least, was not nuts.
Mitt Romney impresses me as a reasonably articulate, beautiful, well-groomed buccaneer. “Buccaneer” may be too positive a noun. Pirate. He impresses me as the type of CEO who – if he had acquired any corporation for whom I worked – would have fired me.
GEE THANKS MITT. NOW THE SAINTS GET TO FIND OUT
Now we find out if Romney will attract faithful followers in The South and how many.
What will the racial bigots Borns Agains, and Southern Born Again Racial Bigots do? Will they vote for a Mormon to defeat a black president? What do they dislike least? Black Obama or Mormon Romney?
The Mormons living in the South now get the opportunity to find out what their neighbors and friends REALLY think of their religion. This will be an interesting season of frankness, discussion, and learning.
LOVE ME BECAUSE I AM RICH
“Pirate” may be a strong sort of noun to describe Romney’s record in business. Newt Gingich, who fancies himself the 21st Century Winston Churchill in exile, called Romney’s depiction of his business record “pious baloney,” which is certainly not very gracious, but essentially correct. However, after the New Hampshire primary, Romney's spokespersons started getting defensive about the public image of his record. His PR decried the following points:
1 Newt Gingrich's criticism of Romney's business methods, which Romney’s people characterized as “Fomenting resentment at success.”
Meaning: We in general and Republicans in particular must admire people who make money, because they are successful and made money. We cannot second guess the ethics of how people went about becoming successful and making money. This is what the Republican Party is – a vehicle to protect the making of lots of money with few strings and regulations and taxes attached.
2 They also said the Republicans must have a candidate who “supports free enterprise and does not condemn it like President Obama” does.
Meaning: when a man has made money, we have to admire the man and like it, no matter what. To make a huge fortune, typically a man has to make his compromises, and sometimes to break laws and break ethical standards. Then the man spends the rest of his life living with the consequences of those decisions and rationalizing and justifying the methods that made his money. A man does not need some poor whiners complaining about his methods no matter how egregious. Besides, America is bankrupt and has to downsize, so we need someone who has experience in taking an organizational wreckage and reaping profits from it.
IN CONCLUSION
Romney has a lot of gall to say that when his political opponents complain about his business practices that equal criticism and assaults on the free enterprise system and by extension Americanism. This is nothing of the sort. We have the right to judge Romney and free enterprise on a case by case basis.
Bachman Gingrich Huntsman Paul Perry Romney Santorum
Date location type delegates candidate and percentage of the vote
B G H Pl Pr R S Others
January
3 Iowa caucus 28 5% 13 1 21 10 24.6 24.5 0.1
10 New Hampshire primary 12 0.1% 9.4 17 23 0.7 39 9.4 0.7
100 years ago, the presidential candidates had names like Beauchamp, Eugene, William Howard Taft, Judson, Oscar, Robert, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas, Woodrow Wilson.
This year’s presidential candidates insist on going by nicknames like Newt, Ron, and two! Ricks. It sounds like a company softball team roster. Mitt Romney’s name really is Mitt Romney. Willard Mitt Romney. I assume his middle name is a family name – or George had an obsession with baseball in that period. Does Mitt have a brother named Batt? It would be darned interesting to find out why Romney became “Mitt Romney” instead of “Will Romney.”
THE INSULT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
Romney won the Iowa caucus barely. Then he won the New Hampshire primary by a 15 percent minority. He is the first Republican candidate to do so.
Romney lives in New Hampshire (and in California). The result means 61 percent of the voters voted for someone other than Romney. That is really insulting considering he and his family campaigned in New Hampshire for five years. What do the New Hampshirites want – free coupons?
HUNTSMAN VS ROMNEY
I will admit the only Republican presidential candidate that I can stand is Jon Huntsman. Here in Utah, the highly orthodox iron rod Republicans regard him as a hippie. He played in a rock band when he was a teenager. Today his beliefs remain in basic ways consistently conservative.
Romney is good looking in that really good looking sort of way. He went through well-known moderate to liberal political periods, and if he has done it once, he can do it again. Romney’s father ran for the presidency back in 1968. Despite his reputation for political indecisiveness, George Romney would have made a better president than Nixon, Romney, at least, was not nuts.
Mitt Romney impresses me as a reasonably articulate, beautiful, well-groomed buccaneer. “Buccaneer” may be too positive a noun. Pirate. He impresses me as the type of CEO who – if he had acquired any corporation for whom I worked – would have fired me.
GEE THANKS MITT. NOW THE SAINTS GET TO FIND OUT
Now we find out if Romney will attract faithful followers in The South and how many.
What will the racial bigots Borns Agains, and Southern Born Again Racial Bigots do? Will they vote for a Mormon to defeat a black president? What do they dislike least? Black Obama or Mormon Romney?
The Mormons living in the South now get the opportunity to find out what their neighbors and friends REALLY think of their religion. This will be an interesting season of frankness, discussion, and learning.
LOVE ME BECAUSE I AM RICH
“Pirate” may be a strong sort of noun to describe Romney’s record in business. Newt Gingich, who fancies himself the 21st Century Winston Churchill in exile, called Romney’s depiction of his business record “pious baloney,” which is certainly not very gracious, but essentially correct. However, after the New Hampshire primary, Romney's spokespersons started getting defensive about the public image of his record. His PR decried the following points:
1 Newt Gingrich's criticism of Romney's business methods, which Romney’s people characterized as “Fomenting resentment at success.”
Meaning: We in general and Republicans in particular must admire people who make money, because they are successful and made money. We cannot second guess the ethics of how people went about becoming successful and making money. This is what the Republican Party is – a vehicle to protect the making of lots of money with few strings and regulations and taxes attached.
2 They also said the Republicans must have a candidate who “supports free enterprise and does not condemn it like President Obama” does.
Meaning: when a man has made money, we have to admire the man and like it, no matter what. To make a huge fortune, typically a man has to make his compromises, and sometimes to break laws and break ethical standards. Then the man spends the rest of his life living with the consequences of those decisions and rationalizing and justifying the methods that made his money. A man does not need some poor whiners complaining about his methods no matter how egregious. Besides, America is bankrupt and has to downsize, so we need someone who has experience in taking an organizational wreckage and reaping profits from it.
IN CONCLUSION
Romney has a lot of gall to say that when his political opponents complain about his business practices that equal criticism and assaults on the free enterprise system and by extension Americanism. This is nothing of the sort. We have the right to judge Romney and free enterprise on a case by case basis.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
THE BYU WILCOX FIRING: A REMINDER ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF MONITORING OFFICIAL WORK FILES
Here’s an article from the Salt Lake Tribune that serves as the beginning of 5 points about work place records.
1 For as long as we work at our various institutions, we should insist on seeing and reading and reviewing our official file.
2 We should insist on reviewing and photocopying every bit in it every six months.
3 If we find something questionable or just plain wrong headed in our official file, we discuss it point blank with our file leaders and get it amended.
4 If and when our leaders dismiss us, we demand to review and photocopy the complete file.
5 Federal law requires that certain types of documents stay in an organization for a year, or a few years, or forever. If the leadership has deliberately removed or suppressed documents in the official file, you can and should take legal action. Do not go gentle into that good night without your own set of documentation.
As to the details of why BYU fired Kendall Wilcox – it doesn’t take much of a sense of prophecy to know what has happened here. These sorts of firings turn into cases of he says/he says – and both parties then accuse the other of presenting only a certain percentage of the real truth. However, the issue in these sorts of cases is the difference between what official excuses the institution presents to the public and what its real reason actually turns out to be.
And now, the article.
Openly gay BYU producer, filmmaker fired
Response » School insists sexual identity wasn’t a factor, saying employee failed to show up for work or talk to supervisor
Preserved from the Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52947893-78/wilcox-byu-jenkins-church.html.csp
By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: November 18, 2011 03:35PM
Updated: November 18, 2011 03:43PM
LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University has fired Kendall Wilcox, an executive producer in the school’s broadcasting department who, on his own time, is making an independent documentary about being gay and Mormon.
Wilcox announced the move Friday morning on his Facebook page, saying he was terminated the previous week by his BYU supervisors who “cited certain tasks and communications that I had not performed to their liking.”
The Emmy-winning filmmaker, who did not immediately return phone calls and emails Friday, defended himself in his post. He said he faced “an increasingly hostile work environment over the last several months with which I refused to continue to engage.”
BYU spokeswoman Carrie Jenkins said emphatically that Wilcox wasn’t let go for being gay or for his work on the documentary.
She mentioned Wilcox’s August interview about his life and work with Radio West’s Doug Fabrizio, in which he told the radio host that his BYU supervisors “were very respectful and loving” when he told them about his homosexuality and documentary project.
“They kept reminding me over and over about our friendship,” Wilcox told Fabrizio. “and since then all of our interactions have been full of love and respect and open-heartedness.”
According to Jenkins, however, Wilcox has not stepped into BYU Broadcasting offices for two months.
“Kendall was terminated for two basic reasons,” Jenkins said Friday. “He refused to come to work and he refused to communicate with his supervisor.”
Jenkins said the school was surprised by Wilcox’s claim about “a hostile work environment.”
That was something “he had said in a text message to his supervisors,” she said, “but this claim did not go through human resources or through [BYU’s} equal opportunity office.”
Wilcox did not return calls, but he did caution Facebook readers not to see his firing “as one more example of institutionalized homophobia on the part of BYU or the [LDS] Church.”
He is still optimistic that the Mormon community “is at a time in our history when we are proactively putting the destructive polemics behind us and treating each other with genuine love, respect and empathy.”
To that end, Wilcox is continuing to work on Far Between, a film that will document his journey to find a place in a faith that gives him no option but a life of celibacy and in a culture that pushes him to reject his religion. He is interviewing current and former Mormons, activists and defenders, those in mixed-orientation marriages, gays with longtime partners, writers, scholars, therapists, mothers, spouses and children to see how they manage that tension. The film’s tone will be respectful of all positions and experiences, he told The Salt Lake Tribune in July, letting the narrative take him in diverse directions.
He also created a nonprofit organization, Empathy First Initiative, to help improve conversations about homosexuality and other issues.
“No one is perfect at this, least of all me,” Wilcox wrote on Facebook. “But I do believe we’ve reached a tipping point at which — while keeping an eye to the sad events of the past regarding the [LDS] Church and homosexuality — we can all support one another in seeking truth, forgiveness and reconciliation.”
Together , he said, “we are making it better.”
© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune
1 For as long as we work at our various institutions, we should insist on seeing and reading and reviewing our official file.
2 We should insist on reviewing and photocopying every bit in it every six months.
3 If we find something questionable or just plain wrong headed in our official file, we discuss it point blank with our file leaders and get it amended.
4 If and when our leaders dismiss us, we demand to review and photocopy the complete file.
5 Federal law requires that certain types of documents stay in an organization for a year, or a few years, or forever. If the leadership has deliberately removed or suppressed documents in the official file, you can and should take legal action. Do not go gentle into that good night without your own set of documentation.
As to the details of why BYU fired Kendall Wilcox – it doesn’t take much of a sense of prophecy to know what has happened here. These sorts of firings turn into cases of he says/he says – and both parties then accuse the other of presenting only a certain percentage of the real truth. However, the issue in these sorts of cases is the difference between what official excuses the institution presents to the public and what its real reason actually turns out to be.
And now, the article.
Openly gay BYU producer, filmmaker fired
Response » School insists sexual identity wasn’t a factor, saying employee failed to show up for work or talk to supervisor
Preserved from the Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52947893-78/wilcox-byu-jenkins-church.html.csp
By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: November 18, 2011 03:35PM
Updated: November 18, 2011 03:43PM
LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University has fired Kendall Wilcox, an executive producer in the school’s broadcasting department who, on his own time, is making an independent documentary about being gay and Mormon.
Wilcox announced the move Friday morning on his Facebook page, saying he was terminated the previous week by his BYU supervisors who “cited certain tasks and communications that I had not performed to their liking.”
The Emmy-winning filmmaker, who did not immediately return phone calls and emails Friday, defended himself in his post. He said he faced “an increasingly hostile work environment over the last several months with which I refused to continue to engage.”
BYU spokeswoman Carrie Jenkins said emphatically that Wilcox wasn’t let go for being gay or for his work on the documentary.
She mentioned Wilcox’s August interview about his life and work with Radio West’s Doug Fabrizio, in which he told the radio host that his BYU supervisors “were very respectful and loving” when he told them about his homosexuality and documentary project.
“They kept reminding me over and over about our friendship,” Wilcox told Fabrizio. “and since then all of our interactions have been full of love and respect and open-heartedness.”
According to Jenkins, however, Wilcox has not stepped into BYU Broadcasting offices for two months.
“Kendall was terminated for two basic reasons,” Jenkins said Friday. “He refused to come to work and he refused to communicate with his supervisor.”
Jenkins said the school was surprised by Wilcox’s claim about “a hostile work environment.”
That was something “he had said in a text message to his supervisors,” she said, “but this claim did not go through human resources or through [BYU’s} equal opportunity office.”
Wilcox did not return calls, but he did caution Facebook readers not to see his firing “as one more example of institutionalized homophobia on the part of BYU or the [LDS] Church.”
He is still optimistic that the Mormon community “is at a time in our history when we are proactively putting the destructive polemics behind us and treating each other with genuine love, respect and empathy.”
To that end, Wilcox is continuing to work on Far Between, a film that will document his journey to find a place in a faith that gives him no option but a life of celibacy and in a culture that pushes him to reject his religion. He is interviewing current and former Mormons, activists and defenders, those in mixed-orientation marriages, gays with longtime partners, writers, scholars, therapists, mothers, spouses and children to see how they manage that tension. The film’s tone will be respectful of all positions and experiences, he told The Salt Lake Tribune in July, letting the narrative take him in diverse directions.
He also created a nonprofit organization, Empathy First Initiative, to help improve conversations about homosexuality and other issues.
“No one is perfect at this, least of all me,” Wilcox wrote on Facebook. “But I do believe we’ve reached a tipping point at which — while keeping an eye to the sad events of the past regarding the [LDS] Church and homosexuality — we can all support one another in seeking truth, forgiveness and reconciliation.”
Together , he said, “we are making it better.”
© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune
Monday, October 3, 2011
PROVO TABERNACLE TEMPLE: foundations, walls, streets, parking
The real work of rebuilding the Provo Tabernacle Temple now begins.
Provo's government should support and carry out the following policy items concerning the project:
1 Rebuilding the Tabernacle-temple will be an expensive, difficult, major undertaking. However, Provo City government must insist the foundation have earthquake seismic reinforcements and seismic shock absorbers similar to what the Utah State Capitol has under it. It is not a question of whether Provo will get rocked by a 7.0+ earthquake; the question is when. The city must require the temple be prepared.
2 Provo should insist the temple employ fire protection and alarm systems we can trust implicitly. That should go without saying, but the problem with that is people would not say it.
3 Those ancient, nineteenth-century brick walls need steel reinforcement and seismic reinforcement. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should also assure Provo smoke damage to the walls will not cause bad smells and lung-breathing risks to temple workers or patrons.
4 Provo should encourage the Post Office to move and sell its property to The LDS Church for its new temple square. For starters, the building is old (nearly 50), way out-of-date, and too small for Provo's needs. Furthermore, its location has never really been ideal. The 100 North 100 West Post Office location (pre-1963) made a far better site. That was why the feds took it for The Will Robinson Federal Building. Provo should encourage the Post Office to build a big and modern facility somewhere in central Provo.
5 The location of the Provo Tabernacle Temple poses security problems that Provo should address without delay. The building stands close to both 100 South and University Avenue, a sitting duck for drive-by terrorist outrages from two streets. Provo should volunteer to close down 100 South between University Avenue and 100 West and give it to the new temple square. Thus, the temple will address security risks from only one street. Provo set the precedent by closing a street for the NuSkin project. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints deserves the same consideration.
6 100 South Street running west will become an important access street to the new temple square. This means it will need a traffic light at 500 West Street.
7 When the piece of 100 South Street closes, 200 South Street will become a major east-west thoroughfare. It will need new traffic lights at 500 West, Freedom Blvd., and University Avenue.
8 Provo should encourage if not insist The L D S Church build an underground parking garage under the park. We do not want to encourage much of ugly parking around a beautiful Church Building. Frankly, Provo should encourage NuSkin to donate their parking garage land to the Church and then build a new parking terrace in the block to the west. If the Church builds its own parking structure, it will need to build a sophisticated planter box structure for the trees, shrubs, lawn, and flowers in the park. Fortunately, experienced architects can design such a structure. The added parking out-of-sight will benefit everyone in the long-run future.
This restoration can evolve into something good or something great depending on what sort of planning goes into the project, starting today.
Provo's government should support and carry out the following policy items concerning the project:
1 Rebuilding the Tabernacle-temple will be an expensive, difficult, major undertaking. However, Provo City government must insist the foundation have earthquake seismic reinforcements and seismic shock absorbers similar to what the Utah State Capitol has under it. It is not a question of whether Provo will get rocked by a 7.0+ earthquake; the question is when. The city must require the temple be prepared.
2 Provo should insist the temple employ fire protection and alarm systems we can trust implicitly. That should go without saying, but the problem with that is people would not say it.
3 Those ancient, nineteenth-century brick walls need steel reinforcement and seismic reinforcement. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should also assure Provo smoke damage to the walls will not cause bad smells and lung-breathing risks to temple workers or patrons.
4 Provo should encourage the Post Office to move and sell its property to The LDS Church for its new temple square. For starters, the building is old (nearly 50), way out-of-date, and too small for Provo's needs. Furthermore, its location has never really been ideal. The 100 North 100 West Post Office location (pre-1963) made a far better site. That was why the feds took it for The Will Robinson Federal Building. Provo should encourage the Post Office to build a big and modern facility somewhere in central Provo.
5 The location of the Provo Tabernacle Temple poses security problems that Provo should address without delay. The building stands close to both 100 South and University Avenue, a sitting duck for drive-by terrorist outrages from two streets. Provo should volunteer to close down 100 South between University Avenue and 100 West and give it to the new temple square. Thus, the temple will address security risks from only one street. Provo set the precedent by closing a street for the NuSkin project. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints deserves the same consideration.
6 100 South Street running west will become an important access street to the new temple square. This means it will need a traffic light at 500 West Street.
7 When the piece of 100 South Street closes, 200 South Street will become a major east-west thoroughfare. It will need new traffic lights at 500 West, Freedom Blvd., and University Avenue.
8 Provo should encourage if not insist The L D S Church build an underground parking garage under the park. We do not want to encourage much of ugly parking around a beautiful Church Building. Frankly, Provo should encourage NuSkin to donate their parking garage land to the Church and then build a new parking terrace in the block to the west. If the Church builds its own parking structure, it will need to build a sophisticated planter box structure for the trees, shrubs, lawn, and flowers in the park. Fortunately, experienced architects can design such a structure. The added parking out-of-sight will benefit everyone in the long-run future.
This restoration can evolve into something good or something great depending on what sort of planning goes into the project, starting today.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
THE NATIONAL DEFENSE TEST DAY BROADCAST: prophecies of the Instantaneous Electronic Communications Age
September 2011 marks the 87th anniversary of a landmark military radio broadcast. Western Electric recorded the broadcast from the telephone lines, which is now one of the oldest existing original radio broadcast recordings in history. I write “original” because a number of famous radio recordings that come from an earlier date (the KDKA 1920 presidential election returns comes to mind) actually were recreations. The KDKA 1920 election returns recording was recreated in 1936 and 1950.
On 12 September 1924, the US military mobilized for a National Defense Test Day. The entire concept alarmed the nations and militaries of Europe, but the military mobilized mostly was a publicity gimmick, a male bonding ritual, and a stunt in honor of General of the Army John Pershing, who retired from the Army the next day.
The culminating event of the Test Day was a live coast-to-coast radio broadcast, starting at 8:00 EST. One old time radio history website described the broadcast and the surviving recording this way:
“9/12/24-- National Defense Test Day Broadcast. WEAF-WCAP network of eighteen stations. Linecheck recorded by Western Electric. A ninety-minute program aired to demonstrate how radio could respond to national emergencies thru the interconnection of stations in various cities. Speeches by Secretary of War Weeks, General Pershing, General Saltzman of the Signal Corps, and General J. F. Carty of AT&T. This broadcast marked the first major demonstration of multiple remote cut-ins on a single program, with engineers in fourteen cities responding on cue, followed by two-way conversations between General Pershing and generals representing each of the Army Corps areas. Most of the program was recorded and pressings of the discs were presented to General Pershing. Sets of the discs are also held by the Library Of Congress and the National Archives. Audio quality of the recording is excellent, but two of the sides recorded were damaged during processing and do not survive.”
Let me clarify some points made in this summary. The broadcast originated from the radio station in Washington D.C. The military selected the other radio stations in this ad hoc network for maximum nation-wide radio coverage. Their selection of stations performed successfully, though the whole intermountain west had limited coverage from one station in Denver – two if you count the station in Omaha. California’s coverage was limited to one station in Oakland. The military could have improved Coverage in The West by adding KSL and KNX, but apparently the generals did not care that much about The West. They provided pretty thorough coverage in The East though.
THE BROADCAST
The recording features numerous joys for old radio enthusiasts. For starters, at the very beginning someone taps on the microphone (a big ancient canister models from the sound of the reverb) like it was amateur night in Weehawken. The voices sound as if they were recorded in a long metal tunnel, which was typical of old radio’s sound. The announcer lists every last radio station in the network, something that soon became impractical to do when NBC and CBS eventually created their national networks in 1926 and 1928. This is the first radio recording of multiple remote cut-ins on a single program; it may have been the very first coast-to-coast multiple radio station broadcast with remote cut-ins. It featured a roll call of radio broadcast telephone operators starting in Washington and sounding off in a line that stretched in less than a minute to Oakland. This is the first radio recording that featured a participant in Salt Lake City – and villages in Wyoming and Nevada for that matter.
Nowadays only listeners with patience can sit through the whole recording. It has no commercials, being a federal broadcast. It has no orchestra or band music. It features a cabinet secretary and a bunch of generals speaking about military strategy and radio technological details – neither of which will leave the audience laughing. However, in 1924 the broadcast must have been revelation to small town and rural radio owners.
General Pershing’s address still feels like revelation, considering how frank he is about his experience in World War I and coordinating the American mobilization in 1917-1918 for the Great War in Europe. He admitted publicly that the military made mistakes in the mobilization. It is true: the American mobilization made many mistakes and missteps, took too much time, too much money, crowded too many boys in too few training camps. It will be darned interesting to see if any modern general will someday make the same sorts of admissions in public about Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pershing also talked live over the radio with four generals who oversaw Defense Test Day activities in various regions. He talked first with a general headquartered in New York, then a general in Chicago, then a general in Omaha, and then a general in Oakland. The yokels sat before their radios listening in enraptured silence.
Pershing’s talk with his general in New York is one of the few humorous highlights of the broadcast. The New York general seems to have a few too many martinis to celebrate Test Day’s conclusion or to steady his nerves for the nation-wide radio hook up. At one point, he sings (off key yet) a few lines of an old barracks song, much to Pershing’s horror.
The broadcast also gave the rural radio audience a sense of the scale of America. Pershing in Washington, which was in nighttime, asked the general in Oakland about the sunset, which had just occurred and was then lingering in golden twilight.
The generals’ main broadcast goal consisted in teaching citizens how the government could use radio to instantaneously broadcast information to the entire nation during a crisis using a radio network, ideally a radio network with telephone lines and/or shortwave. It was also clear that the military could use radio for its instantaneous private communications as well. That night saw an altogether prophetic broadcast, maybe THE most prophetic radio broadcast ever done.
QUICK COMMUNICATION
Consider the old days.
It took days for telegraph reporters to get the news of the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to the rest of the northeast USA, even longer out to the west coast.
In contrast, 17 years after the Test Day broadcast, the Japanese Air Force followed a commercial radio station frequency into the Island of Oahu and bombed the US military installations on the island. Within minutes, the commercial radio stations of Oahu were broadcasted information, warning and instructions to the residents. Interestingly enough, the radio news networks did not get wind of the situation for more than two hours. The attack started at noon, eastern time, but John Daly did not read the first live CBS radio report until 2:30 p.m. ET. If KNX in Los Angeles or KCBS in San Francisco had received reports from Honolulu earlier than that, the whole CBS network could have reported the attack considerably sooner.
In contrast, 19 years after the test day broadcast, the allied command in England signaled NBC Radio a warning about the impending D-Day Invasion (a Morris code V repeated three times), NBC warned its executives and radio stations to activate (a special four note NBC chimes), and within minutes, the entire continental USA got the news that the invasion had started.
When President Lincoln was assassinated it took several hours, sometimes a couple of days for the telegraphs and newspapers to disseminate the bad news.
In contrast, consider when President Roosevelt died 20 year after the test day broadcast. Roosevelt died at 3:45 p.m. Central Time in Warm Springs Georgia. Roosevelt’s administration did not release the new for nearly an hour. The first newscaster to broadcast a news bulletin was John Daly on CBS, who interrupted a program at 5:40 p.m. ET (4:40 p.m. CT) with the first report. Never the less the whole nation knew about the death in less than an hour after it occurred, though the nation could have learned quicker if the administration had been willing.
President Kennedy was assassinated nearly 40 years after the Test Day broadcast. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. CT, and within 4-10 minutes, radio and TV news reporters broadcast bulletins locally in Dallas and then nation-wide. Walter Cronkite of CBS TV News broadcast its first TV network bulletin ten minutes after the shooting; Alan Jackson of CBS Radio News broadcast its first radio network bulletin shortly thereafter. In the first hour, as evidenced by a recording made by the White House, both an Air Force jet-liner transporting half of the President’s cabinet to Japan and the officials in the White House situation room used the private news services to gather their information. The administration made the official announcement of the death of the president 35 minutes after he died in the Parkland Hospital emergency room.
In October 1958, NBC broadcast live to the entire nation the ceremonies surrounding the grand opening of its new broadcast facilities in Washington D.C. It broadcasted part of that ceremony in color on live TV; the videotape record of that broadcast is the oldest surviving color videotape still in existence. President Eisenhower attended the broadcast and spoke – it was the first time he appeared on a color TV broadcast from Washington. He said that government should attach itself to the very best communications available to keep the citizens alert and informed. Eisenhower’s remarks seem remarkably candid today, considering how many political leaders do not want to keep the citizens in any sort of loop.
On 11 September 2001, at 8:42 ET, an airliner crashed into the almost top floors of the north World Trade Center Tower. The various networks started reporting the news within 1 - 4 minutes. All of them reported and showed the second airliner crashing into the south World Trade Center on live TV. This event broadcast illustrated graphically that TV viewers not only could get instantaneous information all over the world, but that it was also possible from them to get mass induced instantaneous stress disorders from watching disaster. In the 21st Century, one does not have to live through disaster to feel as if one has lived through disaster.
President Bush the Second was visiting a school in Florida at the time of the attacks. The military and the secret service quickly evacuated him and his entourage to Air Force One. The military decided not to fly it directly back to Washington. Instead it took the better part of the day to lolly-gag its way back via Louisiana and Omaha. This was done out of fear that the Washington air space was not secure of lurking terrorists. The president did not make any sort of information speech to the nation until later in the evening, but he could have given the public up to the minute information if he wanted to. He did not.
Thus, the National Defense Test Day broadcast was indeed prophetic about how quickly governments could get important information to the citizens in times of crisis. When it wanted to.
INSTANT MISCOMMUNICATION
What the September 1924 Test Day broadcast did not tell us was how much hatred, propaganda, lying, and out right miscommunication radio and TV networks can broadcast quickly.
For example:
In October 1938, Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast a live dramatic adaption of H G Wells’ old science fiction novel “The World of The Worlds.” Welles and his writers gussied up the old book by setting it in modern times and presenting the narrative as if it were a series of radio news bulletins and live news broadcasts. The Mercury Theater did not have a big audience that night (it was opposite Edgar Bergen’s megahit Sunday night comedy-variety program), but a considerable percentage of those who listened to the broadcast thought it was really describing a real invasion of Earth by Martians.
The day before D-Day’s Normandy Invasion in June 1944, news broadcaster Robert Trout at CBS was involved in a miscommunication that resulted in a bulletin announcing that the Normandy Invasion had started when it was in the preparation stage.
I once heard as part of an Old Time Radio program recording, a news bulletin that announced that the USA had dropped an atomic bomb on a Japanese city other than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In September 1945, the day before the Japanese surrendered, a couple of networks did bulletins announcing the surrender of Japan – prematurely.
On 8 July 1947, radio stations in New Mexico and some network news broadcasts reported that an unidentified flying object had crashed in the plains near Roswell, New Mexico.
When Kennedy was shot, some reported that a secret service agent had also been killed in the shooting. I suspect they got the details of the Officer Tippetts shooting confused. The networks all reported early on accounts of gun fire coming from the grassy knoll as well.
In 1992, when President Bush the First vomited on the prime minister of Japan at an official state dinner, CNN a few hours later got a report and came very close to announcing on live TV that President Bush had died.
THE LEARNING CURVE
The Defense Test Day radio broadcast demonstrated the future of broadcasting to its listeners that night, and made a number of prophecies that came true very quickly. The generals failed to tell us one important thing about radio and television networks – the technology is morality neutral. It is good or bad depending on the morality of those who control the cameras and microphones.
On 12 September 1924, the US military mobilized for a National Defense Test Day. The entire concept alarmed the nations and militaries of Europe, but the military mobilized mostly was a publicity gimmick, a male bonding ritual, and a stunt in honor of General of the Army John Pershing, who retired from the Army the next day.
The culminating event of the Test Day was a live coast-to-coast radio broadcast, starting at 8:00 EST. One old time radio history website described the broadcast and the surviving recording this way:
“9/12/24-- National Defense Test Day Broadcast. WEAF-WCAP network of eighteen stations. Linecheck recorded by Western Electric. A ninety-minute program aired to demonstrate how radio could respond to national emergencies thru the interconnection of stations in various cities. Speeches by Secretary of War Weeks, General Pershing, General Saltzman of the Signal Corps, and General J. F. Carty of AT&T. This broadcast marked the first major demonstration of multiple remote cut-ins on a single program, with engineers in fourteen cities responding on cue, followed by two-way conversations between General Pershing and generals representing each of the Army Corps areas. Most of the program was recorded and pressings of the discs were presented to General Pershing. Sets of the discs are also held by the Library Of Congress and the National Archives. Audio quality of the recording is excellent, but two of the sides recorded were damaged during processing and do not survive.”
Let me clarify some points made in this summary. The broadcast originated from the radio station in Washington D.C. The military selected the other radio stations in this ad hoc network for maximum nation-wide radio coverage. Their selection of stations performed successfully, though the whole intermountain west had limited coverage from one station in Denver – two if you count the station in Omaha. California’s coverage was limited to one station in Oakland. The military could have improved Coverage in The West by adding KSL and KNX, but apparently the generals did not care that much about The West. They provided pretty thorough coverage in The East though.
THE BROADCAST
The recording features numerous joys for old radio enthusiasts. For starters, at the very beginning someone taps on the microphone (a big ancient canister models from the sound of the reverb) like it was amateur night in Weehawken. The voices sound as if they were recorded in a long metal tunnel, which was typical of old radio’s sound. The announcer lists every last radio station in the network, something that soon became impractical to do when NBC and CBS eventually created their national networks in 1926 and 1928. This is the first radio recording of multiple remote cut-ins on a single program; it may have been the very first coast-to-coast multiple radio station broadcast with remote cut-ins. It featured a roll call of radio broadcast telephone operators starting in Washington and sounding off in a line that stretched in less than a minute to Oakland. This is the first radio recording that featured a participant in Salt Lake City – and villages in Wyoming and Nevada for that matter.
Nowadays only listeners with patience can sit through the whole recording. It has no commercials, being a federal broadcast. It has no orchestra or band music. It features a cabinet secretary and a bunch of generals speaking about military strategy and radio technological details – neither of which will leave the audience laughing. However, in 1924 the broadcast must have been revelation to small town and rural radio owners.
General Pershing’s address still feels like revelation, considering how frank he is about his experience in World War I and coordinating the American mobilization in 1917-1918 for the Great War in Europe. He admitted publicly that the military made mistakes in the mobilization. It is true: the American mobilization made many mistakes and missteps, took too much time, too much money, crowded too many boys in too few training camps. It will be darned interesting to see if any modern general will someday make the same sorts of admissions in public about Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pershing also talked live over the radio with four generals who oversaw Defense Test Day activities in various regions. He talked first with a general headquartered in New York, then a general in Chicago, then a general in Omaha, and then a general in Oakland. The yokels sat before their radios listening in enraptured silence.
Pershing’s talk with his general in New York is one of the few humorous highlights of the broadcast. The New York general seems to have a few too many martinis to celebrate Test Day’s conclusion or to steady his nerves for the nation-wide radio hook up. At one point, he sings (off key yet) a few lines of an old barracks song, much to Pershing’s horror.
The broadcast also gave the rural radio audience a sense of the scale of America. Pershing in Washington, which was in nighttime, asked the general in Oakland about the sunset, which had just occurred and was then lingering in golden twilight.
The generals’ main broadcast goal consisted in teaching citizens how the government could use radio to instantaneously broadcast information to the entire nation during a crisis using a radio network, ideally a radio network with telephone lines and/or shortwave. It was also clear that the military could use radio for its instantaneous private communications as well. That night saw an altogether prophetic broadcast, maybe THE most prophetic radio broadcast ever done.
QUICK COMMUNICATION
Consider the old days.
It took days for telegraph reporters to get the news of the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to the rest of the northeast USA, even longer out to the west coast.
In contrast, 17 years after the Test Day broadcast, the Japanese Air Force followed a commercial radio station frequency into the Island of Oahu and bombed the US military installations on the island. Within minutes, the commercial radio stations of Oahu were broadcasted information, warning and instructions to the residents. Interestingly enough, the radio news networks did not get wind of the situation for more than two hours. The attack started at noon, eastern time, but John Daly did not read the first live CBS radio report until 2:30 p.m. ET. If KNX in Los Angeles or KCBS in San Francisco had received reports from Honolulu earlier than that, the whole CBS network could have reported the attack considerably sooner.
In contrast, 19 years after the test day broadcast, the allied command in England signaled NBC Radio a warning about the impending D-Day Invasion (a Morris code V repeated three times), NBC warned its executives and radio stations to activate (a special four note NBC chimes), and within minutes, the entire continental USA got the news that the invasion had started.
When President Lincoln was assassinated it took several hours, sometimes a couple of days for the telegraphs and newspapers to disseminate the bad news.
In contrast, consider when President Roosevelt died 20 year after the test day broadcast. Roosevelt died at 3:45 p.m. Central Time in Warm Springs Georgia. Roosevelt’s administration did not release the new for nearly an hour. The first newscaster to broadcast a news bulletin was John Daly on CBS, who interrupted a program at 5:40 p.m. ET (4:40 p.m. CT) with the first report. Never the less the whole nation knew about the death in less than an hour after it occurred, though the nation could have learned quicker if the administration had been willing.
President Kennedy was assassinated nearly 40 years after the Test Day broadcast. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. CT, and within 4-10 minutes, radio and TV news reporters broadcast bulletins locally in Dallas and then nation-wide. Walter Cronkite of CBS TV News broadcast its first TV network bulletin ten minutes after the shooting; Alan Jackson of CBS Radio News broadcast its first radio network bulletin shortly thereafter. In the first hour, as evidenced by a recording made by the White House, both an Air Force jet-liner transporting half of the President’s cabinet to Japan and the officials in the White House situation room used the private news services to gather their information. The administration made the official announcement of the death of the president 35 minutes after he died in the Parkland Hospital emergency room.
In October 1958, NBC broadcast live to the entire nation the ceremonies surrounding the grand opening of its new broadcast facilities in Washington D.C. It broadcasted part of that ceremony in color on live TV; the videotape record of that broadcast is the oldest surviving color videotape still in existence. President Eisenhower attended the broadcast and spoke – it was the first time he appeared on a color TV broadcast from Washington. He said that government should attach itself to the very best communications available to keep the citizens alert and informed. Eisenhower’s remarks seem remarkably candid today, considering how many political leaders do not want to keep the citizens in any sort of loop.
On 11 September 2001, at 8:42 ET, an airliner crashed into the almost top floors of the north World Trade Center Tower. The various networks started reporting the news within 1 - 4 minutes. All of them reported and showed the second airliner crashing into the south World Trade Center on live TV. This event broadcast illustrated graphically that TV viewers not only could get instantaneous information all over the world, but that it was also possible from them to get mass induced instantaneous stress disorders from watching disaster. In the 21st Century, one does not have to live through disaster to feel as if one has lived through disaster.
President Bush the Second was visiting a school in Florida at the time of the attacks. The military and the secret service quickly evacuated him and his entourage to Air Force One. The military decided not to fly it directly back to Washington. Instead it took the better part of the day to lolly-gag its way back via Louisiana and Omaha. This was done out of fear that the Washington air space was not secure of lurking terrorists. The president did not make any sort of information speech to the nation until later in the evening, but he could have given the public up to the minute information if he wanted to. He did not.
Thus, the National Defense Test Day broadcast was indeed prophetic about how quickly governments could get important information to the citizens in times of crisis. When it wanted to.
INSTANT MISCOMMUNICATION
What the September 1924 Test Day broadcast did not tell us was how much hatred, propaganda, lying, and out right miscommunication radio and TV networks can broadcast quickly.
For example:
In October 1938, Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast a live dramatic adaption of H G Wells’ old science fiction novel “The World of The Worlds.” Welles and his writers gussied up the old book by setting it in modern times and presenting the narrative as if it were a series of radio news bulletins and live news broadcasts. The Mercury Theater did not have a big audience that night (it was opposite Edgar Bergen’s megahit Sunday night comedy-variety program), but a considerable percentage of those who listened to the broadcast thought it was really describing a real invasion of Earth by Martians.
The day before D-Day’s Normandy Invasion in June 1944, news broadcaster Robert Trout at CBS was involved in a miscommunication that resulted in a bulletin announcing that the Normandy Invasion had started when it was in the preparation stage.
I once heard as part of an Old Time Radio program recording, a news bulletin that announced that the USA had dropped an atomic bomb on a Japanese city other than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In September 1945, the day before the Japanese surrendered, a couple of networks did bulletins announcing the surrender of Japan – prematurely.
On 8 July 1947, radio stations in New Mexico and some network news broadcasts reported that an unidentified flying object had crashed in the plains near Roswell, New Mexico.
When Kennedy was shot, some reported that a secret service agent had also been killed in the shooting. I suspect they got the details of the Officer Tippetts shooting confused. The networks all reported early on accounts of gun fire coming from the grassy knoll as well.
In 1992, when President Bush the First vomited on the prime minister of Japan at an official state dinner, CNN a few hours later got a report and came very close to announcing on live TV that President Bush had died.
THE LEARNING CURVE
The Defense Test Day radio broadcast demonstrated the future of broadcasting to its listeners that night, and made a number of prophecies that came true very quickly. The generals failed to tell us one important thing about radio and television networks – the technology is morality neutral. It is good or bad depending on the morality of those who control the cameras and microphones.
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