Let America be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

-----Langston Hughes

Stop the Insanity!

I have recently made a very painful resolution: I must stop buying books.

I have to get my bibliophilia in check. Although I believe you can never have too many books, I'm faced with a huge backlog of books I haven't read yet. And I keep buying more. I just finished a book I bought over a year ago, and I have still older purchases collecting dust on my shelf as I write. And some of them aren't even books I purchased: they're gifts. Here's a small list of my recent book acquisitions.

It started a couple of months before the Christmas, when Dr. Jen kindly bought me a copy of Neil Gaiman's latest, Fragile Things. I still haven't read it. I still haven't read his Anansi Boys, either, which I bought for myself when it came out in hardcover in 2005.

Dr. Murk lent me three books. I read two of them, but I still haven't read Philip K. Dick's Valis, which he lent me months ago. (Come to think of it, I think I may still have Dr. Mantodea's copy of William Gibson's Neuromancer that he lent me about 16 years ago, but I've read that several times over.) He also gave me, free of charge, Hunters of Dune, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, although he thinks it's crap.

The always-lovely but seldom-seen Freya sent me, among other things, a copy of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy for my birthday. She also sent me a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas, which purchased Capacity, by Troy Ballantine; Traitor General and His Last Command, by Dan Abnett, Superman: The Never-Ending Battle, by Roger Stern, and I Am The Law, The Judge Dredd Omnibus. And she doesn't even celebrate Christmas.

Freya wasn't the only person to get me a B & N gift card, though. It's pretty much de rigeur for me to receive them from my family. My brother also gave me a Gamestop gift card, because he loves me. This year's Christmas B & N gift cards hauled in Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain; Boyos, by Richard Marinick; Captain Alatriste, by Arturo Perez-Reverte; The Assassin's Touch, by Laura Joh Rowland; Wolves of the Calla, by Stephen King; Farewell, Summer, by Ray Bradbury; The System of the World, by Neil Stephenson, and Kull, Exile of Atlantis, by Robert E. Howard; as well as Heat, by Bill Buford, which I've already read, and World War Z, by Max Brooks, which I'm reading now.

The Science Fiction Book Club just recently sent me, at my request, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susannah Clarke, and Odyssey, by Jack McDevitt. Recent bargain table finds I couldn't pass up include Cape Breton Road, by D.R. MacDonald; Circuit of Heaven, by Dennis Danvers; and The Collected Mystery Stories of Lawrence Block, to name but a (very) few.

That's 24 books, only about one-third of the books on my unread shelf. I know this because I counted, and I have 92 unread books.

I read fast, so it's my hope that I'll make some headway once I stop replacing books as fast as I read them. If you're ever curious to see what I'm reading, there's an Amazon link to the left. This Amazon link is pretty much the only thing I update faithfully, so it's accurate to within a day or two of me starting something new.

Now, don't even get me started about bookshelf space. I'm officially out.

The Boston Terror Scare

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past week, you probably know about the recent “terror scare” in Boston on Wednesday. For those who don’t, you can find the story summarized below, and on countless reputable websites on the Internet. The Wand of Wonder, a blog to which I contribute frequently, has a bunch of posts offering opinions, as does my friend’s blog. Here’s mine.

To summarize, on Wednesday, January 31st, Boston police responded to reports of suspicious packages left in odd places throughout the city. The packages appeared to be blinking, and naturally bombs were one of the first things that came to mind. Police bomb squads investigated the packages. After the city of Boston was brought to a near-standstill for most of Wednesday afternoon as bridges and roads were closed fearing a possible terrorist attack, the packages were found to be advertisments for a popular Cartoon Network show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The “ads” were made from a Lite-Brite.

(As an aside, I love ATHF. I think it’s one of the funniest cartoons in a long time, and I recommend it. That being said, I continue with my analysis.)

Eventually, the parent company of Cartoon Network, Turner Broadcasting, Inc., issued a statement explaining what the mysterious packages were: part of a “guerilla marketing” campaign designed to place advertisements in unexpected places. After this announcement, and after upwards of $750,000.00 and God knows how many man-hours were expended, the terrorism threat level in Boston returned to normal.

Here’s the thing. Boston isn’t the only city that has these ads. In fact, they’ve been up in New York City, L.A., San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Seattle and Portland for a couple of weeks. Apparently, no one in those cities mistook these ads for bombs. Bully for them.

But back to Boston. Two men were arrested and charged with “planting a hoax device,” which may lead to five years in prison for each of them. They’re currently out on bail. The Mayor of Boston and the Attorney General are raising hell about ATHF, saying it should be taken off the air, and about Turner Broadcasting, saying the company’s actions are irresponsible in a post 9/11 world. They claim that at the very least Turner should foot the bill for the cost of the massive police response that shut down parts of Boston on Wednesday. (Turner broadcasting has issued a statement today saying they will reimburse Boston for all costs incurred as a result of their advertising.) Other people think it’s kind of funny. They think that the Boston police are idiots for mistaking a Lite-Brite for a bomb, and that the response was way overblown, and that it’s a cartoon, for fuck’s sake.

As someone who drives to Boston almost every day, and as Boston and the surrounding towns are home to people I care very deeply for, allow me to tell you what I think.

This was a colossally dumb marketing idea. Further, whoever’s idea it was to place these ads where they were placed is a complete moron. One of the packages was placed in Sullivan Square near Interstate 93, which is the central traffic artery through the city. I-93 suffers from gridlock for at least 10 hours a day on a normal day. (Sullivan Square, incidentally, is smack in the middle of where someone I care about works, and had this occurred on the 30th, instead of the 31st, it would have really fucked with my lunch plans.) Reports of these packages suspended from bridges closed the Charles River to all traffic and shut down Storrow Drive for a while, which, for those who don’t know Boston well, is a pretty major street along the waterfront (ditto on the gridlock situation). When these roads get closed or delayed, the result is FUBAR. If either of these ads had been bombs, as was feared, the damage could have been extensive. Oh yeah: one was placed near New England Medical Center, too.

The short version: all are pretty likely locations for terrorists to target.

Turner Broadcasting is doing the right thing. They know their marketing idea was dumb, and although they couldn’t have predicted the level of shit it would stir up, they’ve assumed responsibility and apologized, and are trying to make amends and restitution for the economic damage to the city.

Now listen up, because the Angry Piper is not in the habit of defending the police very often. But thank God for the Boston Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police, who demonstrated a commendable level of readiness to a perceived threat to the city. They acted swiftly and efficiently to contain and assess the situation. Had it actually been a terrorist threat, the B.P.D. seemed ready and able to deal with it. The B.P.D. is not made up of idiots because they can’t recognize a cartoon character ad and dismiss it when it’s, say, hanging from the underside of a bridge on a main artery through the city. It’s not supposed to be there. It’s suspicious. And since the city had no idea about this planned “guerilla marketing” campaign (neither did the other cities, so far as I know), they felt it bore investigation.

I say again, Bravo to the Boston Police Department. They did the right thing.

As this story developed throughout the day yesterday, I considered what should happen as a result of this incident. I thought (and still think) that Turner should foot the bill for the cost of the response effort and publicly apologize. I thought (and still think) that the B.P.D. should be applauded and commended on doing a great job. I thought (and still think) that taking ATHF off the air is a ridiculous and stupid overreaction to an unfortunate event that inconvenienced and frightened a lot of people. And, lastly, I thought that the two fellows in question were likely misguided fans who deserved no more than a stiff fine and/or community service, as clearly there was no terrorist intent to their actions. I figured these two guys were likely shitting in their pants at the thought that something they figured was harmless shut down an entire fucking city for an afternoon, and that they could be going to jail for it.

Notice I didn’t say I still think that. Because now we come to the two people in this entire situation who did the wrong thing, and are still doing the wrong thing: the two clowns who actually hung the ads.

In their arraignment hearing, they appeared “amused” when the prosecutor informed the judge the ads were made from a Lite-Brite. They have been advised by their lawyers not to talk about the case, but, when questioned by reporters, rather than say “No comment”, one said they would only talk about haircuts from the 1970’s. The other asked reporters, “Anyone wanna talk about hair?”

Perhaps their lawyers should have simply told them not to talk, period. These guys are fucking idiots. They’re facing a five-year prison term and have the entire city of Boston pissed at them. The company that hired them has publicly apologized and is paying close to a million bucks to reimburse the city, and they’re cracking wise. Good luck staying out of prison, douchebags. Enjoy your five years of forced anal sex.

Back in 1938, Orson Welles caused a national panic and mass hysteria with his CBS radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. Now, we can and do laugh at the thought. How silly were those gullible folks back then to believe a Martian invasion could be happening! But you know what? I’m betting it wasn’t so funny at the time. At least Welles didn’t think so; he publicly apologized the next day.

Maybe in a few years we can look back on this and smile, but right now it’s not funny. As someone who was in Boston on Wednesday, I can certainly tell you the mood was anything but jovial.