On the first of August 1971, the entertainment community and others, gathered together for a benefit concert in New York City for Bangladesh, was organized to raise international awareness and to fund relief efforts for the refugees, related to genocide following a war of liberation. Ravi Shankar, one of the concert organizers would quip, “In one day, the whole world knew the name of Bangladesh. It was a fantastic occasion”. Today, in 2018, Rohingya Muslims are facing a fate worse or just as fatal as the Bangladeshi did in 1971, and so, ladies and gentlemen, the time is ripe for another concert, the time is now, the urgency is now, let the world hear you play your instruments and singing voices out loud…if not for them now, then for whom and when…?

 

“For whom the bell tolls” … An expression from a sermon by John Donne. Donne says that because we are all part of mankind, any person’s death is a loss to all of us: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

There are more female journalist appearing on television then ever before, many in beauty queen mode, even among the older ones, not one gray hair head among them, far too many blonds to count. That is the cultural real life of television today, and is very much expected, as our fake theatrical life has spilled into reality. Did anyone expect the returning cast of Will & Grace, after being absent for ten years, to show much gray hair, not this blogger, or anyone cued into current television hair fads. Which brings me to mention, the return of Roseanne from 1988. The ABC television network has released a few promo pictures of as they called them, ‘the Conner clan’, updated, as we are to believe that after all these years, again, no gray hair, of course they all could have dyed their hair, but why? Marketing managers are keenly aware, nobody likes to watch a bunch of gray haired old fogies on television, when the remembrance of yesterday is more important in terms of today’s television marketing viewership, with all its current hair shade fads. Who can tell just by appearance, who is the mother, the grandmother or even the great grandmother, not me. There’s a rumor making the rounds to remake the 1977 miniseries, Roots, and if the keen awareness of trending fads of marketing managers get their way, it will be done with all the female roles appearing in straight hair wigs… such is the power of the purse…

The United States has such an overbearing self-worth, of self-importance, if you will, as a kinda  policemen over the whole world, that has led them to traveling around and capturing people, labeling them, unlawful combatants, illegal combatants, unprivileged combatant, belligerents, take your pick, who are, so claimed, are in armed conflict against The United States, who may be detained without prosecution by no certain international laws, for an uncertain amount of time, where cases of torture, has been alleged. Such arrogance, if fully or partially practiced by other countries en mass, would have long been taken before the United Nations, tagged a crime against all humanity. These illegal apprehensions, are dared not taken to be imprisoned within American borders, where American law would not allow it, since there are no such laws on the books that would even remotely govern it, but to an off-shore prison run by the military, where civil and international laws can be more easily hidden, circumvented by yards of illegal bureaucratic red tape, I give you, The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Gitmo, for short. Now picture if you can, a vacationing American father of six, with wife in tow, anywhere on earth, taken into custody for an uncertain amount of time, labeled anyone of the above illegitimate descriptive charges, then advise where in the world he can turn, seeking a redress of his imprisoned situation…if the above is not personal enough, or to your liking, how about if it was you and yours so imprisoned?

 

Sidebar: There are a lot of wrong doing in the world that remain unpunished, simply because there is no punishable governing law in place. To address any perceived wrong, that warrant punishment, a law must first be imposed to address that wrong, one cannot simply take it upon themselves to inflect punishment willy-nelly…

If the North Koreans want to use the Winter Olympic doors to come in from the cold, let them, if the North Koreans want to hijack the Winter Olympics, let them, so what’s at stake here, can be some sort of world peace, or at the very minimum, talks about world peace. This American President, chief representative, meetings with North Korean defectors and the Warmbier family members looks good on paper, just not here, and at this time. It has been voiced that the North is trying to forge a wedge between the U.S. and the South, is that all, a wedge, without war, looks good to me, lets dress it up a little, let’s talk about it, make it possible, and end the end, hope that somebody will write a book about it…

The current Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, has been married to Karen Pence since 1985, they met while he was in law school, she married her first husband in 1978, they were soon divorced. Whenever I see a picture of Mike and Karen together, my mind starts to wonder if soon after their marriage, an agreement was made between them, that she would culturally agree to maintain the trophy wife status, by never appearing in age related gray hair, like so many other married couples. Their appearance together produces a striking contrasting appearance, he in white hair and she in dark hair. The burden of trophyism almost always fall to the female to be maintained, although, some males in a marriage have been known to dye their hair or wear a toupee, especially when married to a much younger partner, thereby avoiding that awkward contrasting appearance. Growing up on my city block, there was this married couple, the female was over a foot taller then her husband, when ever they walked together, the contrasting stares must have felt like jeering shocks of gunfire, looking back, it didn’t seem to matter to them, everyone could plainly see that they were very much in love, that the cultural differences of their different heights, just didn’t matter. What did matter, to those very jealous on lookers, that hated them, because they didn’t have a loving partner of their own, to walk with of any height.

When I watch a televised news program, I don’t want to, nor expect to, do a lot of reading and if I do find some, am annoyed, so, for local televised news I have switched to WCBS-TV, Channel 2 news in New York City, the 5p-6p broadcast to be precise. This program is not banner free, just banner less, than all the other local broadcast newscasts in my area. My televised news rotation once included all three of the major broadcast news networks, along with the English language DW-TV News and BBC America but, was chased away by all the annoying banners and sometime news crawl, and further, what is voiced is instantly displayed on the screen as text. The only text I welcome on a news television program are, proper names and titles, and location, anything else is an unforgivable annoyance from the mission of a news broadcast, that should be some form of comfort in having the news, a very personal affair for me, reported to me… I have always looked upon television as a visual, audio medium… only, and is repulsed by those who are trying to make of it something it is not… a book with moving pictures and sound…

In one of the key establishment character scenes of some the personalities in 1954’s, The Barefoot Contessa, we meet, a film/director, a Hollywood gofer, money man and blond bombshell type, their appearance mirroring what very much one would find today in 2018 Hollywood. Dyed heads all, except when a toupee would be a necessary, so, fakery has not changed much since then and is still very much in play, in drama as well as in real life depicted in photoplays. Fast forward to a current situation comedy supposedly set in a 1986 East Texas town, one would think that the then hairstyles would have been carefully researched to the point of to know not to depict a woman with dyed blond hair, revealing dark roots, a no-no then, as is the style these days, even the odd chance of hair being naturally streaked, a full uniformed hair-dye would have been performed straight away in the 1980’s, streaking hair shades, again, a no-no.

 

One last point, a movie or television production with child actors, their lines are always carefully monitored by a, pardon the expression, a script girl, for clarity of diction, however, what is really required is a person without a copy of the script, an elocution expert with excellent hearing…demanding, can you repeat that, only correctly this time, or, make it sound clearer… I mean, can you repeat it, please…as the child actor storms off the set, crying to parents… claiming to have said the line correctly… but that is not what was heard…without having a copy of script to compare what should have been spoken, hearing what the audience will hear, the clarity of diction can be demanded and corrected…

Certain truths… a rodent will jump from a burning ship into the sea not knowing if it can swim, an immigrant is more certain of making a good go of it in a new land, not even knowing in advance if it can be done, against the certain certainty of staying in one place and dying, that is not an option taken likely. Does anyone know of an immigrant that has not risked it all to become an immigrant, an American immigrant? This American President wants to make it easier for the well-educated, opulent and skilled to enter the U.S., that’s all well and good on the surface, but without that essential, nagging hunger to succeed, that is crucial and ‘a must’, be the driving force of any immigrant, that is not present in the well-educated, opulent and skilled, who can probably succeed almost anywhere. The underdog immigrant is expected to lose, is most likely the victim of social, racial, economic or political injustice at home, will often find the most minuscule of opportunities in the U.S. a bonanza, not to be wasted, not fully appreciated by the well-bred or even among some the native born. Rohingya Muslims, would make the best U.S. immigrants, the genocide, experienced in Myanmar, (that must stop), there is no hard-ship too difficult to endure, when they arrive at these great American shores…

 

And now a brief, in part, internal history in America…

 

“The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million African-Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1910 and 1970. Until 1910, more than 90 percent of the African-American population lived in the American South. In 1900, only one-fifth of African-Americans living in the South were living in urban areas. By the end of the Great Migration, a bare majority of 53 percent remained in the South, while 40 percent lived in the North, and 7 percent in the West, and African-Americans had become an urbanized population. By 1970, more than 80 percent of African-Americans lived in cities, and by 1960, of those African-Americans still living in the South, half now lived in urban areas. In 1991, Nicholas Lemann wrote that the Great Migration:

was one of the largest and most rapid mass internal movements in history—perhaps the greatest not caused by the immediate threat of execution or starvation. In sheer numbers it outranks the migration of any other ethnic group—Italians or Irish or Jews or Poles—to [the United States]. For blacks, the migration meant leaving what had always been their economic and social base in America, and finding a new one”. The Great Migration, (African American) excerpted from Wikipedia, thank you…

The Urban Dictionary define ‘hype’ as follows:

“A fad. A clever marketing strategy which a product is advertized as the thing everyone must have, to the point where people begin to feel they need to consume it”.

 

With reference to what I now call the ‘memo dud’, prompting Rachel Maddow to, “That’s it, ha, ha, ha, that’s all they got, this is all the hype was about, what is it now two weeks”. Even this famed broadcaster could not be restrained from deploring, and yet launching, the overused giant red, ‘breaking news’ banner, further diminishing it, as a broadcasting tool, in my view, to a trifle of its former self, in explaining the ‘memo’ hype as a dud. Shakespeare is said to have coined in 1598, “much ado about nothing”, seems so appropriate at about now, hands down. This ‘memo’, as a movement? Should it continue, die on the vine or undergo some sort of metamorphosis into something else and be unrecognizable, in its continuum? Only time will tell.

“Then time will tell just who has fell

And who’s been left behind

When you go your way and I go mine” Thanking you, Bob Dylan from “Most likely you go your way (And I go mine) from Blonde on Blonde…

A whole new industry is being developed in clear sight of the American people, government funded and maintained by the tax paying public, that will result in private industry contracts, being awarded to scour up billions of dollars in private industry profits. The fuel that is driving this new industry is also government founded in fear, fear of drug infestation, and if that is not enough, fear of the immigrant has been added on for good measure. For want of a better name, let me just call it, The Wall, (a business scheme) stretching for miles along the southern border between Mexico and the United States. Drug addiction is on the rise in the U.S., not because of what is coming across the border, but what is being manufactured in the U.S. and distributed by pharmacy and doctor. Fear of the immigrant is on the rise by the clever exploitation of the detailed gruesomeness of crimes committed by one or two immigrants, curtailing the good nature and reputations of a million plus, of hard-working law-abiding immigrants, like all new immigrants to the U.S., who are just seeking a better life for themselves and their descendants.