Il Mio Manifesto

In the last few days I have had discussions with old pals from the Fourth Estate. It is doing well and the jewels and minks will only be sold to those of fine breeding, namely Roger Ailes. They have informed me that my plight in academia is a grim one: namely research can only get a privileged few very far, because most of the time faculty is desperately trying hammer one of its futile proposals for research down a foundation’s throat. At then the thankless teaching load, especially for younger faculty, includes such courses as the following three-credit masterpiece: FYC 4003 Family Financial Management.

I harken back to the old aphorism that the ass is leaner on the other hide, though, because when I was set to plunge myself into the thankless anonymity of writing for the Palatka Daily News or assistant editor of Fleet Owner Magazine I would have died to be an academic, in part because it didn’t look like I would be writing copy for the NY Times or broadcasting for the BBC any time soon.

So what I suppose I’ve always hankered for is the possibility of working in the jungles and godforsaken veldt while at once capturing something uniquely narrative. I’m nowhere near that now, but I’ve got the seed of an idea.

Many efforts have been made to marry journalism with academia in the past, and most of them haven’t been that successful. Journalism departments typify this perhaps the most, attempting to create scholarship and scholars out of something which is by it’s very nature not a scholarly process. But the same can be said for the news media, which for whatever reason seems to think that reporters can become experts on all range of subject matters despite their acute focus on only the most pertinent details to a contemporary story. This is most egregious when a cable news channel will put on the TV some cockamamie fool who can pronounce mujahideen but whose credentials nor more recommend them as a Middle East expert to CNN than to CVS.

So I’ve decided to combine my work in both disciplines, and specifically my work on resilience theory and natural hazards, to my ongoing sensibilities as a storyteller, for toxic effect. The project is protean, the aim ephemeral, the desire simple: try something that has never been done before, either because there’s no audience or because it’s too damn complicated.

In a sense, this is a call to arms on my part. I want to actually challenge myself and others to see if a utilization of blogs and other multimedia can move the material in question, in this case probably resiliency work in southeastern Mexico, or whether it is doomed to just be conjunctive. I’ve seen what’s out there, and as a result I wish to see what I can modify myself and put intro practice. Hopefully it will be something grand, but if it fails to be anything more than an effort that mirrors this self-promoter, then I want nothing of it.

University of Fredo, Gainesville

It’s been more than 24 hours since I heard Fredo Gonzales speak before a “raucous” crowd (that is apparently the adjective of choice among the news outlets that covered his talk), but the experience has left me with a savory taste in my mouth to be sure.

 

While the University of Florida student body is undoubtedly more poltiically conservative than its counterparts in other public universities, say, in California, the tactics employed by activist groups were often original and confrontational enough to be provocative without losing a smidgen of Southern grace.

 

Then again, perhaps Alberto Gonzales is just easy pickin’s these days.

 

His canned speech was less than impressive to be sure. He began with an joke meant to stoke the anti-Big Government flames of the College Campus Republicans in the audience, and ended with some insipid references to pursuing public service in trying times.

 

At one point he seemed to be pointing out his would-be critics seated before him by saying, “It’s easy to make potshots, but what would are you doing?” And, no, no one responded with “avoiding criminal prosecution” or “baking my district attorney an apple pie,” but we were close.

 

The aforementioned tactics ensued about a quarter of the way through Gonzo’s garbage, perhaps at the point when he mentioned that the United States is the greatest country in the world for the eighth time (no wait, that’s how many attorneys he fired). By now you might have seen the footage, but if you haven’t two students reenacted a Camp X-Ray scene that could have used some direction from guerrilla thespians, or at the very least the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

 

Of course, Florida being Florida, they were Tasered.

 

No, actually they were arrested and charged with the ominous statute of “interrupting a public event.” I know what you’re thinking in reading this (disgraced AG Alberto Gonzales talking about himself is actually an event?), but it appeals to my draconian sensibilities; the UFPD will assuredly be on call next time a student comes in late to my class.

 

He lost his rapt audience from that moment on: nubile sorority girls slung their UF gear aside and brandished their bright yellow “SHAME” shirts with flare, he was booed and heckled more than Barry Bonds at an away game, even the ushers looked exasperated about having to deal with this much pent-up bile given the pathetic automaton standing stage left.

 

I took part in the jeering, unscripted as it was, and even elicited a response from the pursed lips of our nation’s first Latino attorney general. In describing Clinton’s ouster of all 93 attorneys just after his inauguration, Gonzales began to rehash the typical Republican balderdash about “serving at the pleasure,” etc., etc. This evasive argument has helped the Rush Limbaughs of the world comfort themselves, but it hardly applies to a case where sitting attorneys were systematically targeted and dismissed during a presidency–especially on trumped up charges of not prosecuting voter fraud or because their party affiliation wasn’t especially well liked.

 

“Apples and oranges,” I bellowed, causing a few prep school-educated frat boys in front of me to turn around and give me the stare reserved for the puny freshman who doesn’t manage to pass a hazing ritual of multiple bananas stuffed up the rectum.

 

“This is not apples and oranges,” Gonzo shot back in his best soliloquy of the night. In truth he spoke to a faculty member of the law school, but that cupcake was insubstantial enough to make Fredo look stately.

 

The Q&A period was a predictable wash, with the former AG denying the US uses torture tactics at every turn, and admitting to one mistake and one mistake only: the mishandling of personnel management in the Department of Justice. Oh, wee, is he ever a master of the euphemism.

 

However, when pressed about the rationale for torture for the fifth or sixth time, Nerd Blossom finally succumbed to vexation with a rehashed rhetorical question about whether or not “Al Qaeda cares about whether or not we follow the law or torture.” Fredo still seems to arguing two sides of the same argument, claiming that the US didn’t or doesn’t torture, but then seeming to infer that it wouldn’t affect our troops abroad if they did.

 

The true travesty is that Alberto Gonzales was paid $40,000 in speaker fees to attend (does that mean that Regent and Liberty Universities will have shake down Pat Robertson and the Fallwell estate to equal this sum?). He has no public presence to speak of, and given that he read off of his notes most of the time, and gave one-sentence answers to the moderator the rest, he should have been paying UF students to come.

 

But he was not prepared for this barrage, and I think it is safe to say that neither were the UFPD. One can only hope that Washington University, his next stop on what normally be called a show of penitence if anybody but a Bush Administration official was involved, will end in similar chaos. The best these troglodytes can do is entertain us, and Fredo served his purposes there.

Heil Nation von Alligatoren!

The bellicism of the University of Florida is becoming something of a slight concern for me. Orange and blue regalia are nothing new in the 352, but the ubiquity of this color, and any alligator-related iconography, brings to the fore scenes from Triumph of the Will or perhaps Victory of Faith. Neither Bernie Machen or Urban Meyer can assume the mantle of Die Fuhrer, now matter how many good ol’ boys show up to UF football games.

Today I had the misfortune of walking by a stadium while the Christians were being eaten (in this case the Vanderbilt University football team) and saw how this indoctrination takes place firsthand. Young children seem to be taught the various gesticulations necessary to be a true Gator before they’ve even acquired basic motor skills. The disabled appear to be wrapped in blue and orange adornments despite their garbled protestations. Even the elderly accompany their progeniture clad in Mardi Gras beads and war paint because they understand full well that their sons and daughters will place them in a nursing home otherwise.

I have researched the matter and discovered that though this phenomena is not exclusive to the South, that they are exacerbated by the isolation of Gainesville, and places like it, from larger urban populations. Such places perhaps do not fall prey to such games of excess as easily.

There is no more serious a time for the dispensation of energies than at this moment, what with war, global warming, and staph infection conspiring to bring us crashing through our Victorian porches to the shifting sands below. Yet the Gator Nation is more concerned with whether Tim Tebow will throw an interception, or whether one’s peroxide blonde hair should be tied with a blue bow or an orange bow.

I fear that I will be forced to meld my mind to the color saturation and mascot omnipresence of the community at some point in my life. I mean after all, how did millions of Germans fall in line with Hitler and his timeless message if not because of constant exposure? One can only trust one’s will to triumph.

Racing New York, New York

It’s been a week. Time to recap:

Short version: Last Sunday was a terrible race, but a wonderful day. I am annoyed enough with the way the marathon went (3:27:04) that I’ve already registered for the next one in late February in Gainesville HOME OF THE GATORS Florida.

Long version: Thanks to the generous hospitality of friends of Reuben, who was also running, we woke up bright and early on the mat of a dojo a little ways outside Jersey City. We got to the runners’ village around six and separated into our respective camps. Reuben and I had different colored starting numbers and were starting in different groups, which was odd because we both had indicated the same goal pace (3:20:00). I ended up in a corral with runners aiming for 3:40 and 3:50 and wouldn’t even be going over the top of the Verrazano bridge, which is where the race started. So instead of hearing the Howitzer, Tony Bennett’s New York, New York, and hanging out with Paula Radcliffe, I ran in the lower level in a single lane with a great view of the construction equipment.

Because it was such an enormous race, over 39,000 runners, it was nearly impossible to pass the slower runners for the first 18 miles. Whenever I spotted an opening I would sprint through as fast as I could. The cost of that sort of inefficient pacing became very apparent in the last four miles, which were surprisingly steep.

I was mostly focused on the runners in front of me and didn’t get to much time surveying the scenery. The atmosphere and the crowds were, except in Brooklyn, terrific.

You may notice that I’m dressed a little warmer than the rest of the runners. Everyone started off with several layers on and shed them during the first few miles. I was too cheap to discard my new gloves and hat and because I didn’t get too hot, drenched as I was in Gatorade, I just kept the ridiculous outfit.

Reuben beat me by 6 minutes, which cannot stand. We’re having a re-match in Gainesville in late February under more equal conditions and in the company of this blog’s loyal contributor perdixperdix. Bring it on.

Tearing it up

The University of Florida is often engaged with fascinating research, some of it appealing to residents of the the District, but most of it is entirely abstruse. In many ways this is why I choose to conduct my research here, knowing full well that unless I derive a precise formula for a hook-and-lateral pass my chances at éclat are doomed.

Take, for instance, news that crocodile and alligator tears are shed during some good ol’ noshing. It is incredible that this measure of research even registers on the University’s propaganda page, or that news of its journal publication would still be played on the radio two and a half weeks after its intial press release.

But you see, the alligator is a totalizing force like none other I have come to know.

Here are a few other press releases that I have come across and viewed with certain skepticism:
* Epidermal ruddiness of the nape is strongly correlated with authoritarian perceptions of culture and society (American Ethnologist)
* Sparsely inhabited mangrove landscapes are most conducive to disestablismentarian personally identified ideologies (PII) (Political Science and Politics)
* Consumption of baked goods highest in saturated fat found to be distributed evenly along the interstate highway system of the southeastern United States (Journal of the Institute of Nutritional Science)

It is good to be a Gator. I shed no ironic tears in saying this.