tom moody

The following articles were linked to on the Digital Media Tree blog and I want to put them up here as well. For many of us who've lived in the New York metro area for years it was painful to watch the media dub Rudy Giuliani a "hero" after 9/11, just because he had some poise in front of the camera while Bush was flying further and further west. That's what he did--the man lived for the camera, he was always injecting himself into news stories as mayor. He was also a bully and race-baiter and exploited the 9/11 tragedy for great personal gain after leaving office. His public mistreatment of his family members is disgusting. In short, he is not a hero, just someone who looks confident on TV. The public record reflects all this but it is not balanced: Google's searches of blogs can help restore that balance as the media continues to gloss the Rudester. If you agree with me that President Giuliani would be a mistake, you might consider putting one of these articles in a hyperlink around his name when mentioning him online. The top 10 Google searches should include one or more of these articles and not the usual puffery for this less-than-savory candidate.

Here are some elements of a counternarrative:

1. Rudy Giuliani was kicked off the Iraq Study Group because he never showed up for meetings. (He was too busy making lucrative speeches bragging about his "bravery" on 9/11.)

2. Rudy Giuliani was the only candidate not invited to speak to the firefighters' presidential forum. The firefighters are angry because Giuliani's administration provided them with defective radios, which killed many of their comrades on 9/11, and also scooped up the remains of the fallen firefighters and hauled them off to the dump along with the too-hastily-disposed-of WTC debris. A Firefighters Union video titled "Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend" mentions Giuliani's foolishness in locating his mayoral "Command Center" in WTC 7. That building was destroyed on 9/11/01, forcing the mayor to operate out in the street (while running away from the danger).

3. Rolling Stone correspondent and former New York Press writer Matt Taibbi considers Giuliani "worse than Bush."

4. Lastly, here is a review of Wayne Barrett's & Dan Collins' book on the Giuliani myth, Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11.

Noticed an AP headline "Student Hiker Dies from Fall in Chile." Very sad. A Chilean student? No, to be newsworthy it would have to be an American death. Love the way the headline writer knows that detail can just be left out. Checked Google News and learned that the hiker was from Seattle, according to other, more responsible headlines. Even the AP's is now revised, in some publications, such as Forbes online, to be less Yankeecentric.

...literally at our expense. Can't solve a problem? There must be some gear we can throw at it. American knowhow and all that. The top photo came from antiwar.com--not sure where they got it. It almost looks like the soldier is a quadraplegic riding the robot but he appears to be squatting behind it, possibly adjusting it so it doesn't spray wild bullets at American soldiers. The bottom photo is from Wired, putting the "all tech is good tech" spin on things as usual.

The military fascination with robotics is mirrored in the art world: from VVork comes a link to this Dutch psych-test-cum-conceptual-art project where viewers mull over whether to stick their hands inside a device mimicking the scene in Aliens where the android stabs a knife between a man's fingers at lightning speed. People are afraid to put their palms down on the template and don't entirely trust the device. Well, duh.

To quote Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories, "the perfect marriage of technology and the human form is death."