The warmth of Joe Biden and the terror of little robot dogs
Diary of the last 10 hours
5.45am
Inauguration hour and here in Aotearoa we are fully into it: RNZ; Twitter; Karren and I, watching by the dawn's early light.
The radio is into it, Twitter is into it, Karren and I are most surely into it.
It’s not so much that we hope to be uplifted, it's just reassuring to see it taking place. The nation has not turned a weapon upon itself.
There is grandeur, there is a solemn sense of occasion.
But you only have to hold it up to the light and turn it around slightly to find the comical. Already people are making top class jokes about Bernie Sanders, rugged up against the Washington cold.
The state of the union is: reasserting itself.
President Biden is showing his years and also his understanding and warmth.
The state of the speech is: exactly what he had to say.
There is express repudiation of attitudes taken and harms done these past four years, but the name of the perpetrator in chief is not spoken.
There are compelling phrases like uncivil war.
There are words of frank realism buttressing anything that might otherwise sound too unduly hopeful.
More Than A Feilding reader Chris Eichbaum writes that the conviction of delivery can make a good speech great, and this one has plenty. Authentic, warm.
Unity. He wants to bring people together, to feel a common cause.
Unity. It’s not enough just to make people feel the vibe, he’s using the word, expressly, many many times.
Unity. What an ask. But the division that besets them now is no way to go on; cannot go on. Let's see what his best shot can do.
Can a poem be better than a speech? It sure can. Amazing Amanda Gorman takes an assortment of the thoughts and sentiments that have just been delivered, lifts them out of their muddy hiking boots, puts them into high heels and Lord see how they dance.
Marvellous.
Meet the new President. Doesn't drink, smiles all the time, loves his wife and family and rescue dog, cares about people, has a heart in the place where the last guy had a wallet and a little black book.
8.16am
Kim Dotcom is on the Twitter making grand assertions.
Several people in Trump's inner circle dangled a pardon in front of my nose. I told them I’m not interested in a pardon unless Assange & Snowden get pardoned and if not I would trade my pardon for Assange. I don’t need a pardon. I’m a battle-scarred warrior. I’ll go to Valhalla
Fair enough, and hey while we're talking like this, did you know I’m third in line to be King of Greece?
Snopes has a list of some of the more notable pardons doled out for, surely, grubby sordid exchanges of filthy lucre as per rumours more or less verified by everyone’s nightmare idea of an attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
You don't need much to get the flavour.
Kenneth Kurson (full pardon), a friend of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner who was charged in October with cyberstalking during a heated divorce, per the AP.
Salomon Melgen (commuted sentence), a prominent eye doctor from Palm Beach, Florida, who is in prison after being convicted on dozens of counts of health care fraud.
Shalom Weiss (commuted sentence), who was sentenced to more than 800 years in prison in connection to a fraud scheme that siphoned $450 million from an insurance company, leading to its collapse. He spent a year on the run before being arrested in Austria and extradited to the U.S., per The New York Times.
9.12am
Where were we? Oh yes, embracing unity, leaving enmity behind, not speaking again of those crooks.
Okay, but just one more thought about all the wrongest people.
First: it looks like the crazy swivel eyed conspiracists are shrivelling up in the harsh light of the sun.
Great. But you can guarantee the fascist and white supremacists won't be folding. They seem to be a malign constant in human society, most often confined to the fringe, where they need to be, not in any way accommodated.
Unity. It doesn’t preclude acting with resolve to prosecute what happened at the Capitol, acting with resolve to identify fascist acts wherever they occur, doing all that's necessary to contain it.
11.10am
Reading about modernity and atomisation and the advisability and worth of monogamy. No really, take a look, it’s worth your time.
The industrial revolution solidified the security of coupledom as a haven against the atomising effect of the modern workplace, the modern city, the weakening of religion and community bonds.
So far so good, except:
‘today, we have to give one person what an entire village used to provide – financial and emotional support, companionship, entertainment, friendship, familiarity, mystery, love, sex, the works’, which turns coupledom into a safety raft in a sea of loneliness and anomie.
I have a question, and it is: if we are using these arrangements to cocoon ourselves away from the world, does that potentially withdraw us from engagement with our larger wider community?
In other words - is marriage getting in the way of democracy and unity?
The peril of our time, arguably, is disengagement. The silos of Facebook encourage us to embrace the like-minded and close our doors to others.
Full credit, then, to New Plymouth MP Glen Bennett and district councillor Anneka Carlson for setting up their public Facebook page Politics Taranaki.
They propose to draw in people who've wanted to be politically active but don't know where to start. They say wherever they sit in politics, they just want them to have good, decent conversations about politics.
Yes, er, Facebook. I do see the problem with the argument here. But if they can turn problem into solution, more power to them.
I’m all in favor of anything that encourages unity.
10.45am
I’m all in favour of anything that encourages unity, so I say this with no snark intended. None at all. Hello old mate poor old Simon! I too have been a parent of a little Wiggles fan. Yeah they're great, especially Dorothy the Dinosaur, but swear to God after 40,000 million repeats of mashed potato mashed potato I would be ready to pretend I had to drive to Wellington in the middle of a pandemic too.
1.15 am
Earlier in the week I raised the memory of that absolute record breaker in Australian album sales Hot August Night. I can’t remember the exact numbers but honestly, it was their Dark Side of the Moon. Like, every home had a copy or something.
Anyway, all the reminiscing reminded me that back then we would have on our TV, every evening, an actual current affairs show doing actual reports and long interviews, right there on the TV. Amazing.
So now I’m trying to remember, but a bit hazy, which one of the current affairs programmes used the start this track for their theme tune.
Perhaps MTAF reader George Andrews - hello George! - can recall? One incarnation had as its theme tune the theme from Shaft, and then at some point there was this. Am I remembering right? Anyone?
I went looking on Google but nothing there. What I did get, though, was a little bit of joy in its own right.
Please enjoy forty odd years of 6.00pm News themes. This compilation includes MTAF reader Ali Mau, all the way back in 1993 - hello Ali! - and poignant images of Angela d'Audney being marvellous.
It also quite faithfully chronicles the way the news devolved into spoon-feeding and news McNuggets somewhere around the late 1990s and god it gets pretty hard to listen to after that. But anyway, do please enjoy the music.
4.20pm
Did you watch that Black Mirror episode with the terrifying little robot dogs? Jesus. No way I’m living in the same country as one or these things.
We’ll end up united against them, against a wall without a prayer.
I guarantee it.
I'm fairly sure that "Hot August Night" was the record sent to my parents by a record club, as an inertia sales tactic - if you didn't send it back, you were billed for it. This could be why so many households had a copy.
Would be super keen to learn your time travel trick David. I can keep it secret. Promise.