It occurred to me that my father was 18 years old when this event took place. How strange to consider that he was alive at the same time as Civil War veterans! Time — time is a funny thing, Skippy.

Don’t you wish that all of us, if we sat down and howled “OWWWW, you’re HURTING ME!” would be gathered up in comforting arms, held and rocked until the hurt went away, no matter how unintentional the harm: that such cries would be met with instant compassion and apology rather than defensiveness, sarcastic barbs or abusive teachings about stiff upper lips?

Do read the whole, very excellent, piece. On behalf of my fellow “too sensitives” — grateful thanks, PB.

America’s serious news media — whether print, broadcast or cable — are in the grip of a collective nervous breakdown. Embracing popular culture and its icons seems somehow therapeutic on several levels: It appears to address charges that serious media are elitist, as well as the manifest indifference of younger readers and viewers to conventional news. Then there’s the fact of simple, brute commerce; popular culture in the form of film, music and TV now provides an outsized share of the financially strapped media’s advertising revenue. Finally, there’s that source of the news media’s anxiety and confusion — and that great enabler of popular culture — the Internet.

When [Michael] Jackson’s death was first reported, traffic across the Internet spiked to virtually unprecedented levels. Google’s search engine slowed to a crawl; Yahoo reported “one of the biggest things” in its history; social networks Twitter and Facebook nearly collapsed under the weight of traffic. This newspaper experienced 12 million page views at its website, apparently because it was widely credited with confirming the death.

If so, congratulations — you’re savvier than some late pop stars.

If not, call on Monday to make an appointment with an attorney. It’s not something anyone enjoys, but it is what you owe your family.

Theory: people are bitter about past experiences only to the extent that they perceive themselves as victims.
Possible Corollary: Stop feeling/acting like a victim, stop feeling bitter.

If you see any weaknesses in this idea, or wish to embroider a bit, fire away — please!

(Sorry for the poor quality image; as they say in the customer support business, PILBKAC (Problem Is Located Between Keyboard and Chair).)

I plan to offer a couple of these in an upcoming “1000th Comment” contest, so stay tuned!

Eight episodes of right-wing extremist violence in four-and-a-half months. We haven’t gone four weeks since February without some deranged soul—always with a long history of mental illness; usually with a record of military service and/or domestic violence; and invariably jacked up on a toxic cocktail of white male privilege; us-versus-them enemy-seeking; fury at women, blacks and/or Jews; and a belief that the world as he knew it was ending unless he took up arms—taking out his gun and killing innocent Americans in a suicidal bid for glory.

For the record: This is not business as usual. True, there have always been occasional events, usually dismissed by the corporate media as “isolated incidents,” the work of “lone wolf shooters” acting for reasons all their own. But you have to go back a long, long way in American history before you come to a place where you find incidents like this happening an average of once every two weeks. And the chattering classes are finally beginning to realize what those of us who’ve been faithfully watching the right wing for years have been telling them for a long while now: there’s nothing isolated about any of this.

In fact, this is exactly how full-scale terrorism begins.

How do we respond? What do we do? PeaceBang reflects:

What I’m getting at is that I don’t believe — have never believed — that what will heal the world of hateful fundamentalisms is rationalism, but humility and reverence. When I am with Unitarian Universalists, I often feel that we’re under the impression that a good dose of reading on the historical Jesus, Biblical criticism and other “rational” sources will cure any dogmatic mind of its delusions. [...]

Reverence, mystery, humility, service and love are the antidote. Not information. Not sociology. Not analysis.

Prayer. Silence. Cultivating peace within the great ambiguity, the unknown, and the transient.

I believe this, but it will take a more enlightened soul to lead me out of the paralyzing fear that these terrorist incidents are precipitating.