Back in the Saddle

Your pal Olaf, that is, I (and I shan't use the third person anymore, although it is tempting to adopt that style) have been off securing some semblance of a financial future by working across the divide between art and science. Yes, I've taken on a consulting job, which bangs the rust off some old technical joints and also will refuel the slowly depleting bank account. Although I'd thought I'd turned away permanently from the world of software engineering in late 2001 (terminal burnout combined with the tech implosion), an offer that I can't refuse and which will actually be fascinating and challenging work has plopped into my lap, thanks to an old friend whose generosity extends to giving me a chance to rehone my chops techwise.

So in the intervening days, I've been somewhat inattentive to the news, hustling around getting information, gear, and stuffing information into my noggin that actually will make me some money, as opposed to this solitary ranting that I send into the blogosphere in the hope that someone somewhere might actually read it. Then, after returning from a long day in the Big City, I happened to catch a rebroadcast of Bill Moyers' address last Sunday to the National Conference on Media Reform which had met in St. Louis. Watch this. Read the transcript. All the ranting I have made about mainstream media and how it has been coopted by power to oppress the working people is expressed by Moyers in such an eloquent, logical, and even entertaining manner that I have nothing to add. Here's a sample:

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.

You're going to hear a lot about this. Mr. Moyers is not going to retire quietly. He recognizes the danger we are in and he knows its source.

This speech is going to go down in history as the watershed moment for the left, and even more importantly, for the beginning of the end of the theofascist extremist attempt at a coup. Mark my words.