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About
Phil Rambles, Phil Price blog.
My Name
pnprice@creekcats.com
Links
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index
circa 1993
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Book: Blinded by the Right, by David Brock
David Brock is the former conservative "hit man" who wrote the books "The Real Anita Hill", "The Seduction of Hillary Rodham," penned dozens of right-wing hate pieces about the Clintons and about liberals in general, and was the toast of the conservative establishment in Washington for most of the 1990's. In his book "Blinded by the Right," Brock reveals that virtually everything he wrote was a lie.
Brock says he was motivated by unreasoning hatred of liberals in general, and by the fact that the more vitriolic he became the more he was lauded by the conservatives. More importantly, he says that many conservative leaders such as Newt Gingrich were equally unreasoning and hateful. Conservative media such as the American Spectator and the Washington Times frequently published unsubstantiated rumor as fact, which didn't bother him at the time...but his conscience was eventually tweaked when he found that the problem went beyond publishing rumors, to publishing "facts" that were known to be false. Once he started to critically examine his own work, and that of others, even his admittedly atrophied conscience recoiled, and he renounced the innuendo and outright lying in which he had previously participated.
Having read the two paragraphs above, you've got the gist of the book. The details are somewhat interesting---who said what to whom, which conservative columnists were liars and which were hypocrites, and so on---but the book is really much longer than it needs to be. It's still worth reading, though. For one thing, it shatters the illusion that all of the major media outlets check the facts before publication: Brock says that in fifteen years of writing, the only time true fact-checking was performed was for the Esquire article that became the basis of "Blinded by the Right."
There are important messages here for anyone, conservative or liberal, who bases his or her opinions on editorials, opinion pieces, and even "in-depth reviews" of "the facts." If Brock is to be believed, the problem is bigger on the right than on the left, but no one is immune.
[/Books/Nonfiction]
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Italy: Verona
I just got back from a quick (ten-day) trip to Italy. I spent the first few days in Verona, where my parents were taking a couple of weeks of language lessons at a language school called "Lingua IT." I ended up taking four days of beginner lessons, which turned out to be a great idea: amazingly, just a few days of morning classes taught me enough to carry on simple conversations of the "where are you from, how long will you be here" variety; it was also a way to meet some very nice, interesting fellow students. The experience was so good, I think I'll try to include a week of language classes in future trips to foreign countries, although it may be hard to replicate such a positive experience, which was partly due to the excellent (and very friendly) instructors.
The old part of Verona is a lovely, heavily-touristed area, which includes an impressive Roman arena, a castle more interesting for its history than for its architecture, and late-medieval sites including "Juliet's balcony" (that's the Juliet of Romeo and Juliet), although...ahem...the balcony actually post-dates the story by fifty years or so.
My four days in Verona whipped past quickly, partly because of the busy schedule: the four days packed in classes each morning; lunches with my parents and our fellow students; a quick walking tour of the city by one of the instructors; an afternoon of chores (e.g. laundry); a very festive school dinner at which much awful vino was consumed; and some exercise at a swimming pool with the landlady of my parents' apartment and a student from the school (my mom set those two up on a blind date...or, as they say in Italy, my mom "wore the yellow shoes.")
I could easily have spent another week in Verona doing more of the same, but unfortunately didn't have time, as I had to move along to Rimini for a tournament.
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Italy: Rimini and "Paganello"
After leaving my parents in Verona, I continued to the city of Rimini on the Adriatic. Rimini is a generally unappealing city that is Italy's version of Ft. Lauderdale: lots of hotels hosting lots of beach-loving drunken yahoos, many of them German. Ordinarily not the kind of thing that would interest me at all, except that Rimini happens to be the host city for one of the most unusual, enjoyable Ultimate Frisbee tournaments in the world, the "Paganello" beach Ultimate tournament. The tournament's slogan is, appropriately, "nessun dorma" (nobody sleeps): what with playing the games, going to dinner late, and then going to one of the nightly tournament parties, sleep deprivation is a real issue. The tournament creates its own little world, partly due to the recurring sound track: the start of each one-hour round, and the five-minute warning, and the one-minute warning, are marked by a series of musical jingles that work their way into your very being, to the point that it's almost disconcerting to have to live without them after the tournament is over.
I played on a team called "Thrill Ride" in the mixed (co-ed) division. Unfortunately two of our players cancelled at the last minute, leaving us short-handed: we only had five men. (Beach Ultimate has five players per team on the field, with at least two of each sex). I'm sorry to say that I wasn't able to hold up my end: my knee problem wouldn't allow me to give my full effort. I did have one great throwing game, which has to go in my career top 25, but other than that I wasn't able to contribute much. Fortunately our other men were very good, and our strong women's contingent allowed us to play 3w/2m a lot of the time. We finished in sixth place, out of 24 teams in the division, and with a little luck (or a little more poise) could have finished a couple of places higher.
I really liked all of the people on my team, only one of whom I knew before (former East Bay resident Mike Baldwin, now living in Sydney, Australia). The whole experience was so positive, I was melancholy at the end of the tournament, saddened by the realization that as my Ultimate career winds to a close, I'll not be able to do this kind of thing anymore.
In addition to hanging out with my own team, I spent a fair amount of time with the folks from Huck Finn, a SF-bay-area mixed team. They're a laugh riot, and were single-handedly (or, rather, single-teamedly) responsible for the rousing success of a talent/no-talent show hosted by Denver-based team Spaghetti Western.
[/Travel]
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