BY STEVE JANOSKI
With five months left until the fateful day, the general election circus of national politics is roaring with all of its pitiful melodrama, boring speeches, and media pundits who are hired simply to hash, rehash, and re-rehash what the boring speeches and pitiful melodrama all means to the nation.
I try to ignore the up-to-the-minute minutia because I am not one might call a "swing voter." (See "one who votes for a different set of principles every four years.") I know where I stand and I vote accordingly, and that more or less keeps me above the fray.
But I can never help but worry about the effect that all of the garbage "narratives" have on the outcome of a given election, and while petty issues have always been a part of politics, one could easily be inundated with worthless information due to the incessant tickers of the 24-hour news cycle.
The latest "story" to gain traction has come from the Republican camp. The GOP, desperate to win back the ever-important dog-lover vote in the wake of criticism over Mitt Romney's practice of strapping his dog's crate to car roofs for long trips, has attacked President Obama over a passage in his autobiography where he states that he ate dog meat while living in Indonesia at the age of 7 — at the age of 7.
Although it's disgusting that the election has gotten to this point already, I know where it comes from, and I can't say I'm surprised. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan explained it concisely when she said, "There are literally thousands of people in the United States now who are employed to cover these campaigns minute by minute, and they need something to say."
I, however, was truly hoping that they'd say something of a bit more consequence that doesn't further encourage this awful practice of digging further and further back into a candidate's past to "expose" innocuous, meaningless events and shape them to reflect on that person's ability to lead.
Evidently, if one holds the slightest notion of running for president some day, they must watch every step and guard every action from childhood onwards so as to not give the media fodder in 35 years when they decide to put their name on a ticket.
Many of the presidents whose names decorate the very top of the "Greatest U.S. Presidents" lists would likely not even be seen as near electable today if the current standards had been applied to them.
Andrew Jackson, the legendary general nicknamed "Old Hickory," was a quarrelsome man who had killed an attorney in a duel 22 years before he was elected. It was said that he had taken so many bullets as a result of the practice that he "rattled like a bag of marbles."
Did that make him "unfit to lead?" Or, perhaps, in today's terms, "unelectable?"
Thomas Jefferson is another. His indiscretions with his own slaves have been slowly revealed over the centuries, and one can't help but wonder if they would have been laid out in detail the day after it was announced that he'd be writing the Declaration of Independence had Fox News been around.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt married his own fifth cousin. JFK couldn't keep his hands off of women, before or after being elected. Ulysses S. Grant (along with many other presidents, including W) was known as a heavy drinker in his youth. Lincoln was, well, ugly, as well as a borderline depressive.
And some of the finest leaders from other countries — Winston Churchill springs to mind — would never be allowed near the highest office given their natures.
Leaders, no matter how perfect they seem, are still just people. They are flawed. They screw up, they falter when others push on, they lose faith, they regret.
But elections are not about the past. They're about looking toward the future and putting faith in the intellectual ability of a candidate to set a strong course for the country and drag it toward that objective.
It's not about being a celebrity, and it's not about being perfect. It's about being the right fit for the nation at the time it needs them most. Like Jackson. Like Jefferson. Like Roosevelt. Like Lincoln.
It's troublesome that this country, which once prided itself on being the land where one could forget the past, forge a new life, and meet with unbridled success (so much so that it became known as the "American Dream") seems to be on this path of making the ghosts in one's closet the focus of so much attention.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Springtime again
BY STEVE JANOSKI
If I did not see it myself, I might have thought it straight off the cover of some generic Hallmark card: a middle-aged couple, sitting side by side together on a wooden park bench overlooking the wind-rippled waters, watching the geese waddle back and forth between bank and burn.
They’re tightly intertwined and make for a curious sight: he, gray-haired, adorned in a black suit jacket with a silver wristwatch that glares in the sun, sits with his arm around her shawl-clad shoulders. Her blonde hair washes over his sleeve.
She leans against him, dips her face closer to his, and they appear to speak in between small kisses, and I cannot help but think how unusual it is to see a couple so clearly in the middle of their lives who retrain that kind of affection for each other.
Often, it seems that those who have become too familiar with each other tend to let a callous apathy replace the fondness they once felt.
Not these two. They huddle close in the way that young couples with softer hearts do, before life’s tribulations cast their stony shadows.
I come to the conclusion that they’re probably not the typical long-married couple, and I wonder what their back story might be.
Maybe they are both divorced… or at least, one is divorced. Maybe the other is separated.
They met by way of a friend, maybe, or through a dating site that has put them on the path to being one of the infamous "online success stories" the commercials talk about. Now, they’re in those early stages of love that makes even the most callous adult feel like a teenager again.
Or maybe it is something more sinister — an illicit lunch break meeting in a secluded park far from prying eyes and husbands and wives, with darkened cell phones left back at the car to clear the way for an undisturbed soiree.
Although I always picture those kinds of things happening in seedy hotels along Route 3, maybe they’ve branched out.
Or maybe it’s something less unscrupulous. After all, it could be something sad — shockingly sad, perhaps — such as two people coping with the news of some illness that only one must face and pondering their own mortality in a place so rife with life.
Sometimes, it takes that sort of thing — that sort of calamity — to recognize the true worth of the things around us.
Regardless, each looks upon the other with feeling, with passion even, and that in itself is admirable.
A rustling in the wild-tailed forsythias, which are quickly turning from yellow to green, captures my attention for a brief second, and I notice the ground cover, little patches of clover and whatnot, is rising quickly because of the snowless winter and a lone cherry blossom tree is already in the midst of its annual sanguine fireworks display.
When I look back, the couple is walking away, arms around waists, in a slow, amiable saunter back to the parking lot.
I turn back toward the river.
Their story was probably not that insidious, and not that morose.
But in the end, their story matters not. It is spring once again.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/community/147105115_Springtime_again_.html?page=all
If I did not see it myself, I might have thought it straight off the cover of some generic Hallmark card: a middle-aged couple, sitting side by side together on a wooden park bench overlooking the wind-rippled waters, watching the geese waddle back and forth between bank and burn.
They’re tightly intertwined and make for a curious sight: he, gray-haired, adorned in a black suit jacket with a silver wristwatch that glares in the sun, sits with his arm around her shawl-clad shoulders. Her blonde hair washes over his sleeve.
She leans against him, dips her face closer to his, and they appear to speak in between small kisses, and I cannot help but think how unusual it is to see a couple so clearly in the middle of their lives who retrain that kind of affection for each other.
Often, it seems that those who have become too familiar with each other tend to let a callous apathy replace the fondness they once felt.
Not these two. They huddle close in the way that young couples with softer hearts do, before life’s tribulations cast their stony shadows.
I come to the conclusion that they’re probably not the typical long-married couple, and I wonder what their back story might be.
Maybe they are both divorced… or at least, one is divorced. Maybe the other is separated.
They met by way of a friend, maybe, or through a dating site that has put them on the path to being one of the infamous "online success stories" the commercials talk about. Now, they’re in those early stages of love that makes even the most callous adult feel like a teenager again.
Or maybe it is something more sinister — an illicit lunch break meeting in a secluded park far from prying eyes and husbands and wives, with darkened cell phones left back at the car to clear the way for an undisturbed soiree.
Although I always picture those kinds of things happening in seedy hotels along Route 3, maybe they’ve branched out.
Or maybe it’s something less unscrupulous. After all, it could be something sad — shockingly sad, perhaps — such as two people coping with the news of some illness that only one must face and pondering their own mortality in a place so rife with life.
Sometimes, it takes that sort of thing — that sort of calamity — to recognize the true worth of the things around us.
Regardless, each looks upon the other with feeling, with passion even, and that in itself is admirable.
A rustling in the wild-tailed forsythias, which are quickly turning from yellow to green, captures my attention for a brief second, and I notice the ground cover, little patches of clover and whatnot, is rising quickly because of the snowless winter and a lone cherry blossom tree is already in the midst of its annual sanguine fireworks display.
When I look back, the couple is walking away, arms around waists, in a slow, amiable saunter back to the parking lot.
I turn back toward the river.
Their story was probably not that insidious, and not that morose.
But in the end, their story matters not. It is spring once again.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/community/147105115_Springtime_again_.html?page=all
Get out of my Facebook
BY STEVE JANOSKI
It was in the English dystopia depicted in the 2005 movie "V for Vendetta" that I first saw the ideals enumerated in Orwell's "1984" come to life, as agents of a repressive government rode around in vans monitoring private citizens' phone conversations while "fingermen" patrolled the streets at night looking for those who violated curfew.
Being what one might call a vicious civil libertarian who sees the threat of the iron heel's descent behind every governmental policy, I was always terrified at the prospect that such a thing might occur, and that movie's depiction of how, and why, it could happen, were ringing all too true at the time.
But, just a few short years after the film was made, Americans, in their infinite wisdom, have already made roving vans and telescreens not only unnecessary, but magnificently obsolete by incorporating Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and a plethora of other oddly-named Internet sites into their daily lives.
Now, the government doesn't have to spy on its citizens, because people are so willing to voice every feeling about every mundane event that even the most stringent monitor at the Ministry of Love would say, "Jesus, shut up already, I just don't care."
I too am guilty of having a Facebook, although I am extraordinarily difficult to track down and use it for little more than posting Iron Maiden videos or Bill Murray quotes. But still, I'm on it, and I must admit that it's entertaining and has its uses.
However, what frightens me is that our willingness to share our thoughts has come at a price, and that's been illuminated by a recent Associated Press article on what is becoming an increasingly common practice of employers: demanding prospective employees' Facebook logins during interviews in order to further "vet" candidates.
According to the article, the practice occurs more frequently when applying for jobs in fields like law enforcement, but it's expanding to the private sector as well.
Sears, for example, uses a "third-party application to draw information from the profile, such as friends lists," as a way to stay "updated on the applicant's work history."
While this might be enough to convince some applicants (like me) to walk out and tell Sears what they can do with their friend request and third-party applications, in an economy that remains somewhat rocky, not everyone is in a position to turn down jobs that provide a near-living wage.
Inevitably, some will say that this is what we get for being a part of the digital age. Facebook is an Internet site, one which is neither secure or private, and what's done there is akin to leaving your bedroom blinds open all the time...along with the windows open. After sending binoculars to all of your neighbors.
But regardless, that does not give government agencies or private companies the right to get around the privacy settings that we are able to set up.
These are frightening legal questions that are straying into new territory, and it's likely that it will take lawsuits, decisions, appeals, and more decisions before a clear line is drawn on what exactly is public and what is not in regards to social networking sites.
The American public must have some say in this. Now is the time that the citizenry, which is so prone to overreact on the mundane and so willfully ignorant about the important, must overreact in the sharpest way to this kind of invasion of privacy in order to stop it where it stands.
We have seen what can happen when all care or want of privacy ceases to be a concern - a quick look at the citizens of Great Britain, a kingdom already under Big Brother's watchful eye, provides the starkest illustration.
And as a nation that values personal freedom and self-reliance (even if we rarely practice the latter), we do not want to head in that direction.
Once, being "off the grid" meant that that you lived in a cabin, drank rain water from barrels, and burned candles instead of light bulbs. Now, it's claiming that you don't have a Facebook and admitting that you have no idea how to clearly read a Twitter feed.
Consider me "off the grid."
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/144915765_Get_out_of_my_Facebook.html?c=y&page=1
It was in the English dystopia depicted in the 2005 movie "V for Vendetta" that I first saw the ideals enumerated in Orwell's "1984" come to life, as agents of a repressive government rode around in vans monitoring private citizens' phone conversations while "fingermen" patrolled the streets at night looking for those who violated curfew.
Being what one might call a vicious civil libertarian who sees the threat of the iron heel's descent behind every governmental policy, I was always terrified at the prospect that such a thing might occur, and that movie's depiction of how, and why, it could happen, were ringing all too true at the time.
But, just a few short years after the film was made, Americans, in their infinite wisdom, have already made roving vans and telescreens not only unnecessary, but magnificently obsolete by incorporating Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and a plethora of other oddly-named Internet sites into their daily lives.
Now, the government doesn't have to spy on its citizens, because people are so willing to voice every feeling about every mundane event that even the most stringent monitor at the Ministry of Love would say, "Jesus, shut up already, I just don't care."
I too am guilty of having a Facebook, although I am extraordinarily difficult to track down and use it for little more than posting Iron Maiden videos or Bill Murray quotes. But still, I'm on it, and I must admit that it's entertaining and has its uses.
However, what frightens me is that our willingness to share our thoughts has come at a price, and that's been illuminated by a recent Associated Press article on what is becoming an increasingly common practice of employers: demanding prospective employees' Facebook logins during interviews in order to further "vet" candidates.
According to the article, the practice occurs more frequently when applying for jobs in fields like law enforcement, but it's expanding to the private sector as well.
Sears, for example, uses a "third-party application to draw information from the profile, such as friends lists," as a way to stay "updated on the applicant's work history."
While this might be enough to convince some applicants (like me) to walk out and tell Sears what they can do with their friend request and third-party applications, in an economy that remains somewhat rocky, not everyone is in a position to turn down jobs that provide a near-living wage.
Inevitably, some will say that this is what we get for being a part of the digital age. Facebook is an Internet site, one which is neither secure or private, and what's done there is akin to leaving your bedroom blinds open all the time...along with the windows open. After sending binoculars to all of your neighbors.
But regardless, that does not give government agencies or private companies the right to get around the privacy settings that we are able to set up.
These are frightening legal questions that are straying into new territory, and it's likely that it will take lawsuits, decisions, appeals, and more decisions before a clear line is drawn on what exactly is public and what is not in regards to social networking sites.
The American public must have some say in this. Now is the time that the citizenry, which is so prone to overreact on the mundane and so willfully ignorant about the important, must overreact in the sharpest way to this kind of invasion of privacy in order to stop it where it stands.
We have seen what can happen when all care or want of privacy ceases to be a concern - a quick look at the citizens of Great Britain, a kingdom already under Big Brother's watchful eye, provides the starkest illustration.
And as a nation that values personal freedom and self-reliance (even if we rarely practice the latter), we do not want to head in that direction.
Once, being "off the grid" meant that that you lived in a cabin, drank rain water from barrels, and burned candles instead of light bulbs. Now, it's claiming that you don't have a Facebook and admitting that you have no idea how to clearly read a Twitter feed.
Consider me "off the grid."
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/144915765_Get_out_of_my_Facebook.html?c=y&page=1
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