In a previous post, I wrote about the 1976 film, Network, and how its crazed network news anchor, Howard Beale, Mad Prophet of the Airwaves reminded me of some of today’s cable TV personalities.  Back when the film was first released, it was considered a dark, comic satire of the  confused nineteen seventies.  It reflected the zeitgeist of the time, but was regarded as over the top, a caricature, an exaggeration on steroids of our increasingly trivializing culture.  We were becoming gossipy, voyeuristic, and vapid.  Viewed today, however, the film seems barely over the top.  In some ways we have have far surpassed Paddy Chayefsky’s dystopian visions.  As  time passes, we begin to see that his darkest visions are not imaginary at all.

The current world-wide frenzy over WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables exposure and the efforts brings to mind the darkest element of the film.  In one of his broadcasts, Beale reveals the impending merge of his own network with an international conglomerate.  While his network’s executives were perfectly happy to allow Beale’s rants to go out on the airwaves completely uncensored in the past due to his spectacular ratings, there was something about this particular story that made them change course abruptly and get Beale under control, not matter what happened to his ratings and their profits.

In more recent times, while politicians publicly decried WikiLeaks’ previous exposures of military secrets regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, some even calling for his arrest or assassination, no action was actually taken.  In general, while there are laws that apply to those with secret and top secret clearances that make it a crime to reveal state secrets, they have not been applicable to journalists and media outlets who publish those secrets.  Hence, the US soldier who provided secret documents to WikiLeaks faces prosecution, but the various news outlets who published those documents, including Wikileaks have not been prosecuted.

All that has suddenly changed.  In the wake of the diplomatic cable leaks, the full force of law enforcement agencies from around the world, as well as the power and influence of multi-national corporations have been brought to bear on Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange.  The WikiLeaks website, and its mirrors around the world, have been subjected to massive denial-of-service attacks.  Amazon Web Services kicked them off their servers, EveryDNS, their name services provider, was also targeted for denial-of-service attacks and was forced to drop WikiLeaks.  Finally,  MasterCard and PayPal both suspended processing donations for the non-profit organization that supports WikiLeaks.  Throughout all this, WikiLeaks has managed to “stay on the air.”

These major efforts to cripple and shut down WikiLeaks have been conducted by non-governmental commercial entities, at least based on what is publicly known.  The National Security Agency no doubt has the capability to stage denial-of-service attacks, but as of yet, they’re not talking and nobody’s leaking.

While the private sector leads the attack, governments around the world have been struggling to devise interpretations of their laws and definitions of jurisdictions that would allow them to bring criminal charges against Assange and WikiLeaks.   Nothing quite fits, so they have so far been unsuccessful.  By establishing itself as an international network, WikiLeaks has been successful in exploiting laws and loopholes in the legal jurisdictions where it has operations.  In a matter that is completely unrelated to WikiLeaks controversy, the UK has managed to arrest Assange based on Swedish charges of sexual assault.  Assange is being held without bail in Britain awaiting and fighting extradition to Sweden.  The specifics of that case are particularly murky and under normal circumstances it’s questionable that Assange would even be convicted in a Swedish court, but these are far from normal circumstances.

Given the controversial history of WikiLeaks, one questions why this seemingly world-wide and coordinated assault on them should happen now.  In the past, certain politicians, from every side of the aisle have condemned Assange and WikiLeaks, but those attacks were more a matter of grandstanding for personal political gain rather than any serious or legitimate action.  Until now, it has only been a lot of hot but empty rhetoric.

Why now and why so sudden?

Perhaps this sudden coordinated effort has nothing really to do with past offences or even the current leaking of US diplomatic cables.  Certainly they are embarrassing, but no more embarrassing or damaging than a video of the US military massacring  civilians and journalists in Iraq.  When those were leaked, Amazon, Mastercard, and PayPal didn’t declare war on WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange is a very strange man.  His motivation for doing the things he does can be questioned; he seems to be the kind of man who bears no allegiance to anyone but himself. He does, however have a flair for the dramatic.  His public persona is reminiscent of a demented villain in a James Bond movie.  One of the things he spoke about he was being interviewed during publicity tour promoting Cablegate, was the release next year of leaked documents from a prominent bank that would scandalize the international banking industry.  The current efforts to incarcerate him and shutdown WikiLeaks may have nothing to do with anything they have leaked in the past.  They may have everything to do with preventing the exposure of criminal activities conducted by a cabal of multi-national financial institutions and corporations.

Just like Howard Beale, Assange and WikiLeaks may have stumbled upon something far more dangerous than they may have imagined.  Like Wikileaks, they are everywhere and they are nowhere.  They pledge allegiance to no flag, sovereign nations are simply divisions or branch offices.  The visible world order that we perceive, composed of political structures that we believe exist, based on ideologies, beliefs, aspirations, and even evils, all of which we can comprehend, is an illusion.  It is the invisible world order that manages our affairs.  There are no borders, no laws, no rules, and no guiding principles Order and efficiency must be maintained.  Politics, as we believe them to be, are irrelevancies to be managed by the flow of currency to one place or another from one place or another.

Exposure of duplicity in foreign relations? No big deal.  Proof that a war launched on false pretenses needlessly has killed hundreds of thousands and brought misery to million? Not a problem.

Expose the phantom world order?  Now you’ve pissed off MasterCard, and that will NOT be tolerated.

Network – Corporate Cosmology.

See larger image Network (DVD) Director: Sidney Lumet Starring: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty Rating: R (Restricted) List Price: $14.96 USD New From: $5.74 In Stock Used from: $4.12 In Stock Release date November 9, 2010.

© 2010 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

The ratings are spectacular and the network changes its mind about Beale’s retirement.  The evening news is handed over to a young ambitious programming executive from the entertainment division (Faye Dunaway), and Beale becomes “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves.”  His rallying cry to his audience is, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”  Millions of people across the nation open their windows and scream it out into the night.  Glenn Beck can only wish he had that kind of clout.

Beale’s success leads to a primetime  show that becomes the foundation for a network lineup that plays on all the fears and paranoia of the time and the network rakes in the cash.  The offerings seemed a little over the top at the time, with one program following the activities of the “Ecumenical Liberation Army,” a sly take-off on Patty Hearst kidnappers, the “Symbionese Liberation Army.” In a preview of the current reality show fad, every week the episode featured actual footage of crimes being committed by the terrorists, shot by the terrorists themselves.  Viewed today, however, the offerings of the fiction UBS network, seem like a naive preview of what our culture is today.

Glenn Beck’s daily paranoid and hateful rants, which indicate that sanity is not his friend seem like Beale’s ravings taken to an absurd extreme.  In the parlance of pop culture, Beck jumped the shark long ago, probably before his first telecast.

Beale, in spite of his mental breakdown, never completely broke with reality and seemed to genuinely care about the wellbeing of his audience.  The conspiracies that he warned of were real, and most of all, he urged his audience to think for themselves.  It is his truth telling about his network’s planned corporate merger and its plan to control what people see and think and believe that leads to his ultimate downfall.

Beck does no such thing.  It is he who must do all the thinking for his audience because only he can see all the evil around us, but in reality he is simply an agent of the corporate interests that control him.  If he were a true “Mad Prophet of  the Airwaves,’” attempting to reveal the truths that only a mad prophet can, he would expose the ugly truths of his own corporation and fellow travelers, such as Sean Hannity’s traitorous and obscene exploitation of service families to promote himself and line the pockets of his cronies.   Instead he takes to the blackboard and raves on and on about secret plots that make sense only to himself.  Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski’s manifesto makes more sense than Beck’s condescending lectures.  What he preaches may be nonsense and he may just be another clown, but taking a page from Beck’s own playbook in referencing Hitler, I’ll point out that no one thought Mein Kampf made much sense either, even before it became a blueprint for worldwide catastrophe.  He may be a clown, but the ignorance and hatred he is so proudly preaching is taking root.

Network (Two-Disc Special Edition) (DVD) Director: Sidney Lumet Starring: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall Rating: R (Restricted) List Price: $26.99 USD New From: $5.31 In Stock Used from: $4.73 In Stock Release date February 28, 2006.

© 2010 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

Seven years later, Mike Nichols turned Charles Webb’s novel The Graduate into a blockbuster movie starring a very young Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock, a young college graduate who is seduced and corrupted by the wife of his father’s law partner, the infamous Mrs. Robinson, played deliciously by Anne Bancroft.  The film captures 1960’s affluent society’s shallowness, best summed up in this memorable exchange:

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?

What one word might a contemporary Mr. McGuire whisper to Benjamin? “Derivatives”?

In the end, Ben finds redemption in the love of Elaine, Mrs. Robinson’s daughter and in the final scene we see them escaping on a city bus.  They may be free, but their future is still uncertain as revealed by the uncomfortable expressions on their faces.  As much as we want them to, I can’t actually picture them staying together.

Novelist Eugene Mirabelli, my college writing teacher, published a novel in 1959, the same year as Roth’s first book, called The Burning Air, which told the story of George and Giula (pronounced “Julia.” It’s Italian and accurate, but I remember Mirabelli using it as an example in class of how to confound your readers by using an an unusual spelling for a common name).  The book is an account of a hot summer weekend after college when the young couple must confront their future.  Complicating matters are the pressures brought to bear by Giulia’s family.  Again, the couple are doomed, and George is left with only a wistful memory.

In Ian McEwan’s 2007 novel On Chesil Beach, the young couple, Edward and Florence, are actually married, but nevertheless still doomed. McEwan sets his story in pre-sexual revolution days of July, 1962.  Edward and Florence are trying to escape the stultifying values of their parents, and to break free of the class distinctions that separate them, but their own insecurities and uniquely sheltered backgrounds lead to a disastrous wedding night.  Again, a young man is left to wonder about what might have been had he been able to discover his adult self just a little bit sooner.

Back when I was a twenty-something, I attempted to write a story in this genre called “A Couple.”  I have to admit that I was very much “influenced” by both Goodbye, Columbus and The Burning Air. The doomed lovers in my story are on their final spring break in college, with graduation and their adult lives steadfastly approaching.  Of course, like Roth and Mirabelli before me, I attempted to blame everything on her family.  I could never really figure out the ending or what the story meant, so I put the first draft manuscript in a box, put the box in a basement, and forgot about it for twenty years.

When I started writing again, my wife found the box in the basement and I rediscovered the story.  I read it again, and although I felt embarrassed by some of the writing, I found something compelling about it.  I remembered writing on my old smith-corona in the apartment my wife and I lived in when we were first married.  It was the last thing I wrote before getting caught up in career pursuits and starting a family caused me to stop writing.

The story still didn’t have a decent ending, but I started typing it into my computer cleaning up the embarrassingly bad parts and crappy dialogue.  I reworked the story over and over again, trying about seven or eight different endings.  Finally, when I got tired of working on it, I started sending it out.  Fifty rejections and several more rewrites later, it was accepted by two journals on the same day.

It’s hard to know what made the difference between rejection and acceptance, but I believe it was the final small revision I made.  I had been in a workshop with Elizabeth Benedict the previous summer and I remembered her speaking about dialogue in fiction.  “Dialogue in fiction is not like conversation, where people avoid the truth at all costs and don’t reveal what they really think.  That doesn’t work in fiction.  Take a chance, have your character say something they never would in real-life, and see what happens.”

I found the place in my story where I needed to do that and I think it made all the difference.  It also revealed that the breakup was not only her fault, it was also his.

“A Couple” is available in Cantaraville Two and also as a mini-eBook from various retailers in the eBook Store.

See larger image A Couple (Kindle Edition) By (author) Fred Bubbers List Price: $0.99 USD Release date January 29, 2011.

See larger image Goodbye, Columbus : And Five Short Stories (Vintage International) (Paperback) By (author) Philip Roth List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $4.46 In Stock Used from: $0.11 In Stock Release date January 13, 1994.

See larger image The Graduate (Paperback) By (author) Charles Webb List Price: $16.00 USD New From: $4.46 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date April 2, 2002.

See larger image The Burning Air (Hardcover) By (author) Eugene Mirabelli Used from: $23.50 In Stock

See larger image On Chesil Beach (Paperback) By (author) Ian McEwan List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $2.23 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date June 10, 2008.

© 2009 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.