Pacifica Riptide

John Flinn: Do Travel Writers Fudge the Truth?

DO TRAVEL WRITERS FUDGE THE TRUTH?

Pacifican John Flinn, executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle travel section, reviews Rolf Potts' new book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There, and interviews the travel writer about the difference (if any) between tourists and travelers, the true meaning (if any) of "authentic," and why Potts included a "special commentary track" (essentially outtakes) at the end of each chapter, confessing all the ugly little secrets about the writing process: the exaggerations, the omissions, the poetic license, the creative stretches. "I wanted to show how the laws of nature and the laws of storytelling are separate entities," Potts told Flinn. This book sounds like an adventure in travel writing, with a detour into philosophy and ethics, just the thing for lovers of side trips.

JOHN MAYBURY

EDITOR & PUBLISHER

PACIFICA RIPTIDE

Missing Turkey Alert

Spotted Deere in San Pedro Valley Park

John Maybury photo

Strongside Gym Launches New Web Site

STRONGSIDE GYM

 

Picture Perfect: Photography of the World

PERFECT PICTURES

Stuffed Pandas

"Ohhhh, I can't believe I ate so much mashed bamboo and gravy." Two cubs sleep off Thanksgiving Day gluttony at the Qinling Panda research center, Shaanxi Province, China. (sfgate.com)

Bad Head Day

NASA officials relieved by urine-to-water processor results

(The Houston Chronicle ran a story about the shuttle mission November 25 under this headline, but the newspaper got so much flak about the headline that it had to rewrite it for the Web. )

Obama: "Fresh Thinking"

Obama: 'Change comes . . . from me'

BY NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON
Politico
November 26, 2008

Obama referred to his team of advisers as "fresh thinking," adding that the “vision for change comes first and foremost…from me.”

President-elect Barack Obama pushed back at a press conference in Chicago today when asked how he would respond to supporters "who were looking for change," given how many of his announced and rumored appointments thus far are Clinton administration veterans.

“When it comes to the people that we've pulled together -- because I know this has been sort of conventional wisdom floating around Washington -- that, well, you know, there's a recycling of people who were in the Clinton administration,” Obama replied, referring specifically to the economic team he introduced on Monday. “And so it would be surprising if I selected a Treasury secretary who had had no connection with the last Democratic administration because that would mean that the person had no experience in Washington whatsoever.”

He added that it would be troubling had he made appointments with no government experience given the severity of the market meltdown.

In terms of breaking from the past, his team of advisers combine experience with fresh thinking, Obama said, adding that the “vision for change comes first and foremost…from me.”

“That's my job, is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing it,” he said. “I think that when you ultimately look at what this advisory board looks like, you'll say this is a cross-section of opinion that in some ways reinforces conventional wisdom, in some ways breaks with orthodoxy in all sorts of ways.”

Police Chase on Ice: Great White North

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MoveOn: Fan Club or Force?

Published on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
MoveOn: Fan Club or Force?
By Tom Gallagher

I'd gone to a couple of MoveOn anti-Iraq War events in the past, but it wasn't until last week that I actually attended my first MoveOn meeting. The past events seemed modestly successful, but left me unsure of the organization's capacity outside of cyberspace. This meeting, on the other hand, was downright impressive. There were about a hundred people gathered at a downtown San Francisco restaurant. The group was mostly young, probably to be expected since the event was initially organized by the Young Democrats and only opened to oldsters when other meetings rapidly filled up. And, according to MoveOn, it was just one of more than 1,000 events around the country that night. If only the content had matched the organization.

The event ran according to a tight script, a recorded MoveOn introduction and instructions, with interruptions for conversation on directed topics. And while this highly structured format did not allow for real breadth of expression of opinion, it did serve the purpose of keeping the event on course and on a neat hour-and-a-half schedule. No one was likely to walk away swearing off MoveOn meetings because they didn't get to the point. The point was a "Real Voices for Change" campaign that would involve taking thousands of pictures of people holding signs that, in the words of a MoveOn fund appeal, would "put Congress on notice that we expect them to help pass Obama's bold agenda.

"All of Obama's agenda?" I wondered. Including his proposal to send 7,000 additional troops to Afghanistan? Or the "plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and the Marines by 27,000 troops" in the words of his website?  And which bold agenda? The pre-election plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy or the post election economic plan that reportedly no longer includes their repeal, despite the arguably greater current need for the revenue?

Well, probably those parts of the agenda won't make it into the photos on the website, but even the ones that have cry out for more. Like the signs that say "I stand with Obama for an end to the war in Iraq" ˆ do the MoveOn membbers holding them really want sixteen to eighteen more months of combat troops followed by an American military presence continuing indefinitely, as his current plan calls for? I'm guessing a lot of people attending the meetings and getting the e-mail were a lot closer to the more get-out-ASAP positions that Kucinich, Gravel, Richardson, or even Edwards were arguing way back when. Have they really changed their minds on that?  No one's asked.

Or the pictures with the "I stand with Obama for Health Care" signs. I'm guessing there's a lot of people out there who helped put Obama over the top who think his health care plan could use some improving. The smart betting money may not be on passing a single payer plan right away, but don't we still need to remind Congress that in these economic times, we can't afford to be diverting our health care dollars into the redundant and wasteful private health insurance industry boondoggle? And the "I stand with Obama for Clean Energy" sign holders—might they not want to get a clearer idea where the President-elect stands on nuclear power before writing him a blank check? 

The real question is who's supporting whose agenda? MoveOn is an organization of potentially immense influence. the "Real Voices for Change" meetings alone demonstrated that. And were they to poll their members on what they wanted to see in an Iraq withdrawal plan, a health care plan, or a clean energy plan, the organization might be able to throw valuable ideas into the mix that would be quite different from the advice Obama will get from the centrist Cabinet he is in the process of assembling. 

Whether you think Obama's the second coming of FDR or Abraham Lincoln, or whether you consider him comfortably within the Carter-Mondale-Clinton-Gore-Kerry tradition, we should be able to agree that he needs agitators, not cheerleaders. Let's not allow all the deals to be sealed between the Democratic Wall Street types and the Republican Wall Street types. If MoveOn really wants to make something happen, it should make Obama look moderate (which shouldn't be awfully hard) by letting Congress know that there are millions of us out there who want far more than he's talking about. And who knows, if there's enough of us, maybe he will too.

Besides, we should be a bit embarrassed by this kind of thing. If we could just step out of our shoes long enough to imagine how we would view Bush or Reagan supporters cheering their man on to do whatever was on his agenda—no questions asked—we might get an idea of how fooolish this blind boosterism looks to the non-believers.

MoveOn has an impressive decade under its belt. It could have an even more important one in front of it, but not if it resigns itself to handing out pom-poms.

FULL ARTICLE HERE