Goddamn Lies

They cut deeper, they do
 They hurt more than the unvarnished ones
Sure, you can make your peace with the white lies,
  The garden variety deceptions
And deal with the untruths
 And the artful omissions
The distinctions without a difference,
  The what-have-yous
But it's hard to cope with the goddamn lies

You are well familiar with the symphony of deceit
Intimate even, with the ways of evasion

The instinctive lies
 The barefaced ones
The reflexive ones
 The rank denials
The wholly unnecessary ones
 The exaggerations
The diversionary ones
 The outright fabrications

But it's hard to abide with the goddamn lies

And what, you may ask, elevates a lie into that august territory
Moving forward, worthy of that emphatic qualifier?

The texture of a goddamn lie is of the nature of a wound
A goddamn lie aims for, and achieves, infamy
Its essential quality goes far beyond shame
A goddamn lie rises above the highest peaks of untruths
It is of a piece with the surreal, devastating and brazen,
A goddamn lie summons irony, borne as it is out of its bed of hypocrisy
Most of all, a goddamn lie celebrates the lie qua lie
A goddamn lie dances on the grave of its achievement

II.

Politicians, as a matter of course, are avid connoisseurs of the lie
Indeed we expect a close acquaintance of it of most of their breed
Some breathe it with a naturalness that is often unnerving
Grifters too are students and daily practitioners of its corruption
And deploy it in a manner that is all too self-serving
But it is the rarest beast that achieves the goddamn lie

All cultures have their own folklore,
  Often at the expense of others
Founding myths, origin stories,
  Their striking legends soaked in blood

Erecting statues of the colossus,
  Destinies manifest and men's burdens
On terrain where equality, dreams and fond promises
  Meet ceilinged glass
The rhetoric of the powerful
  And the strategy of the shrewd
The hand of god,
  Witness the triumph of the trickster
Freedoms and liberties,
  The laws of grifters

From faulty biology, allusions to race, and sundry nationalisms
History books point to those who heed the conqueror's catechism
But when everything they claim to uphold is written in sand
It's hard to keep things straight when all is goddam lies

Deceit, a playlist

A soundtrack for this evasion. (spotify version)

See previously: Symphony of Deceit

This folktale is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: humour, culture, deception, evasion, lies, observation, perception, strategy, satire, negotiation, life, rogues, covidious, hatchet job, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, toli, poetry

Writing log. April 22, 2022

The Annual Report

The leading contender was just launched (category: literary fiction)
A touch unorthodox perhaps, it's hard to keep up with the latest fashions
Today's fresh arrival in my mailbox was The Company's annual report
Would it be magical realism this year or the stream of consciousness of yore?

The most interesting section in The Company's 10-K statement
Outlined "the rationale for management's use of non-GAAP information
In the Compensation Discussion and Analysis and Proxy Statement"
A wonder of the world: dense bureaucratese and obfuscation

"The Company believes" that this fiction "provides increased transparency
And clarity into both the operational results of the business
And the performance of The Company's pension plans improves visibility
To management decisions and their impacts on operational performance"

The wholesale escapism, the whimsical mix of romance and fantasy
That The Company's writers have laid out, so striking and awkward
"Enables better comparison to peer companies; and allows The Company
To provide a long-term strategic view of the business going forward."

I'm not normally a fan of the fantasy genre but was quite shaken to the core
By this panoply of words hidden in plain sight that confounded and obscured
What with precious jewels of misdirection whose sole intent was to distort
I commend to the Pulitzer Prize committee The Company's annual report

Fantasy, a Playlist

A fictitious soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• Fantasy by Earth, Wind & Fire
• My Fantasy by Guy
• Fantasy by Mariah Carey and O.D.B)
• Fantasy by George Michael
• Bone Lies by Freddie MacGregor

Some things take away your breath and reading the company's annual report was revelatory.

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

File under: language, misdirection, shell game, humour, hatchet job, culture, observation, IBM, deception, finance, capitalism, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log. Concept March 28, 2020. August 19, 2021

Symphony of Deceit

There are those who act like they don't know what is at issue
And allow the beholder to proceed with their conceit
Sometimes it is best to allow a fool to continue
This is part and parcel of the symphony of deceit

There are those who altogether pretend not to understand
Gnomic, they deflect scrutiny with knowing humor or opacity
Notice that when it comes time for the decision, and the change of plans
They'd sowed the seeds that allowed them to escape from the difficulty

There are those thoroughly comfortable with the terrain of uncertainty
Grounded in the art of duplicity, they are badged with masks of civility
Try to pin them down, or confront them as to their appalling neglect
Watch and learn as you are left disarmed as they promptly change the subject

Diplomacy means the art of nearly deceiving all your friends, but not quite deceiving all your enemies.

— Kofi Abrefa Busia

All warfare is based on deception.

— Sun Tzu

Symphony of Deceit, a playlist

A soundtrack for this evasion. (spotify version)

• MC's Act Like They Don't Know by KRS-One
• Lies by Jonathan Butler
• Sweet Lies by Beres Hammond
• My Deceiving Heart by The Impressions
• Lies by En Vogue
• No More Lies by Michel'le
• Lies by Thompson Twins
• Bone Lies by Freddie McGregor
• Lies by Trina Broussard
• Misled by Kool & the Gang
• Lies, Deception, and Fantasy by Lee Foss & Chris Lake
• Feed Me Lies by Trina
• Lies by Melisa Morgan
• Deception by Miles Davis
• Yesterdays by Clifford Brown

This folktale is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: humour, culture, deception, evasion, lies, observation, perception, strategy, satire, negotiation, rogues, life, covidious, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: April 6, 2021

New and Improved

Another case of the new formula, another case of a company juicing the books: the diaper wipes that we had settled on for The Daughter got the New and Improved! treatment last week (the exclamation mark is the usual signifier of duplicity). It's the now customary scenario: a company decides to wring out surplus value by squeezing every ounce out of its means of production, typical latter day capitalism at work.

Working in an industry that is perpetually focused on the new and shiny, I probably shouldn't begrudge innovation in a mature market, and what is more fundamental than diaper wipes after all. Furthermore The Wife suggested I should censor this particular rant - perhaps wanting me to elevate the discourse and not fall into a parental blogging rut. I had even planned initially to use the title of this piece to dissect exactly why the recent redesign of Delicious left me in literal despair, but, well, my muckraking instincts for economic malarkey would not be denied. I'm knee deep in it, so diaper wipes toli it is...

I note:

1. The number of wipes per box is reduced, 64 rather than 70
2. The formulation is changed - the material is different and the liquid the wipes are soaked in is different. Presumably cheaper ingredients are being used all around.
3. The price per box remains the same.
4. Profit!

Counteracting this, my investigations reveal that the size of each individual wipe is slightly increased now a 17.7 by 17.7 cm square as opposed to a 17.7 by 17.2 rectangle. Thus an individual wipe might feel slightly more substantial in your hand. Such are the fringe benefits.

I won't repeat my usual analysis of the costs of all the raw materials (although I was intrigued by some of the substituted chemicals) - I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that the research and development costs of this process tweak is neutral in that regard.

Doing the math however, even if the same raw material for the tissue was being used, they have managed to get a 6 percent decrease in their costs. This combined with a 8.5 percent decrease in the units per box (their revenues are assuredly tied to the total number of units moved) is the icing on the cake, or should I say, the fruit at the bottom.

And the only thing they had to do was change the packaging. The New Formula is marketed as "New and Improved"!, ostensibly "thicker, more absorbent" and the new box has been given a makeover - green graphics evoking the forest plundered in the manufacturing process, marketing copy about how it is good for the environment, bio-degradable, hypo-allergenic etc.

Impressionable Youth

Most egregious is that the new diaper wipes have a stenciled design of what looks like little Winnie the Poohs to make it more exciting for both the adult wipers and the toddler wipees. The owners of A.A. Milne's copyright (or is it Disney) must be smiling at both the licensing opportunity and inspired product placement, eyeballs are everything and the younger and more impressionable the better.

Some surfer of the conventional wisdom says you have to do something 10,000 times (or is 10,000 hours) before you become a pro. Diapers are in most cases a 2 to 4 year part of a parent's life thus one might approach that virtuosity. Incidentally the diaper companies quite ludicrously say that you should expect to change 10 diapers a day (it is obviously in their interest to encourage inflation in diaper changing rates). Crunching numbers as is my wont, in addition to the economic bonanza gained by the process tweak, there are all those ad impressions that can be monetized, marketed to the highest bidder.

The brand is called Seventh Generation, they must be in Seventh Heaven at this turn of events. Really, think about the impressions here. The best minds of my generation are trying to figure out how to get users to click on ads and here we have literal evidence of bottom power. Various science fiction novels and films have emphasized the permanent advertising that is in our near future. The tissues given to economy passengers on some airlines have advertisements on them; much has been made about catering to captive audiences in toilet stalls and the like. The future has long intruded in the most routine encounters, intimacy and privacy be damned.

I expect that my love for Winnie the Pooh, Peter Rabbit and Kwaku Ananse will remain undiminished, but surely one might wonder about a potential backlash. I expect however such things have been taken into account, brand managers are watching social media for signs of reaction to the rebranding. Indeed my company even markets software for this purpose.

Maker's Mark was pilloried recently for planning to dilute the alcohol content of its bourbon and other products; the company reacted by reversing its decision. Fiddling with the formula is a fine art and perilous especially with food and drink (New Coke and horse meat notwithstanding). They should really have just gone with strategy of smaller containers like the orange juice producers. For other types of product the sky seems to be the limit in this respect. Inertia being what it is, most people won't change their practice even if they notice the difference.

We are all jaded customers, used to being nickled and dimed and singing the inflation calypso - this is par for the course in this Great Recession. Anyway, I noticed and wrote it up for what its worth.

A New and Improved Playlist

A soundtrack for this note as is my custom

• George Howard - Brand New (And All Made Over)
  Jazz-Funk grooves at the beginning of his career.
• Brand New Heavies - Put The Funk Back In It
  Alternatively try Shakedown from the same album
• Gil Scott-Heron - Ain't no New Thing
• Kanye West - Devil in a New Dress
• Allan Family - New Creation
• Morgan Heritage - New Time, New Sign
• Luciano - Tell Me Why
• Brand New Heavies - Get Used To It
• Dwele - What Profit
  What profit a man indeed?

File under: economics, deception, marketing, pricing, design, observation, perception, packaging, snake oil, Hard Sell, sales, New Formula, backlash, commodities, strategy, capitalism, irritation, rant, USA, whimsy, toli

Juicing the Books

My greatest acknowledged vice, according to two of the women most dear to me, is that I drink too much fruit juice. Rather than dwell on this marital and maternal complaint over what is surely a most benign addiction (compare the problems of keeping a fridge full of orange, pineapple and mango juice to alcoholism, the perils of nicotine, drugs, sex, or say dodging bill collectors due to gambling debts with loan sharks and their ilk), I thought that acknowledging it upfront would help explain how I worked myself into a state of righteous indignation over the following article. Well partially at least.

Tropicana Orange Juice Raising Prices

PepsiCo said it was shrinking its most popular size by about 8 percent, while maintaining its price, and raising the price on another size starting in May.

The 64-ounce container of orange juice will drop to 59 ounces. The suggested retail price will remain at $3.59. [snip]

Food and beverage makers react to changing ingredient costs by raising prices, changing products sizes or both. It is a way to protect their profit margins, and in the case of shrinking packages, offer less to shoppers so they can still buy products without having to pay more money at once.

Now far be it for me to complain about my suppliers raising prices. It's not a case of hell hath no fury like a juice lover squeezed. I do understand, after all, that the Florida winter damaged crops this year and that there's supply and demand and all that. Like Bubbles in The Wire, I accept what a working man has to do to make a living. It's all in the game right? No, what got to me was the disingenousness of the thing. That last line in the article is a prima facie lie, an attempt to disguise a price increase with weasel words. Well I started feeling like Bodie: the game is rigged.

You may recall me discoursing on The New Formula - the propensity of companies to tweak processes and often worsen their products in furtherance of the bottom line, a pathological hallmark of latter-day capitalism. I even had a case study showing how spikes in the prices of soybeans directly led to me losing out on my trusty Oil of Olay body wash as, first, the oil maleation process was removed and then, when there was nothing to be tweaked in the manufacturing process, soybeans were removed and the product was relaunched and relabeled "new and improved". Such is life right? Make lemonade when life gives you lemons.

But that was tinkering with process, now they're even messing with my lemonade. With commodities like juice, one would think that there is only so much you can do to process to wring out efficiencies. You can only pay the illegal immigrant labour force so little to harvest, even they need basic food and shelter after all. The gains from fertilizer are diminishing and runoff issues are quite literal. Even the politics of it are confusing; banana republics are expensive these days. Ecuador's going mildly 'socialist' to the dismay of old fashioned Texas businessmen. In all seriousness, the economics of modern day agriculture are fairly well studied and there's precious little slack.

No. It's the package shrinking that gets me. The Tropicana deception, as I called it, this juicing of the books is only the latest in an interesting trend of manufacturers increasing prices but retaining the same size packaging. Bottles or containers are made more convex, given revamped designs to fill the same physical dimensions, the spouts are shaped to pour out more than previously. Throughout the sticker price remains constant in order to fool the indiscriminate consumer into thinking that they are receiving the same product.

This orange deception is the result of literal bean counting in the spirit of airline companies in the 1990s that literally started saving peanuts (reducing the number of peanuts per package distributed in flight - and these days you're lucky to even get any complimentary snacks). We're being nickeled and dimed to death. The sole concession to honesty is in the small print of the labels on supermarket shelves - the per unit price that generations of consumers had to fight for. Regulations that are often meaningless in the marketplace.

Consider liquid detergent in this vein. There is a fine interplay of fluid dynamics between the design of the spouts of modern liquid detergent bottles and the viscosity of the liquid they contain. And this is an engineering and marketing decision, when you pour, sometimes things come out faster than you expect. At other times, it is rather that you have to be quite lithe of hand to steady the bottle as you try to stop pouring - call the result excess runoff if you will to keep with the fertilizer analogue. It's a minor irritation to be sure but the net effect is to make you use more of the product than you expected, a cynical nod towards planned obsolescence. And I've experimented you know, I follow these things closely - for a couple of years I even kept a collection of old bottles of Ivory, Palmolive, Tide and the like. Results? Well each brand tweaked their bottle design and consumer convenience was never in mind.

But let's broaden the perspective here on this mania for manipulation, this drive to extract surplus value. We see this in strategies adopted in modern agriculture - or should I rather say agribusiness: piling on the fertilizer, force feeding animals substances that should alarm even the most jaded, corn everywhere, herding in crowded cages, top-ups with antibiotics when expedient and so forth. No wonder modern farms or say your local meat rendering plant are desolate places. But this imperative has broad applicability. Airline travel is now seen in its true light - convenient perhaps, but an exercise in stress and physical discomfort. The space in economy class of ye regular airline is now so circumscribed as to be cattle tested. The logic indeed is that we're only cattle. "Buy something you stupid consumer" as that poster goes.

But I can understand the perverse incentives. I know that there is a push at the end of each quarter to close deals and I've felt it wherever I've worked no matter how low up the totem pole I might rest. You don't need studies of companies manipulating earnings to consistently beat expectations to know what all this means. When we read about Lehman Brothers doing the Repo 105 dance, it is much the same attitude towards truth in advertising at work. The current encomiums to "do more with less" have their counterpart as we have seen, "sell less for more" is Pepsi's slogan. As someone who owns stock I can understand the profit imperative, as a consumer however, I know it will come back to bite me and in this case, it will bite me in the form of a 59 ounce juice container lovingly designed to fill much the same shelf space as its 64 ounce predecessor.

It's all a shell game and there are now so few scales left to fall from my eyes. I am now eagerly awaiting the new juice containers in May to add to my collection of deceptive latter day capitalist artifacts - an archive of products engineered for the express purpose of juicing the books.

Soundtrack For This Note

• Richard "Dimples" Fields - She's Got Papers On Me (featuring Betty Wright)
  A cautionary tale this one, it's all downhill from here.
• Oran "Juice" Jones - The Rain
  A juice soundtrack should always feature the one and only Oran "Juice" Jones whose oeuvre I've discussed previously. The Rain is about betrayal:

  That's right, now close your mouth 'cause you cold busted. Now sit down here, I'm so upset with you I don't know what to do.

  Hear that Tropicana?
• Eric B. & Rakim - Know The Ledge
  It's all about the inflation calypso isn't it? Well, knowledge is king. Alternatively try Naughty By Nature's Uptown Anthem from the same Juice soundtrack.
• Superchunk - Package Thief Tropicana's theme, punks.
• Masi Asare - Orange Soda
  I'm going to have to go in for soda instead of juice what with all these pricing shenanigans.
• The Juice Crew - The Symphony
  Pound for pound the heavyweight champion of posse cuts.
• Orange Glow by Amel Larrieux
• Atmosphere - Shoulda Known
  From their 2008 album rightly titled When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold

Anyone have any further examples of these newfangled "advances" in packaging?

Disclaimer: I should note that of late I've been mostly buying a brand of juice that is often sourced from South America (typically Brazil) rather than juice from Florida or California - I wonder if I'll return to Tropicana or Minute Maid after this fiasco - can't they have the nerve to simply increase the price? And while digressing, I should also again note that I've started to see pineapple juice from Ghana making it to the supermarket shelves in these California climes. I do applaud the wonders of distribution in this modern age. It's the packaging and advertising that gets me down. Deception innit?

File under: economics, deception, pricing, design, strategy, policy, juice, packaging, irritation, rant, USA, capitalism, marketing, observation, perception, commodities, backlash, snake oil, New Formula, toli

The Game of the Rough Beast

This is an open letter.
This is a game.
This is a poem.

To The Editors,
Dear Mr Reporter,
This is my second draft.

First I wrote to The Editors,
Then it was to you.
Now it's a different beast.

A parlour game in your honour.
I tried it out on a friend.
A political junkie, he likes toli.

He said it was rough,
That it needed work.
Bear with me, I'm wrangling with this thing.

I'm a child of the web.
First an adventure in hypertext
Now prose and some poetry.

William Butler Yeats.
Recall what he wrote:
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold"

This is part of a series.
I hope you'll play.
It's about The Second Coming

1. Cut and Paste
2. Cause and Effect
3. The Game of the Rough Beast

Cut and paste

A game for you.
Simple instructions.
A test of comprehension.

Phase 1: Cut

Read the following passage.
It's from the New York Times
Some questions when you are done

In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, thousands of Palestinians mourned the death of most of the Ghaliya family and wept as Huda Ghaliya, 7, kneeled to kiss her dead father before he, her mother and four siblings were buried. All were killed when the Israeli shell struck the beach where they were having a picnic. Huda had been playing nearby on the beach at the time. On Saturday, she asked mourners, "Please do not leave me alone."

The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya of Hamas, who called the incident "a war crime," said he would adopt the girl. Later, Mr. Abbas, who called the incident "a dangerous, horrible, ugly crime against civilians," issued a presidential order adopting her.

The dead included Ali Ghaliya, 49, and his wife, Raisa, 35, and their children Ilham, 15, Sabreen, 7, Hanadi, 1, and Haihsam, 4 months. Mr. Ghaliya's first wife survived, said Ayyam Ghaliya, 20, one of Mr. Ghaliya's surviving children.

Questions (Phase 1)

• Imagine that you wrote this passage, what title would you use when you submitted the article?
• Imagine that you were the editor of this newspaper and received this article, what title would you use when you published it?
• Bonus question: What page would you run this article on?

Phase 2: Paste

Read the following passage,
it's from the same article.
Some questions when you are done

Hamas fired at least 15 Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel on Saturday, ending a tattered 16-month truce with Israel, a day after eight Palestinians were killed on a Gaza beach, apparently by an errant Israeli shell.

Later on Saturday, in Ramallah, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced he had set July 26 for an unprecedented Palestinian referendum on the principles of a unified political platform agreed upon by Palestinian prisoners, which calls for a Palestinian state in pre-1967 boundaries alongside Israel.

Spokesmen for the ruling Hamas movement said they rejected the referendum decree and were studying their options, raising the prospect of further confrontation.

Questions (Phase 2)

• Imagine that you wrote this passage, what title would you use when you submitted the article?
• If you were the editor of this newspaper and received this article, what title would you use when you published it?
• Bonus question. How well do these passages flow?

Cause and Effect

I made your second passage my first.
If you read the published article,
You'll no doubt see the reverse.

These were my friend's answers:
"Orphaned girl adopted by President"
"Random stuff about Palestine"

He saw two different stories:
"Death of family leads to end of truce"
"Hamas breaks cease-fire to distract attention from political confrontation with the President"

This was the published title:
Hamas Fires Rockets Into Israel, Ending 16-Month Truce
My friend then wrote "The perfidy of the press is one subject you should be used to"

It was a late night
The Wife saw me reading
Something in my face

"Why are you reading this Israel-Palestine stuff?"
Then I showed her your second passage,
I now call it the second coming.

"But they've buried it.
I would have never read past the beginning.
What page is it on? ... The whole thing is hidden..."

The Guidelines
They said:
Avoid politics

The Guidelines
They said:
Don't pick fights

Common sense,
Empirical evidence:
Steer clear of the Israel-Palestine matter

Still: I'm a journalist's son
You've given me an opening
I can't resist the temptation

The journalistic impulse
I seek out strange bedfellows
A student of editorial decisions

I'm in awe of what you've accomplished
You wrote the strongest fourth, fifth and sixth paragraphs I can imagine.
You ought to be a hero.

You covered a textbook massacre
Wrote in the strongest language
And yet: the story was buried.

A skillful presentation
You reported eight deaths
You shouldn't be accused of mendacity

And yet: the story was buried.
It's lost. Misrepresented at best.
The Reporter and The Editors.

Intentional and artful rather than inept:
The page, the wording, the images, the placement.
And calculation: the title. Best left unread.

Below the fold.
The Reporter's byline.
Those delicately arranged passages

A terrain of uncertainty
Did The Editors ask you for balance?
Were there two separate stories?

Who chose the title?
And are you proud of it?
I'd rather be wrong.

I would be grateful if you could comment
On words hidden in plain sight.
I had the most dreadful time that night.

A young girl has been taught
An awful lesson in life:
Death, the school of hard knocks

I lost faith that night
At this brutish spectacle
What kind of world is this?

A perplexing script:
Business as usual,
There go those Palestinians again.

My first draft:

Your article published on Sunday June 11, 2006 in the New York Times newspaper is by my measure the most skillful piece of journalism in the past year. I applaud the care you have taken in your endeavours, the craft with which either yourself and your editors combined to tell a story. It is so skillful that I feel obliged to write to you.

My second draft:

Your article published on Sunday June 11, 2006 on page 6 in the New York Times newspaper is by my measure the most skillful piece of misdirection I have witnessed in journalism in the past year. The phrase intelligent design does not do justice to the craft with which either yourself and/or your editors combined to bury a story of outrage. I applaud the care you have taken in your endeavours. It is so skillful that I feel obliged to write to you. You should win a Pulitzer for it.

I attempted to play your game
Exercising editorial discretion
And tried my hand at misdirection

The rest of the article
The same clarity of structure
3 paragraphs to muddy, 3 paragraphs to disarm

The Reporter and The Editors
I haven't slept since that day.
I assume someone didn't sleep round your way

The cameras must have been rolling
Slightly different story the next day
Hmmm, a new reporter.

The Game of the Rough Beast

Cut and paste.
Cause and effect.
The logical structure of perfidy.

The Reporter
The Editors
Me

Integrity
Mendacity
Whimsy

A question
An exclamation
A period

Inquiry
Slander
A fine line

Cognitive dissonance
Misdirection
Fair and balanced

Paragraphs: 1-2-3
Paragraphs: 4-5-6
Jackson 5: "ABC. Easy as 1-2-3"

I want to think the best of you.
I want to think the worst of you.
This is all a big muddle.

I want to think the best of The Reporter.
I want to think the worst of The Editors.
Resistance or deception? I'm unmoored, bereft.

Israel
Palestine
[ this space intentionally left blank ]

The beach at Beit Lahiya.
The soul of a reporter.
The policies of The Editors.

"From Gaza into Israel"
"On a Gaza beach"
First movement and action, then the passive, a mere location.

"Hamas... launched at least 15 Qassam rockets"
"An errant Israeli shell"
First actor then action, then the passive. There's no actor.

Curtis Mayfield spoke the truth
We lost him, I miss him
This is what he sang:

They're all political actors... but they all know
If there's a hell below
We're all going to go

The logical structure of perfidy.
An awful reversal of causality.
The strange architecture of misdirection.

Normally effect follows cause.
Outrage is directed at cause,
And understanding attaches itself to effect.

In the human infrastructure of misdirection,
Cause follows effect,
And cause is itself an effect.

In those middle pages of your newspaper,
Cause is buried by effect,
And outrage attaches itself to effect

All that remains is effect.
Your byline, your story, the passive tense
The Editors, The Gray Lady

Back to front, the story is buried.
Eight dead bodies replaced by abstraction
Grim reality meets editorial necessity

I can't work out this puzzle.
I don't know which facts to dwell on.
I like to play this puzzle at night.

I don't know how to order these paragraphs.
Cut and paste. Cause and effect.
I don't want to play the game.

Do you sleep at night Mr Reporter?
Do you think The Editors sleep at night?
I rewrite your article at night

Her name is Huda Ghaliya.
Her family is dead.
They died on the beach in front of her.

It was a picnic. On the beach.
A shell.
They are all dead.

She cried.
They died.
I cried.

I suspect you cried
Did The Editors cry?
And were the cameras rolling?

Did the world cry?
Errant Israeli shell
15 Qassam rockets

June 11, 2006
Page 6 of the New York Times
The title, your story: buried.

The beach, the picnic, the shell
The cameras, the family: the coffins
The rockets, the funeral, the story

June 12, 2006
Page 8 of the New York Times
New title, the story: gasping.

Night. Sleep. Day
Black. White. Gray.
The Reporter. The Editors. The Gray Lady.

New York Times.
The Reporter.
Hamas Fires Rockets Into Israel, Ending 16-Month Truce

Haaretz.
The spin.
Peretz: Gaza beach blast may have internal Palestinian cause

New York Times
Round two. Politics as Theatre.
Errant Shell Turns Girl Into Palestinian Icon

This is what I read that night
This is what I saw
This is the fog of war

Do you know each other?
Do your editors know the other editors?
This is such a muddle.

My original title: Abject mendacity of New York Times Editors
My draft title: On misdirection and injustice
My published title: The Game of the Rough Beast

I wanted to avenge her.
Instead I wrote a parlour game.
It is my only act of resistance.

I want to stare directly at the heart of darkness.
I hope I won't flinch.
I don't trust myself.

I wonder if you've come close to the rough beast.
I think you've come close to the rough beast.
Have you come close to the rough beast?

I want to know what he looks like.
I don't want to know what he looks like.
I know he's there.

I can only hope that one day you will do a follow-up story on her loss.
I can only hope that one day you will do a follow-up story on the Hamas shelling.
A follow-up story with the same editors.

I can only hope you'll play the game again
The game of cut and paste
The game of cause and effect

Then maybe I'll sleep at night
Then maybe I'll know the rough beast
Then maybe I'll make my own accommodations

I have only my pen to wield
I wonder if you've read this far
I hope you haven't read this far

He is close
I can hear him
A neighbour's house is on fire

I hear her cries.
I see her face.
I play my music

"It's 2am when the party's over
All I wanna do, all I wanna do
I wanna be with you"

Cut and paste.
Cause and effect.
The logical structure of perfidy.

Her name is Huda Ghaliya.
Her family is dead.
They died on the beach in front of her.

I want to avenge her.
Bring them back to the picnic.
Maybe it is better this way.

What kind of injustice is this?
Who is writing the script?
And who is editing it?

What are the names of your editors?
Did you have an editor at all?
I prefer to know them as The Editors.

Let's hear it from the poets
William Blake: Til we have built Jerusalem
William Butler Yeats: Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

Yeats's first cut,
A quotable sort
Everyone remembers this:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

But it's about The Second Coming
The story written afterwards
And everyone forgets it:

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born?

My thesis as it is:
In the School of Hard Knocks
Things Fall Apart beats Heart of Darkness

More practical, bear with me.
Heart of Darkness: Angola, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Congo, Chile, Somalia, El Salvador
Things Fall Apart: Soviet Union, Nigeria...

Try it again, your neck of the woods.
Heart of Darkness: 9/11, Baghdad, Al Zarqawi, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha...
Things Fall Apart: Katrina, Enron, Abramoff, Cunningham...

When I read your article
I was reminded of the poem
"A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun"

I seek a comfort suite
And pray for peace and quiet
The cement of my society

To be out of sight
To live out of mind
A chance to recover

I try to stare at the sun
I want to look into his eyes
Confront him head on:

The rough beast.
Observe his contours
Resist nostalgia

I hope I don't flinch.
I want to cover my eyes
I fall asleep

Help me, Mr Reporter.
Her name is Huda Ghaliya.
The rough beast, The Editors

This thing's a puzzle.
I'm tired of the game.
Where are The Editors?

I wake up on the beach at Beit Lahiya
Where are you, Mr Reporter?
And who are The Editors?

The rough beast lies next to me.
William Blake: Among those dark Satanic Mills
William Butler Yeats: Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born

Yours sincerely.
Sincerely yours.
I'd like some answers.

---

The Game of the Rough Beast
The Reporter and The Editors
The beach at Beit Lahiya

The Second Coming

The Ghaliya family lost four members less than two years ago when an Israeli Army shell hit their farm in Beit Lahiya. Then, as now, the army said it was shelling to try to stop Palestinian fire into Israel.

The Rough Beast

File under: journalism, misdirection, framing, New York Times, editorial, decisions, poetry, literature, Yeats, war, crime, writing, conflict, politics, media, language, deception, observation, loss, waste, grief, spin, outrage, reflection, bias, tone, NYT, Israel, Palestine, Things Fall Apart, The Rough Beast, toli