Reflections From a Murky Pond

It is a long recurring theme, the call to have no regrets and/or to live one’s life without regret. Both the young and the middle-aged seeking to find their lost youth herald this idea as a measure of courage and personal growth.

It is one of the more laughable ideas that I’ve heard issue from the mouths of fools and people trying to sell me something. It also would be dangerous if generally achievable.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that only the severely mentally deficient and/or damaged, the most shallow of narcissists, and total sociopaths could ever hope to achieve a life with no regrets. Let’s concentrate instead upon those deluded fools who might attempt this largely in vain.

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As most Americans know and Liberals bemoan, Keith Olbermann was suspended without pay indefinitely by NBC on November 5, 2010 for violating NBC News ethics policies. Specifically, he was removed for contributing to the election campaigns of three Democratic candidates this election season.

Silencing Olbermann is a great thing for America but I’m not sure this was the way to do it.

The stated reason for NBC’s suspension of the hyper-Liberal Olbermann was that he directly and willfully violated NBC’s Newsroom Policy when he made those donations with the one to Raul Grijalva being made immediately on the same day that Olbermann hosted Grijalva on his show:

Anyone working for NBC News who takes part in civic or other outside activities may find that these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest. Such activities may include participation in or contributions to political campaigns or groups that espouse controversial positions. You should report any such potential conflicts in advance to, and obtain prior approval of, the President of NBC News or his designee.

There is no doubt that Keith Olbermann violated NBC’s policy which is based upon the journalistic ethics code called – ironically given the foul and perfidious degeneration of the NY Times – the code of the Grey Lady.

Where doubt, both ethical and logical, arises is in whether or not such standards and policies should be applied to Olbermann.

The ethical question arises from NBC’s policies themselves. Legal or not, is it right to require as terms of continued employment that employees refrain from full participation in the civic process? These employees are private citizens, and there’s an ethical  issue with any employment requirement that impinges upon their freedoms of speech and association.

The logical problem is nothing more than a result of a logical fallacy based upon an utterly false and well-disproven postulate, that Keith Olbermann is a journalist or even an employee of a news agency. MSNBC is not a news agency by a creditable definition of the term and Keith Olbermann doesn’t even attempt to bear any resemblance to journalist.  Applying the code of the Grey Lady to him is patently ridiculous.

So, for what little it’s worth in the grand scheme of things, I’m ambivalent about Olbermann suspension. I’m ecstatic that he’s been, at least temporarily, stopped from further polluting the airwaves with his filth, but I’m not fond of why he was removed.

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World. Both were dire, dystopian works that speculated upon a horrid future. The two great authors were, however, wildly divergent in their fears and warnings.

George Orwell v. Aldous Huxley – Divergent Distopian Predictions

Both Orwell and Huxley feared a future when we would be a captive culture. Orwell feared captivity by the State but Huxley feared captivity by own venality and pleasure seeking.

Orwell depicted a future society where books were banned and where the State would deprive us of information. Huxley posited a future society where would be no reason to ban a book, because there would be no one who would want to read one, but where so much data would be provided that we would be sunk into egoistic pacifism.

Orwell feared that the State would conceal the truth from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned out by the constant nattering stream of irrelevancies.

Simply put, Orwell feared hate and pain whereas Huxley feared love and pleasure. There is grim sense in both men’s fears; both the “carrot” and the “stick” are used to gain and maintain control.
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On Monday, August 23, 2010 a US federal judge blocked the Obama administration from funding human embryonic stem cell research via the National Institutes of Health (NHS). The court ruled that the President Obama’s planned financial support Human Embryonic Stem Cell (HESC) research violates an existing  federal law barring the use of taxpayer money for experiments that destroy human embryos.

So much for President Obama March 9, 2009 Executive Order 13505, with which he supposedly tried to fund the practice with taxpayer money.

From the Washington Post:

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits the National Institutes of Health from funding the research under the administration’s new guidelines, citing an appeals court’s ruling that the researchers who had challenged the less-restrictive policy have the legal standing to pursue their lawsuit.

The decision, a setback for one of the administration’s most high-profile scientific policies, was praised by opponents of the research.

The preliminary injunction will, if some vestige of the laws of America still exist, be followed with a final ruling that permanently blocks Obama’s directive. This is not because HESC research is wrong but because a President’s Executive Orders do not overrule the laws as created by the Congress and, therefor he cannot approve such funding when a law explicitly prohibits it.

That is a much more important point than whether or not Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research gets federal funding – unless one suddenly likes the idea of the “Imperial Presidency.”

In Aesop fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper a grasshopper spends the warm months singing and idling while the ant worked hard to store up food for long, cold winter. When winter arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger, and upon asking the ant for food and shelter, is rejected and castigated for its idleness and sloth. Soon the grasshopper dies of cold and hunger.

The story was once used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the perils of laziness and improvidence.

That, of course, was a story for a vastly different age. Now such a parable would be derided as an example of greed and the ant would be cast as the villain.  Yet, even so, The Ant and the Grasshopper can be recast in a modern light:

The Ant and the Grasshopper: A Parable For Today

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, NPR, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green…’

ACORN busses in hundreds of angry protesters and stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, ‘We Shall Overcome.’

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper’s sake, demanding that they must kill any God that did not damn this ant.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act, making it retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, rumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing down the rest of the free world with it, and in some dark, but suddenly nearer Hell Pazuzu smiles.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2010 and 2012.

Sadly, we’ve degenerated very far since the time of that 7th Century BC Thracian Fabulist, Aesop became famous across the ancient world as the preeminent teller of fables. Now the Ant would be cast as the rapacious, selfish, capitalist and the Grasshopper as an oppressed minority or an example of “The Ant’s Burden.” 😉