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There’s a saying a number of people my age share: “If you remember the ’70s, it means you didn’t live through them.” British journalist and author Francis Wheen, though, has me thinking that maybe that lack of memory was not chemically induced but, rather, the result of trying to forget.
 With Strange Days Indeed: The 1970s: The Golden Days of Paranoia, Wheen proposes exactly what the subtitle suggests: that the Seventies were “a pungent mélange of apocalyptic dread and conspiratorial fever.” Paranoia may be a psychiatric term, but given that it is defined as a “pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others,” there’s plenty of reason the Seventies could be described as the days of paranoia.
First published in Britain last year and released in the U.S. this month, Strange Days Indeed kicks off its discussion of the 1970s and paranoia with the poster child, Richard Nixon. Depending on perspective, Nixon can be seen as both cause and effect, with his “enemies list” and taping his own conversations while at the same time burglarizing and bugging those perceived enemies. Wheen, though, doesn’t suggest this was solely an American affliction. He points to how the British government struggled to keep on the lights, declared five states of emergency between June 1970 and February 1974 and actually went to three-day workweeks. Then there was Uganda’s Idi Amin and China in the midst of its Cultural Revolution.
Governments weren’t the only entities displaying the symptoms. There seemed to be a worldwide bloom of so-called revolutionary movements, from Italy’s Red Brigades to Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang to America’s Symbionese Liberation Army. Yet many of these groups offered no alternatives to what they opposed. Instead, their terrorism seemed an end rather than a means. “Nihilist hyperbole and exaggerated fury filled the analytical void,” Wheen writes. “It wouldn’t do to admit that they were suffering from little more than existential angst, bourgeois guilt and a nagging discontent at the soullessness and shallowness of consumerist society.”
But politics weren’t the only part of society that seemed to be caught up in a collective derangement. Among those reflecting the tenor of the times was science fiction author Phillip K. Dick. His noted break with reality left him, Wheen says, “trapped in one of his own novels.” For example, Dick wrote numerous letters to the FBI but didn’t mail them. Instead, he put each in an outside trash can, figuring the FBI would get them through its spy operations.
Wheen sometimes tends to overreach a bit in his premise. Certainly, nits could be picked as to whether many of the items he cites are paranoid behavior or symptoms of a widespread anxiety. Additionally, American readers may find a number of British public figures and issues with which they are unfamiliar. And while Wheen’s tour through the Seventies is always tinged with a touch of humor, some readers may want a dictionary handy as they encounter phrases like “corybantic orgy.” Still, Strange Days Indeed has a value not only as history but as a prism on today’s cultural and political psyche.
Wheen’s last book, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, used 1979 as a starting point for examining the growth of conspiracy theory, superstition and the supernatural in so-called modern thinking. Looking back on the decade that preceded that survey, he suggests those familiar with the Seventies may see “flickering glimpses of déjà vu” in this century.
He may be right. Plenty of news stories at the end of 2009 suggested the 2000s were the worst decade ever. Time even ran a cover story last December calling it “the Decade from Hell.” This week Newsweek not only suggested America may truly be in decline, it refers to this as “America’s Age of Angst.” Is that angst merely part of a bad flashback or did the golden days of paranoia produce an irreversible effect? Although that question probably can’t be answered for a few decades and is beyond the scope of Strange Days Indeed, Wheen’s look at the Seventies certainly leaves us more to ponder than just that decade.
[T]he Seventies were about as sober as a meths-swilling vagrant waylaying passers-by to tell them that the Archbishop of Canterbury has planted electrodes in his brain.
Francis Wheen, Strange Days Indeed
Seems a California man’s appointment as a special assistant attorney general by South Dakota AG Marty Jackley is causing a bit of stir in California politics.
California’s FlashReport blog reports that when Republican John Eastman formally filed as a candidate for California Attorney General yesterday, the former law school dean listed his occupation, which will appear on the ballot, as “assistant attorney general.” Eastman, though, is not employed by the California Attorney General’s Office. When asked about the designation, his campaign issued a “ballot designation worksheet” that said, “On February 23, 2010, I was appointed Special Assistant Attorney General by South Dakota Attorney General Marty J. Jackley to represent the state before the Supreme Court of the United States in Reisch v. Sisney, No. 09-953.” The campaign said that means “the ballot designation of Assistant Attorney General is literally accurate and is the most accurate description” of Eastman’s current principal profession and occupation.
Sisney, a South Dakota penitentiary inmate, sued the State seeking damages under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) for alleged interference with his ability to practice his Jewish faith. Both Sisney and the State have asked the Supreme Court to review the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the case. The appeals involve issues regarding whether RLUIPA waives the state’s immunity from suit under the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and whether the RLUIPA violates that part of the federal constitution that limits Congressional spending to pay debts and “to provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.”
Eastman is listed as “counsel of record” on the cross-petition for review the State filed with the Supreme Court, even though it was filed February 9, two weeks before Eastman’s appointment. In the release from his campaign office, Eastman said he will be paid $20,000 for researching and writing that petition and a reply to any opposing brief. If the Supreme Court hears the case, Eastman said he will “expend significant effort” preparing and presenting the written and oral arguments and anticipates billing the state “at least an additional $100,000.”.
Why is the ballot designation such a big deal? According to FlashReport, if it is “upheld by a judge on the invariable court challenge, it will REALLY help Eastman.” None of the other GOP candidates apparently have the funds necessary to run statewide television ads, meaning having “assistant attorney general” printed on the ballot may be a powerful ad in and of itself.
The attorney general is also authorized to appoint assistant attorneys general as he may deem necessary on a part-time basis for special assignments. The attorney general shall fix their compensation and … [s]uch assistant attorneys general shall have the power and authority specifically delegated to them by the attorney general in writing.
SDCL § 1-11-5
Which do you prefer? Lurid, fruity prose, awash in imagery and sensuous textures and colors? Or straight-forward, clean, simple prose?
My journalism degree and background seems to almost demand simple and clean prose. That is called good writing. Now good writing can also be descriptive, but “lurid, fruity prose” would seem the antithesis of good writing.
Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!
William Strunk & E.B. White, The Elements of Style
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism today released its seventh annual report on The State of the News Media. While it covers all variety of media, it certainly bears out the concerns about my old stomping ground — newspapers. (I’m old enough to remember the transition from typewriters to word processors in the newsroom.) Here’s the metaphor the report uses for newspapers: people who deliver the newspaper “are complaining that the Monday edition doesn’t have enough throw-weight to get all the way up the porch.”
The local daily certainly bears that out. A significant problem, of course, is revenues, an area in which newspapers are not the only ones suffering. The study indicates that newspaper ad revenue fell 26% during 2009, bringing the total loss over the last three years to 43%. Both radio and local television ad revenue fell 22% last year, magazine ad revenue dropped 17% and network TV 8% (and news alone probably more). But the real kicker for newspapers is that the study estimates the industry has lost $1.6 billion in annual reporting and editing capacity since 2000, or roughly 30%.
In 2009 alone, an estimated 5,900 full-time newspaper jobs were shed, numbers similar to 2008. hat means roughly one-third of newsroom jobs in American newspapers that existed in 2001 are gone, with the cuts coming in significant part from specialty beats like science, the arts, suburban government and statehouse coverage. These figures threaten an outcome that may make throw-weight concerns irrelevant: newspapers “are flirting with a tipping point where the cutbacks are so great that even loyal audiences give up.”
Across the media board, some of the damage may well be self-inflicted. Attributable in part to cable television and radio, the executive summary observes that 71% of Americans believe most news sources are biased and 70% feel overwhelmed rather than informed by the amount of news and information they see. “Quantitatively,” the study notes, “argument rather than expanding information is the growing share of media people are exposed to today.”
To me, that is more disconcerting than throw-weight: fewer outlets elevating argument over information and objectivity. Combine it all and it’s not a good formula for a marketplace of ideas.
The losses suffered in traditional news gathering in the last year were so severe that by any accounting they overwhelm the innovations in the world of news and journalism[.]
Press release for State of the News Media 2010
By their nature, historic figures tend to be locked on particular periods in their lives. If they also happen to become a key character on television or in film, it is fairly certain they will be forever stereotyped by that portrayal. For many, Seth Bullock has become the handsome, somewhat idealistic and good-hearted sheriff from the HBO series Deadwood. Yet like all human beings, historic figures are always far more or much less than our image of them. With his concise biography, Seth Bullock: Black Hills Lawman, David A. Wolff shows that there was a great deal more to Bullock than commonly believed.
 Indicative of how narrow the perspective of historic figures can be, Bullock served as sheriff for less than 10 months. The rest of his life was spent in pursuit of other activities that Wolff methodically casts into three stages.
Although the first period includes Bullock’s time as sheriff, Wolff terms it a period as “pioneer and politician.” Bullock was a sheriff and legislator in Montana before embarking for the northern Black Hils of what would become South Dakota during the area’s gold rush in the summer of 1876. Yet indicative of his future activity, Bullock was not a wide-eyed gold prospector but, with his partner Solomon Star, headed to Deadwood, then little more than a mining camp, to open a hardware store with a fireproof storage facility. It was a business venture that would last nearly 25 years.
Just 11 days after arriving, Bullock was elected to the nascent community’s first attempt at self-government and was appointed sheriff when county governments were created the following year. By that time, the town had a population of probably less than 5,000 but about 60 saloons. Although Bullock focused on bigger issues than disorderly miners, he was ousted in an election later that year. Bullock remained active in and a booster of the community, such as promoting the creation of a fire department. Promotion, even speculation, would mark the next phase of Bullock’s life, a stage which, ironically, would find destructive fires affecting both its beginning and end. And while his role as sheriff might define him to the public years later, he did not become an Old West legend like other Deadwood personalities such as Wild Bill Hickok. That’s because, Wolff writes, “Bullock’s story did not contain the requisite amount of bloodshed.”
Bullock spent much of the 1880s and 1890s pursuing business interests while at the same time seeking to help their survival by promoting economic development and trying to gain railroad access for the Black Hills. His investments were varied and included mining, ranching and even breeding horses for harness racing. At one point in 1886, he was president of no less than 13 newly formed mining companies. According to Wolff, Bullock tended more towards being an idea man, often leaving the day-to-day work to others. Between that and the somewhat speculative nature of many of the efforts in which he was involved and invested, Bullock’s personal economic well-being was quite sensitive to the vagaries of the local and national economy. Even though this phase of Bullock’s life doesn’t have and can’t be described with the excitement or imagery of the rowdy mining town of lore, Wolff details not only the variety oif Bullock’s ideas and investments but the boom and bust cycles he faced.
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Bullock’s level of investment and boosterism declined. His spirits were re-enaged by the Spanish-American War, an event that would contribute to public service becoming the final predominant theme of his life. Bullock headed up a cavalry troop made up of volunteers from the Black Hills. While the troop never left the U.S., Bullock gained some attention in the national media as Deadwood’s Old West sheriff. Equally important, the service strengthened Bullock’s ties with Teddy Roosevelt, who he had met in the early 1890s. Back in the Black Hills after the war, in 1901 Bullock was appointed superintendent of the Black Hills Forest Reserve.
In his introduction to the book, Wolff, a professor of history at Black Hills State University, suggests Bullock “was the most important person in the Black Hills in his lifetime.” If so, perhaps the widest impact stems from being forest supervisor and pushing for and implementing multiple use of the forest. This approach would help bring a balance between economic development and preservation of the resources that were the foundation of that development. There is less detail in this portion of the book, which may well stem from the fact that the source material likely is not lively, contemporaneous frontier newspaper accounts and public records but official documents of a government bureaucracy. Bullock would ultimately return to law enforcement, though, serving as South Dakota’s U.S. Marshall from 1906 to 1914.
When Bullock died in Deadwood in 1919, both the town and the region were far different from the Old West image that town carries to this day. That change reinforces the subtitle in the sense that Bullock was one of the guiding forces in converting the lawlessness of the mining camps into the type of order necessary to create viable communities. In so doing, Wolff makes it clear that viewing Bullock only through the prism of a frontier town sheriff is to do him and history a disservice.
By the early twentieth century, Bullock was more than willing to tell stories about his early days in Deadwood, embellishing them where he thought appropriate.
David A. Wolff, Seth Bullock: Black Hills Lawman
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