BE roll

Everyone should write their own obit…

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 15:48:18 -0500

First off, no – I’m not ill or dying.

Just got to thinking about what might be written about me after I do die and it scared me. Nice things, like “loving wife and mother” or “sweet” or “hard working”. Shit like that.

The truth may not be pretty but it is still the truth.

So I’m working on my obit this week. It will be painful, sad, funny and more like me than what someone else thinks.

Once it is written, re-written, edited and then mulled over and gone thru the process a few times I may even post it here for laughs.

Camera update

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 03:12:56 -0500

It never ends dammit…

So since around 2006 I’ve beenposting what I consider the minimum features needed in order to be able to shoot decent visual stories. This has included:

Mike input
Headset out
Decent zoom capacity
Decent ISO/ASA capacity
Manual controls

Accessories would include a headset, microphone (back in the day that would be a stick mike, shotgun mike, lav mike. All with cables initially and then when I could affortd it (retired now on a fixed income) a wireless kit. And of course some kind of portable light. Tungsten then fluorescent then (and now) LED. And my personal favorite: a good tripod.

2006 was right after that paradigm shift – the Digital Revolution where we moved from (originall) film then to tape then to what was called “digital tape” and then fully digital. No tape.

No tape was non-linear. No need to cruise through reams of tape trying to find that single shot or interview segment. Well…ya really do need to do some cruising if you don’t remember what you shot or what someone else shot and you’re stuck editing. Rather than one long ass physical piece of tape you can now look at clips and only dive into those you need.

So here goes off the top of my greying head. What I’d look for in a camera with restrictions.

Under $2K if at all possible for body and basic lens.
Shoots 4K (in addition to HD 720 & 1080).
Mike input
Headset out
Uses reasonably priced media (SD/SDHC cards are my choise these days)
Wireless mike kit
LED light or light kit
A good but not too heavy tripod (as we age we can’t handle the heavy stuff as much)

Now it’s time to head over to my Mecca – B&H Photography. I like them because they have a solid website that is easy to search. You may have a favorite of your own, so go with that if you want. Note: no favors passed on by B&H to me.

First decision is what body do I want. The choices in the green bar are Photography or Camcorders. Going with the latter for now. The difference is that a camcorder generally has a lens permanently mounted on it. If you can find one with a decent wide angle to tele zoom, great. As I’ve aged I’ve found I like have a variety of lenses to choose from. I’ll get into choosing a camcorder towards the end.

Now that I’ve chosen Photography, I click on Digital Cameras. More than 1300 cameras to pick from. Ignore brand and scroll down to ratings and click on the four and five star reviews by customers. Number is now at 1290.

Price range $300 to $1500. I’m leaving the extra $500 for tripod, mikes, lights, shipping. Down to 341 choices.

Sensor size is important for ability to capture in low light and video quality. So clicking off 1″, 4/3, APS-C, and Full Frame. 300 cameras left to chose from.

For video resolution going with 1080 and 4K. 285.

Features – mike input, headset out, swivel/tilt LCD, built-in viewfinder. The rotatable LCD makes for easier low/high shots and the viewfinder makes seeing on bright days easier. 50.

Card choise – SD and down to 49. Now it’s time to look at the details. Up at the top on the right hand side is a button you can chose for sorting the cameras. Stuff like Featured, Low to High, High to Low, Best Rated, Alphabetical, Newet, etc. Going with Low to High.

For $799 the choices are:

Panasonic Lumix G95 M4/3 with 12-60 lens
Nikon D7500 DSLR body only
Canon EOS M4/3 body only
Panasonic Lumix G95 pops up again, this time with a camera bad and SD card

And from there the prices just start climbing. Looking at cameras up around $1500 you’ll see:

CanonOES R7 Mirro6rless camera body only
Sony a7iii Mirrorless camera body only
Sony A6700 Mirrorless camera body only
Nikon Z50 ii Mirrorless camera with 18-140 lens
Panasonic Lumix S5

If you are a brand specific person, go with what you know. Read the customer reviews. Google the models and read independent review. At least with this search you’ve narrowed your choices down to a handful.

Personally I fell in love with the Panasonic Lumix GH line years ago and have slowly built up my lens collection. Paired with the Rode Go (original) wireless kit or Synco wireless kit and an Angler Sparta 7×9 LED light with stand and a small but sturdy Manfrotto Compact Action tripod I’m ready for anything. Best of all it won’t break my back.

Let’s go back to choice of body type and go with Camcorder. In the next field you can choose Action Cameras, Consumer Cameras, Camcorders, or specialty VR/360 cameras. The Camcorders start at close to $1300, so gonna choose Consumer Cameras.

There are 31 choices ranging from $84 to $1349. Again choosing Customer Ratings of 4 and 5 stars. Down to 15 choices.

Price range of $300 to $1500. 13 choices.

Camcorder type let’s go with Palm held. 6.

Mike input/down to 5. Electronic viewfinder and down to 2.

$950 for the Sony FDR-AX43A

$1349 for the Canon Vixia HF G70

Another tool you can use is to click the “Compare” boxes. Since we only have two to look at here (and you’re limited as to how many you can compare at once, let’s try it. Click on both camera “Compare” boxes and then below click on “Compare These Items.”

And now you can scroll down and directly compare features.

Enjoy. It’s late and I need my sleep.

NEARLY TWO DECADES…

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 01:41:01 -0500

I’ve always been a visual person…kind of.

Back in elementary and high school I loved writing. Creative writing and then writing in the reverse pyramid of news. Even whilst honing my skills with my first camera and learning to love the possibilities and smells of the darkroom.

Post-college I learned the awful truth of those days. Print news was not friendly to young women who wanted to work behind the camera. Something called descimination. And it stretched out to cover anyone who was not white and male.

Well of course times changed (thank you FCC for mandating that women and minorities should have equal ops in industries using federal airwaves). I got my dream job as a TV news camera(wo)man and hung in there for nearly thirty years.

Entered my second career as a high school broadcast/slash/English teacher. Meh.

That renewed my interest in writing…so mid-academic career I learned about blogging and started this site.

That was way back in 2006.

The blog thrived for years and then fell into the background as all things do eventually. Replaced by social media with less of a commitment to in-depth thinking…flashier. Quicker outreach and responses.

But now I’m drawn back. I’m 75 this year. With age you slow down and if you’re lucky you’ve become wiser. Not too sure about the latter in my case but I have slowed down.

And I want to muse…to ponder. To think.

Again.

Watch.

This.

Spot.

Thank you.

Is blogging dead? I don’t know, but I’m back…

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:22:35 -0500

This began in 2006 in my (relative) youth when I first learned about blogging as a way to share experiences and knowledge. Then around 2015 or perhaps a bit earlier I felt as if my brain had been emptied and I had nothing more to share.

But now I’m older. Hopefully wiser.

And there may be more to share.

As I’ve gotten older (now 75) I’ve had to shift to lighter, less professional gear. Prosumer babycams, M43 digital cams (my personal favorite is the Panasonic GH line) and accompanying “accessories”.

So to get to it here’s the first real review in years of the new https://beachtek.com/product/dxa-micro-pro/ that came in yesterday.

Here’s what I’ve found out.

Marketing – you’re always the best

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 12:43:38 -0500

While at a Farmer’s Market this morning I was reminded of the adage that you should always be “the best” at something. There was a young nut salesman describing his range. “This is our best seller”, “this one is my personal favorite” (the one I think is best), “this one is the hottest” and so […]

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Riding the wild slide through life…

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 01:32:02 -0600

Whoooeeee!

I began this blog in 2006 when at the ripe young age of 56 I felt a need to communicate…to share knowledge and bitch and ramble on about life.

Here we are 22 years later and the urge is growing again…

To capsulize: I spent 28 years as a broadcast news cameraman (editor, live truck occasional operator, videojournalist…the latter at the end of this career). Then moved on to ten years of teaching high school broadcasting, multimedia and English (and a few other classes that shall remain nameless).

Then. Retirement.

Well that didn’t take…I actually “retired” and the took up freelancing for anyone who’d hire and old “lady”. Ditch that. I now call myself a termagant (don’t be lazy…look it up). Freelancing carried me along until my total and official retirement from being paid to work in 2016. That took.

But the passion to tell visual stories never died…it grew and consumed me and I found a very understanding local publisher for an online magazine who actually seemed to appreciate my work. Rich Turner of Soundings Journal.

So for the past seven or eight years visual stories pop up on his site.

I guess I’ll continue to shoot, write, edit until my body or mind goes. Or maybe not. Wanna see what a crazy old lady sees? Stick with me.

BTW here’s one of my favorites – Mt. Diablo Beacon

Transfer woes…

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 14:57:30 -0500

There is no depth to the dispair I’m feeling. My old blog was invisible due to a template change I made some time ago. Went thru all the hoops to create a new template and export/import all old posts to it. But to no avail. Still invisible.

Please bear with me as I attempt to overcome the Lords of Time and Space in reacquiring my backstories…

Take a Breath. AI isn’t coming for your job, not today anyway!

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 10:22:28 -0500

The rate of change in all areas AI related can be overwhelming. In fact the closer you follow it, the more overwhelming it becomes! Technologies that didn’t exist a year ago, are iterating so quickly it’s hard to keep up. Here’s the good news. You don’t have to keep up, at least not just yet. […]

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Generative AI Devalues Experience

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:56:33 -0500

In reading how Generative AI, particularly ChatGPT and other Large Language Models, are being used in creative workflows and corporate support setting, it’s become very clear that GPT* devalues experience. *I’m using GPT as a generic reference to all Large Language Models. A recent article, that I’ve lost the reference to, talked about a “large […]

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The New Paradigm: Fast, Great and Free

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 09:55:36 -0600

For my entire production life, I’ve heard the trope that you can have any two of “Fast, Good or Cheap,” and it has been true that entire time. Except that today’s release of Lumberjack Builder version four completely breaks the paradigm. For the first time you can have Fast, Great (accurate) transcripts for free, completely […]

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Editing Tools are Evolving – Again!

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 08:46:09 -0600

Anyone who’;s been in the production industries for any length of time has already navigated many technology changes: from analog to digital, SD to HD, SDR to HDR and so on. Avid Media Composer was first out the digital Non-Linear Editing gate, and pretty much every other interface was inspired by the design decisions made […]

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AI is Singing, and Dancing!

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 10:46:18 -0500

It’s no secret that I started to learn to sing back in 2014 because I had been very bad a Karaoke. Eight and a bit years later I’m “competent” as a singer. What’s mildly annoying about it that, in far less time, researchers have taught AI entities to sing, and even have them accepted as […]

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A Glimmer of Hope Detecting Deepfakes

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 10:02:56 -0500

A deepfake allows us to animate any face and have it say whatever we want that face to say. Useful in resurrecting long dead actors (or recently dead to finish a movie), but incredibly dangerous when it – inevitably – it moves into the political arena. Exonet describes the problem in great detail in this […]

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It’s been nearly a year…

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 14:34:14 -0500

…since I checked in here. But no worries, I’m still very much alive and active. Perhaps TOO active.

If you’re curious and have the time, here’s my latest story. Enjoy.

Chinese Gambling Tokens

Images, Motion, Animation, Music and Edit all from Text Prompts, but what’s the real end game?

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 14:24:12 -0500

While video dominates most communication and entertainment, it seems like Artificial Intelligence thrives on text. There’s a lot of new and quite diverse tools for using text prompts for image generation, 3D model creation, Human avatar movement, Animation and editing, all driven with text prompts. While text prompts are the current interface, they are not […]

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Actors signing up for AI assisted Digital “after careers” as Deepfakes Flourish

Sun, 02 Oct 2022 15:55:00 -0500

With examples like James Earl Jones “signing over rights to” his Darth Vader voice to an artificial intelligence startup, and Bruce Willis selling rights to his “image/personea” to a Deepfake company so his digital twin can continue to perform (and earn income for his family), it seems there is a career for your digital likeness […]

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Synthetic Newsreaders Move from Lab to Product

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 12:43:55 -0500

In the Amplified Actors article last September, I spoke of some experiments from 2018 and later at the BBC and NHK with synthetic newsreaders. Those “experiments” are now productized and available from Virtual Human startup Hour One, with their text driven AI anchors and newsrooms. In my article I spoke of an experiment with Multilingual […]

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Netflix’s Validation Framework for Unreal Engine Cements Unreal in the Cinematic Universe

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 12:47:25 -0500

If I were staring my career now, I’d be focusing on Artificial Intelligence and Unreal Engine. One for making me more creative, and one opening a whole storytelling universe “on my desktop.” Given that I focused on post production because it had air conditioning, being able to control my “shooting universe” in air conditioning is […]

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AI and the Music Video

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 10:30:01 -0500

Whether or not Artificial Intelligence can ever be creative is an ongoing question. In the Unreal blog they highlighted a project Words, camera, action: Creating an AI music video with Unreal Engine 5. As is usually the case with creative projects, it was a collaboration between human creators and a multiplicity of Machine Learning ‘algorithms’ […]

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A Clear Example of Postmodern Media Participation

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 10:26:33 -0500

DISCLAIMER: I know I’m getting up there in age, but there’s still enough bark in me to yap when something chafes my understanding of media and postmodernism. This is a story about media, postmodernism, volleyball, and why we shouldn’t hesitate to participate in all of it. I apologize for burying the lede, but I have to tee this up for those not familiar with my work.

To review, Western Civilization has had two major disruptions to previous cultures, thereby changing its entire thrust. In Premodern times, the cultural mantra was “I believe, therefore I understand.” The Roman church was the most powerful institution, and they held on until the creation of moveable type. Since the Bible was closely-guarded by the Priests, Gutenberg’s printing of the Bible was viewed as heresy by the church. However, individuality was on its inevitable rise, because people could read the Bible for themselves and discover that the church had nefarious reasons for hiding the text. When John Wycliffe published the first common English language version of the text, he said, “This book shall make possible government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The church dug up his bones after his death and burned them in a Paris ceremony.

The printing of books brought the Academy back to prominence, along with a new mantra for the culture: “I think and reason, therefore I understand.” This brought about the Modern era and the culture drifted to logic and what I call “The Management Culture,” one that was led by commonly-embraced varieties of one-potato, two-potato, three-potato, four thinking. Follow the rules, and you’ll succeed. This era hosted the industrial revolution and incredible advancements in health, science, manufacturing, education, and beyond. It also produced the “Greatest Generation”, those who fought World War Two and won. Then came the baby boomers and the rebellion against all this, for it was pretty clear that the only ones who truly benefitted from Modernism were those at the top of life’s pyramid.

The boomers brought us the personal computer and the internet, and suddenly everybody was connected to everybody else. The WWW was brand new in cultural thinking, but most people still cling to Modernity in the same way the church objected to Gutenberg and Wycliffe. In a world where everyone is connected — what Jay Rosen called “The Great Horizontal” — we’ve now created a new method of communicating. The top can still talk to the bottom (mass marketing), and the bottom can still talk to the top (although through the top’s filters). What’s different today is that the bottom can talk to the rest of the bottom, and that is changing things forever.

So, we’re now in the era of Postmodernism, where the mantra Is now: “I participate, therefore I understand.” We have to figure some things out, but the bottom is perfectly capable of running things through less selfish means than the modernist culture employed. We all will participate, but new thinking is coming about very slowly. And, this sets the stage for my little story.

In the world of girls’ and women’s volleyball — one that’s exploding unawares — there is a publication known as PrepVolleyball.com that requires the participation of those in the sport. It’s one of the key media companies involved in the massive growth of girls volleyball, because they provide rankings, lists, tournament summaries, and much more, all with the intent of providing a single location where volleyball at the club and prep levels can be centered. There are other specific websites that also provide great services, but PrepVolleyball.com is attempting to get their arms completely around youngsters involvement in the sport. Volleyball is not only the biggest participatory sport for young girls in the U.S., but it’s also the fastest-growing.

So, here’s what I need to tell you. PrepVolleyball is a media company that requires the cooperation of everybody participating in the sport. I complained about how there are zero players from Alabama involved in their rankings and lists, and it’s because the schools and clubs here are governed by people who cannot see the handwriting on the wall. Hence, no athletes from Alabama are displayed in what is an extremely useful tool for coaches and administrators during the recruiting process and beyond. Here’s a little of what James Pompeo from the publication told me:

“If Alabama wants more representation there are a few things that need to occur. The first, is that when we open submission for awards, commitments, seasonal updates, and more…. Players, parents, and coaches need to participate. If we have no submissions, there can be no recognition. For instance, we repeatedly sent out emails, free articles, and social media posts about our upcoming Academic All-Americans list, and we received ONE submission from Alabama. No subscription was needed to nominate a player.
Secondly, and this is most likely out of both of our control, teams from Alabama have to compete with the best of the best, that is in the OPEN divisions. Otherwise they can’t be seen or written about. We only have so many eyes and ears. So, we can’t be everywhere. That’s why it’s important that teams compete at the National level. That’s where we operate the most.
If those things happen, then Alabama will be recognized, represented, and celebrated.”

I’ve contacted so many people about this that I’m really making a pest of myself, but here’s the point. One of those groups that I contacted was the Southern Regional Volleyball Association, who immediately washed their hands of responsibility by taking a Modernist position on media. Here is the key line from an email from the Commissioner, William Kenyon:

“It would be on PrepVolleyball.com to market their services and raise awareness of their product in Alabama.”

No, no, no! A thousand times no. This is the old way of thinking, and who’s to argue with the logic? However, today’s culture demands that the coaches, players, and parents of volleyball players in Alabama simply need to cooperate and participate with the media company. In this sense, the participators in the sport can write their own headlines by becoming partners with PrepVolleyball.com, just like those people from the “markets” that do cooperate.

What Mr. Kenyon doesn’t realize is that they, too, ARE a part of PrepVolleyball.com, media partners in creating and maintaining the universe that belongs to them. There is tremendous power in the bottom assuming responsibility for themselves, and PrepVolleyball.com should be rewarded for their efforts to manage and maintain the site. Postmodern institutions will all function this way sooner or later. It’s the essence of The Great Horizontal.

I believe this is a great illustration of the times we’re going through. Everybody is a media company today. Citizen involvement with the press is at an all-time high, and citizen journalism itself is blossoming in a great many places, youTube being chief among them. Imagine an influencer waiting for publications to contact them. It’s just astonishing to me.

And, I won’t give up.

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Five AI Tools you can use right now

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 17:33:10 -0500

If you’ve used Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro or Blackmagic Resolve you are already using some Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning tools. Final Cut Pro is catching up with the others in their use of Machine Learning tools in their NLEs. It’s likely that some of these stand alone tools, or features from them, will migrate into […]

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The Right’s Most Dreadful Fear: The T in LGBTQ

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 15:21:24 -0500

Before I begin, let’s agree that this is a kind of “loaded-gun” topic and that you’ll grant me at least a little license to develop an argument, around which we might be able to actually talk to each other. I’m speaking of the one letter in the LGBTQ alphabet that right-wing Christians abhor the most, that being the T for Transgender. The divide here seems unbreachable, but let’s look anyway.

For the science perspective, let’s turn to Scientific Direct, where transgenderism is defined as such:

…transgenderism is physiological in origin, and according to this study, it may be related to events during prenatal neurological development…
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, transgenderism refers to the broad spectrum of people who transiently or persistently identify with a gender different from their natal sex (DSM 5, APA, 2013). Indeed, male-to-female transgender (or transwomen or transgender women) describes individuals assigned male at birth but who later in life identify and live as women (Hembree et al., 2017). Many, but not all transgender people, seek a social or a somatic transition in order to alleviate the significant distress (called Gender Dysphoria) resulting from the incongruence between the body and the gender identity.

The Urban Dictionary’s top definition of transgenderism is a wee bit different, for it includes the view of at least some who refer to themselves as transgender:

A concise word for referring to anything and everything within and behind the state, experience, theory, ideology, perspective, premise, perspective, belief, philosophy, etc, of that which is, was, or can be “transgender”.
It is simply the corollary of words like “homosexuality”, “gayness”, “lesbianism”, or “bisexuality”.
The word itself has no positive or negative implication. Anyone who tells you that it does, is an overreactive activist.
I’m so tired of arguments online over transgenderism.

From The Legonier, which offers a “Christian” perspective:

…“Transgendered” became “transgender” after 2015 to indicate the new idea: that transgenderism is ontological, or something that is true of a person’s very essence. Today, the psychological condition where a person feels like their personal identity does not match their anatomical sex is called gender dysphoria. And there is a strong push in our culture to agree with the transgendered movement that when one’s gender, defined as their feelings of being male or female, conflicts with the biological markers of maleness or femaleness, the feelings are determinative…
…Not all who claim to be transgendered, however, are suffering from a biological defect, and even some who are cannot reduce their feelings to a biological cause. Personal sin is still a reality. How does that come into play? Transgenderism, from the perspective of Scripture, is related to the sin of envy. Specifically, transgenderism is, at root, sinful envy of the sexual anatomy of another.

You can begin to see the problem, for one’s understanding determines the definition. Toss in the word “sin”, and there can be no debate. Consequently, this is a can of worms for intellectual discussion, and the view at the ground level can be daunting. This is especially true in the rural south, where ideas of being a man include deeply ingrained and highly competitive raising of male children who are capable of taking care of themselves and their families, regardless of the personal cost to them. To accomplish their goal, white, southern, rural men — referred lovingly among themselves as Rednecks — build their curriculum using what they call “traditional” norms that include racist hatred (“they’re trying to take what’s ours, including our children”). To these people, those who say they’re transgender are actually just pretending, because a man is a man, and a woman is a woman. They don’t want their kids pretending to be what they’re not.

Rural southerners are willing to leave alone those who make this claim, but they draw the line at public displays of same-sex — or what appears to be — affection, which is why Disney’s “Lightfoot” is such a flop at the box office. The film shows a same-sex kiss, and Disney is being vilified publicly for it. Disney! Imagine that?

Transgender is an overarching pejorative for anything that isn’t locked into the narrative of one man, one woman, married and bearing children. And yet, in his memoir about Redneck Culture, The Righteous Redneck’s Journey to Love, Keith Coffell recalls being taken into the woods at age 12 by his best friend, who was 13 at the time, and his friend’s father. There, they both raped him, and the point is that this was male-on-male rape, so the argument about homosexuality being culturally unacceptable is both hypocritical and outrageous. This was a part of Keith’s “training” to be what he called a “Redneck Soldier” in fighting the war against those who would want to change their lifestyle, namely those liberals in Washington.

So, the issue really isn’t as black and white as it seems, and those who complain the hardest are those who are most desperately afraid that they might “catch” it, or worse, someone in their family might. They wouldn’t ever wish to be part of a minority, for they know very well how those are treated, so they strike out in defense of their perceived majority maleness. This raises a wall between themselves and the rest of culture, one that is never really discussed among themselves. Disdain for such is considered “right”, because they see themselves as defenders of the way it’s always been.

For others, the concept of the T is an affront to intelligence, those who look around and see the world gone wacky and feel they must put their foot down on all of this acting out. Just because one “feels” like the opposite sex, they argue, doesn’t mean it’s actually so. These people seem to understand “gay” but think of transgenderism as extreme, disgusting, and unnatural, especially when it comes to medical “treatments” that include a physical transition to the opposite sex. For men, this means medications to alter body chemistry to remove masculine features and replace them with hormones that produce more femininity, like smooth skin and breasts, and removal of their sex organs and replacing them with artificially-created vaginas. While some believe that the T represents all of the other letters in the acronym, this extreme variation is what offends the intelligence or common sense of a great many Americans.

There are also stories surfacing about some who’ve undergone transition surgery only to later change their minds. Many publications have written about “transition regret” with even WebMD recommending physicians be cautious and referencing the 2nd annual Genspect conference on March 12, appropriately identified as #DetransitionAwarenessDay:

“There is growing concern among many doctors and other healthcare professionals as to whether this is, in fact, the best way to proceed for those under aged 18, in particular, with several countries pulling back on medical treatment and instead emphasizing psychotherapy first…
…“This is a minority within a minority,” said Genspect advisor Stella O’Malley, adding that the first meeting in 2021 was held because “too many people were dismissing the stories of the detransitioners.” O’Malley is a psychotherapist, a clinical advisor to the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, and a founding member of the International Association of Therapists for Desisters and Detransitioners.
“It’s become blindingly obvious over the last year that…‘detrans’ is a huge part of the trans phenomenon,” said O’Malley, adding that detransitioners have been “undermined and dismissed.”

However, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) is a 501©3 Christian organization created to provide “experts” to present their point-of-view on Transgenderism to the courts. Detransition Awareness Day is their creation, another vehicle for spreading Christian propaganda that they hope will “balance” coverage of this controversial cultural matter. Here’s a fascinating story from TransSafety that uncovers the SEGM’s slight-of-hand:

A ongoing tactic among evangelical and conservative groups in the United States is to build up stables of anti-LGBT expert witnesses, to provide biased evidence to court cases which are not well suited to establishing a clear picture of scientific consensus (absent major professional bodies intervening) and comparing competing scientific evidence from each other. The experts used have valid medical and academic qualifications, but are often operating outside of their primary speciality, and giving evidence out of step with wider scientific consensus.

The fundamentalist Christians who make up a big part of the Republican Party are using this artificially-created confusion to remain steadfast in their beliefs that this is nothing more than basic sin for which practitioners must repent and move along.

And in so doing, they prove that their capacity as leaders of the free world is unacceptable, for they do not wish to lead those who don’t practice their brand of everything, including self-control.

Imagine that! Trying to legislate self-control.

Good luck, folks.

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Speaking at Entertainment & Artificial Intelligence Event in Montreal

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 19:08:37 -0500

I just got back from Montreal with my brain full of thoughts about AI. Sharing these with you and looking forward to your reflections. Please feel free to comment back!

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The Temerity to Speak For God

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 16:19:28 -0500

Courtesy JW.com

There are a lot of voices and views presented in today’s culture wars, but who speaks for God? I’m serious. The question, of course, assumes the existence of the God of the Book, the God who historically involves Himself in the lives of His creation, the very top of which is humankind. After all, we can’t have an argument with the people of the Book without a determination of the will of God in matters important to them or us.

The Book points out that we should read the signs before us. Believers of every stripe must look around and judge for themselves if the leanings of the Christian Right, for example, are a part of that will. The same applies to those on the left and all human religions. Where is God in our dealings with each other in this, the 21st Century since the Christ? For sure, the signs are all around us.

At CBN in the 80s (and today), we proclaimed ourselves to be “Sons of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” This, of course, gave us permission to speak on behalf of the will of God as it pertained to current events. You may think of this as a weak justification, and you’d be right, because it’s entirely self-proclaimed.

This proclamation is alive and well on the right today, and the justification Is still very weak. As we attempt to read the signs, let’s ask ourselves a few obvious questions:

Is Covid19 a part of His judgment against unrighteousness among us? How about the volcanoes and hurricanes? What do we think of all the mass killings in the U.S. just this year alone? Why do we so ardently cling to our weapons, if we trust in God for our protection? Have you seen the pictures from Lake Mead? How about that Yellowstone flooding? Well, Terry, that’s what we call LaNina, that area of cold (or not) water just southwest of the U.S. that controls our weather. Okay, but how does LaNina get there? I mean, either you’re going to believe in God, or you aren’t. And if you believe that God still rules in the lives of humans, then it might be useful to take a close look at all these extreme “natural” phenomenon, or what we call “disasters”. Is what we view as a disaster simply God trying to make things right?

The brilliant Umair Haque, one of the most acclaimed thinkers alive today, has written of this in an essay called The End of the World as We Know It — But I Don’t Feel Fine.

Look, let’s just be real for a second. Think about the Biblical apocalypse. Like what parts of it aren’t seemingly on our doorstep yet? We’ve got, let’s see, the pandemics, floods, fires, the nations falling, the people turning on each other, the animals dying. That doesn’t mean you should head for the nearest church pew, and bow. Do it if you want, if you need to. I’m just pointing out that it’s literally getting classically and literally apocalyptic out there.

The fundamentalist Christians in our midst would immediately scream that these examples are God’s judgment against the liberals who want to force their sin and iniquity on the rest of us. (Damn those awful sinners!) One can easily see how that view is convenient, but is the possible destruction of California really that, or is it the foolishness of building on a major fault line? If “the big one” ever happens, this will be a part of the aftermath discussions.

However, to find the answer, we must turn to the Book and explore signs that were attributed to God and His judgment. The first place to look is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah through the story of Lot and his family in the book of Genesis. Sexual sin — specifically sodomy — was attributed to both communities, known as the cities on the plain. God tells Lot that he’s going to destroy the cities and “urges” Lot to flee with his family and not to look back with fondness as He destroys all of the inhabitants of the area. Lot’s wife looked back, the story goes, and God turned her into a pillar of salt. This story is used throughout history to preach against sexual sin, and it was very effective in turning the audience into passive and submissive members of the human race. They were directed to look to their leaders — those who speak on behalf of their view of God — for guidance, as the subsequent hierarchy advanced.

But they get this story of Sodom and Gomorrah all wrong, for it has nothing to do with sexual sins but rather the self-centered nature that prompted such behavior. Here’s the text from Ezekiel, chapter 16:

“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it.”

Therefore, this “disaster” was brought upon them by their own greed, avarice, covetousness, envy and more. And, since we’re talking about the Old Testament God, the people had prophets in their midst to warn them when their rulers rejected God. This is what we’re missing in today’s religious-based conflict between the right and the left. Who has the temerity to speak for God? I don’t hear it anywhere, and the only ones claiming to do so are biased on behalf of the right, another form of self-justification.

And the Old Testament prophets were not from the best families or communities; they were the long-haired hippy types of society back then, rebels who railed against the ruling authorities by reminding them that God put them on the throne and, therefore, He would decide whether the king’s reign would be prosperous or otherwise. It was based on the behavior of the king with regards to his duties over the people. A great example of this is when Jeremiah went to King Shallum to prophesy over him. Shallum gained the throne upon the death of his father Josiah, one of the most righteous kings in the history of Israel. Shallum, however, had turned away from God. Jeremiah spoke of Josiah when he said, “He (Josiah) pleaded the cause of the poor and the afflicted and then it was well with him. Is this not what it means to know me, saith the Lord.” This summarizes the messages of all the prophets, and it puts us on notice that we’ll always have responsibilities towards the poor and the afflicted. We hear none of this from anyone today, and it’s especially stunning that, in the age of social media, we can’t recognize the prophets among us. They are there, most likely in the arts community, perhaps among the most ardent observers of culture, the comedians. Of course, this would be a joke to those who practice their piety before men while suffering from oxygen deprivation atop their self-created pedestals. These people most definitely do NOT speak for God.

In fact, the saving of one’s own ass from the hellfire of the next life forms a selfish basis for all of evangelicalism, Christian or otherwise. For people of the Book, this is the core gift that Jesus died to give us, but it’s a bizarre form of logical mischief designed to empower the church, not the human race. Evangelical churches count the number of “salvations” they produce, which is surely a sign of the importance they place on the act of convincing others to “turn their lives over to Jesus”, a big part of which is participating in “missions” to convert others throughout the world. All it accomplishes is to add to the enormous mass that must live their lives for tomorrow, because the deal they’ve made with the church is to be their obedient servants, and that doesn’t always mean serving God.

The saddest note in all of this for me is that it impacts the lives of very good and well-intentioned human beings. I just don’t see a way out for them. They have rejected Life’s heaven — which exists in the here and now moment — for an artificial and self-serving “gospel” that makes heaven only available after death. We are truly amphibians, as C.S. Lewis taught us, capable of living in two realms at the same time. One is life “under the sun”, which is described brilliantly in the book of Ecclesiastes. The second realm is the spirit, and that is our real home, for we are spiritual beings on human journeys, not the other way around. We can’t be more spiritual than we already are, so suggestions for “spiritual growth” are really quite a waste of the time we’ve been given under the sun. We should instead be seeking how to become better human beings, and that message is a million miles from contemporary evangelicals who claim they speak for God.

They most certainly do not.

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The Desperate Need To Be ‘Somebody’

Sat, 28 May 2022 08:55:58 -0500

Like a great many others in the days following the atrocity in Uvalda, Texas, I struggled to make sense of it all. My first thought was that this was a crime of rage and that there’s too much rage in our culture. I’ve changed my mind, however, because I now believe that these crimes are birthed of fear. Nothing else can produce the kinds of behavior we’re seeing with these shootings. We can talk about gun control, poor use of background checks, and mental illness, but I think it’s all motivated by fear — specifically, the fear of being a nobody. From social media “influencers” to billionaires and their rockets, it seems as though everybody else is succeeding in life. But what about those who don’t succeed, or worse, can find no way that they could ever share in what they’re seeing on television or their phones?

The correct term for this is envy, one of the seven deadly sins. Envy is not the same as coveting; it’s much more intensely personal. It’s entirely driven by our egos, for a healthy self is content to let life be in charge, to simply blossom where they’re planted.

Back in the mid-1970s, I went through a season in my life of hanging only with African-American friends. I dressed in silky Superfly clothes, with wide and long shirt collars — open with chest hair on display — and, of course, the jewelry. I went to the black bars and hung with friends who played basketball with our television station recreation league team. One of my friends during that season was an inner-city high school basketball coach. I remember playing in a benefit game at his gym, where the crowd erupted when I hit a jump shot. I asked my buddy the coach about it, and he said, “Look around, stupid! You’re the only white guy in the building!”

One day, he invited me to watch his team practice. It was fascinating. Every time one of them hit a shot, he would cry out, “I’m known!” Over and over, a made shot evoked shouts of “I’m known!” I asked my friend about it, and he said that scoring in a high school game meant you’d get your name in the paper. Hence, “I’m known!” This was an amazing revelation to me, and I still think about it today. What must it be like to grow up feeling like a nobody, unless you could score in high school sports, because that mean you weren’t a nobody; you were known!

There exists today a deep pocket of Americans who go through their lives feeling unknown. It spans the gamut of nationalities, and it’s especially prevalent among uneducated white folks in America’s Southland. They are incensed at the idea that they are somehow “privileged” because they’re white, when the reality is they’re dirt poor while pretending otherwise. Redneck culture includes driving home to young people the reality that they are nobodies. Behaviors, especially alcohol and sex, are designed specifically to toughen up young boys to face the inevitable. It’s not uncommon for incredible episodes of abuse in the lives of these young people. Born a redneck; die as a redneck. Very few people make it out. The most remarkable thing about rednecks is their refusal to publicly embrace a loser identity, which is why they vote Republican. “We’re just fine. We’re independent. We take care of our own and don’t need any of your government assistance.”

In his remarkable book, The Righteous Redneck’s Journey To Love, Keith Coffell tells of the cruelty applied to him as the community did their best to turn him into a “redneck soldier”. At the age of 12, he was taken to the woods by his uncle and an older boy, stripped, and sexually assaulted. Here’s a paragraph from later that night:

As I lay face down on my bed with my head buried in my pillow, I could still feel Uncle Joe’s slimy hands on my body, smell his whiskey laden breath breathing down my neck, feel his prickly whiskers rubbing against my chest, and cringe at the thought of Bobby’s sticky tongue pressing against my body. I cried myself to sleep that night and the next night and the next night and the next night. In fact, the nightmare of the rape still haunts and taunts me from time to time. I never told my parents. I felt they didn’t care. And in my mind, I believed Daddy would have simply said, “Stop your fuss boy, you in Redneck Boot Camp. You’ll be alright.”

Of course, not every redneck soldier is raped, but the takeaway here is that this kind of ignorance and brutality are likely more prevalent in the South than anybody realizes. If we ever want to understand the kinds of evil that this kind of treatment can produce, we only need to look into the roots that produced such rotten fruit in the first place.

New York Times best-selling author Mike Robinson says, “When you accept yourself for who you are without trying to be a ‘somebody’ in the eyes of humanity, then you have let go of your ego…Only an ego would make a person a ‘somebody’ or its opposite, a ‘nobody’. Your descriptive labels are not who you are, they are what you have become, so don’t judge yourself and others on the value of a label. Instead allow the true you to emerge, because when you are not attached to any descriptive label, you are free”

In a new article about Robinson’s book The True Dynamics of Life in CISION (PRWeb), writer Sara Gibbons provides a warning that summarizes Robinson’s thoughts:

“…to be a ‘somebody’ a person has to become something other than what they are, and to do that they have to desire, strive and suffer. He relates this to the very beginnings of society and the consequent development of desire for more. This caused society to split and divide into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. This split is called envy, which is the fundamental fear of not having enough or not being good enough. It is the fear of being a ‘nobody’. This is so destructive to human life that it is more deadly than AIDS, HIV, cancer and more toxic than greenhouse gases.”

By association, the GOP appeals to this need to be “somebody”. As the representatives of the wealthy, they ought to know who’s a somebody and who is not. By appearing to represent Evangelical Christianity, Republicans appeal to their sense of faith as a representation that they are okay, alright, and on the side of good. Add to that sweeping generalizations from the Bible, such as “Nothing is impossible with God”.

The greatest evil here may be that the GOP uses envy to manipulate the electorate on behalf of the rich and the extremely rich. The unintended consequences, of course, are all over the map, and include things like we saw this week. The Bible actually calls this “tickling the ears”, which is a whole lot easier than educating people. It tries to make them feel warm and wanted, well, except for those who don’t.

I agree with Mike Robinson that this struggle between the ego and the self — if effectively supported from without — is at the core of most things that are wrong with us humans at this stage in our development.

The insanity of Uvalde is just one more, highly horrific example.

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The Ego’s Role in Trauma Response II

Tue, 24 May 2022 10:00:01 -0500

When I reach into myself, there is no confidence at all. Can you imagine living your life as such? Probably not, which Is why this whole measure of confidence is misleading at best, and dangerous if not acknowledged by professional counselors. There exists a vast cavern of emptiness for me and those like me when I reach inside to find help under stress. It’s just not there. It was never allowed to develop due to childhood trauma. Therefore, I’ve lived my life with ego confidence instead of self confidence, and it is this revelation I wish most to share with the world.

Here are a couple of key paragraphs from part I of this series:

The ego is a part of the self but not the self. When all needs are met, the ego and the self work together efficiently to take us through our lives. Ego is not inherently evil, although it can become very much so with the right set of circumstances. For example, where there is trauma, the ego rises in defense and seizes the opportunity to lead the damaged self. But, as the ego continues in this position, it becomes stronger in representing the self’s identity, one that is often fallacious and harmful to the self’s wellbeing.
…The character of the ego, post-trauma, is described in Eric Bernes’ Transactional Analysis in a juvenile ego state known as The Little Professor, which is why some trauma responses are often viewed as foolish and childish behaviors. The Little Professor is smart, creative, and obsessed with protecting the self. Unfortunately, however, protecting the self includes living the life that the self knows should be hers, and in order to stay in charge, the ego then works to continue the pain that keeps the self bound in what feels like complete helplessness. This is often where the patient’s damages surface in what is often addictive behavior. Quieting the voice of the ego becomes the self’s obsession, which addictions provide for a season. A nervous breakdown of some sort will occur when the patient’s ego/self runs completely off the rails, for example, through an arrest, an outburst at work, or some other form of self-destruction, including suicide.

Ego confidence is developed over years as “victories” over the weak self in all things human development and relationships. The most common weaponry here is in the ability to gather insight from others while providing little in ammunition that could be used against the ego. Those deep into their egos, for example, will rarely remember the names of people to whom they’ve just been introduced, because they are too busy at the moment of such an introduction trying to figure out how to take advantage of the moment to sell themselves or otherwise manipulate the new face. Ego confidence, therefore, is a series of behaviors and beliefs that boost the ego’s hold over the self.

1965

A story of this from my own life comes from the constant obsessions to be noticed for outer expressions of talent. When I was in early high school, I spent one entire summer teaching myself how to play the 5‑string banjo. I bought cheap albums and slowed them down to half speed in order to study the notes and figure out the finger work. The banjo was one of my most important ways to show off without letting anybody get close to me. I couldn’t “take” lessons, because I had to do it on my own. I got my wish and became known for playing bluegrass music in Michigan. I was on TV every week with my brothers. I’d get invited to all the parties, but nobody wanted me for me, just to entertain their guests with my banjo. This is the cruel fruit of ego confidence. His ambitions are different than mine, and so it goes.

This is why Craig Nakken in The Addictive Personality writes that suicide is actually an act of homicide in which the self finally kills the ego. Before trauma, the ego and the self work together to create a growing girl or boy with all the attributes available to well-adjusted children. We call this “sanity”. Enter trauma, and the Little Professor rises to protect the self and slowing begins the job of doing the living for the self, which is destined for total failure resulting in even the death of the patient. Confidence exists only in the form of the personality that the ego creates, so there Is zero actual self-confidence. Therefore, when in situations as an adult that require a modicum of self-confidence, the response is defensive, loud, and generally filled with rage.

And, this is what we must overcome in order to find sanity in the here and now.

This is complicated by what I view as an ego-driven wish among people to place their agency (self-determined) over human nature. In recovery, we call this “terminal uniqueness”, because people will chase their own vision for themselves rather than admit they are just like everybody else. Partly, this is due to a lack of agreement over what exactly constitutes human nature. This is directly due to the ego’s attempt to present itself as somehow different than everybody else. This allows them to sidestep similarities in nature by saying they don’t apply. This is the greatest lie in the history of humanity, for we are truly all the same as human beings. We respond to stimuli in the same ways even though we may be different in the ways we think. Like snowflakes are all snowflakes even though they’re all different. Turn up the heat, and they melt. As humans, we “melt” in a similar fashion.

I believe our only real task in life is to become more human. This is the only logical conclusion, given that we are spiritual beings on a human journey, not the other way around. Despite centuries of teachings by “holy” people, we cannot possibly ever become MORE spiritual than we already are. What we can, however, become is more human. Moreover, it makes common sense, too, because what else could God possibly want from us? To conquer each other? To destroy in order to gain? Why? As my friend Doc Searls says, “Life is a death sentence for us all.” How true, and he goes on to tell us that the only difference between us is that some have more comfortable accommodations along the way.

Can we share our comforts to make the journey easier for others? Of course, but there’s that self-centeredness we’re famous for, so we don’t. I got mine on my own, so you can get yours, too. You just need God, a little faith, and you’ll feel so much better when you do it for yourself. It is a personal, oftentimes lonely calling, for we are corrupt at core, and the truth is that we get uncomfortable, because who wants to believe this of themselves? This is why people get angry when their sense of agency is discovered to be bullshit. Today, we emphasize how different we all are, but a great many of our societal problems could be overcome if we’d only agree that human nature trumps agency every time.

When God created humans (in whichever way you choose to believe), he put us in a garden that was watered by a mist. We can safely conclude then that this is where and how we were intended to live together. Unfortunately, we chose to believe the lie of the ego that our own guilt and shame made us feel unwelcome, and so we left. Joni Mitchell was right; we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. And, we can only do this on our own by giving up our ego-driven, self-centered lives. Only then will the devil be defeated. This must be an internal governor, for all external controls will end in bloodshed. They always do.

So, the real question is can we ever get back to the garden? Again, this is the only goal that accomplishes the original task of the Creator of the Universe. Think of it as a cosmic “let’s see if they can dig themselves out of it.” By now, you likely feel that I’ve gone off the deep end, but it needs to be taken seriously, because the future of our planet is at stake.

Are we going to continue to twirl our fingers and whistle in the dark until Jesus comes to take us home? If these same people ignore the mercy side of our witness, then all has been lost, and God has no reason to keep us around.

People, He wants US to figure it out. How can I “make” you love my neighbor, if you won’t do it on your own?

Can humans unite as one without the constant presence of self-centeredness?

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The GOP’s 40-year Criminal Conspiracy to Take Over the U.S.

Sun, 15 May 2022 15:28:48 -0500

Trump addresses the Council for National Policy (CNP), courtesy Center for Media and Democracy

The current state of the Republican Party in the U.S. is the result of a 40+ year conspiracy by right-wing zealots to overthrow the government and to replace it with one more friendly to wealth, corporations, and hypocritical morality. This conspiracy is criminal in its use of tax exemptions to hide the real reasons for a coup de-tat in the name of “education”. I was a part of this in its early days, so I’m not surprised it has come very close to success.

Here’s how I recall one meeting in particular from my book about Pat Robertson, The Gospel of Self: How Pat Robertson Stole the Soul of the GOP. Pat gathered a small handful of key executives in charge of content for The 700 Club. It was January 1, 1985. Ronald Reagan had been re-elected, but Pat saw a void beginning in 1988. Here’s the gist of what he told us in the board room that day:

“We must form a shadow government,” he began. “We must begin to find and train Christian people, so that they can be placed in every position that matters, because the country is on the verge of collapse. The Lord is showing me that when it goes, nobody is going to know what to do, and they will turn to us, because we will have answers. We won’t be afraid. We’ve got to work to make sure God’s people are in the schools, the school boards, the city councils, the county commissions, the trash collectors, the tax collectors and all local government positions. We need to be in the state legislatures, the statewide offices, Congress, the courts, everywhere. We can’t be overt and obvious about this; we must do it quietly and create this shadow government.”

In many ways, this statement was years in the making and was energized by the election of Ronald Reagan and the rise of the televangelists in America. Satellite TV was just being birthed, and CBN owned a transponder on the very first Satcom satellite, which positioned us to ride above the grip that the networks had on the TV screens in American homes. Pat knew that this advantage would provide the technical mechanisms for disrupting the status quo provided by network domination of the news hegemony. We called our content “TV Journalism With A Different Spirit,” which was euphemistic for right-wing political propaganda. We were criticized by certain media observers as “so slanted that it’s vertical.” It turns out that what we actually did was to write the playbook upon which Fox News is based.

Pat Robertson ran for President in 1988 as the man who would replace Ronald Reagan. Think about that for a minute. This event and events surrounding it were the direct result of the politicization of the tongue-talking (expression for those Christians who practice the Gifts of the Spirit outlined in the gospel, speaking in tongues being one of them) audience of The 700 Club and the more staid worshippers under the Moral Majority brand of Jerry Falwell. The core beliefs of these two groups couldn’t be more different, and yet they found fellowship with each other under the banner of relieving the country of what they called sin. Both groups preached separating themselves from a culture that threatened their sensibilities as neighbors. This threat seemed to directly attack their faithfulness to what the Bible taught them about men and women, prayer in public places (like schools), displaying creches and the Ten Commandments, and especially what they viewed as infanticide through abortion. Together, we made the claim that the country was hostile to Christianity, and that the country’s issues were simply expressions of human fallenness.

It was a powerful argument to those who believed that they were of the redeemed, and thus their ability to rightly judge the culture was a given among them. This is still quite evident today.

Privately, Pat Robertson despised Jerry Falwell, especially in the wake of him taking over Jim Bakker’s ministry to the tongue-talkers. Falwell represented that he was the right person to intervene in the mess created by Bakker’s infidelity, but we knew it would be a disaster. Strange bedfellows they were, Falwell and Bakker. Add to all that Oral Roberts’ presentation that if he didn’t raise $9 million by Friday, God would take him home, and Jimmy Swaggart’s illicit rendezvous with street hookers, and you had the makings of a total dismembering of televangelism as a whole.

Our biggest fear at the time was that Pat’s run for President would be included in the follies of televangelism as a whole, and Pat’s shadow government seemed to take an enormous hit. After all, Pat’s entire vision included his ability to draw a more intelligent crowd than the others. Unfortunately, it was these very people who abandoned all television ministries as a result of the antics of Roberts, Bakker, Swaggart, and others.

Regardless of judgments coming from outside Christian circles, Pat pressed forward with his plans to run for President. Almost overnight everything changed when the IRS office of criminal investigations opened an investigation into misuse of our contributions for political purposes. They were right, and they had mounds of evidence even before my deposition in the case.

The investigation came “right from the top” according to the investigator who handled my deposition. I took it to mean that it was “requested” by George H.W. Bush to force Pat out of the 1988 race. It worked, but it’s very important to understand that Pat and his associates thought little of pushing tax exemptions to their extreme limits in the process of his efforts. In the case of the Council for National Policy (CNP), of which Pat was president in 1982, they took up Pat’s cause of “restoring America to its rightful place as a Christian nation”. Here is an organization behaving exactly as we did, up to their necks in politics and yet having the enormous benefit of being a tax-exempt organization. This is illegal, folks, and yet we’re all looking the other way while they try to[ take over the government. CBN was also profoundly pro-business, which appealed to wealthy contributors, I’m convinced that the hundreds of tax exempt organizations under CNP leadership are — like we did in the 1980s — breaking the law when it comes to the “education” exemptions of 501©3 tax exempt organizations.

One of the beneficiaries of the coup attempt is J.D. Vance, the presumptive Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio in the fall. In an Intelligencer article about Vance, there is one particular paragraph that’s noteworthy for this missive. Here it is:

“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” he said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”

“Our people”. This would be the same ones that Pat Robertson referred to in his Shadow Government secret proclamation. It’s all illegal in its use of tax exemptions and needs to be put down permanently.

It’s hard for me to imagine why a Democratic White House doesn’t open an investigation into the CNP, for the results would have an important and necessary chilling effect on their efforts to overthrow the U.S. Government.

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Christianity’s Big Branding Problem

Sun, 08 May 2022 10:33:34 -0500

Editor’s Note: This was first published five years ago in the Huffington Post.

Courtesy

Courtesy David Hayward, The Naked Pastor

Dear Christians,

I’m writing to you today to discuss a very serious matter. Your brand — and especially the realm of Evangelicalism — has been hi-jacked by extremists who are using it to advance political theories that have nothing to do with your beliefs. You may not have had anything to do with it personally, but this thievery has taken place right in front of you. It has been sinister and systematic, and we’ve arrived at a confused place today where the brand is now interchangeable with the extreme political right. I played a role in this maneuvering during the 1980s as the executive producer of Pat Robertson’s flagship TV program The 700 Club. Please bear with me as I attempt to explain.

The 1980s was the era that launched Christianity as a Republican political force. It has grown over the subsequent years and eventually energized the election of Donald Trump. Noted theologian Roger Olsen recalled for a blog commenter the very moment he realized what was happening.

For me the “tipping point” (almost driving me insane) was when television talk show hosts began inviting Jerry Falwell and his ilk onto their programs to speak for all evangelicals. Donahue, King, et al. Why didn’t they have moderate-to-progressive evangelicals on their shows to speak for evangelicalism? Because moderate-to-progressive evangelicals didn’t interest them. We speak with too many syllables and too much ambiguity. They wanted demagoguery, bluster, extremism. The fundamentalists calling themselves evangelicals provided it. Many evangelicals fell into line with this trend as did many fundamentalists. I am one of the few “hold outs” from the older, truer evangelicalism that refused and still refuses to go along with that narrative.

So the initial hijacking of the brand was the work of a powerful few, but it was aided in great part by a news media in search of cultural “sides” to explain conflicts between the right and the left. And this, of course, had to be done in a manner that would produce ratings or enhance readership. Hence, Dr. Olsen’s “tipping point.” Denominational Christianity was shoved aside by those who taught their flocks that political participation was a major tenet of living the Christian life. It didn’t matter that the GOP was the party of the wealthy, their “traditional values” synced so well with the faith that it was easy to convince Christian voters to support them — in fact, “become” them — and in so doing move conservatism even farther to the right through fundamentalist extremes.

They preach what I call the Gospel of Self, a self-betterment, self-improvement theology that can’t help but produce behavior contrary to the faith. Let’s face it: self is the very thing that must be overcome in the Christian tradition, not the building up of ourselves up so that we can run the world around us. That is called “idolatry,” and we all know the warnings about that. The voice reminds me of the voice who said, “tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” We need to restore the brand to its rightful place, or Christian evangelism will become nothing more than a useless attempt to protect our own asses from a future of hellfire and damnation. We will continue to push people away and lose those from our flocks that are weary of what they see as hypocrisy. We need to let God be God, and put a stop to this damnable crusade for power and influence within the culture. I believe there are a great many who see this as contrary to the Great Commission but don’t know what to do about it.

Chris Hedges is a longtime critic of this behavior speaks to it once again in a piece called “Trump and the Christian Fascists:”

“These believers … detest the reality-based world. They condemn it as contaminated, decayed and immoral. This world took their jobs. It destroyed their future. It ruined their communities. It doomed their children. It flooded their lives with alcohol, opioids, pornography, sexual abuse, jail sentences, domestic violence, deprivation and despair. And then, from the depths of suicidal despair, they suddenly discovered that God has a plan for them. God will save them. God will intervene in their lives to promote and protect them. God has called them to carry out his holy mission in the world and to be rich, powerful and happy.”

It is the Gospel of Self. How to create satisfaction for yourself and your family in this life while fighting the battles of God in the political arena. This is the antithesis of what Jesus taught in the gospels.

“The just shall live by faith” is the very foundation of protestantism. God is not mocked, and all who call themselves “Christian” know in their hearts that faith doesn’t include what’s in front of us in our culture. God judges these things and acts upon him as the natural has always done the unnatural, and we need faith in order to let that happen without trying to move things along under our own power. Life’s usual method of dealing with our dissatisfaction is to keep pouring it on until we learn to truly trust Him, not our ability to do battle ourselves in hopes of “winning” a more comfortable living in this life. Don’t think that’s the way it works? Start praying for patience and watch what happens. We simply aren’t promised a peaceful neighborhood, a sinless, well-managed, and questionless society, or any other utopian fantasy that is trouble free for those of us supposedly in the know. What happened to our understanding that the corrupt nature of humankind is a trap for those who believe we have control over anything. We were promised that the poor would always be with us, and it’s by our reaction to and our treatment of those who live under poverty’s harsh taskmaster that we are judged. We cannot earn ourselves a rose garden no matter how badly we want one. That kind of justification would not be of faith anyway, so why do we try so hard to make ourselves feel so very special. Moreover, why do we attempt to force others to embrace that specialness?

“The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch,” the Bible tells us. There is no reference to denomination, doctrine, or dogma, because the term referred to the way those pioneers lived and taught others to live, their overriding behavior being the piety they displayed. They loved one another. Noah Webster, of the dictionary fame, was certainly a Christian and defined the term thusly in his 1828 dictionary, the one we all use when trying to understand terms used in documents of that era:

CHRISTIAN, noun 1. A believer in the religion of Christ. 2. A professor of his belief in the religion of Christ. 3. A real disciple of Christ; one who believes in the truth of the christian religion, and studies to follow the example, and obey the precepts, of Christ; a believer in Christ who is characterized by real piety. 4. In a general sense, the word Christians includes all who are born in a christian country or of christian parents.

So Noah Webster didn’t even come close to defining the brand by its position within the culture other than to identify piety with the term. And just so we understand number three, let’s also ask Mr. Webster to define “piety:”

PI’ETY, noun [Latin pietas, from pius, or its root, probably a contracted word.] Piety in principle, is a compound of veneration or reverence of the Supreme Being and love of his character, or veneration accompanied with love; and piety in practice, is the exercise of these affections in obedience to his will and devotion to his service.

In all things as Christians, Jesus is our model, our example, our Lord, and the author of grace. If we have questions about any issue or behavior, we can look to Him for ourselves and not be dependent on what the preacher says or any so-called expert. This was the great cultural disruption in the West brought about by Gutenberg’s printing of the Bible with the first printing press. That invention — along with common English translations of the book — decimated the unquestioned power of Rome and spread that power across the land. So began the enlightenment, protestantism, and ultimately colonialism and a modern world governed by logic and reason.

Christians are still a great throng in the world, one represented as a tapestry of different practices and branches with no one granted the authority to proclaim themselves or anyone else the “real” Christians. Various creeds have been written to help better define our specific beliefs, although we cannot escape the truth that these were written by men. Some will insist that these men were guided by the Holy Spirit and therefore sanctified in God’s eyes, but fallen man is fallen man, and if we really believe that, it’s hard to blindly trust any such reasoning. I would argue, in fact, that we’ve used those creeds and such to create neat boxes within which we can place people who disagree with us, and that is not piety, not even close.

The natural inclination of children to love others is relentlessly “cleansed” by “Christian” parents eager to bring them into their separatist, nationalist folds, and the harm done in so doing is incalculable. Even within families, members who refuse to walk according to the beliefs of the patriarch or matriarch are privately and even publicly ostracized. Children grow up and become adults, and in many denominations, that means they leave, and, according to Pew, the “unchurched” population is growing at a pace unexperienced in times past. These young people are deeply turned off, and yet their antagonizers continue to loudly profess the very moral hypocrisy they see as they’re growing up. Lectures and disapproval are often tied to sexual activities and thoughts, thought to be immoral in the profession of many churches.

However, morality doesn’t begin and end with sex. It just doesn’t, yet these extremists argue morality entirely around the sex act. Abortion isn’t about killing babies; it’s about sex. If it were not, then why don’t these vocal Christians support birth control? The churches don’t talk about the statistics. Did you know that the abortion rate in the U.S. is back to where it was before Roe v Wade? It’s not a legal issue, and it never was. It’s about sex and the extremist view that the act is evil unless somehow made clean by the church’s sanctification through marriage. Gay marriage. Homosexuality. Transgenderism. They’re all about sex. We think it makes God angry, and we don’t want to get caught up in that anger, so we rail against any sexual practice outside marriage between a man and a woman. We claim God is judging the world for this, and yet the Bible points out that Sodom wasn’t destroyed for its sexual sins but rather for its failure to take care of the poor and the afflicted. One is free, therefore, to ask that if God is indeed judging today, who exactly is He judging? Perhaps the very church attendees who plead the morality message at every turn.

That’s a very dangerous practice, because morality is a much, much broader matter. It includes, among other things, obscene CEO salaries, oppression of workers through poor wages and conditions, opposition to welfare, insider trading, tax loopholes, flouting avarice, and removing government programs that protect the poor and the afflicted. How Christian people can side with such immorality is the great mystery of the Twenty-First Century, but it begins with those who have seized the brand and run with it.

I use the words “Christian brand,” because it’s a marketing problem. We need to see it as such, if there’s to be any hope of correcting the extreme shifting of Christianity far to the political right. And if this is to be, then we need to create faith-based arguments about it and spread those far and wide. Political debates today are required to be entertaining, and that means extremes going at each other. Let’s take that debate into the church, for debating in the public square is quite useless. Let’s not be afraid to confront questions of mixing theology and politics from the pulpit, in our Bible studies, and in our homes.

The only thing wrong with error, after all, is the contempt it breeds for those who would disagree, usually without investigation. We’re better than that, aren’t we?

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Why Members of the Clergy Cheat

Tue, 03 May 2022 12:10:56 -0500

Courtesy Crikey.

in the wake of the collapse of The Hillsong USA Church leadership over confessions of sexual dalliances, there’s been a significant degree of tsk-tsking as usual. We’re seeing this often in the church today, but very few people actually talk about it. Perhaps it’s because we think of it as powerful men falling due to their own egos or character failings. It’s so simple, therefore, that it doesn’t require deeper types of thinking.

In my view, it’s the role of minister/leader that is a set-up for these men. So, let’s take a look.

Many who read this will think I’ve generated an asinine rationalization for males’ risky adventure with sex outside their own marriages, but I think there’s something else here to be considered. Surely, there’s more to it, as we examine the continual failures of leaders, church or otherwise, in having affairs or sexual liaisons with those under their charge. These cases are all lopped into the bins of failed character, narcissism, or some other pathological weakness of “the flesh.” So, we properly vilify them publicly, and we move on in search of the next perfect man to sit under and then later crush when they turn out to be human.

But I think there’s something else going on here — that could be prevented — if we only could speak honestly.

To set the stage, let’s begin with this wonderful quote by John R. W. Stott:

“And they who fain would serve Thee best are conscious most of wrong within.”

Honestly now, who can argue with this? Does it not stand to reason that ministers of the gospel — a.k.a. those doing the Lord’s work — would be the most conscious of their own sin and nature? This removes all doubt from the truth that these leaders are fully aware of the sin they are committing, which means they also know about the consequences with the God they serve. Therefore, we ask again, what is so compelling about this that these men are willing to throw away everything just to pursue it?

It’s not about the sex, the physical act. It’s about intimacy and how that influences a man’s ability to create. Let me repeat that. It’s about intimacy and how that influences a man’s ability to create. In this sense, it’s much worse than a simple slapping of two bodies; it’s about what happens with the man’s desperate need for intimacy. And, this ought to influence all wives of creative people, for intimacy is easily lost to feelings of rejection with these sensitive souls. This is the point at which our culture needs to invest, in ministry, in therapy, and in psychology in general.

There is one thing that most of these men can claim: they are sensitive creatively and need (yes, need) to be intimately in love in order to tap into the source that feeds their imaginations. This is called the artist’s muse and is accomplished through the one-way flow of love from the source of all love, through each of us, towards another. It is an inbound flow that the man has felt before, and to him, it’s absolutely sacred and holy. He must give away what he receives, or the flow will stagnate, and he will be fully lost. It is a crushing experience for one’s creativity to stagnate, and it comes from shutting down the flow through any one of a number of emotions the man might be feeling. He must reactivate the flow through the giving of love, for then, the ultimate giver of love will replace that which he gives away, and in that refreshment comes more from the source. This is why being in love is such a phenomenal feel-good experience. The entire fruit of the spirit travels with that flow, so it “feels” marvelous.

I can hear the gasps even now. “C’mon, Terry, what about sensitive and creative women? Don’t they require this intimacy, too?” I’m not smart enough to figure all that out, but I’ll say this. Throughout history, the idea of an artist’s muse is always feminine. Besides, I’m speaking about men here, so just bear with me, because I believe there are great differences between the two sexes. Please. There will be others who’ll read this as a rationalization for my own dalliances, for I was once a chronic womanizer. There may be truth to that, but I’ll argue that it doesn’t change the reasoning presented here.

Culture says to creative people, “conform,” but they simply cannot. Can. Not. It’s always cannot; never will not. Creators value their sensitive source, not that which ignores the voices from beyond. Hence, society’s rules and regulations are actually designed to move away from the source. After all, chaos is the mother of pain to those who demand order. The problem with this is that creativity flows from chaos, not order.

He feels bad that his behavior has hurt others, but he’s not making decisions with the full weight of consciousness, and this is so important to understand. He knows what he’s doing is wrong. He knows the inevitable consequences. He is driven by a profound need to get to a place where he can receive. It overrides all decision-making filters, because it comes from beyond. When the prolific songwriter Bill Monroe told me in an interview that he never wrote a single song but simply “heard them first”, he was speaking of this flow. Richard Adams, in the forward to his little book “The Unbroken Web,” describes a moving web of creativity that encircles the earth constantly. It contains all of the creative efforts of humanity and explains how people from different continents told the same ancient stories prior to intercontinental travel of any sort. I hope this is well-known in the artistic community, because it is more real to artists than their own logic and attitudes towards process.

This is why the draw is intimacy, not sex. These men generally don’t do this just to get off; there’s something much more sinister going on, and we’re never going to fix the problem without this understanding. Our egos (a.k.a. the devil) are just waiting with the ammunition to corrupt this beautiful experience in order to take over. Most cannot put their finger on what’s actually happening (as stated above), so they go along with the ego’s prompting, which, as it always does, leads to devastation of the self.

If a minister’s wife isn’t also his muse, then trouble is on the horizon. This is a super important area to discuss with each other and perhaps a therapist, and it’s even more important for those in the counseling business to wrap their arms around. A creative man needs words of affirmation more than anybody could possibly imagine, and these come through the avenue of love. While it’s very true that preachers wives have their own set of responsibilities and duties to the ministry, she must NEVER drift far from the muse role she has held since they first fell in love. I simply cannot overstate the value of this in ministry relationships.

At sometime, somewhere, and somehow he has lost true intimacy with his significant other, and the creative blockage is palpable. He feels suffocated. He knows he needs intimacy as much as oxygen, but he cannot find it until he randomly encounters another searching soul. He thinks he sees it in her eyes, and her first encounter with him likely includes words of affirmation he is on the lookout for. “I love the way your personality shines through your messages,” or something similar. Suddenly, he is confronted with confusion and guilt, so he decides simply to dismiss what he’s feeling as chance. It’s at that point, however, that his ego has already begun the process of justification, and he is most likely a goner.

So, what do we do about these troubled souls? Do we not at least owe them for their revelatory inspirations that have blessed us? Yes, but does that, however, mean we must look the other way? God forbid. But let us always remember that this is a church, not some other form of institution.

Ministers know that forgiveness awaits their confession, and this adds to the problem of rationalizing infidelity. After all, why not proceed, if you know you’ll be forgiven up front? It is a very delicate and difficult manifestation of human nature.

Surely, they must face disciplinary proceedings and be given a leave of absence or be terminated. This is where it gets sticky, however, because he’s left with only one choice and that is to move along and start over in some other place. We see this all the time, but one session of chasing the wind easily flows into another, and the real matter is never addressed.

Let me repeat the basics. Creative men need feminine inspiration, even if its homosexual. It’s as important as air to breathe for these people. Therefore, their spouse must, above all, function as a muse to the preacher, and this is often expressed as sexual intimacy. This is why marital problems involving such servants can be so destructive for the ministry itself, and this needs positive, non-judgmental discussion between the ministers and their spouses. The remarkable thing here is that these men are naturally drawn to this feminine energy and often end up with a person who functions unknowingly as their muse.

Would that all such men would be so lucky.

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Adobe and Frame.io: Now it makes sense!

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 12:08:41 -0500

When Frame.io introduced Camera to Cloud I thought it was brilliant, but the level of technology that was required to implement it, led me to think that it was only for the “high end” of production, an area out of my experience. While often lucrative, that’s a fairly finite market, and I doubted C2C would […]

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Amplifying Individual Music Composition

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 14:39:55 -0500

Three new tools use Machine Learning tools to compose music. Two with a gamified interface for free form composition, and the other a browser based custom music track creation tool, reminiscent of SmartSound, but with computer instruments. ToneStone describes itself as a :musical creativity platform for everyone” and appears to be browser based. I say […]

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AI and Copyright: How many opinions (and a little outrage) do I need?

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 10:32:50 -0500

I recently read the article Art Created By Artificial Intelligence Can’t Be Copyrighted, US Agency Rules, which is an examination of the ruling by the US Copyright Office refusing to grant copyright to “creations” by an AI/ML: in this case images created by a Machine. These were deliberate test cases to determine the possibility of […]

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Creating People and Places as we want them

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 11:43:59 -0600

Storytelling has always been about painting pictures – in people’s mind or on a screen somewhere. One of the significant challenges for visual storytellers is creating the people and places from the storyteller’s imagination, into a more tangible medium, like digital bits! Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are dramatically simplifying the way we […]

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We’re Getting Closer to ‘Mind Reading’

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 10:13:03 -0600

While NVIDIA’s Canvas isn’t reading minds, research projects suggest we are moving toward being able to capture images from brain waves, or even hear internal voices. These research projects are a very long way from the premises of that first sentence, but advances happen so quickly it won’t be long before they move out of […]

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Creativity gets a new Canvas

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 09:10:08 -0600

One of my deep regrets is that I have no native sketching skills, nor have I taken the time to learn, so it’s always a challenge when I have a mental picture that I’d love to visualize. Enter NVIDIA Canvas, which turns “simple” brush strokes into realistic landscape images. I put “simple” in inverted commas […]

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A “Biblical” Worldview Deconstructed

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 10:44:17 -0600

Continuing with my series of essays about the fundamental beliefs of contemporary Evangelical Christians — assumptions that drive the entire movement, including those who would identify as MAGA Christians — let’s deconstruct the idea of a “Biblical Worldview”, as in, “Our school teaches a Biblical Worldview.”

This worldview is then used to divide and separate the behavior of Christians from the rest of the culture.

So common is this phrase in evangelicalism, that everyone takes it for granted. I mean, if you believe every word of the book, why would you not wish to live by it? That’s the simplicity that it offers, and “I want all my neighbors to do the same thing. Therefore, I’ll do the best I can to recruit them into the way we live, and everything will be just fine.” It’s the ultimate disrespect for the beliefs of others, but it doesn’t seem that way to them, for they are “saving” their neighbors from eternal damnation.

In postmodern vernacular, this “world view” is the same thing as a “Grand Narrative,” the overarching story of what’s presented at all levels throughout the narrative. The difference, however, is what gives us the wiggle room to deconstruct the narrative, because these things are usually presented as fact, although we cannot fool nature into performing as we would wish. Many, if not most, grand narratives have at least an element of this, which is why deconstruction can very much become the monkey wrench in the plans of humankind. However, it’s also wise to question such narratives in order to gain wisdom and understanding and to prevent culture from completely running off any self-interested rails.

To have a “Biblical” worldview, we must first choose which Bible we’re going to use, and this alone can take a lifetime of study and still not completely affirm the grand narrative selected. At this point, many simply create a new translation, one that better fits the story being presented. Moreover, once a translation is selected, believers must completely believe in its inerrancy. So important is this belief, that movement leaders refer to it as “the WORD of God.” In other words, the Bible provides all that’s necessary to prove itself as the literal voice of God, therefore it proclaims the true wishes of the final authority. In this way, these people view the Bible and its words literally, at least so far as they help frame the narrative.

(Aside: If you wish to understand what is meant in the Bible about the Word of God, read the books of Adam and Eve, apocryphal literature that presents the lives of Adam and Eve and their progeny after the garden.)

It is this authority that has driven Western Civilization for over 2,000 years, beginning with the Council of Nice in the 4th Century A.D., through the Dark Ages when the church governed everything about salvation of the saints, including the selling of special dispensations to royals in order to keep its coffers full. Then came the printing press and decades of complaints from the church about losing its authority over the book. This led to The Enlightenment and the protestant revolution of “the just shall live by faith.” On and on, our history is filled with wars and other conflicts over the inerrancy of scripture. “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” On the one hand, it’s nice to have the rules of life all handily laid out for us, so that we can “decide” if we want to follow them or not. This places the onus for what they view as “salvation” in our own hands, meaning we must live by these rules, which begin with “the just shall live by faith.” Confused? On the other hand, whatever happened to “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”?

So, you can see the problem with this Biblical Worldview profession, because it turns out to be better for the evangelicals than those being recruited. I’m reminded of The Shirky Principle, that institutions will always try to preserve the problem for which they are the solution. It’s very easy to do that when you insist that even though Jesus is believed to have redeemed humanity (“It is finished”), the Biblical Worldview suggests that we play a role in our own redemption, so much so that the word redemption itself requires its own deconstruction. Therefore, the correct response to this Biblical Worldview is one of separating ourselves from the sins of others, and maintaining that separation regardless of the begging and pleading of the have-nots. We’re taught not to link ourselves with such people, which is why this crowd feels its Biblical to reject others in the name of God, regardless of how it appears on the surface. After all, what’s to stop these heathens from taking what I’ve earned in following the rules? They are the problem, not me.

The elites of Western culture have always maintained a special relationship with Christianity, for the “saving” of heathen cultures was a fast-track to manipulation in terms of maintaining peace among the working class while profiting enormously from their labor. It’s no surprise therefore that the same is rampant today. The printing press temporarily disrupted this cozy relationship between man and mammon, prompting the powerful, 15th-Century priestly statement: “The jewel of the elites is in the hands of the laity.” The internet, however, is an even greater disruption to organized Christianity, because the web is a 3‑way communications medium. The top can talk “to” the bottom. The bottom can talk “to” the top. But the greatest cultural changes are coming from the 3rd way, which is that the bottom can talk with the bottom without interference from the top, and this is simply not compatible with the church’s one-to-many hegemony.

An important part of modern Christianity’s Grand Narrative is its relationship to Israel and how Zionism is a necessary part of Jesus returning to earth to claim the redeemed humans and take them to Heaven with him in what’s known as “The Rapture of the Church.” The Biblical Worldview teaches that Israel is sacred and that all promises made by God to the ancients still apply, and that to criticize Israel is to displease God or challenge God. Moreover, since the end will begin in a Jewish Jerusalem, we should support Israel’s existence at all cost. This is what authorizes Evangelical Christians to proclaim that the return of Jesus is near, a belief that has undergirded evangelicalism since 1948 and why the U.S. gives Israel so much no-strings-attached money. Call it a Strategic Defense Initiative if you’d like, but this is what a Biblical Worldview teaches. In addition, the Zionists will eventually have to replace the mosque on the Temple Mount with a new temple, which will result in violence and bloodshed on a scale we’ve yet to witness in the Middle East, but you won’t hear it condemned completely by the U.S. Why not? Because that’s where Jesus will return, so there’s nothing wrong with (wink-wink) helping it along.

If you actually believe this would be God’s will, I feel very sorry for you.

People mostly stay silent about these realities, choosing instead to trust the church overall or their place of worship and leaders who attended seminary and are professionally trained. How could such academic thinkers be wrong, right? Ask them questions, however, and they’ll refer back to their own catechism, which uses the Bible to teach the inerrancy of the Bible. It’s the greatest illustration of circular reasoning in the history of humankind. For example, is the story of God stopping the rotation of the earth for 24-hours to enable Joshua to completely conquer his enemies a myth or a true story? “Well, cough-harrumph, Terry, God can do anything, right?” What God “can” do is not evidence of what God did or didn’t do.

Walt Disney built his entire empire on the idea of “the plausible impossible,” which was a reference to the death-defying feats of animated characters. To be kind, let’s make the assumption that religions contain many elements of the plausible impossible, only Christians refer to them as fact in the name of the miraculous. This is a vain attempt to fool nature, but we buy into it with regularity.

There is no greater mystery with these believers than the combining of the New Testament with the Old Testament in order to come up with cultural rules for believers.

To further study all this, let’s turn to an insider definition of a Biblical Worldview, and what better document to examine than one created by the monstrous heresy known as “Focus on the Family” and its prophet, James Dobson. The ministry calls its worldview a “Christian Worldview”, which is the same thing as Biblical Worldview. Here are just a few paragraphs that explain the concept.

A biblical worldview is based on the infallible Word of God. When you believe the Bible is entirely true, then you allow it to be the foundation of everything you say and do. That means, for instance, you take seriously the mandate in Romans 13 to honor the governing authorities by researching the candidates and issues, making voting a priority.
Do you have a biblical worldview? Answer the following questions, based on claims found in the Bible and which George Barna used in his survey:
- Do absolute moral truths exist?
- Is absolute truth defined by the Bible?
- Did Jesus Christ live a sinless life?
- Is God the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe, and does He still rule it today?
- Is salvation a gift from God that cannot be earned?
- Is Satan real?
- Does a Christian have a responsibility to share his or her faith in Christ with other people?
- Is the Bible accurate in all of its teachings?
Did you answer yes to these? Only 9 percent of “born- again” believers did (according to Barna research). But what’s more important than your yes to these questions is whether your life shows it. Granted, we are all sinners and fall short, but most of our gut reactions will reflect what we deep-down, honest-to-goodness believe to be real and true…
…Here is the big problem. Nonbiblical worldview ideas don’t just sit in a book somewhere waiting for people to examine them. They bombard us constantly from television, film, music, newspapers, magazines, books and academia.
Because we live in a selfish, fallen world, these ideas seductively appeal to the desires of our flesh, and we often end up incorporating them into our personal worldview. Sadly, we often do this without even knowing it.
For example, most Christians would agree with 1 Thessalonians 4:3 and other Scriptures that command us to avoid sexual immorality, but how often do Christians fall into lust or premarital and extramarital sexual sin? Is it simply because they are weak when tempted, or did it begin much earlier, with the seductive lies from our sexualized society?

Notice how this narrative forces cultural problems on those who don’t use their Biblical Worldview. This will forever keep their fingers pointed at others in their pursuit of happiness and is justification for not loving their neighbors.

You can see the requirement that the Bible be considered the absolute and infallible authority in order to live what’s called a Biblical Worldview. The irony is that the entirety of this worldview is in opposition to their claim that they represent love and serving God. The Bible serves as law enforcement here, which is inconsistent with the essential belief that the just shall live by faith.

The most astonishing claim presented by Focus on the Family here is that voting for Christians who share this worldview is a part of “honoring” the governing authorities. Again, this claim demands our deconstruction, but most followers simply say “Amen” and do what they’re told.

One of the most common phrases we hear from this group is that if you give a man a fish, you’ll feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, you’ll feed him for a lifetime. It’s a nice sound bite, but it assumes an entirely level playing field for all. All have the same access to fish, the same equipment and techniques, and plenty of fish for everybody. I assure you that this not the case, and so the wording is at best wishful thinking, a thought that works only in the abstract but not practically. To many, it’s simply a statement of shirking responsibility to love our neighbors, if it results in us losing anything that we believe belongs to us.

The absurdities we’re hearing today from the Christian Right all stem from the grand narrative first considered at Roman Emperor Constantine’s Church Council at Nice, where concepts considered heresy were discussed and dealt with, especially involving the divinity of Christ. Faith was transformed into creed, and thus was born the “true” church, one based on the rules and regulations of how all “should” behave in order to form a better society. That it led instead to the Dark Ages should surprise no one,

We are heading in that direction once again, if the fascism of the extreme right becomes the law of the land. We are much closer to civil war than anybody thinks, as the 21st-Century searches for its identity. If the right gets its way, that identity will certainly begin with the authority of its Biblical Worldview, because most are afraid of it or ignorant to its real purpose, which is to support and strengthen the grip of self-centered capitalists on Western Civilization.

If you wish to study the Bible, make sure you include serious time in the Book of Ecclesiastes, which spells out the best way to live our lives “under the sun” — our lives as human beings on planet Earth. There is nothing in this book that’s altered by the redemption of the Christ, so its wisdom is universal in how to best live our lives. This book is extremely significant for ferreting out the religious, because it contains the “shit happens” realities of living under the sun. It contradicts those Christians who insist that they are somehow immune from tragedy, above the wages of sin, and the worst comforting statement ever made by Christian “friends” to the suffering: “there’s a reason God allowed this to happen.”

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11

Time and chance? That can’t be part of a Biblical Worldview, and yet, there it is.

The post A “Biblical” Worldview Deconstructed appeared first on Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog.

Trouble For The Town That NASA Built?

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 12:14:25 -0600

Northrop Grumman Facebook Ad for Huntsville

As people in North Alabama go about their daily lives, they do so without an active press watching out for their best interests. There’s no real newspaper to speak of, as Huntsville’s a part of the AL.com franchise. Huntsville is a boom town that recently captured the title of Alabama’s biggest city from Birmingham, so it stands to reason that it would support efforts to keep an eye on all that money floating around. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and so residents here tend to whistle along in the hope that their leaders aren’t (just) in it for themselves. That’s what happens absent a press that takes its job seriously.

The emperor of Huntsville is NASA, and nobody here has the courage to call a boondoggle what it is, because it puts so much food in so many mouths that it would be inappropriate to say that NASA is leading the parade completely naked. There’s been a significant disruption to the space industry in the form of reusable boosters, led by Elon Musk and the team at Space‑X. While Huntsville relies on our government to support space efforts, the private sector is advancing by giant leaps and bounds.

NASA is well aware of what’s happening, as well as those in Congress who approve or disapprove the massive funding of NASA and NASA projects. SpaceX is winning NASA contracts with increasing frequency based on a history of innovation, expertise, and outstanding performance. When SpaceX won the $2.9 billion Artemis lunar lander contract over Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, a Marshall Space Flight Center regular, Bezos sued NASA. The suit was tossed in court, and this was a bellwether event in U.S. space program history, although not publicly acknowledged in North Alabama.

NASA and Huntsville have long been the center of activity between the government and the private sector. One drive through Cummings Research Park, and you’ll see the logos of every private company involved in the U.S. space program, although many go back to the heyday of the race to space between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Huntsville is a museum for the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle programs. The Saturn‑5 that stands along the interstate is a testimony to the gargantuan effort by Werner von Braun’s Nazi rocket team that led up to it and set the U.S. on the path to outer space dominance in a changing world. The problem is that the technology has passed us by. Being married to the archaic means we cannot — dare not — do anything that might conflict with the government. NASA is tied to taxpayers, and therein lies the real problem. U.S. Senators simply cannot continue to fund such a monster forever, and its end is likely to surprise everybody here, because no one’s really reporting about it. The government has watched as NASA has shifted its most precious cargo — astronauts — to SpaceX, which has handled the responsibility with class and perfection. SpaceX has successfully landed over 100 boosters, most of them via landing platforms at sea. Think about that for a minute. Its Falcon9 program has been incredibly successful, especially as it relates to delivering cargo and people to and from the International Space Station.

But what about Huntsville? It’s all hyperbole and golly gee about the Artemis program and its Space Launch System (SLS) approved by Congress and taxpayer-funded. It makes much more sense for NASA to invest in the real future instead of one that’s built on politics and warm, fuzzy memories of days gone by. Cost overruns for SLS and its contractors (here in Huntsville) are enormous and continuous, and the handwriting on the wall is not favorable for a reliable future for the space program in Huntsville. And all of this is taking place without the watchful eyes of even the hint of a questioning press.

Absent a vibrant local press, information becomes public relations or some other form of favorable propaganda. The Huntsville Business Journal, for example, is producing a 3‑part series “Huntsville Takes the Lead to ‘Rock-it’ Back to the Moon” that goes far beyond the make-up of a simple puff piece. It’s hard propaganda that sings the praises of Huntsville’s businesses who are living off the nipple of NASA’s money. Here are just a few quotes from the series:

…Today, a new generation of space explorers is taking over. They are watching and learning and building their own bright futures right here in the Rocket City. They are the Artemis generation, who will once again lead the way as America returns to the moon, this time with the Space Launch Systems (SLS) – the most powerful rocket ever developed…
…“Currently, the SLS program has contributed $2.4 billion to Alabama’s economy; 13,000 jobs across the state; and generated more than $55 million in state and local taxes,” Mayor (Tommy) Battle said. “When you look at how much it is adding to our economy and then look at what it is adding to the world, you realize we are doing something no one else can do, that we’ve done it before, and we are doing it again…
…Home to the propulsion systems associated with the rockets we currently fly, and every successful rocket we have flown in the past, the Rocket City is once again at the heart of world-changing feats and life and death-defying technology.
Rocket scientists here in Huntsville are already working on hardware for five iterations of the Artemis Space Launch Systems (SLS), America’s next generation exploration class rocket, and the only rocket that can fly the manned Orion spacecraft safety to the moon.
Fifteen percent more power than the Saturn V, the SLS is the only exploration class vehicle capable of sending humans into deep space along with large systems that are necessary to live and work in deep space.
And none of these missions can get off earth and escape earth’s gravity field without the SLS, managed and for a large part, built here in Huntsville!…

I hope you can see the denial present in this “news.” The Marshall Space Flight Center needs a rock solid relationship with SpaceX in order to continue with the moniker “Rocket City,” because Musk and others from the private sector (who worry about things like cost instead of just dipping into tax dollars for more) are taking over everything. Likewise, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center needs “used” SpaceX props for its museum. Without those show pieces, the place is, again, a museum about the early days of space.

What does exist of a “press” here in Huntsville seems completely sold on the idea that SLS, Artemis, and the Orion lander are the future of space. Meanwhile, the open nature of SpaceX’s work gives us daily views of what’s taking place in Boca Chica, Texas and the SpaceX Starship program. NASA funds some projects, including a Starship orbit around the moon. Elon Musk, however, has his sights set on Mars and colonizing the red planet. SpaceX has yet to test its genius Starship booster and Starship combination and is waiting for an environmental impact study from the FAA (which certainly has the ears of NASA) before approving a test flight of Booster 4 and Starship 20. This system will destroy the Huntsville claim that SLS is the most powerful rocket ever developed.

Government-generated environmental concerns have kept SpaceX from testing its innovative system, and there’s talk of delays and even moving from Boca Chica to the Florida space coast. Meanwhile, Huntsville holds its breath, for this event is likely to get ALL of the global attention of space industry watchers (including Congress) and firmly place SLS in the junk bin of technological disruption.

Generally speaking, the press outside Huntsville includes skepticism about SLS, but it’s not something you’ll receive here. The bane of local media is always its relationship with local advertisers, and this is no different. Local news departments, for example, stay away from complaints about car dealers, because sales departments would have a cow!

The SpaceX vision includes fuel tankers in space, space stations, and everything else that would be necessary for humans to become an interplanetary species. And Elon Musk’s primary concerns are the outer space aspirations of countries like China, Russia, and other U.S. (business) adversaries. SpaceX gladly embraces these challenges, while NASA and Huntsville are hung up on the costly and time-consuming elements of doing it the old way. The damage to North Alabama’s economy will eventually be devastating.

The Government Accounting Office’s 2021 NASA report will be out this Spring, and it will describe even greater cost-overruns, errors, and delays in the SLS program. There’s talk of another launch delay, possibly to the summer of 2022. In the end, SLS will deliver on its promise to send Americans back to the moon, but as each month passes, Huntsville sinks deeper and deeper into the quagmire of yesterday when it comes to innovation and the future. There simply is no future in outer space without reusability, and that’s not what NASA is doing with SLS.

Behind all the public cheerleading for NASA, leadership here knows of what’s happening, and that may be the biggest story of all. Hush everybody, for as long as the emperor THINKS he’s clothed, what’s the problem?

The post Trouble For The Town That NASA Built? appeared first on Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog.

Effort vs. Audience

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 22:35:22 -0500

Lived in news for nearly a lifetime and have now lived nearly a lifetime outside of news. Twenty eight years in and now nineteen years on the outside.

But obviously I can never give up visual storytelling…and rather than an audience of thousands or tens of thousands, I now voluntarily produce stories for an online magazine (soundingsmag.net) publshed by a dear friend (Rich Turner). The upbeat: I get to choose stories and shoot/edit/produce them myself or by partnering with a wonderful retiree (Michael Cockrell) who not only has learned how to be a reporter but is an invaluable asset as a producer as well. We click is the best way to put it.

We’ve done some mighty tomes together on local waterways, animal rescue, PG&E power shutdowns. More like documentaries than news stories because we love detail. Being able to take as much time as needed and go into as much detail as we can get away with is gratifying.

Until our last effort. Months (maybe six or more) in planning, research, interviewing. A story of how ill prepared the state of California is for more frequent and extended droughts. Getting rebuffed by state agencies who either didn’t want to deal with a less than important news site or just didn’t give a shit about keeping the public informed resulted in a “silent” heart attack for me and only SIX (yeah, 6) hits on the final video. (You can see it here: https://youtu.be/648GU5lle9Q)

Now if we were a major outlet we’d get attention and maybe…just maybe…the story would result in some serious backpeddling or change with state agencies. But with six hits? Nada.

So now I’m debating the merits of serious in-depth stories vs. how it affects my health. Being denied access to information that is owed to the people by their very own government is ludicrous. Being told by the state drought task force they just don’t have the time to answer questions is infruiating.

So it looks as if I may have to back off (temporarily I hope) from serious stories and maybe just focus on shorter and possibly more audience attracting stories. The age old news conundrum. Do we give them what they want (titilation) or what they need to know.

Help me out here – what would YOU do?

Down at the Brown

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 04:36:20 -0500

As haze-gray as a battleship, the Brown Building never did fit its name. But that’s what the local cops called the two story structure on the edge of town, so who was I to nitpick? I was just some young punk with a TV camera on his shoulder, surprised to be allowed inside the detective’s headquarters and always a little relieved to leave. It hadn’t been that many months since I was still pretending to be a college student and avoiding law enforcement every chance I got. Now, beefy dudes in short sleeve shirts and shoulder holsters ushered me into backrooms to gawk at bricks of weed, recovered guns or some schlub in cuffs getting his thumbs blackened at the fingerprint machine. It was the dawn of the 90’s and the hottest show on TV was COPS. Every Saturday night, the nation tuned in by the millions to watch real life police officers go out on patrol. The job itself was old, but that kind of access was something new. Suddenly, every small town cop, backwoods deputy and ham-bone sheriff was suddenly ready for their close-ups. That’s where I come in, a mostly sober 22 year old in love with the lens and the places I could take it. For the first couple of years, I took it to the Brown building, or at the very least, its parking lot.

A low slung gravel strip with just enough room for a dozen unmarked Crown Vics and two or three TV station news cars, the small parking lot behind the Brown Building was the scene of many a suspect’s perp-walk debut. Countless are the times I raced to that lot with the sole mission of putting some freshly arrested suspect on the evening news. Thirty years later, the sound of feet scuffling over rocks immediately takes me back to the Brown Building lot, where I learned the art of the grab and made some lifelong friends along the way. Andy, Paul, Carolyn and Woody were slightly older and far more experienced and together they taught me the way of the walk-down; how to bag as many different angles of a few short seconds while being in place should the shackled captive choose to confess on the way to the pokey.

Don’t laugh. It happened.

Mostly though, the schmuck in custody bit their lip, remaining silent as me and my buddies swooped in with our logo’d lenses and leading questions. Accused murderers, suspected thieves and the occasional arsonist were regularly frog-marched into the Brown Building under a crush of local lenses. Some hung their heads, others shot angry glances and mumbled curses under their breath. A few of them still stomp through my subconscious: the hulking Marine in a torn hospital gown, accused of killing his family hours earlier. A scary biker in shackles and tats, who made it very clear he wanted to stomp a mud-hole in this cameraman’s candy-ass. The aging matriarch of a crack dealing clan who stared down my camera before hocking up a slow-motion glob of hillbilly spit that damn near landed in mind’s eye. Usually, though, it happened in a flash - with the ‘bad guy’ and a detective in tow disappearing into the Brown Building. Its heavy gray door would slam shut, a thunderous sound often followed by nervous laughter as we news crews critiqued each other's performance and played back our tape.

Those days are long gone. A few years after my time there, the city abandoned the Brown Building, moving their Detective Division to a shiny new fortress downtown. Now, curious camera crews have to call ahead and talk to shiny new Public Information Officers, slick individuals whose main mission seemed to be deflect and delay. Backdoor walk-downs are a thing of the past. Now officers bring in their suspects through a guarded sally port, well out of range of the Fourth Estate. Maybe that’s for the best. Even those accused of the most heinous crimes deserve a little dignity as they enter the Judicial System. Maybe. But I for one am so glad I got to cover the lurching parade of thugs, saints and felons with so few restraints, happy to have learned all that I did there, forever grateful I got the chance to sling a lens down at The Brown.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find my heating pad.

A Message From Our Staff...

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:18 -0600

Here at The Lenslinger Institute, we believe in granting certain senior faculty members extended leaves of absence. Erratic and unannounced, these epic visionquests are a curriculum quirk unique to the field of Cameramanthropology -- as only sudden, seemingly stupid safaris can truly emulate the bug-eating wonder that is modern day news-gathering. At least that's the way our founder explained it, before fetching his boy Otto and escaping upriver. That was nearly a year ago and though we cursed his name and burned his stuff the moment he was gone, we never denied the fact that one day his goofy ass would return. Well, here we are. His Lenslocity rolled up on shore an hour ago, reeking of spent deadlines and live oysters. He won't say where he's been, only muttering something about a missing microphone and island harlots. We on the Senior Advisory Board can only trusty our enigmatic leader has been stewing in his lagoon again. That or dude scored a righteous freelance gig and he's holding out on the rest of us. Either way, the Earl of Churl is back and he seems to wanna fire up the blog again.

Stand by...

Rock the Sure Shot

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:18 -0600

What's with all these protestors blocking photographers' shots lately? That's like sticking up 'Garage Sale' signs all over your neighborhood, then getting pissed when folks show up in your driveway wanting to buy your old toaster.

I don't get it. I've been covering protests of varying degrees since the first Bush administration and I've seen a lot of goofy things in the name of dissent. But a pack of hacks raising a ruckus on public property and demanding the media look away? That's a new one.

Or is it?

In the fall of 2016, angry mobs flooded the streets of uptown Charlotte to protest the police shooting of Keith Scott. I was there among the crush of cops, clergy and anarchists one night when one protestor in particular produced of all things, a bathroom mirror. "The media needs to look at itself!", he screamed as he jammed the mirror into my lens. 'Clever', I thought, as I twisted my torso to turn away from him. But the pack of jackals around me was so tight I couldn't escape the reflective heckler and he succeeded in blocking my shot for several minutes. Luckily, I had a 'security detail' with me that night, which simply meant that a few paces behind me was an underemployed bar bouncer being paid to make sure I made my deadline unmolested. After a few inelegant gestures on my part, I got his attention and he quickly shoo'd Mr. Mirror away.

What's my point? Don't know that I have one, other than to suggest that people who protest in public should fully expect, perhaps even want, to make a headline. Otherwise, might I suggest your organization launch a letter writing campaign, or perhaps a bake sale... just don't be surprised when camera crews show up. See, this sidewalk happens to be our office and we're all under heavy deadline. We may not give one thin shit about your issue, but we care deeply about documenting whatever is about to go down. So, to quote the Beastie Boys, don't come with the rhymes that you just half-baked. And whatever you do, don't try to hide from us.

You won't like how it looks on the evening news.

Lenslinger Interview: Charlotte Media Podcast

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:18 -0600

CHARLOTTE MEDIA PODCAST: Episode 2: Stewart Pittman on life under glass

When Adam Butler asked me to be on his Charlotte Media Podcast, I thought we were gonna talk TV News. And boy, did we. But that rascally Adam slipped in some discourse and before you know it, I'd exposed myself. Man, that sounds creepy AF! Anyhoo, consider the next forty-eight minutes of your life non-returnable. It's a pretty manic ramble on my part, Southern accent and all. One past reporter pal said this particular podcast reminds her of being stuck in a news car with me on some deadline-driven dog-day afternoon. ATTICA!

Mission Improbable

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:18 -0600

It’s a brutal pursuit, this gathering of facts - a headlong dash into danger and indifference, a race around the region as if the very future of the republic hinged on a thirty second clip of an upended dump-truck. For nearly thirty years I’ve wedged my way into unwise positions, spotlighted the plight of the victors and the vanquished as desk-bound overlords critiqued my technique in real-time. There’s a million ways to make a much better living, but none that held my attention like the flickering blue screen inside my viewfinder.

I’ve learned a lot along the way: don’t trust politicians of any party, keep your head on a swivel no matter the backdrop, clean your plate before heading into dirty weather. Three decades of daily deadlines haven’t bought me a beach house, but it’s made me wealthy beyond measure in other ways. I’ve quizzed future presidents, hung out of helicopters and carried more beauty queens than most parade floats. Sure, I’ve cursed it all a time or ten, but never once seriously considered doing anything else with my working life.

I know lots of people with the same affliction. I can’t say I like them all. But drop in on any breaking news scene and you’ll find a puddling scrum of gadflies, philosophers and misfits. But for all their differences, they share one unifying trait: they are insatiable communicators, be it with a camera, a microphone or keyboard. Block their shot and they’ll rip your lips off. Obfuscate and you’ll make a mortal enemy. Utter the phrase ‘no comment’ and we’ll camp out in your yard and tell everyone you wouldn’t talk.

Such habits have never made journalists very popular and we’re totally cool with that. If everyone loves us, we’re not doing our jobs correctly. Lately though, it’s gotten out of hand. Elected leaders blame us for not adopting their spin, toothless rubes scream obscenities from passing pick-up trucks and people we once considered friends spread lies and distortions they heard in their own personal echo chambers.

Just this afternoon, some nut-bag with a grudge gunned down five newspaper employees, all for reasons no one’s ever gonna understand. But even a tragedy as unspeakable as this won’t stop us. It only strengthens our resolve and recommits us to our mission. So yell ‘Fake News’ all you want. It only emboldens us. I’m proud to be a part of the fourth estate, as imperfect as it is. Try to squelch us and our numbers will only multiply.

After all, a free press is a very large part of what makes this country great. Look it up in that history book you don't own. I'll wait...

Terms and Conditions

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:18 -0600

If you've ever followed another station's live truck to a breaking news scene you just insisted didn't exist, you might be my kind of photog.

If you've ever waltzed into a press conference that was well underway, set up your sticks in a clattering fashion and still bagged the bite every outlet uses that night, you might be my kind of photog.

If you've ever grown bored watching cops drag a river, cursed the day you picked up a lens, then displayed nothing but grace when the body popped up, you might be my kind of photog.

If you keep a mental inventory of every public bathroom, all night diner and sweeping skyline view within the mid-city metroplex, you might be my kind of photog.

If you've ever scanned a jam packed ballroom and found the one politician in the room who didn't want to be on TV that day, you might be my kind of photog.

If you know the glow of a gas station stabbing, have taken a selfie with a cadaver dog and know the best places to eat in the worst parts of town, you might be my kind of photog.

If you can make a grieving mother feel good about sharing her story and live with yourself afterwards, you might be my kind of photog.

If you know how to act when the President comes to town, when the school bus tips over, when the widow reaches for her next clump of Kleenex, you might be my kind of photog.

If you're up to being thrust into danger and doldrums at a moment's notice without letting it turn you into an absolute scab, you might be my kind of photog.

As for the rest of you, there's always the Postal Service.

Do me a favor...

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:17 -0600

This may sound strange coming from a guy with a TV camera permanently affixed to his shoulder, but do me a favor and TURN OFF THE NEWS. No, not the local stuff - the folks who work on that live in your community and, contrary to popular belief, often care about it. No, I’m talking about those other broadcasts, the ones that don’t even pretend to be neutral, the ones that wallow in boosterism, the ones that ruin family gatherings.

You know, Cable News.

Now, before you label me a heretic (I’ll wait for all you haters out there to look that word up), hear me out: I’m talking ALL Cable News. CNN, FOX, MSNBC - whatever combination of capital letters makes you hate your fellow American. Turn. That. Shit. Off. You’ll be happier when you do, not to mention just as informed about the world as you would be if you depended on some blown-dried anchor to assure you opinion is the only correct one.

I know quite a few blown-dried anchors. Some are dear friends. Some are nuttier than squirrel turds. When it comes to forming important opinions, you’d do just as well to consult that PTA President you know, or even that kooky neighbor who blows their grass clippings onto your driveway.

Okay, now that our TV is off (remember, turn it back on for the LOCAL news. There’s a story coming up featuring a dog in a funny hat that you will NOT wanna miss), do me another favor. Get in your car, drive to a neighborhood nothing like yours, park it, get out and strike up a friendly conversation with someone who looks different than you. It’s okay, they’re not gonna rip your eye-lids off, no matter what your favorite pundit has told you. In fact, they may turn out to be the kind of person you really like, despite the fact that their hair, clothes or skin isn’t what you’d be comfortable wearing. If you’re not careful, you might even find yourself nodding in agreement over some universal truism. (It’s okay, I won’t tell your friends in whatever echo chamber you call home.) Of course, some of the things these strangers say will strongly contradict your world view, but that’s fine. In fact, I have it on good authority that that’s supposed to be way our country works.

Then again, I’m old enough to remember when Republican and Democrat were opposite sides of an American coin, not two warring factions that couldn’t wait to roll a grenade into each other’s villages. How we got to where we are is something our robotic overlords, er, history books will one day have to decide. Me, I’m just worried about survival. Mine, my children and this nation that’s been so very good to all of us. This country, this sprawling, scary, schizophrenic country is all we Americans got and it deserves better than to be destroyed in the name of partisan politics. Say you wake up next November to find your side won. That neighbor with the grass clippings who’s sure YOU’RE the one who’s nuts will still be there. Or will you set his house on fire for thinking differently than you? Asking for a friend…

Thanks for reading this. I don’t expect it to change any minds. But it’s been on my mind lately, largely due to social media. What a wonder social media is. Several times a day, I glance at my phone and stare slack-jawed at what one of my ‘friends’ posted. ‘How can they believe THAT?’, I ask myself, but no one ever answers. All I can come up with is that they’ve surrounded themselves with only like-minded folk, that they subsist on a media diet consisting of nothing but the kind of lies and distortions that pleases their particular palate.

As for me, I’m just a simple cameraman. For nearly three decades I’ve dropped in on every kind of person there was and somehow convinced them to be on television. It hasn’t made me any smarter than you, but it has widened my worldview and taught me that no one side is completely correct. If a guy who drives around with a tripod in his trunk can figure that out, surely the rest of you can.

Now if you’ll excuse me, this piece about the dog in the funny hat ain’t gonna write itself.

What Charlotte News Crews Already Know

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:17 -0600

I’m not sure if you've noticed, but Charlotte is crawling with news crews. I know, for I count myself among them. The Queen City is a hard news market; chases, blazes and slayings dominate the day. It’s a meat grinder, all right, and if you're not careful, it'll slowly chew you up. So the next time you pass that camera crew on the corner, consider what those crusty souls behind the glass have been through and what they've learned along the way…

They know all the places to go for that killer view of the city’s skyline, but they made me promise on my zoom lens not to tell you where there they are.

They know that strip of sidewalk outside the Mecklenburg County Courthouse where a marked news unit can hop the curb and park. It’s a longstanding practice, but it still feels weird doing so with all those cop cars around.

They know Greg Olsen will always give them a decent soundbite in the Carolina Panthers locker room - after a big win, or following a soul-crushing loss -- because Greg Olsen is a standup dude.

They know what it's like to hover over the city in a helicopter as something beneath them burns; and they know how it feels to watch the same chopper fly toward that blackening plume, while they're stuck sit in traffic on I-77.

They know what tear gas smells like. Many last tasted it in 2016, when the Keith Scott protest turned deadly and Crown Town came undone. By the way, the footage you’ve watched of the madness that week exist solely because some loners with lenses chose not to run.

They know whether to race to the seventh level of the Daily Parking Deck or across the way to the Airport Overlook Lot, depending on what runway the troubled airplane is trying to land on.

They know how long it takes to get from the Spectrum Center's semi-secret Media Entrance all the way to center court. (Five to fifteen minutes, depending on your attitude, how much gear you have with you and the chattiness level of the metal detector lady.)

They know that if they work a Friday night shift, misfortune will be their plunder. They’ll end up somewhere along Beatties Ford or Sugar Creek or Albemarle roads. They know when the cop cars leave the scenes, they should, too.

They know that, for whatever reason, the sunrises at Charlotte Motor Speedway are nothing short of spectacular. Ask any morning crew that’s done a Speed Week preview there and packed up a little slower than usual.

And they all know that in fifteen months or so, the Republican National Convention is going to slam into Charlotte and that they'll be there, riding the chaos that will surely come with it.

We just don't wanna taste any more tear gas.

From Our Personnel Department...

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:17 -0600

SIGHTED NOMAD WANTED

Must have firm grip, a pair of sniper's eyes and a knack for gadgets.

Endless missions await.

Will supply with aging weaponry, middling assistance and new demands daily. Must like ugly weather and attractive gasbags. Motoring skills mandatory. Penchant for pockets a plus. Will train. Won't coddle. Shoulders eroded. Spines maligned. Empty stares lengthened. Bad attitudes validated. Abuse a certainty. Respect sporadic. Worldview widened. Anecdotes amassed. Swagger magnified.

COME JOIN OUR TEAM!

(Applicants assume all risks.)

Oh, The Places You'll (be forced to) Go!

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:17 -0600

Congratulations! Today is your day! You're the photog on call! You’re off and away! There’s poo on the highway. And goo at the zoo. Stop by the station and grab a hair-do! Lex will be waiting. Or maybe take June. Just don’t go with Nigel. That dude’s a buffoon!

The scanner just burped! It horkled and hacked! We’re gonna need you two to come back! Pick up a live truck! Head straight out of town! An unpleasant something has just fallen down!

You can’t lag behind! But please do not speed! There’s no time for lunch! You’re now THE LEAD! Producers are juicing! A manager stammered! I’m pretty sure our sports guy is hammered!

We know you’re not there yet! And busy as hell. But we need to know just HOW this thing fell? Did something else push it? Did it just take a dive? Was it feeling depressed? All out of jive? Let us know when you get there. WE'LL DO IT LIVE!

You’ll round off the bottom. In a box off the top! We’ll come back after weather. And probably not stop! We’re still in the book. So try not to flop! Now put down that phone and know you’re the best. Whatever you do, wear that damn yellow vest! Tweet when you get there. We’ll flesh out the rest!

You’ll come to a place where the streets are not marked. We don’t really give a damn where you parked. Just get on that guardrail. The countdown’s begun. Fire up the camera. Set it on STUN. There’s no time to focus. You’re up on the bird. Stand by for grandeur…

Let’s polish this turd!

A Little Less Conversation...

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:17 -0600

They may smell like a bucket of wet gym socks, but I've found most college mascots to be pretty reasonable creatures. Sure, they're misunderstood. But how can you not be when you're a spherical fruit with stubby blue arms? Where can a tiger with cereal issues go, without someone yelling "You're G-r-r-r-e-e-a-t! And who can blame a horse-headed playboy for pickin' up digits on the road? I can't! Which is why I jumped at the chance to speak with a number of them at an industry function the other day. Well, actually I was the only one speaking. Mascots are pretty quiet. In fact, they don't talk at all! Don't know why, really. Anyhoo, sitting there, listening to the minutes of the meeting not be read, I got to thinking...

Ya know, mascots and photogs aren't all that different. Both species sweat profusely, both suffer from poor peripheral vision and both know how to whip the natives into a frenzy with just the roll of a shoulder. Maybe that's why I always identified with these taciturn assassins - even Shadow Satan over there. Normally, I try to avoid fallen angels, but I gotta say, for an agent of the underworld, he's good people. I just wish he'd share some sordid road stories with me, but all he ever did is stare. Then he pantomimed my execution, much to the pleasure of the cleaning crew. Once I even asked a cheerleader WHY these creatures are so quiet all the time. She only shrugged and said the mascots didn't like to talk about it.

I guess I should have seen that coming.

An Important Message To Families...

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:56:17 -0600

PARENTS,

Does your young teenager think camera crews are cool? Does he only stop fondling the remote control when the local news is on? Does she hold her phone strangely sideways when snapping a selfie? WE CAN HELP. What seems like a passing interest in TV News can lead them down a road filled with potholes, potholes that your son or daughter will be expected to stop and put on television. That’s no life for anybody. Which is why we here at the Lenslinger Institute have established a unusual youth intervention program to discourage kids from even considering what was once the world’s most interesting dead-end job.

HERE’S HOW:

We blow up your kid’s phone at 3 AM, tell ‘em there’s a circus train derailment on the edge of town and we need their help. They’ll be excited at first, but that feeling will fade once our crack team of washed-up photogs arrive and throw them into the back of our very own live truck (the one with the blacked out windows!). From there we run your son/daughter through a gauntlet of real world news gathering scenarios, from the soul-draining tedium of a simulated city council meeting to virtual hurricane immersion! The shift is long but it usually ends with the kind of panic attack that will send your little hipster running straight for the nearest Coast Guard recruiter. Hey, look who’s making America great again!

OUR COMMITMENT:

Our rough but loving crew of photog-expats and rogue sound recordists are determined to make sure your little buttercup doesn’t make the same mistakes they did. Which is why we have no problem abandoning them in a Wal-Mart parking lot until they can score fresh sound on the Battle of Gallipoli. Truth is most of our staff emotionally shattered, if not estranged from their families. But that’s not important right now! What IS important is that your child understands there’s no simply future in covering yesterday’s news. So don’t get all weirded out if they come home talking about being strapped to a wobbly stepladder and handed a red-hot handycam. I can personally assure you that the Waffle House sausage grease we spray on them during the plebe period IS 100% Gluten-free.

YOUR MOVE:

Sure, our tactics are a bit unconventional, but we guarantee your snowflake won’t be pass a local news car in traffic without getting the vapors. They’ll thank you later. And considering they’re gonna be the ones picking out your rest home, it pays to maximum their income potential NOW. Ya know, studies show that every time a young adult pursues a career in TV News, a future venture capitalist dies. Our country can’t withstand that. So do what’s right and cough up the seven payments of $49.99! The sooner you do, the sooner we can frog-march your little smart-ass through the longest workday of their young lives. They’ll come back with a weird eye twitch and a major better attitude. Most importantly, you’ll rest easy knowing your children’s future is a little bit brighter - and for far less cash than even a decent reform school…

Speaking of which, did we mention the extra charge for the souvenir video?