The Daily Californian wrote an article about Berkeley bloggers on Wednesday, and Ghost Word was featured. The web site has two pictures of me, one good (above) and one less flattering. That's me in my office. I really do smile on occasion.
It's been about two years since I started this blog and I have managed to keep writing despite the pressures of a busy life. I try to focus on books and the Bay Area literary scene, but snippets about journalism creep in every once in a while.
It's one of those days I would like to diverge into media. A few weeks ago I went to see a premiere of Rory Kennedy's new documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. It's an exploration of the military culture that permitted low level soldiers to degrade, beat, and abuse Iraqi prisoners. While one general was demoted and punished for her role in the scandal, the real people responsible, those who wrote the memos condoning abuse, those who turned their heads, were never held accountable. Kennedy's documentary will be shown on HBO Thursday and it does a remarkable job of drawing a disturbing portrait of America's military might.
After watching this documentary, go see the exhibt of Fernando Botero's drawings of Abu Ghraib at Berkeley's Doe Library. Botero is the artist known for his roly-poly figures; men with rolls of fat that give them a pleasing roundness. Botero draws these figures in his exhibit, only this time they are being beaten, urinated on, exposed, and humiliated.
3 comments:
Here are some things I see when I read that Daily Cal story. I see a dead tree paper trying to be hip by writing about bloggers. I see bloggers using the dead tree media to promote themselves. And then when all the readers have gone to the blogs, the dead tree media withers away.
We'll have to wait and see. There's the possibility of convergence, where the dead tree media becomes the internet media. That seems to be the current trend.
I agree that the media is converging...about the Botero exhibit, I wandered into it, if you can believe this, by accident. I was going into the stacks on my Barbara Pym quest and found myself alone in the gallery, wondering where all the students and the computers went. Then I sort of came to and looked up.
Jesus.
Then I had to go back to the office and act normal among the clueless.
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