Here is my Albuquerque Tribune column, which ran Wednesday, January 24, 2007.
NEW YEAR, NEW QUESTIONS
After 75 years, I still find that there are a lot of questions in the modern era I am puzzled about
By Arthur Alpert
A new year, the first month fading - I no longer write"06" on my checks. Up ahead, looming like a mountain in the Chinese mist, is a birthday so momentous – 75 - that I am motivated to sum up.
Let’s see. Still childish after all these years, but that’s no crime. Still ignorant, too, which should be. How sad to be ancient and clueless about puzzles like these:
o How long will we wield the hammer of morality to shape good people?
After pounding for at least 5,767 years, as the Jewish calendar has it) – perhaps you noticed – we’re not better individuals and our societies are neither just nor kind.
So, if we define insanity as playing the same notes over and over and over and expecting a different tune, why not jettison the moral frame of reference for another way of seeing?
o Who purloined the dictionaries? Without definitions, a word "means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less, " as Humpty Dumpty said. Even my favorite conservative columnist, David Brooks, can’t decide what conservative means.
Also, who killed the proofreaders? I’ve lost patience with faze spelled p–h-a-s-e. And don’t get me started on site/sight/cite.
o What is the basis of George W. Bush’s self-esteem?
o We geezers are fewer daily, so I understand why Albuquerque’s last Big Band radio format fell silent. Yet all ages packed El Rey last month for Western swing, classic pop and folk rock by "Asleep at the Wheel". Might a station playing Americana make it?
o Why respect the iffy "law" of supply and demand, while ignoring the natural law of unintended consequences. The corporate moguls who financed George W. Bush never imagined Iraq. They paid only for corporate welfare, no regulation and to lower their taxes. (And what a lovely return-on-investment !)
o Pitches for replica watches dominate my email. Why? What are they?
o More moral framework : by labeling everything good or bad, right or wrong, this or that, we erase human complexity and create problems that can’t be solved. Is that why we rage at each other?
o Speaking of labels, when Rightists call liberals bad names, like "liberal," liberals duck and urge civility. Surely the proper first response to charges you are a liberal or leftist should be "Thank you."
o Why don’t we mourn the living? A communal rite would let us salute and cry for outstanding folks cut down early. Like the admirable Colin Powell, used and discarded by his friends. Or John McCain, the former exemplar of honor who would rather be President.
o Boring isn’t it, listening to Amy Goodman, Molly Ivins, George Soros, economist Bob Kuttner, Thom Hartmann, and Noam Chomsky every Sunday morning. What? They’re never on? Exactly. "Meet the Press" and its competitors run the gamut of opinion from A to B.
o My passionate identification with the football Giants was born in the 1930s so why doesn’t management listen when I say, "Fire the coach."
o I used to sneer at conspiracy theories. Irrational, I said. When did my sneer become irrational? Watergate? Iran-Contra? Karl Rove and the Swiftboaters? Today’s neo-cons?
o Wouldn’t extending Do Not Call to cover non-profits, pollsters and politicians represent Heaven on earth?
Told you – I’m ancient and clueless. And this was just a partial list.
Alpert is a semi-retired journalist in Albuquerque. Reach him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com.