If you want to see the best middle-of-the-road newspaper column in an Alabama paper today — that is what passes for liberalism in this state — you could drive to Anniston and pick up a copy of the Star.
But why bother?
Since you are online anyway, you could simply click on this link and read H. Brandt Ayers’s column, headlined: ‘Tea Party Tempest.’
It is well written and makes some great points, although you know me. I have a quibble or two.
I’ve always looked at the winter holiday period as a time for a break from work. And since writing has been my work for the past 28 years, I try not to do much of it during the Christmas-New Year holidays. Instead, one of the ways I rest and relax takes place in a Strat-O-Lounger in front of TV hooked up to a cable line, with many, many movie channels!
It’s not simply an escape, since I tend to flip around a lot and watch more than one show at a time sometimes, especially when watching the educational commercial channels. Two of the best are The History Channel and The Discovery Channel. This past week, they both ran simultaneous specials in prime time dealing with all the literature of possible scenarios on what might be the end of the world as we know it, or looked at another way, a time for a new beginning on Earth.
While the titles sound apocalyptic, as in the end of all things, the word actually means a revealing story. And in this case, both the nature shows on Discovery that deal with potential environmental disasters that could spell the end for human civilization, and the historical looks at prophesy, both have a potential happy ending. Even in the writings of Nostradamus, there are always in the end two females forms, representing two potential fates. And the way these shows end up seem to have the right message for us all. We have a chance to choose a better path closer to nature, not down the road of greed and war.
The only thing we Web journalists can do is sit back and watch what happens, and report on it to some extent. Like the seers in a way, we are here to say people have a choice. And we can editorialize about what we think that choice should be — yes trying to influence people in those choices.
Here are a couple of video samples to think about. We urge you to take a break from the relentless nature of cable TV news and think more broadly about some of these things. After President Barack Obama is inaugurated January 20, and the new Congress is in session, we will be thinking about the broader picture as we get into specific policy debates in the months and years ahead.
While it is not going to be politically correct to talk about it publicly in these terms, all of these shows end up mentioning the date December 21, 2012 — when the Mayan calendar and other evidence points to either a dramatic end to life on Earth, or some kind of a new beginning. That’s when the Earth and Sun will line up with the center of the Milky Way galaxy, a time of potential upheaval in nature’s forces.
Let’s hope that is the time when we figure out the answer to begin ending our dependence on fossil fuels. Otherwise we may very well see the four horses of the apocalypse in our time as a self-fulfilling prophesy.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
