The illegal American invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation was so epochal a catastrophe that it spawned a negative phrase in Arabic, “to Iraqize” or `arqana…So how can Libyans and the world avoid the Iraqization of Libya?

— Juan Cole, “How to Avoid Bush’s Iraq Mistakes in Libya”

University of Michigan Prof. Juan Cole’s analyses on all things Middle Eastern at his Informed Comment site (juancole.com), are like music to a thinking person’s ears. Take a look back over the past few days’ postings, including his “Top Ten Myths about the Libya War.”

The second features Nick Davies, the amazing reporter who refused to take no for a story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2011/jul/07/news-of-the-world-phone-hacking-nick-davies-rupert-murdoch-video

Americans live in a late capitalist society where the rich have gotten many times richer and the middle class has gotten poorer, where Wall Street bankers have stolen us blind and blamed us for living above our means, where persistent unemployment is worse than in the Great Depression, where most politicians and some judges have been bought by corporations or special interests, where authorities actively conspire to keep people from voting, where the government spies on citizens assiduously without warrant or probable cause, and where the minds of the sheep are kept off their fleecing by substituting celebrity gossip, sex scandals, and half-disguised bigotry for genuine news…

http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/our-news-and-their-news.html#comments

Read the column here. See the page here. See this week’s entire Digital Edition here. Or just keep reading:

There I was, trying to get some writer-editor work done. And there on the TV was … a “Green Hornet” marathon.

Jason the TVaholic, at www.tvaholic.com, documented 153 such marathons that ran last Thanksgiving weekend.

Bravo carried eight Thanksgiving Day episodes of “Millionaire Matchmaker” followed by five episodes of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

The Syfy channel played eight James Bond films that day followed by four more Friday and two after that.

Meanwhile “Home Alone” 4, 3 & 2 were terrorizing the ABC Family channel. History dispatched 11 episodes of “Ice Road Truckers.”

The Discovery Channel shipped 15 episodes of “Deadliest Catch” followed by 10 eps of “Dirty Jobs.”

Jason notes that to be listed, a marathon has to be at least five hours of the same show or type of movie.

That scene was repeated with 131 marathons run over New Year’s weekend and 119 over Christmas weekend.

The running continues. Bravo was back the other day with five more episodes of “Millionaire Matchmaker,” followed by five “Tabatha’s Salon” takeovers and seven more “Real Housewives.”

Who’s watching all this stuff?

Who has the time?

I would if I could.

For example, that “Green Hornet”?

Just about the funnest 1960s-era crime-fighter series this side of “Batman,” with its heroes masquerading as a newspaper publisher and his valet.

The latter, Kato, was played by celebrated martial artist Bruce Lee. His cool moves and the show’s cool gadgets were a teenager’s dream come black-and-white-screen true.

Not that I would know anything about it: I missed all those “Green Hornet” episodes that my buddies arrived raving about on school mornings. Seems there was some problem with our TV’s rabbit ears not picking up the signal.

Since then cable has become king and I’ve caught an episode here and there.

Ah, but thanks to Syfy’s Jan. 11 “Green Hornet” marathon, there was my chance to watch every episode.

That marathon was a naked promo, of course, for the movie of the same name coming to a theater near you.

I’m all for different remotes for different folks. Eye of the beholder and all that. But I’ve seen the movie trailer. It seemed to shout, “Invest your money, intelligence and dignity elsewhere: Catch the Syfy marathon.”

Alas, instead some of us have to work. So, I went “Green Hornet” marathonless.

Yet Kato was beckoning after I left the house and then returned home. So… er, no, I didn’t exactly go “Green Hornet” marathonless.

My old TV did allow for regular escapes to the “Twilight Zone.” These days, Rod Serling’s signature series is a regular marathoner, averaging 1.16 million total views during its New Year’s Day run.

Meanwhile “Law & Order” is its own perpetual marathon. The series ought to have its own cable channel by its own name, after dominating a couple of other networks.

Among other marathons, I had heard that VH1 was running five hours of “Saturday Night Live” episodes.

To view some of “SNL’s” first several season classics again would be nice. I recall more than once being at parties back then, when one of us asked the host if there was a TV where we could catch the show’s beginning — and the whole gathering ended up in that room watching.

My musings on the tube would be incomplete without mention of a potentially ultimate marathon: “24.”

Original. Fresh. I stumbled upon Jack Bauer in his first episodes.

Right up until its last season, his was the only TV show I actually made time to see.

In rerun form the spontaneity, and thus much of the thrill, is gone. But in its own way “24” was its own marathon.

The thought occurs that a reader could email to say the idea is not to sit and watch all of a marathon’s episodes as they air, but to TiVo them in order to share their finer points some day with, say, culturally deprived grandkids.

But I don’t have a TiVo or other digital video recorder. The closest I have to a digital video library is the video subscription service Netflix.

Even that account I have suspended, realizing I’m too much on the go to watch all the great stuff lined up in my queue.

Then there’s YouTube. I’m hesitant to search its innumerable online videos for a certain crime-fighting duo. It wouldn’t surprise me to find every episode. They’d then go to the queue of favorites that I was so happy to find but rarely watch.

Nope, no snarky comments here about a dumbed-down, TV-watching nation.

TV gluttony can be as bad as any excess.

One also can enjoy the “Green Hornet” without being a blockhead.

When things are a tad less busy, maybe I will.

— C.B. Hanif

“Isn’t Azerbaijan a democratic republic? Constitutionally, it is, of course. But the constitution is one thing and the political culture and practice are something else.”

— Christel Fricke, director of the Center for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo, Norway, writing at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

It’s a new year in Baku, Azerbaijan, which I last wrote about here, after visiting, on behalf of the international Organization of News Ombudsmen, here.

Even as bustling Baku booms, it seems the more things change, the more things…don’t? As Ms. Fricke observes, the struggle continues.

More Baku scenes:

— C.B. Hanif

— From my latest commentary in Florida Weekly.

Read it here. See the page here. See this week’s entire Digital Edition here. Or just keep reading:

2010: The best and the worst

December 30, 2010

MSNBC chose Florida Democratic nominee Alex Sink as Worst Political Candidate of 2010 for her failed bid against Republican governor-elect Rick Scott.

I’m not so sure about that call.

Not with folks such as Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell garnering way too many votes up in Delaware.

“It’s unbelievable,” proclaimed MSNBC’s Chuck Todd in bestowing on Sink the, er, dishonor.

“Think about it,” asserted Mr. Todd, a Miami native. “You lost to a guy who defrauded Medicare — in Florida! OK? More people on Medicare perhaps in the state of Florida per capita than maybe any other state!”

For certain, state CFO Sink failed to exploit neophyte Scott’s political flaws. And like many a Dem she ran an uninspired campaign.

But Mr. Scott not only deftly surfed conservatism’s latest wave. In barely winning Florida’s closest gubernatorial battle since 1876, he spent a state record $70-plus million, most of it his own dough.

Seems our professional political punditry should be paying a lot more attention to the money influencing our elections.

Pronouncing awards obviously is more fun.

In fact, I soon was generating my own. For example, for 2010’s Worst Christmas Tree I nominate the $11 million, jewel-encrusted “most expensive Christmas tree ever.”

That’s according to the manager of the Emirates Palace hotel, whose Abu Dhabi lobby the faux tree graced.

Immediate thought: Why not scrimp with a miserly $1 million tree? Then with the remaining $10 million, apply such imperatives as feeding the needy. They might be hard to find in Abu Dhabi, but they abound in neighboring countries.

This reminded me of the excesses that helped land other area rulers in trouble: The last Shah of Iran splurged billions on U.S. jet fighters that were outside Iranian territory before they even got up to speed.

Meanwhile, back in the capital and arguably richest emirate of the United Arab Emirates, the hotel soon was ’fessing up to “overload.”

Regrets were made regarding the monument to conspicuous consumption. The Emirates Palace, it was explained, had served only as the venue, for a hotel-based jeweler’s exhibition in quest of a Guinness record. A statement carried by the staterun news agency cited the “values of openness and tolerance” in the international business and tourism hub.

Of course, catering to Westerners is good business. But is bad taste?

Moving on, how about the Worst Analysis of South Florida’s Professional Sports Scene?

Was it the media hand-wringing over the poor start by the Mammy Hates, better known (especially now that they are winning) as the Miami Heat?

Or, all the angst over the bumbling Miami Dolphins, whose owner Stephen Ross had predicted — make that promised — a Super Bowl appearance this year?

Well, one hardly can blame a team owner for being a homer, or trying to sell tickets.

Thus my whiners — er, “winners,” were the commentators who, before the Heat’s recent 12-game win streak, were calling Coach Erik Spoelstra a goner, and all but reinstalling Pat Riley, former coach and now president, on the bench.

Sure, analysts have gotta analyze. But the reality is the new, LeBron James-equipped but uncoordinated Heat model, limped into the season with key injuries. The question is how well the players eventually execute an idea called “team.”

Next, for non-sports enthusiasts, how about Best/Worst Performance in a Spiritual Drama?

Was it Gainesville’s “burning pastor,” who wanted to desecrate a certain holy text?

Or the media that fawned over him to the point of international celebrity?

Better was America’s concerted rejection of His Royal Hatefulness.

Better still were the Palm Beach Atlantic University youths who rallied at West Palm Beach’s Centennial Square against extremism of any stripe. The Christian college’s students particularly challenged the idea of someone saying or doing hurtful things in the name of their religion.

I have a soft spot in my heart (all right, head too) for this kind of sanity. With yesteryear’s flower children largely gone AWOL, this nod goes to the kids.

Meanwhile, having long paid attention to the natural foods scene, I thought I’d check for 2010’s bests in that arena. Among several, Brenna Bertram-Salman, marketing director at the Whole Foods Market in Palm Beach Gardens, cited:

“Crème Brûlée Chevre – Ramekins filled with fresh goat cheese and layered with offerings like fig and cocoa or lemon and cherry. These made-to-order gems are topped (with) flavored sugars and caramelized to perfection.”

It was the Best Reminder of How Far That Industry Has Come since the early ’70s. Back then, folks used tongs to grab tofu from bulk containers at such groceries as The Health Concern in Towson, Md. How to have imagined that today, such “natural food store” items would be packaged staples available even at non-specialty grocers?

Let’s shift gears and note that we’re leaving behind not only another year, but also another decade.

Thus, included among various Items That Became Obsolete During The Last 10 Years are maps, watches and wired — as opposed to wireless — anything.

The obvious “culprit,” if you will, is everadvancing technology. When’s the last time you received an America Online disc in the mail? Yet I also would add such low-tech items as the Electoral College.

My Outdated of The Decade vote, however, goes to the encyclopedia. Specifically, the print version.

(By the way, the oft-augured demise of the print newspaper? Like paperless offices, greatly exaggerated.)

Back to encyclopedias: Remember Honey Ryder, the Bond girl Ursula Andress portrayed in “Dr. No”? She told 007 that’s how she had educated herself, starting with the letter A and having worked her way up to T. 

— C.B. Hanif

— From my latest commentary in Florida Weekly

See it here. See this week’s entire Digital Edition here. See the page here. Or just keep reading:

Can I give up the printed page? Power me up

C.B. Hanif

December 16, 2010

When it comes to what to read these days I find myself simultaneously a traditionalist and a technophile, fighting a losing battle against the biggest blockbuster of this holiday season: the electronic book.

Count me among the holdouts, a defender of the printed volume. I like the touch, the feel, the tradition, the universality of The Real Thing.

It’s a longstanding love affair. What was that one thing I desperately missed for weeks that long-ago summer, when for whatever reason I was grounded while my friends were outside playing baseball? A book.

Any book. Not the convenience and great features of the new reading contraptions that keep singing a siren’s song to this technology enthusiast.

Yes, I confess. Part of my problem is I love things electronic.

Shipwrecked on a deserted island? I easily can think of the single volume I’d want to have along. I’d rather have my laptop with wireless access to all the world’s libraries.

And I don’t know anyone else who, even back in the early ’80s, rushed over to Radio Shack to pick up that combination car stereo and CB radio.

But I’m trying hard, very hard, to remain Old School on this matter.

You might envision me as the Cowardly Lion from “The Wizard of Oz,” only this time chanting:

“I do believe in books, I do believe in books, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do!”

And by book, again, I mean the print volume.

My dissonance was only accentuated when I stopped by the bustling Barnes & Noble bookstore at Legacy Place on PGA Boulevard.

It was nice to walk in and see all the people perusing books. Real books.

Tables in and around the store’s café were filled with conversations and/or readers. In an aisle, two stacks of books had proved just the right height to provide a makeshift chair for one engaged gentleman.

It simply was a comfortable place for a reader; as cozy as any library, rivaling many a beach.

And at a display of B&N’s proprietary electronic book reader, the Nook, there was a knowledgeable, articulate and witty saleswoman, Sandra, demonstrating its numerous features by way of explaining why it is one of the hottest gifts.

In fact, even as I began crafting this column a couple of days later, a New York Times email pushed to my Blackberry smart phone was proclaiming:

“Forget those bland ‘black text on gray, no touch screen’ e-book readers. Here’s Nook Color, a reader from Barnes & Noble with a color touch screen.”

The Times’ David Pogue was saying in his “State of the Art” column (almost as much a must-read as my Florida

Weekly colleague Bradford Schmidt’s “The Mashup”), that:

“E-book readers like the Amazon Kindle may be all the rage this holiday season. But five years from now, they’ll seem as laughably primitive as the Commodore 64.”

In touting the new Nook as major progress for humanity, Pogue concluded, “Yes, five years from now, we’ll laugh at this reader, too — but not derisively. As we unwrap our all-color, alltouch screen e-book readers under the 2015 tree, we’ll remember this machine as the one that showed the way.”

It was beginning to sink in. The question no longer is what to read, but how.

A few steps away, however, at the Eissey Campus of Palm Beach State College, came yet another take.

“The misperception that people buy more e-books than printed books is widespread and the e-book publishers do nothing to dispell it,” said David Pena, director of the school’s Library Learning Resources Center.

“They want to make people think print is unhip and on the way out — much bigger profits in selling an electronic file for $9.99 than a printed book for the same price,” said the soft-spoken but always erudite Dr. Pena.

“In 2009, total U.S. book sales were about $24 billion, e-book sales accounted for only $313 million of that. Of course e-book sales are growing fast, but they’re not even 10 percent of the total.

“PBSC libraries offer over 30,000 e-books to our students, but e-book hits account for less than 10 percent of our total circulation. Academic librarians can tell you that everyone talks about e-books, but students will choose a print book over an e-book almost every time.

“E-books and e-readers are most convenient and useful for light reading — best-selling fiction and the like,” Dr. Pena said. “But a printed book is much better for intense reading and serious study requiring note taking, underlining, rereading, flipping back and forth, etc.

“PBSC libraries offer Nooks, Kindles, and iPads with preloaded e-books for checkout by students. There’s plenty of interest in the devices, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who borrows from us becomes a regular user of e-readers or goes out and buys one for themselves.”

All that warmed the heard of your correspondent. One reason I tend to hold out against being an early adopter of the new electronics is that the gadgets are coming too fast and furious.

No, my Blackberry isn’t perfect. But I don’t want an iPhone — I think?

I love my Mac laptop. But during our last Social Media Roundup session over at Store Self Storage and Wine Storage, “Branding Professor” Patrick Barbanes of Really Simple Social Media suggested I give an iPad a try.

I easily could envision his expected result. I’d be like Mikey of the old TV cereal commercial: “He likes it!”

Problem is, I don’t wanna like it. Not unless I really need it.

Still, I suspect I already know the outcome of this e-story.

It’s probably just a matter of time before Sandra has another sale.

— C.B. Hanif

]]> http://www.hanifonmedia.com/best-book-of-the-season-first-get-plugged-in/feed/ 2 http://www.hanifonmedia.com/wikileaks-helpful-hurtful-or-just-voyeuristic/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wikileaks-helpful-hurtful-or-just-voyeuristic http://www.hanifonmedia.com/wikileaks-helpful-hurtful-or-just-voyeuristic/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 04:45:43 +0000 admin http://www.hanifonmedia.com/?p=2684 From my latest Florida Weekly commentary:

Perusing the trove of sensitive documents is like viewing our world neighbors’ — and our own — dirty linen. Foreign leaders are as embarrassed as our own. I was left wondering just who decided what got leaked.

Read the rest here. See this week’s entire Digital Edition here. Or, just keep reading:

Is WikiLeaks information helpful, hurtful or just voyeuristic?

C.B. Hanif

December 9, 2010

By now we’ve finished off the leftover turkey. And others of us have digested a portion of the latest WikiLeaks release.

For those who haven’t, WikiLeaks is the award-winning, international notfor profit whistle-blowing organization that, as its name implies, publishes leaked documents alleging high institutional misconduct.

Beyond the obvious national security implications, there’s plenty for shock value, humor and serious contemplation in the recent massive release of confidential diplomatic cables.

Perusing the trove of sensitive documents is like viewing our world neighbors’ — and our own — dirty linen. Foreign leaders are as embarrassed as our own. I was left wondering just who decided what got leaked.

Like most local folks with whom I talked, I confess to being of two minds on all this.

Most were your average Jane or John who have been numbed by, or simply have tuned out, the revelations of what our government and foreign governments have been up to. Other folks shared thoughts from pertinent professional backgrounds.

“I have mixed reactions to WikiLeaks,” said Bob Jenks, member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Burns Road.

“I am absolutely of the viewpoint that our government should be open to full scrutiny and subject to the will of the people,” said the former Naval aviator who has been a business planner throughout most of his career, including when he organized the first practical business plan for the Palm Beach County Health Department.

“I am not so naïve, however, to believe that we live in a world of full trust and mutual honor,” said Mr. Jenks, who has degrees from Harvard, who continues as a professor in the School of Management at Walden University and now lives in North Palm Beach.

“So, especially when dealing with situations where we already know that there is rampant corruption, I reluctantly have to recognize we have to use the same weapons employed by the bullies, liars and cowards out there in order to protect our country, ourselves and our children.”

It turns out our foreign policy is much more complex — and perplexing — than even those of us who have tried to pay attention have thought. Recognition of that is one good outcome of this peek.

For example, we’re learning just how “disastrously” corrupt is the Afghanistan government we’re trying to prop up. According to our embassy folks, their agriculture guy “appears to be the only minister that was confirmed about whom no allegations of bribery exist.”

Unlike government corruption, one revelation that was surprising is Arab leaders’ sentiment that the U.S. should invade Iran.

Regarding that, Ghassan Rubeiz of Palm Beach Gardens, prior to his Dec. 2 talk on “Sex, Religion and Politics in the Middle East,” at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Palm Beaches, said: “Religious dynasties can be fratricidal: (Saudi Arabia) King Abdullah wants the ‘head of the snake to be cut off in Iran.’

“But the Saudi people and the majority of Arab society disagree with the king and with other Gulf rulers,” added Mr. Rubeiz. “Arab society may have mixed feelings about the Tehran regime. But they are against hosting a third war in the region, and they do not consider Iran a major threat.”

Mr. Rubeiz is an Arab-American social scientist with a background in ecumenism; he was Middle East Secretary of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches between 1979 and 1993.

“My reaction: Media is making too big an issue of it,” said Allen Maxwell, who’s back for the season to lead the popular NewsTalk discussions at 9 a.m. Sunday mornings at First Unitarian Universalist on Prosperity Farms Road.

“This is the type of communication that takes place — and should take place — between our diplomats in the field and the Department of State in Washington,” said Mr. Maxwell, emeritus professor of Political Science, Indiana University Kokomo, whose specialties include U.S. foreign policy and global politics.

“I am impressed with the candid nature of some of the cables,” he said. “They provide insights into the attitudes of foreign leaders and of the foreign publics. These are necessary for wise policy-making by our policy makers in Washington. These cables are the heart of diplomacy. The only difference with the WikiLeaks cables is that the public is getting a look at diplomatic communications.”

That’s the transparency I want: to know what my government is doing even when — especially when — government officials don’t think we need to know, or don’t want us to know.

But there’s also the need to balance the jeopardy to our diplomatic and security service people.

That may or may not explain why WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is being pursued by Interpol for alleged sex crimes, why Amazon Inc. has stopped hosting his site, or why WikiLeaks had to move its servers to Switzerland following “mass attacks” online.

But consider Bob Campbell’s cautionary sentiment, as he recalled the leak during the Vietnam Era of the Pentagon Papers, by Daniel Ellsberg:

“Ellsberg was exposing lies perpetrated on the American public by two administrations. That was a major service to America,” said the retired public school psychologist and Jupiter resident. “The WikiLeaks revelations serve no useful purpose and in fact are destructive to the U.S. and our relations with others.”

Truth does have consequences. Given these latest leaks’ potential for help and hurt, we need to be more than just voyeurs.

— C.B. Hanif

Will journalistic and other freedoms boom for this Baku youth the way everything else around him seems to be?

A couple of months after my visit, “Journalism 2.0” author Mark Briggs confirmed from Baku that “There certainly is a lot of interest in journalism for a place that has such struggles with it.”

From my latest offering in Florida Weekly’s Palm Beach Gardens edition, here. Or just keep reading:

And now, to be thankful for something completely different:

Unlike other places in the world we live in a country where, in the words of Stephen Biko of South Africa, “I write what I like.”

We get to cuss out our government officials, even question whether their birth certificates were stamped USA or Kenya, without putting our lives at risk like the anti-apartheid martyr.

In contrast, I met human rights attorney and distinguished former Azerbaijan Parliament member Matlab Mutallimli while in that country in March representing my colleagues of the international Organization of News Ombudsmen.

News ombudsmen field concerns at their news organizations and generally respond publicly.

In Baku, the Caspian sea capital of the oil-rich former Soviet republic that now is the Free Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, the news the other day: “Azerbaijan must immediately release Eynulla Fatullayev.”

It was for his articles critical of the government that Mr. Fatullayev was arrested in 2007 and eventually sentenced to a cumulative eight years in jail on charges ranging from “Incitement of hatred” to tax evasion. So say his defenders, who include the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.

For years Mr. Fatullayev suffered beatings, threats and the persecution of his family because of his outspoken journalism.

In April the European Court of Human Rights, whose rulings Azerbaijan is obligated to observe, found that Mr. Fatullayev’s rights of free expression had been violated and that he had been unfairly tried. The ECHR ordered his release with 27,822 Euros ($37,854) in compensation.

In July, however, Mr. Fatullayev was sentenced to an additional 2½ years on charges of possession of narcotics, which he says are routinely planted by Baku prison guards to silence critics.

On Nov. 11 the Azerbaijani Supreme Court agreed to implement the ECHR decision — while not addressing the drug charges. And in what the Committee to Protect Journalists called a ruling “blatantly tailored to defy the European Court’s order,” a Baku Appeals Court has said he will remain imprisoned while he appeals those charges.

Other Azeri journalists have been even less fortunate.

Enter my host, Matlab Mutallimli. While I broke from a whirlwind schedule of meetings and interviews with journalists and news organizations, he motioned me to follow him through a crowd to the front of a memorial service at the grave of Elmar Huseynov.

It was the anniversary of the brutal 2005 shooting murder of Mr. Huseynov.

A father's graveside grief for his son.

The award-winning journalist had suffered threats and incarceration for his criticism of Azerbaijani authorities. He was fined and forced to close his popular Monitor after being convicted in 1998 of “insulting the nation.”

The view of many gathered was that the Azeri government was responsible for the assassination of Mr. Huseynov, who our U.S. ambassador at his first memorial service had described as a national hero.

I confess to having little clue about the challenges of establishing a free, democratic, post-Soviet era government.

As a journalist, I also don’t take allegations as givens, one reason I would have liked the organizers of my visit to have arranged for me to speak to “the other side,” so to speak.

Yet one of our government officials there has told me that as for higher levels, they are not open to such meetings. They’ve heard it many times before. Ahh, progress on media? Not really.

A couple of months after my visit, “Journalism 2.0” author Mark Briggs confirmed from Baku that “There certainly is a lot of interest in journalism for a place that has such struggles with it.” Among the hurdles he cited:

“News outlets must receive a special license from the government, which means there is little investigative reporting. (The government doesn’t tolerate criticism.) Independent news sources, mostly online, apparently operate with a single-minded focus on complaining about the government, so the idea of journalistic objectivity and fairness are a ‘are work in progress,’ to put it mildly.’ Still, many journalists I spoke to are hopeful that the Internet will change the game and bring a diversity of voices and reporting to a nation that sorely needs it.”

And the fact that there is no news on regulating the Internet is one place where there is some hope.

Our own news media are not guiltless, of course.

I’ve mentioned before my ombudsman colleagues chastising us U.S. media types for cheerleading our nation and the world into the Iraq disaster. Just this year, we have endured another round of idiotic media fascination over whether President Barack Obama was born in the USA or is a closet Muslim. We’ve had journalists give carte blanc to “angry” folks who threaten to tote weapons to public rallies, rather than call it out as the thinly veiled thuggery that it is.

And sure, our radio and TV blowhards get to say pretty much what they want. But our government doesn’t make us listen. We all get to tune them out. Because — in popular culture jargon — that’s how we roll.

It’s just more of our freedom that we should not take for granted.

So thanks, Dear Readers — especially those of you who fought and marched and even died — for my freedom to write what I hope you and I like.

On a street in Baku.

Thanksgiving Day addenda:

Voice of America: Azerbaijanis Blog for Freedom

MSNBC: Azerbaijan frees second critical blogger

— C.B. Hanif

Just one question. To all the people who voted for Allen West.

What the heck were you thinking?

OK, that concludes my analysis of the midterm elections.

Or not.

Like every other Tom, Dick and Hanif, I too have thoughts regarding what President Obama called the “shellacking” of his Democrats by the Republicans.

To better inform them I trucked down to the Forum Club at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach.

There, Ken Rudin, National Public Radio’s political editor, during his talk three days after the election, was “trying to explain what happened Nov. 2.”

Mr. Rudin confirmed my sense that in the universal picture, this too shall pass.

“We keep thinking that these sea changes will last forever,” he said, “and they don’t. They turn on a dime.”

For a perfect example he pointed back to November 2006 when President Bush was unpopular, the invasion of Iraq was unpopular, the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina was being ridiculed and reviled nationwide, there was the corruption in Congress, gasoline prices were out of control, all of which helped usher an historic win as the Dems took back the House and Senate.

In 2008, he noted, it was more of the same. Sen. John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate excited the base but ultimately sank GOP chances of succeeding President Bush, amid more gains for the Dems.

That had folks thinking the Democrats’ coalition of African-Americans and Latinos, seniors and younger voters, and rural people who had been voting Republican for years would last a long while, Mr. Rudin told Forum Club, of which I should note I am a member.

“The Republicans were deemed irrelevant if not worse, the party of Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh, who would be in the wilderness for the longest time. And obviously the longest time lasted less then two years.”

While it’s true that a House majority and 60 Senate seats suggests a party can do what it wants, Mr. Rudin said, “The reality is when trying put together the health care bill, everybody had their own special interest” and there was a feeding frenzy. Recall Dem senators such as Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska demanding that to garner their vote, this or that must be added to the bill.

“Many Democrats forgot what got them there into the majority to begin with.” People were worrying about their jobs and their children’s future, he said, “And that was the underlying fear and feeling that was going on in this country.”

But sea change?

Mr. Rudin noted that Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater carried six states when routed by Democrat Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Two years later the GOP gained 47 seats in the House. Two years after, Richard Nixon was elected.

Same in 1972. “Richard Nixon carried 49 states as George McGovern was seen as a left-wing extremist, and it seemed the Republican control would last forever.” Two years later came Watergate, the Republican Party was routed in Congress, and two years later the nation elected President Jimmy Carter.

“For those of us who have followed and studied politics for a long time,” said Mr. Rudin, who has for several decades, “you can say of the euphoria for the Republicans in 2010, or the euphoria for the Democrats in 2006, it doesn’t last forever and it could change on a dime.”

In other words, for folks who are happy or not about the election outcomes — and I’m not — this too shall pass.

To me the question is how long we, our children and the world will have to endure what comes next: more missed opportunities before leadership brings us together, rather than continue playing the politics of division that keeps paying off so nicely for the Gingriches, Limbaughs and now congressmen such as West.

“Take our country back?” How about taking our county forward. Together?

And what the anger-focused media keep missing is the frustration among those Democrats, Independents and, yes, Republicans who have watched the Democrats fail to stand strong in the face of opponents who from the beginning said their objective was to see the administration, and by extension our nation, fail.

“I am independent. I am also moderate. I am part of the American non-partisan electorate,” said “theprofessor007” in a comment I saw over at huffingtonpost. com. “It is mostly the Democrats’ own failures to start real change, change that was clearly mandated by independents in 2009, what (sic) is causing your 2010 midterm election problems.”

President Obama still has the potential, because he hasn’t abandoned the high road. He’ll have to work harder than ever now to stay on it and still get done what voters elected him to do.

Thus I was surprised when a friend told me at the Forum Club that she had voted for West, who ousted U.S. Rep. Ron Klein in Florida Congressional District 22.

It’s obvious to anyone who cares to notice that West, the tough-talking former military contractor, who rails against “Coexist” bumper stickers while trying to grow up to be John Wayne, is the Tea Party’s Great Black Hope, supplanting perpetual GOP candidate Alan Keyes.

My friend said one thing that had endeared him to her is he consistently had attended Forum Club luncheons during the past two years. I appreciate the affirmation that such attendance can help take one all the way to Congress.

But she also said she “just felt good about him in my gut.” And while I have too much regard for her other than to graciously differ, perhaps there we have the story of the election: one person’s gut feeling, anger, fear or other emotion, is another person’s common sense.

Let’s hope our newly elected officials show they have the guts to do right by our nation. For now, I’m not optimistic.

But I trust that too shall pass.

— C.B. Hanif