that just won't go away

A couple of mornings ago, the local cable news station ran a segment about the announcement of the WaMu layoffs and their implications for the mortgage business and the general economic climate. Part of the piece was given over to a Q and A session between a reporter and one of those self-proclaimed "experts" in which mainstream journalism invests too much of their faith these days. The expert discussed the immediate pain of the layoffs and the cosmic contraction of available credit. He then qualified his statements by saying that the subprime mortgage business "should never have existed," as it created an untenable situation where people who were not in a position to afford home ownership made the mistake of leveraging their bubble-enriched home equity to forestall the inevitable until the whole shaky facade came crashing down.

It's a reasonable enough argument. I've never understood the logic of treating one's house like an ATM, as equity isn't really an investment that pays dividends but a measure of ownership to be borrowed against, which is fine when one wants to pay a child's college tuition or for an addition to the house, but not so much when one wants a new plasma television or trip to Cancun. The thing is, though, that I clearly remembered this same "expert" (or one of his clone brothers hatched from the vats beneath Harvard Business School) on the same news program three years ago assuring that there was no housing bubble, home prices would continue to rise, and that the freewheeling equity-fueled spendathon was a slightly risky, but ultimately beneficial means of keeping the consumer economy humming until the other financial players got back on their feet again.

I'm not one for pinning scarlet letters on folks or strappado-induced confessions of error, but it seems to me that if one played cheerleader for the problem, he or she ought to at least acknowledge that role when dispensing solutions. Or, you know, the reporter could have confronted the expert on his past error and asked why his current remarks should be taken seriously in that light.

The truth is that we've long since passed into a world where rewritable reality is the order of the day. There are few fuck-ups so serious that they can't be ignored, spun in a more positive manner, or deflected with some of sleight of hand.

This: "What about those WMD's Iraq was supposed to have which you used as justification for war?"

Begets this: "LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU! IT'S AN IRANIAN!" or "Illegal immigrants and gays are conspiring to destroy America!" or "I have no idea what you are referring to."

Anatoly Kuznetsov's Babi Yar is a autobiographical novel recounting the author's experiences as a child in wartime Kiev and the massacre of the city's Jewish population by the Nazi occupation force. Originally published in the Soviet Union, Kuznetsov released a complete uncensored version after defecting to the West in the wake of the Czech uprising. In the complete version of the novel, the sections originally removed by the Soviet censors and the author's post-defection additions to the text were highlighted with boldface and italics, respectively. It is an excellent, if utterly depressing, story, but also serves an incomparable example of post situ revisionism put into in practice. The passage where the author recounts how his class was directed to tear out textbook pages featuring purged "Heroes of the Revolution" I found especially fascinating in light of the current subjective cast reality has taken.

There's no need for that kind of heavy-handed revisionism in present day "open" societies. The breakneck flow of the information stream, consolidation of profit-hungry media outlets, and the accent of style over substance are far more subtle and effective than Orwell's memory hole could ever be. A non-stop barrage of white noise directed at an atrophied attention span makes it easy to pull off all sorts of shenanigans without drawing the attention of the intended marks.

...and the next thing you know, everyone's wearing flared (or super-tight distressed) pants, listening to neo-prog rock on an expensive yet soon-to-be-obsolete mp3 player, and thinking that Mitt Romney (or Ron Paul or Hillary Clinton) has some really good ideas about the direction this country needs to take.

Curve - Faît Accompli (from Doppelgänger, 1992) - Not quite shoegaze, not quite electronic, not quite goth, but quite nice all the same.

The Untouchables - Free Yourself (from Wild Child, 1985) - Just like mod revival band, bringing a horn section to punk venue.