Getting Excited (c)1992 by Lois B. Laulicht Valley Head, WV Let me explain! In addition to the huge economic and social problems which complicate our stretched out lives, we must also deal with our national affliction. We are burdened with national cool and maybe even international cool! It stalks our universe in politics, business, and even in the family. It invades our relationships with bosses and workers, parents and children, and particularly so, in the areas of commerce and services. Conventional wisdom seems to hold the view that without cool there cannot be objectivity! To begin. There is a social expectation to maintain a polite and mild response to major and minor impositions upon one's freedom, psyche, pocket book, and time. One can almost expect a surprised recoil of shock when these varied assumptions go too far and reaction to them becomes blunt, angry and honest. When one refuses to accept the stereotypes of race, class, sex or age and reacts with impatience, communicating an unwillingness to put up with this expensive and demeaning behavior, the reflexive excuses pour out. It is rarely the responsibility of the provider of the service but something that you did that wasn't quite correct. And with a quick sleight of hand, the victim becomes guilty of the blunder or worse. Within this context is the most insulting and infuriating expectation...that one is expected not to fight back. This social behavior is pervasive. As information technology has become ever more sophisticated it appears there are more and more areas where transactions are fouled up. From charge card credits to accurate prescriptions to delivery of ordered merchandise -- you name it. Most of us have shared this kind of experience. Some of us are much less tolerant to the increasing time spent re-doing tasks and correcting an ever increasing list of mistakes. The information age appears to have created huge bottlenecks where many of us feel ripped off and still more turned off. In important areas touching upon the restriction of social freedom the reaction is almost always defensive surprise when strong rebuttal challenges cold war tactics of guilt by association. Very recently a group of writers with whom I was associated either actively engaged or went along in defining me an anarchist and Un-American because I was critical of various computer industry marketing strategies. I not only refused to go along with their definition of me but took steps to remind others that this bunch of computer professionals were equating product criticism with the political ideology of Joseph McCarthy. (See "The Politics of Technology and PC Sales" by Jerome & Lois Laulicht or Right.Zip) We were expected to fold our computerized tent and slink away. That's the problem with not being cool. One cannot, should not, and shall not play by the rules of "cool". An example: When I recently saw that this same bunch were putting out an on-line magazine I asked myself do you roll over and play dead or do you act in your normal non-cool manner? The fact of the matter is that covering up important social issues with cool posturing often ignores the blatant abuse of the social rules we say we respect. The forum of the BBS, like the radio talk show, reaches many people and preserves a caller's ability to speak their minds. They are different platforms but share many of the same characteristics as politicians like Ross Perot and Jerry Brown understand. These forums provide a place to help create public positions on a variety of issues and easily disseminate information and new ideas. One of the things we know for sure is that the audience is far greater than the number of active participants and is growing. For whatever the reasons most people do not expose themselves this way. They prefer anonymity and usually respond with silence. There are several very active conferences on ILink, Opinion and Politics, which are home to a number of people who like to create controversy and attack other members by making racial, national or religious aspersions. The belief is that these are depersonalized descriptions of various groups of people. All of this occurs within the framework of defending the right to hold and offer differing opinions or views. One does not lose one's cool in these kinds of forums because it is both bad form and self defeating. Cool has won again and we all have all become losers in the process. I turned these conferences off when Jewish women were characterized as loud, pushy, and aggressive. I will be offended by that blatant piece of anti-Semitism and anti-feminism for a long time. What are some of the areas we are "cool" about? Scales and charts are pretentious for a non-scholar, so let's put it the terms of our childhood - getting warm, warmer, hot and hottest! The ultimate question is the one which deals with the relationship between the reaction of "hottest" and how one behaves. Perhaps that uneasy relation- ship is still another measure of our national cool; doing a lot of talking and taking little action like a TV media event. In terms of my first example - McCarthy type behavior from my former associates in California - I was definitely uncool. My reaction to their slurs upon my character were somewhere between warm and hot, notwithstanding a call for a name check to the FBI to ascertain any Neo-Nazi involvement. Will the Fascists on the aforementioned ILink conferences be surprised at my uncool reaction to their bigotry relating to my religious orientation or my sex? The Senate was certainly surprised at the uncool stance of women all over America when several women upset establishment politicians in Illinois and in Pennsylvania. That process has just begun! The reaction to the jury decision relating to Rodney King and the pounding he took in the name of law and order is dangerously very uncool! The loss of life, the trauma inflicted upon the innocent, the shame of decent law enforcement officials around the country has become the symptom of our own national neglect and responsibility. And finally, my beloved son told me that a draft of a letter to the Editor of Newsweek magazine was "rather emotional" The article I responded to was a critique of Sen. Robt. C. Byrd of WV and his porking tactics for his constituents. The letter was never sent but was buried in son's computer and is good example of warmer on my own personal continuum. Senator Robert C.Byrd of WV is indeed, a very powerful man, but he is also a man who has not forgotten his own beginnings. " The Anatomy of Pork "; Newsweek: April 13, 1992 by Brian Kelly missed the point thoroughly re: a four laner in remote WV. When this highway project is completed it will represent one of the FEW successful economic development strategies that the Fed has financed. This remote and under developed area in WV has needed a project of this magnitude to make possible easy and quick access for industry and tourism. Sen. Byrd has converted a bit of his Congressional credit into a useful opportunity for the hardworking and under paid people in this part of the state. If this simple minded definition of pork is carried to its logical conclusion all congressional activity which helps the few at a cost to the many becomes pork. It seems to me that the question becomes what community is in most need of "pork", how these fundamental distinctions are made, and is there any equity in the crude horse trading that goes on in the name of local constituencies. When business is the beneficiary and the pork become rancid, it seems to take much too long for corrective management action to get into high gear. The profits are sucked up and the public is left holding a very expensive bag with almost nothing to show for huge expenditures. The country will be far better off when more of the heavily larded pork leaves the DC metropolitan area to provide at least a floor of economic stability to the many depression ridden communities in the country. Many of the people who live and work in the Washington metropolitan area do not live in America any more than do the affluent in California. They live in the world of prestige, influence, and high living where their country club fees would feed a small family for a year! Moreover, the power structure inside the Washington beltway have little interest in the needs of the American people any more than the upper middle class in California have in the working people of Watts or San Francisco. The rest of the society are simply not important others except perhaps in an election year. Maybe! That part of the society which objects to rich and pungent adjectives consider all of this commentary bad form. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt recently teed off at William Greider's "The Betrayal of American Democracy"; Simon & Schuster in the April 27, 1992 issue of the New York Times. Mr. Greider's adjectives are referred to as the "mud slide of the author's prose". I think what caught my attention was the observation that Greider's treatise was "the not altogether startling or original contention that the wishes of the American people are no longer expressed by what goes on in Washington". Obviously, as experts at gauging national cool, Washington is of the opinion that we will not be GETTING EXCITED, a reality underlined by Mr. Greider. Does the Times book critic find the truth of our social condition redundant? That may be, but some public issues don't disappear because they have been analyzed, criticized or politicized. Accepting the fact that being cool is often a social compromise of not wanting to be different, sticking one's neck out, and compromising one's economic or social condition-- we must ask again: Do we get excited about the wholesale acceptance of drug abuse in the society with a concerted "hottest" response? Do we get excited over the spreading of AIDS into the population at large with a concerted "hottest" response? Do we get excited about S&L fraud and demand restitution with a a strident "hottest" response? Do we get excited about the shambles of our public education with a consistent "hot" response? Do we get excited that both national political parties are owned body and soul by special interests and demand, by registering and voting and with our "hottest" response, full loyalty to us-- their constituents? Do we get excited over a spiraling deficit and then fight Washington to free up defense dollars for debt reduction with an imperative "hottest" response? Do we get excited over a recent Commerce Department definition of high wages pegged at six bucks an hour and react with a dismayed "hot" response? Do we refuse to accept the mythology that issues of structural poverty, infant mortality, illiteracy, and sub-standard housing are not local questions and must be addressed with a national committed "hottest" response? Is the nation asleep or do we all need training in getting excited? Is that not the message being sent to us by the tragedy of South Los Angeles... with the"hottest" response which will alarm us all. May 3, 1992 Lois Laulicht PCRelay->Ch1