by David Burn | Sep 14, 2004 | Place
When you live in Chicago (or Chicage, as it is known to some), getting away to a place where one can breathe fresh air, hear birds chirp, and see stars in the night sky is not a luxury, it is essential to one’s sanity and well being. Thankfully, the Door County peninsula is within reach.
View from our campsite, Peninsula State Park, Door County, WI
This was our first visit to the area and my impression is there’s something for everyone in Door. One might stay in an historic inn on the Green Bay side, where golf, tennis and sailing make for a proper outing. Or more to our liking, one might stay in a yurt on a rainy night, then move to a state park the next, while spending the day hiking, swimming and exploring the woods and coastline via bicycle.
by David Burn | Sep 9, 2004 | Politics
“I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed…managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units…Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.” -from Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey
Many in the corporate press claim they’ve grown tired of the steady focus on Vietnam. Instead, they’d prefer a debate on Iraq. The problem is, we would not be in Iraq today if the chickenhawks who put us there had learned the hard lessons of Vietnam–America’s most divisive war and the only one we ever lost.
by David Burn | Sep 9, 2004 | Politics
Chair of the Democratic Party of Maine, Dorothy Melanson, testified under oath in a public hearing before Maine’s secretary of state last Monday that the national Democratic Party is funding efforts throughout the country to stop Nader-Camejo from appearing on ballots.
In this space last week I said I was tempted to vote for Kerry come November, and it is tempting, as he’s the only one left with any chance of dethroning King George. Yet, I find his party’s anti-democratic maneuverings reprehensible (if not criminal). If Kerry wants the progressive vote, this is not the way to go about it.
by David Burn | Sep 8, 2004 | Advertising
In each issue of Communication Arts readers are treated to a profile of one of the nation’s most creative ad agencies. The current issue looks at Huey/Paprocki in Atlanta. Writing for Adweek in January 2003, Ron Huey, a brilliant copywriter and agency head said:
“Great work is most often readily apparent to the client. It takes precious little arm twisting. No plunging down the throat. No “Trust us on this one.” In fact, smart, insightful work usually sells itself. That’s because the client can find little room for rebuttal. The idea is clearly relevant. Strategically, it’s a bullet between the eyes. Creatively, it hammers on emotions like Professor Longhair banging on an upright piano.”
by David Burn | Sep 5, 2004 | Politics
Lately I’ve been thinking of moving to Canada, The British Virgin Islands, Australia, or even Bulgaria in order to at once, sharpen my critique of our federal government (if that’s possible), and also to deny the War Machine its portion of my taxable income. Here’s another point-of-view, more realistic and more responsible:
“The battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one. Our freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They were wrested from them by us. And once we surrender them, the battle to retrieve them is called a revolution. It is a battle that must range across continents and countries. It must not acknowledge national boundaries but, if it is to succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor’s chambers. Empire’s conquests are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse. You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory parade.” – from “Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy” by Arundhati Roy
by David Burn | Sep 5, 2004 | Literature
Legendary writer, Jim Harrison, speaking last June with interviewer extraordinaire, Robert Birnbaum provides some great advice for young writers.
JH: …you have to be giving your entire life to this because that’s the only way it’s possible. This can’t be an avocation. It’s the whole thing. Or nothing.
RB: And what do they (the young writers asking for advice) say?
JH: Most of them, that’s very intimidating. They really haven’t wanted to commit to it, to that extent. But they have to. It’s a strange thing—I didn’t want to understand it when I first read it but I was 19 or something—Dylan Thomas said in order to be a poet or a writer you have to be willing to fall on your face over and over and over. Everybody wants to be cool—
by David Burn | Sep 4, 2004 | Politics
We all know that sex sells. But fear looks to be challenging sex as a primary motivator in the post-911 world. The Republican National Convention was a four-day spectacle built on the unifying power of fear. The message was dead on–if you want to live and feel safe in fortress America, vote for Bush. Fear took us to war and fear will keep us there.
In advertising, where I’ve spent a decade crafting pithy lines for large consumer brands, I can report that employing fear as a motivating device is also fair game. Look at any insurance ad. That’s fear in your face, but there are also more subtle applications. Take beer advertising. Marketers speak of their beer not as a beverage but as a badge. They see their targeted consumers as wearing badges. I follow their drift, but in the end it’s just some guys drinking beer. Implicit in the idea of a badge is one’s need to connect with the right badge. To select the wrong symbol, or badge, is to be in error. Burdens will soon ensue.
The line that separates.
The Republican Party thinks it owns the American flag. It’s their badge. “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists,” said Dubya. That is, if you are one of those Americans who chooses to dissent, you have picked the wrong badge. You’re on the wrong team. You’re un-American at best, or worse, you’re with the enemy. It’s incumbent upon the American people to not only reject the men in office, we must rid ourselves of their divisive messaging.
by David Burn | Sep 4, 2004 | Literature, Politics
From Arundhati Roy’s article, The Algebra of Infinite Justice
In 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) launched the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA. Their purpose was to harness the energy of Afghan resistance to the Soviets and expand it into a holy war, an Islamic jihad, which would turn Muslim countries within the Soviet Union against the communist regime and eventually destabilize it. When it began, it was meant to be the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. It turned out to be much more than that. Over the years, through the ISI, the CIA funded and recruited almost 100,000 radical mojahedin from 40 Islamic countries as soldiers for America’s proxy war. The rank and file of the mojahedin were unaware that their jihad was actually being fought on behalf of Uncle Sam. (The irony is that America was equally unaware that it was financing a future war against itself.)
Also by Arundhati Roy: Confronting Empire and Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy, her classic anti-Imperial treatises.
by David Burn | Sep 3, 2004 | Politics
I’m a fierce independent. I believe the two party system has to go. Party’s over. I think the Dems are sold out to a slightly less slimy group of special (read: CORPORATE) interests, and that’s all there is separating them from the frightening and shameful Republicans. Yet, due to the hideous nature of our current situation, I’m starting to soften my position.
The G.O.P.’s outrageous media strategy, whereby they paint Kerry as unfit to be Commander-In-Chief–from an executive team with five draft deferments and one absent-without-leave from Guard duty among them–is stunning in its very boldness. They have people worried about John Kerry’s Boston accent in a 30 year old newsreel, while they conduct an illegal, hostile Imperialist policy disguised as The War on Terror, right under all our noses, each and every day, with money we provide for them.
It makes me want to drop my need to vote third party and vote for Kerry this fall. Dennis Kucinich helped me see the wisdom in becoming a progressive Dem. I voted for Dennis in the primary and I want to see him elevated to a cabinet position under Kerry. Dennis has advocated a Dept. of Peace. Great! If John Kerry wants the my vote, the progressive vote, Nadar supporters and the disenfranchised who do not normally vote, he would do well to embrace Dennis at this time.
by David Burn | Sep 2, 2004 | Literature
I’m presently looking for a literary agent, or a direct connection with a publisher, interested in one or more of the following book deals. I’m also open to working these stories up in screenplay format, should the money present itself for such an adventure.
Book Deals In The Making:
1) (Yet to be titled), historical fiction centered around the vibrant and controversial life of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the second wife of famed prairie architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright left his first wife, his children and his practice in Oak Park to escape, first to Europe, then to Wisconsin, with the beautiful, also married and intelligent Mamah. Mamah and her two children were later murdered at Taliesin, the Wright family estate, by an enraged manservant who set the place on fire and then waited at the door with an axe. So it has an painful ending, to say the least.
2) Soundcheck Your Brand, a how-to business book on Internet radio with an emphasis for marketers looking to extend their brand presence into this affordable and creatively promising new medium.
3) Game Day and Other Stories, an introductory batch of stories.
4) Making Room, a book of poems.
5) Our Grateful Journey ~ Heady Reflections, a new journalism memoir capturing the spirit (and odor) of Grateful Dead tour, circa 1990.
