detritus

the detritus of winter rising up like pacific atolls volcanic garbage not even a rousing rain can wash away can clean cleanse as in a rite of absolution ego te absolvo the melted snows dribble down the hill tipperary hill and you get surprised seeing anything a squashed plastic bottle invitations to subscribe the head of a child's smiling stuffed pal a flattened pancake fabric why the smile the vacant stare along with beer cans and bottle caps and runaway trash can covers branches leaves all tawny almost colorless not even teasing spring so monochrome so much dogshit on the curbs and near the sidewalks winter's borders dogshit being erased and dogshit not at all evaporated dogshit stubbornly still just dogshit some definition some definition called for here detritus I had thought it was pronounced more like the latin more like deh-tri-tiss with the accent on the deh now there's de treatise eh didn't know it almost sort of rhymes with detroit us unfortunately no disrespect implied inferred or insinuated to a town i've never been to and why does merriam-webster say the plural is detritus and not detriti as latin would dictate take a letter or two detritus funny how one word one flotsam jetsam sort of word can just set a laughorist off and running at the keyboard

F (as in Foolish)-150

Tonight ABC News aired a feature about "America's best-selling car." Um, except it's not a car.

And that's the problem.

Mitt Romney and John McCain and Mike Huckabee are traversing Michigan talking jobs, tring to coax votes in tomorrow's Republican presidential primary. (That's funny: millionaire, starched-shirt Republicans talking to laid-off workers.). So, ABC figured they'd take us to the assembly line of "America's best-selling car." The bit, linked above as a video clip, depicts hard-working folks, and smart technology. I have no problem with any of that. (ABC News's "24" segments are a good approach, in theory.) Both of my parents worked in factories, and they had to quit school after eighth grade during the Great Depression. I don't belittle or demean the workers or what they do. I myself have worked in a factory. Tough stuff. Or unbearably tedious. Or dangerous (my mother got her arm ripped in a machine the plant was trying out; human guinea pigs. They docked her pay for going to the doctor's. Really. This was not 1898, the Age of the Robber Barons. This was a shop with a union in the early 1980s, for God's sake!).

My whole problem is what the story did not say. Why is Ford now trailing Toyota? Why are people losing jobs? Why are politicians lying when they promise they can redeem Detroit from its woes? Why was none of this asked?

How long does everyone think a TRUCK will remain Ford's best-selling vehicle? And why should a truck be America's best-selling vehicle?

I don't get it. Oh sure. Some people have a real need for this vehicle and its strength and power and gas-guzzlingness and its fortresslike protection and its virile potency. But most people don't. And our politicians (except for Bill Richardson, who has dropped out of the race) pander to the public by decrying so-called soaring gas prices (soaring compared to what? based on what value? still cheap compared to thrifty Europe), a mythos perpetuated by the word choices of newscasters and news writers.

My neighbor across the street loves his beautiful F-150. Loves it.

But I certainly don't see him hauling timber or cinder blocks every weekend.

It's all about a John Wayne fantasy of manliness (many women want to partake of the same fantasy), and Manifest Destiny and power and strength and indomitable force and We Are Number One and Who Are You to Suggest Otherwise, It's My Right, Title, and Heir.

Illusion. Illusion. Illusion. Illusions blessed and endorsed by our politicians and entertainment barons (it ain't news, really). They dare not offend our fantasies or break the spell of our collective psychosis.

So, it isn't what the so-called news says, as much as what it doesn't say or how it says it.

And to think, people think there's a liberal media bias. The media is too lazy to have a bias (or for some traditional grammarians: "The media are...").

There. I feel better. But only slightly. Because nothing was accomplished by this. Nothing at all.

(For the record, I own a 1999 Ford Contour with 93,700 miles and my car before that was a Ford Escort station wagon and my son owns a 2006 Ford Focus.)