Thursday, February 17, 2005

Latest 'Notes from a Polite New Yorker' is now online

My latest 'Notes from a Polite New Yorker' column is now online at GetUnderground.com. Click here to read it.

The column is entitled 'Death by Cubicle' and its part muck-raking anti-corporate diatribe, part escapist fantasy. It documents and discusses the travails of being stuck behind a desk all day. When I was unemployed, I couldn't wait to get back into writing financial news, now I'm thinking about being a bounty hunter, dog catcher, pimp or bank robber, anything that will get me out from behind this desk.

I hope this column doesn't get me fired. If I do get fired from my job, I would want it for be for something I wrote. For a writer, being fired for one's writing is the third greatest compliment, the first two being having one's books burned and being jailed.

And speaking of jailing writers for what they write, it can happen here.

3 comments:

Stephen said...

i'm always attracted to oxymorons! you're not from n.y. are you?

Arvin Hill said...

I'm delighted Judith Miller faces the prospect of jail.

It's high time the press is forced to confront the fact that - largely as a result of their own complicity by being mouthpieces for fascism - - the American government has rendered the Constitution obsolete.

Judy's concerned about her own hide, but it bothers few of her fellow members of the press how she -- and they -- were eager, willing tools for the NeoCon quest in building a bogus, groundless basis for an illegal, immoral and unconscienable invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Nor does the press concern itself with the fact that American citizens can be legally kidnapped and held indefinitely -- forever -- and even exported to torture-friendly countries for interrogation.

But when it's her ass on the line, suddenly she expects Americans to rise up with righteous indignation. Fat chance, Judy. One way or another, you reap what you sow.

Okay, so I'm not very polite. This is serious business. And I've had it up to here with the mainstream corporate media expecting rights and privileges the rest of us are no longer afforded.

Matthew Sheahan said...

Yes, I am from New York and don't consider 'Polite New Yorker' to be an oxymoron, though I admit it's an unusual juxtaposition of words.

Arvin is right to criticize Judith Miller. She's done her job poorly in many ways, but the issue goes beyond her to folks like you and me. However complacent the mainstream media is, everyone should be afforded the same rights. Let's raise holy hell for both Judith Miller and the nameless thousands of others whose constitutional rights are violated