The Long Halloween
Nov. 3rd, 2005 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saavedra77Some belated Halloween reminiscences: I went to a Halloween party Saturday where the theme was more, ah, Saturnalia than All Hallow's Eve. HBO's Rome was a major source of inspiration for many of this year's costumes (and suddenly people aren't just "Romans" in their togas and centurion outfits--they're Caesar, Antony, Octavia, Atia, etc), food, and ... entertainment.
Being more a creature of habit, though, I stuck to my standard man in black:
I spent Halloween itself, Monday evening, in downtown Seattle. Getting off the bus at Westlake, I immediately found myself in the midst of a horde of about 25-30 people in zombie outfits, all lurching toward the Pike Place Market, moaning for "brains." And here I was without my chain saw. I laughed when a few of them tottered in my direction, but I'll admit it was a nervous laugh ...
Later that night, & very much in honor of the spirit of the season, I went down to the Elliot Bay Book Company to hear Haynes Johnson talk about the subject of his new book, The Age of Anxiety: From McCarthyism to Terrorism. Johnson began his talk with the dictionary definition:
Mc·Car·thy·ism (ma-kär-thee-izm) n.
1. The practice of publicizing accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence.
2. The use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition.
Hm ... Sound familiar, at all? As with George Clooney's in Good Night and Good Luck, the analogy from Joe McCarthy's tactics to those of certain contemporary demagogues more or less makes itself. And as Johnson (who started his journalistic career at the end of the McCarthy era) lamented, those old scare tactics still work pretty well.
Being more a creature of habit, though, I stuck to my standard man in black:
I spent Halloween itself, Monday evening, in downtown Seattle. Getting off the bus at Westlake, I immediately found myself in the midst of a horde of about 25-30 people in zombie outfits, all lurching toward the Pike Place Market, moaning for "brains." And here I was without my chain saw. I laughed when a few of them tottered in my direction, but I'll admit it was a nervous laugh ...
Later that night, & very much in honor of the spirit of the season, I went down to the Elliot Bay Book Company to hear Haynes Johnson talk about the subject of his new book, The Age of Anxiety: From McCarthyism to Terrorism. Johnson began his talk with the dictionary definition:
Mc·Car·thy·ism (ma-kär-thee-izm) n.
1. The practice of publicizing accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence.
2. The use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition.
Hm ... Sound familiar, at all? As with George Clooney's in Good Night and Good Luck, the analogy from Joe McCarthy's tactics to those of certain contemporary demagogues more or less makes itself. And as Johnson (who started his journalistic career at the end of the McCarthy era) lamented, those old scare tactics still work pretty well.
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Date: 2005-11-04 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-04 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-05 01:17 am (UTC)