The American journalism textbook on my floor, no, I guess it's
outside somewhere, actually, it's in the trash can, no, to be honest,
the trash man hauled it away ten years ago — says that I am supposed to
follow here with a joke about Bigfoot to show you that I am grounded,
sane, and that these theories are immature hogwash.
The next
time you hear or read an American "journalist" doing that, probably
later today, it would be better to find something else to read or
watch, you are wasting your time with that guy. His picture is probably
in an American journalism textbook.
Well, it is also true that I
don't "know" it either — whether the FBI did it, or the ATF did it —
but I think mysteries are intoxicating. I can't help but be curious
about the possibilities.
There are lots of things about living today that are not so great: Dick Cheney ... and, umm ... Dick Cheney.
But
to have the Internet, that is golden, because it gives us alternative
news, opinions, possibilities. Geezuz, back when I was getting fat in
the '60s we didn't have a chance.
We ate what mom put in front
of us and we believed whatever anybody told us. Anybody except James
Sitzman. He lived over on the other side of Central Park. What a
freaking liar.
Well, I see here in the newspaper that "TV ratings keep dropping."
You believe that?
By
the looks in the eyes of the folks at Bomgaars, down at Casey's, and
over at Hardee's, we're not doing nothing but watching TV.
But there it is, right in the paper, and how you gonna dispute that?
A few weeks ago, NBC's average prime-time audience of 4.8 million people was the smallest since at least 1991.
"It's likely you'd have to go back to the days of black and white sets to find a smaller number."
Well,
Ugly Betty notwithstanding, maybe the shitty state of television will
lead to its demise, much as we can only hope that six-dollar gas will
end the age of the automobile dinosaur.
I am an American. I have big dreams.
And like the rest of us, I have been damaged beyond repair by television. Look at me. I am a mess.
I
grew up on TV and eating ... ice cream ... ice cream bars ... ice cream
sandwiches ... sitting on the floor of our home on Sixth Street in
Norfolk, Nebraska ... watching TV. I weighed four hundred pounds by the
time I was in fourth grade. No problem. Get bigger pants.
I knew my ice cream.
And I knew all about Barney, Goober, Andy, Gunsmoke, I Dream Of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian.
Who can forget Bonanza — the episode Hoss And The Leprechauns. A classic. Like Grapes of Wrath.
We
always watched Johnny Carson, of course. He was from Norfolk, graduated
from Norfolk High School. Hometown boy who done good. He done real
goood.
I'd lay on the floor facing the TV, a bowl of chocolate
swirl in front of me, rolling over on my back during the commercials to
shovel in a few scoops, then roll back for more instruction from Don
Rickles, Frank Sinatra, Burt Reynolds, Bob Newhart, Bob Hope, Brian
Keith.
In the forward for my novel The American Dream I talk
about my parents, Milosh and Isabel. They were Czech and Irish. They
moved to Norfolk from Winner, South Dakota when dad got his big break
to be an engineer for the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad.
They
grabbed each other in the South Dakota wind and held on. They were true
believers in the American dream, I suppose, though they would not have
put it that way.
More likely they just believed in working and
going to church and mowing the lawn and taking care of your car and
watching the ball game or Bonanza if it was on.
Dad spent part
of his career on the Long Pine run, staying overnight at the motel near
the tracks and fishing for trout. He brought fish home and maybe a foul
ball from the amateur games in Winner when he got a chance to go there
and see his brother Jimmy, home from the Pacific war, now with a wife
and his own family. Another brother, Albert, served with Patton and
later went to South Omaha to work in a box factory. Frank went to
California. Molly just went away. Dad didn't go to the war because his
job with the railroad was considered vital to the war effort.
They
said Dad was good enough at shortstop to go pro, but he didn't. Maybe
he had to work. Hauled cases at the pop factory before the C&NW.
They did the best they could. It's sad, a sad state of affairs for a
whole nation.
Everyone does the best he can and we end up
bombing Hiroshima. Dad cuts the lawn each Saturday morning on his one
chance to rest and there go a thousand people in Chile, mowed down by
our own CIA.
Mom calls us in to supper and poof! Laos is toast.
Us
kids sneak outside for another round of playing after supper. We play
hide and seek, catch lightning bugs, tell ghost stories and leave the
screen door open just a peep.
A couple hundred intelligent poor people in El Salvador are hustled out of their beds and shot.
In Norfolk the media was The Norfolk Daily News, WJAG Radio and the Omaha World-Herald.
There
is no way for someone just growing up, or someone who has not been much
of anywhere else to know that those outlets distort the news. They tell
the story in the way they want it to be told.
We suffered and
bled along with the perils of Otis The Drunk, but did not have a clue
about the people being murdered by our own government in Chile. And
nobody told us. We weren't supposed to know.
There really is
no way of knowing — not some fat kid who only has eyes for Strawberry
Swirl — that what is on TV is not great and true and the only real
reality worth understanding.
It wasn't until I left Norfolk, to
go to the seminary in Minnesota, then Washington, D.C., then New York,
later prison, that I began to understand what a warped vision and body
my upbringing had saddled me with.
Later on, I even questioned Johnny Carson himself.
I
studied the JFK assassination and learned that attorney Jim Garrison
had been a guest on The Tonight Show, talking about his investigation.
I listened to the recording on the Internet of Carson grilling Garrison.
http://www.prouty.org/audio2.html
I found Carson's address and wrote to him, asking him, Norfolkan-to-Norfolkan — what the fuck is up, dude?
March 2, 2001
Johnny Carson
c/o Carson Productions Group
3110 Main St.
Suite 200
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Mr. Carson:
Hello.
I
am originally from Norfolk, Nebr., graduated from NHS in 1973. Recently
I had a chance to listen to the tape of your interview with attorney
Jim Garrison. I don't recall watching the live interview, but very well
could have as watching your show before bed was our regular routine, as
it was for many others.
As a fellow Norfolkan, I am curious as
to why you treated Garrison as you did. I probably will not get the
chance to contact you twice, so I will be frank right away. You sounded
as if you were acting as a spokesman for someone else. Really. Were you
protecting the real killers of Kennedy?
Of course, you were.
What else can I say, but that it is obvious now with almost forty years
of perspective. The Warren Commission was a joke and Garrison as on to
something. Something frightening to be sure. But why did you have so
much allegiance to the plotters and none to your dead president?
Because he could not pay your from the grave? Is it as simple as that?
Thanks
in part to you we have been forced to live in Disneyland since 1963,
where everything is unreal, everything entertainment and illusion.
Please tell me, as I will never know myself: Is wealth and power worth the sublimation of the truth?
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Mike Palecek
___________
Johnny Carson's Response
March 9, 2001
Mike Palecek
702 6th Avenue
Sheldon, Iowa 51201
Dear Mr. Palecek,
I'm
sending you a copy of a letter I recently received to make you aware
that some ignorant asshole is sending out letters over your signature.
You should look into this.
Sincerely,
Johnny Carson
Writings 
No. I'm looking at the map on my wall that my son made in fifth grade.
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