more re Orwell centennial reception, "homeland", etc.

[pynchonoid]

from the May 15, 2003 edition 

Can the thought police be far behind?
A hundred years after Orwell's birth, some of his
concepts look uncomfortably familiar, while others
seem overused

By Marie Ewald | Special to The Christian Science
Monitor 

WELLESLEY, MASS. – If George Orwell were flipping TV
channels, the novelist would probably stroke his
mustache in puzzlement that his catchphrase "Big
Brother" was chosen to title a reality series about 10
individuals voluntarily living 24 hours a day under
the scrutiny of 28 cameras. 

The phrase "Big Brother," drawn from Orwell's novel
about a totalitarian society, has become just another
listing in "TV Guide" - and in the English dictionary
- even as some claim his concepts have passed their
expiration date. [...] 

Still, many say that current events - including Saddam
Hussein's brutal regime in Iraq and America's homeland
security legislation - eerily resemble elements of
Orwell's dystopia, and that Orwellian concepts help
shed light on the underbelly of 21st century politics.

"These are not historic considerations. They are
alarmingly contemporary," said Mr. Hitchens, who wrote
"Why Orwell Matters" last year. Seeing Iraq through
the lens of Orwell is illuminating, Hitchens said. 

[...] Orwell's exploration of how the media
disseminate highly managed truths and context-free
news is helpful, some academics and journalists say,
in understanding today's media coverage.

"The Iraq war has produced its own rich crop of
Newspeak," wrote columnist Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The
Guardian earlier this month. "But the choicest of all
is the phrase 'weapons of mass destruction.' Even the
most credulous supporters of Tony Blair's war are
beginning to see they were sold a pup."

Orwell's ideas, while unsettlingly prescient about
some foreign affairs, also echo loudly in the US, some
scholars say. Civil libertarians are alarmed at the
invasiveness of the Patriot Act, and are alarmed at a
possible Patriot Act II, which would further expand
government surveillance. In his works, Orwell
recognized that "trading freedom for security is a
death trap," Hitchens says, calling homeland security
a "seductive temptation."

And yet, the surveillance technology Orwell envisioned
is already here - on street corners, in libraries, and
along office hallways - says columnist Ian Williams.
"When Orwell invented telescreens, he was taking a
leap in the dark about technology," Mr. Williams said.
"Now they exist."

[...] 

"Not every tyranny and despotism deserves to be called
totalitarian. Anything antidemocratic has the worst
possible image linked to it," Mr. Wrong  said.
"Totalitarianism doesn't let you have a cup of tea. It
penetrates every aspect of life."

Yet in North Korea, where citizens breathe propaganda,
some counter, the conditions are irrefutably
Orwellian. "It's the only time in my life when I've
tired of the word 'Orwellian,' " Hitchens said of his
visit to North Korea. "The shops had no goods, the
newspapers had no news."

<http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p14s02-stgn.html>

Mr Wrong?  Sounds like somebody in this neighborhood,
always complaining about the bum rap that
"antidemocratic" -- like the US when (as Pynchon notes
in his Foreword) it abridges civil liberties, 
controls the news, throws people in jail, uses
torture, etc -- governments get when they are
imprecisely referred to "totalitarian". 


=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com