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ENCHANTÉ – The Journalist

John at 18 -2

When I was eighteen, fresh from boarding school, I wanted to be a journalist. I had run the School Paper and loved to write stories I had uncovered in the catacombs of a Jesuit Valhalla. Of course, within limits: we were heavily “censored” by the powers that were.

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Nonetheless, my ambition stood firm. I had interviewed with editors of the local papers to find out if this was my calling. I returned ever so convinced, although they told me that it would be a life of poverty and shame: I would always be “criticized” for whatever I wrote.

When I visited a distant Aunt, with whose son I had played in my earlier years during World War II, she said – in a somewhat denigrating manner – “You would be the first journalist in the family.”

But first I had to do my “military service.”

 

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During my army experience, I knew I was not made of general’s material, despite some illustrious uncles and forefathers. Proceeding on my dreams of becoming a journalist, I elected to study political science. I soon discovered that there was no “science” in that faculty and added economics, ending up with two degrees. Economics is said not to be a “science” either because it cannot be “exact” like chemistry (too much “on the one hand and the other”). But at least you learn to count that one plus one is two and not three. At that stage, light shone on my young head, and it became clear I could never be a journalist, living on a dime and having to defer to a newspaper’s “political views.” Apparently, the journalists’ bosses wanted you to follow their “train of thought,” which was not necessarily “objective reporting.”

Overworked, depressed and exhausted businessman at his desk with a pile of work or concept for frustration, stress and writers block

So I started at the Ministry of Economic Affairs on a miserable salary and discovered that ministers deal with parliamentarians (like members of Congress in the US), who often if not mostly had no clue of economics. Here’s where my political science came in: “politics.” Most voters have no clue what economics is either, except where it concerns their pocket book. And politicians want to be re-elected by giving out handouts to voters, to be paid from tax revenues, collected under stress and put away into invisible accounts, held at the “Rekenkamer” (something similar to the US Budget Office). I found out how easy it was to distribute money from secret accounts which seemed bottomless pits, never drying up.

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Meanwhile, I kept in touch with my journalist friends who had elected to follow my original dream. It was amazing how their views differed depending on the papers they worked for. Objectivity had become a virtue embedded in the eye of the beholder. I made a speech somewhere, and the next day each paper wrote a different account of what they had heard. There was “De Volkskrant” (People’s Paper) which was “labor-working class,” “De Tijd” (The Times) which catered to the Christian center, “De Telegraaf” (The Telegraph) which my mother read because it had good gossip stories, and none of them really reported what I had said.

Surprising News headlines torn or ripped from newspapers reporting shocking gossip or developments from important events or items

So I went back to my friends, having a beer in an Amsterdam cellar, and asked them why they could not report “The Truth.”

You know about this girl (2)

 

To my utter surprise, each one said that they had done just that. When I argued the contrary, what did they say? Their editors had changed it in line with the newspaper’s point of view. Period. Some of them were told that if they did not write to the newspaper’s “conclusion” they might as well go fishing in the Amsterdam canals.

And so, at a very young age at the beginning of a career shaped in student idealism of bettering the world, I learned never to trust whatever a newspaper reported. Except the “headlines,” there was nothing to learn anything “true” from what followed. Even headlines were skewed. So how do papers make money that way? Because of advertising. Thanks to that flow of regular money, “journalists” can write whatever they chose, as long as they write what they are told to write if they want their paycheck to continue. Only when newspapers overdo it and lose too many readers, they stop operating or get swallowed up in a merger. But that does not make them any better. Throughout my international career, I noticed that this journalist mantra of having to report from the left existed everywhere in the Western world.

 

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I often wondered where these journalists came from and why so many newspapers represent the “political left.” Left and right have existed as long as people learned to write. “Athens and Spartacus,” the Roman Empire, the opposition to Galilei, the French Revolution, the Civil War, all had their protagonists on both sides. But why are the major US newspapers so blatantly proffering the leftist political view? Even if they continue to lose readership, like The NY Times? Since a long time, I don’t read newspapers anymore. And when I did, I used them mainly for starting my fireplace or find some sales. The same question goes for the “mainstream” media on TV. Why do they so overtly support “the left?”  What’s so “mainstream” about that?

My theory is that journalists usually come from elite households and love to write, but have little inclination to start a business or make real money which in my estimation requires more guts. They often emerge from good universities and are considered “highly intelligent.” Universities in the US seem overwhelmingly “liberal.” Perhaps because the “intelligent” Academia caters to the “young” who are mostly rebellious and anti-Mom and Dad. Well, intelligent they may be, but are they “smart?” A person who starts a business, and is able to become wealthy is to me a lot “smarter” than a journalist who makes it on television and gets paid ridiculous salaries for proffering the leftist views thanks to the advertising industry which has no “color.”

 

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I have come to the conclusion that objective reporting, the essence of journalism, has gone out of the window, except for a few rare newspapers. Most commentators on TV report “from their point of view” directed by their bosses. Writers also write from a “point of view.” But they “make it up.” So to see, the “journalist’s point of view” is not any different. It is tendentious and pursuing a case, often misreporting as a result. The recent US elections are a clear case in point, amplified by what the “mainstream media” keeps spitting  out afterwards. That’s why I don’t read or listen to them anymore. I rather read or write a book. I like to “make it up” the real way.

Closeup of an old typewriter with a sheet of paper and wet camera effect. Once upon a time written on papper.

DON’T FORGET YOUR FALL READING!

SOME WOMEN I HAVE KNOWN – Piano John confuses playing sheet music with playing between the sheets 
AMAZON.COM AND PAPERBACK
http://amzn.to/1QIL94B

ENCHANTING THE SWAN : Grad students and musicians Paul and Fiona fall in love when they perform The Swan and agree to marry but paternal evil blocks their love.

http://amzn.to/1LPFw5o 

 

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Stop The Whining

John Schwartz

 

To all those who flood my e-mail and FB pages with hateful cries about Donald Trump’s victory election, shed your tears somewhere else. Elections have consequences (a quote from his Excellency Barack Obama). Now, let’s give The Donald a chance to prove that his way is better than Obama’s (1% growth, 98 million out of the workforce, skyrocketing Obamacare premiums, energy blockages, depleted military, 20 trillion national debt, black and white divided, immigration and a foreign policy in shambles). Stop whining and get over it. Take it from a very happy foreigner guest of your Great USA. Feeling safer again… and a lot more hopeful.

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ENCHANTÉ – REPEAT: THE LADY AND THE TRUMP

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Hi Everyone: This was written in July 2015!

Remember?

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Is it not wonderful that everyone wants the Lady and the Trump now? Six years back every one fell for the hope and change-sweet smiling unknown pied piper. An untested senator who had mostly voted not present and sat in a pew listening to–but not hearing–a race baiter. The Senator even pushed that contagious congenital (William Safire of the NY Times in 1996), compulsory lying lady aside. Whatever happened to the Obamagirls? They must have gone hiding under the table. And now, they put that woman back on the table with her fornicating hubby in the background! With 17 opposing politicians-contenders crying “us and them.”

Remember when two dogs fight over a bone, the third runs away with it?

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It happened before  with that insufferable parrot (pronunciation ‘Perot’) and his crayon boards. We would never have heard of Hillary or even Monica had he just stayed quiet running his business. And now they want to claim that she, still lying off the cliff,  is IT? What IQ do they rate us for? Can we endure still more lying than we had for the last six years? How stupid do they think we are?

Well, yes, to be fair, we are quite stupid. In 2012, we re-elected the current politician who should never have been re-elected. Only because the so-called smart electorate stayed home, mad that their candidate was a Mormon. And what did they get for their nonchalance? Four more years of tyranny and stalemate, stagnation and lies. Would we finally not want some good tyranny to throw all these bummers out? Get The Lady and the Trump to clean ship?

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PLEASE LET US HAVE REAL HOPE AND HAPPY DAYS AGAIN!

Pundits and politicians, radio and TV commentators, whether socialists or conservatives, feed on each other. The Lady and the Trump are not in their camp. They slip through their fingers. They don’t quack, the pundits do. For pundits and politicians, getting something done is unproductive, because when it’s done you can’t quack about it anymore. And that’s the end of the TV or radio show.  They can’t make money that way. They lose their platform. Don’t you see them poor slimy squatters squirm that the Trump is only a ten billion dollar windbag and the Lady a fired CEO? They say would you please let us talk politics instead of having non-politicians taking action? Executive power, you say? Sure, but only the left is allowed to do that. If the right does it, it’s racist, extremist or right-wing conspiracy. Good! Let’s have it the other way around for a change.

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Black and White always fighting. All over the world. Even dogs do it. During the last six years it has only gotten worse in the US. And what does ‘H’ stand for other than for Hyena? Do you want a howling Hyena in the White House rather than a bulldog getting things done for America and us for a change?

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What about us poor voters and hard workers, that is, those who still have a job? Is it not about time we get some relief from those slimy politicians, especially those who lead us to greater misery with their misguided philosophies that have been proven wrong time after time?

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 Us Poor Voters!

Well, 20 months later, us poor voters finally came out of the woodworks and SPOKE! 

DON’T FORGET YOUR FALL READING!

SOME WOMEN I HAVE KNOWN – Piano John confuses playing sheet music with playing between the sheets 
AMAZON.COM AND PAPERBACK
http://amzn.to/1QIL94B

ENCHANTING THE SWAN : Grad students and musicians Paul and Fiona fall in love when they perform The Swan and agree to marry but paternal evil blocks their love.

http://amzn.to/1LPFw5o 

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ENCHANTÉ – Dinner After Halloween

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We were all seated. I could not see them. They had swoomed in at the last door ring.

They shuffled by, clothed in white garb, and sat down at the dinner table. I saw the chairs moving back and forth and the napkins unfolding. I sat down and welcomed my guests. Did I know who they were?

I soon found out. At my opposite sat Uncle Diederick. He sang his last song in jail. I recognized his drawl. He was accused of unlawful sexual behavior with minors in the stables. I will not draw on this any further because you cannot say anything bad about dead people.

On his left sat Aunt Irma. She always accused me of bedding every girl I could get my hands on and died, disinheriting me from her fortune. She still had this shrill voice, as I’d heard it in our last telephone call when she cursed me in her hospital bed because there was “this child that had to come again.”

Opposite her sat Aunt Ann, also one of those shrill women. She taught me horseback riding and yelled so loud each time when I didn’t sit straight in the saddle that my horse bucked with all fours in the air, me flying out of the saddle.

Next to Aunt Irma sat Willem B. I can’t reveal his last name because his family is so important that they would sue me if I did. He swindled every client on his way to the bank and became so rich that he was unable to count his money on his dead bed. He’d wanted to make me his heir too, but forgot to put it in writing, so the State got all the money. They never said “thanks.”

Opposite him sat the headmaster of my primary school. I couldn’t figure how he would turn up in this illustrious group of noble people, as he was a very ordinary man and a notorious child molester, hitting everyone with his cane who dared to be unruly or contradict him, jumping on our lecterns coming after us.

On the headmaster’s right sat Hans with the long earrings. She had this false smile and mean look and always entered the breakfast room, disturbing my quiet moment with my grandmother, only to gossip about everybody else with a double name in the village.

Opposite her – and next to me – sat Baroness B. whose name I cannot reveal either for the same reason as Willem B’s. She’d kicked me out of her vast apartment where I’d rented a room because the housekeeper had caught me copulating with a girl (the censor board sanitized this part of the sentence). Boy, was she mad.

On my left sat Aunt Phyllis, as an extra punishment. She used to come into the dining room and spat saliva with every word she uttered so that we kids held our hands over our plates whenever she appeared.

So I thanked everyone for coming and invited them to take some food, but nobody did. They chuckled, as they didn’t eat anymore, but they drank the good wine alright, glasses floating in the air.

Baroness B. whispered that she was still waiting for the last month’s rent I hadn’t paid after she’d thrown me out.  I asked her where I could send the money, but she didn’t want to reveal her address.

The schoolmaster mumbled he was surprised to find me in a large house with expensive cars and a lot of money because he’d found me the stupidest kid in the class.

Aunt Ann yelled over the table why I wasn’t competing in the national horse shows, as I’d performed so well flying off my horse.

Uncle Diederick told us that his punishment in the afterlife consisted of having to clean stables for the rich, often confronted by beautiful girls he couldn’t like and unable to touch any beautiful boy that came his way.

Aunt Irma inquired if I had birthed any more children out of wedlock, and when I told her I hadn’t as far as I knew, she didn’t believe me and was going to find out about any hidden babies among the women she said she knew I’d known and slept with full force.

Willem B. sort of apologized for his forgetfulness but in revenge he was spooking the lives of the taxmen who’d stolen his money, and they were all going crazy and were being put in madhouses one after the other.

Aunt Hans with the long earrings told us she’d put an earring with a bug in Hillary’s bed to find out about her latest schemes. To my surprise, a lot of that became true after Halloween.  Luckily, Aunt Phyllis had no saliva anymore and could not spit on my plate.

When they left cackling through the front door without opening it, I knew they were friendly ghosts now and might turn up again. The dinner was left untouched on the table but the glasses were empty. I went to my drawing room where my wife’s precious dolls occupied a whole sofa. One of them, a blond beauty I’d always hoped would come alive, suddenly started talking, her eyes winking at me. “Hi, Johnny,” she said. “I always wanted to see you again, and now I can. I am Fiona, the girl who gave you your first kiss. Remember?” I sat dumbstruck. Fiona died in a horrible horse-riding accident when she was sixteen. She kissed me in my grandmother’s vegetable garden when we were six. “Yes, of course, I remember. We were going to get married. I was inconsolable for years when you died. How come you are a doll?”

“Only for tonight, Johnny. Just kiss me once more, Johnny,  and I go back to heaven.”

I took the doll, and she felt soft, alive, kissed it softly on the mouth, and the eyes winked again. Then it stiffened, and it looked straight ahead as if nothing had happened.

“Why are you kissing that doll?” I heard my wife saying to me. “And why haven’t you cleared the table yet?”

I had no answer.

 

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