By Jim Belshaw
Of the Journal
Just a few things ... The crowd under the bus; the political spinners; the interactive crime map; the cranes.
I was clicking on the crime map one morning when I heard the cranes.
It was quiet in the house. No radio, no TV, and the dogs, worn out from having to wake up long enough to eat breakfast, slept in the living room where the sun heated up the floor.
Suddenly, I could hear cranes, right above the house, squawking and honking, calling out flight commands or whatever cranes do when they're forming up the V for the next leg of the migratory flight.
A minute later, they were gone, leaving me to wonder why the sound of cranes always makes me think things will work out OK in the end.
Then I went back to the Web crime map and the spinners and the crowd under the bus.
I think the bus may be a "meme," which Wikipedia says Richard Dawkins gave us by way of explaining how Darwinian principles can be used to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena.
And no, I don't want to get into an evolution argument here, so let's agree that "meme" means "everyone is saying it."
Which brings me to "under the bus."
A sampling:
"I don't throw anybody under the bus."— Valerie Bertinelli, USA Today.
"He just threw me under the bus."— Talk show host Bill Cunningham, complaining about John McCain.
"I'm used to being under the bus."— NBA player Ben Wallace, Chicago Sun-Times.
"I don't want to throw anybody under the bus."— Texas A&M basketball coach Mark Turgeon, Dallas Morning News.
See what I mean about the meme?
I suppose it could be that we just need another way to say it.
Which brings me to spinners, who find all kinds of ways to say the most interesting things.
Last week, my colleague Jeff Jones reported that Rep. Steve Pearce, running for the Senate in the Republican primary, said something no one could find a fact to support, not even two experts consulted by Jeff.
Pearce said that England "export(s) more radical Islamic terrorists today than any country in the Middle East."
When his Republican opponent, Heather Wilson, pointed out that there wasn't a fact in the world that supported this, Pearce's campaign spokesman accused her of— ahem— going negative.
How do they do that? The spinners, I mean?
I know politicians say things unsupported by facts all the time. I don't think you're allowed to hold public office unless you're willing to do that.
But when another politician points out the obvious, how exactly is that going negative?
Maybe it's a meme.
Or maybe we need an interactive political campaign map like the new crime map on the Journal Web page (ABQjournal.com).
The map shows two kinds of icons spread around the city— a police badge and a gold-on-black icon marked "DWI."
They represent arrests. The map can be configured to show arrests for a 24-hour period or the previous seven days.
Click on the icon and up pop the particulars— name, offense, prior offenses.
So if someone shows up on the map, would he brag about it or feel like he'd been thrown under the bus?
Spinners, memes, crime maps— maybe in the long run it would be best to have an interactive migratory crane map.
Click on crane formation and it explains why the sound of cranes overhead makes you think everything will work out OK in the end.
Write to Jim Belshaw at The Albuquerque Journal, P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, NM 87103; telephone— 823-3930; e-mail— jbelshaw@abqjournal.com.
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