Can of worms.

Thinking out loud.

So they give me a microphone and minidisk recorder yesterday, show me how to use 'em, and let me loose on the world. They are clearly *insane*.

My intent is to cover the meeting of the group organizing a demonstration around preventing a war against Iran. I walk out without *anything* useful where sound is concerned.

I mean nothing against *anyone* in the group and apologise if any of this sounds the least bit dismissive. It's not intended as such: you're doing important work and whatever it takes you to get to the point you can make a decision I salute you for doing it. (Remember, I've always been the sort who'll sit at home listening to the news 'til something catches his fancy.) It just seems to be how groups of people tend to work in general when there's no strict "command structure", and this is my *first* news story.

I know now that I know *nothing*. So I have heard the news each day and listened closely and gathered all sorts of nifty information that suddenly I don't know *what* to do with now that it's up to me to file a story. So I've written on and on and on and on for years on end and suddenly, big deal. It doesn't matter since I've got to scrunch it all down into a few minutes -- *after* I figure out who to ask what. And it's up to me. The KUNM staff is extremely helpful but it's not like I can go and say "who should I ask what". If I can't figure that out I have got no business doing this, period.

It's like standing around, enjoying the landscape, and feeling pretty good about how much you appreciate and understand the landscape when suddenly a midget rides up on the back of a galloping donkey and slaps you in the face with a hot water bottle filled with Kool-aid. Yes, it's exactly like that.

I was *severely* premature in thinking I'd get a usable story out of just one night's meeting at this stage in the game. If the issue were "globalization", it'd be '92 and we'd have vague misgivings about this NAFTA thing that no one really seems to understand *why* it's important. The most that most people can absolutely positively *say* regarding *this* potential war, right now, is something along the lines of "Seymour Hersh thinks this may be a possibility based on quotes from anonymous high level former intelligence officials with ties to the CIA".

". . . and *how* many gunmen were on that grassy knoll?" listeners will wonder if I ever utter those ridiculous words or anything like them into a live mic. Truth or not, it's not newsworthy until it can be made both *concise* and *credible*.

The meeting was basically two hours of going in circles. It was productive in the end, but the actual decisionmaking seemed to take about twenty minutes. Maybe everyone just had to go through the two hours of back and forth about inclusivity versus focus and process and organization and structure before they were ready to commit to making a decision. I respect that. But it's not newsworthy. The headline, if it had one, would have to read "Locals Meet, Discuss Meeting, and Agree to Meet".

The people who talked least seemed to have the best grasp on reality in terms of trying to explain why this matters *now*. But still: the issues are complex. Erring on the side of caution, or trying to, not knowing for sure which side *is* the side of caution (treating minidisks like they're *film*), I didn't record the meeting itself. May have been stupid -- but I knew pretty early on it wouldn't be worth listening through two hours for maybe thirty seconds' "amusement value" quotes. My favourite of these was when one of the raging grannies -- who does *amazing* work -- "caught herself" deep down a rabbit hole, vehemently proving a point everyone agreed with, complete with precision percentage citations of slightly differing public opinion poll results between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.

It was a valid point: basically "Iraqis want the US out". But everyone in the room agreed on that, and trying to *prove* it proved ridiculous, besides which is had *nothing* to do with Iran, all of which she suddenly realized *as* she said it. I do this all the time when I try to discuss this thing. (Pity my mother for having to hear all about the Martyr Hussayn on the phone.)

This illustrates exactly what is wrong with this story. I don't know it. To a considerable degree, I *can't* know it, and no one wants to admit they don't know a thing completely if they dare to speak of it. That might be the *only* way I *can* approach this: I'll *never* be an expert on Iran, but I *must* be credible in telling others what I know about those organizing around it locally.

The day I say something well-intended but even slightly untrue about Iran (or Israel) on the radio will just happen to be the day someone from Iran (or Israel) hears something on the radio and calls the control room threatening to call the FCC *furious* that I would so arrogantly misrepresent this, that, or the other.

I have *immersed* myself in Iran these last couple of weeks. I could immerse myself for *years* and *still* not have the whole story. You think you've found where you can focus on it, but before you know it, you're off on a tangent you absolutely can't get out of save by bottoming out and realizing you've gone absolutely nowhere really fast. Thus: 88% of Sunnis and 72% of Shia in Badghad want the US out. And we got there in a civilized discussion from discussing a whole other country.

It's like a cartoon where you've got the crew of a spaceship navigating through an area with an unusually large number of black holes: one slight miscalculation and vzhwoooompht! you're in a whole different universe where nothing, I mean *nothing* is the same, which isn't to say it doesn't make sense, it just doesn't make sense according to the order of the universe you are accustomed to living in most of the time. This story has *at least* four such "black hole" threads running through it:

1. Nuclear Proliferation,
2. Islam and the West,
3. Israel and its Arab Neighbours, and
4. The U.S. and Iraq.

There are plenty more, but these, as far as I can tell, are the bare minimum you kinda have to touch on at least just a little bit in passing if you're gonna tell a coherent story about *why* this matters right now. You could *easily* create a flowchart taking up a HUGE wall just showing what affects what. Thus, in theory, it's possible to come up with such flows as "North Korea may or may not affect Iran which affects Hezbollah which affects both Lebanon and Israel which affects Syria which affects Iraq which affects the United States which affects Iran".

I think I need to pick *one* angle and one only to focus on. And I need to do it regardless what the Iran group chooses to focus on.

I've got between two and eight minutes. Gee -- I wonder if I have time to talk about the Ottoman empire and the Balfour Declaration. I kinda doubt it.

"Pick your poison" is what this story's telling me.