Tuesday, February 28, 2012
A Double Date
(Recycled jokes) So Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum set up a double date. Newt arrives on time, bringing his three wives and two dead hookers. But Rick can't make it. His wife is in the hospital having a Republican governor removed from her vagina.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
THE HELP
I like the TV show done by Prof. Mellisa Harris-Perry. In fact, she's my favorite news show host. She is about the only one ready to engage with ideas. (She's on MSNBC on Saturday and Sunday morning early.)
I've been aware for some time that she disapproves of The Help. I wanted to know why, and this weekend she put on a panel to discuss the matter: herself (an academician of mixed racial background), a white woman professor who strongly disliked the movie because it did not present the true grimness faced by African Americans in the South, a black male comic, who kept out of the way, and an African American former house cleaner who now works for an association of such workers. As I had predicted, the former house cleaner enjoyed the film as much as I did, while the white professor denounced it, apparently on the grounds that she would have preferred either a documentary or a tragedy. In short, she was complaining that a comedy should have been a tragedy (which is jaw-dropping in its ignorance). She copmmented that no black woman in the film had been raped by a white employer (something that did and no doubt does happen). Another flaw she found was that a young white woman with a college education was functional in the film in finding a publisher for what the black women had to say--and that runs counter to the position that African Americans need no white connections.
There was something horrifying in the positions taken by a woman who was, without doubt, well meaning.
There were two kinds of people missing from the panel. There was no producer. If there had been, she might have said that the film had been financed to send a message but also to sell tickets. The big ticket buyers in the USA are white, so it made sense to have several white characters (good and bad) play major roles. The panel also lacked a creative writer or literary critic, who might have pointed out that the film was a comedy. It wasn't an outlandish comedy like SOME LIKE IT HOT or FAST DAYS AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, but it was fiction and a comedy--and in an ancient exaggerated comic tradition. You know, the one where the wily servants outsmart their cartoonlike boss. I've enjoyed films in that genre many times, and the basic plot line must go back to the ancient Greeks.
Audiences love THE HELP, perhaps because it is a comedy. Where I live, household help is usually Latina, and I've seen people treat Latina workers with the same easy inhumanity we witness in the movie. I thank THE HELP for bringing this back to my attention.
I've been aware for some time that she disapproves of The Help. I wanted to know why, and this weekend she put on a panel to discuss the matter: herself (an academician of mixed racial background), a white woman professor who strongly disliked the movie because it did not present the true grimness faced by African Americans in the South, a black male comic, who kept out of the way, and an African American former house cleaner who now works for an association of such workers. As I had predicted, the former house cleaner enjoyed the film as much as I did, while the white professor denounced it, apparently on the grounds that she would have preferred either a documentary or a tragedy. In short, she was complaining that a comedy should have been a tragedy (which is jaw-dropping in its ignorance). She copmmented that no black woman in the film had been raped by a white employer (something that did and no doubt does happen). Another flaw she found was that a young white woman with a college education was functional in the film in finding a publisher for what the black women had to say--and that runs counter to the position that African Americans need no white connections.
There was something horrifying in the positions taken by a woman who was, without doubt, well meaning.
There were two kinds of people missing from the panel. There was no producer. If there had been, she might have said that the film had been financed to send a message but also to sell tickets. The big ticket buyers in the USA are white, so it made sense to have several white characters (good and bad) play major roles. The panel also lacked a creative writer or literary critic, who might have pointed out that the film was a comedy. It wasn't an outlandish comedy like SOME LIKE IT HOT or FAST DAYS AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, but it was fiction and a comedy--and in an ancient exaggerated comic tradition. You know, the one where the wily servants outsmart their cartoonlike boss. I've enjoyed films in that genre many times, and the basic plot line must go back to the ancient Greeks.
Audiences love THE HELP, perhaps because it is a comedy. Where I live, household help is usually Latina, and I've seen people treat Latina workers with the same easy inhumanity we witness in the movie. I thank THE HELP for bringing this back to my attention.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Stonewall at Gettysburg
I've been watching on TV a civil war history program, and on it a professor was asked what would have happened if Stonewall Jackson had lived to participate in the crucial battle of Gettysburg. The professor began with the obvious (that it's likely the battle would not have been at Gettysburg) and then went on to say that if Jackson had been at Gettysburg, the South would have won.
Baloney. If Jackson had been at Gettysburg, most likely he would have been killed near the peach orchard and by his own men. (We don't talk about fragging.)
Baloney. If Jackson had been at Gettysburg, most likely he would have been killed near the peach orchard and by his own men. (We don't talk about fragging.)
Friday, February 24, 2012
Ancient Campaign Stategies
Reactionary Republicans have roughed out a campaign plan they hope will win them the Presidency. Using an old Karl Rove strategy, but much mangled, they are identifying specific identity groups and working to win their support. For example, they are counting on the anti-contraception voters to push them over the top, along with the Birthers, the Truthers, the gold bugs, Confederate generals and the Anti-Saloon League. We have interesting months ahead.
Ancient
Campaign Strategies
Some of our local Democrats have worked out a strategy to win the open congressional seat. It goes something like this. The seat has been held by a woman, so it should always be held by a woman. As certain friends believed 40 years ago, all women should endorse the woman candidate and support her. Male Democrats can fuck off.
Progressives take a somewhat different view, which is that the people, united, can never be defeated.
Reactionary Republicans have roughed out a campaign plan they hope will win them the Presidency. Using an old Karl Rove strategy, but much mangled, they are identifying specific identity groups and working to win their support. For example, they are counting on the anti-contraception voters to push them over the top, along with the Birthers, the Truthers, the gold bugs, and the Anti-Saloon League. We have interesting months ahead.
Some of our local Democrats have worked out a strategy to win the open congressional seat. It goes something like this. The seat has been held by a woman, so it should always be held by a woman. As certain friends believed 40 years ago, all women should endorse the woman candidate and support her. Male Democrats can fuck off.
Progressives take a somewhat different view, which is that the people, united, can never be defeated.
Reactionary Republicans have roughed out a campaign plan they hope will win them the Presidency. Using an old Karl Rove strategy, but much mangled, they are identifying specific identity groups and working to win their support. For example, they are counting on the anti-contraception voters to push them over the top, along with the Birthers, the Truthers, the gold bugs, and the Anti-Saloon League. We have interesting months ahead.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Atomic Wedgie
This morning I was watching four or five people talking about the Republican Presidential candidates, trying to figure out which one the voters were responding to. Take Rick Santorum, for example. He supposedly knows how to talk to working class men. Now can I say something about that? I grew up surrounded by working class men. Rick Santorum is a prissy faced sex-weirdo who wants women to keep their legs together. Believe me, that does not strike a spark among working class men. Mitt Romney is, as someone said, that rich SOB who sniggered while firing his cleaning lady (your mother) because she got to work late when her child fell ill. Ron Paul is an amusing crank you wouldn't hire to edge your lawn. Newt Gingrich--in his favor, he likes sex, but this pompous know-it-all is less a candidate for President and more a candidate for an atomic wedgie.
President Obama, an African-American Harvard graduate, is a regular guy compared to the Republican parade of freaks.
President Obama, an African-American Harvard graduate, is a regular guy compared to the Republican parade of freaks.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Whitney Houston Becomes a Mormon
Two of my best grandparents were Mormons, so I will not be shocked to learn that Whitney Houston has joined the faith. In the Mormon church, you can baptize dead people, and many Mormons do that for their loved ones or, out of kindness, for other dead people who might need help reaching the Mansions of Bliss. For example (no joke) Hitler and Stalin are now Mormons and so are roughly 600,000 Jews murdered in Hitler's Holocaust. It seems safe to assume that Julius Caesar is a Mormon, along with Pope John, Malcolm X, Theda Bara, John Adams, Kim Kardashian's grandmother, Edgar Allen Poe, Janet Joplin, Willa Cather and Mitt Romney. I'm not sure if I am a Mormon, but I am if my grandparents had a say in the matter.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The Kardashians and Cardassians
People keep asking who the Kardashians, featured in Star Trek, are, so I have finally looked into the matter. The Kardashians (sometimes spelled Cardassians) are humanoid in form but have gigantic asses, which has led to their derogatory nickname as "spoonbutts." They evolved on a planet in the Alpha Quadrant from a species loosely known as "sand crawlers." Their skin is tan, and they continue to grow and regrow scales. Stroking the neck of a Kardashian female produces an erotic reaction. Also the females prefer to be filmed while enjoying sex. Some famous Kardashians include Gil Dukat, Kim, Elim Garak, Bruce Jenner and many others.
The Kardashians prefer to drink hot fish juice and eat larish pie and live, wriggling taspar eggs. Kardashian couples routinely snap at each other bitterly, which makes it relatively easy for them to comingle with humans. This species has photographic memory, which means, in this case, they remember every photograph taken of them. All Kardashian television appearances have exactly the same story line, an oddity to humans but one that Kardashians find comforting. The ideal Kardashian person is one that is perfectly normal, which is to say that he or she is totally lacking personality or talent or anything that makes him or her different from a talking manikin.
The Kardashians prefer to drink hot fish juice and eat larish pie and live, wriggling taspar eggs. Kardashian couples routinely snap at each other bitterly, which makes it relatively easy for them to comingle with humans. This species has photographic memory, which means, in this case, they remember every photograph taken of them. All Kardashian television appearances have exactly the same story line, an oddity to humans but one that Kardashians find comforting. The ideal Kardashian person is one that is perfectly normal, which is to say that he or she is totally lacking personality or talent or anything that makes him or her different from a talking manikin.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
GOP Baloney
President Obama is a Muslim with a deep commitment to Rev. Wright's radical Christianity, and he is waging a war on religion.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
The Black Bloc Anarchists
This might help explain a small corner of the news.
There are many kinds of anarchists, including Christian anarchists, nonviolent anarchists and so on. Anarchism is a set of theories, some of which are brilliant. For example, the idea that each child should have her educational needs met on an individual basis is an anarchist educational theory. The theory works--if your goal is for children to learn rapidly and happily.
If you pay attention to political demonstrations, you have probably noticed a relatively small bunch of guys in the major marches who attack buildings and smash things. Those are the Black Bloc anarchists. Groups like them have long been evident--I first met them in marches in the 1960s. They were the ones who broke windows as we marched and got us teargassed.
The Black Bloc anarchists are what Chris Hedges has called "the cancer of the Occupy movement." They are the dudes dressed in black who, after using the more positive Occupy people as human shields, break loose, attack property and confront the police. Of course the 1% savor this gift, this excuse to crack down on the 99%.
The point Hedges emphasizes is that the Black Bloc is deliberately destroying the Occupy Movement because they consider all organized movements on the Left as sell-outs. What the Black Bloc favors is petty vandalism, which they find romantic and revolutionary. Meanwhile they denounce unions, environmental organizations, Noam Chomsky (well, I denounce Chomsky but do not claim that he's a sell-out), etc. They praise the Unabomber's insane manifesto. The Black Bloc rioters lack common sense. They're like teenage boys doing 60 in a 25 mile zone, only what they kill is hope of change.
There are many kinds of anarchists, including Christian anarchists, nonviolent anarchists and so on. Anarchism is a set of theories, some of which are brilliant. For example, the idea that each child should have her educational needs met on an individual basis is an anarchist educational theory. The theory works--if your goal is for children to learn rapidly and happily.
If you pay attention to political demonstrations, you have probably noticed a relatively small bunch of guys in the major marches who attack buildings and smash things. Those are the Black Bloc anarchists. Groups like them have long been evident--I first met them in marches in the 1960s. They were the ones who broke windows as we marched and got us teargassed.
The Black Bloc anarchists are what Chris Hedges has called "the cancer of the Occupy movement." They are the dudes dressed in black who, after using the more positive Occupy people as human shields, break loose, attack property and confront the police. Of course the 1% savor this gift, this excuse to crack down on the 99%.
The point Hedges emphasizes is that the Black Bloc is deliberately destroying the Occupy Movement because they consider all organized movements on the Left as sell-outs. What the Black Bloc favors is petty vandalism, which they find romantic and revolutionary. Meanwhile they denounce unions, environmental organizations, Noam Chomsky (well, I denounce Chomsky but do not claim that he's a sell-out), etc. They praise the Unabomber's insane manifesto. The Black Bloc rioters lack common sense. They're like teenage boys doing 60 in a 25 mile zone, only what they kill is hope of change.
Monday, February 6, 2012
The Importance of the N-Word
Quite a few years ago my friend and college roommate, Dennis Renault, drew an editorial cartoon for the Sacramento Bee in which he had a KKK member in a sheet using the term "nigger." The obvious intent of the cartoon was to attack racism--much as Mark Twain did in HUCKLEBERRY FINN--and thoughtful people understood that. Others did not. The same editorial board that had okayed the cartoon and published it, backed down as soon as some African American community leaders called for resignations, and the board issued a public apology. Seminars on the word "nigger" were held around the nation, including one on Long Island, 3,000 miles away. My wife attended that discussion, where she was told by an excellent African American law professor that no white person should use "nigger" under any circumstance. "The word is forbidden," she said.
That level of response was, in retrospect, childish. I mean that in this sense: children do not grasp irony. Neither did many of the cartoon's detractors.
That was then. Now we live in an age where a heavily racist term like "nigger" has been desensitized by rappers (at least for the young, who listen to rap). What I want to argue is a little different. I believe that "nigger" is the single most important word we know. Its contempt for other human beings points directly to the founding of this nation, which enshrined slavery in its Constitution. "Nigger" points to our original sin and one that we have hardly begun to correct.
Look at the Republican Party, home of those who claim that President Obama was born in Kenya, raised as a Muslim, graduated from Harvard without writing his own papers, etc. The tortured logic and invention of false facts dates back to the twisted intellectual defense that the South made of slavery. The South is still entrapped in rubbish. Many still believe that slavery was good for African Americans, a civilizing experience. Or they hide, as Robert E. Lee did, in the claim that the Civil War was not about slavery but was about states' rights (the right to own slaves). In fact, slavery was vicious and a curse that twists in our political system.
We need to repeat the word "nigger." It calls up a central fact of history. We would like to forget slavery, of course. We would like to forget the ugliest parts of our past and pretend that Robert E. Lee was a gentleman, not a slave whipper, but that would obscure who and what we are and what we are capable of doing again. We'd do better to keep our history in mind.
That level of response was, in retrospect, childish. I mean that in this sense: children do not grasp irony. Neither did many of the cartoon's detractors.
That was then. Now we live in an age where a heavily racist term like "nigger" has been desensitized by rappers (at least for the young, who listen to rap). What I want to argue is a little different. I believe that "nigger" is the single most important word we know. Its contempt for other human beings points directly to the founding of this nation, which enshrined slavery in its Constitution. "Nigger" points to our original sin and one that we have hardly begun to correct.
Look at the Republican Party, home of those who claim that President Obama was born in Kenya, raised as a Muslim, graduated from Harvard without writing his own papers, etc. The tortured logic and invention of false facts dates back to the twisted intellectual defense that the South made of slavery. The South is still entrapped in rubbish. Many still believe that slavery was good for African Americans, a civilizing experience. Or they hide, as Robert E. Lee did, in the claim that the Civil War was not about slavery but was about states' rights (the right to own slaves). In fact, slavery was vicious and a curse that twists in our political system.
We need to repeat the word "nigger." It calls up a central fact of history. We would like to forget slavery, of course. We would like to forget the ugliest parts of our past and pretend that Robert E. Lee was a gentleman, not a slave whipper, but that would obscure who and what we are and what we are capable of doing again. We'd do better to keep our history in mind.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Our Socialist Super Bowl
Martin Bashir pointed this out.
You might have noticed that in professional baseball, the same teams seem to win each year, the teams like Boston and the Yankees. They have the most money. Pro football is different. In football a team like the 49ers can be among the worst one year and among the best the next year, thanks to a form of socialism.
In 1994, the owners' and players' associations of the National Football League approved a salary cap. This cap is essentially a set amount of money that each of the NFL's 31 teams is allowed to spend on player salaries for the year. I don't know the real figures, but let's say that for the last season, the total amount of money available was $800 million. Divide that by the 31 NFL teams, and each team got to spend about $26 million. To oversimplify, each team gets what it needs; they start off even. Baseball represents the opposite theory: capitalism. The New York Yankees bring in a ton of money, so they get to buy the best players and pay them four times what a team like Oakland can afford. The Yankees hold the record for winning the most pennants. That's why rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the Bank of America.
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