Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

          Thanksgiving nears, an iconic time for family and all such traditions supposedly held dear. It was the occasion of another Big Lie many years ago which manifested three quarters of a century later as a demon of our generation—the demon of tobacco, which any thinking person at that time knew to be a killer. But thinking people being ever in short supply, and the ones who did think being also short of power, the capitalist profiteers of the day made the bed in which millions would die painful and untimely deaths. My family so suffered and so did yours in all likelihood.

          The power of big tobacco was so great that many thought it would be the last of tyrannies to fall, if ever. So who was behind the real killer-weed? Its name is Legion, as the Good Book says, because it is many. Best to laser in on one of those many so we can see how times have changed.

          It was when Henry Luce bought the venerable Life Magazine and launched his maiden issue in November of 1936 in which Food Editor Dorothy Malone showed how best to purvey Thanksgiving dinner for both family and friends.

          She spoke of the classic turkey and all the fixin’s of said meal. But each was given rather short shrift, save for one constant: Camel Cigarettes. With an array of pictures Malone showed how to offer them the moment guests darkened the door, after the first course, between the expected first and second helpings of the Bird, following the Waldorf Salad, and as top-off to dessert and coffee for an end to a perfect day.

          And she had good reasons: cigarettes, she said, were aids to digestion, to clear the palate, increase alkalinity and add good cheer to the occasion. Said Malone, “It’s smart to have Camels on the table (for) a sense of digestive well-being.” Sadly, she never used the words “cancer-sticks,” but that’s what they were. It would take decades before leaked documents told the truth, including how Joe Camel became the go-to symbol for a new generation that was to embrace a deadly practice that evolved, thanks to the down-played ingredients, into their social habit, along with an older generation that should have known better.

          Thus the Turkey Day of that earlier time was a raw deal and not the kind of impression from Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post cover that said, sans words, that God was in his heaven and all was right with our blessings–aside from the hidden horrors of a certain aromatic weed.

          I use the word “weed” because it most often refers to marijuana, the thing that hundreds of thousands went to jail for selling, using or even being around and was thereby a threat to–you guessed it–Big Tobacco. Along with more potent substances, it was deemed a “drug,” while alcohol, also a drug, escaped notoriety—though its cost to society is more than all other drugs put together; hence the misleading phrase of the time, “alcohol ‘and’ drugs.” Among the heroes of all such consumption were rock stars, who were aware that their millions of adorers knew and modeled their drug-infused life-styles. They too are overlooked when assigning shame and blame for that tragic toll; but, hey, they’re musicians!—and idols!

          So what’s on and around your table this Thanksgiving? Betwixt spoonfuls, you may be treated to the wisdom of Trump Nation guests, willing to ruin everyone’s good time, not to mention digestion, with tales of a prior stolen election and the paybacks to be visited on both friend and foe.

          Be advised that your turkey may be another raw deal for the occasion.

         In like a lion, out like a lamb; make way for April showers and the promise of spring. Such is the month of March, named after the Roman god Mars, successor to Ares of the Greeks who began as an agricultural deity but became quarrelsome, leading to fights, which led to wars. Good choice for a lion. So why is April called the “cruelest month”?  

After all, March has its Ides, which was a hell of day for Julius Caesar, stabbed as he was in the rotunda, which had to hurt.  Brutus was among the stabbers, which added insult to injury–the great general-cum-dictator had been his proud and doting mentor. Score one for the lions. Caesar was a brilliant warrior and a gifted writer—read his account of the Gallic War–he just wanted more than others wanted him to have, which was absolute power over their beloved Republic.

          Then there’s St. Pat’s Day; like next month’s Cinco de Mayo, it’s an excuse to party but no one outdoes the Irish in that regard, who are fabled as brawlers as well, true or not. I know something about that, married to an Irish lass half my size, and of whom I’m scared to death. She wins all our fights.

          March’s fabled winds add to its reputation but aids pollination, so there’s that. Still, down through history there’s as much boil and bubble in April as in other months. As the Good Book says, “We are born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” to which may be added another piece of its wisdom, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” So Lions 2, Lambs 0. But April has just begun to fight.

          Every year I remind readers that April is the month the world’s greatest metaphor hit an iceberg–the 14^th day of 1912, to be exact, upon which passenger John Jacob Astor famously objected, “I rang for ice, but this is ridiculous.” And there was more to come, namely, World War I, inspiring T.S. Eliot to call it “the cruelest month of all” in his poem, “The Wasteland”—oddly, that conflict neither began nor ended in April but he had lost a dear friend who may or may not have died in one of the two conflicts that month in 1915–the second Battle of Ypres, or the landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Or he was thinking of the U.S. declaring war on Germany, April 6, 1917.

          So this contest is tied at 2-2, though April has a much greater case to plead, like the first battle for our Independence at Lexington in 1775, Revere’s ride the day before, and Pickett’s Civil War defeat in 1865—much more than “tea parties” in any case.

Keep also in mind that the Beatles grabbed the first five slots on our singles chart in ’64 but, sadly for others, the guy I don’t think was Shakespeare fell from this mortal coil on an April day. And it promises showers to help the seeds that March has scattered with its breezes, however mild or tempestuous. Ancient Greeks must have welcomed that: the age-old prayer to Zeus was a plea to “Rain, rain, upon the fields of Athens,” signaling a seasonal problem in those parts.

          I would go on but I hear the snoring, so I close with delicate thoughts by Robert Browning who, when away at such time, longed to be back “in England, now that April’s here.” He was not alone: it was the best of all months for many a poet who welcomed a break in the weather.

          But take heed: there’s no clear dividing line twixt March and the month to follow. I took sabbatical here from Florida many a year ago, regrettably brought only spring clothes, and on a day in May saw huge flakes of snow cover lovely tulips already in bloom.

          Happily, the tulips survived. They wouldn’t have in my native Missouri. They’re not as hardy as your Yankee blooms. But if in truth April is cruel after all, good luck with your lambs this year.

          The pandemic began and I was sure of one thing, but no idea other things were coming. I knew the virus would be around longer than expected but not that our national response would be outright resistance to good sense and the best science–that the war we would wage would be against each other, not the deadly disease. Nor did any of us guess that as it waned, a tyrant long in the making would rise to shake the Western world.

          Amid retirement and for the first time in my adult life I had no organization or newsroom to shepherd through a crisis. I had learned already, from having worked once with an aging population, that when one lays down a career, it’s risky not to have a plan. One cannot drift, cannot say he or she will merely sleep late, idle days away or travel aimlessly.

           My plan was not as structured as in mid-career but there were precious spaces waiting for me and I was ready to defend them from those who imagined I had nothing to do but help them get what they wanted; I knew how to say that I was saving that time for something else, which sufficed to being left to what I wanted thereafter.

          Those precious spaces would be filled with the bibliography that had shaped me through college and graduate studies. I re-visited that curricula to recall not only what I had learned but what I had missed—and what was at stake when the authors wrote what they wrote and what their ideas and the events meant in real time.

          My studies were in the humanities: literature, history, philosophy, theology, poetry and language—things that carried Western civilization to greatness in the centuries preceding ours. I revisited Plato and Aristotle where I first deplored the former’s absurd notion of two worlds and that we aren’t living in the real one; that people who didn’t believe certain ways should be punished or put to death; that if we had followed Aristotle religion would be far different today, based on ethics instead of dogma.

 When I re-read Aeschylus and his literary kin I realized for the first time how far ahead they were of their own world and what was at stake for them to say what they said—as it came to be for Socrates himself. And early on I loved the pre-Socratics, who were irreverent to the max, questioned all they were told and had their own thoughts; that so many then and long after them suffered for their beautiful minds because Plato had taught dogma only too well, and how to use it to silence upstarts.

          But there were many geniuses in the mainstream too, people who pulled up the rest of humankind with their disciplined minds. Science has done us the greatest favors but today in the face of potential world-wide devastation from disease we dissed them, called them names and, in our blessed ignorance, thought we knew better. Frankly, we were lucky that enough people were careful, followed the science and helped ease the attack while strains of the pandemic ran their course. My guess is we’re still going to pay for our obstinance in ways we won’t fully know for perhaps another generation.

          We were at war with COVID and its variants but we chose to fight each other. How dumb was that? And now, convinced that we know better than geniuses what’s good for us, we’ve set ourselves up for future devastation. We laugh at old depictions of evil, thinking they were meant to terrify gratuitously but folks then, like people now, thought evil shows up in obvious costume and the scary depictions called attention to look below surfaces for its presence—as Augustine startled the faithful in his time that the antichrist was not outside, but within, the Church itself.

          Now there’s Putin. Donald Trump needs to look deep into that guy and see not a “genius” but the next great evil in our world. No one seems able to stop him; maybe Aristotle’s notion of tragedy will save the day—that Putin’s kind is that of the unstoppable jerk who, at last, brings down himself.

          So the answer may be in the past as much as the present, for as Santayanna said, those who know not history are doomed to its repetition.

          February, though short in duration, began with the sage forecasts of Punxsutawney Phil, and ended with Presidents Day, to either of which we give little credence or importance.

Between were days of racy, suggestive Valentines and of storefronts are sick with every shade of red. Time to love, because we say so.

          But I offer no love whatever to pro football or its plantation culture, now or any time until it passes muster with those who’ve brought it adoring crowds, insane wealth and the attention of America and the world.

          I speak of certain skin colors within the showy helmets and uniforms that, combined with all the bright hues of reds, whites, blues, oranges and purples, grace the equally bright green gridirons before our tv and stadia eyes. The names of such athletes adorn not only our Sundays and Super Bowls but MVP lists and Halls of Fame. Sadly, while otherwise allowed to touch, pass and kick the football, those of darker skin are not given the coaching reins because—what?

          Surely my dear readers know whereof I speak. Many players of color have bit their tongues whilst suffering loss of such honors, typically the next step up from years of performance under high physical and mental standards. Brian Flores however will no longer shut up, but his case will be a hard one to press forward because the NFL is led by heads as hard as Confederate generals of yore who today still deny equality and by so doing perpetuate modern-day inequality.

          This outrage deserves what the great American Emerson said of the Fugitive Slave Law of his time: “…it is a filthy law and by god I will not obey it.” Nor will Brian Flores put up with this longstanding practice but if there is no incriminating tape or other whistleblowers to step forward and confirm his charges he, like Colin Kaepernick, will be just another casualty.

Today this vestige of plantation-ism is not said out loud. Players’ helmets and uniforms are affixed with words and symbols touting the end of racism in their sport but the real “players” are owners and front offices where actual rules are made and no zebras are around to blow the pea and cost them touchdowns, and money.   

          And the spectacle that begins in late summer now expands into February, furthering embossing its cachet in the calendar. Not even the seasons of major holidays can compete with this lowliest of months that also has more r’s and oysters than any other.

          This year it opened with Flores’ complaint and egg should be on all faces, fans included, who could rise up and stay away for even one game to show owners that there is power elsewhere to shake their foundations.

          And here’s the irony: football is the most macho of sports but also the most cowardly. Many of these manly-men can’t take a needle, let alone have the nerve to confront a sport that needs to know spectators aren’t the only people to be afraid of. Are you listening, Tom Brady?—they can’t hurt you now: you’re the biggest dog in the stadium and even beer-guzzling, pizza-chomping lowbrows would close their tailgates and listen to you.

          When can any sport fall from grace? When the actors—whether owners or athletes—think they’re bigger than the game itself, and bigger than the nation that has given them such wealth and opportunity.

          By the time you read this, maybe the Houston Texans or others will have hired Brian Flores. But until one does, no love here for the NFL.