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

Mar
15

The Irish and the Ides: Not Much to Party About

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An 1849 depiction of Bridget O'Donnell and her...

Depiction of Bridget O'Donnell and children during the Famine, 1849. Image via Wikipedia

 

Given the rap, playful or otherwise, that all Irish American s will fall out of the nation’s bars early Friday morning, one would think this time in March is all about partying. What is overlooked in the supposed mayhem and the build-up to St. Patrick’s Day is a time of more baleful significance: the Ides of March.

Oh, each of the twelve divisions of the annual lunar cycle has its “Ides,” meaning nothing more than its mid-month. Okay, so it was fudged a bit throughout the year, being the fifteenth in March, May, July and October, and the thirteenth in the rest.

The Ides of March however would be little else but an old-fashioned term were it not for the untimely death of Julius Caesar as dramatized by Shakespeare. A seer had predicted he would not live past mid-March and its celebration of Mars, the god of war, complete with military parade.

Caesar famously noted this warning, one that fell on his ears an earlier day while on his way to the Theatre of Pompeii, but joked about it when the Ides actually came, sensing no trouble in the air. The seer who made the prediction retorted, “Ay, they have come, but they are not gone.” Indeed, Brutus and yon Cassius had something to add to that, and let’s not forget there were sixty other conspirators. That had to hurt. It was the JFK assassination of its day.

So do we party, or mourn? It’s a collision of emotion. St. Pat’s falls within Lent, when the devout are supposed to give up something they like, and who wants to party about that? The Irish had a time-honored solution: go to church in the morning, hit the bars after.

If there’s any truth to Irish love for liquor, the reason may have been self-medication, given their “troubles,” which have been many. Circumstances beyond people’s control are what occasion the great migrations of history. In their case, it was the Potato Famine of the 1840s, which they blamed on Brits and absentee landlords, forcing emigration to the U.S.

But rapid increases in immigration are what most upset the host countries, and the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave was no exception. Employment opportunity signs often carried the addendum, “No Irish Need Apply,” and they were blamed for whatever ailed our country.

This was the story of all migrants and, necessarily being in the minority, they huddled together, whether Jews, Asians, and Blacks; actually, the Irish were lumped together with the latter two in cartoonish caricatures in Boston newspapers of the time. Nearly three-fourths of servants in Boston homes were Irish, the women called “bridgets” and “biddys,” the men were branded “paddys,” and the whole lot of ‘em were dubbed “murphies.” The “Know-Nothing” political party of the late 19th century had a special hatred for the Irish. Hey, welcome, guys! And drink up!

In these latter days, there’s other excitement to numb the pain of history, like the NCAA’s basketball tourney, otherwise known as March Madness. Maybe the “madness” refers to the way we’ve treated newcomers, and the games are in honor of that.

And why not: that noble tradition of xenophobia continued with successive waves of strangers and now we’re alarmed to learn that the influx of hispanics is greater than we thought. Arizona is indebted to them for roofing their homes and toiling its fields in 120-degree heat, but you wouldn’t know it: don’t even think about moving the Statue of Liberty there.

But the price paid for exclusivity is universal. Forever after to be linked to the Ides of March will be the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the lessons continue: that country has desperately needed immigration for some time, and more so now to rebuild following the destruction, but as a society it is resistant to the newcomers. Sixty-five per cent of Japanese are opposed to them, and they guard the gates by means of a little certification test for workers who come and want to stay: one based largely on language. Learn it or begone.

That is the ugly little truth behind our understandable compassion for the destruction there. Sadly, it is still in the memory of many Japanese that a certain bomb descended on them in the not so distant past. Now nature itself has unleashed a holocaust of another sort.

And, again, such “circumstances beyond our control” may occasion another historical migration to save Japan from further destruction, this time of a self-imposed sort.

And by the way, let that be a lesson to us all, one taught to us by the Irish in America. They came, they stayed, and one became president.

I’ll drink to that.

And I’ll do it in an Irish bar.

Categorized in Social Issues

Mar
07

Thinking of Presidents

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Lincoln's Birthday

Image by John McNab via Flickr

Forgive me that Presidents Day is past, but it often flies by with hardly a thought from us.

And if you cringe at detail, don’t even start with the mish-mash of proclamations, executive orders and Senate bills that tinkered with bestowing proper honor on these dudes. What is now “Presidents Day” didn’t really get nailed down without the help of advertisers and the marketplace of the 1980s, another of their excuses to pretend we can buy wares at “sale” or “discount” prices for the occasion.

It should be added that even the spelling has been argued to a stand-off and we are now allowed to render it with or without an apostrophe and be totally okay with all official word-meisters.

What the day really ruined was originally two days off from school in February. Till then kids enjoyed two that month, the 12th and 22nd, respectively, thanks to Washington and Lincoln. Then along came the Messers That Be who merged them into one. Not only that, it is now, as Nixon declared in 19071, “to honor all presidents, including myself.”

Oh, let’s don’t stop there: those examples of dilly-dally with a day supposedly special to all Americans screwed up something else along the way. Washington was actually born on February 11 but under the Julian calendar, which changed to the Gregorian during his lifetime and thereafter computed to Feb. 22. So the legislative adaptation calling for a celebration to be the Third Monday means that its observance can never fall on his actual birthday since that Monday can’t fall any later than the 21st. Hail to the Chief.

We’ve had so many prezes since ol’ George that it’s hard for us to appreciate what a hero and celebrity he was in the American imagination. The most famliar renderings, whether in paint, sculpture or statue were of him on horseback and a sword in view. This acknowldged his military prowess, being, after all, “first in war…” before he could be “…first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

This was the big story–till Lincoln. Washington had died a natural death; Abe was hated and vilified by half the nation till his death from a coward’s bullet evoked the love and secret admiration even of his critics.

It is those two who are thought of first and foremost when Presidents Day rolls around. Admittedly, there are years we think of neither, just that it’s a day off or an excuse to go buy a big screen TV from Billy the Price-Buster, or whoever. In other years will come flashes of memory, thanks maybe to new biographies or memoirs that tell more than the same-old, same-old, or that occasion longer looks at more recent presidents like Carter or Jackson.

What really makes a presidential legacy is success in war. George and Abe are Exhibits Number One, for leading a Revolution and for bringing us united through a Civil conflict, respectively. Both times, American blood ran red on our own soil, which is why we fell so in love with the song, “Over There,” beginning with World War I, because it meant the fighting was not “Over Here.”

But whether Here or There, war is the litmus test for greatness. That’s why LBJ got no love for the Lost Cause in Vietnam, or Nixon for extending it to Cambodia, though the Dickster is vilified for much more than that.
This had to sting, since headier times were hardly faint from Wilson as the first “world” war president, and FDR was fresh as the second.

It’s also why invading that little spit of land called Grenada was such a sweet idea for Reagan, along with his taking on the guerilla Sandanistas; then alas and alack, he fell on his own sword by selling arms for hostages. His minions try to give him all the credit for the fall of Communism but real historians know that’s due to the pope and the Solidarity movement, both of which did more than spout  platitudes far from the fray.

Carter had the luck of an incompetent military that sent dysfunctional helicopters to crash into each other while trying to rescue our hostages in Iran.

Consider now Bush the Elder: too bad he didn’t push on to Baghdad in the first Gulf conflict. That was actually the decent thing to do, but wouldn’t you know, the snake in Iraq got live for another day and for more mischief. Hence, no cigar for H.W.

His son, the Eternal Frat Boy, was handed greatness on a platter when his term, sputtering from the start, got a break with 9/11. Whatever made him then prance out on a big ship and lisp, “Mission Accomplished,” when there was no such thing, is known but to God. To compensate, he marched our children off to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which are still going and are anything but howling successes. So no stogie for him, either.

Ironically, if John Boehner wants to cry for anyone, it should be for Obama, who hasn’t started any wars but got a couple handed to him. If Barack can wriggle out of those, he should be allowed, if not a cigar, at least a last cigarette before going back on the wagon again.

Categorized in Politics
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Mar
01

Bored for 83 Years

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Anne Hathaway at the 81st Academy Awards

Image via Wikipedia

Many of us weren’t born when this nonsense started–meaning, the Academy Awards and the slavish adoration of people with otherwise messed-up lives who have a talent for appearing normal, even heroic, on a silver screen.

This bears saying again: the obsession with celebrity is our  way of re-creating a royalty that was briefly sacrificed by the American Revolution.

Old clips show that Oscar night began with a slow parade of stars to proffer ho-hum thank-you’s to the gods of the Academy, whom you would think are on Olympus, using magic wands and fairy dust to bless a solitary person in each category, to the simmering piss-off of all who come in second. Why the also-rans are so sporting about this deserves a Mystery Award; or as Vince Lombardi so aptly put it: Show me a good loser, and I’ll still show you–a loser. For 20 years, this droning was interspersed with Bob Hope delivering dozens of very un-funny one-liners while Americans cheered.

Nowadays, “progress” means that galling Red Carpet, or what I call the “Perp” Walk by all the usual suspects from the year past, to the background screams of hundreds of sycophants, clueless that some of their current idols will be tomorrow’s Charlie Sheens and Lindsay Lohans, gobbling up our news cycles with their unending perfidies and falls from grace.

So now we’re treated to interviewers who greet each starlet with, “You’re stunning…beautiful…ravishing…”–a clue that they checked a thesaurus beforehand and committed to memory the section on “Beauty.” The objects of their gush are hotties in overpriced dresses that still manage to miss the mark for high fashion.

Some viewers, upset that Joan Rivers and her dah-ling daw-tuh weren’t doing a Carpet show this year, forthwith killed themselves, a tragedy that Variety magazine will write that off as collateral damage.

So what that Jennifer Hudson dropped 80 pounds; she needed to, and helped along by a diet plan that likely cost her more than your annual salary. Natalie Portman is a real talent, so why does she look like a deer-in-headlights? Even when she’s smiling you think she’ll burst into tears the next moment. Anne Hathaway, caught on the Carpet prior to festivities, revealed the biggest eyes and mouth for her size head and, oh, don’t forget her nose, either. But movie cameras like large features and in action she makes you forget about them anyway. We also got to see Sandra Bullock who, for all her beauty, can’t find a decent boyfriend to save her life.

A group of student journalists did a smart take on the winners and losers, allowing that The King’s Speech could have been made fifteen years ago and would have won the prize then too; but that Social Network was cursed with being about the future, which America doesn’t want to hear about right now, and to its peril.

Indeed, while “King’s Speech” got all the hype and praise, “Black Swan” was a tour de force of work and ingenuity, and for its dark exploration of the human psyche. Meaning, who the hell wants to see that, let alone clap for it?

Indeed, Hathaway and James Franco helped lose that very demographic for the night. Being young, they should never go near the Awards, which is for old farts, middle-agers whose lives totally suck, and air-headed twenty-somethings who dream of being discovered by talent agents while working in a malt shop in Tupelo. Hathaway did save the evening from total loss, being at ease and wickedly charming while Franco, riding a wave of popularity from recent successes, did a great job in the role of a lifeless stick-figure.

And it would have been nice to see Mike Douglas again; instead his old man was foisted off on us. Hell, I thought the Kirkster died long ago. There being no such luck, his grossly advanced age and frightening visage, like Hannibal Lector en masque, merely scared the children watching and reminded us all that time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy goddam beautician. I’m sorry, but there is a time to stop going out in public, unless it’s Halloween.

It would be nice if the Oscars died too, or got a radical makeover: e.g., more time and attention to those whose talented writing, cinematography, visual effects, sound and music, costume design, makeup and such, give actors fabulous settings in which it’s hard to fail.

Otherwise, we’re left with those who happen to come up with the best impromptu lines, like Colin Firth’s quip that he now has the feeling his career has just peaked.

Our consolation prize is that we get to wait till next year to be bored to tears again. For the eighty-fourth time.

Categorized in Pop Culture
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Feb
15

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

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Author: Bagande

Image via Wikipedia

Think of Tina Turner’s hit song: “What’s love, what’s love, got-to-do, got-to-do with it…”

Cometh Valentine’s Day, and storefronts are sick with every shade of red. Gosh, we’re a loving people. You can tell from our music, literature, rhetoric and scriptures. We sing and rhapodize about it, and look for it in all the wrong places. Tons of money is spent for perishable blooms and with confections that give to lovers what they want least: more weight.

Love is common but a mystery; can hurt as much as it heals and bring as much pain as pleasure. It’s hard to predict but guaranteed to happen, yet isn’t guaranteed to last: just ask wealthy divorce lawyers. There are loves long and brief, and the sole difference between them is longevity or the lack thereof.

“Puppy love,” so-called, is said to be no love at all, perhaps an illusion, which is terribly unfair to the young; their love is real but comes at a time without benefit of experience and maturity, but felt nonetheless. Puppy love is love, and should be so honored. I had it, and a damn bad case it was.

Speaking of puppies, what about animals, especially family pets–our love for a different species, but the companionship and mutual affection are real and powerful. They comfort and save us from loneliness and are among the truest of our objects of endearment. Unlike humans, they are less affected and hurt by our overprotection, spoiling and co-dependence. Such a deal.

Perhaps most unreal is adult human love, ruined by over-romanticization and generalities that touch our emotions but are highly unrealistic. We say that if it sounds and feels good, then do it, even get married on it, believing it is both good and true. But one wag has suggested that getting hitched while “in love” (or lust) is like getting married while drunk.

The troubadours, by means of a lethally effective combo of art, poetry and song spoke out for love in individual people. Before that, love and marriage were arranged, in the name of custom, convenience and family, which often resulted in bonds of deep love. Indeed, love can be arranged, and history is testament to that.

When love became democratic it meant we preferred to come to it by choice or, as we say, by the call of our hearts. Yet it is no more functional and workable and lasting than love arranged. In our free society, over one-half of marriages do not last because romantic love doesn’t tend to last.

So, in our freedom, we are the ones who find love and lose it, honor and dishonor it, respect and disrespect it, nurture and starve it. And not because it was arranged for us, for it is now our way in love that we give ourselves to each other, and take ourselves away.

So now love is a challenge for even the closest of lovers, let alone those who aren’t. It is what some religion calls the highest but most challenging of all, the love of the extraordinary, those with whom there is little or nothing in common, and values and customs are separated by differences: people hard to love, even unlovable, to our minds. After all, it is clear that most people love and marry those who are most like them.

Love of the extraordinary is not easy, and those who do it are extraordinary themselves, though we often have unflattering names for them and the objects of their affection. Think of the labels you have and use for whoever you don’t like–other races, nationalities, social classes and sexual natures.

American history is one of early dislike, even hatred, for Asians, blacks and Jews, and later for Mexicans, as well as gays and lesbians. Mention transgendered persons today and most people don’t even wanna go there. Muslims are on our latest shit-list; we’ll put up with just about anybody and everybody before we’ll abide them or the presence of a mosque. Who’ll be next?

Christmas is the centerpiece of our biggest holiday season, when we sit patiently for obligatory readings of Isaiah’s vision of universal brotherhood–the hope that “all nations” will come together, in peace, at one place. But each religion wants that to happen at its holy place and not someone else’s. Yet each claims to believe in love and brotherhood, but insists that all the others agree with them just how this should come about.

One of the oldest love stories is about a young woman whose mother made a potion to cause the daughter to fall in love with the king whom she was arranged to marry. As luck would have it, her lowly escort ingested it and all hell broke loose. Tristan and Isolde aside, it might be nice were there a potion for the world’s people and all of us would drink it.

Right now, love doesn’t seem to work and has little to do with it.

Or, okay, so prove me wrong.

Categorized in Gays and Society, Race in America, Religion and Social Issues
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Jan
18

Coming Down the Mountain

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Dr. Martin Luther King giving his "I Have...

Image via Wikipedia

These words were meant to be posted earlier but, well, shots rang out again, this time in Arizona. How ironic that we were only days away from commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr., himself a victim of gun violence.

He had been to the mountain-top, a “peak experience” perhaps, but the trip down is often disappointing, if not perilous. We are familiar with Moses’ legendary ascent, followed by his subsequent descent to a people who, in their faithlessness, had fashioned a god bearing no resemblance to the one he had encountered on high.

Call that a bummer, and it brings to mind King’s own “peak” experience, which he related not in happy terms but with a warning that he saw also the gathering clouds of his own doom. He might not get there with them, he said, in reference to the “promised land” of racial equality, but they would get there as a people. Clearly, he had written both his own epitaph and a vision of the future.

Following his assassination, I and three young black leaders left for Atlanta and his funeral, to represent our Branch of the NAACP of which I was vice president and housing chair. A special called night meeting of mine obliged us to leave late and drive through the dark.

We felt it best to take my car, given that I was the only non-African American. Willard, branch president, drove the first leg while I slept, only to be awakened when he inadvertently drove into Baltimore, which was under curfew. I retook the wheel and turned the first corner right into a cadre of the city’s law enforcement and a circle of police cars.

No one in the nation knew what they were doing in the shocking aftermath of King’s death but it at least briefly changed the racial dynamic. At no point were any of my colleagues pulled from the car or even spoken to. I was hauled out, pinned against the driver’s door and submitted to a string of repetitive, threatening questions as to who I was, where was I going, and why the hell was I in Baltimore.

I relied on instinct and answered all queries quietly and without impatience while license and registration were checked. Some officers had clubs nearly the length of baseball bats, and one crouched down and struck the street hard in rapid succession, the noise of which echoed down the empty city corridors.

They were unsure if I were black or white and, if the latter, I realized that in a strange twist of fate I could be the sacrificial lamb, not those in the car. The police did not guess I was hispanic but couldn’t afford to be violent toward a person of “color,” given the circumstances. Luckily, I had enough to create uncertainty.

I will also add that you haven’t lived till the end of one of those clubs has been rammed into your kidney, endowing pain to last for many a year.

At last, gruff orders were barked in my face to get back in the car, leave their fair city and, if stopped again, all bets were off that we would get to Atlanta. I risked asking for directions, which were spat at me so quickly and vaguely that neither I nor my traveling companions could begin to remember.

Predictably, we were soon lost again, and the only auto on the streets. At most corners were armed policemen accompanied by dogs and I stayed in the center of a wide avenue while we rolled down the window and quickly asked for the interstate. The cop told us but as we sped away he yelled for us to stop, and we feared bullets might come our way.

When found, the exit to the highway was blocked so I went up the down ramp for incoming traffic, only to meet a National Guard convoy coming straight at us. I moved over as far as possible, at high speed, all happening too fast for the convoy, filled as it was with guardsmen still groggy from interrupted sleep.

Once on the highway, the worst option could be to go back north as might be expected, so I drove wrong-way again to a better part of the median and half-spun, half-flew to the south lanes for for D.C. and Richmond.

It was like an action movie but neither thrilling nor fun. A few miles down the road, one of my friends broke the silence to say that I “sure knew how to ‘talk soft’” to the police back there. And they all burst into laughter.
They of course were used to being arrested and yanked out of cars, usually over nothing, something the rest of us cannot understand. But it would help it we could.

Most American communities need training in anti-racism, and a good place to start is in the schools. I know, because while King, Jr. died many years ago, it was only last year in my charming New England town that our kids weren’t allowed to hear, in their classrooms, the first black American president speak on the value of education.

We’re still comin’ down the mountain.

Categorized in Race in America and Social Issues
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Jan
11

Arizona in the Crosshairs

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Jan Brewer

Image via Wikipedia

Arizona was a “Territory” till 1912, and certain folks there are yet to stop riding mules and seeking gold in ghost mines. Quaintly, Phoenix’s “Historic” district are homes built in the 1930s and ‘40s.

This is also the Arizona that nearly lost a major college bowl game a few years ago for outlawing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. As so often occurs with such independent cusses, however, money trumped principle and they hosted the Bowl and harvested its dough.

Frontier rhetoric, along with its prejudices, still abounds. It was my distinct displeasure to visit their state legislature on many occasions during 2000-2005 to hear state senator Russell Pearce and others say the most terrible things about Mexico and Mexicans in terms one would not use to describe vermin of the worst sort. Pearce is a hate-filled product of a past when men supposedly were men and life was cheap. With his help, it has become cheaper.

His doomsday mission is aided and abetted by Gov. Jan Brewer (shown above), a hanger-on pol who got to her current position somewhat by default. Before, she was a homely, unpleasant dish-water sort who, as the immigration pot began to boil and she basked in national attention, got a radical makeover and now bears an eternally blond but Sarah Palin “do,” and face-lift smile, even when voicing unpleasant thoughts.

All this is backdrop for the tragedy of the past week, but to add quickly that there are crackpots in all states of the union who may go over the edge at the slightest and seemingly unrelated provocation.

Add to that however that extreme rhetoric creates a climate made for the deranged. Pearce’s inflammatory harangues aside, Brewer has infamously added the legend of supposed beheaded bodies in the desert that was reported widely and with all the scorn it, and she, deserved. If she’s sorry to have so mis-spake, she has not said so.

But that’s only Arizona. The tragedy there can and most likely will happen anywhere and everywhere. I knew we were in trouble when conservative pols, and those who aspired to be, excused virulent speech at the notorious Town Hall meetings as, “W-e-l-l, we can understand their anger…” This simply authorized overt rage, the next step of which can easily become rage carried out.

What such elected officials did not do was to urge extreme caution to calm down once pique has been expressed. But, no, they used that anger, resulting in more incendiary speech and a scary heightening of social tension.

Sen. John Kyl, who bears eerie resemblance to Zippy the Pinhead, jumped on the Pima County sheriff’s suggestion that the Tucson shooting was related to extreme rhetoric, and deemed it nothing more than political exploitation. However, at no time or occasion has Kyle denounced decades of rancorous statements from the neighboring sheriff, the notorious Joe Arpaio, let alone those of Brewer or Pearce.

Of course, Sarah Palin could be counted on to do verbal spadework for potential tragedy, but suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from view when such occurred and was notably represented by “spokespersons” who said her “crosshairs” map had reference other than to guns. Oh, sure, but should our sole Muslim in Congress ever make such inference, you can bet the farm he’d be condemned as a terrorist and cast into outer darkness.

I’m also beyond tired of said rightwingers and their argument from “equivalence,” that “everyone does it,” regardless of political affiliation or persuasion. I am not about to admit that dose of unreality into my brain, especially in the name of fairness and tolerance, because it’s neither. I do admit to rare instances of liberal extremism but the rest of us do not stand and cheer and elect such numbskulls to Congress or fill their coffers for re-election.

Add to this zany picture Glenn Beck, who rushed to distance himself by posting a little petition eschewing violence or talk of it, while hinting that if Obama doesn’t add a signature oh, gee, guess what that could mean! Beck is currently the other book end to Reagan’s first suggestion that government is the problem, not the answer, and thereby our sworn enemy. Beck wants us to stop our ears from hearing all persons, causes and politics but himself, his own and those whom he endorses.

The other elephant in the room is our aversion to gun control, of which I have said much at other times and may be accessed on this site by clicking the Category of Gun Control for posts titled, “Life In a Hail of Bullets,” Let Me Get My Gun,” “Gun Shy,” and “An America Without Guns.”

Regarding Arizona and its currently lame environment, check the same site for “Thank God for Arizona” (be sure that is tongue in cheek) under “Race in America.”

Categorized in Guns Control and Politics
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Dec
29

Re-Gifting Lady Liberty

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Site #307: The Statue of Liberty (United States).

Image via Wikipedia

‘Twas the day for Giving. Now are days for re-gifting–passing unneeded or unwanted gifts on to others, or Return to Sender.

Given our anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation, it’s time to send the Statue of Liberty back to France. Call it a re-gifting of Lady Liberty.
We don’t like immigrants. But did we ever? Killing the DREAM Act is the latest installment.

Yet we’re so proud of our immigration stories, forgetting they’re all about a bare-knuckle journey for the right to be here. They were crowded into tenements and deprived of constitutional protections till they gained enough political power to enforce those rights. For every tale of hard work and endurance are a hundred others of bigotry and repression against them, and of the national foot squarely on their necks.

Frank Sinatra, the voice by which many of my readers grew up and became part of the fabric of America, is one about whose Italian-American generation we know so little. When he was poised to become Public Heart Throb Number one, Italians were woefully looked down upon. Who knows, or remembers, that they were not even considered white by other Americans at the time?

Like other Italian kids, he knew about social repression and understandably admired the bosses and Dons of mob and mafia who were, to them, heroes who stood up to the WASPs who would keep them down. We like to think Frankie wasn’t really a bag-man for Lucky Luciano, but most likely he was, on that infamous trip to Havana.

Sinatra made his mistakes and paid dearly for them. When he asked a mob boss to help JFK get elected, he did so as a “personal favor,” one that blew up in his face when the thanks they got was Bobby Kennedy’s ripping into the crime syndicates. One wrong bred other wrongs, and organized crime had to be stopped, but it’s important to know how and why it all came about.

In those days there was also our need for migratory labor. War War II was underway and while many white Americans were in battle, those who weren’t balked at doing menial jobs. So beginning in 1942 we had the Bracero program where Mexican workers came in on temporary visas to do what needed to be done.

Then, like now, they were resented and, like now, were blamed because we were unhappy with a war and its economy. They were condemned to incredibly poor housing, often denied their rightful wages and suffered the violence of that kind of racism.

That jackass Patrick Buchanan, who’s somewhere to the right of the Sheriff of Nottingham, is now busy reciting figures showing that employment is up for undocumented workers–as if that alone is a crime, but again, like 50 years ago, it’s because others won’t do those jobs.

It’s a lose-lose situation for the migrants. To the surprise of right-wingers, George Bush supported their presence, for which American agri-business was grateful because it met their needs, like the big farmers and oh, yes, the construction industry that can’t get white folks to install roofs in the hot sun of places like, say, Arizona. It was a union-busting move: let the unions suffer from the drop in wages; George could throw out the Mexicans later–or demand their votes as payoff.

If you have a conscience, you get tired of singing about “land of the free” and tear-ing up when you pass the Statue of Liberty. This is such hypocrisy, as were the tears Sen. Mitch McConnell shed over Judd Gregg’s retirement from the Senate; earlier ol’ Mitcheroo was dry-eyed while he voted against relief and benefits for First Responders at 9/11. Check out the panel of those dying men as they watched clips of McConnell’s sappy sentimentality after denying them justice.

Thus, I propose this letter to France at this holiday season:
“Dear President Sarkozy, your lovely wife and all sons and daughters of the French who gifted us many years ago with the Statue of Liberty: No offense, but we’re sending Her back. Turns out we don’t like people other than ourselves, our color and who are lucky enough to have been born here. As you may have heard, we also don’t like other religions or their houses of worship.

“You have every right to regret, even to resent, our re-gifting Lady Liberty, but as you read this note you mayl understand why. We still have a lot of work to do, especially on ourselves. You would think we were beyond nativism, xenophobia, and prejudice of all sorts but, oops, we’re not, and having a big empty pedestal  near Ellis Island may be a sobering reminder. We seek your patience whilst we engage in our rehabilitative endeavors.

“You may consider exhibiting the Statue when it returns to your care. It would look splendiferous atop the Eiffel Tower. And who knows, if ever we grow up and deserve all the blessings of our rich land and its magnificent Constitution and Bill of Rights, you may wish to re-gift it again, and return Her to the originally intended site. If so, we will even pay for shipping.”

Categorized in Politics and Social Issues
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Dec
16

What “War Against Christmas”?

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Folk tale depiction of Father Christmas riding...

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For those who love wars, there’s always room for one more, and now it’s said that one’s been declared against Christmas by those who don’t believe in or celebrate it.

I thought the latter were merely stating their own preferences, but Fox News, eager to push people into a fight, has made this a priority, led by their intrepid investigative journalist, Gretchen the Little Beauty Queen. She insists that those who are big into Christmas feel they are under attack.

This is likely but another symptom of the changing cultural climate, represented by those who want to “take back their country,” a plaintive cry heard since the election of Obama. Symbolically, the election of a black president merely underscored changes that have long eroded a traditional (read: recognizable) society more familiar to those middle aged and older.

The casualty here is American religion, which has been politicized and made part of the conservative agenda. Declaring this to be a “Christian America” is an attempt to authorize keeping things The Way They Always Were. But, sorry, things weren’t always that way.

For example, the “traditional” family, according to sociologists, was already superceded by both the “nuclear” and “modern” family, and now by a “post-modern” one. But try to tell that to the union.

Christmas is one day in the month of December, but some folks believe they own all thirty-one, and to make room for, say, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa is to admit heretics and impostors. That’s why Christmas muzak is used to drive us nuts, and its commercialization to assault our eyes, even before Thanksgiving, meaning it’s all about the marketplace, to which we are now slaves.

Christmas itself is really about children; it’s a children’s story, for one thing. Lately, however, when I say “happy holidays,” I get fingers jabbed in my face with a stern correction that the entire month is “Merry Christmas” time. But, as such persons often say, it’s a free country, except of course when others claim the same freedom. Then all others must toe the line. I do say, “Merry Christmas” when it’s Christmas Day. To say it during Hanukkah would be rude.

It’s sad that Jews had to beef up Hanukkah, a minor commemoration, to avoid being co-opted at this season of the year. Hence the rise of the “Hanukkah Bush” (which for some Jews is an outrage) to compete with the Christmas Tree. It might help if they would make up their minds how they want to spell it: Hanukkah, or Chanuka?.

But Christmas wasn’t always a big deal, either, banned as a celebration by England’s “Lord Protector” Oliver Cromwell in the 1600s, and our precious Puritans had no use for it at all: banks and businesses stayed open many years before mass immigration brought Orthodoxy and its practices to our shores. Puritans knew that the Tree, the Yule Log and use of lights were all pagan practices, and that was only a short list of their objections. The depiction accompanying this post shows but one step in the evolution of Father Christmas in Scandanavia, riding atop a goat.

What Fox doesn’t mention is that Baby Jesus, and Santa Claus, are major competitors this time of year. If there’s a war, that’s it. One comes from heaven amid announcements by angels and bearing the gift of salvation; the other an elfin benefactor from an undisclosed location on the North Pole, bringing material gifts on a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Spirituality versus Materialism.

Forgive me for seeming impertinent when I say that, take the materialism out of Christmas and everyone, including kids, will have much less interest in the birth of a child, however special. If this seems far-fetched, give it a try for one year.

On the other hand, those Four (Modern) Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the “new atheists” Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and Dennett, protest too much. Religion is poetry more than prose, and they do well to keep that in mind.

Many hands compiled the book of Matthew, e.g., before a final editor pulled all the pieces together and made one heck of a story. But he wasn’t trying to fool anyone. Novels are by far the most popular literature, though fictional people and places are used to tell important truths about life and the world. So did the Gospel authors, so give them a break.

But it’s no reason to get on a high horse. You can fall therefrom and break your neck. There’s no “war on Christmas,” just life in a democracy within the freest nation on earth.

So, Happy Holidays!

Categorized in Politics, Pop Culture, Religion and Social Issues
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Dec
10

“Don’t Tell” the Marines

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Official photograph of General David H. Petrae...

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The military and war are personal legacies, my father’s entire family having fought for the Mexican Revolution, a civil war three times as long as ours. There, the Rebels won. My maternal grandfather fought in our Civil War, but was a Rebel in a losing cause. Had that Yankee bullet at Shiloh been a bit higher, I wouldn’t be writing this.
Men in our family expected life to be comprised of birth, fighting wars, and whatever may come after that. My brother, eager for war, came of age only in time to service the Army of Occupation in Germany. My brother-in-law was a Marine of that vintage.
In college I joined the National Guard and fired the highest score in my unit with long-range rifles the first time I ever held them in my hands. Disappointed with what I considered its lax discipline, I transferred to the Naval Reserve, applied for officer status and was poised to train when a bureaucratic yahoo discovered my student pre-ministerial status and deemed I should be a Chaplain.
I adamantly refused, preferring to be an officer “in the line” and, under threat of draft, resigned and awaited my lot, which never came. The irony is that my parents and grandparents did not expect to fight but had to; my brother and I were all too willing but fate would not permit.
Earlier this year we laid to rest the matriarch of my wife’s family, a proud Marine among the first women allowed in World War II, where she met her future husband, also a “Leatherneck.” She was never in combat because the war began to go our way, otherwise every soul regardless of sex would have been poured into the conflict.
She remained a proud one throughout life, quick to correct being called an ex-Marine, given that there is no such thing. She was active lifelong in the Devil Dogs where she was a striking, popular presence. At her memorial Marines placed the Flag in my wife’s hands, Taps played and the roar of gun salute accompanied the family’s exit between long, silent lines of vets from Rolling Thunder.
With such in mind, however, I dare to say there are not always “proud” moments, a word owned especially by Marines. Why they are the most opposed of all service branches to be rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may be explained in part by the super-macho image. But if so, here again is a time for courage.
The blame for resistance to the policy is always laid at the feet of gays in the military, but no one wants to publicly explore the reasons. The psychology of the he-man has, in part, a sensitive aspect concerning the perceived threat to their “manhood.” Who are they most afraid of: gays, or themselves? Who is more macho than Israeli soldiers and those of many other countries where gays serve openly and courageously?
What is it about America and its arrested male culture that threatens such a firestorm of opposition over what should be a no-brainer? We’ve endured too many years of that flawed non-solution known as “DADT,” and military brass have made the most careful, studied and judicious of assessments, made by and including Defense Secretary Gates and General Petraeus (see photo). Why continue to obfuscate the issue and prolong the injustice?
What on earth has happened to John McCain, warrior himself, once willing to listen to reason, and provided with all the statistics he called for, yet stubborn to the point of inanity while holding up progress?
That McCain wants the matter put to a “referendum” of the rank and file, belies his own past preachments regarding the nature of military leadership. His are bogus arguments that shy from the heart of the issue. Who knows, mayhap his own manhood is threatened by the thought of gays openly in service to the nation’s armed forces and the wars they must prosecute.
Of course it is not to portray this as solely the Marines’ problem, given that there are soldiers in every branch who have issues with gay presence. But they are in the minority, and a great number of Marines don’t mind either.
A first day in a Guard emcampment, I misunderstood an order and thereby invoked the wrath of a superior. As I stammered my defense, beginning with, “But I thought….” he barked my new reality: “You’re not here to think, soldier; you’re here to obey orders!”
Whatever happened to that, John McCain? Your “referendum” is the most slippery of slopes, and a military without orders would be a disaster. You don’t want to go there.

Categorized in Gays and Society, Politics and Social Issues
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Nov
30

Big Spenders

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"The Third-Term Panic", by Thomas Na...

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Wow, did we show them! In these trying economic times, we ran through Black Friday and days following like a bottle of Epsom Salts. I first thought that front page Globe photos were of looters leaving Big Box stores. It was loot, all right, meaning discounted largesse from retail corporations.

And here we thought we were down to the nub, financially, given all the hysterics at town hall meetings and anger at the ballot box. And, gosh, election day was only two and a half weeks before the feeding frenzy.

My, what a recovery, from despondency to gluttony, all in a matter of days. A woman got a temp job for the holidays and said it increased her Christmas budget by two-thousand bucks. Sounds like she wasn’t exactly at death’s door before, but I guess the GOP and its Tea Party must have made her think so at the time.

Ya think maybe something was grossly exaggerated during the past year–leading us to blame our brand new Prez and make his job even worse than what was handed him? And the culprits behind such reckless anxiety were Chicken Littles of politics who wanted us to think the sky was falling. Silly them.

Turns out, TARP and Stimulus money is coming back into the coffers, the market began stabilizing months ago, and we’re financially in better shape than most of the world except for Germany. Wall Street, the Greedy Gus of us all, and certain auto companies are returning some Big Ones to the government, and unemployment strains to grind to a halt, like a runaway locomotive finally getting some brake traction.

I hasten to add that this is hardly over. When the next dip comes, however, like follow-up tremors to an earthquake, maybe we’ll realize this is a “process,” as Obama says, and start dishing some disregard to the nay-sayers who try to make political hay from our pain.

So, as cheerful, generous feelings of the coming Season begin to warm the cockles of our hearts, let’s take a calmer review of the landscape.  Firstly, we now know the Tea Partiers were and are better off than we earlier assumed: they have bigger and better jobs and resources. So what’s their real beef ? It’s a power grab, mainly, from folks who are older, whiter and richer than the average bear but who see the world changing under them. Oh, dear me: you mean the same world that’s changing under the rest of us?

Their demographics show damn little diversity and little of other races, not to mention of recent immigrants (including documented ones). This is not a world they recognize and they’re uncomfortable in it. They want to know whatever happened to backwoods Southern sheriffs who knew how to keep certain people in their place, and smoke-filled back rooms where cigar-chompers managed a world more privileged and familiar to their liking.

But they can’t stand up in front of God and the whole word and admit their racism and a democracy based on cronyism. Looking out over the political panorama, they found the smokescreen they needed: money and taxes! Republicans of course really believe that’s the problem, since their dream is of an America that’s a banana republic comprised of rich and poor, while the devil takes the middle class.

The Tea Party knows that’s a lot of guff. What they want is what we’ve all heard time and again since Obama’s election: not being among the jobless and suffering, they just want their country back, meaning the Good Old Days when men were men and life was cheap, especially if you weren’t a man.

So the Teabaggers held a “party,” otherwise known as the 2010 election campaign, where they told the populace that taxes and Socialism were gonna get our mamas. That was not only a bunch of hooey, but a disgrace to the event they name themselves after.

Just before the election, Glenn Beck told Americans to send any dollar, however spare, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which led to said institution becoming awash in kids’ college money, dispatched by frightened parents and other potential voters. It’s nice to know their dough’s now safe with a Chamber board comprised of reps from ConocoPhillips, Dow Chem, JPMorgan Chase and Rolls Royce. Trouble is, it ain’t dough gonna come back to the donors in any way, shape or form.

But election day came and went and already those who’ve long called Democrats big spenders are over-spending on their own 2012 GOP national convention, while former committeemen wonder why and where the money’s going. Weren’t they were supposed to usher in financial responsibility?

And as far as getting rid of “elitists,” they ran Joe Miller of Yale Law, Rand Paul of Duke Med School, and Ken Buck from Princeton in hopes of doing so. Then there’s Dick Armey, who runs the Tea Party outfit known as FreedomWorks, whose last job was with a big lobbying firm.

Chickens will soon come home to roost. And when the economy really sweetens, it will be the pin that pricks the Tea Party balloon, and it’s hard to keep a whole country mad when it’s feeling better.

I can’t wait to hear the popping sound.

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