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

Feb
19

Saving the World One Disaster at a Time

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Earthquake in Haiti and American foreign policy

This is U.S. foreign policy: help those who try to do us in; and ignore our neighbors, especially the poor ones haplessly within our nearest spheres of influence.

We know what happened with our foes in World War II: one was a repeat from War I as well. Another was led by a figurehead of worn-out ancestral tradition.

Luckily for them, when Hitler gave up and the atomic smoke cleared, we had to keep them from falling to Communism, given their proximity to the USSR while the Eastern bloc quickly grabbed a sector of Berlin, scaring us silly. A glance at your world map shows Japan was just off the huge Soviet coast. So American money-love flowed to those who shortly before had wanted our heads; thus the Berlin airlift and the rebuilding of Japan were hardly humanitarian efforts on our part. Thank god for that: you have to be a neighbor of ours to get nothing.

Some years ago an earthquake hit Mexico City. To liken that capital city to an Arab emirate is a stretch, especially at the time. Our biggest charity towards them is sending hordes of cheapskate tourists to drive tough bargains for curios and return home bragging about their “deals.” Indeed, tough negotiators that they are, these Ugly Americans always get the best of those impoverished folks who elbow for room on dirt plazas while tending to babies wrapped in thin blankets. What pals we are!

Mexico City sits atop soft valley loam and, lacking proper footing, buildings didn’t just rattle but were dumped into heaps like, well, like today’s Haiti. So why hadn’t Mexico built better? To cross our southern border is to be painfully reminded that it is more of a third world nation than we like to think. Boy, could they have used some of what we shucked out to rebuild former enemies far away.

But that’s life as a U.S. neighbor, since we don’t want strong nations on our doorstep. That goes for any of them, anywhere, in the sphere of our control. So we do nothing for them unless of course something awful like an earthquake hits. Then we bust humps showing our infinite mercy. When all is said and done, however, Haiti won’t be better but a tad worse.

Similarly, we tsk-tsked over the Asian tsunami and did Our Thing there too, as we do, under such circumstances, the world over. We’re nothing if not the speeding cop cars and fire engines of the universe, rushing to help what prior safety measures or significant, sustainable policies might have pre-empted.

Haiti is not a place we would know or care a fig about until and unless catastrophe strikes. We have invaded it enough times to make you wonder if we want it the way we did Texas when it was part of Mexico. But, naw, we don’t consider Haiti worth it: we just don’t want them consorting with anyone or anything that doesn’t have our stamp of approval. In sum, we can hurt them but we really don’t want to help them.

When the tremor hit Haiti, they didn’t even have earth-movers and cranes to dig out or hoist fallen walls from the hapless victims. When you’re in a struggle for the next bite to eat or pail of fetid water to drink or bathe in, such are the last things on your list and, besides, you can’t afford them anyway.

Why aren’t such folks on our list of Things to Do that would make this hemisphere happy and whole? Are we saying we haven’t had money for that? And if the reason such catastrophes happen to the wretched of the earth is known only to God, then somebody needs to get next to the Big Guy with some probing questions. Meantime, we shall go on thinking we’re wonderful for trying to save the world one disaster at a time.

Whether at last we can save face for what we’ve otherwise done to our closest neighbors, will be for history to record.

Categorized in Politics
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Feb
12

Don’t Ask: It’s Nobody’s Business

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How ridiculous is this “Don’t ask, don’t tell” business? Where are we, on the dark side of the moon?

Do I have a problem with whoever is willing to fight for our country, putting self in harm’s way and risking death, though they may never even know you or me? No, I don’t. So whose freaking country is this, if not mine and yours? We are forced to be part of denying gays’ role in the military because someone else has a problem with it.

So let’s talk about the real problem. There are lots of people we may not care for. Ya can’t love everybody. Whatever we may not like about them, we can let them be, and we do. But not when it comes to gays; there’s something about being around them that bothers us–and have you noticed this is especially true with so-called he-men?

We used to have more of a problem with black folks. Having them in the military just wouldn’t do, till we coughed up our hairball and let them help us beat Hitler & Co. When they got back home, of course, they couldn’t use our water fountains or live in the neighborhood. Hey, guys, welcome to the land of the free and the home of de facto segregation.

Then there was the civil rights movement and after we threw rocks, bricks and bottles at King, Jr., somebody plugged him while others said he “asked for it.” So for good measure someone plugged Medgar Evers too, and all that after other deadly stuff was done to Viola Liuzzo and Rev. Jim Reeb in Alabama and three young men killed and buried in Mississippi, just for starters. There’s more to tell but I don’t want to put a bad taste in anyone’s morning coffee. Okay, so truth be told, we are gradually (read: a snail’s pace) and agonizingly getting somewhat beyond that.

Which means we need someone else to pick on and, hey, there are gays walking around. Gee, life is good: can’t kick around blacks anymore, at least without potential repercussions, and surely someone else deserves a beating. And gays are there, aren’t they?

Yes, I remember that certain gays used to walk streets, hoping to meet up with other gays. And so did certain gals, prowling for guys, but no one smacked them around–it was ok that they were “asking for it,” too, and some guys helped themselves to the favor. Don’t you just love this upside-down, bizarro world?

Sorry I chased that rabbit, but there’s a point here. We force gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons to colonize in separate places for their socialization and amusement. Just by god stay outta our bars and restaurants. We can be openly expressive to our spouses and dates but they can’t: something might fall out of the sky and it’ll be all their fault.

In ancient times there had to be a taboo against killing one’s own young because there was an irresistible (or they thought there was) urge to whack anything that could later challenge the adult males and compete for the food supply, regardless how helpless and vulnerable it was. The taboo, in time, shut down that behavior.

I’d like a taboo on the behavior of those he-men legends-in-their-own-minds who deem gays in the same army or fighting unit as “bad for morale.” We know that’s not what they mean: these hairy-chested protectors suddenly don’t mind women in the military (though they once did) and shag them at every opportunity–often against their wills, and violently so.

Military brass know what the problem is–that a lot of hetero men find it hard to keep their hands off anybody, women or men. Well, I’m straight, and not being attracted to other men, such temptation never comes close to overwhelming me in close quarters or at long range. And if it did, would it be their fault, or mine? Oh, I forgot: there’s no such thing any more as personal responsibility.

It’s not a matter of how strong our sex drives are, it’s that we need an education in respect for persons and what is and isn’t appropriate behavior around anyone, just as we need consciousness raising in anti-racism and antisemitism.

And think not that such animalistic warping is shallow. All are insidious diseases of the human soul and spirit, but since we know next to nothing about souls and spirits, we can get to work on our bodies, minds and social training.

My most memorable comeuppance was in a therapy group dealing with personal biases, and in role-play I was “interviewed” in view of a “job” by a gay man. Along with the usual vetting, he asked me if I were heterosexual, and if so, when did I first know I was, and would I promise to keep my hands off women in the company–all of which I considered impertinent and finally shot back that it was none of his damn business. To which he replied softly, after a painful pause, “Now you know how we feel.”

When next someone complains about gays in society or in the military and wants to decide by fiat or public referendum whether they deserve to be there and need to explain themselves, tell them as gently and lovingly as you can that no one needs to ask, and no one needs to tell.

Because it’s nobody’s damn business.

Categorized in Gays and Society
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Feb
07

His Marriage Offends Me

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I mean knucklehead New Hampshire state Rep Jordan Ulery, and another of his kind, Rep. David Bates, who deem themselves on the side of the Lord in matters marital.

Both are banging drums, waving flags and collecting signatures from the politically dull-witted to challenge the Granite State’s gay marriage law. Hence, signers and pols are the Fools’ Names and Fools’ Faces that, according to trusim, appear in public places, and all eager to determine morality by referendum–meaning to hell with the Constitution or, for that matter, respect for persons.

Gays justifiably have grievous wounds from all attempts to make them second-class citizens, and Bates, Ulery & Co. have the salt to rub in. The Inquisition were fun folks of the same ilk. And it’s all worded in high-flown language, as if they were God’s proposed amendments to the Ten Commandments: “Resolved,” (don’t you love that word in the mouths of the impertinent?) “…citizens…be allowed to vote on an amendment…that defines marriage.”

Certainly!–we could have done the same with Civil Rights in the day of King, Jr. and still be a racist-led country of de facto segregation, and never having heard of Michael Jordan, let alone Barack Obama and, well, you get the idea.

But Ulery, bless his demented soul, has a mouth to match and was heard to tell the media that “there are a lot of people who are very angry” about gay marriage. At last, in a fit of extreme toleration I put myself in his shoes and tested his words–realizing he was also among those who say that gay marriage insults and harms their very straight and legal wedlock.

I asked myself: how does the marriage of people of other sexual nature and preferences hurt mine? I checked everywhere, under every rock of hearth and home, not to mention my social circles; my image in the mirror and recent photos of spouse and me together to see what may have changed in our appearance (maybe, like Berenger in Ionesco’s play, “Rhinoceros,” we’re becoming, unawares, like certain vile people–as gays supposedly are wont to be–who inhabit our little world that began so happy and hetero in the Garden of Eden). I even cast a jaundiced eye on our eating habits, clothes styles, reading material and religious views; the way we interacted; our sexual habits and practices.

And here’s what I found: Not a damn thing. Not a besmudge or besmear on who and what I and we have been for all these years. So how do other people’s marriages “insult” mine? The big news is that nothing can hurt our marriage unless we let it, or cause it ourselves. What does somebody else’s home and bedroom have to do with ours? Mine certainly doesn’t infect theirs.

Of course, my objections have nary an influence on jokers like Bates and Ulery. In truth, they wouldn’t listen to Jesus Christ. So I introduce into evidence, in this esteemed court of decency, a witness: Ted Olson, lifelong Republican, vet of the Reagan and Bush war rooms, former Solicitor General, advisor to those who impeached Clinton and winner of Bush v. Gore that brought George W into the White House (and widower of the Barbara Olson who went down on a highjacked 9/11 plane). The clincher is that he’s now an advocate of invalidating California’s Prop 8 that overturned the constitutional right to marry a person of the same sex.

Olson is the odd card in otherwise perfect hands that right-wingers are dealing themselves in the gay-marriage controversy. He’s the Four of Clubs in what they thought was a promising royal straight in Hearts. Read what he said in the Jan. 18 Newsweek; I have space only to summarize: a) that same-sex marriage is an American value; b) that those who oppose gay marriage have “ultimately false perceptions about our Constitution and its protection of equality and fundamental rights;” c) that marriage is “a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and economic partnership;” and d) he does “not believe that our society can ever live up to the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness until we stop this invidious discrimination.”

I’m tired of people like Ulery saying he’s offended by gay marriage. I’m offended by his marriage, or his idea of it as the province of rectitude–the difference being that I don’t want to deny or reverse his, or collect signatures to do so.

I’m miffed by some ugly changes in this part of the American Republic. Years ago, elsewhere, I was one who “voted for Johnson and got Goldwater.” For those unborn at the time, or sleeping soundly, a vote for LBJ was to keep Barry from being the Mad Bomber in southeast Asia, only to have Johnson win and it was “Bombs Away!” anyhow.

Today, I thought a move to New England was to the garden of sense and sensibility, only to find too much Southern backwater mentality. So I thank lucky stars for people like Ted Olson. I guess there really is a god; thankfully it’s not Bates’ or Ulery’s.

Categorized in Gays and Society
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Jan
30

A Message to Brown

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A MESSAGE TO BROWN

(Scott Brown’s stunning upset in the Massachusetts special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy sent shock waves throughout that state and the Democratic establishment in early 2010)

Deal with it. Martha learned her lesson in sudden, stunning fashion. And Scott will surely learn his. He’s the beneficiary, for now, of a “perfect storm” of circumstances and of having been lucky enough to catch a wave not of his making. (Note to political aspirants: That’s why it never hurts to run for office even when they say you have no chance).

Contrary to rumor, I doubt our new senator is a nobody with a pretty face, a pin-up for the gals and a truck to show real men that he’s one of them. But as for the former, pause a moment to imagine what would have been said of Martha had such a photo of her had surfaced from an earlier time.

Truth is, Brown has a tiger by the tail. Republicans didn’t elect him, they didn’t even see him coming but will always take what they can get, then pretend they were there on the day of creation. Independents have no real Party in the state and no place to go but to vote contrarian in elections.

Democrats and liberals, for all the right wing says about them, tend to vote their own minds–as in Massachusetts and in Congress–compared to conservatives whose only dance move is a lock-step. Red states elect a Dem now and then but never a real liberal, witness the “blue” and “yellow” dogs who do more to thwart Obama than Republicans alone could ever dream of.

Take one Massachusetts town on Boston’s North Shore–one that nobody can figure out because, when all is said and done, there’s no way to test the waters of preference ahead of time. Few newcomers even speak to regulars, and its formal designation as a “city,” is in reality a small town. One watches with amusement when the folk size up local elections as if they know what really happened–like water front issues or campaigners going door-to-door. Hardly anyone votes–(till Scott came along and scared the hell out of them)–certainly not young upscale families where one commutes to an enviable job in tech corridors while the other tools around with triple-carriers of broods who, when grown, won’t vote there either. They don’t care what happens in that burg and certainly never bow and scrape when a mayor or councilor walks by.

Without local polls, election outcomes are Rohrschachs to look at and to pretend they tell us something. Might as well look at tea leaves.

Speaking of tea, as in “tea party,” that’s who else showed up in that fair state, including the “city” just mentioned. The resident Republicans didn’t dream up all the in-your-face stunts the town suddenly was heir to. There had just been a most civil mayoral campaign–thought to be another sign of its political gentility. Not. For Coakley’s last-minute rally at Michael’s Harborside restaurant, what was seen but an auto plastered with Brown insignia smack front and center in the parking lot and a long line of Brown supporters along the Gillis bridge yelling down obscenities at arrivals. That disgraceful show may have been why Coakley won there–her only victory in the region. At first it appeared the bridge line was a planned mass suicide, and onlookers wondered why they didn’t go ahead and jump.

Oh, sure it was “legal”–as well as an act of meanness to which that port city is unaccustomed. And they’re only part of what Brown has inherited. He’ll have to find a way to deal with them, because these people are ugly–Americans Behaving Badly, whose first taste of blood was in the recent Town Hall Meetings from Hell. As the Good Book says, the parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. They better get what they want or they’ll turn on Brownie as quickly as they turned out for him.

Aside from all the demonization that goes on among the true believers in any election, there’s no evidence that Brown is among such weenies. And where is his home base of Wrentham, by the way? Do not think, given his success, that this Ken Doll will be the centerfold of Senate Republicans for more than five minutes; after that, he will  have to shut up, cooperate and play by their rules and, actually, I think he knows that: too many senators are in line ahead of him and power is not easily ceded.

So, Brown’s victory was one part good campaigning but equal parts a pack of zealots who invaded both state and town just to rub it in the face of the Kennedys and to show Obama a thing or two–not to mention that raw phenomenon of the Angry Voter who got mad too late to show up during Bush-Cheney’s reign of Missions Unaccomplished.

And angry people do stupid things. In and of itself, voting for Brown was not one of them, but the motives of some of their political bedfellows are more than questionable. Pundits are wrong to say this was solely “sending a message to Washington;” some of these miscreants want to tear down the whole house.

Stand by to see more of their mischief until America gets tired of them and sends them packing, as the Bay State did to Martha.

Categorized in Politics
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Jan
23

Just Don’t Call Us Racists

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Denial, as they say in Twelve Step programs, ain’t just a river in Egypt. And there is an adage in religious circles that Dutch Baptists choke on their pipes when they see Spanish Baptists drinking red wine.

Everyone else has a problem, except “us.” And certainly we are not racists. To say, as was common in my early lifetime, that persons of color (hardly the words used) were okay but shouldn’t go to schools with or date or marry whites, not use water fountains and sit only in the backs of public buses, were considered proper social rules; they didn’t say blacks were not God’s children: they were just not quite good enough.

To such minds, “racists” were people who “had a problem,” notably that of beating blacks at will and/or lynching them. Those who merely wanted nonviolent segregation did not, and still don’t, consider themselves racists. This is called denial.

Racism is a deep and insidious sickness of the human soul, and hardly the only one. So are antisemitism, homophobia, gender discrimination, and many more–as are suppression of opportunity and well-being for such persons, not to mention overt abuse. When will we stop hating and resenting Jews?–I have some very nuanced views of the politics that brought about certain boundary issues in the Middle East, but I know more than a few people for whom the very mention of Israel occasions a burst of total blame for all that occurs in that part of the world, if not in the U.S. as well.

When will we stop hating gays and lesbians, not to mention bisexual and transgendered persons–and outlawing the free expression of their love and relationships? When will men stop their violence towards women–and why do we find such quick cures for erectile dysfunction but not breast cancer?

But I digress. Today I speak of racism and the need for everyone, even those of the best hearts and intentions, to take courses in antiracism. You and I are racists to varying degrees; at milder levels we are unconscious casualties of mental structures and behavioral pattens that we inherited–as is Harry Reid and for that matter Trent Lott. We are not taught to challenge our own assumptions but, like it or not, it’s more than past time to do so.

For years citizens and Congress have tried to control the sale, availability and ownership of deadly weapons for which there is no real need in society. But not until a black man was elected president had we seen such angry stockpiling of them. Exactly who do these folks want to shoot? It isn’t enough to say they’re just invoking the Constitution; were that to undergo amendment they would care not a fig and add a few thousand more bang-bangs to their personal arsenals. (Query: If we are truly related to the arboreal apes, are we halfway down, or halfway up, the tree?)

I’ve had to face my own racism and now it is at least known and named, and I am hereafter painfully aware of its inner presence. Blacks too have their own racism and we’re all trying to deal with it. The worst we can do is to say it isn’t there.

There are those who imagine that racism, since the death of King, Jr. and the rise of Obama, has gotten up on little hind legs and gone away. It hasn’t, and the real conversation about it is yet to begin–the Reid and Lott sagas are testament that much is still to be done.

More egregious examples are readily available. Some people still love Rush Limbaugh regardless of the nonsense he continues to spout. His minions think the only racist thing he ever said was that black quarterback Donovan McNabb is given a pass by football analysts because of his color. Their memories are selective; try on these verbal gems from my wacko homeboy: “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray (King, Jr’s assassin). We miss you, James. Godspeed.” And another: “Let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite. Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Whoever thinks there’s little to nothing wrong with those statements needs to sign up for the aforementioned class asap.

J. Donald Johnston wrote that to go into a paint store and ask for “flesh color,” you may find they no longer have just one, but a variety, because times have changed, and flesh color is not something you buy but something you have, and there are many. One flesh color, he added, is just as natural as another on the person who has it, then asked, whose flesh color would you like? They may have it. And he suggested that some will say that Black is beautiful.

Why not? And why don’t we know, or see, that everyone is beautiful?

Categorized in Race in America
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Dec
26

Tiger, Johnny and the Spirit of Giving

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The saga of Tiger Woods, following its initial assault on
our senses, “grew legs” as we say, bringing to mind
however that a potential monetary settlement of his woes
is not unknown among celebrities, including other wildly
popular ones–like Johnny Carson.

Nothing more prompts generosity than personal trouble. People who usually won’t spring a dime otherwise, are found to have hearts big as a golf course when it’s time to shut up, or mollify, someone. Being a season for giving, the examples of two notable benefactors, one in most recent memory and another in the memorable past, may help to understand what tightwads can do when their minds are forcibly opened .

Tiger Woods is said to have given one of his baby dolls nary a gift, even when she begged for such to ease her financial distress. No doubt a smart move on his part, so as not to leave a paper trail–whether it be of the check or greenback variety. For another, he arranged much travel and exotic hideaways and, who knows, some baubles worth keeping, except that she was mightily ticked to discover she was not his “only one.” That’s the first clue that these people, and many more, all deserve each other. But I digress.

Elin, of course, stayed home for kids and carpooling though it’s also rumored there was much to keep her company when not on mom-duty, like a big expense account and a few trips of her own. She also had a nice pre-nup that guaranteed a more than reasonable life among the poor smothered rich should the marriage not work out, but who’da thunk it wouldn’t? Tiger seemed as clean as the silk sheets he snuggled under with his secret little tarts.

Then came the Fall. Now Elin’s in the driver’s seat and Tiger is, as they say, hoist of his own petard–a phrase referring to one, e.g., who might light a fuse then snag his britches on a rusty nail on his way out and can’t douse the fuse or make a clean getaway. This would be funny except that many a philandering male celebrity is sweating bullets now that real blood is smelled by press and paparazzi, and led by the National Enquirer, god bless ‘em. The latter know Rule No. 1 of journalism, to wit, where there’s smoke there’s fire and, in case it’s a rare false alarm, create some of both–or throw out rumors of sexual malfeasance and see what grows legs.

The upshot of all this is that Elin can now go about in the drab dress of a victim (unless something surfaces about her–oh, dear!), watch Tiger squirm and apologize ad infinitum, ad nauseum, while inquiring of him how much all this is worth to make his transgressions eminently forgivable. Again, the buzz is that he has considered baring both heart and wallet to negotiate a favorable if not altogether happy ending, and if that is true, his largesse will know no bounds. All the toys in Santa’s bag can’t top that, nor Scrooge’s turn of heart.

Public memory however is short, not to mention untrustworthy. We forget Johnny Carson, and at the time of his divorce we had little inkling just how golden was the imaginary golf club he swung on his time-honored show. No one ever knew exactly what may have occasioned the Carsons’ split because in those days Johnny, in celebrity terms, was considered “too big to fail.” But his comeuppance came after a much longer spousal association.

So hold your breath as you hear what Joanna Carson got for Christmas that year so long ago: the Bel Air mansion, 3 New York apartments, $5 million in cash and $35,000 a month for more than five years; ALL the jewelry, half of each of his pensions, residuals, design firm stock, New York film studio and broadcasting companies–not to mention a Picasso and other art, 75 Kruggerands, a Rolls Royce, a Mercedes and an ‘81 Datsun(!)

How lucky in love can you get? But some people never get to know the exact value until the fuse reaches the powder and all hell blows up. It would be my luck to have married and divorced Joanna, and got only the ‘81 Datsun. Then again, I’d probably check the mileage first. Be it known that a lot of people were outraged at Joanna, forgetting that Johnny still had much more than all that, left over, along with his continued earning power at the time.

The Bard said, “the course of true love never did run smooth,” but it’s worse than that. Heed the Irish, feisty as they are, that it’s not marriage itself, but having breakfast together in the morning that starts all the trouble.
Fame and fortune are often too much for young lions (or Tigers) and starry-eyed little bimbos are hardly tickets to happiness. The poet Auden’s insight was that any marriage, however prosaic, is more interesting than any romance, however passionate–and that wedlock was our last, best chance to grow up.

It would also keep some people from having too good a Christmas, if all they care about is money.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, Elin!

Categorized in Pop Culture
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Dec
12

Tiger by the Tail

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A TIGER BY THE TAIL

The holiday season of 2009 began rudely with revelations of Tiger Wood’s
secret life, prompting thoughts on the meaning of celebrity and on who
ought to be whose heroes.

To have a tiger by the tail is to have a problem: whether to hang on or let go. Neither is much of an option, and so it is with the strange case of Tiger Woods.
I write for deadlines that are often several days before readers lay eyes on my words. More surely will come to light, given the vagaries of whatever did or did not happen in the early hours of Nov. 27. Whatever it was, Tiger needs for all of us to go find something else to do or think about than to obsess over his domestic tranquility–or lack thereof– whichever the case may be.

But the public isn’t like that. Tell them to do something, and they won’t; tell them not to, and they will, especially when it comes to their celebrities, whom they love–except when they have an excuse to stop loving them. Ain’t love grand?

All of which is to say that America stopped going to work, lost interest in the NFL and whether more troops are going to Afghanistan, and ceased to use their bedrooms for sex until by god they found out what went on that day inside and outside his home in Florida or, more precisely, what occurred before and after he got in his Escalade and when he got out.

Do I have an opinion? I sure do, and it’s worth exactly what you paid for to read this, but at least I know that, unlike some writers who think we give a damn what they say about the matter. I’ll keep mine to myself.

I caught on early in life that heroes are not worth having, especially if you expect more of them than something they are extraordinarily good at, like giving me a reason to live. I try to be my own hero, which may seem presumptive on my part, but given I’ve done so with precious little success, it’s made me sympathetic to others who have the bigger job of fulfilling all the world’s expectations.

Tiger Woods is a fabulous athlete, though I care not a fig for golf or for people who chase little balls all over the world’s greens and fairways; but the first time I saw Tiger in mid-swing, I knew I beheld perfection, and hereafter have watched televised golf only at moments that he approaches tee.

His gift however is part blessing, part curse. Now he also has to be everybody’s hero. Elsewhere on the planet, people have a more realistic view of life but America, half-grown puppy that it is, and a pampered one at that– hence all ass and appetite, demands that a talented person be the hero for their kids that they can’t and won’t be themselves. Now there’s presumption for you.

Tiger is also a “brand,” as they say: besides ogling him with our mouths open, as with all sports we throw good money after bad for anything that reeks of them–their gear, cards and memorabilia–and feel we have a personal investment, along with a claim over the brand’s life. So when something goes wrong at, say, Tiger’s house, as it does at yours and mine, we behave as if our stock fund tanked and took the farm with it.

Enter The National Enquirer, which sometimes trips over accidental truths amid its outright lies and often is the only editorial room that can first get a story out, and you have real drama. Who knew they’d be right or wrong about a supposed Tiger affair? But so he did boing somebody who didn’t live at his address and his wife turned into Cat Woman, scratched him up big-time, and he wisely split for the safety of his locked car. Let’s say further that she took his prized golf club (there’s irony for you) and blasted out its windows, the glass doing a number on his handsome mug; no, say more–say that both regretted their behavior and suddenly remembered a third party in their lives, to wit, the Golden Goose of fame and fortune–and one to be protected at all costs.

Does that hurt me? Do I lose sleep over all his endorsement income now at risk? No, because it’s his and Nike’s, not mine: my tacky little bank account stays tacky and little. Should I feel sorry for Nike? No, screw them, they stopped making the cross country shoes I counted on for years. Do I become depressed because buying his brand hats and shirts has less appeal?If the answer to any of the above were yes, I don’t need a shrink, I need Big Papi to smack me upside the head with his bat and knock some sense into me.

If you hear your kids say, as his brand suggests, “I am Tiger Woods” (dreamed up by Nike, not Tiger, you may be sure) tell them to go to the little boys or girls room and wash their mouths out with soap. Say further that their lives aren’t dependent on any celebrity, but on themselves. And if you want them to have a hero, be one for them. And if you can’t, why not?

It’s your job, not Tiger’s.

Categorized in Pop Culture
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Nov
28

Turkey Lovers, Stuff This

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At the “First Thanksgiving,” white folks were the
ones who showed up hungry and got help from
others. Have we been as generous to others on
our shores?

I happen to think that the real miracle of “first Thanksgiving” was that the Indians didn’t take a very dim view of those new, pale-looking folks just off the boat. After all, the pilgrims and, later, the puritans, were big buttinskis, arriving uninvited and bringing a host of poxes that would obliterate some native populations and decimate the rest.

And don’t forget succeeding waves of European immigration and its broken treaties and wars with their hosts. Imagine: there once were over 500 Indian tribes over our part of North America, from A to Z–Apache to Zuni–and now they comprise less than 1% of the population. Things only got worse when those quaint, fun folks we see on old Hallmark cards became fully genocidal toward the Indian. Talk about crime in your neighborhood!

That’s what I call Hallmark History–misleading representations of early colonial days from seasonal greeting cards whose creators care not a fig about real history, except of the revisionist sort, right down to the imaginary “buckles” on pilgrim hats, pants and shoes.

This means, a) we can forgive the natives for showing up without printed invitations to that first feast (at least they brought more than cheap wine), and b) we can stop ragging on latter-day “immigrants” who want no more than what whitey wanted when he floated onto these banks.
I like especially the story of the early settlers looking for grub after wading ashore, and finding an abandoned village–evacuated precisely because of their sudden appearance–whereupon they found the Indians’ store of corn and confiscated it for their own use. Why? Because they were hungry, and we don’t fault them for that, given that hunger pangs trump etiquette every time.

Amazing it is that in a short time the natives proffered appropriate seed and showed  the colonists how to plant and later harvest on their new continent. This of course is before all hell broke loose (see above).

Today we have not only an unfriendly view of people who show up hungry, whether at our doors or on our shores, but our Monroe Doctrine mentality means third parties can’t make a move, without our permission, clear down through South America (another continent, but who’s counting) to the tip of the Cape of Good Hope. From pesky squatters to mean landlords, that’s us. Ain’t freedom grand?

We’ve come to where our peaceful little Pilgrim Way is to deny jobs and health care to migrants, raid their places of employment, throw them in jail or hope that, better yet, they just go back home. We went so far, as recently mentioned in this space, to build a Berlin Wall on our own southern border when the one in Germany came down. How’s that for irony? And all migrants do is show up hungry but they encounter less generous lessors. Is that what education’s done for us?

Now, why should I complain? Why not just yell, “I’ve got mine, so pull up the ladder,” deem others unlucky by dint of place and birth, and declare the Law of Tooth and Claw–“everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost”?

Actually, I don’t like being free when others aren’t; there’s something that just isn’t fair about that. Oh, I hear snickering in the background, from a gaggle of well-to-do who are spending their stimulus money snorting fine scotch in a classy bar (migrants not welcome); problem is, they don’t know that  overdrinking there or in a sleazy tavern means you’re just as drunk.
Another problem is standing in church and singing words from James Russell Lowell (one of America’s early “household poets”) in a Bach harmony:
All whose boast it is that we
come from parents brave and free,
if there breathe on earth a slave
are we truly free and brave?
If we do not feel the chain
when it works another’s pain,
are we not base slaves indeed,
slaves unwilling to be freed?

And of course we bandy about words ascribed to pastor Martin Niemoller about how certain Europeans silently allowed Nazis to come after every other minority until there was no one left to speak up for white Christians, and the Church in Germany became Hitler’s lackey.
That’s what’s troubling about our Declaration, the Constitution, and all our high-flown rhetoric, whether sacred or secular: their painful truths are the solvent of who we really are, what we live by and what we  force on others.

That’s why our Thanksgiving turkey can be a tough old bird to stomach.

Categorized in Social Issues
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Nov
21

Two Walls Not to Like

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The Wall on the U.S. southern border is a barrier of shame.

I think of Robert Frost’s timeless line, “Something there is that doesn’t like a wall.”

We hated the Berlin Wall throughout its some 25 years of miserable existence and joined the recent anniversary celebration of its collapse. Some people still imagine that Reagan’s words alone toppled it, as if the pope and the Solidarity movement never existed, and prompting the joke that when Ronnie said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” he was standing at the Vietnam Memorial.

Berlin’s wall kept people in, and became a symbol of oppression and injustice. We all detest being “walled in” or “walled off” from anything, whether from opportunity, our potential and especially our freedom. Frost was right: something in us doesn’t like such walls.

Of course, we like that new monstrosity on our own southern border– the one that keeps people out. How, after all these years of enduring Berlin’s wall and exulting at its downfall, can we keep a straight face at the existence of that defamation of freedom?

History is full of ironies and, more disgracefully, of anecdotal information and self-serving untruths. All kinds of nonsense is believed about the Berlin Wall–that it was built by Stalin, when it wasn’t; that it was Russia’s fabrication instead of East Germany’s. The Commies fully expected us to tear it down from the first appearance of its barbed-wire and initial concrete installations, and Eastern guards readily allowed refugees through, often holding barriers aside to assist their passage, smiles on the faces of all concerned.

But Kennedy and Co. called their bluff by letting it all proceed, and deprived the East of another brief Soviet-style confrontation, the USSR’s stock in trade. But the brain-drain had already occurred, along with arrival in the West of the most able-bodied Eastern populace, and the flow of immigration was getting to be a problem.

Kennedy chose to let them seal it off, take the blame for the halt to immigration, and the East was left to finish what it only wanted to start: a big, expensive installation complete with the burden of maintenance and a big black eye on their propaganda, to boot. Give Kennedy an A+ for that one. Actually, most history books said little about the Wall till much later because, in truth, the symbolism was more than its actual strategic importance.

So we hate walls built by others but love those we erect to serve our own political purposes. Our policies have left Mexico and much of South America under our thumb and in dire poverty. Two countries that tried to destroy us in World War II became beneficiaries of American largesse in the aftermath: we didn’t want Germany to go Communist, and Japan’s location on the map is why we rebuilt it too, and now both thrive in ways that Mexico can only dream of.

To visit Mexico in this Year of our Lord, on the other hand, is to see what is virtually a Third World nation–thanks to us. The pressure of poverty forces them northward and they have migratory pressure from their own southern border from people even poorer than they–who head for the U.S. too but find they can be slightly better off in Mexico and avoid a language barrier, so they stop and stay. Small wonder a Mexican leader famously said, “Poor Mexico–So far from God, so close to the United States!”

In his “Mending Wall” poem, Frost hears someone say that “good fences make good neighbors,” and Frost responds,
“Why do they make good neighbors?…
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
what I was walling in or walling out,
and to whom I’d give offense.”
And then concludes,
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
that wants it down.”

So here’s to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and may it not be twenty years before we dismantle that impolitic barrier that separates us from our nearest friends: Mexico. Too bad our generation already has demonized them.

So Berlin’s Wall at last is down, and ours is newly up.

Hey, world: how cool is that?

Categorized in Politics
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Nov
13

Washing Our Hands of the Swine Flu

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H1N1, by any other name, is still Swine Flu

Times change: besides nothing to fear but fear itself, there is now Swine Flu. It’s also the last thing we want for an epitaph, along with “Fell into an outhouse and drowned.” Use of the more scientific term, “H1N1” is hardly a step up, but might gain cachet in a future world of robots.
Other than that, it’s been a nutty bug season anyway: we were told of its coming, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, that vaccines would be in on time, then they weren’t, and now we add the Big One to all regular flus to which we are heir this season of year.

But please do not overrate fear. Regardless what people say, they love to be scared out of their wits. I rest my case on the popularity of totally gross and bloody fare at movies and on TV, which now long outlast Halloween and the leftovers of which genre are yet to open at your local theater. Soon they may squeeze out Christmas flicks, and lead right into the New Year–unless Disney can morph Santa into a child molester with a chain saw.

What we don’t like is unexpected fear, like being grabbed suddenly from behind by the office pest. Snuggling into a theater seat with popcorn and coke, however, and knowing what you’re in for, gets you ready for anything–though you’d never, ever want what happens on the screen to happen to you.

This may have something to do with those who seem totally unafraid of swine flu. I submit, however, that for them it goes beyond that. They don’t want themselves or their kids inoculated; they’ll take their chances, thank you. That’s a huge roll of the dice, of course, and they may live (or die) to regret it.

What I hear in such words is a distrust of government. The Big, Bad Government made the vaccine, and it is a pox unto itself and the foulest of all vermin. Rejecting its role in our health care is their idea of free-market living: totally clueless about science and medicine, they still know what’s best for themselves and their families. So let germs and viruses flow like stocks on the Big Board: avoid buying the ones you don’t like, and you won’t get them; invest in those that you deem, in your infinite wisdom, to be least virulent and place your order–who knows, the right mix (like a stock fund), rather than knock you silly, might turn you into a Super(wo)man, resistant to all disease thereafter.

To wit, throw them all up into the air and let God sort them out. The result will make a great 22nd century disaster movie starring us as the hapless chumps.

Such heads are impervious to good sense. At least we hope they wash their hands. Maybe that’s what Pilate was doing; maybe he didn’t care what happened to an unknown, trouble-making Jew; maybe he heard the flu was coming, couldn’t find the antibacterial wash in his toga, and the silly crowd thought he was making a huge religio-political statement.

In the interest of full disclosure, I get flu shots every year, wash my hands with soap (best when for 15 seconds, and often throughout the day) and keep them from eyes and nose (the mouth is actually quite sterile and flu, like HIV, doesn’t survive our saliva)–and I still get Something that totally kicks my derriere. Thankfully, antibac washes are springing up everywhere but what I don’t do, and should, is use them on my keyboard, steering wheel and door knobs.

My wife, being Irish, thinks water is bad for you and that alcohol kills all germs, but for we who are sane, when water isn’t available, supplemental liquids, especially in the Gatorade family, will do. And someone please do something about people who didn’t get the word about sneezing into kleenexes or arms: maybe they just want their misery to have company.

Some think antibac washes are no improvement on simple soap, but bacterial infections cause weakened immune systems, allowing viral access to the body, and result in virus-weakened bodies. Only if someone is scheduled for hospitalized surgery should such washes be avoided.
Just know that there are several strands of Influenza A, of which H1N1 is the most dangerous. Many are catching other strands of A, which are closely identical except in intensity, duration and virility.

I’m not trying to practice medicine without a license here, and any medical person please be free to correct me.

Otherwise, thank you for listening. Now please go wash your hands. It’s among the best things you can do, however much you love or hate the government.

Categorized in Social Issues
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