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

Oct
30

Sweating It Out with Spiritual Salesmen

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The fall of ‘09 gave us a glimpse of another cultish
movement gone bad: this time in an Arizona sweat lodge;
apparently people have lost faith in the real deal led by
Native Americans who’ve done this long and responsibly.
The lesson was a painful one for the sweat lodge tragedy.

In these hard times, people somehow find money to throw at multiple gadgets for texting and tweeting, FaceBook-ing, YouTub-ing and iPhon-ing, along with “apps” to access the latest stupid celebrity blog or photos of people the rest of us don’t know and don’t care to know–complete with their cats and canines, past and present.

It is notable that all the above can be rolled up into one very expensive little toy if desired. And when the next incarnation of pocket tech promises something else inane, money again will be no object. Whatever happened to the Recession?–or was there ever one: very expensive cars are shamelessly hawked during pro football on TV; multi-million dollar McMansions are still snapped up; and trips around the world remain de rigueur.

But you really know the wolf is a long way from the door when the very impressionable, who seem always to have tons of discretionary cash, will spring $10K for a few days at the feet of quite un-spiritual doofuses. James Arthur Ray, the genius behind the sweat lodge tragedy, has talked the naive out of their dough with all kinds of schemes, under the guise of helping them to “create wealth” in finances, relationships, and mental, physical and spiritual well being. In truth, such would require a true renaissance man, which he clearly is not; what he is, is a risk-taker with other people’s lives.

All such scams have a connection to money, chiefly the transference of yours to the guru. Ray’s self-promotions include the creation of “Harmonic Wealth” in his role as a “personal success strategist”–all of which is gobbledy-gook for a con man. People who in their supposed sophistication wouldn’t trust faith-healers and the televangelists we’ve come to know and loathe, will trail a guy like Ray who’s just a direct descendant of the old snake-oil salesmen. Now and then he sheds his expensive threads to sweat-lodge it with anyone who has more money than sense: an all-round fun fellow.

What must tick off the Native Americans who’ve dutifully protected the Sweat Lodge tradition observed by early Colonists to America, is that hacks like Ray dishonor and betray the practice in many ways–including charging exorbitant fees to participate. Roger Williams of Colonial fame noted in those days that natives used the lodges to purge body and skin and as a means of warding off the French flu.

Their descendants, as we might guess, eschew material gain and invite non-natives to join them in its proper observance for free. Ironically, Ray may have gained all that he knows about the tradition just that way, and for nothing, before making sweat lodges but another arm of his business enterprises.

Ray also found this to be a very cost-efficient way to fleece people, since his meager investment in each amounted to a make-shift tent housing hot rocks doused with water to create sauna-like conditions. Other requisites are darkness (hence no electrical expense), and persons gullible enough to post Ray’s fee.

Sadly, he greedily crammed in over 60 registrants, which in traditional practice should be no more than 12-20, and the result was tragedy. But do the math: $10K times 65 equals $650,000 or nearly $5500 an hour, and that includes sleep-time–a handsome enough return to make other self-help gurus, well, “green” with envy. No wonder that shortly after two people died (with a third to come) he was in a California Ritz Carlton drumming up suckers for another such uplifting “experience.”

His immediate response to an investigation into the Arizona incident was refusal to cooperate or to be interviewed; I didn’t know you could do that but these are strange times.

Since days immemorial there have been those either so fearful of life, in such a hurry for success, greedy, gullible or all the above, that they are willing to believe that someone, somewhere, has all the answers to life. It is also a truism that people who read supermarket tabloids deserved to be lied to–a blanket caveat that covers those who listen to Ray and his ilk.

The lesson of Rev. Jim Bakker’s infamous Heritage Park religious circus was: never trust a religion that has a water slide; the same goes for salesmen with overcrowded tents for sweat lodges.

I’ll say Amen to that.

Categorized in Religion
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Oct
24

Letterman-Polanski Syndrome

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Dave and Roman got unwanted headlines due to one’s recent,
and the other’s past, misbehaviors. It all launched a national
review of the social and workplace obligations of those who
“hold power” over others who are underage or in their employ.
Thankfully, in a month or so Tiger Woods would rescue them
from all the attention

Do we hand it to Dave for turning raunch into ratings; or blame jilted boyfriend “Joe” Halderman for blowing his act of revenge; fault Stephanie Birkitt for sleeping with her boss; or impugn the public for eating up this mess of prurient porridge as if it were good?

Some say there are matters of greater import to be concerned with, but ugly is in the eye of the beholder. It distracted us from Roman Polanski, for one thing. And this is beyond Dave and his ship of fools on late-night:  it’s a tip of the iceberg on relations between men and women in the workplace, and not a simple one at that.

Letterman’s not the first to use his celebrity and hire-and-fire power to shag all female underlings in his employ; he thinks it’s because he’s just to die for, but dress him up as a greasy-cap-wearing dude, pumping gas at an Alabama crossroads, and not a gal in the world will notice him. But he’s in tinsel-town, where women think Larry King is “sexy” with the garish suspenders he wears at 9 p.m., before Dave is even out of bed.

Poor Joe now knows that hell hath no fury like men, too, when scorned. And Stephie will not be the last woman to misgauge her employment options or fall in love with the unattainable; did she think she’d be the queen of Dave’s table, and not just hustling scraps that fall therefrom?

Do these people have educations? Has she heard of the women’s movement? Doesn’t Joe know that when you go mano a mano against a celebrity, you’re the one everybody will love to hate? As for Dave the Knave, he has nowhere to go but Up, since celebrities are America’s royalty: not that we fail to see or hear their evil, but that we don’t care–just serve us another dish of entertainment to talk about around next day’s water cooler.

Dave didn’t ‘fess up because it was the moral thing to do, but to get control of the issue before Joe went public with Stephie’s “un-mailed”but revelatory letters, full of rosy thoughts amid purple prose. Lucky Dave: not only do we know that he goes about with his pants down, but exactly his taste in women–with many more to be outted, we may be sure.

They say Clark Gable was driven to women “beneath” him, and given the star status of such studs, one would think Clark would’ve angled for a roll in the hay with the younger Queen Elizabeth, and Dave with maybe Queen Noor.

Let’s just say it has more to do with the power in such relationships, and that works both ways. Letterman has the power to hire and fire, and how unfortunate that is in the hands of so doofish and insensitive a man. The women, it is said, fear for their jobs. How noble: is it really that bread may be snatched from mouths of hungry babes–or is it the chance of being bedded by a TV Prince, or dreams, someday, of being his Leading Lady? Joe’s just odd-man-out here; with one foot in a hole of rejection, with the other he stepped on a banana peel, and the rest is his hapless history.

Polanski may be a helluva film maker, but otherwise possessed of some goofy
lapses in judgment. Here’s a guy who manned up to admit plying a minor with champagne (mm-hmm) and having his way with her, and signed off to pay her a half-mil so she would know it was worth it–then ran away from a sentence of a mere 42 days in the slammer, putting him forever on the fly; now in his dotage they nab him to pay the piper. Stoo-pid. Plus we don’t know if he ever forked over the 500K heretofore mentioned.

Thus, Roman did it right the first time, then fouled his own nest again. Dave did wrong to begin with, but abra-cadabra!–turned it to gold with his Midas Touch and the help of his amoral audience. You gotta love the whole friggin’ lot of ‘em.

Stephanie needs to know that all that glitters is not gold, that her body and self-respect are worth more than imagined, and to consider the spouses that she and others gals hurt. Yep, Dave’s wife is in the news too, but who cares, her role in all this is not sexy enough for significant mention.

There are many women who make better choices in life and one could
wish they’d knock a few heads among the Stephanies of this world. But women need for men to join in the rant too, so that such star-chasers will stop thinking that is what all men “want.”

As if that’ll ever happen. So don’t hold your breath.

Categorized in Pop Culture
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Oct
03

Is “Dead” the “New 75”?

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Older drivers are crashing into everything and everybody while bills flood legislatures and town councils to require regular driving exams and dire threats to loss of license.

Our youth-obsessed society forgets that aging is inexorable, regardless of face lifts and botox, and we have boldly regrouped life stages–“50 is the new 35,” and “70 is the new 50.” I worry that this cuts both ways: will “dead” become the “new 75″?

Comedian George Carlin said the only time in life we like to get older is childhood–“I’m not nine, I’m nine-and-a-half.” At the other end, we start going backwards and say, “I just turned 92,” though the next birthday may loom near.

The late systems analyst Edwin Friedman used to say that anxiety hovers over society like a cloud, looking for a place to land–usually at any rumor or sensational news report. Currently, the elderly are our panic buttons. They didn’t create dangerous driving, of course; when not on their case, our outrage is directed at teenage drivers.

Fatal teen accidents seem to involve the driver and friends, while the elderly often emerge unscathed after plowing into crowds of strangers or banging into other cars. Maybe that’s what bothers us: if they’re gonna kill somebody, let them kill themselves–as if that’s a real answer to the problem. Keep in mind that all other auto fatalities are caused by the rest of us–the great, dangerous population between teenage and old age.

What our excuse is, I’m not sure, except that we have more than a few. With teenagers it involves high speed and drugs (I include alcohol among drugs and consider the “difference” a bogus attempt to create two classes of users and abusers, one supposedly tolerable and excusable, the other not), while the elderly have issues of impairment–both mental and physical. The rest of us are guilty of all these and more, not to mention driving long after having lost our licenses for a multitude of reasons.

In states like Florida, people are ambivalent about the aged, not knowing whether to tolerate, or bemoan, their presence. Of course old folks there are a huge voting bloc, so there’s no pushing them around. Besides hazardous driving, they create all sorts of minor inconveniences, such as in parking areas where, having exited their own cars, they walk right down the middle of the driving lanes, clueless to be holding up lines of other autos. To shout at them is useless, since in their deafness they can’t hear you. On a lighter side is the spectacle of the “headless driver,” so shrunken as to appear that the car is unoccupied, save for hands detectable on the steering wheel.

But try putting yourself in their shoes: Giving up one’s car, and its freedom of mobility, is just another loss of control over one’s life, and a scary sign that the world is closing in on them. As Seinfeld quipped, we spend our lives looking for the right-sized moving box and, once we find it–we’re in it. Towns have fewer sidewalks, and existing ones are uneven and otherwise dangerous, given that Twenty-through-Sixty-somethings drive like hell on wheels, and any slight inattention while driving (cell phones and that goddam texting) can knock pedestrians of any age right off their mortal coils.

The elderly aren’t fond of group transportation for the same reasons we all aren’t–having to wait for pickup totally sucks, then there’s the lack of privacy and independence: a nonagenarian playing the Stones on iTunes would be hugely unwelcome on the senior bus (but didn’t I say old folks can’t hear?–well, somehow, they can when they want to–again, like the rest of us).  And if they lean on friends or family, they know it takes a re-evaluation of relationships on the part of everybody. What a drag we think they are–and don’t think they don’t know it.

The problem isn’t just older drivers, it’s all of us. Communities don’t really tackle such matters together because the mere mention of senior centers that offer quality of life, or real transportation solutions, get derailed, tabled, or have to wait “till the economy improves”–just like schools and students.

In the meantime, the elderly put up with horn-honking and scape-goating–not to mention abusive signs and language. If they were young again, they could probably punch the lights out of us younger whippersnappers.

If it takes an entire village to raise kids, it takes one to care for and about the aged, and to help them maintain dignity and self-respect.

Categorized in Social Issues
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Sep
26

Send Lady Liberty Back to France

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During Obama’s struggle to bring about health care reform, fall of ‘09 brought, on the heels of ugly Town Hall meetings across the U.S., a new low in Congressional behavior from Joe Wilson of South Carolina and indications that our “nation of immigrants” no longer tolerates its own kind anymore. This begs the question: why not return the Statue of Liberty?

Rush Limbaugh (in)famously has said he hoped Obama “fails,” then hedged what he said, before repeating the first remark–calling to mind Gen. Westmoreland who, during the war in Vietnam, said the Vietnamese didn’t feel pain the way we do, then took it back, then said it again (once to me).

Rush–uh, excuse me, “Rusty,” as he is known in the home-town that he and I share–is the nontitular head of the Republican party, and some pols in his camp will do anything to stop Obama’s health care reform. Like Rusty, they truly want the president to fail. There’s real patriotism for you: sons of the pioneers, who built this country and made it strong. Excuse me, I think I’m going to be sick.

Rep. Joe Wilson is the latest American Behaving Badly, following the Town Hall Meetings from Hell. So we’ve gone from “I hope he fails,” to Wilson’s “You lie,” and at last we know just how ridiculous a year this has been. If there’s anything to the notion that reality is a circle, or that a pendulum at last swings the other way, we can only hope that such comes soon in America.
Obama, of course, is smarter than his critics think. He may get less than he hoped for in a new bill, and people will love any reform much more than they think. The tragedy is that public option may be left out this time–the only thing that would bring down health insurance costs. The GOP loves competition, except for insurance companies, meaning that prices will continue to rise, and when they do, they’ll blame the prez. But should Obama gets his public option, they’ll change the subject to his birth certificate again–after all, he’s up against real intellectuals here.

As Alice would say, what gets “curiouser and curiouser” in this debate is many people’s attitude toward immigrants. We’re a nation of them, right, so if we don’t want our own kind anymore, why not send the Statue of Liberty back to France? After all, it’s about “…your tired, your poor, your hungry masses yearning to be free…”–but, darn, nothing about their health. I guess that means the Lady Liberty is irrelevant, now that the cry from here is, “I’ve got mine, so pull up the ladder!”

No one complained when presidents Reagan and Bush made speeches to school children–but when Obama gave one, a lot of schools opted out–and somebody needs to knock their heads together together. A school in Texas shut out Obama’s speech, then bused the same kids to Cowboy stadium to hear former prez Bush speak live. How fair, and patriotic, is that?

The Immigration Bill that Reagan signed in 1986 allowed legal status, or amnesty, to those who could prove continuous residence, and while barring new migrants from welfare and food stamps, it provided funding for “emergency medical care, and aid to the aged, blind and disabled” among them–and “set up an office to prosecute immigrant-related discrimination regarding employment.” I don’t recall conservatives throwing up their dinner over that, but, after all, it was their precious Ronnie who had signed on to it.

If we can get over this national hypocrisy, and certain legislators get a grip on their real purpose for being in Washington, we might actually get some decent reform. If not, there will be a steep new price for missing the health care boat–which till now has meant that when somebody fell out of it, no one could hear the splash.

By now, however, we should know who’s really to blame for what ails us–and who really lied.

Categorized in Politics
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Sep
19

Goodbye to Town Hall Meetings from Hell

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The summer of ‘09 was one of more than a little discontent.
Americans began to behave badly in a frenzy of misplaced
anger at those not necessarily at fault for their unhappiness.
But who cared? It was not a time for making nice–nor would
it be, for months to come.

Okay, the politically unwashed of our great nation have had their fifteen minutes of fame, yelling and screaming at (s)elected leaders. Barney Frank’s response to the misguided soul who clutched a Hitler-ized picture of Obama, was a welcome rejoinder. Barney may be gay, but he’s no wimp, and senatorial he-man John McCain took note and ejected another Screaming Mimi from his meeting in Phoenix. Folks from Maine clearly get better upbringing at home, given the civility granted to Sen. Olympia Snow.

Around the nation, polls have long showed displeasure with health care and with end-of-life circumstances that threaten to bankrupt their families. “Do something!” they barked, but when someone tried, right wing radio fed them select lines from The Nutcase Handbook for Mayhem and Disorder. God knows the naive populace couldn’t come up with such words and phrases on their own; they’re actually mad about a lot of other things but their rage has been successfully redirected from the guy who really hurt them for eight years to the one who’s been in office, um, barely seven months.

These are the same folks who don’t bother to read a damn book once in a while, wherein facts are marshaled both in order and in perspective, relying instead on bloggers of low mentality. After all, America is a nation of universal Attention Deficit Disorder, unable to read past one page of print without a headlong dash of avoidance for beer or chocolate.

Herewith then a bit of said perspective: even Teddy Roosevelt, the big trust buster who kicked ass and took names, took a stab at health care reform with no success, so we know right away that many people have a gene resistant to such relief. Truman tried again after World War II but some yahoo innocently stumbled on the word “socialization” as a descriptive, and Commie-baiter-in-Chief Sen. Joe McCarthy warned that Stalin and the USSR were coming to get us.

In time, LBJ actually delivered Medicare and folks loved it–imagine that. But the political right wing, who cling to idiocy like a crucifix, have demonized the word “socialism” as a way to stop just short of calling liberalism “communism.” This has worked right up to now and, adding to the confusion, they can always find a crank in Canada or Europe who’s unhappy with life in general and willing to say their health care is a mess. FauX News is a big fan of these miscreants and from their rolodex pull names for newscast interviews. At this point, Jesus Christ could descend from heaven with a health care plan and they would question his birth certificate and call him a Muslim and a liar.

The fact is, single payers and public options do work; and insurance companies in other countries are non-profit and on the same page, hence paperwork, unlike here, is not costly and time-consuming; and insurance is nothing like that forced on American physicians. It should be added that their doctors have sharply fewer expectations than ours in terms of compensation. Further, all medical care is “rationed,” everywhere in the world–it’s just that ours is on the backs of the uninsured and those at end-of- life.

True, bills in Washington are long and complex, but that has been the nature of all legislation since five years before God. But when town hall meetings go from that concern to Hitler-pix and cries of “why don’t we just slow down with this plan,” and “please give me back the country that was created by Jefferson” (another liberal, by the way), you know something’s rotten here, not in Denmark.

First of all, these are the folks who are still mad about the election of Obama; second, why should we “slow down” when the cry long has been to give us health care reform “now!”? And if ever we needed proof that this nation of immigrants doesn’t like more of them, this is it.

Health care reform, something we need most, is temporarily held hostage by red herring complaints. Now that we’ve all had a good look at the town hall thugs, and heard them enough to make us want to puke, it’s time to seize the cure and move on towards a greater America.

Categorized in Politics
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Sep
12

Teddy and Daniel

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The death of Ted Kennedy occasions reflections on him and Daniel Webster

Ted Kennedy’s death closes a great circle but makes us ponder circumstances. Little more than a half-century ago, the name Kennedy was hardly in the mix of national conversation, before we witnessed the saga of an extraordinary family that changed history and now resides, along with other immortals, in the nation’s memory.

JFK’s older brother, Joseph, Jr., was at the time but a tragic personal footnote to a father’s high expectations, only to have the ensuing male siblings exceed them regardless of more lives cut short–except for the most unlikely of all, whose Senate tenure would span that of ten presidents. And this, despite monumental personal flaws, egregious lapses in judgment and countless petty peccadilloes.

And therein lies an irony. National grief for fallen leaders is in direct proportion to what point in their lives they fall to their mortality. Last century, FDR, though long ill, died in office but Truman and Eisenhower outlived their careers and Reagan left this mortal coil after long disappearance from the public eye. Many outstanding House and Senate leaders also became invisible beyond their retirements.

We know the veil of grief that fell over the nation at the death of Lincoln as the Civil War ground to a victorious close and the Great Emancipator was still in office. Long before then, Washington, Adams and Jefferson had gone out to political pasture, and the blows from their demise were somewhat muted.

Ted Kennedy began with early, low self-expectations in the shadow of his brothers, then was not destined to be president due in no small part to the tragic carelessness of Chappaquiddick. But life granted him a wider berth for recovery and, as we saw, he seized both necessity and opportunity with a remarkable career lasting till his death from more natural causes.

Daniel Webster, another New Englander and fabled legislator, branded countless enactments with his name and, like Teddy, was an tireless representative of the people. But his career began and flourished in high-mindedness–before collapsing in an unwise support for the Fugitive Slave Law, which antislavery proponents saw as turning his back on the morality of the issue.
It wasn’t enough that Webster thought he and Henry Clay–“the Great Compromiser”–would thereby avoid civil war, for neither knew how deep a sickness of the human soul were racism and its evil twin of slavery. They were simply on the wrong side of history. Emerson said, “By God, I’ll not obey that filthy law,” and a Whittier poem branded Webster, “Ichabod,” a fallen angel:
“…he who might have lighted up and led his age, falls back in night……from those great eyes
the soul has fled: when faith is lost (and) honor dies, the man is dead!”

Whittier wrote that out of his “surprise and grief and forecast of evil,” from Webster’s betrayal and wished the latter would have lived to see “the flag trampled under the feet of slavery” as the nation went to war anyway.

Kennedy got his mischief out of the way earlier on; Webster, still hungry for more power after three failed attempts to be president, spent his last days as Secretary of State, vigorously enforcing the capture and return of runaway slaves, till a fall from horseback ended his misbegotten labors.

There are no few Kennedy-haters, but joining the lines at the JFK Library at Ted’s viewing, and catching news coverage of the subsequent commemorations was to realize this family are in truth somewhat ordinary people but ones who placed high expectations on themselves and, under such circumstances, did the best they could against the relentless onslaught of tragedy. The words of Homer regarding the House of Agamemnon, despite all its power and influence, “Woe upon woe!” seemingly apply to the Kennedys.

Their ordinariness and warmth was manifest to those at the Library as they waited entry to where the Lion lay in state: Kennedys of all ages, some yet unknown to the nation, walked for hours in the sun and quietly greeted all public mourners.

Hate them if you will, but they’re a class act.

Categorized in Politics
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Aug
08

Mad About Race Again

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The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. episode in the heart of
Massachusetts’ liberal intellectualism revived latent feelings
in people of all races nationwide.

A spark set off a conflagration in the “Republic of Cambridge,” Massachusets and has all the nation up in arms, except in countries where people subjected to real race riots and even genocide are wondering what the hell we’re so upset about.

Bill Cosby said whoever wasn’t there isn’t really entitled to say much about the Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. episode, and that goes for the prez of these United States. That of course hasn’t stopped anyone with feelings overt (or hidden) regarding race. We like to think that racism has gotten up on little hind legs and departed our Extremely Tolerant society. That’s our happy little slogan, which now is shown to be just that. We talk the talk but hardly walk the walk. Even after a big fight (Civil Rights or a Civil War) we think people are too tired to go at it again, but the truth is that people love to fight and all they need is an excuse. The Clash in Cambridge was such a justification.

We would prefer of course that persons of color take all that history of rigged trials and juries, police harassment, profiled beatings and jailings, and unjustified death sentences (let’s don’t even get into slavery)–and just get over it; after all, our new-found “tolerance” is an uneasy truce that is one step away from a new civil war.

All parties at the Gates home overreacted, but Dr. Gates knew that an older white person trying to force his way into his own home would have been treated differently, and that arrival of police would have resulted in a much different conversation:

“Sir, is there anything wrong? May we help you?
“Yes, goddamit it, I couldn’t get this friggin’ door open due to all the rain and I had to force it.”
“We regret that, sir, but would you mind stepping outside here and showing us some identification: we want to make sure that the owner of this property is protected from unlawful entry, and we hope you can appreciate our situation.”
“Uh, okay, but I’m late getting in, tired and hungry and in a hurry, and hope this doesn’t take much longer.”
“Yes, sir, we understand.”
And that, of course, would have been that. Caucasians are used to law enforcement caring about their property, compared to the history of characteristically slow response to any smell of trouble in black neighborhoods. Dr. Gates is privy to all this, and he’ll never be able to surmount all racial obstacles in his life–and or even be a Harvard professor–and escape them. Too bad that this needless circumstance had to evolve into the Perfect Storm.

So police brass pulled an all-nighter, got their story straight, and lined up a big-deal press conference (couldn’t you just smell the testosterone?) to say that every cop in the world wanted to smack the U.S. president and the Mass guv upside the head and demand apologies.

Oh, please: do we really think all cops in every union and enforcement association think alike? If so, a lot of them aren’t thinking; and imagine any of them daring to disagree with the party line in that atmosphere: they could forget future raises or promotions. Law enforcement is no democracy but a top-down org and don’t think otherwise. Notice also that among the officials at the press conference there was a well-placed face or two to represent non-caucasians, but all the big shots in charge were–you guessed it, lily white.

The facts at last were these: Dr. Gates was arrested in his own home and taken away in chains. Of all the missteps by everyone, only the president of the U.S. has tried to defuse the situation–hence depriving Hannity, O’Reilly and all of FauX News of their planned century of insane rants against three black men (remember to count the guv). George Bush’s tongue would have stuck to the roof of his imperial mouth had he admitted even to second thoughts about Iraq; and Dick Cheney, on Judgment Day, has no plans to apologize to God. And the Cantabridgian Cops, had only to appear on a stage and stamp their feet.

Wow. Only in America.

It’s time to get off the backs of Gates, Cambridge’s Finest, and Obama;  learn the extra lesson and get back on the road toward social progress until we can all say we are Free At Last of the racial demon.

Categorized in Race in America
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Aug
01

Man in the Moon

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THE MAN IN THE MOON
The death of Walter Cronkite sent the nation into
grieving, and reminded us of all the nation’s crises,
and successes, that he walked us through, including
the astounding mission to the moon.

Just before the moon landing forty years ago, I was among male graduate students who, suffering as they were from delusions of adequacy common to their breed, were quite sure that astronauts would be but “warm bodies” in such enterprises–mere  puppets of the puppeteers at Mission Control.

Whatever we knew of such endeavor then, we know much more now, albeit we understand it no more than we can understand or replicate feats of commercial or military aviation or how even small airplanes get off the ground. We are but spectators of all such derring-do, whether Wallenda walking the highwire or Knievel airborne over Snake River Canyon, but especially to the fantastic feats of space exploration.

Such are high-stakes maneuvers for which the rest of us need not apply, because we lack the dedication to prepare for it and, yes, the wherewithal mentally and physically to be bona fide qualifiers. The rest of us don’t live in such rarefied air; we are allowed an incredible margin for error to accommodate our flaws, mistakes and stupidity. We live perpetually with egg on our faces, food in our teeth, ketchup on our ties, broken heels and shoestrings, unbuckled, sometimes unzipped.

I suspect that’s why pro sports are such an attraction: a fascination with something done well and with precision, and the winners those who make the fewest mistakes. For the rest of us, nothing is decided when five o’clock comes and the whistle blows. We won’t fall to our ruin as did Wallenda, at age 73, when at last he was no match for extreme winds that knocked him 37 meters to the pavement in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

We learn now that Buzz Aldrin, one of the men on the moon, has suffered extreme depression and gone public with it in hopes of calling attention to a condition we’d rather forget unless we too are so afflicted. He’s traded in all the glory of moments past to display his own humanity–another way of walking the highwire.

Another hero in the moon saga was the one who held our hands through so many other national accomplishments–and tragedies: Walter Cronkite. It is in the nature of the human journey to soon forget, save for occasional reminders, real giants in our social consciousness who made a profound difference in how we view the world. He was not, like Copernicus, a propounder of a vast new theory of the universe, but he was an insightful reporter–and interpreter–of the meaning of celestial pursuits like the space missions.

Not long after the successful moon shot, I interviewed Zeke Segal, head of kthe CBS’Atlanta bureau, who let me listen in on that day’s conference call between Cronkite and all the regional bureau chiefs. It was a privilege to hear this master of the airwaves conduct a roundtable with such skill, precision and terseness: if all the rest of us could but carry on our banal conversations with such brevity and summation rather than the yakkity-yak to which we are victims in these times.

I thought back to when he told us that a man had landed on the lunar surface, while the networks constructed studio simulations to assist viewer understanding. Of course, the Flat Earth people soon emerged from the bowels of the earth, as they tend to do, to say it was all a put-up job and that Walter and the networks had concocted but a newer version of Orson Welles’ Invasion from Mars. So shall it always be that among humankind, descended from the arboreal apes, are those still going up the tree than down it, and will deny all signs of the times and those who interpret them, while applying their leeches of ignorance to the body social.

It took extraordinary people even to conceive of striking out for the heavens, as well as to plan the mission; and to go, or to send others, in a collaboration of science that is stranger than the strangest fiction.

It is now irrefutable history that men have been on the moon, but as long as our memories endure, how can we look Up There anymore and deny that there is a  man in the moon–and it is Walter Cronkite.

Most of us don’t, and can’t, walk highwires of accomplishment but a few among us do. And he was one, along with the astronauts and other champions of space.

Categorized in Social Issues
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Jul
25

Somebody Died

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The death of Michael Jackson in mid-2009 followed shortly that of Farrah Fawcett, creating an embarrassment of unbalanced attention to two icons of American celebrity.

Somebody died, then another Somebody, and therein lies a silly truth about celebrity in our time. And this is perilous territory: remarks critical of the idols of popular culture means that someone most assuredly will hate you.

When Farrah Fawcett shuffled off this mortal coil, that was the story we would have endured for many a day–except that Michael Jackson met his Maker, too. Oops. How unsporting of him to upstage a glamorous colleague at such a crossroad, but some celebrities are more equal than others.

Farrah had but one season as a Charlie’s Angel. Beautiful (who in Hollywood isn’t?), a head of hair that was equal parts mop and mane, and one of those big, jaw-boned, toothy Texas-girl smiles, but you would have thought, given the first blush of hype at her demise, that she had been Mother Teresa.

Then suddenly Farrah was not the center of the news cycle. Ouch. Damn that Michael. She morphed into a digression as music’s Manchild took over the airwaves and was quickly cast as pope of the idol pantheon. How soon we forget: whatever happened to the Beatles, the Stones, and McCartney–all someday to be mourned as saviors of the world, as was Dearly Departed John (Lennon) and the exquisite rhine-stoned corpse of Elvis. Dear me, what shall we do, flush as we are with demigods galore–all of whom gotta die sometime. And all because society loves a good cry now and then, and there will be many a hanky moment in days and years to come. There’s a lesson in that somewhere, but the star-struck aren’t getting it.

The big honk that Michael “touched” all the world with his gift is arguable; but that he redeemed it, well, sound the gong. It is more than ironic, and sadly so, that in our grief the names of, say, Copernicus, Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt seem so forgettable. One changed forever our view of the world and our place in it, all without benefit of telescope (not invented till 100 years after Copernicus); Time called Einstein–“an unfathomably profound genius” who showed us that “the universe was not as it seemed;” and Eleanor blazed a real path for women and minorities the world over.

Their thanks? Well, Copernicus’ celestial-breaking book was put on the Church’s infamous “Index” after he died and remained there for over 200 years–and lost to the world for three centuries; he never got to know what a stir he caused. Einstein got a good measure of fame in life, but at his death people yawned and said that, given his age, wasn’t it about time? At FDR’s funeral Eleanor told reporters, “the story is over,” and assumed she would have no further role in the world or that it would even care, now that he was dead and she no longer First Lady. Hel-LO-o! And at her own demise, “homely” was as frequent a description as was the word “great.”

Michael’s passing brought, first, the obligatory acknowledgments of his talent and the joy it afforded so many: in performance he seemed as lovable as he was electrifying–and there, if we are but honest with ourselves, the legacy enters a pathetic dimension: personal demons, family secrets, friends and cohorts who indulged his habits and fantasies, and now a circus of endless trust litigation that in time will make us all want to puke.

From drugs to baby-dangling, he showed all the earmarks of an immature kid crushed by his own popularity. An expert on celebrity addiction said that, unlike Britney, Michael didn’t have a family who could or would intervene as a team, with doctors, to save him. At one point, among his zoo of companions were two chimps and an imaginary friend. Whatever his “issues,” the self-mangling of his features went from weird to freaky, and just short of monstrous. At last, he was an example of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy: to have the world by the tail but become your own worst enemy–hardly what any of us wants to be.

It’s wise to forgo descriptives of Michael that make him a god of sorts, an earth-redeemer, or the last musical giant we will ever see. The music of Mozart, Bach and numerous others captivates the world centuries after, so we’re in good hands. After such time, will Michael’s body of work be on everybody’s futuristic iPod? It’s just one opinion, but I think not. It will be seen as hot for its time, but not for the ages.

In a bit, Thursday, 6/25/09 will be remembered as just another day in  the obits. Somebody died. It happens all the time.

Categorized in Pop Culture
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Jul
11

All Is Forgiven

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“All Manny had to do, like A-Rod, was hit a homer
or knock in a run, and all would be forgiven”

Manny Ramirez was about to bat for the first time since his suspension for use of banned substances–a euphemism that means he’s a dirty rat who’s done his part, with others, to ruin baseball. And all he had to do, a la Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees, was to hit a homer or just get a hit and knock in a run, and all wouldl be forgiven.

That’s life these days in a celebrity-loving world for which the Grand Old Game is the latest casualty. The deplorable loss of honor and ethics will not deter the Major League brass, who’ve always known a golden goose when they saw one. Brain trust that they claim to be, you’d think they’d take the long view, bite the bullet, clean up their racket and start from square one to save baseball.

But that would mean being content with the insane amounts of dough they’ve made till now and the high life enjoyed for, lo, these many years–if they can but manage to live on that–and let the next generation of owners, brass and players unions earn a new, reputable position in society.

Yeah, as if that’ll ever happen. What is happening is that the public is being massaged with euphemisms like the above and distracted with all manner of sleight of hand that we might, uh, forget that all this has occurred. ‘Tis better, they tell us, to avoid Memory in favor of Forgetfulness. It is in the nature of beer-guzzlers (the drug of choice for childish men who live somehow from ballgame to ballgame) to favor Forgetfulness, sire of Dionysius, the god of wine–clearly an inebriate but much too genteel for modern tastes, and for whom beer is deemed a superior development in the culture of libations. In myth, Memory was mom to the Muses, goddesses of the fine arts and much too precious for guys given to cursing umpires, booing managers and brawling in pubs afterward.

So memory is out, forgetfulness is in, regarding sports ethics. Or does such even exist? There is a vast library of resources on the subject–but only for college and under, as well as amateurs; much less for the rarified air of the pros. There, given that you’re in business, not sport, you do what you can get away with–as too many great players clearly thought, while managers looked the other way, and the brass played dumb till word broke and they feigned shock. Their promise of a clean sweep of the matter means it will forever be swept under the rug.

Even the Code of Ethics for sports officials–i.e., umps, refs, etc.– addresses fairness, integrity and accuracy (please excuse those who are certifiably blind) to “impose a higher ethical standard by which true professionals are judged.” And we string up college coaches for many infractions, mostly over money and recruiting, and would do well to check out the British code and its high standards for things like “Integrity”–as in, “…not encourage performers to violate the rules of the sport.” I’d say looking the other way is a huge infraction, but apparently that’s in another world.

Pro baseball in the U.S. is corrupting itself and getting worse. Manny and others will benefit from nuanced interpretation of rules like, “when” did they do it? It will take a generation of sports management students to get in place and change the culture. For now, Manny will go the way of A-Rod, who’s allowed to play on for Yanks fans, who in turn will tolerate anything that might bring bragging rights from a World Series victory.

Years ago it took racism and sexism to keep Satchel Paige and Babe Didrikson Zaharias out of the majors (she was an incredible athlete in multiple sports–baseball and golf but two–and an Olympian) and not a steriod in either of them. Babe pitched spring training and struck out a slew of male sluggers, but they were not about to let her hang around the Bigs.

I’d like to see a certain Commish have to stand at home plate, bat in hand, while she and Satch took turns whiffing him–before putting an extra fast ball right in his ear.  Maybe then he’d listen. If he did, maybe then all could be forgiven.

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