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

Jun
27

Life in a Hail of Bullets

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LIFE IN A HAIL OF BULLETS

“War between gun owners and police is more likely
than a U.S. war against Iran or North Korea”

How many more casualties must we have, and times to be told, that guns are bad things in a civilized society? Since last utterance on the topic in this space, a physician has been gunned down in Kansas–the latest sensational instance of the terror visited on American society.

That’s right, call it what it is: domestic terrorism, and there need be a war against it–albeit, ironically, one waged without guns. After all, we did so against “big tobacco,” something I never dreamed could come about, and be successful, in my lifetime. After all, I could remember free little four-packs of cigs sent to soldiers at war (which filtered down to us kids as well); movie stars, athletes and other celebs in cigarette ads; and TV hosts (Garry Moore) and entertainers (Dean Martin) smoking on camera, thus carrying the culture right into our living rooms and thereby, our lives. It was cool, it was hip, it was the thing to do–before the incriminating truth was found in companies’ files and archives and the Marlboro Man was but one in thousands to sue the makers for endangering or killing them.

Still, it took decades to drive big tobacco into a corner, and legislation continues to smack it into oblivion where it belongs. But who’d-a thunk it? It shows that when America puts its mind to such endeavor, good things can and will happen.

The difference here is that the gun lobby is, literally, frightening and intimidating (why risk making someone mad who’s holding a gun–or multiples of them?), and too many better-minded, more responsible gun owners never speak out against the NRA: it just wouldn’t be the “manly” thing to do.

Of course, the self-righteousness of their cause is rooted in its constitutionality. Well, the Constitution has been changed before and never is such needed more than now. The right to bear arms in earlier times was to repel British invasions of our agrarian society after the treason of our independence; even then, many a Colonial farmer wouldn’t fire a shot till a redcoat stepped on his property. Now we kill more of each other than we do any foreign enemy, or than they kill of us. Where’s the sense in that?

Our biggest move to control guns was decades ago, and beaten back in a skirmish that actually strengthened the NRA, whose rhetoric is always moralistic and couched in terms of human rights and threats to domestic safety. That means I have much to fear from them and they have nothing to fear from me–after all, I’m not waving a dangerous weapon in anyone’s face.

What too many gun lovers overlook is that, due to their intransigence, we are all unsafe. And do not think they are all law-abiding, as they often crow: no few are anti-authority in general and anti-government in particular, and view even police as a potential enemy. War between the two is more likely than war with Iran or North Korea. Violent crime from guns has caused many communities, especially small ones, to accept distribution of military assault weapons, as we’ve just learned. As one police chief noted: a nut with a deer rifle could cause a crisis of public harm in moments if his force of one or two officers had no adequate fire power of its own.

So now we live in a hail of bullets. After the first (and last) real move to rein in citizen weaponry, president Reagan softened the effort by making a big speech about domestic crime–and mentioned not a word about gun control. How can one be talked about and not the other? He was, of course, “hoist of his own petard”–the NRA lurking menacingly nearby, holding big bucks and big votes, and ready to win one for the Gipper–as long as he left unmentioned the real cause of crime! Since then, in local and state venues around the U.S., it is not uncommon for gun bills in legislatures to end up so watered down till they appear toothless and lose all support.
Let’s take inspiration from the war against tobacco. All the country needs in the matter of guns is a matter of will. And why harp on this at such length? Because “one and one and one can make a million.” Remember?

Next: what would a society without guns look like?

Categorized in Guns Control
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Jun
20

Listening to Pravda

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Spring and summer of 2009 found the adoption of a new hero by
right-wingers–none other than a Russian blogger who was not
from the “Pravda” they assumed, nor was he of the importance
they were led to believe, but a legend only in his–and their–minds.

Desperate for new mud to sling, right wingers the nation over are turning to an unlikely source: Pravda–you know, supposedly the old Soviet news organ. If you were not blessed with a certain blog forwarded to your computer at the time, you may have seen it reprinted, in part, in some easily misled newspapers. I say, “in part”, because a particularly offensive remark was at times omitted.

Under the byline of “Stanislav Mishin,” aka “Mat Rodina,” the U.S. is said to be undergoing a very un-American takeover, to wit, “Marxism.” And who should know better than a Russian? Of course, no one pays attention to foreign writers of any stripe–except the American right wing, when some unknown scribe stumbles into saying something they happen to like. And what they like, in this case, is that a lame-brain thousands of miles away considers America a “dumbed down,” “godless” society whose religion has sold out to pseudo-Marxism, and whose “final collapse” is marked by the election of Barack Obama. Of course, we’ve heard all this before from Republican party leaders, and will hear it again, ad infinitum, ad nauseum for the next eight years, so Mishin is desperately in need of some new material.

In hopes that no one else gets sucked in, let’s talk about Mr. Mishin and then about Pravda. “Mishin” is not an expert, nor is he very bright; he is a blogger–and not all bloggers are equal, and he has other ideas you will not like. He self-identifies as Russian Orthodox, a large communion whose leaders are not in the habit of lecturing other religions, so it is highly unlikely they consider this little goofus their spokesman on faith and morals.

As for the original Pravda: keep in mind that Boris Yeltsin shut down that rag nearly 20 years ago as the official voice of Soviet communism. The former staff ran in every direction, cranking up countless new publications and all grabbing the name “Pravda,” the first emerging as a tabloid and another the internet-based, and unrelated, Pravda Online. The best-selling one is also called, you guessed it, “Pravda,” but it’s not the one Mishin writes for; so he’s not all that big a deal there, and apparently has more American readers than Russian, thanks to impressionable folks here who should be getting their info from reputable sources–oh, but I forgot: the internet is well-suited to the American attention span, which has shrunk to about two seconds at a whack. Hey, maybe that’s what Mishin means when he calls us “dumbed down”! (Note to those who think he’s wonderful: he’s talking about you!)


By the way, the “Pravda” Mishin writes for also touts, “…girls, hot movies, sexy news…” and such, meaning we need not stand for his rants about our loose morals.

Dear friends, I repeat, Mishin is a blogger, and some are just Walter Mittys sitting all day in their pajamas in front of their puters with fierce hopes of entering your brain just because you see their name in cyber space–sort of like kids who pass notes in school or write deathless poetry on bathroom walls. Truth be told, some modern blogging is largely mentally infantile graffiti circulated by knuckleheads passing themselves off as adults.

A telling note was struck when, amid his screed about the U.S., Mishin went off track and launched into a tirade against homosexuality–something often deleted in reprints of his drivel in local papers; perhaps they don’t want you to know the whole truth about him.

Mishin and his ilk are why we must protect and promote the real press–responsible people who do the heavy lifting of news gathering and its dissemination, and who purvey defensible ideas from legitimate sources. Imagine an America full of idiot bloggers from whom we got all of our news! Neither Marxism nor socialism is scarier than that.

In truth, Mishin is “dumbing down” his own society, and dummies here are the sieve through which his nonsense trickles down into ours.

Categorized in Politics
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Jun
13

Let Me Get My Gun

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Why are some people stockpiling dangerous weapons after the election of a black president?

Nothing fans public outrage like the issue of gun control. It makes some people want to, well, shoot someone. Why else stockpile such weapons after an election; when a black man becomes president; or someone calls for reasonable controls on their possession and use?

A Virginia gun shop owner said that after Obama’s election he now has over 200 guns in his home–aside from his place of business. If that makes him feel safer, what about me and his neighbors? Suppose he goes off his screw some night, or his wife leaves him, someone else ticks him off, or he gets mad at God? Forget about me trying to sleep, hoping his Pentium chip doesn’t go out of whack.

But that’s not his concern. He doesn’t care about me, or you, for that matter. He cares only about his “right to bear arms”–regardless that his home is overloaded with them, pun intended. So who else are they for? Let me guess: how about all the other walking arsenals who are his buds and fellow gun club members? What happens to the rest of us when they decide the country is going to hell and needs “the people” (read: them) to take matters into their own hands?

Of course, quick like a bunny (one not blown to Kingdom Come by a 20-gauge shotgun in the fun sport called hunting) I must issue the obvious caveat, that there are many gun owners and lovers who are reasonable and law-abiding in their practice of ownership. I’d also like to hear from them when it comes to their friends who are extremist time-bombs. They complain about Muslims who won’t condemn jihadists, so what does it mean that they stand by silently while Bubba down the street has a house full of hate-lit and belongs to a militarist org that is not only quasi-secret but gets real threatening when someone stumbles onto one of their woods-parties–as I once did. Where are their letters of protest that such aspiring vigilantes are ruining the good name of respectable sport and its practitioners?

Yes, there is such a thing as responsible behavior with deadly objects that have one main purpose: to kill someone or something. And citizens must stand up and say so, at least as loudly as Newt Gingrich has said that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist. Thank god that little doofus of a loose-cannon isn’t president, or I might tote a piece myself, for protection from his social incitements.

It’s been years since Americans have tried to calm the waters of gun rights and controls. But the NRA is a wild-eyed and woolly beast and has Congress more scared than convinced of their unlimited rights. Yet every day we hear of parents killing kids and spouses, of cops being shot, and school children riddled by the scores. The New York Times rounded up numbers that some 120,000 of us have lost life to non-terror homicide– mostly from guns–nearly 25 times those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. If that doesn’t equal a war that is raging right in the U.S., tell me what does.

More than 50 million creepy handguns are in circulation. They account for half of all murders in our country, are used in more than a third of robberies, and kill up to 10,000 people a year. While I nibbled a sandwich at a restaurant in Florida one year, a man my age told me of some robberies in his suburban neighborhood. They asked for law enforcement to come and speak to them. “About safety?” I asked. “No, about defending ourselves,” he replied. I hoped he meant they had gotten, as I had, thorough home inspections and a list of things to increase security. Instead, he told me the police advised them to arm themselves and shoot to kill!

I couldn’t have been more startled, and hoped he hadn’t obtained a gun but he and the rest, flushed with permission from police, had already done so. I didn’t quarrel, I only said what was on my mind: “I’m sorry to hear that, because you realize that your family is now less safe than it was before, and there is far more chance of someone in your family killing one of its own, or a family friend, than killing, wounding or frightening a burglar?”

He squirmed at the news; it was probably the first time since the Great Safety Episode in his neighborhood that he had something other than guns as an answer to the problem. But the harm had been done: there was now a nice neighborhood in my community, inhabited by people like you and me, fairly well educated and decent about most things, armed with guns and the encouragement to use them.

That is an insanity of a sort.

Strange as it may seem, when threatened by fears, real or imagined, don’t go get your gun.

Categorized in Guns Control
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Jun
07

Gun Shy

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Given human nature, a fully armed populace would be a disaster of immense proportions.

That’s what I am, regardless that I hail from the Southern U.S. where guns were common and I fired highest score in my National Guard unit with both carbine and M-1 rifle.

But in very few years and with a gun lobby that was a mere shadow of what the fun folks at the NRA are today, I detested the damn things, their pervasive presence in civilized society, and never, ever owned one. When a former schoolmate came to visit years ago and we took target practice at his behest, he was surprised that in my new incarnation I “couldn’t hit the red side of a green barn.” I took it as a compliment.

As a kid I played with buddies in my uncle’s home, running throughout and scooting on our bellies under furniture–and came with stark suddenness across a large handgun kept beneath his bed. We fell quiet for an eternal moment before remembering parental warnings not to touch any such things we might encounter, thereby escaping the tragedy of another six year old who was shot by his brother–with his mother’s gun: she had bought it as protection from her ex-boyfriend, thought it was safely stored, and had no idea “what made them go up to that shelf.”

But the image of my uncle’s gun stays in my mind with an admixture of fascination and fear. Nothing is made like a gun. Merely to see or hold one evokes a fascination like no other–as did my older brother’s .22 rifle that on rare occasion I surreptitiously took from its closet case to examine its unloaded beauty. Firing one introduces an exhilaration of power until and unless you ponder the horrible effects that can and will be brought on people or objects.

Still in mind too is my first attempt to kill a rabbit on a cold winter morning, as friends stood nearby to celebrate the occasion. Furnished with a borrowed shotgun, I fired unnecessary times across a creek, clueless to the difference between buckshot and solitary bullets. A buddy held up the hare and noted that every bone in its body was pulverized. It was both dead and useless. No celebratory dinner that night, and I had no stomach to retry my luck.

Years have passed and we’ve found how many gun lovers can be both resilient and brutish in their “right to bear arms.” Had the genteel crafters of the Bill of Rights known the sorry pass to which we would come in the modern world, it’s my guess they would have placed a caveat on that one. We no longer live in an agrarian America where the British might invade our property (historical sources claim that many colonists wouldn’t fight until they did). But we’re told that thieves and druggies are tantamount to terrorists and redcoats, and our rebuttal that guns are more a risk to family and friends than to strangers in our homes falls on deaf ears. As someone wisely said, “Jefferson doesn’t have to live in today’s world–but I do.”

Guns are but one part of the larger issue of violence. We are still Dodge City Kids, reared on fantastic and untrue stories of gunslingers like Jessie James, who was no Robin Hood: he robbed the rich and kept it. He and his gang (and the Youngers) were popular after the Civil War when defeated Confederates loved someone who was still a rebel. So along with two chickens in every pot, two cars in every driveway and 2.3 VCRs in the average home–not to mention a cellphone or two for everyone in the family, there is now at least one handgun in two out of three households.

Now, I know something about fear and am no stranger to it. I fear getting knocked in the head, shot, stabbed or beaten; and I tend to be alert in my comings and goings. But I do not believe that I should arm myself or encourage others to do so. Not because I am immune to anger, retaliation and vengeance, but precisely because I am not. Given human nature, a fully armed populace would be a disaster of immense proportions. Laws that favor those who believe in the right to have handguns only increase our peril, strange as that may seem.

The bereaved mother mentioned earlier said she would get a gun again if she had it to do over but then belied her feelings when she added, “You get something to protect yourself, and you end up hurting yourself.”

And therein lies the tragedy of handguns: they do what they’re made for–but to the wrong people.

Categorized in Guns Control
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Jun
07

America Without Guns

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Given human nature, a full armed populace would be a disaster of immense proportions.

That’s what I am, regardless that I hail from the Southern U.S. where guns were common and I fired highest score in my National Guard unit with both carbine and M-1 rifle.

But in very few years and with a gun lobby that was a mere shadow of what the fun folks at the NRA are today, I detested the damn things, their pervasive presence in civilized society, and never, ever owned one. When a former schoolmate came to visit years ago and we took target practice at his behest, he was surprised that in my new incarnation I “couldn’t hit the red side of a green barn.” I took it as a compliment.

As a kid I played with buddies in my uncle’s home, running throughout and scooting on our bellies under furniture–and came with stark suddenness across a large handgun kept beneath his bed. We fell quiet for an eternal moment before remembering parental warnings not to touch any such things we might encounter, thereby escaping the tragedy of another six year old who was shot by his brother–with his mother’s gun: she had bought it as protection from her ex-boyfriend, thought it was safely stored, and had no idea “what made them go up to that shelf.”

But the image of my uncle’s gun stays in my mind with an admixture of fascination and fear. Nothing is made like a gun. Merely to see or hold one evokes a fascination like no other–as did my older brother’s .22 rifle that on rare occasion I surreptitiously took from its closet case to examine its unloaded beauty. Firing one introduces an exhilaration of power until and unless you ponder the horrible effects that can and will be brought on people or objects.

Still in mind too is my first attempt to kill a rabbit on a cold winter morning, as friends stood nearby to celebrate the occasion. Furnished with a borrowed shotgun, I fired unnecessary times across a creek, clueless to the difference between buckshot and solitary bullets. A buddy held up the hare and noted that every bone in its body was pulverized. It was both dead and useless. No celebratory dinner that night, and I had no stomach to retry my luck.

Years have passed and we’ve found how many gun lovers can be both resilient and brutish in their “right to bear arms.” Had the genteel crafters of the Bill of Rights known the sorry pass to which we would come in the modern world, it’s my guess they would have placed a caveat on that one. We no longer live in an agrarian America where the British might invade our property (historical sources claim that many colonists wouldn’t fight until they did). But we’re told that thieves and druggies are tantamount to terrorists and redcoats, and our rebuttal that guns are more a risk to family and friends than to strangers in our homes falls on deaf ears. As someone wisely said, “Jefferson doesn’t have to live in today’s world–but I do.”

Guns are but one part of the larger issue of violence. We are still Dodge City Kids, reared on fantastic and untrue stories of gunslingers like Jessie James, who was no Robin Hood: he robbed the rich and kept it. He and his gang (and the Youngers) were popular after the Civil War when defeated Confederates loved someone who was still a rebel. So along with two chickens in every pot, two cars in every driveway and 2.3 VCRs in the average home–not to mention a cellphone or two for everyone in the family, there is now at least one handgun in two out of three households.

Now, I know something about fear and am no stranger to it. I fear getting knocked in the head, shot, stabbed or beaten; and I tend to be alert in my comings and goings. But I do not believe that I should arm myself or encourage others to do so. Not because I am immune to anger, retaliation and vengeance, but precisely because I am not. Given human nature, a fully armed populace would be a disaster of immense proportions. Laws that favor those who believe in the right to have handguns only increase our peril, strange as that may seem.

The bereaved mother mentioned earlier said she would get a gun again if she had it to do over but then belied her feelings when she added, “You get something to protect yourself, and you end up hurting yourself.”

And therein lies the tragedy of handguns: they do what they’re made for–but to the wrong people.

Categorized in Guns Control
Tags: ,

Jun
01

Star Trek Nation

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This may merit a buzz-saw of reaction, for I deign to speak  of our infantile society. Not that there’s anything wrong with childhood and youth, but I must be so bold to ask: “Is anyone around here grown up, anymore?”

Apparently not. Intelligent conversation on substantive topics must be directed to The Hand, for even NPR is indulging our moronic tastes in a fictional, bizarro world. The latest installment of our social infancy is over Star Trek, the never-ending story we can’t seem to get over. Reality is left only to those of us who are the odd and the strange, whilst the nation worships at Shrines to Things That Never Happened–and never will. And don’t even start with me over the supposedly profound wisdom that we are proffered via this tale and other “epic” sagas that are at best superficial plagiarisms of other and better literature. But, never mind.

There’s something in the Good Book about a child becoming an adult and putting away childish things, but that’s nonsensical crap; the Bible wasn’t created by Lucas and directed by Spielberg, so off with its head (cover?) and into the bonfire of our vanities! Better are the man with the pointy ears and Will Shatner’s stunning role as a stick-figure with a personality like an oyster. Hey, man, this is heavy stuff! But where, oh, where are real book and movie critics when you need them–ones not slaves to the bitch goddess of banal popular culture?

A writer once hopped, skipped and jumped to my editorial desk to advise that I run, not walk, to a new movie about–Superman–and see him fly through the air! Need I say that I never saw that or any sequel, and live to affirm that my IQ has not since lessened nor has one leg become shorter than the other. I was conned into seeing one of the first of that jerkwater genre, 2001 Space Odyssey, and was awakened at the closing credits by fellow movie-goers’ raves about the ape men (whose early appearance had induced my slumber) and how realistic they were–when to me they looked like–well, like guys dressed in monkey suits. And if we are truly descended from the arboreal apes, are we half-way down, or half-way up, the tree?

Thus I am here to declare ours a Star Trek Nation, lost deep in the space between our ears, and headed for a galaxy that is, and will be, nonexistent. But it lives in our minds, and that’s all that counts in this Comic Book World of our own creation. I think of Ionesco’s play, Rhinoceros, a gem from the enlightened days of the Theater of the Absurd, in which Berenger finds society turning into rhinos while his resistance is trumped by facial mutation–a reference to the real-life threat of fascism.

I was about to recommend its reading but, hark!–is that the Enterprise, hovering above my home, offering free rides to NeverLand, whence I may join a club of imaginary friends?
A caller to NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” once allowed it was the greatest day of his life to be able to discuss the latest “Star Trek” on air. As he cited inconsistencies that he said “only a Trekkie could know,” the show’s guest, connected with the production, politely suggested that it was, after all, a movie in its umpteenth incarnation and that such trivia was not uppermost in the makers’ minds.

Years before, a listener to a similar program about another so-called “epic,” asked the guest for the number of the license plate on a Lamborghini in the movie. By this time, the guest had it Up to Here with such idiotic queries and shot back that the caller needed to get a date, kiss and girl and move out of his parents’ basement apartment. I cheered.

Then there was the “Independence Day” movie; one of its “stars” actually declared, on a TV talk show, that said flick was a “humanitarian” undertaking.

Yes, indeed. And I am Napoleon Bonaparte, about to take tea with Lady Godiva.

Categorized in Pop Culture
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May
16

Found: A Jackass in Boston

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In spring of ‘09 a Boston radio host launched on-air
attacks on Mexican immigrants to the U.S. He was counting
on ratings but was met instead with a suspension. He was
subsequently reinstated by his station but with a change in tune.

I had last seen a jackass years ago in the Missouri Ozarks, and it is curious to find one now in the urban confines of Boston. Radio host Jay Severin’s lawyer might like to sue you just for reading this, but he’s busy defending his nut-case client for being less than a Shakespeare or Cicero–you know, someone with great thoughts and the words to go with them.

Severin’s verbal assault on people from Mexico is egregious, but his attorney was of a mind that his suspension would be brief once he and the station “put (this) past us”–as in, yell “Fire!” in a theater, call it free speech and put it all behind you.

News reports call Severin a “right-winger,” but we already guessed that. He doesn’t blame England for Mad Cow disease but he faults Mexico for swine flu. Surely someone like Lou Dobbs would have fallen all over himself to get Jay on his program and they could have sung a duet of, “Go Back to El Rancho Grande.” When Lester Maddox, the Georgia governor who had said AIDS was God’s judgment on gays, thought he got a dose of it from a hospital injection, it made him somewhat of a kinder, gentler person, but it is yet to be determined what it will take to sweeten the bilious temperaments of Dobbs and Severin.

In radio, a big mouth plus a microphone equals success, and the intellectually challenged, of whom there are a frightful number in the world these days, will pass up their mothers’ funerals to tune in. The world is a mystifying place to them, and if they feel they understand what a numbskull is saying, they think he’s brilliant. Larry King showcases several at a time on CNN and in seconds you know that nine in ten, mentally speaking, are two bricks shy of a load. If politics is show business for ugly people, so is radio for the errant mouths of moral defectives.

Hispanics are the last line of defense against the bottom-feeding right wing. Society is more careful these days what it says about blacks, women, and gays: such intolerance can cost ratings and one’s job–as Don Imus found with his two-fer comments on black women athletes, and Anita Bryant’s gay-bashing ended both her marriage and career. In their infinite wisdom, social bullies have turned now to hispanics as those next most vulnerable.

This goes way back to when Mexico honored “immigrant” requests to buy land cheap in their country’s north region, only to have those white “migrants” become a majority and create the state of Texas–who then, as Texans say, “stole the land, fair an’ square”–all accomplished with the obligatory blood-letting.

Jefferson hadn’t been much help: his lovin’ feelings for Sally Hemmings led him to a belief in the intelligence of Africans, which didn’t extend to Caribbeans or South Americans but, after all, he wasn’t shagging a Mexican girl. It’s misleading that those from south of the border are more typically small of stature, since changes in parentage and culture are fast remolding them, as it has others.

My father was Mexican but married into a family of rangy Kentuckians whose genetics rubbed off on me. I didn’t have to put up with the Jay Severins of this world because they knew I could take care of myself; they are, at last, cowards looking for the easy skirmish, and Mexicans are wrongly so viewed; their reticence to retaliate is due to being newcomers here or, yep, necessarily undocumented and can risk deportation.

We don’t want a wealthy, powerful nation next to us, but unlike Japan and West Germany, whose strength we needed against post-war communism, we begrudge Mexico our real partnership and support, regardless that we grabbed over half their country in our own imperialistic moments.

I don’t know Severin’s racial or cultural heritage; that’s beside the point, but he lacks the respect of intelligent persons because he doesn’t earn it. But he isn’t alone–there are too many people who have listened to and defended him.

The radio station, WTKK, says he’s suspended “indefinitely” but we’ll feel better when that changes to “permanent”. After all, it was on that station’s watch that he called Mexicans the “lowest of primitives” who export VD. They should keep in mind that the station’s call letters lend themselves to an extra “K”–and that’s the last thing they would want the city’s wags and comedians to pick up on.

Categorized in Social Issues
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Apr
04

Your Drug of Choice?

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What was true before is so now, that the toll from alcohol abuse (not just addiction) is more costly to society, humanly and economically, than all other drugs in the top ten put together.

Ignorance of certain drugs will endure till pigs fly, thanks to the yakkety-yak and panic induced by politicians and law enforcement. Voters in Massachusets spoke by a huge margin to decriminalize marijuana months ago. Whether there is ultimate wisdom in this public decision, the nonsense of resistance itself is clear.

Would there were as much outrage against horrific prison terms for maryjane as there is towards AIG. We forget the good ol’ days of Prohibition when the kids who frequented speakeasys and ultimately forced Repeal were our grand- and great-grandparents who broke every law on the books to nail down forever their right to the most dangerous drug of all: alcohol. How cool was that? At least, in a more recent Year of Our Lord, decriminalization of weed was forged civilly and democratically.

Allow me to rest my burden for modern times and place the brouhaha in perspective. Thirty-five ago I was on a public rant about the indecent tendency at that time to refer to “alcohol and drugs” in hopes of getting the word “other” planted firmly between “and” and “drugs.” It didn’t occur to Americans that alcohol is a drug, and the news was not taken gently, let alone tolerated.

From doctors’ offices and treatment centers all over the U.S. was heard a common parental sigh of relief when told their kids were addicted to booze instead of MJ or hash: “Oh, thank God, s/he isn’t a druggie!” Wrong. What was true then continues to be so now, that the toll from alcohol abuse (not just addiction) is more costly to society, humanly and economically, than all other drugs in the top ten put together. Alcoholics outnumber other addicts up to 10-1 (1000%) . Oh, let not stop there, or you may get the wrong idea: deaths from good stiff drinks, at times, have outnumbered other overdose 33-1 (3300%). Sorry to ruin your Happy Hour.

This is even to include things ingested that are prescriptive; we are, after all, a drug culture. But such words go in one ear and out the other. Yet how short a time ago were we used to the macho image of the hard-drinking writer or journalist–check out ‘80s books like Dardis’ The Thirsty Muse and Goodwin’s Alcohol and the Writer–with keen insight into many of our faves: Hemingway, O’Neill, Steinbeck, Faulkner and loads of others (don’t forget ol’ F. Scott) whom we imagined wouldn’t have written worth a damn were their quills not dipped in a bottle of Wild Turkey. Of course, the guy who stirred up hard-drinking Good Old Boys with his song, “Oakie from Muskogie” was a user himself (both alcohol and marijuana) and, when asked from whence came his music inspiration, quoth, “Two friends of mine–Mr. Jim Beam and Mr. I.W. Harper.” Cute. His legacy is another nail in the coffin wherein lie impressionable lovers of traditional values and country music.

Unhappily, in this space, I must mince my words, to wit: at least 1 in 20 alcoholics are pre-teen; alcohol damages every gland and organ in the body; alcohol is continually advertised or abused on TV (counting the young guy who’s just gotta have a beer–and the gal who’ll do anything to make sure he gets it by dunking her pretty little head in an ice-cold tub and coming up with a brewski in her teeth); almost half of hospital admissions is alcohol-related, as are traffic fatalities; a fifth of divorces are caused by it, it’s a major contributor to up to a third of suicides in some states, and two-thirds of murder are committed under the influence. Should I mention what it’s doing to instances of child abuse, I risk depressing you to the max.

To get some grasp of the enormity of the alcohol problem–given we are so in denial of its impact vis a vis other drugs, and that Prohibition didn’t work: in the name of a better America, and to save our children, let’s all pledge to cut out drinking, say, just for Lent. If this is impossible for you, you’re part of the problem. If so, will you pledge to stop condemning marijuana and “hard drug” users as the criminals of the overall “drug problem”?

I’ve made this request in times past, and to this day I bless the one person who took the pledge.

Whether she kept it or not is known only to God.

Categorized in Social Issues
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Mar
14

A Lifetime at the Oscars

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It is not my custom to view the Oscars, but love prevailed this year, with the understanding that I could opt out should my eyes glaze over. Over prior years, I had lost appetite for people passing out valentines to each other, and “winners” meaning perhaps the more deserving are by inference “losers.” But, hey, America demands a winner! If eleven o’clock on Sunday is our most sacred hour, the Oscars are “where ego and excess have a good name,” as some wag has eloquently said.

This time, I found myself staying with the Oscars because it was a departure from the same old, same old crashing bores of yesteryear. There were actually moving parts and a host diversely talented and not trying just to be humorous–a vast improvement from Bob Hope’s too-many and very unfunny one-liners. There were also some very good actors–another departure, considering we used to try to make them out of fashion models like Faye Dunaway, Ali MacGraw, Cybil Shepherd and Lauren Hutton.

I dispute not the importance of entertainment, but the need for it on a 24/7 basis means that life among a frightful number of us must totally suck. Thoreau said the mass of humanity have lives of quiet desperation–an observation made without benefit of TV and movies. My spouse has a full life away from film and screen but in childhood fell in love with Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara. Now we have a period guestroom devoted to furnishings a la Gone With the Wind; I call it our Shrine to Something that Never Happened. She thinks guests adore the privilege of sleeping therein; I suspect they inwardly freak out at the prospect.

The horror genre of film astounds me. Were someone to grab us from behind with a loud “boo,” we would scream to not EVER do that again, on threat of a harassment suit. But that evening might find us, armed with coke and popcorn, at a flick advertised as gory and unnerving. When The Exorcist came out to a chorus of acclaim, the critic Stanley Kaufmann said all it takes to really scare us is for someone to jump out of a closet; so why are we surprised that experts with millions of dollars at their disposal are able to work the worst on our souls?

Also, we are more tolerant of the screen than with real life. The slightest gaffes of family and co-workers we take to be signs of their dementia, but it’s okay that in Star Wars, Luke returns from the climactic last battle and calls Princess Leia, “Carrie,” (Fisher, the actress); that in Cleopatra, Liz Taylor, as the queen who died in 30 BC, processed through an arch that didn’t exist for another 300 years; and in Anatomy of a Murder, Lee Remick left a café in a skirt and was clad in slacks by the time she was outside.

Nor were there catty remarks when Julia Roberts, in Pretty Woman, undressed Richard Gere in a sequence where his tie and collar went from unbuttoned to buttoned to undone again in a matter of seconds–after all, it was about sex! But with scores of technicians, including gaffers, best boys and key grips (whoever they are), not to mention a freaking director, and all the money spent, you would think someone would catch the obvious. But heaven forfend I should spill my water glass during a job interview.

I once ventured unflattering remarks about Frank Sinatra and Joan Crawford and you would have thought I dissed the pope and Mother Theresa. A woman nearby almost punched me. Joseph Campbell noted that, though actors are not in the movie theater, they “arrive” there nonetheless, as if from another plane of existence, and we accept these large, mythic figures as models. TV however creates merely celebrities, who are less our models, and more our objects of gossip–because they are seen in the familiar confines of home and not in a special “temple” like the movie theater.

Would that we were wise as Linda Blair, only a ninth-grader when she was the possessed girl in Exorcist–grossly made-up, spewed tasteless obscenities, kicked a doctor where it hurt, attacked her movie mom, puked on priests and did ugly things with a crucifix. Asked how she could, she replied, “because I didn’t really believe the story.”

Keep that in mind between now and next year’s Oscars.

Categorized in Pop Culture
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Feb
28

Greed is a Terrible Thing

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Freshly in office, president Obama told it like it is: Wall Street is a den of shamelessness. It’s a miracle!–and refreshing to hear from someone in authority, considering we low-lives get nowhere with our protestations. Knock on legislators’ doors and they’re always gone to lunch: nobody talking, nobody listening, as far as they’re concerned–and so soon after the begging stage known as a political campaign, with winsome words like, “If elected, I will LISTEN to you!” But the perks and bennies of public “service” prove to be the solvent of good intentions (“Want to see me?–Is your hat in your hand? Got a contribution? Wanna buy a senate seat?”).

Power corrupts, as we know, and absolute power, well, we know about that too. It’s also the ultimate aphrodisiac, though prior histories usually exist, to which political privilege gives absolute authorization. I’ve pored over books of forgotten lore to find where that is written and came up empty every time. My research skills must be slipping.

But greed? Holy cow, there’s a monster for you. It’s one of the Seven Deadlies, but who cares about them anymore? They are but prudish old things–just ask the corporate snakes turned up by the same plow that first unearthed Enron. Not too many years ago banks and investment houses were well-run and deserving of our trust. Then the bottom dropped out of their ethics and the fix was in on our savings and pensions. So who  died and made unethical rich bastards the God of the Western world? Bernie Madoff is just one name and face among a multitude of his ilk. No telling how many in our own towns and cities are victims of him and his unethical clones. Ah, and there goes Diogenes, shuffling by with his lamp, still looking for an honest man after all these years.

Actually, we like and respect people who have more money than they need or deserve. But it’s not them, it’s, well, the money. If they didn’t have it, we’d tell them their tie is crooked, their spouse ugly and their kids stupid. But when introduced to someone who’s loaded, we bow and scrape–and never ask how they came by it.

I recall a certain Daddy Warbucks who was a tad too evasive whilst squirming at my persistent though mannerly questions. Finally, all was too clear: beneath his code-language, he was a loan shark, something a little lower than a tumblebug. He was, nonetheless, respected for his “success.” What law says that talking  people into signing something that stands to improverish them, is okay? Well, right there, in laws written by people just like him.

I once knew of a club exclusive to rich white men. Their great service to the community was an annual drunken event where they staged a “pirate” takeover of the town as a gesture to the burg’s history. In time this raised their profile and revealed their membership policy. Public outrage was huge but the Yo-Ho-Ho boys were unrelenting. This claimed conversation at many social gatherings, at one of which, after much grousing, assertions were made that social pressure, in time, would pry open the club’s membership.

Then a woman once married to one of those Jolly Rogers, before she wisely dropped him, stood to say that we simply didn’t understand such people: they don’t care what you think, she said; they think their money makes them special, regardless if they inherited or otherwise didn’t earn it; furthermore, they think it makes them better than you, so to their minds you and your opinions don’t count.

Needless to say, that threw much water on the discussion and left us with more to grouse about. But next time you wonder how Wall Street and their ilk can continue to take public money and spend it on themselves, remember her words and ponder their meaning: such folk think they’re different, and need a good hard shake and a few years in the slammer where room and board are in abundance, just like their former bonuses–along with bountiful sex–not to mention more than they can stand. Of course, they will consider that to be so unfair but, as mentioned, it’s all part of their being “different.”

Unhappily, we too are big losers. When the crash of ‘29 came and broke the grip of corporate capitalism, Edmund Wilson commented on the “barbarism” of the era preceding it, and finally “the collapse of that stupid gigantic fraud.” So here we are again, and why do we still worship money and the greed-heads who steal it?

As Santayanna said, to ignore the past is to risk the doom of its repetition.

Categorized in Politics
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