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

Feb
07

Rush to Judgment

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When radio commentator Rush Limbaugh said, in early 2009,that he hoped  Obama “fails,” it set off a storm of criticism across America, along with staunch   defense from his “dittoheads”  (As a news column, these comments were  reprinted through much of the U.S. during February of that year)


When a certain Limbaugh said of president Obama, “I hope he fails,” he was but “Rush-ing” to save his radio audience and keep himself in the public eye. His long insistence that he is merely an “entertainer” is far too modest and, as such, so unlike him. Forget Al Franken, Limbaugh is the real comedian among publicly political voices or, in truth, a bad joke. I have hurt so many feelings in the hometown he and I share when I call him a “demagogue,” but for some reason it’s okay in those parts to wish doom on the president, and thereby on all of us.

Our families knew each other, a la all small towns, and theirs was nice (a trait lost on Rusty, as he was called) and, yes, conservative, whereas he is somewhere to the Right of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Men in the family tended to law as a profession (Rusty excepted). Granddad Rush, Sr. was a smallish man who practiced till his death at 102. Rush, Jr. was a fighter pilot who, after exiting the cockpit, burgeoned to considerable proportions, as has Rusty, who was one of the few in the family I didn’t know of: by the time I left our Mississippi River town, he was but seven years old.

Later, I could tell by that distinctive voice on radio that he was a Limbaugh but was appalled at the nonsense he spewed and assumed it would come to naught. Time proved me wrong and I wrote a feature on him that led to a phone call with his wonderful mom, a down-home gal originally from Dunklin County in Missouri’s Bootheel. I asked what she really thought when first hearing him on radio. “I was shocked and embarrassed,” she admitted, and said she called him right away to say that his daddy and granddaddy were conservative, but not  mean like Rusty.

In ancient times,demagogues were populists, but in these latter days have shrunk to Webster’s definition of those who use popular prejudices and false claims to gain power of sorts. That fits Rush, as it did one Father Charles Coughlin. If you know of or remember Coughlin, you are among the few and either alive in that era or have bothered to read a book once in a while. I wager that Rush’s fate, in time, will be that of Coughlin’s; meantime, he’ll take his money and run, since that’s the American Way, but there’s a lot to be lost if the political game changes enough to make him a dinosaur of the airwaves.

Father Coughlin led a Depression-era church  near Detroit called the Shrine of the Little Flower. Don’t let that harmless-sounding moniker fool you: like Rush, his Pentium-chip was out of whack, and he turned to schemes far from sweetness and light.

I suggest that Limbaugh is taking pages from Coughlin’s book during this economic crisis. Rush lived off the fat of the land–and fattened himself in the process–while the GOP ruled, money flowed, and Rush’s supporters imagined he made it all happen. Silly them. They’re called “ditto-heads” for their blind allegiance to his talking head; no one has told them that when two people think exactly alike, one of them isn’t thinking. Multiply that by their present number and you arrive at a scary sum of mindlessness.

Coughlin took it as his mission in life to spit unholy venom at a popular new president who was quickly raising hopes amid the Great Depression–none other than FDR–and please note familiar themes here, as history has an annoying tendency to repeat itself. The good Reverend demonized the New Deal and was expert at manipulating the rhetoric of hate and fear, thereby gaining the ear of those who most felt the economic pinch. Out of it sprang an infamous movement similar to Rush and his minions at present.

Whatever Limbaugh’s audience now, in 1936 Coughlin’s was ten million, absolutely huge for the time. Historians say that were it not for Roosevelt’s political mastery, Coughlin could have shaken the country off course in that election and left us in a sorry state to deal with Hitler and, later, Pearl Harbor. Instead, his party and movement fell apart and Coughlin shuffled off to history’s junk heap.

A final note: Coughlin’s slogan was, “Roosevelt or Ruin.” Sounds a lot like Rush’s slap at Obama: “I hope he fails.”

Are you listening, Rusty? Of course not; he’s rush-ing to judgment with both eyes on his ratings.

Categorized in Politics
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Feb
01

Hail to the Chief Celebrity

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The election of a president occasions a celebrity event called an Inauguration. In the case of the accession of a black person is an anomaly but does not mean that America is now free of racist tendencies.

The GOP got its knickers all in a twist as Obama gathered admirers here and all over the world, forgetting how they had adored their boy Reagan–who was what America had always wanted for prez: a movie star. In time, he morphed into a grandfather figure too, so it was a two-fer.

Reagan raised taxes four times in eight years, never gave the Religious Right what they wanted, stayed away from church, and still was considered the second coming of Christ. He was really their second coming of Roosevelt; FDR had a pedestal on Olympus for actually doing something, and eager for a Republican Roosevelt before the end of the 20th century, the GOP settled for a Cardboard Messiah. And all done with smoke and mirrors, just like on movie sets. After the financial crisis of his first term, when he was nowhere to be seen–thus creating the much stronger Federal Reserve that we know and love today–the Gipper’s State of the Union spiel credited himself for the recovery, while cameras faded on him as he invoked the faux declaration, “Not bad, not bad at all…”

The Reagan presidency was possible after George Murphy, another Hollywood refugee, got elected Senator from California. Arnold the Governator was to be next, but his state was suddenly a liability–from  Gold Rush to Gold Rust. It’s just as well; when he was a champ body-builder, I thought the crowd that cared about those muscle-heads was the thinnest slice of Americana. Imagine my surprise when he parlayed that, and his Terminator flicks, into Head Cheese of the Golden State. People say California is nuts anyway, but there really is no word for what goes on there; we haven’t made one up yet and should do so soon. Here’s a guy who calls political rivals “girlie-men,” forgetting when the state had a website for women to report if he had groped them.

So when Barack got cheers from Boston to Berlin for being an “attractive” leader, the Grand Old Party did protested too much. The idolization of celebrities is a free people’s way of re-creating royalty. When someone bragged that Obama’s Inauguration would show the Brits we don’t need royals–all we showed was we can have them while denying that we do. More smoke and mirrors but, hey, that’s Hollywood for ya.

Celebs go way back, not counting Adam and Eve, who had no one else around to ogle them. In time, you didn’t even have to be real to be a celebrity. Guinevere was one, but she was fictional; married to the greatest king, Arthur, she took to bed his mortal enemy, which now would land her book and movie deals, but in those days meant a one-way ticket to a convent to mull over her mistakes. Lady Godiva was both celebrity and a real person who rode nude through Coventry as a deal for her husband to lower the town’s taxes–not something Laura Bush would have done, but Sarkozy’s wife is clearly a prospect. In Guinevere there is a hint of Princess Diana, and in Godiva more than a touch of Madonna–and I don’t mean the one with the famous Baby.

Then there’s Robin Hood, another fiction, idolized for robbing the rich and giving much less than was imagined to the poor. Had he been an honest man, he would have gained no praise at all, so go figure. But he was “gallant” and one who showed “respect” for women–which is code for “ladies’ man,” and why not, given those cute little tights worn by him and his very merry men.
So here’s to all who fuel our dreams and are more highly regarded than deserved. In truth, every man is a heel to his valet, and as for women, well, who can forget Leona Helmsley. Truth is stranger than fiction, not to mention more painful. Replace the word “fiction” with “celebrity,” and the difference is negligible. Since Reagan, we’ve wanted them for presidents, too.

Except for George, who totally blew it.

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Jan
25

Just Do the Right Thing

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The election of a black president is
not to say we have vanquished
American racism

Beware of thinking this is a new day in race relations. It is and it isn’t. For many young people, black and white, the civil rights movement is ancient history; the rest of us remember vividly segregated schools and separate drinking fountains. Even today, voting irregularities reveal disenfranchisement by new and insidious forms of discrimination.

Yes, America made Cosby, Oprah, Denzel, countless athletes and other black celebrities their entertainment darlings, and hip hop stars are setting popular standards in style and music. Above and below the old Mason-Dixon line hundreds of black mayors, congresspersons and governors have been elected.

Be not deceived. Racism is a deep and insidious sickness of the human spirit. Unchecked, it is obvious; checked, it is subtle, and found where least expected–sometimes in our hearts, which is important to understand.

In 1851, Boston’s Rev. Theodore Parker already was known for transporting runaway slaves, harboring them in his church, re-marrying them as free people, and warned that he would suffer no marshals to enter his parsonage to take back slaves to Southern plantations. He wrote his sermons with a loaded pistol nearby to show that he meant what he said. What put a civilized northern American city at such extremes?

Slaves soon were freed but racism stayed; it merely changed to what it could get away with. As late as 1919, Southern newspapers reviewed lynchings the way movies and concerts are today: one was deplored as amateurish; another deemed “good” and “orderly.” Southern women who organized “for the Prevention of Lunching” failed to get support from Baptist and Methodist churches.

Blacks were forced out of Atlanta in the Year of Our Lord 1912 after two were merely accused of raping a white woman. When compensation was sought in 1987 for those who lost property in 1912, the 25,000 Americans nationwide who came in support were met by jeers and bottles from white citizens.

One of the first Civil Rights martyrs was Medgar Evers of Mississippi. When he came home late from an NAACP meeting in 1963 a bullet from a deer rifle hit him in the back, exploded from his chest and through the living room window before lodging in the kitchen refrigerator. The plaintive cries of his children in the midnight are sounds no moral person can refuse to  hear,     regardless of the passing of years.

But the violence would spread north. Young whites who beat and chased three blacks in Howard Beach, NY in 1986, causing one victim to run onto a highway where he was killed by a car, were said by white residents not to be “bad” boys, merely up to a “prank” and blameless, given that their victim had “endangered himself” by attempting to escape them. We forget too that King couldn’t always count on the Kennedys and turned to leftover Eisenhower judges and liberal Republicans like Rockefeller for support, but he had to dodge J. Edgar Hoover, who used the FBI to ruin him at every turn.

By calling all Americans to justice, and telling black followers they were there “first and foremost as American citizens…to apply their citizenship to its fullness”–and for their “love for democracy,” King’s movement became an American cause, and racism a national, not merely a black, problem.

Author May Sarton wrote after his death, “Now we have buried the face we never knew…silenced the voice we never heard”; and that each of us “must awake, inflamed with the inexorable truth…with acts of caring and fierce calm.”

Has anything really changed? Has racism? Campuses once scenes of civil rights activism now have increases in racial incidents. Name-calling and other conflicts worsen in high schools across the nation. Discrimination in housing continues decades after the Fair Housing Act; no longer told that skin color disqualifies them, blacks are advised that apartments are not available, or quoted higher rents and security deposits than whites.

When we let our society backslide, we do shame to America, to King and to the Civil Rights movement.  Much reform is focused on schools, for once a belief is formed, it is hard to change, and so it is with racism. We must all do the right thing. Educators, religion and the home need to stand for the right thing.

I jogged a local high school track as a class arrived for exercise. Among all those who walked and chatted together, no one accompanied or spoke to the sole black girl; adult advisors seemed unaware. What do I not know that would keep me from saying that the beginning of race relations is just that subtle? Denial of responsibility is a typical reaction, and moral citizens should make necessary admissions, so that healing and transformation may take place.

It all begs the question: Are we where we ought to be in regard to race?

If not, then we must be ready always to do the right thing.

Categorized in Race in America
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Jan
10

Celeritous Celebrity

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You’re really living in a small town when the lead story of its daily paper concerns a maiden from a nearby burg who’s chosen to be Paris Hilton’s “Best Freakin’ Friend”–oh, excuse me–”Best Friend Forever” (BFF).

Things are worse than I thought: we’re victims of an invasion by Paris’ bogus celebrity. Let heaven and nature sing: people in darkness are rescued from humdrum lives, henceforth to follow every last word about said maiden’s career. Hanging with Hilton is to be in the company of a wasted life that smiles enigmatically while walking about, oh, anywhere and doing, oh, anything. By association, we will have everlasting reason to take pride in being residents of this region: “No, I’m only from next town over, but it’s right next to that town, where Paris’ BFF is from. The paper sez so.”

Before this is deemed to be raining on a parade of distinguished accomplishment, did you ever check out Paris’ “BFF” MTV program and wonder why you’re trying to rear your children with lofty values—kids who maybe take time and trouble for trips to Katrina-devastated New Orleans or dedicate early careers to places in South America where there is real poverty—you know, things worth writing about. But as The Little Prince said, newspapers don’t write about matters of importance. So there you go. Things haven’t changed much since that insightful literary warning.

The older generation has screwed up, as it always does, but said news item gives us pause as to whether youth are the hope of the future. But here’s why: adults are complicit in the Fall of Humanity, given what we laud and honor in young people—such as emptiness, as long as it’s clothed in the sparkle of celebrity.

To save those who are slothful and lethargic from a trip to the dictionary, the word “celeritous”this?” Isn’t that what life’s all about?
 means swift-moving–hence a good adjective for “celebrity,” as both are fleeting, though much attention is gained before many celebs crash, burn, and enter rehab. After that, they move on to the junk heap of history where future archaeologists will unearth brief mention of their names and say, “Who the hell was

To doubt this report is to sleep soundly: I read also of a young man’s career goal to be a “rock star.” He made no mention of a passion for music and of great life urgency to play it; no, he just wants to be a star. We know what that means: to hell with whether it brings any measure of excellence and beauty into the world, so long as he gets the accouterment of stardom–you know, gross bucks, unsafe sex with air-headed chicks, and nonstop drugs. What’s not to like about that? His parents, too, must be awesomely proud. It brings to mind a deceased man, richly dressed and propped behind the wheel of a Cadillac, all of which is lowered into a grave by a crane while a mourner is heard to say, “Man, that’s livin’.”

Be free to confuse “accouterment” with “accouchement force’” which means forced delivery, as in childbirth, for that is how celebrity today is muscled into being. God bless America: where else in the world could so many owe so little to something so vacuous—and in such copious amounts. As the truism goes: too much of anything is ugly.

In another life I knew a colorless little editor who so wished to be “with it” that he made much of a local girl who appeared in Playboy. It too was a front-and-center story, as if she were a budding Mother Teresa. When next I saw him I suggested a better headline, to wit, “Local Girl Sheds Clothes for Hef and Named Humanitarian of the Year.” He looked at me in perplexed fashion and asked, “Now why would I do that?”

Why, indeed.

Categorized in Pop Culture
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