Archive Listing
January 31, 2012 - January 24, 2012
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
It's Sajak's
fault
EVEN JONAH IS COMPLICIT. Good of somebody to stand up and take
responsibility. Of course, nobody ever watched Pat
Sajak's show, so maybe he's not
really to blame. But somebody is. Something for Darrell Issa to look
into. But he has a lot of stuff to look into.
Just a reminder that we've been onto Olbermann for a long time.
And lest you forget, he went to Cornell.
So did I. Sorry.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Trouble
Sometimes
I'm just humbled and ashamed.
OR NOT. Before
he quit in a huff, JS charged me with being a fake. I
guess he's right in some respects. I spent half the night last night
talking to Peter, whom some of you may know as a Ron Paul afficianado,
and I couldn't make a dent in his benighted foreign policy views.
Stone-cold defeat for the fisker-in-chief. I've long regarded him as a
son and taken credit for his
abjuration of the hippie sixties politics I used to hammer him about in
a South Jersey back yard. But now he has reconnected with his
biological father and I am happy for him. At the same time, he is
anxious to promote this cursed website because he believes in me as a
writer (and because I
introduced him to quantum physics at 1:23 am.). He's willing to paper
the Internet with references to
InstaPunk, find me a Microsoft guru to deliver Shuteye Town 1999 to you all in its
original intact glory, and he shrugs off the abuse you see here every
day
as 'blog voice' and yet can't help but see as me as me, that nasty old
back yard friend.
But the weak link is me. Brizoni, my other virtual son, is on my ass
(and hard) about finishing the punk story. He says (and I'm
paraphrasing here) he won't forgive me if I don't give you all the
story of the kingships of Kobra Jones, Cadillac Mope, and Gypsy
Jackknife on South Street. Like Peter, he's willing to go out of his
way to find me the
software tools I've lost and hinted (repeatedly, thank you) I must have
to all of you --
PhotoShop and AnimationShop 5.0 . So what did I do? I passed him off to
my wife. Yes, she's a computer executive, but I -- I'm looking at me
now -- the guy who anticipated the Internet ten years in advance... I'm
running like hell from the current technology. The only text mssages I
ever send are to Peter's sister, my pride and joy and motorhead heir.
Why I keep saying I'm
old. My third virtual son,
Lake, is also disappointed in me. He's teaching, although he took a
year out of his life, along with Apotheosis, to put the Boomer Bible
online with a living ICR. He thinks I should do what Brizoni's
demanding. But I'm too noisily busy writing InstaPunk.
My response. I'm going to the Harvard-Penn game this weekend. Because
I'm a shallow asshole? Maybe. Maybe.
Peter, Brian, Joshua -- I apologize. The
last thing I want to do is let you down. No man could ever have more
brilliant and talented offspring than you, even if I'm not the real
father of any of you. I wish you were all
my sons. I'd be the proudest
man alive if even one of you were my biological child. I'm proud to
know you, regardless.
But, as I said, the weak link is me. There are times when I can hear
the faint drumbeat of poetry coming back, even at this late age. But
I'm afraid. Old poets are
generally bad poets. Why I'm going to the Harvard-Penn game this
weekend.
Afterwards, we're going to Ralph's, the best and oldest Italian
restaurant in Philadelphia. Mrs. IP comes home every night and goes to
work trying
to decipher Brizoni's clues about how to snag PhotoShop from the ether.
She doesn't know about the old poets rule. She still believes in me,
too. I'd get back to them all but I'm too busy blogging...
Okay. I have to do better. I am Harry. I am St. Nuke. I am Johnny Dodge.
I am Johnny Dodge. And I have driven the lowlands of New Jersey faster
by car and bike than most of you have ever thought
of.
I am Johnny Dodge. Still. Peter, Brian, Joshua. Still.
Whatever you think, I can still make two muskets sing like one. And I
remain as ruthless, savage, and uncivilized as you always counted on. I
am, to the end of time, the barbarian Scot you knew you knew. I'd
apologize but I can't apologize. It's my nature.
.
Monday, November 08, 2010
The One Reform
that could
Save the United States
Yeah.
Pay what they say you owe. With a check out of your own account.
HALLITES. I first thought of this many many years ago, maybe even
before
Reagan was elected president. I haven't thought of it for years. But if
the Tea Partiers are serious about reducing the size of government,
cutting spending and not just the annual rate of increase in spending,
this is the only way.
Eliminate withholding of federal income taxes, which began as a 'temporary' WWII measure. Put employers out of
the
picture as co-conspirators with the government. Give people paychecks
including all the money they
supposedly receive for their work. Then make them write their own
personal checks to the government for their tax liability. I don't care
what schedule you select -- monthly, quarterly, yearly -- although the
fairest scheme is obviously at the end of the taxable year.
The current
system represents an unwarranted assumption that your current rate of
pay, and therefore your current rate of taxation, will continue through
the end of the year. Say you lose your job halfway through the year and
can't find another job (pretty far-fetched, eh?). The taxes you've paid
in the first half of the year are a gross overpayment because of
progressive tax rates, and the government has, in fact, been borrowing
from you money you don't owe them. Note that this wrinkle is also perniciously regressive; it most penalizes those who are most financially straitened.
The likelihood of general annual tax inequity is
compounded by the fact that individual taxpayers can't know what
legitimate deductions they will have at year end until the year is
done. Because some deductions are associated with extraordinary events
like gains and losses on investments.
Indeed, everyone who receives a
tax refund in the current system should be pissed off, not happy about
what they're getting back. That refund is a no-interest loan they have
given to the government. It's money they could have invested, earned
interest on, or spent before it was devalued by the current rate of
inflation. (Yeah, I once majored in accounting in graduate business
school. Truth is, no matter how clever you think you are about money,
if you don't have to write a check to the feds on April 15, you lose.
The government has just robbed you of some of your money and left you
with no
recourse. Sorry if that upsets any of you shrewd April 14 self-filing
deduction imagineers...)
The irony of this is that all the political talk we hear about tax
rates is bunk. Nobody in the federal government can tell you what your
tax rate is. That's why your tax liability is shown on IRS documents in
the form of tax tables, dollar totals not percentages, marginal or
otherwise. If they
expressed liability in terms of percentages, they'd be open to
litigation based on the unpaid interest associated with their
presumptive, confiscatory collection methods. Does that sound right? Or
does it sound like the incredibly complicated scam it is?
But fairness isn't my point here. That's why I don't care about the
schedules. All I care about is making every Tom, Dick, and Harriet who
pays income taxes experience the pain and loss of paying them out of
their own bank accounts. Money you never see or control or have any
power
to spend is not real. Withholding from your paycheck is not a
convenience or a courtesy or a favor done you by your employer. It's
thievery, carried out by government force via your employer as
compulsory accomplice.
Do you think you're outraged by federal spending? I've got news for
you. If you've ever been happy
about your refund, you're part of the problem. If you've convinced
yourself that your annual income is actually your take-home pay, you
are part of the problem.
I want you to have to write the checks. the way the self-employed
(i.e., the smallest of small business owners) do. Why so many of the
smallest businesses go under with tax troubles and cash flow
nightmares. Why there was so little protest when the feds did away with
income averaging a generation ago. If you have a good year, you pay
through the nose. If you have a bad year the next year, the cushion you
might have had to survive is not there. You're done. Last year,
you were one of the fortunate ones who are obliged to "give back" for
your lucky prosperity. This year, you're a deadbeat on an IRS hit list.
What most people don't realize is that a lot of wage earners and
salaried folk are in the same boat. They just never realize it. Good
year, bad year, the IRS doesn't care. Plutocrat, deadbeat, the scales
that weigh taxable pounds of flesh always have a federal thumb on the scale,
always in the government's favor.
Nothing will change until individual citizens, all of them, know what
they are paying to the government. Feel
what they are paying to the government. Feel that the check they
write every month or quarter or year is a direct subtraction from the
kids' orthodonture, their college fund, the savings that might be put
toward income-producing investments, small business dreams, home
improvements, or fulfilling avocations. You are writing a check to an
entity that sees you as a usable unit, and their assumption is that the
money you send them is money they know better how to spend on your behalf than you do.
Some of their assumptions you might agree with or reluctantly accept. National
defense. Border control. Law enforcement. The courts. Roads and bridges, trash collection, fire departments. (Though why do budget cuts always lay off these essentials instead of the constantly rising tide of invisible bureaucrats? When's the last time you saw a sad exodus from a city or a state or federal office building of indifferent, paper-pushing government clerks defunded by budget cuts? No. You've never seen it. Closed police precincts and fire stations and mounting garbage piles are always the direct price of our spending protests. The DMV always seems to retain its full complement of layabouts.) I dare say most of us are even willing to contribute to a safety net
within limits for those who would otherwise fall through the cracks.
But how much more than that our elected representatives spend to look philanthropic by proxy, give away for favors and influence, and piss away on
quid-pro-quo deals and interest groups and utter bullshit, is your
business. Because you're writing the checks.
And you just might have a wholly different view of how much
accountability they have for their decisions and how closely you
should pay attention to their decisions. The reality of it is that we
are all paying for all of it, and all the waste and insanity is coming
directly out of our own personal accounts. A system that doesn't
represent reality but does everything possible to disguise reality and
cheat on reality is inherently corrupt.
Think about it. One reform. A reform that's a hell of a lot easier and more effective than rewriting the tax code (fair tax, schmair tax) for thousands of pages and debating it for multiple years. One simple bill. End withholding. Up or down. Real spending cuts and real tax reform would be sure to follow.
It would change everything.
If you agree, pass it on.
Zenyatta
WE
GAVE OUR STANDARDS. Everyone knows I'm a male chauvinist. But this
weekend I saw a horse race I will remember as long as Secretariat's
victory at the Belmont. I saw Zenyatta's bid to win her 20th race of 20
entered.
Then I saw ESPN's crawler. "Zenyatta loses -- comes in second by a
head."
Loses? By a head? Try a nostril. And besides, the coverage made it
sound like she'd been beaten. A horse named Blame outran her. You know.
A male horse.
Which is why I want to go on the record. Because I know when I'm seeing
genius. Always have. Always will. My wife is a horsewoman. Hates horse racing. Hadn't ever
heard of Zenyatta before this particular race day. But even she had to
watch.
So we watched. What did I see? What they tried to do cinematically with
Sea Biscuit, only in real life. I've never seen a horse so dead last as Zenyatta after the first half
mile. My wife -- the horse person -- said, "Sorry. No way we she can
win. It's all over. That's just way
too much distance to make up. All done."
And then she came. Like a fucking freight train. Making every other
horse in the field look like he was standing still. Like a fucking
freight train. I've never seen anything like it. Not even Secretariat.
He was never coy. He just smacked your ass. He was Secretariat.
Zenyatta, on the other hand, is a tease: "I'll let you get this far ahead and then I'll run
you down like a dog." That's how fast she is. You could see it
happening this time, too. Way, way, way
back and then the glorious rush. Twice
everybody else's speed. Ten, maybe even five more yards would have done
it. Uuuuuh.
Blame won? Like an exhausted
fighter who manages to duck and retreat and hide in the last round tp
squeak out a win on points. Zenyatta was eating his ass and she was
clearly the faster horse, eating up ground at a rate hardly anyone has
ever seen before.
Sadly, she just mis-timed the finishing line. There's absolutely no
doubt who was the better horse,
Imagine that it was the Belmont. With another eighth mile to go.
HA Blame? Bullshit. An exhausted also-ran.
I'm liking the female
runners these days. And I will never ever forget the sight of Zenyatta
running down her opposition at the Breeder's Cup. If you can forget it
or explain it away, screw you. If that's a loss, so are all of you.
P.S.
Just a reminder that Secretariat was, well, Secretariat:
"Boy.
What are we going to see today?"
Why does it still bring tears to the eyes? Because, oh you dimwit
millennials. Because.
Friday, November 05, 2010
Beware of Milady
Dangerously
evil, with excuses, infinite wiles, and a mercenary obsession.
AMAZON.
Here's a sobering
forecast from the National Review
about the probable fate of the Tea Party d'Artagnans who are riding to
our rescue in Washington.
A
Pig Walking on his Hind Legs
The Post
ruminates today on whether the new crop of anti-Washington
congressmen will go native, as so much of the class of 1994 did. Some great quotes
suggest the answer is yes:
“They run against Washington
calling it a cesspool and discover that it’s really a hot tub,”
said Craig Shirley, president of Shirley and Bannister, a conservative
public relations shop based in Alexandria.
and:
Fourteen of those 73 freshmen
[from 1994] remain in the House, but many more are still in Washington.
“A lot of them went on to have relationships with big lobbies or law
firms here,” Killian says. “Most decided, ‘It’s great in Washington and
I want to stay, so I’ll figure out a way.’ People want to take you to
dinner all the time, and everybody’s hanging on your every word.
“By and large, they became
indistinguishable from the people they replaced.”
My natural pessimism leads me to think
the same will happen this time. As Orwell wrote at the end of Animal
Farm:
The creatures outside looked from pig
to man, and
from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was
impossible to say which was which.
The only way to remedy this is to shrink
the importance and activity of the national government (both at home and
abroad) because talent and money will always flow toward power. But,
once in possession of power, only extraordinary
men like George Washington or Cincinnatus are going to give it up. And
while Congress may not be, as Twain wrote, America’s only
“distinctively native American criminal class,” they’re not Washingtons
either.
Which suggests to me a reading recommendation for all those of Tea Party
bent: Alexandre Dumas's The Three
Musketeers. How could it possibly be relevant? It features a
character who may be the ultimate villain in the entire history of
fiction, greater even than Iago, who was, after all, a creature of
intellect. Not so with Milady de Winter. She was far more akin to the
scorpion of the fable who fatally stung the frog on whose back she was
riding across a torrential river: "Why?" asked the stricken frog. "We
will both die now." The scorpion replied, "It is simply my nature."
Wikipedia actually contains a biography of
the Milady de Winter. Here are some highlights:
A capable and beautiful spy, Milady is
an unusual example of a strong, independent woman with a tragic and
checkered past, filled with the seduction and willful destruction of
men who will provide her with monetary support. Milady is remorseless
and unrepentant for her countless "misdeeds". Late in the novel, after
the reader is already presented with numerous examples of her villainy
to the crown, she is revealed to be the wife of Athos, one of the
musketeers in the title of the novel...
After being expelled by Athos, she winds up in the employ of Cardinal
Richelieu, working as his spy, assassin, and messenger. She steals the
jewels that Anne of Austria, wife of King Louis XIII, entrusted to her
lover the English Duke of Buckingham, but the intended scandal is
averted.
D'Artagnan himself later meets Milady and falls under her spell...
When the Catholic Richelieu lays siege to the Hugenot city of La
Rochelle, the Protestant Buckingham leads an unsuccessful expedition to
assist the besieged. In a house near La Rochelle, Athos and his friends
Porthos and Aramis overhear a conversation between the Cardinal and
Milady, plotting to kill Buckingham before he can make another attempt.
Even if he is the enemy of France, the musketeers regard Buckingham,
the man, as a friend. They commit treason to the crown, and thus warn
him of the threat and upon arriving in England, Milady is arrested and
imprisoned in a house by her hostile brother-in-law, the new Lord de
Winter. She seduces her jailer, John Felton, persuading him that she is
a Puritan at heart and that Buckingham is persecuting her because she
refused his advances. Felton has his own grievances against Buckingham,
whom he blames for his lack of promotion in the army. He thus proceeds
to murder the Duke (a real-life event), but after carrying out the
murder he is aghast to see Milady's ship sailing away without him. He
is later hanged.
Returning to France, Milady carries out the murder of d'Artagnan's
landlady and lover, Mlle Constance Bonacieux, when the two happen upon
one another in a convent. For her multiple murders, and for the other
deaths she has caused, Milady is judged by the musketeers, Lord de
Winter, and by the executioner of Lille, the group having proceeded to
track and hunt Milady after the death of Constance. The executioner of
Lille, who placed the brand upon her shoulder years ago, beheads her in
one of the last scenes of the novel after a mock trial.
Don't get ahead of me here. Milady's not
a stand-in for Nancy Pelosi, that dumbass Richelieu in the kingdom of Obama. She is, to my mind, far more a symbol of
the Washington, DC, culture, that relentlessly corrupting and
unscrupulous vortex of near-infallible seduction to the dark side. What
is most clear about Milady is that no one is immune -- even those who
know full well how terrible and treacherous she is. Even the hero of
heroes, d'Artagnan.
Why I'm recommending you read the book, not just the synopsis. The
scene in which the musketeers abduct her in the dead of night and (dare I say) frog-march
her toward execution is as terrifying as any horror movie you've ever
seen. The musketeers assign guards to carry her along, but their fear
of her is such that as soon as they detect any conversation between
Milady and a guard, they dismiss and replace him. He is tainted, no
longer to be trusted. That's the image that came to me when I read the National Review entry.
Do not think that anything has yet been won. The naifs we have elected
are just so many earnest Feltons; Milady is a genius at spotting
every man's weakness and turning it to her own ends. The watchwords are
vigilance, suspicion, and even paranoia. Milady is waiting, and she is
an almost unstoppably mesmerizing monster.
Maybe
you can't understand the words, but German is the language of control.
Not to be a downer or anything...
P.S.
Don't trust any of the
movies. They're all uncomfortable with the idea of multiple armed men
illegally herding a woman to her beheading. Somehow, the seductress is
always vitiated
as a figure of pure evil. Why seduction is never wholly defeated; it is too often too beautiful to slaughter with the coldness it deserves. Only the original gets it right. So much for
the illuminating power of the canon. We censor it when it offends our
wishful thinking. But we do
still have the original to look back to. If we have the will.
SWARTHMORONS.35.9-13.
Time for a fisking. Why bother? (There was a debate at InstaPunk
about it. See the Comments here.)
I wound up siding with DJ Moore (post what you've got so far and quit)
and Brizoni (Kill him...!)
Here's a bio that
should
make most
people sick:
Tim Wise is among the most prominent
anti-racist writers and educators in the United States, and has been
called, “One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics
of white privilege in the nation,” by best-selling author and professor
Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown University. Wise, who was recently
named one of “25 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World,” by Utne
Reader, has spoken in 49 states, on over 600 college campuses, and to
community groups across the nation. He has also lectured
internationally in Canada and Bermuda on issues of comparative racism,
race and education, racism and religion, and racism in the labor market.
Wise is the author of five books, including White Like Me: Reflections
on Race from a Privileged Son; Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in
Black and White; Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections
From an Angry White Male; Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and
White Denial in the Age of Obama, and his latest, Colorblind: The Rise
of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity. He has
contributed essays to twenty-five books, and is one of several persons
featured in White Men Challenging Racism: Thirty-Five Personal Stories,
from Duke University Press. He received the 2001 British Diversity
Award for best feature essay on race issues, and his writings have
appeared in dozens of popular, professional and scholarly journals.
Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has
conducted trainings with physicians and medical industry professionals
on how to combat racial inequities in health care. He has also trained
corporate, government, entertainment, military and law enforcement
officials on methods for dismantling racism in their institutions, and
has served as a consultant for plaintiff’s attorneys in federal
discrimination cases in New York and Washington State.
In summer, 2005, Wise served as an adjunct faculty member at the Smith
College School for Social Work, in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he
co-taught a Master’s level class on Racism in the U.S. In 2001, Wise
trained journalists to eliminate racial bias in reporting, as a
visiting faculty-in-residence at the Poynter Institute in St.
Petersburg, Florida. From 1999-2003, Wise was an advisor to the Fisk
University Race Relations Institute, in Nashville, and in the early
’90s he was Youth Coordinator and Associate Director of the Louisiana
Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups
organized for the purpose of defeating neo-Nazi political candidate,
David Duke. He graduated from Tulane University in 1990 and received
antiracism training from the People’s Institute for Survival and
Beyond, in New Orleans.
Wise has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs, is a
regular contributor to discussions about race on CNN, and was featured
in a segment on ABC’s 20/20, in 2007.
Sad, sad, sad.
Why do I say that? Because he's a man with a one-note career, and he's
a phony at that. Herewith the fisking that proves it
An Open
Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful
Temper Tantrum Posted on November 3, 2010
For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass
Scotch you drink.
And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue
Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor. [So everyone who disagrees with you is a
drunk. Good to know.]
Whatever the case, and whatever your economic station, know this…
You need to drink up.
And quickly.
And heavily.
Because your time is limited.
Real damned limited. [Do you write
books this way?]
So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking
away in the corners of your consciousness.
The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left.
Not much more now.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
Tick.
Tock. [Yawn.]
I know, you think you’ve taken “your country back” with this election —
and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking, cuz
that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how
dare anyone else say otherwise — but you are wrong. [Speak for yourself, John.]
You have won a small battle in a larger war the meaning of which you do
not remotely understand. [Let me
guess. You're going to explain why you're smarter than everyone else...]
‘Cuz there is nothing even slightly original about you. [As opposed to the ultimate originality of
you. Got it.]
There have always been those who wanted to take the country back. [You must have majored in journalism. One
sentence = one paragraph. Congratulations.]
There were those who, in past years, wanted to take the country back to
a time of enslavement and indentured servitude. [Who were those people exactly? Please be
specific.]
But they lost .[No shit.]
There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when children
could be made to work in mines and factories, when workers had no legal
rights to speak of, when the skies in every major city were heavy with
industrial soot that would gather on sidewalks and windowsills like
volcanic ash. [There were those who
made up fantasy enemies who embodied all that was worst in humankind
and then pretended that their fantasies were all the authority figures
they spent their lives rebelling against. So? And there were those who
bored the shit out of everybody because they hated their parents and
pretended that personal hatreds were synonymous with social justice.]
But they lost. [No shit, again. Are
you starting to see a pattern here, Lochinvar? Your worst fears are the
same as your fantasies.]
There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when women could
not vote, or attend any but a few colleges, or get loans in their own
names, or start their own businesses. [Now
you're
fucking
with reality.
It's people of your kind who
have done more to keep women enslaved than the people you hate. You're
the ones who have decided that women who aren't leftists are fair game
to be derided as whores,sluts,
and
worse.]
[TIME OUT. Anaphora is a figure of
speech that uses constant repetition of opening phrases as a rhetorical
device. "This is a country in which..." "There are those who..." Thing
is, it gets really tiresome. It's not writing. It's bad ad copy. Just
saying.]
But they lost. [Who's they? Sorry.
I'm losing track. Something, perhaps, about the thudding boredom of
your prose is putting me to sleep.]
There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when blacks “had
no rights that the white man was bound to respect,” – this being the
official opinion of the Supreme Court before those awful days of
judicial activism, now decried by the likes of you – and when people of
color could legally be kept from voting solely because of race, or
holding certain jobs, or living in certain neighborhoods, or run out of
other towns altogether when the sun would go down, or be strung up from
trees. [Let me guess. Anyone who
disagrees with you is one of those people.]
But they lost. [Jeez. Do you know
anything about pacing, let alone writing....?]
And you will lose. [Good Lord. Did
you really write your masters thesis this way? Did you submit in
crayon?]
So make a note of it. [I promise. In
crayon.]
Tweet it to yourself. [Shit. My
tweet thing doesn't have a crayon option.]
Put it on your Facebook wall and leave it there so you’ll remember that
I told you so. [Will do. uh, who
told me so? Sorry. I forget. Also, I don't have a Facebook page. Does
that make me a racist? I suppose it does. So so sorry.]
It is coming, and soon. [WHAT is
coming?! You and your hard-on about race relations? Or something else?
Have you ever heard of an actual declarative sentence that doesn't
consist mostly of antecedentless pronouns?]
This isn’t hubris. It isn’t ideology. It is not wishful thinking. [uh, then what is it, kemo sabe? I was
pretty sure it was all three till you told me it wasn't. Now I'm
confused...]
It is math. [Math? Really? Like a
guy who can't write a simple sentence knows something about math?]
Not even advanced math. Just simple, basic, like 3rd grade math. [Oh. Third grade math? That I can
believe.]
The kind of math that proves how your kind — mostly older white folks
beholden to an absurd, inaccurate, nostalgic fantasy of what America
used to be like — are dying. [You're
going to do that with simple addition and subtraction? Can't wait.]
You’re like the bad guy in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot
five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will eventually
pass — even if it takes four sequels to make it happen — but who in the
meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk
by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead this
time. [Oh. Sorry. You weren't
talking about math or even arithmetic. You were talking about counting.
Damn if I don't feel intimidated.]
Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends. [I'll bite. How does this movie end?]
Our ankles survive. [Huh?]
You do not. [Come again. If your
ankles survive, everything important survives? Well... maybe... given
the level of intellect you've shown so far, maybe your ankles are as
smart as the rest of you.]
Michael Meyers, Freddie Kreuger, Jason, and that asshole husband in
that movie with Julia Roberts who tracks her down after she runs away
and changes her identity–they are all done. Even that crazy fucker in
Saw is about to be finished off for good. Granted, he’s gonna be
popping out in 3-D to scare the kiddies, so he isn’t going quietly. But
he’s going, as all bad guys eventually do. [uh, what? I confess it, dude. You've
totally lost me here.]
And in the pantheon of American history, conservative old white people
have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic
and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of
American with others on equal terms.
[Which follows from which particular antecedent proposition exactly...?]
Fine, keep it up. It doesn’t matter.
[Keep what up? Our incredibly extenuated suspension of disbelief that you
can actually write, have something to say, and will ultimately get to
some point us lowly ignoramuses might actually recognize...? Good luck
with that.]
Because you’re on the endangered list.
[Aw. What endangered list?]
And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you
are not worth saving. [Because bald
eagles, unlike white males of European extraction, aren't stone killers
who live high above their prey, looking for any any opportunity to
swoop down and eat the most helpless prey they can find. Right.]
In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people
around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows
Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you
hold so near and dear to your heart. [uh,
I
challenge
you to diagram this sentence, er paragraph. I grant you
it's fiery. It's just not a sentence.]
There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the
good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who
actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach about
them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious feelings,
or those of the so-called “greatest generation” — a bunch whose white
contingent was top-heavy with ethical miscreants who helped save the
world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of it
here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil rights
struggle. [Let me get this straight.
Accuracy increases when the people who actually remember the
times in question are no longer alive to question your historiography.
I see. One small example of your logic: the Republicans you despise so
much were not "ethical miscreants who" didn't "lift a finger on
behalf of the civil rights
struggle." They're the ones who passed the Civil Rights bill by a
greater margin than the Democrats were able to muster. Perhaps that's
the rewriting of history you have in mind? But why?]
It’s OK. Because in about forty years, half the country will be black
or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it. [uh, as long as they're Americans, who
gives a flying fuck what color they are? Oh. That's right. You do.]
Nothing, Senõr Tancredo. [You
must have me confused with somebody else. Almost all of us are not
named Tom Tancredo. Funny how that works.]
Nothing, Senõra Angle, or Senõra Brewer, or Senõr
Beck. [You've got your accents
wrong, The mañana should be on the 'n,' not the 'o.']
Loy tiene muy mal, hijo de Puta. [Thanks. Reminds me of my favorite
song...
My favorite
because my mother loved it. She, of course, was a white supremacist
from way back.]
And by then you will have gone all in as a white nationalist movement —
hell you’ve all but done that now — thus guaranteeing that the folks of
color, and even a decent size minority of us white folks will be able
to crush you, election after election, from the Presidency on down to
the 8th grade student council. [Absolutely,
positively
right.
Unless Marco Rubio, Governor Martinez, and Governor
Sandoval can talk some sense into us in the interim.]
Like I said, this is math. And numbers don’t lie. [Of course they do. Like all tools, they're sibject to the person using them. In your case they lie like rugs.]
Bottom line, this too shall pass. [Which
is where we're going to cut
you off. You go on and on and on about absolutely nothing. You're a
monomaniac with nothing to say. Nothing. Whatever. And everything you
do say is wrong. Here's what's really sad. You've wasted your entire
life on a delusion. You fucking majored in White Guilt. Guess what?
You're a pea-brain. Nothing can save you from that fate. Not even being
the lone white man who feels the pain of all the minorities. Your only
claim to fame is based on the white superiority you everywhere disdain.
Your views about race and equality are supposed to matter more than
others because you're a white man saying it. Pitiful.]
Go to hell, Tim Wise. It's where you belong. You're a racist,
pontificating sonofabitch with a third-rate mind. And you've never
written a decent, compelling paragraph in your life.
End of lesson.
Thursday, November 04, 2010
All Right. A Little
Gloating.
Sarah's
a
pistol.
Scratch
that. She's a bear.
JOY
IS ITS OWN REWARD EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE. Okay. We're human, too.
The job ahead of us is daunting, but we
did have a big victory. For example, Jon Stewart felt compelled to
treat Chris Wallace of Fox News like a human being.
He even plugged Fox News Sunday.
(For
the
wrong
reason,
of
course, but still...)
And there's this
gem from the Glenn Beck Show. Take the link.
It's
worth enduring their clunky software. You'll be laughing out loud. It's
really reminiscent of Mad Magazine
back when it was just zany and, uh, funny.
There's this, too. Kanye West apologizing
to George W. Bush.
The former commander-in-chief revealed
in an interview that he recalls the hip hopper's 2005 charge that Bush
"doesn't care about black people" as a low point in his tenure as
president.
"It was one of the most disgusting moments in my presidency," Bush said
in an interview with Matt Lauer of the moment he heard about West's
comments during a benefit telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bush explained that he interpreted the comment as a clear accusation of
racism.
Bush reportedly blasts West in his new memoir, Decision Points. "I
didn't appreciate it then. I don't appreciate it now...I resent it,
it's not true," he told Lauer of West's accusation.
But after hearing Bush's recent reaction to his comments, West says he
can relate to the former president.
"I definitely can understand the way he feels, you know, to be accused
of being a racist in any way, because the same thing he happened to
me," West said Wednesday in an interview with 97.9 "The Box," referring
back to the aftermath of his outburst against country princess Taylor
Swift.
West was vilified as -- at best, a bully -- and at worst, a racist,
after he stormed the stage at the 2009 Video Music Awards to declare
that Beyonce should have gotten the best female video ward instead of
Swift.
The public outcry prompted the newly "more sensitive" West a year later
to write a song for Swift and to express his regret over the incident
in a long Twitter soliloquy a year later. It's the Swift saga, an
experience that he told New York radio station Hot 97 was "bigger to me
than the Bush moment," that gave him empathy, West said.
"I think we're all quick to pull the race card in America," the hip hop
mogul observed of his run-in with Bush. "And now I'm more open, and the
poetic justice that I feel, to have went through the same thing that he
went [through] - and now I really more connect with him on just a
humanitarian level."
Which is more appropriate than he knows, given the slam-dunk rebuttal
by
outcome of Dem accusations of racism against Tea Partiers and
Republicans this
cycle.
After the 2006 midterm elections, many
in the chattering class declared the GOP had been reduced to a
“regional party” – white, male, and Southern. Since President Obama’s
election in 2008, the Leftist mainstream media has worked diligently to
paint much of the opposition to his policies as the bigoted and
deranged spasms of a marginalized, racist conservative base. The tea
party movement represented “racism, straight up” according to political
philosopher Janeane Garofalo. Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Eugene
Robinson, and Bob Herbert practically took turns writing weekly columns
slandering conservatives using flagrant race baiting, including an
embarrassing election-day screed from Robinson. Chris Matthews
complained that the political Right was “monochromatic” for his taste.
And the Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wondered aloud how
anyone of Hispanic descent could possibly be a Republican. Then came
the 2010 elections.
The midterm election not only busted the myth that the GOP is a
regional party – seeing Republican gains in the Northeast, Midwest and
West – it also puts to rest the notion that Republicans are a lily
white party whose base won’t embrace a diverse slate of candidates. In
eight prominent contests, Republicans nominated and elected excellent
candidates and fine conservatives who also happen to be people of color
Definitely and absolutely read the whole thing. It spells out the
diversity of the conservative electorate, and the only thing it's light
on is the extraordinary number of women
who competed, withstood horrifying
slanders, and won nevertheless. To hell with all the damn
hypocritical, soul-sick liberals, who are tolerant until some minority
pawn tries to step out of his or her assigned box.
Watch
the whole thing. But the part I was looking for was the scene, only alluded to at the end, where referees try to fix the outcome. "Not another yard" is the central idea. Bearing
in mind that the conservative team now consists of men, women,
African-Americans, Indian-Americans, Mexican- Americans, Puerto-Rican Americans,
Cuban-Americans, and, well, Titans.
Sometimes, a little gloating is a confrontation with truth. And there's
also something about the "little people," who just might be "stronger" than the elites, no
matter how big or small or male or female or white or black or brown or
red or yellow they are. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it. Unless we would
anyway. Because it feels so good.
P.S.
Speaking of George W.
Bush, I still can't get over this scene. He and his dad at the Texas
Rangers Game 4 of the World Series. Such a casually great strike thrown
across the heart of the plate. (Can't find the Fox Sports footage that
proves this, so the following will have to do.)
It was a good pitch. Unless
you saw it for yourselves, you'll have to take my word for it.
Something about how life is.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Sober Joy
The End of the Beginning
THE DAY AFTER THE DAY BEFORE. The result was okay. But just
okay. Remember that. It's hard to resist the notion, for example, that
there's something "off" about Rand Paul. You know what I mean. I'm not
happy with him being the face of the tea party movement. His wife is
pretty. But can you imagine hearing that keening, curiously affectless
voice all day long in your
house?
This morning I watched The Daily Show.
It
was
funny.
But charm isn't intelligence or a willingness to admit error and hypocrisy. As Jim
Treacher makes very clear.
The thing to watch out for now is the Great Liberal Sucker Punch, or as
Laura Ingraham so deftly put it, the Lucy swipe-away-the-football
routine which has almost invariably fooled Republicans in the past.
As I write this, Obama is eating some humble pie in his press
conference. He's still supercilious and we're still too dumb to
understand what he was doing, but he's at least acknowledging how
average Americans might interpret his policies as government overreach.
Except that he's not changing any of his views on healthcare, for
example. He's willing to talk about energy but not apparently about
taxes. At least he's not bringing it up. Two promising developments. The
press is asking tough questions. And Obama is being
uncharacteristically articulate without a teleprompter. He insists he
wants to talk to Republicans. Lucy...?
Still. I have to admit I'm liking him more than I have at any time in
the
last three years. He's standing there and taking the questions like a
man. He's not really budging on any of his ideological issues, but he is willing to take the beating he
admits he received. He seems, for once, human and, well, abashed. He's actually used the word "shellacking." Good for
him. Although, when pressed, he has a tendency to revert to how he's
"different, with a funny name," and so forth. Sigh. I wish I could trust him. I just can't. It feels like he's trying to play us yet
again. Damn.
Advice. Make note of contact information for the new Republicans in
congress. Pepper them ceaselessly with reminders of what they've been
sent there to do.
The best news. The real slaughter was at the state level. Republican
governors, Republican legislatures. The most since Reconstruction. The
states now have the power to fight back against federal mandates and
incursions on personal liberty.
All in all, only the end of the beginning. No party hats or
balloons here. There's a big big job ahead, with many pitfalls and
dangers awaiting...
The
real video is here. We're Slash, departing the Church of
Obama and singing in the wilderness. And,
yeah, it's still a wilderness. But sing. And who's in the coffin? Us or them? Both? Think, my friends.
Just in case your energy was flagging. Don't let it.
Twiumph!
SCUM.
Sad. This disgusting, nasty creep is still in the congress.
Seldom has the republic been disgraced by a lower form of lowlife than
Barney Frank. He's mean, smug, sanctimonious, and a shining exemplar of
every other stereotype attached to vicious queens the world over.What
can we say? This:
Oh well. When there's no other alternative, laugh.
