More Wacko Conservative Moments

I don't fully understand why, but I sometimes subject myself to conservative talk radio to see what sort of churlish, loutish ranting qualifies as temperate deliberation on any given day. Maybe I just like the taste of my own bile as my indignation gets exercised. I listen for about 5 minutes and then wonder what in the hell I did that for.


Well, because it's fascinating. I feel like the anthropologist of some whacked culture of foam-at-the-mouthers. (You can actually learn more, by deduction, from the ads run on these shows: Lots of predatory loan, insurance, legal, mortgage, and precious metals ads for which Rush and others act as shills: "See my good friends at _________ and remember to tell that the Rush sent you! That's ___________ and, remember, tell 'em Rush says they're the best!")

Here's a little of what I've heard and read among whacko conservatives -- just in the last few days! Take it from me, turn away now!

Rush Lumbaugh, always the triumphalist when it comes to the impact of European settlements and conquest on Native Americans, insisted that the introduction of tobacco by the Native Americans to the Europeans was far more deadly and sinister than the slaughter and displacement of Native Americans and the annihilation of their cultures and languages. I guess, if I follow Rush's logic, we white folks should go out and kill the rest of the Natives because of the noxious carcinogen that they foisted upon us. Nevermind that conservatives, until well into the 80's, consistently opposed science linking tobacco to cancer, consistently opposed the regulation of tobacco, and remain opposed to the regulation of tobacco as a drug.

Some conservative radio host on Thanksgiving morning expressed outrage toward the new scanner and the optional pat downs at airports. He said, "It's time we targeted terrorists instead of sexually assaulting Americans!!!" Well, who could disagree with that? How about we give terrorists their own line at the security checkpoint? Perhaps we could just ask terrorists to identify themselves. Or we could just not check "Americans" at all and anyone who isn't an American would be, by definition, a terrorist.

I saw a big pickup truck today pulling a huge travel trailer (basically a motorhome with no engine so you have to pull it). With bay windows busting out of the sides, this travel trailer seemed disinclined to stay within the lines of its lane on the highway. Seemed like if I passed it, I'd go under one of those bay windows. Anyway, on the back of the travel trailer were two decals: One was a Ford decal which included this information: "Eating Dodges" and "Shitting Chevies." Now, I'd just spent a couple of days around Thanksgiving subjected to network television which seems to consist of screaming, almost unimaginably bad halftime shows, and the celebration of our greatest national holiday: Black Friday. But I wasn't prepared for the vulgarity of this decal. But what's conservative about this driver?

The other decal showed a little boy arcing his pee onto the word "terrorists." So, I'm guessing, no terrorists allowed in this mode of travel either. What's more, any terrorists on American roads will get their comeuppance when they come upon this American!

On the other hand . . . it's clear to me that this driver is himself al-Qaeda terrorist. A terrorist trying to fit in, to draw attention away from himself by seeming to be a vulgar gas guzzler. If not a terrorist himself,he is, at the very least, a sympathizer with terrorists insofar as he contributes to our dependence on foreign oil, a portion of the funds for which goes to regimes that support those who would roast us alive. So I assume he's part of the terrorist-sympathizer wing of the conservative movement which believes that some god will provide all the fossil fuels we could ever want and burning 'em won't cause any problems for us.

Okay, this next one doesn't involve politics so much, but . . .

Finally, Sarah Palin. In her new book, Palin apparently compliments former American Idol judge Simon Cowell for being the only person who tells the talentless that they are talentless instead of massaging their "self-esteem" like too many others do. However, when the judges on "Dancing with the Stars" dismissed Palin's daughter as talentless a la Simon Cowell, the Palinites called in with their support nonetheless and kept the kid alive! Where was Palin then with her defense of Cowell-like discernment? She'd probably dismiss Fred Astaire as "elitist." Later, when daughter finished high in the ranking, the young hoofer said, "This is a big middle finger to my mother's" opponents. Still more proof of a so-well-raised child.

For an excellent insight into the history of conservatism as an idea beginning with Edmund Burke's defense of Marie Antoinette and the French aristocracy, read Corey Rubin's essay, "The Party of Loss" in Harper's magazine 2010.

Tech and Addiction: Excerpts from What I'm Reading . . .

From "Hammer and Sickle," a short story by Don DeLillo in Harper's magazine, December 2010. This paragraph describes the main jonesing of minimum security prison inmates who were once high-flying, fraud-fueled, business tycoons:


We had TV but what had we
lost, all of us, when we entered the
camp? We’d lost our appendages, our
extensions, the data systems that
kept us fed and cleansed. Where was
the world, our world? The laptops
were gone, the smartphones and
light sensors and megapixels. Our
hands and eyes needed more than we
could give them now. The touchscreens,
the mobile platforms, the
gentle bell reminders of an appointment
or a flight time or a woman in
a room somewhere. And the sense,
the tacit awareness, now lost, that
something newer, smarter, faster, ever
faster, was just a bird’s breath away.
Also lost was the techno anxiety
that these devices routinely carried
with them. But we needed this no
less than we did the devices themselves,
that inherent stress, those
cautions and frustrations. Weren’t
these essential to our mind-set? The
prospect of failed signals and crashed
systems, the memory that needs recharging,
the identity stolen in a series
of clicks. Information, this was
everything, coming in, going out.
We were always on, wanted to be on,
needed to be on, but this was history
now, the shadow of another life.


And from "Bright Frenetic Mills" by Thomas Frank in Harper's. Frank, an historian of economics, decries the dumbing-down of journalism which is more and more responsive to market demands and thus deprofessionalized rather than providing in-depth analysis of cultural and political matters:

So powerful is our desire to believe in the
benevolent divinity of technology that
it cancels out our caution, forces us to
dismiss doubt as so much simple-minded
Luddism. We have trouble grasping
that the Internet might not bring only
good; that an unparalleled tool for enlightenment
and research and transparency
might also bring unprecedented
down-dumbing; that something
that empowers the individual might
also wreck the structures that have
protected the individual for decades.


Photo credit: Federico Morando via Flickr.
Painting: Optimism, by John Slaby

Cruella de Ville Doesn't Read Fairy Tales

I'm always amazed at how well people know fairy tales because I have no memory of anyone ever reading them to me. Maybe my folks did, at least my mom, but I don't remember it and I don’t see that being part of my mom’s maternal repetoire. Too much ghastliness for her tastes and I’m damn sure her mother never read them to the little girl who became my mom.

I know my grandmother, Cruella de Ville, didn't read anything to me either or to my brother except maybe the Riot Act, preferring as she did to smoke in front of the TV while my brother and I cowered in our bedrooms afraid to come out. God forbid one of us should be in the bathroom when she needed to go. "There's only one bathroom in the house AND I'M AN OLD WOMAN!" she'd yell and I know that at least for me it had the effect of constricting whatever progress I might be making. My God, I thought to myself, is she gonna punish me for peeing or is she going to . . . . oh my God! . . . COME IN HERE?

Like I said, I don't think my parents read to me either; not that I recall anyway. Well, there was the one time when I'd stolen some milk money in the first grade and my mother suspected as much -- after all, what's a 6 year old doing with ten dollars of bills and change? -- so she read me the story of the boy who stole and got his hands -- that's hands as in the plural -- cut off. I confessed and feared books thereafter.

Okay, my mom didn’t read me a story of hands being cut off of some boy who stole something. She just sat me down and read a pleasant story that both calmed me down, I suppose, but also prodded some guilt in a boy whose mom was so nice and warm that she didn’t deserve a thief for a son and so I confessed, knowing, instinctively, that life would be better for it.

So, fairy tales? No, but I do recall going to the drive-in with my parents and probably with my little brother to see "101 Dalmatians" and being entranced by the whole spectacle of something so joyous, so engaging as an adventure with 101 spotted, happy pups appearing as they did on the largest screen I'd ever seen there in the middle of a warm summer night fragrant with popcorn, motor heat, and my parents' Winstons.

More Gaby Kerpel Music and Video

Gaby Kerpel is best known for the music he writes for an avant garde Argentinian circus. You can see this troupe and hear Kerpel at the Fuerzabruta show which, I believe, is still off Union Square in Manhattan.

Notes on the World Series

San Francisco just won the World Series . . . .

Me and Baseball:

Though raised mostly in Mississippi, I was born in Detroit to Detroiters, so I proudly stood by my, and my dad's, Detroit Tigers. A lonely devotion this was, too; made fierce by the disdain Mississippian peers directed toward all things associated with Detroit, except cars. I followed the Tigers, and especially hall-of-famer Al Kaline, for years in box scores and watched avidly whenever the Tigers appeared on television -- a rarity in the days of one or two televised games per week. I saved my pennies and bought a satin team jacket . . . which I never wore because at the time, the late 60's, I was the only person other than a real professional athlete, who I'd ever seen wearing a team jacket.



I thrilled to Denny McLain's 31 wins in 1968 followed that Fall by the Tigers coming back from a 3 games to 1 deficit to win the World Series against the seemingly invincible Bob Gibson in the 7th game in St. Louis. And the pleasure of this was made more delicious by the fact that the most hated teacher in my junior high hailed proudly and loudly from St. Louis. Stough was his name. Can't believe I remember the name and him.

But . . . thanks to Pete Maravich, Bill Walton, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, the Georgetown Hoyas, and the Run TMC Golden State Warriors, my interest in baseball withered to be replaced by (if you didn't recognize that pantheon of stars) basketball. Like too many people, I misunderstood baseball and complained about the lack of "action" as if chess were solely about moving the pieces on the board. As the great Leo Durocher, the manager of the World Series winning 1954 New York Giants, aptly stated: "Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand."


Just before this year's World Series, a report on NPR shared a study of baseball in which the "action" was timed in several games. Comes out to about 14 minutes. Even I, having forgotten baseball for so many years, knew that statistic to be misleading to the point of stupidity. Only someone ignorant of baseball could find such a statistic significant.


My Ignorance:

It was the second to last game of the National League Championship series between the Giants and the Phillies (a team I've always hated because in the 60's Philly, according to the appendix in the little Webster's dictionary I still possess, was the 4th largest city in America while Detroit was . . . fifth). 9th Inning. The Giants, at home, get a man to third. One out. Up comes (can't remember) either Juan Uribe or Pablo Sandoval. He hits a high fly to middle left field and my immediate reaction was . . . "Eh, a second out." But, in fact, as I realized almost immediately, it was a sacrifice fly that will win the game because the man on third came steaming home for the winning run.

Chagrined, I pondered how I had lost even the most fundamental baseball acumen. I thought it would be nice to "know" baseball again. Or did I ever really know it? Had I ever understood baseball? If I had, how could I possibly have switched to basketball? I used to envy writers like Roger Kahn and George Will and others who waxed rhapsodically about baseball. I watched Ken Burns's "Baseball" and secretly yearned for the love of baseball's pastoral pleasures (now, to my mind, sadly compromised by the noise and the commodification of every moment at the ballpark).


Been Away from the Game Too Long -- Baseball and 9/11:

In one of the Division Series' games, we're going into the bottom of the 7th Inning and the broadcast has not broken away for another set of commercials. Instead, we get "God Bless America."

My reaction was: Hey, what about "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"? Later, I was informed that "God Bless . . . " is televised, but "Take Me Out . . ." is still sung in the ball park and so I was initially placated.

Okay, so . . . 9/11, right? Right. However, I guess I'm really ignorant of the game because I have no memory of having heard "God Bless . . ." at the handful of games I've attended this decade.

And now that I've heard it 10+ times since the Giants entered post-season play, I'm convinced that "Take Me Out . . . " is more patriotic, more of a spit-in-the-eye to Al Qaeda. After all, we still have the National Anthem at the beginning of the game, right?

"Take Me Out . . ." proclaims a gospel of its own: the "good news" of the communal joyousness baseball bestows in a lovely ballpark; the joyousness of the American Pastime that cannot tarnished and certainly not defeated by some bloody nihilists. Every game of baseball, lovingly played and witnessed, tells Al Qaeda and its ilk that we are still here being Americans. Maybe that's not always pretty, but we are not bloody nihilists, that's for damn sure.



After the National Anthem, "God Bless . . . " just seems overwrought, the result of being far too earnest, and not sufficiently joyous. And there's the undertone, too, of darkness, of nativist triumphalism, a smugness. It's not the song. I wouldn't mind if the song replaced the National Anthem at games. No, it's not the song. It's the forced, sanctimonious communalism and the sense of it being a prayer for the validation of darker impulses.


Stats, Stats, and More Stats:

Seems like I heard a lot of not very dramatic, and even quite useless, stats on the broadcasts. I gather baseball is especially prone to stat-fetish. One of the following is a stat I heard on the broadcast. The others are made up:

First rookie to throw 5 scoreless innings in a World Series game since 1982.

Most broken bats in a World Series game by a team whose mascot is not an animal.

First team to win its first two games in the World Series by more than 5 runs
when both games were night games.

Dave First is the first first baseman named First in the first game of a World
Series when the winning run was scored in the first inning.

First shutout by a visiting pitcher with 3 syllables in his surname.

First time a rookie catcher is in the World Series when the play by play announcer
was himself a catcher.


Names:

I'm glad the World Series is still called the "World Series" and not the "WS". Why can't the National League Championship be called, well, "the National League Championship" instead of the "NLCS"? We've become acronym crazy in this culture. Words are mighty and often beautiful. We should use them, not reduce them to initials. (My students should now remind me of my own "WIR," my "ROL," and my "WWIOTFOWWT".)

Slightly related: I prefer "the 43rd Superbowl" to "Superbowl 43". (I use "43" because I think we're in the 40's with the Superbowl, but I'm not sure which 40. I did watch the Saints win last year. Made the Mississippian in me very happy.)

I prefer "September 11th" to "9/11".


Politics and Baseball:

On November 1st, the Giants of proudly liberal (YES! LIBERAL!!! You got a problem with that?!!?) San Francisco won the World Series. San Francisco dominated, repeatedly dominated teams, despite being deemed underdogs going into every post-season matchup. And in the end, a skinny hipster (or a hippie; can't decide) savaged the Texas Rangers; beat them deep in the heart of Texas, in the politically sclerotic heart of reactionary politics. Of course, this proves the superiority of San Francisco and our "life-style."



And so tomorrow, November 2nd, when we go to the polls for our nation's midterm elections, I will be inspired by our ragtag Giants when I yell on some street corner,
"LET'S GO DEMOCRATS!!!!" I might even throw in a "Fear the Obama!"








My Loyalties:

At the beginning of the season, I could have named one Giant: Tim Lincecum. And yet, I really couldn't have named even him because I wasn't sure how to pronounce "Lincecum."

I've lived in the Bay Area for 30 years, but I had to borrow a Giants cap when I went to Dallas for a wedding just before the World Series. Then, of course, gracious Texans seeing me in the cap would want to talk about players, stats, games, etc. I just had to admit, "The cap ain't mine and I just yesterday stepped up on this here bandwagon."

But on it I was. I was so on that bandwagon. So on it.

And now, we've won. We, that includes me, have won. Now, for the first time in maybe 25 some years, since the Tigers won in the 80s with Kirk Gibson, I can rattle off the starting lineup, and its variations, for a baseball team! And sitting alone in my home, I was strangely moved and overjoyed by the World Series triumph. So much so that it suddenly occurred to me that if the Giants had played the Tigers in this World Series . . . I would've rooted for the Giants.

Dear Detroit and Dear Tigers! Best Wishes, Greg