"The blog has made Glab into a hip town crier, commenting on everything from local politics and cultural happenings to national and international events, all rendered in a colorful, intelligent, working-class vernacular that owes some of its style to Glab’s Chicago-hometown heroes Studs Terkel and Mike Royko." — David Brent Johnson in Bloom Magazine
“This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”
“Our first objective is to free 30 million Americans from the prison of poverty. Can you help us free these Americans? And if you can, let me hear your voices!”
“Do something we can be proud of! Help the weak and the meek and lift them up and help them train and give them an education….”
“We have a right to expect a job, to provide food for our families, a roof over their heads, clothes for their bodies, and with your help, and with god’s help, we will have it in America!”
These are the fiery words of the President of the United States. The year was 1964. Lyndon Baines Johnson criss-crossed the country, trying to whip up excitement among volunteers and community organizers and municipal officials, hoping they’d jump on his Great Society bandwagon.
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LBJ, for all his sins — and there were very, very, very many, truly believed this holy land was big and rich and powerful and generous enough to eliminate poverty here.
He pounded the podium as he spoke. He pointed at the crowd. He punched his fists in the air. He leaned so far over you might have wondered if he’d tumble into the crowd.
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Imagine an old-time, stump-speaking pol, roaring at the crowd from his bully pulpit, challenging them to help the weak and the meek!
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You’ll have to imagine it — no self-respecting pol today would dare utter such silliness.
He or she would be branded naive. Or worse. Liberal. Socialist. Maybe even Muslim.
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I’ve lived through the liberal zenith of the mid-60s, highlighted by LBJ’s Great Society, to the nadir of today’s me-first, don’t tax me bro, every man for himself, make sure you’ve got a gun under your pillow, if you’re poor that’s your tough luck, Ayn Rand, Saint Ronald Reagan, Lloyd Blankfein doing god’s work, ugly America.
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The unnecessary re-confirmation of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker drives the point home. The people of Wisconsin elected — twice — a Tory to lead them out of the economic wilderness. If there’s one true thing that can be said about people who are worried about their wallets and pocketbooks, it’s that they’ll panic. They’ll go for any tough-talking bastard who blames the weak and the meek for all the nation’s ills.
Somehow, though, for the briefest of moments the United States of America became, for lack a of a better word, holy. We actually talked about helping our brothers and sisters.
This “Christian” nation became for a fleeting instant, well, Christian.
So, labor unions and the whole collective bargaining idea have been shot all to hell by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s escape act Tuesday.
Unions are dead. Worker organizing is out.
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As if we didn’t know that already.
The systematic demonization of unions that Saint Ronald Reagan initiated has finally slain the one bulwark standing between the corporatocracy and the rest of humanity.
Get ready for the economic recovery, at which time you’ll be expected to put in 50- and 60-hour weeks as a matter of course. Overtime? Hah.
Work!
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Oh, and make sure your SmartPhone is on 24 hours a day. The boss might need to reach you now — whenever now is.
You are no longer you — you’re a part of a greater, more important, more meaningful entity. You are part of the company.
And anybody who wants to unionize is old hat. She’s the walking dead. She doesn’t work well with others. She’s selfish and corrupt. She’s a special interest. Hell, she may even be part of organized crime! Watch out for her.
So Old Hat
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Better yet, she’s fired.
Let’s have a company picnic! The food and soft drinks are free. Have fun.
Then be prepared to get back to work — on the company’s terms and at the company’s whim.
That is, until the company lays you off.
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CLICK
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UNION
Call me the dead man walking.
I have been, am now, and always will be a union guy. I’ve been a member of the Chicago Streets & San Laborer’s Union, the National Writers Union, and the Newspaper Guild.
Newspaper Guild Picket Line, New York, 1950
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If there were a union for smartasses, I’d not only join, I’d run for steward.
A few years ago, I yelled that I was proud to be a liberal, even though that particular L word had been transformed into an obscenity by the Jesus Right.
Now the U word is akin to the F-bomb.
Okay, here’s my message to the Koch Bros, the Tea Party-ists, Gov. Walker, Rush and Glenn and Sean, Chuck Norris, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Willard Romney, Americans for Prosperity, Eric Cantor, and all the rest of the Tories in this holy land:
Union you!
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WORK TO DO
I’m out there tryin’ to make it.
Written by several of the Isley Brothers, sung by the Average White Band.
“In my lifetime, we’ve gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We’ve gone from Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in twelve years, we’ll be voting for plants.” — Lewis Black
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WISCONSIN IN ONE WORD
Damn!
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WEDNESDAY BLOOMINGTON HAPPENINGS
Click the logo for the best events listings in our town.
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THE ARCHAIC BRITISH CLASS SYSTEM BY MOONLIGHT
The transit of Venus wasn’t the only celestial event to hold Bloomingtonians rapt yesterday.
Did you catch the spectacular full moon overnight?
Sometime around 3:00am, Steve the Dog and I woke up and, as we often do, padded around the house aimlessly for a few moments. This time, though, we stopped in our tracks.
The world outside the Chez Big Mike windows was oddly bright. The full moon was so brilliant that I wondered if I could read by it.
I know, I know — I do strange thing in the middle of the night. So I grabbed the nearest book, a volume of PG Wodehouse‘s Bertie and Jeeves stories. I flipped the thing open and — whaddya know? — I was able to read it without the aid of a lamp.
Hugh Laurie & Stephen Fry As Bertie & Jeeves
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Cool, huh?
I’ll keep you posted on further nocturnal experiments as they occur.
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SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE PROVES: FOODIES ARE JERKS!
Hah!
Even though I consider myself the smartest, most sensitive, fairest-minded member of our species, even this humble reporter can fall victim to the phenomenon wherein we read and believe that which we already hold to be true.
As an example, I nearly thrust my arms in the air and cheered when I came across an article with this headline in the Big Think this morning:
My years at WFM only strengthened my preconceived notion that natural and organic food aficionados are merely mirror images of Puritans and Savonarolas.
See, foodies believe there’s a clean and pure way of living — a conceit I know to be false. They also believe that anyone who doesn’t agree 134% with them is either an evil agri-business lackey or is a deluded victim of the forces of Dick Cheney.
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Don’t get me wrong: I do my best to minimize my intake of red meat, I refuse to eat veal or pate de foie gras, I try to stay away from hydrogenated oils and white flours and sugars, I strive to eat a variety of varied-color things, and I rarely buy salt-laden prepared foods.
But, see, there’s the rub — I try to do all those things. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I have a taste for a Big Mac. Sometimes I don’t have the time or energy to cut up fresh vegetables. Sometimes the siren song of that bag of Wavy Lays is too strong for me to resist.
I am neither a Puritan nor a Savonarola.
But by and large, I try to hold to a general foundation of healthy eating habits (save for the fact that my portions usually are about the size of those served to hippopotami at the Indianapolis Zoo.)
Let’s Eat!
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Anyway, I’ve always felt that foodies believe they’re going to cheat death, much as the Puritans believed they’d attain eternal life through their belief in god. Like the Puritans, as well, foodies tend to think they must save the ignorant masses of unwashed humanity from themselves. And like religious zealots flagellating themselves or confessing their sins to cleanse the soul, food zealots purge and cleanse their alimentary canals in hopes of achieving some sort of higher level of existence.
To which I reply, Leave me alone so I can eat my Tombstone pizza in peace.
Yeah, foodies are pretty jerky. And now I’ve got science to back me up.
“I believe that as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.” — Robert F. Kennedy
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THE LIVES WE LEAD IN A LIFETIME
Bobby Kennedy was shot in the head 44 years ago tomorrow. He lingered, unconscious, for a day, then died.
At the time of his death, Bobby Kennedy was a caring, dedicated, sensitive man.
But for much of his adult life, he’d been a jerk. He’d been ruthless, clannish, a moralizer, pathologically ambitious — the list can go on.
Tragedy changed Bobby Kennedy. The death of his brother catapulted him into deep depression. He had, for lack of a more scientifically accurate term, a nervous breakdown. He emerged on the other side of it a different human being.
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Kennedy was Roman Catholic. For all the Church’s sins — and there are many — one praiseworthy aspect of it is its insistence that there is redemption.
I’ve experienced redemption once or twice. Maybe even three times. So, I would assume, have you.
No, not religious redemption. Human redemption. For lack of a more scientifically accurate term.
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THE PENCIL’S DAILY EVENTS LISTINGS
Click. And GO!
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ANYBODY WHO DISAGREES WITH ME IS MENTALLY ILL
A movie reviewer from my old haunt, the Chicago Reader, has panned “The Avengers” in his capsule review.
Naturally, he’s been flooded with emails and other communiques calling into question his sanity and accusing him of possessing the foulest character. After all, this is the United States of America wherein everybody’s opinion on a movie is of paramount import.
The “calling into question his sanity” part elicited a revelation from reviewer Ben Sachs, though.
Ben Sachs
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Sachs told the reading public that indeed his brain wiring is screwy — he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2004. No one outside his circle of friends and family knew about his problem until he was goaded into this public confessional by a commenter named Morganthus who called him “emotionally imbalanced,” an assessment based only on Sachs’ dislike of “The Avengers.”
“How did Morganthus know?” Sachs wrote.
Wow.
A Typical Movie Reviewer In His Office At The Mental Institution
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In fact, Sachs even explored the role his mental illness plays in his judgement as an arts arbiter. “I liked the movies, literature, and music that I did because they gave form to emotions I couldn’t organize in real life,” he wrote. He wondered if Morganthus somehow sensed this.
That’s a very charitable attitude on the part of Sachs. I can’t imagine that someone who gets so riled up about a movie review that he’ll write in a comment questioning the reviewer’s psychological stability is actually a perceptive soul hoping to help.
Nevertheless, this Morganthus fellow’s rant resulted in Sachs’ fascinating bit of introspection. Read the entire piece; it’s not terribly long.
[h/t to Roger Ebert for pointing out Sachs’ piece on Facebook.]
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FAIR IS FOUL AND FOUL FAIR
Wisconsin voters go to the polls tomorrow. Gov. Scott Walker’s future is in their hands. Will they fire him? The outcome is even money right now.
I don’t know what I like less — Scott Walker or recall elections.
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For all Walker’s sins — and there are many — he broke no laws. He was elected fair and square by Wisconsinites. Now, suddenly, he can be removed from office just because he pushed through legislation and made executive decisions a lot of people didn’t care for?
Folks, that’s democracy. The concept does not imply that once we elect a guy or gal we get everything we want. Isn’t that rather childish?
Now, if I lived in Wisconsin, I’d stand on my head to help defeat Walker in the next regular election.
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This whole hoo-hah reminds me of two things. One is professional quacker Rush Limbaugh crying like a schoolchild after Barack Obama’s election in 2008. “What about the other 46 percent?” he bleated.
The simple answer to his simplistic question was: They’re out of luck until they become 50 percent-plus-one. Rules of the game, baby.
The other thing I thought of was the startling number of my liberal friends who swore they’d move to another country if George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004. A former co-worker who’d moved to Rochester, New York, said it to me one afternoon and I challenged her. “Is that just hyperbole,” I asked. “or do you really mean it?”
“I really mean it,” she said. Rochester is just across Lake Ontario from Canada, she explained, so it wouldn’t be that big a deal. She neglected to mention if the Canadian government had pledged to honor all her wishes after her move.
Dems Flee The US After George W. Bush’s Reelection
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I cared for George W. Bush even less than I care for Scott Walker. Bush will go down, I’m certain, as one of our worst presidents.
His two elections saddened and discouraged me. I could only wonder why a modern nation of some 300M people could select as their leader such a chucklehead. Not that I’d be dancing in the streets had either Al Gore or John Kerry won but, the way I look at it, a stubbed toe is better than being kicked in the gut repeatedly.
Anyway, Bush hooked and crooked his way into the White House the first time he ran and then played the war card to win a second time. But he was still my president because I’m a participating member of the American electorate.
Not That I Was Thrilled About It
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Say what you will about the late John Wayne, when asked his reaction to the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, he said, “I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president.”
Sounds a tad more adult than today’s blatherings, no?
Anyway, rules of the game, right? As long as recall elections are within the rules, I hope Walker gets his ass beat.
