"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.
The phenomenon has only been seen by human eyes seven times.
Wear #14 welder’s glasses or get a pair of those neat eclipse glasses that look a bit like movie theater 3-D glasses. The transit also is visible through one of those pinhole projection boxes the geeky kids in seventh grade always knew how to make when there was a partial solar eclipse.
Eclipse Cheaters
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Which leads me to my fave beat-the-dead-horse question: Why believe in magic and monsters when real life itself is so spectacular?
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WE HAVE A MOVIE
Man, you blew it if you were unable to catch the Italian movie “We Have a Pope.”
I just caught the Ryder Film Series offering last night at the SoFA small theater and it was a delight.
A cardinal named Melville is elected Pope and just as he’s about to greet the crowd in St. Peter’s he suffers what can only be described as a nervous breakdown, brought on primarily by his long simmering lack of self-confidence.
The Moment Before The Breakdown
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The assembled Cardinals, who by canonical law cannot leave the Vatican until the new Pope greets the crowd, panic and eventually bring in a shrink in an effort to get the new boss to the balcony window.
By and by, the new Pope escapes the Vatican and a certain madness ensues.
The beauty of a lot of non-Hollywood movies is they don’t have Hollywood endings. That’s all I’ll say about that.
The movie will run on cable’s Independent Film Channel and if Peter LoPilato can ever get it back here in Bloomington, don’t blow your chance to see it again.
Released in 1988, TLToC dealt with the fever dreams of Christ as he hung on the cross, baking in the sun, driven mad by pain. He imagines an alternative existence wherein he settles into a simple life, marrying Mary Magdalene and not carrying the burden of all humankind’s sins.
The Man Wants Out; The Deity Has A Responsibility
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It’s one of the most pious, spiritual, and reverent movies ever made.
I mean, the whole idea of Christ’s death, as I understand it, was that he was tempted to avoid his fate, but his faith and obedience to his “father in heaven” overcame his human need. And therein, I always thought, lay the foundation for Christianity.
But when TLToC played at the Biograph Theater in Chicago, Catholics and other defenders of the one and only big daddy-o in the sky picketed and shouted and otherwise drew more attention to the film than it ever would have garnered otherwise.
“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.” — Frank Zappa
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SAVE US, RICK
Gotta say it: I miss Rick Santorum.
The political debate has pretty much petered out now that the wackiest altar boy in the nation has quit the presidential race.
We Miss You, Man
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Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are involved in a staring contest over who loves women more. Romney said recently, “93 percent of the job losses during the Obama years have been women who lost those jobs.” Obama, in turn, has dispatched his wife, not to correct Romney’s awkward sentence construction, but to say her man is the greatest thing to happen to women since the invention of chocolate.
Michelle Obama actually said this about the her husband’s deeds for women: “We have an amazing story to tell. This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light.”
Oy.
Suffragette Introducing Featured Speaker Barack Obama
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And in some weird, Twilight Zone-ish turn of events, Ann Romney, a woman who has struggled valiantly to assemble a staff of nannies and maids, has become an icon for all the hard-toiling homemakers of this holy land.
See, I’m pumped about the release in two weeks of the fourth volume in Robert Caro‘s brilliant series of books on the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson. It deals with the 1960 presidential election, Johnson’s ascendency to the presidency following the Kennedy assassination, and his electoral coronation in 1964.
Johnson Drives His Beloved Amphi-car
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LBJ was one fascinating man. He stole elections, bullied opponents, battled for civil rights legislation, loathed John F. Kennedy and then served under him as vice president, allowed the nation to slip into a senseless war in Vietnam and found himself mourning that course of events. He issued orders to members of his staff while perched upon the porcelain princess with the door wide open.
Caro won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Power Broker,” his look into the life of New York City strongman Robert Moses. (BTW, Oliver Stone is working on an HBO biopic based on Caro’s book.) He copped another Pulitzer for the third volume in the Years of Lyndon Johnson series, “Master of the Senate.” For my dough, Caro has to win a third Pulitzer for “The Passage of Power” if it’s even half as good as the previous three tomes on the man.
Robert Caro
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Pick up any of the aforementioned Caro books; you’ll understand a lot more about how America works if you do.
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BEYOND HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
Dig this observation by social ecologist Peter Drucker:
“Like the forces of war, depression shows man as a senseless cog in a senselessly whirling machine which is beyond human understanding and has ceased to serve any purpose but its own.”
Peter Drucker
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The quote, written in 1939, has been interpreted as a description of the madness that was the Great Depression. It sounds to me more like an indictment of unfettered capitalism itself.
The contender for the most evil American of the 20th Century, J. Edgar Hoover, kept a thick dossier on King’s sex life. Yep, King did those tawdry things outlined in the file. To people like Hoover, that file defined King.
To tens of millions of Americans who can now vote freely and don’t have to worry about not getting a job or being turned away from a hotel or restaurant because they’re the wrong color or sex, King was incapable of such “sin.”
Both views insult the man because they deny the fullness of his humanity, the good in him and his failings, his high principles and his base urges.
Me? I respect King all the more for knowing he battled with and often succumbed to temptation. He was just a guy — but what a human being!
Imperfect Men; A More Perfect Nation
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FLIP-FLOP PHONIES
Here’s all you need to know about the state of national politics in this holy land. Jon Huntsman today will endorse Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination for president.
Best Friends Forever
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Huntsman is dropping out of the Republican primaries six days before the South Carolina vote and almost a week after he came in third in the New Hampshire beauty contest, a finish he told his supporters was a springboard to South Carolina. He made the decision this weekend.
Up until yesterday, his website listed chapter and verse as to why Romney is unelectable in November. Or, I should say, was unelectable. Romney is (oops again — was) a flip-flopper, a shark, a pretty boy, a man with no real philosophy.
Man, you’d have thought a Romney presidency would almost have been as devastating to America as the presidency of Barack Obama — who, by the way, was Hunstman’s former boss. The only thing Hunstman didn’t accuse Romney of was being a secret Muslim, but there’s only room in the political conversation for one of those, apparently.
Sunday, the keepers of the Huntsman website made all references to Romney’s evils vanish.
Hunstman’s Suddenly Mitt-Free Website
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Politics would be a funny game if it didn’t make me so glum.
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VOTE FOR ME — I’LL SET YOU FREE!
How weird is it that Rick Perry has suddenly positioned himself as the defender of the people, calling Mitt Romney a “vulture capitalist”?
Very weird.
Perry’s panicked. The man who has sold his governorship to any corporate entity that waves a check in his face, clearly figures the only bullet he has left in his cylinder is to accuse Romney of being a greedy capitalist pig.
Which Romney is — but so is Rick Perry.
It goes to show that the most powerful influence on politics is the virtually pathological ego that spurs a person to want to become a national leader.
Perry: “I’m The One.”
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Perry gave up his precious economic philosophy in the snap of a finger when he felt himself in danger of losing out on the ultimate job promotion.
I’ll vote in the presidential election, sure, but I can’t shake the feeling that anyone who wants to be president of a nation of +300M people with some 5600 active nuclear weapons at his command is, well, a bit off. Why would any sane human being want that kind of responsibility?
Oh Yeah, I Can Handle This Thing — Don’t Worry
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Just trying to meet the needs and desires of our massive population is daunting enough. Knowing that the ace you have up your sleeve in dealing with the world’s nations is an arsenal that could ignite at any moment a global holocaust makes the job desirable only to a crazy man or woman.
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LOCAL POLS: LESS PHONY, JUST AS NUTTY
I spoke with Tim Mayer, the Bloomington City Council’s new president, last week. He’s refreshed from a nice holiday vacation and looking forward to picking up the gavel.
I apologized to him for not playing “Hail to the Chief” when he walked into the Book Corner and he graciously forgave me. “How does it feel to be the Commander in Chief of such an august body?” I asked.
He spun on his heel, pointed to the middle of his back and replied, “The target’s hanging right here.”
Mayer Was Comforted By Judge Mary Ellen Diekhoff After He Was Sworn In
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Mayer became serious and said he’s looking forward to the task. In fact, he claimed the best part of being a council member is hearing the citizenry during the public comment sessions at the meetings. At which point I told him he needs psychiatric treatment.
Mayer is still sane enough to say I was probably right. Then he recounted the tale of a particular well-known citizen gadfly who attended every meeting and had a blustery opinion on every proposal. This man was a shrewd provocateur who knew just how far he could go when raising his idiosyncratic Cain — he knew, for instance, that he could get away with uttering the word shit during his comment period but not the F-bomb.
Anyway, Mayer remembered that the man was familiar enough with the personalities on the Council to be able to get under any of their skins. He knew how to rattle one female former Council president by saying repeatedly, “Listen here, girlie….”
The former president’s hair would stand on end at such moments.
BTW: as for last year’s Council president (and I’m not necessarily saying she’s the one referred to above), doctors in the decompression ward report that Susan Sandberg will be released from her straitjacket soon and should recover nicely, save for the occasional nightmare.
