"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
“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.” — Bertrand Russell
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REALITY CHECK
Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: There is no Sasquatch. AKA “Bigfoot,” the creature does not exist.
There are people who call themselves scientists — but who’ve abdicated their privilege to the title — who’d love to get you to believe nonsense.
Dr. Melba Ketchum: She’s Wrong — Trust Me
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Move on with your life. Ponder all the new exo-planets being discovered virtually every day. Stop running around and trying to do everything in the world by noon and listen to the birds in your neighborhood — all of whom are real. If you take a drive on SR 37, glance at the rock wall cutouts along the side of the road and, noting all the layers of sediment, consider that you’re actually looking at millions of years of history.
Because if you do believe in Bigfoot, you are indeed out of your mind.
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LOTTERY LOSERS
Here’s another piece of advice. The next time there’s a ginormous Powerball payout, you will not win it.
Statistically Speaking, These People Do Not Exist
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Recent calculations indicate that the odds of winning the average Powerball prize are 1 in 175,223.510. And because last week’s half-billion-buck purse attracted so many new players, those odds shot upward.
So save your dough. Or better yet, just send it to The Electron Pencil; we’ll put it to better use than you blowing it on a racket in which your chance of winning, in essence, doesn’t exist.
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DOOM
Let’s stick with the bunk. Admit it, that whole 2012/End of the World thing rattles around in your braincase every once in a while.
The Mayan Calendar
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As we approach December 21st, the target date for all our lives to go kaputnik (don’t try to find a definition for this word, I just made it up), you can be sure our corporate media newsbeings will be covering this “story” with either a smug, knowing smirk or flat-out idiotic credulity.
I’m dying to see how Fox News covers the impending apocalypse.
To that end, NASA has issued an advisory explaining why our interpretation of the Mayan calendar is screwy. Here’s space scientist David Morrison explaining why you’re a loon if you give even an iota of credence to this end of the world scenario.
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Not that this well-thought-out, expert, fact-based argument will make a molecule of difference for the credulous.
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TRUST ME
Speaking of credibility, I have next to none left after announcing several baker’s dozen times the new Ryder website and the attendant marriage of this site with that one.
Swear to the god I don’t believe in we’re only days away from that long-awaited debut.
Almost There
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I know, I know — you don’t want to hear about the labor pains, you only want to see the baby, so I won’t tell you what an heroic ordeal it’s been to get this thing off the ground. My technical and diplomatic skills have been tested to the extreme, but winners never quit, or so said someone like Dick Nixon, who eventually quit anyway.
So stay tuned and we’ll be making our grand announcement before you know it.
“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans — unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.” — Karl Rove
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LAST TWO DAYS
You can vote this morning at The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St. from 8am-noon.
Tomorrow is Election Day. Vote at The Curry Building or your local polling place.
Oh, and do me a big favor — vote for Barack Obama, okay?
I’ve bet a C-note with the radical Chicago lawyer Jerry Boyle on the outcome. He’s certain Willard’s going to take the prize tomorrow and I’ve never wavered in my certainty that Barack Obama will be reelected. If Jerry’s guy wins, I cut a check to the ACLU. If Barack Obama wins — I mean, when Barack Obama wins — Jerry Boyle throws his wallet open.
Book it, if you think the ACLU is a danger to this holy land, you and I disagree profoundly about the meaning of freedom.
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THE END OF AN ERA
Tomorrow will mark the end of national elections as we’ve known them since Dick Nixon foisted the Southern Strategy upon us in 1968.
That’s right, it’s been 44 years since Nixon and his gang of furry little mammals realized that the segregationist Democrats of the South and the blue-collar whites of the North could constitute a mighty, dependable bloc of voters for the GOP.
Nixon & His Southern Point Man, Strom Thurmond
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Nixon was a clever man. He realized that the southern Democrats had no interest in being Democrats anymore. He also realized that even though many northern whites were nauseated by Bull Connor and his fire hoses and snarling dogs, they had zero interest in living next door to black families. More important, Nixon knew northern white daddy-os, by and large, were terrified by the prospect of their daughters sitting next to black teenaged boys in high school civics classes.
Sickening — From A Distance
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Playing on these visceral racial fears, Nixon enticed millions of whites in this nation to vote for the man who, they were certain, would protect them from black people.
At the time, white people constituted nearly 80 percent of the electorate.
Since then, fear of a a black planet has been perhaps the single most important underpinning of Republican strategy in every national election. Willie Horton, anybody?
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Even the hysterical aversion of certain pan-troglodytes within the GOP to the idea of a Barack Obama presidency in 2008 indicated that Nixon’s simple formula was falling apart. That year, it was not enough to simply point out that Obama was brown. No, the operative canard used against him was that he was a secret Muslim, an Ay-rab, a mole who’d give his terrorist brethren the high sign that they could now fly airplanes into every skyscraper in every big city in the United States.
…And He’s An Ayatollah!
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Unfortunately for the antediluvian GOP, there are no longer enough southern segregationists and northern racists to swing an election. How many white families can you name that don’t include a brown member by marriage or birth?
Sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with a brown niece or a black brother-in-law tends to change one’s outlook on things.
The terror is dissipating.
The numbers are working against that old guard Republicanism.
That 80 percent is no more. Soon, it’ll be less than half.
If the Republican Party is to survive, it’ll not only drop the fear appeal but it’ll have to draw blacks and browns into its ranks. That’ll be a good thing.
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YOU DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ VOTE
Meanwhile, the old GOP dogs are trying desperately to hold on.
Realizing the numbers are working against them, Republican strategists have been trying to quash the vote.
Take Florida, where the Republican-dominated state legislature last year reduced the number of early voting days by nearly half. Again, the GOP is being clever. They know that most early voters are Dems and minorities.
It must frustrate the GOP that many Floridians are lining up for six to eight hours at a time to cast their ballots.
Miami Voters On Saturday
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Monday, November 5th, 2012
VOTE ◗ The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St.; 8am-Noon
MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Doctoral Recital: Adam Karfeld on viola; 5pm
CLASS ◗ Sweet Claire Gourmet Bakery — Bread for the Holidays, Learn to make rosca de reyes, stollen, sweet breads, etc.; 6-8pm
VARIETY ◗ Cafe Django — Bloomington Short List, 10-minute acts, Hosted by Taylor McNeeley; 7-9pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center, Recital Hall — Doctoral Recital: Miji Chae on violin; 7pm
“I think we ought to move tanks, the whole goddamned thing. Put a division in there, if necessary. It’s time for action on it. If some Indians get shot, that’s too goddamned bad. If some Americans get shot, that too bad, too.” — Richard M. Nixon on the Wounded Knee protest, 1973.
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A LIFE: JULY 19, 1922 — OCTOBER 21, 2012
George McGovern
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PUBLIC BROADCASTING’S NEWEST STAR
I had a chat with one of the big shots from the shakedown department at a large Midwest NPR station this past week.
This person said the station had just completed its fall fund drive and it was a smash this year.
The station, according to the nabob, breezed way past its fundraising goal.
“Hmm, why do you suppose?” I asked.
“Oh, simple,” the person said. “The minute Mitt Romney started talking about Big Bird the calls started coming in. And this was even before the fund drive began.”
Fundraisers: Ray Magliozzi, Mitt Romney, & Tom Magliozzi
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Thanks, Mitt.
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LOVE AND MARRIAGE
As you know, plaster saints from coast to coast can hardly pray themselves to sleep at night for fear that gay marriage will be imposed upon them tomorrow morning.
Because, you know, all heterosexual marriages will be declared null and void and everyone will be compelled to marry and get naked with a member of their own gender. I wonder who my government-mandated new spouse will be. Pat Murphy?
Murph & Big Mike: Dear God, Please, No
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Yeesh, no wonder the pious of this holy land are petrified.
Anyway, they’re fighting gay marriage like the deranged tigers they are. For instance, the town of Springfield, Missouri, this summer considered adding sexual orientation and gender identity to its boilerplate human rights ordinance. Natch, the righteous of Springfield started quaking and hollering that the world was hurtling toward hell.
The Springfield City Council held hearings during which the public was allowed to comment on the whole shebang. Some pastor got up and began railing about “the word of god” and “the immorality and lawlessness that will be characteristic of the last days.”
He went on to say…, oh, just watch it.
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Hehehe. Neat, huh?
By the way, Springfield’s official nickname is “The Queen City of the Ozarks.”
Is there any need for comedy writers anymore?
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Sunday, October 21st, 2012
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — 3rd Annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition, Semi-finals of competition; 10am-1pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Sweeney Hall — 3rd Annual Indiana International Guitar Festival & Competition, Youth competition; 10am-3pm
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
SPORTS ◗ IU Field Hockey Complex — Hoosier women’s field hockey vs. Villanova; Noon
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Octubafest, Daniel Perantoni, director; 7pm
STAGE ◗ Bloomington Playwrights Project — Ike & Julie Arnov PlayOffs, Writers, directors, & actors stage original mini-plays using themes, props, and single lines given to them 24 hours previously, Mayor Mark Kruzan will open the proceedings; 7:30pm
“Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.” — Sinclair Lewis, Babbit, Ch. 6
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ROVE SHOW
A number of people asked me yesterday morning if I was going to attend the Karl Rove smut-fest at the IU Auditorium.
Rove was the lightning rod. The event was billed as a sort of colloquy between the one-time “rat fucker” and evil genius behind George W. Bush’s presidency and Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s former mouthpiece, but for all the residents of this people’s republic were concerned, Gibbs would be nothing more than a bit player. The two were to dope out the 2012 Election and everybody expected a hockey game to break out.
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Only no punches were thrown and the entire affair, according to observers, was rather tepid.
I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t there.
I told my interrogators yesterday morning I wasn’t going. They know I loathe Rove more than the genetic heart defect that’ll eventually kill me so they were surprised I wouldn’t grab the chance to hiss him.
Unh uh.
I didn’t go for the same reason I don’t watch TV news. It’d make me edgy. I’d fall into that old us-versus-them trick bag the corporate media loves to suck us into.
Some of this town’s most notable citizens gathered outside the Auditorium to shout at its walls how much they object to the very notion that the human species has resulted in something so vile as Karl Rove.
Tomi Allison & Charlotte Zietlow Serenade Rove
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Again, that’d be a no-go for me. It plays into the show business aspect of Rove-mania. He’s not only still a mover and shaker on the political scene, but he’s the designated villain in the pro wrestling spectacle that civic debate has become. The mini-mob outside the Auditorium only heightened the buzz and sense of spectacle of the thing.
Rove’s never been accused of outright vote stealing. No, his sins are worse. He peddles tainted information. He manipulates resentments. He games the system. Rove is a diabolical archcriminal.
I wouldn’t give him a dime of my hard-earned dough even if it was just to throw rotten tomatoes at him.
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DEATH OF THE ‘WEEK
You’ve heard the news that Newsweek will cease publication this year.
Good.
Newsweek actually saw fit to give Karl Rove his own weekly column after his former boss left the White House.
“News”week
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I wonder if the following items on the Rove resume convinced Newsweek’s editors to take him on:
In 1970, Rove, using an alias and pretending to volunteer for Alan Dixon’s reelection, gained access to the Illinois Senator’s campaign office. He worked only for a day. Actually, a mere few hours.
His sole desire was to make off with a few reams of stationary bearing the Dixon campaign letterhead. Rove then printed up phony invitations promising “free beer, free food, girls, and a good time for nothing” at an upcoming invitation-only Dixon rally. Rove then distributed the faux ducats at dive bars, flophouses, homeless shelters, and rock concerts where he sought out the scruffiest and foulest-smelling stoners.
The Dixon campaign was shocked when its rally was invaded by the rather unsavory battalion.
Rove went on to do much volunteer work for the Richard Nixon reelection campaign. He was so valuable to CREEP that Watergate prosecutors actually considered indicting him but decided not to only because he was small potatoes. His artistry in the field of dirty tricks was not yet fully honed.
For instance, working for George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary, Rove floated the rumor that Bush’s biggest rival, John McCain, had fathered a black “love child.” McCain, at the time running ahead of Bush, suffered a surprising defeat in that state, long a bastion of racism.
Bushy & The Brain
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I could fill ten posts with a laundry list of Rove violations of the public trust. Suffice it to say he’s a baddie.
So, if Newsweek wanted this brand of reprobate to pen a weekly column then it deserves to suffer a painful death.
Following in the tradition of Republican stalwart, Newt Gingrich, D’Souza has thrown his wife over for a younger woman.
D’Souza Goes For The Youth Market
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D’Souza, who regularly wows conservative Christian audiences with his railings against the morally bankrupt liberal, secular world, has been toting around a young chickadee whom he introduces as his fiancee.
This even as D’Souza’s ever-loving wife of 20 years, Dixie, has kept the home fires warm for him.
Some observers on my side of the fence say this is typical of the hypocrisy of podium-thumping evangelicals and conservatives.
Pure
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I say nonsense. In fact, I believe the whole incident proves D’Souza is philosophically consistent to a fault. His devotion to the “free market,” obviously, extends to all areas of his life.
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Friday, October 19th, 2012
Brought to you by The Electron Pencil: Bloomington Arts, Culture, Politics, and Hot Air. Daily.
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
ART ◗ Foxfire Park, Nashville — Fall Fine Arts Festival; 11am-6pm
MUSIC ◗ IU Willkie Auditorium — Friday Noon Concert Series: Jeeyoon Kim on piano; Noon
ART & LECTURE ◗ IU Woodburn Hall — Ken Kewley talks about his works in the “Small Is Big” exhibit; 1pm
LECTURE ◗ IU College of Arts & Humanities — “The Myth of Host Desecration in Medieval Aragon & Paris,” Presented by Robert Clark of Kansas Sate University; 3pm
SPORTS ◗ IU Field Hockey Complex — Hoosier women’s field hockey vs. Michigan; 4pm
FILM ◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Side by Side“; 6:45pm
AUTHORS ◗ Sweet Claire Gourmet Bakery — Lemonstone Reading Series, Presented by Writers Guild of Bloomington, tonight Emily Bobo reads and Zach Moon & Lawrence Washington play music; 7-8:30pm
MUSIC FEST ◗ Various locations, Bloomington — BloomingTONE Music Festival, purchase tickets for single events, all events on one night, or a full two-day pass, Friday & Saturday, Tonight’s events:
Cafe Django — Jazz: Marshall Robbins Combo; 7pm — Love Tap; 8pm — Mitch Shriner Trio; 9pm — The Anderson Sextet; 10pm
McGovern did a lot of things in his long public and political life, but the one thing he’ll be remembered for is getting whomped in 1972 by the only president in US history to resign in disgrace.
The senator from South Dakota lost to the unindicted co-conspirator by a margin of 60.7 percent to 37.5 percent.
Richard M. Nixon garnered 18 million more votes than McGovern that sad November day. The incumbent president carried 49 of the 50 states. McGovern couldn’t even carry his own state. He did beat Nixon in Massachusetts but, then as now, everybody knew that Massachusetts is not really, y’know, American.
Nixon Triumphant
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Nixon’s two biggest promises to the American electorate the year he ran for his first term were to bring a divided nation together and end the War in Vietnam. He failed to accomplish either goal by the ’72 election.
Yet the thoughtful residents of this holy land were determined to let him keep his job.
But Nixon was a troubled man. A man who battled inner demons night and day. A man whose damaged psyche impelled him to lie, cheat, steal, slander, sabotage, and otherwise toy with the political process in a way the country had never seen, nor has it seen since.
Here’s the definitive Nixon: After triumphing in the third greatest landslide in American history, he sent a memo to his adviser, speechwriter, and pet rat, Pat Buchanan. It read:
The opposition line will be:
1. McGovern’s mistakes lost it and not his views and not RN’s strength.
2. The low vote proves no one liked either candidate.
3. RN let down his party.
We’re In Real Trouble Now, Pat — We Won Big
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A man who’d lost so dramatically to such an undiagnosed paranoiac might be forgiven for feeling sorry for himself. McGovern and his wife Eleanor were devastated by the campaign and the loss. They mulled moving to England. He admitted to harboring feelings of bitterness and self-pity.
He bounced back emotionally, though, and started giving self deprecating speeches about the ’72 election. At one he said, “For many years, I wanted to run for the presidency in the worst possible way. And last year I sure did.”
McGovern even considered running for president again in 1976 but Democratic party big shots sat him down and told him not to waste his time or theirs. It wasn’t until the Reagan Revolution swept America in 1980 that McGovern was finally ousted from his Senate seat.
In his later years, McGovern worked tirelessly to battle world hunger. He even ran his own bookstore for a couple of years. When George W. Bush was beating the drums for war with Iraq, McGovern called for peace. After the war started, he called for a pullout. After five years of war, he called for Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to be impeached.
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McGovern Being Awarded The Presidential Medal Of Freedom
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Sadly, the loss to Nixon wasn’t the greatest tragedy of McGovern’s life. His daughter Terry was an alcoholic and homeless. She died of hypothermia after passing out in a snow bank in 1994. His son Steven also died of alcoholism just three months ago.
McGovern became a laughingstock in this nation that reveres winners. Yet he dedicated much of his life to helping tens of millions of people around the globe eat.
He is a loser?
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Thursday, October 18th, 2012
Brought to you by The Electron Pencil: Bloomington Arts, Culture, Politics, and Hot Air. Daily.
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
LECTURE ◗ IU Lilly Library — “The Destruction and Preservation of Medieval Documents: A Set of Catalan Examples,” Presented by Paul H. Freeman of Yale University; 4-6pm
LECTURE ◗ IU Poynter Center — “Balancing Ethics and Access: Over-the-Counter HIV Testing,” Presented by Beth Meyerson; 4pm
ART & LECTURE ◗ IU Woodburn Hall — E.M. Saniga talks about his works in the “Small Is Big” exhibit; 5pm
“Who’s gonna take me seriously with this on my head?” — Leanza Cornett
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WHO’S THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL?
I never watch the televised presidential debates for the same reason I’ve never cared about the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
Or even any human beauty pageant, for that matter.
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You know, these TV debates became important only because of what happened in the fall of 1960. Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Dem nominee for president that year came into the scheduled series of debates — the first time the events would be televised nationally — as the punk kid trying to elbow his way past the sitting vice president and foreign policy maven Dick Nixon.
The wags figured the debates would be a slaughter, with the wily Nixon taking the brash rich boy out for a spanking.
Things didn’t turn out that way.
JFK won the election because, during that first debate, held at the WBBM-TV studios in Chicago, he appeared cool, calm, sun-tanned and healthy. Whereas Nixon was gaunt and pale, having recently suffered through some health issues.
Not only that, Nixon fidgeted and sweated. Kennedy was charming and composed.
Beauty And The Beast
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Boom — knockout for the challenger. So Kennedy won the beauty pageant and the White House.
Seems a rather silly criterion upon which to base a vote for the leader of the western world, no?
Anyway, don’t cry for Nixon, America, because he capitalized on his dorky, dweeby, homeliness and his loss to the uber-wealthy, elite Kennedy, to vault into the presidency eight years later. Nixon basically told the voting public, Hey, I’m a schlub — just like you.
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The electorate bought it and, coupled with the fact that the Democratic Party was in the midst of a five year long suicide attempt, we elected ourselves a paranoid, self-loathing, suspicious, unindicted co-conspirator to be our leader. As a reward, we got Watergate, an unprecedented bombing campaign in Southeast Asia, Pat Buchanan, Karl Rove, and the original Rat Fuckers.
Oh, and a couple of pandas from China for the Washington National Zoo.
But I digress.
In the 1980 presidential candidate debates, Ronald Reagan out-prettied Jimmy Carter, which wasn’t very hard to do. Carter was somber and serious, talking about nuclear weapons and energy and the Middle East. Reagan was the chipper cheerleader.
The nation was ready for a pep rally.
When Carter brought up some controversial decisions Reagan had made as California governor, Reagan good-naturedly scolded him, saying, “There you go again.”
Grumpy & Happy
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The debate would be remembered for those words as well as a line Reagan uttered during his closing comment: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
Reagan routed Carter in the election.
In 2004, John Kerry whaled on President George W. Bush in their first debate. I actually watched that show, although I can’t for the life of me remember why. Anyway, I was astounded to discover that I actually felt sorry for Bush. He looked lost, physically diminished even, as the erudite Kerry tore down his arguments one by one.
All the experts agreed: Kerry had won the debate big time.
Dopey & Doc
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What do you think happened? A large percentage of jes’ plain folks in this holy land felt Kerry was too smart, an egghead. Poor old Georgy Boy was just a guy trying to do his job running the country and some Harvard-educated snob comes along and tries to tell him what to do. Bush’s polling numbers actually improved after what I’d figured was a knockout blow.
Now, my side of the political spectrum is always honking about “issues.” The debates must be about hard facts and real problems and definitive plans, they say.
Yet many folks on the Dem/Left/Progressive team last night commented that Barack Obama wasn’t “aggressive” enough, whatever that means. Should he have slugged Mitt Romney at some point in the night?
I suppose that would send ratings through the roof. Maybe that’s the future of presidential debates. The candidates can go after each other on a remote island. Whomever captures the other wins. That would be something Americans could understand.
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But last night’s debate was a wonk-fest. Obama and Romney argued like seniors on the high school debate team. Which, I figure, is what debate is all about.
But now the Obama side wants glitz and glitter and a he-man show of strength. They want that ultimate zinger, the kind that Ronald Reagan could deliver so well and so easily.
Times and sides change.
For the last few days, wits and pundits have been predicting that Romney would narrow Obama’s lead with his performance in the first debate. How they knew this in advance I can not say (other than to point out that news creatures need to invent new angles when conventional wisdom starts getting ripe.)
Sure enough, the post-game commentary and the pronouncements this morning have Romney coming out ahead last night. He looked like he belonged up there, the consensus goes. As opposed, I guess, to Romney showing up in shorts and a T-shirt. Romney, the experts say, looked presidential.
Maybe Obama should have slugged him.
I bet Obama will slug Romney in the next debate. Metaphorically, of course. Then Obama will see his numbers grow again. The final debate will be a tepid affair, with both guys deking and jabbing, but neither willing to risk going for the big blow so close to the election.
My hundred bucks on Obama still looks safe.
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THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARSENALS
One thing none of the three debates will address is the issue of guns.
That matter’s been settled and put to bed. We have agreed as a nation to allow our citizens to arm themselves to the teeth against…, um, against what I don’t know.
Well not all of us have agreed. Not I, for one. And not Nikki Giovanni, the writer and commentator. Here she is on Democracy Now!, spitting into the wind (click on the image for access to the vid; sorry, I couldn’t embed it):
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SUPERSIZE ME
You’ve been reading about that news anchor in Wisconsin who lambasted an emailer for calling her fat, haven’t you? Or you’ve at least seen the vid on YouTube, right?
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The woman is being praised from all quarters for standing up to what can only be described as bullying in the guise of a faux concern for the health of nation’s youth.
I’m all for her. Only I would have saved her a lot of breath. Had I been tasked with writing the news script for her response, I would have handed her a sheet with the original email on it, which she’d read, then the instruction for her to look straight into the lens and say, “And you, sir, are an asshole.”
Simplicity is best, don’t you think?
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Thursday, October 4th, 2012
Brought to you by The Electron Pencil: Bloomington Arts, Culture, Politics, and Hot Air. Daily.
ART ◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center, outside WFHB Studios — Public participation in creating a ten-foot sculpture called “The Angel,” Rain or shine; 9am-5pm
LECTURE ◗ IU SPEA — NBC News’ Phil Lebeau talks about the auto & aviation industries; 9:30am
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
“Obviously crime pays, or there’d be no crime.” — G. Gordon Liddy
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NIXON WOULD BE PROUD
Before I even begin this particular howl, I’ll remind readers that both the Republicans and Democrats have long, storied histories of stealing votes and even whole elections.
The Ballot Box That Put LBJ Over The Top
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That caveat out of the way, I can barely control my indignation over the latest GOP dirty trick.
It’s getting personal now.
A little background: Saturday morning, the Boys of Soma were sitting around reminding each other through unverifiable anecdotes how clever, strong, and sexually potent we are. By and by, it sank in that if we continued to lie to each other loudly, some outside observers might begin to consider us liars. And that wouldn’t do.
So we settled into a brief quiet. And then Saunders piped up.
“I’m very disappointed in Nicole (not her real name),” he said, dolefully.
The rest of us glanced at each other. Nicole is an honorary Boy of Soma. Some consider her, in fact, the leader of the B of S because, well, she could probably kick the hell out of most of us. Okay, any of us.
Headquarters
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Nicole is cherished for a variety of reasons. She’s smart, athletic, outspoken, direct, and one or two of the Boys has been known to become dreamy-eyed while watching her exit the coffeehouse. There is a general agreement within our ranks that her husband, Rod (again, not his real name) is a man to be envied.
No one has ever uttered a discouraging word about Nicole. That is, before Saunders piped up Saturday.
“What is it?” Tough Guy Mac demanded. “What’s the matter with Nicole?” I may be wrong but I think he may have balled his fists.
“Didja see who she’s going for in the election?” Saunders countered.
“No, who?” Mac and Irish Pat said as one.
Saunders dropped the bombshell. “Romney,” he said.
No, No, Say It Ain’t So!
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We uttered a collective gasp. Even Barista Jericho’s iPod, heard over the room speakers at the time, stopped playing.
“Naw!” Tough Guy Mac said, waving Saunders off.
“Can’t be,” Irish Pat said.
“Whaddya talking about?” I said.
Saunders shrugged. “Look at her Facebook page,” he said.
So I pulled out the old machine and logged in. Sure enough, there it was, in a pretty display of electrons: “Nicole Magnuson Likes Mitt Romney.”
Can It Be?
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Again, we fell silent. Gloom settled over our corner of the place.
“Well,” I said, “I’m gonna have to have some words with that young lady.”
“Somebody’s gonna have to,” Irish Pat said.
“I wish she was here right now so we could find out what the hell’s goin’ on,” Tough Guy Mac said.
“In fact, I’m gonna send her a message right now,” I said. Nicole at the time was out of town, in Cincinnati visiting her dear old mother. I clacked out a message telling her I was heartbroken that she’d disappointed us so.
Bang, a return message came back within seconds. “What? What’d I do?” she’d typed.
After a brief discussion during which the three of us at Soma marveled that even so backward a hamlet as Cincinnati now has the Internet, we agreed on the wording of our indictment.
Cincinnati Has Entered The 20th Century — Who Knew?
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“We’re sitting here with our faces in our hands, weeping unashamedly,” I wrote. “None of us can believe it. You…, you…, you like Romney! There. I’ve said it!”
What followed was a long, outraged recount from Nicole of the dirty trick that’d been played on her. It seems someone’s busy these days hacking into people’s Facebook accounts and making them “Like” Mitt Romney.
Apparently, Mitt Romney is trying to get 8 million Likes. I suppose it’s some kind of weird political penis envy, considering that Barack Obama’s page has some 30 million Likes.
Funny how one of Mitt’s talking points is that Barack Obama has been trying to turn people against each other. His own campaign almost came between Nicole and us.
Saboteur
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When all was said and done, Nicole zinged me with this one: “I’m the one who should be disappointed with you. You should know me better than to think I’d go for Romney. I thought we were friends.”
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
Brought to you by The Electron Pencil: Bloomington Arts, Culture, Politics, and Hot Air. Daily.
ART ◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center, outside WFHB Studios — Public participation in creating a ten-foot sculpture called “The Angel,” Rain or shine; 9am-5pm
SALE ◗ IU Morrison Hall — Kinsey Institute Library Book Sale; 9am-5pm
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
CLASS ◗ Purdue Extension, 3400 S. Walnut St. — 2012 Monroe County Citizens’ Academy, Learn how county government works; 6-9pm
CLASS ◗ Monroe County Public Library — Lights, Camera, Write: An Introduction to the Art of Screenwriting, 8-session course; 6:30-8:30pm, through November 28th (except November 21st)
MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Faculty Recital: Carl Lenthe on trombone, Kimberly Carballo on piano; 7pm
CLASS ◗ IU Lilly Library — Lifelong Learning Series: We’re Off to See the Wizard, On the life and work of L. Frank Baum, 3 weekly sessions through October 17th; 7pm
FILM ◗ IU Cinema — “Gun Hill Road,” with personal appearance by actor Esai Morales; 7pm
FILM ◗ SoFA, Room 102 — “The Cove,” Part of the Animal Behavior Film Series; 7pm
FILM ◗ IU Memorial Union, Whittenberger Auditorium — UB Films: “Turn Me On, Dammit!“; 7:30pm
“For me, the most ironic token of that moment in history is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: ‘We came in peace for all mankind.’ As the United States was dropping 7.5 megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity: We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.” — Carl Sagan
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PAY ‘EM: DAY 1
Give teachers the dough they deserve. Do not increase class sizes. Do not extend the school day.
The Chicago Teachers Union strike is everybody’s business.
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LUCKY US
Steve the Dog and I took a walk at dusk yesterday on the shore of Lake Monroe in the Paynetown State Recreation Area.
A blue heron flapped past a few hundred yards off, probably heading home for the night. Fish feeding on surface bugs splashed in the water around the marina.
This Is Minutes From Home
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Paynetown was a bit lonelier than it’s been for months. The temperature hung around 64 degrees.
We walked fast — well, as fast as my creaky ticker would allow us. I may have to wear a long-sleeved shirt tonight.
Apparently, the Wikipedia entry on his novel, “The Human Stain,” recently contained faulty info on the inspiration behind the story. Wikipedia says the book is based on an incident in the life of Manhattan writer Anatole Broyard. Roth says it’s really based on something that happened to Melvin Tumin, a noted researcher in race relations in America.
Roth states in an open letter to Wikipedia that when he contacted Wikipedia in an effort to get the entry corrected, he was told he was not a credible source.
Hah!
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Apparently, Wikipedia needs its info verified by third-party independent sources. Roth, per the online encyclopedia’s own guidelines, is not.
All this makes a whisper of sense, when you think about it for a moment. Wikipedia doesn’t want people editing their own entries. Hell, I’ve been tempted more times than I can remember to create my own Wikipedia entry, describing myself as the Midwest’s greatest unheard-of writer. My newspaper and magazine articles, my books, my online posts have thrilled readers and moved them to tears. History, my fantasy entry would read, will recognize Mr. Glab in much the same way that Van Gogh in the art world was celebrated after his death.
Vince And Me
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But then I remember that Wikipedia won’t allow me to define myself in its database at all.
Can you imagine, for instance, how noted self-admirers like Richard Nixon or Donald Trump would portray themselves?
I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’ve occasionally fantasized hinting to someone I know and trust that I really deserve a Wikipedia entry. Now, I wouldn’t suggest anything outright, but if the person whose ear I bent might take it upon her- or himself to immortalize me thusly, well, who am I to protest?
Anyway, Roth goes on for 2677 words to correct the bit of false information. I suppose that’s what a prolific writer would do. The Philip Roth bibliography entry in Wikipedia states he’s penned 27 novels. He hasn’t challenged that bit of data.
A “writer” such as Ayn Rand could have easily dashed off, say, half a million distorted, specious, and borderline psychotic words correcting some minor point in her Wikipedia entry.
“Writer”
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Writers write. Even “writers” write.
Roth’s open letter is fascinating because it reveals a bit about the life of Melvin Tumin, who was grilled for using “hate speech” in a classroom once. It seems he’d discovered in the middle of a semester that two students had not attended one of his classes. Taking roll one day, he asked the class if anyone knew the students. “Does anyone know these people?” he asked. “Do they exist or are they spooks?”
Ha ha. Spooks, meaning phantoms or wraiths. But at the time Tumin uttered the word, it also was a more “palatable” substitute for “nigger.” Archie Bunker on “All in the Family” regularly referred to black men as spooks.
Lovable Hater
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Tumin was subjected to a grueling inquisition, even thought he’d been known for years for his sensitive work in race relations.
Roth’s letter, like the novel, explores the issues of character assassination, hysteria, and groupthink. In the letter, he also ruminates on what it means to be black.
So it’s much more than a run of the mill letter to the editor demanding a correction. It’s a neat little look at us.
“I was born with a need to be the center of attention and, of course, you’re the center of the world when you’re acting.” — Julie Christie
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IT WAS SEVEN YEARS AGO TODAY
Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill once famously said, “All politics is local.”
I, less famously, counter: “All politics is theater.”
Most of the Republican Party’s formula for success since the late 1960s has been its ability to present its standard-bearers as tough guys, strong men, and decisive generals. The GOP has acted more as a talent agent than a producer of statesmen for the last 45 years.
Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election because he told the nation he would stand firm against the madness in the streets. He’d beat down the savage blacks who were threatening to explode out of their ghettos. And he’d swiftly kick the crap out of the North Vietnamese and bring the boys home.
Save Us, Dick
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We believed him. Just as many of us have believed pro wrestling is on the up and up and Judge Judy is our nation’s top jurist.
Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election because he told us we were terrific and the 1984 campaign by telling us it was Morning in America. Ham that he was, he knew the Soviet Union was on its way out so he talked tough and thereby snatched all the credit for that empire’s inevitable collapse.
Make Us Feel Good About Ourselves, Ronnie
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Theater.
George W. Bush’s role as resolute CEO of the Great United States, Inc. propelled him to victory over a couple of nambypamby Dem opponents in 2000 and 2004. The nation was terrified of presidents who liked blow jobs, college educated eggheads who’d ponder us into paralysis, and crazy Arabs who’d blow up our cities. Bush was the antidote to all those existential threats.
Be The Boss, George
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But then came Hurricane Katrina and the theater went dark.
The worst natural disaster in America’s history presented Bush with a dramatic challenge he was unable to play. It was as if Kristen Stewart were cast in the role of Margaret Thatcher.
Streep As Thatcher; Stewart As, Um, Stewart
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Katrina’s president was a role that was written for Bill Clinton. He’d have set up a second White House in New Orleans. He’d have hugged the storm’s victims until his arms ached. Had Clinton been in office when Katrina hit, people would have been marveling to this day about how fabulous the federal government’s response was to the tragedy.
And in the most practical sense, Clinton wouldn’t have done a thing different than Bush did.
Bush knew how to play the business executive and the military commander. He had a feel for the role of the manly hero who saves the day.
His greatest line before his downfall was, “They hate us for our freedoms.”
Which was, of course, as phony a line as, say, “Go ahead, make my day,” or “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
“Well, do ya, punk?”
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But we in this holy land have always been a cooperative audience. We’ll forgive any political actor for chewing the scenery as long as it makes us feel good. It’s only when pols don’t make us feel all tingly and warm or bold and adventurous that we turn on them.
Witness Jimmy Carter’s malaise speech. Bye bye, Jimmy.
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Bush’s Carter moment came when he uttered those unforgettable words, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
People were still sitting on rooftops waiting to be rescued when Bush said that. The Superdome was filled with refugees at the time of the quote. New Orleans cops were shooting up citizens.
Yet Bush found it important to bestow frat boy bonhomie upon his emergency response point man at that moment in time.
Bush Takes It All In From Above
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And like that, Bush was finished. No matter that no government could ever have responded adequately to Katrina. Nothing like it had ever happened before in America.
But when nature sucker punches us in the belly, we have to blame someone. And it’s not just Americans who react that way. Be it an earthquake in Afghanistan or a flood in India, people will shriek “Where’s our government?” even as the government is digging itself out of the rubble.
At times like that, the first and best thing government can do is assure us everything will turn out alright. The boys in charge must tell us that they’ll move heaven and Earth to set our lives right again.
Bush didn’t know that. He was the wrong actor for the part.
Theater.
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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.
“Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” — Omar Bradley
Some 10,000 soldiers and civilian responders are play-acting what they’ll do in the event that some mad brown people drop a nuke on, say, Bloomington or even Indy.
MUTC covers a thousand acres and has more than a hundred training buildings including structures up to seven stories tall as well as good old split-level suburban type homes.
Now, I mention mad brown people because that’s who we’re really afraid is going to hurl the big one at us, no?
Didn’t George W. Bush whisper the words mushroom cloud and Saddam Hussein into our ears back in 2002 and 2003 to convince us to go along with him and his cronies on their war party? How much has changed regarding how we look at Arabs and Muslims since then?
I wonder if the people who ran IFCFMY instructed the kids to duck and cover back in the ’50s.
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And how feeble-minded do we have to be to figure we’ll survive a nuclear blast if only we have enough ambulances and EMTs?
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WHAT’S THE ANTIDOTE FOR ANTONIN?
I’ve been taking my time reading Rick Perlstein’s fab book, “Nixonland,” this summer.
Perlstein posits that Dick Nixon was the first television era president to give voice to the bleatings and ramblings of the gleefully uneducated in this holy land.
Rick Perlstein
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Nixon’s was truly a grass roots campaign in 1968. He portrayed college-educated people as snobbish, superior, sex- and drug-crazed lunatics who were going to ram blacks, Jews, peace, welfare, and even a little bit of the Communist Manifesto down good people’s throats. Nixon was savvy enough to realize most Americans had a hard enough time getting out of high school.
He rode a wave of self-pity and manufactured paranoia into the White House.
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The divisions Nixon capitalized on in the United States at the time make today’s Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street tête-à-tête look like a pillow fight.
Perlstein suggests that this nation avoided an actual second civil war by a hair’s width. Bombings, murders, assassinations, mob actions, and the army on American streets were as common from 1965 through 1973 as texting while driving is today.
Watts, August 1965
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Anyway, during Nixon’s early years in the White House, PBS was coming into its own as a news operation to be reckoned with, especially since it didn’t have to answer to advertisers. PBS started nosing into some of the more unsavory aspects of the Nixon administration. The President directed the general counsel for the Office of Telecommunications Policy to draw up a plan to defang PBS.
That general counsel wrote memos spelling out precisely how Nixon could bring PBS to heel. He wrote: “The best possibility for White House influence is through Presidential appointees to the Board of Directors.”
Once Nixon had stacked the board with his boys, they could then work on local PBS stations to play ball with the White House through the granting of moneys that were originally meant to go to the national network. The reason? The national network was top heavy with people from “the liberal Establishment of the Northeast.”
In other words, college-educated men. Bad guys who must be battled.
The author of that strategy was a fellow named Antonin Scalia, now the longest serving member of the US Supreme Court.
Antonin Scalia: Warrior Against Liberals
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Yeah, there was a revolution in the ’60s. Only the guys in power staged it — and won it.
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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.
