"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
Admit it, the first time you heard or read the words Mitch Daniels and president this morning, your heart skipped a beat.
Once you caught your breath and realized he’s only going to become the big boss at Purdue University after his gubernatorial term concludes, you might have thought, Good, now we won’t have to worry about him running for Prez of the USA in 2016.
Ladies And Gentlemen, The President Of…
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Not so fast, kiddies.
I direct you to your history books. A fellow named Dwight Eisenhower took the gig as president of Columbia University after he’d helped whack the Nazis in World War II. He held the job for a year, during which it was clear he was far more interested in using the post as a platform to position himself as a statesman than he was in running the university. Next thing people knew, he was being dragged into the 1952 Republican National Convention, saying Aw, shucks, and running for the White House.
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Part of Ike’s reasoning for taking the Columbia job was, as he put it, to advance the cause of education in a democracy.
Follow me here, now. Mitch Daniels has taken his lumps as the governor who oversaw massive budget cuts for Indiana schools. Daniels’ rep as a benefactor of public schooling was shot all to hell.
Now, mirabile dictu, he’s going to lead one of the state’s two most high profile educational institutions after he leaves Indianapolis.
Sounds to me like a very nice strategy for a guy who wants to repair his image. In fact, he might hope to become known as a respected educator by the year 2016.
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PLAYTIME
Click.
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SMILE FOR BRIAN
Happy 70th birthday to Brian Wilson.
Brian Wilson
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The leader of the Beach Boys was one of the musical geniuses of 20th Century America. The BB album “Pet Sounds” has been lauded as one of the five best discs in the history of the rock era.
The harmonies he arranged throughout the Beach Boys’ run verged on the spiritual at times.
If the very idea of Beach Boys’ music makes you smirk, I suggest you give some of their cuts a listen once again. Try to hear them as music rather than as cheesy cultural artifacts of the 60s. You’ll be surprised.
More Than This
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THE CONSCIENCE OF A NATION
The Bloomington City Council is thinking of making a statement about a policy that’s anything but local once again.
Our elected municipal leaders want to make sure the world knows they disapprove of the US Supreme Court Citizens United ruling that essentially gave corporations and big organizations the same free speech rights as individuals. You know, the corporate personhood idea that the Reagan/Bush/Bush court so lovingly bestowed upon us.
Some Of Our Best Friends Are Corporations
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It reminds me of the letter the council sent to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer a couple of years ago when she was fixing to sign that state’s draconian immigration bill.
My guess is Gov. Brewer tossed the letter into the circular file.
I mean, honestly, did our councilors really hope that Brewer might read the letter, take her glasses off, stare out her office window, and muse on the moral implications of the bill? Did they expect her to whisper to herself, “Golly gee, these people really make sense”?
Now That I Think About It…
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Now the Council wants to proclaim itself in favor of a constitutional amendment to un-declare corporations as people.
My only hope is they didn’t spend too much time debating the point.
(And, just to clarify my position, the Citizens United decision was among the dumbest-assed things the US Supreme Court has done in decades.)
“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.” — John Kenneth Galbraith
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THIS MEANS WAR!
Steven Higgs of the Bloomington Alternative ran a fascinating two–parter this month on the 1971 opening salvo in the right wing revolution that has turned this holy land into a corporatocracy. Don’t miss it.
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Less than half a year before he was nominated by Richard Nixon to become a US Supreme Court Associate Justice, the then-rightist Lewis Powell wrote an explosive memo detailing what he saw as the coming war for free enterprise.
Powell, you may recall, retired in the middle of Ronald Reagan’s second term as president. By that time, he was seen as a moderate, a compromiser, the guy who could talk to both Antonin Scalia and Thurgood Marshall. In fact, many felt Powell was even too liberal for a Court and a nation that had moved dramatically rightward in the preceding 16 years.
Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy, an even more conservative jurist, to replace Powell. Now Kennedy is seen as the moderate, the compromiser, and, occasionally, too liberal for his own good.
The right has come a long way, baby.
Powell
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Anyway, Powell, a big-time corporate lawyer and legal advocate for the tobacco industry, wrote that American capitalism was under attack on a variety of fronts 41 years ago. Everybody, he wrote, from Ralph Nader, the media, academia, the federal courts, communists and “New Left”-ists, to outright revolutionaries were gunning for our sacred economic system.
Powell wasn’t speaking metaphorically either. He was convinced liberals were out to destroy America. His screed sounded like nothing other than a typical Rush Limbaugh upchuck.
For instance, Powell quoted a Fortune magazine diatribe against consumer advocate Nader:
“The passion that rules in him — and he is a passionate man — is aimed at smashing utterly the target of his hatred, which is corporate power. He thinks, and says quite bluntly, that a great many corporate executives belong in prison — for defrauding the consumer with shoddy merchandise, poisoning the food supply with chemical additives and willfully manufacturing unsafe products that will maim or kill the buyer.”
Nader, Powell asserted, was dangerous.
Dangerous
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Funny thing is, a mere six years later it was learned that Ford Motor Company bosses knew their Pinto model was liable to explode in flames in rear-end collisions. Those execs also knew a certain number of Pinto drivers and passengers would die as a result. They decided that the deaths and resulting financial damage claims were simply the cost of doing business.
Dangerous, indeed.
In the Powell Memo, sent to members of the US Chamber of Commerce, he suggested corporate America and political leaders devote themselves to the “constant surveillance” of school textbooks and eliminate left-wingers from schools and positions of power.
“There should be no hesitation to attack,” he advised corporate leaders.
Yeesh!
Higgs concludes that the memo was “a literal call to the political arms that have (sic) subsequently driven the nation’s devolution from democracy to oligarchy.”
I suppose the only difference between today and 1971 is that, back then, the only people who would spout such psycho garbage were toady corporate lawyers. Now, the corporations have an entire Tea Party to parrot their paranoia.
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LIZZ WINSTEAD’S BABY
Lizz Winstead created the fabulously successful Daily Show franchise that we think of as Jon Stewart’s baby.
It isn’t.
Winstead
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Stewart came aboard two and a half years after the show was born. He replaced the smarmy-snarky, celebrity-gossipy Craig Kilborn as host. Toward the end of Kilborn’s run, he granted an interview to an Esquire magazine writer in which he suggested that Winstead would happily blow him. It was the last straw in Winstead’s long-standing battle against the comedy boys club that was taking over her show. She quit soon after.
Since her Daily Show stint, Winstead’s career has soared and dived. She co-founded the ill-fated Air America Radio network. She writes occasionally for the Huffington Post, has produced a few TV and radio shows, and now hosts a weekly New York City radio news wrap up program called “Shoot the Messenger.”
I was reminded of Winstead while reading a neat book called “¡Satiristas!: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians,” by Paul Provenza and Dan Dion. It was published by itbooks, a HarperCollins imprint, in 2010. In it Provenza chats with dozens of funny people about their art.
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Winstead is included in the line-up. She tells Provenza that part of her comedic sensibility emanates from her conservative Catholic childhood home in Minneapolis.
She recalls facing her first adult dilemma as a teenaged girl.
“[T]he first time I ever had sex, in high school, I got pregnant. I knew I wasn’t having a baby, bu the way to get an abortion was so insane. Being brought up a Catholic, I didn’t know where to go, but one day I saw a sign on the bus for a place that said, ‘Abortion options.’ I thought, ‘Oh, there are many options.’
“So I go to this place, and it was run by some group called The Lambs of Christ. This woman comes out wearing a lab coat, so I’m thinking she’s some kind of doctor. Then I realized the women at the Clinique and Lancôme counters wear lab coats; she’s not really a doctor, lab coats are pretty much available anywhere. She shows me blow-ups of mangled fetuses and a picture of a kid on a bike. I’m like, ‘A bike?’ It was insane. I left completely confused. As I walked out the door, she was yelling after me, ‘Just remember, the choice you make is mommy or murder.’
“I thought, ‘I’m sixteen and here’s an adult, a “person of God,” impersonating a physician, just scaring the shit out of me.’ Even as a kid, I was, like, ‘That’s fucking weird.'”
Winstead’s 51 years old now, meaning the encounter took place 35 years ago, probably sometime in 1977.
Just four short years after the US Supreme Court’s landmark Roe vs. Wade decision.
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Nashville’s The Tennessean newspaper reported Friday that 24 states passed new abortion restriction laws in 2011, more than any previous year.
Talk about fucking weird.
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MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING
Written by Bruce Springsteen, performed best by Cyndi Lauper.
“The average citizen knows only too well that it makes no difference to him which side wins. He realizes that the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey have come to resemble each other so closely that it is practically impossible to tell them apart; both of them make the same braying noise, and neither of them ever says anything.” — Will Rogers
Don’t get me wrong — this George Zimmerman character is one ultra-weird customer. Mix that with a deranged Florida gun law and you get Trayvon Martin on a slab in the morgue.
But it’s not at all hard to imagine a scared kid acting on impulse and jumping this creep who’s been following him at night in a strange neighborhood.
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It’s no capital offense, natch, but it adds a layer of nuance to the narrative.
The problem is our corporate media loath nuance. They dig black and white, good and evil, an unhinged racist versus a black teenager carrying a bag of Skittles.
Oh wait — it was an unhinged racist versus a black teenager carrying a bag of Skittles.
Here’s the real nuance the slick news stenographers are missing — Trayvon Martin died because this nation can’t let go of its Wild West mythology. High Noon, baby. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We aim to protect our womenfolk and churrens.
Book it — George Zimmerman saw himself as the hero saving his neighborhood from the savages. The state of Florida put the gun in his hand. He ain’t the only one unhinged in this case.
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STRIPPED DOWN JUSTICE
Your Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court at work: yesterday, the Goths who make up the court’s usual 5-4 majority have affirmed the right of jailers to strip search you repeatedly should you have the misfortune to be nabbed for something even so trivial as riding your bike without a bright enough light at night.
Yeesh.
“This Is Gonna Hurt You A Lot Worse Than It’s Gonna Hurt Me.”
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Yep. Some poor schmo who was cuffed because of a clerical error and was strip searched twice while in custody for a week, sued a New Jersey county for his ordeal. The guy was arrested for not paying a petty fine (he actually had paid it but his record was mismarked) so he was thrown in with the rest of the hoodlums, gangbangers, homicidal maniacs, child molesters, arsonists, and other assorted thugs that called the county jail home in 2005.
Naturally, jail officials wished to protect their aforementioned guests from such a vicious character so they inspected his anus and rectum a couple of times to make certain he wasn’t smuggling a submachine gun into the joint.
“Yeah, We Found This Up A Jaywalker’s Ass.”
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Little did his jailers care that he was a nice, stable, professional man, a finance executive for a auto dealership with a family.
But who knows what such a man might stash in his trunk. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, cited cases of people being arrested for the likes of disorderly conduct and public nuisance hiding tobacco and lighters in their rectums. Naturally, an accused person’s dignity and and decency must be disregarded in the face of such imminent dangers.
So, the five justices who gave us the Citizens United ruling have now determined that your ass is ours should you be suspected of even the most minor transgression.
Hey, did I mention the guy who brought suit was black?
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BEER LAKE
The Loved One and I are fast approaching our two-and-a-half year mark here in the garden spot of Indiana, beautiful Bloomington.
I still don’t know my way around a lot of this sprawling megalopolis. And many things still puzzle me. For instance, why is there a That Road?
That’s why I like to read the big glossy, full-color Monroe County map that my neighbor and pal Tom Thickstun gave me about a month ago. And — swear to god — I look up Bloomington things on Wikipedia.
See, I’m a trivia junkie and I look things up at random on Wikipedia. Oh, I know it’s not an authoritative resource. Still, it’s got a lot of cool and fun things in it.
So last night I looked up Lake Monroe. I love the fact that I live five minutes up the road from this fairly good sized, pretty lake. I enjoy taking Steve the Dog down to the Cutright and Paynetown ramps at dusk so we can watch people pull boats out of the water. (Yeah, I’ll admit it — my evenings aren’t as scintillating as they once were.)
Do you realize that the entire project to dam Salt Creek, saw down all the trees in the river valley, and even buy out the town of Elkinsville in order to create the lake cost a mere $16.5M. Man, that’s nothing.
Anyway, I kept scrolling and I came to a Trivia subhead. It reads: “According to the List of countries by beer consumption per capita, the total world consumption of beer is approximately 1/3 of the volume of Lake Monroe at maximum capacity.”
Now, I so want this to be true for the simple reason that someone had to calculate the world population’s intake of beer and then compare it to the volume of Lake Monroe.
One-Third Beer
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Who in his right mind would do that?
I mean, if it were you, wouldn’t you look for a lake whose volume matched exactly the world population’s intake of beer?
And is that what’s imbibed in a year? A decade? Since the historic “Tastes great — less filling” debates?
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I clicked on the List link and saw nothing in the main article to indicate this startling factoid. If such proof exists, it must be in one of the reference articles cited at the bottom.
Believe me, I wasn’t going to click on all those links in search of this bit of hypertrivia.
Oh alright, I know it was probably some smart-assed college kid who was drunk on an amount of beer equal to 1/3 the volume of Lake Monroe at maximum capacity who pranked this Wiki edit.
“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.” — Gore Vidal
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NEVER MIND WHAT WE SAID; LISTEN TO WHAT WE SAY
Nothing like a bogeyman to unite a bunch of scaredy cats, no?
Back in the late 1980s when the Reagan presidency was being readied for its final nap, a bunch of conservative economists and policy wonks (including ideologues from the Heritage Foundation) got together to create a plan for health care reform.
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This funny little gang was all in a tizzy because many Democrats at the time were pushing hard for a single-payer health insurance system.
Since the gang understood that such a government-run system would naturally lead to Stalinesque purges of the population with death tolls reaching into the tens of millions, they needed to come up with an alternative pronto. And so they did.
They came up with a health insurance mandate. The goal, they crowed, was to find a “market-oriented” alternative to the Dem/commie plot and to protect the righteous citizens of this holy land against “free riders” — you know, all those ne’er do wells who don’t have health insurance and then, when they happen to suffer a little sucking chest wound from a shotgun blast or some other trivial hangnail, all of a sudden want to be treated in an emergency room on our dime.
“Are You A Free Rider?”
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So under this alternative, blessed-by-god plan, the conservative ideologues proposed that every American be compelled to purchase health insurance. The Republicans loved it; the plan would be a boon for their sugar daddies in the health insurance rackets. Over the years, a couple of future GOP aspirants for the White House named Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich would hold pep rallies for the health insurance mandate.
Meanwhile, the Dems decided they couldn’t survive anymore without becoming Republicans, so they adopted the plan as well.
Then, under George W. Bush, who lost the 2000 presidential election by half a million votes, thereby winning the 2000 presidential election, America embarked on a tri-fold policy of fighting disastrous wars, ignoring the plight of a major city that had been nearly wiped out by a hurricane, and giving free reign to degenerate Wall Street gamblers so they could sink the world’s economy.
“Can You Believe It? They Said I Won!”
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The American electorate thought this strategy to be lacking. So they elected a Democrat to be president. Now remember, the Democrats had come to the conclusion that they could never triumph over the Republicans without themselves becoming Republicans. Accordingly, the new Democratic president championed ideas that would have made Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and even the sainted Ronald Reagan proud.
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The only problem was, the new president was half black. The real Republicans wet their pants. After changing their shorts, the Republicans announced that their sole goal in this challenging, complex, threatening world was to sabotage Barack Obama.
So, my dear friends, that’s how we get to this strange day. The Heritage Foundation, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and every other conservative and/or True Republican in these Great United States, Inc. are waving their pompons in favor of the US Supreme Court overturning the health insurance mandate proposed by the half-black, half-Republican Barack Obama.
Is it any wonder why fewer than half the eligible voters in America are expected to go to the polls this November?
“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.” — Lenny Bruce
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MAN WAS HIS PET, AFTER THE HOUSEFLY*
In this holy land it’s a lot easier to believe in god than it is not to.
America’s biggest holiday is Christmas.
Our coins read “In God We Trust.”
Every candidate for president must declare what a pious soul he or she is.
We say “… one nation under god…” we we pledge allegiance.
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Both houses of Congress begin each day’s proceedings with a benediction delivered by a professional believer.
When someone sneezes we say, “God bless you.”
When we’re annoyed we say, “For Christ’s sake!” When we’re really mad we say, “God damn it.”
When we go to war, we ask god to help us blow the brains out of enemy soldiers’ heads.
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In America, god is everywhere.
This weekend the putative creator of the universe will be the object of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of special assemblies.
There will be, for instance, a series of “Stand Up for Religious Freedom” rallies in cities around the country. These folks believe their BFF in the sky doesn’t like sex and is miffed because employer health care plans will soon be forced to cover contraceptives.
And Saturday, atheists will crowd the Mall in Washington, DC to proclaim that they have no invisible friends or protectors. Organizers hope the Reason Rally, also dubbed Woodstock for atheists, will attract some 30,000 godless souls.
When I was a kid, a woman named Madalyn Murray O’Hair made a big splash. She was America’s most well-known atheist in the 1960s. It seems her son Bill was compelled to participate in Bible readings while a student in the Baltimore City Public Schools. So she filed suit, which eventually made its way to the US Supreme Court as part of a broader case.
I was a nominal Roman Catholic at the time. My parents (Ma, mostly) still went to church and dragged me along. Ma and Dad wouldn’t drop out for another five or so years. I couldn’t drop out of the faith because I’d never had it.
However, I had some clubbish loyalty to the faithful and so felt that Madeline Murray O’Hair, who soon would found American Atheists, was a villain. She was called “America’s most hated woman.” It didn’t help that O’Hair was pretty much a lunatic.
The Most Hated Woman In America
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So even though I had no particular allegiance to any god, I was on the side of those who did. But I was a kid.
By the age of 12, I’d given up childish things — like blind loyalty — and started thinking for myself. The nuns at St. Giles school had told me god was love. They’d said I must love him.
Man, I had a tough time with that one. How do I love god? I mean, he’s this big, powerful guy who doesn’t say much and is always aggravated. In fact, he’s just like my father.
So I imagined kissing god’s cheeks profusely. See, Ma always made me kiss Dad goodnight. He’d sit there in his recliner, purportedly watching TV but actually dozing noisily. I’d have to stretch and strain to plant my tender little lips on his sandpaper face. He wouldn’t budge an inch.
“Wait’ll I Get My Hands on You!”
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I figured that’s the way it would be with god. I’d imagine myself up in heaven, standing on a chair on my tiptoes, raining smooches on god’s abrasive cheek. He, too, would remain impassive while I gushed over him.
By 12, that fever dream didn’t cut it anymore. I never did figure out how to love god.
I’m not going to Washington for the Atheists’ Woodstock. I’ve long believed atheism is about not being part of a team.
Christians’ll have an easier time of it at their rallies here in America, as well as in Mexico and Cuba. They can all pat each other on the back and say how great it is to be the apple of god’s eye.
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What are the atheists going to do? You can’t really celebrate the non-existence of something, can you?
Actually, I don’t even like the term atheist. There is, of course, the association with Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s weirdness. Then there’s the matter of identifying myself by what I’m not.
It’s like joining a club for people who’ve never murdered anyone. After introducing yourself and proclaiming you’ve never taken a life, there isn’t much else to do.
A better term might be Other — as in the only box I can honestly check on an application that asks me my religion.
“The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.” — Clarence Darrow
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BZZZZZZZZZZZ!
Steve the Dog and I just had a major drama. I was in the process of typing up the entries below when Steve started getting unusually curious about something in a corner of the garage (where I keep my office).
Suddenly, Steve screech-barked and jumped back. I went over to see what was up and I saw a gigantic bumble bee staggering and lumbering around on the concrete floor.
The hair on my arms turned to tiny needles.
A Cute Little Bunny — I Refuse To Post A Picture Of A Bee
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Apparently, the bumble bee took exception to Steve’s sniffing and gave him a shiv to the snoot. Bumble bees, I understand, essentially commit suicide when they sting. I would normally look something like this up to verify it but I’m not gonna do it.
See, I have a bee phobia. Wasps and hornets, too. Merely typing the words makes me shudder. I can’t even look at pictures of the brutes or else I’ll spend the rest of the day glancing over my shoulder in a panic.
You think I’m neurotic about these guys? Take my sister Charlotte and snakes. She can bear them no more courageously than I suffer yellow jackets. Swear to god, Charlotte one day cut the picture illustrating the entry for the word snake out of her family’s dictionary. That’s nuts.
Wanna know what’s more nuts? I wouldn’t even have the cagliones to cut the picture of a bee or wasp out of my dictionary. When I was a kid I read my family’s set of the World Book Encyclopedia voraciously — all except the B volume. I didn’t want to take a chance on seeing a picture of a bee.
See? No Bees
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This reminds me of an incident that happened in the Book Corner last summer. I was straightening out the half-price book table near the big front windows. Suddenly I heard what I originally thought was the drone of a World War II fighter plane. It turned out to be one of those titanic carpenter bees.
They stand about six-foot-three and have a wingspan of some three yards. This particular one was hurling himself against the window trying to get out of the place. Honestly, he was smoking a cigarette. I’m not certain but I think he might have been carrying a gun.
I almost lost control of my bodily functions. I dashed to the other end of the store.
Right at this time, my pal Mary Damm, a soil biology researcher at IU, walked in. She could see the terror on my face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I pointed toward the window where, by this time, the carpenter bee was picking up a large volume and preparing to fling it at the glass.
“You’re afraid of a bee?” she marveled. “It won’t hurt you.”
I looked closely at the bee; he glared back at me and drew one of his fingers across his throat in a threatening manner.
“Look,” I said, almost mewling, “I’m scared to death of these things. I don’t know what to do.”
At this point, Mary started telling me what terrific citizens of the Earth bees are. How they keep to themselves and help propagate countless floral species and how they won’t attack you as long as you don’t molest them.
The bee in the window gave me a terrifying glance and made a shushing gesture in my direction. I think I squeaked.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, “but they still petrify me.”
Almost As Terrifying As Bees
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“Well,” Mary observed, “that’s not rational.”
“No, it’s not,” I said, my voice shaking. “That’s why they call it a phobia.”
“Well, do you want me to get it out of here?”
Oh! Had I the courage to get within 50 feet of the carpenter bee, I would have run up and hugged her. As it was, I could only shout out, “Yes, please!”
Then I offered to fetch her a cardboard box and a push broom and a snow shovel. “Whatever you need to do the job, I’ll get,” I said. I remembered seeing an axe in the basement and so I made a move in that direction before Mary stopped me.
“I won’t need those things,” she said. “I work in the fields all summer long. I’m used to bees. They don’t bother me at all.”
She directed me to bring her a soft drink cup and a piece of paper. She carefully and calmly crept up on the bee as he stood there, trying to figure out his next strategy. She gently placed the cup over the bee and slipped the paper between it and the glass. Then she took the bee outside and released him over a planter on Kirkwood Avenue.
The bee buzzed off without a single word of gratitude, the hoodlum.
“That’s that,” Mary Damm said. “See. They won’t hurt you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said.
Anyway, the bumble bee today. I grabbed the longest broom I could find and positioned myself as far from the bugger as I could. I stretched and craned and flicked him toward the now-open garage door.
I flicked, that is, if flicking is the proper term one would employ to describe moving something the size of a wrecking ball.
Victory! I got the bumble bee out of the garage.
Safe At Last!
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Only I’ll be glancing over my shoulder in a panic occasionally for the rest of today.
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HOORAY!
I’m the first guy to howl when the Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court issues one of its baffling decisions — say, the Citizens United imprimatur for big money interests to take over the electoral process in this holy land.
So, when the Court does something praiseworthy, as it did yesterday, I’ll have to give it its props.
The gist of the main case before the Court in this question was that prosecutors had offered a suspect’s lawyer a nice plea bargain deal. The client would have served a 90-day sentence for a petty infraction.
The lawyer, though, forgot or neglected to tell the client. The plea bargain offer expired, the client pleaded guilty without the deal in place, and he was sentence to three years in prison.
Only later did the client find out he could have accepted a three-month sentence.
Oh, just in case you’re thinking that murderers and rapists and terrorists will now waltz out of prison or never even serve time because of this decision, well, you’re wrong.
This decision was based on the case of a man who was — brace yourself — driving without a license.
Kennedy wrote that America’s criminal justice system is no longer a procession of trials but a virtual assembly line of plea bargains. Ergo, when a guy is denied a possible plea bargain because his attorney is a knucklehead, he’s being denied justice.
Kennedy was tabbed for the Supreme Court post by President Reagan in late 1987. In fact, Kennedy was Reagan’s third choice to replace retiring Justice Lewis Powell. Old Dutch first named Robert Bork to the Court but Bork’s history as a collaborationist in Watergate as well as the fact that his views on American justice were formed by his attendance at the Cro-Magnon School of Law torpedoed his nomination. Reagan came back with a fellow named Douglas Ginsburg, who, it was learned — horrors! — had occasionally smoked a joint while he was a law student.
Bork Abetted Nixon
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So Kennedy, a less reptilian judge than Bork and a man whose lungs were virginal, was named and confirmed.
Since then, Kennedy has been considered a sort-of swing vote in the Court, although he generally pendulates (I just made that word up!) between Right and Far Right as opposed to Right and Left.
The Court since the days of Reagan has become about as Right Wing as a country club locker room. Here’s the current lineup of the Court:
Chief Justice John Roberts (appointed by George W. Bush)
By the way, Kennedy was confirmed 97-0 by the Senate a quarter of a century ago. Doesn’t that kind of bipartisanship seem rather quaint?
Anyway, the Court often rules 5-4 in cases that reflect any cultural or moral divide in these Great United States, Inc. The five, of course, being the quintet of Reagan/Bush/Bush boys.
The lesson? Even though it appears there’s barely a fine hair of distinction between President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, would you really want Romney to start paying off his political debts by naming a sixth conservative to the Court?
And what if this great nation fully tumbles into the Twilight Zone this summer and fall and somehow winds up with Rick Santorum as president? Who’s he gonna name to the Supreme Court? Michele Bachmann?
“No, Really. My Husband’s Straight. No Lie. He’s Into Women. Really.”
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All I’m saying is your vote matters this November.
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AM I ALIVE?
With all the Big Questions swirling around these days, isn’t it disconcerting to realize we don’t even know exactly what life is?
Oh, I don’t mean all those clever answers like “Life is a long lesson in humility” (James M. Barrie) or “Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act” (Truman Capote).
No, I mean what is life?
As in, what’s the difference between a rock and a human being? We all agree a human being has life, right? And the rock does not.
Not Alive
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Now tell me why we know that.
You can’t.
Nor can the greatest life scientists on this weird planet.
Lisa Pratt, Provost’s Professor of Geological Sciences here at IU, for one, can’t tell us what life is. And, hell, she’s a specialist in something called biogeochemistry. Yee-oww.
Pratt told a panel of life scientists at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures yesterday that no one has developed an agreed-upon definition of life so far. “To accept the fact that scientists can’t seem to reach an agreement on the most basic ideas is troubling,” she said.
Alive
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It may be troubling to her but I find it rather comforting. Nature humbles us. The imams and priests and lamas of the world tell us they have the answers. The scientists, though, say Search me.
From now until mid-November the little domed structure just off Indiana Avenue near the Sample Gate will be open to the public. You can peer planets and stars through the Astronomy Department’s telescopes each Wednesday night, provided the sky is clear. Hours are from 9-11pm until mid-April. Every couple of weeks thereafter the facility will open and close a half-hour later due to Daylight Savings Time. After the June solstice, open hours will begin creeping back earlier as the summer wears on.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken
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NEWT’S LATEST BOGEYMAN
Our boy Newty has created a brand new bete noir.
You may recall that almost 20 years ago Newt Gingrich, as the virtual capo of the Republican Party, wrote the infamous “GOPac Memo.”
Mob Chieftan
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The memo advised Republican candidates for Congress that specific words and phrases would galvanize public opinion for the GOP and against the Dems. In fact, the memo’s title was “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”
Gingrich was convinced that the repetition of these words would create indelible images within the minds of voters, much like a TV sitcom hypnotist’s use of trigger words.
Here are some of the words Gingrich recommended Republicans use to associate with themselves and their party:
Common sense
Confident
Courage
Duty
Family
Liberty
Moral
Pro-flag
Proud
Strength
Tough
Truth
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As for the Democrats, Gingrich urged his confreres use these terms:
Anti-flag
Bizarre
Cheat
Collapse
Decay
Disgrace
Impose
Lie
Pathetic
Radical
Shame
Sick
Taxes
They/them
Traitors
Waste
Democrats, According To The GOPac Memo
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You had to figure the word taxes would be in there. The first word a Republican infant utters upon emerging from the womb is taxes.
Garry Trudeau in his “Doonesbury” strip called the GOPac memo “The Magna Carta of attack politics.”
Anyway, the single most damning, uncomplimentary, insulting word on the list would turn out to be liberal.
To be branded a liberal was tantamount to being barred from winning another election for the rest of your life.
One of the reasons the Democrats so infuriate me is that, instead of embracing the liberal label, they ran from it as if it was analogous to child molester.
Otherwise Known As The List Of Prominent Liberals In Indiana
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Thanks in huge part to the GOPac memo, the GOP staged its mini-revolution in the election of 1994. The party gained control of both the House and the Senate and Gingrich became the Speaker of the House.
Say what you will about the craven, cynical nature of the memo, it worked. And Newty is nothing if not an astute politician.
Today, you can be forgiven for thinking liberals don’t even exist in this holy land.
So, now that the Georgia Doughboy is running for president, he finds himself in need of another monster under the bed. He has found it. And he’s got a name for it.
Gingrich’s sworn enemy in these Republican primaries is Mitt Romney. Ergo, Romney must become Newty’s new Godzilla or John Wayne Gacy.
Romney
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This week, Newty found the damning terminology for Romney. Since the liberal dragon has been slain, Gingrich has had to move the enemy bar lower.
Here’s the crushing epithet Gingrich now uses against Romney: He’s a Massachusetts moderate.
The horror — a moderate.
Yep. That’s what he called Romney this week, his voice dripping with Newt-ish contempt. “I am the only viable conservative candidate,” Newty added.
Yikes. If these Great United States, Inc. move any further to the right, Ronald Reagan’s gonna be lumped together with Abbie Hoffman.
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LEFT BRAIN-LESS
Some of my pals on the far left seem to be going just as batty as Newty — only, of course, in the opposite direction. A lot of radical bloggers and Facebook-posters are so disgusted with the wishy-washy politics of Barack Obama that they’re actively calling for his defeat this November.
They say, What’s the difference between Obama and the Republicans?
The nation’s second female US Supreme Court Associate Justice will turn 79 in March. She’s already been walloped in recent years by colon cancer and pancreatic cancer. She’s as frail as a newborn robin. Plus, she has indicated she’d like to retire at the age of 82, which would mean whoever is president in 2015 will select her successor.
I shudder to think of who Newty Gingrich or Rick Santorum might tap to become the sixth conservative member of that august ennead.
Boxcar Books hosted a book release party for Bloomington’s Julia Karr last night, before the region was iced in.
Karr’s new book, “Truth,” is the sequel to her young adult dystopian novel, “XVI” (or “Sixteen” for the Latin-deprived among us.)
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She read a few pages from the fresh tome and took questions from the audience. Karr then revealed she has to split up her writing session each day, sitting at her keyboard for a few hours each morning before going to her day job and then doing the same thing after work.
As expected at these affairs, there were plenty of questions about how an unpublished author can break into the business. Karr kindly advised the wannabe scribes on how to write the perfect query letter and how frustrating and heartbreaking the whole process of trying to get a first book published is.
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Karr handled the questions better than I would have. Forgetabout getting your book published, I’d have advised. Try something easier, like climbing Denali in the middle of winter.
“Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.” — Peter Ustinov
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PAYOLA DEMOCRACY
Two years ago tomorrow, the Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court turned the national electoral process into a plaything for the uber-rich.
George W. Bush Introduces His Nominee For Chief Justice, John Roberts
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Yup. The Citizens United decision came down January 21, 2010, with Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, and Scalia affirming that the more money you’ve got, the more precious your voice is.
Super PACs, the natural malignant outgrowth of the decision, already have proven to be huge influences in the 2012 presidential race. Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have benefited mightily from TV ads placed by their respective super PACs. Of course, both Romney and Gingrich shrug and look innocent when asked about the inflammatory rhetoric of their wealthy cheerleaders.
And don’t think Barack Obama’s own super PACs won’t flood the airwaves come September and October.
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COSTA CONCORDIA TRAGEDY IS A SAD JOKE
Humor is tragedy plus time. Not enough time has passed, for instance, for 9/11 jokes. Nor for even JFK assassination jokes. Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, on the other hand, has inspired the well-known “Otherwise, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” stand-alone punchline.
Some tragic events generated macabre jokes within minutes of their occurrence. In those pre-internet days of 1986, the Challenger space shuttle disaster was followed almost immediately by a rush of calls from office to office about Christa McAuliffe and colleagues, “vacationing all over the Atlantic.”
The Costa Concordia shipwreck story is hardly a week old. I haven’t heard any jokes about it yet. Still, the thing is rife with its own ghastly humor.
The Costa Concordia Before The Funny Business Started
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I mean, honestly, have you read the transcripts of the ship-to-shore radio exchanges between Captain Schettino and onshore authorities as survivors still were being pulled out of the water? It reads like the script from a Marx Brothers movie, for pity’s sake.
When a port official first contacted an officer aboard the Concordia and asked if there was anything wrong, the officer replied only that there was a blackout on board. The port official seemed a tad skeptical considering he’d already been contacted by passengers on the ship who said they’d been ordered to don lifejackets.
Really, now. Wouldn’t Chico Marx, had he been the officer in question, have just as easily lied to the port official, saying the lights were merely out even as the big ship was sinking?
So the port official asked the officer if he should send help. The officer essentially said, Everything’s fine here (with the aside to the audience: As long as you ignore all those people jumping overboard).
Or Chico might have replied, You’d better or my career will be sunk.
Spaulding: How do you do, Di Falco? Not so hot, by the looks of you. (Real dialogue: “Yes. Good evening, Commander Di Falco.”)
Di Falco: Now you listen to me! Get back on that ship! (“Listen, Schettino. There are people trapped on board…. There is a pilot ladder. You will climb that ladder and go on board. You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear?”)
Spaulding: I don’t like the tone of your voice, Di Falco. (“… [L]et me tell you one thing….”)
Di Falco: “Speak up!”
Spaulding: Are you out of your mind? That ship is sinking! (“In this moment, the boat is tipping….”)
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Di Falco: You idiot! Get up there now and save the women and children! I’ll have your hide for this, you dunderhead! (“… [L]isten, there are people coming down the ladder of the prow. You go up that pilot ladder, get on that ship and tell me how many people are still on board…. Listen, Schettino, you saved yourself from the sea, but I am going to really do something bad to you. I am going to make you pay for this. Get on board, [expletive]!”)
Spaulding: Let’s be reasonable, Di Falco. (“Commander, please….)
Di Falco: “No…. You now get up and go on board. They are telling me that on board there are still….”
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Spaudling: Say, Di Falco. There’s no need to raise your voice to me. The rescue is over — I’m safe! (“I am here with the rescue boats. I am here. I am not going anywhere. I am here.”)
Di Falco: “What are you doing, Captain?”
Spaulding: Why, I’m in charge here! Why do you think they call me captain? (“I’m here to coordinate the rescue.”)
Di Falco: You’re now the captain of a rowboat, you hoodlum! (“What are you coordinating there? Go on board! Coordinate the rescue from the ship…! It is an order! Don’t make any more excuses…! My air rescue crew is there!”)
Spaulding: (Looking around.) No wonder I heard helicopters. (“Where are your rescuers?”)
Di Falco: “My air rescue is now on the prow. Go. There are already bodies….”
Spaulding: Bodies? What bodies? (“How many bodies are there?”)
Di Falco: You should be telling me! Great Caesar’s ghost! (“You are the one who has to tell me how many there are! Christ!”)
Spaulding: This is an outrage, Di Falco. You’re asking me to get my new uniform wet. Do you realize how much the dry cleaner charges these days? Besides, it’s cold and dark. (“Do you realize it is dark here and we can’t see anything?”)
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Di Falco: Would you like me to bring you a cup of hot cocoa, Captain? (“And so what? You want to go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Get on the prow of that boat…. Now!”)
Spaulding: What are you worried about, Di Falco? The other rescuers are here. [He puts his arms around two comely female passengers.] I like it fine right here in this lifeboat. (“Commander, I want to go on board but… there are other rescuers.”)
“Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.” — Grace Paley
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COURAGE
One of the most overused terms in sports is courage. A guy hits a single in the bottom of the ninth to win a baseball game for his team and the announcers gasp and coo that’s he’s exhibited an uncommon amount of courage.
Or the plucky college basketball team beats the number one team in the nation which, as we all know, happened a little more than a month ago right here in Bloomington. Sure enough, the announcers and the next day’s sports columnists all agreed: that plucky team was very courageous.
I call bullshit.
Courage?
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There was only one truly courageous professional athlete I’ve ever seen. He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, 70 years ago today.
We know him as Muhammad Ali.
I’ve never given a damn about professional boxing. It’s a cruel sport. It’s nothing more than sanctioned assault and battery performed for the pleasure of the slobs who pay to watch.
Men batter each others’ brains into mush so promoters and TV execs can make millions.
You can have it.
But I was always a fan of Muhammad Ali. He was the first jock to understand that what he was doing, first and foremost, was entertaining.
“Float like a butterfly,” he said, “sting like a bee.”
Poetry.
“I am the greatest,” he proclaimed. “I said that even before I knew I was.”
Comedy.
“I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me,” he said.
Brilliant.
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Muhammad Ali was strong. Muhammad Ali spent months training for a fight. Muhammad Ali endured blows that would disable or kill you and me. Muhammad Ali beat up dozens of men in the ring.
But nothing he did was courageous until he started looking at the question of black and white in America.
“Boxing,” he said, “is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.”
No social commentator has ever uttered or typed a line with such clarity and perspicacity on the topic of race in America.
When he first became boxing’s champion, he had reached the pinnacle of all that a black man could achieve in this holy land. He knew it wasn’t enough.
“I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin’ hell,” he said, “but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.”
Still going by the name Clay, he and Martin Luther King, Jr. were the most famous black men in the world. He was wealthy. What man would jeopardize that?
He did. Racism in America so disgusted him that he joined the Nation of Islam in 1964. He changed his name to Ali.
Ali With Malcolm X
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All those white men watching him beat up another black men weren’t going to like that one bit. Muhammad Ali instantly became the man they loved to hate.
What professional athlete today would put at risk even one commercial shoot to breathe a word about freedom or race or poverty?
Muhammad Ali had work to do — work much more important than mashing the brains of another black man for the amusement of white men.
America’s Vietnam War was disposing of thousands of human beings a week. It was fought, disproportionately, by America’s blacks.
In 1966, when Ali was classified 1-A by the Selective Service System, he opted for courage.
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He was ordered to report to the Army’s induction center in Houston in April, 1967. When the induction officer called his name, Ali refused to respond.
He could have run to Canada, as many young men were doing back then. He could have joined the National Guard, as many pro athletes were doing at the time as well. Joining the National Guard was a way of avoiding service in the regular Army and, consequently, being sent to Southeast Asia.
He’d chosen neither of those ways out.
Three times the induction officer called his name. Three times he stood tall and silent. Finally the officer warned him that refusing to respond was a felony punishable by five years in prison.
Ali remained mum.
He would say later, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. They never called me nigger.”
Which, by the way, was now the preferred appellation for him among so many of those white men who formerly enjoyed watching him beat up another black man.
Ali was immediately arrested and charged. He was found guilty by a jury two months later. He’d been stripped of his championship title by boxing’s regulating authorities the day he was arrested.
Ali Photographed By Gordon Parks During His Exile From Boxing
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He gave up his career and his freedom and put his fortune at risk, all for something he believed in.
Something he believed in.
Which sports celebrity today believes in anything?
Which American today would risk a nickel on something he or she believes in?
It all turned out well for Muhammad Ali, of course. His conviction was overturned by the US Supreme Court. He was allowed to compete for the heavywieght title again and he won it back.
In his doddering years, he has become this nation’s kindly, lovable grandpa. When he dies, politicians and wags will fall all over each other trying to be the first to say what a great man he was.
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But on April 28, 1967, Muhammad Ali had no idea that would happen.
He only knew his public opposition to the Vietnam War was worth risking everything he had.
Rick Santorum Wore This Suit While Decrying Gay Marriage
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Sheesh! Talk about good news-bad news. I mean, the vast majority of overall-ed voters rejected the notion of a Michele Bachmann presidency, which will go a long way toward ensuring that I get a sound sleep tonight. That’s the good news.
But Rick Santorum?
Here, in his own words, is the guy whom 30,007 Iowans think ought to be able to name the next Supreme Court justice: “I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts.”
Man, Rick Santorum would wake Hamlet’s shrink from his nap.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when it comes to guys who pontificate the way Santorum does, the “problem” they have is trying to ignore the endless pictures of homosexual acts that crowd into their imaginations every time they turn the lights out.
Rick Santorum’s Problem(s)
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IGNORANTIA LEGIS*
Eek. Monroe County Auditor Amy Gerstman has done the right thing by saying she won’t run for another term.
Gerstman
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But with the latest revelations about her county credit card use for personal expenses, she might do herself a favor and make an appointment with one of the fine attorneys over at Bunger & Robertson to see if she ought to start packing her toothbrush for a little stay away from home.
Gerstman has purchased gifts, groceries, dinners, and other personal items using at least three of the four credit cards registered under her office’s name. The Herald Times reported this morning that she also paid her kids’ private school tuitions with one of the cards.
The auditor (for the moment) has apologized and says she’s paid back all the money. That’s nice. But if a guy robs a bank and, while being chased by the cops, runs back into the bank claiming he wants to return the loot, the heat still slaps the bracelets on him.
By the way, that fourth credit card? Gerstman claims her office has forgotten the password to access online information about it. She also says the bank lady who normally helps her with the account has been on vacation. Both County Commissioner Marty Hawk and the H-T requested info on that card more than two months ago.
Some vacation.
Oh, and another thing. Bloomington Alternative ran a little piece when she announced her run for the office in 2008. Scroll down to the third paragraph where she’s quoted as saying, “There needs to be a change, restoring confidence is essential.”
Some confidence.
* The legal profession’s shorthand for the Latin, Ignorantia legis neminem excusat (ignorance of the law is no excuse.)
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KILL YOUR TV
Make sure you read at least ten books this year.
Here are ten of my faves:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories by Philip Roth
The Canon: A Whirlgig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier
Angier
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The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson
Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris (the science writer, not the entrepreneurial self-help goof)
Ball Four by Jim Bouton & Leonard Schecter
The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (a so-far three-volume bio of the 36rd President with the fourth book due out this spring)
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos H. Papadimitriou
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
A simple truth: books make you smart; TV makes you stupid.
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FRICTION
The band Television was fronted by the very talented Tom Verlaine along with high school chum Richard Hell. Born Thomas Miller, Verlaine adopted his stage surname from the French poet Paul Verlaine. He said he did it as an homage to Bob Dylan who also renamed himself after a tragic versifier.
