"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
Honestly, our… [sounds of gagging and retching]… President-Elect seems to know precisely how to push all my buttons. I want to ignore his mad, deluded, petrifying soc. med. pronouncements but it’s impossible.
In fact, it’s my duty — and yours, babies, make no mistake about it — to call L’il Duce out every time he moves us thismuch closer to the fascist-capitalist heaven he masturbatorily fantasizes about in bed every night.
Then again, prison‘s such an awful term. How about camp? Y’know, the kind of camp where inmat…, oops, sorry, guests, can sort of concentrate on their sins.
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Simple, Really
Let’s be frank. The underlying philosophy of L’il Duce, his Trumpist followers, and much of the rest of the neo-Republican party boils down to this:
If you’re not rich, if you have a hard time making ends meet, if you’re falling behind because you’re sick or slow, if you’re not ambitious or cut-throat enough to mow down the rest of the world competing for limited dollars and resources, it’s your own damned fault so don’t bother us with your whining.
That’s it, babies.
That’s the philosophy this holy land bought into hook, line and sinker when it Electoral College-ly selected the orange baboon to be our beloved leader.
Religion — and even the lack of it — causes us all to become…, well, weird.
I make no bones about being an atheist. It wasn’t easy coming to that realization, what with being brought up a Roman Catholic and living in a society and world where god is thrown in my face every 23 seconds. The worst was when my mother asked me if I still believed in god — knowing full well what the answer was, but still needing to hear it from my lips. I told her the truth, that I am an atheist, and upon hearing the word she threw her head back in grief as if I’d confessed to helping John Wayne Gacy bury the bodies.
Ma wasn’t always a dedicated god-ist. She peeled away from the Church back in 1970s when millions like her did the same. A Time magazine cover had asked if god was dead in 1966 and the question seemed to seep through American society.
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Then Vietnam, revelations about CIA and FBI hijinks, and Watergate turned the populace off to authority figures, and eschewing organized religion followed. Ma started coming back around to the Church when she hit her 80s. My take was she felt the need to hedge her bets as the end seemed near. She resumed going to mass every week. She began praying her rosary every day. Whenever I’d find myself in a fix — an uncomfortably frequent state — she’d pledge to pray for me. In fact, she promised to say an extra-special prayer for me every day because, she said somberly, I needed it. My nephew Tony, alone among the family, went to mass with her a few times thereby earning an exalted place in her heart.
Confessing my atheism to her was one of the few times in life I’d ever truly disappointed her.
Still, the truth must be adhered to. I began feeling god was the bunk back when I was 11 or 12 years old. The nuns at St Giles school told us we had to love god. I spent hours, late at night, alone in my bed, trying to figure out what that meant. So I resorted to imagining kissing his cheek as Ma’d instruct me to kiss Daddy-o’s cheek goodnight before going to bed. My old man had heavy whiskers so brushing my baby-ish lips against his sandpaper face was not exactly a thrill. I got no thrill from loving god, either.
By the time I was 12 I’d become too big to clobber into submission, so M & D couldn’t force me to go to church with them anymore. Their own weekly attendance at mass was a habit soon broken in any case.
Only a couple of times since then have I felt the need for god. Times when I was alarmingly down on my luck, the sum total of my wealth being whatever cash I had in my pocket, or one or another love of my life having given me the slip.
Today, I’m a happy atheist. I don’t ridicule those who believe in god. Hell, this life is so baffling, so confounding, such a mental and emotional ordeal, that it’s only natural for folks to grasp and search and grope for something to hold onto as the rushing waters of time threaten to wash us all into oblivion.
Still, pious people, those who give their lives over to the idea that a big cat in the sky smiles kindly upon them when they tell him how much they dig him, seem as one to want to apologize to me when they feel the need to pray for me. When I was fistfighting cancer earlier this year, any number of peeps preambled their pledges to pray for me by saying “I’m sorry, but….”
In everyday conversations, when the talk gets around to what tortures or deliverances the future may or may not hold, scads o’folks say to me, “I’m sorry, but I believe god will take care of us….”
I don’t get it.
Why apologize to me?
Perhaps it’s because too many of the religious among us traditionally have scorned, shunned, prosecuted, persecuted, and occasionally snuffed out the lives of those whose god-philosophies varied even minutely from their own. Funny, I don’t feel like killing anyone who who doesn’t believe exactly as I do. Or, shall I say, doesn’t non-believe.
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Grid Grey Matters
Kudos to Indiana University quarterback Zander Diamont for realizing the game of football just might turn his mind into mush.
Diamont says he’s going to quit the game after IU plays in whatever bowl it’s invited to this year. “…[F]or my safety and my future…,” he says, “I need my brain.”
Head Game
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The junior Hoosier ball thrower will forego his final year of gridiron eligibility and graduate early.
Let’s be honest — Diamont is not making the sacrifice of a lifetime. He had no chance of being drafted by an NFL team this coming spring or any subsequent spring. It’s doubtful he’d even be of interest to a Canadian Football League team. He’s about as big as a high school sophomore, meaning he’d be flattened regularly by the behemoths that play the pro game. He’s already been battered by opposing college linemen. Still, he’s making a point.
What does all this mean for the game itself?
At one time, boxing was the preeminent sport in this holy land. The heavyweight champ back in the days of Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, and Rocky Marciano was as revered and recognizable as Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant were not that long ago or LeBron James is today. Then boxing lost its luster, thanks in large part to corruption courtesy of the Mob and assorted other gambling interests. But the death blow to the sport came when too many boxers died or, invariably, became babbling idiots due to the constant barrage of blows to the skull they’d endured. The public at large began to see the Sweet Science for the savage blood sport it is
Can the same thing happen with football?
Sure.
Zander Diamont isn’t the first guy to walk away from the game. Several NFL players already have ditched the sport in mid-career, saying they were concerned about their brains. And, yeah, ex-NFL-ers are dying, both by complications resulting from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and by their own hands as a result of CTE.
Who knows? Perhaps America’s flamboyantly hetero males may have their fall Sunday afternoons free in the foreseeable future.
Dig this tremendous piece on fake news sites (which, terrifyingly, are taken as gospel by a way-too-huge percentage of the populace), emotions driving political discourse on social media, and Wikipedia’s pretty damned good rep as a source for info.
[MG Note: If you click on the Buzzfeed link and really read the spreadsheet, you’ll never again blissfully entrust democracy in the hands of the people. I know I don’t.]
‣ When you get started with Wikipedia [as a volunteer editor], it’s a crash course in library science and intellectual property law.
‣ [H]ow many people on Facebook just read a headline and share it, and don’t do any research whatsoever? Or they don’t even read a headline, and it’s just a .gif or .jpg? Facebook is not a place for news, but it functionally is, and that is bad.
‣ Coming to something with critical thinking is important.
Oh, and BTW, for all you folks on my side of the fence: Don’t wrench your elbow patting yourself on the back — people on the Left are just as prone to emotionalism and credulity as L’il Duce‘s fanboys and -girls are. Book it.
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Our Bullshit
Melissa “Mish” Zimdars, assoc. prof. of communications and media at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, became a soc. med. superstar earlier this month when her list of fake, misleading “news” sites went viral. She told USA Today why she began compiling the list:
One of the main impetuses… was someone telling me when you Google popular vote counts, the first Google News item that pops up is “70news.wordpress.com” which is a fake website saying that Hillary Clinton lost the popular vote. I was like, “Oh my gosh.”
We live in a clickbait world, babies. If someone posts a specious item of gossip or some screaming headline that reinforces your preconceived notion about the candidate you adore/despise, you’re going to fall for it. That is if you’re the average American voter. Further evidence you should do everything in your power to avoid being average.
Zimdars
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Zimdars has posted a Google Doc entitled “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical ‘News Sources’.” In it, she explains how to distinguish these internet cyanide capsules from real news sources. One bit of advice she offers: “If the story makes you REALLY ANGRY [her caps] it’s probably a good idea to keep reading about the topic via other sources to make sure the story you read wasn’t purposefully trying to make you angry (with potentially misleading or false information) in order to generate shares and ad revenue.”
I notice a lot of people on soc. med. pledging to stay away from Facebook et al for a few days because they can’t take being enraged all the time. Real life events are enough to turn the most saintly soul bitter and dyspeptic. Why subject yourself to being manipulated emotionally by money-grubbing reprobates?
Critical thinking, skepticism, disciplined research, and a healthy dose of cynicism re: the hearts of your fellow wo/men are vital prerequisites for surviving in this post-factual climate. Somehow, though, we need to believe Hillary Clinton is dishonest or even a murderer, eating certain foods can cure cancer, the US and Saudi Arabia worked together to make the 9/11 attacks happen, all scientists are on the under-the-table payroll of big corporations, municipal water fluoridation is a government plot to keep us docile, drug companies routinely sabotage new breakthroughs in pharmacology…, hell, the list goes on seemingly forever.
It’s as though we’re bored with real life and wish for it to resemble countless plots of poorly-written thrillers.
In any case, here are some Left-leaning websites that are either unreliable as news sources or flat-out fiction, as compiled by Prof. Zimdars and her assistants:
I figure a number of Pencillistas regularly visit one or more of these sites. My advice: Don’t.
[MG Note: I’m not ignoring the multitude of bogus Right-leaning sites; my progressive sisteren and brethren all pretty much agree upon and can recite them from memory.]
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Now For Some Perspective
All that said, it’s imperative for me to remind one and all that all the dubious Left-leaning, progressive, eco-, mindful-, kumbaya-oriented news sites taken in toto aren’t a fraction as dangerous as any one single Right Wing, demagogue-loving, nationalist, white-ist URL.
Believing that homeopathy is real, that L’il Duce would be five times richer than he is now if only he’d put his daddy-o’s dough into a mutual fund, or that Ike and the GOP grieved when Stalin died while today’s Republicans pillory Barack Obama for offering condolences to the Cubans on Castro’s death are as nothing compared to the rantings of the racists, supremacists, tsarists, uber-tories, and other such crushers of the populace. Living in a dreamy, fairy tale world is one thing; living under despotic separatists and strong-man idolators is quite another.
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The Tale Of The Taping
I expect to have Perry Township trustee Dan Combs in at the WFHB studios this afternoon to record this week’s Big Talk. We’ll be hashing over what exactly a twp. trustee does as well as last week’s GoodFridaybrouhaha, at the center of which stood Dan’s son, Levi.
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Setting up today’s session has been a nightmare, thanks to the holiday and one or two other factors. Ah, well — that’s why they pay me the big bu…, hey, wait a minute!
Six AM at Southwest Airlines Gate B-9, the Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood Int’l Airport, waiting for Flight 2548 to Indianapolis. The sun’s not up yet. It won’t be up for another three-quarters of an hour. I’m straining but I still can’t see any hints of light in the east. I’m running on five hours of sleep and probably still have traces of alcohol in me thanks to the titanic pina coladas and shots of Sex on the Beach we all downed last night on Ocean Drive in South Beach. The Loved one, my sister Charlotte and my brother Joey.
We made plans to get together for Thanksgiving way back when I was still fighting the most dramatic effects of the platinum poisoning and radiation that came this close — by design — to snuffing the life out of me but, in the process, murdered the bejesus out of the cancerous tumors in my neck.
That was such a short time ago but back then I felt as though this Thanksgiving week was as distant as the year 2075. I thought we’d never get here, but we did. And while I waited for the minutes, the days, the months to pass, the world still spun. Brits voted to split from the European Union. The Rio Olympics happened w/o any explosions or hostages taken. In September, global CO2 levels exceeded the symbolic 400 ppm mark, meaning we’re pretty much environmentally fucked from now on. Huzzah, my beloved Chicago Cubs won their first World Series since the first vertebrate land animals crawled out of the primordial seas. Then, a sadistically evil buzz kill, the American people chose Hillary Clinton president of the United States of America by a vote of more than a million votes, meaning Donald Trump is now the president-elect. (Good luck, anthropologists of the future, in trying to figure the previous sentence out.) And yesterday, Fidel Castro died.
All the while, I healed. I’m still healing, although I think the pina coladas and shots of Sex on the Beach may well have retarded that process a bit. Here’s a slideshow from Miami Beach yesterday late afternoon and evening:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Anyway, the long-awaited T-giving week is done (sad face). And I have a pressing need to offer special thanks to those who got me through my poisoning/zapping/healing adventure. I mentioned yesterday The Loved One and bro Joey, natch. Today, I salute a quintet who supported me, urged me along, and even drove me, daily, to the radiation and infusion centers.
Susan & David Jones
Hondo Thompson & Les Crandall
Tyler Ferguson
The five of you…, well, you helped save my life. I love you.
Thank you to the American electorate for choosing Hillary Clinton by a plurality of more than a million. As this figure sinks in, I realize I don’t despise you quite as much as I did on Wednesday morning, November 9th.
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Don’t get a big head, though. Some 62.3 million of you voted for an insulting, unqualified boor.
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Hell Froze Over
Special, wonderful, magical thanks to Tom Ricketts and Theo Epstein. Ricketts for having the smarts to turn the Chicago Cubs operations over to the the most astute thinker in baseball and Epstein for being that guy.
Thanks also to Joe Maddon for being an iconoclastic, free-thinking, calm, ever-so-sanguine leader — precisely what a franchise carrying a 108-year monkey on its back needed.
Thanks to Steve Volan, Kelly Wherley, Michelle Bird, Amelia Lahn, and Tamara Loewenthal for being there at my moment of supreme bliss. Thanks to Nick’s English Hut for being the locus of said bliss.
Thanks to The Loved One for draping a brand new Cubs World Series flag over me as I lay drunk and sleeping in my recliner early the next AM.
And thanks to the Chief, my mother, for instilling the heretofore-but-no-longer crushingly frustrating burden of unrequited Cubs fandom in me from an early age.
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Mine
The Loved One
Sophia Anastasiou-Wasik
Dan Wasik
Margaret Taylor
Patty Wong Swie San
Joey Glab
Charlotte Trunzo
Dr. Jeffrey Allerton
Dr. Fred Wu
Dr. Lisa Baker
Dr. Laurence Behney
Dr. William Pugh
Dr. Erin Wittrig
The registered nurses at the IU Health Medical Oncology & Hematology Infusion Center
The technicians at the IU Health Radiation Oncology Center
My pal, the gentleman farmer/engineer, Sam Zurcher, points out L’il Duce‘s spokestrophy Kellyanne Conway appeared on some TV news/talk three-ring circus dealio last night and said Sec’ys of State oughta stay in Wash., close to the prez, so they can advise him. Y’know, like, Why go gallivanting all over the world talking to furriners, right?
Right.
She also said the incoming Sec’y of State (Rudy Giuliani? Jesus Holy Christ in a McDonald’s dumpster!) should stay close to the king…, er, I mean, president-elect just like Henry Kissinger and George P. Schultz did.
Sam observes, rightly: “Seriously?”
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Sez Zurcher: “Kissinger invented ‘shuttle diplomacy.'” My fave tractor/reaper driver also refers us to a Washington Times chart published at the end of Hillary Clinton’s term as S of S showing how much each of the most recent S of S’s trotted the globe. It was a goddamned hell of a lot, with Kissinger and Schultz occupying positions 3 and 1, respectively, on the mileage rewards list:
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Dang, mang.
Niether George Orwell nor any other creative, imaginative fictionnaire could have concocted this kind of weird truth-fucking. L’il Duce and his Court have been spewing stuff and nonsense since the beginning of His campaign. He — and they — have been called on their prevarications, exaggerations, misconceptions, and downright lies every time…, and none of the peeps who voted for him gives a holy shit about it.
In fact, they seem to want more and more bushwa.
The level of delirious fantasy these people live in is just astounding. How do we converse with people who refuse to accept any base level of fact?
We don’t.
We fight them and their orange boy tooth and nail. Period.
[BIG MIKE NOTE: If you’re new to this story, please scroll down through my last two posts to catch up. Thanks.]
Here are Dan Combs’s responses, verbatim, to my questions:
The Electron Pencil: You are Dan Combs, Perry Twp. trustee?
Dan Combs: “Yes, I’m PTT [Perry Township trustee].”
EP: Did your son, Levi, take the screenshot of Rick Albright’s post and show it to you?
DC: “Yes, Levi took the screenshots.”
EP: Did you consult with Levi before posting the screenshot on your Facebook page?
DC: “Yes, we talked. Levi and I are very close.”
EP: Has Levi experienced any negative reaction to the publication of the screenshot?
DC: “He was very troubled by the vitriol. He is a third generation union member with a good education as to purpose of unionism as well as an inclusive society.”
EP: Did Levi struggle with deciding to go public with the screenshot?
DC: “Yes, he struggled with the decision to post them. Potentially being ostracized at your job is a hard thing to deal with, as well as always trying to anticipate whether some form of retaliation will be forthcoming. There were never any threats to him, but he works in a normally high risk working environment, traffic, where everyone has to be on their safety game. I worry about that more than him, maybe. I challenged him several times as to whether posting them was wise for him. Fathers don’t want their sons and daughters to be in jeopardy, ever. He was just so offended that his union leadership could spew that stuff that he couldn’t let it pass.”
EP: Did you struggle with the decision to go public with the screenshot?
DC: “Yes, I struggled. I’m a politician and have a bit of experience. There are always unanticipated consequences to policy brawls, and unanticipated casualties. I trust Levi’s judgement, so when he said “go” for the ninth or tenth time, I went. The shots were circulated last Thursday to Council members and the Mayor. We waited until we thought everyone had time to process them. To release them to the public. Susan Sandberg was very supportive. Her public support was key in the discussion to publish them, for Levi and me.”
All of Dan Comb’s responses are sic.
The Pencil offers the same opportunity to Rick Albright: I will publish his responses to my questions verbatim.
A couple of prominent Bloomington Democrats have been stirred by “this little dust-up” — Susan Sandberg’s words — and are now speaking publicly about the Facebook post by a local union rep decrying Mayor Hamilton’s decision to rename the Good Friday and Columbus Day holidays.
Both are paid days off for this town’s municipal employees, many of whom are represented by the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 2487. Hamilton issued a memo last week advising city workers to refer to the holidays as Spring Day and Fall Day. He did not — nor is he empowered to — take the paid days away from city employees. Local 2487 president Rick Albright took to a private Facebook page to accuse the mayor of caving in to pressure from unnamed city employees who “don’t believe in Christianity” and are “non-union Muslim[s].” Albright also expressed fear that the paid days would be taken away leading to the obvious question: Why wouldn’t he know this would be an impossibility?
Further delving into Albright’s personal Facebook page reveals his preference to quote and cite from various extreme conservative, nationalist, and “alt-right” websites.
Here’s a typical post on Albright’s page, a “humorous” reference to the Mike Pence/”Hamilton” incident this past weekend:
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In addition to Albright’s incendiary comments, a number of people identifying themselves as fellow AFSCME local members, endorsed his comments on Muslims. One commenter wrote, “Whiny liberals!”
The whole incident “points to the heart of all the concerns we need to stand up to,” says former city council member and mayoral candidate Darryl Neher. A senior lecturer at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Neher says Levi Combs, the AFSCME member who took a screenshot of Albright’s post on the local’s private Facebook page, is paying the price for publicizing the embarrassing screed. “Levi’s taken a lot of blowback,” Neher says.
Combs showed the screenshot to his father, Dan Combs, Perry Township trustee and a retired Monroe County Community Schools Corporation teacher. The elder Combs, whose Facebook handle is Carp Combs, posted the screenshot on his personal page. A flurry of angry reactions ensued.
Seceral observers have expressed concern for Levi Combs’s comfort and safety. They mention potential subtle harassment by his union co-workers and even worry about more blatant attempts to intimidate him.
Acc’d’g to Neher, Levi Combs knew what he was getting into. “Levi’s opinionated,” Neher says. “Levi stands up for what is right.”
Long-time council member Susan Sandberg says, “Levi’s in jeopardy here.”
Sandberg & Neher
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Sandberg first heard about Hamilton’s memo only after it was released. “I didn’t know this was going to happen until it happened,” she says. “I learned about it along with everybody else.”
Nevertheless, she likes the idea of renaming the two holidays. “In making these days more neutral,” she explains, “we’re opening the door to be more inclusive.” Bloomington municipal employees include Muslims, Jews, atheists, and many other non-Christians. They shouldn’t have to be forced to celebrate a day whose raison d’etre arises from that religion. Now that Good Friday has become a more secular, traditional day off it’s time to expunge its exclusive roots.
Albright wrote that the name change is “just another reason why I voted for Trump.”
This morning’s Herald Times carried an editorial opposing Hamilton’s decision. “It was not necessary and just stands to divide rather than unite when it comes to Good Friday,” the editorial read.
Sandberg says, “This is not about division. Who’s the divider?”
She continues: “Nobody’s taking anything away from these union guys. You’ve got your Good Friday. Nobody’s taking your religious freedom away from you. This is not divisive; this is inclusive.”
[Big Mike Note: Requests for comments have been sent out to both Dan Combs and Rick Albright. As soon as I hear back from either, I’ll let you know.]
Weird times, babies, what with the Culture Clash Off-Broadway Tour hitting our sprawling megalopolis. The events, in succession, are thus:
Mayor Hamilton murdered Good Friday and Columbus Day
Some AFSCME local union big shot is blaming the Muslims for putting him up to it
Now, the backstory. In a move so earth-shattering that even the BBC covered it, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton issued a memo last week to city employees declaring the aforementioned paid holidays for B-ton payrollers to be no-speak-ums around City Hall anymore.
And no, that doesn’t mean garbage collectors and the parking ticket-writing crew now will have to toil on those holiest of days. It merely means the days will from now on be called “Spring Holiday” and “Fall Holiday.” The idea being Native Americans don’t have to specifically celebrate the the dude who initiated the holocaust that pretty much wiped most of them off the face of the earth nor must Jews, atheists, Wiccans, etc. be forced to sleep-in late in pretend honor of the crucifixion of some 2000-year-old hell-raising Middle Eastern mystic.
Jesus Died For Your Paid Holiday
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My guess is few but the most hair-splitting of historical obsessives among city workers actually gave a first thought, much less a second, to the names of the equinoctical holidays they long for each demi-annum. That is until Hamilton went and re-monikered them. Suddenly, Good Friday and Columbus Day became fetes of paramount importance to some unionists.
To wit, an AFSCME member named Rick who has access to the union local’s private Facebook page posted the following lively dissent:
I emailed the mayor and hr director to find out what their reason is for the change. I’m thinking since they have non union Muslim employees working at the showers building they don’t want to offend them and their beliefs. They do not believe in Christianity. Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck what they believe. We negotiated good friday andolled Columbus day and they need to Honor those holidays. Still waiting on a answer and it better be good or we will be filing. This is just another reason I voted for Trump. [All sic]
Retired schoolteacher Carp Combs stumbled upon the above screed and posted a screenshot of it on his own page. Apparently, despite — or because of — Rick’s dearth of flying fucks to give, he’s certain L’il Duce would protect the honor of Genoan genocide enthusiasts as well as the inspiration for history’s most identifiable religious logo.
Rick’s so nonplussed by the turn of events that he imagines the mayor to be unilaterally taking away the holidays his (Rick’s) union negotiated through collective bargaining, a legal and political impossibility.
No matter what he erroneously imagines to be the consequences of Hamilton’s fiat, he’s sure those unbelievin’ Arabs are behind it. Worse than not accepting Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, the Muslims aren’t even dues-paying members of Rick’s local.
Combs’s own commentary on the post reads: “Is this ‘hate speech?’ I don’t know.”
We can assume Rick is by no means a man of open heart and arms. He’s not even a guy who’ll crow, “Some of my best friends are Mooz-lims.”
Further, it’s a good bet Rick doesn’t even know what in the goddamned hell a Muslim is, how the world’s largest Muslim nation isn’t even in the Middle East, and how — by jove! — Muslims revere Jesus Christ, AKA Isa al-Masih, as one of the divine prophets sent by god to do whatever it is that prophets are supposed to do. That’s No. 4 of the Six Articles of Islamic Faith.
Sorta like not knowing that the mayor cannot take contractually guaranteed paid holidays away from city employees by snapping his fingers.
Not that Rick would give a flying fuck.
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Dressing Down
I can almost understand it here in the complimentary breakfast room of our Florida hotel. Emphasis on almost.
That is, the current rage for people to wear PJs wherever they go. The Kroger. The Bureau of Motor Vehicles. The gas station. I’ve even seen them worn in the library.
Why, people?
Don’t you care that I now think you’re too lazy and/or lacking in good grooming habits to shower, change your undies, and don fresh duds prior to making a public appearance? Is the entire world now your bedroom? Your kitchen?
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I have zero interest in being drawn into such an intimacy with anyone whose name and occupation I don’t know. I now have etched in my memory the hazmat suit you wore overnight to protect yourself and your loved ones from your own sweat, drool and flatulence. It’ll stay with me all day, you know.
This from a guy so casual he’ll often wear shorts well into December, depending on the temps. So it’s not as though I expect you to wear silk pajamas over which you’ll drape a flowing dressing gown simply to walk from the bed to the bathroom. I don’t demand starched collars and tightly laced bodices as de rigueur for daywear.
Just, for chrissakes, change out of your nightclothes when you venture outside.
So, we hit Florida’s Space Coast last night and whaddya know? Temps in the 40s and the condensation forming on parked car windows threatening to turn to frost.
A needed reminder: Walking through the concourse of Orlando Int’l, it struck me I was at last seeing ethnic people: brown-skinned folks, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, southern Blacks, a Guatemalan or two, New York Jews and Italians. Don’t get me wrong, I love my adopted Bloomington… but it’s whiter, Anglo-er than the audience for a TED Talk on The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers. Or this one:
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The Loved One and I are doing the sister visit tour — hers first, here just outside Cape Canaveral and, in a couple of days, mine down in Boca Raton.
BTW: My sis’s crib, it turns out, isn’t all that far from the Florida home of L’il Duce, Mar-a-Lago. The joint’s already been dubbed by the local press, “the winter White House.” The proximity will creep me out.
Anyway, it seems every hotel along the Space Coast features this guy:
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He stands uncomfortably close to the front door of the Fairfield Inn/Titusville. As we trudged into the place at about midnight, after getting lost several times on the way from Orlando, we both sort of recoiled as the doors slid open and this guy seemed ready to grab us with his pressure-gloved paws. An exact copy of this life-sized plaster statue stood in the lobby of the last place we stayed in down here in Cocoa Beach four years ago in June. The week of the 25th, 2012, to be more precise. Why do I remember that? Simple. That was the week Anthony Rizzo made his debut with the Chicago Cubs. I’d listened to every game on our rental car’s Sirius XM radio.
[Pencillista Alert: Brief baseball talk follows.]
Rizzo, a Ft. Lauderdale native, had been drafted in 2007 by the Theo/Jed regime when the brain trust held sway in Boston. Jed Hoyer then took a job as general manager in San Diego and promptly shipped off the magnificent Adrian Gonzalez to Boston in exchange for Rizzo, with a couple of spare parts thrown in on either side. Theo Epstein, who’d remained in The Hub, was under pressure from Red Sox ownership to bring in more superstar fan draws.
Flash forward to the fall of 2011. Theo and Jed were reunited in Chicago and the first thing they did was swap the then-pitching-star of the Cubs’ minor league system to SD for Anthony. See, the two dug Rizz so much they chased him from coast to coast. In any event, when the season began they let Anthony rake in the high minors until June when they called him up to the big club. He debuted in Wrigley Field the evening of Tuesday, June 26th, against the Mets. He went 2-4 with an RBI double and from there became one of the best players in the game.
Rizzo
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A side note that illustrates the gutsy genius of the Theo/Jed pairing: They brought up Rizzo and ordered then-manager Dale Sveum to play him despite the fact that first base already was occupied by a fellow named Bryan LaHair, who’d be named to the all-star team just a week and a half later. Crazy, right — displacing an all-star with some baby-fat unproven kid. Yeah — crazy like the foxes they are. They knew LaHair was nothing at all special and his all-star nod was a weird fluke based on a deliriously hot May and the dopiness of the all-star selectors. LaHair was out of Major League Baseball by the next season and hasn’t been heard of since.
[Now, back to reality.]
I stepped out of the shower this AM and heard the TV. The Loved One’d switched it on, she explained, because she wanted to find out what the rest of the country was thinking and talking about. We don’t have broadcast or cable TV at Chez Big Mike et L’aimé. We have our echo chamber NPR, the New York Times, and websites that tell us how right and superior we are. But whither the great unwashed Good Morning America-watching plain folks?
L’il Duce‘s trophy-blonde squealer Kellyanne Conway was on, trying to explain away his weekend Twitter storm over the Broadway “Hamilton” incident. The show host was shifting in his seat like a man in need of a gallon jug of Preparation H, clearly made itchy by Conway’s denials of reality.
“Please turn this off,” I implored, “it’s depressing.”
Yeah. I’m still depressed. Three weeks out from this holy land’s most embarrassing election ever and I still don’t believe it.
Then, relief. A door slammed down the hall and the sound of little feet running. A kid giggling. The door reopening and an adult voice, shushing. The kid could neither stop running nor giggling. His parent corralled him and steered him back into the room.
Man, I envy that kid. What does he care that this nation has been taken over by a dangerous boor?
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The Dems’ Dilemma
As I sit here typing in the complimentary breakfast cafe, a table full of business travelers sits next to me, their haircuts neat, their shoes shined to a high gloss, their makeup precise yet understated. How many of them, I wonder, voted for L’il Duce? Yeah, the guy with the flashing blue eyes and the dark blue suit with the American flag in the lapel, he did. At least one of the three women at the table. Maybe two of them. And then there was the black guy. He seemed to be the leader of the group, or at least the most talkative and charismatic. Had he voted for the Orange-utan?
His table-mates seem to like him — or at least pretend to because he’s the boss. The odds are really good that three of them had voted for a race-baiting, neo-fascist demagogue yet are comfortable working with and even being friendly with a black man.
Most American whites can tolerate individuals from other races but once you start talking about the other races collectively, they get cranky. Maybe even downright racist.
An interesting quandary for the Democrats as we hurdle headlong into the 2018 mid-term elections and then the 2020 presidential race. How can the Dems persuade the voting populace — which is still overwhelmingly white — that many, many dark-skinned people need social services (to be paid for with tax dollars) while not petrifying them (the whites) by referring to said darker folks as a group? And how do the Dems appeal to the many different dark-skinned blocs of voters without making the whites start wailing and gnashing their teeth that the party has forgotten them?
Two things: 1) I’m glad I’m not a Democratic strategist and 2) America’s whites are the whiniest sons & daughters of bitches on the planet.
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Pollyanna, Me
One good thing: We still have a president I like and respect.
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The Hits Just Keep On Comin’
From folksinger and stand-up comedian-emeritus Larry Rand on the poor whites who trust L’il Duce:
Trump made them bad promises; the Dems made them none at all, just pointed at Trump and went “Ewwwww.”
Or, how about this from New York Times op-ed columnist Roger Cohen on our glorious president-elect:
He was the self-styled voice of the people to whom he bore least resemblance.
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Priorities
If you’re one of those who think I’m fixated on the president-elect, well, you’re right. My only question is: Why aren’t you?
