"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
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?
It was a little blip on the political radar screen during the just-past election. Did it alter the results? Hell no. But it was awfully indicative of the Democrats’ inability — from the small town level all the way up to Hillary Clinton’s campaign — to offer voters any reason to vote for them other than obsessively shrieking, The Other Guy’s a Jerk.
The Indiana state democratic party a few weeks before the election sent out a mailer targeted to Republicans and conservative Democrats. It said, in essence, if you’re a good conservative, then carpetbagger Trey Hollingsworth is not the guy for you. Rather, vote for an “Indiana native,” Libertarian Russell Brooksbank.
It did not tout the party’s own candidate, Shelli Yoder. It didn’t even mention her.
Yoder & Hollingsworth
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Hollingsworth is the son of privilege who moved to the Hoosier State in the fall of 2015, solely for the purpose — it is said — of running for Congress from Indiana’s 9th District. Hollingsworth’s old man reportedly dumped $4 million in cash into his boy’s war chest. Democrat Shelli Yoder raised cain about it but voters apparently couldn’t have cared less, electing Hollingsworth by a healthy 14 percent.
The party thought the race would be neck and neck. Some polls had showed Yoder and Hollingsworth dead even as late as a week before the election. State-level Dem strategists figured anything we can do to chip a vote or two away from Hollingsworth has got to be good.
It turns out the Dems needed to chip away upwards of 50,000 votes. No matter.
What does matter is the strategy itself. Yoder sold a fairly healthy package of proposals and philosophies. Still, the party felt the need to rely on its stale shriek.
Sez one party insider: “The mailer’s irrelevant. It’s not a story. It didn’t affect the outcome one way or the other.
Another insider argues: “It left the state party with egg on its face and was an embarrassment for Shelli.”
I’ll quibble with with Insider No. 1 only in pointing out the mailer damned well is a story — it screams of the dearth of creativity and understanding among those who make decisions within the Democratic Party, at all levels, in this year of somebody’s lord, 2016.
And my sole quibble with Insider No.2 is the entire goddamned election left all Democrats with egg on their faces. This was just one minute speck of albumen.
I was all for Steve Volan’s parking commission legislation until I found out how many commissions Bloomington already has.
As the Herald Timeseditorialized yesterday AM: “This commission would be No. 38 in the world of boards, commissioners and committees being operated in the very inclusive mechanism that’s called city government.”
Jeez, and I though I was breezy.
Anyway, simple math tells us that’s one commission for every 2162 citizens of this thriving megalopolis. Which, by golly, might be an idea. Think of it — the city council could create a commission for each bloc of the citizenry totaling that many warm bodies. Whenever one or several members of that bloc has a beef with the mayor or the parking ticket scribbler or the garbage collector, they’d simply go to their commission for redress. Maybe they’d get satisfaction and maybe they wouldn’t. Pretty much the way it works now.
Anyway, Mayor John Hamilton nixed Volan’s parking commission that’d been passed 7-0-1 by the council a couple of weeks back. Wednesday night the council overturned Hamilton’s veto 9-0. Clearly the message was: “Don’t fk with us, mister.” The councilpeople wouldn’t put it in quite that coarse a manner, although a smack-down is a smack-down no matter how genteel the smacker’s rhetoric.
Face Off
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Now, Hamilton will be docile for the time being.
And Volan gets to puff out his chest. Of course, he won’t do so blatantly. His parking commission is a needed civic advancement, he’ll say, and he’s right. As long as it’s folded into some other, related commission, I’ll say.
Still, Volan gets to say, should he so choose, The mayor handed me political capital on a platter.
His colleagues on the council no doubt will share in the buffet.
Keep in mind Hamilton wasn’t averse to a the idea of a commission that’d handle the thicket of parking issues in this growing city. Just that, well…, maybe we don’t need a brand spanking new body that’ll stand alone.
“While adding one more commission may not itself seem a significant drain on staff resources,” Hamilton argued, “collectively, the total number of hours committed to staffing these groups is very substantial. I would encourage a joint effort in reviewing the values of these bodies prior to adding a 38th to the list.”
Volan digs commissions, though. In his councilmanic.us blog post trumpeting the passage of the parking body earlier this month, he pointed out its hoped-for ability to avail itself of innovative thought, new research, complex data analysis, and other quant-y and academe-ish practices:
My take is, these days we have science now…. For too long, though, we’ve been making parking decisions ad hoc.
The spanking-new commission would ponder the following parking precepts:
Meters as behavior-modification devices rather than revenue generators
Creating available spaces more evenly distributed throughout the downtown area
Using meter revenue to implement the city’s master growth plan
Further, he exhorted the common wo/man to apply for a position on the new body and then he went a step further: “While you’re at it, you might as well apply for other boards if they look interesting to you. You’ll see from the listing page that we have vacancies.”
His heart is in the right place. In this sense, he hearkens back to those prehistoric days when Frank McCloskey and Charlotte Zietlow led a bunch of ragtag, scrappy outsiders to an astounding upset election victory in 1971, turning Bloomington’s city hall from Republican to Democratic overnight. (Although it’s well to note the city remained a one-party town despite the revolution.) The insurgent Dems had promised to give a voice to all citizens in a council and a mayor’s office that’d previously been run as tightly as Rome’s College of Cardinals after the death of a pope.
In any case, the parking commission’s definitely a thing now and they-ain’t nothin’ the mayor can do about it. Fine. The ground rules and parameters have been set in the tug of war between Hamilton and the council nine.
Nevertheless, the council ought to take Hamilton’s advice and look to consolidate the unwieldy commission set-up here. Either that or give me my own commission.
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Bishop Banter
The Bishop Bar boss, Steve Westrich, joined me yesterday on Big Talk. Catch the WFHB Daily Local News feature here, and the full-length, unedited original interview here.
Big Talk is off next week as the WFHB news operation falls back on its usual Thanksgiving week fare of canned, syndicated programming and repeats of local shows that’ve made a splash over the previous year. My guest the week after should be award-winning poet Catherine Bowman, lately of Indiana University but originally from Texas. I’m telling you, IU poets are all the rage these days, as Catherine is still trying to squeeze in a couple of hours to join me at the studio. This after I had been planning to have another award-winning poet, Ross Gay, on the December 2nd show, but Gay’s hopping around the country on a jet plane these days, as his ongoing rare bestselling-poetry-author tour continues.
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Ross Gay’s latest compendium of meter, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, is the biggest selling title for 2016 at the Book Corner — what, you expected it to be President-elect L’il Duce‘s dyspeptic, bitter, naturally self-serving Crippled America? (BTW, no link for that title — our new demagogue-in-chief can peddle his chintzy wares on his own time). Gay’ll be a Big Talker sooner rather than later.
Catherine Bowman is no slouch in the bookselling biz herself. She’s penned four collections of poetry and her work has appeared in no fewer than six editions of the Best American Poetry series. Stay tuned here for further developments in the great Dec. 2nd Big Talk guest sweepstakes.
Don’t forget, The Bishop Bar proprietor, Steve Westrich, will be my guest on Big Talk this evening on WFHB‘s Daily Local News.
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The DLN begins at 5:30pm and Big Talk normally comes on around 5:45. And, of course, I’ll provide links to the feature podcast and the original, unedited interview with Steve after air time, here.
Keep listening and keep reading, babies!
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Laugh-Track Life
Speaking of The Bishop, Bloomington’s own Sitcom Theatre is slated to give a benefit performance there for the food pantry, Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, Thursday, December 8.
Founded two years ago by Bethy Squires and William McHenry, Sitcom Theater presents scripted-cum-improvised takes on, you guessed it, sitcoms. The troupe started off doing its version of the 1990s cultural touchstone, Friends.
BTW: Good luck to SC co-founder and recent Big Talk guest Squires, who has scored a plum gig as a researcher for a current sitcom and is set to relo to LA the day after tomorrow.
Yep, The Book Corner is scheduled to be back in business in about two weeks. Target date for us to throw the doors open for real, if all goes well, is Friday, December 2nd. Who knows? Perhaps if the book gods smile upon us, we may even re-open a day or two sooner. Stay tuned here for breaking news on that front.
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It turns out proprietor Margaret Taylor carried a sweet insurance policy as a hedge against a catastrophe — or a near-one like the overnight electrical fire that put us out of business Monday evening or Tuesday morning. No one knows exactly when it happened but sometime after the store was closed Monday at 8:00pm and when Margaret showed up for work the next AM at about 7:30, an oscillating fan had burst into flames, tumbled to the floor, burned through the tile flooring and substrate, and ignited a few greeting card spinners before it magically went out.
The mini-blaze did produce an ungodly amount of smoke-stink and sticky black soot that covered virtually all our inventory — books, magazines, calendars, day planners, greeting cards, blank journals, and all the rest. Acc’d’g to Margaret’s insurance company, we’ll be rebuilt (we’ll need a new floor; it’ll be hardwood, I understand, woo-hoo!), repainted, fire-damage restored, and completely restocked over this week and next.
So don’t shed any tears for us, Bloomingtina. Just sock some dollars away from your Black Friday budget — better yet, don’t even honor that silly “tradition” — and do your early Christmas shopping with us, starting — fingers crossed — the first Friday in December.
Nice to know not all news these days is bad, isn’t it?
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Tell It, Jackson!
It’s not unusual to see on our fair megalopolis’s sidewalks IU Maurer School of Law professor Christie Ochoa dragging in tow her three fast-growing young lads. All of them love to read books and one of them, Jackson, even made a little video love letter to the Book Corner a couple of years ago.
Here, groove on it again and again as you sit in your darkened cubbyhole, waiting for us to reopen in two weeks.
Let’s not kid ourselves. L’il Duceasked for high-level security clearances for his spawn not because he wants their help in averting a terrorist attack but because he wants them to jam their fingers and thumbs into the entire global business pie.
He wants them to know all there is to be known about this holy land’s newest business partner, the Rossijskaya Federacija, or in Cyrillic…
… or, in god’s own American English, Russia.
This is your new, improved holy land, babies. The wedding date for the United States of America and Russia is set for January 20, 2017. L’il Duce and the blushing bride have been sleeping together for a while now.
The American Right has been gossiping — approvingly — about the pairing for a few years. The Right’s darling, Sarah Palin, swooned over Russia’s poster boy, Vladimir Putin, seemingly from the day she was thrust upon our nation’s consciousness.
The irony is beyond delicious. The Right made its bones in the second half of the 20th Century by demonizing all things Soviet, communist, socialist, and Russian. Not that they necessarily were wrong in doing so. Joe Stalin and his gang were the moral equivalent of A. Hitler. Stalin’s successors, including Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov, and other variously-titled strongmen, were only slightly less satanic than he. Or at least not so dramatically brazen about their mass-murdering, secret-policing, free-speech-crushing ways. But anyone here who suggested we try avoid hydrogen bombing each other — and, by extension, the rest of the planet — into the stone age was branded un-American, silly as a babbling infant, weak, and maybe even homosexual.
Putin’s Russia is now run by hyper-capitalist demi-mobsters rather than Lenin- and Trotsky-quoting apparatchiks. In other words, L’il Duce‘s and the Right’s kind of people.
The Trump/Putin Family will enjoy all the gifts, especially cash. Don’t expect thank you cards.
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I Demand To Know…
As you know, L’Il Duce as a potential president has been almost wholly a corporate media creation. His was, at first, a situation comedy storyline, then it turned into a cliffhanger, and finally a heartbreaking tragedy. All the different incarnations of the Trump story were just that — stories. TV and dead-tree media these days traffic in nothing but “stories,” as defined by Don Hewitt, the creator of 60 Minutes. Stories garner audiences. Audiences beget ad revenue. To quote Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, on the Trump phenomenon, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
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Studs Terkel, one of my idols, wasn’t a journalist under the accepted definition of the term today — in fact, today’s Journalism — oops, sorry, I mean Media — School professors would scoff at the notion Studs was a reporter. He didn’t, after all, go into a decades-long, crushing debt to earn a J-school degree. He didn’t read the right scriptures and practice the proper rites of uncovering the news, nor did he write enough term papers extolling the canon. He wasn’t accredited by the high, holy sachems of the priesthood.
But he dug and wheedled and he insisted and he demanded answers. Who does that today? I once spoke to a class of IU J-school students and said to them, “Don’t treat the mayor or the state representative or the county clerk with fawning deference. You are their equal. When you get them on the phone, address them, respectfully, by title at first and then call them by their first names.” Oh, the prof almost had a heart attack. No, no, no! he said, springing out of his chair.
My little lecture abruptly came to an end.
Studs used to say a journalist’s most important asset was the ability to ask “the impertinent question.”
Tacit in that phrase was the exhortation: Be impertinent.
Impertinence would have been one reporter, somewhere, sometime along the campaign trail demanding of Trump, “Why did you make fun of that guy with the deformed arm?”
And when Trump would deny it, to follow up with, “What makes you think you can lie about it when we have photos and video of you doing it?”
Impertinence. A lost art in the “science” of journalism.
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More Than Les
Funny thing. Were I the Les Moonves of this global communications colossus, I might have a different take on the all-too-close-to-home events of yesterday. Turns out my first post yesterday was my biggest draw this entire year.
Yep. the “Sad” post, carrying the sketchy news that the Book Corner had suffered what could be a devastating blow when fire broke out overnight in the place, attracted the highest number of page views, highest total traffic, and highest number of links to this site in the year of somebody’s lord, 2016.
So, sure, I could go all Moonves-y and crow about the fire that has (thus far) crippled a beloved Bloomington institution, “It may not have been good for Bloomington, but it was damn good for The Electron Pencil.”
‘Course, I have a sense of morality at least a touch more refined than that of the Sudanese striped hyena.
