"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
Black guys get shot to death by cops, too often for no good reason. A presidential candidate calls for a border wall and a moratorium on immigrants of a certain religion. Our last two presidents were (and are) ridiculed and detested beyond all standards of civilized behavior. One was accused of plotting the most terrible attack against the United States of America in its history for his own nebulous ends. The other is portrayed as a pickaninny, while plenty of citizens insist on believing he’s actually a foreign-born agent out to take over this holy land. White supremacist organizations are insinuating themselves into the political debate for the first time in more than a half century.
And yesterday, snipers gunned down five cops in the streets of Dallas.
Are these the volleys of war?
Are even darker days ahead?
Time will tell. We can say this for certain now, though: A lot of people are itching for a fight. A real fight. Not just yelling and grimacing and name-calling. A fight in which lives are lost.
The angrier the discourse gets, the more firearms are sold. And people aren’t buying guns just to shoot at tin cans on fence posts.
Not when those guns are actually the weapons of warfare.
Like those on display Monday in Bloomington’s July Fourth parade.
A gang of gun-fondlers affiliated with something called the Panther Ridge Training Center which, apparently, is a place where people can go to get intimate with firearms, marched — or, more precisely, rode in a military-style vehicle — in the parade.
A photo of the the Panther Ridge entry was emblazoned on the front page of the Herald Times the other day. The H-T then ran the usual post-Fourth editorial gushing about what a swell nation we are and how free everybody is here, including, the editorial noted, even some exotic types from the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders. Nice to know some of our best friends are Negroes. Among the great and wonderful things this country has going for it, the editorial continued, is the ability of people like the Panther Ridge bunch to display their weapons of warfare during festivities on this holiest of national holidays.
Their presence in the parade, the H-T believes, should make us proud:
A lot of people in Bloomington would like to see the kinds of weapons displayed on the Panther Ridge float to be the subject of gun-control laws. But presuming all the weapons were legally purchased and possessed and violated no laws, their appearance in the parade should be viewed as an expression of patriotic freedom — something important to defend every day, but especially on the nation’s birthday.
Yep. It’s important for us to defend the right of this man to march in our town’s Fourth of July parade:
[Herald Times Photo By Jeremy Hogan]
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If the above-pictured marcher toting an automatic weapon that almost dwarfs him is “patriotic,” then we are a nation ready and eager to kill.
Of course, if you’ve been reading the headlines of late, what other conclusion could you come to?
Finally got a chance to watch Trumbo last night. The Loved One, as usual, was responsible for the choice — it came in the mail from Netflix. She’s a sucker for “message” movies. She loves the screen version of To Kill a Mockingbird so much she went out and bought the DVD.
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I mention this only to illustrate how much she digs the flick. Her library of DVDs can be archived in a shoebox with room left over for the pair of shoes that came in it.
I’m nutty for message movies as well. Problem is, most movies that carry a message today hit you so hard over the head with a hammer — a sledge hammer, for chrissakes — that by the end you’re unconscious and, therefore, unable to see and hear what in the hell ever the message was in the first place. This even though the overwhelming odds are the message for any particular contemporary movie is let’s-start-being-nicer-to-our-darker-skinned-brothers-and-sisters.
Don’t get me wrong: Trumbo carried its own hammers. Message movies by definition must. The good ones, though, use the tools gently, subtly, so much so, in fact, that you hardly even feel the clunk on your head. That was Trumbo.
It’s been a long, long time since I cried while watching a movie. I have a whole line-up of movies that squeeze the water out of me. The end shot in City Lights, the “La Marseillaise” scene in Casablanca, the part in Spartacus where Kirk Douglas as the title character rides off with Jean Simmons’ Varinia against a glorious sunset. And it’s not just that current movies fail to move me to tears. I’ve been on Sertraline (generic for Zoloft) for going on 15 years now. Zoloft and its knock-offs put the damper on a lot of things and crying is one of them. We needn’t explore all the other urges the drug suppresses, although I’m sure you can guess at least one.
Anyway, I’m weaning myself off Sertraline these days and so I was ready for a good bawl. I got one in Trumbo. Bryan Cranston as the title character is sitting at a fancy movie theater with all of Hollywood royalty surrounding him for the opening night of — coincidentally enough — Spartacus. There, big as a Hollywood blockbuster, is the line, “Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo.” The words are reflected off Trumbo’s glasses. Behind the specs, we see Trumbo himself crying.
I cried along with him.
Trumbo, see, had been working in secret for years during the Hollywood blacklist era. Hyenas like Joe McCarthy, Dick Nixon, Hedda Hopper, and John Wayne made big headlines for themselves protecting the rest of us from silly men and women who’d flirted with communism during the pre-World War II years. Only their “protection” entailed the firing and jailing of plenty of talented artists who wouldn’t play footsie with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Trumbo was one of them.
[BTW: Those Hollywood types who actively opposed the communist witch hunt formed a group called the Committee for the First Amendment. While the anti-communists featured bores like Robert Taylor, Adolph Menjou, and others, the Committee for the First Amendment boasted a membership list including the likes of Danny Kaye, John Garfield, Gene Kelly, John Huston, Ira Gershwin, Lauren Bacall, and Humphrey Bogart, cool dudes and dames all.]
All is well so far. The end credits of the movie — Trumbo, not Spartacus — were played against historical photos of the era, including that famous pic of Nixon examining some microfilm rescued from a pumpkin.
Nixon (R) With HUAC Investigator Robert Stripling
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Dick made his bones crying commie. Later, of course, he became our holy land’s most famous political villain. If Nixon did it, conventional wisdom goes, it had to be bad. Naturally, any nostalgic look back at the red-baiting, career-killing, demagogic witch hunt days must include a shot of him, conjuring up character assassinations against innocent folks.
By contrast, Nixon’s most despised enemies, the Kennedys always must be portrayed as heroes, knights of Camelot saving the nation from…, well, whatever.
Except one Kennedy put Nixon to shame as a commie hunter. One of the clan worked hand in hand for more than half a year with Joe McCarthy and his despicable hatchet man, Roy Cohn, rounding up commies, reds, pinkos, and anybody who spoke lightly of Social Security or labor unions.
That was Bobby, the most liberal Kennedy of all — at least acc’d’g to the mythology that has grown around him since his death in 1968.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Bobby was indeed the bleedingest of hearts by the time he was killed. But he had to go through the psyche-shattering grief of losing his brother to an assassin’s bullet and a subsequent nervous breakdown to become a nice guy.
As assistant counsel to McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Bobby worked long into the night six and seven days a week, looking for reds under every bed. He was, at the time, as rabidly anti-communist as anyone, McCarthy and Nixon included. Maybe even more so.
Of course, no picture of Bobby conferring with McCarthy or Cohn ran underneath Trumbo‘s closing credits.
Bobby (L) With McCarthy
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Nixon? Sure. Nixon always was the bad guy; Bobby the good. It never was otherwise.
Only it was.
Real human beings are a lot more complicated than heroes and villains.
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Hell, Why Not?
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July 7th Birthdays
Camillo Golgi — Italian physician and researcher, he discovered the Golgi Apparatus, a vital structure within the animal and human cell.
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I mention him here as an excuse to tell this story: My old pal Eric from back in my Chi. days was one of the more eccentric characters I’ve ever known. He lived in an old dentist’s office at the corner of Chicago and Ashland avenues. He slept in the dentist’s chair. His entire wardrobe consisted of jumpsuits he’d found at Goodwill and other resale shops and several pairs of Aqua Socks. That’s all he wore, summer or winter and in between. He invented a scheme called the Freedom Mobile. The idea was he’d hire a very dark-skinned black man with long dreadlocks to drive around suburbs noted for racially profiling black and Latino drivers. Eric would follow close behind in another car. In his car, he’d have a tiny pin-hole camera attached to the dashboard so that when the black driver was pulled over, presumably only to be harassed, Eric would take photos of the incident. [Mind you, this was in the days immediately preceding the advent of cell phone cameras. So Eric really was a mad innovator.] Anyway, the black man then would call the newspapers and television stations, make a racial profiling complaint against whatever village he’d been stopped in, the village would make a settlement offer, and both Eric and the driver would then live off the proceeds for a year or so. Alright, so that’s Eric.
Eric had a beautiful, tall, blonde, willowy girlfriend named Pam. Pam was deeply in love with him but occasionally his eccentricities became too much for her to bear and she’d break up with him until, some weeks or months later, they’d fall back into each others’ arms. This went on for years until Pam moved to New Orleans, mainly, it was whispered, to put at least a thousand miles between herself and Eric.
Once, during one of their break-ups, Pam started dating a good-looking doctor. Eric told her he didn’t trust the doctor.
“Why not? she asked.
“First of all, I don’t even think he’s a doctor,” Eric said.
“You’re crazy.”
“We’ll see.”
Lo and behold, one summer night Pam was sitting with the doctor, sipping martinis outside the Matchbox bar (which, BTW, was where I met The [Future] Loved One.) Eric came by and spied Pam and her date. He marched up to the two of them and stood there, awaiting an introduction.
“Peter,” Pam said, “this is Eric.” The two gave each other that typical guy nod indicating neither was terribly interested in initiating a deep and warm friendship.
“What do you do?” Peter asked.
“A lot of things,” Eric said. “Pam tells me you’re a doctor.”
Peter nodded.
“So, tell me this — what is a Golgi Apparatus?”
Pam choked on her martini. I tried my best to stifle my laughter (I’d been watching the exchange from the next table.)
Peter, to his credit, outed with a detailed definition of the structure, explaining where exactly it resides in the cell and what precisely its function is.
Eric listened politely and when Peter was finished, nodded as if to approve. He turned to Pam and said, simply, “Okay.”
So, another black guy has been iced by the cops, this time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Add the name Alton Sterling to the list of victims this holy land has taken a delight in compiling over the last few years.
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The cops are saying a 911 call came from someone who said he was being threatened by a man with a gun in a convenience store parking lot. When officers got to the scene, they scuffled with Sterling. During the scrum, someone seems to have yelled out “He’s got a gun!” The cops then filled Sterling full of lead.
As usual, eyewitness accounts vary widely from those of the cops. Passersby are saying Sterling offered little resistance to the officers, who nevertheless slammed him down on a car hood and tasered him.
At this moment, it’s impossible to know for certain what happened. The Baton Rouge PD, state police, the FBI, and the US Department of Justice all will be conducting investigations. Louisiana’s governor says he has “very serious concerns” about the killing. The local NAACP office is calling for the town’s mayor and police chief to quit.
There is one key piece of information that troubles me. Acc’d’g to the owner of the convenience store and other neighbors, Sterling had been a fixture at the parking lot for at least the last six years. He’s been a peaceful, well-liked guy. He sold CDs in the parking lot with the convenience store owner’s permission. He was one of those guys who really makes a neighborhood.
Only the cops, obviously, had no idea who he was. To them, he was just another anonymous black guy who may or may not have been packing heat. And when someone uttered the word “gun,” one of the cops pulled his trigger — again and again and again. Sterling, says the parish coroner, died of “multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and back.”
Why didn’t the cops know who he was? If Sterling indeed was a neighborhood institution, shouldn’t the cops have known that? Don’t they patrol? Don’t they talk to people here, there, and everywhere else on their beat?
I’d have thought policing involved getting to know the district well, being able to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, establishing rapport with residents, being on a first-name basis with shop owners, and so on.
What strikes me about so many of these extra-judicial street executions carried out by the cops is quickness in which they occur. The cops jump out of their squad cars and next thing you know, shots are fired. It’s as though the cops are driving around in sensory deprivation tanks rather than Ford Interceptors. They have no idea whom they’re dealing with or what the circumstances are. They spend too much of their days in isolation, in their cars, exiting only to eat, to take a leak, or to wade into a chaotic situation.
Would all those situations be so chaotic-appearing if the cops had ongoing relationships with the people involved? Would they be so eager to squeeze their triggers if their targets were people they said hello to every day, whose families they knew?
Blanket statement: The cops should know very well the guy who’s been standing in the same parking lot for six years selling CDs. Strangers are scary, especially when they may have guns. They’re a hell of a lot easier to shoot and kill than people you know.
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July 6th Birthdays
Frida Kahlo — Flamboyant Mexican painter with horrible taste in men.
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Bill Haley — The top Comet.
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Pat Paulsen — Comedian. Presidential candidate.
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Burt Ward — TV’s Robin, sidekick of Adam West’s Batman.
So, the FBI recommends no criminal charges against Hillary — which was precisely what we who aren’t wallowing in Hillary-hate knew would happen all along.
FBI Boss James Comey Let’s Hillary Off The Hook
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No matter. To those convinced of her arch-criminal nature, today’s announcement will be meaningless — or it will be further proof her villainous fingers reach into every single aspect of government and society.
Give Hillary-haters this — they view her as the most powerful human on the planet. Huzzah for women’s equality!
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A Good Man Gone
Abner Mikva is dead. He lived a good long life. He was never my Congressperson — my last two reps in the House before I moved out of the city were Rahm Emanuel and Luis Gutierrez — but all Chi. Dems held Ab close to their bosom. He was a great guy, as liberal as anyone, the man who urged Barack Obama to run for president.
Mikva Receives The Presidential Medal Of Freedom
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To understand how Chicago politics worked in the old days — and forget about dead voters and all that mythic baloney — you need only read Mikva’s own tale of his first visit to a local Democratic boss to offer his services in the 1948 elections:
“I came in and said I wanted to help. Dead silence.
” ‘Who sent you?’ the committeeman said.
“I said, ‘Nobody.’
“He said, ‘We don’t want nobody nobody sent.’
“Then he said, ‘We ain’t got no jobs.’
“I said, ‘I don’t want a job.’
“He said, ‘We don’t want nobody that don’t want a job. Where are you from, anyway?’
“I said, ‘University of Chicago.’
“He said, ‘We don’t want nobody from the University of Chicago.’ “
[From Milton Rakove’s book, We Don’t Want Nobody Nobody Sent: An Oral History of the Daley Years.]
With the Shakman Decrees and other court rulings against the establishment of such a blatant patronage army, that kind of conversation rarely, if ever, takes place in Chicago or anywhere else for that matter. Politicians have learned not to build their power bases through a lot of little guys who needed jobs. Now they amass their power through a few big guys who rain torrents of cash upon them. Quite frankly, I’ll take the old way of doing business.
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July 5th Birthdays
Mary Walcott — As a 17-year-old in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, she was accused of advising a neighbor couple to bake a “witch cake” and feed it to a dog so they could determine who had been casting spells upon them. Mary’s aunt actually showed the neighbors how to bake the cake. At trial, it was determined Mary had acted innocently and in good faith. And you think today’s world is weird.
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P.T. Barnum — Despite the mythology that has grown around him, he never said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Too bad; if he had he would instantly have been recognized as the most astute political observer in the history of this holy land.
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Caryn Navy — Blind from birth, Navy earned a bachelor’s degree in math from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. She also minored in computer science and was instrumental in creating computer word processing and translating software for the blind.
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Bill Watterson — Author and illustrator of one of the greatest comic strips of all time, “Calvin and Hobbes.” He grew up, ironically enough, in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
On this most patriotic of holidays, I offer you the following indispensable guide to which you can refer in the event of a major terrorist attack occurring anywhere in the world.
The next time a single terrorist, a couple, or even a larger group of them burst into a fancy restaurant, packed nightclub, or school in session and either open fire with automatic weapons or blow up the place with bombs strapped to their vests, consult the following list so you can know whether or not to care.
If, for instance, the terrorist attack occurs in Warsaw, simply scroll down to Poland to see where that country ranks on my handy Shock/Grief Chart. Using this example, Poland lands squarely in the Outrage level. You must place an appropriate transparent national flag overlay on your Facebook profile picture. You may then talk about the attack for several days at the office and fully expect that everyone will agree with you. Also, TV news, newspapers, and online opinion sites will cover the incident for at least a week.
Study this chart in advance so you may be prepared for the worst:
Level 1: The Day Our Lives Changed Forever
General psychological shock. The introduction of reactionary legislation at the federal, state, and local levels of government. One step closer to a Trump presidency.
The United States
Level 2: Outrage
Place the appropriate transparent national flag overlay on your Facebook profile picture. CNN will create theme music and a special logo for its coverage. Corporate media will cover the attack and its fallout for at least a week.
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
The Czech Republic
Denmark
France
Germany
Greece
The Holy See (Vatican City)
Hong Kong
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Monaco
The Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Singapore
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
The United Kingdom
Level 3: Disgust
Hey, this stuff is happening everywhere! It could happen closer to home one of these days, you just watch.
Argentina
Bolivia
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Columbia
Costa Rica
Ecuador
El Salvador
Finland
Guatemala
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Lithuania
Malaysia
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Peru
The Philippines
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Slovakia
South Africa
Taiwan
Ukraine
Urugauy
Level 4: Head-shaking
It’s their own fault. They’re hot-heads. These people have been blowing themselves up for centuries. What’s wrong with people? Or, Yeah, I’ve heard of that place. It’s a shame.
Algeria
Afghanistan
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Belarus
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Cambodia
Croatia
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Egypt
Haiti
Iran
Iraq
Jamaica
Jordan
Kuwait
Laos
Lebanon
Libya
Macedonia
Morocco
Myanmar (Burma)
Niger
Nigeria
North Korea
Oman
Pakistan
Qatar
Romania
Rwanda
Serbia
Thailand
Tibet
Tunisia
Turkey
United Arab Emirates
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Level 5: Where Is That Again?
Not that it matters.
Albania
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Bhutan
Kazakhstan
Kosovo
Kyrgyzstan
Latvia
The Federated States of Micronesia
Moldova
Mongolia
Montenegro
Nepal
Sao Tome & Principe
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Sri Lanka
Suriname
Tajikistan
Timor-Leste (East Timor)
Tonga
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Level 6: Where Do You Want to Go For Lunch Today?
Usually an African nation. Sometimes a Pacific island group or other such ignorable collection of humanity. Occasionally the site of ongoing slaughter for the last few years.
Angola
Benin
Botswana
Burkina-Faso
Burundi
Cameroon
Chad
Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gabon
Gambia
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Ivory Coast
Kenya
Lesotho
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mozambique
Namibia
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Senegal
Somalia
South Sudan
Sudan
Syria
Tanzania
Togo
Uganda
Zambia
Zimbabwe
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July 4th Birthdays
The Yoo-nited State of Murrica! — The most progressive, innovative, last-best-hope of humankind experiment in culture and government (at the time of its birth). As it grew older, it got fatter, more flatulent, greedier, more cocksure, richer, lazier…, hell, just like almost everyone I know.
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Hiram Walker — Founder of the eponymous Canadian distillery just across the river from Detroit. Walker’s whiskey was superior to American distillers’ products so they lobbied Congress to force foreign whiskey makers to mark their country of origin in large letters on the bottle. Walker renamed his spirit Canadian Club and it remained a huge seller in the states. Walker also created a company town around his distillery. He controlled the town council, the police, and utilities.
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Henrietta Swan Leavitt — A “computer” at the Harvard College Observatory, she studied Cepheid Variable Stars, allowing subsequent astronomers to determine how far various galaxies are from the Milky Way. “Computers” were those whose primary function at observatories was to do complex calculations and tedious counting jobs while looking at photographic plates. Men considered computing jobs entry level positions in astronomy. For women, the jobs were the upper limit of their ascent. It has been said Leavitt “provided the key to determine the size of the cosmos.”
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Rube Goldberg — Cartoonist and inventor, he was famous for his cartoons of wildly complicated machines designed to do the simplest of tasks. Here’s his “Self-operating Napkin”:
Here he is:
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Meyer Lansky — Played, loosely, as Hyman Roth by the brilliant Lee Strasberg in The Godfather: Part II:
Roth: There was this kid I grew up with; he was younger than me. Sorta looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the street. Things were good, we made the most of it. During Prohibition, we ran molasses into Canada… made a fortune, your father, too. As much as anyone, I loved him and trusted him. Later on he had an idea to build a city out of a desert stop-over for GI’s on the way to the West Coast. That kid’s name was Moe Greene, and the city he invented was Las Vegas. This was a great man, a man of vision and guts. And there isn’t even a plaque, or a signpost or a statue of him in that town! Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn’t angry; I knew Moe, I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen; I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!
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Eppie Lederer & Pauline Philips — Born Esther and Pauline Friedman, identical twins from Sioux City, Iowa, who created, respectively, the Ann Landers and Dear Abby advice columns that were syndicated in newspapers all over the world.
Pauline (Abby, L) & Eppie (Ann)
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Eva Marie Saint — The ostensibly naive but really morally sophisticated gamine, Edie Doyle, with whom Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy falls in love in On the Waterfront, and the apparently conniving spy but in truth agent for good, Eve Kendall, in North by Northwest.
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Ron Kovic — As you know if you watched the movie, Born on the Fourth of July, based on his memoir, with Tom Cruise playing him.
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On this date in history, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson & James Monroe — the second, third, and fifth presidents of the United States — died. Adams and Jefferson died within hours of each other in 1826 and Monroe died in 1831.
Loyal Pencillistas know I’m not a Hillary-paranoiac so the following criticism — harsh criticism, as you’ll see — takes on real gravity.
Both Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch were stupid as all hell for engaging in their little half-hour tête à têteon the Phoenix airport tarmac the other day. They were stupid even if the meeting was nothing more than a Hi, how do you do, lovely weather, isn’t it? chit-chat.
Ay, It Was Nothin’!
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But it wasn’t that innocent. No ma’am. I’m as sure of this as I am that Donald Trump, if elected, will be our first unmitigated jerk president. Bill and Loretta got together so that she could give him advance notice on the Justice Dept. investigation into whatever the hell Hill’s in hot water for now, be it BENGHAZI! or emails or whomever she’s personally murdered of late.
We’re not kids. Politics is a rough game. Hill’s race against America’s Shart is going to be a tough one. All the info she can get in advance will help her team spin the indictment or non-indictment or what-have-you.
Sophisticated, worldly, politically-savvy Bill should have known the meeting would be a bomb once the world found out about it — as it surely would. And Loretta should have turned him around and sent him on his way the minute she saw his face. And if either Hill or Barack Obama gave her any kind of directive to meet the hopefully-future-First Gentleman — either outright or of the wink-wink variety — she should have resigned on the spot. Her credibility — Lynch’s — is now as long gone as sanity within the Republican Party.
Even if Hill had nothing at all to do with the meeting, she deserves a shovel-ful of blame for it. If she was really running a tight ship, she’d have made clear to her hubby he should keep his nose clean re: sniffing around for inside dope on the investigation, as she has to have known he would be wont to do.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Hill is a lousy campaigner.
Nevertheless, I’m still rock-hard in her corner. What? You think I want that orange-bronzed baboon to be the leader of my beloved country?
Nope
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Armchair Quarterback
Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton somehow is finding a spare moment or two to read a good book. He came into the Book Corner yesterday afternoon to cop some heady titles. I don’t need to tell you what they were but suffice it to say Bobby Brown’s new New York Times bestselling memoir was not among them (thank heavens).
Anyway, I asked him if he was slated to go to Philly this month to help the Dems crown Hillary Clinton queen of the Party. Ixnay, said he.
“I’ve got too much to do,” he explained and I believe him. Bloomington right now is like Charlie Chaplin’s cabin hanging precariously on the edge of that snow covered cliff in The Gold Rush, what with the state’s property tax cap making it nearly impossible for any of IN’s cities or towns to even pretend to be financially solvent.
Cover Image From B-town’s 2016-17 Fiscal Year Report
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Instead, Hizzoner will do what the rest of us will be doing prime time, Monday through Thursday, July 25-28 — “I’m gonna watch it on TV.”
Toss The Remote Over Here, Wouldja?
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Then again, Hamilton prob. will be alone in his choice of tube fare those nights. Does anybody really watch political conventions anymore?
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Fatal Perspective
Thirty-three years ago this evening, I was out walking around the trendy and glitzy Near North Side of Chi. with my nephews, Tony and Louie. The three of us espied the Baskin-Robbins ice cream joint then at the northeast corner of Oak and Rush streets. Naturally, we turned into the place and ordered towering cones-ful of our fave flavors.
We ambled back outside and and were greeted by the blast of emergency sirens. Cop cars, an ambulance, and several fire trucks raced toward us from all directions. They pulled up right next door to the ice cream shop. Curious, we ambled over to see what was what.
A fairly tall — 25 stories, at least — residential hotel stood there. It was one of those old money, old fashioned places where wealthy-ish single men and women lived, complete with a doorman and a cigar shop in the lobby. It could have been a setting in a Saul Bellow novel. You could imagine highly decorated retired college profs living there or widows living off the old man’s stock earnings.
The firemen and the cops all dashed into the tight gangway between the hotel and the ice cream shop. Tony, Louie, and I — still licking our cones — followed so we could sneak a peek.
And there he was. A man. Partially hidden underneath a blue plaid robe that lay upon him like a tarpaulin. His legs and black socks-clad feet pointing in different directions, all wrong. An elbow jutting up, forming a tent under his robe in such a way that would have been impossible under normal circumstances. The area immediately around him decorated with multi colored rays, rather like those surrounding lunar craters.
The rays were his guts, sinew, and blood, splashed out from a central impact point. The man had taken a dive from one of the hotel’s upper floors. He was beyond dead, of course.
He was beyond human.
In fact, it was as though he’d never been human. He was simply some gory, gooey substance soon to be shoveled up, hosed down, and made to go away by men whose unenviable job it was to clean up after such occurrences.
Tony, Louie, and I threw our ice cream cones to the ground.
At that very moment, I realized I’d never kill myself. It is too insulting and undignified a way to go.
Life was too painful for that man to endure. But he reminded me of how precious my own life was.
And is.
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Birthdays: 2 For the Price of 1
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July 3rd
Charlotte Perkins Gilman — Author, poet, feminist, and social reformer, her experience with what would much later be known as post-partum depression led her to question woman’s place in society. Becoming nearly suicidal after the birth of her first child, her doctor advised her to devote herself fully to motherhood and “Have but two hours’ intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live.” His prescription only exacerbated her depression. After recovery, she became a lifelong fighter for women’s rights and the re-definition of the relationship between the genders. Ironically, she was also a white supremacist and anti-immigrationist.
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George M. Cohan — Penner of countless patriotic ditties, Cohan missed being “Born on the Fourth of July” by a day.
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George Sanders — Film and stage actor who played Addison DeWitt in All About Eve. His bit of repartee with Margo Channing (Bette Davis), Eve Harrington (Ann Baxter), and Claudia Caswell (Marilyn Monroe) at a party in Margo’s penthouse is a classic scene:
Margo Channing: I distinctly remember, Addison, crossing you off of my guest list. What are you doing here?
Addison DeWitt: Dear Margo, you were an unforgettable Peter Pan. You must play it again soon. You remember Miss Caswell.
Margo: I do not. How do you do?
Claudia Caswell: We’ve never met. Maybe that’s why.
Addison: Miss Casswell is an actress, a graduate of the Copacabana School of the Dramatic Arts.
[Eve enters]
Addison: Ah, Eve.
Eve Harrington: Good evening, Mr. DeWitt.
Margo: I’d no idea you two knew each other.
Addison: This must be at long last our formal introduction. Until now we’ve only met in passing.
Claudia: That’s how you met me — in passing.
Margo: Eve, this is an old friend of Mr. DeWitt’s mother. Miss Caswell, Miss Harrington.
Eve: Miss Caswell.
Claudia: How do you do?
Margo: Addison, I’ve been waiting for you to meet Eve for the longest time.
Addison: It could only have been your natural timidity that kept you from mentioning it.
Margo: You’ve heard of her great interest in the theater.
Addison: We have that in common.
Margo: Then you two must have a long talk.
Eve: I’m afraid Mr. DeWitt would find me boring.
Claudia: You won’t bore him long, you won’t get a chance to talk.
Addison: Claudia, come here.
[takes her aside]
Addison: You see that man? That’s Max Fabian, the producer. Now go do yourself some good.
Claudia: Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?
Addison (taking her fur coat): Because that’s what they are.
From Left: Ann Baxter, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe & George Sanders
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Fontella Bass
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Julian Assange — Founder of WikiLeaks.
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On this day in 1916, Hetty Green died. Born Henrietta Robinson, Green parlayed a handsome inheritance (her father was a whaling magnate) into a fortune by investing in Civil War Bonds. Before her marriage to another investor, she insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement wherein her husband, Edward, would have no claim on her wealth. Green then reinvested in US currency, introduced after the Civil War, real estate, railroads, and mines. Her philosophy was to back up her speculations with ample cash reserves and never panic. She became the richest woman in America in the 1890s. Green was nicknamed the Witch of Wall Street. A notorious skinflint, she refused to run water or turn on the heat in her mansion. She wore a single black dress and ordered her maids to wash it rarely. When her young son broke his leg, she attempted to have him treated at a charity hospital for the poor.
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July 2nd
René Lacoste — French tennis player, he won seven singles and four doubles championships in Grand Slam tournament play. He was one of a 1920s collection of French tennis aces dubbed the Four Musketeers. Lacoste was named the world’s No. 1 player in both 1926 and ’27. He became even better known after inventing his own tennis shirt, also known as a polo shirt, on which was embroidered a crocodile (Lacoste’s nickname during his playing career.) In 1961 he invented the first tubular metal racket, making the wooden racket obsolete.
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Hans Bethe — German-born Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist and particle physicist, Bethe headed the Theoretical Division at the Los Alamos, New Mexico, lab where nuclear weapons were invented. Bethe in particular oversaw the calculations of critical mass to create an explosive chain reaction and led in the development of the implosion method of triggering a nuclear explosion. After World War II, he dedicated himself to working toward the elimination of above-ground nuclear testing and and end to the US-Soviet Union arms race.
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Thurgood Marshall — Attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund who successfully argued for the plaintiff in the Brown v. Board of Education in the US Supreme Court. He was named to the Court in 1967 by Lyndon Johnson, the first black man to serve as a Justice.
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Medgar Evers — Civil rights advocate who fought for admission of blacks to the University of Mississippi. He was gunned down by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in 1963. His family rushed him to the Jackson, Mississippi, hospital but he was refused admission at first because he was black. Family members argued to have him admitted and eventually persuaded hospital staffers to treat him. Nevertheless, Evers died of a rifle bullet wound through his heart.
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Vicente Fox — Former president of Mexico who this year gained notoriety when, in an NBC interview, he was asked about Donald Trump’s pledge to build a wall at the Mexican border and force Mexico to pay for it. Fox told the interviewer, “”I’m not going to pay for the fucking wall. And please don’t take out the fucking full word.” Later, he called Trump “ignorant, crazy and egocentric.” Fox also is a strong proponent for decriminalization of marijuana.
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On this date in 1961, Ernest Hemingway took his own life.
I have to admit I’ve been psychologically and emotionally down of late.
I’m frustrated that no foods taste good to me, especially my three main food groups: tomato sauce, bread & pasta, and chocolate. Honestly, all these things are disgusting to me right now. Before I caught cancer, they were the staples of my diet.
Of course, I weighed about 6000 pounds back then. Now, I’m a reed in the wind.
Another reason for my doldrums is the fact that I’m not the guy with cancer anymore. This is embarrassing to admit but I felt like the star of the show when I had My Olive Pits™ in my neck. Now I’m just another guy.
Then there’s the aspect of the rush I got fighting a disease that could have killed me. Had I not begun treatment, my little tumors would be great big tumors by now. And there’d be more of them in different places in my body. I’d be on the way out. Like soldiers who confess that fighting in a war was the high point of their lives, my recent tussle w/ malignancy was weirdly exhilarating. It’s a good bet nothing I’ll ever do for the rest of my life will be so urgent and imperative. The rush is gone. I’m living everyday life again. It’s an anti-climax.
Oh, I’m thrilled to pieces the tumors are gone. I’m equally ecstatic I don’t have to go in for daily radiation treatments or shots of poison every three weeks. But, like most things in life, my cancer war and the subsequent armistice have evoked conflicting emotions within me, many of which might seem awfully loony to those who’ve not been in the fight.
I hope Pencillistas can understand.
Anyway, slowly but surely, I’m finding the energy and desire to live the Big Mike life again. To wit, I’ll be working on some stories for Ron Eid’s Limestone Post magazine, I’ll be cranking up the old Big Talk series of interviews on WFHB radio, I’ll get back to my Black Comedy novel, and of course there’s the Charlotte Zietlow memoir to get published. Oh, and trust me, my seat behind the Book Corner sales counter awaits.
Come to think of it, maybe life isn’t going to be so blah after all.
At risk of infuriating everybody who considers the Fourth of July a religious holiday, I’ve got to say I agree with the author of the piece.
Major League Baseball started making fans stand and sing GBA during the seventh inning stretch of every game in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. As the years went by, most teams cut back on the ritual to the point where now, fans sing the song on Sundays and holidays.
Gersh Kuntzman, who wrote the piece, puts a fascinating historical spin on the song. He writes:
Even Irving Berlin, who wrote “God Bless America” in 1918, considered it so maudlin and depressing that he stuck it in a drawer. Twenty years later, as the world prepared for war, Kate Smith asked Berlin for a patriotic song for her radio show. He pulled out “God Bless America” and changed one lame line — “the gold fields up in Nome” — to an even lamer line — “oceans white with foam.” You know the rest: Smith’s version became as much a symbol of post-war patriotism as the flag, the space program and all the white people moving to the suburbs.
Bill Maher put it best soon after the GBA thing became a baseball rite. He cracked [I’m paraphrasing], Okay, singing the National Anthem before every game is love of country. I get it. But this “God Bless America” stuff, that’s stalking.
I’m not as pointlessly radical as I was back when I was 14 y.o. I wanted to be just like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. I wanted to condemn my nation for its twin sins of racism and the Vietnam War. I wanted to spit on the flag. If I was a little older and had a bit more guts, I’d have run through the streets with Bill Ayres and Brian Flanagan, breaking store windows, taunting cops, and flipping off The Man during the Days of Rage.
Mere months after those October, 1969, mini-riots in Chi., I sat in the grandstand at Wrigley Field awaiting the start of the Cubs game against the Cincinnati Reds. The voice of field announcer Pat Pieper came over the PA: “Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for our National Anthem. Gentlemen, please remove your hats.”
I neither rose nor removed my Cubs cap. That was the extent of my demonstrable radicalism at the time. I felt like a revolutionary. The National Anthem was played on the stadium organ. Still sitting, I was surrounded by standing fans. A little kid near me tugged at his daddy-o’s sleeve and whispered a question to him. Based on daddy-o’s response, the kid must have asked, Why isn’t that guy standing?
Dad loudly replied, his voice dripping with contempt, “He’s an anti-American scum, son.”
At that very moment, I realized how full of holy horseshit in-your-face demonstrations of both patriotism and radicalism were.
Yeah, let’s knock off the “God Bless America” nonsense, and while we’re at it, how about dumping the Anthem before the games as well?
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July 1st Birthdays
George Sand — Born Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, the 19th Century French socialist and novelist adopted her nom de plume, wore men’s clothing, smoked cigarettes, and haunted establishments that previously had been off limits to women. She wrote of the lower classes and women’s rights. She carried on countless affairs with notables of the intelligentsia, including Frédéric Chopin. Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev wrote of her: “What a brave man she was, and what a good woman.”
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William Strunk, Jr. — Along w/ author E.B. White, the Cornell University professor of English compiled the standard usage reference, The Elements of Style, better known as Strunk & White. Strunk worked for a short time as literary consultant at the MGM studios in California. It was said he cut a figure straight out of central casting and so was dubbed “the Professor.”
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Estée Lauder — Founder of the Estée Lauder Companies, specializing in cosmetics. Time magazine named her the only woman among its 1998 list of the 20 most influential businesspeople of the 20th Century. She learned about the cosmetics industry when she helped her uncle run his beauty products company. Her first product was Youth Dew, a bath oil and perfume. She once said, “I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.”
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Carol Chomsky — Wife of Noam, she was a renowned linguist in her own right. She decided to work toward her Harvard PhD during the late 1960’s when her husband was a leading anti-Vietnam War activist. She reasoned she might have to support herself if Noam were to be jailed for his anti-war activities. Carol developed the “repeated reading” method of improving children’s reading speed and word recognition. It entailed having the child read a selection as a recording of it was played. She found that repeating this four times often dramatically improved comprehension and retention.
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Leslie Caron — The only dancer/actress who could have played Lise Bouvier to Gene Kelly’s Gerry Mulligan in the movie version of An American in Paris.
Caron With Kelly
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Debbie Harry — Without her, there’d be no Blondie.
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On this day in 2000, Walter Matthau died. Born Walter Matthow, it’s said his first wife Carol Grace (who was also once married to the novelist William Saroyan) was one of the possible models for Truman Capote’s character Holly Golightly from the novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Matthau exhibited surprising range as an actor, from Fail Safe‘s Professor Groeteschele and A Face in the Crowd‘s Mel Miller to The Odd Couple‘s Oscar Madison. As the slob in Neil Simon’s beloved play, Matthau as Madison weeps in his bed and unloads on his roommate:
I can’t take it anymore, Felix, I’m cracking up. Everything you do irritates me. And when you’re not here, the things I know you’re gonna do when you come in irritate me. You leave me little notes on my pillow. Told you 158 times I can’t stand little notes on my pillow. “We’re all out of cornflakes. F.U.” Took me three hours to figure out F.U. was Felix Ungar!
Alvin Toffler has died. Those of us from a certain generation know the name: He was the bestselling author of Future Shock, a treatise on how the rapid changes in global culture and technology would create a new, unrecognizable culture as we approached the 21st Century.
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Toffler wrote that these changes would be — and already were at the time of publication — extremely stressful to people. I don’t recall him mentioning this in his book but I can name one specific change that has stressed out pretty much everyone in America. That is, with the advances in personal computing, television recording, and cell phones, adults are no longer the primary disseminators of knowledge. For millennia, moms and dads and aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, and even unrelated elders of the community explained and decoded the world to kids. It followed, therefore, that the young ‘uns understood this was a world they were being welcomed into, one they had to grasp, that if they wanted to change it, they’d have to go through the long process of familiarization and understanding it. Adults were the tutors; kiddies the pupils.
T’ain’t that way anymore. I don’t remark upon this to characterize it as either good or bad, only to observe that it’s freakin’ the bejesus out of all of us.
See, people older than the median age can deal with laptops, TiVos, and smart phones, sorta, sure. But it takes them a long time to get it. And the process is frustrating for everyone involved, teacher and student.
The teachers, by the way, are daughters and sons, nieces and nephews, granddaughters and grandsons, and even the little shit who lives next door. The most important and vital devices we use in our everyday lives are the comfortable province of the young. We old bastards tiptoe into that realm as if we’re terrified we’ll step on the cat’s tail, crush a dozen eggs, or trip a landmine.
It’s a reversal of the young/old relationship that humanity has enjoyed since the first Africans crafted tools and the ancient Middle Easterners learned to place seeds in the soil.
Despite their superior knowledge of and comfort with tech devices, kids still want to be guided into this strange as hell world. Rebel though they might, sass though they must, they need older folks to hold their hands through the scary process of getting to know the ins and outs of Homo Sapiens sapiens. (The irony, of course, is no one ever really gets to know all about our worldwide clan, no matter how old we grow.)
We as a species are so hungry for an older, more mighty docent — a parent or elder, in other words — that every single culture in history has created an invisible daddy-o in the sky, one to whom we can beg for relief or forgiveness, who’ll protect us from tornados, and who’ll bestow a shiny new Toyota Camry upon us before our current old beater falls apart in the middle of the roadway.
Kids demand all those things from their elders (including the set of wheels, although not a Camry — one of those hot-looking Mustangs, more likely).
The problem today is if parents and elders and all the rest can’t be trusted to know what they’re talking about regarding new tech, if they must be led like kindergarteners through the thickets of megapixels and Super AMOLED screens, then how in the hell can they possibly guide us through life? They can’t, is the conclusion our kids come to.
Followed by, Damn, mang, we’re alone in this world.
And we flatulent, saggy, balding, paunchy fossils can no longer pretend we know a thing or two, justifying our presence here despite our crumbling bodies. The kids know it all, fer chrissakes!
Nobody’s winning at this point in our history.
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June 30th Birthdays
Man Mountain Dean — Born Frank Simmons Leavitt, he was a professional wrestler who first grappled under the moniker Hell’s Kitchen Bill-Bill, suggested to him by Damon Runyon. He wrestled to mediocre results early in his career and actually went to work as a policeman until he was married in the early 1930s. To that point, pro wrestling was still a fairly straight affair with participants employing holds and strategies seen today in high school matches. Leavitt’s new wife advised him to become a showman wrestler and take the name he made famous. Man Mountain Dean became so popular that the entire sport of professional wrestling changed, becoming the passion play it is today.
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Lena Horne — A Cotton Club jazz singer early in her career, Horne went on to movie and record success and eventually became a respected spokesperson for civil rights. Throughout her career, she refused to perform before segregated audiences. She was blacklisted when her name appeared in the communist-baiting mag Red Channels. She disavowed her earlier associations with leftists and communists in 1952 and with the help of Ed Sullivan was allowed to perform again in movies, on TV, and in “reputable” live venues.
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Dave Van Ronk — Fabled folk singer who played coffeehouses and underground joints in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, Van Ronk is said to have been profoundly influential on the first wave of neo-folk singers in the 60s including Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary; Phil Ochs; and Joni Mitchell. His story was fictionalized in the Coen Brothers movie Inside Llewyn Davis.
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Yngwie Malmsteen — Born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck in Sweden, Malmsteen is a heavy metal guitarist idolized by stoner suburban white boys, ergo per the Onion:
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On this day in 1984, Lillian Hellman died. Playwright and screenwriter, Hellman gained fame as the author of the plays The Children’s Hour, Little Foxes, Watch on the Rhine, and The Autumn Garden. Her leftist sympathies and her longtime relationship with suspected communist Dashiell Hammett led her to be subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee where she told her inquisitors she would gladly testify about herself but would not name names or say anything to damage the reputations of others. She famously said, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions….”
I wonder about people who can’t laugh at themselves. Do they see laughter, wherever it’s directed, as an insult? The more seriously one takes one’s self, the more frequently one will feel insulted.
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Hatred Nation
No matter who wins the November election, we’ll have two presidents in a row who will be the most despised, arguably, in our history.
Whether or not the hatred is justified (and if D. Trump wins, it sure as hell will be) it’s a damned shame our holy land is so filled with odium in this 21st Century.
I was thinking about this because I was imagining Donald T. winning. I’d feel alienated from my own country. I’d be tempted to say “He’s not my president!” I’d be loath to read a newspaper, turn on the radio, or go online. Simply hearing or reading the words “President Trump” would turn my stomach. I’d be embarrassed to be an American.
Then it hit me — that’s precisely what millions of people have thought about the presidency of one Barack H. Obama.
Now nine-tenths of them are full of holy horseshit when they say their abhorrence of BHO is not based, at least partly, on racism. I’ll give you 10 percent who detest him for his policies alone — even though he’s as centrist as any of our last 11 presidents since the end of World War II. I mean, nobody really hates vanilla, do they? Alright, one of ten.
The descent of America into a culture of hate really began with the 1964 election pitting Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater. Before that, the contests between Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey, Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, and even John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon had been horse races people might have felt passionately about but they weren’t certain that if the other guy won, America would automatically and immediately become Hitler’s Germany redux.
In a sense, no matter who would have won in ’64, the losing side felt their nation would be slipping away. Goldwater was an unapologetic radical conservative. “I would remind you,’ he told the cheering throng at the Republican National Convention that summer, “that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” Johnson, the victor, gave us the Great Society and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. None of those three gifts were surprise packages. “Freedom,” he said, “is not enough.”
Hardcore Republicans despised Johnson and his liberal policies.
But that was just the start. By 1968, when Nixon had settled upon his Southern Strategy and welcomed disenchanted Democratic segregationists into the Republican Party, the battle lines had been drawn. This was war — cultural war, racial war, class war, and any other kind of war the citizenry felt like fighting. As long as the other side could be portrayed as an enemy, Nixon knew he had voters right where he wanted them. In war, the combatants must hate each other. Hatred is a powerful motivator. If it can spur men to don battle fatigues and risk their own lives for the purpose of taking those of the other country’s, then it surely can get people off their sofas on a November Tuesday.
Now, hatred is ingrained in our political discourse. If Bernie’s your guy, you must hate Hillary. If Hillary’s your dame, you must hate Trump. If Trump’s your orangutan, you must hate everybody who isn’t you.
I like to think my own hatred of Donald Trump is indeed justified. I figure I have to hate him to remain true to my own morality. I only wish the other side had offered a nice, moderately unlikeable opponent, someone like Bob Dole or Mitt Romney. This hatred can’t be doing me any good.
I know for a fact it isn’t doing America any good.
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June 29th Birthdays
Julia Lathrop — The first female to lead a US federal government bureau, she was named director of the United States Children’s Bureau in 1912. Before that, she’d worked with Jane Addams at Chicago’s Hull House. With Addams and other Hull House women, Lathrop lobbied for Congress to enact legislation for the protection of children. As head of the Children’s Bureau, she directed it toward a scientific approach to studying and solving the problems of child labor, infant mortality, maternal mortality, juvenile delinquency, and many others.
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Harry Frazee — Perhaps the most detested man in Boston for most of the 20th Century. A theatrical producer as well as owner of baseball’s Boston Red Sox, he sold a young pitcher/slugger named Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees the day after Christmas, 1919. Legend has it Frazee sold Ruth in order to finance his production of the musical No, No Nanette but that’s not true (even though Frazee did bankroll the play). Frazee dumped Ruth for many reasons, not the least of which was the Bambino’s predilections for food gorging, staying out all night drinking, and sleeping with pretty much every woman he could lay his hands on.
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Bernard Herrmann — My favorite movie composer of all time. Herrmann’s triumphant film scores include North by Northwest, Psycho, The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original), and Taxi Driver. His screeching violins accompanying the shower scene in Psycho remain to this day the iconic sounds of horror.
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Slim Pickens — Born Louis Burton Lindley, Jr., a rodeo cowboy who gained fame as a film and TV actor, he famously rode a thermonuclear weapon out the bomb bay of his B-52 while waving his ten-gallon hat and yelling Wa-hoo! at the end of the movie Dr. Strangelove….
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Oriana Fallaci — Italian journalist known for her extremely personal interview style. She interviewed dozens of world leaders including Henry Kissinger, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, the Shah of Iran, Lech Walesa, and many others. Her interview with the Ayotollah Khomeini was notable for her confronting him about the place of women in fundamentalist Islam:
Fallaci:I still have to ask you a lot of things. About the “chador”, for example, which I was obliged to wear to come and interview you, and which you impose on Iranian women…. I am not only referring to the dress but to what it represents, I mean the apartheid Iranian women have been forced into after the revolution. They cannot study at the university with men, they cannot work with men, they cannot swim in the sea or in a swimming-pool with men. They have to do everything separately, wearing their “chador.” By the way, how can you swim wearing a “chador”?
Kohmeini:None of this concerns you, our customs do not concern you. If you don’t like the Islamic dress you are not obliged to wear it, since it is for young women and respectable ladies.
Fallaci:This is very kind of you, Imam, since you tell me that, I’m going to immediately rid myself of this stupid medieval rag. There!
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Little Eva — Born Eva Narcissus Boyd, she did the Loco-motion.
Time for my yearly screed against conspiracy theorists and their flights of fancy. This one has to do with Hillary Clinton and, naturally, murder.
See, my old pal Tom from Chi. seemed a bit miffed re: the comments I and another old pal from the same locale, Rich, made under his social media post about the death of some heretofore anonymous United Nations official.
This official, a fellow named John Ashe, was the ambassador to the UN from the tiny nation of Antigua and Barbuda, population a shade over 91,000. A few years back, Ashe served as the president of the UN, meaning he held the gavel during meetings and tsk-tsk’d at ambassadors who violated Robert’s Rules of Order. There’s a new president each year, selected by a vote of the all the ambassadors in the General Assembly and usually awarded to the ambassador from some innocuous, minuscule dot of land. For instance, the incoming president for the 71st session of the General Assembly, scheduled to begin in September, is a chap named Peter Thomson of Fiji.
I will state without fear of being wrong you have never heard of him. He is, in the scheme of global affairs, probably only slightly more influential than is Bloomington’s newly-installed Director of Utilities, Vic Kelson. Similarly, when Ashe was UN prez, he ranked a hair’s breadth more important than former Utilities boss Pat Murphy.
John Ashe up and died last week. Acc’d’g to news reports he was working out in the gym when one of his weights fell, crushing his throat. Coincidentally, Ashe was scheduled to go on trial this week along with four other co-defendants on bribery charges. The FBI says Ashe was given “Rolexes, bespoke suits, and a private basketball court” as well as cash and a family vacation in exchange for greasing the path for his co-conspirators to launder money through Antigua and Barbuda.
It turns out one of his co-conspirators was Ng Lap Seng, a Chinese billionaire. Ng, it seems, was once the subject of a couple of investigations looking into charges he’d laundered money through both the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Foundation.
Like most such schemes, Ng’s, Ashe’s and the others’ was convoluted and involved too many people to insure secrecy. The FBI flipped a guy and next thing you knew, indictments flew.
And like most such schemers, Ng had connections in all sorts of places. Why, he even had his picture taken once with Hillary, acc’d’g to the London Daily Mail.
Tom, normally a fine and smart fellow, likes to speculate about shadow gov’ts and arch-villianous cabals meeting in secret to control our lives. Once he heard about Ashe’s untimely death, Tom immediately concluded that Hillary must have something to do with it. Whether she personally or some highly-paid stooge crushed Ashe’s throat, Tom won’t say. He did take to social media, though, to imply Hillary must somehow have had a hand in Ashe’s demise.
After all, Hillary is a known homicidal maniac, starting with the execution of Vince Foster.
Cold-Blooded Killer
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Rich, shocked, responded first. He wrote: “Seriously?”
I followed with, “Of course he’s serious. Hillary murdered him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Tom was put out by our belittling attitudes. He wrote:
Try looking up rash of climate scientists that died under unusual circumstances before you trash me. Your complacency is the problem. Not my paranoia. Then try reporters who died under unusual circumstances when reporting on the media-cracry consolidation too.
While I accept the possibility — even the likelihood — that corporate and/or governmental interests have been criminally responsible for deaths of critics and “enemies,” these are perforce extremely rare cases, especially outside of countries that repress freedom of speech and the press. Even in Russia or Turkey they’re rare and undertaken as an absolute last resort. A politician or CEO would have to be absolutely certain that the act would remain secret because the risk of exposure would be too great to take.
Problem is, there is no absolute certainty when it comes to planning and executing a conspiracy. The individuals involved would, of necessity, be far too amoral and self-interested to be trusted to keep their mouths shut, especially if investigators came snooping around.
Conspiracy theorists, though, don’t see things that way.
See, we all stand powerless as individuals before the might of government and corporate interests. That’s a terribly uncomfortable way to feel. My way of coping with it is to accept it and acknowledge my impotence, which took a long time and a lot of psychological energy. Others cope by aligning themselves with “insightful” observers who have nebulous “access” to secrets and have been able to connect the dots and put the pieces together. This way, they comfort themselves that they have the tiniest bit of power against those malign interests.
No one wants to be powerless but in reality, in a world of seven billion-plus souls, each one of us has the capacity to affect the affairs of humankind as much as a single cell of John Ashe’s biceps would have been able to prevent that barbell from falling on his throat.
An affinity for conspiracy theories is a way to convince yourself you’re smarter than the average citizen. You’ve machete-d through the lies, you’ve grasped the complexities, you’ve uncovered the cardinal sins that the rest of the fools have bought hook, line and sinker.
Coincidentally, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg writes today of his own tiny slip into conspiratorial thinking. On a trip to Washington, DC, he came to a building that had two flags on prominent display out front. One was the American flag and the other was this one:
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What could this flag be, Steinberg wondered. Looking around, he saw several cars that had the flag image emblazoned on their doors. Could it be the flag of some secretive international banking consortium? An arcane global policing agency?
Turns out the damned thing was the flag of Washington, DC.
Steinberg wrote:
Like somebody turning a reflection on their glasses into an alien mothership, I instinctively thought up a wild, complicated, wrong solution before the simple correct one, creating a shadow government in my head before I thought of the unique little district we were traipsing through. The typical crazy fiction rushing in to fill a vacuum of fact.
Whenever I’m confronted with a conspiracy theory, I think of journalist Matt Taibbi’s take on the 9/11 truth movement. In his book, The Great Derangement, Taibbi writes:
The movement is really distinguished by a kind of defiant unfamiliarity with the actual character of America’s ruling class. In 9/11 truth lore, the people who staff the White House, the security agencies, the Pentagon, and groups like PNAC [the Project for the New American Century] and the Council on Foreign Relations are imagined to be a monolithic, united class of dastardly, swashbuckling risk-takers with permanent hard-ons for Bourne Supremacy-style “false flag” and “black bag” operations, instead of the mundanely greedy, risk-averse, backstabbing, lawn-tending, half-clever suburban golfers they are in real life….
The people who really run America don’t send George Bush and Dick Cheney to the White House to cook up boat-rocking, maniacal, world-domination plans and commit massive criminal conspiracies on live national television; they send them there [to do] shit that never makes the papers but keeps Wall Street and the country’s corporate boardrooms happy. You don’t elect politicians to commit crimes; you elect politicians to make your crimes legal.
IDK, perhaps people are bored. Perhaps they’ve read too many suspense novels or watched too many spy movies. In any case, this bizarre, baffling, nutso world isn’t interesting enough for a lot of people. They find it necessary to create an imaginary world filled with plotters and arch-criminals. For some odd reason, Hillary seems to bring out the the wildest in many people’s imaginations.
