You think it’s easy – you try it

02. November 2009 · Comments Off on You think it’s easy – you try it · Categories: General

Rejoice!

The White House says it has created saved 650,000 jobs!

Of course, that’s about the number of folks that got fired last week. And the net number of jobs that have been lost in the past two months. And it’s a bit of a theoretical number, to say the least.

What I like is that the newsreaders at NPR are able to report ‘created or saved’ jobs on the news with nary a snigger nor a smile in their voice.  Treating a made-up, theoretical, bullshit number as actual news can’t be easy.

I, myself, created or saved a few jobs last week.  True, I ate lunch at home and thus did not save or create jobs at McDonalds or Subway.  But I did create or save jobs for the guys that deliver peanut butter and jelly and bread at the grocery.  Not to mention the guys that make peanut butter and jelly and bread and all the people that depend on them.

Just doing Our Part for the Recovery.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Random Book Club Questions and Comments: Adelsverein

29. October 2009 · Comments Off on Random Book Club Questions and Comments: Adelsverein · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

I’ve done three book club meetings so far with groups who have read one or anther of the Trilogy, and have another two scheduled in the hear future, so I thought I’d get around to answering some of the questions that I have been asked about the setting and the characters – both the real ones, and the ones that I made up.

Question: How could a very intelligent and observant girl like Magda – who grew up on a farm – be so clueless about sex when it comes to her wedding night?

Answer: Firstly – because it wasn’t something that girls in the 19th century were supposed to know anything about; and yes, she might have noticed animals mating on the farm, but still not have had any clue that the same applied to humans. There wasn’t a lot of general information about sex commonly available in most respectable middle-class circles, especially where it concerned unmarried young women. Secondly, if one wasn’t especially interested in the subject in the first place, one wasn’t moved to go out looking for it – because the information just wasn’t there, in the way it is today. Magda was bookish and intellectual, not terribly interested in a subject which wasn’t being thrust at her, 24-7 anyway. My parents had a very dear friend, who had been a young woman in the 1920’s, and in her mid-twenties was dating a young artist. She also did not know anything about what sex involved, and as she told us, her boyfriend drew pictures for her, by way of telling her – and this was in the 1920’s! If a young woman in the 1920’s could have not known about sex, it’s no great leap to project backwards and assume that a woman in the 1840’s – who wasn’t much interested in the prospect – wouldn’t have known much more.

Her sister Liesel, on the other hand – had a healthy sexual appetite and a passionate interest in the man she adored, and so she was able to find sufficient information, and to act on it. One reader commented that Liesel may not have known much – but what she did know, she knew very, very well.

Q: In interviews, actors often claim that they love playing villains – more of an opportunity to pull out all the stops and chew up the scenery; is it as much fun for you to to write a menacing, and hateful villain, like JP Waldrip?

A: Ugh – no, not really. I wrote JP Waldrip as a sadist and sociopath, and not quite sane, a very ugly person, and it was not fun, but more of a grim duty, writing him. That kind of madness frightens me in real life, and spending even a little time in an imaginary space with him was quite unpleasant. I did make up the part about him having odd-colored eyes – but not about wearing a fine-quality hat. Historically, there isn’t really much known about him, for sure – including his reason for he came back to Fredericksburg, two years after the Civil War was over, when he and the other hanging-band members had terrorized Gillespie County during the last years. One local historian says he was brazen, a bully – and he was essentially daring the people in Fredericksburg to make their move. Which they did – although no one knows who shot him dead in the street under an oak tree by the Nimitz Hotel Stables. For dramatic purposes, I came up with my own reason, and version of who shot J.P.

Q: How could Magda have accepted Trap Talmadge’s sword, when it was brought back to her after the war by Robert Hunter – and even had it hanging on the wall of her parlor, given how Trap Talmadge had betrayed her husband? I’d have wanted to throw it at him! Speaking of Trap Talmadge, since he was such a serious alcoholic, however did he mange to serve as a scout for the Confederate Army?

A: Well – it was sent with Trap’s dying confession, and carried by the young man who was courting Magda’s sister Rosalie; I visualized her as being first a little stunned, and then unwilling to say anything hurtful to the man who was about to be part of the family, a man who obviously worshipped Trap as a hero. I think she would have put the sword away for a good long time. She brought it out and had it hung in her parlor, when she was an old woman, and able to remember that Trap was her husband’s good friend, and employee for years, before he made that one horrific mistake – and that he had done his best to atone for it. And I described him as the intermittent sort of alcoholic, who functions for weeks or months, then goes on a horrific bender. As for being able to serve in Benjamin Terry’s regiment – by the time his enlistment was accepted, the Confederacy was getting rather desperate for men: warm, breathing, and possessing three out of four extremities would have been accepted for military service.

Q: Where did you get the character of Mrs. Brown, who came after Magda and the children, brought them food and assistance when they were evicted from the farm by the Confederate authorities? She was fearless, and kind, and didn’t look for any reward – and was the only one of the Becker’s friends who dared come forward and help, when they were in such need.

A: I thought that Mrs. Brown and her family could stand in for the more typical edge-of-the-frontier settler, the roaming Scotch-Irish type, perennially cash-poor but proud, who preferred hunting and herding, never put much effort beyond the minimum in their homestead, lived pretty much in squalor and moved on when the fit took them. They were pretty much looked down upon as shiftless poor whites by the better-off traveler and commentator like Frederick Law Olmstead, sort of the 19th century equivalent of trailer trash – and of course, Magda would have been secretly horrified by the Browns. But it was a kind of a lesson to her – that when the chips are down, the people who will astound everyone by their courage and clear sight are the ones that you don’t really expect heroism from.

Q: I just had to stop and cry, after Chapter 9! That was just so shattering!

A: Umm, yes. Quite a lot of readers have had to stop and have a quiet weep – as they had rather fallen in love with that particular character. But I had always planned it to happen that way, from the very beginning. Some of the elements in Magda’s story are based on reminiscence by Clara Feller, who arrived in Fredericksburg as a teen-aged girl, and lived into the 20th century.

Q: The story reminds me very much of Cold Mountain – that it was about an aspect of the Civil War that I had never heard about; that there were so many Unionists in Confederate states, who were disinclined to fight for the South.

A: Oh, yes – the Civil War was much more complicated than it appears – and the astonishing thing is that there was so much happening out in the West which is generally left out of the standard Civil War narrative. The beginning of the fighting meant a range of difficult and thoughtfully considered choices for all the male characters. And that’s the essential tragedy of the Civil War – every choice made perfect sense to the man making it. I tried to show the whole range of possible reactions: everything from enthusiastically joining the Confederate cause, like the Vining boys, to wanting to serve in the Frontier Battalion to protect against Indian raids like Fredi, and Dolph with the Cavalry of the West. Then there is Charley Nimitz, calculatedly playing it straight down the middle, and Carl, who can’t bring himself to take up arms because he has friends on either side. Hansi wants just to be left the heck alone, and Johann detests slavery and what the Confederates have done to his family – so he joins the Union Army.

Q: When the heck did Charley Nimitz get married? He was such a charming and amusing fellow, I think Magda should have chosen him?

A: He got married towards the end of Book One – The Gathering, having begun courting another girl – the girl which the historical C.H. Nimitz actually married – almost as soon as Magda turned him down. I did take a few liberties with his character, since he had to be at least an appealing a potential husband as Carl Becker, but in the accounts which I read of him, he seems to have been the most notorious teller of tall-tales and perpetrator of practical jokes in all of Gillespie County. And he was a well-respected man in Fredericksburg for all of his life – before, during and well after the Civil War, so painting him as a sort of Scarlett Pimpernel may not have been too far off the mark.

Q: So, what are you working on now, and how soon will it be available?

A: Another trilogy about the frontier, spinning off on some the minor characters in Adelsverein, but only very loosely linked to it. I’m planning all three as ‘stand-alone’ narratives. The first will follow Margaret Becker, in pre-independent Texas, during the War for Independence and in Republic-era Austin, when she keeps a boarding-house and becomes a political hostess. Parts of her story are hinted at, all through Adelsverein; she was one of those peripheral characters who kept threatening to take over. Her life was very interesting – two husbands, experienced the Runaway Scrape, had a career of sorts, and knew all sorts of fascinating people – so she should have her own book. The second one will be the adventures of Fredi, Magda’s younger brother, taking cattle to California during the Gold Rush. I’ve always wanted to write a picaresque Gold Rush adventure, and this is my chance. I had never heard of a cattle drive from Texas to California, in the early 1850s, until I read of it in “The Trail Drivers of Texas” – so there’s another grand unknown frontier adventure for you. The third book – which may very well be the first available because I have four chapters roughed out already – picks up the story of Dolph Becker’s English bride, coming to Texas in the middle of the great cattle boom. I’m hoping to have that one done by Christmas, 2010.

Redline Overload

23. October 2009 · Comments Off on Redline Overload · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, That's Entertainment!

Sometimes, it’s a real pain in the ass, knowing history – kind of like one of those lines of telepaths in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels, who could see all the possible futures, resulting from any deliberate or random action and usually went mad, from it – not daring to take any step at all, seeing all the millions of possible results.
Knowing history is a bit like that. You know what happened before – sometimes many times before – as a result of specific actions or inactions – and even though those baleful results didn’t happen every single damn time, the unfortunate and unlooked for results happened frequently enough to make you jumpy when you start seeing certain things happening one damn more time. And saying, between slightly gritted teeth “No, as a matter of fact, I am NOT paranoid – I just have good pattern recognition!” is of no particular comfort, or defense.

I’ll leave to more qualified and credentialed intellects than mine to take a resounding thwack at the current administration – they’re being beaten like a cheap piñata at a kid’s party where everyone present has slipped off the blindfold, taken up a baseball bat and had a fair old go at it; hey ACORN – how ya doing, still facilitating setting up whorehouses stocked with underage Third-world staff? Lizard-Lips Lady, still adoring Mao and Mother Theresa … geeze, how did someone with a disability that makes you look as if you are trying to pry peanut-butter off the roof of your mouth mid-speech get a job as communications director? Oh, never mind – wife of old Chicago crony – I can do the math. Like I didn’t see that kind of deal coming, from when the serious politicking began, all these long months and years ago. And adding Fox News to the enemies list? Bad move, sports-fans … never pick a fight with someone who buys printer ink by the barrel or pixels by the cart-load. Besides, you are increasing their viewer-stats by degrees, and raising uncomfortable memories of Richard M. Nixon, he of the White House enemies list – and many of those so-called enemies have been dining out forever on their established reputation. You’ve made their reps well into the next couple of decades as ‘fearless chaps and chapesses who dared speak truth to power’ – at least, if they have a sinecure in broadcasting like the dear old croaking saint Daniel Schorr of NPR, in which case they will have a cause to go on croaking about unto the next generation or two. Yeah, like never give a hack a cause to harp on about, endlessly. Eternity, that is thy name.

No – the thing that seriously worries me is what I first started to notice, when I occasionally went spelunking through the deeper lefty-depths of regular bloggers at Open Salon. What initially unsettled me was the casual and usually much applauded (to judge by the appended comments) demonization of the “other.” The “other” in this case being – depending on the issue under discussion – conservatives, Republicans, Sarah Palin fans, Tea Partiers, church-goers, Obama Administration critics, or critics of health-care reform. And these same leftish OS bloggers were not – for the most part – the sort of screeching howler-monkey Kossacks that I would have avoided anyway. I’ve been blogging at OS for more than a year, and many of these exact same bloggers were in a way of being fans of my own OS blog and my writing in general – so the free-floating contempt for conservatives and non-Obama fans of every variation was a little disheartening. I post at OS for the literary exposure, more than engaging in political fisticuffs, so I haven’t made many attempts at open discussion. It’s kind of like your grandmother’s house at Thanksgiving, encountering some of their reactionary old friends: yeah, you could start an argument with them – but it’s not the time or the place, and the whole exercise would be kinda pointless anyway. The minds are already made up, and your Grandmother would be hurt over having a good dinner ruined. Just bite your tongue and have another helping of chestnut stuffing. This sort of thing has been going on since the first ur-blogger put on his saber-toothed tiger PJs, crawled up to his stone keyboard and pecked out “Urg-rok is a moron!” I may not want to get drawn into the discussion—but I’m fairly used to it, after blogging since mid-2002. Used to it – and tired of it. I just observe and analyze, these days and in that venue.

The automatic denigration of the “other” starts to worry me, though, when it slides seamlessly past an equally automatic disregard of whatever argument or position the “other” holds – merely because it is the “other” holding it. The default position becomes “There’s no need to even bother considering “x” because everyone who holds position “x” is *insert group identity label here* – say, a “Tea Partier”, or a “conservative” or “a Christian” or – going even farther “a Fox TV fan” , “a global warming denier” or “someone who wants the poor and uninsured to just die already!” It’s not good and it’s not healthy to have this kind of contempt normalized, especially among people who otherwise pride themselves on being right-thinking, tolerant and broad-minded. And then, a little farther along the continuum of contempt, I get a little more worried, when one starts to hear sincerely-expressed wishes that the “other” just go away, just vanish – so that the well-meaning and sensitive and caring sorts won’t even have to bother with considering those nasty “others” any more. I fear that a dangerous threshold has been reached, when this kind of emotion seep out into the commentary of a semi-mainstream commentator like Garrison Keillor – who most famously of late commented: “one starts to wonder if the country wouldn’t be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the healthcare system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off healthcare to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.” Kind of a sweeping statement there; would Mr. Keillor also recommend that people he disagreed with be subjected to a sort of modern political Nuremburg Law? I suppose he intended to be witty – but it comes off as sour, and angry – and more than a little unsettling, given that he would be talking about a third of his fellow citizens and countrymen.

This very week, the White House has made a fairly concerted and so far unsuccessful effort to de-legitimize Fox News as a news source, arguing that it is just dishing up too much ideological content to be a real news organization. One might suspect that the real problem is that Fox isn’t genuflecting deep enough for the White House press office’s taste, and has the embarrassing tendency to cover issues that the White House would rather be left uncovered. De-legitimizing Fox as a news organization is all of a piece with the tendency noted above; essentially, “what you think and say doesn’t matter, because all good-thinking people have decided that you are beneath notice, that you are ignorant at best and malign at worst, and maybe it would be best for all if you just weren’t around.”

Yeah, knowing history can make reading the headlines a little discomforting; sometimes paranoids really do have people out to get them.

Umbrella

21. October 2009 · Comments Off on Umbrella · Categories: General

It’s raining – you should take an umbrella.

Marines don’t carry umbrellas, I replied.

And just like that the conversation ground to a halt in a cloud of frowny faces and incomprehension.

I’ve been brainwashed.

It is true that Marines don’t carry umbrellas. I have been told, and have no reason to doubt, that there is a Marine Corps Order forbidding this.

Naval officers may carry umbrellas, of course. And probably everyone in the Air Force [1] not only may carry an umbrella but are issued their own umbrella in boot camp and lug one around like Marines carry their rifles.

But Marines must be ready to, on a moment’s notice repel intruders and do battle with the forces of darkness and E-vil. To draw a bayonet with one hand, an M1911 [2] with the other and with the third hand [4] fire an M16 with cold-eyed precision.

Carrying an umbrella would get in the way of all that.

Now, the forces of darkness are highly unlikely to ambush me on the way to the data center [5] so there is no earthly reason why I should not carry an umbrella. Except I don’t. Because it would feel wrong.

Because I have been brainwashed by the Marines to believe it is Just Not Done.

There are a lot of things I now firmly believe with every fiber of my being. How much is a result of spending a few years in the Marines and how much I just picked up on my own is a good question.

All I know is, men don’t carry umbrellas

[1] Any Marine will tell you at the drop of a hat that the Air Force houses their men and women not in barracks but dormitories. And they hire maids to clean up after them in the dormitories.

[2] Nothing against that fine, fine ladies gun [3] of an M9 of course.

[3] I don’t like the M9 because it’s stacked magazine swells out the grip and makes it uncomfortable to hold in my womanly-sized hands.

[4] Marines in a combat situation are incredibly busy acting like the living avatar of Death and are far, far, too engaged for stuff like math. Unless you need to call on the radio for artillery.

[5] I live in Wisconsin – you’d think they’d dig a heated tunnel for us to get from one building to another.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Contemplating Throwing in the Towel on Larry McMurtry

18. October 2009 · Comments Off on Contemplating Throwing in the Towel on Larry McMurtry · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Rant, Working In A Salt Mine...

You know, I’ll be hanging in there for several reasons – sheer stubbornness and the fact that I bought all four of them for pennies on the dollar at various library book sales being chief among them – but I just wanna say that at this point, me carrying on with reading Dead Man’s Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo is already shaping up to be a long and, I fear, ultimately frustrating slog through the deserts of the metaphorical southwest. I might very well get to the end of it all, rejoicing and acclaiming the author as one of the epochal bards of the Texas frontier … but at this point – which about half a dozen chapters into each book, except for Dead Man’s Walk where I am nearly to the end – the odds are about even that I’ll pack it in and go get some unanesthetized root canal work done instead, or maybe watch the whole season run of Bridezillas’. Hey, at least there, I can root for some of the more sane family members and friends of the bridal party and hope that a much-harassed and out-of-patience MOH will haul off and serve up the ‘Zilla-of-the-moment with a richly-deserved knuckle sandwich. This hope will string me along for at least a good few hours – with Bridezillas and McMurtry alike. Drama, baby – it’s all about the drama.

I just keep hoping that something similar will happen, somewhere along in the Woodrow Call/Gus McRae cycle. I so dearly hope it will, because everyone else says such wonderful things about it all, including some of my very own dear fans who have, most flatteringly compared my books to his – on the basis, I think, that I wrote about frontier Texas, and had a hero who was an early Texas Ranger, and included lashings of war, local and historic color, tragic romance and the fading of the Old West. Of course, the lucky author, Mr. McMurtry got a whole couple of TV miniseries made from his books, (with surging royalties and residuals and all, and reissued paperbacks with stills of the stars on the covers, all of which would make his agent worth every penny of the 15% of which Mr. McMurtry earns out of his labors as a creative scribbler and raconteur of the Old West) and so it isn’t all just sour-grapes from an aspiring author, hardly blessed or even barely noticed by the literary-industrial complex … ohhh, do I get any recognition for having written a totally complicated and sort-of-run-on-sentence in the Grand Victorian Tradition? (Oh, guess not, not this time around – better move on, then.)

The first hurdle in my path of eventual acceptance is – that so far, it’s all build-up and character, but no actually delivery. I am sorta-intrigued, but not-really grabbed by interest, in the characters so delineated. I keep wondering why the deadpan flat, detached affect? Why should I care about various characters if the author doesn’t seem to give a damn about them, or even display much interest, other than in the strictly clinical? As a reader I am also a little exhausted by following the constant leaping one character’s POV to another, and another within the same chapter, and just when I have recovered from the last of them and remember who it is, exactly that I am supposed to be interested in – then I trip and fall flat over a large chunk of expository back-story, which doesn’t much lead to anything much happening. A friend of mine, also a fan of both McMurtry and I explained to me that this is very much a Texas thing, to meander and meander, and wander … eventually to come around in a circle again, without anything very much having happened. Apparently, the process of the story is supposed to be the main bit of enjoyment. So how was a couple of hours of heavy petting, leading nowhere other than a chaste kiss of the hand at the doorway supposed to be rewarding – when you have been led in happy anticipation to look for something a bit more energetic? When this happens, romantically, one tends to be a bit disappointed, think of the other party as a dreadful tease, write off the evening as a waste of time and make-up, and resolve to let the answering machine pick-up next time. With a best-selling, and to all appearances, very popular author, who started off Lonesome Dove with one of the very best opening sentences evah … well, maybe one should be a little more indulgent.

Alas – I have a bit of trouble with another aspect of the cycle, especially the earlier books, in being a bit of an amateur specialist in history. That is, amateur in the antique sense of a person who zestfully acquires knowledge for the sheer love of the field. I have no academic training, other than that required of English majors three decades ago, not even a minor in history, or any fancy qualifying initials after my name – only a burning passion to learn as much as I can about any particular aspect, and to get it right, and to weave that knowledge into my stories. Which is all very well, but has absolutely ruined me for watching westerns on television; don’t even get me started on the fantasy west, of pulp novels and TV series and movies. I’m too apt to notice that there is a zipper down the back of the heroine’s dress, notice that the traveling cowboy is camping with a lot more gear than he could have packed into a teensy bedroll on the back of his horse, and there is a deep-rock gold mine right next to a cattle ranch, and to wonder where the heck in the West that could have happened?

Plowing gamely through the first two books has been a bit of a disconcerting experience, as I keep running across names, historic characters and incidents of Texas history but as if someone had jumbled them all together in a small box, and then emptied them out in random order, omitted some pivotal incidents and people, exaggerated others for effect, and now and again threw in something completely bizarre, just rang off-key for me. The real Buffalo Hump wasn’t a hunchback, if the description of him at Meusebach’s peace conference is anything to go by. The real Bigfoot Wallace lived to die of ripe old age; he drew life from a jar of dried beans in Mexican captivity … which incident happened to the survivors of the Meir expedition, not the Texan attempt to take Santa Fe, which occurred twenty years later and during the Civil War anyway. Austin was never raided, looted and burned over by a Comanche raiding party – that happened to Linnville, in 1840 – and the aftermath of that involved a massed force of Rangers, local militia and volunteers giving as good as they got in the Plum Creek fight. Makes me wonder why McMurtry needed to make anything up, when what really happened historically would have made at least as much of a good story. And it is a bit of puzzlement, wondering how the early Rangers in the first two books are pretty consistently pictured as being neophytes, hopeless little golden carp in a sea of hungry sharks – a tasty mouthful for every passing predator … which reminds me of the character who was neatly scalped of all of his hair by Buffalo Hump going past at a gallop. I’m almost sure scalping someone took a little bit more than a single swipe with a knife from horseback, although if anyone had perfected the art of a ride-by scalping, it would have been the Comanche.

It sounded a bit improbable, anyway – and the hapless recipient of it as disposable as any of the red-shirted crewmen on Star Trek, beaming down to an alien planet and being killed in the first act. And that sort of disposing of a character, and other characters, and having characters appear and disappear, and such strange and improbable turns of the plot, such as having a naked English noblewoman with leprosy and a pet snake sing a Verdi aria to bluff a party of hostile Indian warriors into letting a our heroes pass by … well, that was just too television for words, and I came to that realization with a certain shock of recognition. I know they’ve made the books into movies, or into miniseries, and that’s more right than readers and watchers could possibly have known – because it is more like one of the old television westerns than has been along in years! A jumble of historical events and happenstances, check – interminable, episodic adventures – check. Handful of basic, easily identifiable characters – check – some vicious and inscrutable villains (some of them with baroque torture chambers and suitable evil henchmen) – check. Rotating stable of supporting characters, and endless supply of disposable extras – check and check again. And a disconcerting tendency for certain startling shifts in the cast to occurs between seasons …or between books. And there you go – it’s a TV western writ large; no wonder the Lonesome Dove cycle has so many fans. Having come to this conclusion, I will probably carry on for a bit, keeping it in mind… but isn’t Bridezillas on tonight?

Semper Fidelis

16. October 2009 · Comments Off on Semper Fidelis · Categories: General

I am learning how to dance.  Salsa.  With Marissa Garcia and Mike Bassette from Latin Stylz in Oshkosh.

Joe Bob says ‘Check ’em out’.

And it is not so bad. I have found out that dance has a lot in common with close order drill.

Well shucks: anyone can learn close order drill.

There are stylized movements.  You can execute, say, Move A but only from Position B.  Everything happens on a beat.  There is a designated leader, and a designated follower.

There are differences:  Things move a bit faster.  The company is more congenial.  And the music sure ain’t no ‘Semper Fidelis’.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

I Love the Smell of Dripping Sarcasm in the Morning

15. October 2009 · Comments Off on I Love the Smell of Dripping Sarcasm in the Morning · Categories: Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, sarcasm, The Funny

(From one of those e-mails going around, this one from the military broadcaster’s discussion group, a well-known nest of racists and terrorist sympathizers. This will no doubt get me on several watch lists as a person of doubleplusungoodness.)

Wonderful news! After astonishing the world by receiving the Nobel Peace Prize that was so richly deserved (according to the Democratic leadership and all right thinking people everywhere) Our Dear Leader Barack Hussein has been honored again; the Pentagon announced today that the wonderful light of greatness that is our glorious leader has been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor! this after visiting a Marine Corps base last summer. General Sabot, the new military czar in charge of “honoring dear leaders” stated today “We know some reactionary types both in the civilian sector and those in the military (who unlike myself have had their decision making process clouded by actual combat experience) will not agree with this decision. Nevertheless, a careful review of a cellphone photo-capture of the presidents’ arrival clearly shows the light of virtue and really great greatness that is our savior and bringer of change, his majesty Barack (the peace bringer) He has the clear facial expressions of someone who is really going to do something really really brave and stuff!”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stated: “It’s about time we gave this award to someone who deserves it!” she then expanded: “In the recent past we have given this medal to mostly Warmongering military types who followed the orders of the disgraced prior administration! These mostly Republican types received this award while committing horrible war crimes during the period when this was a illegal war. It is appropriate then that his majesty be given this honor as the war has magically become legal under our more enlightened leadership.” Col. Savemyarss, under-military czar of “sayin’ good stuff about our dear leader” stated: “We believe this award is a proper follow up to all those on the General Staff who are now saying that the new administrations’ war plans are enlightened and much better than the old plans of the prior administration and that it is better way to show our loyalty to the new administration since after almost a year we still have no idea what the new administrations war plan are yet. But don”t take that to mean that I think that a year is to long to come up with a plan! It’s just about right! and I am sure the plan will be like the greatest ever! As a matter of fact I hear there is a school in New Jersey that is writing a new song of praise for our dear leader based on the wonderful new plan we all know he is putting together! “and that you can quote me on!”

Around in Back of the Alamo

14. October 2009 · Comments Off on Around in Back of the Alamo · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

The front of the Alamo is instantly recognizable; almost like a stage set. Everybody knows the bed-stead outline with what would have been a pair of towers on either side, a pair of shell-supported niches on either side of the door, and the window over it … were there ever statues in those niches? I’ve always wondered about that. It was a mission church, when first built, then a chapel for the Mexican Army garrison, and at some point the roof over the nave and sanctuary collapsed in. When the Alamo achieved fame everlasting, in the space of 14 days and a murderous hour and a half of pitched battle on a dark April morning, the church building had made into a bastion, filled with a platform and a ramp of packed earth and rubble to make a gun-platform for three cannon at the apse end. Later, it was repaired, and re-roofed, serving for decades as a US Army garrison and warehouse, as what was left of the mission compound was torn down, and the town of San Antonio de Bexar crept closer and closer to the old mission buildings. Eventually, the Army decamped to a new-built compound a little way north of town, and the old chapel became a shrine again.

What hardly show in the usual pictures are the trees and gardens on either side, and in the back, which served as a backdrop for the San Antonio Living History Association’s “Fall at the Alamo” last weekend. My daughter thought there would be quite a few more re-enactors than there were – and as it turned out, I was much more interested in the re-enactors who had demonstrations and talks about early Texas than she was.

She was enchanted by the lace-making demonstration, however. Two ladies were hand-making thread lace, weaving thread from dozens of slender ivory or wood bobbins, each bobbin trimmed with a bauble of beads. The lace pattern was mounted on either a pillow or a little round drum, studded with pins in a precise pattern, and the threads were woven around the pins and twisted with other threads – it was fascinating to watch. There was a spinner, with a basket of hanks of yarn, dyed with natural dyes, all in very muted shades, including a pink made from cochineal … which according to another re-enactor, dressed as a Delaware Indian, was one of Texas’s main exports, in the early days. He actually had a bottle of cochineal insects, little grey-whitish scale bugs that feed on cactus plants. When dried and pulverized, a red dye is extracted from these little insects, a red dye which takes superbly to wool. He had a table full of samples of commodities harvested or produced in Texas in the early days – by early, meaning Republic of Texas or earlier. Some of them I had already known about – like pecans. And leather goods, rice and salt.

I think very fondly of re-enactors when I am working up a book; there is no better way to get an idea of actually how something was accomplished, like starting a fire from flint and steel. Another re-enactor showed us how – not just with a chip of flint rock and what looked like a link from a steel chain, but also with the aid of a little scrap of carbonized cloth to catch the spark, and a wad of vegetable fiber – from, of all things, a mouses’ nest – to feed that little spark and nurse it along. I would have never thought of that, so accustomed to using matches or a lighter in these days.

As nearly as I could see, the gentlemen re-enactors took it all very seriously, being turned out in the finest early 19th century finery; waistcoats, high-buttoned jackets, tall books and all – even to fancy spurs with jingle-bobs on them. My, their spurs really do go jingle-jangle! One of the marked differences in the two movies about the Alamo (The John Wayne one, and the Billy-Bob Thornton version) is that the more recent one seemed to be a bit more authentic as to costuming. I recall reading an interview with the costume designer, who was asked some sort of question about if the cast was dressed in the usual sort of western gear, and the designer replied that, no – nothing especially western, just what would have been the proper fashion for 1836, or maybe during the decade or so before. Kind of interesting to contemplate – that the Texians at the Alamo, when dressed in their best, may have looked very much more like Mr. Darcy than Shane. So – no cowboy hats or boots, no jeans, nothing like what people are used to think of as “western” dress, which is rather more a creation of the later 19th-century west. These gentlemen of early Texas wore tall top-hats, or billed caps, tail-coats or hunting coats made of heavy canvas or buckskin, trimmed with fringe – and very fancy waistcoats. That was a very male bit of a splash- the fancy waistcoat, especially when accessorized with a huge hunting knife.

Breakfast

10. October 2009 · Comments Off on Breakfast · Categories: General

Middle Daughter, [1] talking about me: He is so judgmental.

Example?

MD: Like … he said that a twenty-five year old should have a better job [2] than working at Wendy’s. And that if a guy goes to jail that he’s bad.

Monkeys, [3] in Greek Chorus Mode: He’s right!

Ah yes: I am raising them well.

She is right about the judgmental thing. It’s a flaw, and I know it.

But she is focused on judgment to the exclusion of mercy and forgiveness.

Which reminded me of the great Lou Reed’s “Beginning of a Great Adventure”

It might be fun to have a kid that I could kick around
Create in my own image like a god
I’d raise my own pallbearers to carry me to my grave
And keep me company when I’m a wizened toothless clod

Some gibbering old fool sitting all alone drooling on his shirt
Some senile old fart playing in the dirt
It might be fun to have a kid I could pass something on to
Something better than rage, pain, anger, and hurt


[1] She is 16.
[2] The fellow in question is not a manager, he’s working the counter.
[3] Boys, aged fourteen and nine.

They’re just enlisted men

06. October 2009 · Comments Off on They’re just enlisted men · Categories: General

Dear Everyone,

Thanks to your generosity the ARRA has provided funding for the following in my fair city

Thanks everybody!  We sure do appreciate your tax dollars. 

Except … that money has not yet been spent.  The bridge remains in it’s per-ARRA condition, the detention pond is a wet dream, the two employees are un-hired.

So what’s going on here? [1]

Obama's Economy

I suggest that part of the reason for the red-line – reality – to be screaming skyward like an F-15 on afterburner [2] is that the bulk of the ARRA funds are unspent.

Contrary to what ‘everyone’ was saying, that there were not a whole lot of ‘shovel-ready’ projects.  The funds are hanging around in limbo not doing anyone a bit of good.[3]

Something jerks mightily on his back: the static line, still attached to the airplane God forbid that American fighting men should be entrusted to pull their own ripcords. He can just imagine the staff meeting where they dreamed up the concept of the static line: “For God’s sake, General, they’re just enlisted men! As soon as they jump out of the airplane they’ll probably start daydreaming about their girlfriends, take a few hits from their pocket flasks, catch forty winks, and before you know it they’ll all pile into the ground at a couple of hundred miles an hour!”

I am so, so, glad we have actual professionals handing this stuff so we don’t mess it up.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] Altered image gleefully nicked from TJIC.
[2] Warning!  Cheesy 1970s action and adventure music.
[3] They probably are in an account earning interest at some minuscule rate, but one imagine bales of cash stacked up on loading docks and warehoused in offices around metro D.C. while some serious bureaucratic wrangling goes on.  Good thing money doesn’t loose value just sitting around!

Droit de Seigneur

02. October 2009 · Comments Off on Droit de Seigneur · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Good God, Media Matters Not, Rant, That's Entertainment!

According to the invaluable but frequently erratic Wikipedia, that translates to “the lord’s right” – that is, the right of a noble lord to be the first to bed any or all of the local girls, willing or not, who caught his lordly eye. Further, Wikipedia states that although there is not much credible evidence to suggest this legal right ever existed or was practiced in Western Europe, the phrase has been used ever since, as a convenient short-hand, in reference to all those rights that a noble lord exercised over the tenantry – especially those rights and privileges which infuriated those they were exercised upon. The rights of the lord with regard to the lesser orders variously infuriated, insulted, demeaned, degraded, or at the very least inconvenienced the sturdy peasantry. And there is, I think, something of a race-memory of this in middle- or working-class Americans, for they don’t much like it when someone attempts to claim a lordly privilege. Nothing is more calculated to earn a snappy comeback from a hard working American prole with nothing to loose, then someone in a high dudgeon demanding “Don’t you know who I am?!” There are whole sub-categories of stories of independent mechanics and plumbers who reply, “Yeah, the guy who ain’t gonna get his Hummer back until next Wednesday,” or “Yeah, the a-hole who’d better call another plumber!” The original of this tale involved the English investor, visiting an American cattle ranch, in the far West, circa 1880, and accosted one of the ranch-hands, saying, “Where is your master?” and the hand replying (doubtless with a spit into the weeds and something of a John Wayne snarl) “The S-O-B ain’t been born, yet!”

So, no – traditionally claiming special privilege on account of exalted wealth or blood never went down very well over on this side of the pond, although there is an element in American society that does tend to go all wobbly-kneed when it comes to Euro-royalty. Or royalty of any sort; just look at the covers of the magazines on the rack by the supermarket check-out station. But an over-developed interest in aristocracy of the old, or the new-made kind ought not to be confused with any eagerness to allow law to be set aside for the convenience of a member in good standing of the aristocracy – as the usual Hollywood crowd is discovering to their horror in the wake of the Polonski business. I’d have called it l’affaire Polonski, but that doesn’t quite translate the sense that it wasn’t an affair, in the sexual sense. It was plain old rape (and drugging, and unconsenting sodomy) of a minor, for which the perpetrator bargained down to a lesser charge, was found guilty and skipped the country. And nope, I don’t give a rodent’s patoot that it was upty-odd- decades ago, that he’s a really sooooper-talented, and all his nice Hollywood friends with their faultless moral compasses and quasi-aristocratic assumptions are rallying around, demanding that he is a very, very special person, and entitled to clemency. Nope – that will not do. It wouldn’t do if it had been the plumber Ronnie Polonski, or the Father Polonski the Catholic priest – in fact, I think – no, scratch that; I know the reaction of the Hollywood set would have been much different, in those cases.

I think most of us have assumed for years that Hollywood was a weird, and insulated little world, all to itself, and now we see how very, very easily they assumed the trappings of privilege, and a sense of how the laws that apply to everyone else, somehow, magically do not apply to them, and their very special, talented friends. And now we see, exactly, what they would justify and excuse, and explain away. Frankly, I find it pretty sick-making. Even more sick-making, is the list of actors, directors, and other illuminati who have come out in support of their good buddy, the child-rapist. From what little I might know of some of them, I had expected a little better. Especially Whoopi Goldberg, whom I used to think funny…

Well, then – there’s another ten of fifteen entries on my private movie boycott list, some of them with movies that I still would watch. But not now, not after this sick little exercise in droit de seigneur. Really, are these people trying to make everyone in the whole damned country not watch their movies?

The Road Goes Ever On and On

29. September 2009 · Comments Off on The Road Goes Ever On and On · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, Old West, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Or at least it seems to go on ever and ever in Texas, under a sky that also seems to go on ever and ever, infinitely blue, with clouds floating in it like puffs of cotton. The tops of the clouds are white, the bottoms slightly gray and absolutely flat, as if they were floating on the surface of some airy, invisible sea. The horizon is not masked by atmospheric pollution, or haze, or dust – it’s as clear and as sharp as if there were a line drawn by a compass, or a pencil on the end of a string. This last weekend, I drove to Abilene, in company with another writer, a lady from Kerrville. We had arranged to share expenses and a table at the West Texas Book and Music Festival – a farther journey than to the Richmond Folklife bash the weekend before. This road-trip went west and north, rather than east, out into the fabled lands that I described in Adelsverein as the Llano country – as one character explains,” You should know there are really three parts to Texas. This part is the first: flat and rich, with many rivers and easy to farm. This is shaped like the palm of a hand, with rivers for fingers, running down through it. Then there is the second part, the hills where those rivers begin. Just north of San Antonio de Bexar, it begins: a line of hills like a palisade, a curving wall. Limestone hills with forests of oak trees – meadows in the spring that are nothing but wildflowers, blue or red, or pink. . . . then behind the hills is the last part … they call it the Llano Estacada. In Spanish it means ‘the Staked Plain’ . . . an empty plain covered with short grass, mostly. It is not quite flat, but it looks as if it would go on to the ends of the world. There is also a sort of bush growing there, with leaves like the points of a spear. It sends up a single flower stem, taller than a man; that is what looks like stakes, for miles and miles. I do not think it would be good farm country. All the land can grow is grass – too harsh, too dry – even if it were not for the Comanche.”

This is the country, running north from Junction, set into a river-valley on the far side of the Hill Country, into which few white men ventured, after the Comanche claimed it for their own. Eventually, after the Civil War – with railways, and the US Army, with little towns clustered around crossroads, and river-crossings, and where the iron rails intersected both – this part of Texas became endless pasturelands for the white man’s cattle, rather than the red man’s buffalo. We did not see many yucca plants growing, as we followed the more or less straight arrow of secondary highway, to Menard, and Paint Rock, Bellinger and Winter, all those little towns set out about every thirty or forty miles, towns where the oldest extant buildings seemed to be from the last quarter of the 19th century, and to huddle close around Route 83, which became the Main Street for a couple of blocks, and then the last sheds and signposts flew by and we were out in the country again, with now and again a cultivated field, or a handful of black, or red, or fawn-colored cattle drifting lazily in a fenced pasture, among the scrub-mesquite and patches of cactus.

We stopped here and there – for it is my considered opinion that if you stop every hour and fifteen minutes or so, and get out of the car and walk around, the trip does not seem nearly as long or tiring. At Menard we stopped out of curiosity at a little place on the outskirts of town called the Country Store, which advertised baked goods, jam and handicrafts of all sorts – true to form, it smelled wonderfully of baking, inside. The proprietors sell cookies, pies both sweet and savory, and home-made frozen casseroles. We bought a bag of so-called “cowboy cookies” – stuffed with oatmeal and coconut flakes, and raisins.
In Paint Rock, we took some pictures of the Concho County courthouse, and a down-town that seemed to be completely deserted on a weekend. I don’t think we saw a single person; the town square, such as it was, looked like an abandoned Western movie set.

Both of us had forgotten to bring a tablecloth, for our book table in the Abilene Convention center exhibition hall; so we thought we might buy an inexpensive one, somewhere along the way. We kept our eyes peeled for a second-hand store – which we never found, but in Ballinger, we spied an antique store in an old hotel building, and thought – well, these sorts of places always have old linens, and why not? It would probably cost less than a new plastic one at Walmart, so what the heck? The shop had an interesting miscellany piled up out front, and seemed to be just two rooms at the front of an old storefront – but the proprietor directed us to go down a long, dim corridor lined with more shelves and bits of furniture – and rooms on either side of it were filled, filled to the brim with tables and cabinets and chairs, with vintage clothing and china and glass – beautifully jewel-colored Depression-era pressed-glass. We decided, after working our way down the rooms on one side, and back up the other, that the building must have been a hotel. It possibly could have been an enterprise slightly less savory – but not on a main street. When we found a suitable tablecloth, we asked the owner about this. She laughed, and said that it was rumored that a good few decades ago, some of the upstairs rooms housed an establishment of negotiable affections.

And so, on to Abilene, and a tiny cabin at the local KOA campground, in a grove of pecan trees out on the northwest of town; probably the only thing that would have ever brought me to Abilene besides the book festival, was Dyess AFB – but since my military job specialty was an overseas imbalance, I would never have had reason to be assigned there.

Acorn and Hookers and the NEA, Oh My

27. September 2009 · Comments Off on Acorn and Hookers and the NEA, Oh My · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, World

So I have a perverse sense of humor, and watching the current administration make pratfall, after pratfall, and yet one more pratfall is as much fun as one of those slapstick movies where some hapless oaf is launched out of his house, slapped on the head by a board, skates downhill in a runaway bathtub, and winds up neck deep in a pond where a duck craps on his head… you get the idea. Sort of like the elaborate sequence in “The Money Pit” where Tom Hanks does something pretty much like that.
And the Obama-man has no stunt double to take the pratfall, either … but seriously, didn’t we see this coming? Didn’t all of us who were paying attention lo, these many months ago, know that he was a gorgeously empty suit, with absolutely zip on his resume and a lot of disreputable Chicago friends, carried across the finish line by an adoringly sycophantic media? I just never thought the crackup would be this operatically spectacular, and draw in so many other parties … or be as much fun to watch, over the last few weeks. I also didn’t know that my political sense was that fine-tuned, but that’s what five or six years of hanging out in the more cerebral corners of the blogosphere will get you – the accumulated wisdom and observances of a whole lot of observant, relatively detached and thoughtful people.

And watching that portion of the formerly mainstream media flop around like a landed fish, over being upstaged and scooped – in Jon Stewarts’ inimitable description – by the cast of High School Musical 3, a hidden camera, and a grandmother’s chinchilla coat! Oh my – this is beyond satisfying. It is delicious, like a quart of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. Just desserts, just hors de oeuvres, a just main course of crow! (to quote another radical centrist of my generation, P.J O’Rourke.) Oh, the crew of Sixty Minutes must be in a state of helpless envy, grinding their teeth to a powder by now, and wondering why, why, why did they never think of it, why, why, why didn’t some alert producer round up a couple of interns with mad improv skilz … but it’s too late now. Even Sixty Minutes’ audience joined the Geritol set, a couple of decades ago … and the thought of their top reportorial talent dressing up as a hooker and her pimp doesn’t bear considering, at least not without scouring that mental image out of your mind with a couple of gallons of bleach and some steel wool.

And then on top of it all, to read about the National Endowment for the Arts sitting on the sidelines during a conference call to recruit the a selected portion of the oh-so-arty set to burnish the cred of the current administration, in the finest tradition of socialist regimes everywhere. Oh, my f**ing God … me, I am a semi-oh-well-not-so-starving-artist-writer, always on the prowl for an editing or writing job that will pay the next due utility bill and maybe a bit more, so it does not behoove me to be snotty about earning a living from one’s art … but really, people – taking a gov’ment check to glorify the Chief Executive, all his works and all his ways? Reminds me of the old joke wherein the punch-line is “We’ve already established what you are, now we are just negotiating the price.”

I guess the only question left to me is – will the old traditional main-steam media organs – the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, the alphabet TV networks, and all the rest – cleave unto the One, the Obama-messiah like the villains of Joel Chandler Harris’s animals tales got stuck unto the Tar Baby, and go down with him, all together, squealing in protest. And if that comes up appearing like some sort of racist imagery? Well, I thought it was pretty apt, and if you think using it in this sense would be racist … well, then … bite me. I’m kinda tired of having the racist card played, in regard to The One, anyway. Tired of having to defend myself, explain myself, make excuses for people who, once upon a time and back in the day, happened to be of the same pallor of skin that I am. Done with that all – Barack Obama is a commonplace Chicago political thug only with nicer manners and a better tailor. He has zip skills, a thin resume and a whole lot of embarrassing friends and associations, and I sussed that all out by the time be became the Democrat Party Chosen one. Now, I’d love to get a nice assured stream of income, based on that bit of forecasting, but I’d have to share it with about all the other mainstream and centrist, Constitutionalist-cum-Libertarian blogosphere commentariat

On the Road Again

21. September 2009 · Comments Off on On the Road Again · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

I took a break from all things Tea Party this last weekend, and hit the highway – this in support of the book thing. You remembered the book and author thingy, that I work on, in between blogging for this and that, managing this and that, editing or reviewing this and that, designing this and that? Anyway, months ago I had been invited to participate in a one-day multi-cultural festival at the Fort Bend Museum in Richmond on Saturday. It used to be more of a strictly Hispanic festival, but the director wanted to incorporate something of the German and Czech element, and I thought it might be fun, and they said I could sell copies of the Trilogy … so there I went. It was the first long road-trip in the GG, the new-to-me Acura Legend that replaced the VEV last month, three hours on IH-10 East, almost-but-not-quite to Houston.

Blondie was supposed to go with me; we were to stay Friday night at the director’s house, do the festival and stay Saturday night, and come back early Sunday morning. I guess we could have gone up early Saturday morning, as the festival didn’t start until noon, and come back that night – but it did seem like an awful lot of driving in one day. But our next-door neighbor’s grandson wasn’t available to look after the animals, and Blondie had a big test on Wednesday – so, there I went, off on my own. Driving back on Saturday night was simply out of the question, after a long afternoon at the festival.

What a joy to drive a car where everything worked, reliably – especially the air conditioning, even if I lost the classical music station a few miles east of the turn-off for Gonzalez. And even more of a joy – getting to Katy and only having run through half a tank of gas.
That part of East Texas is subtly different from the area around San Antonio, and the Hill Country that I know – it’s more heavily wooded, with stands of massive, spreading oak trees interspersed with meadows of tall-grass – and much, much greener, especially after a summer where we haven’t had all that much rain. I zipped over rivers – the Guadalupe, the Colorado, and finally the Brazos – all running deep and placid. Around Richmond, suburban lawns are lush and green – not half-dead and crispy brown as they are around San Antonio. In East Texas, tall oaks loom over the houses, and the smaller trees form tangled thickets, stitched together with wild grapevines. There are creeks with water running in them, lakes and waterways – it reminds me of England, a bit. This was the bit of Texas that was historically more Anglo; there was never much Hispanic presence here. It was the closest to the then-United States in the 19th century, and presumably offered those American settlers in Texas a little more of what they were accustomed to, as far as landscape and plant-life went; a little more Southern rather than Southwest, flatter rather than gently rolling.

Richmond is pretty much now a bedroom suburb of Houston. Enough remains of the town to show what it once was like, when it was a discrete entity to itself , anchored by the railway and a bend of the Brazos, adorned with stately, white-pillared homes, rambling Victorian cottages trimmed with yards of wooden gingerbread trim, and dignified old two-storey commercial blocks on the main street. Here and there, during the last half-century, someone with lots of money and no sense of fitness shoe-horned in a structure of concrete-shoe-box style modern – every example of such being as jarringly out of place as a juicy fart in church. Which is a good thing, I guess, that Richmond was prosperous enough over the years that institutions and businesses could to rebuild – but still, it must make it a challenge to pull off a historical district, when the district is broken up with indigestible chunks of Brutal Concrete Moderne.

Anyway – I had a lovely time, talked to a fair number of people, sold three sets of the Trilogy – including two sets to members of the local German heritage society, both of whom knew very little about the Hill Country settlements and the Adelsverein scheme generally. There were a lot of early Texas connections in Richmond – meaning, from the 1820s and 1830s. Jane Long – the widow of one early pioneer/adventurer lived there for many years, as did Carry Nation, she of the saloon-smashing temperance brigade. So did Mirabeau Lamar, sometime president of the Republic of Texas, who fought with Sam Houston like two tomcats in a sack. Sam Houston’s master of scouts, Erastus “Deaf” Smith is also buried there – ostensibly on the current museum’s grounds, but possibly underneath the nearby street intersection. And Benjamin Franklin Terry, of Terry’s Texas Rangers Civil War fame, came from nearby and recruited locally – his saddle, out of which he was shot in fighting around Woodsonville, Kentucky, is in the museum. And after the end of the Civil War, the Woodpeckers and the Jaybirds – gangs formed by partisans of Reconstruction, and of Southern sympathizers fought at least one pitched battle for control of Fort Bend County.
Some of this – people, places and events will eventually become part of my new trilogy, but you will probably have to wait a couple of years to find out exactly how much.

Clouds of Illusion

14. September 2009 · Comments Off on Clouds of Illusion · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Rant, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

I am amused to note a lot of amusing new and old media fall-out, after the massive Tea-party inspired rally on the Mall on Saturday – which, depending on which media outlet and which political orientation you read – may have been as many as two million people or just one or two of them walking a million times around the Capitol Building. They were all carrying Nazi symbols, and Confederate banners and getting their hate on, according to some of the more … ahem … outspoken commentators, such as this one, whose illustration for his post takes the absolute cake for condescension and arrogance … although apparently, the Tea Partiers did pick up the trash when they were done, for which I think they ought to get some credit. And no, I didn’t read much past the ‘teabagger’ reference in the linked column. That’s according to my new principle of considering that as akin to the n-word. This Daggatt person is supposed to be “a meticulous political blogger” according to David Brin’s blog at Open Salon, and offer a “ a truly excellent appraisal.” Yeah, that David Brin. Guess he doesn’t get out all that much.

Quite honestly, I am left shaking my head in weary disbelief, reading the picture that is painted of the Tea Party and conservatives/libertarians in general on the leftist blogs and media – in a similar way that I used to be shaking my head at the portrayal of the military, in similar venues. People would write the most astonishing things, insist that every word was true, and the most horrible things were going on in the military – and couldn’t accept that what they were saying wasn’t anything like the military that I actually lived in. You’d think that a military veteran and someone active in the Tea Party would have some credibility with them, for … you know, actually being there, and being able to speak with authority regarding their particular concern … but no. Their minds were already made up – and who should I believe, them or my lying eyes?

Coincidentally, there is another ruckus brewing – fortunately this involves Hollywood and it’s not Kanye West, so it’s fairly minor, rating only a long and amusing thread at John Scalzi’s Whatever. Apparently the pearls are being clutched, over the inability of this film to find an American distributor because – get this! Those fundamentalist American yahoos are just so anti-the-teaching-of evolution that no one will touch a costume drama about Charles Darwin with a ten-foot pole. Oh, spare me the attack of the vapors, people – the grownups in this country who eschew Michael Bay and all his works and his ways eat up this high-toned, historical costume-drama Merchant Ivory stuff as if it were a quart of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, and don’t you even try telling me otherwise.

See, both these parties appear to have something in common – besides a stratospherically high estimation of their own superiority – and that is, they think they know something, and everything they read, hear on TV, and at cocktail party chit-chat with their friends all reinforces that thing that they think they know. The producers of “Creation” – or more likely, the marketing guru who they have hired to gin up some controversy, attract some attention, and with luck, snag an American distribution deal, all know that Americans (to quote the acerbic Mr. Scalzi) are knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Creationists. All nice, creative, brilliant and witty Brits know this, and they know this because they read it in their newspapers and hear it on the BBC, and all their nice, creative, brilliant and witty friends say so.

And so it is also with our very own dear media and intellectual elite: they just know that the Tea Party folks are ignorant, racist, knuckle-dragging hicks, who are puppets of (pick one or all) Fox TV, the Republican Party, or the insurance industry, because all the very best people say so, and really … the New York Times say so, and so does NPR. Well, there you go. I think that what these people have done is to create a simulacrum in their own minds of what an American is, or a semi-libertarian conservative Constitutionalist is, which has some tiny and almost coincidental resemblance to what they are, really … and for one reason or another, it’s just easier, or more comforting to believe in the simulacrum.

Well, it’s kinder than thinking they are all just nucking futs, which was my first reaction. Hey, I at least did the courtesy of at least trying to be understanding. I live to serve, people.

A Cold Civil War

10. September 2009 · Comments Off on A Cold Civil War · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Politics, War, World

I can’t remember where the concept was first bruited about – someone else’s blog, probably one of the radical non-ranting centrists like the Belmont Club, Neo-Neocon, James Lileks, or Classical Values. To be honest I have as much of a bad memory for where I read about something or other as I do a dislike for crazy rants, name-calling, straw-man construction and other social ruderies. I’d prefer to hang out, on line and in the real world with thoughtful, fairly logical people, people who can defend their opinion with a carefully constructed arguments and real-life examples and/or references. In short, I’d prefer the company of people who don’t go ape-s**t when another person’s opinion or take on some great matter differs from their own. Well-adjusted grownups, in other words – who are comfortable with the existence of contrary opinion – and do not feel the need to go all wild-eyed, and start flinging the epithets like a howler-monkey flinging poo.

So it’s not like I ever went out there looking for insane levels of contention in venues like the Daily Kos, or the Huffington Post, or conversely, Michelle Malkin, or Kim du Toit. That kind of partisan-ship on both sides … well, it just wasn’t me, I’m not particularly confrontational, I have a real life, and many other interests besides politics, and the Tea Party. I also write a lot, I do a non-political blog at Open Salon, and at TheDeeping, market my books, manage some websites and work for the Watercress Press … and all sorts of other stuff, some of it among people who do not share very much of my political opinions, such as they are. Which, inter alia, according to the last couple of surveys I participated in, put me in as tending toward towards the libertarian: strict constitutionalist, fiscal conservative, guardedly social liberal – look, I haven’t cared for decades what consenting adults do in private, just don’t be doing it in the road and frightening the horses. And you kids – get off my lawn! As regards foreign policy, I’m an unreconstructed Jacksonian, mostly because I’ve read enough history to be fairly clear-eyed about the power of national leaders, city-states and mass-movements of people over the long haul of history. What they are capable of doing, they eventually will do – as the Melians discovered of the Athenians. I believe more in the unspoken power of the community to enforce standards of behavior and decorum, rather than written ordinance, I believe in keeping things simple and uncomplicated. I believe that the United States is a pretty radical construct, almost unique among nations as a Republic, that the Founding Fathers put together an amazing document, and one which ought not to be amended or revised for petty reasons and partisan advantage. I also thought Sara Palin was a good choice for V-P, and that she was a pretty straight-up politician, and the citizens of Alaska had shown pretty good sense in electing her for a governor.

And for these opinions, over the last five months, I have been called a liar, a racist and the next thing to a Nazi, either directly on Open Salon, and Facebook, or indirectly in comments there and elsewhere. It’s getting just a bit wearisome, guarding what I write, biting my tongue, and considering what I may say and to whom, lest what I say set off some horrible diatribe from someone I have heretofore considered at least a friend, in person or on-line. Really, I don’t go looking for knock-down, drag-out confrontations, and if people want to believe three impossible things before breakfast, it’s no skin off mine, as I am pretty sure that it would be a waste of breath using logic to talk people out of a belief that logic never put them into. I had just expected better from the people I had chosen to hang around with, in the real world and on-line.

It’s also getting a bit frightening, seeing all this anger indiscriminately being unleashed among people who weren’t particularly confrontational all along, and to realize how terribly polarized a lot of places and spaces are becoming, fractured along red-state, blue-state lines, along statist and constitutionalist lines, and between people who bitched about government busy-bodies poking their noses into everything and the people who bitched about how there ought to be a law. Historically, it puts me in mind of the period just before the Civil War, when feelings about abolition and secession ran so very hot and high that ordinary citizens on either side of the issues could hardly have a conversation about it, each assuming the worst of the other. And then there came a point when there was no more talking – and it ripped our country apart for five bloody years, and set sullen resentments on the Southern side which simmered for a hundred years and more.

When I first came across the “cold civil war” phrase, all these months ago, I thought it sounded like an exaggeration, like the start of some inter-blog flame war, which would engage the participants as passionately as the North and the South, and amuse (or appall) the rest of us for a couple of weeks. But over and over again, the free-floating anger keeps breaking out in the real world. Early this spring, I repeated a joke to another lady in my Red Hat circle, but we were in a restaurant – and I looked around quickly, to see who was within earshot, and lowered my voice so that no one beyond our table could hear. This was a small thing, maybe even a little stupid – but a cold civil war is made up of small and stupid things. Having an old co-blogger call you a racist, being reluctant to put a bumper-sticker on your car, knowing that friends who still work for the DOD are keeping their heads down and their mouths closed, for fear of repercussions on the job, and being very, very careful in casual conversations … no, not an exaggeration any more. Just a cold, cold civil war reality.

(Regular Commenter Al, from across the pond, had this to say – sorry got caught up in the spam-torrent:

But then…the cries of “socialism” are name-calling on the side from which they’re made, are they not?

Obama is, as I understand it, a socialist / communist / terrorist / black supremacist for passing one piece of $1tn legislation (the bailout) and trying to pass another (the health thing). Both real numbers are lower, but let’s call it $2tn for now.

His predecessor, on the other hand, invaded a country which posed no threat and had nothing to do with what should have been his #1 job (catching Bin Laden) and, in the process, killed off more Americans than Bin Laden had and landed the US taxpayer with a bill estimated at $2tn (including long-term healthcare for those wounded).

So…how come one’s a patriot / hero / statesman and Obama’s the opposite for trying to fix the economy and the fact that Americans pay twice as much for healthcare as other civilised countries but get the same results? And why do I see right-wingers talking about taking up arms as a result? It all seems a bit deluded to me, if I’m honest, so if I’m missing something…

My response is: Well, if your source is the BBC, no wonder you are a bit perplexed about all this… and it’s not about the war, Al. Everything is NOT ABOUT THE WAR!”

Hallelujah

07. September 2009 · Comments Off on Hallelujah · Categories: General

Yippy. Skippy.

In Cincinnati tomorrow, President Obama will announce that he’s appointing Ron Bloom his Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy, White House sources tell ABC News.

Qualifications?  An MBA [1].  Worked as an investment banker.  Then he became the special assistant to the president of the USW.

A banker who worked for a union is going to advise the President on manufacturing policy.

Bear Facepalm

Via TJIC.
Graphic via SB7.
Title Reference.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] I ain’t even going to go into ‘involvement‘ with Labor Zionist.  What the hell is that about?

Elegy

06. September 2009 · Comments Off on Elegy · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

So what is there to say – at the ending of two relationships, one fond, fairly intimate and long lasting and the other not-so-fond, purely professional and of a year’s duration – except that Blondie and I shared a bottle of champagne last night in sort-of-celebration? Both those relationships ended within the space of 24 hours, having been put into a final count-down stage some days or weeks before.

I sold my car, and I quit my job.

Well, one of my cars, and one of my jobs. Look, it’s the new age, and the new economy: I have juggled a number of part-time jobs off and on since retiring from the Air Force twelve years ago. I think at one point I had five different part-time jobs simultaneously. Maybe it was four jobs and a check for some voice-work, but the bank clerk commented, on the day that I went and deposited that many checks into my regular account, “Hey, lady – is there a place in town that you don’t work for?”
Although I did have some periods – two or three or even four years at a stretch when I worked for just one employer exclusively and full-time – I kind of like the part-time, multiple employer scheme. Every day different, every day something rather new; if I have been able to figure out anything at all about myself, it’s that I get bored easily, and I am pretty good at organizing things … and that, selfishly, I like to do what I like to do, and if I can get paid for what I like to do – well, then, I like to write, I can think about great things and boil them down to something that is understandable to the general public, I have a nice voice and I can talk well, I can think logically about things and come up with the odd good idea now and again … in other words, something like your typical English major, in the old days when being an English major might have counted for knowing certain things. Like being able to spell and put together a coherent sentence, and know who wrote “Robinson Crusoe.

There used to be all sorts of nice opportunities for English majors for fairly remunerative work along that line, before the market was flooded … fortunately, I can do data entry, read a script and understand marketing strategy, which skills made it possible for me to be hired on last year at a telemarketing firm. Let it me known now that I didn’t much like it, and put up with it only because it was local and the paychecks were regular. Until I receive the last of them, everything about the place is a deep dark secret – except that I had filed my resignation two weeks ago, and last night was my final shift. It felt so good to walk out of there, out of a grey institutional building, with rooms full of identical cubicles, bathrooms that smelled of ass, a horrible break-room with a pair of intermittently-functioning computers which were the only two in the building which employees could use to connect to the internet for purely personal purposes – on strictly-rationed breaks… oh, yes, the only bit of rebellion I displayed during the whole time I was working there was that I bailed last night at 9 AM. My shift was supposed to last until 10:00. They say – and I will affirm – that the worst job that you can have, indoors and working in a cubicle – is customer service at a telemarketing corporation. And I will agree – the only good thing about it is that the paychecks are regular. And that they do not bounce. I had planned to last it out until the Labor Day weekend. And so I did – I just reached my ration of **** at 9 PM, Saturday evening.

The car – the Pumpkin – otherwise known as the VEV, a 1974/75 2-door Volvo sedan, which had practically no rust upon it, of which I had been the sole owner since 1983, having had it repaired in five western European countries and three western states, and which was too old to be regular and reliable transportation – went on eBay in mid-August. My dear Dad had bought me a more reliable car, a 1991 Honda Accura Legend, with refreshingly low mileage and in practically pristine condition, outside and in, which made the Pumpkin extraneous to my needs, and left us with one car more than we had parking space for – not that certain of our neighbors seem to be worried about that. But still – parking on the street is an iffy proposition, given that we are at a well-trafficked corner … well, never mind all that. The Pumpkin went on e-Bay and finally scored a winning bid, from a serious local Volvo motor-head, who is now the envy of all his on-line motor-head friends… it’s not like there is a huge community of mad fans of vintage Volvo sedans, but there are a good few, apparently – and they were all madly envious of his mad skilz and luck. We finalized the sale Friday morning, when I signed all the papers, accepted the cash payment, and gave him the keys.

He was a very young-looking guy, with his baby son along with him; I rather hope that the baby kidlet will have the fully-restored Pumpkin to drive to his senior prom, and what his date will think of that, I can hardly think, except that hope she will be incredibly impressed. Anyway, I gave the buyer the keys, said that I would be home a good part of the day, and that the Pumpkin would fire up OK, and that it would probably make it all right to his place, out in Schertz … and that all day, I kept checking to see if he had come and gotten it. No, for most of the day, it was still parked on the street. But it was gone sometime Friday evening – the new owner, the very young-looking ancient-Volvo motor-head guy came with someone else, and drove it away. Funny, I thought I would have been able to hear it, the sound of the engine, and all, since I had driven it so long, and knew it so well. I thought I might hear someone driving the VEV away. But I guess not – the street in front of my house was empty. And I never heard it go away.

A Sunday Morning – September 3rd

03. September 2009 · Comments Off on A Sunday Morning – September 3rd · Categories: European Disunion, General, History, War

(this is a reprise of a post from five years ago, slightly re-worked, but still relevant, especially since probably no one but me could find it in the archives!)

A Sunday September morning, on one of those mild and gorgeous fall days, when the leaves are just starting to turn, but the last of the summer flowers still linger, and the days are warm, yet everyone grabs hold of those last few golden days, knowing how short they are of duration under the coming Doom of winter.

And there is another Doom besides the changing of the seasons on this morning, a Doom that has been building inescapable by treaty obligation for the last two days, clear to the politically savvy for the last two weeks— since the two old political opposites-and-enemies inexplicably signed an alliance— deferred by a humiliating stand-down and betrayal of the trusting two years since, a doom apparent to the far-sighted for nearly a decade. The armies are marching, the jackals bidden to follow after the conqueror, a country betrayed and dismembered, the crack cavalry troops of an army rated as superior to the American Army as it existed then charging against tanks, their ancient and historic cities reduced to rubble – and by obligation and treaty, the Allies are brought to face a brutal reality. That after two decades of peace, after four years of war that countenanced the slaughter of a significant portion of a generation, that left small towns across Europe and Great Britain decimated and plastered with sad memorials carved with endless lists of names, acres of crosses and desolation, sacrifice and grief, for which no one could afterwards give a really good reason, a decade of pledging Never Again – war is come upon them, however much they would wish and hope and pray otherwise. Reservists had been called to active duty, children had been evacuated en mass from the crowded city center, and Neville Chamberlain, who had been given a choice between war and dishonor, chosen dishonor and now had to go before the nation on radio and announce the coming of war:

“I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government an official note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and consequently this county is at war with Germany. You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful…. We and France are to-day, in fullfrnlment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack on her people. We have a clear conscience, we have done all that any country could do to establish peace. The situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel safe has become intolerable. Now we have resolved to finish it, I know you will all play your part with calmness and courage…

When I have finished speaking certain detailed announcements will be made on behalf of the Government. Give these ‘your closest attention. The Government have made plans under’ which It will be possible’ to carry on the work of the nation in the days of stress and strain which may be ahead of us. These plans need your help; you may be taking your part in the fighting Services or as a volunteer in one of the branches of civil defense. If so, you will report for duty in accordance with the instructions you have received. You may be engaged in work essential to the prosecution of war, or for the maintenance of the life of the people in factories in transport in public utility concerns, or in the supply of other necessaries of life. If so it is of vital importance that you should carry on with your job.

Now may God bless you all, and may he defend the right. For it is evil things that we shall be fighting, against brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution, and against them I am certain that Right will prevail.”

The filmmaker John Boorman in the movie “Hope and Glory” noted the queer occurrence of all the lawnmowers in the suburb suddenly falling silent, everyone listening to the sad speech of a man who has seen his worst fears realized followed by the sound of air raid sirens. It was a false alarm, that morning, but within a year the alarms would sound for real. The docklands would be reduced to rubble, historic churches would fall, the city would burn, but in the aftermath, defiantly humorous signs would appear “More Open Than Usual” and “I Have No Pane, Dear Mother Now.” It would be entirely possible for men who had served in the Western Front to see grim and tragic duty again as firemen and wardens in the streets where they lived in this new war. By the time the Blitz became a reality, most everyone had gotten more or less accustomed to the idea. My Grandpa Jim, though, would take the bombing of London as a personal insult, and be restrained from going downtown and assaulting the German Consulate in Los Angeles, while his son and namesake collected newspaper clippings about the war, and aviation for his scrapbook. I do not think the news of war that came to them on another Sunday morning, nearly two years later came entirely as a surprise, only the direction form which it came— east, and not west.

In any case, the news would have come, late on a Sunday morning, after the early service. I like to think this is a hymn that might have been sung in the last few quiet hours before the storm— as it was at the service I attended the day that the ground offensive began in the first Gulf War.

God of Grace and God of Glory, on your people pour Your Power;
Crown your ancient church’s story, Bring it’s bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, For the facing of this hour
For the facing of this hour.

Lo, the hosts of evil round us, Scorn the Christ, assail his ways!
From the fears that long have bound us, Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of these days,
For the facing of these days!

Cure your children’s warring madness, Bend our pride to your control;
Shame our wanton, selfish gladness, Rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant is wisdom, grant us courage, Lest we miss Your kingdom’s goal
Lest we miss Your kingdom’s goal.

Set our feet on lofty places, Gird our lives that they may be,
Armored with all Christ-like graces, In the fight to set men free.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, That we fail not man nor Thee,
That we fail not man nor Thee

Save us from weak resignation, To the evils we deplore;
Let the gift of Your salvation, Be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, Serving You whom we adore,
Serving you whom we adore.

Tune: Cwm Rhondda
Words: Harry Emerson Fosdick, 1930


September 3, 1939: 70 years ago today.

On the Uses of Certain Epithets

30. August 2009 · Comments Off on On the Uses of Certain Epithets · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Tea Time

So, I’d put it out there that a liberal commenting on the Tea Parties, or hoping to have some sort of dialogue with a member of a Tea Party, and using the derisive term “tea-bagger” is rather like a white racist using the word “ni**er” in reference to a discussion on civil rights.

Discuss.

Talking about the C-C-Camelot Generation

29. August 2009 · Comments Off on Talking about the C-C-Camelot Generation · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Good God, History, Politics

The title of this post really should read “Talkin’ ’bout the C-C-Camelot Generation” but unusual punctuation in the title freaks out the whole entry, and prevents anyone posting comments.

No – for whatever reason, I was never much enamored of the Kennedy clan, all their works and all their ways, even during the so-called Golden Age of Camelot. Blame it on Mom and Dad, who were moderate Republicans at the time, and politically aware, if not particularly active. Blame it on the fact that we weren’t big TV-watchers, in any sense of the word, blame it on the fact that generally we were resistant to going along with the flow: no, we were never spectacularly non-conformist, we just dug in our heels whenever everyone else seemed to be urging us to go along with the flow. In the words of Granny Jessie, “Would you be jumping off a cliff, if everyone else were doing it?”

Whatever the appeal of Camelot was, perhaps we just had a sense that it was glamour, in the old sense of the word, of a fair appearance created by a magic spell, of something shimmering and marvelous in appearance, cast over an unappealing, and even ugly reality, something tinsel and fake, manufactured by experts to beguile the susceptible. And so it eventually turned out to be, as the spell faded and more and more of the ugliness began to show. The Kennedys were, in the words of P.J. O’Rourke, just a rich, bad, arrogant family who thought the world would be a much better place if only they were in charge – and they ought to be in charge, of course, because they were so handsome, rich and clever. But overweening pride – or hubris, as the ancient Greeks used to call it – leads the proud to their own downfall, and so we have been watching the Kennedy drama unfold for the last forty years or so. Sophocles couldn’t have done any better, although I think only one of those spectacularly overwrought and multi-generational telenovelas could have done the Kennedy saga true justice, in every twist and turn – of trials, divorces, and sudden deaths, dizzying ascents, and the sudden hand of tragedy sweeping the chessboard, of lackeys and lick-spittle toadies, death in war, in accidents and by assassin, sex and drunkenness, dirty political deals and corruption, of unspeakable heartbreak and infidelity, of behaving like a drunken lecherous boor in public or in semi-public, and yet being able to a compliant press draw a nice tidy veil over it. It is the stuff of soap operas, to have a have a daughter with emotional or developmental problems lobotomized and ‘disappeared’ for decades, to have cavorted with movie stars, relatives by marriage, and campaign volunteers, flirted with Nazis in the days when it was (barely) politically possible to do business with Herr Hitler, to have contributed to organizations underwriting terrorism in Northern Ireland, and to walk away from an auto-wreck leaving another human being to drown.

This weekend, the regular media are full of elegies for Camelot, and the last and least of the sons of Old Joe Kennedy, who groomed them all with brutal energy to assume the highest offices in the land, but never got farther than a comfortable berth in the most exclusive gentleman’s club in the land. And so the story has come full-circle, the spell of glamour – if not broken – at least in tattered and unconvincing shreds. As hard as the Kennedy machine, and the Kennedy magic could work, they never managed to pull him much farther than that – and one senses the wheels and gears within are about stripped. The generations of Kennedys following after have barely managed to accomplish even that: not even Caroline Kennedy could talk herself into assuming a vacant seat, not after coming off like a ditzy East-coast Valley girl in television interviews. I think my last word on Ted Kennedy would be what I wrote in a comment at Chicagoboyz last week –

“That’s the failing that people – across the board, politically – can never forgive. Not so much because his initial actions, his drunkenness and stupidity put his car off the road in a relatively shallow body of water – it’s because he panicked, and thought only of himself.
And if he had any scrap of self-awareness, any sense of the obligations that are due from anyone who has a pretense of calling themselves a responsible human being, he wouldn’t have been in the position that he has been, ever since that fatal night.
He must lived the rest of his life knowing that if he had only thought heroically, thought of someone else besides himself, been a sensible, sober and responsible human being – gone to the nearest house and called for help – she might have been rescued in time. He might have been able to live down the temporary embarrassment, had a heck of a lot to explain the next morning but … He was a Kennedy, and one of those-so-called charismatic Kennedy-generation Kennedys, after all, of whom much is expected and a lot forgiven – but no. He thought first, foremost and always of himself, drunk and sober.
What we want, I think, of our politicians, is that they at least make a good pretense of thinking of the better good, and of making a more convincing show of caring abut of the people they make a great show of pretending to care about. Ted Kennedy couldn’t even be bothered, in that particular instance and that particular crisis, and so the very nakedness of that ‘don’t care-think-of-myself’ resonates after all this time.
His older brother, for all you might say about him politically – swam a good distance in a South Sea ocean, towing an injured crewman from his PT boat, after the same was sunk in a collision with a Japanese warship. JFK didn’t leave a friend/crewmate/acquaintance behind. And Teddy did. And had to bear that knowledge for all time.
No wonder he turned into a drunk – if he hadn’t already been one before.”

Who Really Owns This Country?

29. August 2009 · Comments Off on Who Really Owns This Country? · Categories: General

I agree with maybe that Glenn Beck at times seems like a marmoset monkey on WAY to much espresso, but as Ace of Spades and others have pointed out, there is very little, if anything, in what he says that is factually indefensible. He has ideas on what to do about it. What say the readers of this august blog? In this request I hope to hear from a certain Kevin Connors and maybe even Sgt. Stryker himself (unless he has become a “contractor” for you know who).

Radar

The Last Kennedy RIP

27. August 2009 · Comments Off on The Last Kennedy RIP · Categories: General

I grew up in the thrall of the Kennedy mystique. I remember clearly when it was announced in class when JFK was killed, and when not so many years later that RFK was Killed. History has questioned whether either of these martyrs deserved the accolades. Now the same scrutiny is placed on Ted Kennedy.

Shortly put, I believe that his reckoning with regard to a certain boiler room girl has his entire life been a motivating factor, and that it is now between him and God. I also think that it is proper to respect the fact that few people in our nation’s leadership have lost so many that were close to them. I personally temper my memories of Mary Jo, Robert Bork, and the almost unbelievably dishonest flaming of Gerald Ford when he pardoned Nixon (…Are there two standards of justice…?) with the almost obsessive desire to meet the conservatives somewhere in between. So fine, I will go along with Winston Churchill’s advice; embalm him, cremate him, and then bury him to make sure he is dead. But deep down I will feel sorry for the fact that the events of his life inexorably led him to both the good and the bad behavior that defined it.

Radar

Light at the End of the Tunnel

25. August 2009 · Comments Off on Light at the End of the Tunnel · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, Working In A Salt Mine...

So, I thought it over, tallied up what I was making, or could make from two of the part-time jobs (the real estate office owned by the World’s Tallest ADHD Child) and the Tiny Specialty Publishing Bidness – business in both cases seems to be picking up – accumulated another paying gig providing content for a San Antonio realtor who has a blog associated with his website which attracts plenty of hits but for which he is tired of producing content … considered that business at the Hellhole phone bank will doubtless fall off after Labor Day … and turned in my resignation. Yep, fourteen days notice required, and cannily, I cashed in some paid-time off on two of the days when I might otherwise have to have worked. Last Night At the Hellhole (sounds like some sort of arty sub-titled French auteur movie, where everyone droops around in fancy costumes and whispers improvised lines, and the camera focuses on all sorts of odd stuff, like cigarette butts in an ash tray) will be the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. If they don’t take away my employee badge at the security desk as I walk out – which is probably what they will do – I will bring it straight home and burn it in the fire pit. Maybe I’ll dance around the flames, sky-clad and drinking some very nice brandy straight from the bottle. Or maybe not. I have had jobs that I hated as much – and spent months and years plotting my escape from them, but this is the first job I ever had which I loathed from the moment I walked in and started on the very first day.

The immediate-supervisor types who know of this are eh-somewhat resigned and completely understanding. Of course, they know it’s a hellhole job, at which only a handful of people last even longer than six months, of course the employee turnover – even in hard economic times – is faster than the turnover of customers in a hot-bed hotel, but I fancy they are at least a little regretful at loosing someone who at least showed up as scheduled, never hung up on or cursed out a caller, grasped most of the sales and computer essentials fairly readily, and followed the dress code most of the time. (Weird – we couldn’t wear jeans. Why you couldn’t wear jeans, or even bother with a dress code when it was answering phones and never coming within two thousand miles of the public we were employed to serve … eh, another incomprehensible. Perhaps they were trying to start employees off on the right foot, get them used to the whole concept of having to dress professionally … oh, bugger it, most everyone working the phones was old enough to have a fair notion. It just seemed pretty pointless.)

And I’m working on the next book, and the Tea Party perks along. Blondie fears that of course, right at the very moment that I’ve given Hellhole Job the shove, all the other work will dry up – but one of the reasons that I didn’t go back to temping was the lack of reliable transportation. I couldn’t depend on the Pumpkin to transport me reliably back and forth to anything more than a couple of miles away, which limited my availability for temping pretty severely. The Acura is a life-saver in that regard. So, three more shifts at the Hellhole, over the next week and a half, and there I am, never to set foot in those drab grey corridors, in that huge windowless room with the sea of work-stations, ever again. I can hardly wait. Oh, and I’ll never, ever set a foot in any of the hotel properties that I took reservations for, or in Atlantic City. God is my witness – never. I may never even want to set foot in New Jersey again, either.

The Mockery, It begins

22. August 2009 · Comments Off on The Mockery, It begins · Categories: Domestic, General, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Politics, sarcasm, That's Entertainment!, The Funny, World

And it burns, it burns us, it does!

Yeah, I saw this at Protein Wisdom. In a perfect world, this would have been on Saturday Night Live. Alas, most funny and deeply sarcastic stuff is on YouTube, these days.

The Politics of Fear

18. August 2009 · Comments Off on The Politics of Fear · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Tea Time

Still – like da Blogfaddah – tracking the fall-out from the raucous and rancorous town-hall meetings about Obama-care. It kind of restores ones faith in the general good sense of the mostly-silent middle, knowing that not everyone is paying more attention to American Idol or whatever the current mainstream TV fixation is. Not everyone drank deep of the hopey-changy kool-aid last November, or listened to the siren-voices of our legacy media, who were mostly on their knees with their eyes fixed adoringly on the One. My faith in that old saw about fooling some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but not being able to fool all the people all the time is somewhat restored. Yes, indeedy – people are paying attention, getting involved in political matters and speaking up, just as we were always told to do by our high school civics teachers, and the plummy-voiced media plutocrats at NPR.

Except that what ordinary here-to-fore-uninvolved people are saying isn’t what the Administration and it’s acolytes wanted to hear, and good lord – are they screeching about that! Nazis and KKKers and haters, oh my! Nancy Pelosi looks like she bit into a breakfast taco and discovered half a cockroach in it, and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership aren’t looking any happier. Henry Waxman looks about to die of dyspepsia … say, does he sleep during the day in a sealed coffin half-filled with Transylvanian soil? Just asking – even when he smiles, he still gives me the creeps.

And the legacy media piling on, along with the leftish or Kossack side of the blogosphere, all screeching together like a chorus of howler monkeys: all those rude and inappropriately-dressed people showing up, asking disconcerting questions and getting in the face of those poor, well-intentioned overworked, innocent representatives who are selflessly only doing their best, and are too busy with their exhausting schedule to actually read the damned legislation. Of course, all those pushy people just must be racists, and organized by the health insurance companies, or the Republican Party, or Fox news, they just must be repeating the lies that Rush Limbaugh told them … really, it infuriating but mostly sad to read much of this, and to also know that the people saying it will in the next breath be congratulating themselves on being so intelligent, independent, perceptive and non-judgmental.

Like J.Lawson, who commended on my last post – and I have also tried to disabuse certain of our internet acquaintances of this kind of delusion, but to no avail. There’s this hysterical insistence that what they say must be so, and after a certain point one just kind of gives up. It’s almost as if they are angry, too angry to be reasoned with. After thinking it over a little more, and digesting comments on blogs like Belmont Club and Neo-Necon, I am thinking that a lot of this anger can be chalked up to fear.

Fear of having been made a fool of, fear of having anchored yourself with chains to a doomed piece of legislation, and to a hollow man in a good suit, fear of embarrassment at having to admit that you made a mistake, and even a good chunk of embarrassment at being outflanked by thousands of ordinary citizens using your own tactics against you. There is also fear of being made to apologize to people you have insulted and demeaned, or of having the dirty tricks you used against others being used against you and yours. And what might be the biggest fear of all, with elected officials and the legacy media who do their bidding, especially when it touches on the Tea Parties: that there is no real leader, that the Tea Party is some huge political amoeba, moving at its own pace and in it’s own time. Imagine that – no leader, to be isolated and cut down with ridicule, no central authority to be corrupted or interdicted. There is no one person or power with a collar and a choke-chain exerting control, as if anyone could control a swarm of bees! While some of us made a hobby out of being local gadflies on some issue or other, most Tea Party volunteers weren’t on anyone’s political radar – so here is this large group of people who came out of apparently nowhere, controlled by no one, and accountable only to our own conscience and set of beliefs. That has got to be as scary as hell to politicians and the commentariat who love them.

Myself, I’m having two scoops of schaudenfreude, with a sprinkling of toasted almonds, some whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top.

The Smell of Napalm…

14. August 2009 · Comments Off on The Smell of Napalm… · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant

Which, according to the deathless line from Apocalypse Now, is loved by the speaking character because it smells of victory … and so am I detecting faint wisps of napalmy odors, now that our elected Congressional aristocrats – at least those of them who have enough nerve to hold an open forum with their constituents – are getting an earful and more from those very constituents. Oh, and the squealing and screeching from oiks like San Fran Nan, and her side-kick Harry-Palms Reid, and their whole amen-chorus in the legacy media is just too rich for words. It’s music to my ears, reading lectures on decorum and civility, the unsuitability of Nazi symbols and imagery, and the evils of –gasp – astroturfing. This from out of the mouths, pens and keyboards of the very people who cheerfully and frequently compared GWB to Hitler, called for his assassination, had no problem with screeching like a cage of howler monkeys at people they had differences with, and over and over again urged us poor ignorant sheeple to get involved, to move ahead politically, and make our voices heard. Double-standards, much?

OK, so an unexpectedly large proportion of the heretofore fairly quiescent and silent middle-of-the road constituency got up to speed, we got involved, organized ourselves and showed up at meetings, demanding answers from our elected aristocrats … and look at where that got us. We scared the ever-loving be-jesus out of a great many local pols who seem to assume they would come home during the break, whip up a quick dog-and-pony show in their home district, bloviate about health-care reform in front of a respectfully submissive audience, and go skipping back to DC having manufactured a pretty little box of consent, all tied up with a tasteful, rainbow ribbon. Whoops – talk about walking into a buzz-saw. Hey, Mr or Ms Congressperson, put town the cellphone, and talk to us – and answer the question! I think about now, most of them would rather put naked in a barrel with a dozen rabid weasels and rolled down hill than take the chance on that … especially since a lot of town-hall attendees are showing up with cameras. Which brings up the old saw about being careful what you ask for, as you may get it. And the other one, about not asking the question, if you don’t want to really hear the answer.

But there has developed somewhat of a down-side to all this. Perfectly ordinary Americans of all ages and political persuasions, exercising their rights as citizens are now are denounced and ridiculed as deranged, ignorant kooks, radical teabaggers, as closet Nazis, puppets of the health-insurance complex and I don’t know what else all, by much of the media and a lot of the so-called intellectual set. I haven’t the nerve, the stomach, or a pair of hip-waders to go venture into Kossack country, or the Huffington Post – just checking out the front page and a couple of links on Open Salon during the last couple of days was enough for me.

Yeah, I post at Open Salon; I have a good few blog-friends over there, as they are not all a raving collection of left-wingers. In fact, many of them are literate, amusing, fairly sane, are excellent and polished writers, and have the excellent good taste to appreciate my own stuff, not that I do much of the in-your-face political stuff there anyway. There was sudden flurry of “OMG-those awful teabaggers are destroying everything that’s good and fair” posts. I went into one comment thread, trying to break it gently to the author of the post that no, the Tea Party that I am associated with is all volunteer, and few of us had ever been politically active in anything much above a church council, that we are funded by donations and our own work, that it doesn’t cost that much to set up a website, or host it either, that we weren’t being directed by anyone but ourselves, or programmed by some sort of mind-control beam directed from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. To no avail – she eventually wound up calling me clueless or a liar and closing the comment threat. I’m afraid that her mind was already made up – there was no point in confusing her with facts straight from a witness with first-hand knowledge.

So, yeah, it’s a bit insulting to be personally called names over this, but there is the light of a faint, guiding star, an Erandil, shining in the darkness – and that is, that we may be turning the tide. We might be on the verge of winning, now that so many ordinary people; old and young, working class and bourgeoisie, libertarians and former Democrats, veterans and college professors are looking at the situation, and getting pissed-off, and insulted, first by our elected aristocracy, and then by a partisan media throwing every scrap of garbage that they can. Way to win friends and influence people, President O, your administration, your friends in Congress, and your house-trained media organs – you’ve stepped right in it now. I don’t know when or how soon victory will come – but it will be sweet, and not a moment before time.

(Later … sigh … comments on this post are frelled because I put punctuation in the title. Reader JL sent the following comment to email, and I thought it so relevant, that I am pasting it in:

I’ve noticed the same thing you’ve noticed about massive, MASSIVE denial
on the left. I left some comments about what I observed at a recent
visit to an ER when my mother fell and hurt (thankfully, not fractured)
her hip – there were two people who passed through the other side of the
bay while we were there who had no insurance, but were given care.

That I wasn’t believed would be putting it very mildly. They simply
cannot believe that their view of the world may be in error – no matter
what evidence is shoved in their face. Even the existence of my mother
was called into question – and this on a ‘feminist’ blog.

(The left is kind, compassionate, and caring. It says so on the label.
Package contents may vary considerably from label descriptions.)

I wasn’t saying the right things – therefore I HAD to be lying, trying
to deceive them. But why? Why would THEY think they were so important
that someone would bother coming on the blog to try to hoax ’em?

I finally found a good description of what’s going on with some of the
more rabid left – it seems to be a combination of paranoia and
projection. Dr. Sanity (she used to work with NASA, btw) has an
interesting post on it here It’s a long one, but worth the time to read.

There has been a series of bizarre conspiracy theories emanating
from anxious leftists for the past 8+ years as they have desperately
attempted to keep the holes in their ideology plugged; and thus
preventing any **reality** from washing over them or flooding their
cognitive processes.

Every time a leak in that ideological dike appears, the
postmodern-progressive-paranoid chewing gum is brought out to plug
it up. The TNG memos were a clever plot by Karl Rove. The Bush
Administration was behind 9/11; Katrina was allowed to destroy New
Orleans because Bush hates blacks. George Bush is about to impose a
theocracy on the unsuspecting U.S. Pat Tillman was murdered because
he wanted to meet with anti-war activist Norm Chomsky. Sarah Palin
is not the mother of Trig and faked her pregnancy. The list of the
paranoid delusions goes on and on and on.

Taken as a whole, they are evidence of an ongoing and determined
refusal to face reality–because it is a reality that threatens the
belief systm of a very large section of the American population.
Without the delusions and conspiracies concocted by the always
creative political left, their whole house of Marxist cards will
come crumbling down.

Some have said that Unwillingness To Face Reality And Its
Consequences is the most serious mental illness of our time; and that is most
certainly true.

The post I referred to on the liberal blog is here – my
posting name was JLawson. I’ve tried posting a couple of other times
there, but my comments disappear in moderation. Oh well.

The left do not want to see that they’re not what they think they are,
or that their ideas aren’t as good as they believe them to be. They
prefer to believe that government’s got a whoppin’ big credit card, and
they can spend as freely as they want without ever having to pay
anything. They prefer to believe that anyone who DOESN’T believe as
they do is evil – not just wrong, or mistaken, or simply offering a
different opinion – they’re EVIL with a capital EV. And sadly, all too
many of them have made their way into our elected aristocracy – and with
their elevation to that lofty position believe that suddenly they’re
beyond their responsibilities to those who put them there.

So, like you, I’m VERY encouraged by the Tea Party phenomena. You’re
right – they ARE scared about it – and if they weren’t they wouldn’t be
trying so blasted hard to discredit them. Same thing with the town hall
meetings – you don’t go through the time and effort and expense to
coordinate and transport your people to block out folks who you think
are being ineffectual – you allocate your resources to take care of a
perceived threat – and the more resources you allocate are a significant
indication of how seriously you take the threat.

The left is scared. Of the right, to be sure – but I think also
somewhat of their own freedom. With no one to basically tell them ‘No’,
what they’re doing now, unfettered, is what they’ve wanted to do for
decades. The results are not what they were hoping, but they have no
ideas other than what they’ve dreamed of for years, so they’ll press on
no matter the cost. But people simply won’t stand by and be silent.
The left realizes they’re waking up the folks they’d rather keep asleep
– but there’s no way to stop it. All they can do is hope for the middle
and right to hit the snooze alarm one more time…

Because if we really wake up – they’re screwed as far as a social
movement goes.

Good luck, and keep up sounding the alarm!

JL

« Older articles
Newer articles »