The Worst Laid Schemes of Mice and Men

October 25, 2015October 25, 2015 / wlm3 / 4 Comments

If a genuine Buddhist, I should have compassion for fellow sentient being Trey Gowdy, who had risen so high so quickly, but who last Thursday splatted back to earth with all of the grandeur of plugged duck.

The contrasting looks on his and Hillary’s faces as he left the hearings declared winner and loser, she, hanging around, flashing smiles; his face, shellacked with sweat, wore the expression of a highway patrolman on his way to ring the doorbell of the next of kin.

Virtually no one to the left of Jennifer Rubin, including ~~Genghis Khan~~ Charles Krauthammer, thinks anything positive came out of last Thursday’s inquisition as far as the Republican Cause goes. In between classes during the hearing, I checked my Twitter feed to find this well-crafted 126-character tweet (complete with a dash) from former Reagan speechwriter Jon Podhoretz: “Why doesn’t Pomero just go over and swear her in as president now – if he goes on like this he’ll practically get her elected.”

In hectoring tones, Pomero demanded to know why Hillary hadn’t fired anyone in light of Benghazi attack.

“I followed the law, Congressman,” Clinton answered. “That was my responsibility.”

“You’re telling me you had no authority to take anyone’s paycheck . . .”

“It is my position that in absence of finding dereliction or breach of duty, there could be no action taken . . . “

[Shouting]: “[The ultimate] decision was to put them back [with] full back-pay and keep them on as employees! [. . .] The folks in Kansas don’t think that is accountability.”

No, in Kansas, even if no underling is ultimately to blame, someone needs to have her paycheck taken anyway. Even if no one is really ultimately accountable, a scapegoat must be found.

How could this process of allowing intemperate, showboating backbenchers like Pomero to take turns asking questions lead anywhere but to a disjointed free-for-all contradiction of Gowdy’s claim that the hearing was not about Hillary?

Representative Martha Roby of Alabama, the most un-Republican-looking Republican woman since Mary Todd Lincoln, asked Hillary if she’d gone home that night of the attacks and if she’d spent the night alone, which elicited laughter from both Hillary and some spectators.

“I don’t know why that’s funny [. . .] I don’t think that’s funny at all.”

If this strategy of giving everyone a chance to ask questions could have been avoided, if, say, representatives could have submitted their questions to Gowdy and he synthesized them into some kind of coherent avenue of inquiry, maybe the hearing could have been a success politically for the Republicans. I don’t know how much autonomy a select committee chairman has in piloting an investigation, but if Gowdy could have organized it differently, he is ultimately to blame for the fiasco.

But actually, the real culprit is that fan-of-the-Pope John Boehner who sanctioned the creation of the vengeful panel in the first place. After all, a bi-partisan but Republican-led committee had already conducted and completed a thorough investigation. The entire premise that the committee’s existence was based on “finding out the truth” instead of politically wounding the presumptive Democratic nominee is a lie — bad karma — and if “the best laid schemes o’ mice and men/Gang aft agley,” certainly that must be true of the worst laid schemes.

Despite Gowdy’s insistence that it “was not about” Madame Secretary, he’s the one who initiated the questions concerning the Blumenthal emails – what a few commentators have referred to as “a rabbit hole” as in [cue the Jefferson Airplane] Alice. It seemed as if the committee was ignorant of the fact that people in very high places have other more sophisticated ways of communication than email. As they kept hectoring Hillary about emails, my apolitical wife asked, “Well, what do the emails have to do with what happened in Benghazi?”

Good question, Judy Birdsong.

Does Gowdy actually truly believe that he is impartial? Does the author of this blog really consider himself a genuine Buddhist?

If so, trips to Delphi are warranted — Know thyself!

Could We at Least Quit Calling These Radicals Conservatives?

October 9, 2015October 9, 2015 / wlm3 / 1 Comment

I came to age in a relatively quiet, orderly decade, the Sixties. I mean, of course, quiet, orderly compared to now. Back then, the anarchists, the ones who wanted to overthrow the Republic, were leftists (the SDS, Black Panthers, etc.).

You had your occasional violent protests, but you could go to class or Bible study without worrying about getting gunned down by some disaffected mama’s boy or redneck jihadist. No one really ever worried that these ‘60’s leftists could topple the Republic.

Nowadays, the anarchists are right-wingers whom the media call “conservatives,” and thanks to gerrymandering, forty or fifty of them have managed to get elected to Congress. Some of these fire-breathers make Abby Hoffman and Rennie Davis look like [archaic reference warning] Ward and June Cleaver.

If the “You, Lie!” Joe Wilsons don’t get their way, like, if they don’t succeed in defunding programs they despise like Planned Parenthood, they throw tantrums and do all they can to shut down the government, or, worse, have the nation default on its debt. It’s as if their vision of the world stops at the zigzagging borders of their benighted gerrymandered districts.

I repeat: the media refer to these ideological, emotion-driven anarchists as conservatives. Joe Wilson, who screamed “You Lie!” to the President of the United States in a State of the Union Address, is considered a conservative!

I sort of worry that Joe and his ilk, unlike Abby and Rennie, could conceivably topple the Republic, or at the very least, sabotage its economy. It appears that the Founding Father’s system doesn’t work nowadays, and a parliamentary system might be preferable. If an irrational minority can completely undermine a rational majority, we have big time, perhaps, insolvable problems, and because of gerrymandering, the chances of Freedom Caucus members being defeated in a general election are as unlikely as Miley Cyrus converting to Mormonism.

The members of the Freedom Caucus are not conservatives, but radicals, so could we please start calling them radicals.

That might be a tiny but meaningful first step.

Casting the Republican Primary Farce

September 25, 2015September 26, 2015 / wlm3 / 2 Comments

Years ago, circa The Hog Breeders’ Gazette, back in his Mozart spinning DJ days at SC Public Radio, Robert Fowler and I cast an entire production of Hamlet using comedy stars from early television — Dick Van Dyke as the Prince, Professor Irwin Corey as Polonius, Bill Dana as the grave digging clown, etc.

Let me assure you, if you had been there (and had spent the earlier part of the day as we had), you would have found our casting howlingly hilarious. We even considered creating a Play Bill like poster, an artsy mixed media something or other that could showcase the shtick, but back then, to create art, you had to be able to draw, to know how to develop photos in darkrooms. Now, praise Huxley, if you can afford an Apple laptop and a Photoshop license, art is much more egalitarian, its modes of production not so tilted in favor of talent and technique.

Yes, happily for me, the days of talent have faded like those old photos developed in dark rooms, and hacks like I-and-I can manifest multimedia fairly easily, spit out poems, songs, digital art, manifestos, or homemade Mother’s Day cards.

This morning, for example, after reading a sardonic email from a friend mocking Jeb’s musings on multiculturalism, it occurred to me that if I were casting a farcical movie mocking the Republican presidential campaign, I’d want Peter Sellers to play Jeb (the smart) Bush.

Imagine Sellers in the role, hunching his shoulders, assuming Bush’s ursine posture. Imagine with his genius for mimicry, his ability to make incarnate misstatement via misstep, Sellers’ executing a low energy pratfall.

Well, one thing led to another, and I started thinking about the other candidates. Fiorina, Cruz, Paul, Trump. What comic would best be able to portray them in this screwball comedy?

Who should play whom?

The problem we face at this early stage is that we don’t know who the protagonist will be. Nevertheless, we know Trump will play a leading role, so let’s cast him first.

Donald Trump

I’d go with Jerry Van Dyke, Dick’s venerable brother.

Van Dyke/Trump

Let’s face it, we don’t need an Olivier to play the Donald. We’re talking Borscht Belt slapstick skit television shit. If he were’t ~~dead~~ 84, Jerry could desitively handle it. Anyone who has seen even one episode of My Mother the Car can vouch for that. All the director would need to do is to get the appropriate wig from wardrobe, have Jerry learn how to pinch his mouth into an anus-like circle, and bluster.

Carly Fiorina

Arthur/Fiorina

Who better than Bea Arthur to play Carly Fiorina? When you think about it, both have a lot in common — two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two husbands. The former a champion for civil rights for women, the latter a campion for civil rights for herself.

Marco Rubio

Newton/Rubio

If the lights are bright enough and he starts sweating, Wayne Newton looks a helluva lot like Marco Rubio. Or vice versa. Come to think of it, Rubio might think about approximating Wayne’s coif, Richie Valens-meets-Ronald Reagan.

Ted Cruz

Al Lewis/Cruz

I’ve said this before — and now it’s become a sort of internet meme – but damn, Ted Cruz is a dead ringer for Grandpa Munster. If only Ted could muster a little of bit of Grandpa’s charisma, he might have a chance.

Chris Christie

If he could have put on, say, a hundred pounds or so, Jackie Gleason would have made a killer Christie.

Rand Paul

Kaye/Paul

Who better to capture that hard-to-pin-down-elfin quality that Paul exudes than Danny Kaye?

Scott Walker

Skeleton/Walker

And finally, the great Red Skeleton as the late lamented Scott Walker. As they say, two pictures are worth two thousand words.

The Second Republican Debate: Mourning in America

September 17, 2015 / wlm3 / Leave a comment

Background

Is it just I-and-I, or does it seem as if the first Republican Debate took place months ago?

You may remember that spectacle, the game show set, Meghan Kelly grilling the Donald, who hammed his way through the night’s entertainment like Don Rickles at a celebrity roast.

Horse-race-wise, much has happened since early August with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker falling back and Carly Florina and Ben Carson advancing in pursuit of a frontrunner who has put some distance between himself and the rest of the pack.

In fact, three-term Texas governor Rick Perry has pulled up lame, and to put a merciful end to this old nag of a metaphor, it’s hard to imagine donors ponying up much more money for the likes of Graham, Pataki, and Santorum.

If I were a Republican – and praise Darwin I’m not — I’d be hoping to shed a few more of the side show performers because, as we saw last night, eleven is about six or seven too many.

Last Night’s Debate

The good news: the set seemed less like Family Feud; the bad news: even though Ronald Reagan’s Air Force One provided an appropriately phallic backdrop for a debate featuring foreign policy, it was not the Gipper but Richard Nixon who came to mind as sweat beaded on the debaters’ upper lips and brows.

It reminded me of those old movies when cops/bad guys shove a detainee “on the hot seat.” Sweating makes people look uncomfortable, as if they’re lying.

Kudos, though, to whoever runs maintenance at the Reagan Library for saving energy in beleaguered California by keeping the thermostat at a planet-saving 78 F.

Jerry Brown, no doubt, approved.

Did Debate 2 Derail the Donald?

This race has befuddled the pundits, made them gun shy. Conventional wisdom says Trump should have faded by now a la Michelle Bachman or Herman Cain last time around. However, because Trump has thrived after tarring POW war hero senator John McCain, smearing Megan Kelly, etc., pundits are equivocating when gauging Trump’s performance last night, speculating that “maybe the air’s coming out of Trump’s balloon” but then quickly adding “you never know.”

One thing’s for certain, however. The candidates have embraced the Trump meme that America is in decline and that each of them is the man or woman who can restore us to greatness.

Oh, for the halcyon days of the second Bush Administration when the economy was in free-fall, financial institutions failing, and ISIS was in utero!

Mourning in America.

A Review of Punditry re. the Republican Debate

August 8, 2015August 8, 2015 / wlm3 / 2 Comments

Jimmy Carter, one of the Right’s favorite punching bags, commented recently that the United States was no longer a democracy but an oligarchy. Although perhaps hyperbolic, Carter’s comments do highlight some uncomfortable facts. For example, according to the New York Times, “fewer than four hundred families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era.”

Not surprisingly, one of the most pressing issues for these donor families is the abolition of estate taxes. How many family estates pay taxes, you might wonder? In 2015, 1.2% of the population paid “death taxes” as the Koch brothers call them, or the “Paris Hilton tax” as EJ Dionne of the Washington Post labels them.

Of course, loopholes large enough for not only camels, but also elephants and asteroids to pass through are there for the exploitation, so when you get down to it, the effective tax rate for the estates of this 1.2% of the population boils down to a paltry 16.6% on average. And get this, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, only “20 [that’s 4 x 5 = 20] small business and farm estates nationwide owed any estate taxes in 2013.”

So does repealing the estate tax make any sense for a government that spends in excess of 600 billion dollars a year on defense alone?

You betcha, if you’re one the Koch brothers or the other 400 families who have raised half of the money flowing into these so-called super PACs.

Next question. How many of the Republican presidential candidates are for the abolishment of estate taxes?

[cue sarcastic laughter]

Which brings me to last Thursday’s presidential debate, which I sort of watched while checking out tweets. (Given my delicate sensibility, my enduring such a grotesque circus is tantamount to drinking that rancid pre-colonoscopy concoction).

More to my taste is reading the pundits’ “takeaways.” Who were the winners and losers?

Well, here’s Hoodoo’s run-down of the conventional wisdom.

The BIG WINNERS according to the pundits:

Carly Fiorina

As far as biography goes, Ms Fiorina, the daughter of a law school professor, dean, and federal judge father and a portrait/abstract artist mother has the advantage of growing up in relative poverty, despite the fact that her parents gave her a grand piano as a wedding gift. She touts her career arc as rising “from secretary to CEO,” and it’s no lie.

During summers while attending Stanford, she worked at Kelley services, and after dropping out of UCLA’s School of Law, she served time as a receptionist at the real estate firm Marcus and Millichap. Later, she earned an MBA from Maryland and a Masters in Management from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Obviously, she ain’t no dummy, and besides that, she’s articulate and quick on her feet, attributes she displayed Thursday night and a rare commodity among most of the other “contestants” on the stage of what seemed more like a gameshow than a debate.

So I agree with the CW on Fiorina. Don’t be surprised if she ends up being a vice presidential choice, despite her first ex-husband Todd Bartlem’s accusation that during their marriage she had an affair with her soon-to-be second and later ex-husband, Frank Fiorina, a senior executive at ATT. Obviously bitter, Bartlem told that paragon of journalistic excellence the Daily Mail that Fiorina “los[t] her humanity” in a “pathological” pursuit of power.

In her memoir Tough Choices, she describes the marriage’s dissolution this way: “While we were married, we weren’t peers.”

Ouch!

Marco Rubio

Like Carly Fiona, Rubio was also lucky enough not to be a beneficiary of great wealth. (Some people have all the luck; sorry, Jeb). In fact, Rubio’s father worked as a bartender, as Marco likes to boast.

CW went gaga over Rubio’s performance. He took on Hillary’s claim of “living from paycheck to paycheck” to great applause and spoke of the 100K of student loans he racked up and repaid in full, though he wisely didn’t mention the $80,000 boat he purchased while paying off his loans, his liquidating a $68,000 retirement account, nor did he mention his failure to make mortgage payments on his home for five months, nor the fact that he had a lease of $50,000 on a 2015 Audi Q7.

Now that’s what I call living from paycheck to paycheck in style!

I disagree with the CW that Rubio was a big winner because of his statement that he doesn’t believe in abortions even if the mother’s life is at stake.

Not to mention rape and incest.

I can see the Hillary commercial now. Female voiceover, pregnant mother with damaged fetus that threatens her life makes the excruciating decision to abort. Cut to subsequently born happy white children skipping towards a swing set to be pushed by surviving, smiling mother.

Or, how about a couple of shots of the baby in David Lynch’s Eraser Head?

John Kasich

Once again Kasich is fortunate to come from modest means; his father was a mail carrier.

During the debate, I agree he was very effective. His response to why he had expanded Medicaid was superb, essentially, “duh,” who in her right mind wouldn’t?

Though the pundits universally adored it, I was less impressed with his non-answer on how he would explain to his hypothetically gay daughter why he doesn’t support marriage equality. Rather than saying, “because the Bible tells me so” or “I believe that sexual orientation is a choice,” he dodged the question and boasted that he had recently attended a gay wedding and added, “If one of my daughters were that, of course, I would love them.” (my italics)

Well, duh, who in his right mind wouldn’t?

Still, if you’re a rational Republican willing to compromise on your contempt for the poor, Kasich strikes me as eminently electable.

THE SO-SO WATER TREADERS

Jeb Bush

I actually think Jeb was a loser and agree with Frank Rich’s assessment that Bush speaks “with all the conviction of a robo-call.” He needed to create some sparks and didn’t.

Plus the poor bastard is a scion of one of the 1.2% of the families who will have to pay some estate taxes when #41 passes from, in Richard Wilbur’s words, “this rotten/Taxable world to a higher standard of living.”

Scott Walker

The conventional wisdom — too scripted — which maybe was a good thing. I can’t find to share the mean-spirited image flashing its way through cyberspace the night of the debate, a motion gif that makes Dukakis in that iconic attack ad featuring him in a tank look like Sean Connery’s James Bond in comparison.

So the picture above will have to do.

Mike Huckabee

An articulate spokesman for the 5^th Century BCE, but will his message appeal to 21^st Century voters?

Chris Christie, Rick Perry, et al

Yawn.

BIG LOSERS

Rand Paul

Though some have touted him a winner, most see Rand Paul as a loser, and I agree with the latter. To break out of this pack, you need charisma, and in Paul’s case, a new hairdresser.

And last but not least

Donald Trump.

Oh, where is HL Mencken when we need him?

Dead and gone to hell, according to all these men and woman of faith.

I so wish someone had asked Trump about his metaphysical beliefs. Perhaps he would have identified himself as the Messiah.

I would, though, if I were Fox News, not be so gung-ho in expelling him from Republic contention. As my favorite saint, Teresa of Avila, famously put it, “More tears have been shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.”

A Trump independent candidacy would doom the Republicans.

Bottom line: All these candidates seem to care about are rich folk and fetuses.

That may be enough if you have the 1.2% shoveling unlimited money your way. For as PT Barnum said and Donald Trump’s ascendency proves, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Bravo, Ted!

June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 / wlm3 / Leave a comment

Stunted is a harsh word, but I think it does justice to Ted Cruz.

Oh, I’ve read about how brilliant he is, how he blazed his way through Princeton, won the Speaker Award at the 1992 North American Debating Championship, edited the Harvard Law Review, etc., but, as the saints, say, “What profit a man if he garner academic accolades but has a social IQ that falls far below Quasimodo’s?”

It’s as if Cruz has never ventured outside the grandiosity of his egomania to even bother having imagined being anyone but himself.

I’ll offer two quick examples. Last Monday, with a microphone in his hand, he mocked Joe Biden as Biden’s eldest son’s coffined body lay in a funeral home in Delaware. Certainly, Cruz follows the news, certainly he had read of Beau Biden’s death, certainly he could wait a couple of weeks before publicly mocking the Vice President.

Earlier, in April, showing his softer side at a fundraiser at the penthouse of gay businessmen Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass, Cruz declared, “If one of my daughters was (sic) gay, I would love them (sic) just as much.”

How noble! After witnessing her birth, giving her bottles, changing her diapers, guiding little spoons into her little open mouth, watching her take those first awkward steps, listening to her delighted pre-verbal laughter, trying to make out those first hard-to-decipher sentences, running beside her as she learned to ride a bike, witnessing her transformation from a girl to a young lady, he would still love his daughter if she were gay!

Bravo, Ted!

A Brief Analysis of the Likability of 2016 Presidential Candidates

April 11, 2015April 11, 2015 / wlm3 / Leave a comment

We US citizens prefer warm, at-ease, smiling, sparkly-eyed presidents to stiff, ill-at-ease socially awkward ones. Look at the slack the nation granted Reagan and Clinton, the former so hen-pecked that he allowed his wife to schedule his travel plans according to the prognostications of an astrologer, the later so randy that he conducted official business on the phone in the Oval Office while being fellated by a woman young enough to be his daughter.

No big deal, we the people, proclaimed.

We dumped awkward mealy-mouthed, well-meaning Jimmy Carter and awkward preppy well-qualified GHW Bush after one term. Okay, I admit things weren’t going all that smoothly during their presidencies economically, but I bet neither would have ever been elected in the first place if they’d had an opponent in the general who possessed even a scintilla of personality, Carter facing stolid cabbage-faced Gerald Ford and Bush Michael Dukakis, who possessed all of the charisma of a sack of charcoal.

Although Obama can be charismatic in a speech, he’s not smooth in a sit-down interview, um-erring a bit too much and emanating a vibe of really not liking people all that much, which I can certainly understand but which isn’t going to endear him to most folk. Given how the economy has turned around during his administration and the disastrous performance of his predecessor, you wouldn’t think he’d be showing up near the top on any the-worst-president-in-history polls, but he is.

Of course, his being bi-racial doesn’t endear him to a large swath of people, especially where I live, in South Carolina, the home of Strom Thurmond, father of four – make that five – children and the creator of the Southern strategy that flipped the South from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican because whites down here have a historical enmity to blacks.

Strom Thurmond Monument, State House Grounds, Columbia, SC

At any rate, Obama’s term is three-quarters done, and the 2016 race is starting, so I thought I’d do an early, completely nonpartisan [cue ironic cough] survey of the likability/charisma indexes of the major candidates aspiring to become the most important powerful person on the third planet from the sun.

We’ll start with the thin (as in numbers) Democratic Field:

Jim Webb

I like Jim Webb. He once had this exchange with President W Bush when Bush asked about Webb’s son, who was fighting in Iraq at the time.

Bush: How’s your boy?

Webb: I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President.

Bush: That’s not what I asked you. How’s your boy?

Webb: That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President.

Webb later said that he got so angry that he wanted to “slug” Bush, which would have been so wonderful, but he didn’t, and I’m afraid this exchange doesn’t reflect all that well on Webb’s social intelligence. For example, he could have answered more deftly.

Bush: How’s your boy?

Webb: Having the time of his life risking it in a godforsaken hellhole, the worst foreign policy debacle in the history of the Republic. By the way, what club are your girls going to tonight?

Bush: Fuck you.

Webb [slugging him] asshole!

Hillary Clinton

Let’s face it, Hillary’s not likable, the female equivalent of Al Gore. She brays when she laughs, dresses in odd anatomy concealing eye-singing pants suits. She lacks the common touch. She’ll try to overcome these problems by reminding people she’s a grandmother. Good look with that.

Okay, now for the Republicans

Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz looks way too much like Grandpa Munster ever to be elected President. I admit Lincoln wasn’t what you would call a pretty boy, but he had kind eyes. Cruz needs to hire some trainer/consultant to erase that self-satisfied contemptuous look off his mug. But then he’d still look like Grandfather Munster, only less of an ass-holey one.

Rand Paul

I like Paul’s hair but he seems a bit too prickly, too thin-skinned, which most people find off-putting, but I can imagine having a beer with him and not wanting to take my own life during the encounter.

Rick Santorum

Yawn. He’s ditching the sweater vests. I’d suggest he try on one of Hillary’s pantsuits, though by his reckoning, that might lead to bestiality.

Jeb Bush

By my standards, he’s more likable than his brother, but by my standards, so is Justin Bieber. It’s good that he doesn’t affect that Texan drawl and that his family is multicultural and that he speaks Spanish, but he seems arrogant (like Obama) and has that simian Bushgene that screams oh-here-we-go-again stamped on his features.

Scott Walker

Of course, I don’t like Scott Walker, but given he’s won three elections in four years, he must come off as an okay guy, And I like that he’s a college dropout. Lots of people can relate to that. Then again, my having a beer with him personally seems about as much fun as having a ~~beer~~ lemonade with Mitt Romney

Mark Rubio

I read that he’s charismatic, but I’m immune. He looks too cherubic, like a Hispanic cupid.

Chris Christie

What’s not to like? A self-promoting bully with the face of a hitman who makes Rabelais’s Gargantua look refined in comparison.

Lindsay Graham

Too soft-spoken, too captious. Imagine him with Frank Underwood’s accent. He’d have a shot. Graham versus Hillary is my dream contest. Foreign policy mana y mano.

* * *

I’m probably leaving someone important out, but this exercise has depressed me, on this of all days, the day of Folly Beach’s Sea and Sand Festival, so I’m checking out with the observation that none of these candidates seem like a “people person.”

My friend Tom Horton, a lifelong Republican, told me when he briefly met Bill Clinton that he, Tom, felt as if he were the most important in the world.

Too bad Slick Willie can’t bottle that and offer Hillary a swig.

Whispers of Schadenfreude, Mike Pence Edition

April 1, 2015April 1, 2015 / wlm3 / Leave a comment

As the self-proclaimed Jimmy Swaggart of Buddhism, I openly admit where I fall short of the ideal established by the Enlightened One, and certainly the cultivation of compassion is an area in which I fall way —make that — abysmally short.

I do sincerely wish that through meditation I could relax the tight little angry fist of my heart and show some empathy for those I dislike when they stumble, rather than luxuriating in a warm, soothing, spiteful bath of schadenfreude.

For example, rather than empathizing with Governor Mike Pence of Indiana as he made a gargantuan ass out of himself on national television, I smirked derisively, enjoying every drop of perspiration forming on his quivering upper lip as if they were karmic pearls bestowed upon me by a benevolent universe. Certainly, I’m no stranger to making a complete ass out of myself, though, of course, I haven’t had the opportunity as yet to elevate my asshoodness to a level worthy of the adjective gargantuan, never having been interviewed by a local broadcast reporter much less by George Stephanopoulous. However, given the chance, I think I’m capable of it.

And certainly, Pence is worthy of compassion if we consider wretches worthy of compassion. I suspect that Pence hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep since deep into last week. Perhaps his problem lay in his admittedly not-exactly-heroic condition of not being able to lie well extemporaneously. In case you’re just now emerging from a coma, Pence refused to answer Stephanopolous’s yes-or-no question as to whether under Pence’s new Indiana Restoration of Religious Freedom Act, a florist (i.e., a business) could refuse to provide flowers for the wedding of a gay couple. (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch an edited version here:

A more practiced liar would have hissed, “Of course, not,” but then again, I suspect that the bill’s raisin de etre is to have “the base” at least think fundamentalists can refuse to cater or provide flowers to gay weddings, coming as it does right after the SCOTUS nixed Indiana’s ban on gay marriage. So rather than telling a lie, he ineffectually tried to dodge the question, transforming himself from a possible presidential candidate to an international laughing stock, the plump bourgeoise target of many a comedian’s acid-laced arrows.

(Not to worry, he made up for his refusal to lie by providing a tractor trailer load in subsequent days)

And, of course, Indiana’s super-majority Republican government would have gotten away with it, as my native South Carolina did with its law, if it had not been for certain segments of corporate America, including NASCAR, deriding the law as bad for business, which just goes to show, as Bob Dylan pointed out lo so many years ago, “Money doesn’t talk; it screams.”

Well, perhaps this confession is a first, halting step from my detour from the golden 8th-fold path, or maybe not. I hear Pence made Letterman’s Top 10 list. Maybe I’ll check that out instead.

Let’s Rebrand Ultra-Conservatives as Reactionaries

March 19, 2015March 19, 2015 / wlm3 / 2 Comments

One thing I try to stress to my students is that they shouldn’t assume that technological sophistication is the equivalent spiritual, intellectual, or social sophistication. Certainly, Tibet isn’t known for its state-of-the-art infrastructure, luxury condos, or sound systems, but few First World citizens would argue that US Televangelist Joel Osteen is a higher being than the Dalai Lama or that Jacques Derrida’s intellect was superior to Aristotle’s or that Dr. Phil understands human nature better than Geoffrey Chaucer.

For example, here’s one former member of the University of South Carolina’s Law Review, a former executive director of the South Carolina’s Republican Party, and current 21st Century US citizen’s solution to the now all but forgotten Ebola crisis:

Need I add that, of course, Mr. Kincannon is pro-life.

Imagine someone in the 1950’s suggesting euthanasia as a way to eradicate polio. I suspect if you conducted a poll of sustenance farmers throughout Asia, the vast majority would consider Mr. Kincannon’s solution to the Ebola epidemic barbaric, even though a large number of them might very well be illiterate.

This same Kincannon fellow in another tweet offers this rather un-PC assessment of the original inhabitants of the American continent:

Of course, the metaphor is backwards: my ancestors, the colonists, were the infestation. Native Americans were here first. We sort of, to be crude about it, car-jacked the continent.

Unfortunately, the media brand rabble-rousers like Kincannon as conservatives, but they have about as much in common with Edmund Burke as Andrew Dice Clay does with Oscar Wilde. They are reactionaries, hipshooters, intemperate, the opposite of conservatives.

Of course, the irony is that often far right adversaries like Benjamin Netanyahu and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei often have a lot in common — monotheism, tribal intransigence and the fervent wish that the US/Irani negotiations fail.

Flat Footed journalists

February 27, 2015February 27, 2015 / wlm3 / Leave a comment

Scott Walker

Please, please, please, can we find one journalist out there who can think on her feet and come up with an impossible-to-dodge follow-up question?

For example, someone recently asked presidential candidate Scott Walker if he considered Obama a Christian, and Walker essentially said he had no idea.

No, Walker has not spent the last decade in a Iron Lung battling polio.

Suggested follow up question: “Governor Walker, have you ever heard of Jeremiah Wright?”

This is a yes or no question. Walker would be forced to answer. If he hemmed and hawed, my theoretical journalist could prompt, “You know, Jeremiah Wright, the radical preacher of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the church Obama attended in his senatorial days?

Walker could say, “I’ll have my people follow up on that,” or, “Oh yeah, now I remember!” or “No, never heard of him.”

(BTW, in one sermon, Wright famously thundered, “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”)

Obviously, if Scott claimed he’s not heard of Wright, there’d be negative consequences: Walker’s unfamiliarity with Wright would suggest that Walker, a college dropout, was too intellectually lazy to have followed the first 2004 campaign, an odd incuriosity for someone aspiring for the highest office in the land.

Jeremiah Wright

(Of course, not picking up on Wright’s name could merely mean that Scott doesn’t think very well on his feet — Wilbur, Orville, Jeremiah? — but we could perhaps see confusion on his face and learn at least something).

Or Scott could have answered, “Yes,” I know Wright and Obama’s association with him. Scott could then explain why he thought Obama’s regular church attendance didn’t necessarily make him a true Christian, which, though impolitic, if not politically suicidal, seems more honest than his pretending not to know. He could also use Wright to support the question Scott had been asked before the Christian one — if he thought Obama loved his country.

Or, Scott could have simply avoided the never-asked follow-up question, “Yes, I think Obama is a Christian,” which strikes me as the most charitable (i.e., Christian) answer he could make, but because we never get penetrating follow-up questions, all we get it is scripted bullshit.

What this country desperately needs are journalists willing to risk non-access by asking meaningful questions.

What good is access if you’re only parroting the candidate’s messages?

Journalists, it ain’t your job to smooze or to fellate but to poke.

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Flat Footed journalists