Faces of the Republican Party

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New Fce of Republican Party

“Rubio-Haley new ‘face’ of Rpublican Party

Beneath the headline “Rubio-Haley new ‘face’ (sic) of Republican Party,” Friday morning’s Post and Courier’s front page displays a photograph of Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley standing on a stage in Spartanburg, SC.   A “drop head” right above the photo reads: “Governor’s endorsement amid rumors she could land on GOP ticket shines light on 2 rising stars, may broaden appeal of conservatives.”

Haley endorsing Rubio in Spartenburg

Haley endorsing Rubio in Spartanburg

I guess the premise is that people hesitant to vote for 21st Century candidates who don’t believe in science will be more likely to vote for 21st Century candidates who don’t believe in science if they’re younger ethic minorities who appear more physically attractive than, say, Mitch McConnell.

Mitch McConnell

Mitch McConnell

I thought it might be interesting, if not instructive, to compare Senator Rubio’s policy positions vis-à-vis Senator McConnell’s. After all, whether or not you accept Darwin’s theory probably has little impact on how you might govern. For all I know, Andrew Jackson believed the earth was flat. Perhaps, we’ll discover more progressive positions that Rubio offers that will appeal to younger voters as the old. white Republican electorate follow Harper Lee and Umberto Eco offstage to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

Let’s start with what I continue to quaintly call global warming.

Climate Change

According to Scientific American’s website, Marco Rubio “believes climate change is happening, but not that it is caused by man.”   Here’s a direct quote: “And I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy.”

Here’s a piece from the USA Today website affiliate Courier Journal on McConnell’s position: “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told the Cincinnati Enquirer’s editorial board on Thursday that he doesn’t know if climate change is a real problem because he’s ‘not a scientist’ and that he’s more interested in producing cheap energy than worrying about it.”

So, as you can see, Rubio, although not a scientist, does boldly admit that global warming is real whereas McConnell because of his lack of expertise dare not judge.

Nevertheless, they both stand together in their opposition to the Paris Climate accords.

I doubt if these positions are going to get the millennials’ hearts a-thumpin.

2nd Amendment

Here’s Senator Rubio’s website on his hearty approval of the District of Columbia v. Heller 5-4 ruling on “gun rights.”

The Second Amendment right to bear arms is one of Americans’ most fundamental rights. Indeed, it is a right that reflects our country’s founding values. Opponents of gun rights often maintain that it is outdated, but it is as important as ever, and no one knows that better than America’s law-abiding gun owners. Marco understands the threats facing gun owners in part because he’s a gun-owner himself.

Furthermore, Senator Rubio is dedicated to

  • Voting to block the Manchin-Bloomberg expansion of background checks
  • Protecting the Second Amendment rights of veterans and their families
  • Standing against any federal attempt to ban commonly owned sporting rifles and standard capacity magazines
  • Pushing to make concealed-carry permits function like drivers’ licenses, so gun owners’ constitutional rights don’t end at state lines
  • Opposing U.S. involvement in the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty
  • Working to expand opportunities for sportsmen on federal lands
  • Fighting to defund the Department of Justice’s radical “Operation Choke Point” and other federal attacks on law-abiding gun manufacturers and dealers
  • Pushing to bring fundamental Second Amendment rights back to D.C. residents

Okay, let’s see if we can come up with some nuanced differences from Senator McConnell.

Darn tooting we can. Here’s what the ultra “conservative” Madison Project has to say about Senator McConnell’s record on guns:

“Here is a sampling of some of McConnell’s shortcomings on gun rights issues:”

  • Voted against Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) Amendment to block authority under Patriot Act to obtain gun records [RC #82, 5/26/11]
  • Voted for an amendment by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) prohibiting the sale or transfer of handguns by a licensed manufacturer, importer or dealer unless a secure gun storage or safety device is provided for each handgun. 25 Republicans and 2 Democrats voted against it. [RC #17, 02/26/04]
  • Voted for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) amendment to spend taxpayer funds for Department of Education grants used to disseminate a gun control agenda in schools and through public service announcements. [RC #32, 03/02/00]
  • Voted for Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) Amendment requiring that all guns be sold with trigger locks [RC#122, 5/18/99] Voted for the 1991 Crime Bill (S. 1241), sponsored by then Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), that imposed a waiting period for handguns and a ban on 14 types of assault style weapons. [RC #125, 07/11/91]
  • Senator McConnell cut a deal with the Democrats to allow all of Obama’s second term nominees to sail through the Senate.  Included in that deal was the confirmation of anti-gun zealot Todd Jones to serve as Director of the ATF.

Despite this apostasy, “The NRA endorsed him anyway, and his relations with that influential group have continued to be good.”

At any rate, it would appear that Mitch McConnell is softer on guns than Marco Rubio.

Taxes

According to his website, Senator Rubio is for simplifying the tax code and slashing income taxes:

His plan

  • Cuts taxes, letting taxpayers keep more of their own money instead of sending it to Washington.
  • Dramatically simplifies the tax code by eliminating all itemized deductions and tax “extenders.”
  • Under Marco’s tax reform plan, the charitable-contribution deduction and a reformed mortgage interest deduction would be available to all taxpayers.
  • Creates a new $2,000 (individual) / $4,000 (married filing jointly) refundable personal tax credit in place of the standard deduction: Credit phases out beginning above $150,000 (individual) / $300,000 (married filing jointly) and would be unavailable to taxpayers with an annual income in excess of $200,000 (individual) / $400,000 (married filing jointly).
  • Eliminates the Marriage Penalty and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).
  • Consolidates the maze of higher education tax incentives into a single, $2,500 universal tax credit for the first four years of post-secondary education and costs related to eligible job skill training. The credit phases out between 400 – 500 percent above the Federal Poverty Level (roughly $97,000 – $121,250 for a family of four).
  • Addresses the tax treatment of health care as part of a comprehensive effort to repeal and replace Obamacare with consumer-centered reforms. The plan repeals all 21 Obamacare taxes.

McConnell’s votes on taxes.

  • Comprehensive tax reform can work if it’s revenue-neutral. (Jul 2013)
  • 1977 AdWatch: Horse Sense understands when tax cuts are real. (Sep 2010)
  • Resolve to lower capital gains taxes. (Aug 2008)
  • Voted NO on increasing tax rate for people earning over $1 million. (Mar 2008)
  • Voted YES on allowing AMT reduction without budget offset. (Mar 2008)
  • Voted YES on raising the Death Tax exemption to $5M from $1M. (Feb 2008)
  • Voted YES on repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax. (Mar 2007)
  • Voted YES on raising estate tax exemption to $5 million. (Mar 2007)
  • Voted YES on supporting permanence of estate tax cuts. (Aug 2006)
  • Voted YES on permanently repealing the `death tax`. (Jun 2006)
  • Voted NO on $47B for military by repealing capital gains tax cut. (Feb 2006)
  • Voted YES on retaining reduced taxes on capital gains & dividends. (Feb 2006)
  • Voted YES on extending the tax cuts on capital gains and dividends. (Nov 2005)
  • Voted YES on $350 billion in tax breaks over 11 years. (May 2003)
  • Voted NO on reducing marriage penalty instead of cutting top tax rates. (May 2001)
  • Voted NO on increasing tax deductions for college tuition. (May 2001)
  • Voted YES on eliminating the ‘marriage penalty’. (Jul 2000)
  • Voted YES on across-the-board spending cut. (Oct 1999)
  • Voted YES on requiring super-majority for raising taxes. (Apr 1998)
  • Rated 76% by NTU, indicating a “Taxpayer’s Friend” on tax votes. (Dec 2003)
  • Rated 0% by the CTJ, indicating opposition to progressive taxation. (Dec 2006)
  • Taxpayer Protection Pledge: no new taxes. (Aug 2010)
  • Supports the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. (Jan 2012)

Yawn. Both favor slashing taxes for the wealthiest taxpayers, which, if you believe in history and math, doesn’t stimulate the economy but leads to massive deficits.

Let’s transition to something less bloodless. Social issues.

Abortion

In the first Fox debate Senator Rubio seemed to suggest that he doesn’t favor any exemptions for abortion, including, incest, rape, or the health of the mother.

Kelly: “You favor a rape and incest exception to abortion bans. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York just said yesterday those exceptions are preposterous. He said they discriminate against an entire class of human beings. If you believe that life begins at conception, as you say you do, how do you justify ending a life just because it begins violently, through no fault of the baby?”

Rubio: “Well, Megyn, first of all, I’m not sure that that’s a correct assessment of my record. I would go on to add that I believe all –”

Kelly: “You don’t favor a rape and incest exception?”

Rubio: “I have never said that. And I have never advocated that. What I have advocated is that we pass a law in this country that says all human life at every stage of its development is worthy of protection. In fact, I think that law already exists. It is called the Constitution of the United States.”

However, more recently, he’s been walking back from that rather draconian view. Here’s what his website has to say.

Protecting life [except for capital punishment] defines who we want to be as a society. All life [except for those on death row] is worthy of protection, and all life enjoys God’s love.

Marco believes that Roe v. Wade was not only morally wrong, but it was a poorly decided legal precedent and should be overturned.

Marco has a record of supporting pro-life policies [like capital punishment], and will continue to do so in public and private life.

Marco believes that as a nation we must always come down on the side of life [except in cases of capital punishment]. We must speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.

Can you guess McConnell’s views on abortion?

That’s right; he’s against abortion, as evidenced by his spearheading the 20 week ban in the Senate, but but does allow exceptions for the life of the mother.

So once again, it appears that Marco Rubio is to the right of Mitch McConnell.

Obamacare

Even though their dire predictions about how the Affordable Care Act would wreak havoc to healthcare and the economy has proven patently false, both continue to advocate its abolishment.

Marco wants a “market-driven” alternative.

Iran Treaty

They hate it!!!

Netanyahu

They love him!!!!

Immigration

Marco, the son of immigrants himself and despite his being a one-time member of the Gang of Eight, is essentially anti-immigration and especially against détente with Cuba.

Mitch wins this battle. He was not a member of the Gang of Eight.

Conclusion

Essentially, there’s not much difference between Rubio and McConnell – except that McConnell’s attendance is much, much superior to Marco Rubio’s, whose chronic truancy dates back to his days as a Florida legislator.

So, to return to the Post and Courier’s headline’s, what about him might broaden Conservative’s appeal to younger voters? His Latin good looks?

article-0-1DD125B000000578-157_638x428

I doubt it. Here’s the cat all the young voters are swooning over.

06firstdraft-bernie-sanders-tmagArticle

 

 

 

The Unhappy Wanderer

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by-any-means-necessaryOn the corner of Robert E Lee Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard, I pick up a hitchhiker — there’s a knapsack on his back — he’s unwashed, emaciated, Whitmanesque in a Johnny Winter sort of way, somewhere between the ages of 40 and 65.

I’m in a good mood, have just gotten word The Kenyon Review has accepted one of my poems. When I pull over, I sing, “Val-deri, val-dera” as I lean over and open the door for him.

There’s the spring 2014 issue of The Paris Review on the seat, which I stick into the side pocket of the open door. He frowns, takes off the knapsack, which is actually a blackened, tattered bookbag, and struggles to jam it between the seats into the back compartment of my Fiat. Finally successful in the stowing, he sits down and turns and grabs for the seat belt like he’s just fallen overboard.

“Where to?” I ask, once the commotion is over, a little ashamed of myself for singing.

“Ultimately, way out west, I reckon.”

He reeks of cigarettes, campfire, mildew, and that metabolic sour wino sweetish stench that in-excess Mad Dog 20-20 and digestive systems produce.

He says, “Let me amend that. Wherever.”

“Wherever?”

“Drop me off wherever?”

The smell is getting to me as we tool down Malcolm X past Eldridge Cleaver Middle School. I decide I’ll take him to the Interstate exit, which is both headed west and qualifies as wherever.

He turns to me, and I can tell he’s looking at me, so I take my eyes off the not-so-heavy traffic and make eye contact with his barely blue eyes all rheumy and sad and staring at me.

“Who’s your favorite poet?” he asks.

I know the answer to this one: “Me.”

“You’re a poet?”

“Yep, as a matter of fact.”

“Published?”

“You bet.”

“Okay, then. Who’s your second favorite poet?”

“Frederick Seidel,” I say, thinking I’ll name someone he’s never heard of.

“Okay,” he says. “You can let me out here.”

“Here? How come?

“Seidel’s a pervert; that’s why.”

You sure you don’t want me to take you to the Interstate?”

“Positive.”

I pull over, he gets out, and I bid goodbye with a sarcastic salute. Self-righteous son-of-a-bitch.

I pull back into traffic, the post-industrial claptrap warehouses scrolling past my side windows, but I can still smell him five blocks away. I have a theory that loud noises drown out odors. I click on the music. Big Brother. Cheap Thrills.

It’s not until I’m past the Huey Newton on-ramp that I realize his bookbag’s still in the back.

No telling what I’m going to find in there.

Cheapthrills

The Curable Romantic

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Dark blues make me frantic

Black jazz brings me down.

Once I was romantic.

Now I stay uptown.

“Harlem Madness” – Fletcher Henderson, Ned Williams, and Irving Mills

519aMi139BL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_I was eaten up with Romanticism when I was a boy growing up in Summerville, SC. On any number of bright, sunny spring days, perfect for playing outside, you could find me in the cave of my bottom bunk reading The Count of Monte Cristo or The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

I was especially a sucker for doomed protagonists who suffered the perpetual ache of unrequited love, sardonic swashbucklers like Cyrano de Bergerac or Poe’s gloom-devoured intellectuals forever grieving for their lost Lenores. Of course, I didn’t share these somewhat pathological predilections with my friends or family. Maybe if I had, some kind soul might have pointed out that celebrating heartache is unhealthy and Darwinianly ineffective when competing for mates.

A consequence of this peculiar focus is that I developed an anachronistic, almost Victorian, appreciation of females as icons worthy of worship, practicing what Yeats describes in his poem “Adam’s Curse” as “the old high way of love.”*

There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

Precedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.

“Idle” as in non-productive. In those days, snagging a touchdown pass or smacking a double was a more reliable pathway to a young girl’s heart than penning cliché-ridden verse that doesn’t scan — still is, as a matter of fact.

So I had a string of crushes I worshipped from afar, for example, the beautiful Joanne Elder, whom I would escort around the circumference of Dogwood Circle never daring to clasp her hand and confess my adoration. I had cultivated an ideal medieval maiden in my psyche and projected her onto this not intellectually curious but practical girl. Meanwhile, in any number of carport utility rooms and out in the still abundant woods around the subdivision of Twin Oaks, other less literary 7th graders were learning how to French kiss. I still can clearly remember one day on an overcrowded school bus Joanne’s writing in the dust on the back door’s window the name of Steve Hoates.

[cue funereal violins]

stones-65Puberty itself was a great help in overcoming the blight of romanticism. I began reading less and listening to music more, Mick Jagger replacing Edmond Dantès as a role model, and despite singles like “As Tears Go By,” many Stones songs like “Under My Thumb” and “Stupid Girl” were openly dismissive of “the fair sex,” if not downright misogynistic.

My attitude coarsened a bit.

A couple of real live heartbreaks made me realize that the Marvelettes were right about the vast number of fish teeming in the sea of love. I came to realize that when you “got a heartache,” you’re much better off using your fingers to punch in jukebox selections rather than manipulating typewriter keys.

I figured out that the old Yeats was wiser than younger Yeats. Take it away, Crazy Jane:

A woman can be proud and stiff

When on love intent;

But Love has pitched his mansion in

The place of excrement;

For nothing can be sole or whole

That has not been rent.

Cyrano and Me

Cyrano and Me

*Of course, over a half-a-century later, I realize this attitude of placing females on pedestals is sexist, a byproduct of the patriarchy, etc, but look up at that less-than-ninety- pound weakling right above this note.  He didn’t know any better.

Quaint, Twitter-Ready Insults

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Michael J O'Donoghue

Michael J O’Donoghue

In the ‘70’s, the late great Michael O’Donoghue published a hilarious piece in the National Lampoon entitled “The Churchill Wit” in which he replaced those time-honored, oft-quoted Churchillian zingers with-

Well, I don’t want to step on his punchline. Here’s the original anecdote.

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend … if you have one.”

— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)

“Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”

— Churchill’s response”

And O’Donoghue’s version

When the noted playwright George Bernard Shaw sent [Churchill] two tickets to the opening night of his new play with a note that read: “Bring a friend, if you have one,” Churchill, not to be outdone, promptly wired back: “You and your play can go fuck yourselves.”

Alas, it seems, as least when it comes to social media, O’Donoghue was prescient in that vulgarity is now to the go-to response in verbal battle, especially on Twitter.

Of course, exhibiting wit in 140 characters – much less waging an argument – is challenging, so it makes sense that the un-clever resort to shit-slinging.

Obviously, trying to out-Andrew-Dice-Clay Andrew Dice Clay makes you look like a psychopath yourself, so, of course, the judicious adult response to scatological insults is no response.

Andrew Dice Clay

Andrew Dice Clay

Unfortunately, judiciousness and I-and-I don’t even have a passing acquaintance. I’ll admit my skin is lens-cleaner thin. For the world of me, I cannot stand to let some cretin tripping on the Kool Aid reduce me to some emblematic body part. Being compelled to respond, I’ve come up with a system to counter foul-fingered trolls who call me “a pussy” or invite me to “suck their dicks.”

Rather than going Medieval on them in the Pulp Fiction sense, I go what you might call “quaint,” wielding minced, old-fashioned oaths inspired by (but not lifted from) those Shakespearean Insult Kits you can find on-line.

For example, let’s say I tweet something like “Does America really want a 79-year-old President in the situation room during a massive cyber attack?” and some Oscar Wilde wannabe responds with “Fuck you, pussy. Hillary’s a liar. It’s proven.”

Instead, of tooth-for-tooth vulgarity, I might respond with “Clever use of synecdoche, you ear-wax-witted nincompoop.”

The key is to throw the assailant off guard. Chances he doesn’t know what synecdoche is, which should give him pause, and even if he does, whatever he responds is going to make him seem ridiculous.

Here’s a quick list of quaint pejoratives: pettifogging, rapscallion, miscreant, bobolyne, scullion, lubberwort, jackanapes, scapegrace, ninnyhammer, poltroon, blatherskite, fopdoodle

Hey, I’m a school teacher, look them up, you lubberwort-eating jackanapes. It’s Friday, going on happy hour, so I’m off to Chico Feo to banter with the wits and all that jazz.

 

Bernie’s Big Challenge

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Photo by Betty Void


Photo by Betty Void

One of the noteworthy early triumphs of Bernie Sanders’ campaign has been his enchantment of millennial voters with degrees from prestigious universities who, though they themselves wouldn’t slum it at a state school, seek free tuition for upcoming matriculators.[1]

Some of these graduates with pedigree degrees whine about the massive debt they’ve incurred seeking humanities diplomas from joints like Columbia, Duke, Stanford, Georgetown, etc. Call me callous, but racking up an ocean of red ink for an English or history or education BA strikes me as demonstrating very poor “critical thinking” skills, or even worse, if you’ve borrowed 200K for an English degree from Columbia, you’ve flunked the basic Darwinian test of financial fitness.

In fact, if you could get into Columbia, chances are you could cop a free ride at the University of New Hampshire or Iowa, graduate summa cum, and with off-the-charts GRE scores, get a Columbia masters for a fraction of the undergraduate expense.

Entitled elitists hankering after socialistic solutions for their elitist mistakes ain’t doing nothing to alleviate the toxic levels of cognitive dissonance poisoning this here Republic founded on rationalism.

But, hey, don’t get me wrong — I’m not blaming them – it’s their parents’ fault.

In fact, I tip my fedora to Bernie and don’t at all question his sincerity or integrity. He’s certainly won over a wide swathe of white voters in New Hampshire and Iowa who identify as Democrats. Moreover, his campaign’s Olympian transcendence of paltry expectations and dismal early poll numbers suggests that his message resonates. It does, of course, in large part because of the effectiveness of Bernie as medium..

The cat possesses not only credibility but also charisma.[2]  His performance among snowy Democratic demographics has been, at least in New Hampshire, spectacular. The day after, right-wingers like Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post are hyperventilating/salivating at the prospect of “an vowed socialist as the Democratic nominee.”

[cut to snow ball gaining mass as it tumbles down Mt Bernie aimed smack dab at Goldman Sacks]

Print

 

Now, what Bernie needs to do, and in an awful hurry, is to convince female African American primary voters like the ones pictured above to vote for a Jewish man who doesn’t believe in an anthropomorphic god.

 

[1] Perhaps, the one-word-for-two EB White rule doesn’t work so well with matriculators. At any rate, I applaud the millennials’  philanthropic spirit.

[2] Of which I’m immune.

Jive and Prejudice

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enhanced-buzz-5008-1375426913-1Coincidentally today, on my 38th wedding anniversary, we finished Pride and Prejudice in the 10th grade Brit Lit survey course I teach.   I’d like to think that over the thirty years I’ve been teaching P&P, I’ve managed to come up with ways to make it engaging for the students, even for some of the boys, who, if they read at all, prefer action-packed fare like Fight Club or sci-fi/fantasy titles like Fine,We’ll Do It in My Spaceship Tower. Unfortunately, for them, in Pride and Prejudice, Napoleon’s troops don’t invade Merton and shish kabob Mr. Wickham, only to be repelled by non-commissioned Darcy and Bingley looking fabulous on their prancing steeds.

Anyway, to prepare students for the pleasures of P&P, you first have to get across that the novel is prototypical, that it’s the mother of modern romantic comedy. [1]

Once that’s established, I concentrate on the characterization, and what a rich array we have. It takes a rather humorless drudge not to find Mr. Collins funny and a very unobservant one not to have encountered an asshole like Mr. Wickham somewhere along life’s escalator ride.

Anyway, today, we looked at the last few chapters, especially the tete-a-tete between Elizabeth and Darcy in “Chapter 60” when she asks him “to account for his ever having fallen in love with her.”

He replies that he couldn’t “fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation,” which could very well describe my own falling in love with Judy Birdsong.

Like Darcy, “I was in the middle before I knew that it had begun.”

Judy jokes that we have a “marriage made in Milwaukee” because we met in graduate school as bartenders at the student union bar – the not quite immortal Golden Spur — back in those halcyon days when 18-year-olds could drink legally. I must have first met Judy B right before the Spur opened for the semester in a meeting conducted by University employees in charge of the Russell House. I cannot say that it was love, or even attraction, at first sight.

In fact, alas, these are the very first words I said to her after she had benignly asked me how it was going.

“You can call me ‘Wesley’” I said, “or ‘Rusty,’ but don’t call me Wes.”

Call me FitzWilliams.

Truth is, I didn’t take much note of her or any of the other neophyte bartenders because I was pissed off. I, the only returning employee besides the manager, had to jump through the hoops of the work-study application process to get my old job back.

^%&*$#%&!

I do remember on opening night we had a reggae band and the manager assigned Judy to exclusively work the cash register, which was really stupid and unfair. I felt sorry for her stuck there  for six-plus hours frenetically ringing up Schlitz Malt Liquors and Lays Potato Chips.

That was in August, but as the weeks progressed, I found myself looking at the schedule hoping that Judy would be sharing my shift. On the surface, we had very little in common. I dabbled in contraband; she didn’t. I had spent a night in jail; she hadn’t. She made straight As; I had racked up an impressive string of Incompletes. She supported Gerald Ford; I supported Jimmy Carter. Her family had a considerable amount of new money; my family had a considerable amount of debt. In short, I was wild, rebellious, immature, and penniless, and she was stable, a conformist, mature, and well-to-do.

Yet, over those weeks I came to appreciate her more and more. I remember one evening when I was checking IDs at the door.  She stopped, and we chatted, and I felt ill at ease. I remember feeling a longing and loneliness bordering on hopelessness as she was leaving.

Miss Judy Birdsong

Miss Judy Birdsong

Unbeknown to me, the crush was mutual, but I could not imagine such a nice, attractive, clever girl being interested in a lout like me, nor did she think that a rogue like I-and-I would be interested in a nice girl like her. However, we started to flirt and “pretend” to have crushes on each other. In fact, I remember coming into the Spur when I had a date with an ex who had dumped me the summer before and Judy’s standing behind the bar with a theatrical frown as she pantomimed wiping away imaginary tears.

What a dumb ass not to figure it out!

The good news is that it didn’t take an elopement and rescue a la Lydia and Darcy to bring us together, but merely alcohol, the liquid Cupid. Although the University was closed on election night in 1976, the Spur was open, and Judy and I were behind the bar, which closed at one, but the staff and a couple of regulars stayed on to continue watching the returns. Somehow after Carter had been declared the winner in the wee hours, one of us  made a move – we can’t remember who – but somehow we found ourselves sitting there on stools at the bar holding hands.

As it turned out, like Darcy and Elizabeth, we had more in common than we had thought, and despite some of Judy’s friends’ reasonable advice that marrying the 1978 version of me was a mistake, she did, and it’s by far the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me or that will ever happen to me.

A Kennel of Doggerel for Donald

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Guess what? Sometimes the past isn’t prologue.

Take, for example, Donald J Trump.

The pundits just knew he’d sink in the slog

slinging that shit out there on the stump.

 

Looks as if the pundits were wrong

to base their predictions on Bachmann and Cain,

who got off to strong starts in 2008

but ended up missing the convention-bound train.

 

They’re not Trump. Both lacking and defying gravity,

he bloviates brandishing a bloodstained skewer.

Confronting him seems like sheer insanity —

like picking a fight with Jessie Ventura.

 

Guess what? Sometimes the past isn’t prologue.

Take, for example, Donald J Trump.

The pundits just knew he’d sink in the slog

slinging that shit out there on the stump.

 

Jessie Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota

Jessie Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota

5 Things I Wish I Could Experience Before I Die

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A performance of King Lear with Van Morison in the lead role and Keith Richards as the Fool.

keith and van

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An NPR on-location story that doesn’t begin with some goddamned sound effect like a pile driver a-driving (story on beachside construction), a trickle of water a-trickling (story California’s drought), twelve stentorian obese sleepers a-snoring (story on sleep apnea laboratories).

no-image-available

 

 

 

 

 

The sight of Andrew Dice Clay and Howard Stern kissing on screen in a remake of Broke Back Mountain.

no-image-available

 

 

 

 

 

The discovery of a lost semi-nude painting of Jane Austen.

Pauline_Bonaparte_2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A restorative cure for alopecia.

hoodoo man b & wIMG_2580 copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art v. Life

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climax_salomecroppedWhen aesthetes like Oscar Wilde or critics like Harold Bloom proclaim that “life imitates art” or “Shakespeare invented the human,” I imagine people rolling their eyes and thinking, “Puh-leez!”

Of course, their adopting these mannerisms confirms Wilde’s and Bloom’s claims. No doubt cinema popularized eye-rolling as a fetching way to express exasperated contempt, and “puh-leez” as in “give me a break,” probably can trace its origins from somewhere in Sitcomland.

What Wilde meant is that artists’ rendering of what they perceive provides the inartistic with images they project onto world, and in the case of characters from literature, models for imitation:

Consider [Wilde writes] the matter from a scientific or a metaphysical point of view, and you will find that I am right. For what is Nature? Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and only then, does it come into existence. At present people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. There may have been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist until Art invented them. Now, it must be admitted, fogs are carried to excess. They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and the exaggerated realism of their method give dull people bronchitis. Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch a cold.
“The Influence of the Impressionists on Climate”

Claude Monet: Le Parlement, effet de brouillard

Claude Monet: Le Parlement, effet de brouillard

To follow up on the second point, from the Renaissance on, literature has provided models for imitation for playgoers and readers eager to customize their personas. For example, males for 4+ centuries have channeled Hamlet, donned black and parroted his depressive wit; clever girls, in turn, have modeled their personalities on Elizabeth Bennet, that arch, articulate social critic. Perhaps the most copied “type” for males of my generation is the Hemingway code hero. Nick Adams and Jake Barnes wannabes around the world have embraced wounded, stoic, epicureanism for going on a century. On a less grandiose scale, Bogart as Sam Spade, John Wayne as, well, John Wayne, and Aubrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly have also offered archetypes for imitation.

Come to think of it, perhaps exotic Papa Hemingway deserves some praise/blame for our current culinary obsessions.

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy, and to make plans.”
                                                              A Moveable Feast

2010-02-25-Blackmarket-oysters

In the late Victorian era, the aestheticism of Pater and Wilde reeked of decadence. Who could take Pater’s advice “[t]o burn always with this hard gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy” if employed as a grocery boy, seamstress, coal miner, or pedagogue?

No, you had to loll your days away reading the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” in exquisitely decorated gardenia-scented rooms (while across town some tailor pricked his finger hand crafting the smoking jacket you had commissioned).

Hidden by the Sleeve of Night and Morn by Edmund Dulac

Hidden by the Sleeve of Night and Morn by Edmund Dulac

Nowadays, few folk perceive decoration as decadent, though decorators have been conspicuously gay, as have been hair-dressers, fashion designers, and at least nowadays on King Street, male salesclerks in clothing stores. The effeminacy of caring about what flowers to place where perhaps only occurs in Late Empire cultures. (I don’t see Dan Boone fussing over container of black-eyed susans). And, yes, many grandsons of D-Day GIs are now uncloseted metrosexuals, and I say this is a good thing.

Certainly, I’d prefer to imbibe my afternoon Colt 45 Malt Liquor pinot in James T Crow’s pleasant arts-and-craft cottage overlooking the Folly River than seated upon motel-like furnishings in a condo overlooking the Mount Pleasant Bypass.

So, excuse me as I slip down to to snip some begonias from the garden. We might disagree about what is beautiful, but we can all agree that beauty beats its alternatives.

Hoodoo Living Quarters

Hoodoo Living Quarters

Why I’m Voting for Hillary in the SC Primary

/ wlm3 / 2 Comments


luggage-pileMy dear departed high school English teacher, Mrs. Clarice Foster, taught us to make concessions early if inconvenient facts got in the way of our arguments. Say, for example, I chose pragmatism over ideology in determining whom to support for the Democratic nomination. In that case, Mrs. Foster would have me admit right away that Hillary and Bill Clinton have accumulated “some baggage” in their quarter century of public life, though she would probably frown if I quantified that baggage as “a boxcar full.”

[Sigh]

There’s “Clinton fatigue,” for example, the “been-there-done-that factor,” a definite negative in an ADHD nation brought up on quick cut editing.

Fire-breathing lefties also wag chiding fingers at Mrs. Clinton for having forged positive relationships with some denizens of Wall Street and for getting rich (god forbid).

More problematic, for me personally, is her tendency on occasion to reverse stances on issues for expediency’s sake.

Need we add that “vaulting ambition,” the phrase Milton uses in to describe Satan in Paradise Lost, might also apply to Hillary?

hillary satanNot to mention her occasionally awkward public presentation, her unease on the stump, what some have called her “unlikability.”  Indeed, some have depicted her as the female equivalent of the Prince of Darkness.

Enter that septuagenarian Galahad, Bernie Sanders, who unlike Hillary, was for gay marriage before she, Bill, and Barack Obama, and except for his recent flip flop on gun control, has been remarkably consistent over the years with his insistent socialist message.

More than any other candidate, Bernie cares about the widening discrepancy in the distribution of our country’s wealth and understands how oligarchy rends the fabric of national cohesion.

Nor has he spent his years in office accumulating riches – his net worth is reported to be a paltry (by politicians’ standards) 700K.[1]

Given these choices, why would I choose to support the seemingly more flawed Hillary over the seemingly purer Bernie?

Here’s why:

  1. If in the unlikely event he were to defeat the Republican nominee, Sanders would have absolutely no chance of getting his agenda passed in Congress.[2]
  2. More troubling, he seems clueless when it comes to foreign affairs. Just today he suggested we immediately normalize relations with Iran, a leading sponsor of terrorism.[3]
  3. He’ll be pushing 80 at the end of his first term (cf. your aged relatives).
  4. But most of all, I don’t want Ted Cruz (or John Kasich, for that matter) nominating the next three Supreme Court Justices. No matter what unreliable nationwide polls say about hypothetical match-ups, Bernie Sanders’ nationwide appeal is limited essentially to white liberals. Trust me, people who aren’t paying attention yet – in other words, a majority of the electorate – aren’t going to fall in love with, much less vote for, an irascible ideologue with unruly hair who is branded as a socialist ad nauseum in negative Republican ads, especially if fear of terrorism is a major campaign issue.[4]

I’ve seen this movie before. It starred Edmund Muskie, George McGovern, and ended very badly.[5]

1972_large

Anyone who claims that there’s no difference between Hillary and the Republicans needs to take a remedial reading course. As a matter of fact, Hillary and Bernie share strikingly similar positions on issues. Unlike every single Republican candidate, they both believe in human acerbated climate change, higher taxes for the wealthy, abortion rights, free community college, diplomatic engagement as opposed to war, etc.

In addition, they both see government as a positive force rather than an anathema. The disheartening news is that neither is going to be able to get legislation through a Congress in which Republicans control both houses. So the contest between them boils down to a choice between someone less liberal and Machiavellian but deeply schooled in international relations to one who is more liberal and principled but seemingly clueless when it comes to foreign affairs.

Unfortunately, I sense a sort of bandwagon effect going on with Bernie among younger voters who are starting to vilify Hillary in Facebook posts. I witnessed the same sort of vibe with McGovern back in the day, i.e., being for McGovern was cool, and that if you weren’t, you would be banished to Squaresville by your hippie peers.

 berniesanders_1Immune to Bernie’s charisma, I opt for pragmatism over cult of personality when the bottom line tells me that a Sanders presidency means no meaningful implementation of his agenda. His purview is narrow, almost exclusively domestic, so I don’t trust him as a vigorous analytical surveyor of the incredibly complicated issues of international diplomacy.  But most importantly, his chances of actually garnering 270 electoral votes are nil.

Even if he were elected, Bernie Sanders was born before the attack on Pearl Harbor — imagine the equivalent of a Pearl-Harbor cyber attack, some North Korean master sabotage of our collective computer systems.

Whom would you rather see in charge, Bernie or Hillary?

The stakes are Himalayan in this election: No matter what happens in the presidential contest, Republicans will continue to control both houses of Congress, and with a Republican president and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, no telling what might be in store – gigantic tax cuts for the very richest, the privatization of Medicare, an escalation of everything Bernie Sanders detests.

Cast a colder eye, millennials.

[1] Which, by the way, is 600k more than his Marco Rubio’s. Hmmm.

[2] Although Sanders promises to break up the “big banks” via executive action, this claim has been met with doubt from both the right and left. Here’s Matthew’s Yglesias’s take.

[3] Imagine the negative Republican commercials.

[4] By the way, I nailed the electoral vote counts in a prediction on September 14th before the last election, so I do possess a smidgen of credibility here.

[5] Though nowadays, the Republican Party has moved so far rightward that “mainstream’ Jeb Bush makes Nixon look like Leon Trotsky in comparison.