Revisionism Revisited

Many have drawn a parallel between the week's events surrounding Michael Jackson's demise and the passing of Elvis Presley. I can see some faint shadows of overlap for a few reasons. Number one is the black-become-white metamorphosis which Elvis executed so effortlessly and seamlessly and quietly. The difference is he did it before he burst on the scene rather than after. And in reverse direction. I wish we could say Jackson's changes had been so well-conceived, well-carried out and well-received. That is assuming Jackson's pursuit had merit in the first place which it did not. Elvis drew from the musical outlaw repertoire of black performers, made it his own and ran with it. In doing so, he was the first and biggest crossover act in music history. To say he integrated black and white onto the dance floor might be a bit much; but with some help from Dick Clark and American Bandstand, the youth of the time did begin to look past race and accept each other more I think. How could anyone fault Elvis--or Dick Clark--for that?
How many of these same good things can be said about Jackson? Well, the times were quite different. Blacks had taken over Detroit studios and were putting out the Barry Gordy sound on millions of platters bought by listeners of both colors. White artists had broken away from the quaint Elvis sound in favor of Brit pop; thanks to Beatlemania. The two camps had managed to de-integrate and re-segregate the music business; perhaps unwittingly but still effectively. Into this fray burst the Jackson Five which as a child act could pass for acceptability to Ed Sullivan's white audience, but deep down they were of course black people albeit with an edge-less quality to their brand of soul. A country torn apart by Vietnam and race riots could handle a cute black kid with an Afro who sang white material.
As Michael grew up, he began to hone an edge to his act. Maybe he did believe that a hipper Gen-X legion of fans who emerged from the turbulence could embrace his blackness without giving any thought to the concept of race at all. Smart move. They did just that as the machine was now being driven by Quincy Jones and MTV at redline speed and selling billions of dollars worth of music. Up to this point, he had been doing some good for music and race relations both.
Why Jackson went wrong, how he went wrong and why no one helped him back to the right path are all moot points now. They became moot long ago as his perversions and delusions and confusion about his self identity played out in court and the media. Any hope of a looming "comeback" would be as credible as one attempted by someone who thought the time was ripe for a modern version of Amos 'n Andy. Who would pay huge money to see a pasty caricature of a mannequin with no heart or soul left in him?
I think the saddest part of these last few days is the racial divide which is again so evident. The grieving energy expended by white people was a fraction of that depicted in the media at least by black fans. Nearly 3/4 of black people felt the amount of coverage was proper while about the same percentage of whites felt it was excessive. If Brooke Shields had not gone before the cameras (with a much better tan than she usually displays) today, I submit the event might have been completely un-integrated. Oh wait: Jackson's white "children" were present so do they count? But wait: they don't have any of his DNA so are they "his?"
Number two on my list of similarities has to do with medicine as practiced so badly and so ineffectively by the medical profession who does a great deal of harm despite their lofty and broken promise. To blame the victim for getting addicted to pills is missing the mark. The companies making these compounds, the government that approves them, the doctors who push them and the insurance companies that keep the whole machine greased and spinning are the villains. The people they suck in and chew up and spit out are pitiable. And because Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley both got ground up in those blades, I feel sorry for them both. I just wish Michael could have built on Elvis' sociological ground breaking rather than turning it on its head. He would have left a much better legacy.

Cheering Then Booing Then Cheering Then. . .

I have not written in a while because I have had something to do. It makes me wonder how many blogs are put out there because the blogger has nothing else to do. A casual perusal of the blogosphere would produce a rather obvious conclusion.
What I am doing is starting a vacuum tube equipment repair business. I have always fixed mine and other people's old TVs and radios as a hobby so I am going to try and dig my way out of this employment dustbowl the government has dumped us all in by making some money from my enterprising brainpower. Yes I do blame the government because part of what we charge them with is providing a sound basic structure on which a somewhat free economy can thrive and grow. They failed to do that in the beginning so in the end it is their fault.
I also have not written because I did not want to criticize the new prez even though I am becoming disgusted. He deserves all these good marks for being smart and progressive and hip, true enough. His wife has a vegetable garden on the museum grounds for the first time since World War Two days. She had a live jazz ensemble perform at the White House today for the first time in anyone's memory. There are lots of things to like about these people. Today he went before the AMA and told them what they did not want to hear. They boo-ed him. But then they are rich doctors making trillions off the anguish of sick frightened people so how much sensitivity can you expect from them?
Bill Maher of HBO made a good point on Keith Olbermann's show tonight. He uses his studio audiences as his political barometer. He says that in the beginning when he expressed hope for the future under the new leadership, the audiences cheered. Then when the new leadership started morphing into a mean-spirited copy of the old leadership and Bill complained out loud, the audiences boo-ed him in disagreement and blind support of their hero. Now when he rages against the machine that is stalling on ending war, stalling on Gitmo, stalling on gay rights, stalling on CIA reforms, stalling on every major promise made to get the left wing on board during the campaign, the audience cheers. So the fickle crowd has swung to and fro and to again but for different reasons.
Look at what Kennedy promised in the way of what was then liberal thinking. Then look at what he actually did in Cuba and Vietnam. And what he did not do for civil rights for African Americans. The difference between the promise and the reality is seldom mentioned in light of what ultimately happened to him. And it is unlikely that the man in the street in 1963 was fully aware of how disappointing the new leadership was proving to be. Today, the man on the street is plugged in to the instant web-o-sphere and disappointment can turn to rage overnight as seen in Iran over the last few days. I will stop there and let all this sink in as the ramifications and parallels are too chilling to expand upon. If ever there was a place I did not want to go there to, this would be it.

Do YOU Want to Swim in This Gene Pool?

For all his apparent skills in assessing and manipulating--, uh. . .the entire world, our President is a little out of step right here at home in the backwaters of the ignorant pond in which wade what used to be called the silent majority. Though I guess we need a new name now for the generation that succeeded the dim bulbs who re-elected Nixon since that original group seems to have produced offspring of equally challenged mental capacity. The question is whether he will float with the backflowing current or power up the pumps and flush the filth.
The latest issue that separates the know-somethings from the know-nothings is whether to torture our enemies or not. The Know-Somethings who should include the President and Eric Holder and Nancy Pelosi (and probably do) are quite right in their belief that torture is wrong no matter what information it produces from anyone about anything. The know-nothings that include Newt and Mitch and Sean and Rush (and why is this list longer than the other one?) are pressing forward with their ignorant and jingoistic drumbeat that torture saves american lives so therefore is OK. For all the nonsense that now passes for analysis on NPR, there are occasional unintended lapses that produce fleeting moments of vision on their air. The other day, they had a guy with a British accent who works for some think tank observing that other countries have suffered far worse proportional attacks on their own soil than the USA did on 11 September. But you don't see those other countries taking high handed (or would that be low handed?) measures to beat the so-called truth out of unfortunate captives to head off another attack. Here is a guy who can cut to the core and boy I wish he could bottle that and inject it into the mass bloodstream. But it's too late. The testosterone and adrenaline have been so pressurized by the titilating details of waterboarding and genito-electrical stimulation and dog biting and face-punching by big bruiser military macho men with stars and bars patches on their shoulders that the average clod out there scared of foreclosure is telling the president to "move forward instead of looking backward."
It has been a couple of weeks since I saw any poll numbers but as recently as the first of this month, a majority of citizens advocated torture as a means to extract information from "suspected terrorists." This is consistent with the high percentage of people who advocate murder by the state but call it "capital" punishment. These same people are buying up all the bullets and guns they possibly can in places like Texas and Florida so they can be armed and ready to resist whatever threat they think the government represents as it tries to keep order and calm amidst the widening chaos. There is a twisted sense of Twilight Zone irony in there somewhere; I should have that worked out in my next posting. For now though, I will try to get back to my main point. All this garbage about "looking forward" is code for "we reserve the right to bust mooslim ay-rab heads to protect the red white and blue."
The president and the Congress do have lots of stuff to deal with; like how to de-fuse the stink bomb the previous administration set off last fall that was calculated to produce the economic collapse which is hurting so many in the middle and lower classes. But that job does not take up every hour of every day. The hard work has been done; the groundwork laid and yes there is some tuning and tweaking and monitoring to be done. But there are thousands of smart lawyers and investigators and journalists reporting to work every day with time on their hands to dig up the ugly and illegal truth about the last eight years. If Pat Leahy and Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi and Obama himself can keep sight of Santayana's warning, they will be able to measure their forward progress by how meticulously they examine the past records of old emails and memos and phone transcripts. For if the crimes of the past are not exposed and recognized for the transgressions they were, we are doomed to play out the same bad scripts with unhappier endings.
The President needs to educate and enlighten and lead; not follow and cower and buckle. Whether he will yield to the ignorance and let bygones be forgotten and swept under the rug, or forcefully make a case for moving to the next level of social conscience and awareness and honesty will be the first real test of his character.

Radio Head

The ad I posted on my local craigslist to earn money by repairing old TVs and radios and phonographs has not panned out like I hoped. One guy asked me if he should buy this late model DLP HDTV that was semi-broken for cheap money; and then maybe I could fix it. Another person wanted me to align his late model transistor FM tuner even though it did not need that. Someone else is bringing me his late model transistor amp that smoked when he turned it on after it sat for five years in an attic. You get the idea. But the most bizarre has been Paul who owns a CB sales and service shop on the grounds of a sprawling truck stop at the edge of town. He called to ask if I would be interested in fixing broken CB radios for his mainly trucker clientele.
Rather than hold out for what I really wanted, I went out there a couple days ago and was greeted by a burly, blocky, hypertensive middle aged man who has owned the operation for a dozen years or so. The tech repair area which is situated like the kitchen at Denny's in that it looks out over the selling floor through a bunker-like slot is littered with torn apart CB radios that are covered in a film of road grime. Some of them don't transmit; some don't receive; some do neither but nearly all have been upgraded with echo and talkback demanded by this demanding group of men who pound their rigs across the country day and night nonstop. When these compact black boxes with sharply protruding chromed non-safety knobs are working well, they keep these guys chatting and joking and trading barbs with each other for maybe ten miles ahead or behind them at most. A few have extra added booster circuits to throw the range much farther; this being totally disallowed at least on paper by the FCC but totally ignored in practice. After two and a half days trying to fix these battered and burned up archaic anachronisms, I am close to giving up. It seems Paul is trying to replace his long-time repair guy who is moving away but wants to keep fixing stuff long distance. Cliff who is moving away wants Paul to ship the broken ones to Ohio from Arizona for repair then await return by UPS or FedEx. Paul does not want to do this being the fairly smart guy he is; but he is having a hard time finding a crack repair guy who can intuitively scope out a defect and correct it in a matter of minutes on site. I never let on I had any such level of skill; but I did promise at Paul's urging to "give it a try." He has been very decent to me and paid me for a couple of small jobs I did on easy repairs. But his hope that I am the successor to Mister Wizard is ending in disappointment.
The enlightenment for me has been a confirmation of my worst suspicions about this segment of our country's socio-political strata that constitutes this milieu. They are not bad people but they are extremely ignorant and narrow-minded. There was a time I would have called them bad BECAUSE they are ignorant and narrow-minded. I am trying to get past that. If I say so myself, I have done a pretty fair job of that while working at the CB shop. Just to give an example; Paul let loose with a slam against Nancy Pelosi for suggesting the next generation of 50 million offspring of the current generation would have a hard burden paying back big deficits. He ridiculed her for pulling a number like that out of the air when the entire US population was "only like ten million." When I told him it was more like 300 million, he looked at me like I was an FCC examiner who had just walked in the front door with a handheld RF signal strength meter to take some readings. He has a side bet with a friend that our current President will be killed before July 20 2009. If Obama lives past that, Paul has to cough up $100 to somebody in his circle of Limbaugh-listening louts. Most of the political talk that starts up with customers has to do with the "wrong direction" things are rapidly going now that "he" is in office. Paul is making an effort not to offend me as he can guess where my sentiments lie. But there is no way I can function well and fit in to this scene.
I must also mention the son Justin who is 30 going on about 19. He comes shuffling in and around 1 PM every day and immediately is hit with text and cell calls from his ex-wife and new girlfriend. He is apparently in high demand. He is kind of cute but the genetic programming is already at work. By the time those 50 million are paying all that debt service, Justin is going to be burly and blocky and trying to hold his gut in like dad has been for a few years now. By then, he will be as bitter and disgusted as the old man and probably no less dangerous. Will there still be citizens' band radio then? I would have guessed all that had dried up and blown away as cellphones took over. But no: these radios still serve a purpose similar to that of guns. They give a man some reach and some clout and some projection of his bigger self. I suspect that if the gov't ever tried to close down CB, they will have a helluva fight on their hands. And so for the foreseeable future, the big rigs will still ride that beam and keep their culture alive on the sky waves that skip off the ionosphere when the sun goes down. That assumes Paul can find the crack transistor-swapper he is looking so hard for. I am truly disappointed that it will not be me.

The Smell of Self Praise

The Oscar show ended with a whimper tonight after banging its own drum for four hours. And I regret to say I sat through most of it hoping it would find a higher road. Instead, the Academy (as it likes to call itself in desperate hope of imparting some actual meaning to what it does) took the safe, slow, flat and muddy path through the slums of a third world country. At the end of the night, the movie business managed to look even more transparently self serving than it does all the rest of the year. Anointing a mindless fairy tale that glamorizes television, drug violence and caste distinction with a gold plated plaster mold that has no genitalia (even though he is naked) renders the AMPAS utterly irrelevant and out of touch. Again.
The only good thing that happened was Sean Penn being just a bit self effacing and graciously acknowledging Mickey Rourke in his acceptance speech. Mr Penn also used the bully pulpit he held for about 90 seconds to get in some digs at the anti-gay hate-mongering right wing. Bravo to him for seizing the moment and giving some lip back to the self-righteous fascists who are denying same-sex couples what should be their equal rights. Another great moment was Sophia Loren posing with her hand on her hip and daring anyone to suggest she has aged at all let alone gracefully. She carried the evening even though she spoke for less than sixty seconds.
It has nothing to do with the movie awards, but I wish to comment on the last few days in national politics and the theater is has provided. Theater of the Absurd that is. It seems some of the Republican governors are openly stating they don't like the stimulus package because of the strings attached. Funny how they did not complain when the previous administration put far more stringent and onerous oh-by-the-ways on No Child Left Behind just to name one heavy handed program that cost money rather than provided it. Once again the intellectual dishonesty of the right wing shows it has no bottom. But the worst offender in the category of If-we-can't win,-at-least-inflict-maximum-damage is this fathead senator from the deep south. Shelby I think is now saying our president is not a citizen and so he is illegally in the White House. Some newspaper in Philadelphia is saying this and worse, calling Obama a Marxist and Communist and dismantler of all things sacred especially capitalism. The governor of Florida, a republican aptly named Crist, has allowed that there is only one national leader on the scene and his name is Obama and he is running the executive branch of the government. So here we do have a rare moment of intellectual honesty from a quarter not known for it and I applaud Mr Crist. Though I do not worship him. The sooner our capitalist model is exposed for what it is and the damage it has done, the sooner it can be systematically gutted and replaced with a more fair and balanced method of allocating dwindling resources. And anybody who does not see that as a step forward is an idiot. Who probably thinks Slum Dog Millionaire is a great movie.

Still Waiting For the Bounce

By now, there should have been a positive uplift effect from the new President. But all this "breath of fresh air" stuff is turning out to be just cosmetic and superficial. If it were not for those most evil villains the Republicans, there might have been some substance to the "new direction" promises. McConnell and Kyl and most of the entire Texas crowd have positioned themselves as the spoilers and are relishing their Limbaugh-fanned obstructionism. The sooner Obama goes public with some scathing name-calling and tar and feathering, the better chance he will have of success. All this cocktail partying and super bowl partying and reaching out in bipartisan fashion nonsense is a waste of time in the face of this mean-spirited grandstanding. The main reason we are in this fix is this sort of Rove-ian behavior; the sooner they are called on it out in the open the better. One tiny voice from the shadows can faintly be heard from some GOP governors. They are telling the right wing of the Congress to abandon this tactic and get on board. I applaud them even if their motives are less than honorable.
Now the other big question on my mind is the Blogojevich thing. How can there be no outcry when a federal prosecutor taps somebody's home phone then goes public with a lot of incendiary half-truths? This governor was booby-trapped, way-laid and blindsided by an ambitious and unscrupulous asshole whose naked power-grabbing and spotlight-hogging is positively McCarthy-esque. Not that the governor is any saint. But politics is a game of gamesmanship and he knows how to play or at least he thought he did. To be tripped up in this fashion with his due process rights out the window is cause for alarm. The Guantanamo effect is now spreading to domestic government operations where anything is fair and legal if it means nabbing a criminal.
Some politicos had wondered out loud last fall whether an Obama White House might give back some of the rights taken away by the previous junta. It would seem the answer is a quiet but resolute "no." The same people who had posed the then-rhetorical question mostly answered it speculatively by suggesting that no president will surrender power no matter how ill-gotten it might be. All the warm and fuzzy shirtsleeves and fist-bumping notwithstanding; this smooth-talking, wide-smiling master of the shrewd foul-drawing sneak-around covets his ability to wield great power silently, swiftly and coldly. The ex-governor of Illinois has been the sacrificial lamb whose blood is being splashed on the doorpost for all to see.
But back to my original point on the economic situation and its repair job. This systemic and chronic economic sickness is much bigger than a stimulus package can fix. Capitalism is bankrupt in every sense of the word. It cannot sustain itself as a system. I am fairly jubilant to hear the concept itself being brought into question for its lack of viability for the first time since Kruschev. It is high time and long overdue for serious self examination as we survey the wreckage around us. A full century ago, the other Roosevelt got on the correct side of history and yanked the choker chains on the mad dogs we now call the robber barons. A little skirmish called World War One and an inconveniently timed stroke inside Woodrow Wilson's brain served to undo much of that good work. The result was the Coolidge depression that the other Roosevelt pulled us out of by the skin of our teeth against a serious and earnest attempt to take the country Communist. I am not suggesting we revisit Marxism as alternative. . .or maybe I am. Strange how the far right branded Obama a Marxist last summer in a pre-emptive strike. They must have seen this coming and must have known in their black hearts how wrong all this has been. Rather than own up to it and get on the right side of history, they dig in trench-style to lob mortars and nerve-gas on the only politician with the guts to sort of vaguely suggest another FDR sea-change. If this country has to go Marxist, and it has to decimate the population in a civil war to do it, I say bring it on and the sooner the better. Death to the capitalists and robber barons and aristocratic upper class.

The Arbitrariness of It All

In a few hours, the least populated time zone in the continental US will go berserk for a minute or so as the Earth reaches the same relative position compared with the sun that it was 365 and one fourth days ago. Or maybe one second earlier. Or later. They are adding a second to make up for an accumulated error in the atom clocks. Whoever "they" are. There is no significance whatsoever to any of this and it never ceases to amaze me how much people make over the "new year." We will probably all be asleep when the changeover happens at our house. Our dogs will become frightened when the guns and firecrackers start going off and they will jump in bed with us and whimper and lick our faces. There are worse ways to be awoken that to have your puppies asking you to comfort them.
The most significant thing that happened today was the alignment of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and the Moon. I guess the Sun comes in there too since it had just set. An observer on the moon would have seen the Sun and the Earth plus Mercury and Jupiter and Venus I guess but we will never be able to prove that. My point is that these recurring curiosities of celestial positionings are remarkable only from certain vantage points and even then. . .they are fleeting and ephemeral and soon forgotten. Sort of like humanity and its pathetic endeavors that seemed to consume our consciousness for the period we now call 2008. Nothing important happened last year other than our stupid election that consumed billions of dollars and took attention away from things that needed it a lot more. The outcome was less bad than it might have been. That is all I can manage to say about it.
The only good thing I personally have to show for myself was the creation of a vacuum tube amplifier from scratch. Using a circuit from a magazine article, I figured out all the engineering of the chassis. I gathered all the specific parts which my business associate paid for, and put them all together and turned it on. It worked and makes beautiful music. Now we are going to try and sell it for more than the pieces cost him; and if we succeed we will make more and sell them. Of all the things I have tried to do, failed to do, succeeded in doing, or dreamed about doing-- this one has turned out the best of all at least looking back over a long time. If you had told me 365 and one fourth days and one second ago that I would be sitting here listening to an aria on a tube amplifier I built at my kitchen table and that I conceived in my own brain, I would have said that was not likely to occur in this universe. But something came into alignment cosmically and electronically, so thank you to the invisible hands that set me spinning on this mortal coil for a little while. And gave me the energy and vision I needed to do something good this year.