Why Gays and Guns Win

gaysnotguns02For the past month the media, unlike the actual public, has been obsessed with the issues of gay marriage and gun control. The issues have been portrayed as twin harbingers of a new more liberal age, a 1960′s redux, that has brought out all of the old battle lines. But this, in fact, is not true. These debates, and the inexorable success of gay marrige, and the equally certain failure of gun control legislation, are very much issues and outcomes of our current time. Though their discussion is happening at the same time, the two issues couldn’t be more different except for the one constant at the center of them both- the power and control of government.

It is not overstating the case to say that America is as polarized today as it has been since the Civil War, which was the blueprint for Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” that still represents the Republican Party today. These lines have become hard baked over the last two decades by the lucrative squirting of media lighter fluid onto the bonfire of social and economic discontent. But the most common mistake that talking heads and the general public make is the constant complaint that “government is not working,” or that our representatives are not “doing their job.” On the contrary, they are working, and doing their jobs- which are not to pass legislation, but to represent their constituents- very well indeed. Extreme members represent extreme districts and states, and do so very well by polling and focus grouping the landscape on an hourly basis. And this is exactly why gays and guns are winning the day.

There are several reasons why opposition to gay marriage has eroded steadily over the last twenty years. First and most powerful, sadly, is the AIDS crisis. Before the AIDS epidemic, gays and lesbians were not that far from Stonewall. Towns had gay bars and major cities like New York and San Francisco had thriving gay communities, but at best there was a prevailing “live and let live” ethos. AIDS changed that. AIDS was a clarion call to “come out,” and over the decade of the 1990′s America realized that gays and lesbians were not “them,” but “us.” The result was that the generation of Sally Rides, who hid their lives and loves in order to be functioning participants in society and culture (functioning, that is, without the legal and tax benefits of marriage), gave way to a generation of gay and lesbian people in all walks of life holding hands and openly declaring their love for one another.  Another powerful factor has been the increasingly powerful portrayal of gays and lesbians in the media that has helped inure a younger generation. Over the course of the last twenty years, America has come to know that gay and lesbian people are not just the clowns like the dimwit in picture above in the pink net dress, who clearly was not helping the debate, and “dykes on bikes” but everyone else in all walks of American life. Being gay became no big deal and even those like the man in the dress now fail to get all the attention they crave.

The acceptance of guns in our lives and culture have taken a very similar trajectory. Guns, like gays, have slowly overcome their negative, supercharged, media stereotypes. Though they are obviously not similar or analogous in any other way, the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School doesn’t represent gun owners in American any more than a morbidly obese man crawling on his hands and knees wearing nothing but a leather thong and a dog collar represents gay people. Your gay dentist and your neighbor with a handgun responsibly locked in a drawer are not news but they are really who we are.

But it’s really in their relationship to government and its power where these two issues intersect. Two decades ago, Will Portman would probably have not come out, to his family let alone the public, out of respect for his Republican father’s political career. But doing so made the government’s role in obstructing him from the legal benefits that all other Americans enjoy all the more obvious and onerous, to the senator and to everyone else who isn’t benighted by retarding religious dogma. Government restrictions on the American people’s rights to make their own choices is antithetical to the fabric of our nation. And so it also is with the right to own a gun.

None of the proposed gun restriction laws would really have much impact on gun violence in America. Background checks would remain easy to get around and would be impossible to enforce. Large ammunition clips are all over the nation and would remain easy to get. There will most certainly be another terrible episode where a mentally deranged person will kill others with an assault rifle. That just is, and will remain, part of American life. But as tragic as that will be, like assault weapon violence in general, it will represent an infinitesimal percentage of gun deaths, the vast majority of which come from handguns- which themselves don’t even approach the numbers of violent deaths caused by baseball bats, knives, crowbars and the like.

In a month or so, the memory of Sandy Hook Elementary School will pass from all those Americans who didn’t lose a loved one. The next Sandy Hook will create a momentary clamor to once again do something about gun violence, which will once again die down after a few months having initiated no new legislation. But while the Supreme Court will be loathe to decide on gay marriage, and will look for any opportunity to punt, nevertheless, state by state, statute by statute, restrictions to gay rights will fall away because at the end of the day, we Americans just don’t like the government- and worse, odious, self-important Napoleon complexers like New York mayor Michel Bloomberg- telling us what to do. We prefer it when corporate America does that.

 

 

The Worst of Us: Nixon at 100

From the beginning there was something wrong, something reptilian about Richard Nixon. His black eyes never revealed even a flicker of warmth, humor or anything resembling humanity. His blank, baleful stare was what you’d expect in a mugshot from someone who had calmly performed an unspeakably heinous act, which is in fact exactly what he did. It is to America’s everlasting shame, and the cause of everlasting damage, that so lowly and disgraceful a person as Nixon was ever admitted to our nation’s highest office. The most important lesson Richard Nixon left us, was not about him, it was about us. It is how so base and crass a person manipulated us all and how we allowed that to happen.

Richard M. Nixon was not the first person to get into politics to try to fill a hole in a soul bereft of any sense of self worth. Politics is, after all, a performing art, and many who are drawn to public performance are seeking affirmation and usually even love they have not received from more normal and healthy avenues. Many have honed their performance skills out of sad and desperate need for attention often, as in Nixon’s case, to compensate for indifferent or even hostile parents. The best develop talent and skill in singing, dancing or acting to share and even enlighten the rest of us. The worst, like Richard Nixon, succeed by deciding there is no deceit or shame too great to bear to get the attention they want and need- even when they know they have lied and cheated to get it.

Nixon knew from his earliest days that he was not only without charm, but was not a particularly likable person (he often ruefully compared himself on this score with John Kennedy). This was no doubt reinforced by his mother who never recovered from the loss of her eldest son, Harold, from tuberculosis in 1925 and who from all accounts was never impressed by any of her younger son’s accomplishments. Nixon endured equally all manner of discouragement from the woman who would eventually become his long suffering wife. He even pushed himself literally into the drivers seat of her life, lowering himself to be her chauffeur on dates with other men until after a relentless two year assault, she finally relented to his dogged advances to her everlasting regret (she absolutely hated being a political wife).

His first run for congress against popular Democrat Jeremiah “Jerry” Voorhis was an afterthought. His name was entered simply because no credible Republican challenger to Voorhis had emerged. But Nixon set upon the course that would shape the rest of his life- to win by smearing Voorhis with outright lies about fabricated and untrue links to the Communist Party. Like so many of Nixon’s future opponents, Voorhis was totally unprepared for so low and unethical an assault- and even more shocked that it could be successful. Nixon held dear W.C. Field’s maxim that “anything worth having is worth cheating for.” And cheat and lie Nixon did without shame or conscience at every turn for the rest of his life.

The real tragedy of Richard Nixon is not how he lived his own vile and debased existence, but how he contaminated all of ours. Corruption and politics have been intertwined throughout human existence, but Nixon not only abandoned basic decency and any previously shared nominal ethical baseline, he ultimately, and without shame, nakedly shook off the shackles that the law itself imposed on his ambitions. When his web of lies and crimes finally began to unravel in public, like Jerry Voorhis, the nation was simply unable to grasp the depth of his defilement of the highest office in the land. There had certainly been presidential scandals before Nixon, but the very thought that a president would plan office break-ins to be financed from secret safes filled with cash made dirty from the grimy fingerprints of criminals from his desk in the Oval Office was simply more than we could all get our heads around. It took years for it all to sink in.

But Nixon’s personal disgrace has proven to be the least damaging part of his dire legacy. Nixon’s true endowment to American culture and politics is the rooting of a immovable tree of bitter cynicism, the stinking fruit of which Ronald Reagan was able to wave under the noses of the American people a few short years later as he declared “government is the problem.” Despite the stupidity of that infamous remark- government is nothing more than the enforcement arm of the people’s elected officials- the institution has never recovered. Not long into his own presidency, Ronald Reagan sat a the very same Oval Office desk while plans were drawn up to illegally circumvent the Constitution and great strides were taken to learn from, and avoid, Nixon’s missteps. Twenty years later, another Nixon protegee, Dick Cheney, would go so far as to take his former boss one better and create a criminal shadow government from the Vice President’s office that would deceitfully and covertly lead an inexperienced and thoroughly witless chief executive into a disastrous war, the full accounting of which is a decade away from full tally.

All of this is the price we have paid, and will continue to pay, for allowing the worst among us to achieve positions of awesome power. Were we all to poll a hundred people in our families and work circles and ask “do you think government is just a bunch of crooks?” we all pretty much know what the results would look like. This is the grim disease that Richard Milhous Nixon bequeathed to us, which has only spread and become darker and more pervasive as time has gone on, and sadly one which we have shown no signs yet of being able to cure.

Loudly into That Good Night

To really understand the full implications of the election of 2012, you need look no further than the desk of the info-tainment juggernaut “Fox News” and it’s reigning high priest, Bill O’Reilly. The folks at Fox, usually so canny at reading and manipulating the zeitgeist of their audience, was not only caught flat-footed, but thanks in part to nemesis Jon Stewart, their blinking confusion and bumbling denial of what was staring them in the face became a humiliating public spectacle. Fox, Karl Rove and Associates were caught by surprise because none of them noticed that over the last four years, the raft they filled daily with their own fetid hot air was drifting farther and farther from the shore of reality. The country out of their collective office windows, beyond the golf club bags, framed Ten Commandment tablets and Reagan busts has changed. Dramatically.

The folks at Fox misunderstood the relationship between the country and its president, thinking that many only voted for for him in the first place out of white guilt and were secretly just waiting for the chance to dump him and go back to the “good old days.” They and their cohorts did all they could to stir animosity towards the president, even stooping daily to speculation about his birthplace, religion, ties to all manner of terrorists and organizations- and even participation in some imagined “New World Order” cabal right out of an X-Men comic. These attacks seemed a workable strategy because, for Fox and Friends, “America” still has it’s heart in the 1950′s when mom stayed at home and dad’s job supported a house and a car or two- and where people of color knew their place and did their jobs as night porters and fruit pickers, content with white patronage. The election of 2012, far more than its predecessor four years earlier, has finally dispelled that myth. Them days is over, and have been for a long, long time.

Barack Obama was right when he said in his victorious speech that it was not “about him” but about “us.” Every day the country looks more like him and less like Ronald Reagan posing on a horse. What Tuesday night showed us all is that consequently the center of power in America has slowly and steadily shifted away from the white, mostly male, conservative Christians who have been resisting civil rights and economic integrity since the nation’s founding towards women who demanded the vote, those who’s skin color, language or religious beliefs have branded them as second class citizens and those who have been made to feel ashamed about who they love. While Tuesday night didn’t end the tyranny of the myths of Mayberry RFD, Ronald Reagan and a blue-eyed Jesus, it showed us that the muscle of the electorate is no longer with those who propagate, and benefit from, those myths by deliberately distorting and withholding the truth- from the president’s birthplace to “weapons of mass destruction,” to wild eyed claims that smoking marijuana leads to a sad end as a heroin addicted prostitute to the fallacy that tax cuts do anything at all to create jobs or grow the economy. None if it is true and the country is waking up to to these facts.

And so, the Republican head and else scratching begins in earnest. The most obtuse among them will first blame New Jersey governor Chris “Benedict Arnold” Christie for daring to be caught in the same picture frame as the Kenyan Satan and then to their dismal nominee, Willard Romney. While a truly bad and empty candidate who was repeatedly caught bald face lying, Romney was not the Republican’s problem. In fact Willard actually outperformed Republican senatorial candidates, who even managed to lose races in crimson Montana and North Dakota, by an average of 9 percentage points. Two previous Republican presidential buzz marquee names, Wisconsin’s Tommy Thompson and Virginia’s George “Muckaka” Allen also lost their comeback races. Add on the fact that marriage equality finally broke it’s long losing streak with wins, and marijuana was essentially decriminalized in two states. And this, of course, in the face of unprecedented spending with some donars such as Chinese gambling kingpin Sheldon Adelson whizzing away over $100 million all told. Turns out that Citizen’s United was not the death knell of American politics because we’re not so easy to buy and Adelson and the Koch Brothers can’t be happy campers.

The Republican recovery will not be easy nor quick. Their central problem is their very core message and core constituents. Running again on a platform opposing immigration reform, and thus Latinos, opposition to abortion in any and all cases, qualifying and comparing rape with adultery, yet more tax cuts for rich people to pad their Cayman Island accounts, and fear and distrust of people of color and gays and lesbians, is a one way ticket to an even more profound and dismal defeat. As Bill O’Reilly observed Tuesday night, “Obama wins because it’s not a traditional America anymore. The white establishment is the minority. People (who are not white) want things.” Yes, indeed they do Bill. They want civil rights, jobs and a share of the American pie. They want to make their own choices about their bodies, from what they put into them to what comes out of them, and to love and marry who they want.

So, Bill, make all the noise you want, which you get paid to do, they are not going to let uncious anachronisms like you stand in their way- all of our way- any longer. It is indeed, finally, Morning in America.

when sexism bites back

If you grew up in the 70′s, you’ll no doubt recognize this image from the hit movie Summer of ’42. The movie was about a young, lonely woman whose husband has been away in the military for several years. Being young and attractive, she is the fantasy object of the teenaged boys in her neighborhood, and any in the movie theater, and she ends up having a sexual relationship with a very lucky one of them. It is a charming and touching, coming-of-age romantic film that made a sex symbol out of its star, Jennifer O’Neil. It dramatized the experience many, if not most honest, young men desire, a first sexual experience with an older woman with whom they can learn in a more nurturing environment than with girls their own age, who after all, usually expect them to know what they are doing.

Though she bears a passing resemblance, the woman in the image here is not Jennifer O’Neil, however. Her name is Brittani Colleps, and yesterday the twenty eight year-old woman was sentenced to five years in prison for having a sexual relationship with several young men, none of whom, unlike the movie, was under the age of eighteen. These were all men of legal age and the crux of the case against Ms. Colleps was that she was a High School teacher and a coach and thus the relationships were inappropriate. Few would deny that Ms. Colleps, who like O’Neil’s film character, also has a husband in the military, should have looked elsewhere for a liaison no matter how lonely or sexually restless she was. But life and relationships are never that easy or simple. People are not always so clear-headed and emotionally strong, and none of us has ever done the right thing every time. Like the woman in the movie, and like the vast majority of inappropriate affairs, Colleps got involved with someone she was familiar with, and no doubt knew full well she shouldn’t be messing around with. But she would not be the first person to be lured by the temptation of the naughty and forbidden.

But all of this still begs the core question- was a crime actually committed? According to court testimony, Ms. Colleps was not just a lonely woman who lapsed, she was an aggressive suitor to these young men who sent them repeated text messages and invitations. The main piece of evidence against her was a video that allegedly showed her having group sex with four of them at once. No one made the charge in court that Ms. Colleps held grades or the prospect of academic advancement over these young men’s heads in order to coerce them into this activity. This was not a case of sexual harassment. These were all adult men who willingly, and probably enthusiastically, engaged in these activities with Ms. Colleps. None of them tried to, our could, make a credible case that she harmed them in any way- and if one of them even tried to complain about lost innocence they’d have been laughed out of the room. Instead, they were all very likely eager to participate and had they not enjoyed the experience they could easily have gotten dressed and walked out the door. But none of them did. Nothing in the video showed any of them to be distressed in any way. Everyone in the video was apparently enjoying the experience.

But gender and age matter in this case and it’s the elephant in the room. Had this been a young woman having group sex with four older men- or one older man having group sex with four younger women or one younger man with four older women- we would all look at each of these scenarios very differently because genders, and the relationships between genders and age, are not the same. We assume in society and law that men are sexually predatory in nature and that women in their late teens are emotionally and sexually vulnerable and require legal protection. Laws, such as the one Ms. Colleps was convicted of violating, were constructed to protect young women from men and it’s only more recently that reverse cases have to our national attention, doubtless due to men rarely complaining and the emergence of video and communications technology of the sort that was the tent pole in the case against Ms. Colleps providing evidence.

Opinions on Ms. Colleps case are no doubt split down gender lines too. Few men would seriously argue that she deserves a prison sentence and most would probably admit that they would have like to have known her when they were eighteen. But such is the twisted nature of our cultural quest for “equality” that we have confused gender with race and the Civil Rights movement. “Race” is a social term with no biological underpinning, gender is not. While there are not significant or meaningful differences between people of different skin tones or hair textures, there are indeed massive differences between men and women and Ms. Colleps sad case, and the gross miscarriage of justice that will see her not only shamed in her community but actually behind bars for five years, testifies to the injustice of pretending there aren’t.

Romney and The Tebow Effect

He wasn’t his first choice and he wasn’t his second choice. Those two were undoubtedly the safe choices, Pawlenty and Portman, the two mainstream, blow-dried stiffs who’d have been happy to stand innocuously behind Romney like political wives on prozac. But most importantly for the Republican nominee, either of those choices would have said that Romney was enough. A do-no-harm sidekick would have told America that Romney didn’t need any help, just a warm, competent body. But with sliding poll numbers starting to solidify unfavorably, Willard Romney bowed to the Republican party and monied voices around him and did what he is most loathe to do- he gambled and took Paul Ryan as his running mate. While this was supposed to be his moment, like John McCain before him, he now finds himself little more than an MC between a rock star and the teeming mosh pits of true believers. The pick also tells us all that the party is looking past their lackluster nominee to a future with the man Dick Cheney said he “worships the ground he walks on.” No one ever said that about Willard Romney, and from now on the Tebow Effect will be in play- the fans will be watching their hero standing on the sidelines rather than the guy who’s actually on the field.

But unlike four years ago, Romney’s problem is even worse in key respects than John McCain’s. Unlike the comical Sarah Palin, who also lit the fire and drew the crowds, Ryan will also be the one who can handle questions and speak to the press. Where Romney lives on a seven second delay before answering any question to try to avoid a gaffe, Ryan answers questions quickly and effortlessly. Where Romney gives off the odor of a slimy used car salesman who will say anything to see you drive a new car off the lot, Ryan earnestly looks the camera in with big blue eyes and is frank and honest, or at least as frank and honest as a politician can be.


What makes the Ryan pick most interesting is that it tells us the actual state of the Republican Party. It tells us that the conservative wing of our politics is betting that 2012 will either be a replay of 1964, when their champion ideologue provided the national spear tip for their movement, or 1980, when another right wing zealot considered unpalatable to the American electorate was packaged well enough to make the sale. Either way, the guys and gals with the money, the most conservative of the lot, will feel vindicated. They will have injected their draconian political virus into the American bloodstream and cutting their taxes even further and killing off Social Security and Medicare will be on the table.

Those voices in the center and left of center, like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who are chuckling and licking their chops over the Ryan choice would do well to review the 1980 race. The left made the very same noises and were staggered when their seemingly moribund incumbent with few answers proved no match for a candidate with new energy, a sense of vision and purpose and an ability to wrap himself in the iconography of Americana. While Barack Obama is not Jimmy Carter, he is far more “likable” and does not have an international hostage crisis on his plate, his presidency certainly has stalled. Whether you, quite rightly, observe that there really isn’t much an American president can do about international finance, or point to congressional gridlock, it is hard to argue that his administration appears mired in political mud. There is no “vision thing” coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Neither Romney nor Ryan is Ronald Reagan, but a lot of folks on the right, with very deep pockets, are wagering that Ryan could become his own generations version. Win or lose, they now have the franchise quarterback to build their team around, and while they’d like to win this year, their eyes are on their golden boy for the future. Those in the center and left, who have essentially done nothing but back-pedal since Lyndon Johnson was run out of town, had better start looking past the sputtering unions and the tired old veterans like Biden’s and Hillary’s for young talent to fight the next generation’s wars. And it would help greatly to have someone with the “vision thing.”

Pawlenty, the other white meat

When the Republicans who are actually in a position to decide survey their options for a vice presidential candidate to aid their stunningly weak nominee, they face the most narrowed field in modern times. With the internal struggle between the Koch Brothers financial establishment, the hardcore “Earth is only 6,000 years old” Christian evangelicals, the Likud Israelis, the Tea Party, the Bush years, and the unprecedented Palin fiasco, all of the traditional metrics are off the table. Like the food in a facility for seniors, their choice has to be devoid of anything resembling flavor or spice or even salt. They are left with only one possible choice, the lukewarm pile of tasteless and soulless grayish white mash known as former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

Under more normal circumstances, Pawlenty’s name would hardly even come up- he was never even in the mix for John McCain. It’s not just that he makes an order of grits look like curry vindaloo, he is virtually without gifts. He is not much to look at, has no public speaking skills, has no deft political instincts and is devoid of a soul or any charm. Were Pawlenty to rob a gas station, the guy sitting behind bulletproof glass would be at a total loss to describe him to the police (“I dunno…just, ya know, ‘a white guy’…”). The real reason a generic, tow-the-party-line toady like Pawlenty is the only choice left is simply because everyone else has been eliminated due to a toxic element to their candidacy. Let’s consider the field.

First, New Jersey’s own media darling Chris Christie. Christie resisted a chorus of calls to get into the race from the start and for good reason. Unlike so many politicians, Christie is actually self-aware enough to know that the presidency is deeper water than he can swim in. He’s actually thought out what it might be like to get called into the White House Situation Room in the middle of the night to decide what to do about a rapidly unfolding disaster somewhere in the world. It would hard to look at those faces when yours is covered in chocolate sauce and orange Cheeto dust. But perhaps most importantly, Christie wants to reserve for himself the right to be the rude, uncouth slob that he is. He has no interest in having to clean himself up, actually be anywhere on time (he’s habitually late) and have his life and diet under a media microscope. And the zipped-up Romney can’t stand him, so there’s that. Felix ain’t taking Oscar.

Then there is Rob Portman, long considered the front-runner by the media. Portman is from Ohio, a state Romney must win, and he is clearly a very smart man and an adept politician who sufficiently loves Jesus in a Protestant way. He was also, however, the budget director under George W. Bush who presided over the breathtaking economic collapse we will likely never recover from. No potential vice presidential nominee would open the Romney campaign up to the “we tried that and look where it got us” campaign ad like Portman. You can bet the Obama team in Chicago has a long video reel of Portman discussing the Bush Administration policy all queued up and the Romney folks know it. And, Portman also lacks the attackdog quality usually required of a Vice Presidential nominee.

Florida senator Marco Rubio was anointed as the VP front runner even before a nominee was in sight. He was seen as the obvious answer to the Republicans’ Latino problem, but under further scrutiny the bloom has come off that rose. Being Cuban is not exactly the same as the vast majority of American Latinos who come from Mexican and South and Central American descent. And with only a few years in the senate under his belt, he increasingly looks like a reach, and a cynical one at that. And his immigration suggestions lack the inflexible cruelty favored by the base of the party. This turkey needs more time in the oven.

Then we come to the tier of names that are floated for ethic political reasons like Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, and hilariously Condaleeza Rice. Jindal is a smart man capable of articulating political ideas, and Republicans love to bring some color to their table, even badly enough to elect the hapless Michael Steel as head of the Republican National Committee. But Jindal committed a colossal own-goal with his 2009 State of the Union rebuttal, famously sashaying to the microphone like Kenneth the pansy from the NBC hit show 30 Rock. While Jindal certainly has a core of support within the Republican Party hoping to be credible with voters of color, it’s unlikely Romney wants a running mate who induces giggles. Nikki Haley has only just arrived on the scene, and apparently undeservedly, still has the lingering scent of sex scandal. The only woman to really be seriously considered is New Hampshire’s up-and-coming Kelly Ayotte, but like Rubio, she’s hardly taken her coat off in the senate chambers. She was offered a tryout, getting a shot on ABC’s Sunday stapleThis Week, but fumbled badly. The truly desperate keep trying to drag Jeb Bush into the mix, but Bush scuttled those attempts by distancing himself from the more rabid elements of his party, also known as the base of it.

And so, the last man standing is Tim Pawlenty, who loves himself some Protestant flavored Jesus and can do the bowling alleys and diners Romney couldn’t walk into without disinfectant. While Pawlenty has nothing to recommend himself, unlike the rest of the field, at least he has nothing to disqualify himself. And so when it comes time for Romney to pin the corsage on his prom date, Tim will be the only one left. And what makes this choice even more ironic is that, should Romney’s finances turn out to be so disastrous that he actually has to step down- something not nearly as far fetched as it might sound- Pawlenty would make a far superior nominee. Though he was the first to drop out of the Republican primary, in a general election, he could unite the Neanderthal evangelicals with the Tea Party and anti-tax crowd while safely carrying the water for the Koch Brothers and the neo-cons. While Romney continues to flounder with healthcare, Bain and offshore bank accounts in what should be an easy environment for a challenger, the knives might be coming out and Tedious Tim Pawlenty’s day might just come much faster than anyone thought.

The Case for Citizen’s United

Imagine for a moment that you put your credit card down to finally buy the 52″ HD, big screen television you’ve wanted for years. And then the clerk hands you a public disclosure form to announce your purchase to the world- and to the fellas who will be looking for a place to watch the game as well as the local meth heads searching for a quick score. Or, imagine the same thing happening when you purchased a vibrator to go with Fifty Shades of Grey? Wink, wink from the UPS guy. It’s an outrageous idea that almost no American citizen would find even remotely acceptable. We like to think that we have a certain level of privacy in this country and that, as long as we follow the law, where we spend our money is our business and our business alone. The same thing goes for our vote. You might work in a union shop but be a Republican who would certainly be shunned if your workmates knew how you voted. Or you might be a closeted gay Republican who will pull the lever for Obama this Fall. No one would get very far making the case that our purchase or our votes should be public.

Yet, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, there has been a great hue and cry made about political contributions made without public disclosure and the clarion call from the “progressives” is that “we have a right to know” who makes contributions. But do we really? And why exactly would that be? Why should anyone have a “right” to know how anyone else legally spends their money, from big screen televisions to vibrators to political contributions? (With “anyone” meaning actual people. Corporations have their own business decisions to make and are, at least in theory, responsible to their share holders.) We have a right to know, progressives argue, because of the power that those contributions wield in our process- and this is the great weakness in the progressive argument because the real problem for them is not the money, or the ads. The reason progressives cry foul is that they don’t like the election results. You don’t hear a peep of complaint from the conservatives because ever since Richard Nixon hired Roger Ailes in 1968, who is now the head of Fox News, the right wing has been much better at exploiting the public who lack the sophistication and education to understand politics. Just look at what goes into most American mouths, let alone into their vote. And that is a very, very different problem. From the “Silent Majority” to “Morning in America” to the Swift Boat ads, the conservatives have written the book on conning the rubes while progressives can only stand in a puddle of themselves and whine about the lack of “fairness.” Newsflash: Life ain’t fair. There ain’t no “social justice.” Get over it.

The great problem with American democracy is not money. As columnist George Will pointed out, we spend more on condiments like ketchup and mustard than we do on politics. The real problem is how susceptible the American public is to advertising. We all face a virtual onslaught all day, every day, from rolling billboards to magazines to television, even on our cell phones. And most of it is lies. Straight up, bald-faced, lies. But we continue to get them because they continue to work on us. Too many of our fellow countrymen and women believe that one cigarette “tastes better” than another, or that one laundry detergent really does “get whites whiter.” And with regard to food? We line up to pay for our portions of mystery meat-like substances handed out of drive-through windows and microwave-ready processed pseudo-food material of unimaginable origin that we can quickly heat up and eat right out of the container. The very word “meat” no longer has a viable definition beyond originating, at least marginally, from some part of a mammal or a bird. Yet Americans flock to “value meals” and gorge themselves until they require insulin injections and two seats on the bus. “Fat Free” cookies? Hell yeah, load up the cart.

The great failing of liberalism since the end of World War II, now conveniently re-dubbed progressivism, has been in blaming advertisers and businesses rather than holding people responsible for their choices and behavior. Like New York Mayor Bloomberg’s laughable ban on big sodas it’s been an endless game of blaming the rules and not the team. Liberalism exhausted itself playing helicopter mom to the American people as it built an endlessly complex legal labyrinth that only became more and more absurd and unenforceable as it grew (who today, for example, can even define “Affirmative Action?”). This led to the election of Ronald Reagan, who just a few years before was universally considered a wingnut, under the banner that government- the government edifice of alphabet agencies, the FDA, the USDA, the FEC, SEC, etc, built by forty years of liberalism- had “become the problem.” As a result, those agencies are all now zombies, gutted and run entirely by the very industries they were created to regulate. From Vioxx to the Massey coal mine disaster to e coli in our vegetables from mountains of untreated, infected cowshit in the water, we are on our own now. And this is clearly how the American people like it.

And so here is the good news. What the Citizens United decision did was to take the training wheels off. This summer and fall we will all see an avalanche of advertising unlike anything we’ve seen before, particularly in the swing states. It will be wall-to-wall Reverend Wright, Kenyan birth certificates, Mormon cults and how Bain raped one business after another. It will be the nastiest, meanest- and yes, most unfair- campaign of our time. Instead of having the government regulation as a filtering intermediary- a task for which it is stunningly unsuited- it is now up to the American people to make their own decisions upon what they see and hear. Faced with this flood of ads, will they make better decisions in their politics than they do about their food? No, probably not. But that’s what democracy is all about. Voters will have to decide who will serve their best interests and if they think that’s going to be handmaidens to billionaire casino owners and the Koch Brothers, then that’s what we’re going to get. And that is almost certainly what we’re going to get and it will be what we deserve.

But then, at some point, that will change. The pendulum will swing because, while they may be able to con the rubes, the rich and the corporate have shown over and over that they too cannot help themselves from going too far. They too gorge themselves until they crash, from the Gilded Age, to the Depression, to the S&L scam to Enron to AIG and the banks in 2008, they just can’t stop themselves. And, of course, when they go, they take us- rubes and all- over the cliff with them. The best of the derivative scam is still yet to come and when it does, “socialized medicine,” regulation of banks and tax breaks for “job creators” might- just might- look very, very different.

Eventually, there will emerge a new breed of progressives who will rise up and take on the world they live in- by that time it will be a world gasping on pollution baking in solar radiation. They will no longer take stale bong hits of “social justice” race politics and will have long ago given up on backpedaling while they defend the shambles of 20th century liberalism altogether. They will be more media savvy and learn how to design their own advertising to share their message. Eventually, the American people will learn how to ask questions and navigate through political ads the same way they did with 19th century offerings for snake oil and “elixirs of youth.” It won’t be tomorrow, or even in the lifetime of anyone reading this, but Citizens United is actually a crucial step in the right direction.

A Portrait in Cowardice

There are two kinds of courage. The first is a mindset, an approach to life and its challenges. We often hear of the courage of those who, day in and day out, have to fight to overcome illness or physical disabilities. We have courageous teachers who go to work every day knowing full well only a small fraction of their students will go on to academic success. But they persevere. Then there is that second variety, when a person is suddenly faced with a defining moment that tests their integrity and defines their lives- the soldier who gets out of the line of fire but goes back to retrieve a wounded comrade or the marchers who crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge and refused to yield in face of teargas and billy clubs. These people are models for the rest of us- particularly those who did what was right when the stakes where the highest- and they are the example from which national identities are built.

And then there are those, like Colin Powell, who face their defining moment and show themselves to be moral cowards. Powell, is actively trying to cover his shame with his current column in Newsweek written to pimp his new and dishonest apology, ironically and unblushingly titled It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership. But there is no fig leaf broad enough to cover a moral failing that literally cost hundreds of thousands of people their very lives. It is no overstatement to say that had Colin Powell been a person of courage and with integrity- an actual leader- the world would be a very, very different place today.

From the outset, Colin Powell knew that invading Iraq was a disastrous idea. Unlike Dick Cheney, who did everything he could to avoid actually serving in the armed forces, Powell had built a stellar career in the military. Powell was also quite aware that because of his stature with the American people, his appointment as Secretary of State was a political boon for George W. Bush who was widely perceived as a lightweight in general and in foreign policy in particular. Bush was a man who knew nothing of the world and had never traveled outside of the borders of his home country. Powell knew full well that his appointment gave the American people comfort. He was going to be an adult in the room.

In the wake of 9/11, however, the lunatics took over the Bush asylum. Not only did Ppwell make his notorious Iraq warning that “if you break it you own it,” he also famously referred to the neo-cons who had taken over the Bush Administration to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as “fucking crazies.” Colin Powell knew what was happening around him and knew how disastrous it would be for everyone involved if the “fucking crazies” got their way. But what was equally clear at this crucial moment in our nation’s history is that Powell’s public stamp of approval for an invasion of Iraq was vital to Cheney and the rest of the Bush crowd. Without it, they literally could not have moved forward on their harebrained scheme to take over an Islamic country in the Middle East and then become an occupying power. Colin Powell not only knew better, but that he also knew that Dick Cheney and his cohorts were fabricating loads of utter bullshit to scoop out onto the American people. He was never fooled or convinced by the ridiculous, supposed Iraqi source, ironically known as “Curveball.” Powell had refused much of what Cheney’s henchman in chief, Scooter Libby, had tried to put in his disgraceful UN Speech. But, instead of standing tall and telling what he knew to be the truth- or at least not telling what doubted was real- Powell went along to get along and shamed himself. Colin Powell was, at that very moment, the last guardian of our nation’s health and instead of standing up for the country he claimed to love, he got stared down and sheepishly stepped out of the way and let the Crazy Train pass.

But, as disgraceful as his UN speech was, Powell’s ultimate test of character was still ahead of him, and it came in a White House hallway when George W. Bush told him it was going to be war and asked “Are you with me?” From the very beginning of the 2000 presidential campaign, Powell had questioned whether Bush could “fill a suit,” and here was his moment to call that empty suit out. Had Powell looked Bush back in the eye and said, “No, sir, I am not and if you follow this course of action I will resign my position,” Bush would almost certainly not have been able to go forward. A dissenting Powell- the one actually military man in the whole administration- who was willing to walk away rather than be party to this disaster would have set warning fireworks across the national sky. All of Cheney and Libby’s bogus “WMD” claims would have suddenly received much more scrutiny and skepticism. There would not have been a war in Iraq.

What makes Powell’s recent media forays so egregious is his dishonesty and, like the boss he once served, his inability to admit his lapse of character- and act that would require real courage. In his Newsweek column he appears to think we’ve all just forgotten about what really happened. He claims to have believed all the incredulous evidence he was given- despite being on record as actively questioning it. And, of course, even if what he now says were true, a real leader would have at the very least, the very least, demanded to see real proof and a serious case made for so drastic an action as sending tens of thousands of American servicemen and women into harm’s way. But he didn’t do any of that.

A book on “leadership” from someone who soiled himself in his moment of greatest calling should be regarded like a book on relationship advice by Bill Clinton. Powell should be up nights writhing in remorse for all the needless death and destruction that he could have steered us away from. But instead he now shamelessly works the paid speech circuit full time to try to publically paper over his chasm of his moral failure and to scrub the blood from his hands. And again like his former boss, he’s given a pass by his countrymen because the reality of his and the rest of the Bush Administration’s actions are just too tragic and costly to face squarely. And so we continue instead to pretend that our brave troops have been “defending our freedom” when the truth is our troops have been fighting for each other, just hoping the survive the burning furnace of Hell that Powell and company needlessly and carelessly hurled them into.

The Depp of Ego

It’s surprising that it took this long for the classic 1960′s series Dark Shadows to take it’s turn getting the retro-update treatment. The series has everything you could ask for, 60′s camp, iconic characters and even classic theme music. It’s a prime property to pick the pockets of middle-aged folk who almost all look back with nostalgic fondness for that simpler time and who can be counted on to pony up for a few hours of reliving it. This lucrative demographic is what has fueled a literal avalanche of remakes of iconic material from the 60′s and 70′s. The sad part generally, and with this latest Dark Shadows version in particular, is that these remakes are terrible and do nothing but remind us all not only of how interesting the originals were, but how dismal and imagination-free the current generation of entertainers are. And worst of all, how shamelessly egotistical they are. And no one is more guilty than Johnny Depp.

There can be reasons for remakes. Ian McKellan’s, Richard III set during World War I reveled in the timeless relevance of the play, but also spoke to a war that remains unexplainable almost a hundred years later. It was not staged solely to satisfy the I-wanna-play-dressup ego of its powerful star, or to make a fast buck at the mall cinema, it had a point. Tom Cruise’s hamfisted “Mission Impossible” series? Not so much. They had nothing to do with the classic series and were made for no other reason than to pull people into theaters to watch Cruise masterbate.

The same, sadly, can be said of Johnny Depp’s entire underachieving career. Lacking the gravitas to take on serious material, nor as his embarrassing and disastrous turn opposite Angelina Jolie in The Tourist demonstrated, enough masculinity to be a romantic leading man, Depp relies instead on goofy make-up and costumes and casual, take-nothing-seriously, cool to pose as his generation’s Dean Martin. Certain that nothing beyond just showing up to play the clown is ever really necessary to cash in on his brand, Depp shuffles through all of his ego driven vehicles on slacker’s auto-pilot. Like Martin, instead of actually stretching his talent and doing any real work or developing any new material, Depp just slaps on some make-up and relies on his wink-wink charm to keep the millions pouring into his bank account. He doesn’t give a shit.

But, like Cruise and the cadre of pandering re-makers, in catering to his own gargantuan ego, Depp does a great disservice to those who he mocks. His dreadful and tasteless turn as Willie Wonka overshadowed the wonderful job that Gene Wilder did in making that role a beloved classic. Wilder’s first few speechless minutes in his film blows away anything the gormless Depp did anywhere in his BFF Tim Burton’s anethestized version. Wilder was funny, menacing and endlessly charming because was a good enough actor to express those qualities. Depp was not funny, not charming and was really nothing but a white painted face hiding an entertainer far, far out of his depth. It’s a shame that audiences will be confused into straying from the original.

Like so many of his generation, Depp was transfixed by Dark Shadows, and by Jonathon Frid’s Barnabas Collins. While Frid’s menacing cool is probably lost on audiences today, in the late 60′s, like another supporting character from a low-budget TV show, Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, Frid’s Barnabas made him one of the biggest and most instantly recognizable stars of his day. With the power and money Depp culled from his Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Depp could get to be Barnabas Collins just as he got to be Willie Wonka. But, instead of exploring any of the rich themes of life and love that could be mined from Dark Shadows, he just once again just put on his white make-up and tried to turn it into the slapstick comedy that he and Burton have showed over and over again they don’t have to wit to do. It is just stoopid.

But there is a larger lesson here. Dark Shadows was not Richard III. What made the otherwise pedestrian soap opera a cultural phenomenon was Jonathon Frid’s performance which captured the imagination of a generation. That can’t be replicated no matter how much money and power you have. Dark Shadows, and Frid’s character, deserved better than to be turned into bad screwball comedy. Like the recent Star Trek reboot, it could have at least tried to be a serious endeavor that was respectful to both the original and those who loved it. But to be serious risks scrutiny. It’s so much easier just to be a joker.

We’ll see how Depp feels in 20 or 30 years when someone who’s a kid now grows up and wants to play Jack Sparrow in some hologram version of a Pirates re-boot. But, like Dean Martin, Depp won’t give a shit about that either as long as the check banks.

america’s baseball problem

Yesterday with some free time in the afternoon, I thought I’d do something I hadn’t done in years, watch a baseball game. That is a baseball game that wasn’t a playoff or a World’s Series game, just an old school, Saturday afternoon baseball game. I remembered that every year as I watch the end of the season I promise myself I will get into the game the following Spring, so I decided to make good on that promise to myself- but was surprised to find that there wasn’t a game on. I trolled the network channels that used to always have games on, but there was nothing. So, I did a search and found that there were actually several games on, but they were only available if you ponied up hundreds of dollars for a premium dish channel. So much for that idea.

But still curious, I did another search to see when the next game would be on either network or basic cable and the best I could find was one “regional” game every week or so. By regional, what they mean is they won’t say until gametime who’s playing and which game it is. So, if I like to follow any specific teams, with no idea who’s playing, there’s no reason for me to mark the date. I nevertheless looked at the possibilities they offered which were mostly habitually bad, small market teams. And I realized why I never get into baseball until the playoffs start. It’s because baseball has the same problem America does- it’s broken and while everyone knows how to fix it, no one is willing to do it. While the NFL thrives, baseball sits moribund like Blockbuster watching Netflix run them into the ground.

Baseball’s problem is the same as Wall Street’s, and America’s writ large. A few greedy people formed a network that rigs the system to advantage their own wallets at the expense of the game that provides their livelihood. They are happy to cook their golden goose and eat it today with no thought to what tomorrow might bring for even them, let alone the next generation. The very same problem we have as a nation. But this should come as no surprise because baseball has always been a mirror to the American soul. Baseball excluded black players until the post-war period just as the country did. Baseball also gave women the opportunity to join the game during the war, only to shut them down after to usher them back into the kitchens to the tune of Doris Day ditties as soon as it was over. But now, baseball has created it’s own grisly death spiral to which all Americans should take notice.

In it’s century-long heyday, baseball provided us with several virtues. First, it was above all an equalizer. Everyone went to baseball games, and most importantly, segregated seating obviously aside, they all sat together. You could have the mayor of your city, or your United States Senator, sitting in the row in front of you telling at the umpire and eating the same hot dog you were were. Now, your mayor sits in a luxury box sipping champagne while most baseball stadiums struggle to put regular fans into the seats. More and more teams play in almost empty venues. And there are good reasons for that.

Tickets to an average baseball game in 1965 cost around $2.25, or about $13 today adjusted for inflation. Today, decent seats for even the lowly Oakland A’s, who were featured in the recent film Moneyball, would set you back $30 to $50. And then, of course, you tack on parking for $17, and $8 for a hotdog, and a day for a family of four at the ballpark becomes an enterprise of several hundred bucks because everyone is shamelessly after their own pound of flesh.

In it’s glory years baseball was a family game and was a place that men in particular bonded with their children. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has written eloquently about afternoons she spent with her father at Ebbets Field. Families shared team allegiances and followed their players and scores and those who didn’t go to the ballpark on a Saturday afternoon watched on television. America was in the game. Today, the vast majority of hardcore baseball fans who are willing to spend $225 on products like DirecTV’s MLB Extra Innings to have access to televised games are middle-aged or older. The only people who grow up with baseball now are the sons and daughters of that ever winnowing demographic who are privy to premium cable and dish services. Once the great equalizer, baseball has now all but disappeared from the lives of the working class and the poor for whom it used to be a cultural staple.

But baseball’s problems go beyond television. Another reason for empty stadiums is the grotesque disparity between the quality of the teams. Small market teams, and those like the Oakland A’s who have small pocketed owners, are not seriously competitive. They are, literally, farm teams for the First World teams. If you were going to splash out to take your family to see a game would you cough up $200+ to see the Blue Jays play the Astros? Probably not.

Meanwhile, the NFL thrives. Thursday’s NFL Draft, where the teams did nothing but select players from the college ranks, was a huge ratings success for ESPN. Sure, much has been made of football’s appeal to a contemporary American culture that craves violence over finesse, but that’s far from the whole story. The NFL thrives because it’s regulates itself. It instituted profit sharing and a salary cap to equalize the sport and avoid any single team being able to horde the talent. The Green Bay Packers, whose stadium essentially can hold their whole town, and a low-income town to boot, were the best team in the game for most of the season. Some teams are habitually better than others, the Steelers and Patriots always field teams that will be in the championship hunt, but it’s never because of money advantage. They just know who they are and what kind of players will work for them. That’s identity and a legacy that fans can relate to, and part of the reason you see Steeler’s jerseys in the stands wherever they play. And, by having NFL games available on network television in every market on every Sunday- with no teams owning their own networks to cash in for themselves- the NFL ensures the next generation will be engaged in the sport and that virtually any kid who wants to can be part of the conversation the way baseball fans used to be.

The NFL has it’s own problems to be sure and, at an average ticket price of $60, stadium attendance is down. It will have to address this at some point because half-full stadiums don’t make for good television. But the moral of the story here is one we should all consider during this election year. An open, unregulated market that allows people to realize their greediest, most selfish and least patriotic drives at the expense of the greater whole is one that will inevitably eat itself. We all blithely followed George W. Bush, brandishing the banner of Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of American social cannibalism, to the very brink of ruin. Unless we yank control of our economy back from the banks and energy and health insurance corporations who are literally feasting on the flesh of our children and shitting out toxins we will be living in an empty stadium with a few rich people in luxury boxes as we all look around, and remember the cheers and camaraderie of days long gone- and what it used to be like to be American.