If this administration does anything positive, it's consistently by mistake--good results remaining after poor strategies.
A brand new one may have just happened: The White House Correspondents Dinner. There were no big splashes of controversy following this year's event. I like that. I think you should, too.
45 banned his staffers from attending. The press moguls have been skewering him, and them, and some got personal insults showered upon them at last year's gala-debacle. They had it coming, but if I were them, I'm not sure I would show up this year either.
Not that the White House Correspondents Association is at fault, at least not that much. They invited comedian Michelle Wolf to rip themselves and the White House press corps, and she did a terrific job of it. I'm sure 45, as the protective father figure, wanted to keep Sarah Sanders from getting her feelings hurt again--as if historian Ron Chernow, author of outstanding biographies of Washington and Hamilton and this year's featured speaker, would have done that.
This isn't that bad an idea, though. Journalists and those they cover have gotten pretty palsy-walsy in recent decades. The lens through which their reportage and those they report about have become more opaque and tainted.
It has served to create an alternative culture in which elites in media, government and culture have mingled almost by requirement. This serves none of us well.
It's a sophisticated game, one that has been going on for far longer than we think. Government staffers allow information to leak in various ways, some of which 'not for confirmation,' which means "I'll give you this if you don't use my name." The reduction of pure integrity is done to assist both sides of the table: One of which wouldn't have the information otherwise, the other seeks protection of their positions--either their very jobs or the access by which they have to a person of greater power. If you've ever heard the phrase "deep background," it means that the information you're absorbing was delivered, and came, with a mutually backscratching price.
The delicacy of this balance must remain ongoing. Sources become more reliable with time; the reporter knows the number to call for shadow confirmation of what they've heard from one other source which may or may not be familiar or that reliable. Journalists often use the two-source rule before 'going with the story': If two independent sources, who otherwise wouldn't know the other has the information, confirm its veracity, it's enough of a fact to put into a story and allow the greater public to see and react to it.
When things get too friendly between sources and journalists, the latter are more inclined not to go with stories they know shed poor light on the former. It's not exactly a cover-up, because other news sources may be looking for the same thing and one never wants to be 'beaten' on a key story. But it means that the journalist won't be immediately, and with passion, following up on a factoid they know they need to confirm. And maybe, with luck, the moment will pass, we'll all get on other things, and the factoid will have been largely forgotten, or the context in which it applies the greatest will have run its course. It's true especially if, as a journalist, I'm close enough to the source to believe, not without reason, that I'm the only person with this information for the present moment. I'll pass on an 'exclusive', something the source would never otherwise know, to continue to allow the conduit of information to keep flowing. This is tricky stuff and can bounce back badly on the journalist and the source, so it's a card that cannot be played often. Think of Deep Throat during Watergate: the meeting in the parking garage, in which both exchange what they know.
The other game is also played. If I'm a government staffer, I will definitely want to get to know certain journalists well and immediately, so as to get their trust and be the person they call first. I might do this because I don't like my boss, or because I do and I'm a willing 'plant' for the administration to spread news people will like, or create a buffer for news they might not like. So I'd better not be so full of myself to believe I'll be able to fool a journalist. I'll give enough information to be credible. I'm also aware that the journalist will be following up.
Either way, more distance between government staffers and journalists cannot be a bad thing. It may serve to keep both sides a bit more honest, if that's a term that can ever be utilized here. Because none of it is ever 100% complete: Nobody has all the information available, and even if they did, it wouldn't be in that person's best interest to let the other side know that it has. Accurate, reasonably thorough but quick impressions are the territory of journalism; completeness is that of history. Time is journalism's enemy; it is history's greatest ally.
Does this mean "fake news" is rampant and routine? Is 45 right? No, he isn't. That continues to be all about the fact--and I do mean fact--that he's not getting the comments and arrangement of facts (or in his case, pseudo-facts) that he's going to be pleased with, ever. He wants one news source (and with Fox, he is as close to it as anyone has ever been) to say exactly what he wants--a direct government- propagandized news source.
He won't get that. Even some of Fox's commentators have recently sounded off in ways 45 finds displeasing. And with relationships between journalists and sources so ongoing and free-wheeling, especially with friends inside this White House holding very little back because they understand what an enormous threat this president is, the combined effects of all these relationships serve to deliver enough information for us to gain a sufficient perspective on what this person is really like and how he intends to continue governing.
So if 45 tells his people to stay away from the WHCD, it won't solve his problems and it isn't likely to create many for those covering him. Those games go on in places we're not used to seeing (Though there are parties leading up to the WHCD that go on from the previous Tuesday, or so says Mark Leibovich in his book about the snarkiness of Washington called This Town. This year, 45 finally caved in and said that staffers were allowed to attend the pre-party parties--at which journalists could, and no doubt did, ask them for additional information or set up interviews to do so. See? Everybody gets what they want anyhow.). I'm not even sure he understood that going in, which is why so many excellent inside sources were developed so soon. Now that that toothpaste is out of the tube, it's proving to be problematic to stuff it back in.
And if journalists don't get quite as cozy with those on whom they report and have to work a little harder to get scoops, that's all right, too. As adversarial as 45 wishes to make things between him and the press, in actuality sometimes things aren't quite adversarial enough. In journalism as in politics, half of what truly counts is what we know about what is said--and half what we don't know, comprised of what is not said.
If media people become as much the stars as those they cover, we should be a little suspicious of that. Leibovich's book starts with the funeral of NBC News' Tim Russert, who died suddenly in 2008. He reported a scenario in which a striking number of people basically feigned the depth of their condolences so they could show up and strike picture poses with, for instance, Morning Joe and Mika. (In a later discussion, he told me that John McCain's 2018 funeral was much the same--to see and be seen more than honoring a great statesman.)
This is hardly about 45 taking anything like a high road; it's about the leftovers of a dinner of triteness amounting to ongoing pettiness. Now, more than ever, we need to have trustworthy sources of information. A compromise that results in a bit more distance between reporters and sources may just keep more of the former from being compromised by the latter.
In dealing with a president who has lied more than 10,000 times, and counting, it's vital that we extend a reasonable reliance upon the integrity of those from whom we get our straight facts about this liar. Since the results of those efforts have yielded mixed success, a little less self-congratulation and celebration of them feel more appropriate nowadays.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Monday, April 15, 2019
Avoiding the Turkish Echo Chamber
The journalist, who should be in jail elsewhere, kept pounding away at the utter despair of the situation.
"There's nothing that can be done," he kept saying.
He made it clear that in Turkey, his native country from which he fled for being someone who poked holes in the current, severely repressive regime of president Recep Tayyiv Erdogan, the government has nearly all bases covered with respect to the display of information about it. Resist, and torture may be waiting for you. Most certainly, there will be prison.
The Erdogan regime has routinely harassed journalists who dared to publish something against the government line. One of them was Mahir Zeynalov, who in 2014 literally had to leave by his back door to keep the agents from seizing him. He spoke of his situation at Marquette University last Thursday.
In hiding, he couldn't meet with any of his friends because all knew they, too, would be questioned and harassed by police. In fact, 40 of his friends are now in prison. "It was basically solitary confinement," Zeynalov said. He managed to get to the States, and has a six-year sentence hanging over his head for "political criticism" upon his return.
He couldn't return to his home for fear of arrest, either. Spied upon in their texting and e-mails, Zeynalov and his wife invented a language with which they could communicate (How, exactly, they did this he didn't explain.). His wife tried to join him in America and managed to gain a visa. The plane was forced to land in Germany, Zeynalov said, and she was taken off and sent back to Turkey. "She was called an agent of ISIS," he said. But she made it here in 2017.
International intrigue in Turkish repression isn't that rare. So pervasive is the Erdogan government's reach in these matters that it succeeded in getting an event cancelled at Columbia University, Zeynalov said.
It tried to do the same thing to Marquette last Thursday, said Zeynalov. Obviously, it was unsuccessful. But to know that it had the absolute chutzpah to try such a stunt (except who can blame them--it worked the first time) is, to say the least, chilling and invasive.
It also implies that the Erdogan government has enough in common with 45's gang of thugs that, at the very least, its attempt would not meet with condemnation. No, I haven't read a thing about this, either.
Erdogan is riding the same wave of nationalist populism that got 45 to sneak into the presidency's back door via the Electoral College. Zeynalov, now the Chief Editor of an internet site called Globe Post Media, broke it down for us, which made it all the more chilling. In order for populism to work, he said, you need:
"There's nothing that can be done," he kept saying.
He made it clear that in Turkey, his native country from which he fled for being someone who poked holes in the current, severely repressive regime of president Recep Tayyiv Erdogan, the government has nearly all bases covered with respect to the display of information about it. Resist, and torture may be waiting for you. Most certainly, there will be prison.
The Erdogan regime has routinely harassed journalists who dared to publish something against the government line. One of them was Mahir Zeynalov, who in 2014 literally had to leave by his back door to keep the agents from seizing him. He spoke of his situation at Marquette University last Thursday.
In hiding, he couldn't meet with any of his friends because all knew they, too, would be questioned and harassed by police. In fact, 40 of his friends are now in prison. "It was basically solitary confinement," Zeynalov said. He managed to get to the States, and has a six-year sentence hanging over his head for "political criticism" upon his return.
He couldn't return to his home for fear of arrest, either. Spied upon in their texting and e-mails, Zeynalov and his wife invented a language with which they could communicate (How, exactly, they did this he didn't explain.). His wife tried to join him in America and managed to gain a visa. The plane was forced to land in Germany, Zeynalov said, and she was taken off and sent back to Turkey. "She was called an agent of ISIS," he said. But she made it here in 2017.
International intrigue in Turkish repression isn't that rare. So pervasive is the Erdogan government's reach in these matters that it succeeded in getting an event cancelled at Columbia University, Zeynalov said.
It tried to do the same thing to Marquette last Thursday, said Zeynalov. Obviously, it was unsuccessful. But to know that it had the absolute chutzpah to try such a stunt (except who can blame them--it worked the first time) is, to say the least, chilling and invasive.
It also implies that the Erdogan government has enough in common with 45's gang of thugs that, at the very least, its attempt would not meet with condemnation. No, I haven't read a thing about this, either.
Erdogan is riding the same wave of nationalist populism that got 45 to sneak into the presidency's back door via the Electoral College. Zeynalov, now the Chief Editor of an internet site called Globe Post Media, broke it down for us, which made it all the more chilling. In order for populism to work, he said, you need:
- An enemy--someone to hate;
- A charismatic leader who calls out the elite establishment;
- Assistance from mainstream media (one tries to squash it, the other manipulates it with his tweets and bully pulpit);
- An economy where most people are working and unemployment is low;
- Low interest rates;
- Economic anxiety, meaning future fatalism about the coming effects of automation;
- Cultural insecurity--persuading the people that they are being humiliated by foreign forces; and
- The victim/blame card, where the leadership never has to take responsibility for any of the country's problems.
Go back and substitute 45 for Erdogan. You get the picture. And really, the only thing that separates us from Turkey is the continued independence of journalists, tweeting notwithstanding. On top of his media repression, Erdogan is extremely persuasive--"People continue to think the fix is on against them," Zeynalov said--and 45 has his base in a state of constant, nonsensical reinforcement--but here, there are still publications, websites and television networks that won't let him get away with it.
More to the point, the Supreme Court hasn't reversed the effects of the Sullivan v. New York Times case in 1964, which establishes an extremely high bar for enforcement of libel suits brought by political candidates and politically-elected or appointed officials. Much in line with the spirit of the constitutional phraseology of Article 1, which allows members of Congress to say just about anything they wish on the floor of their respective chambers without fear of legal vengeance--"for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place"--the Court said that actual malice must take place for any attack on a politician in order for it even to be considered at trial: that the publisher must know beforehand that not only was the information false, but damagingly false.
It hasn't, yet. But Clarence Thomas has called for a review of that concept. 45 has wondered out loud more than once that media (which is to say, media that publishes something he doesn't like, a staple with tyrants) should be liable to lawsuits for attacking him. And six members of Georgia's state legislature have introduced a bill in which the state's government would establish an ethics board for journalists, thus screening those who report on their activities.
Beyond that, Devin Nunes (R-CA), 45's former cat's paw on the House Intelligence Committee (another wonderful by-product of the 2018 mid-terms; we've heard little from him since except what's to follow here), announced recently that he would go after the Sacramento Bee for misrepresenting what the Bee called a "cocaine-fueled party with sex workers" on a yacht owned by a winery he partly owns in California. He claimed that he had to spend big bucks on defending himself against the charge during the past campaign, which, by the way, he won. He didn't ask the Bee, which never accused him of being on that yacht at that time or for being any part of it, for a retraction or correction, which is required in the state of California as a necessary part of the libel process. Nonetheless, he wants to recover damages.
In the end, no harm, no foul, because Sullivan. Nunes is still in Congress, so this is pretty much dead on arrival in court (except if he has money, which he does, he can make the Bee spend a lot of its own money, thus partly accomplishing his goal). In Turkey, though, such a story about anyone connected with Erdogan most likely would never see the light of day.
Things that diminish little by little, place by place, incident by incident, are difficult to detect on the daily radar, especially in a country as large as ours. But it's becoming clear that, to keep our nation from becoming an echo chamber like Turkey, the free press is, and must be, the bulwark that stands in the way of that utter disaster of token democracy and anaconda-like control. As noted above, everything is in place for us to become a land of coercively uninformed bobbleheads, something for which 45 lusts in his corrupted soul. Nancy Pelosi was right in her "60 Minutes" interview: We have enough resistance to survive one term of him, but probably not for another.
We are closer to Turkey's cruel fate than we'd like to realize. We don't want American journalists, fleeing prosecution just for doing their jobs, to admit to another country's listeners that there isn't anything anybody can do about it anymore. The free press is, really, all we have left.
But that means, too, that the Julian Assanges of the world must be given sufficient latitude to do their snooping against governments including our own, exposing uncomfortable, brand new things or those long since buried, based on truth and the facts regardless of motivation. Freedom of expression, like the rest of them listed under the Bill of Rights, cuts both ways.
More on that later.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
In the end, no harm, no foul, because Sullivan. Nunes is still in Congress, so this is pretty much dead on arrival in court (except if he has money, which he does, he can make the Bee spend a lot of its own money, thus partly accomplishing his goal). In Turkey, though, such a story about anyone connected with Erdogan most likely would never see the light of day.
Things that diminish little by little, place by place, incident by incident, are difficult to detect on the daily radar, especially in a country as large as ours. But it's becoming clear that, to keep our nation from becoming an echo chamber like Turkey, the free press is, and must be, the bulwark that stands in the way of that utter disaster of token democracy and anaconda-like control. As noted above, everything is in place for us to become a land of coercively uninformed bobbleheads, something for which 45 lusts in his corrupted soul. Nancy Pelosi was right in her "60 Minutes" interview: We have enough resistance to survive one term of him, but probably not for another.
We are closer to Turkey's cruel fate than we'd like to realize. We don't want American journalists, fleeing prosecution just for doing their jobs, to admit to another country's listeners that there isn't anything anybody can do about it anymore. The free press is, really, all we have left.
But that means, too, that the Julian Assanges of the world must be given sufficient latitude to do their snooping against governments including our own, exposing uncomfortable, brand new things or those long since buried, based on truth and the facts regardless of motivation. Freedom of expression, like the rest of them listed under the Bill of Rights, cuts both ways.
More on that later.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Another Wait in Line, Another Confrontation with Culture
Different day, different grocery, different line. This one didn't have the automatic checkout counters. Not that I insist on buying groceries without them, but this one's in the neighborhood.
And not that the line was long. I was the second of two. Nothing all that bothersome. So I waited.
He was counting his change to get the exact amount. Maybe he didn't have an extra single. Maybe he just insisted that it comes out to be exact.
It was annoying. He didn't notice me at his left, not three feet away. Or maybe he did, and I didn't matter to him. But if one chooses to be in a line, one chooses, too, to wait for those ahead, regardless of their individual quirks.
There are people like that. They are about my age. And, I suppose, in the same way that I insist on being actually waited on by a checkout person, he insisted on not carrying around as much change in his pocket any longer. And the world could wait another minute or two. So there.
This one shouted his allegiance to the world. He wore a red "Keep America Great 2020" cap. His campaign, too, had begun. So there.
I must say that here, on the east side of Milwaukee, I don't see many of those folks. I must also say that I'm rather glad. I mean, there's nothing really wrong with them. They might even help me if I'd fallen, despite having my Obama t-shirt on, which occasionally I do in the summer. If he fell, I would help him, despite the awful cap.
I can't abide by his support for this monster, though. Logic just doesn't work, and I go with logic pretty often.
I noticed, though, another very definite item he was wearing, this one pinned to his jacket: A pro-life button. To me, that shouted far louder.
The two are simply combined: Keep 45 as president, and they get the Supreme Court they need for the rest of their lives. And, admittedly, so far, so good for them. With Mitch McConnell riding shotgun and in literal control of appointment processes--so much so that he's cancelling the need to have filibusters by the opposing party to block some of them, as retched and unqualified as they may be--the assembly line's well underway on each federal level.
But they're waiting for the crescendo of the opera: The reversal of Roe v. Wade, and what they believe will be the cancellation of abortion in America. Ruth Bader Ginsberg's health is reportedly all right for the moment, but that thread is thin. That's what's at stake here: the right of the woman to choose how to deal with her, and only her, own pregnancy, and whether beyond reasonable limitations that's anybody's business but hers, her doctor's, and her god's (to paraphrase Colin Powell, a Republican, at least the last time I looked).
Really, that's all they want and have ever wanted. And then God himself (a male, of course) will rule over the land unto eternity, instead of these horrible sinners, and all will be well. Foreign policy and making NATO pay up and tariffs and even immigration are secondary, though connected to the same mentality: the world has always been a little too complicated. Time to re-simplify, even though the world has moved far beyond them. In fact, because the world has moved far beyond them, it's their turn to strike back against it.
Especially if you're pregnant and would rather not follow through. Then you are in hell. And you belong there.
That's why the excessively religiously afflicted shout that once pregnant, it isn't a choice. But it is. The technology's here for all to utilize. It's only not a choice if you don't know of the alternatives.
And I know women who have utilized it, one of whom even wrote about it in a book. They seem pretty decent people to me. Even the one who died when the medical expert made a mistake. It was within the gestation limits of the law. It was in a hospital. It was scheduled. Nobody was panicking; she just didn't want it. It went terribly wrong. It worked perfectly on the fetus, but didn't avoid her the way it was supposed to, and she died.
I've always wanted to ask those bent on condemning those who make that choice: Do you believe that the soul of that woman, a colleague of mine, went to the everlasting fires of hell? Do you? And tell me, please, how you can make that conclusion? How can you know what happens after death?
A worthless pursuit, though. I'd get the Bible quoted somehow, and to compare quotes is to fight on their turf. One always loses in a way, because it's the thinking outside of that box that leads people to enlightenment, and that's what scares them: That others are not exclusively tied to a good book that isn't the only book that discusses morality and history, and which may or may not be accurate in parts.
I don't mind that fellow and wouldn't mind any of it whatsoever if our culture and political status weren't so tied to the support of someone who is simply using the faithful to get his way, dealt with his vengeful attitude, for what appears to be the sole purpose of making himself famous and crushing anyone who deems to stand in his way. And he sure is doing that, so far, while he ignores the larger effects.
That's what I really want to tell him: He's using you. He doesn't care one bit about you. You're encouraging him to ruin us. Us, which includes you. There's another chance to turn this away next year, but based on the state Supreme Court election result in Wisconsin it will be a much closer-run thing that it once appeared.
The shock effect has worn off on most of us. The sad fact of the matter is that there's much more of this mentality out there than we ever wanted to admit. It is as threatening as it is sad, and it will take another gigantic effort to thwart it.
Whenever I see these buttons or signs or banners, I think about all that. And all I did was stand in line, again.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
And not that the line was long. I was the second of two. Nothing all that bothersome. So I waited.
He was counting his change to get the exact amount. Maybe he didn't have an extra single. Maybe he just insisted that it comes out to be exact.
It was annoying. He didn't notice me at his left, not three feet away. Or maybe he did, and I didn't matter to him. But if one chooses to be in a line, one chooses, too, to wait for those ahead, regardless of their individual quirks.
There are people like that. They are about my age. And, I suppose, in the same way that I insist on being actually waited on by a checkout person, he insisted on not carrying around as much change in his pocket any longer. And the world could wait another minute or two. So there.
This one shouted his allegiance to the world. He wore a red "Keep America Great 2020" cap. His campaign, too, had begun. So there.
I must say that here, on the east side of Milwaukee, I don't see many of those folks. I must also say that I'm rather glad. I mean, there's nothing really wrong with them. They might even help me if I'd fallen, despite having my Obama t-shirt on, which occasionally I do in the summer. If he fell, I would help him, despite the awful cap.
I can't abide by his support for this monster, though. Logic just doesn't work, and I go with logic pretty often.
I noticed, though, another very definite item he was wearing, this one pinned to his jacket: A pro-life button. To me, that shouted far louder.
The two are simply combined: Keep 45 as president, and they get the Supreme Court they need for the rest of their lives. And, admittedly, so far, so good for them. With Mitch McConnell riding shotgun and in literal control of appointment processes--so much so that he's cancelling the need to have filibusters by the opposing party to block some of them, as retched and unqualified as they may be--the assembly line's well underway on each federal level.
But they're waiting for the crescendo of the opera: The reversal of Roe v. Wade, and what they believe will be the cancellation of abortion in America. Ruth Bader Ginsberg's health is reportedly all right for the moment, but that thread is thin. That's what's at stake here: the right of the woman to choose how to deal with her, and only her, own pregnancy, and whether beyond reasonable limitations that's anybody's business but hers, her doctor's, and her god's (to paraphrase Colin Powell, a Republican, at least the last time I looked).
Really, that's all they want and have ever wanted. And then God himself (a male, of course) will rule over the land unto eternity, instead of these horrible sinners, and all will be well. Foreign policy and making NATO pay up and tariffs and even immigration are secondary, though connected to the same mentality: the world has always been a little too complicated. Time to re-simplify, even though the world has moved far beyond them. In fact, because the world has moved far beyond them, it's their turn to strike back against it.
Especially if you're pregnant and would rather not follow through. Then you are in hell. And you belong there.
That's why the excessively religiously afflicted shout that once pregnant, it isn't a choice. But it is. The technology's here for all to utilize. It's only not a choice if you don't know of the alternatives.
And I know women who have utilized it, one of whom even wrote about it in a book. They seem pretty decent people to me. Even the one who died when the medical expert made a mistake. It was within the gestation limits of the law. It was in a hospital. It was scheduled. Nobody was panicking; she just didn't want it. It went terribly wrong. It worked perfectly on the fetus, but didn't avoid her the way it was supposed to, and she died.
I've always wanted to ask those bent on condemning those who make that choice: Do you believe that the soul of that woman, a colleague of mine, went to the everlasting fires of hell? Do you? And tell me, please, how you can make that conclusion? How can you know what happens after death?
A worthless pursuit, though. I'd get the Bible quoted somehow, and to compare quotes is to fight on their turf. One always loses in a way, because it's the thinking outside of that box that leads people to enlightenment, and that's what scares them: That others are not exclusively tied to a good book that isn't the only book that discusses morality and history, and which may or may not be accurate in parts.
I don't mind that fellow and wouldn't mind any of it whatsoever if our culture and political status weren't so tied to the support of someone who is simply using the faithful to get his way, dealt with his vengeful attitude, for what appears to be the sole purpose of making himself famous and crushing anyone who deems to stand in his way. And he sure is doing that, so far, while he ignores the larger effects.
That's what I really want to tell him: He's using you. He doesn't care one bit about you. You're encouraging him to ruin us. Us, which includes you. There's another chance to turn this away next year, but based on the state Supreme Court election result in Wisconsin it will be a much closer-run thing that it once appeared.
The shock effect has worn off on most of us. The sad fact of the matter is that there's much more of this mentality out there than we ever wanted to admit. It is as threatening as it is sad, and it will take another gigantic effort to thwart it.
Whenever I see these buttons or signs or banners, I think about all that. And all I did was stand in line, again.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
The NFL Owners Blew It
They blew it. The NFL blew it.
They let him get away. The owners had a chance to let 45 into their tight little cadre of billionaire franchise mavens, just five years ago.
They said no to his attempt to purchase the Buffalo Bills. Not that they didn't have good reason. I mean, would you let this guy take over anything, considering his track record, even before laying the country to waste (too)?
But they knew all about him. Nobody's allowed inside this very exclusive club, described by Mark Leibovich in his book Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times, without serious vetting. They knew 45 had had pro football ownership experience--in the World Football League in the 1980s, when he owned the New Jersey Generals. That league learned about his flim-flamsiness way back then. They learned that he misrepresented his true worth--sound familiar? The NFL owners saw also him, accurately, as an threat to their neat little club (the Cowboys' Jerry Jones, being probably the insider who represents that, being a vocal and obnoxious 45 backer besides running his mouth and making mostly empty threats, wouldn't you know), and turned him away.
Think of it. With that to take up his time, with that secretive group to try to dominate (Is there any doubt that that's what he would have tried to do?), running for president, though it had occurred to him before, might have been put on permanent hold while he would have run rampant over norms and practices in that establishment. Too.
Such is one of the points made by Leibovich, author of the snarky This Town, about the attitudes that make Washington, DC, the snark capital of the world, and a unique glimpse into why it doesn't work very well. His latest work is entitled Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times, a look at how the NFL, an oligarchy if there ever was one (the exception, of course, being the Green Bay Packers, which are "publicly" owned, so to speak, except it acts very much like the rest when it comes to decisions and governance), maintains its brand through controversy after controversy by getting up-close with some franchises from a fan's perspective.
Like his first work, Leibovich pours on the sarcasm about how much of the NFL concerns dynamics between very few people to create the addictive facade of entertainment that it is. It doesn't delve deep into concussions and other debilitating injuries; it doesn't have to but it does touch on the league's efforts to dilute them. It is far more concerned with self-absorption and ego-massaging.
Yet, it makes all kinds of sense as to why the owners wouldn't allow 45 to enter their realm. The watchwords for NFL ownership and how it's supposed to reflect the league's brand (always, always check the brand) are subtlety, soft-stepping, and a devotion to back-benching. Flamboyance is frowned upon, which is why Jerry Jones is, proudly according to him, considered something of an outlier and the Washington Redskins' Dan Snyder, who can't even do that very well, either, is internally and thoroughly disliked. If you history buffs out there recall robber barons such as Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt, you're getting warm about these folks and their general demeanors.
But they are intense competitors and owners of far more than their teams. They are almost all male (Virginia McClaskey, daughter of George Halas and owner of the Chicago Bears, is the exception) and, along with their deep pockets, some of the unattached ones got themselves re-attached to some very leggy friends. Steve Tisch, New York Giants' owner, was one, but apparently lost her (as of 2017). So is, or was, Robert Kraft, New England Patriots' owner, who because of recent charges of solicitation of prostitution (which he will be defending in court, after having publicly apologized for it then pled not guilty--go figure), may or may not have relinquished his own gorgeous blonde who age-wise could probably be a grand-daughter, a substitute for his deeply mourned, late wife.
Leibovich is a Pats' fan--he is aware of all others' deep hate--so his obsession with getting quality interviews with Kraft, coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady informs much of the book. It probably should anyway, since, like it or not, the three have now combined for six Super Bowl victories, including two of the last three. The results follow:
They let him get away. The owners had a chance to let 45 into their tight little cadre of billionaire franchise mavens, just five years ago.
They said no to his attempt to purchase the Buffalo Bills. Not that they didn't have good reason. I mean, would you let this guy take over anything, considering his track record, even before laying the country to waste (too)?
But they knew all about him. Nobody's allowed inside this very exclusive club, described by Mark Leibovich in his book Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times, without serious vetting. They knew 45 had had pro football ownership experience--in the World Football League in the 1980s, when he owned the New Jersey Generals. That league learned about his flim-flamsiness way back then. They learned that he misrepresented his true worth--sound familiar? The NFL owners saw also him, accurately, as an threat to their neat little club (the Cowboys' Jerry Jones, being probably the insider who represents that, being a vocal and obnoxious 45 backer besides running his mouth and making mostly empty threats, wouldn't you know), and turned him away.
Think of it. With that to take up his time, with that secretive group to try to dominate (Is there any doubt that that's what he would have tried to do?), running for president, though it had occurred to him before, might have been put on permanent hold while he would have run rampant over norms and practices in that establishment. Too.
Such is one of the points made by Leibovich, author of the snarky This Town, about the attitudes that make Washington, DC, the snark capital of the world, and a unique glimpse into why it doesn't work very well. His latest work is entitled Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times, a look at how the NFL, an oligarchy if there ever was one (the exception, of course, being the Green Bay Packers, which are "publicly" owned, so to speak, except it acts very much like the rest when it comes to decisions and governance), maintains its brand through controversy after controversy by getting up-close with some franchises from a fan's perspective.
Like his first work, Leibovich pours on the sarcasm about how much of the NFL concerns dynamics between very few people to create the addictive facade of entertainment that it is. It doesn't delve deep into concussions and other debilitating injuries; it doesn't have to but it does touch on the league's efforts to dilute them. It is far more concerned with self-absorption and ego-massaging.
Yet, it makes all kinds of sense as to why the owners wouldn't allow 45 to enter their realm. The watchwords for NFL ownership and how it's supposed to reflect the league's brand (always, always check the brand) are subtlety, soft-stepping, and a devotion to back-benching. Flamboyance is frowned upon, which is why Jerry Jones is, proudly according to him, considered something of an outlier and the Washington Redskins' Dan Snyder, who can't even do that very well, either, is internally and thoroughly disliked. If you history buffs out there recall robber barons such as Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt, you're getting warm about these folks and their general demeanors.
But they are intense competitors and owners of far more than their teams. They are almost all male (Virginia McClaskey, daughter of George Halas and owner of the Chicago Bears, is the exception) and, along with their deep pockets, some of the unattached ones got themselves re-attached to some very leggy friends. Steve Tisch, New York Giants' owner, was one, but apparently lost her (as of 2017). So is, or was, Robert Kraft, New England Patriots' owner, who because of recent charges of solicitation of prostitution (which he will be defending in court, after having publicly apologized for it then pled not guilty--go figure), may or may not have relinquished his own gorgeous blonde who age-wise could probably be a grand-daughter, a substitute for his deeply mourned, late wife.
Leibovich is a Pats' fan--he is aware of all others' deep hate--so his obsession with getting quality interviews with Kraft, coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady informs much of the book. It probably should anyway, since, like it or not, the three have now combined for six Super Bowl victories, including two of the last three. The results follow:
- Kraft: Open to much discussion, but seemed manipulative at times.
- Belichick: Never mind. He's a ghost. The inartful dodger.
- Brady: Oddly cooperative at certain times and in certain ways. Never much more than opaque. He has his own brand now, so, you know.
In charge of the bulk of dealing with these egos is Roger Goodell, the much beleaguered commissioner, whose judgments were, and are, much maligned--letting off Ray Rice easy, the ridiculous deflategate, the delayed torture of CTE, and the like. His attitude toward the press is much like the above, a combination of all three, in fact. He knows how to handle those who seek the real truth, the underlying truth of matters, which is to say: He never, ever delivers it.
But Leibovich does his best to find it anyhow. What drives these moguls? First, the need to have a plaything above and beyond the businesses in which they originally made their fortunes: That's the role of owning these franchises. After all, they don't make anything. They don't mean anything besides whatever the fans and media want them to mean. If the NFL decided to close shop (not absurd, considering former lockouts), would something else spring up in its stead? Of course it would. Remember 1981 and the strike? Substitutes filled the rosters, fans showed up, and on the league went.
We have to have the NFL. It defines us. That's why Colin Kaepernick couldn't get any traction with his otherwise very meaningful protest against police brutality against black people--made exactly where it should have been to have maximum exposure (What else could he have done? Knelt in Carnegie Hall?), and found himself on the street. But it wasn't the essence of the protest that got him there. It was 45, who decided to utilize that as a rallying cry for the blue collar faithful who just can't live without their teams. He described the damage done in strictly anti-military terms, which had nothing to do with it. The players, somewhat confused and divided, nervous about their own employment status, mostly didn't and couldn't stand up for Kaepernick. The owners, seeing that the loudest fans (i.e. the ones who show up on Sunday, and where there's smoke, there's fire) fell in behind 45 and tried their best not to take it on outwardly and decisively, even though a significant percentage of NFL players are black.
But it's why they kowtowed to 45 that matters. 45 found a way to get back at those who had rejected him, knowing he could get under their skins in a way that he's particularly good at. He tweeted and ranted and gesticulated at rallies and kept the spotlight on them, making sure that they understood the threats to their playthings. And they listened.
They listened because they knew the advantages they were enjoying, taking money from 45's adherents. They listened because the richer you get, the more paranoid you are about losing your money. They listened because, as the living, breathing, most visible adherents of the biggest of big business, they voted for him. (Come now. They must have. If not, why didn't most of them turn on him immediately?)
They knew that potentially, they'd have to pay Kaepernick for blackballing him from the league. And they have because loose lips sank those ships and someone got messy with their e-mails. But hell, they have those millions. Chump change. Flick the hands together to remove the crumbs. Let's move on.
Bonding with a monster like 45 and have, really, no cultural or financial accountability, is like brushing bugs off sleeves. It's all good, then: another season comes on, all is well, and the Pats win again. 45 wins, too, in every single way: Without paying a dime for it, he embarrassed the league his own way and got away with it; he ginned up racism with the pseudo-patriotism that draws the faithful like flies to garbage; and he let the owners know that, unless they state the opposite clearly and decisively, in the twisted way that he's known for, he owns them.
I'm not sure what is worse: Having these selfish, bloated, egocentric, excessively rich people govern the thinking of so many of us (including me, since I haven't stopped caring about the Packers, but less than before), or having one of them, in deep revenge, control them in ways they cannot imagine and might not be able to forecast next time (Think there won't be a next time? Think again.). It is so much where we are as a country now. It is not a very good place.
As is true about everything else, we are his playthings, too. So are the immigrants. So are the people so slavishly, mindlessly, blindly devoted to him. So is the rest of the world. That's what we have here. So thanks to Mark Leibovich for pointing that out, as disturbing as it is.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
But Leibovich does his best to find it anyhow. What drives these moguls? First, the need to have a plaything above and beyond the businesses in which they originally made their fortunes: That's the role of owning these franchises. After all, they don't make anything. They don't mean anything besides whatever the fans and media want them to mean. If the NFL decided to close shop (not absurd, considering former lockouts), would something else spring up in its stead? Of course it would. Remember 1981 and the strike? Substitutes filled the rosters, fans showed up, and on the league went.
We have to have the NFL. It defines us. That's why Colin Kaepernick couldn't get any traction with his otherwise very meaningful protest against police brutality against black people--made exactly where it should have been to have maximum exposure (What else could he have done? Knelt in Carnegie Hall?), and found himself on the street. But it wasn't the essence of the protest that got him there. It was 45, who decided to utilize that as a rallying cry for the blue collar faithful who just can't live without their teams. He described the damage done in strictly anti-military terms, which had nothing to do with it. The players, somewhat confused and divided, nervous about their own employment status, mostly didn't and couldn't stand up for Kaepernick. The owners, seeing that the loudest fans (i.e. the ones who show up on Sunday, and where there's smoke, there's fire) fell in behind 45 and tried their best not to take it on outwardly and decisively, even though a significant percentage of NFL players are black.
But it's why they kowtowed to 45 that matters. 45 found a way to get back at those who had rejected him, knowing he could get under their skins in a way that he's particularly good at. He tweeted and ranted and gesticulated at rallies and kept the spotlight on them, making sure that they understood the threats to their playthings. And they listened.
They listened because they knew the advantages they were enjoying, taking money from 45's adherents. They listened because the richer you get, the more paranoid you are about losing your money. They listened because, as the living, breathing, most visible adherents of the biggest of big business, they voted for him. (Come now. They must have. If not, why didn't most of them turn on him immediately?)
They knew that potentially, they'd have to pay Kaepernick for blackballing him from the league. And they have because loose lips sank those ships and someone got messy with their e-mails. But hell, they have those millions. Chump change. Flick the hands together to remove the crumbs. Let's move on.
Bonding with a monster like 45 and have, really, no cultural or financial accountability, is like brushing bugs off sleeves. It's all good, then: another season comes on, all is well, and the Pats win again. 45 wins, too, in every single way: Without paying a dime for it, he embarrassed the league his own way and got away with it; he ginned up racism with the pseudo-patriotism that draws the faithful like flies to garbage; and he let the owners know that, unless they state the opposite clearly and decisively, in the twisted way that he's known for, he owns them.
I'm not sure what is worse: Having these selfish, bloated, egocentric, excessively rich people govern the thinking of so many of us (including me, since I haven't stopped caring about the Packers, but less than before), or having one of them, in deep revenge, control them in ways they cannot imagine and might not be able to forecast next time (Think there won't be a next time? Think again.). It is so much where we are as a country now. It is not a very good place.
As is true about everything else, we are his playthings, too. So are the immigrants. So are the people so slavishly, mindlessly, blindly devoted to him. So is the rest of the world. That's what we have here. So thanks to Mark Leibovich for pointing that out, as disturbing as it is.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Sunday, April 7, 2019
My Apolitical (?) Sunday Morning
All this happened in three hours this morning....
Up at the usual time on Sunday when I go to my church, I normally turn on CNN's spate of talk shows. They're usually really good: Jake Tapper's "State of the Nation"; Fareed Zakaria's "GPS"; and Brian Stelter's "Reliable Sources". Good stuff. Deeper than most talk shows. I also occasionally take in the softest of the soft, CBS Sunday Morning, designed to let us all know that in spite of it all, beauty and culture still exist, which isn't all that bad a thing to keep saying at least once a week.
I passed on them today. Not sure why; just a little too predictable lately (except GPS always throws a curve or two, since he's not native to these shores and sees the world a little differently, though also pretty accurately). I mean, I know the Mueller report's been sandbagged by the Attorney General; I know 45 has said really, really stupid things lately; and Sunday Morning will include some interview with a TV or movie or music star, mostly recent; some gee-ain't-life-grand-and-we're-pretty-lucky-after-all vignette; and the one-minute, nature's-still-here clip at the very end in which you can actually hear the animals and the breeze.
It bored me. So I went to church, not because I was bored. I intended to go all along. CNN replays these shows later, so I can catch them if I think I really need to.
Or, I tried to go to church. But for the first time that I can remember, there was no place to park. I have a normal, public parking area that I patronize near church, on a half-block off a major street, and there was a space left as there usually is (maybe even two, sometimes), but two people with bad aim (or uncaring, take your pick) took up enough of that remaining spot so that I knew that, because I'm not a particularly small person, getting out of the car would involve either:
You can see the problem. So I tried to find another spot.
Within seven blocks in three directions (the fourth being east, but nothing left there but a plunge to the lake), though, I found absolutely nothing that I could take a chance on, be it too small for a parallel parking squeeze-in, or even a half-spot at the tail end of a block that a guy could try to take and hope the cops would be in church, too.
And time was running out. Parking eight or nine blocks away would mean I'd have to really hurry in order (at this point) to get to the service, or, tardy, wait a good ten minutes to be seated, since higgledy-piggledy seating during the first hymn and prayers will not be tolerated, unless I would sneak into the last two or three rows, which is not my style. I have a spot on the left, about four rows from the front, that I have claimed by squatter's rights for, well, over two decades now. (I have rarely seen anyone else sit in that spot, or even in that pew on a non-Christmas or non-Easter celebration. I don't know why. I shower. I use deodorant. I brush my teeth. I dress understatedly but acceptably. I don't get it. Maybe it's why most kids and adults, when given that choice, almost never sit in front of any presentation, school, church or whatever thing they haven't paid for ahead of time. That includes anyone reading this, so please don't deny it.)
All this was in jeopardy. So I said, well, (cleaning up language because it's Sunday--with apologies to George Carlin): Can't go to frickin' church because there's no goldang place to park within nearly a mile? To heck with it.
My status as a sinner is no doubt well-known. We'll try again next week.
Opting for information instead of inspiration, I bolted back and re-parked in the back lot of my apartment complex. Okay--all dressed up and nowhere to go? Not really.
I just moved up my normal agenda, which includes purchasing a Sunday New York Times at the Starbucks or CVS, each of which is within a block of my residence. I chose the former today. Then, in a gesture of absolute defiance, I opted not to have coffee in Starbucks but instead in Stone Creek Coffee, which was two blocks to the north, at the far end of the Downer Avenue clique of businesses. While it has no periodicals or newspapers to buy (Starbucks is also adjacent to Boswell Books, probably the class independent bookstore in Milwaukee), Stone Creek Coffee is larger, livelier, and has far better access to natural light at any one time of the day. It also has outdoor seating, which on Sunday afternoons very soon will be filled with younger patrons and their dogs and laptops. Of the two, Stone Creek is more fun to be around, if nowhere near as outwardly intellectual (though lots of people bring books and, again, their laptops, so a decent conversation is never far away if one manages to get into one).
Out of Starbucks I walked, back onto Downer, en route to my coffee guerrilla hideout. Just as I did so, a lady who seemed around my age (Was that sensitive enough?) called out to me. This was odd by itself.
"Sir," she asked, "Do you think I can park without putting money in here?"
Her car took up a legally-allowable position right outside the bookstore/Starbucks complex, adjacent to a meter. She couldn't have had a better position if she'd driven around the block and waited all day.
Remember, it's Sunday. I have never, ever seen any parking signs that, by themselves, with the exceptions of Loading Zones, prohibited parking on Sunday. (Have you?)
She was dressed nicely, suggesting that either she was (a) on the way to church; (b) coming from church; or (c) maybe seeing the grands or something. Her face and tone suggested a sense of humor. Instead of being a tad condescending, which I could easily have been--It's Sunday, dear--I tried mine out on her.
I did a kind of Bill Murray-David Letterman combo of false pretense. "Of course you can!" I said in a tone of exaggerated gravitas, slashing at the air. "It's Sunday. This is America!"
She caught it immediately. "That's right! I can park here!" She said, starting to smile. "Stick around," she suggested, "in case the police stop by."
Oh, right. Dump it all on me. He said so, Officer. She was kidding. I think.
I wished her a good day. Off I walked.
Stone Creek was energetic, though not as much as it would be at the noon hour, so I was kind of glad I'd stopped in much earlier than I usually do. Yet, I took one of only three small tables left open.
One of the other ones was next to me. Almost immediately, a young fellow sat down. Not a big deal; lots of young-uns populate this place. But this one had a Cubs uniform shirt on.
And he approached me. His date/probably girlfriend but maybe sister, who also (gasp!) donned a Cubs jersey, hadn't arrived. He needed his coffee, though. They had to have stayed at someone's house or at a nearby hotel last night. Otherwise, what were they doing on the Upper East Side, when Miller Park's out on about 55th off of Bluemound, about five miles from here, with still about three hours before game time? Hadn't they heard of tailgating?
"Would you mind manning this spot while I'm gone?" he asked.
I couldn't resist. "You're lucky we're friendly in this city," I said with a smile. "Hey, it's a big country."
He grinned. I mentioned that the bats were hot this weekend, what with the first two games of the Cubs-Brewers series being a split with resulting scores of 13-10 and 14-8. Miller Park wasn't a baseball stadium as much as it was a launching pad.
He said he had attended the Friday night game in which the Brewers smashed five home runs. I replied that Milwaukee still hadn't found a way to handle Chicago's Jason Hayward, who went yard again last night. "They should just walk him," I said in exasperation. "They're far better off." In dignified response, he noted that Ryan Braun had hit another three-run homer last night, his second in two games, which seemed to bring the Brewers back into it, now trailing 7-5, but the Cubbies exploded for seven more runs in the next inning. (Shifts? What shifts? The hitters seem to be adjusting.)
Two enthusiastic baseball partisans commenting on the other team's prowess; this was a respectful discussion. I offered to put the sports section of the Sunday NYT in save-this-place form on the table, along with some of the special section's single-paged leafs of the effects that the internet is having on the, well, universe, along with its particularly developing quirkiness, which is far more enormous than I ever realized (see below). He thanked me.
"You might want to take a look at the story about the Yankees and their injuries," I said. They have presently eleven guys out. In baseball, this is incredible.
I followed him for a refill, which Stone Creek Coffee offers free of charge. Right in front of me was a mom with a very cute little girl, donning a silver ribbon around her forehead. "What a cute little ribbon!" I had to remark, not that it was any of my business. Mom turned to smile, and so did her daughter. "Can you say thank you?" she cooed to her, not that she could, but an expression of back-door gratitude it was. Seeing that I was only there for a refill, she let me in front of her, since I had unwittingly stood between her and what looked like her sister, the proud, smiling auntie.
I'm not sure there's anything on this earth as sweet as a smiling baby, with full belly and dry pants. That little one never did stop grinning. "Say bye-bye," said mom as I stepped away from the counter, and she waved at me. Can the world be a bad place after that?
Three other people joined the Cubs' fan while I went through the ten pages of the special section. They were individually, separately leafed and depicted with artistic displays on the whole of one side and spunky, witty discussions of separate phenomena on the other. They were fun, if sometimes disconcerting, to take in. I learned that, among other things:
Up at the usual time on Sunday when I go to my church, I normally turn on CNN's spate of talk shows. They're usually really good: Jake Tapper's "State of the Nation"; Fareed Zakaria's "GPS"; and Brian Stelter's "Reliable Sources". Good stuff. Deeper than most talk shows. I also occasionally take in the softest of the soft, CBS Sunday Morning, designed to let us all know that in spite of it all, beauty and culture still exist, which isn't all that bad a thing to keep saying at least once a week.
I passed on them today. Not sure why; just a little too predictable lately (except GPS always throws a curve or two, since he's not native to these shores and sees the world a little differently, though also pretty accurately). I mean, I know the Mueller report's been sandbagged by the Attorney General; I know 45 has said really, really stupid things lately; and Sunday Morning will include some interview with a TV or movie or music star, mostly recent; some gee-ain't-life-grand-and-we're-pretty-lucky-after-all vignette; and the one-minute, nature's-still-here clip at the very end in which you can actually hear the animals and the breeze.
It bored me. So I went to church, not because I was bored. I intended to go all along. CNN replays these shows later, so I can catch them if I think I really need to.
Or, I tried to go to church. But for the first time that I can remember, there was no place to park. I have a normal, public parking area that I patronize near church, on a half-block off a major street, and there was a space left as there usually is (maybe even two, sometimes), but two people with bad aim (or uncaring, take your pick) took up enough of that remaining spot so that I knew that, because I'm not a particularly small person, getting out of the car would involve either:
- a sucking in of breath that I'm not used to;
- scraping some part of my body that I normally wouldn't;
- having to do that twice, in fact, if these same vehicles were around in another hour or so; or
- needing to get out of the car by utilizing the passenger-side door, which meant trying to navigate the shift knob on the floor, which meant hurting myself or it or banging my head on the ceiling as I tried to lift myself; besides, see immediately above for a possible repeat.
You can see the problem. So I tried to find another spot.
Within seven blocks in three directions (the fourth being east, but nothing left there but a plunge to the lake), though, I found absolutely nothing that I could take a chance on, be it too small for a parallel parking squeeze-in, or even a half-spot at the tail end of a block that a guy could try to take and hope the cops would be in church, too.
And time was running out. Parking eight or nine blocks away would mean I'd have to really hurry in order (at this point) to get to the service, or, tardy, wait a good ten minutes to be seated, since higgledy-piggledy seating during the first hymn and prayers will not be tolerated, unless I would sneak into the last two or three rows, which is not my style. I have a spot on the left, about four rows from the front, that I have claimed by squatter's rights for, well, over two decades now. (I have rarely seen anyone else sit in that spot, or even in that pew on a non-Christmas or non-Easter celebration. I don't know why. I shower. I use deodorant. I brush my teeth. I dress understatedly but acceptably. I don't get it. Maybe it's why most kids and adults, when given that choice, almost never sit in front of any presentation, school, church or whatever thing they haven't paid for ahead of time. That includes anyone reading this, so please don't deny it.)
All this was in jeopardy. So I said, well, (cleaning up language because it's Sunday--with apologies to George Carlin): Can't go to frickin' church because there's no goldang place to park within nearly a mile? To heck with it.
My status as a sinner is no doubt well-known. We'll try again next week.
Opting for information instead of inspiration, I bolted back and re-parked in the back lot of my apartment complex. Okay--all dressed up and nowhere to go? Not really.
I just moved up my normal agenda, which includes purchasing a Sunday New York Times at the Starbucks or CVS, each of which is within a block of my residence. I chose the former today. Then, in a gesture of absolute defiance, I opted not to have coffee in Starbucks but instead in Stone Creek Coffee, which was two blocks to the north, at the far end of the Downer Avenue clique of businesses. While it has no periodicals or newspapers to buy (Starbucks is also adjacent to Boswell Books, probably the class independent bookstore in Milwaukee), Stone Creek Coffee is larger, livelier, and has far better access to natural light at any one time of the day. It also has outdoor seating, which on Sunday afternoons very soon will be filled with younger patrons and their dogs and laptops. Of the two, Stone Creek is more fun to be around, if nowhere near as outwardly intellectual (though lots of people bring books and, again, their laptops, so a decent conversation is never far away if one manages to get into one).
Out of Starbucks I walked, back onto Downer, en route to my coffee guerrilla hideout. Just as I did so, a lady who seemed around my age (Was that sensitive enough?) called out to me. This was odd by itself.
"Sir," she asked, "Do you think I can park without putting money in here?"
Her car took up a legally-allowable position right outside the bookstore/Starbucks complex, adjacent to a meter. She couldn't have had a better position if she'd driven around the block and waited all day.
Remember, it's Sunday. I have never, ever seen any parking signs that, by themselves, with the exceptions of Loading Zones, prohibited parking on Sunday. (Have you?)
She was dressed nicely, suggesting that either she was (a) on the way to church; (b) coming from church; or (c) maybe seeing the grands or something. Her face and tone suggested a sense of humor. Instead of being a tad condescending, which I could easily have been--It's Sunday, dear--I tried mine out on her.
I did a kind of Bill Murray-David Letterman combo of false pretense. "Of course you can!" I said in a tone of exaggerated gravitas, slashing at the air. "It's Sunday. This is America!"
She caught it immediately. "That's right! I can park here!" She said, starting to smile. "Stick around," she suggested, "in case the police stop by."
Oh, right. Dump it all on me. He said so, Officer. She was kidding. I think.
I wished her a good day. Off I walked.
Stone Creek was energetic, though not as much as it would be at the noon hour, so I was kind of glad I'd stopped in much earlier than I usually do. Yet, I took one of only three small tables left open.
One of the other ones was next to me. Almost immediately, a young fellow sat down. Not a big deal; lots of young-uns populate this place. But this one had a Cubs uniform shirt on.
And he approached me. His date/probably girlfriend but maybe sister, who also (gasp!) donned a Cubs jersey, hadn't arrived. He needed his coffee, though. They had to have stayed at someone's house or at a nearby hotel last night. Otherwise, what were they doing on the Upper East Side, when Miller Park's out on about 55th off of Bluemound, about five miles from here, with still about three hours before game time? Hadn't they heard of tailgating?
"Would you mind manning this spot while I'm gone?" he asked.
I couldn't resist. "You're lucky we're friendly in this city," I said with a smile. "Hey, it's a big country."
He grinned. I mentioned that the bats were hot this weekend, what with the first two games of the Cubs-Brewers series being a split with resulting scores of 13-10 and 14-8. Miller Park wasn't a baseball stadium as much as it was a launching pad.
He said he had attended the Friday night game in which the Brewers smashed five home runs. I replied that Milwaukee still hadn't found a way to handle Chicago's Jason Hayward, who went yard again last night. "They should just walk him," I said in exasperation. "They're far better off." In dignified response, he noted that Ryan Braun had hit another three-run homer last night, his second in two games, which seemed to bring the Brewers back into it, now trailing 7-5, but the Cubbies exploded for seven more runs in the next inning. (Shifts? What shifts? The hitters seem to be adjusting.)
Two enthusiastic baseball partisans commenting on the other team's prowess; this was a respectful discussion. I offered to put the sports section of the Sunday NYT in save-this-place form on the table, along with some of the special section's single-paged leafs of the effects that the internet is having on the, well, universe, along with its particularly developing quirkiness, which is far more enormous than I ever realized (see below). He thanked me.
"You might want to take a look at the story about the Yankees and their injuries," I said. They have presently eleven guys out. In baseball, this is incredible.
I followed him for a refill, which Stone Creek Coffee offers free of charge. Right in front of me was a mom with a very cute little girl, donning a silver ribbon around her forehead. "What a cute little ribbon!" I had to remark, not that it was any of my business. Mom turned to smile, and so did her daughter. "Can you say thank you?" she cooed to her, not that she could, but an expression of back-door gratitude it was. Seeing that I was only there for a refill, she let me in front of her, since I had unwittingly stood between her and what looked like her sister, the proud, smiling auntie.
I'm not sure there's anything on this earth as sweet as a smiling baby, with full belly and dry pants. That little one never did stop grinning. "Say bye-bye," said mom as I stepped away from the counter, and she waved at me. Can the world be a bad place after that?
Three other people joined the Cubs' fan while I went through the ten pages of the special section. They were individually, separately leafed and depicted with artistic displays on the whole of one side and spunky, witty discussions of separate phenomena on the other. They were fun, if sometimes disconcerting, to take in. I learned that, among other things:
- Gwyneth Paltrow, inventor of Goop, had descended from the next galaxy to promote an oval egg-shaped stone called "yoni" that she claimed would, if inserted inside vaginas, regulate women's periods and increase bladder control. I read this in the New York Times, today. But, probably upon major failures (Golly, ya think?), the Orange County DA's office made her back down from such a claim and refund all monies upon request. (Just make movies, okay? It's what you're good at.)
- You can make your own Slime. The directions were listed. Got some Elmer's Glue? You're on the way.
- In an expression of where we're all going, dogs are taking over the soul of the internet from cats because, of course, cats just won't do what people want them to do. It's all about the growing specter of control now, so not only do dogs make better videos, but so do the cats who act like dogs.
- A Russian-born Australian guy nicknamed Zyzz (pronounced Zyzz) has inspired, and is inspiring, hundreds of thousands of fitness enthusiasts, even though he's been dead these last seven years. It's also becoming evident that right-wingers, obsessed with male dominance, also view the shirtless torso of none other than Alex Jones, he of Infowars, who apparently takes macho supplements.
- There are videos that consumer-mad people can watch that potentially have the effects of relieving the need to buy stuff. These videos show people opening boxes of things that we're unlikely to ever purchase on our own. This results, apparently, in fulfillment of some sort.
- There are plenty of videos of real-life parents with their real-life little kids, going through all the ups and downs of child raising, including birth itself, pranking the kids to the point of tears, and an announcement of the presence of lice. Cute stuff, too.
- You can get a celebrity, for a certain price (Katie Couric $200, Brett Favre $500, for instance), to send you a personalized video message. You write the script, they say it. If you think this has the potential to turn creepy, you'd be correct. Favre, for example, unwittingly stated prearranged, coded anti-Semitic language, to which he strenuously objected once discovered.
- Guys have proposed marriage on video as surprises, which sounds romantic in a way, except sometimes the girls say no. So it goes, though it sure sounds cheaper than renting an airplane to fly over with a banner.
- Male bots are generally invented to do tasks, while female bots are generally designed to follow instructions from real males. If you suspect this has the potential of being about you-know-what, you'd also be accurate.
This is the internet, in part. You and I both know of other, similarly crazy things that get put on it. Good things appear, too, like TED talks and unlikely friendships among animals and famous moments in sports. But if the above items are there and are well-followed, that's a statement that bears consideration, not the least concern of which is this simple fact: a considerable number of these people vote.
I know. Can't avoid sneaking politics in there, but lightly. But I can't say (and neither can you) what Will Rogers used to: All I know is what I read in the papers. With that, I returned here to Mr. Laptop and decided to tell you all about it. Such was my mostly apolitical Sunday morning.
Gotta go. Lots more to read.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Dying of Disinterest, Everywhere
People shouted bloody murder, justifiably, when the incompetent and clueless front person for privatized schools, Secretary of Education Betsy DuVos, showed up with a budget request nullifying any government funding of the Special Olympics to boot. The grant, I believe, was something like 25 million dollars.
Not a small piece of change. To wipe it off the rolls was an act of utter disdain for the challenged that stands as part of a slippery slope toward fascism, which curses and jettisons the underprivileged on behalf of those who dominate. When we lose compassion, we lose it all.
Fascism: Now there's a word schools need to pay more attention to. That's where we're going. We are going exactly where the Axis powers went before World War II--and which led to their utter destruction, led by the USA, which, at the time, didn't think such thinking would ever get here.
But there were vestiges built into our culture despite the upfront claims. My hometown of Grafton, Wisconsin, for example, was the site of a summer camp sponsored by the German-American Bund, which claimed hyper-patriotism to disguise its efforts to train quasi-fascists, not unlike the Hitler Youth in Germany--you know, train 'em early. It was exposed quickly by a free press, essential to democracy, and it disbanded after three years.
There was also the 1939 meeting of the Bund, 20,000 strong, in New York City, which featured an incident in which a protester was roughed up pretty badly when he got escorted outside (there is film of that moment). Does that remind you of any other rallies, far more recently?
We need to know this and to be reminded of it. It's part of our history. Too. Shouldn't a democratically-based government shell out a few bucks to warn everybody about what happens when people sleep through campaigns and elections? When they refuse to discuss it because it's too uncomfortable, which is happening more and more these days?
The request to eliminate Special Olympics from the education budget, given to a Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, which handles all budget requests first, is dead on arrival, of course. It will never fly. They'll get their money, if only because media attention (note, once again, the role of the media) was quick and decisive. 45 quickly reversed course and put the money back in. He was just checking if anyone was looking so he could get away with it if he could. Once again, he's that awful, he's that clueless, he's that insensitive, he's that much of a fascist.
As pathetic as that was, though, that's not what I'm talking about here. There was another budget item that has also been proposed to conclude: one that funds history and civics education. That it was listed as another item to be scratched says a remarkably ridiculous thing about how the 45 administration thinks of the need for our children to understand the need for their participation--which is that it's not necessary, or that somehow someone else will take care of that.
As a former history and government teacher, I should be grateful, in a way, for that mentality (even though I am suspicious of its integrity). If 45ers are saying that we have that in our schools already and why the federal government should shell out yet more money for it, well, then, so much the better: we get what we need for nary a dime.
If that were true, we wouldn't be struggling to get 60 percent participation in a presidential election, and 25 percent for anything else. The students would get why their votes would matter, why following what their elected representatives vote for mattered, why voting, or not voting, has always mattered. If that were true, then, reportedly, 20 states wouldn't be absent from civics education.
Yes. This is a failure of our educational system, and of myself as a member of it. It would be the greatest folly for me to pretend that in all my 30 years as a classroom teacher, all my social studies students now vote in every election. The body language of too many in class, the anti-intellectual attitudes expressed, all suggested that regardless of my passionate urging (and if nothing else, I was passionate), regardless of being presented with plenty of facts to support its crucial import, plenty of them regarded voting as a waste of time. (There were others who did, indeed, pay attention. I thank them one and all, and I'm pretty damn proud of them.)
The simple percentages are revelatory, despite the efforts we've made to make it easy for everybody to vote. We let some do it online, we allow flexible voting dates, we've constitutionally lowered the age to 18. There is talk of making voting day a national holiday so people wouldn't need to leave work to vote (except, of course, the polls are always open until 7 or 8 at night). Nothing has worked because democracy is dying of disinterest.
Here's another indicator, though: Relative to Special Olympics, this item, history and civics education, as essential to our functioning democracy as anything else could be, was more or less a throw-in from the last budget: $4.6 million, or more than five times less. Chump change, in comparison. We had to make some tough decisions, DuVos kept saying, with her smile that wishes to win people over but doesn't. I don't think that was tough at all.
I don't recall anybody fighting tooth and nail for history and civics education, do you? I don't recall any headlines. I don't recall any vital conversations, on air or not. Indeed, I just found this little kernel of budgetary mention because a Facebook friend got it to my site (and thanks for that).
I'd like to know what that $4.6 million bought, as inadequate as it is in the first place. Spread out through the entire nation, benefits would get very thin in a big hurry. In other words, this is tokenism.
Federal contributions to Native Hawaiian and Native Alaskan education, which also found the original chopping block (and which will also be replaced, I predict), were over $30 million each. I think such education is important to those indigenous peoples so that they can learn, for instance, how the USA insidiously acquired their lands for profit and religiously-connected expansionism (the "manifest" in "manifest destiny") and undermined the native governments which caught on a little too late to stop it--resulting in Japanese attempts to attack both in World War II. History can be bitter, too.
The histories of those two states, their heritages, were worth more than $60 million in federal money. The spending for history and civics in the 48 contiguous states? More than 13 times less. Really? That's all we have?
This looks quite cynical from here, exactly the attitude most of those kids have chosen to take when considering their heritage, their history, and why that feeds into their participation in what is left of our democracy.
Yes. What is left of it. It dies of disinterest, a little each day, of the kind of tokenism and lip service which leads to cynicism which leads people to stay home instead of voting because history and civics, and the citizenship they are supposed to promote, get short shrift after the supposedly more essential 3 R's. The refrain from the play "1776" is telling: Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
I mean, beyond some washed up teacher writing a blog. After the Constitutional Convention, a lady asked Ben Franklin what kind of government the delegates had created. "A republic, madam," he replied, "If you can keep it."
Starting to look like a great big IF, if you ask me.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Not a small piece of change. To wipe it off the rolls was an act of utter disdain for the challenged that stands as part of a slippery slope toward fascism, which curses and jettisons the underprivileged on behalf of those who dominate. When we lose compassion, we lose it all.
Fascism: Now there's a word schools need to pay more attention to. That's where we're going. We are going exactly where the Axis powers went before World War II--and which led to their utter destruction, led by the USA, which, at the time, didn't think such thinking would ever get here.
But there were vestiges built into our culture despite the upfront claims. My hometown of Grafton, Wisconsin, for example, was the site of a summer camp sponsored by the German-American Bund, which claimed hyper-patriotism to disguise its efforts to train quasi-fascists, not unlike the Hitler Youth in Germany--you know, train 'em early. It was exposed quickly by a free press, essential to democracy, and it disbanded after three years.
There was also the 1939 meeting of the Bund, 20,000 strong, in New York City, which featured an incident in which a protester was roughed up pretty badly when he got escorted outside (there is film of that moment). Does that remind you of any other rallies, far more recently?
We need to know this and to be reminded of it. It's part of our history. Too. Shouldn't a democratically-based government shell out a few bucks to warn everybody about what happens when people sleep through campaigns and elections? When they refuse to discuss it because it's too uncomfortable, which is happening more and more these days?
The request to eliminate Special Olympics from the education budget, given to a Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, which handles all budget requests first, is dead on arrival, of course. It will never fly. They'll get their money, if only because media attention (note, once again, the role of the media) was quick and decisive. 45 quickly reversed course and put the money back in. He was just checking if anyone was looking so he could get away with it if he could. Once again, he's that awful, he's that clueless, he's that insensitive, he's that much of a fascist.
As pathetic as that was, though, that's not what I'm talking about here. There was another budget item that has also been proposed to conclude: one that funds history and civics education. That it was listed as another item to be scratched says a remarkably ridiculous thing about how the 45 administration thinks of the need for our children to understand the need for their participation--which is that it's not necessary, or that somehow someone else will take care of that.
As a former history and government teacher, I should be grateful, in a way, for that mentality (even though I am suspicious of its integrity). If 45ers are saying that we have that in our schools already and why the federal government should shell out yet more money for it, well, then, so much the better: we get what we need for nary a dime.
If that were true, we wouldn't be struggling to get 60 percent participation in a presidential election, and 25 percent for anything else. The students would get why their votes would matter, why following what their elected representatives vote for mattered, why voting, or not voting, has always mattered. If that were true, then, reportedly, 20 states wouldn't be absent from civics education.
Yes. This is a failure of our educational system, and of myself as a member of it. It would be the greatest folly for me to pretend that in all my 30 years as a classroom teacher, all my social studies students now vote in every election. The body language of too many in class, the anti-intellectual attitudes expressed, all suggested that regardless of my passionate urging (and if nothing else, I was passionate), regardless of being presented with plenty of facts to support its crucial import, plenty of them regarded voting as a waste of time. (There were others who did, indeed, pay attention. I thank them one and all, and I'm pretty damn proud of them.)
The simple percentages are revelatory, despite the efforts we've made to make it easy for everybody to vote. We let some do it online, we allow flexible voting dates, we've constitutionally lowered the age to 18. There is talk of making voting day a national holiday so people wouldn't need to leave work to vote (except, of course, the polls are always open until 7 or 8 at night). Nothing has worked because democracy is dying of disinterest.
Here's another indicator, though: Relative to Special Olympics, this item, history and civics education, as essential to our functioning democracy as anything else could be, was more or less a throw-in from the last budget: $4.6 million, or more than five times less. Chump change, in comparison. We had to make some tough decisions, DuVos kept saying, with her smile that wishes to win people over but doesn't. I don't think that was tough at all.
I don't recall anybody fighting tooth and nail for history and civics education, do you? I don't recall any headlines. I don't recall any vital conversations, on air or not. Indeed, I just found this little kernel of budgetary mention because a Facebook friend got it to my site (and thanks for that).
I'd like to know what that $4.6 million bought, as inadequate as it is in the first place. Spread out through the entire nation, benefits would get very thin in a big hurry. In other words, this is tokenism.
Federal contributions to Native Hawaiian and Native Alaskan education, which also found the original chopping block (and which will also be replaced, I predict), were over $30 million each. I think such education is important to those indigenous peoples so that they can learn, for instance, how the USA insidiously acquired their lands for profit and religiously-connected expansionism (the "manifest" in "manifest destiny") and undermined the native governments which caught on a little too late to stop it--resulting in Japanese attempts to attack both in World War II. History can be bitter, too.
The histories of those two states, their heritages, were worth more than $60 million in federal money. The spending for history and civics in the 48 contiguous states? More than 13 times less. Really? That's all we have?
This looks quite cynical from here, exactly the attitude most of those kids have chosen to take when considering their heritage, their history, and why that feeds into their participation in what is left of our democracy.
Yes. What is left of it. It dies of disinterest, a little each day, of the kind of tokenism and lip service which leads to cynicism which leads people to stay home instead of voting because history and civics, and the citizenship they are supposed to promote, get short shrift after the supposedly more essential 3 R's. The refrain from the play "1776" is telling: Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
I mean, beyond some washed up teacher writing a blog. After the Constitutional Convention, a lady asked Ben Franklin what kind of government the delegates had created. "A republic, madam," he replied, "If you can keep it."
Starting to look like a great big IF, if you ask me.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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