Basic math from Florida

I’ve been doing a pretty good job of curtailing television time around here. There are two reasons for this. First, the campaign ads and, far worse, the accompanying, nonstop nonsense about ‘the midterms’ from some of the more odious celebrity anchors is sickening. Secondly, and more importantly, I have really been enjoying reading first thing in the morning. I make the coffee, make the bed, turn on the lamp on my table, and sit down. It’s been dark here lately until well past 7:00, and starting the day with well-crafted sentences printed on paper rather than the television or radio is a little bit of heaven for me.

But this morning I relapsed and turned on Today, which never fails to provide endless examples of the transformation of what was once the news into cheap entertainment. My current favorite is Matt Lauer, who hosts Today, and David Gregory, who moderates, supposedly, Meet the Press. Matt Lauer went to California to moderate a debate between the two candidates for governor of that state, and David Gregory went to Florida to do the same with the three candidates vying to represent that state in the U.S. Senate. As much as they would like for it to be, this is not a presidential election. These elections are about people voting on candidates and issues specific to their cities, counties, municipalities and states. So why, I’ve wondered, are these figureheads from national media outlets even involved in these races?

Because, I learned this morning, they’re doing what they do best: manufacturing stories. This morning, Today opened with the “controversy” from Florida. Three people are running for one seat: a Democrat, who is black, a Republican darling of the Tea Party, who is Cuban, and the governor, who is running as an independent, who is white and widely rumored to be a homo. According to many polls, the Democrat is so far behind it’s hopeless, and therein lies our paint-by-numbers controversy for the day: Bill Clinton, who hasn’t been president for nearly a decade, is campaigning for his fellow Democrat, and there are rumors that he advised that candidate to drop out of the race, which would bolster the independent candidate and defeat the Republican. Is that true? Did he really say that? Meredith Vierra had the Democrat on and really showed us her stuff. But, but, she said, there are rumors, and where do you suppose they came from? I’m not dropping out of the race, the candidate managed to say at least four times. The people of Florida will decide with their ballots.

If you have three candidates and one withdraws, there are two options. Either the people who supported the withdrawn candidate do not vote, or they vote for one of the two remaining candidates. Regardless of what Bill Clinton said or did not say, that’s a simple mathematical fact. If Bill Clinton reminded the candidate that his withdrawal from the race would increase the chances of one of the two remaining candidates, so what?

Here’s what. Not five minutes later, Ann Curry sat down with two of the network’s Cub Scouts, David Gregory, just back from his celebrity appearance in Florida, and Chuck Todd, NBC’s blandly snide White House correspondent. Ann Curry wanted to know how things are looking for the Democrats. How badly are they going to lose next week? Then – and this is perhaps one of the reasons that someone who greets people on national television by saying “Hey” earns millions – she brought the chat back to the interview with the Florida candidate. Only by that point the story had morphed a bit and the reference about advice given – or not – in Florida was no longer to Bill Clinton but to The White House. My oh my, I thought, how things evolve in less than five minutes, because had you tuned in at that moment, or had you not been paying attention, I would not blame you for believing that The White House was interfering in state races. And that, of course, makes it a story not about elementary mathematics as broken down – or not – by an elder statesman who clearly knows a thing or two about winning elections but one of national relevance.

Dangerous people, dangerous movies

I love picking out movies on Netflix and then watching them at home, but there’s still nothing quite like seeing a movie at a theater with a big screen and a sound system to match. So this weekend I walked to my neighborhood theater, paid $4.00 for a ticket, and bought a bag of popcorn from a young woman who, as it turns out, lives two houses down the street from me. I love a late-afternoon movie, especially if it’s a dreary day, so Saturday was perfect. I decided to see Eat, Pray, Love, which I did not expect to like. I wanted, badly, to be wrong. Before the lights even went down my problem with the movie wasn’t the movie itself but the author of the book, who, post eating, praying and loving, believes her plight of not being able to marry someone because he is not a citizen of the U.S. is worth a lot of ink (the publishers and the book-buying public agree, unfortunately). Personally, given the hostility toward many couples in this country when it comes to marriage, I find that sort of tone deafness offensive. Still, I didn’t want to dismiss the movie before it even started. I am trying not to typecast. I wanted a good surprise, and I got one. The movie started badly, and then – here’s the surprise – it got worse. Way worse. If I had to write a succinct overview of the movie for the newspaper, here goes: A celebration of middle class self-indulgence. Great scenery.

Which made for an interesting contrast with the other two movies I watched over the weekend: The Most Dangerous Man in America and Sometimes in April. My blurb copy for each of them would read as follows: Freedom of speech: Yes? No? Maybe?

I didn’t fully experience the 1970s, but I still get nostalgic for the era. From what I’ve read and heard and seen, it seems to me that the 1970s is the last time people, en masse, actually rejected convention. In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon employee and the Wiki leaker of his day, earned the most dangerous designation by sharing massive volumes of classified documents with The New York Times. He was driven to this act because, as someone who had contributed to the “intelligence” used to justify the war in what Nixon called, on tape, “that little shit-ass country,” his conscience would no longer permit him not to. The most compelling part of the film, I thought, occurred after the leak. Nixon imposed an injunction, so other papers across the country, one by one, in solidarity, took up publishing the documents where the New York Times left off. In fairly quick order, the supreme court also answered to its conscience and dismissed Nixon’s injunction, but not before what for me was the movie’s most memorable scene. As Tricky Dick was doing his best to nationalize the print and broadcast media, Daniel Ellsberg gave a copy of the documents to a congressman from Alaska, who read from them at the U.S. Capitol during a filibuster, which, technically, transferred the official ownership of the papers from the Pentagon to the U.S. Congress. I love dangerous people.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, Rwanda. The 1994 genocide in that country in which nearly 1 million people (more by some estimates) were killed intrigues me. April 1994 for me is not confined to grainy black and white photographs in history books. I remember it, and I remember it well. Sometimes in April follows two brothers throughout the killing spree and its aftermath. One is married to a Tutsi woman; the other is an announcer on the Rwandan radio station that beat the death drums via the airwaves throughout the genocide, branding Tutsis as, among other things, “cockroaches.” The story is a complex one, and the questions it left with me are even more so. What exactly does freedom of speech mean? Is it okay for people like Michael Savage to take to dehumanize Muslims and liberals and anyone else he doesn’t like by calling them “vermin”? Does the right to free speech cover Portland’s own right-wing, talking hyena, who claims, repeatedly, that well over half of all Latinos in the city are “illegals”? Should her station be required to have documentation on file to back up that claim? I don’t know.

Throughout Sometimes in April, newsreels from a particular day of the genocide were shown along with the number of people killed by that date at the bottom of the screen, a morbid ticker, if you will. One day that month – and I remember this very clearly – as people were hacked to bits with machetes, the lead story on the national news in the U.S. was the mournful youngsters gathered in Seattle to comfort one another through a devastating blow: Kurt Cobain had killed himself, silencing forever “the voice of a generation.” What on earth were they going to do without him? In spite of the message that Courtney Love had recorded for the weeping wounded, they were lost, as was Julia Roberts on Saturday afternoon as she gazed down at her wedding photos and tearfully realized she couldn’t picture herself in her own marriage. It was a crisis, to be sure, as was the number accompanying the images of the mourners. I believe 30,000 people had been murdered in Rwanda at that point in the film, but it may have been up to 60,000 by then. Sorry – I’m not so good with numbers.

The kettle accuses the pot

If you are reading this I beg you to trust me when I say I am not – absolutely not – defending or speaking up on behalf or sympathizing with or supporting Sarah Palin or Christine O’Donnell, the snotty, whiney candidate for the U.S. Senate seat once occupied by Joe Biden. In fact, I am counting on Christine O’Donnell to put the Tea Party out of business. Condescending laughter can only cover up a complete ignorance of the Constitution for so long.

But a conversation about misplaced, misguided condescension would not be complete without Katie Couric. Before I say what I want to say, this: I do not hate Katie Couric. In fact, when it comes to the anchors at the three major networks, I find her to be the least troubling. Since I watch Katie Couric more than the others, I am simply more familiar with her. And when it comes to shoveling forth non news from the dumbed down buffet, she never, ever fails to deliver.

That’s where Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell come in. In a way, I think we should all send Katie Couric thank you notes because she may have single handedly derailed John McCain’s ascension to the presidency by asking Mama Grizzly about what she reads when she ain’t busy with her cubs. But this business with Christine O’Donnell’s inability to discuss recent supreme court cases during a debate with her opponent is a bit heavy handed, I think. Last week Katie Couric used the Christine O’Donnell story to replay an excerpt from her interview with the matriarch of the Tea Party. The link: Christine O’Donnell isn’t the only one who cannot discuss the doings at the court; her mentor had the same problem, and here is a clip from that interview in case your memory needs refreshing.

And here, in case you’re still reading, is my problem. If candidates are expected to be able to speak intelligently about what’s going on at the court, where are they expected to get that information? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. I happen to think it would behoove a person running for Congress, which has to work with the court from time to time, to be informed, but in that department, Katie Couric needs to step down from the pedestal while she can still do so gracefully. Unless Jan Crawford comes on to sneer about military funerals or to explain how it’s really no biggie that corporations now have the same freedom of speech as individuals, Katie Couric has other, more important stuff to talk about, like Tiger Woods, her sappy everyday heroes serial, bed bugs, the miners in Chile, her staged interaction with a child in Haiti shortly after the earthquake – she actually touched him! – and, just last week, her sit down with Clint Eastwood, who has a new movie coming out and either just turned 80 or is about to.

Documentation

The story about the stopping and starting of home foreclosures continues to puzzle me. Here’s a chance, I keep thinking, to show the banks in all their glorious incompetence, and it’s been barely reported. So here, in no particular order, are but a few of the aspects of the story I think are questionable. First, the housing market seems to define the economy in this country. Why? Hell if I know. I guess there aren’t enough houses. Second, the bigger and better and more vulgar the new houses being built, the better we all “feel.” Third, and I am in agreement here, many, many people bought more than they could afford. The greed at the mortgage companies spread like terminal cancer (agreed) and lots of people, lots and lots of people, are now having serious difficulties making their payments (agreed) so the banks, which are the ultimate culprits in my opinion, rather than issuing refunds and letters of apology have been evicting the very people they screwed in the first place.

More recently, and very quietly, the foreclosures were halted by the banks, who acknowledged a few paperwork issues. Which turned out to be the numbing onslaught of hundreds of forms required to activate many, many foreclosures, which were signed by people with no knowledge whatsoever of what they were doing. And then, even more quietly, came the admission that some of the paperwork that connected a mortgage to a specific property and a specific owner wasn’t, well, it wasn’t all in the file. (The “To” line on the check I write each month for my house payment has changed five times in eight years, so I’m not surprised that the files are in disarray).

Then, “the White House” – never Obama, or anyone else with a name, but always “The White House” – urged the banks to not impose a moratorium on foreclosures because “the White House” believed that would be bad for the economy. Finally, the foreclosure machine is up and running again, but more slowly and with almost no mention on the nightly news.

The miners emerged in Chile, and on Today a poodle rode a skateboard while other poodles jumped rope. The father from Happy Days died the same week as the mother from Leave it to Beaver – neither of them, thank goodness, were competing on Dancing with the Stars – and the Oregon Ducks were ranked number one in a poll.

Once, either late in 2008 or early in 2009, a congresswoman from Ohio called Marci Kaptur was dismissed as a populist (a word that seems to have ran its course for now, and for that I am thankful) because she expressed some very unpolished sentiments about the banks. She was but a blip on most of the news channels. The right wing talkies accused her of inciting criminal behavior by urging people in her district, which includes Toledo, to not leave their homes just because they’re put into foreclosure but to instead become squatters.

Bill Moyers had her on for a real conversation – you could rely on him for that – during which she explained that she was not inciting criminal behavior at all.

She’d been to a meeting with some moneyed authority figure with Ohio connections, who, according to her, made sure she knew that he was tight with someone in the state who had more political and financial power than her. “I guess that was supposed to be some sort of threat,” she said, and laughed. Another of her ideas was to decentralize, geographically, the U.S. Treasury. She thought it was too close to Wall Street, that there was a bit too much coziness between the two allegedly separate entities, so she suggested part of it relocate further west, someplace like Ohio, perhaps. Not surprisingly, the “leadership” at the treasury was not pleased. Finally, regarding the foreclosure situation, she said, simply, this: If you’re ordered to leave your house, demand to see the paperwork before you start packing. Marci Kaptur didn’t hesitate to say that when the mortgages changed hands so many times, she believed it was important to confirm that the company kicking you out of your house could prove it had the documents required to do so.

What a naïve, simple-minded populist. The whole story – or lack thereof – makes me wonder, of course, if Marci Kaptur is having a good laugh these days, or if she’s about to be tossed out of office by a candidate funded by anonymous donations, the kind that are now blessed by the wise ones in robes.

Tears from the trail

Of all the campaigns this election season there are two I find particularly interesting. One is in Alaska, the other in Nevada. Both are on the receiving end of more than their fair share of public funds (welfare, in Republicanese) yet both appear to be on the verge of electing candidates whose primary campaign promise is to reduce both the size of the federal government and the influence it has on their respective states. In Alaska, residents receive a check for enduring the winter, a bonus of sorts. And the fine people of Nevada, like a tasteless television commercial, are brought to you by the rest of us, who pay inordinate amounts of money for one poor decision after another, including the fact that even though water is in drastically short supply in Nevada, it was the fastest growing state in the country for two decades. For the purely selfish reason that I like to be entertained, I hope the Tea Party candidates win in both states. If these candidates are to be believed, if they’re elected there will be no more free money in Alaska and no more free water in Nevada. What I’m looking forward to is listening to how they manage to blame the hard times that are bound to follow on Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Destructive though it may be, that’s my idea of fun.

But on the interesting meter, those two races pale in comparison to what is going on in Kentucky, where, as of Tuesday morning, the national handkerchief has been handed to Tea Party candidate Rand Paul, who stormed off the stage after a debate and refused to shake hands with his opponent, Jack Conway. Like a toddler who has had his favorite blanky taken away from him, Rand Paul is simpering on television screens all across the land because his opponent is running commercials that question Rand Paul’s Christian faith. Drawing on some cult weirdness from Rand Paul’s college days – a secret society, a woman tied up and bowed down before some sort of statue – Jack Conway’s ads accuse Rand Paul of mocking Christianity. The religious conservatives, following their always effective game plan to hoard the victim prize before anyone else can even find it, are crying foul. Among their many explanations for why this is so unjust is this gem: those activities took place when Rand Paul was in college, 30 years ago, so this is unfair.

Which reminded me – how could it not? – of a prime bit of televised lunacy from the early 1990s, when rumors began to surface that a young man with presidential aspirations from Arkansas had smoked weed when he was in college. I do not know of a single person who came of age in the 1960s or 1970s who did not smoke pot at one time or another – some more than others, of course – but in 1992 the television people, rather than introducing any contextual logic to the story, flamed it for all it was worth. And here in 2010 they are doing the same thing with the Kentucky cry baby. On Tuesday morning, Matt Lauer, whose on-air persona is so dumbed down it’s almost adorable, put on his glasses – that means it’s tough time – and asked Jack Conway, “Do you believe Rand Paul is a man of faith?” I realize Matt Lauer’s fortune is dependent on him overcompensating for the Republican-spawned fantasy that the media is liberal, but seriously. Who cares if Jack Conway thinks Rand Paul is “a man of faith”? Jack Conway doesn’t. He answered the question simply and clearly. “I am not questioning his faith,” he said, “I am questioning his actions.” Matt Lauer, in the midst of a hallucination in which he is a journalist, asked his question again, more sternly this time. And Jack Conway, again, answered it, adding that he has concrete plans to create more than 11,000 jobs in Kentucky. What does Rand Paul have? There was no answer to that, since Rand Paul refused to come on the show. Perhaps he was just following the lead of other Tea Party candidates, who refuse to talk to the media, but it may have been something much more simple than that – perhaps he’d been sent to his room for a time out.

Unfortunately, other Democrats weren’t quite as logical as Jack Conway. In addition to a severe aversion to cults, one of the many reasons I refuse to register as a Democrat is that their spinelessness plays directly into the Republican strategy time after time after time. Accordingly, the chorus from Democrats across the country – including, sadly, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill – was that Jack Conway’s ads went too far and crossed the line. Which made me wonder, what line? Because my opinion is that until presenting yourself as overtly religious becomes as much of a political liability as an endorsement from Nancy Pelosi, Jack Conway has not gone nearly far enough. But it’s a great start.

'Tis the season, again

For the first time in my life I am looking forward to the college football season. Believe it or not, I think I’ve finally found a way to join in the fun and celebrate. That’s because a friend of mine and I are starting a support group for people who loathe college football and all of its accessories. For once I can say, honestly, that I cannot wait for game time.

This all started last week when I went downtown to meet my friend for dinner. She and I met at “the agency” many years ago. She was doomed from the moment she signed the confidentiality agreement, as was I. I drank too much and became almost allergic to the sound of a human voice. She gained a lot of weight and dropped out of her band and started smoking pot every night so she could get some sleep. We got along quite well.

She works downtown now – a huge improvement all on its own, I think – in an office that’s not quite as delusional. “It’s not a cult like ‘the agency’ was,” she said. “People almost always leave at 5:30 and when I ride the bus home I just look out the window. It’s great.” She sipped her beer thoughtfully, then continued. “But they do like to talk about college football. A lot. My manager even talks about the Ducks during team meetings, which is really weird.” A lot of ranting followed. Then, she said that she sometimes felt guilty for not riding along on the tide of team spirit, like she’s an elitist of some sort. To which I said, loud enough for the people at the next table to pause, “For now at least you are not required to apologize for not being stupid.” That was probably not a wise move on my part, considering we were sitting in a sports bar.

I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for a few years. On the afternoons that the Badgers played at Camp Randall, if you weren’t a fan of brute force it was best to stay home. There were brawls and litter and barf in the streets and assaults galore and on and on. But that was in a college town where something along the lines of 50,000 college students lived and drank. Mayhem was to be expected.

This, on the other hand, is Portland, Oregon. This metropolis is home, I believe, to close to 1 million souls. We’re known, from what I read, for sustainability, for renewable energy, for reasonable, informed urban planning, for public transportation, for citizen involvement, for our appreciation, though often piously expressed, of the earth and all its wonders. And apparently we are striving to be known for college football. At ‘the agency’ there were so many company-wide e-mails going around about the finer points of the Ducks-Beavs rivalry that the CEO ordered the college football crowd to set up its own distribution list. (I must say I was impressed when I heard that about the CEO, the last person I’d expect to take a stand against college football: when she asked me once where I was from and I told her Missouri, she said, “Oh, you’re a Tiger!”) College football jokes and barbs and all-around stupid comments are on the news here. I am not kidding: the news. If an anchor or reporter wears green or yellow or orange there will be – and you can bet on this – an onslaught of stupid remarks. About the same time the leaves begin to turn and the mornings chill, I start to see a lot of cars around town – by that I mean Portland – decked out with college football flags, a horrific sight, one that reminds me of paintings from the history textbooks of my youth of the patriots headed off to fight in the American Revolution. Last week someone posted on Facebook that some fat ass had made some national business magazine's top 10 list about the biggest this or most that. The rah rah commenced immediately, and here’s the one that best summed up the prevailing sentiment: Another Duck under the radar! The guy is niether under the radar nor a Duck, but remember, this is college football blather, so it's best to skip the technicalities. And last year came the news that not only are football players more prone to brain damage (I was shocked, personally) but also that many children in Oregon believe the term Civil War refers not to the battle over slavery but the game between the Ducks and the Beavs. That’s encouraging, I think: contrary to what we’ve heard about technology making automatons of today’s youngsters, here in Oregon the little ones are paying close attention to their elders.

While it is certainly fun to dismiss all the college football fanatics as stupid, I know it’s also wrong, so I had to think about my kneejerk comment. I know that there are thoughtful people cheering in the stands all across the land, and in sports bars, and in living rooms. It’s the forcing of the football foolishness into the daily conversation that infuriates me. And I do think, elitist though it may be, that when adults – adults – bray and chant and deck their cars out with flags and manage to reference ‘their’ team in every conversation, even if they’re news anchors on network affiliates in ‘major markets’ (Portland, for instance) and if, especially if, 15, 20 years and anywhere from 50 to 200 pounds beyond their college years, assuming they went to college, people continue to not only identify with ‘their’ team but to introduce themselves as a Duck or a Beaver or perhaps a Coug, and then, with absolutely no indication from me that I am even remotely interested in talking about football, go right ahead and ask me, What are you?, when all those if’s align, I think that asking after the particulars of the IQ is, pardon the pun, fair game.

Novel update

My novel is coming along. I think telling people that I was going to start writing on Oct. 1 was a very good thing to do. It’s a coming out of sorts, a commitment not just in my head but out loud, spoken. It’s like I signed up for something. There have been a number of things about the experience thus far that have struck me. For me, it’s imperative to resist the temptation to edit my own work as I write it. I can spend an entire afternoon tinkering over one paragraph, moving commas around and such, so for me it’s almost painful to not go over everything and change it. But, I am learning to resist. When I write myself into situations that I am unable to address the way I think they should be addressed, I am teaching myself to simply type the words NEEDS WORK and keep going. Closely related, I think, is the issue of scope. With this project I am not writing about a thought, or a realization, or an event or a conversation: I am attempting to put an entire life and its universe on paper. It’s a very different realm for me, a much, much larger canvas. It’s exhilarating at moments, realizing that I can explore all sorts of things, meander here and there and see what happens, but it’s also terrifying. Which brings me to the fear factor. Each and every one of the past 15 mornings have included a moment, usually when I’m getting the coffee going, when I’ve thought, What if today is the day I hit a brick wall at 100 miles per hour and am unable to go any further? A trivial thought, perhaps, but I can feel it in the pit of my stomach when it presents itself. I think I know my way around the language pretty well, and I think a bit of fear and dread here and there is not such a bad thing. It keeps me honest. And it apparently keeps me writing. This morning, as the trees across the street came into faint relief during the slow light up, I reached and then surpassed 10,000 words.

A miracle

If I were just a tad more paranoid and prone to conspiracy theories, it would take very little to convince me that the entire saga in Chile was planned, scripted and staged for no other purpose than to steer the world’s attention away from other, more ominous situations. Pakistan, for example, where thousands and thousands of people have died and thousands more are about to, or Haiti, or Afghanistan. Or, closer to home, that little blip of a story about the banks imposing a moratorium on home foreclosures because they screwed up their own paperwork – talk about a story that yields way more questions than answers – and, darker yet, the White House’s objection to it. The White House thinks calling a halt to foreclosures in order to get the forms in good working order will not be good for the economy. The White House also believes, particularly now that the cameras and microphones are no longer in the Gulf of Mexico but are hard at work in Chile, that this is the time to lift the ban on offshore drilling that was put in place, as I understand it, to make sure that everyone was adhering to the same rules and regulations. The timing, of course, has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the upcoming elections.

Not that it takes much in the way of talent or intelligence, but I knew this mining story was going to be insufferable from its inception. It was August, and when news broke that there were several miners trapped a half mile beneath the Chilean surface, a blind person could have seen the twinkle in the eyes of the newscasters when they announced that the men may not be rescued until Christmas. Now there, I thought, is a timeline for a reality show. This would not be your garden variety hero story about a dog who miraculously dials 911 as the house begins to fill with smoke, or the baby who falls out of a window and is rescued and saved by an everyday hero who was just waiting for the opportunity to give back. Oh no, this would be something else altogether.

I skipped the news on Wednesday morning. It was bad enough on Tuesday, the excitement, the anticipation, the raw emotion of it all. I was saddened that even the Newshour had a correspondent on, live at the scene. Facebook, however, proved too tempting. There were many status updates about the wonder of it all, this restoration of humanity captured live, in real time, for us all to witness. One of the most prolific status updaters I know – a guy who very skillfully blends, using very few words, smarminess and authoritarianism – wrote that there was something disturbing about CNN posting the number of miners rescued on its ticker. “This is not a sporting event,” he wrote. So I wrote, as a comment, which I rarely do: “Oh, but it is …” To which someone else responded, “This is so kewel!! Realty tv has NOTHING on this!” And there were many, many others who had been posting throughout the night. They were touched, they were moved, they were in tears. Then, many of them, addressing whomever had started the particular comment thread they happened to be on, this: Love you. Love you, Lynn. Love you, Claudia. Colleen, I love you soooooooooo much.

I am sorry – sort of – to be so negative, but mandatory, global group hugs make me squirmy.

But speaking of love, that’s the subject of the one news story I did read about the miners on Wednesday morning. Shortly after reading the miners declared (and I’m surprised it took as long as it did to run into this) “… heroes … Nobel men” on Facebook, I opened up the Huffington Post. I was scrolling down in search of what I can no longer recall when I came across a good one. The wives of the miners are fighting – physically, in some instances – with their mistresses (some have more than one) over who is going to get the compensation from the Chilean government. Which makes me wonder how long it will take for the geniuses at Today or Good Morning America to stage a reconciliation show where they all come on – the hero, the wife, a child or two, and a mistress, or perhaps two – and find themselves so overcome with emotion by how profoundly thankful they are for life’s simple pleasures. I cannot wait to share in the grief and joy, to insert myself into the story as if it were my own, and I probably won’t have to for long.

Accommodations

The long-distance book group is going really well. Every Sunday at noon Pacific my sister calls me from Saint Louis. I then hit the flash key and dial Oklahoma. Then I press the flash key again and there we are, my sisters and I. We’re reading War and Peace, which is astonishing, I think. This past Sunday, the book group was a bit of war and a bit of peace. That’s because in spite of the fact that the commercials have thus far been mercifully sparse this year, the holidays are, as they say, right around the corner.

In my family, the holidays are all about power. And if you want to take a really wet and sloshy piss to mark the holiday tree as your very own territory, there is no better way to do so than to throw your spouse and your offspring into the mix and use them as collateral to alter the schedule for everyone else. For years, my sister in Oklahoma managed to move Christmas from the 25th of December to the 26th. Her husband, who is a doctor, was the alleged reason for this. While he made his rounds at the hospital, she and the girls did their own excessive Christmas thing at the house and then, the following morning, flew to Saint Louis, where they bestowed upon our parents the greatest mandatory gift they could have ever dreamed of: their granddaughters. And there was nobody who bitched more relentlessly about this than the father of my two nephews. How rude, he said, over and over again, how inconsiderate.

In 2009 my sister in Saint Louis moved into the house where we all grew up. This year, she’s decided to have Thanksgiving at what another one of my brothers pompously calls “our ancestral home.” And my brother the daddy, his two boys and his wife are going to honor the family by tearing themselves away from my nephews’ mother’s family’s table in California and going to Saint Louis. There’s just one small glitch, which was discussed at length during this week’s book group meeting: my brother told everyone he was flying in on Monday and leaving on Friday, so my sister in Oklahoma made reservations for her family, which is arriving on Wednesday night and leaving on Saturday, at a bed and breakfast right down the road from the ancestral place. The problem, of course, is that my brother didn’t actually make reservations – he only checked the schedules and the fares. He has two young children, and his time is more valuable than any of us could ever imagine. And now seats are scarce and fares are high (that’s called supply and demand, I believe). So, assuming he’s actually purchased the tickets (and that would not be a wise assumption, an observation I kept to myself on Sunday), he and his will need to fly out of Saint Louis on Thursday morning.

So let’s do Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday.

And here’s the real beauty of it. I didn’t have to say a word. I didn’t have to recite the tale of planning our mother’s memorial service, which we’d decided to have at the end of May. My brother started throwing grenades all across the land over that one because the exact date had not been confirmed by the second week in January, and, having a child and all, he needed to make his reservations in advance ... five months in advance. I couldn’t plan my way out of a paper bag, according to him. The standards are different for him, of course, which is just one of the many things I find loathsome about him. But on Sunday, I held my tongue for the most part. I’d like to say that’s because I’m reasonable and wise, but that would be a lie. The reason I shut up is that I couldn’t have gotten a word in had I tried because my sister in Oklahoma, who successfully rescheduled Christmas for two decades, went on a bit of a tear. “Does he ever think of anyone else?” she asked finally. I believe I was expected to say something cruel about my brother at that point; I’ve done so so many times that I think it’s probably considered something of an agenda item. Instead, I simply enjoyed myself: there is no amount of money that could buy this brand of entertainment, so my contribution to the conversation was a question rather than a condemnation: “Do you two think that Prince Andrei is going to hit it off with Natasha Rostov?" I asked. "It’s sort of leaning that way, I think.”

God hates many people

I think the most exacting form of bigotry isn’t to assault people, or lynch them, or vote against them. I think the most effective form of all the phobias and ‘isms I can think of is to just pretend the group of people does not exist. Measured against that standard, Katie Couric and Jan Crawford, her condescending, braying legal correspondent, deserve an award.

According to the Phelps family, the founders of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, insisting that God hates fags is passé: God has moved on to bigger and better things, and he now hates dead soldiers. In keeping with my theory that us fags are the greatest fund raisers on the planet, the fags are central to God’s hatred of dead soldiers; he hates the dead soldiers, according to the Phelps, because they died fighting for a country – the U.S. – that tolerates fags. And that’s why the dead soldiers are indeed dead. After spending nearly two decades criss crossing the country and the world in order to show up at funerals for fags who had died of AIDS with bright placards expressing sentiments including, but not limited to, “God Hates Fags” and “GAY = Got AIDS Yet?” the Phelps and their followers upped the ante and started showing up at services for dead U.S. military personnel. And that was when, of course, the media, which had ignored the protests at fag funerals for the most part, started to pay attention.

This week, in what must be a wet dream come true for the family and its followers, the Phelps went before the costumed almighty at the supreme court. On Wednesday evening, Katie Couric led her newscast with an update on the hearing, bringing Jan Crawford on, of course, to enlighten us on the background of the case and the family.

All of it, of course, except for the fact that the Phelps have been torturing fag families and fag celebrations for years and years. I cannot say for sure why it even entered my mind that CBS might acknowledge the fact that military funerals are but the latest PR tactic employed by Topeka’s most famous family. For starters, I realize – trust me, I realize – that this country is so blissed out by uniformed young men with guns that it’s a wonder the companies that manufacture anti-depressants haven’t gone out of business, and there is no one who can be counted on to wave the flag and beat the drum quite as enthusiastically – and to the exclusion of so many others – as Katie Couric. It’s almost as if she’s angling for a medal. And for finishers, I think it’s important to always keep in mind the fact that it took many thousands of fag deaths in the early 1980s before the networks, including CBS, even mentioned the then-new epidemic. In addition to the fags, there were plenty of other early adopters in the HIV saga, including prostitutes, IV drug users and – remember this one? – Haitians. Members of those groups, like the fags, were unmentionable and so, thanks to people with minds like Katie Couric and Jan Crawford, unmentioned.

Even so, in spite of reality, I was surprised. How can you talk about the Phelps family without referencing the fags? You’ll have to ask Katie Couric and her legal lackey about that. For now, I’m focusing on another, more basic question. Which is the more ominous presence on the horizon of a future – or not – for fags? I’d have to say CBS. At least the Phelps family acknowledges our existence. They even call us by name.

Dancing for a cause

The schedule was pretty tight around here Monday evening. I had dinner earlier than usual, watched a bit of the news, did the dishes and then got into a very nice bath for a very nice soak. Then I got into my night attire and made a pot of mint tea – I love tea on cold evenings – and settled down on the couch. The lights went down, the orchestra warmed up, and Dancing with the Stars began. It was story night, no less. Each pair had to use its dance to tell a story. Story night, I thought: it took only those two words, story night, to make the gayest show on television exponentially more gay, something I hadn't believed possible.

It wasn’t too long, though, before it went straight, as in straight down hill, or straight to hell.

But first, the good parts. The football player and the basketball player get sexier each week, and Monday was no exception. “You’re so charming,” one of the judges said to the quarterback, and I could not have chosen a better word myself. Imagine me, finding a football player charming. It happened. The Situation – his name? his handle? I don’t know – is hot as well, but in a different way. Endearingly earnest, I suppose. And “Bristol the Pistol,” well, I like her actually. She is just really not into it, and she knows she’s really not into it, and she says so, as do the judges. You’re in no danger of becoming the next Meryl Streep, one of them said. Her dance partner, who is luscious, cannot stop kissing her, which makes me think that headlines are in the making.

The first offender was Florence Henderson, who – in what appeared to my cynical eyes to be a ploy for sympathy votes – got all weepy talking about how much The Sound of Music, from which her song was taken, meant to her and how much it reminded her, weep weep, of … her … dead … husband. “I’m sure he’s very proud of me,” she said before her dance, the tears glimmering in her eyes like, well, like stars. “I’m sure he was watching you,” one of the judges syruped after her dance. Being manipulatively maudlin is one of the worst offenses I know of, and on Monday Florence Henderson offended with the best of them.

Margaret Cho was equally tasteless, but in a different way. Her story, in case anyone missed the symbolism of her rainbow-themed costume, including a feathery headdress, was all about pride, and coming out as who you are. After slip-shodding her way through Copacabana she faced the judges indignantly, telling one of them, who told her that her dance sucked, more or less, that the whole point of her performance was standing up to those who criticize you. I could just hear the go-alongs chanting, you go, girl! It got worse. Backstage, Margaret Cho got her two cents in just before the numbers to text in a vote in her support were announced. These are scary times for the gay community, she proclaimed. The kids are committing suicide and we must all stand together against bullying! Bullshit. Here’s my first problem: Margaret Cho, as far as I’m concerned, does not speak for “the gay community” (I don’t think anyone does, in all fairness). Here’s my second problem: regurgitating the talking points about youngsters killing themselves because they cannot stand up to the ages-old issue of bullying just before viewers of the most-watched television show in the U.S. are about to vote – or not – on whether you should stay or go is really, really cheap. It turns being gay into a circus act, I think, and, in the process, turns gay people and our “supporters” into caricatures of circus animals. No, thank you. And here’s my third and final problem: Margaret Cho is a shitty dancer. When even I can identify missteps, you know it’s bad.

Margaret Cho and Florence Henderson, however, paled in comparison on the meter of poor taste to the woman who used her performance to cash in on our hardcore romance with the military. Though I should have seen this coming, I was shocked and horrified by the dancing portrayal of a soldier who emerges out of the smoke machine’s fog (back from battle? from death?) to embrace his gal, who is sitting beside a table with a framed photograph of him in uniform on it. Backstage, right before receiving the judge’s scores and right before the voting on her performance via text and telephone began, the woman (I do not know her name), grabbed the opportunity to say, in a voice as authentic as margarine, that she’d like to dedicate the evening’s dance to all the men and women in the armed services. (Automated salutes are apparently as mandatory in Hollywood as they are on the network news: The woman who won the best director award for The Hurt Locker did the same thing). She just won the damn show, I thought, but I must admit that her dancing is actually pretty good.

I'm your guy

There is some truth to the old bit about being careful what you wish for. For a long time now I’ve believed that politics would be better if more people who are not educated and trained as lawyers ran for office.

NBA retirees are not what I had in mind.

But, here in the territory, we’re getting ready to elect ourselves a governor, and I think there is a very good chance that we are going to elect a guy whose primary job experience, as best I can tell, is a stint with the Portland Trail Blazers. As a player. That’s Chris Dudley, who is – sit down for this one – a Republican. His opponent, whom I intend to vote for, is John Kitzhaber. John Kitzhaber is a doctor by trade. He was Oregon’s governor for two terms, beginning shortly after I moved here and ending in the early 2000’s. When he left office he made a most unfortunate statement: he didn’t believe the state was governable. I think Kitzhaber was a fine governor then, and I think he’d make a fine governor now, but I don’t think he’ll win. He’s “an insider,” and in an age when an endorsement from Sarah Palin actually means something, that’s not a good thing to be.

On Thursday night the two stood on a stage and had a debate. Despite all my criticisms of our local television people, I was impressed. One of the anchors, who asked her questions from behind a desk she shared with an Oregonian reporter, came very close to scolding Dudley at one point, reminding him, in so many words, to skip the messaging and answer the question. He didn’t, of course. He didn’t really answer any of the questions. Conservatives don’t have to answer questions. That’s because, regardless of context, they enter their races as victims of the liberal and elite and terribly biased media. They whine and cry and stomp their feet like the indulged children they are. Afraid of being on the receiving end of their labeling machine, people in the media, for the most part, have allowed themselves to be thrust into the role of AccomoMommy, who does not want to listen to her toddler wail for hours, and who can blame her? Rather than being held to the same rules everyone else must follow, conservative candidates are handled with extreme care. They are bestowed with a brand of the special rights the conservatives themselves claim to loathe. It’s a brilliant strategy, I think: it works.

So instead of answering questions, Chris Dudley simply recited, over and over and over again, Oregon’s rankings on things like unemployment, job creation, number of corporate headquarters located here, etc., which are indeed dismal. Since John Kitzhaber was governor eight years ago, Oregon’s current situation is his fault. On one hand, this is encouraging – Republicans, at least in Oregon, appear to have a memory that extends beyond the past 22 months. But on the other, it’s disturbing to me, the way Dudley concluded his recital, many times, in his dumb jock cadence, with a simple, black-and-white sentiment: if you’re happy with those numbers, then vote for the status quo, but if you’re not, I’m your guy.

It didn’t surprise me that Dudley couldn’t think of a single development in Oregon he finds objectionable. Nor did it surprise me that he thinks the private sector, even when heavily subsidized by public funds (which it usually is) is the answer to all of our ills. But I was a bit surprised that he didn’t seem to know what an open primary is. Personally, I don’t completely understand the concept of open primaries myself, but were I running for governor I think I’d study up on the issue. But what really surprised me was that neither Chris Dudley nor John Kitzhaber properly declared himself to the Oregon electorate: Which of these guys is a Duck, and which is a Beaver? My guess, if I had to put money on it, is that they’re both Ducks at heart. But this is no time for guesswork: the election is barely a month away, college football is on, and I think we all need to know.