Today's Tweet

how to sneak chocolate undetected into a US cinema pic.twitter.com/GkBNQFAUV8
— inexorable pride (@eggsandbread) April 19, 2015

Today's SNL

American "culture" is a curious thing - all 'round.

If It's Not About Football

One of my basic themes is "It's not about what they tell us it's about".

Things change, and that's a necessary thing - not necessarily a good thing, but a necessary thing nonetheless.  And it seems to me that we've changed our way into some weird place where we think we have it all figured out - eg: with computerized automation, we can build things to an amazing degree of accuracy, within tolerances that we only dreamed about 35 years ago.  Productivity is thru the roof and the costs of production are so low, we can afford to waste billions of dollars shipping goods from cheap-labor countries to low-price consumers and still turn record-breaking profits, etc etc etc.

And yet, with all our big-brain accomplishments, it would appear the world around us insists on going up in flames anyway, as we sit and wonder what we're doing wrong.  Which led me on a typically circuitous path to remembering the scene from North Dallas Forty (the book, which was pretty good; not the movie, which was bloody fucking awful) where the D Lineman finally goes off on one of the coaches, saying "Whenever we say it's a game, you call it a business; and whenever we call it a business, you say it's just a game."

So, maybe we could take a look at the NFL as an example of our obsession with a kind of robotic pursuit of smash-fitting people into a marketing department's spreadsheet model of perfection -  per Steve Almond:

What kept me hooked was the limbic tingle familiar to any football fan, the sense that I was watching an event that mattered. The speed and scale of the game, the noise of the crowd, the grandiloquent narration and caffeinated camera angles—all these signaled a heightened quality of attention. The players dashed about, their bodies lit in a kind of bright funnel of consequence.

There are all sorts of laudable reasons people watch sports, and football in particular. We wish to reconnect to the unscripted physical pleasures of childhood. We wish for moral structure in a world that feels chaotic, a chance to scratch the inborn itch for tribal affiliation. Sports allow men, in particular, a common language by which to converse.

When we root for a team, the conscious desire is to see them win, to bask in reflected glory. But the unconscious function of fandom is, I think, just the opposite. It’s a form of surrender to our essential helplessness in the universal order. In an age of scientific assurance, people still yearn for spiritual struggle. Fandom allows us to fire our faith in the forge of loss. Because our teams inevitably do lose. And this experience forms the bedrock of our identification.

Backing a team helps Americans, in particular, contend with the unease of living in the most competitive society on earth, a society in which we’re socialized to feel like losers.

That’s the special sauce that capitalism puts on the burgers. It’s how you turn citizens into efficient workers and consumers. You convince them that they are forever falling behind.

What I Love

It seems a lifetime ago, but there was a time I had the great privilege of being allowed to hang around at the periphery of arguments like this one:



There's just something amazingly inspiring to me when I hear the heavyweights gettin' after it like that.

And also too, the exchange between Tyson and Dawkins was exactly that - it was an exchange.  Both men are strong advocates of their respective points of view, and they don't mince words in presenting them or defending them.  But what makes this important to me is that both men have points of view that have real and intrinsic value.  They're both coming at it from the perspective of reason and provable fact - and they'll battle it out as to the best way to get their points across to an audience less knowledgable than themselves.  Ya just can't not love that.

But instead of hearing this kind of smart discussion, the "debate" we get to witness on practically any subject is limited to a stultifying exhibition of Fact vs "Yeah, but Jesus" - or Fact vs "Yeah, but some people say" - or Fact vs "Yeah, but the Democrats".

And it ends with, "So, scientists are telling us the earth is a sphere that rotates on its axis and orbits the local star, while others believe this not to be the case - obviously some good arguments on both sides, but we'll have to leave it at that because the marketing department needs to sell you some shit you've never heard of, which you don't need, and you can't afford.  Please join us tomorrow for our featured segment - Oxygen: Essential to human life or just another scam from the Chemical Manufacturers?"

Haves And Soon-To-Haves

Try not to think about Logan's Run or The Island or Roller Ball or whatever.

Take Me Back

The bad old days, when 42nd Street was something kinda wild and dangerous (also fun):

I'm not convinced this qualifies as "improvement":

But I have to keep reminding myself that 'Nostalgia' was considered a mental disorder until mid-20th century.

Cuz It's Hard To See

An awful lot of people came to love Archie Bunker because the perverse twist in American TV Culture is that sometimes the characters meant to be the Negative Exemplars morph into "the guys telling the real truth" - the ones who're just speaking from their hearts, ignoring the imposition of Political Correctness blah blah blah.  They're supposed to show the deep dark id of the lower brain, but somehow way too many of us mistake it for what I think is a pretty fucked up version of child-like innocence.



If I'm a racist asshole, then I'm a racist asshole.  And if I don't know I'm a racist asshole, then it just means I have some work to do; particularly on my Self Awareness.  It doesn't mean it's OK to say whatever stoopid thing that pops into my skull just because I don't know it's a stoopid thing to say.  AND, it doesn't mean I get to go on choosing to remain stoopid.

A Difference Of Ethos

(not an April Fools thing)

There is no Chief Ethics Officer.
This is not a democracy.
The free market is morally neutral - as God intended.
You get along by going along.
Conform and be dull.
Embrace the Noble Lie.
Watch more TV.  Go out to a movie.
Stay safe - take the blue pill.



DecodeDC

It's (Supposed To Be) About Balance

JFK speaking at a meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961:



(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

"Solon decreed it a crime for any man to shrink from controversy" - that bit's pretty good, but beyond that, it seems like this speech is one of those moments in history that lets us see at least the beginnings of a certain unravelling.

He says it straight out - we have to take the right of all citizens to know what their government is up to and weigh it against the need to keep "the enemy" from knowing things we really need them not to know (insert snarky crack about Don Rumsfeld here).

I guess I could spend the next few decades trying to trace thru all the flips and turns of journalism just in the last half of the 20th century, trying to figure out where "it all went wrong".  And while that may be a truly fun ride, I get the feeling it's not as useful right now as figuring out what's been driving the enormous changes we've been seeing.  I'm not just talking about the tech revolution or whatever - I think it has everything to do with the tensions that are always present between What's-Best-For-The-Most vs what's good for a fairly narrow power agenda on the part of almost literally a few very well placed individuals.

Capt Obvious says, "Robbing the house gets a lot easier once you've killed the watch dog.  And if you can get the homeowners to kill their dog for you, well then you're one clever mother fucker, and maybe you deserve all the booty you can carry, and whoa - can I give you a hand?  Some of those pillow cases look pretty heavy."

We've had to fight this fight on several occasions - kinda what got us going in the first place back in the 18th century.  So here we go again.

It's not about pointing and laughing at The Tea Party. Although it's great sport and somebody needs to do that, they're mostly people who're rightly upset, but who're being co-opted and misled.

And it's not about pissing and moaning about how the Dems have also been co-opted and now they're just as bad as the Repubs.

It's not about immigrants or brown people in general, or your upper middle class douche-y Libertarian neighbors or the jag-off at the 7-11 who doesn't seem to care about satisfying your every whim in a humble but joyous way while constantly expressing his gratitude for the opportunity to slowly starve to death on $8.50 an hour.  It's also not about the kid in the do-rag and the baggy pants, and it's not about a whole fuckload of distractions that're easy to say and easy to understand and just as easy to recognize as total crapola once ya spend half a micro-neuron thinking about it.

It's not even about being mad at the right people - or being mad for the right reasons.  It's about figuring out what to do about being mad at the right people for the right reasons.  If I ever figure that one out, I'll be sure to let ya know, but in the mean time, yeah - let's take our country back.  We can start by taking it back from Goldman-Sachs, and from Exxon-Mobil, and from Koch Industries, and from The Walton Gang, and from whoever else wants to rule over us instead of serving beside us.

Real World Pulchritude

Yeah, OK - it's a little lame in that "holy-fuck-man-why-do-white-people-gotta-try-this-shit" kinda way, but there's a fair-sized chunk o' truth here that needs to get out.



hat tip = HuffPo

October

I don't like the idea that we feel the need to make a particular month "Breast Awareness Month" (eg).  Shit, like I need to be reminded about boobies?

I just don't think we should let ourselves be herded into a comfortable mindset that all we ever have to do is wear a little ribbon of a certain color on our lapels - or put a magnetic ribbon on our cars - and just kinda roll our eyes at how cute it is for all those manly gridiron studmuffins to be rockin' the pink accessories.  For one month.

Seriously - does anybody who's done battle with cancer have to be reminded of it?  Do they think about it for just that 8.5% of the year?

Cancer's about the worst thing that can happen to anybody - and cancer doesn't only happen to cancer patients.  It happens to all of us.  Quick, name five people you know personally who 1) has never had cancer, and 2) doesn't know anybody who's had cancer.  I'll bet my bucks to your boogers you can't do it.

But let's get back to our national allergy to feeling real feelings and facing real facts.  Instead of concentrating on the sanitized make-believe romantically noble bullshit being peddled by profit takers and rent seekers running phony joints like Susan G Komen and the NFL, maybe we could be thinking about this, from The Scar Project:

And maybe we could put some real pressure on policy makers to get off their asses and get something done about something that really matters for a fucking change.

Yesterday's History

Think IEDs and Ethnic/Sectarian Violence are either new or somehow run contrary to our glorious American heritage?  Think again.

Wikipedia:

In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton,[1] Herman Frank Cash, and Robert Chambliss, members of United Klans of America, aKu Klux Klan group, planted a box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, near the basement.[2] At about 10:22 a.m., twenty-six children were walking into the basement assembly room to prepare for the sermon entitled “The Love That Forgives,” when the bomb exploded.[3][4] Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14), were killed in the attack,[5] and 22 additional people were injured, one of whom was Addie Mae Collins' younger sister, Sarah.[6] The explosion blew a hole in the church's rear wall, destroyed the back steps and all but one stained-glass window, which showed Christ leading a group of little children.[7]

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 2005

Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Birmingham was a violent city and was nicknamed “Bombingham”, because the city had experienced more than 50 bombings in black institutions and homes since World War I.[8] Only a week before the bombing Wallace had told The New York Times that to stop integration Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals."[9]

A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested but only charged with possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On October 8, 1963, Chambliss received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.[10] At the time, no federal charges were filed on Chambliss.[11]

The case was unsolved until Bill Baxley was elected Attorney General of Alabama. He requested the original Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the case and discovered that the FBI had accumulated evidence against the named suspects that had not been revealed to the prosecutors by order of J. Edgar Hoover. The files were used to reopen the case in 1971.[12]

In November 1977, the seemingly forgotten case of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing was brought to Court, where Chambliss, now aged 73, was tried once again and was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.[13] Chambliss died in Lloyd Noland Hospital and Health Center on October 29, 1985.[14]

On May 18, 2000, the FBI announced that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing had been carried out by the Ku Klux Klan splinter group the Cahaba Boys. It was claimed that four men, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry had been responsible for the crime.[15] Cash was dead but Blanton and Cherry were arrested, and both have since been tried and convicted.[16]

It seems like the calendar is filling up with anniversaries of the incredibly shitty things we do to each other - mostly done in the name of something that's supposed to be holy or honorable or in our best interests as one "nation" or another.

Mother's Little Helper(s)

James Lee Stanley (on the right) and John Batdorf.




And a short bit from Bryant Gumbel on drug use in USAmerica:

Gumbel Commentary: America's Drug Problem

We're 5% of the world's population, but we consume 80% of the world's pain meds (including 99% of the world's Vicodin).

Ritalin = 4 million kids (mostly)

Anti-Depressants = 22 million women

Sleeping pills = 30 million adults

Statins (to lower cholesterol) = 32 million of any age or gender

We spent over $325,800,000,000 on prescription drugs last year - that's close to $1000 for every American.

Americans who took at least one prescription medication last month = 150 million

Americans who took 3 or more prescription medications last month = 67 million

Americans who took 5 or more prescription medications last month = 31 million 

Today's Best Blog Line - #2

"Ignorance Arbitrage"

Here's the whole post from No More Mister Nice Blog:

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

EVEN THE TRIVIAL TALKING POINTS FROM THE RIGHT ARE DISHONEST

I saw that Newsmax was pushing this ridiculous story and wasn't sure it was worth a post, but now I see it's a front-page story at Fox Nation, so here's the ridiculousness:

'Butler' Box Office Sales Plummet by One-Third

The movie "Lee Daniels' The Butler" saw its weekend box office receipts plummet by nearly a third, from $24.6 million in its opening week to $17 million last week, after a storm of protests from Republican and veterans groups.

The film depicts a White House butler who served eight presidents, and has come under fire for its portrayal of former President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy as being racially insensitive and for casting Jane Fonda as the first lady.

Supporters of President Reagan and veterans groups especially have criticized the film, with some calling for boycotts....

Oh, its box office plummeted? By nearly a third? And it's all because of boycotts by Reagan lovers and Jane Fonda haters? (Or, as the Fox Nation headline implies, because America has suddenly become tired of Oprah Winfrey?)

Nonsense. Every movie that reaches #1 at the weekend box office "plummets" the next week. Boycotts aren't necessary -- moviegoers just move on.

Yes, The Butler's box office dropped 33.0% in its second weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. But the previous #1, Elysium, suffered a54.1% drop in its second week. Before that was 2 Guns: a 58.4% drop.Before that was The Wolverine: a 59.9% drop. Before that was The Conjuring: a 46.9% drop.

Do I need to go on? In fact, The Butler had the smallest second-week drop for a #1 movie since Identity Thief back in March.

This story is up at Fox Nation even though Rupert Murdoch runs a movie studio. It's not as if the moviegoing habits of Americans are unknowable to the Fox media empire.

But this is what I call the right-wing media's "ignorance arbitrage." The conservative purveyors of this nonsense know it's nonsense. But they know they can sell it to people who don't. And that's what they do.

The Theater

I love it and it makes me nauseous; and I can't think of anything more repulsively silly than most show tunes, but I remember way too many of them; and I still can't figure out why I know so much about all this shit - and all of that goes on inside my head all at the same time.  Sometimes I hate my brain.