Oregon's Entry

Rachel Maddow's work the last couple of nights is worth revisiting on the web (hopefully it's there!).  This would be her programs of October 7,8, 2010.  On the 7th she interviewed this Robinson character who's running for Congress from a small pop. mostly rural district in Oregon, against a long-time Democratic Congressman.  Classic set up for the Tea Party dynamics of this year.  Pump money into a small race (see Deleware, Alaska, Nevada), make it about national issues with emotional resonance (e.g., Obama, Kenyan Usurper), voila, you have your pretty daggone weird candidate.  As a blogger recently said, the Tea Party may actually be understood as daring the voter to vote for their candidate.  It's like kids all standing around a frayed wire and egging on the boy who is always fucking up but in a funny way, "touch it.. go on... touch it."

I watched Maddow attempt to interview the Robinson character last night.  Libby had recorded it.  It's a case study in defense and denial on Robinson's part.  There are a few guys like him in the deepest recesses of the Texaco, but I don't really even want to talk to them any more, because there's no longer any point.  They have closed down, the walls are up, the sentries pace 24/7.  I'd actually be kinda nervous to drive down their driveway, or knock on their door.  This Robinson character has a luxurious writing history, going back decades.  He has positions without end on all the emotional hot-button controversies.  When Maddow reads him one of his own sentences, time after time, he reacts by claiming she's attacking him, character-assassinating him, or not talking about the "real" issues of his current campaign.  It's so bizarre and laughable that she finally ends up laughing in exasperation.  It's the clinical example of "entrenchment."  And if Oregon elects this guy to be their representative.... well, they'll get to have first hand knowledge of what it's like to have been "represented"' by Jesse Helms for decades, I'm sorry to tell them.

But Ms Maddow made a very good point last night--debriefing the interview, I guess you might say--that I'd like to expand on just a bit.  Fact is, one of the curious things about Mr. Robinson's campaign is, it's being funded to the tune of $150 K by anonymous sources operating as a national fundraising entity.  Apparently there are no rules which make this situation illegal.  So it's quite possible that monied people--even people from other countries--can so to speak buy a congressman in the US by targetting small population districts in out of the way places and just flooding the district with advertising.  All it takes is money.  Because we do know that advertising works when it's well designed and executed  WE DO KNOW THAT.  It's all around us.

Now Ms Maddow was just directing the viewer's attention to this rather worrisome truth with regard to Mr. Robinson, a person who had just shown himself to be utterly unqualified for office the night before.  With enough good advertising, she was saying, this guy could actually win.  (As an aside, I have a friend who used to be a criminal lawyer.  One time he was assigned to defend some young men from out of state who'd come down to a drug house and shotgunned several of the people who lived there.  It was pretty cut and dried, this case, but as he sat in the courtroom with his co-counsels, the assistant DA who was arguing the state's case was so inept that, going to lunch, the various attorneys for the defense looked at each other in the elevator and said, "We might actually win this case.")  Robinson might actually win.  Maddow played one of his ads.  It's a decent ad, and bears no resemblance to the actual candidate we had just observed, in the flesh, for 15 minutes.  If this ad runs every night on the local teevee, and if his opponent has less of a war chest for advertising, after a while a lot of voters will just remember "Robinson" when they go to vote.  That's how it works.  

So what does it mean, Maddow said, when we allow a situation where anonymous money in unlimited amounts can swamp a little small population district and get a candidate like that elected?  And I said--to Libby--we already have exactly this in the whole country, don't we?  That is, we have a never-ending election campaign running 24/7 right now, drumming into any and all who listen that our President is a Kenyan Usurper (or to use one of Mr. Limbaugh's many elegant phrases, "a man-child in over his head," i.e., a "boy" if you get Mr. Limbaugh's drift, "wink wink."    Day after day, from Day One, Mr. Obama has been painted as a dangerous 5th columnist from some other part of the world, injected into "our country" by unknown forces to "destroy" "our" way of life.  Thus the Tea Party Slogan, "Take Our Country Back."  This theme, this refrain, has been in the air since the moment Mr. Obama took the podium on January 20, 2009.  The funding for this endless advertising campaign--where does it come from?  Damn if I know.  I saw the other day that Beck had lost 256 advertisers since Obama was elected.  Doesn't seem to matter, not like it does when Kevin Harvick loses Shell Oil.

So we'll see, we'll see.  It's a tricky issue to actually discuss.  Jonathan Alter said last night that "we have to be careful not to make this election about intelligence."  Meaning that it's not politically effective to talk about how stupid a candidate seems to be, or how stupid an electorate might seem if they vote for him or her.  It's true.  People don't like being called stupid.  People don't like to see a candidate diminished in that vein--unless they're doing it themselves of course, as Limbaugh and the rest do to Obama, Pelosi, et al, every day.

But we also surely see, and clearly, that advertising works.  This is a factual statement, and the subject matter of business schools, sociology departments, and political science departments every where.  Advertising pays off.  This is why business spends billions on it every years.  There is no doubt that advertising is effective, and possibly this little noted fact is as important as any fact in the current world in which we live. How do you report on something that, in the reporting, might seem to insult the viewers.  Or, on the other hand--raise questions about the fuel that keeps your so-called "journalism" afloat.  Do tell. 

Right now the United States' electoral system--our democracy--is exposed to anonymous advertising assault in basically unlimited amount.  Certain themes have been played for over thirty years, and it is a fact that repetition is in itself a successful advertising tactic.  We have watched a seemingly grass roots "movement" spring up upon Obama's election, and develop power and momentum.  "Take Our Country Back."  What does that even mean?  Amongst Tea Partiers, it elicits a knowing nod, or a high 5.

Strange that Tom Delay was an exterminator before he got into politics.  What goes around I guess.

Firemen or Pyromaniacs, You Be the Judge

(c) John Cirillo

It's gotten so a reductio ad absurdum argument is being met, down at the Texaco, with agreement.  Strange days indeed.  People used to cite the Fireman as hero par excellence.  Hundreds of brave firemen lost their lives during the 9/11 World Trade Center inferno by running up the stairs in an effort to save the civilians on higher floors.  Yesterday, driving to work and listening to the right wing talk show on our local "Rush Radio" station beaming out of Rawleigh, the hosts and callers were in agreement that that Tennessee Fire Department did exactly the right thing when they stood and watched a guy get burned out.  He hadn't paid his fee.  Tough shit.  Case closed.  (Later on in the day some other conservative yammerers argued that the Tennessee FD was actually a government entity, so that's why they watched the fire.  Possibly some conservatives take both positions at once, since in their "world" contradictions are merely interesting features, like calves with two heads.  Whatever.)

I thought firemen put out fires.  That was their job, and indeed, their definition.  A guy in a fire suit or driving a fire truck is not a fireman.  Kramer proved that definitively some years back.  If you're a fireman, you put out the fire.  The whole department in Tennessee, who sat and watched this guy lose his house, belongings, and several pets, because he hadn't paid a $75 fee, the whole department should be fired.  Period.  Probably they should also be put in jail for a while too--for negligence.  I don't know whether that's legal or not, so I can't argue that point.  But the whole department should be fired, without any doubt.  They didn't do their job.  That's a simple and obvious situation.  Fire these guys.  Find some other men who are willing to be firemen. 

"Bbbbbut," the guy at the Texaco argues.  "The guy didn't pay his fire fee.  It serves him right."

Let me remind you of something Ronald Reagan did, back in the early '80s.  Not that I'm a big fan of Reagan, mind you.  In fact, I think much of our current disaster can be laid at the feet of Mr. Reagan.  However, back in the early '80s, Mr. Reagan fired a whole group of people--Air Traffic Controllers--because they went on strike.  The idea was, being an Air Traffic Controller was so critical a job that it was dangerous to the public to allow them to strike.  That is to say, they were betraying their fundamental task.
Nope, said Reagan.  You're outta here.  Of course this was viewed as a right wing victory because Mr. Reagan "broke" a union.  And indeed, that's one way to look at it.  But I'd argue that underlying that was simply the fact that Air Traffic Controllers have a duty to public safety that cannot be exempted--it's who they are.  And it's that duty that gave Reagan the support he needed to fire the whole group of them for striking.

I have no idea at what management level the Tennessee Fire Department made the decision to go watch the fire.  Pyromaniacs watch fires.  Did they all do a circle-jerk while they were watching?  One would think that some "Chief" made this decision about the fee.  Can police do the same thing--work on a pay-as-you-go basis out there in Tennessee?  If a bank doesn't pay it's fee, do the cops just watch the robbery unfold?  Or the home being invaded?  What's the difference?  Cops/Extortionists--you make the call.

I used to argue, down at the Texaco, that we actually all wanted a world--a society--where the common good is defended, i.e., that the idea that everyone should pay for each specific "service" if they wanted it, or not if not, undercut all of us.  The police example was usually the reductio that got traction, at least in itself.  Some of the boys still balked at public schools, because the idea of an educated citizen was too abstract for them.  Apparently now they've come to accept the Fire Department case.  I'd guess privatizing the police is just around the corner.  I guess "dangerous to the public" has become an anachronism, a vestige of those old socialist times when Ike and Uncle Joe divided the planet and ruled with iron fists.

Some of this goes along with the gun fetishists club.  "Gun people" seem to think that everyone should have a gun, and be ready to use it.  That would fix up things for the criminals, eh.  And save us lots of money we now pay for police protection.  Which we can spend on more guns I guess.  Neato.  These folks may find themselves, one night, standing out in the cold and listening to the ammo go off like popcorn amidst the inferno, whilst the guys in the fire hats make a big circle and frolic around the blaze.like it was halloween.

It's a world Ms. O'Donnell, in her pointy hat, will find herself at home in I guess.

Why Nothing Much Ever Happens Part 7,581

http://firedoglake.com/2010/10/03/sunday-late-night-ombudsandy-takes-broders-word-for-it/

Beckham (c) Tbogg

This is some good reporting, but beyond that, just consider that this is also reporting in the vast mundane sea, where one shrimp is pretty much like another, and where the real "story" is the sea itself, calm except for the long swell, shiny with the reflection of the sun, empty, a universe unto itself.  We see, then, a detail, like thousands of other details we might also see, and say: yes.  The United States is a country who's first class citizens are not people at all, but corporations and other business entities.  Their political task is to deal with the inconvenient problem of elections, shaping them to the ends desired for business reasons.  Because for a business, what other reasons exist.

{I include the beautiful photo of Beckham partly because I like to think of him and his spirit, and also because behind him is the calm ocean.} 

Utah Savage

Three Rivers Petroglyph site, New Mexico, photo by Bill Hicks

It's Sunday morning and we're about to undertake a trip down to Tarboro, NC to visit Libby's dad for his birthday.  There's a whole cluster of birthdays around the end of September/early October in our extended family--five or six of 'em.  It's finally thank gawd and at last turned fall here, after the summer held on straight through September with mostly temps up into the 90s.  And out here in the Piedmont South, you can't mitigate anything by saying, well, it's dry heat.  Like they do in Utah or Pie Town, NM.  This equinox the light changed like it does, and the sun has drifted down the tree line to the south, like it's supposed to.  But until mid-week it's been burning up--no rain for nearly a month, trees seeming near death, the woods so dry some yahoo with a 4 wheeler could have burned us out in a jiffy.  Then this week it rained for two or three days straight.  Down on the coast, Wilmington got 21 inches and people were kayaking in the streets.  (A guy told me that at work--he was bringing us some steel-clad batteries that came out of heavy equipment--he said his Wilmington branch had to close for the flooding, something they never did.)

Libby's going to spruce up her dad's bathroom for his birthday.  Pretty new shower curtain and towels.  He's a very guy guy--doesn't see the need, lives in a spartan kinda way, in the retirement apartment he moved into last year.  I changed his guitar strings last time down.  He started playing guitar when he was 72, and loves music, still sings in the choir.  When Libby's mom died I suggested to him that maybe he should get into cooking, learn how to do it.  We knew a widower down on Ocracoke who did just that, baked cakes and pies until he was in his 90s.  Libby's dad was utterly offended at the idea.  He's got a little kitchen in his digs, but seems like the extent of his cooking is probably a can of Campbell's now and then. 

Anyways, before heading out, I want to mention a wonderful blog I found today, called "Utah Savage."  You should check it out.  I put a link up in the links section here.  It includes even a novel, as a section, called "The Narcissist."  Which surely will find a publisher, as its author dreams of finding.  Where's Black Sparrow Press anyways?  I'll definitely be checking back to see what she's up to.  Her most recent post is made up of her answers to one of those "Fifty Questions" things you might see if you tend to thumb through certain magazines.  Here's just one of her answers:

9.To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken? Answer: To very little degree.  My life led me around by the nose.

I like that answer a lot, probably because it has been my experience as well.  It's always amazed me when I run into people who have some big plan, who even had the plan when they were 13, who followed the plan, step by step, who say now, at 50-something--why yes, I knew I was going to be a _______ and it's worked out great.  I have an old friend who played music and studied medicine and specialized in a certain area because he knew that you could have time off in that area (i.e., there were no emergencies), and he moved to a coastal region, built a sailboat, sailed on great trips when he had the time (and he had the time).  It all worked out, far as I know.  But I'm pretty much like Ms Pendleton--things came along.  For example, I never ever had the idea of being in a band, much less a band that was kinda successful if you measure success by getting paid to go to various European countries, or getting mentioned favorably in newspapers and reviews, or being in a kinda lauded (or I'd say now, much later, over-lauded) musical about the sweetened up life of an unreconstructed murdering sadist in 1870s Missouri who was eventually assassinated in 1881.  I did not plan any of this.  And as I've mentioned here before, the dang trees have grown twenty feet taller since I put up the cabin, and are situated just as tenuously in the rocky ground around the house, and could at pretty much anytime take the house out like a sledge hammer taking out a cockroach.  So yes indeed.

Go check out her fine blog.  She kinda reminds me of Charles Bukowski, just a little.  And not the bad Charles, who got awful on camera to his last wife.  More like the Bukowski who endured life working at the Post Office, then ended his wonderful novel "Post Office" by winning at the track, quitting the post office job, and writing the dang thing.

11.You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire. They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend. The criticism is distasteful and unjustified. What do you do? Answer: I'd let them finish trashing my friend then tell them she/he is my friend.  Then I'd watch to see how they react.