the rix mix

Less than 24 hours remaining to post your racist comments on Jersey newspaper websites & right wing blogs in advance of President Obama's visit to the state. I don't have to suggest any keywords because you use them every day at home.
***
Note to Arizona Senators Kyl & McCain: We'll be glad to take your share of the stim funds.
***
Note to Senators Sessions, Coburn, et al. Judge Sotomayor learned to turn the ice on male assholes forty years ago as a teenager in the Bronx wearing Catholic High School clothes. You're amateurs to a Nuyorican woman.

Of course, you could invite Rosie Perez, who might say, "Youse guys just want a kick in the nuts, I don't need my big brotha for that."

Iowa city hopes slaughterhouse sale turns its luck
By Nigel Duara

POSTVILLE, Iowa (AP) Life in Postville wasn't easy before federal agents raided the area's largest employer and detained 389 people on immigration charges.

The May 2008 raid on the Agriprocessors slaughterhouse came as the nationwide recession was deepening and the city was struggling to cope with some of the long-term economic problems many rural Midwestern communities face.

The string of bad news that followed - bankruptcy, the arrest of senior managers, the exodus of hundreds of other immigrant workers and a failed attempt to keep the plant running with out-of-state workers - left both town and plant as shadows of their former selves, with Postville's population about half its pre-raid size and the kosher slaughterhouse's staff about one-tenth its former size.

There is cautious hope that the expected approval Wednesday of the sale of the plant to SHF Industries, a subsidiary to Canadian plastics maker Hershey Friedman, will bring people back to fill the city's vacated storefronts and homes.
***
The immigration raid - the largest of its kind in Iowa history - tore deeply at the city's social fabric, which had been a unique blend of longtime white residents, Latinos from Mexico and Guatemala, and Hasidic Jews. The raid separated families as workers were jailed and then deported, and it led to the departure of many Latinos who had lived in Postville for years.

Many residents who remain have no interest in slaughterhouse work because of their age or a simple distaste for the often repetitive and messy jobs.

What the matter with unemployed Americans & their families? They won't uproot themselves & relocate to Wherethehellami USA for disgusting, low-paying jobs with no future. & I don't mean just blue collar workers. There's plenty of available labor with out-sourced white collar skills & antiquated college degrees, hanging on by threads to devalued suburban homes mortgaged to the roofs, aging SUVs in the driveways. Yeah, many of them voted Repug for years, screw unions & OSHA & FDA. Let the illegal brown folks pluck the chickens & wade through cattle offal. But if we catch 'em, ship 'em back where they came from. If there's nobody to replace them, use prison labor at 25 cents an hour, or those women with the kids named Kaneasha & DeShawn.

Hey, all work has dignity, right? It's only certain types of people who don't deserve dignity, like the ones who will do anything to gain a foothold in the United States, who do the shitwork & dream the dreams so their children can make the dreams real.

The Prez did a smooth 1/2 inning in the broadcast booth as the National League scored three runs. Baseball isn't Obama's game, but he enjoys it & keeps an eye on the White Sox. His staff got him up to speed after a week overseas. He takes the Rudy Giuliani approach, easiest & best way. If you were a fan of a team before you were a politician - Rudy was a Yankees guy - don't knock the other team in town but don't fake enthusiasm for it or try to play both sides & pretend impartiality. Obama is Chicago & proudly wore a White Sox jacket.

AL 4 NL 3
***
A couple walking ahead of me up the block out front, no hurry, holding hands, I thought nothing of it until they turned into the back yard of the vacant house on the corner, went up the steps to the rear porch & through the door, which was unlocked.
***

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, baseball

Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University; Grand Central Publishing; 2009.

"What would happen if a student at one of America’s most secular colleges spent a semester at Reverend Jerry Falwell’s “Bible Boot Camp” for young evangelicals?

"The Unlikely Disciple answers that question, following Brown University sophomore Kevin Roose during his semester as a new transfer student at Liberty University, the world’s largest evangelical Christian college."

Publisher's blurb

Three things attracted me to the book. First, I was curious about the culture of the school, mainly because it is so large & the vision of one man. Second, Roose's experience is something I can fantasize doing, & have done in other, smaller ways. Third, my nephew - who I like but hardly know - attended Liberty & graduated with a useful degree in business & sports management. Although a PK (pastor's kid), he was raised a moderately conservative United Methodist, attended public schools, & wasn't under parental pressure to turn Evangelical, much less associate himself with strict fundamentalism. I don't think the fundamentalism is what attracted him to Liberty. What specifically did draw him there was a mystery to me. Maybe the book could enlighten me.

A well-adjusted Brown University sophomore, Roose seemed poorly-equipped for this project, his reasons for doing it not very convincing. He never had a church, attended Sunday school, or belonged to a Christian youth group. His parents are affluent, liberal, secularized Quakers. He didn't know enough to even fake an Evangelical attitude in a crowd of arm-waving Born Agains, something any mainline Methodist kid could do. Surely, he'll be found out within 24 hours in a Liberty men's dorm.

But Kevin Roose is open, affable, adaptable, makes friends easily, qualities appreciated on any college campus & especially at conservative Christian schools, where abrasiveness, fashionable rebellion, & alienated behavior stick out like a scarecrow in a cornfield. So he reads, takes a crash course in Evangelicalspeak & manners with an Evangelical friend, rehearses interpersonal encounters &, most importantly, decides to be as honest as possible without completely blowing his cover as a recent arrival at the school with a desire for an earnest Life in Christ. Few people he meets at Liberty show curiosity about Roose's vague personal history & his unwillingness to reveal which Rhode Island school he had previously attended.

The male students (with prying resident advisors) on Roose's dorm floor are recognizable types, as college students & as Evangelicals, including the mildly rebellious guy from Jersey. One roommate is nasty & paranoid, nobody likes him. Most are friendly enough. They're all horny. They sound & act impossibly naive in this day & age. But they listen to mainstream rock. They know popular culture. A few sneakily gather to watch "R" rated movies ($50). They all want to be better Christians.

Their favorite insults are "queer," "gay," & "fag." Someday, in the real world, one of them might misspeak to a big, tough gay of the sort they don't even know exists, & receive a huge scare if not a broken nose. Because, as Roose notes, for all their obsession with the subject, they have terrible gaydars. When Roose invites a gay friend from Brown for a weekend, nobody gets it. There's much they don't get. Liberty must be a convenient place for a confused, guilt-ridden, conflicted young gay or lesbian Evangelical to hide for a few years, since it's easy enough to pretend sexual enthusiasm for the opposite sex when no one expects actual intimacy & the rules expressly forbid it. Only a brave few guys seek help from the spiritual advisor assigned to deal with same-sex attraction. The same advisor counsels habitual masturbators. Roose doesn't enlighten us on what women with those "problems" do. Except for a few women he gets to know personally, we don't learn much about the female Liberty experience. We do get the impression they have great presence on campus but not much power other than their psychic & pheromonal effect on celibate young men. It's a patriarchal culture. Some of Liberty' s male students imagine screwing & impregnating their wives at will. Some consider joinng the Quiverful movement, which advocates gigantic families of happy caucasian Christians. One wonders if they will discuss this with their fiances or just surprise them later. But it's all hypothetical at this stage.

Meeting Roose's new friends, it's important to remember that they didn't choose to attend Wheaton College (the most selective Evangelical school), Asbury College, Bethel University, Messiah College, George Fox University, Northwestern College, or Eastern Mennonite University about an hour up the Interstate. All those schools also have exclusively Christian faculty & strong codes of conduct, if not exactly "The Liberty Way." But they're "liberal" compared to Liberty. Some of them teach intelligent design, & Eastern Mennonite even offers a major in Peace Studies.

Roose tries to "date." Of course, hardly any college students "date" anymore, so it's rather quaint, with all the virgins afraid to even risk a kiss ($10 offense), expecting to find a soulmate/spouse based on a stroll around campus & a deep conversation at a Lynchburg restaurant. Students at Liberty want to meet & marry someone from the school, & Falwell encourages it. Get married, then be fruitful & multiply.

Many of the rules that seem so onerous now are just throwbacks to the in loco parentis authority colleges assumed into the Nineteen-Sixties, when courts overturned some of them in public schools, & others were gradually abandoned with changes in attitudes & lifestyles. Liberty keeps the dress codes, curfews, strict separation of sexes in dorms, required chapel attendance, etc. Other rules against dancing & public affection are old-time Baptist. Jerry Falwell wasn't only straight-laced, he was downright nostalgic. Liberty students know these rules going in, it's their choice. Breaking the rules incurs monetary fines. A student can run up hundreds of dollars in fines without coming close to dismissal. They think twice about bumming a ciggie in town ($25). The Liberty Way also has the effect of shifting & somewhat leveling the social playing field.

Basic academics at Liberty are predictably awful. "History of Life" could use a Flintstones cartoon as a Young Earth teaching aid, & although taught as a science requirement, could easily be combined with the basic Old Testament course. There's all kinds of twisted logic & rationales to make facts fit metaphor. But I wouldn't call Liberty a "Bible Boot Camp." It's advanced training - in ignorance. Students already know the Bible when they arrive, Roose was starting almost from scratch. I'd like to know how they explain plate tectonics, which, if you want to believe God set everything in motion eons ago to prepare the world for humans, is very inspiring.

The other stuff: the constant praying & self-evaluation, enthusiastic church services & assemblies, the honesty & civility, the sense of community, are qualities of all Evangelical colleges, & apparent to a lesser degree on the campuses of many religious-affiliated schools without looking too hard for them. For certain types of adolescent Evangelicals, Liberty is in some ways almost a party school. Roose voluntarily spends Spring Break in Florida with a mission team, not drunk in Cancún on dad's credit card.

"Unlikely Disciple" loses suspense as Roose discovers conformity & participation overcome every obstacle. His clumsiness handling the exterior forms raises hardly any suspicions, even with those whose jobs are to look & listen for students marching to different drummers in their interior lives. He does what he must to fit in, as sincerely as he can. Roose is forced into a healthier, more disciplined lifestyle; he wasn't a true slacker before he arrived at Liberty. He becomes less guarded of his feelings. But he's more intent on finding common ground than in figuring out where he is in the broader American religious landscape, & why Liberty is what it is & attracts the students it does. I think it's attractive for many young people who simply loved Sunday School & Christian Summer Camp, love Jesus & belonging to something larger than themselves, & are comfortable with authority - adults telling them what to do & think. Those students risk the most under Liberty's fundamentalist indoctrination; they become narrow-minded or resistant enough to matriculate, or discontented enough to drop out. Roose's lack of religious experience prevents him from doing much comparing & contrasting. He didn't know young Christians capable of slicing & dicing fundamentalism without placing dinosaurs in Adam & Eve's backyard, ignoring social justice, or voting Republican. A friend of mine with 16 years of quality Catholic education could saute Liberty students in Augustine's Latin, too. Roose dives into Liberty having little familiarity with the alternatives; the depth & breadth of orthodox Christianity Liberty rejects. It's a weakness in the book. But the tale never stalls, & is often touching & funny.

"Unlikely Disciple" reaches a slam climax through incredibly lucky timing for Roose, made possible because he's too good a writer & too smart to be intimidated & awed by Jerry Falwell's distant religious authority & power. He has chutzpah. Ironically, Roose becomes a campus celebrity without exposing himself. What happens next is completely unexpected & mind-blowing.

***
Kevin Roose website
Liberty University
Council for Christian Colleges & Universities

Labels: blogging against theocracy, education, religion, what I'm reading

Labels: motel hotel, New Jersey, postcard

I was in a pissy mood for hours today before I realized it was why I was having unpleasant encounters with the kinds of people & situations I usually handle with some detachment & patience. The beautiful weather disguised my bad mood to myself. So it's probably not a good evening to critique a book I liked but which had very disturbing subject matter: a fundamentalist college. So disturbing that I reread Garry Wills' lovely, scholarly little book, "What Paul Meant" (Paul being the Apostle), just to clear the fundamentalist nonsense out of my head. Wills is, so far as I know, a Roman Catholic in good standing in a parish somewhere. I hope so, because he writes in the best tradition of Catholic intellectuals who study, question, doubt, & yet ultimately affirm, & also know how to present difficult ideas to readers of average intelligence like myself. In this book, he reminds again & again that a narrative carrying a doctrinal truth (or any other kind of truth) doesn't mean the narrative itself is true. God created the world. Doctrine. In six Earth days? The strength of American protestant fundamentalism doesn't make it less aberrational.

Labels: religion

Labels: nature, postcard, religion

If I seem to be at the supermarket a lot, it's only because I'm so close to two.

Tonight, a cop at Shoprite checked my backpack. I was dressed neater than usual. Shoprite sells reusable shopping bags, but doesn't make it easy to use them. The cashiers automatically double bag everything. I take the plastic bags over by the window, carefully repack everything in my small backpack, & put the plastic bags back on a checkout rack. After doing this, I dallied a bit while I decided whether go directly to the library or make a short side trip to Radio Shack. I was a little preoccupied. As I walked out the door, I heard a voice ask, "What's in your bag, sir?" Eh? Is he asking me? Yes, he was. I had to take off the backpack, unzip it, hope I'd kept the receipt rather than left it in a plastic bag. Thank heavens, it was in there. At least the cop was apologetic. After 9/11, I expected to be doing it all the time in PATH stations. "What's in your bag, sir?" 15 pounds of old record albums.

Well, the cop in the Shoprite was young, & with more experience he'll better read the difference between a suspicious character & a merely peculiar character.
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Yesterday, a guy behind me in line at the 7-11 asked, "Did you used to live in Linden?" I moved out of Linden in 1990. I said yes. He said I used to go to his sub shop, he remembered all his regular customers. Then I made a faux pas. I said, "Oh, Blue's." He looked disappointed & said, no it was BZ's sub shop near the theater. BZ's was my girlfriend's preferred sub shop, she was hooked on the tunafish subs there, liked mayonnaise, & she only got tunafish. But when I was having a sub built just for myself, I went to Blue's by the train station, he had better rolls & good provolone, & listened to me concerning proportions of oil & vinegar. I didn't say that to the guy. I thanked him for remembering me. I guess I just look older, not different.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ

Man dies after falling into vat of boiling chocolate in Camden

A horrid headline to see on the newsfeed. Although it's tragic, I immediately recalled an old, dumb Smothers Brothers routine:

Tom (singing): I into a vat of chocolate. Oh, I fell into a vat of chocolate.
Dick : What did you do when you fell into the chocolate?
Tom: I just yelled fire when I fell into the chocolate.
Dick (exasperated): Tom, why did you yell fire when you fell into the chocolate?
Tom: I yelled fire because no one would save me if I yelled CHOCOLATE!!

"There weren't nothing strange about your daddy."

Rev. Al Sharpton, Jr., to Michael Jackson's children at the Memorial Service.

We can accept hyperbole. But it isn't good to tell a lie. Unless Al's awkward double negative was intentional.

Labels: culture, obituary

Robert S. McNamara, the powerful defense secretary who helped lead the nation into the maelstrom of Vietnam and spent the rest of his life wrestling with the war’s moral consequences, died Monday at his home in Washington. He was 93.

So you know I wasn't always crazy, I'll tell you what I really wanted to do when I graduated high school.

I wanted to get a no-brainer job, in a record or hardware store, or company mailroom. I wanted to play in a garage rock band, take piano lessons, & hang out with my girlfriend, & mind my own business. I wanted to attend night school at the community college, only two courses per semester, make some good grades to compensate for my lousy high school transcript, & after awhile when I thought I could handle it, transfer full-time into Montclair State or one of the new less-exclusive colleges Rutgers was planning. Beneath my nuttiness & anxious temperament I sort of knew who I was, & I had a reasonable assessment of my weaknesses & strengths. I stuttered, I had bad study habits, but I could read & write, & I loved music.

I couldn't do these things, or couldn't do them easily, although they were sensible, modest aspirations. There was a military draft, & if you were drafted you were probably going to Vietnam, like my oldest brother, who also needed time to sort out his life but surrendered to the draft when he couldn't keep himself in college with a deferment. He survived. Vietnam was tragic, useless war. It was fought mostly by young men who couldn't or wouldn't go to college, or flunked or dropped out of college. It split America by class & by race. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam today is the Vietnam I thought was inevitable when I turned 18, & Robert S. McNamara was Secretary of Defense. Robert S. McNamara was the architect of countless deaths & ruined lives, & a divided nation - our nation; even he came to realize it over time.

Occasionally, I catch glimpses of what America might have become without Robert S. McNamara as Secretary of Defense, & like what I see.

Labels: growing up, obituary

Apparently, Russian immigrants have completely taken over American competitive professional show dancing. I don't get the connection. Was this a popular thing in Russia? I was watching a PBS show of the Latin dance competition. During a break in the contest, there was an exhibition by the Junior Division champions. The girl dancer was announced as 13 years old, looked a leggy 21, & she & her 15 year old partner clearly engaged in an artistic simulation of the sex act, from passionate foreplay to intercourse. She actually lay down on the floor for the latter, with the guy on top. They were Russians, too. The audience loved it.
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Why would anyone now believe Sara Palin has the character & emotional stability to handle the Office of President of the United States? It's mind-boggling. She's unaware that we can actually compare her with other powerful, successful women. It doesn't freak me out that Nancy Pelosi & Hillary Clinton are respectively second & fourth in the line of presidential succession. Hillary has everything one needs to be president, I would've easily voted for her over John McCain, & it wouldn't have mattered to me if Obama had picked her for VP, had he figured it was the only way he could win.

For all the nasty stuff I've written about George W. Bush, I never called him, or perceived him as, a quitter. That he was made by Karl Rove & placed so much value on Dick Cheney tells us his presidency couldn't have been any better. But the man absorbed all the punishment accompanying the job. It didn't drive him back to drinking, although he could act like a dry drunk. The Presidency would hammer Palin into pieces.
***,
Pathmark was madness. The supermarket has a mix 'n' match 10 for $7.70 sale to get the .77 individual price, & a lot of other stuff on sale at higher prices ending in 7. It probably works out alright elsewhere, but in my Pathmark it's too much to expect customers to read simple instructions, understand the concept of mix 'n' match, & count to ten. I was only there for bananas, green peppers, & coffee.
***

Labels: Grandma Palin, potpourri, shopping

Labels: Asbury Park, jersey shore, postcard

I used to be a fun guy sometimes, & the 4th of July was a fun holiday. But the last time I had a date to share a bag of zeppoles at local fireworks was 2003, & after watching the next year alone from a parking lot radiating the day's heat, I was on my way to being no fun at all anytime for anyone. So now I watch people have fun at the fireworks on TV. Macy's-on-the-Hudson was impressive on a big screen with neighbors shooting off rockets & firecrackers & a finale rumbling through the air from the next town. Boston is where they get in the right spirit. You can dress up silly for that one. Craig Ferguson is a fitting host. Even Neil Diamond seemed right for the occasion. They lay the sentimentality on lightly up there. Although one of the recorded songs played during the display said America is "a high school prom, it's a Springsteen song," & went on to list a bunch of other stuff we're supposed to be. I detest those kinds of lyrics.

American Joey Chestnut decisively defeated six-time titleholder Takeru Kobayashi of Japan in the Coney Island Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, consuming 68 weiners & winning his third consecutive title. What more could we ask for on Independence Day? Except peace.

Labels: holidays

State Governors who became President:

Thomas Jefferson, Governor of Virginia, 1779-81
James Monroe, Governor of Virginia, 1799-1802
Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, 1829
John Tyler, Governor of Virginia, 1825-26
James Knox Polk, Governor of Tennessee, 1839-41
Andrew Johnson, Governor of Tennessee, 1853-57,
Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Governor of Ohio, 1868-72, 1876-77
Grover Cleveland, Governor of New York, 1883-85
William McKinley, Governor of Ohio, 1892-96
Theodore Roosevelt, Governor of New York, 1898-1900
Woodrow Wilson, Governor of New Jersey, 1911-13
Calvin Coolidge, Governor of Massachusetts, 1919-20
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Governor of New York, 1929-33
James Earl Carter, Jr., Governor of Georgia, 1971-75
Ronald Wilson Reagan, Governor of California, 1967-75
William Jefferson Clinton, Governor of Arkansas, 1978-80, 1982-92
George Walker Bush, Governor of Texas, 1995-2000

Other:

Andrew Jackson, Territorial Governor of the Florida, 1821
William Henry Harrison, Territorial Governor of Indiana, 1801-13
William Howard Taft, Governor of the Philippines, 1901-04

Gina's backyard, looking toward her house. The area I'm in is shadier than the photo, which was lightened a bit. It's a four-part yard. Deck next to the house, then a small grassy area fringed with flowers & shrubs. This is the "grove," with flagstone paths & brickwork patio with a picnic table, Wiccans would love it. Behind me is a "glen," a small wild area, a mini-woods covered with ground ivy, & a shed Gina doesn't use much. The houses on either side have ordinary grass yards.

There's a county-built fence at the edge of the property, beyond that a small creek flowing out of Kean University &, unfortunately, a noisy playground & park.

I visit this lovely scene many weekends to feed Gina's cats, a five minute walk.

Labels: cats, Elizabeth NJ

Only 2 1/2 years as governor, never having faced a single serious crisis while in office. No help at all to John McCain with independent voters. No evidence of a keen intellect or desire to learn. Third rate education. No substantial "career" before entering politics. & somehow, between now & 2012, merely by campaigning & fund-raising among the far right in the lower 48 & appearing on Fake News every other day, Sarah Palin makes herself qualified for the presidency?

She's trying to short circuit investigations. She won't need to take the blame if Alaska's economy goes really bad (unlikely), or credit Obama for improvements. Her approval ratings could be terrible by 2010; they've dropped 10 points over the past year. Be even riskier if she ran for reelection with Alaskans knowing she'll be spending more time in Iowa than in Alaska. Despite her Hockey Mom crap & basketball analogies, this is not a woman with Hillary's multi-tasking skills.

& tell me, just who was making fun of Trig? Can't put that on Letterman.

All the stuff she said she didn't want to do, the official trips, trade missions, etc., are how governors build up their national credentials.

One TV commentator said, "Her credentials can't help but get weaker now, as time passes."

As for rumors there's a big scandal about to pop, an indictment, that could explain it, too. I hope not. Sara & her devotees are so screwball & so divisive that Democrats could hardly hope for a greater affliction upon Repugs.

Labels: Grandma Palin

My shrink ran 90 minutes late today. For an appointment rarely lasting more than ten minutes. I bring a paperback. I don't expect to read ten chapters & watch a half hour of news. It's in a crappy part of the city - not the crappiest, that's a few more blocks. At least it wasn't the blast furnace heat we usually have in early July. On the way back I like to make a few stops downtown, a place I generally avoid. I was feeling cranky by the time I saw him, the stores would be closing, there were dark storm clouds approaching. I'm sure he understood why I gave monosyllabic answers to his standard inquiries. Sometimes we have a little chat. Not today. I don't bother complaining, it's a mental health clinic, everybody complains whether or not their gripes are rational, the staff is expected only to listen patiently.

Warning, Fellow Bloggers:

A judge in Freehold ruled today that a Washington State blogger who posted comments about the pornography industry is not covered by shield laws that protect newspaper reporters and can be sued for defamation.

Acknowledging that he was wading into largely uncharted legal waters, Superior Court Judge Louis Locascio said Shellee Hale's message board postings last year about a Freehold-based computer software company were nothing more than the rants of "private person with unexplained motives for her postings" and cannot be given the same protections as information compiled though the process of news gathering.
***
The decision maintains the distinction between internet bloggers and journalists affiliated with news organizations, said Thomas Cafferty, counsel to the New Jersey Press Association.

Bloggers have always been subjected to defamation claims in New Jersey, Cafferty said, but this case shows they cannot use the Shield Law, which protects journalists from revealing their sources.

Labels: about writing, Elizabeth NJ, mental health

You knew it was coming eventually.

I stop in DD after the library, sit down with my decaf, with a view of the TV, CNN, hope to learn something about Iraq withdrawal, Iran, Honduras, health care bill, maybe a Karl Malden tribute or Al & Franni arriving in D.C.

Freakin' Michael Jackson.

Look, Michael lived under continuous stress for 50 years. For the first 21 or so, the stress was imposed from the outside. But after that the stress was increasingly of his own making. Poor career decisions. Clueless choices in his personal life. A prisoner of his own whims & obsessions. Whatever the doctor did, whatever drugs he prescribed, Michael Jackson wasn't murdered. There's no one else to blame. Not Papa Jackson, not Berry Gordy, although the "values" of those two exploitative men served him badly in the long run. Not his hangers-on & sycophants. Not Liz Taylor or the Sheik of Dubai, his "friends." Not the paparazzi. Doesn't matter who inherits his catalogue, estate & his debts & his test tube children. It's all product. Michael Jackson made product. Sometimes great product, all through his recording career. But he saw it as product.

He wasn't like Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, foundering on a "masterpiece" his damaged psyche wouldn't let him finish.

Michael Jackson had no sooner crowned himself "King of Pop" than three smarter, new megastars, Prince, Madonna, & Springsteen, damned near knocked the crown clear off his head. Hip hop rendered any "message" he had irrelevant. His own sister Janet wasn't messing around.

Which brings me to the opinion I've held for two decades. Following the unparalleled success of "Thriller," Jackson made a decision that revealed his tragic flaw & his Motown indoctrination. Rather than understanding the uniqueness of the achievement, the opportunity it presented, Michael set as his primary ambition the making of an album that would sell bigger than "Thriller." Not a better album. He had no clear idea how to accomplish this feat, & he didn't quite possess all the skills (or vision) he needed to do it. He didn't use the success of "Thriller" to develop his songwriting, to work on a point-of-view, to embark on some dreamed of personal artistic project, to get his life & finances on solid ground, maybe do some psychotherapy to control his demons. He bought a monkey & built Neverland & wrecked his face.

Michael Jackson was one fucked up man. In that regard, he truly did top Elvis. The other King, after a few years of bad movies & non-hits, shook off the indifference & a stifling manager, Colonel Parker, long enough to give us an incredible comeback, a trim figure, & some great records before he reverted to form, missing out on the beautiful support the new generation extended to Johnny Cash & Roy Orbison, & which would have revitalized him yet a third time.

A good king has a capacity for reigning wisely at least some of the time.

Labels: bully pulpit, Elvis Presley, media madness, music, obituary, Showbiz

is how Yankee radio baseball announcer John Sterling would call Al Franken's extra-inning victory over Norm Coleman.

Now we have to wait while Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid in a spirit of bipartisanship begs Repugs for permission to seat Franken, & asks them which committee assignments Al gets.

Al's coin toss win in a state Obama carried by 300,000 shows that independent Minnesotans had reservations about electing him over an incumbent. He had a tough primary, too. But Al will be a fine senator.

Al will be on the senate judiciary committee for the Sotermayor SCOTUS hearings. In 1991, he played a United States Senator in an SNL skit during the Clarence Thomas hearings

Labels: in the news, THE election

Pastor invites flock to bring guns to church

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Ken Pagano, the pastor of the New Bethel Church here, is passionate about gun rights. He shoots regularly at the local firing range, and his sermon two weeks ago was on “God, Guns, Gospel and Geometry.” And on Saturday night, he is inviting his congregation of 150 and others to wear or carry their firearms into the sanctuary to “celebrate our rights as Americans!” as a promotional flier for the “open carry celebration” puts it.

“God and guns were part of the foundation of this country,” Mr. Pagano, 49, said Wednesday in the small brick Assembly of God church, where a large wooden cross hung over the altar and two American flags jutted from side walls. “I don’t see any contradiction in this. Not every Christian denomination is pacifist.”

Ironically, the Assemblies of God grew out of a movement that had a strong, if nondoctrinal, antiwar sentiment among rural adherents, & which has produced many wartime conscientious objectors; young men who saw a great difference between carrying a gun to hunt animals & using a gun to kill people.

The Methodist circuit preacher packing a Bible & a pistol & bringing Jesus & civilization to the frontier is an old story for Sunday school kids. Most American protestants don't think guns belong in church even if they support the right to carry guns to church. What's surprising, maybe, is how few pastors there are like Pagano. In a competitive market for conservative churches, he's desperate to put more people in his pews. Look around, you can find a church for every kind of bullshit. A few years ago, a local preacher pressured all the men & boys in his congregation to wear army fatigues to church one Sunday to show they were Soldiers for Christ. That was a predominantly Black evangelical church. I was a new blogger & criticised it, & it was one of the few times my blog generated a lot of angry comments (& an e mail from the assistant pastor) defending the practice. If folks would rather be sheep than shepherds, they'll be herded & usually shorn of their money. Cynically, I figured the pastor recommended exactly where to purchase the fatigues, or had his own supply he was glad to sell his "soldiers."

Labels: in the news, religion

If Bernie Madoff had been caught or confessed early in his ponzi scheme, he'd have served his time & been out of prison long ago.

I watched a documentary about Madoff. Evil. Bernie, his higher level employees & accomplices, the SEC, the greedy super-rich investors who couldn't be bothered to investigate why Bernie was so mysteriously profitable. I didn't feel so sorry for the European counts & dukes. I did feel very sorry for the people who entrusted their life savings to financial planners who in turn invested the money with Madoff. Those unfortunate folks didn't know Madoff had their money until it was gone. They didn't get the Madoff personal treatment, the arcane explanations of Bernie's "system," the tour of his headquarters with all the computers showing the neat columns of numbers. No, those smaller investors just woke up broke one day. They're upper middle class professionals having - or expecting to have - a comfortable retirement they'd worked toward for 40, 50 years. They have their social security, their basic pensions (if they weren't self-employed), & maybe some property if they didn't sell the house, move into a cheaper condo, & invest the difference. If Bernie felt the cumulative pain & loss of these people, he would find himself in the next-to-lowest ring of Dante's Inferno, among the fraudulent advisors, the Eighth Circle, deeper than the gluttonous & avaricious & lustful. It would be unbearable. In a NYT piece, Ralph Blumental places Madoff at the bottom, among the frozen betrayers, in the icy pit, an allegory of those who violate trust. An oddity of the Ninth Circle is the presence of souls whose bodies are still alive, now inhabited in world above by demons.

Labels: Cape May, jersey shore, love, Mahalo, postcard, sex, Wildwoods NJ

The reason for TV pitchman Billy Mays' huge success eluded me when he pitched products other than the Oxy Clean line. His memorable air horn voice communicated wild enthusiasm, but there was nothing intrinsically trustworthy about his personality. I could enjoy him for a few minutes. He was a boardwalk & county fair act, directly descended from traveling miracle medicine salesmen - which is what Oxy Clean stuff is; it either works or it doesn't, & the pitch assumes we haven't met anyone who has actually bought & used the product.

The appeal of Billy Mays was easier to grasp than GemTV - jewelry porn. There, applying the identical format to each item, a transparently silly "play the game" thing with cheesy music & outrageously inflated "start price," a person sitting behind a counter sells ten hideous rings at $1000+ in two minutes, then moves on immediately to the next item & does it all over again, with the same this is the greatest deal I ever offered pitch. Tanzanites, rubies, diamonds, opals, emeralds, it doesn't matter. The "game" is only that quantities are limited & they dare you to buy it without knowing the final price. There's an entire half-hour infomercial with demonstrations devoted to selling a $60 food processor, but those rings & necklaces just fly out, & you have nothing until they're delivered, & how long does the kick last after you open the boxes? Customers are called "collectors" & ain't that the truth.

Billy Mays was no overnight success. He'd been on the road for a decade & seized his opportunity when he met the OrangeGlo guy in Pittsburgh, & that was no sure thing. He knew his job & enjoyed his fame. He may have died from something bouncing off his head during a rough plane landing yesterday.

(Google now scans new blog posts for keywords & summons up an advertisement on the post published page. Just showed me an ad for India jewelry).

Labels: obituary, TV

Woman with a ravaged face asking for money outside the supermarket. Can't guess how old she is; drugs & booze make people ageless in the worst way. I gave her a buck. I'll always give her something if I have it, because one evening she was outside Dunkin' Donuts & said she was tired & needed a cup of coffee. I thought, yeah, sure, but handed her some change, & a few minutes later she came inside & used my change to buy a cup of coffee.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ

I think this is only the second cloud snapshot I've taken where the camera saw exactly what I was seeing. The original 5 mp photo is quite impressive.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, photograph, weather

"In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul."
Gov. Mark Sanford, e mail to Argentinian lover

I wonder if he's written such sweet words to his wife?

If the fundies want to make a marquee defense of the sanctity of marriage between a man & a woman, they can do so in South Carolina, which has a law against adultery & fornication on the books & a governor who just confessed to cheating on his wife. The problem is that Mark Sanford had the affair in Argentina. Long-distance relationships rarely work out. I'd bet he's fooled around closer to home.

An extramarital affair by itself shouldn't be a career-breaker. But Sanford did some stuff we wouldn't abide here in New Jersey the Fuggetaboudit State, where Bill Clinton could have run for a third term & won. He tried to turn down stim bucks. We get so few cents back on the federal tax dollar that we'll take all we can get, strings attached. No one wants to secede from the Union, although some parts of the state wish they could secede from New Jersey.

No matter where super-rich Jersey Governor Jon Corzine spends his weekends, or who he spends them with, when he's out of the state we expect him to inform Senate President Dick Codey, who knows what to do & won't get rattled if there's flash floods or a prison riot.

Labels: in the news, New Jersey politics

I have a lot of respect for radio & TV announcers & "sidekicks." On radio, before my time, staff announcers were very important, the best ones had distinctive voices, usually in the baritone range. Some used phony upper-class diction. Radio stars made their announcers part of the cast, as characters caricaturing their real selves & jobs, like Don Wilson, Jack Benny's announcer, playing Jack Benny's announcer, Don Wilson.

When Ed McMahon said he had worked his way through college as a pitchman on the Atlantic City boardwalk, selling vegetable slicers, I knew exactly what he was talking about; they were still there when I was a kid walking the boards. He learned much on the boardwalk.

Johnny Carson could not have been an easy guy to work for. Temperamental, guarded, a stinging Scorpio, what probably made him a decent boss was that he didn't like change, & he appreciated the loyalty he demanded. But Ed still had to go with Johnny's flow, show after show, a great skill. Ed had the personality of a first rate bartender. Ed also had the additional responsibility, shared with bandleader Doc_Severinsen, of watching over the Tonight Show when Johnny went to regular guest hosts. Johnny didn't want controversy, or the desk props broken, on his day off. Working with Johnny prepared Ed, more or less, to handle Jerry Lewis once-a-year.

All the other good-paying gigs, Star Search, Publishers Clearing House, & execrable Bloopers with Dick Clark, with Ed functioning as a "celebrity," were made possible by Johnny Carson, which Ed never forgot.

Labels: obituary, TV

This performance on Jimmy Fallon's show last night was highly stimulating, as was their Letterman appearance a few weeks ago. Singer Thurston Moore's tee shirt has a risque image.

Labels: music, TV

I tried a Coolata at Dunkin' Donuts. The drink is as numbing cold as the black coffee is scalding hot. I couldn't hold the cup for fear of frostbite, taking small, cautious sips through a straw. About one-third of the way through, the heavy aeration was already making me burp, so I trashed it. I'll stick with iced coffee. If someone calls you a coolata, you've been insulted in Italian.