I’ve been away for several weeks driving around America in a gasoline powered ve-hicle. I’ve seen things.
This I know: While nobody knows how this presidential campaign will play out it is an absolute certainty that like in 1968, the Empire will be shaken to its core.
W. and crew have taken the GOP so far out on a dead limb that they’ve nominated a candidate who they despise. Hillary, having given the okeydoke to “blue collar America” has smashed the LBJ coalition.
Meanwhile that unsinkable ship, the “USS Sole Superpower,” has sunk. A shocked and addled populace drifts on the waves, clinging to its habits and prejudices while sharks circle the wreckage. They face a stark choice: they can swim towards the small island on the horizon (which may not even have any food or water) called “Obama,” or they can stay put and hope to be rescued before the sharks decide to strike.
(Metaphor switch!) Obama, the Mohammed Ali of politics (see? Americans can embrace a Muslim champ) has, against all odds, defeated the hardest hitter around to take the Democratic Title. The Clintons, like George Foreman, foresaw an early knockout, but Obama employed a “rope-a-dope” strategy. He’s taken some thundering shots to the head and body, which is worrisome, and the tireless GOP waits in the wings like Joe Frazier. The ensuing fight won’t be pretty. Furthermore, unlike Ali, Obama didn’t get a knockout. He won on points in a controversial split decision.
Obama will not use the rope-a-dope on McCain. He’ll float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, stick and jab. To win he must fight his fight and bring it.
The greatest obstacle to this would be a Hillary vice-presidency. The Republicans have a warehouse full of ammunition on the Clintons, sitting unused. Obama would be caught flat footed, spending the entire campaign explaining what the Clintons really meant by this or that. You know the drill.
I know for a fact that Republicans are desperately praying (literally) for an Obama-Clinton ticket. For all of their bluster, GOPs know this: Their candidate might win out only if Obama picks Hillary. They know that McCain is no Joe Frazier. No, he is a Scott LeDeaux, a paper tiger with a glass jaw. A Great White Hope, if you will, though even a LeDeaux could land a lucky punch if he catches the Champ flat footed.
So will “blue collar America” ever vote for Obama? (Metaphor switching back!) As we bob on the ocean, surrounded by sharks, something new develops. Amongst the run-of-the-mill sharks, up swims a ravenous 40-foot Great White named “War on Iran!” Maybe, just maybe, America will decide to swim for that island.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.
F-F-F-Fire!
Why does the American public allow pundits and politicians to talk to them as if they are the senile relative in the room? These a-holes love to banter amongst themselves about what “The American People” think about some piece of drivel or another until we learn it verbatim.
The American People, the story goes, think issues are boring and politics are dirty.To be president a person must be able to take a punch–even (especially) a sucker punch, or a kick in the groin. I mean, what if Bin Laden caught Obama farting in church? What if Iran saw Hillary scratch her ass during the national anthem?
The American people just love this stuff, see? We love to gawk at the accident by the side of the road. In fact, we’d love it if, barring a real accident, one could be staged for our entertainment.
The Media, having framed the terms of battle, forces Democrats to steel themselves for months of expensive, banal, and–considering the numbers–pointless trench warfare between Clinton and Obama. Independents? Hell I don’t know…how could someone honestly not have chosen sides by now?
Republicans wait with bated breath: “Please, please, pleeeez, let it be Hillary!”
Their Hillary ammo sits un-used, and it is some foul stuff (I’ve heard it)–it will make the Rev. Wright business look like a stubbed toe. Seriously.
To most of the rest of the industrialized world this bickering is bizarre to say the very least. Why are we,The American People, putting ourselves through this? Why must we piss on people that we presumably expect our soldiers to salute someday? It’s as if The American People, standing in a burning house that could spread fire to the entire neighborhood, would rather argue about who left the toilet seat up (and what kind of person would do such an awful thing) than put the fire out. Is this really us?
War of the Roveses
For all of its incompetence, greed, lying, looting, and criminality, for all it’s hypocrisy, scandals, and military blunders, there are two things that modern Republicanism does well: accrue power and defeat liberals at the polls.
The Neo-con cabal, in spite of its anti-government rhetoric has succeeded in centralizing power in the executive branch to a degree heretofore undreamed of except perhaps in some paranoid and dystopian science fiction. Clearly, at some point the executive branch must voluntarily cede some of its power back to Congress and the judicial branch.
Additionally, over the last thirty years they have trained a large segment of the public to react emotionally to “cultural issues”, turning the 60’s on its head. Now it’s liberals who are old fashioned, hypocritical, and ideologically inflexible. This has been done using tactics perfected and instituted by that most foul of all Karls, Rove.
This is what worries me about the Clinton bid for the nomination. Beyond the daily insults to my intelligence, which are merely annoying, one’s tactics speak loudly as to what one’s motivations are. If the Clintons are willing to use Rovian tactics on Obama–whom nationwide polls indicate is the most popular Democrat in America, what does this say about how president H. Clinton will preside?
Like mustard gas and anthrax bombs, the mere existence of Rovian tactics doesn’t mean that they must be used. They contaminate the battlefield for everyone and must never be used except as a last resort on an enemy who has used them first. A Democrat should never use them on a Democrat. Ape shall NOT kill ape!
This brings us to the crux of the matter: these are not people whom I trust to pare back the executive branch’s power. Hillary promises health care and troop withdrawal. What if she decides to triangulate to the right as she has done so often in the past when faced with a tough political battle? Will she “go Rovian” on Democrats who stand in her way?
Because of the Supreme Court situation, I will vote for Ms. Clinton should she receive the nomination, but under extreme duress. Like the Third Degree, smallpox blankets, and McCarthyism, Rovian politics must be brought down. They have made the American voter a laughing-stock, an object of pity and scorn around the world. Rovism must be torn town like Saddam’s statue. This can only be done when it is no longer tolerated by decent people. It is the issue of this primary and indeed the whole election; it’s the one that History is watching.
Officer Sam
BILLY: Hey Willy! Did you hear about the Superpower who started an oil war and invaded and ruined a whole country?
WILLY: No, Billy! What happened?
BILLY: They left without the oil!
WILLY: Really? Why??
BILLY: Cuz they’re so GOOD!
WILLY: HA HA HA!
The World Cop has become the Bad Lieutenant–a twisted, thieving, lascivious oil-swilling bully. To be sure, Officer Sam has never been a model cop. From his earliest days on the beat he’s lined his pockets, planted evidence, and twisted arms and done killings for the Big Boys. But in the last seven years he’s gone berserk while we–his employers–mostly averted our eyes as he’s strolled across the world spying, looting, and torturing on duty. He has ordered up every shiny gadget and every new weapon–on credit–to the point where the entire world economy is teetering on the brink of ruin.
Traditionally content to shake down Third World “ghetto” communities, he has lately taken to rummaging through our trash, breaking into our houses, bugging our phones and computers, looting our bank accounts, and arresting us without charges whilst smearing and destroying anyone who crosses him. Hiding behind the the flag, the sacrifices of his predecessors, and even the cross, Officer Sam has disgraced the force at a time when the world was most vulnerable, going so far as to deputize one Mr. Private Contractor, who answers only to him.
When he finally brought down the Soviet Mafia by means fair and foul, all hopes turned to the World Cop. Would he make things right with those whose lives were ruined or lost during the long struggle? Nope. Instead, Officer Sam promoted himself to Emperor Sam and wallowed in self-righteousness, ignorance, decadence and greed. Now the jig is almost up. At the very least, Emperor Sam will be demoted back to beat cop. What remains to be seen is what happens after that. Will he be forgiven, fired, or forced to resign? If it is one of the latter, will he wear a suit to work in his new life or will he work the drive-thru window?
Even if Barack or Hillary pull us out of Iraq, this won’t be over by a long shot. The crimes have been committed in plain view, and Sam’s “issues” remain–and his enablers have yet to admit the scope of the problems–his and theirs.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.
Pass the White-Out
Two nights ago, on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, I was walking home in South Philly, grumbling to myself about SUVs blocking narrow one-way streets because their owners abandoned them for quick sandwiches. Then I look to my right and see Bill Clinton sitting down with Chelsea and getting grubby with a cheese steak, right on the sidewalk–to very little fanfare. People were excited, taking cell phone snap shots and calling their moms, and Bill was letting anybody come right up and paw at him and shake the hand he was trying to eat with. The thing that struck me was that as small a gathering as it was–25 well-scattered people at its peak–they all really responded to the dude, and the dude to them. There was a Hispanic family, an Asian family, a twenty-something black couple, and random pedestrians of every variety–and there was no “Oh my God it’s the President!.” Instead it was a giddy “Oh my God, it’s Bill.” They just go to him like they know him.
Here in Philadelphia, I have enjoyed the option of squandering several opportunities in recent weeks to see either of the democratic candidates in person, and within easy walking distance. For years we have heard how presidential campaigns are completely controlled by the media, and determined by the TV strategies of campaign eggheads. Elections are long. The family of one candidate is working the street late at night, for the primaries. A big part of these things is decided on the ground, as they say.
Pennsylvania voters stuck to the script Tuesday and Hillary got her win. Obama, not terribly demoralized by the inevitable results, had–even as Hillary’s familial tentacles were glad handing working class Philly–already pulled out of the state to attend to more practical markets. The only thing the Clinton victory may have possibly accomplished was to bolster her latest strategy of hammering it into the Democratic party’s collective psyche that Obama would, as the Democratic nominee, have a daunting task ahead trying to wrest the coveted white, working class votes from a guy that reminds every hillbilly of their loopy estranged grandfather.
Nora Ephron (find her on IMDb before you Google her) is positively distraught that, as she estimates, this entire historical presidential election process will, ironically, come down to which candidate white male voters choose from the options of either-a-woman-or-a-black-guy, or an old white man who favors the illegal torture of illegally detained “enemy” combatants.
There are plenty of reasons not to vote and a variety of rationales that indicate that the outcome is a foregone conclusion, but Jesus lady, it is only April. Let the kids have a little fun.
Ephron is saying that even though voters from other demographic groups will each make educated, rational and color-and-gender blind decisions as to who should lead the free world, a bunch of misogynistic, xenophobic, anger management-challenged honkies will cast the votes that tip the scales.
Man, fuck that. Get off your sorry emo butts and go out and kick some metal head ass. Keep us honky motherfuckers from going to the polls. What do I care, I wouldn’t dignify that charade with my participation if they were giving out Xanax martinis to everybody as they came out of the voting booths.
Prior to the age of terror-alert-level color codes as a major campaign issue diversion, the women’s vote was divided and neutralized, and its electoral leverage had, for years, been gutted by one issue: abortion. Candidates felt little pressure in regards to how they were viewed in the light of any other issue, in the eyes of women, because once a candidate’s stance on abortion had been determined, the vote of nearly every woman was dictated by that. Women debated scores of other issues, but pro-choicers have not voted for fascist, right-to-life zealots, nor, conversely, have right-to-lifers voted for commie, pinko baby-killers.
Generally it has not mattered because these issues come in pre-packaged bundles. There aren’t many candidates running on a “Universal Health Care/Overturn Roe v. Wade” platform, and now, with John McCain pitted against Democratic candidate _____, it does seem time to unify the female vote. No politician really wants the hassle of overturning Roe, and McCain, crazy as he may be, isn’t a likely threat to focus his lunacy on taking on a nation of furious women. Iran maybe, but not politically active lefty women.
So to prevent us crackers (who Ephron assures you can in no way be trusted in this case) from queering the pitch when the curtains close, let’s go over a couple of strategies that will keep whitey from having his say on election day:
-Tell the white guys in your life that you truly believe they have a real chance at this Velvet Revolver lead singer gig and they shouldn’t spare a minute for anything that doesn’t involve preparing for their web-cam video audition.
-On election day: Free access to IShotMyself.com (NSFW)
-Schedule a Super Bowl with a Pamela Anderson-Condoleezza Rice mud-wrestling bout half-time show.
-Squidbillies marathon.
-Free Xanax martinis for anybody who knows most of the words to “Highway to Hell.”
All right, this ain’t a top ten list but you get the idea of how little effort is required to divert the abominable white man from his simple task of deciding the fate of the world, and you can use this as a guide to ensure that you will take back the night, fight the power, and stick it to the man.
Just remember though, a honky on a Xanax martini hangover can be a mother, brothers and sisters.
Long has written about sports, news, music and travel under various names and for various publications, including the Buffalo News, The Beast, Blue Dog Press, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the New York Sports Express, among others. He served a short stint as the guitar player in the Philadelphia metal-hop band, Incognegro. He also played guitar and sang on recordings of the Laughing Hyenas and The Unsane. He has dabbled in documentary and music video. He is a veteran of the US Navy and a graduate of the University of Houston. He lives in Philadelphia. You can google the rest.
So I’m flippin’ through the latest Blender like I do every 15 years (or however often it comes out) reading an interview with my favorite armed-to-the-teats lesbian hit man, Alicia Keys (whose portrayal of the afore described villainess you may or may not have caught in 2006’s Smokin’ Aces). From the interview, I learn she is not a member of the Cream tribute band from Ohio, The Black Keys, but she does tell me that it was the government who invented gangsta’ rap to get black people to kill each other.
Now it all makes sense. This government has consistently proved themselves so very competent in so many ways that the effortless play acting performed by Tupac and Biggie, et al, could have been choreographed only by an organization so exacting and perfectionist as that which dwells in halls of power in Washington, D. C.
Is there anything they can’t do? What with the storied cooperation and goodwill that has flourished between the clandestine, information-gathering branches of the government, such as the CIA, FBI and now I guess the late B.I.G. over the decades, how can they be stopped? And they’re so funky too. Who knew?
It was Gore, I bet. Tipper Gore, that is. Stumping away her days decrying and trying to suppress every form of musical expression on the planet, while at night she was in the VP mansion’s basement-studio kickin’ it with an old 808, a tube Neumann, pen and pad and some old school Koss cans. What times those must have been. Remember back when Clinton was running against Bush the 41st? Those bumper stickers that said George Bush and under that Bill Clinton, but the words Bush and Bill were crossed out, leaving “George Clinton: P-Funk in the White House!”
And you thought it was a joke? Maybe that’s what George Clinton did to get back at all those rappers who sample-jacked his jams without paying him. He conspired with the Billary Clinton administration to concoct a popular musical style so diabolical that the performers of it would kill each other in a public gang war. That old wily rascal.
It is a bold stance for Keys to take, however, suggesting that the artists who perform(ed) gangsta’ rap were not capable of fashioning the actual style of music that they so skillfully recorded, produced and performed, but that the government thought it up for them.
Or maybe I’m reading this wrong and looking ahead too far. Maybe Tupac and Biggie weren’t in on the con at all and were just duped pawns being moved around a game board that only the eye of the Man with the gigantic Hand is big enough to survey the enormity of. The Man that controls the world economy and so meticulously guides our domestic and foreign policies with such awe-inspiring deftness.
Keys must be talking about that same government who couldn’t think of anything better to do than sit outside of Manuel Noriega’s bunker in Panama blaring AC/DC and the Beach Boys from speakers propped up on their Humvees until puppet-gone-rogue Noriega caved and came out with his hands up. They used the same tactic towards Saddam’s Iraqi army positions in Kuwait in the Gulf War. These tactics are developed and deployed by the PsyOps (Psychological Operations) division of military intelligence. The work of pure genius.
Then again, if you sat outside my house and played even two Beach Boys songs all the way through I’d come out, guns a blazing–if I had any guns.
Keys says that “If Malcolm [X] or Huey [Newton] had the outlets our musicians have today, [the movement would] be global. I have to figure out a way to do it myself.”
I hope she doesn’t have anything in mind like working up a holographic Malcolm & Huey rap duo like that creepy Frank Sinatra ghost she sang a duet with at the Grammys this year. But then, what do I know? Maybe Keys is a genius and she’s working for the government, too.
Long has written about sports, news, music and travel under various names and for various publications, including the Buffalo News, The Beast, Blue Dog Press, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the New York Sports Express, among others. He served a short stint as the guitar player in the Philadelphia metal-hop band, Incognegro. He also played guitar and sang on recordings of the Laughing Hyenas and The Unsane. He has dabbled in documentary and music video. He is a veteran of the US Navy and a graduate of the University of Houston. He lives in Philadelphia. You can google the rest.
Bare-Knuckle Diction
Disclaimer to any supporters of Senator First Lady, who might stumble across this column:
Barack Obama and his campaign are unaware of my existence. I do not claim to speak for him, them, or any of his supporters. I accept in advance that I expect that any of these folks would “repudiate” (magic word of the week) me and my opinions, as well as my family, my lifestyle, my religion, my handwriting, and my DVD collection. Cool with me. End disclaimer.
As the Senator First Lady’s campaign gradually becomes so shrill as to become audible only to Blue Dogs and Republicans, one marvels at the “politics as hockey-fight” mentality of her hard-core supporters. The rate at which her campaign generates intellectually dishonest “facts” and then REPUDIATES (ding-ding) them, then refolds them into the debate almost defies comprehension. One visualizes a thousand Roves in a room busily typing away on a thousand typewriters to create the One Perfect Dis, the Big One that will finally take out The Interloper. Well, pardon the fuck out of me, I not only don’t want her doing this to Obama, I don’t even want her doing it to McCain!
And make no mistake, it is the appalling intellectual dishonesty that I REPUDIATE (ding-ding). Because that is what I hate about Republicanism. The whole “who are you going to believe, me–or your own eyes and ears?” sickening arrogance of it all, the whole “are you still beating your spouse” circular logic (HA! Gotcha!). I won’t bother to list and shoot down the whole twisted litany of Clinton Campaign gripes, not because I can’t , or that I’m “above it all”, but because they don’t deserve the dignity of a response. Period.
I, alone amongst my circle, was a Bill–and by extension I suppose, Hillary–Clinton supporter. I thought they performed an invaluable rear guard action against the Neo-Con blitzkrieg during the 90s. But like the old Cold Warriors who internalized the enemy’s tactics and became that which they were fighting against, the Clintons have now become a menace in their own right. The frightening thing is that Clintonistas seem as blind to their hero’s transparent chicanery as George W’s followers are to his. It’s the EXACT same vibe.
But, let’s pretend that Hillary is right, that Obama is full of shit. There’s an old saying, “Only a fool confuses horseshit and bullshit”. Horseshit is a conceit, bullshit is a lie. Horseshit is harmless, bullshit is destructive.
Obama and Hillary claim to want to accomplish very similar things. One candidate wants to do this by appealing to our better nature (yes, like Dr. King, and (sigh) no, I don’t say that because he’s Black). The other appears to think that Americans lack this better nature and must be bullied, tormented and tricked into doing the right thing. If that ISN’T bullshit, it doesn’t matter who the president is.
Obama and Generation Shrug
As the world holds its collective breath at the prospect of America FINALLY pulling its head out of its ass, the oil-industrial complex wakes up and digs in its heels. Now Barrack Hussein Kumbaya Adolf Huggy-Bear Media-Darling Obama, this “untried” politician, having miraculously pulled ahead, must take on the Clintons, the neo-cons, the Religious Right and their media operatives all at once.
I am a cynic, and I realize Obama is a professional politician vying to run a vast empire. But the time is long overdue for Generation Shrug to grow up. Oil wars? Shrug. A lawless President? Shrug. Stolen elections? Shrug. Oil barons looting the Treasury? Shrug. Vice President running amok? Shrug. The list goes on and on.
Mrs. Clinton is a hard worker? Who gives a shit? Is she going to win folks seats in Congress and the Senate? No. The former presumed Democratic candidate has been silent while the neo-cons gobbled up this country and crapped on the world. This country has a chance, maybe one chance (and an undeserved one at that) to stop its slide into dictatorship and disaster–DISASTER. The next month will see the Clintonistas, the neo-cons, the Christo-Fascists, and the media tie Obama to the whipping post. He will probably bear it gracefully, but will his candidacy survive? The tone of politics in America can change if we stop acting like gullible rubes.
The people who are attacking and will continue to attack Obama are not the guys at the water cooler or sitting on the next barstool. They are elite, highly paid professionals representing vast constituencies. When they act like pigs it is because they are allowed to act like pigs and frankly, as our representatives, they make pigs of us all. They are professionals and must be forced to act as such. When challenged at work are you and I allowed to lie, smear and whine? To shift the blame, attack people’s patriotism and break rules? Are we allowed to slander? To send company security to take out our enemies and spy on fellow employees? When called to account, are we allowed to act like outraged martyrs?
I know Obama isn’t Dr. King. He ain’t Jesus. But he isn’t an empty suit either. We are battling some very dark forces indeed. McCain is another Nixon waiting to happen. Hillary Clinton, while smart, hard working and well meaning, is a thumb in the eye, dirty political infighter and a fifty-one-percenter to the core. Barack Obama is attempting to point this bloated, addled, apathetic, war mongering herd to higher ground. You can take a chance, or you can shrug and sink back into the pigsty, knowing in your bones that this leads to a broken economy, more military disasters and more piggishness. Kumbaya my ass!