White Dudes for Obama

A friend of mine has joined a Facebook group: DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN.

Another friend of mine has joined an opposing group: Petition to remove facebook group praying for President Obama's death

Spelling errors, all caps and typos aside, the former group deserves all the ridicule thinking people can muster; and the latter, well, they just don't get it.

Facebook and the Internet are all about voices.  There will always be hatred and hate speech; but censorship is a knee-jerk response.

Thinking people need to combat hate and stupidity with their own voice -- not through the suppression of speech.

I'm tempted to get on Facebook and create a group of my own, for all like-minded Americans who are tired of the racist propaganda that passes for Tea Party manifestos and Republican dialogues.

WHITE DUDES FOR OBAMA

Dude, dudette, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever -- we're here to stand up against the Republican and Tea Party bullies whose blind and ignorant hatred for President Obama threatens not only national security,  but our individual liberties as well.

We like the President.  He was elected on a promise of change for the better -- and that change is happening.  We no longer have a would-be cowboy president whose policies help only his own party; we have a president who thinks, who uses diplomacy and tact, and who is willing to make decisions that are not dependent on party politics -- not even those of his own party.

The Great Unspoken Truth  is that President Obama is hated because . . . he's one of Them.

And you know who They are.

Conservatives, Republicans, Tea Partiers all scream, "We want our country back!"

The only correct answer is, "Your country hasn't been taken away.  It's right here.  Not much is different.  The fact is, you just don't like a black guy in charge."

And that is what it's all about.

Our group name is only symbolic -- a deliberate response to the irrational racial hatred of the Far, Far Right.  To us, "White Dudes" means "Normal Americans who don't care about anybody else's politics and just want to be left alone."  And it's a signal to the ultra-conservative haters in America: yes, there are a lot of white people -- and many others -- who support the President.

The Mad Doctor of conservative television, Glenn Beck, who just recently has begun hearing the voice of God tell him what to do (No, he ain't crazy), has sold the far right on the idea that "We Surround Them" -- that the conservatives, the Republicans, the flag-waving, the God-fearing, surround the rest of Americans -- in effect, dominating middle America.  Ruling them by majority.

The Mad Doctor is wrong.  The Right does not own patriotism.  The Right does not own God.  The Right does not rule America.

We all, as Americans, claim these rights and privileges and beliefs.  The people.  The people who are left and right, conservative and progressive,  farmers and suburbanites, truck drivers, hybrid owners, blue- and white-collars, Christian and Atheist and Agnostic and Jewish and Muslim and...

...All-American.

WHITE DUDES FOR OBAMA are Americans who don't give a damn about politics.  We are in the immense and overwhelming grey area on the line between all the Far-Idiots to whom Ideology is the End-All, Be-All.

We live and survive in the real America -- an America where bills have to be paid, where our pay checks are never enough, where government isn't great, but it isn't the enemy, where our elected officials rarely represent us and where the game of party politics -- and the politicians who play the game -- makes losers of us all.

You're blocking President Obama's choices for administration positions that are invaluable to our country.  Your temper tantrum is hurting America.

You wear tea bags on your heads, get drunk, wave guns and brandish racist signs that are terribly misspelled.  Did you ever go to a school?

Your Republican-led states are threatening secession and anti-Government lawsuits.  I thought you were against the wasteful use of taxpayer dollars.

It's the Far, Wingnut Right against, well, everyone else.  This isn't a populist movement or a second American Revolution.  It's the Civil War all over again -- just because the President is black.

As the man once said, "Tyranny is always better organized than freedom."

WHITE DUDES FOR OBAMA are white and black and everyone in between -- basically, everyone who disagrees with the far-right bullies, no matter our color, our religion -- or lack thereof -- or our political preferences.  We want to live without violence, without discord.

But we will fight your hatred and your political bullying. 

We want change for the better.

We're behind the President.

And thinking people will prevail.

We are the majority.

And We Surround You.

My friend who joined the anti-Obama Facebook group is not a racist.   My friend simply does not like President Obama.  I'm not sure why; but that is my friend's right.  I suspect that my friend joined because the group name is an old, old joke (add any politician's name here).  My friend loves humor, sick jokes (as do I), dry wit and serious drinking.  I truly believe my friend wishes no ill will upon the President.

But there are those who do wish ill will, and worse, upon President Obama.

And it's due to dirty political tactics, smears, and racism.

This is Washington evil at its most organized.  What's next?  Herding Democrats and intellectuals into cattle cars and calling it a Freedom Train?

Seriously -- isn't it time for all the hate and hypocrisy and lies to stop?

An Adventurer . . . FOUND

If you're a fan of the Adventurers Club at Disney World -- the best place on property that is no longer there, you have probably wondered what they did with all the props, tricks and puppets.

Well, one has been found . . . at Disneyland.  Here's a photo and the link to Samland's Disney blog.

Next time you see him, buy Shrunken Ned a gin and tonic for me.

No radio . . . no problem

I'm an anomaly in America.

When I drive anywhere nowadays, the radio is off.

It came to a point, while I was driving an hour or more from Hampton Roads to Richmond, and then back 8 hours later, for an hour to three hours, that I wasn't enjoying it.

It was the same music, over and over,  The same voices.  The same inflections.  The same insipid commercials.  The same bumpers.

The worst was morning drive time.  The same man/woman DJ team, mostly trying to amuse in a Campbell's soup, tasteless but inoffensive way -- which, in itself, is offensive to intelligent people.

Then the woman quit, and her replacement was perhaps even more insipid -- no, stupid -- in her suburbanite, SUV-driving way.  Everything was about babies.  Kids and sports.

I finally realized . . .

I'd had enough.

Every now and then I'd tune into Mancow in the Morning out of Chicago.  A liitle outrageous, a little funny.  But somewhere he turned a corner.  He stopped being funny and tried to be political.

Cut the bitch off.

John Boy and Billy, syndicated out of Carolina or Georgia or somewhere backwards.  Redneck humor a decade after Hee Haw had died and been buried.

"Hey, big feller, lemme hold a dollar."

No thanks.

So I cut the bitch off.

Not just one channel.

The whole radio.

Off.

That was 2006.

Since then, driving, whenever I drive, no matter how far, it's pure thought.

I used to think it would be boring, not to have any input.  To drive for so long.  No TV.  No music.  No voices.

Hey, let's talk about pre-schoolers, and how about the drool.  Ha Ha!

But their input is without thought.  It's dull.  Mundane.  It's at such a level of intrinsic mundanity that it's offensive to anyone who can think for themselves.

I've learned I can supply my own input -- and it's far more interesting and far more productive than listening to the pablum that is broadcast to the masses.

Roll the window down.  Breeze feels good on my arm.  Train tracks outside my neighborhood.  The bell gonna start?  Lights flash?  No.  Move.

Bump across the tracks.  Monolith on the right -- marks etched into it to note the water level if it floods.

Nice.  I'd be underwater.

295 to 95.  An asphalt semi-circle of assholes in Dodge Rams trying to cut their way in front of you instead of slowing down.

95 is usually unobstructed.  But spring break, Memorial Day, July 4, National Hangnail Day, Pizza Month, it's bumper to bumper bullshit.

18-wheelers, their sides either completely blank or the most-colorful things I've ever seen on a highway beside truck-stop hookers, roll like skyscrapers between hybrids, convertibles, suvs, and sludge-covered 4-wheelers from Quebec.

Past the hill with green and yellow John Deere machinery, the gun-glorifying Disneyland of Death comes up on the left.  Hook the fish in its mouth, win a prize, and learn how it feels to kill a living thing.

Nice T-shirts, though.

Troopers parked on the median.  In the right emergency lanes, SUVs parked catty-corned behind other cars, blue lights flashing in the back windows.  Damn!  Stealth supertroopers!

You can't trust anybody when you're pushing 75.

Sip of coffee.  Think about the novel.  Never good stuff -- just what I've done wrong, the parts I have to fix.  Decide to delete a line.  Hope I remember when I get home.

King's Dominion comes up on the right.  The red flashing sign is always missing some letters, a gap on each side.  Kong's Domininion.  Giant ape runs the roller coaster.  Kin's Dominion.  Inbred relatives teach you what family love is all about under the Eiffel Tower.  Season Passes available.

I could get off there and drive east a few miles to Dawn.  To the right at that intersection is one of my favorite clients.  Gloria's Cafe is a down-home, old school home-cookin' restaurant, run by two of the nicest people I've ever met.  Tom and Gloria are trying to do their best, not only to make their way with a restaurant, but to conscientously serve good food at a good price and make their customers happy.  My lunches there have been great...but I can't stop for breakfast.  Hell, I'm late as it is.

SUVs with New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey plates.  A smattering from Maryland.  It reminds me of a tow truck driver I met 30 years ago on I-64, who said he refused to stop for anyone below the Mason-Dixon line.

Then, there it is.  Billboard.  PORTERHOUSE STEAK $12.99

It used to be the Iron Skillet, a chain of truck stop restaurants stretching from there to her and beyond.  No idea what happened, but suddenly Iron Skillet became  Ruther Glen Travel Plaza restaurant.  Same meals, same prices, same mgmt.  There are big white blanks on the signs now, covering the old name.  And that's where I get off, exit 104, Ruther Glen.

Confusion with the signs.  Turn left, get in the left hand lane.  Turn right, well, that's different.  To turn right and go straight up 207 or to turn right into the truck stop on the right, hell, just go right.  But if you want to hit the Ruther Glen Travel Plaza, which is also to the right, you have to stay in the middle lane and turn right, the turn left at the light, because that's on the other side of the tracks.

Good luck, mofos.

Once again: blind drivers trying to get in front of each other, merely to make sure they get the hottest Egg McMuffin from the stainless steel slide.

Sun slanting through the windows.  Grass being cut.  I smell the freshness.  Radio is off.  Sound is noise.  Light, scents, movement, thought -- that's existence.

Coffee from the tumbler.  Decide to add a new sidebar to the novel.  Something about a Mayan artifact that may or may not have someone or something ancient inside it.  Find a picture later.

Slight curves, low hills.  Green.  Pick ups jumping in front of you, even though there are no other cars behind you.  Fuckers just don't want to wait.

Sherriff's cruiser angled on the median.  207 connects 95 and 301, and it's pretty busy for Maryland people who use 301 because it's less crowded than the interstate.  And they speed on 207 trying to get home.  The deputies know this.  Its where I got snagged when I first started working at the paper, and I didn't know the game.  Now it's no more than 60 for me on the way in to work.

The old Caroline Conutry Club on the right.  It was turned into a restauarant a few years ago, the Feedlot, I shit you not.  Probably had troughs in the back room for the high-rolling guests.  The place went through some proprietors, now it's closed again.  Probably best.  I went in there to work on some ads with the most recent manager, and couldn't find a place to lay down my books because the white tablecloths on the tables were covered in mouse turds.

Needless to say, I never stopped in for a bite.

Pasture coming up on the left, speckled with cows.  Some are standing in a shallow pond.  The big white house is where a Richmond lawyer lives, if I remember correctly.  He shot and killed his older neighbor over a dispute about a cow jumping the fence.  A high-priced lawyer out of DC got him off.  He's persona non grata with the rest of the county, now.

Take a left at the bypass.  Finish the coffee.  Past the Food Lion and the McDonald's where the bushes along the drive-thru are infested with flying things.  Then it's the main drag in Bowling Green.  Main Street.

Mayberry lives.

I park in the dirt and gravel lot between the Dollar General and the Pitts and Manns building.  My office is in the first floor of the red brick P&M place.  I tuck my iPhone in my left pocket, my wallet in my back, gather up my lunch bag and sales books, and sigh.

I don't have to cut the radio off.  Didn't druive in with Elliott in the Morning or John Boy or Mancow or Freida and Fred or any damn body.

I had my own thoughts to talk with, to dream with, to keep me busy.

Then reality hits.  My brain shuts down.

Time for work.

"Diane, it's twenty years later..."

. . . and Twin Peaks is still the most groundbreaking television show ever aired.  It raised the bar for TV drama, just like Hill Street Blues had only nine years beforehand.

Here's a story all about Peaks 20 years later.  And a few more:

American pie

Boston Globe - Courtney Hollands - ‎Apr 8, 2010‎

What goes perfectly with the Brattle's evening of 'Twin Peaks'? Special Agent Dale Cooper's favorite treat, cherry pie. By Courtney Hollands “Twin Peaks'' ...

Still Wrapped In Plastic: 'Twin Peaks' Turns 20

NPR - John Powers - ‎Apr 8, 2010‎

The phrase "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" became a national obsession in 1990. Palmer, played by Sheryl Lee, was brutally murdered on the show ...

VHS Review: On The Air

HeyUGuys.co.uk (blog) - Craig Skinner - ‎Apr 9, 2010‎

In our continuing Twin Peaks retrospective I take a look at the David Lynch/Mark Frost helmed comedy series, On The Air. Don't worry you read the title ...

"Mulholland Drive" Star Believes a David Lynch Follow-Up Is Coming

NBC Miami (blog) - Bryan Alexander - ‎Apr 8, 2010‎

Twenty years ago today David Lynch rocked television and cherry pie history with the debut of "Twin Peaks." So being in a nostalgic state of mind, ...

IGN Playlist: David Lynch

IGN - Scott Collura - ‎Apr 8, 2010‎

On the occasion of Twin Peaks' 20th anniversary, we hit "shuffle" on one of our strangest (and favorite) movie collections. by Scott Collura April 8, ...

Why Twin Peaks Ruled

IGN - Matt Fowler - ‎Apr 8, 2010‎

On its 20th Anniversary, IGN looks back with mega-fondness on the landmark David Lynch series. The dreams, the dwarves and the damn fine coffee. by Matt ...

Happy 20th Birthday, Twin Peaks

Geekosystem - Robert Quigley - ‎Apr 8, 2010‎

20 years ago to this day, ABC put a fish in America's collective percolator by unleashing David Lynch's weird ...

All 17 related articles »

Wow Bob Wow!

Newspapers...Still Not Getting It

About nine months ago, I wrote here about how I knew newspapers were dead.  Okay, at least dying.  Driving themselves to the verge of extinction . . . because they just don't get it.

What don't they get?

The present.  How the combination of the evolving whims of consumers and the evolution of technology has sped past them -- and the fact that they cannot catch up.

Ever.

In that link above, I mention Jeff Jarvis.  In an email, Jeff convinced me that a book about the newspaper crisis would not sell -- because he was begged by his publisher not to even submit a proposal.

They didn't want to have to turn him down.

He knows his shit about newspapers and about IT.  And I don't mean "It," the word, or It, the Stephen King novel.  He knows his shIT.  And I suggest you look at his blog posts,

What is content, then?

and

Serendipity is unexpected relevance

They're about the failure of newspapers and the dinosaurs in charge to comprehend the changes affecting them.  They're about the arrogance -- still -- that they're needed.

Journalism is needed.

Newspapers are not.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

McSweeney's "Celebration of the Newspaper" [Part I]

That title up there is the subtitle of the latest issue of McSweeney's -- specifically, McSweeney's No. 33, the San Francisco Panorama.  Although it was published and distributed in December, I couldn't find it anywhere locally to take a look at it until last week, when I found two copies at a Borders in Fredericksburg.

I paid $16.00 for a newspaper?

McSweeney's, if you're not familiar with it, is a quarterly (roughly) print magazine of both fiction and creative nonfiction.  Robert Mitchum's jailhouse tattoos in The Night of the Hunter show exactly how I feel about McSweeney's.  Not just this issue.  Every issue.

I was predisposed to like No. 33.  I love newspapers and I love the newspaper format.  My favorite magazine of all time is The Monster Times, a sci-fi/horror/fantasy/comics magazine from the '70s, published in newspaper format.

But the problem with this issue of McSweeney's is the same problem I have with every issue of McSweeney's:  The graphic design is exemplary.  Superb.  Contemporary.  Cutting edge.  Magnificent.

But . . .

The contents leave me utterly cold.  Intrigued intellectually; but completely devoid of feelings or passion.

The editorial goal with this issue was, in the words of editor Dave Eggers and noted in a marvelous "Information Pamphlet" included with this issue:

We're hoping to remind readers of all the things a printed newspaper can do.  The articles are long, the design expansive.  We think newspapers are essential, and should always be part of the delivery of news and information.  We've got a lot of friends who used to work at newspapers and were laid off.  And we've got a lot of friends working at newspapers now who keep watching their space shrink as budgets get tighter and space more precious.  The Panorama is just a reminder that readers will be more likely to pay for a physical paper if they're given something very different than what they can get on the internet.  And until someone gets people to really pay for content online, the paper newspaper is still the most viable business model for getting journalists paid to do the reporting essential to a democracy.

If this issue is a Celebration of the Newspaper, then I submit that every issue is a Celebration of the Mundane.  That is the basic tenet of what's considered contemporary Literature: finding the small, "important" stories of everyday life, using typical, but somehow atypical, characters.   Ordinary people in ordinary situations.

I have always preferred stories about ordinary (or extraordinary) people in extraordinary situations.  Turning to McSweeney's for stories I like is, I have found, much like turning to the New Yorker for the cartoons when you're used to the cartoons from Playboy or the original National Lampoon.  The latter are laugh out loud and frequently rude, that makes you want to share them with friends; the former is intellectual and droll, and laughter is eschewed for comments such as, "That's funny" or "Oh, that's clever" and might be mentioned over dinner in the Hamptons.

Lampoon:

Playboy:

New Yorker:

To get the joke, you have to be one of us, dahling.  If you don't get it, you're one of them.

I guess I'm a them.

McSweeney's and its editors generally have a San Francisco mentality, which is quite evident with every issue.  With the Panorama, San Francisco comes to the fore, as it should -- every newspaper is a reflection on its home community.  By extension, McSweeney's is the nation's New Yorker, if you will, but with a contemporary San Francisco attitude: hip, edgy, bohemian, literary -- and, really, I do like all those things.

But I'm a them, and McSweeney's isn't written for peasants such as I.

Take a look at everything that makes up this newspaper:

Frankly, this is some good shit.  If this were an actual daily (or weekly) newspaper, this would be an incredible, monumental achievement of news and creativity:

• 350,000 words (that's 2-3 novels)
• 10 sections (Main, Section Two, Sports, Arts One and Two, Food, Comics, Opinion & Analysis, Books, Magazine)
• 120 broadsheet pages (that means regular large-size newspaper pages -- actually, they're larger than most newspaper pages today)

There's more that I can list, but the important thing is, they did what they set out to do: they made a one-shot newspaper that stretched the form and the promise of the newspaper and made it not only ultra-contemporary, shaking off most of the design traditions that have been inbred for decades, but updating journalistic content for the 21st century.

Actually, I love it.

It engages the reader 100% with its graphic design.  The choice of article topics are perfect regarding the San Francisco audience.  However, nationally, with more than a few articles about the Middle East, it pushes interest.  For years now, American newspapers have suffered with the burden of reporting on the conflict in the Middle East, when the large majority of the American public doesn't give a damn about it -- and is actually turned off by the topic.  The Panorama rams it down our throats.  In this respect, it is a throwback to 1950s-'60s journalism: "We will tell you what the important things are you need to know . . . and you will read it."

The articles are about a good variety of topics -- and the important thing is, it's a matter of difference: topic choices most newspapers wouldn't make because the overriding philosophy with metro-dailies is Local Interest First.

And every page has color.  It's used logically, beautifully and creatively. 

This issue is wondrous and magical to look at, to behold.

But it's so damn literary with regards to content that it leaves me absolutely cold inside.


To be continued . . .