61 Points of Loathing – (Small Scale for the Ladies)

61 Points of Loathing

Why 61?  It’s the number of home runs Roger Maris hit in the magical upside-down year 1961 to break the single season record, only to be ridiculed by fans and neglected by the Hall of Fame.  But dammit, he looked like a ballplayer.

1.  The worse your haircut is, the more attractive you seem to become.  I don’t know if it takes away from the God-awful pucker faces these emo kids have, but their swish-top haircuts are always the rave. 

2. There is no such thing as an athletic role model anymore.  Even if you aren’t on the juice, cheating on your spouse, yelling at officials, or fathering illegitimate children…you might tomorrow.

3. “Politics is Hollywood for ugly people.”  (Truth.)

4.  I have a 2004 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar on my wall.  Not only have I outgrown the need to plaster my surroundings with half naked women, but I can’t even keep up with a normal schedule.  Obsolete. 

5.  Men: Is it possible to watch a female eat a banana without thinking something dirty?

6. Women: With that being said, there are other sources of potassium, you know…

7. Women again: …and protein…

8. Women for the third time: I’m sorry.

9.  In 1970, Dock Ellis pitched a complete game no-hitter while under the influence of LSD. 

10. In 2008, Alex Denison had a near-death experience after 2 energy drinks and a flight of stairs. 

11.  I was asked at dinner last night whether men would be needed at all if women could asexually reproduce.  After years of training as a red-blooded chauvinistic pig, I still couldn’t come up with one reason we would ever be kept around…

12.  The lead singer of Slayer is a practicing Catholic.  I weep for all the braindead metalheads who think that they are hearing the words of Satan’s henchmen. 

13.  Before there was Buckcherry’s “Crazy Bitch”, there was Leonard Cohen’s 1974 ballad “Chelsea Hotel #2”.  “I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel.  You were talking so brave and so sweet.  Giving me head on the unmade bed, while limousines wait in the street.”

14.  The preceding was the first time Buckcherry and Leonard Cohen have ever been used in the same area code, let alone sentence.

15.  A friend tried to tell me that all of the 9/11 hijackers are still alive.  I don’t have a punchline.  I think this speaks for itself.

16.  BABA-BOOEY.  Do people still do that?

17. Text message sent to friend: “Yeah, we’re going to see Bruno tonight at the theaters.”

18.  Text message received in reply: “Oh yeah – You going to get a BJ from a 16 year old?”

19.  The same friend once said he would have sex with an Arby’s roast beef sandwich.  I think he may still be my friend because he makes me feel better about myself.

20.  I don’t believe most of the items on Post Secret.  If you give people the opportunity to send you an anonymous confession on a postcard, you had better expect them to be dramatic and hyperbolic.  This may come back to haunt me, but I don’t think this many people genuinely despise their immediate family.

21.  Thank goodness for a text clarification from previous friend: “You know.  In the theater.”

22.  61 is an extremely ambitious number for something only I will ever read.

23.  I knew a girl that used to write about me in her diary, and with each passing day, I more deeply consider breaking into her home and stealing it.  And then lighting her home on fire.  The two incidents are not related.

24.  Too much concentration is put into erectile dysfunction medication.  I understand that it is awful to be old and impotent, but for the love of God, there must be a reason why it doesn’t work anymore.  Take a hint, raisin-sack.

25.  I never want to have daughters.  I would never let them leave the house and consequently would go insane from the menstruation typhoon that would drown me in middle-age.

26.  The top three songs of the past decade: 3. “Grace Kelly” by Mika.  2. “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley. 1. “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse.  Reason being?  None of them sound like they were made anytime in the last decade.

27.  I want to hate John Mayer but I can’t.

28.  Will.I.Am wants to be relevant, but isn’t.  (Does anyone remember on election night when they beamed him in on CNN via Star Wars hologram?  Moments like this lead me to believe that the Dark Ages couldn’t have been this bad.)

29.  The number one fear of all Americans is public speaking. 

30.  The number one reason we don’t have more doctors is a college pre-calculus requirement.

31.  (I’m fine with that.  I’m not sure I want a doctor who isn’t confident with his pre-calculus abilities.  Trigonometry and anatomy are eerily similar.)

32.  Whoever it was that sat down and figured out all of the theorems, formulas, and statistical boundaries of mathematics is simply an asshole.  An asshole.

33.  Whatever happened to Spain?  Not to sound ignorant, but are they even a country anymore?

34.  The further you go in advanced education, the more likely you are to be a liberal.  Liberal response: “The enlightenment of the mind.”  The right-wing response: “Liberal brainwashing!”

35.  No one likes the Beatles as much as they say they do.

36.  The current rate of American drug consumption has fueled gang-related terrorism near our southern border, resulting in numerous innocent deaths and a continuing threat of violence, which leads me back to what I’ve been saying this entire time: Down with whitey.

37.  It is impossible to lead a cow upstairs, but not downstairs.  So never build your slaughter house in the attic.

38.   More than half of American families  with teenagers use internet filters to limit access to adult material.  The rest have fathers looking for the perfect bonding opportunity. 

39.  Who the hell is Kim Kardashian?

40.  There is virtually no use for bird-baths.  Unless you fill them with sulfuric acid. 

41.  Why do the mentally handicapped make such great dishwashers?

42.  50 Bibles are sold every minute in the world. The Bible is also the world’s most shoplifted book.  In unrelated news, I hate Republicans. 

43.  The most recent lyric to come through my stereo system: “All the fluids of your mother, I can barely stand in your lake of juices.  And the doctor asked me, where do all your parts go?”  (Art: An excuse to say anything.)

44.  “Go.”  That is an entire sentence.  And it is aesthetically disgusting. 

45.  I wish there really were monsters under children’s beds.  Monsters that threatened bodily harm if kids didn’t put down their video games and study.  Monsters: the perfect cure for ADHD. 

46.  It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open, but it is too easy to shit your pants while sneezing. 

47.  A fetus develops fingerprints at just 17 weeks in the womb.  THIS IS WHY WE HAVE TO ACT FAST, LIBERAL BABY-KILLERS.

48.  Previously mentioned friend text update: “Whatever, nigga.”

49.  I’ve been having awful dreams about John McCain’s daughter Meghan.  To make a long story short, yes she is naked, and no, I don’t get to enjoy any of the alcohol from the bottle that is smashed over my head.

50.  My mom has a thing for broken noses and mustaches.  I’ve been trying to hook her up with Rollie Fingers for years. ( http://i578.photobucket.com/albums/ss226/picturesforworknothingelse/250_rollie_fingers.jpg )

51.  In 1899, someone told President McKinley that, “everything that can be invented has already been invented.”  If only that were true.  Without the fleshlight, we would be a much more productive society. 

52.  The Fleshlight, if you were unaware, is the best selling adult item in the world.  If you don’t know what it is, think about it for a second, and you’ll probably be right.

53.  Surprisingly, inflatable sheep do not make the top 10. 

54.  I know more attractive Sara(h)’s than any other name.  This could be because it is a popular name, or because I assume all attractive strangers are named Sarah.

55. The ocean is scarier than space.  There might be aliens in space, but there are definitely icky fish things with lights on their heads in the ocean.
http://oddplaza.blogspot.com/2008/02/1.html – Find me anything like that in space, and I’ll gladly pitch a tent in the desert forever.

56.  My friend David Conway writes about sports.  He writes well.  And unlike myself, he doesn’t have to talk about tranny hookers for anyone’s attention.  What the hell, I’ll plug him up as well:   http://www.chicagosportssuck.wordpress.com

57. If you’re small and headed to prison, you should lube yourself in advance.  I mean, what’s it going to hurt?  (No pun intended.)

58. TRANNY HOOKERS.  Are they real?  Find out at 10.

59.  It’s only 8:13, and one google search assured me that yes, indeed, tranny hookers are not only real, but incredibly available.  Anyone want to split one?  (Again, no pun intended.)

60.  I have a Rafael Palmeiro bobble-head doll with eyes that follow me everywhere I go.  And I like it.

61.  The song that just rolled across my iTunes shuffle is about a sad transsexual.  And his/her partner “swallowed the evidence.”  (Art.)

Despite his miraculous 1961 season, Maris truly did not deserve to be a Hall of Famer.  He didn’t drink enough booze or harass enough women to ever be a legend.

Alex Denison.

Winning is Sinning: Or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Despise The Entire Jive

Could it all be a dream?  A silly, demented, self-important dream that could never possibly be reality?  A hidden little corner of the human mind that has somehow clawed it’s way to consciousness, like a badger from back of the cerebellum, piercing through all the mundane transactions of give and take and straight through the forehead.  Yes – straight through my forehead hangs the zombified fist of the Republican Party, taking it’s last breaths before wilting away like a forgotten rose: a truly beautiful piece of earth that bloomed many years ago and has been deteriorating ever since.  With Nixon came a blustery winter.  And with Reagan a rejuvenated spring.  Bush II was the faded lifeless fall.  And where do we go from here?

“And where do we go from here?  And which is the way that’s clear?  Still looking for that blue jean, baby queen.  Prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.  See her shake on the movie screen …Jimmy Dean…” 

And it is this blue jean, baby queen that comes as the final nail in a proverbial coffin this evening, the coffin of an entire party filled with vampires and street preachers, degenerates and crusaders – all going down in a fireball of pompous certainty, untamed bigotry, and the most hypocritical positioning imaginable.  Pure apocalyptic beauty, a Shakespearean tragedy, all rolled into the guise of a value-oriented organization.  The gorgeous siren of backwoods intolerance has left her post, and with her goes the last bit of elected confidence left on the right wing scale.

If Palin is indeed the paradoxical baby queen, then Mark Sanford can be none other than Jimmy Dean – the rebel without a cause.  The romantic bad-boy with a bigger picture than the restraints of his career and the scorn of his community.  His press conferences are like watching a mid-life crisis in action, filled with long-faced absences of thought – pure delusion at times – before awakening to find the dumbfounded mob of reporters and supporters alike, sharing the same thoughts of confusion.  His Argentine princess, a news reporter herself, and a beautiful specimen of adultery if one has ever been created, seems to be his true desire.  Not the sympathy of a nation, nor the forgiveness of his constituency.  No – just the love of his self-described “soul mate,” the women of his garbled dreams, and wispy little cloud that he tends to stare at through misty lenses. 

Yes, where do we go from here?  Do I dance on the graves of the fallen?  Do I drag John Ensign back into the picture for reference, or David Vitter for good measure, and create a Christmas card mugshot for the liberal friends and family?  Can I even relish in the fact that these elected men and women have all gutted their own chances of political fortune, or do I sweat at the reality that they have already been a considerable success?  With every scandal that seeps it’s way through the wire, I question my own political desires and regret all my off-the-cuff remarks.  If only life were like an internet history file – another subject worthy of fret – which could be deleted after abuse.  Have I really won at all?  Or have I been contributing to the larger target of sin!  And have my efforts been in vain, and have my dreams already been extinguished by the reality of behavior?  Is my party next?  Are my heroes soon to be destroyed? 

But I rest easy for now, with the zombie fist dangling from my mind.  The entire party drooling all over themselves, trying to come up with a solution for their demise.  There aren’t enough sandbags in the Sahara to keep the water from flooding the sadistic visions of the GOP, and the people know it all!  Drippy little grins have turned into horrified slobbering confessions and the world can see it all!  Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave, a bone-dry skeleton with a perfect haircut still meticulously preserved.  (I often wonder, merely wonder, how Russia can display the body of Lenin as a hero to a nation, and how the Republicans have allowed Reagan’s body to rot underground.  The savior to our country!  The messiah of the spoken word!  A Christ-like figure for all the praise, the greatest leader of all time!  Underground.  In a modest hole.  No Rushmore.  No mummified presentation.  Just a pile of radioactive perfection with the flag wrapped round and round.)

And here we are – the Democrats (dirty words) with all the glory of piety behind us, and almost nothing to show for it.  The hopeful 60 member Senate has been achieved, and will be squandered without thought.  Health care will be tarnished, the gay agenda left to drown, and all of the hopes that floated us through the finish line will fall to the ground like an ominous fog over Washington – the last reminder of a dream deferred.  The last reminder of the slugs that truly run our country on both sides of the aisle, slowly sucking the optimism from the atmosphere and leaving nothing but a slimy trail of waste.  Literal waste.  From the Senate floor to your front door, with no end in sight.  The promises left unfulfilled from years of apathy and greed – and these are the good guys.  The ones to appreciate.  Because they’re merely wasting our time, but taking advantage for themselves.

It’s the ones that lose both – our trust and their own kingdoms – that are really the ones to revile.  The ones to look at with upturned noses and simply thoughts: You wasted everything we gave you.  An entire nation of people that accept the lizards of civil service and never think twice of reelection.  As long as we aren’t too burdened with the tremendous price of fuel, or the loss of cable television, or the bacon on our tables, we will vote again and again for the same disgusting tyrants of brain-washed, filthy bloodlust.  Nixon, if nothing else, was a winner.  But Jimmy Carter was a shame.

And the shames are who we should be looking for to drive this country away from public policy, and instead into the fields of self-reliance, peace, and contribution.  Outer-Washington leadership that doesn’t have to answer to the angry taxpayer, the ambitious lobbyist, or the pile of dogshit in a suit.  Where are the dreamers that don’t need the power?  Where are the ones satisfied with pure change – for the better – for the people – for the elegant romance of life? 

Dead.  All dead.  And mostly forgotten.  The ones that got away.

We can never win – Democrats, Republicans, non-partisan babes of middle-ground.  We are all in this together.  And the dying party gives the chance for the thriving party to ruin all the gleaming ideas they once held.  The element of power will take over, the wasteful shake of power-rabies finally tearing through the world.  And we, again, are losers.  The same ones that fought so hard for liberties and life will be the casualties of victory.  The casualties of our own fight.  The same fight that we “won.”

“The buck stops here,” Truman said.  But the muck keeps rolling on.

The Beauty of the Conservative Fox

If asked to punish the opposition to my political dreams, the very soul that wishes to crush me and leave me for dead inside a trash compactor outside of Louisville, there are truly only two considerable options that rush blindly through my mind.  The first, of course, is to hate them with every fiber of my being and to spend the rest of my life committing a whole overflowing cornucopia of sins in order to extinguish their flame.  Or I could date them – considering the female gender specifically – and put them through all of the lukewarm Applebee’s dinners they can swallow before sucking them dry through the torment of marriage.

Ah, sweet sadistic fantasies – will you ever leave my mind?

God forbid they ever crawl from my ears like tarantulas of virtue.  A tarantula of virtue that keeps reminding me (in the sacred language of the arachnids, very tricky – very tricky!) that I find the conservative breed the most alluring.  And after years of dating soppy liberals with sloughs of social problems and an overwhelming lack of foresight, I am ready to admit that the liberal end of the political spectrum is the weakest of possible options.  Feminists eating feminists and spike-haired teetotalers are damn attractive – damn attractive! – but lack the little twist that I so much enjoy.  It’s amazing how conventional and expected the life of a drug addict is.  Waking up and going to “work”, at different times of course, but always maintaining a similar routine that seems mundane for the subject at hand.

If you’re going to lead a life of hard drugs, abuse, or simple excess… you better stand out every once in a while.  You’ll be forgotten – (And the corpse will rot without notice.)

And the beauty of the conservative female is as follows: Passionate structure.  It no longer matters that your views are incorrect, (or misguided, or ignorant, or perhaps just obsolete,) but instead that you believe in something at all.  You believe that the lives of coulda-beens and shoulda-beens are more important than our society of ares – maybe you’re right!  Perhaps my eyes have been blinded by the stinging sweat of nervous do-gooders.  And damn! I’ve invested so much!  But that’s why I have my soft spot for you, righty foxes, and even your mothers, as well.

Two champagne glasses filled with gorgeous certainty and unrivaled confidence create the legs of the ideal conservative woman.  Perfectly tanned – spoiled even – by a sun that has shone just for them.  And in turn, they shine for me.  For you.  For everyone, some would insist.  It was Winston Churchill who once said, “The perfect set of legs could make me a Nazi in seconds.”  Don’t look that up, it’s speculative at best, but a valid point all the same.  (Churchill thought it, I’m sure, and isn’t that good enough?)  And I say in complete seriousness, with a hastily mixed concoction of shame and pleasure smeared across my face, that a sincere Republican woman is more attractive than her counterpart.

But Christ! Have I gone soft?  Have I lost all sense of convictions?  Have I been snagged by the evil glue that seeped from the pores of Richard Nixon?  The same disgusting paste that some life-long Republicans can’t seem to pry themselves away from?  Have I lost my mind to the extent that I would chance my entire life in the hands of a right-wing nutjob in high heels?

Yes – and it’s a beautiful downfall that tastes sweeter with each passing day.

And I’d fill an entire newspaper with personal ads suggesting the very same treacherous thought that I’ve been hinting at for so long: The young Republican woman, (much like the ideal young Republican male,) has class.  A shine.  A dare I say blissful quality that has no competition, and unsurpassed brilliance in moments of defense.  When they argue, they make me smile.  And when they win, in those rare and bittersweet moments, I get butterflies as though I were performing “Stairway to Heaven” on an ivory kazoo at Wembley Stadium.  A certain wonderfully nervous moment I can’t suppress with distain for neo-con rhetoric.  Five spoonfuls of liberal sugar get all lumped up in my throat.  It’s a tremendous, awful experience I always treasure behind closed doors.

Doors I have used to hide shrines of Republican idols, both named Mike.  Wallace and Ditka, respectively, make me grit my teeth with anxious frustration.  And doors that hide file cabinets of complaints about immigration, and concessions to faith-based ideologies, and certain sympathies for Nixon.  He thought he was right!  Go figure.  And I’ve come to accept such pitiful excuses from lizards of California politics. 

And the hope – the subtle dream – is that behind a closed door lies a beautiful right-wing fanatic who can agree to disagree.  Or at least is willing to fight dirty – the only way to fight – with chairs, or lamps, or the overturned urn of my Libertarian father smashed across both our skulls, leaving us in a swirling pile of blood and filth and rhetoric.  And love.  Perhaps not the same dream that Dr. King shared with the masses, but a vision of perfection nonetheless.

And a wonderful realization of insanity.

The Hidden Torso of Kingston

For over three years, I worked in what would come to be known enthusiastically in the Clinton 90s as the “service industry.”  It’s what America has become: a nation that is completely based in service oriented careers, from fast food to telemarketing, as opposed to the years we spent as a leading industrialized nation.  Name me the big wig industrial tycoons of the 21st Century – the modern day equivalents to Ford, Carnegie, or Rockefellar – and the answers are far less clear.  Our modern captains of financial gain are computer wizards – Gates and Jobs – and reliability from the blue-collar backbone of America no longer means what it used to. 

This has nothing to do with any of that mumbo jumbo.

This summer I picked up a job with the Des Moines County Roads Department, and before I get into the spellbinding story I have saved for the most sincere readers, allow me to fill you in on my usual job duties: I wake up at 6 in the morning, roll into the shop around 7, and until a noon lunch, my partner and I usually drive around doing 15 minute odd jobs at our leisure.  You know – for the sake of the county.  Your tax dollars keep our gas tank filled in order to promote what the boss calls “windshield time.”  Maybe we mow a lawn or two, weed-eat a bridge area, or paint some railroad crosses.  Maybe we don’t.  Maybe our mission is to “scout” the county for problems – a wonderful code that simply means “we’ve run out of things for you to do at the moment, so feel free to drive around.”  And we do. 

But occasionally, as part of our lackey duties, we have to participate in roadkill pickup.  With the rest of the crew working on their designated projects, (road fills, culvert work, or sign detail,) my partner John and I are the designated roadkill bitches, expected to drop whatever we are doing to retrieve nature’s corpses.  Understandably, our only calls come for deer.  John is a farm boy and has no squeamish tendencies when it comes to dead animals.  I am a city slicker, but also a part-time nut-job, so picking up decapitated deer doesn’t send me into a frenzy either.  I shared a quick story with John late last afternoon about my elementary days at the bus stop picking up dead possums and swinging them at my riding companions.  I miss the good old days.

Anyway, we had a call yesterday afternoon about a deer on Highway 99 – “real fresh” our boss assured us, promising that the smell would be only minimally offensive.  Without a second thought, John and I headed down 99 toward Kingston without shovels or tarps or anything but our God given strength and beautiful hands.  John claims to be a model.  I claim he’s full of shit.  Either way, within 20 minutes we stumbled across the body of our interest. 

Both of the antlers had been knocked from its crown, and one of its eyeballs had rolled down the white line of the steamy highway.  The neck had been unquestionably broken, twisted nearly all the way around.  The back legs had been run over repeatedly it seemed, both on the verge of falling off, but somehow managing to keep in a whole trail of bowels and internal organs that were beginning to spew from the backside.  And in the mess of it all, there were lots of random pieces of meat scattered across the road, none of which I could place as distinct body parts, but all surrounded by swarms of horse flies.  We put on our gloves and gave it a go.  The plan was to pick her up by the legs and swing her into the back of our truck.  From there, we would drop by Strawberry Point and leave her in a backwoods ditch.  This was all easier said than done. 

It should be noted that we have done this before, and although we are not trained professionals, we weren’t novices either.  Most of the time an intact deer is fairly manageable, or at least manageable enough to load into a truck and discard like the reeking corpse that it is.  But we had never dealt with a specimen that looked as though it had been hit by a tank, run over by a motorcycle gang, and then bombed from the sky.  It proved to be more difficult than anticipated.

John wanted to avoid the backdoor mix-up that was starting to drip down the hind legs, so he took the front two legs by the head, and I grabbed the back two.  Immediately, a stiff wind of death swept past us, but being the footsoldiers of county decency, we pressed forward.  The first attempt to lift her into the bed was a failure, and we sat her down to collect our thoughts for a moment.  The back end was starting to dismantle, and my face was beginning to twist with disgust at the purplish trail of intestines that were winding into the road.  I wanted it all to be done with.

We counted to three and lifted once more to swing the beast into the truck.  As we struggled to raise the head, we could hear the sound of tearing.  Being a lardass of 20 years running, I assumed it was the crotch of my jeans, and for the first time in my life, I was sorry that it wasn’t.  The back legs stretched to their limits, and without notice, snapped off, dropping my end to the asphalt.  The sudden jolt not only dismantled what fragile support there was for the bowel system, spilling the innards across the highway, (and my boots,) but apparently shocked the entire inner workings.  A shot of blood came out of the mouth and left a healthy slathering on the front of John’s shirt.  He squealed and dropped his end with frustration. 

So here we are: John and I standing in the middle of Highway 99 around a mutilated deer corpse.  He’s got blood dripping off his gloves and t-shirt, and I’m holding two legs in the air like drum sticks with yesterday’s berries oozed across my boots.  If I had been a passerby to a similar situation, I would have called local authorities. 

“That’s it!” John screamed, wiping his gloves on the grass.  “I’ll take care of this myself.”  He told me to watch down the road and tell me if anyone was coming.  Not a car in sight.  He grabbed the front two legs and shuffled himself backwards across the highway toward the opposite side ditch.  Pulling the carcass over the edge, he disappeared into the trench with a grunt.  I leaned up against the truck and couldn’t help but laugh, realizing how disastrous the whole process had gone.  Sensing a need to help, I collected all the scattered body parts on the road, leaving a tremendous pool of blood on the east side. With an arm full of parts, I chucked them into the ditch, hitting John with a sliver of belly meat and a renegade antler.  He was not amused.

Peeking over the edge, I tried to see what his plan was.  He had smashed the deer into the ground as well as he could, and was proceeding to cover it up with cornhusks and tall grass.  I almost spit up my lunch with laughter.  A car passed by and I gave him the head’s up.  He quickly put his hands behind his back as if there were no particular reason as to why he had descended into the ditch.  I doubled over with another heave of comedy.

Climbing out of the ditch, John and I stood next to each other and admired the work.  A great brown mound in the middle of a bright green patch of field ditch.  Lying to ourselves, we said it was completely inconspicuous and impossible to see from the road, wiping our hands of wrong doing and committing fully to the idea of practicality.  “There was no other way,” I said looking down at the hump.  “It had to be done.”

We drove off that afternoon with smiles across our faces, knowing that if our boss or the neighbors had seen our display, we probably would be explaining ourselves for the next few days.  We told ourselves that the dismembered limb teetering on the top of the pile could have come from anywhere.  And sadly, we were completely satisfied with our solution.

Driving by this morning, the heavy rain last night had moved most of the grass pile, leaving the sorrowful deer exposed to the elements and more tragic looking than ever.  We had one thing going for us: It looked as though only a rabid animal could have torn it apart like that.  It couldn’t possibly be the product of a couple college kids from the Midwest.  Never.

Silly teenage girl exclamation of the day: I love my job.

Dig Your Graves Now, Liberal Nation! We Are Swine That Cannot Be Harvested For Meat!

Do you remember all the left wing blowhards that came out after September 11^th and claimed it was all an intricate plot by the U.S. government to gain sympathy for a full-scale attack on the Middle East?  The hullabaloo over films like Loose Change and Zeitgeist?  Sometimes I’d like to forget.  Did you know there are people out there who think that Pearl Harbor was a similar situation, allowed to happen for the sake of solidifying support for U.S. involvement in World War II?   For years I’ve had liberal nutjobs breathing down my neck about everything from the JFK assassination to the idea that America actually caused the great Asian Tsunami a few years back.  Most would agree that these proposals are filled with holes and faulty logic, and I’ve never attached myself to anything of the sort.  But after a while, you have to rock the boat.

Speaking of conspiracy theorists, it was just last week that James Von Braun shot up the Holocaust Museum in D.C., voicing a significant stance of defiance against the well-documented tragedy of the Holocaust.  Von Braun is well into his late eighties, prompting lefty commentator Bill Maher to remark, “New Rule: You can’t call someone a neo-Nazi if they are older than the Nazi-Nazis.”  And indeed, it seems a bit more than strange to think that this elderly bigot was planning to target not only the Holocaust Museum, but a number of other Washington D.C. locations, as well as Fox News headquarters.  And to be honest, after years of scrutiny, I imagine Fox News would have been the most well prepared for the situation. 

But even more bizarre about his quest, including his apparent disgust for Roger Ailes’s Fox News, is the fact that Von Braun is about as far right as you can get on the political compass.  He blogged about his hate for civil rights and the equality of the races, and a number of other more mundane topics that would make my blog look like Disney World in print.   But the Nazis are a fundamentally right wing group, full of absurd claims that rival every bit of insanity that Socialism would dare to bring about.  Yes, it might seem far-fetched to some, but the Nazi ideology would be a threat to President Obama and his radical policies of uber-nationalization. 

Let’s look back further, to just around two weeks ago when abortion provider George Tiller was gunned down in front of his church.  The motive was very clear: pro-life advocates were fed up with the idea of the most extreme of Bible-based sins, late term abortions, and they were going to put a stop to it.  At this point, there are only a handful of professionals willing to perform the procedure, making it one of the most dangerous professions in the country.  Regardless of your beliefs about abortion or the like, most would agree that the actions carried out were beyond extreme, and dripping with irrationality.  Death on top of “death,” (the quotations placed in respect for my own beliefs on the topic,) brings a familiar quotation to mind: An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind.

But to provide a more intimate and realistic quotation, straight from my facebook feed directly after the murder, “I’m sorry George Tiller, but you had it coming.”

To branch off into a tangent for just a moment, I want to say something directly from the heart, (a place that has been neglected in most of my writing, and one I promise to avoid for the rest of this piece.)  No one should ever protest a funeral.  In the name of your God, in the name of your country even, no one should ever physically protest a funeral.  Even surrounding the topic of murder or rape, my position remains the same.  A human being has died, for better or worse, and can we as a people not respect their dismissal from earth?  They are not here to witness your upset, nor is your protest seen as a shining beacon of truth.  Those who desecrate the grave sites of both saints and sinners deserve nothing less than shame themselves.  Mother Theresa nor Hitler should ever be lowered into the ground in front of a crowd seething with anger.  They have left this world.  Why would you dare to elongate the process?

Having realized the increasing length of this spiel, allow me to quickly cut to the chase: There was a shooter in New York just a couple months ago who picked off 13 victims in a matter of minutes.  The shooter killed himself, so his intentions were never fully realized, but several columnists and bloggers came out with a similar theory: the man was so upset by the idea that gay marriage had been legalized in Iowa that he went on self-destructive rampage of bigotry.  And to go even further, several suggested that the election of Barack Obama as President had triggered some kind of gun scare.  Basically, the election of a liberal president frightened gun owners, believing he would attempt to revoke their right to bare arms, and caused a frenzy of trigger-happy Constitutionalists.  To preserve their 2^nd Amendment Rights, people would be using their guns more often than ever – even to commit heinous acts.  Now what point these right-wing writers were trying to present had initially been lost in a dizzying fog, but I’m beginning to connect some comically conspiratorial dots.  It was all a warning.

Holocaust Museum Shooter: Neo-Nazi against Civil Rights, as well as belief in the Holocaust, (a liberal Jewish myth.)
Abortion Doctor Shooter: Far-right religious fanatic taking a vigilante stance against the sin of abortion.
New York Shooter Justification: Anti-gay marriage and protection of 2^nd Amendment principles. 

Is anyone else seeing a pattern of far-right hate? 

The Conspiracy Theory: The American far-right is planning an ultimatum – dispose of this liberal government or people are going to die. 

Is that crazy enough for you?  To suggest that a party that can’t even decide what positions they are for or against could be involved in the organization of a national conspiracy?  May I remind you that none of us have given Bush enough credit as a political mastermind.  But all the setup is there, if not structured at all by conventional party doctrine.  To begin the Republican Revolution would be very simple, and would most likely begin with a speech from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, (a slimy amphibian of a name for a slimy amphibian of a politician):

“My friends – we are all proud Americans.  Proud to serve our country in times of need and proud to protect our country in the wake of a threat to our freedoms.  And for far too long now, our nation has been under attack from the liberal agenda and the Socialist ideology that has plagued our recent misfortunes.  America has spoken out, in a sincere moment of revolution, and lives have been lost in response to the tyranny of a Democratic government.  Can we as a nation cast our political differences aside and embrace a simple truth: only one party can keep this country safe.  Only one party can protect our people with certainty and unrivaled power.  This is the time for a Republican movement – a movement created for the safety of our citizens – to end this uprising of violence.  It is plain to see that a Democratic government promotes nothing but unfortunate death, and in order for these tragedies to stop, we must bring back our Republican house.  We must bring back our Republican Senate.  And we must bring back a God-fearing President, a conservative of moral fiber, who will lead us back into the shining light of God, and away from the disgusting reign of liberal insanity that will forever be seen as an oil slick in the annals of time.  God bless America, and God bless our troops.”

Because in order for any speech to be credible, you have to bless the troops – God forbid you not do so, you are a commie, a killer, a swine.  And the chants of “Heil Gingrich” will be heard across the land, and Sarah Palin will rise again as the charismatic leader of the Republican nation, accompanied by any number of well-dressed zombies, from Eric Cantor to Bobby Jindal.  Mitt Romney’s a Mormon, such an unfortunate thing to be in the middle of a Christian theocracy, and will immediately be trampled in the great Revolution Riots of 2012, perhaps by Mike Huckabee himself, who very well might become the next chief of this great land, under the close and personal guidance of Jesus Christ.  Yes, I can see it all now. 

And the liberals will be herded up like cattle and sent to the Gulags of Colorado and Montana.  They must be exterminated to prevent further travesties!  The ghost of Hubert Humphrey will try and comfort the weary prisoners, but it is no use, because the liberal species has always been a spineless one, and Humphrey’s hulking frame casts nothing but a dismal shadow on the entire lot.  The only benefit to being spineless is that the opposition realizes you are no good for physical labor, so you will be put out of your misery immediately.  A whole colony of starving Socialist dogs. 

Have I made it far-fetched enough?

Obviously, the idea of a neo-con takeover shouldn’t scare any one quite yet, but as usual, my actual point is hidden somewhere in a mess of sarcasm and self-important rhetoric.  There IS a rush of conservative violence, and there IS a need to bring this idea to the forefront before it gets out of hand.  It truly isn’t a partisan issue, but rather a humanitarian one, and perhaps even a practical suggestion.  Violence in this arena is not justified, especially considering the usual presentation of a tolerant God.  People cannot take things into their own hands for the “sake of humanity.”  The same goes for the liberal eco-terrorists, destroying people’s livelihoods for the salvation of the environment.  The side is not important.  As my government teacher Mr. Remmers once perfectly commented, Al Queda are extremists of Islam – a religion that has been vilified in recent years by the Western world.  The Ku Klux Klan are religious extremists as well – of Christianity. 

One more little (ha) article about tolerance.  One more reaching grasp for a better world, or at least a better circle of readership.  And if last week’s stinging comment means anything, (“Dear Alex Denison.  You are a faggot,”) it promises that I won’t be shutting up any time soon.  Just one more thing Joe Biden and I share, (besides a loving relationship) – we can never manage to keep our mouths shut.

Alex Denison, Ph.D.

Des Moines County, Iowa

“Ch-ch-check this fucker out,” Martin the county sign worker said to me, sliding his greasy fingers across a hand-held roller ball mouse.  He squinted at a tiny computer screen in the middle of the cab, and I leaned over to take a closer look.  It was a satellite map of Des Moines County, from Burlington to Yarmouth, and every dusty dirt road in between.  “Find your huh-house,” Martin spit out with a smile, handing me the mouse and leaning back in his shock resistant chair.  And I did. 
           

I zoomed all the way in, close enough to see the tear in the passenger side fabric of my Jeep’s old soft top, suggesting that the photos were taken sometime recently.  I was admittedly impressed, and Martin could see it on my face, so he told me to “dick around” with it some more as we made our way down the back roads of the county.  I pretended to, but I didn’t know what I was looking for.  I just kept zooming in on silos and crop patterns that looked like UFO creations until eventually I stopped and started gazing out the window.  The green hills seemed to go on forever, but I knew that they did not.  I’ve always known that they did not.  Martin told me he had only left Iowa once, last summer for California, and I wonder if he ever thought they just went on forever, never ending, like a perpetual galaxy of crops.  I’m sure he, like myself, sometimes wishes they did.  I’ve always wished they did.
           

And in between the staggered stutters of Martin’s explanations, (an unfortunate thing to witness, although he keeps such a good humor about it,) I lolled in and out of conscious thought.  I saw the upturned silos from last summer’s gruesome flood, and they reminded me of beautifully tragic works of art.  The leaning silo of Yarmouth, I thought, but didn’t dare share it with Martin.  He was in the middle of a lengthy tirade over affirmative action that I had accidentally provoked, and I wouldn’t dream of trying to explain why I thought these shattered dreams were gorgeous.  It just wouldn’t make sense, and doesn’t make sense, in any and all forms.  Once after creating a lopsided barricade, I tried to tell him about “wabi-sabi,” the Japanese belief in beauty through the imperfect.  He told me to stop spouting off that Swahili shit.  And I did. 
           
I think back about that satellite imagery from Martin’s sign truck and all the things that fill up just our tiny nook of the world.  There are 99 counties in Iowa alone, well over 3,000 in the rest of the country, and God forbid I sit down and do the research through the world’s commonwealths and territories, boroughs or “parishes”.  That’s what Louisiana calls them, parishes, which I learned from an old black and white movie whose name escapes me as I babble.  Too many nights watching those old films. But focusing back on just our little patch of earth, it’s hard to fathom all the life stories that are being played out day by day, as I type, and as you sleep, and as we all pass each other through routine.  40,600 people, give or take a few well-fed farmers who die from high cholesterol, or a handful of drunk teenagers that navigated their way through a few bottles of Smirnoff and then end over end into a ditch.  And then a couple babies are popped out from time to time, little “Jacobs” or “Catherines” and a few cutesy names like “Willow” that will never make it in the real world with such a whimsical signature.  And what a shame.

CEO’s are not named Willow, Toby, or Hope.  Believe what you want to believe, from the creation of the universe to the meaning of life, but CEO’s are not named Willow, Toby, or Hope.

And just from our little cranny of the globe, a place that seems so boring and non-complex, we all know people that would put big city stories to shame.  Cheating husbands living in basements with barely legal girls, drunken public officials found in fast-food parking lots, and a number of shameless deviants whose names tend to slip our minds, so conveniently, just as we want to tell their tale to an outsider, a foreigner to this former boomtown, this well dug hole.  Someone is cheating on their partner at this moment.  Hell, maybe two or three.  Some high school kid is taking a swig of lightning in a barn down a worn out road.  And someone else, a lot of people, are plotting their way out.  There’s a number of options, really.  Some will choose finality. 

I drove through the Burger King drive-thru this evening and saw an old friend of mine in the rear view mirror.  I say friend out of pure folksy hospitality, when in reality, we merely shared space a time or two, and shot the breeze a few times more.  He was in a neck brace, sporting his trademark aviators, and his wife was slouched against the passenger side mirror.  He used to tell some of the craziest stories; his wife giving birth to a three foot tall man, or how he knifed his way out of a hospital room in the ‘80s.  Us kids never took him too seriously, but I think he believed what he was saying.  And for all I know, it may be true.  I’m sure every county in Iowa has a “Greasy Steve,” or a “Vince” that becomes the stuff of legend – pure mythology at times – but yet we think of them as our own.  Only our own.  And yet their stories rarely leave the boundaries of our chunk.

Sometimes I lie outside at night and just think about all the people I have met over the past few years.  Faces I’d like to greet, but realize quickly they don’t remember me at all.  Faces I’d like to meet, but realize quickly I’ll never see them again.  Some of those are the most haunting of all.  And at times it almost feels as though the moon is mocking our little county, coming round when it likes and leaving without so much as a goodbye, creating the sultry black sky I’ve driven under for many years now, with friends and strangers alike.  I think about what Martin does after work, and whether he really does try and pork his wife at the dinner table after every meal, or whether I’d just really like to believe that.  I tell myself I don’t, but for some reason it seems charming. 

And I think about all of us trying so hard to get out – future doctors and lawyers, writers and engineers – all with the simple goal of leaving this town, this county behind.  I, of course, am one of them.  It could be that mocking moon, but I strive to just get out, get free, and look around somewhere else for a while.  And I used to think we all felt that way, that deep longing to get out at whatever cost, but I’ve learned more over the past couple weeks than just how to disintegrate a deer.  Some people really love it here, and wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else.  “We were like the Beverly Hillbillies,” Martin told me of his trip to California.  “It’s just too different for me.”  And in Martin’s case, I can’t blame him.  Corn-fed, corn-bred, and proud to say so – as though he shouldn’t be.  I’ve lost a bit of smarm and gained a bit of respect for those with simple ambitions.  Pure ambitions – to live, to love, and to just get by, without the flash of higher ideals.  I honestly can’t blame them, and at times I envy the thought.  What are we truly living for: the pursuit of happiness or the pursuit of power, wealth, and greed?  It’s a larger topic than suitable for this county, which is why we’ll leave it alone.

So why do I want out?  I’ve got a lot between my ears that doesn’t sit well in this place.  I’ve lost a lot of my angst, and I’ve started leaning toward practicality.  My dreams just don’t fit inside this box.  Hell, it might just be a needed change of scenery. And yes, industry is down, and sometimes it seems the entire economic morale may sink into the depths of the muddy Mississippi, but there’s always something to be done.  If you like it here, don’t be ashamed.  You’re in good company, I’ve seen.  And most situations, like riverboat paddles, work in steady cycles.

Yes, Des Moines Country is truly a beautiful place if you’re looking for the right things.  A bit simple for some, but isn’t it always?  The 3^rd biggest harvest, next to corn or soy, is nearly always complaint.  But maybe you have a head full of notions that can’t be reached from these old roads.  A head full of notions that have been screaming for too long, and you’re afraid they’ll echo through the valleys.  I understand, I do.  I’m with you.

Or maybe the moon’s mocking you, too.

Gay Filet With Freedom Fries

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but I am not a saint.  The greatest title that I could possibly allow is “prophet,” but even that is a bit of a stretch, but a wonderful opening line at cocktail parties and bar mitzvahs, (the Jews eat it up!)  But I have to admit, and give myself a pat on the back, that I have refrained from indulging myself in societal taboos or religious sins.  Believe it or not, I have yet to have an abortion.  I have never been involved in drugs, illegal or otherwise.  And perhaps the greatest of shocks, I am not a homosexual, nor ever plan to be. 

But if I wanted to partake in any of these activities, I believe I should have the right.

(Allow me to quickly say something about a labeling epidemic that I have become a victim of.  I hear it quite frequently – more often from females – that I seem like a guy that “could be gay.”  I don’t necessarily take this as an insult, but I’d like to point out that I am, for lack of a better word, disgusting.  Despite the fact that I wear collared shirts nearly every day and involve myself in the arts, I also am a chauvinistic mess of filth and fantasy, the likes of which have only been seen in single-digit centuries.  To be strikingly to the point, the average human being would find much of my behavior more disgusting then the thought of slug-on-slug  blue-collar sodomy.  You dig?)

But to get back to the point, for the safety of all involved, I have a quite serious point to make.  Recently, a firestorm of chattering has come up over the topic of gay marriage – and rightfully so.  In the eyes of organized religion, homosexuality is one of the most cardinal sins, and the basis for more anger and faith-based frustration than perhaps any other area.  And the arguments can be made that religion must be separated from government, (boring,) or that there are plenty of other sins, perhaps more private sins, that don’t receive the kind of attention that same-sex partnerships do.  Did you know that 90% of men and nearly 65% of women masturbate on a regular basis?  Last time I checked, this is fairly looked down upon in the eyes of churches across the globe.  A tremendous waste of possible procreation to boot.  Yes, I’m talking about scattered semen residue in the middle of a potentially poignant article about personal rights, but who’s keeping track?  Certainly not the Catholic Church, pro-family organizations, nor Newt Gingrich.  That’s for sure. 

And in the past I have apologized for length, but I won’t do that any longer.  I’ve read arguments from every end of the spectrum and from people that honestly don’t know a thing other than the fact that male and female genitalia aren’t designed as they are out of pure coincidence.  Which is another argument all together: my Wrangler isn’t designed to take sharp corners at breakneck speeds or drive through 3 feet of standing water, but I do so because I can.  We’re a very independent species, human beings.  We challenge the limitations of our existence.  It’s kind of cute, really.

Which brings me to the larger point that I am desperately trying to make.  I believe that we are presented with choices every day, the option to do this or that, perhaps even right or wrong, and when to it comes to matters that directly affect only your own life, (or matters such as abortion that are a direct correlation of your life,) you should have the option to do what you want.  You will be the one suffering the ultimate consequences – whether mental, physical, or otherwise – and there is no need to insist people follow any direct routes.  This obviously doesn’t apply to certain things such as rape or murder, but instances of abortion, (not quite murder,) drug use, or gay relations are all matters of choice that seem to fit my theory quite nicely. 

And when it comes to this topic of gay marriage, I don’t understand the outcry.  With abortion or even drugs, there are larger forces at work.  The idea of a mother killing a potential human being is, in my eyes, a matter of perspective.  With drugs, there are underlying factors of gang violence and even circumstances that arise from long-term use, (ailing children, violence, and so on.)  But aside from the fact that God seems to wag his finger at the idea of sexual plugs that don’t seem to fit, there really is no major argument to suggest that homosexuality is a threat.  “It’s a threat to the American family!”  Why?  Has your husband been waiting to ditch you and the kids for his accountant Rico? 

Unless, of course, God will smite our entire globe for the allowance of gay marriage – (as opposed to PRACTICE of homosexuality, which has been practiced since the beginning of time,) leaving us a post-apocalyptic world of ash and stone all for the sake of a few incorrectly bumped uglies.  Shame on you gay America – your selfish practices have cost us all. 

Speaking of costs, you’d think that there could be some practical economic argument to make over the idea of gay marriage.  Something that Mitch McConnell or the Evangelical movement could really sink their teeth into.  “The gays are costing us millions!”  But economists are suggesting that the allowance of gay marriage, in just the handful of states that have overturned bans, could generate a new $32 Billion in wedding related fees alone.  That’s a lot of cash, friends, and a lot of cash that looks pretty enticing in the middle of an economic crisis such as ours.  But when I suggested this to my right-wing road-sign changing cohort at the Roads Department, he told me he would rather pay, “triple the taxes” than to allow the homosexuals to receive some kind of governmental recognition.  Go figure.

I guess I just don’t understand the basis for all the hooplah.  There is very little evidence to suggest that homosexual marriage will effect the typical Nascar fan at all, unless they themselves decide to hitch with a fellow dangler.  (I hear Jeff Gordon is single.)  The only argument I’ve heard involves the dangers to the existence of the American family, but as Jon Stewart suggested on a show earlier this week, is the real danger the idea that dudes can just hook up now, for legal purposes, and no longer have to deal with nagging wives or menstruation cycles ever again?  Or perhaps a whole collective of “Chuck and Larry’s” just looking to milk the system?  Is this really a consideration?

And to bring it back to a political standpoint, (which is always the best way to approach such matters,) it seems like a strange philosophical stand for the Republican Party.  Putting the influence of the religious Right aside, (and the fact that most homosexual scandals, with the exception of Barney Frank, tend to come from the GOP’s side of the aisle,) the idea of gay marriage seems to fit in with a distinct part of their message: less government.  But this would include privacy, which doesn’t apply to the Republican Party at all, considering the topic of abortion as well.  (Abortion is a privacy issue, not one of life.)  And even the Libertarians, (Ron Paul from the past,) seem to shy away from supporting such a measure, which agreeing that the War on Drugs is lost and that Americans need to be left alone.  Hell, even the Democrats shy away from the issue.  Obama does not support gay marriage specifically, in an elaborate plot to keep with mainstream America on issues that will never cross his desk.  I told you he was smart.

But the message I present remains simple: So you don’t agree with gay marriage?  Then don’t do it.  Don’t agree with drug use?  More power to you.  Abortion isn’t your style?  Enjoy your little booger eaters.  Is it really enough to justify killing an abortion doctor?  Or to drag a teenage kid 5 miles down a gravel road behind an old Chevy truck?  I don’t tend to think so, but I’ve been known to be wrong.  I have the great belief that God’s greatest creation, should there be an Almighty in the skies above us, is the amazing idea of free will.  When asked the meaning of life, most devout Christians will say the answer is to serve and praise God above.  And my only complaint about such logic is if God is so concerned with adoration, then why were we given the option to go astray?  If the Lord never wanted abortions to be done, then why isn’t the womb an impenetrable steel trap?  And why did he give us so many damn holes to stick things in?  It almost seems like some sick kind of encouragement that, to be honest, I want nothing to do with. 

Perhaps it’s all a trap.

But I wanted to take a shot at my own little perception of the argument over gay marriage, having seen efforts from other well meaning writers.  I suppose there’s no right or wrong, and as my mother said to me earlier this morning, “morality comes from conscience.”  It’s just another matter of perceptive free will.  The idea of morals is a topic for another day, but the taste should serve this piece quite well – who is to say what is right?  God it often seems, but he also sends mixed messages.  “Peace and love, blah blah blah – DAMNATION.”  It’s confusing for a young thinker such as myself.  So my answer, as always, is simple: Do what you want to do.  Think what you want to think.  And challenge the system if necessary.  Drugs, babies, and sexual agendas all fall into my realm of moral ambiguity, so follow your heart, little dreamers.  And who knows – you might get it right.

Nigger

It may be hard to believe that someone as far to the left of the political compass as I am, (and as outspoken as possible,) would surround themselves with people that disagree wholeheartedly with almost everything I appreciate about the American way.  Homosexual rights, the female agenda, gun control, social services, and abortion are all topics that have been brought up in too many smoky garages, and around too many half-drunken bonfires.  Here in Burlington, my friends look for as many subjects to challenge me on as possible, knowing all too well that I can never shy away from an argument.  But the number one debate that I have been having over the past few months is one that I feel extremely passionate about, but will never be able to win amongst my associates here in town.  Can we move past the use of the word “nigger”?

It’s not that I’m uncomfortable around the word, especially after having heard it for close to 6 years now with the maturation of camo-clad bigotry.  I have no fear of being associated with hate-mongers and ending up with a baseball bat to the knee caps.  This is the kind of racist fear that is as damaging to the credibility of black America as any chew-slathered comment.  And my argument against the use of the term “nigger” is as simple as I could possibly make it – void of all references to differences in social upbringing or urbanity – and instead focusing on simple logic.  Allow me to give you a taste:

First we have to get past the frequent argument that “black people call each other niggers,” because it really doesn’t apply to the situation at hand.  If you had any sense, you would understand that it is a matter of desensitizing the word – taking away the hateful context and defeating it by creating a term of solidarity.  It, in essence, attempts to take away some of the punch of the word, and to suggest anything else would be stupid.  As an argument that this justifies white people calling black people niggers, it certainly falls flat on its face.  But so many of my neo-Nazi friends’ arguments do.

There has to be a consideration for the word itself.  It is unparalleled in weightiness of insult.  For a white person to call a black person a nigger is to take them back in time and insult generation after generation of African descendants.  It was a word created specifically for hateful intent, and this connotation will remain as such.  No other word in our language is such a direct rocket of hatred. 

So when the argument comes up, (as it usually does,) that there are two kinds of black people, “decent black people,” and “niggers,” I usually begin to sweat with anticipation for a verbal knockout.  We can easily split black people up into categories of people we admire as fellow citizens, and those of which we despise for their flaws, but we can easily do the same for whites.  There are white people that I enjoy and appreciate, and there are white people that deserve their share of criticism.  This applies to people of every race.  But the difference is that we have no word to apply to white people, (“crackers,” “wankstas,” “wiggers,” dumbasses,” etc.) that could ever compare to the term nigger.  There is not one.  For every “nigger” that is selling drugs, doing drugs, enacting violence, or committing crime, there is a white person that is doing the same, yet only one is the “nigger.”  The white guy is a “dumbass.”  They don’t even out.  And they never will.

There’s simply no reason to target the black population in this way, (and I know I am preaching to the choir.)  Now, I have come to terms that I have many, many racist friends – they have the right to believe anything they want, and call people nearly everything they want – but I in turn have the right to argue them down to exhaustion.  Furthermore, this usually works, with most people eventually just agreeing not to use the word in front of me, and to think before they speak.  But this isn’t what I’m fighting for.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to plead the First Amendment several times in my life.  My article a few years back about Randy Winegard’s unfortunate condition of penis envy gained me a few new readers, but no friends among community leaders.  (I lost a website for the stunt, but will stick by my original claim.)  We have this Amendment to protect the viewpoints of all citizens, whether they be through print, religion, or otherwise, with only minimal exception.  But I often wonder, where is it inside the human mind that allows for decency to be thrown out the window in exchange for capability.  You are legally capable of calling someone a nigger, but what possible explanation can be given as to why you would want to do so?  It’s the most loaded of words.  It’s the nuclear bomb of racial remarks.  So many are lucky to be in the sole environment of fellow bigots, or worse yet, friends that are too kind and quiet to challenge such behavior.  I have never been considered kind or quiet, and have no problem making a scene.  Eventually, the scene is going to be made in a place where the odds are not so favorable, and the consequences may be grim.

I make the simple request to treat people with similar respect, if possible.  When a friend makes a mistake, we call him a moron.  An idiot.  When a stranger does the same, he’s a dumbass – maybe worse.  But for some reason, when a black man acts in a way that we consider reprehensible, he becomes a nigger, and that just baffles me beyond belief.  There’s no way to kill it.  I certainly can’t do much more than fight my futile battles.  But for the love of God, (yes, the same God that so many of the right-wing foul-mouths claim to be their ever loving savior,) can we at least entertain the idea of equality for a while?  Maybe just for a moment, between slugs of Miller High Life, we could acknowledge the similarity of our shared flesh and blood, regardless of our color, and in spite of past concerns? 

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream.  As usual, I have more of a complaint.

Begging for Lies

It has been only sixty years since the publication of George Orwell’s 1984 and the introduction of double-speak and telescreens to the vocabulary of the public.  But within this short amount of time, the media has evolved into a propaganda powerhouse that perhaps not even Orwell could have conceived.  There are twenty-four hour “news” stations, up to the minute coverage of every major event, and all of the convenient perks that go along with an internet connection.  For all of these resources, there is a public that is dying to consume as much content as possible, regardless of credibility or truth. And although every news outlet presents itself as factually accurate, media consumers are now using these same outlets to be propagandized, and the lines between factual journalism and punditry have been effectively blurred. 
           
There are currently three major networks that provide a national nightly newscast: NBC, CBS, and ABC, respectively.  PBS provides a nightly broadcast, but enjoys nowhere near as many viewers as the other networks.  Each of these stations claims to provide a fair and factual account of the day’s news stories, and for the most part, this can be seen as true.  The anchors provide the majority of the details, while reporters and eye-witnesses collect further evidence for support.  There are no pundits, nor analysts, and the journalists rarely make any comments toward the news.  Only in extreme circumstances, such as Brian William’s recent on-air disgust with an Air Force One photo-op gone wrong, will a journalist break from their traditional role to comment on any report.  This is what is expected of the major network broadcasts, and in comparison to other media outlets, such as cable news or talk radio, the complaints of bias are far less prevalent.
      
      But with the help of the internet, these same journalists are able to shed their reputations as news professionals and participate in the frenzy that is web-logging, or “blogging.”  NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams updates his blog, the “Daily Nightly,” after every broadcast, including opinions and criticisms of the same stories presented earlier in the evening.  More importantly, these blogs are usually part of the network’s website, and are often advertised in the nightly broadcast.  This ties the traditional presentation of news to the personal opinions of the journalist while eliminating the professional courtesy of pure fact.  Established and respected journalists such as Jack Cafferty , now of CNN, have been asked to turn their attention to the web to not only reach an even larger demographic, but to allow a more intimate channel for the news.  Viewers and readers alike are asked to comment on news stories, and these same comments are often used on air to gauge passion between two sides of an argument.  The blogger responses to the news become as large a part of the story as the news itself, creating an entire ocean of possible pundits through the advancements of the internet.  These opinions are now integral parts of the news. 
         
   Consequently, with thousands of viewers later logging on to view journalists’ blogs, the opinions of an anchor can help to solidify his station’s ratings, or ultimately damage credibility.  This is nowhere more apparent than in the realm of cable news.  Each of the three major cable news channels, CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC, cling to slogans such as “The Most Trusted Name in News,” “Fair and Balanced,” and “The Place for Politics,” while offering more commentary than news reporting.  Deceptively, hosts like Keith Olbermann, Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity, and Lou Dobbs all present an account of the day’s events, but litter their broadcasts with opinion based reporting, punditry, and spin.  Each of these stations has developed a reputation based on their broadcast personalities, with FOX News being widely considered the most conservative, and MSNBC the most liberal.  Furthermore, the stations do very little to argue against these political constraints.  The reason for this is simple: people tune in exclusively to hear their side of the argument in full swing, effectively offering themselves up for propaganda, and contributing to huge ratings in the process. 
          
  With this in mind, each of these networks has created a business model based on their targeted demographic, pumping out partisan propaganda over an entire twenty-four hour span.  According to a recent L.A. Times article, FOX News has led the ratings war for the past seven years, “delivering an average prime-time viewership of 2.1 million” in 2008.  Michael Wolff, author of the book Rupert Murdoch: The Man Who Owns the News, has spent a great deal of time with Murdoch, owner of FOX News, and claims that the biases and tilts that are often associated with the station’s reporting are not a matter of political preference, but are purely based in business.  “If [Murdoch] felt there were any money in far-left reporting,” Wolff wrote, “he would gladly do it.”  With MSNBC and CNN being labeled as liberally slanted and center-left networks, FOX News has monopolized the conservative viewpoint, and consequently reaps the rewards.  It should be noted, according to reports by the L.A. Times and the Nielson Ratings for television, all three of these cable networks saw over 40% increases in viewership in 2008, while only NBC gained viewers among the major network nightly broadcasts.  This could suggest an even more dramatic shift toward commentary-based broadcasts and further highlights the viewers’ desire for propaganda. 
           
To complicate things even further, many of the commentators double as reliable journalists and experts.  Tom Brokaw, the former NBC Nightly News anchor and frequent moderator for Meet the Press, has recently opened himself up as a commentator and pundit, most notably for MSNBC.  He’s even begun writing op-ed pieces for the New York Times.  His most recent article is a scathing criticism of what he calls “small town big spending,” which details his complaints over the economic practices of states like South Dakota and Iowa.   During his tenure as a news anchor, he rarely allowed his opinions to leak, but now in semi-retirement, he has made a comeback through punditry.  For viewers familiar with Brokaw, this could easily blur the line between journalism and subjective analysis.  Furthermore, guests are brought onto cable news programs and labeled “experts” or “journalists,” then proceed to share a slanted mixture of thoughts and fact, most often never differentiating between the two.  To a viewer that is relying on journalism to provide them accurate reporting, these guests’ arguments can easily be misconstrued as completely factual.  Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, actually claims that the blog revolution has kept windy pundits in check, citing that bloggers “fact-check statements and compare them with previous utterances.” This might very well be true, but the fact remains that these statements are already being consumed, and many will escape the pursuers of veracity. It can easily become a vicious cycle of one-sided debate that can unfortunately muddy the waters of truth. 
          
  This is seen most interestingly through a study done by the Pew Research Study in 2007, which tested the political knowledge of news consuming participants.  Pew claims that despite the fact that “today’s citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago,” not all sources are equal in effectiveness.  Among national broadcasts, FOX News viewers actually recorded the worst scores in the study, and viewers of network nightly news broadcasts did even poorer than CNN viewers.  And to add the icing to the cake, viewers of Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report, shows based on the mockery of the news, recorded the highest scores of all participants.  Understandably, newspaper website and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer viewers also ranked near the top of the list, neither exhibiting any major concerns for bias.  But what these results show, above all else, is that a steady diet of one-sided rhetoric may not be the best way to remain educated in news-related matters.  In fact, it may be the best way to lose sight of the truth.
          
  But for all the flack that journalism receives for its perceived biases and spin, most would agree that the good outweighs the bad. It was our third President, Thomas Jefferson, who famously said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.”   Newspaper journalism, sadly the least profitable method of news media, still remains a well respected force in the presentation of fact, and most networks do indeed have entire blocks dedicated purely to news reporting.  But with the invention of the internet, and the advancement of technology, the opportunities for media propaganda and spin have become greater than ever, with even less scrutiny.  And perhaps most frighteningly, new methods of media propaganda have been able to bypass the watchdog of journalism entirely, while still providing the partisan rhetoric that much of the public desires. 
           
This is seen most strikingly in New York Times columnist Virginia Heffernan’s article “The YouTube Presidency.”  The Obama Administration, widely considered the most high-tech administration in our nation’s history, “maintains an entire staff devoted to new media.”  Part of this staff’s responsibilities include continuous updates of the Barack Obama YouTube channel, which not only supplies clips from Obama press events, but also weekly speeches from the President himself, created solely for YouTube purposes.  These speeches are full of the same rhetoric and promises that most politicians are known to spread, but what makes this considerably different is that journalists have virtually no say in the presentations when all is said and done.  Obama is able to communicate directly to millions of his subscribers who willingly follow his channel and swallow the propaganda.  As Heffernan notes in her article, it is “unsettling” to realize that political reporters can’t keep up with the steady output from the Obama team, and that millions of American citizens are attracted to the unfiltered content.  This material escapes all fact-checks and analysis, and goes directly to the viewers that want it.  It’s the most direct form of propaganda available, and with the number of subscribers going up each day, it’s scarily effective. 
           
One must accept that propaganda is always presented with business in mind, whether it be financially or even governmentally.  But the worst part of this current struggle with propaganda is easily the loss of truth in a technological age that should enhance our ability to find it.  Instead, most media consumers are simply that: consumers, and not thinkers that are able to cut through spin and bias to find the core to every story, and the facts within every report.  And although we should be able to confidently trust our nation’s journalists, the lines between journalists and pundits have become less clear than ever, and people are still too willing to accept what is given to them, without any consideration for further research.  These consumers prefer to hear viewpoints and opinion that mirror their own, as opposed to the truth and the consequences that result from it.  With every partisan blowhard claiming to be a newsman, and with every report being sprinkled with falsities, the media is taking advantage of our entire culture, and no one seems to mind.

Hoffman

There are things I do not know -
Is it obvious?
The Bible never told me so.

And it’s not that I’m a slow reader -
I’m not!  I have read some lengthy prints,
I have been through lengthy stints
Of continued education.
But now I question, just one question:
Is it mental masturbation?
And have I learned at all. 

Because I can tell you about Kings,
And lots of other worldly things.
Did you know Chester Arthur changed his pants seven times a day?
You probably didn’t – and you shouldn’t,
And if you were truly bright you wouldn’t
Waste your time with such trivialities so you can boldly say,
“Did you know…”
“Did you know?…”
“Did you know?!…”

And perhaps you did! Congratulations, I wish you all the best,
Hoping someone, anyone, will find greater use for such great fact.
But do you know how to hold a woman?
Do you know how to kill a man,
Should the time arise
And you lock eyes
With a villain in the flesh – and you have a stainless knife.
A timid looking wife.
Those ideas didn’t come out of a book – you can try and look
But they came out of your mind.
You made them up.
I made them up.
Did you know?