Today’s Sermon: Never Never Land Revisited

Working my way through Ellen Chen’s Tao Te Ching, I arrived at chapter 17: “The best government, the people know it is just there.” In addition to describing leadership in tune with Tao, this also foreshadows the modern sentiment that the government that governs least, governs best. This lofty notion lies at the heart of libertarianism and makes us pine for an ideal world — one that, unfortunately, is probably incompatible with complexity of modern society. (I’ll leave that thought hanging in case anyone would like to comment.)

Then chapter 18 seemingly takes up a new topic by stating, “On the decline of the great Tao, there are humanity and righteousness.” The meaning here, on which most translators agree, is that when mankind loses its grounding in Nature, it begins to rely on artificial prescriptions for behavior. [I prefer Chen’s translation for its careful attention to meaning; for more reader-friendly wording, click here.]

There is a correlation between the two chapters, because each has to do with society becoming detached from the Tao. Ch. 17 goes on to say, “The next best [government], they love and praise it. The next, they fear it. The next, they revile against it.” This is so reflective of today’s situation it’s almost scary. People of all political stripes fear the government (especially when it’s controlled by the other side) because they see “humanity and righteousness” being forced down their throats via legislation. The Right doesn’t like government-as-doctor, the Left doesn’t want a federal arbiter of public morality imposing religion in the civic arena. Yet who but the government — which in a democracy is supposed to be nothing other than ourselves — can protect us from the predatory actions of the ruthless among us?

Chen has an interesting comment regarding those opening lines of Ch. 18:

We read in the Chuang Tzu that when nature was perfect human beings did not know humanity or righteousness. Their condition being pre-moral, they were naturally good without knowing good from evil. When moral ideas appeared nature had already suffered a loss. Only when humans had lost their original solidarity with the rest of the natural kingdom did they become conscious of the moral values of humanity and righteousness, exalting humans above other creatures. Moral values are thus purchased at a price.

Remind you of anything? This is the Eden myth as seen from the perspective of another culture. Whatever mess we’re in today (take your pick), we’re in it because we’re only human and have a propensity to make value judgments and there’s really no going back. Yearning for simple government is like yearning for Eden — or for Never Never Land. Like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, some people just don’t want to grow up and face the music of having to figure out how to live together in a civilized society. But moral values are indeed purchased at a price, and sometimes we just have to pay it.

[As an aside, let me briefly mount my soapbox to point out that this ancient Chinese conceptualization of a pre-moral human condition challenges the Christian fundamentalist belief that the story of Eden is a true and exclusive recounting of actual events (see previous sermon). For another interesting take, consider Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), which hypothesized that as recently as what we refer to as “antiquity” (as opposed to prehistory), humans obeyed voices in their heads that they attributed to “the gods” and did not arrive at the state we now call consciousness, with its concomitant value judgments, until the brain had made an evolutionary leap. (Extra credit for diagramming that sentence.)]

The TTC is simply telling it like it is, no advice rendered. And in this instance, I think it’s telling us that an ideal society is so far in our past that it’s not likely to lie in our future. But the basis for the ideal is something to keep in mind for living in the present.

Today’s forecast is brought to you by...

I had posted previously on the preponderance of personal perspectives that can be found on the web. The comments posted to news stories are staggering in their insignificance. But those solicited by reporters, while similarly insignificant, continue to be amusing by the very fact that they’re solicited. Now the Northeast is facing yet another blizzard, and once again the media are seeking out the opinions of guys-on-the-street.

A story from the Associated Press reports:

Scott Bogina of Haddonfield, N.J., was gassing up his car across the Delaware River in Pennsauken, N.J., a little after 5 a.m. and held his hands and watched rain, not snow, land on his gloves. “I don't see anything yet. I hope it stays like this. I like snow, but it's starting to be a little much,” he said.

Wow, that’s really insightful. I’m a bit mystified by Scott’s river crossings, but thanks, Scott. Then there’s this from Philly.com:

“Yeah, I'm kind of tired of it,” said Dave Pearson, who was walking a beagle late Wednesday in tony Rittenhouse Square, where much of the grass was still streaked with slushy remnants of previous storms. “We'll see if it happens. I'm tired of it ... we'll have to deal with it.”

A needed dose of reality there, Dave. But then that’s the kind of opinion you’re gonna find in tony Rittenhouse Square. (I always wondered what Rittenhouse’s first name was.) Then a bit closer to my old stomping grounds comes this late-breaking news flash from the Delaware County Daily Times:

While business had been brisk all day at the Giant Food Store in Aldan, according to one employee, the aisles were not overcrowded at Genuardi’s in the Glen Mills section of Concord around 3 p.m. Wednesday said an observer. “They’re waiting till it snows,” predicted one worker. “There have been so many different forecasts.”

No names, you notice. People in Delco safeguard their anonymity. Especially when asked to make a call in the face of so many different forecasts.

I’m not sure whether the purpose is to cultivate warm fuzzy feeling on the part of the reader – “gosh, these are folks just like me!” – or whether there’s some crusty guy sitting at the city editor’s desk screaming for more human interest or whether reporters are being paid by the column inch. It’s nice that Scott and Dave have become immortalized. But those supermarket clerks in Aldan and Glen Mills will just have to wait their turn. It’ll come.

Cornelius Python’s Ambulatory Circus

I was aware that the CPAC just took place. One couldn’t help but notice the various headlines on the news sites, but I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. Why get myself worked up? So I let Jon Stewart get worked up for me last night and learned that a few of the participants called this the “conservative Woodstock.” Talk about a stretch.

But the other thing that struck me is this: When this crowd gets together, they expend an enormous amount of vitriol fixating on lefties and declaring them the ruination of America. It’s the same rhetoric that used to go down 40 years ago about intellectual-homosexual-communist hippies. After all this time, the Right still hasn’t gotten the paranoia and hatred out of its system.

Now, I’ve posted here before that the Left simply isn’t as well organized, but you don’t find us deriding conservatives the same way. Sure, we poke fun at the teabaggers, but only because they’re so laughable. But why is it that we find conservatives ludicrous – or at worst bothersome – while they brand us a threat? They’re like the retired military types from Monty Python forever protesting the impropriety of the sketches.

Their rebuttal of course would be that they love America, and Glenn Beck would throw in a few tears for effect. Just like wrapping themselves in the flag, they seize on all the patriotic fervor and claim exclusive ownership. But not admitting other points of view – in fact, degrading other points of view – isn’t what the America that the rest of us love is about.

One can’t help but admire the Right for its cohesiveness, even if it’s too lock-step most of the time. But they need a little perspective, not to mention the ability to laugh at themselves. (I don’t know that that’s happened since W did his mock-search for wmd’s at the press corps dinner. And as the Daily Show demonstrates, we lefties at least know how to poke fun at ourselves.) Because without that ability, they simply hark back to another Python sketch: “twit of the year.”

Who You Gonna Call?

The big brouhaha in Prescott last week centered on a couple of city council members proposing that the town’s coffers could be boosted by imposing fees to use the public library. The comments in the on-line Courier pretty much came down to outrage, and an editorial a couple of days later took the same stance, calling it a “bonehead move.” The issue, of course, was the idea of paying for something we’re already paying for through taxes.

But that was nothing compared to what Tracy, California is doing: charging citizens for emergency response to the tune of $300 a pop — or else you can “subscribe” to e.r. service for $48 a year.
 

What’s interesting about this scenario isn’t so much the facts of the story as how it’s been reported. It came to national attention via Tom Friedman in his Sunday NYT column (which even showed up on Google News’ “fast flip” pages). He described the situation, as reported by Sacramento’s CBS affiliate, as having to “pay every time they call 911.”

But there’s a subtle difference between being charged for a service and for the phone call that summons it. The Tracy newspaper makes no reference to 911 calls – this was just the TV news’ way of sensationalizing the story.

Subscribing to e.r. service isn’t unheard of. Our last house in Tucson was outside the city limits and we had to pay such a “subscription” for fire protection. It’s admittedly a tough thing to swallow if your taxes have paid for a service all along and it’s suddenly made subject to fee. But the CBS affiliate created the distinct impression that phones in Tracy are going to be charged for 911 calls.

Things are tough all over. But the news media should be a little more objective.

On missing/not missing PA...

It’s been more than 30 years since I left Pennsylvania, and I admit there are some things that I miss. Or at least used to miss.

For a while I missed the change in seasons, although I found Tucson’s dry heat preferable to the Delaware Valley’s hot, humid summers; now that I’m in Prescott I can enjoy the changes again (it’s snowing as I write this) along with relative aridity. And it was easy to miss cheese steaks and hoagies from where they make them best, although once I became a vegetarian that ceased to matter. (Never really missed scrapple anyway. Tastykakes maybe, until I got militant about hydrogenated oil.)

I still miss proximity to the ocean, what used to be a day trip of an hour or so now requiring a major trek to California. But that’s not missing PA, it’s missing NJ. I’ve also missed driving on wooded country roads, where the trees overhang the lane and the sunlight coming through the leaves dapples your dashboard. Not even AZ’s ponderosa pine-lined highways, like driving up the switchbacks on 89A from Sedona to Flag, can match that sublime experience. Those country roads back east almost make up for the hell that the interstates and main arteries have become.

But there are also a few things I definitely don’t miss.

One is the liquor control board, which restricts the sale of wine and spirits to state stores and that of beer to either case purchases at distributors or six packs at bars and a handful of delis. Totally ridiculous. When I got to Arizona and discovered you could satisfy your cravings at a supermarket or drugstore, it was like coming out from under a cloud.

Another is the auto inspection system, whereby you haul your jalopy into a state-licensed private garage every year and, if you’re lucky, they won’t rip you off for unnecessary repairs. Imagine my surprise upon moving to Delaware in finding that state-operated garages lent some uniformity to this process. And then discovering that Arizona only cared about your emissions.

And a third is living in a state that once elected Rick Santorum to the Senate. I expect such of Arizona; it’s the home of western conservatism. John Kyl can’t help it, it’s in his blood, he’s what his constituents expect. And “maverick” John McCain—well, we’ll leave him be for now. But gay-bashing, sanctimonious, smarmy Santorum? I can’t even bring myself to put his cheesy face on this page. But now that he’s declaring himself a possible presidential candidate, I figure I’d take this early swipe.

It’s said that various factions in Pennsy politics or demographics are responsible for the perpetuation of eighteenth-century restrictions on the procurement of liquid refreshment and of having your mode of transport held hostage by a local grease monkey. But whatever insanity among the electorate was responsible for propelling Rick Santorum onto the national stage proves that Pennsylvanians are no less gullible than Alaskans.

Rock the Vote

Evan Bayh sez he’s fed up with the partisanship in DC, so who can blame him for wanting to get outa there? But one of the weird things about Bayh announcing his retirement is the timing, since the deadline for filing to run for his vacated seat is right around the corner. According to the NYT: “Democrats say that since no party candidate is likely to raise enough signatures to qualify for the ballot by the deadline on Friday, the state party will be allowed to select its Senate candidate. But Republicans are challenging that interpretation and said they were exploring their legal options to deny Democrats a candidate if no one meets the filing deadline.”

Denying them a candidate. Ain’t that just like the GOP to thwart the democratic process?

But the weirdest bit now emerging is the grass-roots effort to draft Indiana favorite son John Mellencamp. He’s apparently got a lot going for him, especially his long-time association with Farm-Aid, and is unabashedly a lefty. And his fan base could presumably make short work of that deadline.

Having JM in the Senate would also fill the void in Congress left by the late Sonny Bono, who was succeeded in office by his wife Mary, formerly a Scientologist (ain’t Wikipedia wonderful?) and now married to another congressman, Connie Mack IV of Florida, great-grandson of the Connie Mack who owned the Philadelphia Athletics and whose name graced the ballpark where I used to go to see the Phillies play when I was a kid, probably for the last time in 1965, followed the next year by seeing Sonny & Cher on TV for the first time, which says something about things coming around. Or maybe six degrees of something-or-other. Or maybe nothing at all.

Granted, we already have a former show biz type in the Senate with Al Franken, but no reason why musicians shouldn’t join in the fray. Just think of the precedent it would set. NJ’s Lautenberg is ancient, so Springsteen could easily run for his seat. And how about you, Lamar Alexander, isn’t it time to go home to Tennessee and make room for Sheryl Crow? And Dianne Feinstein’s got a few years on Barbara Boxer, she could be grooming the perpetually political Jackson Browne before Ahnuld starts getting ideas.

Some speculate that Bayh will replace the ageing Biden on the 2012 ticket, which would also leave him poised to inherit the Obama mantle. I dunno, though – just another white guy? Let’s think ahead: maybe Lady Gaga will be ready by then.

Meanwhile, here’s something to strike fear into the hearts of the family values crowd....

The Long Camera

Yesterday I stumbled via Huffpost on an article in Esquire profiling Roger Ebert. America’s favorite film critic has undergone a number of operations for cancer that have made his familiar face unrecognizable, but he’s a testimony to perseverance. 

Coming across this was a bit jarring for me, since I was spending the day preparing for my post-60 colonoscopy. I’d had one ten years ago and knew the drill; at least they’ve made the clean-out stuff less vile to drink, but it’s still the case that when you’re just killing time playing solitaire on the computer and nature’s call comes, as it does repeatedly, you don’t have the luxury of saying to yourself “I’ll just finish this game.” (See Dave Barry for the best description.) Still, even after getting past that ordeal one can’t help but fret over what they might find where the sun don’t shine.

In the interview, Ebert paid homage to former partner Gene Siskel, who died of a brain tumor in February of 1999. It was in February of 2001 that my dad was diagnosed with mesothelioma (resulting from industrial exposure to asbestos), which killed him three months later. And it was in February of 2007 that Beth and I lost one of our closest friends after her decade-long bout with liposarcoma. So I began to think maybe I should’ve pushed my date with the long camera into March.

Anyway, it was all routine and the anesthesia was lovely (thanks, Maureen) – so much so that I felt like they were giving me the bum’s rush hustling me out of there when it was over.  I’d be happy if they come up with some easier alternative within the next ten years. Even happier if something like the medical tricorder from Star Trek finally got invented.

Because it’s good to know something’s wrong early enough to do something about it. But it’s still disquieting to know that something’s gonna get you eventually.

Teatime for Democracy, Part II

The NYT ran a lengthy front-page feature story today on the Tea Party movement, and it has to make you stop and think. Many of the participants are past 60 and getting politically involved for the first time in their lives, which makes me wonder what sidelines they were standing on back in the sixties. They’re obviously sincere and concerned, however wacky they may seem to those of us on the left. But their problem, it strikes me, is that they’re running off half-cocked with scattershot paranoia, due mostly to their willingness to take anything that Glenn Beck – today’s answer to “Lonesome” Rhodes – says at face value.

They’re railing against big government, bailouts, and the sellout of both parties to special interests, and quite rightly so. But just consider some of their extraneous talking points:

• Obama is a socialist. (The guy is now seen as hopelessly centrist by the left.) Or a Nazi. (Pick one, wouldja?) A tyrant at any rate. (Uh, excuse me, but where were you during W’s expansion of presidential power?) This is so ludicrous it defies belief and just points to their susceptibility to Fox brainwashing.
• The “birther” argument. Come on, get a life.
• Obama will take our guns away. Face it, the NRA has conditioned these folks to believe this will be the case with any Democrat, so save your paranoia for somebody who actually advocates it.
• Along with the 2nd Amendment argument: Prepare for violence in the streets. Okay, so we lefties felt the same back in the sixties, but it’s no more likely now than it was then.
• The Democratic administration is to blame for the deficit. Another attempt to rewrite history.
• Any regulation of health care is socialism and therefore evil. Presumably they’ve never been denied coverage and/or are content with government sponsoring Medicare and VA benefits. (BTW, the Daily Show’s take on health care in Hawaii, where the RNC was meeting, is particularly priceless.)
• Sarah Palin is America’s savior. This is the scariest bit, succumbing to the folksy appeal of a half-educated bimbo who winked her way into the base’s favor, you betcha.

And along with these talking points inevitably comes the conservative fall-back on family values that spells disregard for minority or gay rights – as well as for such libertarian principles as decriminalizing drugs, separation of church and state, support for reproductive rights, and generally keeping government out of the bedroom.

If these teabaggers would just focus on the main issues – valid debates over the role and size of government, our ineffectual Congress, the insidious power of big banks – they might find more Americans willing to take them seriously. But by echoing Beck’s rantings and staking out these other claims, they’re proving themselves to be nothing more than raving loonies. We of the sixties at least left a legacy of music; this crowd will only leave a trail of Metamucil.

Big Gulp

The question put to NYT readers on Sunday was “Is Soda the New Tobacco?” And no matter how many people this might make squirm, I think there’s no doubt about it.

Soda (or “pop” depending on your part of the country) was a treat when I was a kid – just like it was portrayed in this ad. I remember big coolers in which you swung the top open and moved a glass bottle along by its neck to where it was released by payment (which I think was a dime, up from a nickel in those older ads). And of course you returned the bottle for 2 cents. Then there were the exotic flavors beyond Coke: Do they still make cream soda? or birch beer (which I always found smoother than root)? I know Frank’s black cherry wishniak is defunct. I even remember when 7-up was introduced into the Philly market, because my mom had a job demo-ing it in stores.

But enough nostalgia; today soda is big business, a dumping ground for all that surplus corn as it corrodes young teeth and older stomachs. The thought of a soda machine in school would’ve been an unimaginable fantasy for me as I forced down that gag-inducing room-temperature milk (the perfect accompaniment to the cafeteria’s version of pizza), but it’s long been a reality. Yet there are nay-sayers who claim it’s making kids fat. How un-American can you get?

So the suggestion is on the table to tax soda, and I say why not. If alcohol and tobacco warrant surcharges, there’s no need to spare gratuitous sugar beverages if it would (a) put a dent, however small, in consumption, (b) generate revenue, and (c) give a whole lot of people something new to complain about.

The nay-sayers on the other side will rebut that this is just the top of another slippery slope, because who is the government to penalize us for what we consume? Maybe it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from a free market/personal liberty perspective – but then neither does pouring that stuff down your throat non-stop from the standpoint of common sense.

Soda is the new tobacco, with consumers clinging to their right to pollute their bodies and industry crying persecution. Soda drinkers, it’s time to take a big gulp and face the fizz: it ain’t health food, so if you need it so desperately, cough up a little more now and be ready to pay through the nose later. It’ll be a new meaning for “noser” with every sip.

Today’s Sermon: Going by the Book

The psychiatric community is gearing up for a new edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual – the last word on disorders of the mind, and an example of the extent to which a book becomes an unimpeachable source. Like how I used to regard How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive or today esteem the Tao Te Ching.

Along the same line, in the original Star Trek series there was an episode called “A Piece of the Action.” The crew of the Enterprise encountered a planetary culture that had adopted the customs of early twentieth century American gangsters – all because a previous starship had left behind a book called Chicago Mobs of the Twenties. People of that planet designated it a sacred book and proceeded to build their society around it. They justified their lifestyle by claiming they simply did what was written in “the book.” What resulted was merely what evolved between starship visits – but that’s nothing compared to what we’ve managed to convince ourselves of over the course of two millennia.

To gauge the disproportionate impact of the written word, consider just one bit from the Bible. The story of the Fall in the third chapter of Genesis has shaped western civilization’s attitudes toward nature, evil, gender relations, and man’s relation with divinity, all within the context of that one supposed event on which it centers. And somewhere along the line in the development of Christianity, early Church fathers found it convenient to infer from this myth that Adam’s punishment imposed the stigma of sin on all of his descendents.

But viewed purely as fable, the Eden story simply explains why we have to work for a living: because our ancestors were kicked out of Paradise. Doesn’t it sound like a tale likely to have been told by primitive peoples around a campfire? “Once upon a time people didn’t have to hunt animals or till fields, all they had to do was reach up and pick fruit from trees; then one day somebody disobeyed God and picked the wrong fruit. Now stop kvetching and thresh that wheat.”

This is what mythology is all about. The Hebrews were no different from the Greeks or American Indians or any preliterate people – they invented explanations for their reality. Unfortunately, a lot of people today take this fable as gospel just because it’s in the Bible. (Yeah, I remember that Sunday School song: “How do I know? The Bible tells me so.” Nowadays I prefer Ira Gershwin’s take: “The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, it ain’t necessarily so.”) But as if literal interpretations of myth weren’t bad enough, some conservatives are now pressing for their own version of the Bible. It’s like with TTC translations: it’s a question of what it actually says vs. what some interpreters want it to say.

So the new DSM will be the bible of mental health care for another 10+ years, and we can assume that it’s authoritatively based on clinical practice and research. But I’ll bet it doesn’t have a classification for this other prevailing form of insanity, because belief in the unquestionable truth of holy books continues to promote narrow-mindedness and repressive attitudes.

Islamic jihadists who justify their actions on promises of rewards in the afterlife are bad enough. As long as American fundamentalists press their worldview – scaring believers with talk about sin and hellfire, teaching creationism instead of science, taking Adam’s dominion over Creation (and over Eve) as a cue to public policy, even promoting a “young earth” theory on the rim of the Grand Canyon – we’re living in a Star Trek reality. Beam me up, Scotty, it’s crazy down here.

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Note:  Some of this post was paraphrased from another blog that appears to be defunct. For its more nuanced argument of the Eden fable, click here.

A couple of quick updates...

1. It seems that Palin’s poll numbers have taken a tumble. Could it be that most Americans weren’t impressed with her “hillbilly palm pilot”?

2. Muslim scholars have declared that full-body scanners at airports violate their religion’s insistence on modesty. So may I modestly suggest: YOU DON’T FLY! (Just like Palin’s candidacy!)

Now here’s a solution to both situations. In lieu of the body scan, make Muslims take the GOP “purity test” in order to be allowed on airplanes. And have Palin submit to a brain scan, just to see if she has one. That way, a negative reading will confirm she’s a safe bet for the GOP – and she’ll have a choice of running mates to balance the ticket.

3. Students Schools continue to major in be a venue for 2nd Amendment rights.

4. I still have not heard Lady Gaga.

Remembering Phil

President O just hosted a celebration of protest music from the Civil Rights era – a not inappropriate gesture considering that the Sixties have turned fifty and we now have a black man in the White House. Dylan was on hand performing “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and Joan Baez sang “We Shall Overcome.” But there was an 800-pound gorilla in the room (I use that metaphor instead of “elephant” in case any Republicans were inadvertently present) in the guise of the ghost of Phil Ochs.

I didn’t even know who Phil Ochs was until I started college in ’66. Maybe I had heard his “There But for Fortune” sung by Joan Baez and thought it was pretty, or was amused by the Chad Mitchell Trio doing his “Draft Dodger Rag.” Then I bought a copy of I Ain’t Marching Anymore (1965) and was impressed with his scathing commentary on racial tension, “Here’s to the State of Mississippi.” But it was the title track that completely turned my head around.

Unlike other protest songs like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” that merely lamented war and violence, this one suggested action – or rather, resistance – and expressed an attitude I hadn’t encountered in the music of the era: not “let there be peace” or “stop the fighting” or “alas, mankind” but just “I refuse to participate in this insanity.” I don’t know that anybody before then had ever put it so bluntly.


 
Ochs had no sooner released this scorching statement when along comes a concert album with the achingly beautiful “Changes”:
The world's spinning madly, it drifts in the dark
swings through a hollow of haze
a race around the stars
a journey through the universe ablaze
with changes

There was no one quite like him. Only Dylan’s early songs had the same journalistic/poetic balance, but Dylan was to back off from current affairs. Phil went on to write more protest songs even while dallying with artsier lyrics, to help found the Yippie movement, to take a few bizarre turns, and eventually to take his own life. But he was as much a seminal figure of the Sixties as anyone, and “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” left an indelible mark on my political consciousness.
 
Of course, that particular song had special significance in the days of the draft. The fact that we now have a volunteer army suggests more of a willingness to engage in combat – or does it? It’s still the old who lead us to the wars and the young who fall. Maybe the continuation of unnecessary or unwinnable wars will make young men & women think twice before enlisting, because the sentiment of Ochs’s song applies to any era, not just the sixties. 

But somehow I don’t think the White House is going to be hosting a celebration of anti-war music anytime soon.

 

A Big Hand for the Little Lady

After the recent brouhaha, I have to wonder if the 53% of Republicans who believe Sarah Palin is better qualified to be president than Barack Obama are people who write their shopping lists on their hands when they go to the market.

But here’s what I really think. Those hand notes were so totally obvious, I suspect her handlers not only put her up to it but also made her make sure it was as conspicuous as it was – so that she would become a target of ridicule from the liberal elites and earn her even more points with the common folk. You know, the ones who write their shopping lists on their hands when they go to the market.

I’ve gotta hand it to her. I mean, could anybody really be that stupid? 
 

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Speaking of guacamole . . . When I go into a Mexican restaurant, I do so with the full weight of the armed forces of the United States behind me. Because as a vegetarian, I don’t want to know if there’s lard in the refried beans.

Even though I don’t eat meat, I try not to be fanatical about it. If a dish is described as smothered in chili, I’m going to be curious whether it’s con carne or not. But I can pretty much decide from the description whether or not it’ll turn me off. The refries are another matter, because the more traditional the kitchen, the more likely it is that they’ve stirred in a big dollop o’ lard. And with more eateries taking pains to point out that they don’t use lard, you’ve got to figure that those that don’t say, do. But for a good many years, I’ve turned a blind eye to the question and eaten my beans in willful ignorance.

Same goes for the rice, until I was shocked out of my obliviousness this past year. We were ordering spinach enchiladas in one of our regular Mexican places in Flagstaff and made the mistake of commenting to the waitress that it was one of our favorite veggie dishes in town. Whereupon she identified herself as also a vegetarian and warned us that the rice was made with chicken stock. I didn’t really need to know this, because now I can’t in good conscience get rice there anymore. And of course it now has me wondering about how they prepare it at every other Mexican restaurant I go into.

Entering most restaurants as a vegetarian must be something like entering the army as a homosexual. You don’t really announce yourself. You kind of feel your way around and try to be inconspicuous. But you don’t exactly feel welcome. There are more options for vegetarians in British pubs than there are in most American restaurants. Chains like Friday’s, Chili’s, and Applebee’s could care less. Between the lines in the menu, you read “We don’t need your kind here.” Even so, I don’t mind letting them know when push comes to shove. And it’s not like they’re going to kick me out. So there is a difference.

One of these years, they’ll start posting ingredients on menus. But until then, if there’s lard in the beans or chicken stock in the rice, I’d just as soon not know. Just like the Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And one of these years, maybe there’ll be a bit more respect on both fronts.

News Flash! Avocados Conquer Earth!

Super Bowl Sunday is reputed to be the day on which Americans wolf down guacamole like there’s no tomorrow – a precaution against one’s team’s losing, I suppose. And there seems to be no shortage of avocados at the grocery store, so let the dipping begin.

I remember as a kid in the Philly burbs hearing radio commercials for avocados, presumably because they were just being introduced to that market, so I feel like my life has ridden the crest of the avocado wave. (Fun fact: The word “avocado” comes from the Nahuatl ahuacatl, which means “testicle.”) I don’t know that I ever encountered guacamole before moving to Arizona in 1979, but it won me over from the first dip. Even so, I think it took a couple of years before I actually bought one and figured out how to open it; now it seems I’m fondling them for firmness at every shopping trip.

The big news, of course, is that the split seasons for avocados seem to have passed. Used to be that in winter the black Hasses gave way to the green Bacons, which were never quite as good; now we have Hasses all year, with the little code stickers in the domestic off-season indicating their Chilean origin.

Now, here’s what gets to me. When I go to the grocery store and see a bin full of avocados, I will occasionally flash on the fact that there are similar bins full of avocados all over town. And all over the state. And all over the country.  And week after week, they’re being replenished. And I’m picturing these container ships coming in from Chile on a regular basis carrying millions of avocados. And it blows my mind.

Why don’t I have the same reaction with oranges or tomatoes or onions? I guess because for the longest time I considered avocados a luxury item, a non-necessity, with the good Hass variety only available seasonally. And it’s not that I’m reacting in horror to the carbon footprint of this delightful fruit (although that’s certainly in the back of my mind), I just can’t get over how many avocados are crossing the equator on a regular basis. Yet Chile only ranks sixth in avocado production (behind Mexico, Indonesia, the U.S., Colombia, and Brazil), so I’m guessing that what I’m seeing at the market is merely the tip of the guacamole.

Maybe I sound like I just fell off the turnip avocado truck. But I’m beginning to fear that avocados are waiting to take over the world. And those big pits? Whatever you do, don’t put them under your bed!
 

Y'All Won't Believe This...

But then maybe you will. A recent poll of Republicans shows that 63% believe Barack Obama is a socialist; 53% believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President; 77% oppose same-sex marriage, with smaller majorities opposing benefits for gay couples and not wanting to see gays teach in public schools or serve in the military; 77% (perhaps the same bunch) believe that the biblical creation story should be taught in public schools; and 76% view abortion as murder while an additional 15% support the death penalty.

The demographics say a lot about those who hold these opinions: the largest age group is over 60, and 42% of those polled live in the South – which may skew the statistics, but has a lot to say about the South today. While it may seem unfair to stereotype an entire region, it’s pretty obvious that the South is crawling with wingnuts. During the presidential race, the NYT reported on how Southerners perceived Obama – which by and large was with suspicion – and that perception doesn’t seem to have changed. Did anyone expect it to? Just because some C&W singers wear their hair longer than used to be seen on the Grand Ole Opry doesn’t make the place any less scary for outsiders with inappropriate worldviews than Easy Rider depicted it.

I don’t begrudge people their opinions, but misperceptions of a president’s politics and a wannabe’s qualifications – not to mention defending creationism – speak to lack of knowledge more than anything. W, himself a Southerner, touted “No Child Left Behind”; maybe he should have been more supportive of adult education.

Before We Get Old

It’s a good thing I got some of my usual daily routines out of the way, because XM just launched a weekend of The Who on Deep Tracks. Maybe I’ll forego practicing pre-1950 standards on guitar today.

It’s in honor of their upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, of course, which I’m not entirely sure I can bear watching. I mean, Pete is a real geezer now, and I’m not terribly confident he can leap like he did at Woodstock. And even though Roger still has his lungs, what appear to be new teeth are rendering his s’s somewhat sibilant. Especially now that it’s just the two of them, they’ve become almost a cringe-inducing nostalgia act.

A pity, that. It’s not like I wanted them all to die before they got old, but they’ve gotten even scarier than the Stones, since Mick defies belief in aging and Keith always looked decrepit anyway. So before we all get any older, let’s revel a bit....

All in favor, raise your cold, dead hands...

It was almost too good to be true – not “good” good, just yummy blog fodder. Seems an Arizona state legislator from Mesa (the wackiest ones we’ve got out here) was sponsoring a bill to make it legal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. It’s already okay to take a gun into a bar, so why not up the ante?

Even the right-leaning Courier editorialized against it, but that didn’t stop some readers from chiming in with knee-jerk defenses of the 2nd Amendment. The very first person to post a response claimed, “If it requires a permit, it is not a Right. A permit, by definition, is ‘permission’. You do not need ‘permission’ to excercise a Right.” But in defense of the paper’s stand, another person observed that said amendment does provide for a “well-regulated” militia.

Now, regardless of how this bill turns out, the fact remains that there are people who believe gun ownership should be a no-holds-barred proposition. The operative sentiment seems to be, bad guys will get guns without permits anyway, so why should honest citizens have to jump through hoops? This either/or mentality is crazy-making – the same line of thinking that views the world as us and them, and we all know where that gets us.

But the shades of the spectrum between bad guys and honest citizens is so varied that it also takes in crazies who go on rampages in workplaces, schools, restaurants, military bases, and even churches. And don’t forget the iconic postal worker. (Hello, Newman...) And how about that guy who just pulled up next to you at the stoplight, the one who’s been tailgating you for the past two miles?...

The NRA’s answer to increased gun violence, even massacres like Virginia Tech? More guns for everybody! That’s because this gang o’ loonies has its members indoctrinated into this all-or-nothing attitude wherein any attempt at regulation triggers a red flag. And we all know what regulation means: no more hunting Bambi’s mom with assault rifles.

Does anyone seriously think the Framers had this in mind when they put their muskets back on the wall after defeating the Redcoats? Or that they opened the amendment with the words “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State” just because they wanted to pad it out a bit? The complete wording even hits you in the face when you go to the NRA website, but you have to think they’re speed-reading past that first clause. And somehow I can’t envision Wayne LaPierre as a colonial militiaman. (Maybe in a Napoleon hat and a straightjacket, though.)

I don’t think gun ownership is the real issue here. The real issue is why such issues have to be black and white, no shades of gray allowed. Sure, let’s provide for that “militia,” but let’s keep it well regulated as was intended. I won’t deny there’s some sense to the motto “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”; but if guns aren’t regulated, don’t press your luck at stoplights.

That '70s Showman

I didn’t watch the Grammys – didn’t even know they had been on until I saw headlines the next morning saying who’d won. But I’ve already declared myself culturally out of touch, so that shouldn’t come as too much of a shock. Just another line for the obelisk.

But here’s this Lady Gaga again, somebody I hadn’t even heard of before a couple of months ago. And she’s singing a duet with Elton John, so I couldn’t resist finding the video (which I admit that I watched with the sound off). The production number seems like others of recent vintage that I’ve caught sight of, featuring a lot of people doing aerobics. And there’s LG, as dressed to kill as EJ ever was. Murder by flamboyance.

Younger readers may find this hard to believe, but before his Captain Fantastic persona, before he began performing in silly costumes, Elton John was a top-caliber rocker with no such pretensions. The proof of the pudding is his album 11-17-70 (17-11-70 in the UK release) capturing a radio concert from that date of (gulp) nearly forty years ago. With just piano, bass, and drums, it’s a hard, lean set kicking off with “Bad Side of the Moon”; and by the time he wraps up with an 18-minute medley building on “Burn Down the Mission,” you feel as exhausted as he must’ve been.

According to the Wikipedia entry, he cut his hand at some point during the set, and by the end of the show his keyboard was covered with blood. It also notes that EJ said in several interviews that he considered it his best live performance. The CD expands on the original LP’s edit of the concert with one additional track, but there had been a bootleg of the whole hour – wish I had it, and wonder why they couldn’t’ve put the whole thing on the CD.

Sir Elton is undeniably a showman, and it’s obvious that his choice of on-stage apparel was never intended to compensate for any diminishment in talent. (From what I’ve read, he did it to compensate instead for a repressed childhood.) But it’s refreshing to listen to this early performance, not only for its raw energy but also to know that it wasn’t being delivered by a man dressed as Donald Duck.

A Version of Aversion

In a previous post about the appropriateness of religious imagery in advertising, I made a few suggestions for McDonald’s but neglected a necessary disclosure: I have never patronized McDonald’s in my life.

It didn’t start out as a matter of principle (as compared to my never having patronized Pizza Hut after they put up a restaurant just down the street from a little pizza shop in my hometown and drove it out of business). There just came a point where I realized I’d never been to McDonald’s and decided to keep it that way. By the time the golden arches arrived in the Philly burbs, I’d already been a fan of Gino’s, the regional fast-food burger chain. And when Burger King showed up, I was more than ready to have it my way.

But there was something about McDonald’s that made me want to stay away. Maybe it was feeling invaded – that the two all-beef patties, lettuce, cheese, etc was ripping off the already established Gino Giant (which for all I know was ripping off the Big Mac). Or maybe I had heard that walking under arches was bad luck. Or maybe it was just Ronald. Ronald was always a bit over the top. I never liked the clown heads outside of fun houses either. Creeped me out.

So I’ve managed to avoid McDonald’s, but I admit to having come dangerously close. My dad was into carving whales, and he talked a local mall-based McD with a nautical motif into buying a couple. I couldn’t not check them out, but all it took was walking in, scoping out the carvings, and walking out. And then there was the time the folks came to visit me in Tucson and I took them down to Nogales; after being unwilling to consume anything south of the border they afterward asked if I’d stop at the American-side McD so they could get coffee. I went to the drive-thru so they could satisfy their craving but like to think that I myself wasn’t patronizing the place. And since I went vegetarian around 1985, it’s not like it’s been hard. (My sole foray into the meat zone in recent memory was a Wendy’s, where I was asked if I wanted to biggie my fries. Who would have expected vocabulary enrichment at a fast food joint?)

When I recently had the occasion to get together with an old friend, he probably thought it peculiar that I balked at the suggestion of McDonald’s when it was the most convenient venue. But having gone this long, I saw no reason to break my streak. I once fancied that my tombstone could bear the epitaph “He never ate at McDonalds.” But there’s no sense in starting a list – an obelisk would be way too showy.