Obama Is My Reagan

In 2004, in the midst of a contentious political season when I was voting more against someone than for someone (hmm, seems familiar), I saw a young, handsome and charismatic African-American state senator who was running for national office give a speech at the DNC. His name, of course, was Barack Obama, and like a lot of people in the immediate aftermath of that speech, I wondered "why isn't *this guy* the one running for president?" It's not that I didn't like John Kerry, but...I was more anti-Dubya than pro-Kerry, and I wanted more than anything to see George and his posse rounded up and hauled before the International War Crimes Tribunal for what they perpetuated in Iraq. Still, when Obama was done speaking, I thought I'd like to vote for him someday. I can no longer find the message boards that I was a regular on back then (mostly because a lot of them became infected with spambots), but I'm pretty sure that I predicted (or hoped aloud) that Barack Obama would be elected president someday.


So when he announced his bid in 2007...I had not really kept up with him since 2004, and I remembered liking his speech but not being sure that a black man could win the White House, not in the America I knew (and I didn't know half of what I know now when it comes to the racial divide and how I have benefited from it). But he ran, and he came to speak at Clemson (and that's when I first saw snipers on the roofs of buildings surrounding his speaking area, joking to my buddy about how many of them, if local, were likely wanting to take a shot at him and not protect him), and I was all in for hope and change. Obama was the first guy I voted for who won (I turned seventeen a month before Clinton's 1996 victory, and honestly I would've voted for him even though I was still kinda Republican back then). Then when I voted for him again four years later, and he won, I felt like a tiny part of the reason why (though my state has never gone for him in an election, those cranky racist white folks around me have to die sometime).


So let me say something that will likely piss off anyone I know who has never liked him, because I think it's going to be true: Obama will be to Democrats what Reagan is to Republicans. I already feel like he's that way for me. And boy do I wish he'd seize the government and take over for life like his enemies have long said he would.


Now, when I say he's my Reagan, let me be perfectly clear: you will never, ever dissuade me from this with facts or logic. You could tell me that he didn't do half of what he wanted to do, that he was not as effective as he should've been, or that he was someone who sold a vision of America that isn't close to being reality. Okay, fine, but you know what he did for me? He saved me from being cynical about our nation, about our possibilities. Didn't Reagan do that for the GOP?


Reagan came along after Nixon, who was a hot mess all his own and whose exit from the stage (apart from a brief "third term lite" in the tenure of Gerald Ford) seemed to signal the death of the Republican Party. Then Reagan (a celebrity, by the way) came along and Americans of conservative stripes fell in love with him. To this day, you can point out Reagan's flaws and GOPers won't hear it. So when anyone tries to tell me how Obama screwed up this country, I can just chuckle and go "well" with that disarming Reagan twinkle in my eye that secretly says "you fucking prick, don't you know you can't dissuade me with logic!"


I'm like a Trump supporter, but less evil.


I think the historic record will be kinder to Obama than the contemporary scene (and yes, I think racism has a lot to do with it, though not all Obama-haters are bigots. I'm sure not all of them are employed by Fox News). Frankly, the more that people talk about how awful he is, the more I think he must be doing something right. People didn't always like Reagan when he was in office (especially not John Hinckley). But we don't remember that so much as the way that he made us "feel." Ditto for Obama and me, I won't always remember the times when he failed (or when his critics said that he failed), but I'll remember how he made me feel proud to be an American, where at least I knew he was free to be president after two-hundred-plus years of white people.


But more than that, there's the personal politics: when I read that Obama didn't really have a relationship with his father, and that he was raised by his mother with help from his maternal grandparents, it marked the first time I can remember coming across a presidential candidate whose upbringing mirrored mine (to this day, I am also accused of being a secret Muslim born in Kenya, but that's another issue). Plus, look at who faced him in 2008: I voted for McCain in the 2000 Repub primary here in SC and was crushed when he lost to former Yale cheerleader and future war criminal Dubya. Then I saw him become just the absolute lapdog for Bush (kinda like Chris Christie is for the short-fingered Devil), and by the time he ran, I was full-on Democrat and liberal. And it didn't help that his running mate was an idiot.


So Obama made me a believer in the political system, four years after Bush's cynical win as a sign of our national cowardice to admit that the Iraq War was a mistake. And whatever his faults (of which I am sure there are more than a few), I believed in him again in 2012. I believe in him now. Like FDR or JFK before him, Obama will be a Democratic icon. Maybe he won't be the national icon that I believe he should be, but you can never account for sore losers. Obama is my Reagan, hell he's even better than Reagan to me, but I'll settle for him being thought of in such terms by my fellow Dems. And no amount of facts can persuade me otherwise, because when have facts mattered to Reagan lovers? Obama is my Reagan; one day I can only hope the GOP can think of someone as "their Obama."

Be Careful About What You Choose to Be

In case you haven't noticed, we're living in a very contentious political season right now, with each side trying to outdo the other in terms of who's the loudest voice in the room. I would imagine that, if you know me or at least have "known" me online for a while now, you can tell where I stand on the debate between Clinton and Trump. I'm not here to argue with you about that (I can't, anyway; you would have to leave a comment, and I would have to respond, and then you'd have to respond to my response to your comment, and so on and so forth until one or both of us is referred to as "that asshole" and mutual blocking of friendship begins). No, I don't think I'll change your mind about this any more than you'll change mine. But I wonder if we couldn't stand to be a little nicer about it.

Social media is fantastic, but it's also infantilizing. Trading insults once was the low-hanging fruit of internet trolls. Now one of those trolls is running for president (harsh, I know, but true). When it's at its best, social media can open our eyes to a side of the world or side of an issue that we may never have considered before; at its worst, it can create an echo chamber of well-meaning but ultimately unrewarding and unchallenging sycophantic comments traded back and forth. The feedback loop we all enter into (your humble blogger included) can blind us to the other side of the issue (and there is always another side, even if it's ultimately not the right side after all). It's far easier to stay in our lane. It's also fun as hell to insult those who disagree with us.

I'm not about to give up speaking my mind when it comes to short-fingered megalomaniacs who have no business running a used-car dealership, much less a country. But I would hope that we all take a minute to acknowledge that "freedom of speech" and "freedom to be an asshole" don't mean the same things.

But perhaps my jabs at the Once and Future Internet Troll have already alienated you, if you're still reading. My bad.

Kurt Vonnegut has a line from Mother Night, which concerns an American spy living in Berlin during the Second World War who, in order to get information for the Allied war effort, has to pose as a rabble-rousing Nazi sympathizer (like "Tokyo Rose" or "Lord Haw-Haw"). Not to give anything away, but everyone who knew this character was a spy is either dead or not talking when the Israelis finally come for him. The line that I think bears repeating is "we must be careful about the things we pretend to be."

In a political season, it's easy to shout and bellow and yell. It's fun, really, and the feedback loop of likeminded people agreeing with you can be intoxicating. But I have a hard time believing that many of my conservative friends, people who seem to have deeply held beliefs that I may disagree with and fight against but which I do not doubt they believe in wholeheartedly, would embrace a man who doesn't have anything in common with the sainted "Ronnie" that many of them seem to think is just about to walk through that doorway all over again. I think they're pretending, talking themselves into being on the Trump train. Similarly, I'm talking myself into supporting Hillary. It's becoming easier to do when I consider that the other candidate is someone I would never vote for, but I'm not a Clinton booster. This election, both sides have been handed a candidate that maybe isn't all that great. Only one of them, I believe, would be a disaster as president, and it sure ain't the one who's had actual experience in government.

But again, I'm guessing if you don't agree with me, you've stopped reading by now.

It's easy to get behind a keyboard, to risk nothing by saying something that everyone in your circle will approve. But how many of you will actually get out from behind that monitor or put away that phone and risk yourselves, your beings?

In April, some friends of mine helped organize and stage a sit-in rally here at Clemson, demanding that more minority voices be heard and responded to in the wake of a racial incident which angered them and all right-thinking people on campus (you'd be surprised how many people didn't think it was such a big deal). They risked being kicked out of school. They risked arrest. Some of them were arrested. You don't have to agree with what they were protesting for, but you have to respect them. I respect them. It's easy to be brave, to pretend to be brave anyway, when you've got some distance between the words you use and the people they affect. Social media is a wonderful tool for enlightenment, but it can be used to build up barriers and refuse to see the common humanity shared with even our most fervent enemies. Don't be an internet troll, content to throw jabs that will get you multiple likes from the usual suspects. Be willing to admit when you're wrong (because news flash, you often will be), and be willing to learn from your mistakes (because you will make them).

Let me end with another Vonnegut quote: goddam it, babies, you've got to be kind.

Walking Life

It's the end of June, a month that has been eventful in the greater, outside world, with the good (Cavs winning) balanced out by the bad (Orlando) and everything in between. Because all the local libraries have the nerve to be patriotic, and also because I don't have wi-fi at the casa, I will be offline at least until the Fourth, after the libs close tomorrow afternoon for the holiday weekend.

If only the Brits had won...wait, would "Brexit" have happened if we were still property of the Queen?

Anyway, I'm coming to the end of the period I like to call "no payments for student loans or medical bills due," I've already mailed off the first payment for next month for the student loans and my medical bills will be paid via an arrangement I like to call "bleeding me dry if I don't get a job soon." Speaking of which, I have applications out there, no responses as yet. But some of the jobs I've applied for in teaching, they probably are waiting for a while before calling people like myself, who are qualified to teach. I figure by this time next month, it might be time to hit the "panic" button on the lack-of-incoming-cash department. But for now, I walk.

I started up walking again over at Sertoma Field ("Sertoma" being Cherokee for "made-up word coined by white people," I suppose. Though if I Google it after posting this and it turns out to be a real word, who's the racist then?). It usually takes about forty-five minutes to do three laps (well, it takes me forty-five minutes to do three laps), and it's a good way to meet people who like to run by while also saying good morning if they can be bothered. I'm not a hat-wearer per se, but I like to go walk before I even think about taking a shower, and my bedhead is best hidden under my twenty-odd-years-old Red Sox cap (from Starter, so it's got a band in the back to accommodate my oversized head). Plus, you tend to get sweaty from all that walking. So why not save some water and walk while you already stink? Stink some more! It's fun!

I got an iPod Shuffle back in May, it was almost a full month before I got it up and running (of the two thousand songs I have, it could load maybe 250. But I can't complain about the variety too much, even when I don't want to hear Van Morrison songs one right after the other. I like to mix it up). I like to have a soundtrack while I avoid the duck shit that's all over certain parts of the walking track. At Sertoma, as in life, a lot of your time will be spent avoiding duck shit. Look it up, it's in the Bible and the Bill of Rights. Generally, I have been walking pretty regularly in the mornings, at around nine; any later and, with the way the weather is going here in SC, I'd melt before I made it completely all the way around. And I'd melt into the duck shit on the paths. Nobody wants that.

By and large, I've done a lot of reading this past month, right now I'm almost three hundred pages into Infinite Jest. I like to head down to the Cooper lib and get online, the parking pass doesn't run out until early August so why not? I do miss the daily tumult of either teaching a class or preparing to teach one the next day; even after the clusterfuck that was April, I have to say that I enjoyed every last stress-inducing minute of the final build-up to graduation. As I didn't get into any MFA programs yet, I'll have to put off my exit from the state for a year, I guess. There's a lot of uncertainty in the near future, safe to say, and I imagine a lot of my fellow grads feel something similar. I guess that's why I took up walking again, even with all the duck shit to navigate: it's something that I have some control over, even if there's duck shit involved. And did I mention how the mama and papa ducks hiss at you if you walk too close to their babies?

At any rate, I walk to lose weight (which I *think* is starting to work), I walk to get exercise, I walk to get out of the house for a little bit, and I walk because I like to listen to music. And then I walk some more...

Isolationism Is So 1941

If you're like me and you're waking up today (or, if like me you turned it to CNN right after "@midnight" and saw the news, you went to bed) with the news that the UK has left the EU, all because of something called the "Brexit vote," you are not alone. Also, you may want to make sure you didn't have anything invested in any English businesses, because their economy is in the shitter. Literally.

I have to admit that I'm not well-versed on what Brexit means (it sounds like a synth-pop duo from the Eighties, albeit a very racist and xenophobic one). But judging from the way it's being described online, it sounds like a really, really, really fucking stupid idea. Kind of like electing Trump over here.

By the way, that sentient bag of human fecal matter tweeted some sort of nonsense about the UK "taking their country back, like we will take back America." Can he be forced to stay in Scotland for the rest of his life? They know what to do with power-hungry despots over there (hey kids, ever read "Macbeth"?).

Anywho, it seems like the more the world is becoming connected, the easier it is for people to bemoan that connection (or, assuming that they don't know the meaning of the word "bemoan," bitch and complain about it). I know it's scary, and I know that it's not always fun to have connections to the outside world. But it's time for all of us to put on our big boy(or girl) pants and admit that hey, we're all connected. And not in a pseudo-hippie bullshit kind of way, either.

Isolationism, as sold to us most recently by Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and now Donald Trump, sounds fantastic. Hey, screw the rest of the world, we don't need nobody! But ask any of the members of famous bands who went off to do their solo careers (and whose names aren't John, Paul, George, or Ringo) how that worked out. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, I heard all the time apocalyptic warnings about "the coming one-world government." It was supposed to set the plate for a ravenous Satan to feast upon all our souls, presumably while James Taylor blasted in the background.

Seriously, does anyone actually think the Evil One gets down to heavy metal? Please, Satan is an earworm junkie. How else to explain Justin Bieber?

Like I said, going it alone sounds like a great idea, whether you're a moody teenager or a country. But you need people (and other countries) in today's world. You cannot do it alone. Even solo acts need backing musicians.

I would like to point out that all this citation of musical metaphors is meant to cover the fact that I still am not 100 percent sure of what "Brexit" is. But I do know what isolationism is; it's an outmoded, outdated, and thoroughly discredited ideology that essentially gives a middle finger to the rest of the world and then shuts itself away in its room to listen to Goth music. Britain done fucked up, and I think we should take some pause before we similarly fuck up by electing Reichsfuhrer Trump in November.

I still think "Brexit" is a fantastic name for a synth-pop duo, by the way.

No Randy Quaid, No ID4

There's a lot of incredibly serious and depressing shit going on in the world this past week, in case you haven't noticed. So let me set your mind at ease by talking about something that is far, far less substantial or important...though of course, that's what the government wants you to believe.

I was in high school when the original Independence Day (also known as ID4, in an attempt to confuse people wondering where IDs 1-3 were, or maybe that's just me being silly) came out. I *think* I saw it during its original run, but I certainly saw it during what turned out to be the last of VHS's glory days (the late Nineties) on more than one occasion, and it sure seemed awesome at the time. Shit got blow'd up real good, and when you're a hormonal teenage boy that's what you went to movies to see (well, that and naked female chests, of which ID4 was bereft). Over time, as is often the case with things that we love when we're younger and stupider, I came to view ID4 as a cynical cash-grab by two directors who were clearly of the Michael Bay school of action shit (even if they pre-dated him or even inspired him, I lumped them in with Bay's amped-up uber-manly shitfests). This is not to say that ID4 is a bad movie; it's entertaining as hell when shit's getting blow'd up real good. But it's the alien invasion movie as popcorn thrill-ride, when more substantial and lasting alien movies (like Alien or The Thing, for instance) force us to confront more "realistic" instances of aliens among us (I use quotation marks because no one really knows how "reality" would be affected by contact with an alien species. My guess: we'd lose our shit).

Part of what makes me appreciate, to some extent, my own view of the film's faults is that it has quite possibly the most overwrought death scene in the history of cinema. I speak, of course, of former walking punchline (and current walking punchline, but for different reasons) Randy Quaid's heroic sacrifice to shove his plane up the alien ship's....well, just go watch it. I can wait, it's on YouTube.

Are you back? Good. Notice anything about that scene in particular? I am not a professional screenwriter, I don't know if it's hard to craft the perfect dialogue for anally probing (or perhaps acting as a human catheter on) an alien spaceship, knowing full well that you're a goner. But I'm guessing a roomful of actual monkeys chained to typewriters would write more convincing "last hurrah" dialogue than what comes out of Mr. Quaid's mouth. Why stop at one cliché when you can use them all? Really, we're in no hurry to bring this alien craft down, have your moment, Mr. Quaid!

It is shitty filmmaking par excellence.

So while I see this generation's ID4, with Goldblum and Pullman and even, for some reason, Brent Spiner back in it (spoiler alert: I thought his character died in the original, but I'm not a Hollywood scriptwriter), I say "that's nice, but where's your Randy Quaid-esque character or moment?" By the way, I have zero interest in seeing the new one. I find that remakes or reboots or re-imaginings sometimes stretch the credibility factor and indeed rarely justify their existence (there are exceptions to this rule, of course. But they're few and far between). And while the internet (read: lonely men) was getting itself in a tizzy over an all-female Ghostbusters, nary a word seems to be said about a Quaid-less ID4 (if Spiner can come back, why not Quaid? Maybe his proctology exam of the alien ship granted him an extra life or two?). I will be that voice in the wilderness, then, that one brave soul asking the question that no one in their right mind would ask because I have a lot of time on my hands and it's stupid and pointless and less depressing to think about than our country's sick obsession with firearms.

I'll be more than happy to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom for this post, is what I'm saying.

Truly, in the history of cinema, in the history of chewing scenery, in the history of milking it for all it's worth, Randy Quaid in ID4's closing act cannot be beat. So maybe the new film won't even try. But where there's a will, there's a way. Nothing like a little elbow grease to get the job done. I'm coming, Elizabeth, and that's all she wrote. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. In the words of my generation, whatever...

The Last Stand of the Heterosexual White Male (And Why That's a Good Thing)

Everywhere on the internet, it seems, people are getting angry and yelling at one another. And usually it's because of Donald Trump. I am not here to slam him any more than I already have (though have you tried buying any Trump Steaks lately?), but to point to a larger issue that I think is driving his surge to future Fuehrer-dom, if it can't be stopped. The issue I speak about, of course, is the death of political incorrectness.

Any time I hear someone say aloud "well, we all have to be politically correct now," what I really hear is "I can't call blacks/Muslims/Hispanics/Jews/fill-in-the-blank what I really want to call them anymore." This may strike some of you as unfair, but this is my blog. You want to complain about it, start your own. Anyway, it's no secret why The Great Combover One is currently leading the GOP over a cliff of non-relevance no matter what happens in November: white people be tripping, yo.

Specifically, white heterosexual males (of which I am a member, though I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it considering some of the company I have to keep).

During my TCTC days, we were told in Sociology that in twenty years, people of Mexican or Hispanic descent would be the majority in this country. Seeing as my last class at TCTC was twelve years ago, I'd say we're in the home stretch towards that goal being achieved. African-Americans may dominate our sports, music, and culture, but they're not a huge part of our overall population. And pretty soon, neither will we white folks be, at least in terms of dominance through sheer numbers.

All I can say is: thank fucking God.

For most of recorded history, people from the relatively small continent of Europe (and not even all of Europe; when was the last time thoughts of an Italian invasion stirred fear in anyone?) have kinda had the run of things, using their pale skin (from being so far from the sun, don't you know?) as some sort of indicator that they're better than anyone else (spoiler alert: we're not). From slavery to imperialism, colonialism to Colonial Williamsburg, we white men have had a lot to answer for, even if (as my family loves to remind me whenever I dare to be the only liberal in the room) some of us didn't have direct participation in ancient-history stuff (but here's the thing: that shit still has power over everything we do, and we don't acknowledge it at our peril). I think we white men have done some good things, to be sure: the Beatles, for one thing, and pizza. But that's an awful small amount of good to bring into the world when the balance is really scaled towards all the negative shit we've done, or has been done in our name. And it's not even stuff that we just did to "others." I'm pretty sure the Spanish Inquisition was more terrifying than anything Monty Python conceived of for the skit of the same name.

You'll notice I didn't say "we white people," because let's be honest: for most of history, women didn't mean shit to white men except as baby-makers and maybe mistresses when we got tired of making babies officially. Somehow giving you ladies the vote less than a hundred years ago means "we're good, right?" Considering how casually rape culture is taken by some of my fellow white men (most of them at Return of Kings), it's understandable that we are not, in fact, good.

So we (white men not named me) are scared of the coming loss of racial dominance, I guess. Tough shit, it's a thing and it's happening, and thank God for it. Someone else will be in charge now, as it should be. It might not happen this election cycle (hell, there may be enough crazy white people to elect a smooth-talking con artist to the highest office in the land; it's happened before), but it's coming, and soon. And we white men can be like Custer, kicking and screaming the whole way because our penis size is threatened. Or we can work with those communities that are rising up to dominate our country, and ensure that they know that we're allies, not enemies. This is a nation of immigrants, from all over the damn place. We white men have no special claim to being "American," not really.

But I'm guessing my friends who support Trump are going to hate this idea :-p

The Smiths, "The Queen Is Dead"

Last week I woke up one morning sure that, when I turned on the TV, the news networks would be breaking from their regular Trump coverage to announce the death of Queen Elizabeth II (or "Liza," as her friends call her). I can't explain why this certainty came over me, if it was part of some left-over dream residue or a psychic malevolency on my part. Obviously, when I did turn on the TV there was no such breaking news. But given the fact that Liza did just celebrate her 90th birthday on this planet, the odds are in my favor that such a day will occur sooner rather than later.

I don't like authority figures, especially those whose authority is just assumed and not earned (or "earned" in quotation marks). In a country where we're this close to electing a self-important billionaire (or so he says...I think Donnie's facing another bankruptcy, hence the making of America great again) or the wife of a former president (so she's had experience hanging around the White House), I seem to be in the minority of folks who feel this way. All the Bernie Bros convince me of is that they'd be liking Trump if he wasn't playing the bigot card. I don't know what to think about for the fall, I almost wish we'd lost the Revolution now.

Britain, once our landlord, is still a country that we look to with what even the most Anglophile among us would regard as a simpering inferiority complex. And why not? They've got centuries of culture to our two (though said culture is way more racist and sexist when you take a closer look at it and get past the sexy accents), they often times make better music, and nobody does tuberculosis-ridden female novelists quite like the UK. But they have an archaic and borderline stupid devotion to a family of inbreds whose only claim to legitimacy is "we have been and always will be better than you."

I remember getting up super-early in the morning on the day William and Kate got married. I am anything but a royalist, but I had a bad attack of what I later learned were gallstones, and I was up anyway writhing in pain so I figured I'd check it out. To hear the way people talk about the royal family, and the two kids born since and how they'll "inherit the throne" once Liza checks out (I guess Chuck isn't in line for it anymore? I didn't get the memo on that one), I feel like shouting "constitutional monarchy" at the top of my lungs. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the Windsors are figureheads at this point. That is, they don't do anything but look pretty for the cameras and tourists. You know, Kardashians.

Maybe it's not so hard to understand why people are obsessed with them, then.

I came to loath the whole enterprise like countless American boys of my time: by reading John Lydon's autobiography Rotten. The once and future Sex Pistol unloads on the whole notion of inherited authority pretty well (my memory is hazy, but he did pen "God Save the Queen" so I feel I'm on good footing without having to refer to the memoir). What's more, about a dozen years later I stumbled across John Gardner's Grendel, which includes a paragraph that explains where royal "authority" gets off telling us mere mortals what to do (hint: it's similar to the whole "built another castle, that sank into the swamp" story from Monty Python and the Holy Grail). When it comes to the royals, there's an awful lot of wish fulfillment on the part of royal-watchers. Call it "crown envy" instead of penis envy, if you will. I don't understand it...unless, of course, I do.

You know how I mentioned the Pistols just now, and punk rock in general? That's my jam, frankly. I would love to travel back in time to around 1976 (when it was all getting started) right up to 1982 or so (Ian Curtis was dead, but punk was now "postpunk" or "New Wave" and just about to become ridiculous thanks to the New Romantics). So perhaps it's not all that weird to me how some people look to other cultures (and other timelines) to feel better about themselves. Growing up in a small town that I was convinced was devoid of culture, I looked at the world outside the confines of my town and wanted to be in that world (I was Ariel in The Little Mermaid, minus the ability to swim or the red hair). Looking at the wider world now, and how incredibly close we seem to be to some sort of apocalypse, I think maybe I was naïve back then. But I can be forgiven for it; I saw something attractive in a culture not my own and wanted to emulate it. It's not a sin (well, not until you start emulating Nazis and put people you don't like in camps, but that could never happen under any president, right?).

I thought, in my younger, more "radicalized" days, that when the Queen did throw off her mortal coil, I'd blast "The Queen Is Dead" at full volume. But the Queen is as much a flesh-and-blood human being as she is a figurehead (albeit a figurehead for a system that I still seem passionately opposed to, even though there's really no reason for me to still carry the punk-rock flag against the royals). In "The King's Speech," we even see her as a little girl, her daddy the guy who has to rally his country in the wake of Hitler's blitzkrieg. It's easy to forget that the figureheads we hate or love, at the end of the day, take a shit like the rest of us. That doesn't make our feelings any less valid, but it should regulate our behavior a little bit. So when Liza doffs her crazy hat one last time and exits stage left, I guess I'll try to take a minute to remember that she's somebody's mother/grandmother/great-grandmother. But after that moment, I still might queue up some Smiths or Sex Pistols. Because I'm human, too.

Conspiracy Theory: Donald Trump is Andy Kaufman

Since his presidential campaign began with an anti-Mexican soundbite that might have ended a lesser politician’s bid right then and there, Donald Trump has baffled both the Republican establishment and the political pundits on television who figured that this was all an elaborate con job by the real-estate mogul to expand his brand and nothing more. So far, the Trump hate-filled balloon has only rose higher and higher, and the oxygen to the lungs of his critics seems increasingly thin. You’ve probably heard or posited conspiracy theories to explain the unexplainable Trump juggernaut, so I humbly present my own: Donald Trump is Andy Kaufman.

 

I’ll just pause here while those in the reading audience who don’t know who Kaufman was look him up on Wikipedia…

 

Okay, when I said that about Trump being Kaufman, there are one of two ways that you, the reader, could take it: 1.) I’m being facetious about Trump *actually* being Kaufman, a notorious performance artist who most assuredly passed away in 1984 from a rare form of lung cancer. I’m merely suggesting that Trump has perhaps captured the same anarchic spirit that Kaufman used to disrupt professional wrestling (as the “Intergender World Champion”) and unleashed it on the modern-day GOP. Or 2.) I am sincerely suggesting that Trump and Kaufman (who, let’s face it, you’ve never seen in the same room together at the same time) are one and the same, and that Kaufman is playing the obnoxious “Trump” character to perfection in his greatest role yet.

 

What if I told you I was leaning towards number 2?

 

No, hear me out: When he allegedly “died” in 1984 (at the height of the backlash from his Intergender Wrestling career, mind you, having turned heel to battle Jerry “The King” Lawler and supposedly suffered a broken neck and a public meltdown on David Letterman’s old NBC show in the process), Kaufman had pulled so many hoaxes and performances that left his audience’s heads scratching that no one believed it. Every few years (especially since the evolution of the internet), rumors persist that Kaufman is poised to “return” to the world at large after a significant time out of the public eye. Rumors of his return were especially persistent in 1999, upon the eve of the film Man In the Moon (a Kaufman biopic starring fellow comedian and performance artist Jim Carrey…wait, he was serious about that whole “anti-vaccine” thing?), and in 2004, the twentieth anniversary of his “death.”

 

As a Kaufman fan, I do admit that I wanted to believe that Kaufman perhaps had faked his death all those years ago, and that he would indeed return. But my more rational, less conspiracy-minded self was inclined to believe that no one would put their family through what Andy’s family suffered (and indeed, they were skeptical about his fatal diagnosis when it first came to light; they had put up with his fantasies and performances for far longer than the general public had). Still, when friends posted articles purporting to Kaufman sightings in Wal-Mart parking lots (perhaps akin to Elvis, Kaufman’s idol, who seems to haunt Waffle Houses nearly forty years after *his* alleged passing), I felt a twinge of “what if,” if only for a moment.

 

Perhaps to better understand my conceit that Trump and Kaufman are one in the same, it’s important to point out that Kaufman the man was universally loved and treasured by his close associates because, no matter how insane his antics, he was a deeply funny and warm human being, full of kindness. No one’s ever accused Trump of having a soul, to my knowledge. But Kaufman could go dark, for sure, whether as the wrestling heel or as his most beloved-or-hated alter ego, Tony Clifton. In this role, Kaufman got to play the world’s worst lounge lizard, a nightclub “entertainer” who got to be as cruel, crass, and boorish as Kaufman was sweet and kind in real life. Sometimes to throw the audience, Kaufman would appear onstage while Clifton was performing, causing fans who “knew” that Clifton was Kaufman in heavy make-up and garish Seventies garb to pause and reconsider. In those instances, it was actually Kaufman’s best friend and partner-in-crime Bob Zmuda beneath the distinctive Clifton wig and jowls. But the audience never knew that.

 

Now, I realize it’s crazy to suggest that Donald John Trump is not a real person at all but a creation of a talented performer whose most memorable characters either endeared themselves to the audience (Foreign Man/Latka on “Taxi”) or drove that same audience to hiss and boo and finally hate him (the wrestling champ, Clifton). But if you put aside the facts for a moment (or “facts”), doesn’t it seem plausible? After all, how do we know that Trump is who he says he is (son of a real-estate mogul, a mogul himself, a graduate of the Wharton Business School, etc.)? Couldn’t it all be a cleverly constructed ploy by Kaufman, long underground in the guise of this “Trump” (doesn’t the name along suggest it’s a pun on something, or else a too-real-to-be-real name, like that of fictional presidents in movies?) and finally ready to re-enter the public life? Or hasn’t he been playing Trump since 1984, if not earlier? Consider Trump’s facial appearance; you’d swear that could be just a really poorly-rendered latex mask, if you didn’t know any better. But what if you do know better? Why would his skin be so orange? And that hair, it’s obviously a cheap wig, perhaps clamped in place Joe Dirt-style to keep Kaufman/Trump’s brain from exposure to the elements?

 

My hypothesis (and keep in mind, like most conspiracy theorists, I only use scientific terms to make my outlandish claims appear legitimate): Sometime in the fall of 1983, Donald Trump as we knew of him before then dies in a deliciously ironic way for a rich asshole (like, say, actually trying to dive into a gold-coin pool like Scrooge McDuck and breaking his neck), before the news gets out Andy Kaufman gets ahold of this information somehow. Let’s say…carrier pigeon. No, Illuminati. Yes, every conspiracy theorist’s favorite bugaboo, who control everything, they *arrange* for Trump to die so that Kaufman (who can’t get work after the fall-out from his wrestling-heel days) can step into a new role. It’s Tony Clifton writ large, and he and Zmuda get to work. But they can’t have Kaufman known to inhabit the role, so they concoct the “rare lung cancer” diagnosis so that Kaufman (who was not a smoker) can suitably “die” with a cloud of suspicion over him to distract fans from the sudden re-emergence of Donald J. Trump from, say, several months of vacation in Antarctica. So when Kaufman’s “death” is announced in May 1984, Donald Trump can slip back into American consciousness and no one bats an eye. Over the rest of the decade, “Trump” becomes louder, more obnoxious, declares bankruptcy (actually a front so Kaufman can finally get actual surgery to “look like” Trump, he’s been wearing the latex mask all this time and it’s starting to show), bounces back, has numerous public scandals, takes to social media with the instincts of a tween Taylor Swift fan, and finally emerges in 2015, thirty-one years after his “death,” to destroy the GOP from the inside, because it will be the greatest Andy Kaufman performance of all time!

I suppose you have a better theory…?

The Semester Ahead (A Plan That Will Surely Be Revised Often)

One last week between now and the start of the fall semester at the university, which means I will also be teaching Composition to the young'uns who are coming in as freshmen. I really haven't even thought about the classes I'm signed up to take, to be honest (and for some reason, I signed up for four classes, I may re-think that by drop time). No, it's been all about thinking about me standing in front of a room, telling people "I'll be your teacher for this semester, and I will not tolerate any having of fun or joke-telling. I will run this classroom with an iron fist, you hear me?"

Though in my own experience as a student, such teachers rarely were memorable or that good at their jobs. No, the teachers I liked and from whom I learned the most managed to balance out discipline and joviality. If you messed up something in their class, you didn't fear their loud yelling so much as their lack of any yelling, just a stern look of disapproval and disappointment. I hope to emulate that in my own teaching this year. But if I have to, I will lower the mother-f*&%-ing boom on those young punks.

Some things I hope to not do or not do as much:

1.) Be online - a simple look at my activity log on Facebook for any day over the past three months is enough to shame me into considering rehab...even as I type this up and plan on posting it on FB. I never said I was perfect. I did cut back on online "killing time" shit last year with my school work, and I imagine my students would prefer it if I placed their work over any time I could be spending trading jokes with friends online. It helps that I don't have internet at my place, though I do have a TV, which leads me to number 2

2.) Watch TV - this is helped by the fact that a lot of my shows are off the air or just on nights where it'd be far better for me to sleep. Jon Stewart leaving the Daily Show, for one (though I for one welcome our new fake-news anchor who is also named Trevor), Colbert being on the Late Show now also. I love The Nightly Show, and @midnight, but my schedule is thus: Monday, Wednesday and Friday I got to be up and ready to go to teach at eight in the morning. So no late nights Tuesdays or Thursdays, and it wouldn't hurt me to get to bed earlier the rest of the week. Yes, there's this thing called DVR, no I don't have it. I've over-indulged on TV this summer (good and bad), there really are fewer and fewer things for me to get excited about (I refuse to watch NBC after the way they shat all over Community, for instance).

3.) Stay up late - I think if I'm "staying up late" on a night where I'm not planning on getting up at five the next morning, it had better be because I'm working on something for one of my classes or working on something I've assigned my students and which they have turned in and are expecting a grade on. Because few college students are pacified with the "sticker for participation" tactic anymore.

4.) Read for fun - I've overindulged this summer, which is good. A lot of the "reading for fun" became, either by design or by accident, reading-for-my-creative-thesis, and I've already got a pretty hefty list of things that I could say inspired me directly or indirectly with whatever shape my final thesis ends up being. I'll still need the occasional trashy cash-in book about "stupid things" like sports or celebrities behaving badly, but I hope to limit that.

5.) Eat crappy food - my waistline expanded over the first two semesters of grad school, and I was all set to start getting up early and walking around Sertoma, as well as cutting back on the obvious crap I ate. But then I forgot to set my alarm the first full day off from school, and it's been that way ever since. I hope to have time to do the bare minimum of exercise, but cutting back on terrible food (in that it's terrible for you, not terrible to eat) would help immensely.

Now, having said all that: plans tend to change once they meet reality, and I imagine many of those things will falter when confronted with whatever reality springs up. But I know this going in, and I know that I don't want to let anyone down, least of all my students who put work into their class assignments (I would hope, anyway). I volunteered for the early shift, mostly because I figured I'd have an easier time of it with parking (I hope, anyway) but also because I figure it's best to get the teaching out of the way early in the day, like going third or fourth in a speech class. I hope so, anyway. There's a whole lot of hope in this, I guess. Teaching is one of those things where you never know how you'll be at it until you try it. And I'm about to get my call-up in a little over a week's time.

Hopefully I don't break a leg literally

Jon Stewart Leaves "Daily Show," Opens Up Neighborhood Arby's

Like a lot of you, I discovered The Daily Show when I was in college (or maybe it was on a trip to the beach, when the house my family was staying at happened to have Comedy Central...anyway, for the purposes of this story, let's say college). I was charmed by the "fake news" format, the skewering of a tired old dinosaur of news-gathering, the nightly news. The host was tall, blond, a former Sports Center guy who seemed like he would coast on this gig for a while.

I'm talking about Craig Kilborn, the original host of the show. I went to college for the first time a long, long time ago.

But then, things were different: I thought I'd manage to finagle my way into a job on Conan O'Brien's NBC show as a writer, so I neglected class. You can already tell how that turned out without me going into further detail. Kilborn and the Daily Show were required viewing in my college dorm room, mostly because my roommate for my first semester liked to stay up late and I...I had eight o'clock class. In the morning. No wonder I didn't feel like attending. At any rate, Comedy Central was something that I didn't have back in old Walhalla, not anymore (we'd had CC back when we first got cable, twenty-five years ago, but it wasn't really "Comedy Central" yet). And when I flunked out and had to return home with my tail between my legs, it was something that I didn't have again, until about 2005 or 2006.

By then, of course, Kilborn was long gone (first to CBS, then into the yawning void that characterizes formerly famous people as "has-been." I'm sure he'll have a reality show before all is said and done). Jon Stewart, whom I was aware of only as a middling actor in some films I kinda avoided (he was in some Adam Sandler movies, and Death to Smoochie), was the host of the show, and he had become a force of nature by taking on the Bush administration's criminal war in Iraq. I'd bought the book America without having seen the show because, well, I just had a feeling that it was in my outrage wheelhouse. 2004 was probably the angriest-at-Bush I had ever been (especially when the asshole won a second term, I was livid), and that Daily Show book soothed my heartbroken liberal soul.

So we got Comedy Central sometime in 2005 or 2006, because the good people at Northland figured I and my grandparents had had our fill of CMT ("hey, it's a channel, I guess") and other lousy programming options. We also got VH1 (and I was able to reconnect with music and care about it again up until Iggy Azalea came along). But Comedy Central meant The Daily Show, as well as (eventually, because I didn't like it at first) The Colbert Report.

I won't bore you with the near-decade then that I've had to watch the show under Stewart's tenure, nor the moments that made me laugh hardest or made me think the most (sometimes they were both in the same act). And with Trevor Noah coming in to take over, it's not like The Daily Show is dying. But it feels like it.

I know that, during the time I wasn't able to see the show (yes, I know, there's this thing called "the internet" with all kinds of videos of cats playing keyboards and other nonsense, but be patient with me), Stewart steered the show away from the genial mockery of the Kilborn era into a more potent, more focused attack on the media and on the ways in which certain administrations (like, oh I don't know, the Bush one) manipulated that media for their own benefit. A lot of those same outlets seem to be tripping over themselves to damn with faint praise Stewart as he embarks on his final week of shows. I saw something on Fox News (if ever there was a "fake news outlet," it's those jackholes) where the once reputable Howard Kurtz tried to say that Stewart's "secret meetings" with Obama were a big deal. This is the same network that practically lived in Dick Cheney's sphincter from 2001 to 2008...anyway, the fact is that yes, Stewart is a leftie (and not just in terms of which hand he writes with). So what? News itself, the real deal, has been moving away from "objective" reporting for so long that I can't even begin to think of when it last was indeed objective (Ancient Sumer, maybe?). Bill O'Reilly is the right's Jon Stewart, only not funny on purpose. Sean Hannity is Colbert's character without the irony. And your point is what, exactly?

For as much as I'll miss Stewart when he made me laugh, it won't mean as much without the moments when something happened that was terrible, and I anticipated that evening's or that week's first new episode, to see his commentary about it. The most recent, on the shootings in my home state, might rank as just the most honest moment in news on the entire event, because the "agenda" Stewart was pushing that night was just outrage that this shit continues to happen, and that we don't seem willing to do anything about it (oh, we're able. Don't let anyone tell you we're not). I know Trevor Noah will do his best to fill that void (and Larry Wilmore, on The Nightly Show, is easily the peer of Stewart when it comes to showing outrage at horrific events, while still trying to save us all with the comedy that makes such tragedies bearable). But it won't be the same.

During Jon Stewart's tenure, he seemed to age well beyond his years. He's fifty-two, I think, but he looks far, far older. Trying to make sense of all the crap that passes for "news" these days will do that to a man, I'm sure, and I think he deserves a rest. But goddam it, I need him around to mock the powerful and unrepentant as he's done for fifteen years (almost ten of which I got to see). Imagine what he could do with a Trump presidency...oh lord, if that's what it takes to get him to come back, let him stay retired.

At any rate, the world of news (fake or otherwise) is better off for Stewart's tenure. You may disagree, but that's your opinion. And if you think Stewart was bad for this country, well...what's say you and me go get a meal down at Arby's? You know what, you go ahead and eat that roast beef sandwich, I can wait.

Trump Takes on the Presidents (All of 'Em)

George Washington: "Are you kidding me? Guy couldn't win a battle against the Brits to save his life. Listen, here's what I would've done: negotiate with the lobsterbacks to have just Manhattan and the Greater Metropolitan Area, let them have the rest. I mean, I'm just saying. And when I chop down a cherry tree, I own it.”

 

John Adams: "Loser."

 

Thomas Jefferson: "Dummy, and a loser."

 

James Madison: "I take turds bigger than him."

 

James Monroe: "I got a doctrine for you, build a wall on the Mexican border. Would've saved us all a lot of trouble."

 

John  Quincy Adams: "I didn't like this movie the first time I saw it, when it was his dad. Talk about nepotism."

 

Andrew Jackson: "His nickname was 'Old Hickory.' Mine is 'Young, Virile Stud.' What a loser, though he did try to get the Indians out of here. Lovely people, but they couldn't run a casino before I came along."

 

Martin Van Buren: "You know, I like his sideburns, not going to lie. Otherwise, a loser."

 

William Henry Harrison: "Who the fuck is this?"

 

John Tyler: "Loser, waste of space."

 

James K. Polk: "I'm just saying, you go annexing Mexican lands and then you're surprised at how many of them are here illegally?"

 

Zachery Taylor: "Loser, I don't believe he even served in the Mexican War."

 

Millard Fillmore: "I prefer Mallard Fillmore, I'm just being honest."

 

Franklin Pierce: "Hawkeye? Please, least-likable MASH cast member. I was always a Frank Burns fan."

 

James Buchanan: "I'm just saying..."

 

Abraham Lincoln: "I go to a theater, you don't see me getting shot."

 

Andrew Johnson: "Never met a whiskey bottle he didn't like. Loser."

 

US Grant: "I question whether he's a war hero."

 

Rutherford B. Hayes - Grover Cleveland: "Losers, all of them. I got a meeting in ten, you think we can speed this along?"

 

William McKinley: “What, are you making up guys now? Get serious.”

 

Theodore Roosevelt: "Pansy. No real man wears glasses."

 

William Howard Taft: "Somebody should follow him with a tuba, making fart noises."

 

Woodrow Wilson: "See what I said about TR."

 

Warren G. Harding: "More like Soft-ing, am I right?"

 

Calvin Coolidge: “Instead of ‘Hard-ing,’ you see?”

 

Herbert Hoover: "Get it? Soft-ing?"

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "You don't know comedy. I know comedy. Oh, this guy. Cripple, loser. Wouldn't even get out of his chair to greet troops as they came home."

 

Harry S. Truman: "I never trust anyone from Missouri."

 

Dwight D. Eisenhower: "I question his war record."

 

John F. Kennedy: "Son of a bitch had better hair than me. Oswald took care of that."

 

Lyndon B. Johnson: "If it had been me, Vietnam would be 'Trump-Vietnam,' casinos all up and down the coast."

 

Richard Nixon: "Who doesn't tape themselves saying racist things?"

 

Gerald R. Ford: "I don't know why we ever voted for him for president."

 

Jimmy Carter: "Toothy bastard, am I right?"

 

Ronald Reagan: "Great hair, though I don't believe it's his natural color."

 

George Bush: "See what I said about pansies wearing glasses."

 

Bill Clinton: "I told him, I said 'Bill, outsource your affairs.' But did he listen?"

 

George W. Bush: "Loser, pathetic. Iraq would be a golf course if I was in charge."

 

Barack Obama: "He's from Kenya, he's black, and I assume some black Kenyans are good people. But no, not this one."

You Know, That Guy, the One With the Hair (Do I Have to Say His Name?)

Been a while since I checked in here, now that racism is over in South Carolina I don't know what all to complain about.

Just kidding (unfortunately), racism is alive and well in SC. If you ever bought stock in a company that sells or manufactures Confederate flags, you've seen your investment pay dividends. But alas, that is to be expected.

It's almost August, and August has never been my favorite month. For one thing, it's always the barometer I use for how hot it is in June and July (as in "if it's this hot now, imagine what it'll be like in August." I feel like, thanks to climate change, the dread of an August afternoon is perhaps more legit than it was beforehand). For another, it's the time when school starts back, though I'm now looking forward to school because I'm back in it. Sure, there's the prospect of having to teach a class this semester (as well as the next), on account of "that's kind of what teachers do and I'm going to school to teach/write and so...," but I'm not good in front of crowds. The one time I was good in front of a crowd, it was 2007, we'd just lost a game to Boston College (who are the Washington Generals of the ACC, so that should tell you how bad the mood was that night), and I got up on a small abutment to try and paraphrase the "friends, Romans, countrymen" speech. I had been drinking earlier in the night, but I was sober-ish by then. I was just being a punk kid.

Now I have to be a punk kid in front of other younger, punkier kids. And I have to be an adult about it. Oh...boy.

At any rate, lots of stuff going on in the news, naturally. My favorite ESPN show host, Keith Olbermann, is wrapping up his final week on the air at ESPN 2. I feel like the One Person Who Watched His Show this time around, and even I wasn't enough. After they ran off Bill Simmons, I began to think that ESPN was trying to dumb down their brand (or "Skip Bayless-Stephen A. Smith" it, if you will). With Olbermann's exit and that of Colin Cowherd (not a favorite, but at least he wasn't always sipping the Kool-Aid of the major leagues...not always, anyway), I think my suspicions are confirmed.

Also, Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show in three weeks. His replacement is a guy named "Trevor," which makes me happy from a personal standpoint. But I think we're going to miss Stewart's brand of take-no-shit and take-no-prisoners comedy this upcoming election cycle.

Which reminds me...no, not going to mention him by name (if you say it three times while looking in a mirror, his hairpiece appears on your natural hair and overwhelms it). Suffice it to say, I am just as sick of You-Know-Who as you probably are. But the GOP laid down for decades in the gutter with un-Reconstructed Southerners and bigots of all stripes: this is karma for them. In that sense, I'm happy for He Who Cannot Be Named's entry into the race. I just hope it lasts long enough that somebody from my side gets to win (I'm not sold on HRC, but mostly because I don't like obvious choices. I want a little drama with my nomination process...not as much as what's going on over on the other side, but just a little bit would be nice).

Man, if you think it's hot outside now, wait until August...

The Day They Drove Old Dixie Down

This past week has brought me to a more appreciative sense of my South Carolinian-ness, if that's even a word. As you are no doubt aware, we had the unspeakable crime of murder visited upon our state on June 17, in the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. The crime was racially motivated, and the killer took photos of himself with various racial totems (including the American flag, which last time I checked did in fact fly over a nation where the distance between "all men are created equal" and the reality has been closing over the last century or so, but is nowhere near closed). What took up the media's attention, rightly or wrongly, was the fact that our state capital grounds hosted a Confederate battle flag for well over fifty years, first over the dome itself (at the bottom, below the American and state flags) and then at a "memorial for Confederate dead" when a compromise was reached over the flag's place on state grounds in the early part of this century.

That flag is down now, for good, and I couldn't be happier.

I grew up in the South, and of course I was taught that the South "had just cause" to demand its separation from the United States, that it was basically a follow-up to the 13 Colonies breaking ties with England. That the war hadn't been fought over slavery but "state's rights." I was brought up to believe this, at least in school. My mother encouraged my early reading, and my early love of history, and she never looked at the books I brought home from the library to say "oh, that's not something you should be reading" (not that I was bringing home issues of Playboy or anything: this is a public library in the South we're talking about), but my point is that she never once told me that I couldn't read something, and I read a lot (or started a lot of books, sometimes giving up after a few pages because, as a kid, I probably would've been happier with books with pictures of talking animals or whatever).

I educated myself about the war, read as much about it as I could, and I came to the conclusion that the war was fought over one thing: slavery.

I know that a lot of people defending the flag over the past month have argued otherwise, but the idea that the Confederate flag represents anything but a government bent on preserving servitude of its black inhabitants (they weren't considered "citizens" by any stretch) is patently false and delusional. Do I think every single Confederate soldier was a racist slave-owner or sympathetic to the idea that blacks were inferior and thus needed to be kept in chains? No, I do not. I think that the average infantry soldier (usually the poorest of the poor, and unable to afford slaves anyway) probably fought more because their homes were being invaded. I think that you can serve with valor and heroism for a cause which does not merit it. The Southern soldiers, the ones who displayed courage and bravery, did so in the service of a cause which was far, far beneath them. Those who fought for the preservation of slavery (including the leading politicians of the Confederacy, and many of her generals) deserved to lose the war in 1865.

Good thing I didn't give out my personal address on this thing, or else there'd be a mob of Confederate flag-waving activists on my lawn when I get home.

The fact is, the South was wrong to break away from the United States, because it did so in the service of a cause which didn't seek to honor the foundations of liberty but because it sought to deny them, to a sizable portion of its population (ironically, had the South tapped into the manpower of blacks in the region earlier as soldiers in the army, they could very well have done better militarily once the tide turned at Gettysburg. And no, the fact that the Confederacy finally grudgingly began to enlist companies of black soldiers does not mean that the racism and hatred which fueled their desire to do anything but arm slaves is suddenly and magically washed away). Whatever the Confederate flag meant before the end of the war (and it meant slavery), it came to mean far worse when taken up as a banner by the Klan and other terrorist organizations in the immediate aftermath of the war and the implementation of Reconstruction.

When the flag went up our state house flag pole in the early Sixties, it wasn't to honor the Confederate dead. It was a giant middle finger (and a threat) to the efforts of Civil Rights leaders to enact change in the South. That we're still arguing this so long after the last shots of the war were fired, and I see people that I know and like (and even some relatives) online say that it's "heritage, not hate," is heartbreaking to me. I don't expect anyone reading this to have their minds or hearts changed just because I dropped some knowledge about the Confederacy and the Civil War. But I got to hope for it.

So seeing the flag taken down, finally, on Friday morning, it was a great day to be an American, and a South Carolinian. All these people flying Rebel flags from their trucks, who went to the trouble to spend money on such things, they don't have a rallying point on the State House grounds anymore. In fact, the song "Rednecks" by Randy Newman comes to mind. It's a song written from the point-of-view of a Southern racist in the Seventies, and as such it uses a certain word that white people really shouldn't say anymore (and indeed, Newman saying it in character might not assuage casual listeners who might hear it out of context), but it's a beautiful song in terms of capturing not just the mindset of the South but also of the North (where racism, as it turns out, is not a foreign concept). But for a long time, deservedly so, the South and white Southerners have been known as the nation's preeminent racists. Taking down the flag doesn't automatically mean that racism is over in SC, but it signals that maybe we can start trying to do better, to pay back what we owe. I do think there's a place for the flag, but that place is in a museum, where a respectful treatment of the past (in all its unpleasant aspects) can take place. All these people flying the flag now, they're signs of the past, not of the future. To quote Newman, they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. And now their pathetic symbol of pride is gone from the grounds of the State House.

Good riddance to old rubbish.

More Nonsense on My Part

The past few weeks have brought a lot of attention to my home state of South Carolina, for reasons that at first were terrible and horrific (the massacre of nine black church-goers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston by a horribly racist and evil little shit) and then, however fleetingly, hopeful (the sense of unity that took hold amongst blacks and whites in this state, not the "race war" that said little shit wanted to start). Then people started talking about the Confederate battle flag and...

Well, I've made my position clear on Facebook (as have a lot of my friends, pro and con) but I figure it could use re-stating here: the flag was put up in the early Sixties as a rebuke to the growing Civil Rights movement of that period, so even if you buy into the notion that the Confederacy wasn't somehow about slavery (which, btw, it was; I've been a Civil War buff all my life, and the evidence of intent on the Confederacy's part to preserve slavery is easy to find assuming you want to, if you're inclined the other way), the placement of the flag, first on the pole with the American and state flag (high over the capital dome in Columbia) and then afterwards on a monument on state-capital grounds, was a clear example of racial animus. It has no business on state or federal property, unless that property is a museum.

Which leads me to this: when it comes time to consider my MFA options, the states I'll look to with the most interest will likely be ones that never had any reason to fly the Rebel flag in the first place, much less as a symbolic gesture against basic human rights.

In a discussion we all had with our advisor, the point was made that, for PHD or MFA programs after grad school, it might behoove us to look outside of our immediate vicinity, if only because a Clemson degree might have some sort of novelty in, say, Harvard or Yale (not that I'm foolish enough to think either of those snotty snob-factories would take me in, but anyway). Schools in the South are well familiar with us mostly because of football (and depending on the season's fortunes, either they're well-disposed towards us because we can be beat or they bear resentment because we can't be beat). So me going to, say, the University of Georgia and saying "let me in your MFA program" (assuming they have one) isn't a shoe-in. Or maybe it is...I don't know what UGA's standards are. But they are the school where the members of R.E.M. met, so they've got that going for them.

I will look at schools in the South, naturally, especially those in and around New Orleans (I freaking love that city, and I've only been the one time). Also, I wonder if Vandy in Nashville might be an option, if only because their football team usually sucks and therefore I'm likely to end up having plenty of room to move around on a football Saturday (no offence, Vanderbilt). But I'd really like to try my luck north of the Mason-Dixon, to somewhere outside the Confederacy or the "border states": Missouri (Ferguson pretty much proved that the "Show Me State" was a Confederate state in all but name only), Kentucky (I'm sure they're lovely people, but there's Mitch McConnell), West Virginia (y'all was still part of old Virginia for the first couple of years of the war), Maryland, and Delaware (yes, Delaware was a slave state, if my 1960s World Book "map of slave states" is to be believed. Which would mean that was the last time anyone noticed Delaware for any reason). I realize that schools in these states might stumble across this blog o' mine when I start sending out resumes and say "hey, what's he got against Delaware?" To which I respond (because they might be the only places offering) "Not a damn thing. I love Delaware! It's so close to Philadelphia!"

There's the famous "Iowa Writer's Workshop" at the University of Iowa, which is justly famous for producing some great writers. Bet it's hella-expensive, though. Syracuse has a shared school color (orange) and George Saunders, but we were warned that picking a school simply because of someone in our field (in my case, creative writing) might not work out if said person is too busy to really help us, and I have to keep that in mind. Plus, there's cold weather to consider: I am not a fan of winter. I'm not a fan of summer, though. Spring and fall are more my speed, which is a shame because both are disappearing because of global warming.

At any rate, I don't ask much of my prospective MFA program: a good school but not too expensive, in a state with no former (or current) allegiances to the South which would cause it to want to fly a Rebel flag on state-owned grounds, with a professor who's good at writing but who can make time for me, and temperate weather all the year round. Is that too much to ask?

I will say that, for now anyway (because it could always change), I'm proud of my fellow South Carolinians (well, the ones not flying Rebel flags all of a sudden, anyway). We Southerners in general have often been the butt of national jokes, and the focus of a lot of opposition from others because of our clearly biased and horrific treatment of our neighbors (if said neighbors happened to have different pigment than ours, for example). We have a strong legacy not just of stubborn pride but of haunted pride, which permeates much of the literature of our region (there's the "two big Bills" Faulkner and Styron, Charles Portis, Eudora Welty, Flannery and Carson, Walker Percy and Roy Blount Jr., and so on), and I have at times been either ashamed or proud of my Southern identity. We is complicated for sure, but this time of national and state-wide mourning has shown me that we are better than we think we can be, when we really have to be. Now, at some point we'll probably go back to being gubbers and rednecks, but for now, for this moment, we're standing side by side with our neighbors, trying to love when it's easier to hate because love is so much more rewarding. For however long that lasts, it'll be a validation of our common humanity. The Charleston Nine will live long after the little shit that killed them takes his last breath and is dumped aside except by those who thrive on hate. Maybe I'll rescind my "no former Confed states" clause in my MFA search, because maybe the South deserves a little more credit than that. Maybe, anyway...

Father's Day for the Fatherless

I don't know when exactly I became aware of the fact that my birth father wasn't in the picture. I know that, for much of my childhood, I looked to my grandfather on my mother's side of the family as a "daddy," and even called him such well until my sister (then a toddler) provided us all with the nickname that's stuck to this day: "Big Pop." That's my "half-sister technically, because she and my half-brother have a different father than I do, but we get on each other's nerves enough that we might as well be full-blooded relatives." Anyway, I know that, when I finally realized my father wasn't like other kids' dads (in that he wasn't a presence in my life), I began a tentative and ongoing quest to both seek him out and avoid him like the plague. I think that was born of both the urge to address this gaping hole in my personal history (my father's side of the family) and also my desire to fill that hole with anything other than what the truth might be, in case I didn't like that truth very much. My dad could be anybody, I decided, even a famous person that my mom had never probably had opportunity to run into (because we share a birthday, I thought John Lennon might have somehow fathered me, though that could be excused to my budding Beatlemania at the time).

I do know some basic facts about him, my real dad, including his name. I'm not going to share that name here, because I want the option (exercised since I was just becoming aware of my father's absence, and the attendant anger that triggered) of not having to look him up or have him looked up for me by someone who means well. I do know how to get in touch with him, as it turns out. But I'm still not sure that I'm at a place emotionally where that would be a good thing for me. So anyway, my father was some years older than my mom when they met, he'd been in the armed forces in Vietnam (my mom showed me a picture of him in Marine-looking uniforms, but I'm not 100 percent sure that's what he ended up in, though I do remember a sort of "yearbook" from Parris Island, the Marine training complex in SC), and he was pursuing some sort of degree at the same college she attended, which is how they met. When my mom showed me a picture of him in her yearbook, he had the whole "late Seventies" look going on (long hair, tacky moustache, leisure suit), and there was a menorah in the background, leading me briefly to consider that my dad was Jewish (it would explain my fandom of such Jewish entertainers as Woody Allen or Mel Brooks, perhaps), but as it turns out that was just a decoration in the library where he was posed. He had a motorcycle, he and my mom weren't a great romance by any means but they got together and later on, I came along. When I was born, he wasn't in the picture; my mom says that years later, he wanted to try and help raise me but my mom thought that would be unfair to me to suddenly have this guy that I didn't know in my life. I don't blame her for that or fault her one bit. I know it would've been an adjustment, and required a whole lot of explaining.

My dad, according to my mom, moved to the beat of his own drummer, and I think that's the most obvious thing I got from him. I've never been entirely comfortable with "received wisdom," I've always tried to be different (or if I wasn't trying, I was still different) from whatever the prevailing tone or opinion might be. Something that I got from him because of his absence was a ready identification with those who similarly grew up with an absentee parent, usually a father missing from the scene. I identified with John Lennon because of our shared birthdays and our absentee dads, and thought maybe that, if I became famous for something, my dad would see my name and once again feel like he's missed out on something (assuming he'd felt like that to begin with). I identified with Barack Obama when I learned that he was raised by his mom and her parents (his maternal grandparents), much like I was. I identify with Francois Truffaut because he had the chance to met his natural father and decided that it might be best to just let sleeping dogs lie.

I also read about famous folks whose fathers wouldn't win any parenting awards anytime soon (Brian Wilson's dad/band manager swindled his son out of millions in songwriting profits, Marvin Gaye's dad shot him on April Fool's Day). Whenever I hear someone talk about "family values," and how the father should be in the household (otherwise the worth of the children being raised in that household are somehow devalued), I get angry and defensive. I turned out fine, I want to say. Or at least 75%, more or less, on my good days...

But I want to end with talking about those fathers who stayed, among them some of my friends who have been or just now are becoming parents. I learned, thanks to my dad's absence, that a family doesn't have to be the basic man-woman-child(-ren) set-up. Even if you're a product of a single-parent home, or an adoptive set of parents, or what have you, you have a family, a legacy. You have value no matter who missed out on your childhood and adulthood. I might never take that step to contact my dad, but it won't be because I'm afraid he won't like or love me. It'll be my choice. I don't need to have my father, by his presence or absence in my life, determine mine, or whether I'll be there for any hypothetical kids that I have. I have a strong group of role models (beginning with my maternal grandfather) for how to parent, how to be there for your kids. I wouldn't be getting in touch with my father because I need a dad. It would be nice to know if there are any diseases on his side of the family that I need to watch out for, naturally, but I would want to get in touch with him if and when I'm ready.

At any rate, just be kind to each other (if we learn anything from the Charleston shootings, let it be that)

How I Spent My Summer Vacation (So Far)

Officially, it's not even summer yet. Seriously, look at the calendar. I'll wait...

See? The official start is something like a week off, and yet it's hotter than the dickens outside in my part of the world. Well, it's not that bad, really. But it's pretty humid-y at times.

I feel like this is my "First World/White People Problems" post, but I just don't know what to do with myself and haven't for about a month. School let out before May started, and I still have a couple of weeks before my summer class starts. In the meantime...

Bupkus.

I was hoping that all the time off would lead me to write short stories of amazing depth and skill that the literary world would have to take notice. Or at least write enough to fill out my prospective thesis-thingy which I will be hoping to turn in at the end of my grad-school journey.

But I've started a couple of things, have yet to finish them...which is fine. Really. I have plenty of time for that nonsense. Right?

At any rate, if you know me you know that this is a rare thing for me, to have so much time off (and indeed, besides the class I'm taking later, it's not time off that's ending anytime soon). I should be able to enjoy it. Hell, I've earned it. But...

Like I said, this is my "First World Problems" post: I've dithered about getting a job this summer, I could always do that. Also, I have been writing...just, it's non-fiction stuff that I've done in the hopes of placing said things with websites or magazines in the not-too-distant future. I guess I just like complaining too much to enjoy the breather.

And it *has* been nice to have a breather, don't get me wrong. I've been reading for fun (as well as reading towards an eye of adding some of the stuff as "inspiration" for my eventual thesis). Yesterday I spent about three hours in my uncle's pool, trying to soak up the sun while my cousin and niece splashed around me and called me "bad paddle cake" or "bad funnel cake" (derived from a day when they pretended to stomp me when I was laying down on the floor, calling me a paddle cake or funnel cake for whatever reason it is that a seven-year-old and a four-year-old come up with such nicknames). Today I have spent about four hours online. And when I get home, I'm going to get my William Styron on.

I checked out a book which collected some of Norman Mailer's letters recently and, while I didn't get far into the book, I did pick up on Mailer's enthusiasm for Styron's first novel, Lie Down in Darkness. I have that book, along with The Confessions of Nat Turner, and yesterday I picked up The Long March. I think it was well over a year ago that I read Sophie's Choice and thought "man, this guy is a great fucking writer!" I just haven't made time for his stuff since. Having read through the complete works of Charles Portis and a good chunk of Walker Percy, it seems only fitting to try and read some of my way through Styron's work. It may not have any influence on my thesis in the end, but that's not the only reason to read things.

Though it's a *good* reason...

Anyway, my legs and feet are starting to be sore at the end of the day, which means I should probably invest in some new shoes (I've had the pair that I wear regularly since about 2013, so probably time to get some newer ones). Network TV is summer reruns, I'm planning to keep up with The Daily Show up until Jon Stewart leaves but other than that it's Bar Rescue reruns and maybe a baseball game or two.

Internet (a Play) ...actually, a poem

I don't consider myself a poet, but for one of my classes last semester we had the option of getting creative and so I chose to do so. I'm self-publishing this here because current events have caught up with some of the subjects (like the Royal Baby being born) and because I like it in spite of the fact that I'm working in a format in which I am not terribly comfortable. This format was inspired by Gertrude Stein's work, and I hope it's playful while being serious. At any rate, enjoy:

I

 

Internet

Inter net

In ter net

In her net

I sink, I find

Myself after long nights

Staring at photos

 

II

 

A play should consist of acts

Actors

Sets

Dialogue

Scripts

Audience

Internet has some, but not all

Of that

 

III

 

Meet the stars of the play

Of the interplay

Of the internet

Avatars all

(and really, who uses their

Real picture anyway?

 

IV

 

Someone said

“Let there be no love poems until

There is justice between the races”

And someone else said “At night, alone,

I marry the bed”

And yet another someone said “I am Dionysus, son of Zeus, come to

Thebes, where my mother gave me birth, struck by lightning.”

 

V

 

This is where the audience applauds.

 

VI

 

            The last century saw wars, famines, genocides, religious intolerance and wholesale murder of entire groups of people. And they had the telegraph, the telephone, the moving picture, the still picture, radio, and television. You really think an email sent just in time can stop a war?

 

VII

 

Isn’t it nice to think so?

 

VIII

 

I’m Henry the Eighth I am

I got married to the widow next door, she’d been married seven times before

And every one was a Henry

(Hmm, makes you wonder

Why men keep marrying her

And why they keep turning out dead

It wasn’t a rock, it was a rock lobster!

 

IX

 

Now comes the part when I confess

Roman numerals past this point are confusing

So I’d better make this count

A conversation is a conversation is a conversation

Did I mention?

“A Poem for Speculative Hipsters”

Preach on, Baraka

Blast manifesto

Blast the manifesto

Blast the man with your festo

Fist-o

 

X

 

Okay, after this point we’ll be taking

Suggestions from the audience

Improv, improve, im-prove

Mindless chatter of the mindless classes

Autocorrect my spelling, spilling

Aught to correct Mickey Spillane

Puns, puns, puns

No fun (said Iggy, circa 1969

Ten years before I was born

I like old stuff, I make no apologies

Hipster before there was hipster

And now my hips are old

Puns, puns, puns

Crisis in the Middle East

Scott Walker in the Middle West

The Duggars breeding like rabbits

 

XI

 

Is it unfair that I’m creeped out by them? No one talks about how such a religious family fucked their way to TV fame, but seriously? Why do we assign morality to celebrity? Aren’t the two mutually exclusive? If Tim Tebow could throw a forward pass, would it matter how much he dry-humps Jesus? As I write this, “the world is waiting for William and Kate to have their next child.” I crank up “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols, constitutional monarchy means “the royals are figureheads” so who gives a shit?

 

XII

 

Truth or dare

Dare

I dare you to speak the truth

Puns, puns, puns

Truth is, I’m not a poet

Bet you didn’t know that

Love poems, love poems, I love poems

Just can’t write them

See what I mean?

Sacred Profanity

Profane Scarcity

I would love to be in love

Or at least in like

Online, on the line

Line on you, girl, hypothetical

 

XIII(?)

 

Love is lovers love to lovers love

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

See you on the flip side

The Cool Side

Standing alone at the dance, watching the girls dance

I have no business dancing

I have no business writing poetry

I have no business writing poetry about dancing

I have no business dancing about poetry

“Dancing About Poetry”

Hmm, sounds like a title

14

 

Christ the redeemer

Christ, the redeemer

Christ, it’s the redeemer

Sacred profane puns, puns, puns

Love to love you, baby

In my head, I’m Marvin Gaye, singing “Let’s Get It On”

To a girl, any girl

In reality, online, looking at her pic

I wonder if she likes or tolerates me

Or if she even knows who Marvin Gaye is

 

15

 

This was going to be a lot shorter and less neurotic

 

16

 

But poetry should kill, poems should kill

In the name of love?

Sure, why not

Or maybe love in the name of killing?

Nah, Manson-esque

Girls, girls, girls

How did Motley Crue get in here?

Well, while they’re here, confession time:

I used to want to grow up to be Slash

Or Sambora, or somebody with long hair and who could play

Guitar

Girls, girls, girls,

They seemed to like those guys when I was growing up

 

17

 

Never mind I don’t like to let my hair grow out,

Nor can I play any instrument

 

18

 

Have I mentioned this was supposed to be shorter?

 

19

 

Like, two pages, tops

 

20

 

            In the grand scheme of things, I can’t complain. I grew up not knowing my father, but my mom did a great job and my grandparents were there to help. I was not neglected, molested, abandoned, or rejected to any significant degree from my family. So how can I be a great writer? I know alcoholism runs in the family, but knowing is half the battle. I have spent time working enough customer service jobs to know I don’t want to work in customer service anymore. I’ve come close but never quite achieved deep and lasting love with a woman. I had acne in middle school. Girls don’t like pizza-faces. I’m still aware of lingering doubts about my ability to attract a mate, in my own mind. I’m funny, which is a help, but sometimes I’m too funny. Women I like might not take me seriously. Online connections are great, but I could go for the real-life ones if I weren’t so shy. Terrified. Convinced I’ll fuck it up somehow.

 

21

 

By the way, notice I switched away from Roman numerals?

 

22

 

Catch-22, Yossarian Lives

 

23

 

A friend of mine said online

The Roman Empire fell because they

Put Christians in charge

I’m tempted to reply that the Goths had more to do with it

So we should keep our eyes on Hot Topic employees

And Robert Smith from The Cure

 

24

 

I have fears that I’m more interesting online

 

25

 

This is where the audience applauds and leaves, satisfied with another great performance onstage