American Patrol

I’ve also gotten into a great deal of trouble in the past writing about the recently deceased Senator Edward “Teddy” Kennedy (D-MA), particularly when I suggested a few years back that it was a shame that a speech given by Kennedy on a valid and acute point that no one else was making at the time hadn’t been given by someone who wasn’t a clapped-out caricature of bloviating limousine liberalism and thus was harder to ignore or dismiss. Yes, that’s harsh, and yes, de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but before attaining the gray eminence status so remarked on in the days since his passing it could seem a pretty fair cop. Kennedy’s wealth, scandal plagued early career, and what could seem a drunken, womanizing celebrity lifestyle could make him a difficult figure to take seriously.

None of that, of course, has received much play this week, and in fairness his second marriage and advancing age had done much in recent years to blunt, if not entirely rehabilitate, the Senator’s reputation. Instead, we have heard of Kennedy’s legislative achievements (though how his involvement in the No Child Left Behind program keeps getting counted on that list is completely beyond me), his notable speeches, and his close relationships with his fellow Senators, and given what may be our last tour through Camelot and our last chorus of the last verse of “Abraham, Martin, and John.”

We have also seen some remarkably crass attempts at exploiting Kennedy’s legacy politically from both sides of the aisle, particularly where health care reform legislation is concerned. While health care reform can legitimately be considered Senator Kennedy’s issue, suggestions that Kennedy’s death be used as an impetus to pass health care reform in his memory, up to and including dubbing the whole package the Edward M. Kennedy Health Care Reform Act, are legitimate only to the extent that such a bill conforms to his record on what he considered acceptable reform as expressed by the Kennedy-chaired Senate HELP committee’s “Kennedy bill”—attaching Kennedy’s name and legacy to some of the egregious compromises currently making their way through the Senate would be both a travesty and grounds for a right good haunting.

Speaking of egregious compromise, attempts by the Republican Senate Caucus to posthumously parlay Kennedy’s old school congressional collegiality and willingness to negotiate into a view of the Senator as some sort of buffer between the Democrats and the Republicans—the Senatorial equivalent of the porridge Goldilocks ate—and to blame their own lack of compromise on his long and now permanent absence is the sort of bad faith crap they have come to specialize in as a party. Kennedy was a committed liberal, and was clearly in favor of much of what the GOP has objected to in the reform effort. Given the chance to negotiate and pass the HELP bill in his lifetime, each and every Republican member of the committee declined to do so.

As for former Arkansas Governor turned right wing radio host Mike Huckabee’s use of Kennedy’s death in the furtherance of Deather propaganda, this is perhaps the first time I have ever regretted the absence of my long since lapsed Christian faith, as it prevents me from seriously contemplating the eternal damnation that would no doubt await Pastor Huckabee at the hands of a just god.

In watching the coverage of this summer's town meeting protests by the Fox 'n' Rush inspired and lobbyist bankrolled Tea Bag set, I have been bothered by an overwhelming sense of deja vu. While this in itself is something already seen, an entirely understandable consequence of living in a country whose political culture devolved into cyclical repetition of the same damn things over and over again early in my lifetime, I could not shake the feeling that I was missing something specific.

It finally came to me sometime last week-- same vu, different perspectif, specifically one from the other side of the aisle. The tactics I was seeing in the town hall meetings were the selfsame tactics used by the earnest youngsters (and the aging leftover hangers on who mentored them)of what passed for the campus left back at my dear old alma mater in the Golden Age of PC. In the late '80s and early 90's, speakers representing conservative viewpoints were often treated to disruptions, shout-downs (chant with me now-- "Sexist, racist, anti-gay, (fill in the blank), go away..."), Godwinist rhetoric (complete with little magic marker moustaches), and crowd packing all too reminiscent of meeting places in Democratic constituencies circa August 2009.

Differences abound, of course, apart from the facile "we were right, they are wrong." For one thing, as usual, today's right has it all over yesterday's left in terms of money and organization-- funny what those representing the haves tend to get. And, of course, the scale is entirely different-- media was smaller back in the day, and tended to be limited to local print and short segments on the local (broadcast) tv news, and the internet was still pretty much a collection of bbs and newsgroups. Still, the impetus behind the action-- shutting down a dialogue instead of having one, stifling an argument instead of winning it-- is pretty much the same.

I tend to get into trouble when I write about protest politics, but reams of feedback from the activistas telling me they'll be out on the barricades saving the world while I sit on my bourgeois backside typing hasn't really changed my mind one bit about it's basic nature, which I consider this-- reductive (chants and placard slogans do not an argument make), inefficient(the larger the protest, the more diffuse the message, and the more likely the messengers are to be simple attention seekers-- cf Seattle and Quebec City), and often ineffectual, a tactic of last resort that is too often pushed to the fore because it's kinetic, flashy, and fun and provides an immediate outlet.

Dismayed as I have been by the lack of leftist response during the "town hells," as this summer's political silly season draws to a close I have become more convinced that, in the final analysis, the protests of the right have done more to discredit their views and reputations than busloads of counterprotestors could have done. Give 'em enough rope, hell, they brought in lumber and tools and built their own scaffolds. That said, I anxiously await the pro-reform march on Washington coming up-- I'll be sitting here on my bourgeois backside hoping no one blows it.

Or "Tell Me, Who Are These People In My Neighborhood?" I don't want to spoil the party, but...

This week's City Pages A-List section informs me that this Saturday my home stomping grounds will be host to the "NE Pimps and Hos Bar Crawl," a festive event wherein many of the neighborhood's fine drinking establishments will be hosting a bunch of presumably white "party people" costumed as gross ethnic stereotypes. "....(People are invited to dress in the most colorful, audacious, and downright fancy threads they can find. Throw a brass ornament on your grandpa's walking stick (instant pimp cane!)..."-- just make sure the ornament is extra heavy and the stick extra sturdy for beating bitchez who don't bring in enough green.

"...Ladies should wear their biggest hoop earrings, fiercest club wear, and perhaps even some of those cheap press-on nails from the drugstore..." But hey, ladies, why stop there? With the clever use of some make up and theatrical putty (available at many local costume supply shops), you can create authentic looking herpes chancres, crack pipe burns, needle tracks, and bruises. Why not really get in to the spirit of the event and blow some strangers for money out in the parking lot?

And hey, there's plenty more weekends left before the snow flies-- plenty of time for lots of other theme events. How about a "Bucks and Mammies" pub crawl? A "Braves and Squaws" street dance? A "Sheiks and Harem Girls" or "Jihadis and Jihadi-ettes" progressive dinner at some of the many Middle Eastern restaurants in the neighborhood? Get creative!

Festivities, such as they are, will begin at 6 p.m. Saturday, August 15th at Elsie's Bowling Center, and will proceed starting at 7 p.m. to the Yacht Club, Psycho Suzi's, Stasiu's, Grumpy's, Shaw's, and many other fine establishments. Northeasters-- if you see any of these folks on the street or in any of your favorite Northeast watering holes, make sure you let them know how utterly fucking embarrassing it is to be sharing the neighborhood, and indeed the planet's surface, with them. And feel free to take whatever action you may deem necessary to those sporting actual blackface make up.

Thinking about the state of political dialogue in this country circa 2009 brings to mind the story of the blind men and the elephant, particularly the version in an old National Lampoon cartoon wherein one of the blind men, crouched beneath the elephant’s rectum, declares the elephant soft and mushy. Offered here are four possible takes on it, in some ways related, though presented in no particular order.

1) The American political dialogue has become a much less funny version of the Monty Python Argument Clinic sketch, with one side engaging in an intellectual process while the other automatically gainsays everything said without any reference to reason whatsoever. Senator DeMint (R-SC), among other Republican leaders in both the house and Senate, have gone on record couching their opposition to health care reform, to pick just one example, as simply a nifty means of sticking it to the President politically. That seems to be the entirety of the Republican opposition—the mere act of opposing—though in fairness they are remaining true to the traditional Republican principle that those who make huge amounts of money (particularly those who pass some of it on to the Party and its candidates) should be allowed to continue to make huge amounts of money regardless of circumstance, doctors and insurance executives included. The actual health, physical and financial, of their constituents? A lesser consideration, and one that is in any case addressed by the Greatest Health Care System in the World, as represented by the aforementioned doctors and insurance executives.

2) Free speech isn't free. Our political discussion in this country is dominated by lobbying, advertising and public relations professionals, aided and abetted by state of the art opinion research and psychological warfare professionals ("consultants") and a lazy media that swallows whole and blanket rotates anything that they deem newsworthy (which is usually a synonym for "controversial") without the least regard to its factual content. All of this costs money, meaning that the viewpoints of those who profit from the status quo, and are able to funnel some of those profits in the direction of this sort of manipulation get their viewpoints heard and repeated, and you don't. Per their decision in Buckley v. Valeo, this is just fine with the Supreme Court.

3) Given the last eight (oh, all right, thirty. Oh, all right, sixty. Oh, okay, fine, two hundred thirty three) years of American political history, we have become so crabbed by our constant exposure to lies and secrets in the public sphere that some of us wouldn’t recognize a straightforward political discussion if it were occurring in our pants. Healthy skepticism has in certain quarters metastasized into a malignant cynicism, a kind of terminal inability to accept the obvious where the convoluted will do— all motives are questioned, all statements parsed for hidden meaning, all rational explanations weighed against truly outlandish ones. The result? A sort of regurgatative phase of late stage bullshit poisoning, combined with a nasty social tendency towards political coprophagia.

4) One whole side of the conversation-- the Republicans, the conservatives, call them what you will-- is proceeding in a near constant state of bad faith, from false, misleading, and obfuscatory statements on the floors of the House and Senate to the cacophonous shit stream of talk radio and right wing media all the way down to the phony grass roots of the bussed in, corporate sponsored "protesters" who have been disrupting congressional town hall meetings of late. This latter group's lobbyist-generated marching orders contain what might be a fitting slogan for the entire movement, top to bottom: "Try to rattle (them), not have an intelligent debate." Rattle them with fear mongering. Rattle them with distracting lies. Exploit the diverting antics of the mentally ill. Avoid, at all costs, any situation that might expose your blinkered, received view of things to rational scrutiny. By all means, don't engage the "enemy" in a battle of wits. You're unarmed, and will lose. And that would be bad for business.