We Are Lost

Oh, shit. When these two guys start teaming up, you know we're in trouble.

At least we know who his running mate will be.

Super Fat Tuesday

Well here in New Orleans it's not Super Tuesday, and all those elections are not even a blip on the screen. It's what you see above. Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras, ya know. Our primary will be Saturday, and I'll be a poll worker. It's likely to be a minuscule turnout, as the primary is unlikely to make much of a difference. Louisiana is one of those states who get to sit and watch every four years as other states decide who the nominees will be.

Democrats and independents can vote in the Democratic race, but the Republican race is Republicans only. The interesting twist is that in addition to the primary, the Republican party held a series of caucuses also about a month ago and didn't tell anybody. Even the paper just noticed it today. Those caucuses selected delegates who are not bound to vote for the candidate they promised to vote for, and the final delegate count may or may not be bound by the results of the Saturday primary. Those clever little Republicans, they're so cute when they get this way.

Too clever by half. The paper says the La. Republican party did this in a rather desperate bid to get a piece of the action before Super Tuesday. But their pitiful inability to publicize the caucuses to either the public or the candidates made it a wasted effort. Of course, if the candidates slug it out to the point of a brokered Republican Convention, all those uncommitted Louisiana delegates could find themselves very popular.

And how am I spending my Mardi Gras? At home, nursing a cold. Boo. [Photo is from 2002.]

New Orleans Business Model

This is the way we do things here. [click to enlarge]



Note: This was taken on Saturday of the weekend of the BCS college football national championship game. LSU -- the home team -- vs. Ohio State. There were LOTS of tourists in town, eager to spend money and have a good time. The store was closed.

Damn

This is so depressing.

Heath Ledger [left], whose chiseled good looks made him a heartthrob to millions and who won movie fame for playing a tragic homosexual cowboy, was found dead in a Manhattan apartment today, police said.

The body of the Australian actor, who won an Academy Award nomination for the 2005 movie "Brokeback Mountain," was found hours after this year's Oscar picks were announced.

Ledger, 28, was found unconscious at 3:26 p.m. and pronounced dead minutes later by emergency medical personnel, said Det. Madelyne Galindo, a spokeswoman for the New York Police Department.

The loss of a promising young talent is always tragic. Some of us feel even more pained because of the role he'll now always be known by, even though he should have grown and been known by even greater achievements. That is Ennis Del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain" for which he got an Oscar nomination.

Gays have had a tough time in how we're shown in the movies. (Read "The Celluloid Closet" by Vito Russo. Better yet, see the documentary made of it.) We bounce from monsters to freaks to tormented artists to comic relief to flighty faggots to psycho killers to whatever. After AIDS shook up popular perception, we became noble sufferers, the secondary character who would lead the star and main character from sneering scorn to grudging respect and finally admiring acceptance. Then the AIDS guy tidily dies off. See "Philadelphia Story." Most recently, the vogue has been for the affirmation of gay guys as full, if quirky, members of society, unless we want to get married or join the Marines. We've all seen the movies. We're here! We're queer! We're running for Congress!

"Brokeback Mountain" hit a nerve because it didn't fit the mold. Two cowboys out on the range tending their herds, icons of American masculinity, fall in love. Intense, passionate, sexual love, and no doubt about it.

But the point of movie is not the first part, where Jack and Ennis fall in love. It's not that these two cowboy lovers fuck each other, it's that they almost never can. They're too scared, and only dare risk getting together for the occasional "fishing trip," once a year or so. Of Ledger, Andrew Sullivan said, "his performance in Brokeback Mountain was a gut-wrenchingly under-stated evocation of the terror and pain of the closet."

I am fortunate that, mostly because of when I was born, I escaped much of that terror and pain. Not all, though. I went through all the usual terrified agonies of gay teenage self-discovery, but got through.

Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall gave two powerful performances of men who would never have the chance to get through what I got through, never get a chance to find themselves and a place for their love. It was a painful, tragic, agonizing -- yet wonderful -- love story, one that may have led a lot of people to rethink some assumptions.

That's an admirable achievement for the late Heath Ledger. There should have been more.

That Tears It

One of the more ridiculous little memes of this election is the one about Hillary Clinton's tears. You know the story. During a campaign stop at a coffee shop in Portsmouth, N.H., she got a little emotional after being asked why she was running and how she stood the pressure. She got a catch in her voice as she told how very personal it was to her, how strongly she felt about moving the nation forward.

The reactions were predictable. In Maureen Dowd's widely criticized op-ed she quoted her male colleagues saying snarky things like, "Is this how she’ll talk to Kim Jong-il?” or "That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand."

Back and forth it went. “If she is breaking down now, before winning her party’s nomination, then how would she act under pressure as president?” “[This is] the oldest, dumbest canard about women: they’re too emotional to hold power.”

Isn't a huge point being missed here? Just look at that photo, for one thing. She was in a coffee shop, surrounded by women who were either committed supporters or sympathetic. It was "safe" emotionally, as much as any public appearance could be. I think something inside her knew that, and knew that if there was ever going to be a time and place to let a little out, this was it.

Note that I am not saying that this was all planned and calculated. How could it be? She didn't know she would be asked that question. What I'm saying is that emotions have multiple components, including what we feel inside and how much of it we let show openly. Every person with a normal emotional intelligence knows how to regulate the second part, knows from the moment and the context, from where you are and who you're talking to, how much of your feelings you can let show. It's not something you calculate, you know it instinctively.

We can never know how many times Hillary has felt strong emotions during this campaign and kept them in check. I doubt that anyone knows, not even Bill. But in this place, at a relatively low pressure event surrounded by sympathetic women, she could let a little show. She knew it instinctively. It wouldn't surprise me if she needed to let a little steam off -- I would, in her position -- but she didn't do it until she was in a place safe to do so. I think we can take it for granted that if she HAD been facing down Kim Jong-Il she would have been quite a bit different, pure Ice Queen, as she should be.

What this event says to me is not that she has no control over her emotions, but that she does. Perfectly.

Suicide by Faith

OK, it wasn't really suicide, as she didn't intend to die. It was an unintentional death, and tragic. What raises it to bizarre is that so many who loved and cared for her were forced to collude in her death. The reason: her faith.

New Orleans had a cold snap last week with overnight temperatures dropping into the 20s. On Thursday the body of a woman was found in a park on the West Bank, across the Mississippi from the main city. According to the report she was a homeless woman who had been sleeping on a bench there for two weeks. Cause of death: hypothermia.

The mind easily fills in the rest. Homeless, probably mentally ill, abandoned. No money, no friends, no family, probably barely knew where she was. Sad, yeah, but it happens, buddy.

But it wasn't so. Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis deBerry wrote an article about her today, giving the name he knew her by at their church on Sundays, Lovie Collins. He knew she had been on that spot not for two weeks, but for at least six months, and he sometimes would drive by on his way home from work just to see her. The church members saw her as one of their own and were deeply concerned for her, offering her food, shelter, clothing, blankets, medicine. She was not diagnosed as mentally ill, because for that you have to see a doctor, and she wouldn't. Her family, far from being distant and oblivious, was on the spot, and as the cold was moving in two of Lovie's sisters had come to beg her to please come indoors, just for a few nights.

Except for the food, she refused everything. God had told her to.

She believed that the ministry God had called her to was to live unprotected out in the elements. I suppose that it was a demonstration of faith, based on one or the other of those Bible verses that say "God will provide." She also was convinced she was physically safe because God had told her she would be raptured into heaven on the Day of Judgment, so she couldn't die before then. She told deBerry all this when he spoke to her to see if she needed anything and, he wrote, "I knew not to argue with her."

So she froze to death alone in a park, with good people all around the city safe in their homes, worried sick about whether Lovie would make it. Reading deBerry's piece, what struck me was how these things happen because our whole society and legal system has decided not to argue with Lovie. If the convictions or beliefs or fantasies that kept her out there had been more ... secular ... social services surely could have intervened at her family's request, as she had certainly become a danger to herself by refusing even blankets as the temp dropped below freezing.

Stay out in the cold in the name of Jesus, however, and society raises its hands and backs slowly away. Stand on a street corner downtown and berate strangers, and you're arrested as a public nuisance. Do it with a Bible in your hand, and the cops look the other way. That the leading Republican presidential candidate can say he doesn't believe in evolution and not get laughed off the stage is just another example of America deciding not to argue with Lovie.

Look where it got Lovie.

Gay Side of Jon Stewart

Gosh, I've been quiet.

I can't resist sharing this, though. AfterElton is a pro blog produced by the gay cable channel Logo covering gay and bi men in entertainment and the media. They just did a terrific piece featuring clips from "The Daily Show" called "A Look Back at Jon Stewart's Greatest Gay Moments." Gay topics can be a great source for humor, especially pieces on "family values" conservatives getting caught - literally - with their pants down. But what comes through is how Jon Stewart, a straight guy, clearly feels a deeply personal sense of outrage at anti-gay policies and practices. Sometimes he drops the humor entirely and just lets his anger through.

The whole series is worth seeing, but I cannot resist sharing this particular clip. In November 2003 there were news reports of rumors that at some point in the past, one of Prince Charles's male personal aides had been rendering services a little too, umm, personal.

Because of strict English slander laws, we over here were actually getting more information than the British. So Stewart dispatched Stephen Colbert, who had not yet spun off his own show and was still a Daily Show reporter, to see how things looked from over there. The resulting segment, the legendary "Banana episode," was pretty damn funny, if salacious. It also offers the rare pleasure of seeing two consummate television professionals, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, totally losing it.

The Shoggoth Party

Hmm. I think I've found my political home.

More to the point, an official bid for the presidency has been declared by Fred Thompson, the former actor/senator, if there's a difference. Now here's an interesting exercise. Go to Frederick of Hollywood's campaign website, http://www.fred08.com/. Read his official biography, what he wants you to know about him and his career. While reading, keep this question in your mind: When has this guy ever been the boss?

Manager of someone else's political campaign doesn't count, as the boss is the candidate. Lobbyist doesn't count, as the boss is the client. Actor certainly doesn't count. Even if you're the star, which he never has been, the boss of the set is the director. His private practice as a lawyer? Can't tell, as he doesn't say whether he was boss of his own firm or just a junior partner in someone else's. (Actually, if he'd had his own firm, you'd think he'd say so, wouldn't you?) Senator? OK, he was a committee chairman, so he could certainly boss the committee staff around. But when policy was decided it was decided by the whole Senate, not by Fred Thompson, alone in his office with the burden of history on his shoulders. Only when he was running for office himself has he ever really been the boss, and the record shows that winning the race was all he really cared about. Doing the job of Senator he found a bit of a bore.

So when has this guy, who wants to lead the United States, ever sat behind a desk with a sign on it saying "The Buck Stops Here"? As far as I can tell, never.

Haven't we had enough of amateurs trying to wing it?

Video: "Jesse"

"Jesse" is the first major American song & video release by gay Israeli singer Ivri Lider. He's highly popular there.

I think it's lovely, winsome, and very sweet.

Perspective on the 35W

So many outsiders were continuing to talk about the flooding of New Orleans as if it were an unavoidable weather event that I began using an analogy that I hoped would help them see it as the engineering failure it was.

You expect bridges to hold up when you drive across them, don't you? Well, the faith you put in those concrete and steel structures is the same faith New Orleanians put into the concrete and steel the federal government erected and promised would keep the water out.

To say that we should have known better, that we should have expected to drown, is like saying that motorists who want to get from one side of a body of water to the other are reckless.

Wednesday evening, a Mississippi River bridge in Minnesota fell down during the Minneapolis-St. Paul rush hour. It was unknown Thursday afternoon how many people had died.

What is known is this: They shouldn't have died.

-- Columnist Jarvis DeBerry, New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 3, 2007

Ol' Glowing-Red-Eyes Is Back

I had no idea we had such a talented Vice-President.

It Just Gets Worse

"The odds of us still having a republic in anything but name only by January 2009 grows more remote every day."

That's Nightshift at Shakesville, writing about this peachy new executive order released by the White House last week. Like him, I can't understand why the news media aren't calling more attention to this, unless it's simply fear. Nightshift's analysis is better than anything I could do, so let me quote it:

Under this order, the Executive Branch can ’starve out’ a person by completely freezing their [economic] assets, without trial, without the need to present evidence, and without appeal. The Treasury Secretary has sole discretion to determine who is in violation of this order, in ‘consultation’ with the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State. That last part is verbiage; Treasury has the power per this order. Even better, the Secretary of Treasury has the explicit authority to delegate this decision to any flunky or flunkies of his choice per Sec. 6. This order applies to all persons within the United States. If Treasury declares that a person is a ‘SIGNIFICANT RISK’ to commit violence in Iraq, or a ‘SIGNIFICANT RISK’ to support violence in Iraq in any way, or to have assisted in any way a person who is a ‘SIGNIFICANT RISK’ to do so, all their assets are to be immediately frozen.

It is a further violation of the order to make a donation to such a person whose assets have been frozen. (I was being literal when I said ’starve’ them. Such a person would have no legal means of acquiring food, clothing, or shelter. They couldn’t buy it with frozen assets, nor accept it as a gift, and stealing is already illegal.)

Furthermore, those assets can be frozen with no warning, after no judicial proceeding, if someone in Treasury is of the opinion that it should be done. There's nothing like a habeaus corpus provision requiring them to show any cause for this action, much less prove their case. Technically they're just freezing your assets, not seizing them, so they're not bound by the requirement to justify their action or compensate you for your loss. Of course, if you cannot use your assets, you might as well not have them.

So Bush has given himself the power to declare any person or organization an economic unperson any time he wants to, for any or no reason. I suppose he could decide that merely disagreeing with his Iraq policies might constitute "undermining efforts to promote ... political reform in Iraq," so there's no reason Treasury couldn't take action against me for writing this post. Depending on how draconian they're feeling that day, as an unperson I could not receive so much as a sawbuck from my dad to buy a meal without making him and the restaurant into unpersons too. And in case you think this is a spoof or a joke, here's the link to the official announcement by the White House.

Now doesn't that make you feel all comfortable and secure?

Joe D. Calls It

When I lived in Los Angeles in the 80s I was privileged to know jazz clarinetist Joe Darensbourg. He was born in Baton Rouge in 1906. He told me of hearing brass bands that had come up from New Orleans to play parades, bands featuring incredible teenage cornet prodigy Louis Armstrong. He was impressed. Joe had a great career, playing with Jelly Roll Morton, Fate Marable, Buddy Petit, Kid Ory. In the 50s he had a national hit single with "Yellow Dog Blues." He came full circle when he toured the world as a member of Louis Armstrongs' All-Stars.

He was a fine clarinetist, but his true art form was storytelling. Man, could he talk, about the people he'd known, places he'd gone, things he'd seen and done. His stories tended to blossom like flowers as further details, you know, came to him. His friends all knew this, and just enjoyed the show.

I was thinking of him watching the political coverage from Washington. I videotaped a 2.5 hour interview with Joe in 1982, which I later transcribed and published in the journal New Orleans Music. Talking of Jelly Roll Morton, another great musician and great, err, storyteller, Joe said:

Well, Jelly was a great prevaricator, or liar to be exact.

We need phrases like this in modern political discourse.

Mary Poppins. Fear her.

You grew up with the Mary Poppins movie, didn't you? Of course you did. We all did. I may have even seen it in a theater when it was released. I'm not sure, but I would have been about eight, so it could be.

But we all saw it on TV at least when growing up. And what a dark, twisted influence she was on us all. Evil. Terrifying. Corrupting. Drawing us into the lightless realm of malign power, ruthless domination, and the unspeakable horror of children being swept up into demonic influence by those they are supposed to trust.

I mean, cummon. Just look at the trailer for the movie.

Guitar -- Whoa!

Xuefei Yang is 30, born in Beijing, China. For many years Asians have been getting really, really interested in Western music, often Classical music. And sometimes truly amazing performers emerge.

Paganini is best known as the first superstar violin virtuoso. During his lifetime he was equally renowned for his performances on guitar, and he arranged many of his incredibly difficult showoff pieces for guitar. Like his Caprice No. 24, popular and well known.

So what this young woman does in performing it is like ... day-umm ... holy shit ...

Chapman Stick

I'd heard of this thing long before I heard it played, but I didn't know much about it and wasn't much interested. But a few years ago I went into a place on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans that was part of the Satchmo Summerfest evening fest, the Satchmo Club Strut. It's a fun event, with a wonderful variety of musicians and bands playing, for everyone to enjoy in the clubs and on the street.

One club, I don't remember which, had a guy playing jazz on a Chapman Stick with a drummer, and it was amazing. I was transfixed, fascinated.

The Stick looks like a wide electric guitar fingerboard with strings, but with no other instrument body. As I understand it, playing it is like the "hammering on" guitar technique, hitting a string with a left hand finger behind its fret to make the note sound without plucking the string with your right. Unlike a guitar, the Stick's pickups are so sensitive that this is the standard mode of playing it, with no need to pluck any strings, and therefore both hands can finger notes, and with great gentleness and subtlety. This lets the Stick be strung so that one player can cover bass lines, chord fill-ins, and the lead melody.

For me, it's fascinating to watch, and this guy Rob Martino shows how beautiful it can sound.

Who's tamed who?

Firedoglake was discussing this news about Mitt Romney. Whatever their politics, a lot of people do not at all like the story of him loading the family dog into a cage strapped onto the top of the car for a long road trip.

Well, that's Mitt's problem. But a commenter at FDL quoted this from a New York Times article:

Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants.

My thoughts on that:

It’s now thought that when a species of animal is domesticated, over time and many generations its brain shrinks a bit. If the critters no longer have to search for food because humans are feeding them, the “search for food” function of the brain atrophies. This is normal. Evolution. Life adapts.

Paleontologists are finding evidence showing that when wolves started hanging with humans and turning into dogs, both their brains AND ours shrank a bit. Each species specialized in tasks the other couldn't do as well, like sniffing out prey (dogs) or hitting it with a spear (us), and life adapted. We both changed.

In other words, dogs and humans simultaneously domesticated each other. We are two symbiotic species, and neither would be what it is without the other. I look at my dog sleeping on my expensive leather couch, and not only does this not surprise me, but I suspect I know who got the better end of the deal.

Subpoena Time!

I see that congressional subpoenas are going to start arriving at the White House, especially in the Office of the Vice President. Sen. Leahy's running out of patience, and it's about time. Keep yer popcorn handy, cause the legal fireworks are about to start.

Of course, it would be nice to subpoena Tricky Dick v.2.0 personally, drag his ass in and make him testify. But to do that, you'd have to find Mr. Undisclosed Location and actually serve the papers on him, and I don't think Cheney will be inclined to cooperate. In fact, I think it might go something like this:



[h/t CHS at FDL]

Squirrels Don't Let Squirrels Climb Drunk

Some pumpkins were left outside for a while in a Minneapolis neighborhood. Fermentation occurred, as daytime heat caused naturally occurring yeasts to process the sugars in the pumpkins into alcohol. A hungry squirrel came along. He got more than he bargained for.



The report is that he was fine the next day, but SQUIRREL what a hangover!!

Get It Right, Jesse

There's not much sadder than people who have historically been victims of prejudice embracing it wholeheartedly. Bishop Harry R. Jackson is a prominent black clergyman, founder of the High Impact Leadership Coalition. He certainly knows all about the bitter history black people have suffered in this country. Yet in his article Why Do Gays Hate Religious Freedom? he lies outright about S-1105, the Matthew Shepard Law now before the Senate, which proposes to include gays as a protected group under federal Hate Crime laws.

Now, you can have legitimate doubts about Hate Crime laws, especially since intent has always been a legitimate concern when prosecuting a violent crime. But the point is that someone has to actually commit a violent crime before the laws come into effect, thereby adding extra severity to the punishment. In no way do they "muzzle" anyone, prevent anyone from expressing his or her opinion, as this charming ad implies they do. So long as you're not expressing your opinion by committing violent crimes -- and I trust, Bishop Jackson, that you are not -- they don't apply to you. (Read the text if you want to check me.)

But these people are simply fanatics, who have left reason far behind. Another black pastor, Rev. Gregory Daniels of Chicago, announced from the pulpit, "If the KKK opposes gay marriage, I would ride with them." Yeah, that's gonna work out real well. Even Jesse Jackson, who should know better, has opposed gay marriage by trotting out the "I'm A Bigger Victim Than You" card, saying, "Gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution."

Now hold it right there. If you're going to drag in that outdated provision -- it's in Article 1, Section 2 and was repealed by the 14th Amendment -- at least try to understand it. Most assume that in counting a slave as 3/5 of a free man, slaveholders and their political allies were expressing their hatred and contempt of their black chattels, not even affording them the dignity of being a full human being.

Wrong. Slave states actually wanted slaves to be counted as full human beings, 5/5 of a free man. The free states wanted to count them not at all, as 0/5 of a free man. Why? Because the relative political power of the states, embodied by the number of seats each state had in the House and in the Electoral College, was determined by the number of persons in each state as determined by the census. Not the number of voters, or even citizens. Persons.

If slaves counted as full humans, that would increase the power of the slave states relative to the free states by upping their census numbers and giving them more seats. If they counted not at all, the reverse would be the case, which is what the opponents of slavery wanted. They had quite a battle about it at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and the eventual compromise, 3/5 of a free man, actually favored slave states a little more than free states.

Of course, if everybody understood this it would deprive orators of a nice rhetorical flourish. But at least I wouldn't be rolling my eyes so often.