These Times: A Repeat

Halfway into President Obama's first year in office, I made an observation that's worth repeating.

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I'm reminded of a comment Frederick Douglass once made about Abraham Lincoln, for whom the President has great respect, which I am afraid applies to some of the programs Obama has put forward as well. Douglass was speaking on April 14, 1876, before a crowd in Washington, D.C. (including then-President Ulysses S. Grant) as part of a ceremony dedicating a monument to Lincoln as Emancipator of the slaves.

Douglass didn't pull a single punch in his speech. He said Lincoln (mindful that he was Caucasian, and in advance of Franz Fanon noted that hardship experienced as part of a majority bears no resemblance to suffering as a minority) had two missions: To save the United States from coming apart, and to "free his country from the great crime of slavery." To do this, Lincoln had to have "the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow countrymen."

Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible.

Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

The President is trying to perform just such a balancing act as Lincoln did; and to most people in the Center, he appears resolute and decisive. But simply being a more thoughtful, empathetic and intelligent human being than the Guttersnipe who occupied the White House before him isn't enough.

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Verrückt Wie Ein Ballon Voller Ratten

I'd like to inaugurate a new category here at Before Nine. And, an explanation is in order as to how it came about.

There are few phrases I've generated in my life that are wholly original, and that's probably true for most people. I'm not being paid, currently, to invent aphorisms or the telling bon mot that punctuates or underlines some expression of acerbic wit. I'd like to be; but, I'm not.

As brilliant as it gets for me is sitting around my tiny living room in my underwear, drinking coffee, and listening to Steve Roach's Immersion:Four at 9 o'clock in the morning. Your mind tends to drift with Roach's music, and I found myself considering that this week marked the thirtieth anniversary of my moving to The City By The Bay (it was actually on Thursday, the 28th).

In thinking about that, I had to shake my head (long, strange trip so far, man), and when I tried remembering what it felt like to be the Me who showed up here to take a new job, I shook my head again; Jesus; I felt like a balloon full of rats.


Rat Balloon, Used By Unions To Protest Hiring Practices
At Various Businesses In New York City (Photo: Gawker.com)

When I stopped laughing, I decided to apply this phrase to a new Blog category, wherein you can find the really really wacky stuff. We already have Tubby The Nutter Presents Whack Jobs On Parade, and When Buffoons Walked The Earth -- but, that's for stories involving people in the news, for the most part.

We all know individuals in our own lives, or see things going on in the day-to-day world, of manifest weirdness. Crazy, in fact. As crazy as... a balloon full of rats.

Bingo.

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Two Men From Utah Beach

Infantry Under Fire, Huddled At The Utah Beach Seawall,
June 6, 1944 (Smithsonian Collection; Public Domain)

Today, the New York Times, one of the last newspapers where publishing Obituaries is an art form (one of the last newspapers, come to that), reported two men who had once been at Utah Beach at the same time on D-Day -- J.D. Salinger -- author of Franny And Zooey; Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters; and, aber natürlich, Catcher In The Rye -- and Louis Auchincloss ("Wall Street lawyer from a prominent old New York family who became a durable and prolific chronicler of Manhattan’s old-money elite"), died at ages 91 and 92 respectively.

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Portrait Of Auchincloss By Everett Raymond Kinstler, 2008

Auchincloss was a member of America's hereditary, monied elite. He was raised in a world of town houses, summer homes on Long Island and Bar Harbor, Maine; private clubs and servants, debutante parties and travel abroad. However, as a child Auchincloss thought of himself as "neither rich nor aristocratic": In a 1974 autobiography, A Writer's Capital, he noted, “Like most children of affluence, I grew up with a distinct sense that my parents were only tolerably well off. This is because children always compare their families with wealthier ones, never with poorer."


Facades Of Brownstone Mansions, New York City 2008
(Photo: New York Times Online Real Estate Section)

His path through life was predictable enough for one of his class -- a comfortable childhood, preparatory schools; guaranteed entry to Yale in 1935; he seemed predestined for the life of a Gentleman of his class; a man with means who did little beyond tending and adding to the Family fortune. But it was in his Junior year at Yale that the wheels came off his little Bourgeois wagon.


Not For You And Me: Summer Home In Bar Harbor, ME

Auchincloss yearned to break from the well-travelled path of the monied and privileged and wrote a novel. When it was subsequently rejected by a major New York publisher, Auchincloss decided “that a man born to the responsibilities of a brownstone bourgeois world could only be an artist or writer if he were a genius.” He dropped out of Yale, which he found suffocating, and decided upon taking up a profession, one that his milieu wouldn't reject, and entered the University of Virginia Law School on the eve of WW2.

He was surprisingly good at the law -- and, Trusts and Estates law, at that -- a specialty almost solely devoted to the hereditary wealthy. In WW2, he volunteered for the U.S. Navy, was commissioned an officer and served in Naval Intelligence (typical for a Knickerbocker), but left that to command an LST at Utah beach on D-Day at Normandy, then in the Pacific after V-E Day. Even with his normal duties, he had completed a second novel, but "threw it in the trash".

It wasn't until 1947 that he completed The Indifferent Children, published after he returned to his law practice. It appeared under the pseudonym Andrew Lee, in deference to his mother, who thought the book “trivial and vulgar”, and feared it would damage his career (the horror of publicity, too, a trait of the rich).


Auchincloss At His New York City Home, 2005

I remember reading a New Yorker portrait of him several years ago while waiting in my Dog Trainer's office, and was struck with how much a man of his class he was -- and yet, he wasn't. He felt no sense of guilt at who and what he was (there isn't a trace of it in his writing). And, although I haven't read much of his work (which, like a wine, had hints of Edith Wharton and John Updike-ian highlights, though Auchincloss was far below Updike), his characters were drawn from his own world, and in chronicling their human failings, Auchincloss pointed up the value of at least an ethical rectitude if not a moral one.

The very wealthy are rarely seen by the likes of you and I. Where they live, where they eat, travel and shop is inside a Magic Circle of privilege and exclusivity. If he hadn't been an author, and his books hadn't possessed some merit, Auchincloss would have moved through life inside that Circle, acting as lawyer to his own tribe; his mark would have been made in helping them to preserve and maintain wealth accumulated over generations. His friends and clients would have been "his crowd... the right sort", who knew people he knew, summered where he did, voted Republican, and may have had their suits, shirts and shoes custom-made by the same Gentleman's tailors and reclusive cobblers.

But that wasn't his life -- or, not all of it. When he was writing, he was temporarily freed of the bourgeois world he swam in so easily. Auchincloss couldn't escape what he was as a man, but as an author he tried to see further, explore the human condition and bring back an artifact from his travels for a wider audience.

Commenting to an interviewer for some Tony Manhattan publication in 2007, however, Auchincloss reminded us that the world of the wealthy never really goes away in what are, for the rest of us, good times or bad:

Even near the end of his life, Mr. Auchincloss said the influence of his class had not waned. “I grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in a nouveau riche world, where money was spent wildly, and I’m still living in one!,” he told The Financial Times in 2007. “The private schools are all jammed with long waiting lists; the clubs — all the old clubs — are jammed with long waiting lists today; the harbors are clogged with yachts; there has never been a more material society than the one we live in today. Where is this ‘vanished world’ they talk about?” he asked. “I don’t think the critics have looked out the window!”

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J.D. Salinger, Surprised By A Fan's Camera In Cornish, NH,
On His 89th Birthday In 2008: "woe betide any of those fans
who track him down just to explain that they, like, totally
love him and can so relate to his retreat from a world of
phony bastards. “No you don’t,” he told one such visitor.
“Or you wouldn’t be here."

Jerome David Salinger was once groomed by his father for a career in the ham business, which, fortunately for American letters, never quite congealed. He was born in New York City, attended Progressive and Prep schools; he had just begun to publish short fiction -- in The New Yorker, no less -- when he was drafted in 1942. Initially a rifleman in the 4th Infantry Division, he was transferred to serve as a Counterintelligence specialist, trained to interrogate prisoners and review captured documents and maps -- meaning Salinger had to possess an above-average ability with spoken and written German.


Camp Ritchie, Maryland, During WW2 (Contemporary Postcard)

(Training for all CIC specialists was conducted at one location -- Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and is detailed in the book, Germans, by George Bailey [1970]. I wonder if Salinger and Bailey knew each other; they were at the Camp at the same time, 1943, and had to know the same instructors, characters, and fellow voulnteers, many of whom were German-Jewish refugees from the nazis who had taken U.S. citizenship.)

Salinger went ashore on D-Day at Utah beach with elements of the firat wave of the 4th Infantry. I've wondered from time to time whether Louis Auchincloss, commanding an LST in carrying that first wave in to Utah on June 6th, ferried the future author of one of America's enduring, classic postwar novels that day; it's not impossible.

In December of 1944 and into 1945, Salinger fought in the Battle Of The Bulge -- when everyone on the line, for weeks, no matter what their MOS*, were riflemen. After The Bulge, he was was hospitalized with "battle fatigue", the forerunning terminology for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

[*MOS = Military Occupational Specialty, a term more familiar to Vietnam-era draftees]


Salinger, In The U.S. Army, Circa 1944 (Unknown)

After release from hospital, he remained in Germany for at least a year, helping Allied authorities track down nazi functionaries wanted by the Occupation powers. He married a German woman, briefly; very little is known of her, or this period in Salinger's life.

(We might be able to infer what some of his duties may have been, again from George Bailey's book: Many of the CIC specialists in 1945-46 also helped to resettle refugees from the Soviets in various small German communities -- who were under Allied military jurisdiction and had no choice but to, uh, follow orders.)

(This involved a degree of subterfuge, quick wits, and a sense of both the scale of physical and moral destruction the nazis had brought on Europe and their own country; and a heightened sense of the kind of absurdity peculiar to the U.S. Army, which appears in novels like Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse Five.)

Returning from the war, Salinger also returned to New York City and in 1948 published a short story, "A Perfect Day For Bananafish", in the New Yorker -- a kind of shot-across-the-bow to announce a different kind of writer was in town. After several other short stories were published by the magazine, in 1951 Salinger's seminal novel, Catcher In The Rye, was published.

Salinger had A Major And Serious Jones for attention as a literary genius; and, he'd proven he had the chops for it. While in college, he had bragged about his literary talent and ambitions -- and his short fiction had marked him as a real talent. But, when Catcher became a runaway bestseller and critical success, being in the 'eye of the comic book hurricane' was more than he bargained for.


Salinger On The Cover Of TIME, 1953: From The Bulge
To National Notoriety In Less Than Ten Years

It wasn't just being lionized by the Establishment press and New York literary mafia; the book was a landmark of postwar American alienation. Salinger seemed to give a voice through his narrator, Holden Caulfield, to the conflicted, shamed, vainglorious, and noble patter which runs through all our heads on a daily basis; Caulfield was nearly an archetypal figure -- and the novel resonated.

What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while...What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
Holden Caulfield, Catcher In The Rye

And it did resonate with the feelings of being lost, an undefined longing, in so many people who read the novel that Salinger was subjected to what eventually would be termed 'stalking' from readers -- some enthusiastic, many others troubled; but all of whom believed Salinger had a finer perception of the world we live in, and could be that "terrific friend" and help them. They wanted answers to The Big Questions.

(Sometimes, it's the author of the moment you look for. In the 70's, after The World According To Garp had appeared, four friends from my time in New York and I borrowed someone's car and drove up into New England; there was talk of trying to get a glimpse of Salinger -- rejected by the eternal Mick Koznick [A guy as big as Lucca Brazi, drunk, in black leather jacket and Ray-Bans, punches you in the chest with a forefinger and says, "M'eye right? I'm right. M'eye right? I'm right"] as "too bourgeois" -- turned into a search for Putney, Vermont, and author John Irving; which might have succeeded, but for the fact that we were most of the time drunk.)


First Paperback Edition Of Catcher In The Rye

The response of college students to the work of J. D. Salinger indicates that he, more than anyone else, has not turned his back on the times but, instead, has managed to put his finger on whatever struggle of significance is going on between self and culture.
Phillip Roth, 1974

Eventually, Salinger told his editors that he was “good and sick” of seeing his photograph on the dust jacket of Catcher in the Rye and demanded that it be removed from subsequent editions. He ordered his agent to burn any fan mail. In 1953, Salinger moved to a 90-acre parcel of land in Cornish, New Hampshire, which had a long history as an artist's colony.

And, for the most part, Salinger was never publicly seen again. He was rumored to have achieved a mystical state of satori and left the physical plane; or to be writing novel after novel to be published after his death (and so removed from attendant publicity); or to have decayed into an abberated, Howard-Hughes-like paranoid, long-haired recluse. College students tried staking out his property, or -- once it became known he had a PO Box in Cornish -- his local Post Office. sightings of Salinger were few, and brief; the man was smart and quick.


James Earl Jones As 'Terence Mann', The Salinger Character
From W.P. Kinsella's Tale Which Became Field Of Dreams

In the early 80's, when W.P. Kinsella wrote his novel, "Shoeless Joe" (turned into the film Field Of Dreams in 1989), he put J. D. Salinger into the novel, going to New Hampshire to bring him back to Iowa and the magical baseball field Ray Kinsella has built in his cornfield. Salinger would have nothing to do with the production and didn't want his name used; the reclusive author figure played by James Earl Jones became 'Terence Mann' ("I don't have any answers for you -- and I don't know the secret of life. So piss off").

In 1997, Ron Rosenblum wrote a piece for Esquire magazine, "The Haunted Life Of J. D. Salinger": The silence of a writer is not quite the same as the silence of God, but there's something analogous: an awe-inspiring creator, someone who we belive has some answers of some kind, refusing to respond to us, hiding his face, withholding his creation.

Still, Salinger could be seen in and around Cornish, if you were diligent. He would be outdone in the reclusiveness department by Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr., author of his own engrossing postmodern novels ( V.; Gravity's Rainbow; Crying Of Lot 49; Mason & Dixon; Vineland; Against The Day), who has only been publicly seen twice between the early 1960's and the late 1990's -- and not at all since.


Thomas Riggles Pynchon, Jr., In 1953: One Of Seven

Only seven published photographs of him known are to exist -- six yearbook photos, and one as a seaman in the U.S. Navy in the mid-to-late 1950's.

Okay, Pynchon's done a few 'Simpsons' voiceovers, where his cartoon character has a paper bag over his head; and Robert K. Massie thanked Pynchon in the afterword to Massie's amazingly good 1991 book, Dreadnought; but he still makes Salinger look like a publicity hog.

Unlike Salinger, Pynchon (who is 73 this year) isn't demanding, Garbo-like, to be left alone; he simply prefers anonymity. Doing the occasional 'Simpsons' guest spot is Pynchon's way of mocking his own sense of privacy -- something Salinger would never have done, and proof that hanging out with Tom for an afternoon or over a beer wouldn't be a waste of time and might even be fun.

Wikipedia notes: In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson — a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt — and fathered a son, Jackson, in 1991. The disclosure ... led some journalists and photographers to try to track him down.

[I]n 1997, a CNN camera crew filmed him in Manhattan. Angered by this invasion of his privacy, he rang CNN asking that he not be identified ... "Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed." In 1998, a reporter for the [South African] Sunday Times managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.

I don't know enough about Salinger's inner life, or Pynchon's, to know why they removed themselves from the barest hint of the public spotlight. But, I don't have to. Their lives -- like mine, or yours -- are no one else's business.

I don't agree with John Fowles' autobiographical-fictional narrator in his novel, Daniel Martin, when he notes that creative persons put themselves up on a public soapbox and suffer all that doing so entails. I'm a fairly private person, and Pynchon (or Salinger)'s ire at being stalked like a Snow Leopard by a National Geographic film team is wholly appropriate.


“Here’s your quote. Thomas Pynchon loved this book. Almost
as much as he loves cameras,” a reference indicating that
Marge Simpson’s novel sucks Brontosauruses. Fellow Recluse
Salaman Rushdie describes Pynchon as "Still Crazy After All
These Years".

Salinger was married several times, and divorced; in the 1990's, his daughter would publish a book about being the child of an obviously brilliant and obsessive-compulsive man, the only look into his world anyone had been granted in almost forty years. One tantalizing glimpse from the book: Salinger had a bookcase in his Cornish home, packed with what very well may have been manuscripts written over the years.


Salinger And His Wife, Circa 2009 (Paul Adao, NY Post)

About the same time, in his early eighties, Salinger married a nurse "considerably younger" than himself, but did not change his reclusiveness or irascibility. His new wife adopted Salinger's desire for privacy. He only had his name brought back into the public spotlight when forced -- as he did last year, when a Swedish author wanted to publish what amounted to a sequel to Catcher, titled "Sixty Years After". The Swede claimed it was a parody, like Jane Austen With Zombies. Salinger was plenty steamed, and a court agreed with him.

After breaking his hip this past winter, his health declined rapidly, and he passed away -- peacefully, it was reported -- last night. Like Auchincloss, he lived his life on his own terms; not comfortably provided to him, but -- for better or worse, like all of us -- one made by his own hand. But I believe Salinger will be missed, and his works read by new generations (Catcher In The Rye still sells over 250,000 copies a year) long after Louis' writings fade into a genteel obscurity.

I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
Holden Caulfield, Catcher In The Rye

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Why Should Tomorrow Be Different?

I just don't understand. At all.

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Wall Street is marketing derivatives last seen before credit markets froze in 2007 as the record bond rally prompts investors to take more risks to boost returns.

Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley are encouraging clients to buy swaps that pay higher yields for speculating on the extent of losses in corporate defaults. Trading in credit- default swap indexes rose in the fourth quarter for the first time since 2008, according to Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. data. Federal Reserve data show leverage, or borrowed money, is rising in capital markets.

Investors who retreated to the safety of government debt during the financial crisis are returning to ... synthetic collateralized debt obligations after last year’s record 57.5 percent rally in junk bonds left money managers with fewer options.... President Barack Obama’s adviser Paul Volcker has blamed credit swaps and CDOs for taking the financial system “to the brink of disaster"...

The Masters Of The Universe are doing the same things, all over again. This is the equivalent of doing Crystal Meth, and having your life, and the lives of people around you, destroyed by your addiction. Then, you stop; you get cleaned up and do a little twelve-stepping... then you start doing Teh Meth again -- because it's just so easy and feels so good and "just a little won't hurt".

And, because... well; the government will just bail the Banksters out again -- because Timmeh Gaitner and Mr. Blankfein will cry and make the DIJA go down if they don't.

We live in a world of greedy, insensate idiots, and there are times when I wish The Big Rock™ would just take us out because we're too damn stupid to breathe.

But, I'm only a dog -- and nobody listens to me.

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Life During Wartime

Something about the times we're living through made me remember a scene from one of my favorite Alan Furst novels, The World At Night: In June of 1940, Parisian film producer Jean Casson finds himself remobilized into the army, part of a cinematography unit documenting what ends up as a massive defeat, and on the road walking back to Paris, in that order.

As Casson watched, the country died. He saw a granary looted, a farmhouse burned by men in a truck, a crowd of prisoners in gray behind barbed wire.

One night, he bumps into an old man, drinking something yellow out of a bottle, which he shares around a campfire with Casson. They talk, obliquely, about the coming occupation.

“We’ll all live deep down, now,” the sculptor said, throwing a stick of wood on the fire. “Twenty ways to prepare a crayfish. Or, you know, chess. Sanskrit poetry. It will hurt like hell, sonny, you’ll see.”

Casson has spent his life in the milieu of exclusive, wealthy Parisian society -- not quite Ancien Regime, old-monied nobility, but right next door. He found a niche in film production, made some money at it; but, assigning motive and direction to characters in a script was much simpler than determining where ethical, even moral, boundaries are in his own life.

Casson's story is where he draws those lines, and to what or whom he owes his allegiances. Furst is very good at presenting his character's search, warts and all.


Alan Furst

I admire Furst's writing, and enjoyed World At Night -- and a sequel, Red Gold -- among his ten novels of living in a Europe during the mid-thirties, and espionage, on into the Second World War. I recommend his work without reservation; it's good (You can see an interview with Furst here, talking about his 2008 release, The Spies Of Warsaw).

And, I only have one Alan Furst story: In 2006, with the release of his then-newest novel, The Foreign Correspondent, Furst was scheduled to do make a brief appearance at Stacey's Bookstore, an institution on Market Street since the 1930's; it closed in 2008, a victim of The Crash.

He appeared on the second floor at the back, with windows overlooking the street and a perspective that reminded me of a narrow Gustave Callibote painting of a Paris street seen from a second-floor balcony (the trunk of a tree; a circular iron grate around its base; a glimpse of a pedestrian).

There were thirty or so people there, at one o'clock in the afternoon on a workday in midweek. Furst seemed slightly preoccupied, but read the opening segment of his book easily in a warm contralto. When it was over Furst answered questions, then signed copies of the book.

Stepping up, I mentioned to Furst that I'd particularly enjoyed The World At Night, and the sequel, and particularly like the Jean Casson character; would he make any other appearances in another book?

Furst took my copy of Foreign Correspondent and looked at me as if stung. "No!" he said, with emphasis. "I had a bad relationship with my publisher at the time, and was locked into a contract. They 'suggested' to me that I write a sequel with Casson in it, and that's why I wrote Red Gold, under protest. It wasn't a happy experience for me."

I was surprised at his response, but added quickly that even so, it was a good read; I'd enjoyed it. Furst, who had bent down over a table to sign my copy of his newest, remained in that position and turned his head to look up at me.

"Thank you; that's very kind," he said quietly, then turned his head back to my copy of the book, and signed it.

Ever since then, when I've wanted to say Hey, pal; know what? You're an idiot to someone without being so blunt, I use that line -- a soft emphasis on the word 'kind', which indicates the comment is anything but sincere, and an assumption that the listener is too ignorant to comprehend the subtlety of the insult -- or, not; in which case my point is made, anyway.

But, fortunately or unfortunately, I don't have to spend time with Furst; I just buy and read his books. He's a good, even gifted, writer; his evocation of Europe on the edge of the abyss of nazi domination and occupation, and of people who resisted it, is brilliant.

Here's a tip: You can find good, used copies in hardback or paperback of any of Furst's work, some even signed if that's your thing, by ordering them through Alibris.com, or ABEbooks.

These bookselling services list inventory held by secondhand booksellers, who were having a hard time competing with McBorders or Burned & Ignoble even before the economy tanked. Want to buy books? Use either or both of these services. You'll wait a few days -- it won't be instant gratification -- but it's worth it.

Of course, Alan won't receive a dime from these sales -- but the secondhand booksellers of America will; I'm really fine with that. And, isn't that gesture, well... kind?

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Times Are Good Again

(Screencapture: New York Times Online, January 25, 2010)

Times are good again for the BSD's of the financial world, the 'Masters Of The Universe', as reported by the New York Times' fashion section in a little article entitled, "Ready To Spend, But Not To Boast".

I liked the part where the NYT observed that the chief executives of the nation’s four largest banks took a drubbing in hearings from Congressional leaders. They "took a drubbing"? Please.

The four people who appeared in front of the Congressional Inquiry weren't that uncomfortable. It was Kabuki theatre for the Banksters, as much as it was for the politicians ("Shocked! I'm shocked to discover there is gambling going on in here!").

And, there was that special moment when one banker's wife (who did not wish to be named), noted

Of bonus critics [the wife observed that] executives like her husband work hard and are unjustly singled out as greedy. “Everybody wants someone to blame,” she said, “and rich people are an easy target.”

Everybody wants someone to blame -- gee, it almost sounds as if she considers the collapse of the American financial system and our economy as a crime so complicated that there's no way to determine who committed it. How could it be anyone's fault, really? Certainly not the people working in the financial industry.

And, hey -- what did you think about the Bankster, who just bought a $4.9 Million-dollar home in Vermont nearly out of the jaws forclosure, and hasn't told his extended family about his Big Purchase, or his Big Bonus this year... because "he's afraid they'll ask him for money"!!

Wow; I'm left breathless, man. This dude isn't only Greedy; he doesn't want to suffer the shame of being revealed as selfish, a mean-spirited bastard, and ready to ignore his own family's trouble! Classic. That's the spirit of Darwinian competition that makes the difference between ordinary men and Masters Of The Friggin' Universe, Baby!!

It's what's making America GREAT! Isn't it?

And, the real 'easy targets' the Bankster's wife mentioned for these little social tumbles aren't the wealthy. It's people further down on the economic ladder -- who lose their minimum-wage jobs, and the benefits of social programs (meaning, health care, food, shelter), cut because the economy collapsed, because the BSDs and Masters Of The Universe weren't satisfied selling securities backed with air (the dot-com 'Bubble' of 1995-2001); so they sold securities backed by real property but massively encumbered by risk (the 'Housing Bubble' of 1999-2007).

The Big Boys wanted more. And now, after a scary little blip on their radar -- well, times are good again. They can get back to the 'business of living'.

And, in These Times, that's so comforting to know.

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When They Rise So High, Or Are So Wide, No One Can Shoot Them Down

Lard Boy At The White House, 2008

I don't think it's possible to be Caucasian and raised in some denomination of christianity, here or in Europe, without passively absorbing both racism and anti-semitism. If you're counted among that number, these things are contained in the images around you, in casual comments of family. You learn that other races and religions are, well, other. Not us; therefore not equal. Strange. Excluded.

And you accept these images, and words from trusted people around you, because that's what children do. They become a part of you, normal and natural, whether you recognize they're a set of unchallenged assumptions about the world or not.

Once you do figure out that they're part of your makeup, I don't suggest becoming overly sensitive and and present a knee-jerk guilt about historical racism or anti-semitism, or gay-bashing, or misogyny, or whatever. The best you can do is be aware of your own issues and don't be an idiot any more -- though I do feel it's a responsibility to call others who toss out even a casual remark that denigrates another race, or gender, or religion, or sexual choice, on their behavior. It's bullshit, and needs to be labeled as such the moment it appears.

(I wouldn't use it as an excuse to be morally self-righteous, however. You're in the same boat, except you're aware and trying to behave differently -- so acting as if you're superior you're won't wash.)

With all that as background, I offer this, from MediaMatters.org, in a slightly abbreviated form:

*****

From the January 20 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: If you have often wondered just out of, you know, a legitimately curious political sense -- if you have asked yourself why are so many Jewish people, liberal, what when it seemed so much of what liberals do would be anathema to Jewish people, particularly abortion, but any number of things -- taxes, tax increase. Look it -- you know something, folks?

There are a lot of people, when you say banker, people think Jewish. People who have prejudice, people who have, you know -- what's the best way to say -- a little prejudice about them. To some people, bankers -- code word for Jewish -- and guess who Obama's assaulting? He's assaulting bankers. He's assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there's starting to be some buyer's remorse there.



Anyway, if you've -- if you have often asked that question, if you've been puzzled by so many Jewish people vote liberal or vote Democrat, you -- give Norman's book a shot. It's called, Why Jews are Liberals. He's Jewish and he would know. And it's -- look, it's a good read. And Norman [Podhoretz] is a -- there's no other way to say it -- he's a profound intellectual but he's not an egghead elitist. And he's written this book with an effort to have anybody that reads it understand exactly what he is talking about.

****

In short, what Limbaugh is saying is (1) The stereotypical view of Jew = Money / Banking is accurate and correct; otherwise, his statements wouldn't mean anything; and (2) Jews in America are frequently liberals, and since Jews are "money people", perhaps they are suffering "buyer's remorse" for supporting Obama -- since Jews are liberals? And Bankers? And Obama is attacking Bankers? Meaning, Jews?

Yeah; you got it.

Abraham Foxman, Chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (which has been very reluctant to criticize right-wing commentators), also got it, and did comment on Limbaugh's remarks on January 21st, calling them "a new low", and "borderline anti-semitic".


Foxman, Left, With Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and Director
Of The Yad Vashem Memorial In Jerusalem, Avner Shalev

While the age-old stereotype about Jews and money has a long and sordid history, it also remains one of the main pillars of anti-Semitism and is widely accepted by many Americans... His notion that Jews vote based on their religion, rather than on their interests as Americans, plays into the hands of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.

However, Lard Boy wouldn't apologize. On his January 22nd program, he responded (again, via MediaMatters):

LIMBAUGH: ... I was referring to Jew-haters, and Mr. Foxman, this is what's been omitted from what you read that I said. I was alluding to what you know exists. You know that there are Jew-haters out there and I know there are Jew-haters out there and many of them are in the Obama administration or in his circle of friends.

And Mr. Foxman, if you really want to go after anti-Semitism, you should first start looking at it on the left and within the Obama administration and within his circle of friends because that's where you're going to find it. You're not going to find anti-Semitism on this radio show. You're going to find nothing but love and respect and admiration for the Jewish people and an unwavering support for Israel. That has not ever shaken. I was referring to the Jew-haters, the bigots. Twice I referred to prejudiced people.

My favorite part is where Limbaugh -- a white, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, lectures the head of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League about anti-semitism. And, historically, relations between the African-American and Jewish communities in the U.S. haven't been the best... so I'll just say it: Is Limbaugh suggesting that the Obama administration and the President's "circle of friends" are filled with anti-semitic blacks -- and that Jews (who he already suggests are liberals, with money) should stop supporting the President?

Then -- and I almost don't believe it -- Limbaugh went one step further: He used the "Some Of My Best Friends Are" defense; a classic:

I have to tell you, folks, one of my closest friends is Mark Levin. Everybody knows this. Mark Levin is Jewish. Mark Levin is disgusted with Abraham Foxman. What I've come to learn through this episode is how many Jewish people are disgusted with Abraham Foxman and have been for many years.

Shorter Rush: I can't be anti-semitic; I have a close friend who's one of them! And he doesn't like this other Jewish guy who criticized what I said -- so I have to be right!


Obligatory Cute Animal Photo For Comic Relief
(Somebody Named Mystic_Calipso Is Responsible)

*****

All this engendered a flurry of blog posting by even more politically conservative Jews than Foxman himself is, defending The Blimp's remarks and claiming the ADL Chairman was irrelevant and 'fetid', and how dare he criticize someone who is such a great friend to Israel as The Lard Boy.

And, strangely, a visit to ADL's website has a link to Foxman's statement criticizing Limbaugh on its home page ("Limbaugh Reaches Low With Remarks About Jews"). But, when you follow it, there's nothing but an HTTP/1.1 500 Server Error message. Perhaps Lard Boy can silence the ADL Chairman, just as he is able to force apologies from Republicans who publicly criticize him.


(Image: A Town Called Dobson © 2007)

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of some people claiming that racial, gender, sexual, or religious differences are so completely essential. It's clear that in a combat situation, fighting a forest fire, or dealing with a gunshot victim in an ER, nobody gives two hoots about that crap. If anyone can look at photographs of people in Haiti -- traumatized, starving, grieving, hurt -- and think ahh, they're black, then they have long way to go to join the human race.

The world is about to begin facing some very basic, hard choices about survival and quality of life -- and we can divide off into national, or racial, or tribal, or economic class groups. We can fight each other for food and energy and water and technology. Or, we recognize that compared with that probable future, our differences are trivial -- and emphasizing them is only a method of dividing people, manipulating us against each other, when we most need to be united and compassionate.

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And, while I believe the term 'nazi' is very specific, and isn't just another verb to casually toss around, WNNX Radio in Atlanta, GA once broadcast a little tune they'd put together, splicing Blimpy's own words, and used as the audio portion of this video which Lard Boy has tried hard to suppress.

Limbaugh is a monumentally bigoted individual. It wouldn't matter -- except, he has a gigantic soapbox from which to broadcast a nearly unending river of vomit. He's shown he has serious influence in the Republican party, and with the American Right -- not because he's respected for wise and truthful counsel, or presenting practical solutions to the issues we face.



It's because he runs a daily radio show which taps, not into hopes and dreams, but encites anger, even hatred. He vomits over the air; his listeners lap it up and vomit it back when they call in. And, manipulating people's anger with half-truths is a cherished tactic of the Right (only they call it 'tapping into popular discontent'). So long as it elects GOP candidates, they're just fine with it.

Limbaugh appears to be untouchable. He can ridicule the sick, or children born with brain damage, and toss out a racial slur or two when he feels in the mood (that "Barack, The Magic Negro" clip wasn't racist?). He can abuse drugs... and nothing happens; this sack of shit is still on the air!. And, whether he understands it or not, when he starts going down a well-worn anti-semitic trail, no one should sit and be privately outraged.

And; WNNX called him a nazi? Yeah; for this? I'm fine with it.

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UPDATE: The Onion, in it's usual gerkin-in-cheek style, has an Op-Ed piece written by Das Blimpy:

The irony is that, even if I did die, the hell I would surely be sent to could not possibly be any worse than the bottomless pool of excrement I already paddle around in like some demented, shit-covered walrus. In fact, every time I hear my voice coming through the headphones I nearly gag, and I think, "What the fuck am I doing?" Why would I say that Michael J. Fox is faking his Parkinson's symptoms? Why would I find it funny to play a song called "Barack the Magic Negro"? Why would I tell people not to give aid to Haiti?

Why, indeed?

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I See Donka Ufman© -- All The Time

Coming soon to this space: More Donka Ufman.

All will be explained. Well, not all; I mean, we're not going to tell you if the 'Matrix' is real, or who killed JFK, or whether a big Rock™ is going to hit the Earth anytime soon.

But Donka Ufman? Ha ha; wait for it.

Dream Come True

The President, Glancing In A Mirror At The White House
(Photo: Talking Points Memo, "Obama's First Year")

Well, as Donka Ufman© would say, this is a rant n' rave™ that's going to be long. But, don't worry! I'll put in pictures of cute animals. Think of them as load-bearing walls in the Winchester Mystery House that is this blog.

So, let's see: President Obama decided that, in his first year of office, he would

--> Continue the Bush-Cheney Policies on Executive Privilege and National Security programs which allow spying on Americans' communications, and blatant violations of Due Process and protections against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures -- frightening legal precedents that undermine basic constitutional principles;

--> Allow to be placed in appointed positions, in the SEC and Federal banking system, former or current executives from Wall Street investment firms (principally, Goldman-Sachs) where they are in positions to affect national policy and legislation that could directly benefit those 'former' employers (this is commonly called "conflict of interest");


This Little Guy Doesn't Want To Live Under Sharia Law.

--> Expand the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and, insofar as we're able the northeastern provinces of Pakistan to seek out and destroy Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership and infrastructure (this, I absolutely agree with -- it should have been done years ago... so, about damn time);

--> While overseeing a massive, taxpayer-funded bailout of banks and investment firms (all so interconnected that if you paid money to one it ended up with another -- for example, a third of the bailout funds paid to AIG actually went to Citibank and another large percentage to Goldman-Sachs), Obama made the assumption that the money would allow banks to begin lending again, thus fueling a recovery by creating production, demand, and jobs for the millions who badly need them.

Instead, the banks and investment firms took the Federal bailout money -- that would be yours, and mine -- and rather than lend more to small businesses, restricted their loans... and then paid out hundreds of billions in bonuses to its executives (and some to a few staff employees, too).


This Little Kitty Is Goldman-Sachs' New Advertising Mascot --
You Know, Like The Aflac Duck, or the Merril-Lynch Lion.

--> At The Same Time, the banks were slow to renegotiate the terms of many toxic mortgage loans (when they did at all), and Federal programs to assist homeowners with mortgage issues seemed designed more to help the banks holding the mortgages, rather than homeowners;

--> Finally, Obama, as head of the Democratic Party, gambled all its political capital with the public that had voted, hopefully, for Obama in 2008, on a single throw -- Health Care reform legislation. That may now have gone into the toilet.


This Cute Puppy Is Non-Denominational.

As a result, in a future not all that long from now, the period of mid-2006 to early 2009 may be seen as an aberration, a break in the Thug dominance of the country. We may be headed towards a Dream Come True for the wealthy and the social conservatives, who don't really care if a Christian Hitler clone or an Avocado is made President (please note: I didn't say elected).

We may move closer to the kind of nation Lil' Boots was beginning to rule when he was brushed off: Where the Middle Class is made poorer, year after year; where the upper 2 to 5 per cent of the American population is made richer; where politics is dominated by a single party so completely that most national policy is about allowing the Free Market to do whatever it wants...


Daily Purchase Of These Plush Mini-Toys Will Be Mandatory.

Leaving us with a small group of Owners with money, access and influence; and a group of social Xtian Thugs allowed to enact whatever laws or regulation they want on the country -- so long as they don't really challenge the Owners. And then there's the rest of us, serving both of these groups or their interests, one way or another -- because we won't have any choice.

And for all this, I'm pissed off.

UPDATE: Over at TPM (a site I go to daily, just to note what new Thang is happening in American politics), a former Republican Congressional staffer emailed the site's owner, Josh Marshall, with some observations about What's Up With Obama and the Dems.


Our Fiscal Problems Have Forced Us To Rely On New Forms Of
National Defense That We Can Afford. China Is Pleased.

Ask yourself, is it easier to pass a difficult, complex legislative agenda when the country is under stress if the opposition party is seen as the Party of Bush, or if the opposition party is able to begin redefining itself as the party of populism, or of un-Washingtonism, or of fiscal restraint? Give the opposition party a fresh start, for free, and you've bought yourself all manner of trouble. That's really the only transformative development Obama has presided over so far.

A fairly trenchant and cogent analysis, as they say; worth the read.

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Why? Something Happen Yesterday?

I guess. Whole lotta people running around talking about stuff.


Clearly the Markets thought last nights' news was, uh,
really good! Yeah! Off over 200 points earlier, it's just
off by 122 points at 2PM PDST (Screencapture: Marketwatch)

And, there's another large earthquake in Haiti, but the future of the Democratic Party is certainly more important.

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