Porch Missionary

A knock on the door last week, too damned early in the morning…a woman with pamphlets, a forced smile, and a bible.
“Hello, I’m spreading the good word about a 3-day conference in–”
“Is this a god thing?”
“Why yes, it’s a 3-day conference in–”
“We’ve already got a grail!”
“What?”
“Never mind. You have encyclopedias?”
“But…what? It’s a 3-day…”
“Vacuum cleaners? Brushes? I could use a good brush! Steaks?”
(Confused) “Ummm?”
“You don’t have any of those?”
She shook her head.
“Can you get students to paint my house real cheap?”
“I don’t think you understand.”
(Leaning into her space a little bit.) “Are you implying I’m stupid? That I can’t possibly understand? That’s hurtful, from where I’m standing. I think I do pretty well with what I’ve been given: the best that I can. You don’t need to be mean about it.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to–”
“Maybe you should just try the neighbors; they’re real zealots. I hear they drowned a witch, last place they lived. They definitely burn books–religiously, you might say–and other things. ”
A wink.
“What?”
“It’s a pun. I told you I was smart. Not that I’m an angel myself. I’ve danced a bunch and, between you and me, I’ve eaten more than my fair share of owls.”
“Owls?”
“Yup. Owls” A nod. “That just between you and me, mind.”
A step back, almost certainly subconsciously. She looks over her shoulder at the street–no backup there–and no witnesses–and turns back to me, squints a little, then backs to the edge of the porch stairs before spinning towards the street. A hand on the railing, and she’s gone. Down the rickety stairs, scurrying away, glancing worriedly over her shoulder, she skitters up the street.
I wave heartily, call after her, “Good luck! Have a blessed day!”

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Every Day Is MemeDay: Rescue Child

I’ve saved so many memes in a file on my hard drives and finally wondered: what am I saving these for? My retirement? A rainy day? Maybe that–but isn’t it raining right now? Of course it is. My mom had a leash for me. Of course she did.

DAHOF: South Dakota Rep. Michael Clark

Not every selection for the Dumb Ass Hall Of Fame is an idiot, dotard, or buffoon. Some, like this week’s honoree, are just brain-numbed by hate and ignorance.

Bigoted SD Rep. Michael Clark doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near the tribute to these great leaders.

The morality of the nation crumbles around us, hurtling toward a precipice of as-yet-unimaginable depth, spurred by the pubescent leadership of our President, the jibbering sycophants who surround him, and the spineless cowards of the Senate and Congress, most of whom are more than intelligent enough to see what this man is, but refuse to act for reasons both partisan and personal. I awake each morning, take my pills, and empty my bladder beneath a cloud of dread: what terrible things have transpired since the day before. What has the skulking boy king said, what has he done or, most often, what excremental feats of churlish impertinence have the lunks and sneering bounders emboldened by his example been up to?

Another cop killing an unarmed black man? Running him down with a patrol car? Shooting him seven or eight times in the back? Gunning him down for closing a door–a fragile blue ego more important than a warrant and the Fourth Amendment? Or maybe another ally insulted? Another adversary provoked? Another treaty broken? Another bold faced lie maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? Another denial of that lie, despite video?

Given all of this and so much more, I am barely surprised to hear that South Dakota state Representative Michael Clark tried to press the argument, that businesses should be allowed to turn down people based on the color of their skin. As my dad used to say, “I shit you not.”

In a heady stupor of exclusionist victory dancing following the Supreme Court ruling in favor of a homophobic Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because of his religious beliefs, Clark boasted on Facebook that the decision was a “win for freedom of speech and freedom of religion.” Other FB users called him on his gleeful embrace of bigotry, and the intrepid lawmaker doubled down.

“It is his business,” Clark wrote in a comment. “He should have the opportunity to run his business the way he wants. If he wants to turn away people of color, then [that’s] his choice.”

We’ve seen this mindset before. On buses in Tennessee. In schools in Arkansas. At lunch counters in Alabama.

It is modestly affirming that a furor quickly built, on Facebook and among the general public and first regional, then national news organizations began covering the incident. At first he tried to frame his bigotry as standard anti-government rhetoric, asserting that  business owners only need serve certain segments of society and that the market would ultimately determine if the business succeeded or failed. The negative comments and press coverage built up, as some of reminded this attorney and elected lawmaker of a not-so-irrelevant document called The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Predictably, the heat was too much for tough cowboy Clark, who ultimately deleted the post on Tuesday. He said he had “jumped in on it a little bit too fast,” the Argus-Leader reported.

Not long  after, he apologized via email to a reporter for the Leader, followed by a glib, insincere retraction on Facebook. “I am apologizing for some of my Facebook comments. “I would never advocate discriminating against people based on their color or race.”

But in an interview with the Argus-Leader, Clark said he believed that business owners should be able to turn away certain customers if they would otherwise violate their religious beliefs. “If it’s truly his strongly based belief, he should be able to turn them away,” Clark told the Leader. “People shouldn’t be able to use their minority status to bully a business. The vote of the dollar is very strong,” he said.

I’m still parsing which is more disgusting, the unapologetic awfulness of the President and his Trumpkins, or these slimy, cynical clones who imitate his success playing to the lowest common denominators, shouting whatever vile and hateful bile they happen to be regurgitating at any particular moment? It is a tough contest indeed. Trump is culpable for setting the tone, but they’re all playing the same game: vomit out sinful rhetoric to the bleating masses and keep pressing–then either deny it completely and blame the press for making it up, or mutter a dishonest, heartless apology rife with crocodile tears and move on. “I didn’t say that. But if you have tape that shows I did, then I certainly didn’t mean it.”

Well,  Mr. Clark, we’re not buying what you’re selling. You don’t get to worm and squirm out of it with a cynical “I’m sorry,” so take ownership for the man you’ve become. Burn a cross, beat a gay man–be your honest self. Your soul is already exposed before your neighbors, your friends, and especially your God.

It is easy to say, “I would never advocate discriminating against people based on their color or race” but the simple fact is that yes, you would, because yes, you did. It’s not like we haven’t seen your kind before.

Grim Truth of Almond Milk

I agree with the profundity excerpted below.  It is so deeply wrong that it’s called Almond Milk. There are no nipples on almonds. None. They can’t be milked. They don’t make more tomorrow. They’re drowned, then cracked and crushed and churned through a mechanical extractor and squeezed through a filter. What’s left, that people drink, is more like blood. They should call it Almond Blood.

D.A.H.O.F. Nominees: Sarah Braasch & The Merritt Lake Oakland Charcoal Nazi

Thank all gods–the tall ones and the small ones the jiggly ones and firm ones–for dumb asses, because without dumb asses I’d have slipped completely from this blog altogether. Fortunately, just like Michael Corleone, “Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in!” The dumb asses, I mean. They do the pulling.

We’re singling out a particular sub-grouping of racist dumb-asses today, with our improbably similar nominees, Yale career student Sarah Brasch, who brought down the clenched fist of justice on her dormitory neighbor for the insidious crime of…napping while black. (I know what you’re thinking: how dare they! These black people and their fatigue, the nerve of them!) On the other side of the continent, her doppleganger, the as-yet-unidentified Merritt Lake Charcoal Nazi a.k.a. The Barbie Nazi, who saved the entire city of Oakland, and neighboring Bay Area communities, from those who dared to “barbecue while black.”

I’ve had a realization while processing the nominations, and I don’t mean the one where I drop to my knees and thank fate that I was born a white man in America. I’m not proud. I don’t feel good about that, but it is a whole hell of a lot safer for me and my children. Among the comments for a youtube video of the charcoal incident, the question was posited: do white people think 911 is there for them to call any time they feel uncomfortable or scared?

Well sure we do! We’ve got TV. We’ve got the internet. When was the last time a redneck with a license to kill wrapped his sweaty palm around my esophagus–or yours?–and squeezed, then threw me to the ground like a rag doll and charged me with resisting arrest when I squirmed and struggled for a breath?  We are pretty used to the cops coming when we call and strangling, bashing, kicking, and shooting holes in all the people who make us scared. It’s a better benefit than anything the AARP offers–and The White Club is pretty much free. Hell, they pay you!

The discussion for these nominations is: are these people just evil, or just stupid? Evil can’t be grounds for a DAHOF nomination, but stupidity can. And as much as I want to think otherwise, these women probably aren’t evil, but they do make it easier to understand how great minds as far back as Plato have considered the merits of a philosophy so barbarous as eugenics. To paraphrase Sarah Palin, “Cull baby, cull.”

Too far? Yes. Yes I know it was. And I’m sorry.

What we’re looking at here is traditional fear-rooted ignorance. Recall that the KKK was formed as a self-defense brotherhood by ex-confederates (like all the male heroes in Gone With the Wind–when they rush out in the middle of the night, and dear sweet Ashley is gravely wounded, they were out doing Night Rides, lashing out violently against the threat they believed was posed by freed slaves and carpetbaggers. Poor sweet beautiful Ashley wasn’t evil–just terrified of the new realities of the the Reconstruction.

Our nominees have no karma (that we know of) to fear, but they fear none-the-less, a fear that is wrapped–like one of those little crescent rolls around a cocktail wienie–by ignorance. The Charcoal Nazi, like many martinets, clings to her interpretation of rules in a sadly futile attempt to bring order to a chaotic reality she’s unequipped to navigate. Ms. Braasch is no different. Both women’s’ smug and self-righteous facades belie defective creatures fumblingly struggling to impose control over whatever happens to scare them. Ms. Braasch, who has spent most of her 43 years accumulating a trophy case full of doctoral degrees, is clearly incapable of functioning in a community setting. We don’t have a lot of information on the Charcoal Nazi, but dollars to doughnuts she exhibits some similar traits: unreasonable anger at a world that defies her expectations–one of which we can assume was racial primacy.

It could be a difficult to sort this out, but in the end, Dumbassedness® is not necessarily a function of stupidity or racism, though are three are often symptoms of the same malady. The accomplished dumb ass exhibits selective ignorance, blinding cruelty, intellectual laziness/lack of curiosity, and the paralyzing paucity of imagination. Given such criteria, both women’s nominations are approved.

 

Evangelicals LOVE Trump No Matter Who & How Often He’s Slipped The Schmeckle

This is a photo-shopped composite picture–Fake News!–but it’s useful here. A picture worth a thousand words and all that..and it certainly got your attention.

The Washington Post just threw us an interesting article on the unwillingness of Evangelicals to condemn Donald Trump for his serial philandering, ultimately explaining the moral hypocrisy on white christian nationalism, irrational fear of islam, and a certain cold-tempered pragmatism that suggests they would excuse the excesses of Satan himself, should the devil suddenly call out for a Pro-Life, Anti-Gay, Unfettered Second Amendment political campaign platform.

It is a compelling argument and quite worthy of the 3 minutes it takes to read, but by no means but by no means should we regard the seeming disconnect between values and conduct as purely related to racial and religious identity and all their attendant fears and bigotries.

There’s a good deal of self-identification at work, as well. It is difficult to find a place so rife with illicit and immoral conduct than a protestant church. Don’t take that on my word. Statistically, despite decreasing numbers, American Evangelicals have the highest divorce rate (and highest rate of domestic violence) among all religious groupings, including non-believers (Atheists have the lowest rates).

And who can blame them? All that energy and intensity has to go somewhere, and it often goes into each other’s spouses. And why not? Forgiveness is at close at hand. They get Trump. They understand how difficult it is to keep things zipped up. God has his plan, after all. It wouldn’t happen if HE didn’t want it to (so slip out of that girdle, Mildred). Pots don’t call kettles black. Stones and glass houses. etc. etc.

D.A.H.O.F: Jamie Gilt

D U M B – A S S   H A L L   OF   F A M E   N O M I N A T I O N

I shouldn’t need an excuse to circle back around to my poor, mistreated, attention-starved blog–or the millions, thousands, hundreds, dozens of eager readers who breathlessly await my oracular musings. Nevertheless, when life gives you lemons…

Okay, so no lemons. Instead, we got Jamie Gilt, the outspoken Florida horse mommy who loves her guns. A profuse poster of pro-firearm propaganda and fetishist rhetoric, who had reportedly been bragging of late about her 4-year-old son’s proficiency at the shooting range, Ms. Gilt recently threw this bit of wisdom up on the internet:

Silly rabbit. A few days ago, this upright, outspoken, patriotic (these colors don’t run, dammit!) saw her worst feats come to light when she was brutally gunned down…by said 4-year-old, who capped her from the backseat of their moving vehicle while she was driving and he was playing with her .45 automatic in the back seat.

Doh! Ms. Gilt gets automatic acceptance into the Dumb Ass Hall of Fame.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3484064/Pro-gun-poster-girl-shot-four-year-old-son-driving-Florida-boy-pistol-seat-truck.html

https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/03/09/jamie-gilt/

http://www.jacksonville.com/news/20160817/jamie-gilt-gun-advocate-shot-by-her-4-year-old-son-remains-infamous-six-months-later

Trump Tower: Don’t Worry, It’s Just PANTS ON FIRE.

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/367870-fire-crews-responding-to-fire-at-trump-tower

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/trump-tower-new-york-catches-fire-smoke-seen-billowing-roof-1654247

It’s Snowy Deck & Patio Furniture Season

Christmas is over and back in its box in the attic. The jet stream is blowing hard across the Great Lakes and pummeling us with sub-zero wind chills and lake effect snow, arctic clippers and blowing down across Ohio and, this week, that newest hyperbolic wild weather phenomena–the BOMB CYCLONE (oh how the marketing brahs at The Weather Channel must have sighed whilst excavating that gem of a meteorological wonder)–is hitting the mainstream, joining Snowmageddon and Polar Vortex in that rarefied caste of ratings-generating American Idol Weather Terminology.

This is not to undermine the effects of winter storms and the havoc they wreak. Every time it sleets south of Fredericksburg, Virginia dozens of Sons & Daughters of the Confederacy are lost to, or injured in, wholly avoidable automobile accidents. (HINT: Stay home, Beauregard, that white stuff is slippery.) And Boston got spanked by Flash floods that froze (WTF?) entire neighborhoods in place, which is messed up. But it is Boston and, well, karma. Right? Somebody has to bear the burden of the Patriots’ deal with the devil, and it ain’t going to be living Vegan Ken doll QB Tom “Quinoa Salad” Brady.

What does trouble me about these Twitter-friendly parade of ridiculous terminology is that shade they’re throwing on the time-honored, proven-to-be-accurate method of winter storm appraisal, the good old-fashioned Deck & Patio Furniture photo. For as long as I can remember (admittedly, not as long as I used to be able to remember), the severity of winter storms has been evaluated using observable scientific method, most recently on the internet but for many years before that in the form of viewer-submitted photos and filler coverage by local news teams. Three generations learned to analyze the critical level of a “weather event” through this observable, utterly reliable data.

How would I know what winter was bringing to my good, decades-long friend Sally, who lives far away in Montana, if she didn’t apprise me of winter conditions north of Yellowstone with timely and evocative imagery of her deck, live and up to date?  That’s right. These are my actual friend’s actual photos of her actual furniture.

It goes without saying that the level of personal connection forged between me and my friend–or any one of the millions of Americans who annually apprise the world of their on-deck snow conditions (looks like Sally has a nice 7 inch base with a few inches of powder on top)–exceeds anything a few bozos with an old meteorology textbook can manage with their horror-film vocabulary.

And, final, overlook the community-building that comes from the ubiquity of patio-furniture. I don’t think it is overstatement to say that these photos–and the sense of kinship they evoke–are one of the deep and abiding bonds that hold us together as a nation, and as a people. Stick that in your Bomb Storm and smoke it, why don’t you.

Danielle LoPresti: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Because it’s all about the kids when it comes down to it, right? One of my favorite covers of a Christmas classic.