Well, it's been a while since I've done a QotD, and since Rachel was here a couple of weeks ago (or so, hell if I can remember), and dropped a topic in my lap, I figured it's time to type some gibberish put up a Question.

Since I've already given away the ending, I'm not going to spend a lot of time typing a bunch of senseless crap leading up to the Question.  I'm more interested in the answers and the conversation than I am reading my own blatherings.

It alienates the very people... the stupid sheeple... that you need to reach.

Sometimes images from the past fade ..... except when they don't:

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Canadian film star Keanu Reeves and Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.
               

Roll over Beethoven, and tell ..... you-know-who to stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    

I wrote about this several years ago; alas, several links which I cite here no longer work. But here first is her story of courage, followed by what she is doing today.

In the political world, doppelgangers seem to be more the norm than ever. Exhibit A:

SEPARATED at BIRTH - Politico's Mike Allen and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.)
                   

Our men in Washington, indeed. For now: stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and when I was a tiny Karmafish I loved baseball and the New York Yankees.  Yes!  The Yanks!  I loved Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson and Thurmon Munson (I cried) and Micky Rivers.  That team, the '77 team, filled my world.  I was a kid and I followed that season like I have no other.  I loved the drama and pathos of that year.  I loved the fights between Martin and Steinbrenner and Martin and Jackson.  It all seemed so vital at the time.  Baseball just seemed a vital, normal, and an everyday part of the world.  We played it in backyards and in the street.  Some of us were Yankees fans and some of us rooted for the Sox, but when I was a kid we all watched baseball and cared about it.  Coming out of the Connecticut burbs at the time it was as natural as breathing.  All of my friends followed the game.

{More below.}

Please view video of the exchange . . . Sherrod  to Martin: 'You are dead wrong!"

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Once you label me you negate me.
~ Søren Aabye Kierkegaard [Danish Philosopher 1813 to 1855]

The much acclaimed Roland Martin, a Cable News Network Analyst, reacted to a partial report.  Apparently, Mister Martin, acknowledged for his insightful and provocative assessments, heard but a bit of an edited video and responded on a national stage.  Admittedly, barely informed, and unaware of the background, the CNN Correspondent spoke of his antipathy for what he defined as a racist reality. The frequently featured Journalist offered his fervent judgment of Federal Department of Agriculture Director Shirley Sherrod's actions, none of which occurred.  On Tuesday, July 20, 2010, late in the afternoon, given an opportunity to listen to and speak with the object of his scorn, Shirley Sherrod, the righteous Roland Martin refused to open his mind and ears.  Mister Martin avowed racism is racism regardless of when it occurs or if it is repeated years later.  The consequence, tears and fears flourished.  These were my own.

If there is one thing that I have learned from reading the gibberish of on-line political activists, it is that political labels have become pretty much meaningless.  Liberal Fascists, no less than Conservative Hippie Zionists, have stretched the meaning of political labels out of any and all proportion.  In so many instances, rather than arguing the merits of whatever case they wish to make, Progressive Right-Wing Socialists simply fling around ad hominems like confetti in order to delegitimize their vegetarian opponents.  Hippie Liberal Communists, from across the political spectrum, love to suggest that Left-Wing Progressive Fascists are not merely wrong, but bad, bad people.  Progressive Conservatives, much like their Right-Wing Liberal opponents, constantly argue that the other side is just filled to overflowing with Anti-American Warmongering Pacifists.  

It has to stop!

{More gibberish below.}

The Elizabeth Warren "Collapse of the Middle Class" video from 2007 has shown up in several diaries lately, as the debate over who will head the new Consumer Protection Agency begins.  I have no intention of re-litigating her case here, but would like to address some of the substance of her remarks, in light of economic developments since she made them.

She outlines the increased pressures on families in the past thirty years.  Income for adult males has actually decreased in inflation-adjusted dollars, and though she doesn't give the reason, I'd be willing to bet the loss of union jobs, and offshoring of manufacturing has resulted in reduced earning opportunities.  She also notes that thirty years ago, it was possible to enter the middle class with only a high school diploma (my note: via union jobs, again) but now it requires a college education, the costs of which are borne by the individual, not the taxpayers as a whole.

In an age, when nature is besieged and the political landscape blighted, and one stands, stoop shouldered and wincing into the howling wasteland of epic-scale idiocy extant in the era, a solitary person can feel lost ... marooned inside an increasingly isolated sense of self. Whether urban, suburban, or rural dwelling, the sense of alienation, for an individual, is profound ... as discernible to the eye as the constellations of foreclosure signs stippling overgrown front lawns across the land ... as hidden as the abandoned dreams within.

The fraying ligature of the landscape of the United States reveals an inner geography of alienation and anomie. Living on the island of Manhattan, I daily negotiate an urban layout of practical, but identity-decimating grids -- a cityscape of harsh, inhuman right angles ... a geography that renders street encounters abrupt, curt and intrusive.

After a time, one begins, by reflex, to buffer oneself against such intrusions, withdrawing inward ... becoming a self-enclosed, walking fortress, shielding oneself from the degradations of these impersonal affronts (that feel altogether personal) -- with I-Pods, Blackberries, and other vestments attendant to the muttered prayers of the self-absorbed.

While above the street -- corporate towers -- that are steel and concrete kingdoms of blind, willful ascension -- blot the skyline ... these structures flee upward, as if to escape the implications of life lived at street level and sharing in the consequences of decisions made within their sterile, insular sanctums of power and cupidity.  

Nothing like the separation between the distant past and the present, huh? Well ... not so fast ....

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - English TV star Ricky Gervais and French composer Claude Debussy.
                           

Keep this crazy train rolling - and stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    

I've been a loyal Democrat and devoted liberal my entire life. Even as a teenager when Reagan was popular with my generation, intuitively I knew his vision was wrong. So I worked my butt off for the party and registered voters. I did this on faith that the Democratic Party would be a vehicle for economic and social justice.

Yet a lingering disenchantment with the party always lurked like a nagging conscious and whispered doubts in my ear. Personal friends from my youth may recall how I often quipped that Republicans were the party of evil and Democrats the party of gutlessness. Alas, our winner take all system reinforces the two party duopoly, so I saw no viable alternative. And perhaps there never will be.

We are all aware of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), championed by former Congressman Bob "I'm A Libertarian If It Doesn't Involve Your Penis Or Vagina" Barr; we now have two rulings, released on the same day by the same Federal judge, that will render the Act moot, if they're either upheld throughout the appeals process...or if the Obama Administration decides to end that appeals process right now.

There's a lot of ground to cover, and time is short.

Let's get to work.

In the early-mid 90s, I was going through trauma.  I had recently moved to Phoenix, where I was managing the Borders Cafe on Camelback Road... and I was sad.

Sad. Sad. Sad, I was.

Strange things continue - even on the world of espionage .....

SEPARATED at BIRTH - two women of intrigue: Russian spy suspect Anna Chapman (a/k/a Anya Kushchenko)....

..... and Elliot Spitzer's 'friend' Ashley Alexandra Dupré (a/k/a Ashley Youmans).

Keep those cards and letters coming, folks: and stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....    

This morning, as with so many mornings, as of late, I had to undertake an agonizing, intricate procedure to pull myself together, simply to extract myself from bed to face another day.

Television, cell phone, computer glowed before me: The media nimbus boiled: its hypnagogia-like flux of imagery, its counterfeit immediacy and proffered flummery insistent to drowned out auras of extinction rising from veritable nature; the earth's warnings rising like musical notes ...  swelling, reverberating, enveloping us. In the Gulf of Mexico ... literally falling to earth as chemical rain.  

I stood dazzled before the scintillating doomscape of the Anthropocene Epoch. It has entered me ... It has made me and undone me. It tells me who I am; it holds me near, enclosing me in the thrall of the false intimacy of its endless spectacle.  

Some mornings, I don't think I can compose myself to face it.

I have an unhealthy fixation with competition food shows on tv.  Iron Chef, Dinner Impossible, Top Chef, Chopped you name it, I've watched it.  I like these types of shows better than the talking head cooking shows like Giada or Rachael.  I don't want a perky narrative, I want drama and creativity.

I'm also incredibly cheap.  Thrifty. Economical.  Broke.  Every year around this time, I give myself a cooking challenge.  I go through the pantry and freezer, looking for odds and ends, and things which are about to expire, and try to make interesting meals from the items I find.  Sometimes the results are great, other times I end up frying an egg for my long-suffering husband, but either way, my grocery bill drops, and I have a little fun trying out some new ideas.

Always remember that "the past is not prologue" ..... err..... except when it is:

DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - TV host Stephen Colbert and General Ignacio Zaragoza (pictured on Mexico's 500 peso note).
                     

....Zounds! While you're battening down the hatches, why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....