About greg

Just another bozo on the bus.

totally fucking worthless

Posted on June 12, 2016 by greg

I’m hoping at some point today I’ll get angry. Anger might be nice. Right now all I can muster up is a sort of deep, abiding melancholy.

Today there’ll be the standard offering of thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families, which are totally fucking worthless. As usual, there’ll be a pointless search for ‘answers’ — why and how ‘something like this’ can happen here. But whatever answers there are to be found will be totally fucking worthless, because we won’t actually do anything. There’ll be the predictable calls for effective gun legislation, which will be totally fucking worthless — and of course gun sales in Florida will skyrocket for a week or so, also totally fucking worthless.

There’ll be tearful memorial services, and people will leave flowers and notes and teddy bears outside the nightclub, and some newspaper or magazine will print photographs of all ~~twenty~~ ~~twenty-nine~~ fifty (the butcher’s bill keeps changing) of the fatally wounded victims. And it’ll all be totally fucking worthless, because we’ve done all that before and we all know that we’ll be doing it again.

Waiting for the dead and wounded.

For the next few days we’ll be reading the tweets sent by folks in the nightclub, we’ll be seeing chaotic smartphone videos and facebook posts. We’ll be hearing accounts from those who escaped, and the memories of family and friends of the dead (“He was a good boy, never bothered anybody, always willing to help, loved animals”), and we’ll tell ourselves what a tragic event this was and lamenting how many young, innocent lives were cut short. But all that will be totally fucking worthless because absolutely nothing will change. Not one goddamn thing.

I’m back. I had to step away for a while. Because you know what else is totally fucking worthless? Another blog post on another mass shooting.

I’d probably have just deleted all this and got on with my day had I not had a short chat with a friend. Here’s the reason it was a short chat — he said “Bernie would have found a way to get gun control passed if the election hadn’t been stolen from him.” And that anger I’d been searching for, it started to perk up. I held it in, though, and said if the Democrats can re-take Congress, maybe Hillary can get something passed. Which is when he said something like “I’ll never vote for Hillary, I’m done voting for the lesser of two evils, I’ll vote for the Green Party, I don’t care if Trump wins.”

Here’s yet another thing that’s totally fucking worthless: that guy’s opinion. But it helped me find that anger.

If there any chance at all — even a remote chance — of passing even the weakest and most tepid gun safety legislation, Democrats need to keep the White House and win both houses of Congress. Trump sure as hell isn’t going to do anything about guns.

Don’t tell me you want to stop mass shootings but aren’t willing to vote for Clinton because your candidate lost the primary. I don’t care if you think Clinton and Donald Trump are both the spawn of Satan — only one spawn of Satan has professed any interest in passing some responsible gun laws. I don’t care if the Green Party candidate has a plan to seize and melt every goddamn gun in the US and turn them all into orthodontic braces for poor kids — the Green Party isn’t going to win; they can only suck votes away from Clinton. I don’t care if the notion of voting for Clinton actually makes you physically ill — vomit, then vote Democratic and start pushing for gun safety legislation.

You don’t have to like Clinton. You don’t even have to trust her. All you have to do is ask yourself which of the two candidates — which of the two major political parties — is most likely to press for reasonable gun safety laws. And if you loathe Hillary Clinton more than you loathe mass shootings, then as far as I’m concerned you’re also totally fucking worthless.

acts of belligerency and the way the world is today

Posted on June 10, 2016 by greg

When you think of Ringgold, Georgia (and I know you do), you probably only think of it as the county seat of Catoosa County. Some of you may think of Samuel Ringgold, the hero of the Battle of Palo Alto. I mean, the town is named for him, after all. But mostly likely when you think of Ringgold, you think of the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862.

Oh, c’mon. You know — that daring American Civil War raid? The one in which Union scout James J. Andrews hijacked a locomotive known as The General at Big Shanty, GA and led Confederate troops on a chase? Well, you probably remember the Buster Keaton movie based on the event. That’s right, that Great Locomotive Chase of 1862. Anyway, the chase ended in Ringgold, when The General ran out of fuel and stopped. It’s pretty easy to catch a train that’s stopped. Anyway, the train stopped, Andrews tried to escape, was captured, charged with “acts of unlawful belligerency” and eventually hanged.

Acts of belligerency, lawful or otherwise, remain an important part of Ringgold culture. Every month the American Wrestling Federation stages an event there. Last Saturday night featured an epic match between Paul ‘Nature Boy’ Lee and ‘Iron’ Mann.

Paul ‘Nature Boy’ Lee at the office.

During the match Nature Boy executed a classic Greek wrestling maneuver, which involved trapping his opponent in the ring’s ropes, then striking him repeatedly with a chair. Patricia Anne Crowe, a passionate aficionado of AWF matches, was distressed at witnessing the seemingly inevitable defeat of Iron Mann. It seems Iron Mann is ‘good’ whereas Nature Boy, despite his tranquil nom du stade, is ‘bad’. Ms. Crowe could not restrain herself. She spoke out in Iron Mann’s defense. When her logic did not dissuade Nature Boy from his blatant misuse of a chair, she went to Iron Mann’s aid.

She produced a knife and attempted to cut through the ropes in the forlorn hope of freeing Iron Mann, thereby allowing him to defend himself. Brave Ms. Crowe.

The situation was tense, to be sure. It might have been defused, though had Nature Boy not suggested that Ms. Crowe return to her seat and “sit her toothless self back down.” It was a rash remark that Nature Boy would soon regret. As Nature Boy himself put it:

“I had him tied up and was beating on him, and this lady jumps up with a knife, cuts him loose, and then pulled a loaded gun on me.”

It was a Romantic gesture, really — a swashbuckling exploit worthy of Errol Flynn. Or maybe Orlando Bloom (in the pirate movies, not Orlando Bloom in Main Street, a film which was appalling on several levels and had no swashbuckling at all). The courageous Ms. Crowe risked her own life in a desperate effort to save Iron Mann, as well as in defense of her honor.

“He was talking mean to me, and I got mad. I guess I just let my temper get the best of me and I pulled my pistol on him”

That ‘toothless’ remark, it must be admitted, was rather ungentlemanly. But Ms. Crowe demonstrated great restraint. She didn’t actually fire the .38 caliber pistol. That probably accounts for why she was only charged with aggravated assault and reckless conduct. She was released Monday on US$4000 bail.

It’s unclear whether or not Ms. Crowe’s pistol was returned to her.

Ms. Patricia Anne Crowe, 59, amateur swashbuckler.

AWF promotion officials have stated they intend to install metal detectors before any future events in Ringgold.

“The way the world is today, things happen at movie theatres and malls….you have to take extreme measures to protect fans.”

Yes. The way the world is today. It’s actually getting to the point where it’s difficult to trust American Wrestling Federation fans to be responsible gun owners.

fuck you sexual harasser

Posted on June 8, 2016 by greg

I can remember being in high school, riding around in a car with my buddies, passing a couple of girls on the street, and the guys leaning out the windows, laughing and shouting. I don’t recall what they shouted. Probably something like “Hey baby, looking good.” I remember thinking it was a stupid thing to do — not because I thought it was harassing or threatening, but simply because it didn’t seem to me like an effective way to pick up girls.

I never gave much thought to cat-calling as a young man. It was just something some guys did. I did four years in the military and heard male troops catcall women, and didn’t think much about it. I did four years in college and heard undergrads catcall women, and didn’t think much about it. Then I became a counselor in the psychiatric/security unit of a prison for women. The inmates taught me a LOT about what life was like for women — or at least what life was like for women who ended up in prison. Every few weeks I’d be assigned weekend duty. That sometimes included taking low-risk inmates on local excursions — a movie, maybe. Maybe a trip to a nearby park. Maybe a visit to a local diner so they could get to eat something other than prison food. It wasn’t unusual for me to drive a prison van with six to eight women convicts into town, herd them into the local theater, buy them all popcorn, and watch a movie with them.

And it wasn’t unusual for local young men, seeing us all walk down the street, to shout out the windows of their pickups at the women. When that happened, I noticed a lot of the women would tense up. And I paid attention, though not entirely for the right reasons. I paid attention in part because I’d been trained to notice body language. But I was also very aware that when any group of inmates start to tense up, you’d best pay attention.

A big chunk of my job was to try to understand and help these women, so on various occasions I’d talk to some of them about their reaction to the cat-calling. I remember one of them saying something like “When I hear that, I get ready to run. They gonna have to catch me, if they want to rape me.” That’s when I first started to get it. I still tended to put that anxiety down to druggie paranoia and living in bad neighborhoods — but I got the first real inkling of what it was like for those women to move through the world.

Years later I was living with a woman — a feminist criminologist. She opened my eyes in a lot of ways. One of the many things I learned was that an intellectual understanding of feminism doesn’t give you any meaningful insight into how women have to live. There was a night when she asked me to go with her to fetch something from a local market. I was busy doing something and didn’t really want to interrupt it. I figured she just wanted me along for company. But she explained there wasn’t any safe place for her to park at the market — which made no sense to me, since there was plenty of parking spaces nearby. What she meant, though, was 1) a lot of navy men often went to that market for beer and 2) there wasn’t a street light she could park beneath. She needed to park under a street light, she said, to be sure nobody was hiding in or near the car.

And I began to understand a bit more. I could run to the market to buy a clove of garlic without a second thought. For her, a run to the market required strategies to stay safe. And it wasn’t just a run to the market at night — it was going to the gym in the morning, it was getting off work in the evening, it was going to the mall, it was taking the dog for a walk. Taking the damned dog for a damned walk, and just by doing that she knew there was a decent chance she’d get harassed. Just walking down a street with a dog.

To me, this was a revelation. To her, it was so glaringly obvious that it hardly needed to be mentioned. And this was a woman who taught feminist thinking.

And you know what? I still don’t get it. Not really. I mean, I get it when I think about it. But as a guy, I rarely have to think about it. Which is why I’m both ashamed and grateful when a woman reminds me. And that’s what happened this morning. A friend of mine, Lori Andrews, posted this on Facebook:

I just got cat called with “mommy”. Of course I was far enough away that I couldn’t identify which construction worker did it. But here is what I wanted to say to him.

I have hated you my entire life. You drove beside me when I was a child and terrified me. You followed me and tried to touch me when I was a young woman. You have yelled at me from cars, broken my reverie in quiet walks, assaulted me verbally on my bike. You still talk about me and call out to me just out of view but always in earshot. Always when just I alone can hear it and no passers by are aware. Every day of my life I have endured your endless taunts and frightening threats. I’m 48 years old.

Fuck you sexual harasser. Fuck you.

It’s difficult for me to imagine the ridiculous lengths women have to go through every day just to avoid being harassed or harmed. Most of my life I’ve been in careers that required me to try to understand what life is like for other people. I like to think I’m pretty good at it. But every time I come across an experience like Lori’s, I’m reminded that I still don’t really get it. Despite having the lesson repeated to me countless times by so many women, it still doesn’t entirely register in my brain that women deal with this shit every day.

Here’s proof of that: earlier today I mentioned to a woman friend that I was thinking about writing a blog post about cat-calling because another friend had posted about an incident on Facebook. I said something like “More women should talk about this crap, so men will be reminded of just how hateful and pernicious it is.” My friend said “Why should it be a woman’s responsibility to remind men not to be assholes?”

There’s no good way for me to end this post. There’s nothing I can say that won’t come across as self-serving, or patronizing, or stupid in some way. But this has been on my mind all morning and it’s important that this stuff gets discussed.

I want to thank Lori for allowing me to quote her Facebook post and use her name. And I want to thank all the women who responded to her Facebook post, and as long as I’m at it, I should thank all the women who’ve been patient with me over the years. It’s not your responsibility to remind men not to be assholes — but thank you for doing it anyway.

fuck dilbert

Posted on June 6, 2016 by greg

Oh lawdy, did you see this? Scott Adams — the Dilbert cartoonist — has 1) endorsed Hillary Clinton for President of These United States and 2) says she’s likely to start a race war. But it’s okay, on account of 3) he’s only endorsing her to escape assassination.

No, I am NOT making this up. It sounds like I’m making it up, on account of it’s so fucking stupid it would make paramecium scratch their heads — but I am NOT making it up. Here’s his endorsement in its paramecium-confusing entirety. So you can check what I write against what he actually no-shit I’m-not-making-this-up says.

“This past week we saw Clinton pair the idea of President Trump with nuclear disaster, racism, Hitler, the Holocaust, and whatever else makes you tremble in fear.”

And hey, there’s some truth in that. Not a lot, but some. Hillary did, in fact, say this:

“[I]t’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.”

I have to say, it’s pretty easy to imagine Trump getting the U.S. involved in a war. He talks a lot about bombing the shit out of people, which sounds pretty war-like to me. But did she actually ‘pair’ Trump with Hitler and the Holocaust? Nope. Did she call him a racist? Well, sorta kinda. What she actually said was that Trump “plays coy with white supremacists.” She says that because Trump actually does play coy with white supremacists. Which, I guess, is pretty much saying he’s either a racist or he doesn’t mind racists. But that’s because Trump is a racist. Or doesn’t mind racists.

Adams also wrote this in his ‘endorsement’ of Clinton:

“Trump took her so-called “woman card” and turned it into a liability. So Clinton wisely pivoted. Her new scare tactics are solid-gold persuasion.”

Well, no. Trump didn’t turn the ‘woman card’ into a liability. Trump said “I think only card she has is the women’s card.” That didn’t hurt Clinton at all. In fact, it turned a LOT of women away from Trump. Well, farther away. And Clinton didn’t pivot away from Trump’s sexist comment; she embraced it as an example of why women can’t trust or believe him.

And then Adams says — and again, I’m honestly NOT making this up — this Dilbert guy actually wrote these exact words:

“The only downside I can see to the new approach is that it is likely to trigger a race war in the United States. And I would be a top-ten assassination target in that scenario because once you define Trump as Hitler, you also give citizens moral permission to kill him. And obviously it would be okay to kill anyone who actively supports a genocidal dictator, including anyone who wrote about his persuasion skills in positive terms.

If Clinton successfully pairs Trump with Hitler in your mind – as she is doing – and loses anyway, about a quarter of the country will think it is morally justified to assassinate their own leader.”

Apparently if you claim Trump is a racist and you cite some of the racist shit Trump says, and then racist violence starts, the violence is the fault of those folks who called Trump a racist. To believe that and write it is stupid at the atomic level. Every atom in Scott Adams body must be spinning off-kilter and making a whiny, high-pitched mree mree mree sound, like an air conditioner that’s about to explosively cease functioning.

It’s a good thing Trump supporters and conservatives have too much integrity to pair anybody with Hitler (oh lawdy, I’m a fucking riot).

And that ‘morally justified to assassinate’ bullshit? This colossal fuckwit Adams is not only suggesting Clinton is tacitly promoting the murder of Trump but also the murder of himself because — because who the fuck knows why? Because he predicted Trump would win the election? C’mon.

Those French dudes who wrote politically charged cartoons for Charlie Hebdo? They were assassinated because they offended intolerant religious fanatics. Those guys took actual risks by writing unpopular stuff about actual issues. Writing a cartoon about an office drone in a cubicle and a snarky dog doesn’t make anybody a threat. Jeebus, get over yourself. Dilbert is no fucking Charlie Hebdo.

Then Adams says — and I know you’re thinking he can’t possible say anything stupider than what he’s already said, but YOU’D BE WRONG. He writes:

“I’ve decided to endorse Hillary Clinton for President, for my personal safety. Trump supporters don’t have any bad feelings about patriotic Americans such as myself, so I’ll be safe from that crowd. But Clinton supporters have convinced me – and here I am being 100% serious – that my safety is at risk if I am seen as supportive of Trump.”

He may be 100% serious, but he’s also 100% full of moose shit. The only risk to Scott Adams is that somebody might decide to stop reading his comic or buying his fucking stuffed dogs or his…well, his books.

But don’t fret. At the very end of his ‘endorsement’ Scott Adams asks you to buy his book. Seriously. Again, totally NOT making that up. So if all you Hillary supporters can just hold off on that race war and assassination summer long enough to buy his book, then maybe he’ll be able to afford to escape to some safe haven for cartoonist heroes.

Mree mree mree mreeeee.

this is bullshit

Posted on June 1, 2016 by greg

It’s no secret that I’ve become disenchanted with the Sanders campaign — and to some extent with Bernie himself. A few folks have pointed out that since the beginning of his campaign I’ve been harder on Bernie than I have on Hillary. And it’s absolutely true — I have been. That’s because I expected more of Bernie than I did of Hillary. In fact, I still expect more of Bernie than I do of Hillary. I expect Hillary and her campaign to engage in traditional politics; I expected Bernie and his campaign to move beyond that.

Let me also say I’m not entirely opposed to traditional politics. When practiced with integrity, politics is about getting stuff done. It’s about finding the seam between what’s ideal and what’s possible. But when practiced with cynicism or ego — and way too often these days, that’s the default toggle — politics becomes about tearing down the people with whom you disagree.

Which brings me to this. Over the last few days, I’ve seen this posted five times by five different people. All of them are people I like. They’re all people I firmly believe have integrity. They’re people who would never deliberately spread a lie. And yet there’s this:

I don’t know anything about Ron Gavalik. But I do know this is bullshit. I don’t say that because I’ve become a convert of Hillary Clinton. I haven’t — though I accept she’s going to be the Democratic nominee and I’ll work to get her elected. I say this is bullshit because I took the time to look into it. I looked into it because this made no sense to me. I may not be an avid Hillary supporter, but she’s always been sound on the issue of Social Security. I had to wonder if she’d somehow changed her position.

She hasn’t.

Here’s how this sort of pernicious bullshit gets spread. It started back before the New Hampshire primary, when Bernie made a categorical statement that he’d never accept any sort of cut to Social Security. Daniel Marans, a reporter for The Huffington Post, asked the Clinton campaign if they were also willing to make “a red-line pledge not to cut [social security] benefits.” According to the article Marans published, the aide pointed Marans to the Clinton campaign website, in which Hillary is quoted as saying “I won’t cut Social Security. … I’ll defend it, and I’ll expand it.” The aide then told Marans the following:

“She has no plans to cut benefits and, in fact, has a plan to expand them.”

That seems pretty clear, right? But wait — no plan to cut Social Security doesn’t mean she won’t consider it at some point in the future. Could that mean she’s ‘open’ to the idea? Marans then interviewed Nancy Altman, who has a lot of experience in issues involving Social Security (and who, by the way, also does reporting for The Huffington Post). Ms. Altman stated Clinton’s policy statements:

“do not definitively promise not to cut the program.”

That’s technically accurate, though radically misleading. On her campaign website Clinton lays out her plan to extend Social Security benefits and very clearly states “I won’t cut Social Security” but she doesn’t say “I definitely promise not to cut the program, honest, cross my heart, I’m not making this up, pinkie swear”.

Marans also interviewed Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the Progressive Campaign Change Committee. When asked for a response to Clinton’s aide’s comment that Hillary doesn’t plan to cut benefits, Ms. Taylor said:

“George W. Bush had no plan to invade Iraq.”

Since George W. Bush DID, in fact, invade Iraq, clearly Hillary Clinton will almost certainly cut Soci…you know, that notion just too stupid for me to even finish writing it.

Let’s review all that. A reporter for The Huffington Post interviewed a Clinton campaign staffer who stated Hillary had no plans to cut Social Security but DID have plans to expand the program. He then interviewed another reporter for The Huffington Post who read the Clinton campaign’s position on Social Security and decided it didn’t include a definite promise not to cut Social Security. Finally, he interviewed a third person who noted that George W. Bush invaded Iraq.

Got that? That bit of rank speculation was then reported at CommonDreams.org under the following headline:

Hillary Clinton Refuses to Rule Out Any and All Benefit Cuts to Social Security

And that leads us directly back to Ron Gavalik’s bullshit claim that Hillary Clinton is ‘open’ to the idea of cutting Social Security benefits for poor folks.

There are valid reasons to prefer Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. Lots of valid reasons, in fact, which is why I supported Bernie early in the campaign. There’s simply no need to make shit up and smear it all over the Intertubes.

This is exactly the sort of ugly politics Bernie opposed at the beginning of his campaign. It’s bullshit like this — and the willingness of so many Bernie supporters to fabricate bullshit like this — that led me to end my support for Bernie’s campaign. It’s bullshit like this — and the willingness of so many Bernie supporters to believe anything if it suggests Hillary is evil and corrupt — that disappoints me more than any of the ugly attacks spread by the Republicans.

You don’t have to lie about Hillary to support Bernie. You don’t have to resort to this sort of bullshit.

not worried about trump

Posted on May 30, 2016 by greg

I ain’t worried about no Trump.

He’s not going to be president. He’s just not. There’s no way. Let me say that again. There is absolutely no fucking way Donald J. Trump is going to become the President of These United States. I’m completely confident in saying that.

Well, I mean, I suppose it’s possible. It’s also possible that the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park could erupt again later this week. After all, it’s been 650,000 years since its last eruption. So it’s within the realm of possibility. But is either of these massively calamitous events anywhere near likely to happen? Nope.

Here’s the thing: first off, Trump’s got no ground game. Sure, the guy’s pretty good at holding big rallies. Rallies are great visuals. All that spectacle — excited people waving signs and calling out the candidate’s name. That looks impressive on television and in news photos. But rallies don’t get voters to the polling stations on election day. You want to win an election, you’ve got to get voters to places where they can actually vote. You need a political infrastructure designed to both encourage voters and to shift their bodies from the sofa to the voting booth. Infrastructure is NOT flashy or exciting, so Trump and his crew of political remora haven’t devoted much time or effort to putting that infrastructure together.

Second, Trump hasn’t been tested against a Democratic candidate. He’s been ‘debating’ against dumplings who couldn’t really attack him because they mostly agree with him. And when they didn’t agree with him, they were afraid to alienate the Republican base (I almost said the ‘lunatic fringe’, but now that IS the Republican base).

I mean, look — in the Republican debates Trump could rise up on his hind legs and say astonishingly stupid things like “We’re not winning. America doesn’t win anymore. We don’t win. We’re just not winning.” and his opponents couldn’t say “What the fuck are you talking about — winning what?” They couldn’t say something like “Well, sure we’re winning, of course we’re winning” because that would be seen as supporting President Hussein Bams of Muslim, Kenya. If you look at the order of the fuckwits who dropped out of the Republican race, you’ll see that the most rational candidates dropped out soonest. The Republican primary was never a contest to determine who was the best person to govern These United States. It was always a contest to see who was the biggest asshole.

Which is why Trump’s biggest competition came from Ted Fuckin’ Cruz, the man whose own political party would vote him Most Likely To Be Left To Starve On An Ice Floe. Ted Fuckin’ Cruz is so actively disliked that if a plane carrying Republicans crashed in the Andes, they’d starve before they’d eat him. I don’t think anybody actually believed Ted Fuckin’ Cruz was the Zodiac Killer, but a lot of people wanted him to be. And that’s the guy Trump had to beat in the primaries. You put Trump on a debate stage with any Democrat not currently in a coma and Trump will explode like a popcorn fart. All it’ll take is somebody using a calm voice and saying “Well, no, building a wall along the border with Mexico is just a silly idea.”

But even if Trump had a ground game, and even if Trump was a competent conservative debater, he still couldn’t win the coming election. The math is against him — and math is a merciless sumbitch. Only about 23% of the electorate (those folks who are eligible to vote) are registered as Republicans. Democrats do a bit better (32% of the electorate) but the biggest voting bloc in the U.S. right now are Independents and unaffiliated voters (at 39% of the electorate). The remaining 6% are registered as Libertarians or Green Party or one of the whackadoodle political fringe groups.

So even if every registered Republican shows up at the pools and votes for Trump and if fully half of the unaffiliated and Independent voters experience a psychotic fugue state in the voting booth and go for Trump, that’s still only 42% of the electorate. That’s the most optimistic outcome for Trump.

The fact is, a lot of Republicans aren’t willing to vote for Trump. That’s especially true for women. Depending on which poll you look at, anywhere from 35-45% of women registered as Republicans have said they definitely won’t vote for Trump. Nor can Trump rely on many of those unaffiliated/Independent voters. Almost half of younger voters — those 18 to 35 — are unaffiliated/Independent voters. The same is true of Latino voters; nearly half are registered as unaffiliated/Independent.

Trump’s not getting the women’s vote, he’s not getting the Latino vote, he’s not getting the vote of any minority group. Trump’s wheelhouse is mostly filled with angry/scared white guys. It sure seems like there’s a lot of them these days; they make a lot of noise and we see them on television all the goddamn time — but happily there’s just not enough of them to carry an election.

Trump’s not a serious candidate. The political party he represents is no longer a serious political party. He’s fucked — and with any luck, he’s fucked the entire Republican party. Trump’s defeat may force them to get serious again.

The only way Democrats can lose is by dividing the party and not showing up to vote. Which, now that I say it, is possible.

In other news, back in March of this year locals reported an area of the Shoshone River near Yellowstone National Park was boiling. That boiling has stopped. For the moment.

practicing in public

Posted on May 25, 2016 by greg

I very much like the work of photographer William Gedney, but I admit I wasn’t terribly interested when I learned his journals were available online. Still, when I wrote about Gedney several years ago I took the opportunity to look at a few of them.

Most of the journal entries were pretty dull. Photography historians may be fascinated to know that on Friday, April 22nd, 1966 Gedney finished a roll of Tri-X in his Leica M3 by shooting a few frames of the Long Island University gym and the Paramount building (1/60 at f 2.8) and of a sleeping boy (1/10 at f 2.8). Me, I don’t really care. It’s mildly interesting to know Gedney stopped by Diane Arbus’s apartment in January of 1969 to fetch a couple of prints, and that her hair was very short at the time. Me, I don’t really care.

I’m only slightly more interested in reading the quotations or song lyrics Gedney copied into his journals. I tend not to be inspired by ‘inspirational’ quotations. But I found myself reading a three page entry in Gedney’s 1969 journal. Three pages — one long quotation by Alfred Stieglitz. I won’t quote the thing; you can read it yourself if you want. Essentially Stieglitz was talking about ‘practicing in public’ — showing work that doesn’t quite meet your standards for what the work could be. He said:

[I]f one does not practice in public in reality, then in nine cases out of ten the world will never see the finished product of one’s work. Some people go on the assumption that if a thing is not a hundred percent perfect it should not be given to the world, but I have seen too many things that were a hundred percent perfect that were spiritually dead, and then things that have been seemingly incomplete that have life and vitality, which I prefer by far to the other so-called perfect thing.

Stieglitz also talks some bullshit, like “Is the thing felt – does it come out of an inner need – an inner must? Is one ready to die for it?… that is the only test.” Is one ready to die for it, lawdy. Drama queen, right there. Gedney includes all that crap about ‘inner must’ in his three pages — but I think we can overlook the bullshit and still learn something worthwhile from Stieglitz.

I love the notion of practicing in public. I’d be lying if I claimed I only shot photographs for my own pleasure. I enjoy making them available to other folks. I rather hope the folks who bother to look at them find something worthwhile in some of them, but if they don’t, I’m not that concerned. For the most part, I’m fairly confident of my ability to take a good photo — if I have a moment or two to allow the elements of a good photo to register in my brain. You know, stuff like composition, light and shadow, geometry, depth of field. All I need is that moment or two; I’ve been noodling with cameras long enough that I can adapt fairly quickly to most situations.

But then there’s street photography, and the street is pretty damned stingy when it comes to allowing you a moment or two for anything to register in the brain. Sure, you can look at a scene and quickly assess the possibilities — the light is good over there, the shadows are nice in that spot, all I need now is for something interesting to happen right there. But if nothing happens — like in the shot below — you’re just left standing around gawping like the village idiot. There’s a spot for potentially interesting photo, but the street just ain’t giving it away.

Street work is different. It’s about immediacy. It’s about anticipating what’s about to happen while incorporating the unpredictable. It’s about being open to the moment and responding to it creatively, and without conscious thought. Those are things I’ve been good at all my life. All my life — except when it comes to photography.

I have very little confidence in my ability to shoot street. I totally love doing it. I love the spontaneity of it. I love the semi-unpredictable way groups of people shift in and out of patterns. I love the way the point of balance of an image may exist only for a moment, then disappear and what could have been an engaging photo becomes just a disorganized, visually jarring clump of people. I love shooting from the hip (and I mean literally from the hip), trying to anticipate how various elements will arrange themselves in the next few moments — and predicting how that arrangement will appear through the lens of a camera held maybe eighteen inches below my eyes.

All the things I love about street photography are things that make it easy to get it wrong. It’s so very easy to miss the shot, to fuck up the composition, to release the shutter a moment too soon or too late, to be half a step too far to the left, to fail to notice what’s taking place (or not taking place) in the background.

The difference between good street work and ineffective street work can be measured in the time it takes a person to turn their head or glance at a cell phone. I love the practice of street photography — getting out there and trying to do it well. And I’m with Stieglitz about the importance of practicing in public. If you want to be good at this stuff, you need to be open about the struggle. Fuck perfection.

So back to Gedney and Stieglitz:

Either you feel that a thing must be perfect before you present it to the public, or you are willing to let it go out even knowing that it is not perfect, because you are striving for something even beyond what you have achieved… [I]n struggling for perfection you know that you may lose the very glimmer of life, the very spirit of the thing that you also know exists at a particular point in what you have done; and that to interfere with it would be to destroy that very living quality.

Practicing in public. I’ve been thinking about this concept off and on for a few years, but it was only recently I began to focus on that last phrase: “…to interfere with it would be to destroy that very living quality.”

It’s that living quality that makes street photography vital, isn’t it? So if there’s any style of photography that ought to be practiced in public — that should be liberated from the entire idea of ‘perfection’ — it should be street. Right?

i want my bernie back

Posted on May 20, 2016 by greg

Well, I’m done with Bernie. Don’t misunderstand me. Bernie Sanders’s politics still align more closely with mine. I still think he’d have been a good president. I’m just done supporting him.

Not because of that fracas in Nevada. And that’s all it was, a fracas — a lot of bustle and fuss and loud noises. It was the result of anger and passion, and I’m of the opinion that anger and passion have a place in politics. I think it was stupid, but I don’t have any real problem with that.

And it’s not because Bernie doesn’t really have a realistic path to the nomination. That’s just math and unbending reality. I don’t think Bernie should stop his campaign and start supporting Hillary — at least not yet. I think he needs to show up in Philadelphia with as many pledged delegates as he can get, so he can help shape the official Democratic platform.

And I’m not withdrawing my support for Bernie because of what I see as the emerging hypocrisy of some of his positions. And yes, I mean hypocrisy. Early in his campaign he decried the idea of superdelegates, saying the DNC used them to overturn the will of the people. I rather agreed with him. But now that he needs them, Bernie seems to think it’s fine for superdelegates to overturn the will of the people. His argument is that polls show him doing better against Trump, so for the good of the Democratic party superdelegates should support him rather than Hillary, even though she’s won more pledged delegates and has won more votes. And about those polls — throughout this campaign Bernie has dismissed the importance of polling data. And he’s been right to do so. If we listened to the polls, Bernie would already be back home in Vermont. Yet now he’s using polling numbers to bolster his argument that superdelegates should abandon Hillary and support him. That’s hypocrisy. It’s also unrealistic to think he can disparage the Democratic party elite as part of his stump speech, and then expect them to support him (because that’s exactly what the superdelegates are — the party elite).

But even that isn’t what’s caused me to change my mind about supporting Bernie. A certain amount of hypocrisy is hard-wired into the political process. Politics is grounded in compromise, and that sometimes means you have to support a position you don’t fully agree with. Bernie has spent his entire life in public service; he’s had to do that before. Not as often as some, but he’s done it. And I don’t find fault with him for that.

I want my Bernie back.

No, the reason I’m no longer supporting Bernie is because of an emerging pattern of whiny self-righteousness and martyrdom that I find offensive. It bothered me early on, when Bernie’s flacks dismissed Hillary’s victories in the South as somehow illegitimate, because the Southern states were Red states. It bothered me that he did that while championing his own victories in caucus states, which are the least democratic way of nominating a candidate.

I’m tired of hearing Bernie supporters who can’t be bothered to learn the requirements for voting in their primaries, then claim their votes are being suppressed. I’m tired of hearing Bernie’s campaign claim that every primary or caucus they lose has somehow been rigged, but every state he’s won is a legitimate victory. I’m tired of the histrionics, the claim that if Bernie doesn’t win then democracy is dead. And I’m really tired of hearing folks say that if Democrats don’t support Bernie, then they deserve Trump.

I still want a US$15 minimum wage. I still want free or affordable college available to everyone. I still want to see the big banks neutered, and the criminal justice system reformed, and universal medical care. I still want all those things I wanted five months ago during the Iowa caucus. I still want that Bernie Sanders.

But I don’t want what Bernie’s campaign has become. I want the old Not me, us Bernie Sanders. I don’t want the new Me, or you deserve to get fucked over Bernie campaign.

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