Malaria. Mumps. Mauling By A Bear. All Things We Will Miss More Than You.
When the “end” came for Senator Joe Lieberman (I-“only-give-a-fuck-about-me”—CT), it was hoped for by many here on the left that there would be more to it than what we got a week or so ago. More smoke. More fire. A bruising primary battle that he would again lose and again spit on the process with another third party run that would end this time with an exhausting loss and a bicuspid-loosening, lachrymose speech to end all bicuspid-loosening, lachrymose speeches.
Instead, we got the unexpected, punk-assed bow-out before the predicted knock-out…and a pretty damned lachrymose speech anyways.
We will take it.
You see, when you get a bow out like that, it means that said candidate's internal polling in-state is not merely on the negative end of things. It means that it is abysmal to the point where it can not be centrifugally spun to even neutral.
This final Senatorial term and his craven shenanigans during it soiled his reputation in Connecticut to the point where the number of those who'd backed him for the last twenty years, “just 'cuz”, was swamped by the number of those who'd begun to find themselves pissed off by him as far back as the 2000 Presidential election when he patty-caked with his direct opponent Dick Cheney(!), and the steadily increasing number of middle-grounders who found his post-September 11th hawk-fuck behavior growing more reprehensible by the month.
It would have been schadenfreudilly-icious fun to see it end for him all Santorum-like on a balloon and confetti-free stage with a small band of broken-hearted nutmegger supporters and a doddering, stiff-lipped John McCain by his side as the TV talking heads all went on about the sadness of it all / warrior carried out on his shield / “he was his own man” yada-yada they reflexively spew out of their mouths. “Just 'cuz”.
But instead, with his typical courage…Joe ran away rather than get run out. We'll never know just how awful the internals actually were, but let's just say that the numbers were not based on some random “it just happened”, shrug your shoulders “Wha?” anomaly. In politics, things happen for a reason. And Joe Lieberman started seeding the ground early for his abandonment by the Connecticut electorate.
In 1998, he let it be known to the generation of Democratic politicos that came after him and ascended to power without his king-making-thank-you-very-much! that he would not be ignored, when he came out as the one Dem to most obviously hop a cheap-ass hobo-ride on the right wing's “Get Bill Clinton Express” during the impeachment hearings. This was one of the first times I remember hearing about Lieberman's oh-so-convenient “moral” (pronounced by Joe in that annoying as hell, cloying “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll” intonation) nature. It would sadly, not be the fucking last.
Two years later in 2000, having ridden the wave of fame from his standing alone against Bill Clinton's penis or something like that, we found Joe again on the national stage, having been chosen as the Vice Presidential candidate by then veep Al Gore in a stupidly misguided attempt to curry favor with the mewling, chicken-necked scolds of the voter base. Lieberman not only brought us all the new word for the opposite of voter excitement (“Joe-mentum”), but also let everyone know who his friends truly were when he he rhetorically gelded himself and handed over on the world's smallest silver platter said separated goods to his opponent, the famously venomous Dick Cheney during their lone Vice Presidential debate that season. His relationship with Cheney that night was like that of a sozzled patrician reveler at a dinner party in Georgetown who realizes upon grabbing the last canapé off the hors d'œuvres tray that a fellow “Villager” has grabbed the other end of it—where they laughingly break the fucking thing in half, each wolf it down and then cut some cushy deal two weeks later as they hack the 18th hole at Swan Point to bits because “Hey, guys like us…we have to get along, right?”.
Wrong.
Throw in his droopy-jowled capitulation to Bush, Cheney and the Brooks Brothers Rioters during the later 2000 recount fight, totally undermining the top-of-the-ticket push to count every vote and his passive / aggressive pattern became clear to all. Albeit a bit too clear for ol' Joe, though…
As the year 2004 bought him back into the limelight. That is, if you consider “the limelight” the bare periphery of the goddamned political stage where you could just make out his silhouette where the haze of the spotlight ends and stagehand-hiding darkness begins. He was ten things beyond an afterthought in the 2004 Democratic Presidential primaries and that universal opinion evidently bent what was left of the needle of his wildly spinning internal moral compass for fucking good. Sure, it's doubtful that his almost metronomic fellating of George Bush's divisive Iraq War in the face of its bullshitteousness (which as said bullshitteousness increased, so oddly did his support for it) didn't have a thing to do with Dems running from him on the national stage like he had the disease-of-the-day SARS shooting out of his pores at them, huh?. He took offense that Dems took offense over his playing doormat to the GOP's shit-covered shoes whenever possible and never looked back after that should-have-been-ruinous political season. Should-have-been-ruinous. Alas.
Shoot ahead to 2006 when even Nutmeg State Dems found him distastefully bitter and chose another Democrat, Ned Lamont to be their standard bearer for the party. Joe went to the mattresses at this point, invoking his alter ego Droopy Dog's mantra “You know what? That makes me mad.” and effectively laid waste to what was left of his Democratic bona fides with his third party run for the slot. It was going to be a win / win for him. If he won, he'd thumb his nose at the party he'd screwed into despising him, and even if he lost he'd split the vote so the “ungrateful” Dems couldn't possibly win, thus handing the seat over to his canapé-sharing palsie-walsies in the G.O.P. Scenario Number One came to pass, and from that point forward, he would be led only by his aforementioned (cue the heroic-but-dated Frank Capra movie music) “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll nature”.
Which meant nad-kicking anyone and any policy that he simply disliked because it originated from or benefited the party he'd been abandoning since his supposedly canny shanking of Bill Clinton in '98. Hell, as far back as his first term really, since he giddily backed George Bush the Senior's initial Gulf War in 1991. People forget about that little shot across the bow.
It was all downhill and ugly on big, square wheels after that for ol' Joey “Shanks”. From his unctuous, drama-queeny dithering on who to caucus with in the Senate and playing the Dems for chumps (not that hard of a thing, really) by invoking his magical, key Senate vote in return for attendance at key leadership meetings, only to run back to Mitch McConnell and crew with the “Ooh, Ooh! Here's what they're gonna do!” dirt, to his dude-who-will-not-leave-the-party-even-though-the-host's-gotta-go-to-work-the-next-day level of continued support for the war in Iraq after everyone else saw it for the debacle it was, to his bilious backing of Connecticut's Catholic-run Hospitals refusing to administer the morning after pill on the religious whims of their owners to rape victims (Yes…rape…VICTIMS!), which prompted his infamous “It's only a short ride to another hospital” callous-speak, his descent was like un-unwatchable blurry footage of a wild car crash from some cheesy “You Gotta See This!” late night reality video show. He'd campaign with his comrade-in-hypocrisy John McCain during the latter's 2008 stumble for President and then…then give a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008 that showed us all the bold difference between “Country Crazy” (Zell Miller) and “DINO Diabolical” (Lieberman himself). After President Obama's election and the Dems increasing their Senate numbers to where Lieberman's passive-aggresive pussy-footing meant even less, he was reduced to the occasional “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll” pontification on whatever vote it was that would move him to be that ineffectual old man yelling at clouds in the sky.
Until now. Those bad internal polls and a little bird's tale of less-than-good responses from potential donors on an initial reach-out for a 2012 run were enough to squelch his hopes of torturing us with six more years of deeply felt moaning from that tom turkey neck of his.
Of course, just 48 hours ago, he let loose a spew of pride-bandaging nonsense about how he 'could have won if he chose to run' as political reporters' angle on him was shifting to how his once-considerable constituency had evaporated. His statement only went to prove the point that a self-aggrandizing, toothless leopard never really can change its spots. But just before all that and his retirement announcement, he desperately tried to pull one of the oldest and most transparent tricks in ye olde book of con-artistry. And that was his flexing what little power he had left in getting “Don't Ask—Don't Tell” repealed when he did and the way he did.
Take yourself back to high school, junior going into senior year—pretty much the stretch run of things and you'll probably remember this scenario either happening to you or saw it happen to any number of people: Kids who spent the last few chapters of their time there fucking off everything worth a damn—ditching every class they had, smoking in the stairwells, and acting like utterly self-centered tools to anyone who dared call them on these transgressions while simultaneously compounding the school's delinquency problem . All of a sudden as the end nears, they get it in their heads to come back to class, make up a few homework assignments and maybe slap together a project they should have been working on throughout and then expect that final, furtive burst of psuedo-conscientious activity to be the thing their entire student career is to be graded upon. “Pay no attention to my long legacy of assholery…how's about this fine poster board triptych and still-drying papier-mâché presentation on the life-cycle of the multitude-feeding, mother-fucking corn plant, huh?”
“I mean…I get a science medal for this, right?”
No.You. Do. Not.
Joe Lieberman was that dorkwad student for the entire second half of his Senate career, siding with the delinquents and thugs and being a general miscreant and pain-in-the-ass to everyone who expected better of him and let him know that they did. He comes to the obvious end of things and then, only then—did he suddenly figure it was finally okay to do a “gasp!” decent thing for some Americans who really needed it in the last session of Congress where he could really use some of that alleged capital he'd sat his wrinkled ass on for years. He is that asshole kid you will remember forever for overflowing all the toilets during lunch—when you were on one of them. He is the dude who thought it would be fun to mix the science class' magnesium flakes into the pottery class clay, thus blowing up the kiln and contaminating the gym with fumes for three months. During the winter. That dude…who wants you to instead remember for him for that excellent goddamned corn plant display he roughed off in the last three weeks of school. DADT repeal was great. But hey, it was the only decent thing to do…and special points are not awarded for doing what you are supposed to do, especially when in retrospect it is one of the only things you were supposed to do that you actually went out and did.
In a prizefight, you don't win 'cause you put together a pretty flurry in the last thirty seconds of each round after shambling about and tanking the first two minutes and thirty seconds of those rounds, because it never really fools the judges.
Only dive-taking bums do that. And Joe Lieberman…is a dive-taking bum.
I will not miss him, and neither will you. His bogus “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll” nature will be an afterthought after countless afterthoughts before it. That passive-aggressive backstabbiness and craven ransom holding of votes that should have been simple-human-decency-based will not be thought of as ironic or crafty politicking, but rather as what they were—underhanded and self-serving. His migraine-inducing plays for integrity when confronted with his misdeeds, trotting out the sad, soggy old card of neo-cons everywhere—“I marched with Dr. King”—will absolutely not be missed. Real warriors of that time never have to bring that shit up out of context. Only post-mid-life-crisis ideological flip-floppers looking to cover their naked asses from rightful criticism work that mawkish angle out of the blue.
So, Joe…it ends…as bad things like root canals, IRS audits and weekend-long diarrheic bouts with Indian food poisoning always do. With the sufferer pained and worse for wear, but happier than a cat in a “Deadliest Catch” fish hold that the bad times are at long last over. Toodle-oooo, Joey, and I hope your future career at Fox is so quickly negotiated that when the Senate door swings shut to hit you where the Good Lord split you that it can only strike the vapor of whatever final legislative fart on the way out I know you'll decide to grace that august chamber with.
Here's a song to scoot out to. And please enjoy Oran's spoken word love poem at the 2:23 mark.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
...Where The Good Lord Split You
Monday, January 24, 2011
The Dukes Of Moral Hazard
“Jes’ Some Good Ol’ Boys (And Girls), Never Meanin’ No Harm...” Right!
No. I'm not dead. In fact, I'm quite well actually…but I've been so schedule-addled (working from afternoons into nights now) and damned busy for what seems like forever that I can hardly find the time to write like I should.
I am DEEPLY sorry for that. Sorry for that, and for not fighting the good fight as I wanted to here through observation and dialogue with you all. I'm sorrier still for missing all the opportunities to cover all the “News” this blog's name demands we should. So many half-done, fitful pieces tucked in their little folders with reference materials and supportive charts and graphics and all that. Pieces that I tell ya— woulda-coulda been great had I gotten them done. Or something like that.
The following piece was last worked on in the Spring/early Summer of last year. I felt very strongly about the issue it spoke to then…and…
Well…it hits home ever stronger today. Here it is, unedited save for a small, updated editor's note dealing with the status of one of the people mentioned within.
Read on…
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The Dukes Of Moral Hazard
Not too long ago, a client I do some work for had a policy in place that pretty much encouraged an activity by its market audience that was going to lead to some innocent people being badly impacted thanks to the wild and self-serving whims of a few. I addressed this to my client, as did others who worked in the same capacity, but responsibility was shrugged off, most classically with the phrase “Hey...we’re not cops.” One co-hort of mine spoke up forcefully to all who would listen, laying out that said client was most assuredly creating a situation of something called “Moral Hazard” . I knew what it meant, having lawyers in the family and an insurance industry professional as a spouse, but some of those it was directed towards (and in the direct position to right the potential wrongs) were in “Duh? Du-u-u-u-u-u-u-hhh?” mode. My co-hort “G” broke it down for ‘em.
G: Moral hazard. (“Sigh!”) You don’t kno—ugh! It’s when you like...knowingly enable a situation that clearly benefits you, but has some elements to it that you know...you KNOW is gonna put some people in harm’s way. Serious harm’s way. Somebody’s gonna get hurt bad.. But you don’t care, ‘cause legally you’re kinda covered. Ethically though...you’re living foul. You know it. Now, we can try to play that shit off, but sooner or later we’re gonna be on the hook when something bad goes down. Watch and see.
CLIENT “A”: I dunno…I think you…might be overstating things.
G: Okay. I'm just sayin', though. You watch and see.
It was only a few months later when the client flipped the script, with a drastic policy change closing those extremely self-favorable but evidently perilous loopholes. Turned out that “G” was exactly right—the bad scenario he would go on to detail had occurred and was exactly what brought on the ol’ switcheroo as people were damaged by the “whatever happens, happens” laissez faire policy and the client was in a position of potentially heavy liability.
Which brings us back...
...to these clowns.In the heat of the Health Care Reform battle a month or so ago, and quite honestly, ever since around...say, 12:01 p.m. two January 20ths ago, the usual batshitteous wingnut suspects have been in a feces-flinging lather over their ideology’s rejection by a majority of the American people. They chuckled about and cheered on that percentage of the Soreloser-ists who bitterly (Yes, “bitterly”. Funny how no one wants to address that bit of prescience / common sense the then-candidate Obama dared speak publicly on) ramped up their going for their
You see, when you come off years of recent skullduggery that makes all the skullduggery of the past look like little more than a smack-your-head-and-go-“Awwwwwww!” game of Stratego™—stealing national elections, lying us into a economy and moral standing-draining war, torturing under the cover of bullshit necessity to mask simple sadism—only to find that “the people” no longer want you at the levers of power that you are addicted to being in the mere proximity of, you will do just about fucking anything and everything, including supporting those who would stoop to damn-near anarchy in America, as long as it means you get to jerk the puppet strings around yet again.
Let's be real, though. Being so bereft of ideas is embarrassing. In a spin-free, reality-based vacuum, said idea-less would look like dimwits. (Sadly, that vacuum has ceased to exist in the last twenty five, cable-news stuffed, centrifuge-action years.) And because the idea-less have no rational counter to the opposing side’s policies and no hold of facts due to truth’s being radioactive to open discussion of their destructive “beliefs”, the last line of defense for them ends up being the public embrace of their lunatic fringe. And it is not just a few in the right’s hierarchy who we find suckling greedily at crazy’s swollen teat. From the House Minority Whip (Now Speaker Of The House—ed.) John Boehner (pictured as “Luke Duke” in the photo-illustration) who screamed like a jumper cable-tortured banshee on the floor of the House as his GOP's obstruction to Health Care Reform dissolved, to wingnuttia’s de-facto dumbfuck standard-bearer Sarah Palin’s whooping up the unsubtle, misspelled placard carrying crowds in her creepy, singsong-y Lonesome Rhodes in-drag- style, to the usually passive-aggressive bitchery/ but now “we really lost”, spiteful, fuck-the-world-ism of good ol’ Insta-
Those few who dare point out the bedshittery of encouraging the extremists come home to find the locks on ye olde wingnut welfare bank vault door have been changed. The American Enterprise Institute’s former sloganeer-in-charge—David Frum, learned this the hard way when he publicly pointed out the clear results of doing the shing-a-ling with the spittle-spraying devils of the fringe.
Dear Arthur,
This will memorialize our conversation at lunch today. Effective immediately, my position as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute is terminated. I appreciate the consideration that delays my emptying of my office until after my return from travel next week. Premises will be vacated no later than April 9.
I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute, and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship.
Very truly yours, David Frum
It could have been worse for him, I suppose. They could have just mailed him his stuff, like the Reagan blow-up doll and the sumptuous, corinthian leather waterboarding bench from his old office. Postage-fucking-due, of course.
Where “Moral Hazard” comes into play is when these supposedly intelligent-in-some-ways people willfully hose gasoline onto the white hot fires burning within the worst of their ilk. We saw post-the HCR bill’s passage by the House, a rash of vandalism against property, actual physical threats to lawmakers who dared vote “aye”, and some not very-well-coded threats of something worse than injury to the same. The bad actors? Nearly to a Goddamned man, folks identifying with the super-heated phraseology of the lunatics behaving badly at the public gatherings that the Palins, Boehners and piss-pot Reynoldses have not merely winked at casually, but have vociferously championed.
Championed by playing to these kooks’ base “Duke Nukem” eliminationist fantasies with the “harmless” crosshair-sighting of ideological opponents on their websites and telling the very same people they’ve backed carrying firearms to simple rallies to “Don’t Retreat, RELOAD!‘
Championed by making excuses for the un-democratic and actually destructive acts by the fanatics, and then openly playing to them by mimicking their all-too-familiar screaming, screeching and shouting down—except this time on the floor of the U.S. House Of Representatives instead of atop a rickety milk crate on a streetcorner in downtown East Bumfuck where that sort of goonery usually belongs.
Championed by the breathless glamorization of a so-called “movement” whose most fervent members openly...and I do mean openly espouse the hoariest of old racist tropes and rhetoric and at their most moral, barely pooh-pooh said “quackery” as less than inconsequential. Which brings us to their worst pandering—namely the tying things all together with a “Don’t Tread On Me” green and yellow bow of “fuck democracy-ism” by defending the likes of the Hutaree Cult Of Anti-Governmental Crazy—an actual loaded-for-bear group of violence-espousing dead-enders who—guess what?—are ideological brethren to the Teabaggers.
It would be one thing if the heat here was over a basic difference of opinion—a disagreement with policy and direction. But it’s not that. The nexus between the boiling, molten core of the Tea Party “movement” and the pundits and politicos who are gleefully agitating it is the spectacularly unsubtle spectre of cornered-rat violence.
A basic difference of opinion will not move you to bring assault weapons to a town hall debate on health care, to hang nooses to and fro—just out of protest, mind you, or to vandalize opponent's homes and campaign offices. Once violence rears its medusa-head in mere discussions of policy, we have moved from an airing out of differences and debate to terroristic thuggery. And the general rule is: You terrorize when your opponent is someone you hate to the point where your ability to civilly disagree and engage in discussion has effectively left you.
The knifepoint, noose and bullet is the last bastion of the simple-minded zealot.
And when you keep these people madly frothing, knowing full well that you are agitating an unstable core and one of these nuts acts out—because when you talk of “the tree of liberty needing to be refreshed with the blood of patriots”, and you gun-sight ideological opponents and defend anarchic, bomb-making, would-be domestic bomb-tossers—you have tacitly incited that act and are on the hook for it. If not legally, then at the very least in the spirit of the law of basic common sense.
Understand though, that these class and spin-insulated (from their pickled-in-crazy “base”) instigators will try to explain away their non-culpability and cluck their tongues at all the unfortunateness while disingenuously cheering on whatever the awful act committed is, because it still forwards their spiteful “We're not in charge, so fuck the world” narrative.
And if you think the issue of “Moral Hazard” isn’t a worthwhile one with repercussions that can change the course of history, I suggest you go back no further than a mere few years after yours truly here was born—1965.
I was born into and grew up as a member of the old Nation Of Islam in the early 60’s. Muhammad Ali was a family friend as was the late Malcolm X, who was directly and fatally affected by “Moral Hazard’s”...well, hazards.
A mere twelve days after the assassination of JFK, Malcolm went a bit off the reservation if you will, with his infamously blunt “Chickens coming home to roost” statements about the U.S.'s celebration of and willy-nilly meting out of violence domestically and internationally, and tied Kennedy’s murder in as a self-caused by-product of it. Thinking objectively, it was indeed a tough bit of rhetoric, coming so soon on the heels of the world-stunning crime, but actually it was pretty par for the course in terms of the them-vs.-us NOI-speak at the time. The sentiment was one definitely felt in-group, and yes, even in certain circles of über-progressives beyond the Nation, albeit quietly. That said, the words whipped up a vicious anti-Black Muslim backlash, which is doubly ironic when you consider that the group was already under mega-siege by local police departments, the F.B.I., and the C.I.A.’s oh-so-ethical COINTELPRO program. Things actually managed to get worse pressure-wise for the Muslims, and in an effort to create some breathing room, the NOI’s leader, Elijah Muhammad effectively threw Malcolm under the bus via a very public suspension from the Mosque (inside the NOI we simply called it being “put out”) and a printed repudiation of his words.
Now, simultaneous to this, there were also some deep undercurrents of fear and loathing running rampant within the NOI—things the general public had no clue of, but if you were an NOI member and knew people in the hierarchy in the bigger Mosques like New York’s, Boston’s, Chicago’s, Detroit’s, Philadelphia’s and Newark’s, you most certainly knew about it—namely that as the group's leader Elijah Muhammad was in extremely ill health, his natural successor as NOI leader was his second-in-command—Malcolm X, and he, much to the chagrin of his leadership peers was cut from a much different cloth than they were. Like any other religious sect, there were people in charge with a vested financial interest in maintaining the structural status quo that kept them more than just materially comfortable. Malcolm X was not one of these people. He was a hard-ass, an ascetic, and had a pathological dislike of those who profited off the backs of the poor, but extremely charitable followers in the Nation. The fear in the collection-plate grubbing leadership was that should Malcolm ascend to the NOI's leadership upon Elijah's passing, (who would actually hang on “Hyman Roth”-style at death’s door for many years) that the monetary gravy train would end and with it, all of the perks and deference paid to them. (Spike Lee is one of the few non-Nation insiders to pick up on this scandal and notes it as a key plot point in his film “Malcolm X”)
With that, said leadership mounted a well-timed and very self-serving PR assault against Malcolm's so-called “transgressions” that featured great, heaping helpings of superheated, eliminationist rhetoric.
For example:
On July 9, John Ali, a top aide (The NOI National Secretary actually as well as a later exposed FBI plant and informant—ed. note L.M.) to (Elijah) Muhammad, answered a question about Malcolm X by saying that “anyone who opposes the Honorable Elijah Muhammad puts their life in jeopardy.”
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The December 4th issue of Muhammad Speaks i (The NOI's weekly newspaper—ed. note L.M.) included an article by Louis X (later Louis Farrakhan—ed. note L.M.) that railed against Malcolm X and said that “such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death.”
And then there was the following infamous “satirical” cartoon drawn by Eugene Majied that appeared in the NOI's newspaper “Muhammad Speaks”, depicting not in code, but in blunt visual language to Muslims how things should end for a so-called “traitor” like Malcolm. (The term, “Take his head!” was often roared hyperbolically from behind Mosque rostrums as a call for revenge against those who dared do them bodily harm)
Again, the words in their usual “in our house” context would be more of the usual fire-em'-up hyperbole, as no outside threat's “head” had ever been taken, but that sentiment had never been so literally depicted. This was naked, visceral “snuff”-speak. Words, yes ...but with words you have to be careful when and how you speak and of course know who you are speaking to. You don’t yell “FIRE” in a crowded theatre, nor do you for shits and giggles yell “GUN!” when you see police officers frantically chasing someone down. Bad things can happen.
And very, very bad things happened to Minister Malcolm X.
Much like the loopy, gun-brandishing, conspiracy theory-wedded base of the Tea Partiers, the NOI had its own bag of mixed nuts within. We called them, “Spooky Brothers”. These were the NOI members who most of us kind of shied away from, the scary ones who really, truly, and totally believed in orbiting Motherships spiriting all thirty million of us Black folk away, and the fable of grafted, blue-eyed devils being fashioned 6,000 years ago on the island of Patmos and the like—never considering that a lot of these tales were feel-good, hyper-Black, counter-mythology designed to force out hundreds of years of self-hate that slavery and white supremacism had managed to drill into our heads. No...“Spooky Brothers” were that desperate bunch who couldn’t or wouldn’t discern rhetoric from reality. You could not joke with them. One, a semi-acquaintance of my father's dropped by our home unexpectedly one evening while my dad was still at work and almost pulled a “Cape Fear” number on us were it not for me and two of my three brothers occupying him, whilst another ran to Daddy's job to get him, and when Daddy did get there, he forcibly threw this nut out and pretty much saw to it that he never darkened a doorway within a hundred miles of us again. If there were some never-before-spoken word ten phantom letters of the alphabet past “Z” for “Zealot” to describe what folks like this were, it would have been a perfectly apt one. They were damaged, desperate folks who if not for the psychic life preserver and regimentation of the NOI would have wound up either dead or locked away for having brought death to someone. It was the last-ditch thing they could coalesce around, belong to, believe in. Nuance-free, dead-ender, “Spooky Brothers”.
Sound familiar?
But the “Spooky Brothers” could be sort of useful pariahs in the NOI. Useful in that they would do just about anything you positioned them to if the “order” came from on high, but still, not the sort you went to if you wanted good outside PR. In the end, they were loose cannon fuck-ups. And being fuck-ups you had to treat them the way the NYPD treats fuck-up cops—banishing them to “beats” in the hinterlands where they couldn't cause too much trouble.
In the Muslims' case, those hinterlands was Muhammad's Mosque #25 in Newark, New Jersey—a.k.a. “Spooky Brother Central”. The organization's national hierarchy knew they were there, what they were about and what they were capable of and still pushed that dangerous rhetorical envelope against Malcolm X. And the “Spookies” spookily ate up every bit of the threatening speech, gobbled down every morsel of malice and it metastasized in them, manifesting itself in the end...like so.
Malcolm X's lifeless body being rushed from the Audubon Ballroom across Broadway to Presbyterian Hospital where efforts to resuscitate him failed.For years afterward, and to our (the old NOI's) eternal shame, many of those in the Nation who spouted that incendiary, threatening bullshit tried to play it off like they had no culpability in egging on the terrible event, especially after Malcolm's historical stock only rose afterward. But as sure as hell they did. They were looking out for their own creepy self-interest, looking to take down the no-bullshit heir apparent, and position themselves better and closer to power...so they said what they said, knowing that there were malleably crazy, eager, subordinate someones who would do what they did. Yes, there were powerful outside entities who did their own part to enable the deed (Yes, I'm looking at you in your sequined, off-the-shoulder gown, J. Edgar) and further a larger and even more destructive agenda, but there the toxic words stand...said by those who said them and acted upon at least in part by those everyone talking knew were capable and anxious to act out.
Only some 35 years later would Louis (formerly Louis X...yes, that aforementioned Louis X) Farrakhan own up to his part in pushing the narrative and fostering the atmosphere that led to Malcolm's murder.
Cold comfort that, but there it is. Moral Hazard, people.
There will of course be the cry that someone is chilling someone's right to speak in laying this nightmare scenario out. That cry will be a supremely hollow one as the people yelling loudest about the “chilling” will be the ones who cheered the disemboweling of The Bill Of Rights post-September 11th, championed the blacklisting of artists who disagreed with the breakneck rush to war, and had no problem with Habeas Corpus becoming little more than a corpse itself when it suited their political desires.
Disagreeing publicly is as American as apple-fucking-pie. But sloppily calling down fatwas for an armed, zealot-filled base to act upon is what the Frum-ian swarthy “evil” are supposed to be known for. When one of our homegrown, whipped-up nuts acts out in his or her fucked-up, ostensibly patriotic duty and gets a person or a group of innocent persons separated from their lives (A-gain), you will see these “Dukes Of Moral Hazard” rush to cover their asses, because we live in an age where every word you blog, bleat, bitch or bloviate lives on no matter how you try to wish it away into the cornfield. You cannot—for lack of a better phrase—un-shoot that gun.
This bears repeating...
And because the idea-less have no rational counter to the opposing side’s policies and no hold of facts due to truth’s being radioactive to open discussion of their destructive “beliefs”, the last line of defense for them ends up being the embracing their lunatic fringe.
Dave Neiwert and John Amato have a book coming out entitled “Over The Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove Driven Right Insane” and it could not be better titled, for that is exactly what has happened. From the actual penning of “Birther” legislation, to the inane, unconstitutional slashes at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of Arizona's so-called immigration reform law, to the repeated and spiteful threats of secession from the republic, “teh crazy” has bled over from the supposed fringe to the main Republican Party garment proper, thanks to the right's luminaries having nothing else to offer. With “teh crazy” having become their new normal, all bets are off. The usual self-centeredness, cowardice and amorality is something we could sort of laugh at as the right's public policy motor would comically seize and blow itself to pieces Wile E. Coyote-style, as in Newt's infamous FUBAR-ing of the budget talks with Bill Clinton in '93. This new, brazen, violence-infused tack being taken...
Well...this is being done at “The Dukes Of Moral Hazard's” own peril.
Here's something you may not know: For decades after Malcolm X's assassination, and very quietly I might add, many who helped fan the flames and create the atmosphere for his murder found themselves on the receiving end of extremely rough justice from patient, long-memoried people deeply wounded by his death. Louis Farrakhan himself went underground for an extended time after the death of Elijah Muhammad and the subsequent exposure of his fecklessness left him with little protection from that silent band of revengers who when time and opportunity allowed 'paid it backward' in very final terms to those involved at all levels. But for the grace of God and some very serious back-channel mea culpas, he is somehow still with us. And even with all of that, his F.O.I. security detail still doesn't let their guard down for a second, nearly half a century later. Why?
Because there is the obvious, above-board justice from the court of common sense and the judgement of history but there is also a thing called karmic justice—where one oftentimes reaps exactly what one has sown. You never really see it coming but if you're smart, you know it's out there, a maelstrom of anger churning far, far away that eventually says “Hello” with but a breeze's kiss on the cheek at first. It touches you nonetheless. And then...then baby, you reap the mother-fucking whirlwind.
They are playing with people's lives. Literally. And there is a price for playing with people's lives...for the poor pawns on the board, of course...but also, for those playing and getting off on the awful game itself.
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And there it was as of early this past summer. Or rather, is.
It didn't take a Nostradamus to see “teh crazy” coming. Far more influential writers and pundits felt the first raindrops same as I did. Bill Clinton spoke on it ominously. The person most affected, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords smelled the storm coming miles away and sounded the siren quite early.
Yet, here we are. Still.
Note former President Clinton's call-out to take care in what we say and when…
“…Everything any of us says falls on the unhinged and the hinged alike.”
…And this piece's noting...
“...that desperate bunch who couldn’t or wouldn’t discern rhetoric from reality.”
Was Jared Loughner some rabid Teabagger gone 'round the bend? We don't know. He himself may not even know. But the opportunists who helped whip up the toxic. eliminationist, anti-government frenzy and cheered on those who brought and brandished loaded weapons at political rallies and town halls sure as hell is hot did…NOT...HELP.
So, that clucking sound the right's biggest whiners are complaining about? No. It's not the tongues of those of us who foresaw this.
It's just you know...the sound of old friends and family popping in for a visit.
P.S. The following JPEG is just to show when this piece was actually worked on.
Some things are unfortuntely timeless.
There's more...
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Tucson is in Shock
As a paramedic who used to work in Tucson (a quarter century ago), I
know the UA Trauma Center very well. Without question, it's the best
place Gabby Giffords and her colleagues could have been taken.
From the shooting till she arrived at UA was 37 minutes, a remarkable
scene time given 6 dead and 13 wounded (I think I have those numbers
correct.) My mom, who lives in Gabby's district, says the doctor's are
"cautiously optimistic." Gabby is responsive to pain, squeezing
fingers and so on, and the bullet to her head went in and out CLEANLY
without doing the damage which it could have. The good news in all
this seems to be that the shooter (my opinion, purely from what I've
read so far; I could well be wrong) wasn't using hollow-point bullets
(which expand dramatically on contact.) If he had been, I assure you
there'd be even more dead and that a head shot would have been fatal.
People in Tucson are in shock. Mom says she had 15+ calls yesterday
from around the country, and 10 today. Everyone is just sitting there,
stunned, unable to think of anything else. The little girl who was
killed was only nine years old; she was there as a reward for winning
a class election in her own grade. She was all excited because she was
going to get to hang out with Gaby and see how government works in
real life...
Tucson is in shock.
Gaby and a number of others, continue to fight for their lives. There's more...
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