Tag: Donald Trump

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said… (August 20, 2015)

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Chris McCoy’s cover story, “Best of Enemies” …

Thanks for a good article. Having known Mr. Buckley and written at length about him, I can assure you that this infamous moment with Vidal was highly uncharacteristic. In fact, he had great friendships with many of the leading liberal/left-thinkers of the era: John Kenneth Galbraith, Murray Kempton, Norman Mailer, Al Lowenstein, etc.

Vidal, on the other hand, managed to alienate seemingly everyone with whom he engaged, including Mailer, Podhoretz, Truman Capote, and Robert Kennedy. I look forward to the film, but the reality is that Buckley set the standard for civil discourse for decades, but for his exchanges with Vidal.

George Shadroui

About Susan Wilson’s column, “Gen X Marks the Spot” …

Generation X is considered to be anyone born between 1962 — sometimes 1961 — and 1981.

wutisay

I’ve heard 1964 ended the baby boom. So I’ve considered myself a boomer for years. You’re messing with my claim to curmudgeonliness.

Brunetto Latini

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s column, “Master Debaters, Near and Far” …

I like the Trumpster being in the midst of the current slate of GOP presidential candidates. There’s never a dull moment with Trump’s politically unorthodox behavior and tactics he uses against the cowering blue-blood establishment — milquetoast Republicans and the in-the-Democrats’-back-pocket media.

I think there’s deep resentment of the political scum in Washington, who have been governing over the last nine years or so against the will of the majority of Americans. Trump’s ever-rising poll numbers are indicative of their angst and disgust. The more Trump rants about illegal aliens, closing our borders, Marx-Obamacare, tax rates and structures, foreign enemies, the higher his numbers.

The RNC, DNC, and media have to be scratching their heads about Trump’s poll numbers. None of their playbooks have instructions on how to deal with non-politicians like him. Especially ones worth $10 billion.

Will Trump make it to the White House? Not likely. But candidates are definitely paying close attention to Trump — his poll numbers and his tactics — and they’re taking notes. Needless to say, the next 14 months of American politics should be interesting and entertaining.

Nightcrawler

Abortion was certainly a major topic during the recent Republican debates. There were passionate denunciations of abortion made by most of the candidates. But I think much hypocrisy is shown by these “pro-life” candidates who are so concerned with protecting unborn life but who seem to lack compassion for people after they are born. The candidates would all repeal Obamacare and offer no plan to help the 50 million people who would then lack access to health care. The suffering of millions of Americans and the deaths of thousands of others each year because they lack health coverage does not seem to be a problem for them. These candidates and other conservatives look at the poor as deadbeats waiting for government handouts, when the overwhelming majority of poor people work and pay taxes. Poor people struggle, because they are paid wages a person cannot live on. Sister Joan Chittister recently said a person can be against abortion but not deserve to be called “pro-life,” because they do not care about a child after it is born. She said instead of being truly pro-life that these people are really just pro-birth. I would characterize all Republican presidential candidates as pro-birth, not pro-life.

Philip Williams

The fact that Trump can rise in the polls after supporting a single-payer heath-care system at the RNC debate ought to establish once and for all that the Republican base is driven more by animus than by any concern for policy. He can run to the left of Bernie Sanders if he wants, as long as he keeps saying mean things about women and minorities.

autoegocrat

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Opinion Viewpoint

Trumped

Donald Trump is blunt about his primary qualification to be president: “I’m really rich!”

Yes, he is — and so are most of the other people running for the White House. All but four of the 22 prominent candidates across both parties are millionaires. The only non-millionaires are Senator Bernie Sanders, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, Senator Marco Rubio, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

And people with even more money than the candidates are bankrolling their campaigns. The New York Times reported that “fewer than 400 families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era.”

The Times found an especially astounding concentration of wealth among contributors to GOP campaigns. “Just 130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super PACs,” the paper reported. 

The Washington Post followed up with an editorial warning of an emerging “American oligarchy.” The Post wrote that big donations from the super-rich have “the potential to warp the political system.” In this sea of money, Trump still stands out. He is so rich that he doesn’t need to raise money to run his campaign. He recently took to Twitter to slam Republican candidates for going to a conference held by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. He said the politicians who went to the event were guilty of begging for money.

Trump’s derision drew lots of snickers, but his surprisingly successful campaign — built in part upon boasts about the power of big money — has traction with voters. Pew Research reported last December that the nation’s rich now have a “median net worth that is nearly 70 times that of the country’s lower-income families, [and there is now] also the widest wealth gap between these families in 30 years.” The top 1 percent now controls more than 80 percent of the nation’s wealth. 

Sanders gets a rousing response when he states that the gap between the very rich and everyone else in America is wider today than at any time since the 1920s. Senator Elizabeth Warren has become a folk hero on the left by calling for more help for middle- and working-class families while pushing a crackdown on the rich — specifically, on Wall Street’s risky but high-profit business ventures, which rely on government bailouts when they go sour. 

But somehow the richest of the rich candidates leads the GOP race. Trump says his wealth is evidence of his ability to make deals and thus become “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” Trump offers no specifics about how he will produce those jobs.

Conversations with voters — right or left — deliver one consistent theme: Economic anxiety is high. But there is no consensus on how to level the playing field. Polls show most conservatives do not want government action — other than lowering taxes. Among Democrats, more than 90 percent tell Pew that they want government intervention, such as raising the minimum wage, but only 40 percent of Republicans agree. Hillary Clinton has endorsed a proposal to raise the minimum wage in New York. So has Sanders, who calls the current $7.25 federal minimum wage a “starvation wage.” Trump and most of the GOP contenders oppose raising the minimum wage. They favor tax cuts, which they say would ignite growth.

Last year, President Obama proposed raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. The Republican Congress blocked his effort. According to 2012 exit polls, voters with annual family incomes under $51,000 made up 41 percent of the electorate. They voted for President Obama by 22 percentage points over Republican Mitt Romney. 

Today, most Americans polled say the economy is better than it was when President Obama came to office. Unemployment is down, and Wall Street profits are up to record levels. But wages are stagnant and median household income has not gone up for 20 years.

Meanwhile, loopholes and deductions taxes on the wealthy remain near historic lows, in part because of the extension of Bush-era tax cuts. And now the wealthy, under the new, more permissive campaign finance rules approved by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, are exerting more financial influence to mute any response to the populist impulse.

If politics is a mirror to the nation’s soul, then Trump and his boastful billions are a true reflection of America.

Juan Williams is a Fox News political analyst.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Master Debaters, Near and Far

Boring, boring, boring, boring, TRUMP!, boring, boring, boring, TRUMP!, boring, boring, boring, boring, TRUMP!, boring, boring, TRUMP!

That was the most concise analysis of last week’s GOP presidential candidate debate that I read. And that was on Twitter. It was a lot like the final episode of True Detective, except you’d replace “TRUMP!” with “KA-BLAM!”

The candidates spent most of the debate trying to convince viewers that they would be the best man to control American women’s uteruses, and denying any possibly sensible positions they’d held in the past. I fully expected Chris Wallace to end the debate by saying, “Final question: Which of you is the absolute batshit craziest, and why?”

The aftermath of the GOP debate was almost as much fun as the debate itself, as The Donald seemingly shot himself in the foot with misogynist comments about Fox moderator Megyn Kelly, who had the audacity to ask Trump about his many past mysogynist comments. Pundits immediately proclaimed that Trump had jumped the shark and that his campaign was over, unless he apologized.

Trump, as anyone who has observed his career could predict, didn’t apologize, and instead ramped up his rhetoric another notch. Naturally, his lead in the polls grew and Fox groveled, withering under Trump’s verbal assaults on the network.

I fully expect Trump to pull out a bunch of bills at the next debate and “make it rain” on the other candidates. What could it hurt at this point? He’s the Teflon Man.

It was a big week for debates, with Monday night’s Memphis mayoral forum coming just on the heels of the GOP’s extravaganza. Five candidates — Mayor A C Wharton, Jim Strickland, Harold Collins, Mike Williams, and Sharon Webb — vied to impress Memphis voters with their rhetoric and political acumen.

Well, except for Webb, who appeared to have wandered onstage by accident. As one person tweeted: “I’m sure Dr. Sharon is a sweet woman with a great heart, but this is not her element.” That would be correct, if by “her element,” you mean Earth. Prediction: You will not read or hear the term “Webb-mentum” in the next few weeks.

Each of the other four candidates made some points and took some shots at their opponents. Wharton gave as good as he got (and he got fired upon more than Detective Ray Velcoro in that True Detective finale).

I still think the race is going to come down to Wharton and Strickland, based primarily on the fact that they are by far the best-financed, and that beating an incumbent in a field split four ways is tough without serious cash. I don’t think race-based voting will be much of a factor. Memphis voters have shown time and time again that when it comes to city-wide races, crossover voting is the rule rather than the exception, especially when party affiliation is not a factor.

One thing is certain: This fall in Memphis will not be boring.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Debate Rap

CREDIT: Richard Koele | Dreamstime.com

By the time this clairvoyant column hits the streets, the first Fox News/Facebook debate between the 87 declared GOP candidates will have already taken place. But just like Nostradamus, I already know what’s going to happen.

The Fox clan will determine the top 10 contenders by their popularity ranking in the latest national polls, which coincidentally is the same way they do it on American Idol.

Fox News boss Roger Ailes has chosen crack journalists Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace to be the ringmasters of this circus, and since the bottom three contestants are statistically even, Ailes will probably pick who he thinks will give the best television. This debate is definitive proof that the de-facto leader of the Republican Party is Fox News. My crystal ball has told me what the Top 10 will say, starting with …

Donald Trump: The darling of the Tea Party and low-knowledge voter will make an attempt at dignity, until someone points out what an asshole he is, then Trump will go off and call everyone a loser and a horrible person and make damaging remarks about some opponent’s personal life. He’ll insist that he’s a nice person and that people like him, sort of like Al Franken minus the humor. Then he’ll rail about “illegals” and try to justify his comments about rapists by citing the abhorrent singular murder in San Francisco. He’ll build an impregnable fence, but it will be the classiest fence ever built. It’s time to put a winner in the White House. The four personal bankruptcies and three wives were just a speed bump. 

Scott Walker: The wildly unpopular governor of Wisconsin will mention that he’s already won two elections, although one was a recall prompted by the signatures of thousands of angry citizens who mobbed the Capitol Building in Madison. The recall was narrowly defeated thanks to a fortune in Koch brothers money. He will say his comparison of protesters with ISIS was poorly worded, but if elected president, the college dropout will immediately target this country’s greatest threat — the teachers’ union.

Richard Koele | Dreamstime.com

Jeb Bush

Jeb Bush: “The other white meat” will insist that he’s his own man and will profess his love for his father and his brother without mentioning either of them by name. He’ll deflect accusations of being “soft” on immigration and say that Trump’s comments about Mexicans were hurtful and vulgar — only he’ll say it in the nicest possible way. Bush will mention his Mexican wife and love of the Hispanic people, appealing to them by hablando un poco español. He will say that his remarks about his endorsement of the Iraq war and his comments about “phasing out” Medicare were taken out of context.

Dr. Ben Carson: The brilliant neurosurgeon will tell his truly remarkable story and mention his recognized excellence in his field. Then he’ll compare Obamacare to slavery and the Democrats to the Nazis. He’ll discuss his opposition to gay marriage and attempt to explain away the fact that he has never run for or been elected to anything. He has said, “We live in a Gestapo age, [but] people don’t realize it.” With his fondness for Nazi references, you might let him work on your brain but not on your country.

Marco Rubio: He will pander to the Latino vote, even though Hispanics probably know the difference between a Mexican, a Puerto Rican, and a Cuban from Miami. He’ll condemn the new Cuba agreement, saying Obama made a deal with a communist dictator. He will mention his parents’ ordeal, and when asked if he, as a freshman senator, is prepared to be president, he will compare himself to John F. Kennedy. When asked about climate change, he will say he’s not a scientist and then plead for a glass of water.

Mike Huckabee: The Huck will double down on his remarks comparing the recent Iran accords to “marching the Israelis to the oven door.” He will say that the president is feckless and naive and then repeat his quote, “It doesn’t embarrass me one bit to let you know that I believe Adam and Eve were real people.” Wait until someone tells him they were black.

Rand Paul: The Ayn Rand acolyte will first have to explain why he tried to pass a law allowing him to run for president and senator at the same time. He will discuss his opposition to Medicare and Social Security and parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He’ll say he wants to fix Social Security but wants you to forget about his statement that “reform is going to happen, and I hope it’s privatization,” or “The fundamental reason why Medicare is failing is why the Soviet Union failed.”

Ted Cruz: The loathsome reincarnation of Joseph McCarthy will repeat his statements that “Obama is the world’s largest financier of Islamic terrorism,” and “This is an administration that seems bound and determined to violate every single one of our Bill of Rights,” thus disqualifying him from further serious consideration for high office.

The other debators will be like a game of musical chairs between Chris “Bridgegate” Christie, Rick “Oops” Perry, and John Kasich, who stands a real chance of being shunned in the state of which he is governor. A Kasich staffer summed it up when he compared preparing for these debates to getting ready for a NASCAR race when one of the drivers is drunk. After all, who would you rather watch? Donald Trump or Carly Fiorina? My prediction is that the ratings for the debate will be “yoooge” and Fox will sign all the candidates to a glorified version of Hollywood Squares. There will definitely be a sequel, and it will be bigger, classier, and more spectacular than Sharknado 3.

Did I mention Benghazi?

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said… (July 30, 2015)

Greg Cravens

About Tim Sampson’s The Last Word column, “Trumped” …

After Trump wins the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, I expect to see Trump step up on the stage and tell his adoring conservative fans, “Bitches, you just got punk’d!!” And then Ashton Kutcher jumps out from behind the curtain.

Charley Eppes

Trump is a hero. He is the living embodiment of the Republican id. Unrestrained by the need to court the votes of the squishy middle, he is free to pull back the bed sheet and reveal the raging Rotary club president within. He is what the Republican Party would be if we didn’t have elections.

Jeff

About Chris Davis’ cover story, “Rockin’ the Halls” …

Thank you for last week’s story about the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, and especially for the focus on the artistry of Jim Dickinson. Of course, in Memphis, museums love to exhibit musicians’ rhinestone jumpsuits or stage costumes. Dickinson’s musical genius was that he helped develop so many of those superstars from studios like Ardent and Zebra Ranch. We’re proud to be able to display an expression of Jim’s artistry in that piano.

I made an insensitive mistake in last week’s article, referring to that piano as “Jim’s soul,” and I apologize to his great family. As a fellow Christian, while I love the awesomely creative expression of that piano, I understand that his soul, through grace, is both huge and eternal, a testament to his great slogan, “I’m just dead, I’m not gone.”

John Doyle, Memphis Music Hall of Fame

About Alexandra Pusateri’s post, “TBI Investigating Darrius Stewart Case” …

Who trusts the TBI or D.A. to investigate this? They need the police to produce evidence that keeps the jails full. Who is going to bite the hand that feeds them? I am so outraged, as a U.S. citizen, by the mentality of the police and their supporters. Police can kill without recourse.

Memphis Belle

I am enjoying watching our local media fan the flames and totally try to have this story blow up into something much more than it actually is. Memphis TV media: It’s just not going to happen here. Sorry.

Midtown Mark

I’m also enjoying reading some of the comments being posted on those local media articles. The local racists are so mad that black people aren’t rioting and protesting over this.

Nobody

I’m enjoying all the wanton police violence sweeping the country. Isn’t this just great? People are dying for systemic reasons we could fix but refuse to address, because it makes us feel icky. Wait, this actually sucks, because it could happen to anyone. Now it doesn’t seem so funny anymore.

Autoegocrat

About Wendi C. Thomas’ column, “Black Wealth Matters” …

Black wealth does matter. If things were reversed and blacks were the minority in numbers but majority holders of wealth in Memphis, the sentiment on the Caucasian side of this issue would be very different.

TruthBeTold

It is important that “black-owned businesses” are actually owned by black people and not just a front man or woman and that the employee ranks have actual black workers whose wages form the actual foundation of community.

Nick R.

About Bianca Phillips’ post, “MPD Does Not Have Passenger Policy for Traffic Stops” …

There is always a problem when any authority exceeds its constitutional limits, be it the MPD or anybody else. If it is unconstitutional for the police to demand ID on a passenger when the police are merely enforcing traffic laws, they do not have the right to go ahead and do it anyway.

If I am walking down the street minding my own business and the police stop me and ask me to show ID, I will not do so unless they can show some probable cause as to why I should comply. None of which gives Darrius Stewart cause to run and then fight with that policeman.

Arlington Pop

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Trumped

CREDIT: Imdan | Dreamstime.com

I don’t think I’ve ever used the term “bafflement” before, but I am now in a total state of bafflement. I can usually use reason and objective thinking to figure things out, but on this one I am stumped. I can’t seem to be able to think of one single fraction of a reason why anyone claiming to be a member of the human race could possibly think that it would be a good idea for Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States. Is there some kind of Kool-Aid out there that I don’t know about? Have we sunken this low? Is everyone smoking crack? Is this an alien invasion in disguise? Is this an ISIS plot?

Now the next time I travel to another country, I am going to have to tell people again that I am from Canada, so I don’t suffer the shame and humiliation of their knowing I am from a country where this repugnant, nouveau riche cartoon character is leading the polls in his party for the upcoming presidential election.

I don’t know who or what is worse: Trump, his supporters, or the sad state of the Republican Party, if this is the best they have to offer. I never thought these words would cross my mind in any way, shape, or fashion, but I sincerely think I’d rather see Sarah Palin in the White House than Donald Trump. Or Charles Manson. Or — God forbid — someone who is almost as frightening as Trump is: Marie Osmond. She scares the crap out of me on those weight-loss commercials, with the way she points into the camera when trying make a point. Come to think of it, she and Trump maybe have a lot in common. They’re both monsters.

Trump is the sleaziest, worst kind of opportunist, because all he really wants is attention. I don’t think he even wants the job of POTUS at all. He just wants people to pay attention to him. Thus, the hair. I know, I know. It’s an easy target that has been maligned for decades. But if he weren’t just out in the limelight to get attention he would do something to correct that magic carpet ride. After all — and he has said this on camera about two million times in the past week — he IS worth $10 billion. I think he can afford a stylist, but then that would take away from his shtick. And he is nothing but shtick. NOTHING. Other than hateful, racist, laughable comments about immigrants, I haven’t heard him say anything other than his gag-a-maggot claims of how rich he is. But then, I turn away in horror every time I see him on the television screen, so I might be missing something. Anyway, he’s a delusional creep, and it’s a shame even I am paying this much attention to him. Trump, be gone before one of your tacky skyscrapers falls on you.

So I’m going to turn my attention elsewhere and get down on my knees and thank Barack Obama for being the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. How in the hell it took so long for this to happen is anybody’s guess. But at least he did it, and at least he is going to try to do something about the crooked, for-profit, privately owned prison system in this country, where thousands and thousands of people are living like animals because they happened to have been caught with weed or pain pills on them. Oh, how violent and scary they are.

I can’t wait to see what else Obama does during this last period of his presidency. If I were him, I would go nuts. Now that gay marriage is finally legal across the country and he doesn’t have that to worry about, I would start enacting laws that replaced nonviolent drug offenders in the prisons with people who place unwanted telecommunication and scam calls to innocent people’s cell phones.

My phone is like a slot machine some days, with all the dinging from any number of bullshit calls. The other day I got one, and it was a recording from a robot voice telling me this was my final notice and that the IRS was filing a lawsuit against me. Right. I was so skeert. Like the IRS is going to leave an automated message on my cell phone voice mail, and like I make enough money for them to care about anything in my tax return.

So I tried to call back to play a little game. A woman did answer saying, “Hello, Internal Revenue Service,” in an unamerikan accent, and I could actually hear a television and a kid crying in the background. I called back from a landline, and when I tried to lay into her, she hung up. So I tried calling back from my cell phone numerous times but kept getting a fast busy signal and finally a number-disconnected message. Damn! I was all ready to play into her hand and fall for it before I told her my bank’s pin number was 666 and that I was Satan and was on my way to eat her children. But alas, no luck. Does anyone have a number for Donald Trump they can share with me?

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Wrecking Ball!

CREDIT: © Luis Lopes Silva | Dreamstime.com

© Luis Lopes Silva | Dreamstime.com

Hope Solo

Wow! Did you see that? No, not NBC telling Donald Trump that he was fired or Miley Cyrus posing nude again. I’m talkin’ about the U.S. women’s national soccer team putting a wrecking ball through Japan and winning its first World Cup in 16 years.

I’ll own up to my soccer ignorance. I tried to learn the game when the Memphis Rogues were filling the Liberty Bowl back in the late 1970s, but that was more of a good excuse to sit with your rowdy friends and get blasted. I even tried to play the game back in grade school but I kept getting kicked in the shins, and I refuse to participate in any sport that causes personal pain. I like to watch it, though, and what I saw last Sunday was spectacular. In the words of finals attendee Joe Biden, “This is a big fuckin’ deal.” After that match I was thinking that maybe women ought to govern for a while. But then people would scream, “I want my country back.”

My wife and I set aside all pending responsibilities to be certain we would be in front of the TV to watch this game, but almost before we could change the channel, the United States had scored. Then scored and scored and scored again. Our gesticulating and screaming frightened the dogs almost as much as the previous night’s fireworks. When Carli Lloyd kicked that 54-yard goal, we lost our minds.

Has anyone ever seen a kick like that before? Maybe the NFL could polish its tainted image by hiring the first female field-goal kicker. Going in to the match, we didn’t even know the players’ names, but we do now. Lloyd, who had struggled in earlier matches, scored the fastest goal ever and had the first hat trick in World Cup history. Aptly named goalkeeper Hope Solo won the Golden Glove award for allowing only three goals in seven games. The U.S. women’s national soccer team is the first to win three World Cups and in the process got payback for Japan’s World Cup victory win in 2011. What an inspiration this must be for girls everywhere and for women’s sports in general. People used to criticize soccer for lack of action. Not anymore. 

Truth be told, I felt a lot more patriotic on the fifth of July than the fourth. I watched all the usual festivities and squirmed through Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the USA” for the thousandth time, but I don’t participate anymore, because downtown Memphis on the Fourth of July is no country for old men.

But we ate hot dogs with relish, both literally and figuratively, and as it turns out, it wasn’t necessary to go downtown at all. The continual massive explosions around our neighborhood made us feel like we were right in the middle of the official display. The family pets turned into mad dogs, alternately howling at the ceiling or trembling in fear. There was a meme going around on social media that said that on the Fourth of July, the citizens of Memphis can play their favorite guessing game: Is it fireworks or gunshots?

The truth is, Independence Day, like Halloween, has become just another opportunity for grown people to get drunk and run wild. Is this the way we demonstrate patriotism? What those women did on that soccer field, playing for their country, was patriotic. The soldiers who serve us and the families that support them are patriotic. Blowing up shit is not patriotic.

In full disclosure, I’m not much of a patriot. Samuel Johnson in 1775, and Bob Dylan in 1983, said “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and I tend to believe them. Most of the patriotism I had was kicked out of me during the Vietnam War era, when we had a paranoid-schizophrenic president who refused to listen to legitimate protests or admit that he was wrong. I didn’t feel very proud to be an American back then. When Nixon’s conservative “Silent Majority” hijacked both what it meant to be patriotic and the American flag as symbol of the divisive “my country, right or wrong” sentiment, the flag turned into a pro-war symbol or a bumper sticker indicating loyalty to the administration. It was then when I realized that you can separate love of country from whoever happens to be in power at the time.

Politicians use patriotism for their own cynical purposes, so it’s illogical to pledge allegiance to a transient regime with an ideological agenda. I can simultaneously love my country while opposing the politics of those who would use patriotism like a cudgel. But after that incredible victory in the World Cup, I have found something to be patriotic about — devoid of war, politics, or division — just joy. That group of women did their country proud, which is something we can all relish.

Randy Haspel writes the Recycled Hippies blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Week That Was …

CREDIT: Bruce VanWyngarden

I was on vacation last week — on the road, on a boat, in the woods — mostly off the grid, as it were. Did I miss anything?

I mean, besides the Supreme Court approving the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and making gay marriage the law of the land, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley deciding to take down the Confederate flag, and the Grizzlies making a few moves and drafting another “project.” That’s about it, right?

Oh, and President Obama singing a hymn and making one of the most powerful and beautiful speeches I’ve ever heard. That, too.

I got bits and pieces of it all on my cell phone. Traveling across Long Island with my son at the wheel, I checked CNN and saw that the ACA had survived its most serious challenge. “Wow,” I said. “The Supreme Court upheld Obamacare today.”

“That’s a big deal, right?” said my son.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “A very big deal.” Then back to vacationing we went.

It was the same sort of scenario with the SCOTUS gay-marriage decision. I learned of it on my phone in a coffee shop in Amagansett.

“That’s huge,” my son said.

“Amazing,” I said. Then back to vacationing we went: sailing, surfing, hikes in the woods, walks along secluded beaches. Our Airbnb didn’t have wi-fi and phone reception was iffy. The country was changing in monumental ways and we were barely aware of it.

Friday night, we went to hear a couple of acoustic musicians play in the local town square. It was a gorgeous evening, cool, dark, and starry, with a half-moon hanging overhead. The performers finished with a lovely version of Neil Young’s “Helpless.” Blue, blue windows behind the stars. Such peace.

As the crowd stood and shuffled, I stayed seated on the blanket and checked Facebook, as one does occasionally, even on vacation. A friend had posted a video of President Obama singing “Amazing Grace” during his eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney. I clicked on it and listened. Within seconds there were tears in my eyes. What a powerful and perfect redemptive gesture. I sat for a while, taking it in and maybe for the first time understanding the magnitude of what had transpired in my country in a few short days.

I got back to Memphis Sunday and spent hours catching up, reading newspapers, checking websites, getting opinions and reactions to all the drama.

Justice Scalia’s get-off-my-lawn dissents, citing “hippies” and other “jiggery-pokery” were priceless. There was the inevitable blowback. Some GOP officeholders were still trying to figure out ways to keep the tides of change at bay. The old tropes of Christian persecution and states’ rights were run up the flagpole again, but even the politicians seemed to know it was over. The KKK announced a march in South Carolina, for “heritage.” Send in the clowns. Speaking of which: Donald Trump even got fired.

What a week.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Carrienelson1 | Dreamstime.com

Rather than make up some lame best/worst list from the past year, I’d rather list a few things I would like to see happen in the future. They vary in subject and are in no particular order, but all are equally important. At least to me. I’m not talking about things in general, like “a return to civility,” but specific things that I lie awake and think about in my quietest hours. It’s because I’m a problem solver, and I’m waiting on some progressive think tank to call me up and actually pay me to dream up gems like these. Some may call them pipe dreams, but I’d prefer to think of it as “creative visualization,” which, I read, causes your wildest fantasies to come true, provided that they are first approved by CIA guidelines on astral projection. So, if I shut my eyes and concentrate, the Akashic record of all things past and future will grant my desires, which include:

• In the near future, the discredited and co-opted Tea Party will break away from the Republicans and form a third political party called the Neo-Dixiecrats, paying homage to their philosophical forefathers. This will encompass the race baiters, the climate deniers, the science refuseniks, the rape defenders, the Obama haters, the wackos, morons, and yahoos, leaving the business of governing up to those who actually have the country’s best interests at heart.

• After the first of the year, NRA president Wayne “Call Me Crazy” LaPierre will convene another news conference in which he will reveal that because of pressure from his members, he now agrees that military assault weapons have no purpose on city streets other than murder, and his conscience leads him to oppose the sale of high-capacity magazines and drums to the general public. LaPierre will say, “The police are out-gunned, and just like the ‘Tommy gun’ was banned in the 1920s, I see no reason not to outlaw assault-style weapons now.” LaPierre will further announce an NRA fund to assist victims of gun violence and educate school children about the dangers of firearms. In a candid aside, LaPierre will tell assembled reporters, “Look, I always knew that the Founding Fathers were only talking about muskets, but these guys were paying me a million dollars a year. The high-tech weapons of today don’t really have anything to do with the Second Amendment.”

• Leading up to the mid-term elections, the benefits of legalizing marijuana will spread from west to east, just like the original pot craze in the Sixties. But this will be about personal freedom and the potential revenues resulting from government regulation and taxation of marijuana sales. Pot laws will fall in state after state like dominoes, which, by coincidence, will see pizza sales rise. When the possession and sale of small amounts of pot are legalized, the prison doors will open wide and release tens of thousands of nonviolent marijuana offenders back into their communities; municipalities will discontinue using SWAT teams to kick in the doors of marijuana growers; because the profit has been taken out of illegal pot trafficking, the crime rate drops precipitately; the bloody conflict in Mexico ends because marijuana was the cash crop and the demand for harder drugs has now diminished. The U.S. government smacks themselves on the head and says, “What were we thinking?” while Congress votes to end the fool’s errand, the failed “War on Drugs.”

• Rupert Murdoch decides that the Republican Party has gone too far and transforms the Fox News Network into an entertainment channel that only shows Elvis movies and old reruns of All in the Family. Murdoch announces that a major portion of Fox’s profits will go to Planned Parenthood and the establishment of a series of nationwide adoption agencies for unwed mothers. Shortly thereafter, Rush Limbaugh’s sponsors decide that enough is enough, and end one of the longest and most obnoxious chapters in radio history. After his arrest for inciting a riot, Rush is declared a clear and present danger to the common order and is spotted wandering the streets with Bill O’Reilly, attempting to kick the homeless.

• President Obama brings the war in Afghanistan to an early end, pledges that the U.S. will never again initiate a war by invading a sovereign state without provocation, and announces a commission to look into the Bush administration’s lies leading up to the bombing of Baghdad.

• The Bass Pro Shop opens in the Pyramid to praise and unprecedented excitement. The featured attractions are unique to Memphis and the world and become a must-see in travel articles and tourist guides. The underwater visual experience is so enthralling that even the jaded people of Memphis return to the area, revitalizing the Pinch district while creating scores of jobs. Bass Pro decides against plastering their name all over the pyramid or putting a giant fishing lure on the exterior.

• The owners of the six major record companies decide that, hereafter, rap will be considered an art form, just not music. Some guy screaming into a microphone while a DJ plays sounds from days of yore is not a musical presentation; it is a spoken-word recitation, accompanied by pilfered snippets of already existing songs. I don’t care how much they pay in royalties, “sampling” is merely stealing another artist’s creation. Imagine Andy Warhol “sampling” Vincent Van Gogh.

• It is discovered that Donald Trump was not born in Queens, as records indicate, but in his mother’s native Scotland. His father falsified the birth notification with assistance from paid lackeys in the press, hoping the boy would be president someday. The Donald is declared an illegal alien and is forced to “self-deport,” where he begins a campaign for Scottish independence from an “illegitimate monarchy.”

• In 2016, we will elect our first woman president: Elizabeth Warren. And finally …

• Justin Timberlake will record my most soulful composition, “A Woman’s Touch,” available for listening on YouTube by Randy and the Radiants, and it becomes his biggest hit to date. I move into a zero-lot line on the river and pay off my credit card bills. Hey, it could happen. And a guy can dream, can’t he? All I need is a little help from my friends and some collective creative visualizations. That just might bring me the same happy new year that I wish for all of you.