Category Archives: The Red, White & Blues

06.04.17
by

Heads of State

Let’s look at the images side by side.

No – let’s really look.

I mean, there’s free porn all over the Internet featuring people (and god knows what else) doing sexual things you never dreamed of. And your kids – or nieces and nephews – have accessed this stuff more than once or ten times.

NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. #denial

Trust me, I know – I teach college juniors and seniors who reached puberty in the Digital Revolution.

But this week we’re not talking about sex, are we? It’s about political violence via comedy – or imagery – or something in that area.

So, how far is TOO FAR? Does it depend on the person being depicted in the image? Maybe it’s about the amount of blood or how vivid the photo is? Can a drawing be as offensive and tasteless as a photograph? What about taking iconic commercial photography and transforming it with a few clicks and inserts into something vile and offensive?

Oh.. so more offensive than this?

Well, I remember Judge Potter Stewart once famously said in a Supreme Court case that he couldn’t tell you what obscenity was but he knows it when he sees it. So I guess that would include not only sexual images but also violent ones, since in a broader definition the latter could also be considered pornographic, right?

I’m getting to the images.

Yes. imageS.

Having grown up in the sixties and seventies, I still subscribe to the Fairness Doctrine, which ostensibly ensured that when reporting on current events one needs to present both sides of a story.

This also works.

So it’s not enough to look at the comedian Kathy Griffin holding up the bloody severed head of our current Electoral Potus in a bizarre photo shoot.   If you’re going to critique an offensive image from one side, you need to show one perhaps equally offensive (Note: Or not, it’s your call) from the other.

Now, let’s really study them and see what we think because, really – if they’ve been on the Internet once, they WILL be there a million times more. I know it. You know it. And THEY all know it. Whoever the collective condemning THEY are in any particular moment.

Okay – ready. Here goes. Make your kids leave the room and make sure your heart medicine is nearby – that is if you need it or have any room left in your said, perhaps damaged, heart, for those on the side you particularly despise.   And yes – we’re all taking sides on this one.

Now. Once again. Ready, get set and…….go!!!!!!!

BEHOLD

There.

That wasn’t so bad, was it? Or was it??? Is your heart still even beating???

Take a breath.

Gimme a minute, Chairy!

Now you might be more offended by one or the other. Or perhaps you’re not offended at all. Maybe you think it’s all good under freedom of expression.

Or – maybe it’s nothing like that at all.

Maybe the severed head of a sitting president particularly offends you when its held by a popular left wing comic with whom you vehemently disagree with and never found funny.

Still, maybe taking the iconic campaign image of the previous president – the first BLACK president – and depicting him with a lynching rope around his neck as if he were a runaway slave who was caught and hung in the pre Civil War south – might bridle you more. Especially since it was also circulated when he was in office. 

I’m not one to judge for you. Only you can judge for you.   I mean —

As Rod Serling once wrote, it’s all in the “eye of the beholder.” Right?

Twilight Zone or how I imagine all Twitter Trolls?

Here’s what you need to understand. The image of Barack Obama lynched was widely passed all around right wing Republican circles and beyond with nary an apology or much massive regret at the time. And oh yes, what’s that I see, there’s even some red blood dripping down from the rope around his neck. Right above his tie. Which is right above the word ROPE – which substitutes for 44’s much quoted catch-phrase – HOPE.

Here’s what you also need to understand. The California Republican Party has just this weekend started using the Kathy Griffin/Trump beheading image in a FUNDRAISING EMAIL/LETTER.

Pretty much sums it up.

That’s right, they are so offended that are actually referencing and passing around the image over and over again in order to — make a buck.

Now — if that doesn’t make America great again, I don’t know what will.

#Resist

And save the outrage for real life. That goes for both sides. God knows, there’s enough to go around.

Seven more innocent souls were killed in London on Saturday and the blood they bled was real.

Stay strong london

Think about it the next time you decide to pile onto the tar and feathering of a comedienne in our virtual town square by supporting all those on your side of the aisle who feel the need to separate themselves from the motley pack of the rest of us by grasping for what is now our non-existent high ground.

Higher Ground – Playing for Change

05.07.17
by

Fried Egg Insurance

Bette Midler has a classic monologue about the humongous lady she once saw walking down 42nd Street in NYC who, she noticed, when she looked more closely, was sporting a fried egg on the center of her almost bald head.

In this routine, Bette goes on to laugh about the vagaries of life in the city and of this lady in particular, joking that she hopes to God that she herself doesn’t one day wind up with a fried egg on her head on a hot NYC street in the middle of July just because she couldn’t help herself.

And then it all turns deadly serious:

…Because the truth about friend eggs, she continues. …You can call it a fried egg. You can call it anything you like…But everybody gets one. Some people, they wear ‘em, on the outside. And some people, they wear ‘em, on the inside.”

If you want to know why we need to expand and fix the Affordable Care Act, nee ObamaCare, and why we should really be headed towards single payer, universal health care for EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN, this is the reason.

We will all, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US, be getting sick. We will break down. We will sputter. And we will one day – as the doctor informed the youngster me in the hospital hallway back in the seventies about my beloved aunt who had just suffered a fatal heart attack – EXPIRE.

So.. do I not have to grade papers? #legitquestion

The question is, how will it begin to happen for our loved ones and us? Can we live in dignity a little bit or a lot longer with the proper care? Or will we find ourselves unchecked, and the modern day equivalent of dying in the streets, because it makes more economic sense for the top power brokers in society for us to do so?

In other words, if health care costs too much the average American will not go to the doctor. Or wait until it’s too late to go. Or be dragged unwillingly to a hospital emergency room they can’t afford or are too scared to enter.

New strategies to avoid that situation

But if you are fortunate enough to be independently wealthy, or have gold star private insurance through your place of business (that, is, if you’re working) or have bought because money is no object, or long ago faced your inevitable expiration (which of us has?) and saved every penny you earned (again, which of us has?) for this inevitable day — NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.

There is another simple question we all have to ask ourselves as this national debate rages on:

What is ultimately more important – money or taking care of each other?

Can I have a few more minutes to think it over?

Now, I am more than aware that many in the country currently believe that taking care of each other means taking care of our loved ones and not people we’ve never met. And that since money is a rare commodity these days, they feel no obligation sharing with people they don’t know – certainly not others they deem inferior, or superior, or whose religious views, or outlook on a particular social issue, they find abhorrent.

Still, when you’re standing in the critical care unit of the hospital as I once did when I was a teenager…

…or in the center of an AIDS ward of a different hospital as I did in the eighties and nineties, bearing witness to various friends dying at way too young of an age…

I will never forget #youcancountonit

…or in the carpeted section of the upscale cancer floor of one of the best hospitals in the country as I did at the turn of this past century as my mother died from breast cancer…

…or in the heart and lung section a few years ago of that same upscale hospital as I saw my second mother go from lung cancer…

NONE of these arguments much matter. You don’t see dollar signs. You don’t see religion. Or race. Or the political affiliations. Of anyone.

Your only thought is that your loved one and the loved ones of every single person on that floor and within your sight line gets better. At any cost.

I am not an expert on health insurance and I certainly don’t play one on television.   But what I also would never play at ever in front of a TV camera is a partier in the White House Rose Garden toasting the repeal of a law that will TAKE AWAY health care from more than 20 million people in favor of a vague intangible plan that I haven’t fully read and whose cost is, thus far, unknown.

If they only had a…

I mean, I’m only gonna buy something from Amazon when I KNOW I can get it cheaper – not because Jeff Bezos promises me that if and when they get it in stock or create their own new version, it’s gonna to be cheaper and better than the something that I have now. Sure, Jeff seems nice and all – and is friends with Oprah – and is in the billionaire boys/sometimes women’s club and must know something, right? But when it comes to my own somethings, certainly I do have to be a little more careful. Right???

I am certainly old enough to remember a world in my twenties when I had to pay full price at the dermatologist and allergist because acne and asthma were deemed pre-existing conditions. But any one of us can remember the insurance market PRE-OBAMACARE. It was a time when insurance companies and states would pick and choose who to cover – locking or pricing people out. Many ran wildly expensive high-risk pools for those who were refused coverage that priced them out of the market or left them unable to afford necessary drugs.   Yes, everyone had ACCESS to health care but what is that when you can’t afford to have it – or to have a decent policy where you can get properly taken care of?

Remember that, assholes?

White, middle-aged guys – and certainly I am all of that and more – have gone from being our nation’s founding fathers of freedom to a bunch of selfish, snake oil selling, unfeeling assholes. There’s no other way to say it. And I’m embarrassed to be a part of that particular demographic in more ways than I can say.