Go ahead and gloat

The Chair is a loyal family member and friend, a devoted educator and a writer who tries, though does not always succeed, to see all sides of an issue in his work.

But the Chair is tired of being nice and taking the high road.

Aren’t you?

I know many of you are because I received countless (Note: Okay, more than a dozen) gleeful, hopeful and prayerful messages this week that the indictment of Donald Trump means that he is finally going to be held responsible for his countless crimes against — HUMANITY!

Oh, of course not humanity.

It’s just for things like falsifying his business records while paying hush money to a porn star and then lying about it everywhere he saw fit.

My friends worry that this case isn’t important enough or strong enough to get him. They call me to assuage their worries about things like that, though I can’t imagine why.

But I tell them to think of this indictment as an appetizer to a four or five course meal.

Or maybe simply a palate cleanser before the real meal begins.

There is so much to look forward to: vote tampering, perjury, illegal possession of government documents, inciting an insurrection against the US government, cooking the books of your real estate business and pilfering multimillions of dollars to bolster a fortune you overestimate or underestimate to the IRS, depending on the day and what benefits you – though not necessarily in that order.

One supposes crimes against humanity could eventually be on that much longer list once the last rock is turned over and the last orange-hued cockroach is forced from its hiding place. But who knows? By that time we might be onto something else and he just might not be available for us to kick around anymore.

And no, I’m not suggesting or threatening anyone! And if I were, I certainly wouldn’t do it in writing. And I definitely wouldn’t do it in public.

Unlike some people.

This is more than I can say for scores of the friends, relatives, acquaintances and strangers that have crossed my path over the last eight years.

Ever since Trump floated the idea of running for president, and right around the time he spread the false story that Pres. Obama, our first Black president, wasn’t born in this country, the seemingly nicest people in the world I’ve known and/or never met until that moment, have wished him death and fates worse than that.

And quite often, they’ve felt a bit guilty about it.

I might not have learned a lot in therapy but one thing I’ve realized is that guilt is a wasted emotion unless it serves to suppress some abhorrent action.

Meaning that wishing someone a slow and painful torturous existence, or even death, is not the same as killing him/her/them or spending your time making sure they suffer in all kinds of imaginable and unimaginable ways.

In fact, it might even be healthy to wish all of those things on someone you loathe in the midst of a bile-filled tantrum of your choice, provided you don’t act on it.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me…after all.

Despite the fact that name-calling is a well-known, and guiltless, international Trumpian pastime.

This is why I also tell everyone that crosses my path who feels the need to confess that they have never wished any one person this much particular evil to… have at it!!

I do this because I know it’s healthy to vent but mostly due to the fact that after all these years I get they are far, far, FAR from ALONE.

I would include myself on this list of people.

In my entire life, which is at this point is much longer than hypochondriacal me ever thought it would be in my younger years, I have never encountered a single public or private figure who has ever elicited so much bile from me and from so many others on such an unrelenting, and almost daily, basis.

It rivals the meanest mean girl (or guy) I knew in high school and brings to mind what came out of the mouth of the angriest and most egregious middle school complainer in the world.

Okay, the latter could even be me on certain days. But still –

Rather than squash the instinct and provoke self-induced heart attacks or binge drinking, I want to let everyone know, and all those I don’t know, that — IT’S OKAY.

Yell, gloat and say what you will in the privacy of your own home (Note: Or in selected public places to pre-screened selected audiences).

It doesn’t make you a bad person.

Not to mention, whatever you are thinking or saying, we’ve all likely thought worse. And in my case, A LOT worse.

This begs the question of what he’s likely thinking and saying in regards to the likes of you and your kind – presently or in the past. Or even future.

But the difference between him and us is that we don’t act out or act on those thoughts. We’re in no danger of getting indicted for them because they’re not crimes.

Most certainly, they’re not crimes against humanity.

Which is more than I can say for….

Well, now I don’t even really need to say it.

“Bad Things” – Machine Gun Kelly & Camila Cabello

03.26.23

by notesfromachair

A Sad State

The state flower of Florida is the orange blossom and so is the painted-on complexion of its most infamous resident.

Yet that’s not most concerning for me about what’s being churned out of that region on the rest of us at this moment in time.

A charter K-12 school in its state capitol called the Tallahassee Classical School, a place that literally markets its mission as training the minds and improving the hearts of young people through a content-rich classical education in the liberal arts, several weeks ago forced a principal to resign for daring to allow a sixth-grade art teacher to show her students an image of Michelangelo’s David, arguably one of THE most regarded works of sculptural art ever made.

Yes, of course David is totally nude, and includes his… penis.

But he is also 17 feet tall, made out of marble and to this day receives more than a million visitors annually at his home in the Accademia Gallery in Florence.

I’ve been there and spent time with Him and I can honestly say nothing prepares you for how truly magnificent the experience is up close. But as a gay man I’m also here to tell you — it’s not even remotely about his… penis.

Not that there is anything wrong with it.

Oh no Chairy, you made Colin nervous giggle.

My husband referred me to the David story broadcast on Alex Wagner’s MSNBC show this week and she gives a far more detailed rendition of it than I can here.

Click here to watch the segment… and yes, this is NUTS

Even though I am truly fascinated by the parent who thought David was obscene, the two more families that called for the ousting of the art teacher, and the movement that ensued that forced the principal of that charter school to resign.

Still, the David will get over this. The fact is, He’s not new to controversy. After He was unveiled in the early 1500s the Catholic Church and eventually the Vatican found his nudity so reprehensible that he was given a fig leaf to cover his… penis.

And there that fig leaf remained for approximately 400 years until it was eventually decided that mass society might be mature enough to handle what He was given by Michelangelo – which when you think of it is merely a replication of what the Church believes God gave man.

It makes one wonder if you simply need to be made of stone in order to battle through centuries of insanity and ignorance and still remain standing.

Well, perhaps not.

Grace Linn is 100 years old, made of flesh and blood, and last week she stood up to the Martin Country School Board at a meeting, lambasting the powers that be for banning dozens of books, from school libraries and classroom curriculums, due to pressure from conservative and religious groups.

Among them are classics like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Interestingly, one deals with the enslavement of women and the other the enslavement of non-white people but both are set against episodes of murder, societal mayhem and occasional sex, all topics easily found in any version of another classic – The Bible.

In her short speech, Ms. Linn told us about her husband, who was killed at the age of 26 during WWII defending democracy, the constitution and freedom.

She then went on to point out that one of the freedoms the Nazis crushed was the freedom to read books they banned.

And that in our country the freedom to read, protected by the first amendment, is our essential RIGHT and the DUTY of our democracy. And it is continually under attack by both the public and private groups that think THEY hold the TRUTH.

She said it far more effectively into the faces of those school board members than any of the go f-k yourselves I would likely say to them in person. Or to Florida’s governor, and likely 2024 presidential hopeful, Ron DeSantis – he of the already tired campaign slogan, Florida is where woke goes to die.

DeSantis is currently campaigning across the country against the perils of being awake while one of his century-old constituents is warning us not to go to sleep and avert our minds from reality.

And they say that the age of 80, Joe Biden is too old to lead?

The truth is that it sometimes takes someone a bit more… seasoned… to see the big picture in perilous times. And I say that not merely as someone who at this point could generously be considered to be, well, spicy.

The American Library Association tells us it received a record 1200 challenges to books in 2022, which was almost double the amount it received the previous year, which up to that point was the all-time high.

Those 2022 challenges cover more than 2500 books and are from national conservative groups like Moms for Liberty, an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one. Included are pretty much what you’d expect but thrown into the mix are things like a children’s biography of the late Puerto Rican baseball star Roberto Clemente – so great that even younger Me was one his fans – and a series of family friendly science fiction YA novels from… James Patterson?

The guy whose non-cutting edge paperbacks you couldn’t turn away from at the airport even if you tried has created a series of novels about winged teenagers (Note: Maximum Ride) that’s deemed too cutting edge for that typical air commuter’s kid to read?

Truly?

It’d be one thing if I were ranting about the 100 plus anti LGBTQ bills before state legislatures in 22 states in 2023. Not that I’m not and not that there aren’t and not that they are any less scary or important.

Or warning straight audiences across the country that this year’s June gay pride parades won’t be nearly as fun for you to attend with your kids, as I know so many of you do, because of the fact that eight states are already loaded up with bills to severely restrict or ban drag performances.

But the idea of living in a burnt orange world of rage and Florida-like repression really should make us all stop and think while we still can.

And not about naked marble man or his…um… thing.

“The State of Florida” – Less Than Jake