A little more ...

... anonymity may be in order.

Today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On The Origin Of Species".

My brain doens't seem to be working properly today, as I've tried & failed a few times to express precisely what this day means to me.  So, instead, I will post a picture of my unfinished Darwin-inspired tattoo:

It says, "Forms most beautiful & most wonderful have evolved" ...

Contrast & Compare

"There’s been a lack of acknowledgement by our president in understanding what it is that the American military provides in terms of, obviously, the safety, the security of our country. I want him to acknowledge the sacrifices that these individual men and women, our sons, our daughters, our moms, our dads, our brothers and sisters are providing this country to keep us safe." (Former-Alaska Governor & 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin ... without even a hint of irony)

Wow ... Just, wow.

LOTR + Michael Bolton = best YouTube video ever?

Not Hyperbole

Wes Anderson's film-version of Roald Dahl's excellent book, "Fantastic Mr. Fox", might eventually become one of my favorite movies ... ever.  I think I need to see it two or three more times just to be sure.  But, my goodness, not only did Mr. Anderson execute an excellent adaptation of what I would think would be a very difficult book to, you know, motion-picturize, but what he created is an aesthetically brilliant & particulary well-"acted" (or, you know, "voiced", or whatever) film that is charming & real pleasure to watch.  There is a certain richness to the imagery & motifs, colors & fonts Mr. Anderson employs (which is not new; most of his recent films, starting, I think, with 2001s "The Royal Tenenbaums", are visually notable), & "Fantastic Mr. Fox" really is no exception ... In fact, it may be Wes Anderson's most effective effort thus far at capturing successfully & precisely his own unique aesthetic & story-telling style.

See it.

"American Prometheus"

Crossing by J. Robert Oppenheimer

It was evening when we came to the river
with a low moon over the desert
that we had lost in the mountains, forgotten,
what with the cold and the sweating
and the ranges barring the sky.
And when we found it again,
In the dry hills down by the river,
half withered, we had
the hot winds against us.

There were two palms by the landing;
The yuccas were flowering; there was
a light on the far shore, and tamarisks.
We waited a long time, in silence.
Then we heard the oars creaking
and afterwards, I remember,
the boatman called to us.
We did not look back at the mountains.

Current Obsession [part4]

I'm currently obsessed with the PBS documentary, "The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer".  He is such a brilliant & tragic figure; filled with all the ambiguities & imperfections that, in a lot of ways, make me feel more comfortable in the world.  (Pardon me if that last sentiment doesn't make a whole lot of sense; I suppose I ought to flesh that thought out one day ...)  It's worth mentioning that I'm also currently reading (& also obsessed with) David Halberstam's "The Fifties", which includes a long discussion of Oppenheimer in the context of the Atomic Age & the Cold War - an era of deep interest to me.

Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Darwin on the American Civil War

... in letter to American biologist Asa Gray dated 5 June 1861:

"I never knew the newspapers so profoundly interesting. N. America does not do England justice: I have not seen or heard of a soul who is not with the North. Some few, & I am one, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against Slavery. In the long run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity. What wonderful times we live in.... Great God how I shd like to see that greatest curse on Earth Slavery abolished."

Sic. Obviously. But profound. Two days from now marks the 146th Anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, & a few days after that, the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Origin Of The Species ... Of course, Lincoln & Darwin share a birthday right down to the year (12 February 1809 ... They both turned 200 this year) & they are both linked by the fact that their efforts & ideas changed the course of history ... & maybe these their contributions were in entirely different fields except in this respect: they were both emancipators of body & mind, & are utterly worth remembering in the same breath, I think.

Sarah Palin on Charles Darwin

This ought to come as no surprise to anyone ... From The New York Times:

"Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she 'didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea' or from 'monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.'"

Weezer featuring Kenny G

My dreams have been answered:

Alex Pareene on "Don't Vote For Bloomberg"

Gawker's Alex Pareene has penned an anti-endorsement of Michael Bloomberg which is pretty great, so I'm going to cut & paste a few of my favorite parts & arguments from it. (You can see the whole original here.) I tend to not always agree with him, & sometimes I wonder how sophisticated his grasp of policy is, but this is a fine - albeit slightly crude - dissection of Mayor Bloomberg's failures as Mayor of New York. I'll only add that I feel Bloomberg's re-election today will, in essence, be a victory for shallowness & style over substance (like Mayor Koch placing pretty curtains in abandoned Bronx tenement windows in the 80s), & Pareene gives voice to that feeling in his piece:

"... You will probably not vote, because there are no contested races for anything important in 90% of the nation. But if you are a New Yorker, we have one message: don't vote for Michael Bloomberg.

You know those idiots who don't know anything about politics but think it sounds smart to say "I am a social liberal and an economic conservative?" Bloomberg is the candidate for them ...

For all the talk of Bloomberg the power-player who at least gets things done without worrying about the unions and special interests, he's been unable to win any political battle with anyone he couldn't literally buy off. Like Sheldon Silver, who (thankfully) killed the West Side Stadium and (annoyingly) ended all that "Congestion Pricing" talk. And those unions and special interests were just bought off, which worked fine back when the boom whose end Bloomberg never saw coming was in full swing.

And about that stadium: what the fuck was that? And the Olympics thing? After bitching about Giuliani's disgraceful subsidizing of the fucking Yankees, Bloomberg both turns around completely on that particular issue and attempts to build the fucking Jets a stadium, so that New York could get an Olympics that it did not want. And that failed, and everyone forgot about it. Meanwhile: 40,000 people in shelters!

Bloomberg could personally buy every single one of those people an apartment in a vacant Williamsburg luxury condo building and still have enough left over to bribe a City Council member into supporting his fifth term.

And those luxury Williamsbug condo buildings, by the way, that stand vacant? Yes, well, that was part of this brilliant plan to utilize rezoning to spur the free market (which always allocates resources more efficiently than anything else in the history of civilization but sometimes it needs government help, like with tax breaks and stuff) to create affordable housing all over the waterfront. This did not work, as developers decided to just not bother to build all those affordable housing units they were supposed to build. More than 2,200 promised new affordable partments in Williamsburg and Greenpoint have turned out to be 768, 20 percent of which are renovations of apartments that were already affordable. There are lots more of these stories.

His record on housing, like his record on nearly everything having to do with the outer boroughs and poverty and human beings who make less than $100,000 a year, has been a ridiculous disgrace. His entire philosophy of development solving everything turned out to be precisely, 100% wrong, and suddenly the city itself was driving the real estate boom, driving up land prices to absurd levels across the boroughs and tearing down neighborhoods only to replace them with vacant lots and half-filled cheaply built hideous high-rises once the bottom fell out of the City Hall-inflated market. But hey, we got the High Line and 311! So you can sleep in that fancy park while you call 311 asking if there is room in a shelter because you can no longer afford your home.

...

The MTA has raised fares while cutting service (without actually cutting service, officially—it's just that whatever line you happen to ride is suddenly experiencing a whole lot of track work every single goddamn weekend).

...

Bloomberg is also the beneficiary of the most friendly news coverage of any big city mayor in the nation. Easily. It helps that, you know, he is a media mogul, himself, and he is good, close, personal friends with the three publishers who run the newspapers that went after each one of his predecessors for shit they've let slide under this mayor, because they know he's a good, decent guy, at heart, and the only one who can Fix New York, because of his Money.

Can you imagine how the Post would've blown up if David Dinkins lied about taking the Subway to work every day? The Daily News response to discovering that John Lindsay flew to Bermuda every weekend?

Let's talk about the cops, for a second: they are still operating under Giuliani levels of complete disregard for the law. They are getting drunk and running people over and shooting unarmed black people and sodomizing people in subway stations. The Civilian Complaint Review Board has become a joke, unless your case gets a lot of publicity. There's obviously no accountability, whatsoever, and no attempt to recruit and train more cops from the communities they actually police. The NYPD remains, primarily, the home of roided-out white people from outside the city with a great deal of contempt for civil liberties. The Mayor always sounds properly upset when some of them rape someone, but he's never done a damn thing to rein them in or change the culture.

What he has done is Keep Us Safe by never once giving a shit about Civil Liberties. The cops stop and frisk thousands more people every year, your 4th Amendment rights do not apply in the Subway system, and expensive and completely neffective new rings of cameras are going up across Manhattan.

Bloomberg deserves to be run out of town on an inadequately funded public rail line for the 2004 GOP convention alone. Remember that ridiculous farce? No, of course not, no one does, besides the thousands of people improperly spied on, arrested, harassed, and detained by the NYPD. All of this was completely illegal. No heads rolled.

...

And he is personally a jerk. He is a thin-skinned, unpleasant, sanctimonious asshole. His company is being sued for a culture of sexual discrimination that plaintiffs say Bloomberg himself contributed to. He is a tremendous dick to reporters whenever he gets cranky. He is fucking race-baiting with Rudy Giuliani again, because why not?

He has been a shitty mayor and he does not deserve the support of anyone who claims to be a liberal. Though what all of his most destructive missteps as mayor have in common is that they do not in any way upset or inconvenience the well-off self-professed liberals who support him. Besides maybe a couple Critical Mass riders arrested in illegal sweeps. (Though he sure does like bike lanes, so it's a wash, right?)

... Just don't fucking vote for Michael Bloomberg."

New York City General Election 2009

This morning I voted in the New York City General Election, & cast my ballot(s) for:

Bill Thompson for Mayor of the City of New York (on the Working Families Party ticket);

Bill de Blasio for Public Advocate of the City of New York (on the Working Families Party ticket);

John C. Liu for Comptroller of the City of New York (on the Working Families Party ticket);

Reginald A Boddie for Judge of the Civil Court of Kings County/Brooklyn (on the Democratic Party ticket);

Marty Markowitz for Brooklyn Borough President (on the Working Families Party ticket);

Charles J. Hynes for District Attorney of Kings County/Brooklyn (on the Working Families Party ticket);

Stephen T. Levin for City Council representing the 33rd District (on the Working Families Party ticket);

& Rachel A. Adams for Judge of the Civil Court for the 5th Municipal Court District of Kings County/Brooklyn (on the Democratic Party ticket);

I did not cast a ballot for the 2 "Ballot Proposals".

Coltrane & Hartman

I've been a little obsessed with John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman's version of "My One & Only Love", which you can hear below. You sort of don't expect Hartman's voice when it chimes in, & it's a bit jarring at first, but you soon realize it's just because its so lovely & rich, & adds a down-to-earth element to the arrangement ... Also, Coltrane's accompaniment during the second-half of the ballad is pitch perfect. Together - & not just on this track - these two create a near-perfect sound, especially if you're feeling a little sentimental or blue.

"This is the story of how three dinosaur species became one dinosaur species ..."

Also known as taxonomical consolidation ...

Halloween 2009

Just a little hint on who I'm rooting for in the World Series

More Silliness

Alex Jones - everyone's favorite purveyor of conspiracy nonsense - is out with a new "documentary" titled, "Fall of the Republic: The Presidency of Barack H. Obama". It seems like a kind of sequel to his previous "documentary" on the President, "The Obama Deception", which came out a mere two months after President Obama took office, & cynically (& insanely) labeled him a "New World Order" stooge, a puppet of "International Bankers" (you all know what that means, wink-wink) & a man who would "cede United States sovereignty to globalists".

Since I haven't seen this new film yet, I will - of course - reserve judgment on its content. However, since I'm intimately familiar with Alex Jones' work (& the numerous factual inaccuracies, false & revisionist history, non-sequitors & logical fallacies he employs), I can say with almost complete certainty that "Fall of the Republic" will be prize-winningly insane, offensively wrong (or not even wrong) & - of course - highly entertaining in that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 sort of way.

Anyway, I plan on watching a few times &, if I have time, writing a little something about it.

(I want to add that "The Obama Deception" was really disappointing, especially after Jones' put out "Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement", which is probably his most entertaining & - of course - most dishonest piece of propaganda to date. Let's hope he did better this time.)

US Secret Service Addresses the Surge in Right-wing Extremism

Just saw this in the Boston Globe:

The unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama, a rise in racist hate groups, and a new wave of antigovernment fervor threaten to overwhelm the US Secret Service, according to government officials and reports, raising new questions about the 144-year-old agency’s overall mission.

The Secret Service is tracking a far broader range of possible threats to the nation’s leaders, the officials said, even as it also investigates financial crimes such as counterfeiting as part of its original mandate.

The new demands are leading some officials, both inside and outside the agency, to raise the possibility of the service curtailing or dropping its role in fighting financial crime to focus more on protecting leaders and their families from assassination attempts and thwarting terrorist plots aimed at high-profile events.

“If there were an evaluation of the service’s two missions, it might be determined that it is ineffective . . . to conduct its protection mission and investigate financial crimes,’’ according to a internal report issued in August by the Congressional Research Service ...

This is just more evidence that the Department of Homeland Security report warning of an increase in Right-wing extremism & threats against the government & the President - a report, by the by, initiated by the Bush Administration - was absolutely prescient.

Religious Infidelity on the Subway

Apparently, this ad is coming to New York City subways:



Its funny that when atheists advertise, we do it in a polite, gentle & thought-provoking way, as opposed to the myriad subway preachers & mountebanks, who scream (literally) at captive audiences about hell-fire & damnation, & do not cease their abusive nonsense even when people ask them nicely.

More than anything, I hope these signs - which are more a kind of commentary than mere advertisements - give a little comfort to closeted atheists who are afraid or nervous about "coming out", as it were, letting them know they are not alone. I also like that it deals with the more nuanced issue of morality & religious belief/unbelief ... & lest you think these posters are unnecessary because you feel New York City is a bastion of either, depending on one's politics, liberal & secular cosmopolitanism & intellectualism, or depraved, godless debauchery, I would remind you that there is a great deal of religious insanity in this town ... A great deal ...

For more information on the ads, see The Big Apple Coalition for Reason website.

Sarah Silverman's Modest Suggestion For Ending World Hunger

Three words: Sell The Vatican.

Oh yeah, & ...

... The Red Sox got swept out of the post-season by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim - who broke a curse of their own, finally. I'm obviously upset, but, listen, they simply outplayed us in all aspects - especially pitching - & its as simple as that; they deserved the series win.

The off-season will probably see a lot of changes & a few departures, & next year will likely be a rebuilding year for our heroes ... Anyway, for now, I'm rooting for the Angels against the Yankees (obviously) but will probably be pulling the hardest for the Los Angeles Dodgers, & not just because I have a man-crush on Casey Blake.

PZ Myers, Science Advisor to Yahweh

Mr. Deity FTW:

Red Sox lose Nobel Peace Prize bid to President Obama

The pain is still a bit too near, so I'll just sort of throw out that the Red Sox were embarrassingly shut out by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim last night ... & while I'm not panicking - & this it would be awesome if we came back to tonight & gave'em a good, old fashion beating - our team looked really anemic. Hopefully, our bats can pick up tonight. HOPEFULLY.

Also, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, which, honestly, feels like (1) a fuck you to George W. Bush & (2) a sign that Europe & America are buds again ... Still, I can't help but feel like the Nobel committee is either trying to (1) "punk" America or (2) incite more Right-wing hatred for the President (this is, after all, an "international" award) ...

National Poetry Day [part 3]

Baseball's Sad Lexicon by Franklin Pierce Adams

These are the saddest of possible words:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double –
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."

National Poetry Day [part 2]

This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

National Poetry Day [part 1]

I'm just corny enough to be into events like National Poetry Day. I may post one or two of mine later ... & while I'm moved to post many, many poems I like from all over, because it's National Poetry Day, I'll stick to American verse ... & will obviously start here:

I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman

1.
I SING the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the
soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal
themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the
dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

2.
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face
balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and
broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and
shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or
cow-yard,
The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,
good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown
after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding
the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd
neck and the counting;
Such-like I love - I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's
breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with
the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3.
I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal
love,
He drank water only, the blood show'd like scarlet through the
clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail'd his boat himself, he
had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of
the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

4.
I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is
enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly
round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking
on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases
the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5.
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.

This the nucleus - after the child is born of woman, man is born of
woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil'd, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

6.
The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is
utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to
the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred - is it the meanest one in the
laborers' gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation
sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7.
A man's body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the
sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one
animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd.

In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in
tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.

Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby,
good-sized arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires,
reachings, aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express'd in
parlors and lecture-rooms?)

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be
fathers in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and
enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
back through the centuries?)

8.
A woman's body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the
mothers.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations
and times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more
beautiful than the most beautiful face.

Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

9.
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and
women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of
the soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
that they are my poems,
Man's, woman's, child, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's,
father's, young man's, young woman's poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck,
neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone,
breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round,
man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your
body or of any one's body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from
woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and
tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

Michelle Goldberg on the mainstreaming of Alex Jones

... on The New Republic website. Here's a snip:

"Until recently, Jones’s search for mainstream allies has been less than fruitful. During the Bush years, when the conservative movement acknowledged Jones at all, it was to mock and revile him. In March 2006, Sean Hannity ridiculed Charlie Sheen for spinning September 11 conspiracy theories on Jones’s show. In May 2007, Michelle Malkin argued that Ron Paul’s associations with Jones and the 9/11 Truth movement should disqualify him from participating in GOP primary debates. Last year, Bill O’Reilly ran outtakes from Jones’s interview with fellow Truther Willie Nelson on a segment about 'the dumbest things that have been said in the past three months.'

But, since Obama’s election, the ridicule has died down. On March 15, Jones released a documentary called The Obama Deception, which has been widely advertised in conservative media and viewed more than four million times on YouTube. The Obama Deception is basically a more detailed version of the dystopian scenario promoted night after night on Beck. Arguing that Obama is the front man for an oligarchy working to create a planetary totalitarian state, it is like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion stripped of any reference to Jews ..."

Bicycles

I've been neglecting my bicycle ... Definitely going to ride to-&-from work for the rest of the week. Also, thinking up a photo project where I ride my bicycle to friend's houses around Brooklyn & take pictures of them ... Must, must, must remember to charge my camera.

"Soxtober"

Also, the Red Sox, like I reported earlier, are in the play-offs ... & finished out their season 95 - 67 with 12 - 7 comeback victory over the Cleveland Indians on Sunday. Depending on what post-season schedule the Yankees pick, the Red Sox will face the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the best-of-5 American League Division Series either Wednesday at 6pm or Thursday at 9pm.

I'll write a bit more about this up-coming series when I get some time.

"Too Scared To Move" & other songs

Picked up the new-ish Owen (Mike Kinsella) album, New Leaves, the other day & have been listening to it first-song-to-last-song, as well as shuffled, since then. It's slickly produced but not too specialized, & heavy on the earthy elements (lots of strings & twangy guitars, for instance) & definitely represents Kinsella's best arrangement & composition work thus-far in his solo career (I'm leaving out American Football since that is a whole different animal, & - duh - not solo) ...

I don't particularly find the album's lyrics & themes, which retain on some of the earnestness & elusive/out-of-nowhere crassness that Owen songs are known for, very strong. I'll admit this is a little subjective, but I've found that when artists like Mike Kinsella, who have, up until now, explored the down-side to interpersonal relationships, suddenly find themselves, for instance married with a cute baby, the edginess that was hitherto present in their songs & personas can often be lost ... Another example of this is Max Bemis, who's follow-up to ... Is a Real Boy drifted into corny-country more than a few times ... Still, New Leaves is evocative & heartachingly pretty (give it up to the aforementioned arrangements & Kinsella's crack-team of guest musicians), & I plan on telling him at least all the complementary portions of this tiny little review when I see him perform on Friday at the Mercury Lounge on E. Houston in Manhattan.

Also, The One AM Radio (a friendly acquaintance called Hrishi from way back) will be opening up for Mr. Kinsella, & I look forward to hearing about his life on the West Coast.

New cube & the old life

(I'm currently squatting in this unused cubicle because my computer passed away the other day - the one with two screens - & her replacement won't arrive until Monday AM. There's something lovely about how empty this new space is, until I'm reminded of the inhumanity of this kind of office/space use. I really feel cubicles - in any environment - ought to be viewed with embarassment & a sense of "oh, gosh, I know, they are so terrible ..." etc. But this sort of leads me to my point which is, if I get into Graduate School for next Autumn ... or even if I don't, I will never, ever work in a cubicle ever, ever again.)

"Sort of a dubious honor"

Last night - & despite losing their last 5 games in a row - the Boston Red Sox clinched the American League Wild Card. I'm not going to lie, it feels a little weird to break into the post-season this way - via a Texas loss - but the Sox worked hard this season despite adversity & injuries, won a lot of games down the stretch, & while they're sort of stumbling right now, I actually feel pretty good about our team's chances once October baseball begins.

I'm assuming we'll be playing the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim again in the ALDS, by the way, which usually works out well for us ... Anyway, I'll keep all my 5 readers updated on the Sox as the playoff situation unfolds. Go Sox!

All At Once

There exists a lack of precision & clarity when it comes to the more radical criticisms of President Obama & his Administration. According to Right-wing opinion, President Obama is, all at once, a Marxist, Socialist, Communist, Nazi, Fascist, Radical Muslim/Radical Christian, Black Nationalist Internationalist who wants to institute a totalitarian police-state but also let the UN & "global leaders" control America. Of course, these are all mutually exclusive categories, with a few exceptions - I think the moniker "Islamofascist" is actually warranted in a lot of situations - but still ... It smacks of either intellectual laziness or outright dishonesty to claim with a straight-face that President Obama can be described with any one of these labels, let alone ALL of them.

But it gets better. This morning, a man called John L. Perry published a column suggesting that, some day soon, "patriotic general[s] and flag officers [may have to] sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a 'family intervention', with some form of limited, shared responsibility?"

He goes on:

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don't shrug and say, "We can always worry about that later."

I know there's a lot to focus on here ("those who control him"?! A coup d'etat?!) but I'm more interested in the lack of irony here - that a man who thinks President Obama is destroying the Constitution & is planning on implementing a "radical" agenda (which will no doubt result in "tyranny" & "martial law") is essentially inviting the military to stage an illegal & unconstitutional coup d'etat which will likely lead to actual martial law & the creation of a military oligarchy, with the President as a figure-head!

Anyway, the column was pulled from NewsMax - a Right-wing "column mill" website - this morning, probably because it advocated the military overthrow of the United States of America, which is frowned upon, generally, by decent human beings.

... &, of course, file this under "without even a hint of irony" ...

New York City Democratic Primary Run-off 2009

This morning I voted in the New York City Democratic Primary Run-off for Comptroller & Public Advocate, & cast my ballot(s) for:

David Yassky for Comptroller;

& Mark Green for Public Advocate.

"Fed"

This is scary stuff:

"The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a cemetery in Kentucky, and a law enforcement official told The Associated Press the word "fed" was scrawled on the dead man's chest.

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of a forest in rural southeast Kentucky. The Census has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, pending the outcome of the investigation.

Investigators are still trying to determine whether the death was a killing or a suicide, and if a killing, whether the motive was related to his government job or to anti-government sentiment."

There is a Right-wing conspiracy theory that the U.S. Census will be used - somehow - by, get this, ACORN, to throw people who oppose the Obama Administration &, or course, the "New World Order" in FEMA concentration camps ... That Department of Homeland Security paper about Right-wing extremism is looking more & more prescient as time goes by.

But, seriously, this is a tragedy.

Without A Hint Of Irony [part 4]

I've been seeing the Gadsden flag everywhere lately, & most notoriously at the Right-wing 'Teabagger' rallies. The flag, in case you're unfamiliar, looks like this:



Now, appropriating (or misappropriating) flags for partisan reasons is nothing new, especially for Right-wingers, who have long tried to shroud their various causes in the Stars & Stripes (as well as the Stars & Bars, I might add). I abhor the practice, but it's a free country & people ought to be able to display any patriotic flag whenever & wherever they choose (though I'd prefer they stay within the suggested guidelines). Now, part of the Right-wing appropriation of the Gadsden flag is the notion that the Federal government has overstepped its bounds with respect to both States' Rights & Individual Rights, & this flag - which dates back to the founding of the Republic - is somehow an embodiment of, & justification for, that viewpoint (i.e. someone who favors Federal intervention, generally, or, say, specifically, an expansion of health care coverage to more Americans would be out of step with the spirit of this patriotic flag).

Now, the Rattlesnake as American patriotic iconography & symbolism is older than the Republic, & makes its first appearance during the 7 Years War (also called the French & Indian War), in which colonial militias fought with the British - their Mother-country - against the French & their Indian allies, & were victorious. Benjamin Franklin, in an attempt to foment colonial unity for the British cause & against the French imperial presence in the New World, created perhaps the first North American political cartoon, which depicted a dead rattlesnake cut into 8 sections, with each section representing 8 sections of British America (New England as the head, New York, New Jersey, & so on).



The message was simple - "Join, or Die". Only colonial unity could resist French encroachments into British territory (notably, Ohio & Western Pennsylvania), including the self-reliant & basically self-governing colonies. When you think about it, when many of the Founders were fighting for ratification of the Constitution & the creation of a Federal government, & when they talked about an American people (as opposed to Virginians & Pennsylvanians, etc.), they were drawing on the imagery & iconography of Franklin's piece ... which, also, inspired Gadsden's design. The Rattlesnake is a symbol of, first, the unity of the colonies &, second, the United States of America ... Not 13 Colonies or little Republics, not 50 autonomous, self-interested States, but one, indissoluble Union ...

... & so those who fly this flag - which is a symbol of our National (read that Federal) heritage - & who would foment rebellion among the States, & attempt to pit American against American (in this case, in the service of elite monied, Corporate interests like insurance companies) do so, seemingly, without even a hint of irony.

"Good Friends, Bad Habits" music video

I'll be seeing Mr. Kinsella on 9 October 2009 at the Mercury Lounge with friends, p.s.

Qaddafi & Conspiracism

Here's what the New York Times had to say about Libyan Dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi's rambling, conspiracy-laden speech to the U.N. General Assembly:

"Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi ... delivered a long and rambling diatribe — far exceeding the 15-minute limit on speeches — against the Security Council and a host of other perceived enemies ...

In the first third of a speech that lasted more than 90 minutes, Colonel Qaddafi focused on what he called the inherent unfairness of the United Nations, which gives the five permanent members of the Security Council far more authority than the nations in the General Assembly. This, Mr. Qaddafi said, was dictatorship, not democracy and, as such, 'was terrorism itself.'

... An hour into his address, Colonel Qaddafi began calling for investigations into each of the major wars since the United Nations was founded: the Korean War, the war over the Suez Canal, the Vietnam War and the United States’ two wars in Iraq, which he called 'the mother of all evils.'

... The Afghan war, too, he said, should be investigated for possible prosecution. At times, Colonel Qaddafi veered into conspiracy, saying, for example, that the H1N1 influenza virus, also called swine flu, might be a military or corporate weapon that got out of a lab, and he intimated that an Israeli hand was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

I'm certainly not the kind of person to dismiss the United Nations out-of-hand, nor do I have an ideological opposition to its existence. In fact, I think the idea is positive & necessary, even if the execution of such a project ends up being fruitless, which it usually is. Still, when mendacious dictators - especially those who have unflinchingly funded horrible acts of terrorism - are given a stage with which they can ramble-on about personal vendettas & supposed conspiracies, stroking their own inflated egos & generally being unhelpful, I cannot help but feel the U.N. is a bit of a waste of time.

(Also, blah-blah-blah Arab & Muslim commitment to conspiracism, especially anything involving Jews, Zionists, the Mossad, etc. blah-blah-blah ... Alex Jones probably loves this guy.)

Autumn is here

... & I'm forced to beg, sort of, for sweater-weather. It's 81 degrees in New York right now (& 90, or so I hear, in Portland).

Craft night, tonight.

What To Do on 22 November ...

On "Darwin Day 2" - 22 November 2009, the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species - two dishonest Creationists & their followers are planning on distributing, for free, 50,000 copies of an altered version of Darwin's book to students & bystanders at dozens of colleges & universities around the country.

The key alteration is a 50 page "forward", written by Mr. Ray Comfort, which turns out to be - surprise, surprise - a typical, ignorant & dishonest attempt to defame Charles Darwin & discredit his brilliant & demonstrably true Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection ...

YouTube user ZOMGitsCriss has produced a wonderful rebuttal to Comfort's partner's (Kirk Cameron) video announcing this insidious plot, including what I'm calling the "Dead Poet's Society" reaction to being given an illuminating book with a terrible & mendacious "forword" - rip out the forward, keep the poetry ... or, you know, in this case, keep the science. (In the film, an idealistic & modern poetry teacher instructs his students to rip out an out-moded guide to judging "good poetry" from the beginning of a poetry textbook so the students can enjoy the pieces in the volume in their own way.)

Happy U.S. Constitution Day

On this day, 17 September, in 1787, the Constitution of the United States was officially adopted by the Constitutional Convention, sometimes known as the Philadelphia Convention for where the proceedings took place. Initially, the meeting was set to improve & revise the Articles of Confederation, which had governed the fledgling United States for the six years prior. Noting the inadequacy of the Articles, Alexander Hamilton, of New York, & James Madison, of Virginia, pushed for the creation of a new document & a new government ... The result, after much compromise & toil, was, & continues to be, the most important political document in the history of the world, & - in my opinion - the most valuable & best-designed blueprint for government yet conceived.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Indeed ... The Union & The Constitution Forever!

The Daily Show on that little protest last weekend:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Mad Men
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

P-Swayz

Patrick Swayze (AKA "P-Swayz" among my friends) died yesterday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. I don't throw the work 'genius' around willy-nilly - I reserve that distinction for but a few people (Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damm, Michael Bolton, Issac Newton, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Kenny G, for instance) - but this guy was a triple-threat, a real talent, & the real deal. "Road House", "Dirty Dancing", & his hit song, "She's Like The Wind" (better than "Heartbeat" by Don Johnson, for sure) are all testaments to this fact. But one moment stands over all others, which I will share with you below. For now, so long, P-Swayz, you were & will always be a BRO ...

New York City Democratic Primary Day 2009

This morning I voted in the New York City / City Council District 33 Democratic Primary, & cast my ballot(s) for:

Tony Avella for Mayor;

David Yassky for Comptroller;

Eric Gioia for Public Advocate;

& Ken Diamondstone for City Council.

Without A Hint Of Irony [part 3]

Osama bin Laden - hiding in a cave somewhere in either Pakistan or Afghanistan from the U.S. Military (& our allies) - released a tape the other day in which he calls President Barack Obama "powerless" ...

... without a hint of irony.

(Seriously, can we find, capture or kill this douchebag before the year is up? Please?)

Roger Federer

... may be the best tennis player ever. I'm uncomfortable making statements like that but this shot is maybe the best evidence of the truth of such an assertion.

Running

In case anyone ever wondered what my face looks like as I'm crossing the finish line of a race ...

Vergara & the WTC

I own a copy of Camilo Jose Vergara's "The New American Ghetto" which is a jarring photo-journalistic account of the American urban landscape during the the latter-part of the 20th Century ... I came across his piece on Slate just now regarding photographs where the Twin Towers appear small & in the background.

I like little, idiosyncratic pieces like this one because I'm a believer in small things, details most-of-the-time unnoticed, heart-warming & personal experiences of mass objects, the things we all notice, that no one else notices, that maybe we don't share until later.

Looking Downtown

My buddy sent me this:

Home By Now by Meg Kearney

New Hampshire air curls my hair like a child's
hand curls around a finger. "Children?" No,
we tell the realtor, but maybe a dog or two.
They'll bark at the mail car (Margaret's
Chevy Supreme) and chase the occasional
moose here in this place where doors are left
unlocked and it's Code Green from sun-up,
meaning go ahead and feel relieved—
the terrorists are back where you left them
on East 20th Street and Avenue C. In New York
we stocked our emergency packs with whistles
and duct tape. In New England, precautions take
a milder hue: don't say "pig" on a lobster boat
or paint the hull blue. Your friends in the city
say they'll miss you but don't blame you—they
still cringe each time a plane's overhead,
one ear cocked for the other shoe.

9/11

... & its rainy & cold in the city. I never know what to say on these anniversaries, really. Be good to each other today, & carpe diem, eh?

For tomorrow:

Health Care Address To Congress

... &, still, we ought not let Rep. "Joe" Wilson's douchebaggery overshadow what was a very effective speech by President Obama last night on health care reform ... A speech which reminded me that politics is the art of the possible (whether I like it or not), & that ideology & rigidity with regard to policy is not a virtue. Yes, I am committed to the 'Public Option' but the ultimate goal of reform is reduction of costs & affordable health care coverage for all Americans, & what ever the best way is to achieve that goal - the cheapest, most efficient & most effective - is how we ought to move forward.

Remember, the essence of Liberalism - which is an approach, not an ideology - as well as Americanism, is compromise & open-mindedness with respect to meeting political & social goals.

Pure Klass

A screen shot of the updated Wikipedia entry for South Carolina Congressman "Joe" Wilson, who shouted "You Lie" at the President of the United States during his health care address to a joint-session of Congress last night:



Click to expand, then laugh a little.

Al Franken Draws America

The original:

School Speech

It seems to me that there can only be two reasons why anyone would oppose President Obama's speech to the nation's children: (1) You, for whatever reason, disagree vociferously with ANYTHING & EVERYTHING the President does, no matter how necessary, noble, benign, insignificant or obligatory, or (2) you hate education, don't want children being challenged to succeed in school & oppose breeding a sense of shared-responsibility between teachers, parents, families & the students.

... To be fair, I oppose the President ending his speech with "God Bless America", so I guess I can now count on the extremists in former category to also oppose unconstitutional religious endorsements in school, right? RIGHT?

Glenn Beck & Jordan Maxwell [part 2]

Some conspiracists (on a major conspiracy-oriented message-board) are nonplussed that Glenn Beck is "taking a page literally straight out of our archives, and Jordan Maxwell's books." Check it out here.

My goodness, when these people think you're crazy ...

Glenn Beck & Jordan Maxwell

What makes looking at conspiracy myths & the people who spread them so interesting is that, despite being built on (at best) ignorance & (at worst) outright mendacity, conspiracism is - & this might sounds almost celebratory but, I assure you, it is not - a robust discipline. G. Edward Griffin's 1969 film-strip, The Capitalist Conspiracy, discusses a "conspiratorial view of history" contrasting this approach with other, mainstream approaches to the study of history & past events. While many maintain that conspiricism is an ad hoc community made up of people who dispute the mainstream version of certain events, it is, I think, more accurate to look at conspiracism as an approach & a narrative, all-encompassing worldview.

For most purveyors of conspiracy myths, events that are, to them, in dispute - say, that 9/11 was "an inside job" done by various secret organizations in cooperation with the Bush Administration - is part of a larger story that encompasses countless historical events, various social & political ideologies, as well as religious views. In the past I've called this the Conspiracy Meta-narrative, but what was missing from my initial analysis was a discussion of the the specific approaches conspiracists employ to come to their far-reaching & broad conclusions. Rather then get into all of them right now, I want to touch on one with reference to a current event & trend I've been noticing: the mainstreaming of conspiracism, aspects of the Conspiracy Meta-narrative & certain approaches conspiracists, especially by FOX News announcer, Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck is a Right-wing commentator on the FOX News network who has - especially since President Obama was elected & inaugerated - been dangerously close to full-blown conspiracism. A few months ago he mentioned FEMA concentration camps on both his show & the FOX News morning show, Fox & Friends, stating that he was interested in debunking the existence of the camps, only to claim later he "could not debunk them" & then, later, stated somewhat ambivalently that he did not believe they existed. Regardless of his conclusion, the meme was planted & a once-fringe conspiracy notion was fed into the mainstream conservative FOX News audience. The FEMA concentration camp myth is an old one, dating back at least as far as the early days of the Clinton Administration, when Right-wing militia-types, fearful of "One World Government", the banning of firearms & the notion that international troops could be deployed in the United States, began to spread a rumor that FEMA was building camps in order to either imprison or mass-murder those who opposed the "New World Order".

The other night, Glenn Beck moved a few steps closer to outright conspiracism. In a discussion of the symbology of the GE Building & Rockefeller Center in New York - which houses NBC, including MSNBC & Beck's chief rival, Keith Olbermann (who nightly excoriates Beck, Bill O'Reilly, & the FOX News network) - Beck sought to tie the architectural & stylistic aspects of the buildings in & around Rockefeller Center to what he saw as the insidious (& current) socio-political motivations of the General Electric Company (which owns NBC & its various subsidiaries). Now, Rockefeller Center (named for John D. Rockefeller, Jr. - a favorite conspiracist target, by the way!) & the buildings & structures around it are known for their Art Deco architecture, as well as the heroic & grand iconography that was popular when the area was developed in the late 1920s & early 30s.

To make a connection between Beck's perceived enemies (progressive & Liberal Americans, President Obama - who Beck sees as a crypto-fascist - & the Democratic Congress, private citizens who happen to work for the Federal Government, & the General Electric company & their cable news subsidiary, MSNBC) & the notoriously silly strawman of totalitarianism that Beck has been trying to convince his viewers will be imposed on them by the Obama Administration any day now (an amalgam of early 20th-century Progressivism, European Fascism & Stalinist/Soviet Communism), he has employed an approach long used by one of the most famous conspiracists of the last 30 years, Jordan Maxwell. Before I get to who Jordan Maxwell is, to paraphrase Beck's argument, Rockefeller Center & the buildings around it, have a lot of art work, created by many different people (some of whom may have been progressive, Liberal, Left-wing or - gasp - American Communist) which employed imagery that can be interpreted as either collectivist or leader-oriented, & that used devices that represented the prevalent view at the time, of history as a march of progress towards some sort of Utopian future.



Beck interpreted these symbols as evidence that (1) John D. Rockefeller, Jr. must have been a communist because he was a self-avowed internationalist, or globalist, progressive & in Beck's mind, progressive really means fascist & communist, &, to him, fascism & communism are, somehow, the same political movement, which is, uhuh, synonymous with American-style progressivism, (2) General Electric - one of the more ruthless, Capitalist companies of the last 75 years of so - is a communist company because the area that surrounds its headquarters happens to have artwork, created in the 1930s, that employs popular tropes from that time period, (3) the symbolism in the various pieces are signs & markers left over from Rockefeller, the General Electric company, & the various artists that, one day, thirty years after the project was commissioned & executed, a biracial baby named Barack Obama would be born in Hawaii, & become President of the United States in order to usher in an age of socialist, fascist, communist & - um - Liberal totalitarianism. If this wasn't insane enough for you on its face, consider Beck's approach compared to one taken by the notorious conspiracist Jordan Maxwell ...

Jordan Maxwell is like the real world version of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon, except more rotund, not Ivy League educated &, to be frank, totally out of his mind. I've actually been trying to ascertain Maxwell's education records, & since most conspiracists love touting even Bachelor's degrees (I've actually seen guys put "BA" after their names like PhDs do on self-published books on how the earth is growing) I'm left to assume he has no formal training or degrees. Maxwell's "specialties" are in "occult & religious philosophy", "ancient symbols and occult emblems", "ancient sciences & technology" & "secret societies & their influence on world events". You may have already guessed that Maxwell is a believer in the Conspiracy Meta-narrative, including the notion that 9/11 was "an inside job", there exists a secret cabal of people who control the world & that we are headed towards a one-world fascist state.



Maxwell's presentations are long & detailed studies of, among other things, the symbols & architecture that exist in Federal institutions (especially government building around the Capitol) & how those symbols reveal the dark & evil plots of various people & groups, both historical & of the present day. He goes through, detail by detail, the fascii on the walls of the U.S. House & Senate chambers, various aspects of the American dollar-bill, corporate logos, & art work, teasing out the secret meanings that "elites" & conspirators leave behind to callously tout their evil machinations. Maxwell's "scholarship" employs the worst kind of circumstantial reasoning, logical fallacies (like "begging the question"), non-sequitors, outright untruth, & what skeptics call "woo-woo" ... In Maxwell's case - & now in Glenn Beck's case too - we're really seeing an ignorant or untrained person try to squeeze occult or hidden meanings out of architecture & artwork which, obviously, has no relevance to current events. I mean, the notion that this kind of symbology, or study of symbols & symbolism, can say anything more broad then the individual feelings of the creator of the art is absurd ... & even if the artist was interested in any of the perceived interests of the "New World Order" that has no bearing on whether this conspiracy notion is true or not ...

... & its not: There is no secret cabal trying to take over the world that conveniently leaves symbols around for paranoids to pick up on, as if they want to get caught or discovered. Barack Obama is not a crypto-fascist & the architecture around Rockefeller Center is not a prophecy (this is the logical conclusion of Beck's argument) for his ascendancy & political motivations. Glenn Beck, by employing the silly & shallow methods of radical conspiracists, has now, officially, joined the community of paranoid & - I'll say it - America-hating conspiracists like Jordan Maxwell (who think our government "did 9/11") ... People like Alex Jones & Jordan Maxwell finally have a friend & ideological partner in the mainstream, & that is a sad day for democracy, journalism & the Republic.

70 Years Ago

September 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.