Tristesse Times Two

Like almost everyone, I’m stunned and saddened by Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris.  The human carnage is awful, the geopolitical implications are chilling, and the fear that this is just an opening salvo in a mobile, hydra-headed Isis/Isil/Daesh/Al Qaeda/Islamic Extremist assault on the West, in the West, is palpable. 

That this horror occurred in Paris magnifies the sadness.  For many United States citizens, Paris is the epitome of sophisticated, romantic culture – not to mention that France is our country’s oldest ally.  An exploded Russian airline in the Sinai, a series of hideous bombings in Beirut, terrorist assaults in Barcelona, the continuing and deadly Israeli-Palestinian strife, even the fairly recent semi-successful plots in London, have not touched us as viscerally.  On Facebook, for example, people are superimposing the Tricoleur on their avatars.  No one I know did this when a Russian plane was shot down earlier this month, resulting in even more casualties of innocents. 

Not a criticism; a triste observation.

To risk sounding like NRAniks who predictably say ‘this is not the time to discuss gun control’ after some horrific mass shooting . . . this is probably not the time to rehearse the West’s often dismal colonial and neo-colonial and current history in the Middle East.  Certainly we can learn from history, but historical memory and ‘facts’ are not static.  Historicity changes as current events change.  They’ve changed now.

Which brings me to the second sadness.  It wasn’t that long ago that a serious threat to our country or to our key allies was addressed by a unified U.S. populace, including and importantly, elected or wanting-to-be-elected politicians.  Evidently, the recent past is no longer operative.

It’s disgusting that a handful of high-profile United States politicians are using the Paris tragedy to immediately bash President Obama (and anyone connected with him).  There are legitimate questions about the current administration’s Middle East policy, but for heaven’s sake, give the President more than a few hours to meet with his highest-level advisors, foreign leaders, CIA spymasters, cyber-security forces  . . . and give him the benefit of the doubt that he is actually doing these things. 

Even if we cannot and should not bid adieu to tristesse, let us act thoughtfully without sentimentality or partisanship.

Consider carefully that it is not the people who call for peace but those who make peace who are commended. For there are those who talk but do nothing.

Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary, but it should not be an endless preoccupation. You must dwell also on the glad remembrance of God's loving-kindness; otherwise, sadness will harden the heart and lead it more deeply into despair.

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Haitian Art for Halloween

Zombies!  Graveyards!  Skulls!  Blood Sacrifices!  Creepy Dead Dolls!  Who would possibly want more from artworks suitable for Halloween?  

If this floats your Charon boat, I recommend exploring, even purchasing Haitian art.

By coupling Halloween and Haitian art, one flirts with reinforcing the shoddy and uninformed sensationalism that has stereotyped Haiti and Haitian Vodou for 250 years.  Nonetheless, many Haitian art traditions are deeply rooted in Vodou practice and iconography, some of which do involve corpses and cemeteries and simulated violence.  Of particular relevance are works invoking the Gedes, the family of lwa (Vodou spirits) in charge of death.  (You may remember the Baron Samedi character from the Bond Film Live or Let Die — he’s often considered the head of the Gede family, which is why Papa Doc Duvalier adopted the Baron’s persona.)  Also appropriate for Halloween are works featuring imagery that Westerners have often considered diabolical, like the horned lwa Bossu or the serpent lwa Damballah.

In all seriousness, Haitian art is wonderful, and much of it is delightfully joyous (children playing, fantasy paradises complete with happy and peaceful animals, bountiful markets) — and still very affordable. Moreover, there are many free trade organizations that ensure the artists (often struggling to make a living in their impoverished, disaster-prone country) are not getting ripped off.

I’ve chosen to highlight ‘Halloweenish’ strands of Haitian art as an excuse to write about an art tradition and a religion that have interested me for many, many years.  Because I do encourage you to consider buying Haitian art, I’ve included price ranges when I can.

Painting

Haitian painting is varied, vibrant and, for want of a better word, rhythmic.  It’s been recognized on the international art scene for decades, but good new works by talented artists are available to purchase for under US$500.  Typical subjects include markets, rural life, and animals; Vodou-themed paintings tend to be a bit more expensive, but still affordable.  I own four, suitable for Halloween, price range (at purchase) fifty dollars to, well, more. The following examples are not mine, unfortunately.

Hector Hyppolite, ‘Magique Noire,’ c. 1947.  The self-taught Hyppolite (d. 1948) is the original ‘old master’ who brought Haitian art into wide recognition.  Among his admirers and promoters were Andre Breton and Truman Capote.  Hippolyte was an hougan (Vodou priest); this painting shows a ceremony invoking Bossu, the bull-headed lwa of war and resistance.  His works are rarely on the market and when they are, they’re extremely costly.

Wilson Bigaud, ‘Zombis,’ 1983 (?).  Bigaud (d. 2010) was an internationally recognized artist, a second-generation ‘old master.’  Haitian zombis are not dangerous to others, as they’re basically robotic slaves; it’s the zombi-maker (here equipped with sacrificial offerings and deftly avoiding the church’s shadow) who is feared.  Bigaud’s paintings sell for between three and ten thousand dollars (rough estimate).

Frantz Zepherin, ‘Gedes,’ 2007.  Zepherin rose to fame as a ‘third-generation master’ rather recently (including having his paintings on New Yorker and Smithsonian magazine covers).  The Gedes are the family of lwa associated with death, cemeteries, and (!) fertility.  I think the Gede in the upper right is Jean-Bertrand Aristide, deposed in 2004 for alleged abuses of power and then exiled to South Africa. Or it could be Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo’s infamous dictator.  Or a generic Tonton Makout (feared paramilitary enforcer). Zepherin paintings now also sell in the thousands.

Henri Jean-Louis, ‘Ceremonie,’ 2012.  This charming little painting shows a procession to a country graveyard, where a goat will be sacrificed to honor or appease one of the Gedes.  You can buy this painting today for $150 — which shows that high-quality Haitian art truly is affordable. Maybe you’ll discover the next Haitian master!

Sequin Arts 

The most famous form of sequin arts is the drapo (Vodou flag). For centuries, decorative symbolic flags have been used in Vodou rituals; it was in the 1930s, when cheap plastic sequins became available in Haiti, that drapo began to be spangled in bling.  These flags represent various lwa and, more recently, historical personages and events.  They are also affordable — ones by well-known artists may cost up to $1000, but drapo by newer practitioners are available for as little as $100, a bargain considering the labor-intensive work involved.  Below are examples of contemporary sequined flags.

Left:  Drapo for Ezili Danto, lwa of fiercely protective and vindictive motherhood, 

by noted flag artist Yves Telemaque.

Right:  Drapo for the Gedes (probably Baron Samedi or Baron Cimitiere) 

by increasingly collected flag artist Georges Valris.

Left:  Drapo for Ayizan, lwa of religious tradition, here presenting the ason (sacred beaded rattle), by up-and-coming flag artist Roudy Azor.

Right:  Drapo for Barrybamz, lwa of cool power, guaranteed to give your Republican acquaintances a real Halloween scare — by New York-born artist Sophie Sanders.

Less well known but equally fabulous are bedazzled shrines and other ritual objects.  The artist Pierrot Barra (d. 1998) worked out of the Iron Market in Port-au-Prince, using scraps and found objects to create his visionary art.  He often incorporated discarded dolls in his work, giving them a distinctively eerie aura.  Because he was a member of the secret (and feared) Bizango society, his iconography can differ from standard Vodou representations. The image that heads this essay is a detail from a Barra shrine to the Marassa Twa (children-lwa of blessings and mysteries: they are twins, but one and one equals three).  Barra also made smaller objects, like offering bottles and the little coffins used in Bizango ceremonies. These are quite affordable, when you can find them.

Gallery Installation of Pierrot Barra’s work. I can’t positively tell the subjects from this photo, but the lower left may be an aspect of Damballah (creator lwa associated with snakes};  the sculpture in the foreground is Agwe (lwa of the ocean) with his boat and consort.  The crosses in the two large sculptures indicate that they may represent one of the Gedes; I have no idea about the cabbage-patch doll-headed shrine on the upper left, except that it’s somewhat disconcerting.

Ritual coffins (sekey madoule) by Pierrot Barra.  The middle one has a plastic window through which you can view the occupant, a very dead looking baby doll (see the insert, lower left). These coffins, carried on one’s head during nighttime processions, are done in the Bizango society’s signature colors of red and black.  

You can also buy sequined bottles and paket kongo (embellished bags for charms and spells) for well under $100.  By the way, I’m estimating prices based on purchasing Haitian art in the United States; obviously, it’s less expensive if purchased in Haiti.

Clockwise from left: a bottle for the Gedes, a paket kongo invoking Ezili Frida (lwa of seduction and love — it’s not very Halloweeny, but it shows how paket can be sequined), a paket invoking the Gedes, and pakets probably invoking Bossu in his three-horned (most powerful) aspect.

A sorcerer’s paket to call upon Kafou (lwa of the crossroads, another deathly Gede).  Larger than most pakets, this object not only incorporates the cross (cemeteries, death, crossroads); it also incorporates eating utensils, suggesting the power of this lwa to consume his enemies. Its colors imply ties to the Bizango society, which — as dispenser of rough justice in rural Haiti, supposedly including the ultimate punishment of zombification — was metaphorically connected to human sacrifice, even cannibalism (particularly in the Western media).

Metal Art

Cut and often repoussé metal art is widely available, attractive, eco-friendly, and very affordable.  Nice big pieces cost under $100, smaller ones a lot less. Hand-crafted from recycled steel drums and other scrap metal, metal artworks take a lot of time and skill to make.   If placed outside, they will rust; if you don’t like the look of ‘naturally’ aged metal, coat the sculpture with spray enamel about once a year.

The best known type is the wall sculpture, often of pleasant subjects like birds, angels, and the tree of life.  More recently, metal artists include functional objects (mirrors, candle holders, hooks, bowls, house numbers) in their repertoire, and brightly painted works are becoming more popular.  

Now primarily a tourist art (not necessarily a bad thing), metal sculpture began as a Vodou art form, centered in the village of Croix des Bouquets. Its founding father is Georges Liautaud (1899 -1991), who made crosses for the communal cemetery and sculptures for the local Vodou temple.  His disciples Serge Jolimeau and Gabriel Bien-Aime, also from Croix des Bouquets, have continued to produced vodou-themed metal art as well as purely decorative pieces. 

Left to right:  A magically metamorphosing Damballah by Georges Liautaud; a cheerfully diabolical Damballah by Serge Jolimeau; a sorcerer with snakes by Gabriel Bien-Aime.

Left to right:  Mermaids (actually Lasiren, the lwa of the sea, its riches and dangers) are popular motifs, although most Westerners are unaware of their religious significance — this contemporary one has a distinctly serpentine tail, linking her to Damballah;  this piece is a bit older and has obviously been outside — it depicts a Vodou sacrifice like the one that inaugurated the Haitian Revolution;  an example of a contemporary painted metal sculpture — evidently a Damballah/Bossu hybrid.

New Developments

After the AIDS epidemic, political turmoil, and the disastrous 2010 earthquake, young Haitian artists calling themselves Atis Rezistans are refashioning Vodou material culture to express the ruin of their country — and its indefatigable creativity.  Their work, formed from cast-off debris and urban junk, centers on the Gedes, the irrepressible family of ghoulish lwa who also tease and trick.  I don’t know whether one can buy these sculptures (often life-sized) outside of Haiti, or what they might cost.  But as Fet Gede, or All Souls Day (November 2), is a public holiday in Haiti, and is fast approaching, it’s appropriate to end this essay with a look at a few of these astonishing mixed media works.

Andre Eugene, “Military Glory.” The coil phallus is a direct reference to the Gedes, who often brandish huge phalluses (phalli?), as well as to mythologies of masculine power.  

Jean-Herard Celeur, “Gede Triptych.” Is this a nursing home or a motorcycle race in Hell?

The Atis Rezistans also create smaller works which are probably affordable if one happens to be in the junkyard section of Port-au-Prince, where group members have their studios.  I don’t know the names of the artists of these pieces.  One can certainly see the influence of sorcerers’ pakets kongo in the figure in the left foreground and the influence of Pierrot Barra’s sekey madoule in the figure on the right.

"Nou Met Led Me Nou La!" 

(We May Be Ugly, But We Are Here!)

—Haitian Proverb

My Dad and the Chicago Cubs

In the 1920s and early 30s, enterprising young Cubs fans like my dad could 

avail themselves of the ultimate cheap seats

My father, born in 1922, grew up in Chicago’s North Side, not far from Wrigley Field.  In the 1920s, memories of the Cubs’ 1908 World Series Victory — and the Cubs’ overall competitiveness — were still very much alive.  Thus Cubs fans were generally more hopeful than they’ve been in my lifetime (except for rare and wonderful times like now!).  Add to this the 1919  Chicago Black Sox scandal, which caused many Southside Chicago fans to jump ship to the North Side: growing up idolizing the Cubs was neither quixotic nor pathetic.  

For my dad, the Cubs were beloved next door neighbors, and Wrigley Field was the preferred destination for father-son outings and solo adventures.  My paternal grandfather, also a Cubs fan although originally from Kentucky, would take my dad to games on Saturday afternoons — Grandpop dressed properly in suit and hat, Dad dressed in knickers and cap.  These excursions mattered a lot to my dad.  Grandpop had endured crushing family tragedies and financial setbacks that made him an unreliable and certainly an unhappy father, and trips to Wrigley were usually fun, positive activities that also provided uncontroversial things to talk about at home.  (Being quizzed on baseball statistics at an early age gave my dad a real head-start in mental math skills, which he tried [with middling results] to pass on to his own children.)

I don’t have a picture of my dad and Grandpop at a Cubs game, 

so here’s another father-and-son photo from the same era:  

Al Capone and his boy (they no doubt had better seats than my relatives ever had)

In the 1930s, my father expanded his Wrigley Field jaunts.  He and his stick-ball-playing friends would shinny up the trees that, before the bleachers were expanded, afforded a free view of the game.  My favorite story was how Dad — at ten or twelve years of age — would blend with the crowd waiting for Cubs’ game tickets, find a respectable-looking man, and ask him in his best street-urchin manner:  Hey, mister, could you pretend to be my father so I can get into the game?  Ah, innocent times, and less financially grasping times as well: children were admitted free.  I’m not sure what the age of paid admission was then, but my father was a cute little guy, so he probably worked this scam well into his teens.

Dad’s crowning achievement as a young Cubs fan was witnessing Babe Ruth’s called shot.  It’s unclear whether he was there with Grandpop or with a random man willing to walk up to the ticket booth holding the hand of an enterprising and unrelated kid.  The point, for my father, was that he was really, truly there — a witness to history.  He saw the Bambino point to center field (where, in some versions of the family story Dad was sitting), and then he watched the home run sail over his head.  How could you not be a life-long Cubs fan (or at least Wrigley Field fan) after that?

In the 1932 World Series (Cubs vs. Yankees), Game 3 at Wrigley, Yankee Babe Ruth pointed to center field, then rocketed it out there.

There were potential roadblocks.  Dad married my mother, whose downstate Illinois father was a committed White Sox fan.  Heresy!  Fortunately for their union, Mom didn’t then care that much about baseball and easily converted to Cubs fandom.  Part of the her pliancy was due to the way her father lived his baseball allegiance: he would retreat to his car and listen to the Chicago White Sox games on the radio.  I remember many times visiting my maternal grandparents, and someone would ask: ‘Where’s Dave’?  ‘Out in the car with the White Sox’ would be the reply, and the rest of us would go about our business.  

This whiff of apostasy had ramifications in my childhood.  I knew that not everyone in my family was a Cubs fan (and that the Cubs weren’t very good at that time); wasn’t I free to choose my own team?  I did so, one rainy, cold summer when I was about eight years old. We were all stranded in Northern Wisconsin’s Pine Beach with nothing for children to do except read library books and listen to the radio.  During the latter activity, I decided to become a baseball apostate and root for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The expected opposition from my dad did not happen, as he and my mother were enjoying partying with their friends and anyway, the Cubs were horrible that year (surprise!).  The next summer, though, we all went to a Milwaukee Braves game in County Stadium, which was wonderful and baseball-star-spangled: Warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews, and Hank Aaron immortalized in my pink leatherette autograph book! I added the (Milwaukee, not the turncoat Atlanta) Braves to the Dodgers (and, even though I wouldn’t admit it, the Cubs) on my favorite-teams list.  

Aaron, Spahn, and Matthews in 1958, before the Milwaukee Braves ultimately lost the post-season to the New York Yankees.  

My father and, by then, my mother remained steadfast Cubs fans. I became a teenager, college student, wife, and mother . . . and although a less attentive major league baseball fan, a baseball fan still (heck, I was an assistant little league baseball coach on Okinawa).  Later, as a university professor, I would go with my graduate students to Durham Bulls minor league games and occasionally act as umpire in intramural graduate squad matches.  Meanwhile, my parents retired from Wisconsin to North Carolina.  After a few short years, my father experienced major health setbacks, and he couldn’t play golf, tennis, ping-pong, jarts, bridge, or even fifty-two-card-pickup any more.  His formerly active life was radically curtailed, and about the only sports activity he could enjoy was . . . watching the Cubs.  

Thanks to WGN at that time (NOT NOW, so merci beaucoup not, ‘America’s Network’), Cubs games were broadcast widely and frequently.  My dad would organize his day around those broadcasts, and when classes and meetings allowed, I’d join him and my mom in viewing and rooting . . . and thus restoring my life-long albeit sometimes-under-the-radar Cubs fandom to fully active status.  

Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, pretending to be friendly competitors.  

Less than two years before he died, Dad was able to savor the exciting home-run-record race waged by Mark McGwire, (for a time) Ken Griffey Jr., and (YES!!!!) the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa.  As a team, the Cubs were vaguely competitive then, but the real fan thrill adhered to the 1998 home-run race.  My father, whose love of the Cubs began when there were no Hispanic or Black ballplayers in the major leagues — not even a thought that there could be — was as absorbed in this quest as health allowed him to be. The last book my father ‘read’ was a graphic-novel biography of Sammy Sosa.

Dad really believed that the Cubs would win the World Series in his lifetime.  That didn’t happen.   As his daughter, I’m especially savoring the Cubs’ run this year — hoping that if the Cubs are champions in 2015 (or almost champions), and I’m totally into it, and having a fine time watching games with good friends, my father is holding up a ‘W’ banner, somewhere in the skies above Wrigley Field.

[Update courtesy of my sister, re Babe Ruth's called shot:   Dad and his parents had a little lunch outside of Wrigley Field before Grandpop went in to watch the World Series game with the other men in the crowd.  Luckily, our grandmother was able to snag makeshift bleacher seat tickets from a scalper as they began to walk home and thus could surprise Dad with the perfect birthday present (he was turning ten years old).  So, instead of paying $15 each (as Grandpop had), they got in for $2 each, and happened to be in the perfect position to see the called shot.]

Why We Should Abolish the Death Penalty. Immediately.

United States statutes concerning capital punishment are a snarl of conflicting jurisdictions, regulations, methods, and justifications.  Therefore, even the President cannot stop  executions throughout the country.  Only the Supreme Court can do that. (Not to mention individual states’ governors, who can commute death sentences, and legislatures, which are randomly lurching around this crucial human rights issue.)

The President, however, could do something — something important.  He could (1) commute all Federal death sentences to life imprisonment, (2) direct the Federal Bureau of Prisons to indefinitely postpone all pending executions, and/or (3) direct all Federal prosecutors to cease requesting the death penalty during the charging and arraignment stages of criminal proceedings. (Source:  https://www.quora.com/Could-a-presidential-decree-be-used-to-abolish-the-death-penalty-in-the-United-States.) 

Barack Obama should do all three of these things now.   

The reason to do so immediately is not Pope Francis’s recent United States visit, during which he condemned capital punishment as antithetical to a pro-life (in the broadest possible terms) ethical world view.  Nor is it because of the sickening screw-ups concerning ‘lethal injection’ drugs:  the illegality of procurement, the bureaucratic ineptitudes, the unconstitutional suffering endured by many recipients of slap-dash death cocktails. Nor is it even because of the incontrovertible fact that there are innocent (or at least not justifiably adjudicated as guilty) people on death row, not to mention among those already executed.  Nor issues of youth, mental illness, mental incapacity, racial bias, inadequate counsel . . .

It’s this.

This is a photograph of a young Saudi Arabian man, arrested and condemned for attending, at age 17, a protest in favor of Shia rights in a country dominated by Sunni fundamentalism.  Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr is not accused of any violent crime.  His main transgression may be that he comes from a prominent Shia family, members of which have been outspoken in their criticism of the Saudi monarchy.  His uncle, Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, was sentenced to death a year ago for for seeking “'foreign meddling' in [Saudi Arabia], 'disobeying' its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces.” 

As soon as King Salman ratifies his sentence, which can happen at any moment, Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr will be decapitated, then have his rotting corpse displayed in public (the ‘crucifixion’ often referred to in news reports). 

The British government has been trying to stop this outrage -- magnified by charges of torture and a rigged ‘trial' -- through official condemnation, the United Nations, and media outcry. So have France and other countries.  The United States, to this point, has been officially silent in the face of its heavily subsidized Middle Eastern ally’s barbaric justice.

It’s not that Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr’s case is one-of-a-kind.  Saudi Arabia lists a lot of crimes that merit execution, often grotesquely public execution: along with murder and sedition, capital offenses include apostasy, blasphemy, fornication, adultery, sodomy, carjacking, and drug smuggling.  Despite being a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Saudi Arabia continues to impose the death sentence for juvenile crimes. 

So do Iran, Sudan, Nigeria, and Yemen, to name a few — and these countries have similar laundry lists of capital crimes. 

I’ve mentioned here a few countries that impose capital punishment on (1) ’moral’ and ‘religious’ crimes.  More countries expand it to (2) ‘treason,’ which evidently can include attending an anti-government rally.  Most death-penalty-friendly nations see (3) murder, aggravated rape, and in some cases, drug-dealing as meriting capital punishment.

The United States imposes the death penalty on people (usually violent, recidivist, even sociopathic individuals who are also usually poor, marginalized, mentally incompetent, outside-the-safety-net, and badly-represented) in categories (2) and (3).  It doesn’t (these days) impose the death penalty on people in category (1).  Nonetheless, the U.S. ranks number five on the dishonor roll of ‘executing’ countries, narrowly edging out Somalia, lagging far behind China (the champion upholder of law and order for anti-state activities as well as a host of ‘normal crimes),  but within theoretical striking distance of Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia (particularly if we re-visited the moral and religious category, perhaps by revivifying The Duke of York’s Laws for the Government of the New York Colony, which counted denying ‘the true God’ and homosexual acts as capital offenses).

When there’s a well-publicized case in category (1), such as Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr’s, what standing does the United States have to protest?  We cannot argue that our death penalties are more just than ‘theirs.’  Executions may be carried out on different grounds, but the grounds are arguably just as flawed. In addition, the stomach-turning grotesqueness of United States’ executions (from public hangings to Old Sparky to the latest horrors of lethal injections) makes it impossible for us to chastise our allies for unnecessary barbarity.

If the United States wants to exert moral authority successfully, through example as well as through economic clout and military action, we have to demonstrate that we’re true to these ideals at home. Our effectiveness vis-a-vis ISIS, Boko Haram (as if we really cared, which would be not really), and other rampaging death-dealing factions — and to secure allies, and to create international consensus — is connected directly to our ability to practice what we preach . . . even if we have to start changing our own practices so we can ethically condemn ‘allies’ whose values should be antithetical to ours, and to those of most countries on the planet.

The moral is embedded in the political (and vice versa).  Geo-stragically speaking, the United States would be in a stronger position morally and politically if, at least on the Federal level, we abolished the death penalty.  President Obama has some options here, and he should take them.  Immediately.

Once More Unto the Breach

                                        Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

                                        Or close the wall up . . . 

                                             —Henry V, 3.1

Just when you thought Republican grand guignol could not get any grander, the past few days’ Congressional Speaker Drama hit the hustings. ‘Drama’ is probably a euphemism.  Events quickly exploded into what Sir Philip Sidney excoriated as ‘mungrell tragi-comedy,’ a theatrical spectacle that not only mixes genres but also pulverizes them into an inchoate squirm of competing performances.  To Sidney in 1580, the mungrells’ biggest dramatic sin is ignoring the classical unities. Things haven’t changed much in 2015, as the GOP is maniacally engaged in attacking the very ideological and procedural unities that used to define a political party.

Perhaps recourse to Renaissance theatre, specifically Shakespearean theatre (because Shakespeare did blend genres without embracing full mungrellhood, and because most of us are familiar with his plays) might help explain what’s been happening in the United States House of Representatives.  We could call the play Boehnerolianus . . . or MacBoehner . . . or Boehnlet (Hamboehn?). . . or King John (wait, that’s already been used, if one accepts a capacious Shakespearean canon).

                                          The night has been unruly: where we lay [. . .]

                                          And prophesying with accents terrible 

                                          Of dire combustion and confused events 

                                          New hatch'd to the woeful time.

                                               —Macbeth, 2.3

Act One:  John Boehner (R-OH) abdicates his Speaker of the House position because uneasy lies the head that wants to play golf instead of deal with recalcitrant dickwads.  A week later, he has a bad dream about a "hand" that "came reaching, pulling," and, ultimately preventing his dream-self from making a needed escape. "I was trying to get out and I couldn't get out," Boehner related. This is either a symptom of watching Godfather 3 too many times or a genuine Shakespearean portent, or both.  Not to worry, though:  the succession is set, with Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) slotted into the Speakership. Speaker Boehner can give up the responsibilities that come with being King of the Hill and go back to being a bibulously care-free Prince Hal. No more unto the breach!

                                         If she and I be pleased, what’s that to you?

                                         ' Tis bargained ’twixt us twain, being alone,

                                         That she shall still be curst in company.

                                              —The Taming of the Shrew, 2.1

Act Two:  On Wednesday, October 7, the thanes gather in Washington DC to crown successor Kevin.  Enough seem to be on board for the coronation to occur, even though Kevin the Syntaxless leaves a bit to be desired in the one-would-think-important talent of communicative arts.  Conclave happens, news people poised to report, Kevin McCarthy announces:  that he’s dropped out!  No way!  But, uh, why?  

Political pundits (who in this post-classical, post-Shakespearean age assume the dramatic rolls of Greek choruses) are oddly tongue-tied.  It’s as if they know something that they don’t feel comfortable sharing with their less-informed audiences.  Something like the pervasive rumors that Kevin McCarthy has been carrying on a long affair with Renee Ellmers (R-NC from the district right next to mine, but not mine, so she’s not my fault).  Of course, their ‘friendship’ was under-the-radar, because every politically connected person in the country knew about it.  Nonetheless, the reasons for McCarthy’s withdrawal are initially explained via vote numbers.

                                          Exit.  Pursued by a bear.

                                              —A Winter’s Tale, 3.3

Act Three:  On Thursday, October 8, the main/lame/tamestream media finally coughs up what they’ve known all along.  Not only the allegations of a not-so-family-values affair between two married Republican congresspeople, but also that McCarthy may have been blackmailed into resigning.  Rumors are rumors, and are plentiful, but a full-blown media attack using said rumors can be pretty devastating.  Ewwww.  

ANOTHER Republican Speaker sex scandal?  Weren’t Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, and Denny Hastert sufficiently embarrassing?  Couldn’t Kevin McCarthy have been thoughtful enough to confine his dirty-boy inclinations to diaper-play prostitutes (Sen. David Vitter R-LA) or wide-stance bathroom meet-and-greets (Sen. Larry Craig, R-ID)?  But sullying one’s own political nest, in the nest itself . . . . 

By the end of Thursday and certainly by Friday, more details ooze out of the muck.  The instigator of much of the Ellmers-McCarthy finger-pointing was the notorious take-em-all-down conservative troller Charles Johnson.  Johnson’s shit-slinging was soon lateraled to Steve Baer, a very wealthy (and evidently very bored) person who loves to bombard ‘thought leaders’ with zillions of scurrilous emails  Which he did, vis-a-vis McCarthy, and which caused so many sludge-spattering waves in the underground political cesspool that poor old Kevin has to  head for the Bakersfield hinterlands, while slut-shamed Renee is left to being curst in company.

How wonderful that McCarthy was actually pursued (and made to exit) by a Baer!

                                          But we both obey,

                                          And here give up ourselves, in the full bent

                                          To lay our service freely at your feet,

                                          To be commanded.

                                               —Hamlet, 2.2

Act Four:  No one with serious House of Representatives cred wants the job of Speaker!  By Friday, people go full-frontal into proposing less and less likely candidates and analyzing the next Speaker’s new clothes.  Which would be seriously frayed breech cloths, if they’re lucky.  My favorite sansculottes (actually proposed for Speaker!) are Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich (who OF COURSE said he’d be willing to resume his previous role). The Constitution does not require that a Speaker has to be an actual, current member of the House of Representatives, so why not?  Just remember that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ended up dead (as did just about everyone else in Hamlet), but that’s probably a different discussion.  

In addition to Dick and Newt are a handful of House Republicans registering interest in the job:  Teapartiers Daniel Webster (R-FL), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), certified crazy person Darrell Issa (R-CA). back-benchers John Kline (R-MN) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA).  The problem is that the new Speaker would need to reconcile the Republican Party’s warring factions and do some actual legislating.  None of these politicians seems capable of doing so:  some are card-carrying members of the no-compromise, no-government guild and others are so obscure and clout-less that they’d have zero chance of influencing their Housemates to play nice. 

                                         Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

                                         The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

                                         Or to take arms against a sea of troubles . . . 

                                                 —Hamlet 1.2

Act Five: Enter Paul Ryan (R-WI), the pop-up consensus candidate for Speaker — conservative, respected by peers, smarter than the average GOPer.  There’s a small difficulty, however.  Precisely because he is smarter than the average GOPer, Representative Ryan wants nothing to do with this horrible, thankless, soul-shattering, career-killing job. He’d rather spend time with his young children, go deer-hunting, and watch Packer games than try to corral stray naysayers, get criticized on all sides, and fundraise, fundraise, fundraise.  Good call, Paul!

Except his panicky colleagues are acting like hormone-addled teenage boys:  ‘No’ must mean ‘yes’, or at least ‘maybe’ if I keep asking you, or ‘I give up’ because you’re tired of hearing how much actual pain I’m in (blue balls for red-staters).  Pressure on all sides, from every Republican representative who can find an unoccupied microphone to former running-mate Mitt Romney.  Save us! You’re the chosen one! It’s your patriotic duty! We’ll get some other lackey to do the tiresome fundraising part!  And thus Paul Ryan, being human despite the Eddie Munster haircut, is reconsidering.  Perhaps.

Like Hamlet, Ryan is undecided.  The reluctant lead player in the latest Republican mungrell tragi-comedy, he’s now holed up in Wisconsin to contemplate previous Speakers’ fates and to consider the particular sea of troubles — government shutdowns, debt ceilings, rolling back Obamacare for the umpteenth unsuccessful time — into which he’d be plunging.  Will ‘no’ mean ‘yes’?

If it doesn’t, John Boehner’s nightmare comes true . . . and he may have to stay on as Speaker for a few more months.  Once more unto the breach, dammit. 

                                          Rather proclaim it [. . .]

                                          That he which hath no stomach to this fight,

                                          Let him depart.

                                                —Henry V 4.3

Gun Control Opposition: Cui Bono?

When trying to crack an unsolved case, a useful question to pose is: Cui Bono?  I learned this in Criminal Law classes many moons ago.  The lesson has been reinforced through years of reading detective fiction and watching TV cop dramas, in which the question is asked in less academically Latinate terms.  To Whose Benefit?  Or more colloquially and less grammatically translated:  Who Benefits? 

This motive-locating question kept popping into my mind the last few days, as the recent Oregon school shootings were rehearsed and analyzed . . . and the ‘gun control discussion’ once again washed up on the shores of national consciousness, accompanied by the expected flotsam of enforce-existing-statutes, it’s-a-mental-health-problem-not-a-gun-problem, criminals-don’t-follow-laws-anyway-so-what’s-the-point, and (thank you Jeb!) stuff-happens on one side, and the predictable jetsam of plug-gunshow-loopholes, expand-background-checks, restrict-ammunition-clips, and forbid-military-style-automatic-weapons on the other.  (I'm not even counting the Obama-Is-Coming-To-Take-My-Guns or the More-Guns-Equal-Less-Gun-Violence idiots.)

As anyone who knows me or has read my previous blogs and op-eds on guns realizes, I agree with the jetsam.  But I think that ‘my side’ is missing an important point, if it really wants to change this country’s gun culture. Cui Bono?  Who benefits from resisting gun control measures? We have to know the profiteers in order to combat their influence.  Simply making outraged moral arguments or trying to shame cowardly politicians just doesn’t cut it, as we certainly should have figured out by now.  

The easy answer to 'who benefits,' of course, is the National Rifle Association (and the politicians pandering for its approval).  And if one digs a little deeper, armament and ammunition manufacturers who fund and control the NRA.  All of this is pretty obvious.  

What’s not so obvious is the network of corporate and ideological interests uniting many enterprises and initiatives that benefit financially from 2nd Amendment absolutism.  These would include the for-profit private prison industry and the for-profit bail bond industry, both integral corporate components of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), an umbrella organization responsible for drafting ‘model bills’ that benefit its members and that Republican-controlled state legislators have enacted into law.  Many of these laws have to do with guns:  stand-your-ground laws and open-carry laws to name a few . . . not to mention ALEC-backed opposition to any and all gun control efforts. Although it might seem paradoxical, ALEC’s advocacy of privatizing key components of the U.S. justice system fits neatly with its advocacy of unfettered access to guns.  

How?  The more our society becomes criminalized, and the more criminalization is handled by private corporations, everyone (if everyone means ALEC members) benefits.  On both ends!  More fear of crime: more weapons. More weapons, more profit and more crime. More crime, more high bails and incarceration.  More high bails and incarceration, more profit.  

This circle jerk encompasses anti-immigration efforts as well, as ALEC supports anti-immigrant mandatory incarceration measures.  And the ‘war on drugs’ with its attendant, disastrous, mandatory sentencing.  And the push to try juvenile offenders as adults (more moolah for private prisons).  Even, tangentially, the media’s fixation on florid mass shootings (easily ‘analyzed’ as occurrences that tighter gun laws would not prevent) rather than on the appalling number of ‘routine’ firearm murders and accidental killings and suicides that take the lives of approximately 30,000 citizens a year (a grim statistic that actually could be positively impacted by tighter gun laws).

In all these instances, the potent profit-producer of enhanced public paranoia drives up gun sales and stokes the cultural anxieties that keep fearful citizens electing ALEC-backed politicians to state and national office.

Cui Bono?  Not the interests of the vast majority of U.S. citizens who support reasonable gun control measures. Maybe if we look seriously at who does, we might be able to effect meaningful change.   

Walk On By: Scott Walker Returns to CheeseCurdistan

                                       If you see me walking down the street

                                       And I start to cry each time we meet

                                       Walk on by, walk on by . . . 

                                                Foolish pride

                                                Is all that I have left

                                       So let me hide

                                               The tears and the sadness you gave me

                                               When you said goodbye.

                                                         —Dionne Warwick, “Walk on By”

Scott Walker officially quit the Republican Presidential race this evening with an announcement at once subdued, whiney, self-serving, and churlish.  Basically, it’s all Donald Trump’s fault (most of it probably is, but even so . . . ).  Plus the field’s refusal to embrace Ronald Reagan’s optimism. Even more, it’s the polled potential voters’ refusal to embrace Scott Walker, the union-buster with enough bluster to pass muster with both the GOP ‘elite’ and the Tea Party renegades. And in conclusion:  it’s up to most of the other semi-acceptable-to-the-general-electorate candidates to drop out now, so the Scottster won’t be left fermenting alone in his foolish pride.

I admit that I’ve never understood the Scott Walker appeal (when there was some).  I say this as a native Wisconsinite, genetically predisposed to think the best of fellow cheeseheads. Yet it’s not that big a mystery:  for decades, Wisconsin’s industrial base has eroded (as has happened throughout the upper Midwest); union influence consequently has waned; the state’s college sports teams have not recently done all that well, which makes everybody crabby. And we hate Tom Izzo and Jim Harbaugh and Bo Ryan, who’re all socialist Muslims.  Not to mention the detested Seahawks, who last year whomped the Pack with their left-coast liberal tricks (yesterday’s revenge win might have been the nail in Scott Walker’s coffin, as it deprived him of a grievance-based talking point).  

Seriously, there’s always been a reactionary (nativist, bigoted) strain in Wisconsin politics.  Senator Joe McCarthy (aka Ted Cruz’s genotypical and ideological daddy) was from the little town (Grand Chute, Wisconsin) next to the only-a-bit-bigger town (Appleton, Wisconsin) where I grew up.  The John Birch Society has its headquarters in Appleton.  

The bust of Joseph McCarthy in the Outagamie County Courthouse, Appleton 

(down the street from my childhood home)

In addition, even though historically Wisconsin has been known for progressive (read: good) education, there’s also been a push-back against it like, forever. Thus Scott Walker’s slash-and-burn tactics vis-a-vis the Badger State’s education apparatus is not an anomaly.  True story:  in my 600+ graduating class at Appleton Senior High, less than 100 students were college-bound (which includes the 70+ headed for what we then called ‘vocy tech’), and of the remaining 25 or so, only five (FIVE — which would be me, three of my good friends, and an outlier who went somewhere in Indiana) were destined for higher education outside the state.  

And so?  Scott Walker’s success as a Wisconsin politician is not really a surprise, even though for me it’s an embarrassment.  The fact that his success, such as it has been, is a factor of tapping in to the most retrograde politics of the state I truly love is unfortunate.  The fact that his weasel vision did not translate to a national groundswell is not at all cause for tears and sadness. Walk on by — bye-bye.