The Ultimate Retro Raleigh Quiz

Doesn’t matter how long you lived in Raleigh —

It’s the quality of the experience 

I don’t know how to make interactive quizzes, so here’s one in the lame form of a blog.  The U.S. political scene has been so brain-eating-wormishly insane that, after a few weeks of fevered writing, I am out of things to say.  But blogs need to be fed. 

This offering, in part, is in response to recent ‘news’ assessments of best places to live and the equivalent, many of which highlight Raleigh and its suburbs. Eat your heart out, people who now live in Mequon or Melrose or Boise or somewhere in the snake-infested Southwest. It’s also a response to the Buzzfeedy ‘How Southern/ North Carolinian Are You?’ quizzes that waft across our Facebook feeds.  Most consequently, to me, this is a way to buy a little more time to think of something new to write about politics.

The Retro Raleigh quiz is especially but not exclusively for former NC State graduate students, and it attempts to assess that experience through what most of us actually did or didn’t do (rather than through silly benchmarks like preference for sweetened or unsweetened iced tea). The point might be — if you agree with a whole lot of these propositions, you can claim to be a ‘Raleighite’ in perpetuity.  Even if you now don't live in Raleigh, Apex, Wake Forest, Garner, or Cary. Lucky you!  

You can claim to be a genuine Retro Raleighite if:

—You’ve had way too much to drink at Mitch’s.

—You’ve ridden the Pullen Park Carousel.

—You’ve participated in Moral Mondays, or wished you’d been here to do so.

—You’ve bought something at School Kids Records.

—You pulled an all-nighter grading 40 Freshman English papers.

—You’ve fed the pigeons in Capitol Square.

—You’ve run or jogged around the NC State track.

—You’ve had way too much to drink at PR.

—You’ve played golf, or putt-putt, or whacked away at a driving range somewhere in Wake County.

—You’ve gone to a movie at the Rialto.

—You’ve said vile things about Carolina.

—You pulled an all-nighter writing a final paper for a course you basically ignored all semester.

—You still have outstanding overdue books at D. H. Hill Library.

—You’ve slept for over an hour in the (late lamented) Tompkins Hall graduate lounge.

—You’ve gone to the North Carolina Museum of Art, or the North Carolina Museum of History, at least twice.

—You’ve spent some uncomfortable time, feeling old but oddly good about yourself, at Cup-A-Joe.

—You’ve had breakfast or brunch somewhere around Moore Square.

—You attended a live Whiskeytown performance and had way too much to drink.

—You crashed at a friend’s Raleigh apartment for more than three days in a row.

—You idolized an NCState professor and then thought better of it.

—You’ve attended a sporting event at Reynolds Colosseum.

—You’ve complained about how ‘theory’ is ruining appreciation of literature.

—You’ve borrowed a friend’s car and then 'forgot' to refill the gas tank after being stuck in Beltline traffic.

—You’ve attended a performance at the Theatre in the Park or the Raleigh Little Theatre in the Rose Garden. 

—You’ve gone bowling on Hillsborough Street (forgot the name of the second-story place, sorry!) and also had way too much to drink there.

—You’ve said vile things about Duke.

—You've attended a Durham Bulls baseball game and hwtmtd 

—You couldn't find your room on the first day of classes (double points if the class was in Harrelson).  

There are 28 questions (I think -- it's late, and counting while scrolling is not high on my priority list).  Nonetheless, if you answer in the affirmative to 20 of these questions, you are an official Retro Raleighite.  Aren't you special!

Moles, Trolls and Cornholios

It seems as if everyone, bastard and non-, is running for the Republican Presidential nomination.  And they all popped up last Thursday, ready to be hammered by the Fox moderators and each other.  Particularly during the main event, when the fearsome threesome of Brent Baer (aka Eddie Munster after having raided John Boehner’s pancake makeup kit), Chris Wallace (doing his best hey-I’ve-got-gravitas-just-like-my-dad act), and Megyn Kelly (don’t call me Bimbo because I’ve got a superfluous ‘y’ in my name) inaugurated the night by seeming to stage a ‘Fox and Friends’ takeover . . . before delivering big-assed whacks, with the pol occupying the center hole taking most of the blows.

Bam!  Right off the bat, a show of hands!  Who is a potential Republican traitor, to the extent of mounting a third-party candidacy?  ‘Me, myself, and I,’ Donald Trump volunteered.  ‘I’ll support myself if I’m the nominee;  otherwise, quién sabe, as the rapists say?’  Talk about starting the debate with a ratings grabber.

The evening just got more and more strange.  With every petulantly bellicose response, Trump increasingly resembled a deranged cuttlefish squirting toxic ink over the entire Republican Party. The littler fishies thrashed about helplessly, bubbling platitudes and canning themselves in oleaginous talking points.  After the debate ended and it was time to buss up the beer bottles and popcorn, I decided that the cephalopod metaphor forming in my mind drew from the wrong part of the animal kingdom.  Instead, what about the charges that Donald Trump is really a Democratic mole?

Trump-as-mole started as an Onion-esque conspiracy theory.  Yet is it really preposterous?  Trump revels in insulting (and occasionally unmasking) almost every Republican [‘thought’?] leader (e.g. Jeb: lacks energy; Lindsey: can't crack 1%; Carly: brings on migraines).  His screed about ‘giving,’ for example — that he gives to all candidates so they will do him favors — is a strong indictment of the Citizens United decision, which has allowed cockamamie GOP candidates to compete and often win.  Sure, he used ‘giving’ to explain why Hillary Clinton attended his most recent wedding.  But it applies equally, even more devastatingly to pipsqueak Republicans in search of their own private billionaire.

Then there are Trump’s dumps on women.  Plenty were brought up during the debate (calling women slobs, pigs, and better-on-their-knees); not to be undone by himself, the Donald added to his caddishness on Friday, suggesting that moderator Megyn Kelly was ‘mean’ to him because she had blood coming out of her ‘wherever.’  [Every woman over the age of twelve knows exactly what he meant, as we’ve all heard versions of his distasteful put-down at times when we’ve been angry, outspoken, or have challenged male authority.]  What better way to expose Republican misogyny in general than to voice it crudely and wait for Republicans to come up with unconvincing lukewarm responses or for Democrats to pounce on his remarks as indicative of the mainstream GOP’s anti-women policies, as Hillary Clinton did today?  Worthy of a really really smart, really really really rich mole!

The self-gratifying excessiveness of Trump’s ‘you’re on the rag’ stupidity, and the way he has kept escalating it for the past three days, suggests that the billionaire may be more of a troll than a mole.  He’s trolling the Republican establishment for sure, which includes picking a fight with Fox News and making them grovel for forgiveness, as has been announced tonight re the conciliatory genuflection of Roger Ailes. Trump is also trolling the entire democratic electoral process; what egomaniac wouldn’t shoot for the biggest possible target?  Is this really what our country’s political decisions have become — a sorry brew of Orwellian pop-up polls, reality TV ratings, and social media buzz?

The redundantly logorrheic insistence of Trump’s outrageousness suggests another trolling target. If you’ve convinced yourself that you’re the most successful, intelligent, appealing  person in modern history, what could be more fun than trolling yourself?  Can you get the booboisie to keep supporting you, no matter how you up the insanity ante?  

A mole and a troll (and a cuttlefish, but it didn’t rhyme). Obviously, I’m casting about for ingenious comparisons with which to characterize Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping rise to political prominence.  Let me try a final one, which to me seems quite apt.

Beavis and Butthead fans know that Beavis has a completely unhinged alter ego, ‘The Great Cornholio.’  Cornholio is Beavis in a fugue state, yelling gibberish, waving his arms, and being even more scatologically juvenile than his ‘normal’ persona.  Cornholio has a thing about Latin America, like (heh-heh) Lake Titicaca and talking in a ‘Spanish’ accent . . . in one episode, he’s deported to Mexico by the INS. The ‘normal’ Beavis usually has no memory of Cornholio’s escapades, and/or will deny them vehemently.  What makes the Cornholio/Beavis dyad so funny is that the everyday Beavis is childishly, vulgarly unfiltered to begin with.  Can absolutely self-absorbed, politically incorrect excess be amped up? To make that surreal point, even the Cornholio alter has an alter: Bungholio. 

Thus I suggest Donald Trump as The Great Cornholio, incorporating the mole and the troll into increasingly fantastic, free-floating, maybe even sociopathic self-representations.  And if you don’t agree with me, you’re a stupid, weak, hormonal loser. 

It’s a Guy Thing: the Republican Debates and the Optics of Gender

I spent most of my academic life in a department that expected female faculty to host (and cook and clean up for) parties . . .  and to keep silent when male models of pedagogy (all-knowing lectures from on high rather than, say, collaborative dialogue) were constantly rewarded. Thus, a formulaic academic title — catchy phrase, colon, and real subjects A and B — seems appropriate for this short rumination on the upcoming Republican debate and its potential for being a total body slam against women.  

Fox News has just announced the Thursday line-up.  All white guys except for the BINO Ben Carson and LINOs Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.  As I said: all [virtual] white guys.  Even if Carly Fiorina (a WINO) or Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal (an IINO) had been included, it still would have been an all-white-guy line-up.  But the optics might have been different, particularly if disastrous-CEO Fiorina had been standing on the stage.

You know that Planned Parenthood funding will be brought up.  It’s the hot issue of the day.  So imagine this:  ten middle-aged guys thundering about how that organization should be defunded by every governmental and private agency known to man. Will Jeb Bush be asked about his comment re Planned Parenthood, “I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues?”  Will Donald Trump be asked why he thinks breastfeeding is disgusting?  Will Mike Huckabee be asked whether championship of ‘traditional marriage’ means championship of traditionally subservient women’s roles? Will all of them be asked why Hillary Clinton is un(pants)suited to be President?  

This is just the start of what could be a monumental fail for the Republican Party.  So many issues that voters actually care about are entangled in gender considerations. Minimum wage:  important for women trying to support a family on a shoestring income. Gun violence: important to women who fear being shot in domestic disputes and/or who fear for their children’s safety every day.  Immigration: important to women who want their families to remain together and for their kids to succeed.  Policing and incarceration:  important to women who see their husbands, sons, and fathers imprisoned for relatively minor offenses, thus rupturing their families, not to mention their own risks if they get caught up in our anything-but gender-and-income-and-ethnicity neutral justice system. Health insurance:  uh, duh — particularly when improving women’s health services is a key component of Obamacare, which all Republican candidates seem to think is the Nazi Muslim devil’s plan to . . .  oh who knows, to make the unterfrauen dominant? 

I’m not arguing that these issues have impacts only on women.  Instead, I suggest that they have distinctive impacts, ones that need recognition and articulation.  Which no one on the Republican debate podium will be able to do.  

They could, of course.  You don’t have to be a woman to support and advocate for women’s issues, experiences, and points of view.  I can imagine, for instance, that if Joe Biden enters the scrum, he would be as articulate (in his endearing Uncle Joe way) about such matters as would Hillary Clinton (whose adult life has been significantly dedicated to women’s issues [and don’t even bring up slut-shaming vis-a-vis Bill’s sexual adventures because what in the hell would you do, ladies, if put in that horridly no-win situation?)].  In an alternate political universe, I can imagine some current Republican candidates trying to do the same as Vice President Biden.

But it’s this year’s political universe. The Republican Presidential Debate of August 6, 2015, will be an all-guys thing, not only in gender optics, which may be bad enough, but in defensive white male-based attitude. White males — white Republican males, or I-think-like-a-white Republican male because I’m a victim of ‘liberal’ change — are the core of the Republican base. No one will contest this base ideology, I suspect, even if their life experiences and private souls prompt them otherwise (nonetheless, I hold out a modicum of hope for John Kasich).  The debate will be an unhappy and antiquated guy thing:  in effect, as the men trumpet their dislike of everything that’s happening currently, women will be told to bake cookies while they shut up and listen and internalize the misogynistic message.

I hope I’m wrong.