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. 

June to Ward! There’s Something Wrong with the . . . Republican Debate!

Mainly, that I kept thinking about Leave It To Beaver.  Like, every candidate was an evil doppelgänger to characters on a sweet — AND NO LONGER RELEVANT TO OUR LIVES EXCEPT DURING A CABLE NOSTALGIATHON — television show.  I love me some nostalgia, but I keep hoping that the ongoing presidential mini-series might swerve into contemporary relevance.  

Fat chance.  As long as Republicans babble-squabble about economic and social policies most of the country has moved beyond, they keep rebranding themselves as the Grand Old/Outdated Party.  Not to mention the last debate’s signature trait — puerile name-calling, which of course sent viewers (or, at least, me) into reveries of elementary school nonny-nonny-boo-boo contests.  Which, in turn, led to thoughts of that era’s (few, because there were only three channels available on my family’s newly and proudly purchased TV set) must-watch programs, of which Leave It To Beaver was primus inter pares.  It didn’t occur to me, as a kid, that this child-centric show was also boy-centric (what other choices were there, other than the Mickey Mouse Club, which was more gender-balanced?).  In fact, I’d never thought about it until, well, a couple days ago, when I was trying to sort out the reasons that comparing the debate to the Cleaver family saga made sense.

So that’s one reason: both LITB and the Republican Debates are male dramas, full of jockeying for supremacy and the tensions of male bonding and the conundrums of potential male power.  The second reason, as I suggested above, is the juvenile level of ‘discussion.’  The third reason is the retronaut quality of today’s Republican discourse and policy.  As Elizabeth Warren asked Republicans (re the jihad against Planned Parenthood) a day or so ago, “Did you fall down and hit your head and wake up and think it’s the1950s?”  

The fourth reason is that the GOP debaters actually remind me of LITB characters.  In some instances, they look like them; in all instances, they embody stereotypical traits encapsulated in those characters.  

Will the real Eddie Haskell stand up?

Although Rand Paul certainly has Eddie Haskell hair, and a good measure of Eddie Haskell smarminess, Donald Trump wins the role so fast it’ll make your head spin.  Eddie’s signature trait is seamless sycophantic duplicity, as in threatening Beaver in one breath (“beat it kid, or else”) and complimenting his mother June in the next (“you’re looking lovely today, Mrs. Cleaver”).  As in (Trump version): Carly Fiorina is too ugly to be President but I think she’s a beautiful woman.  Also, to many of us Eddie is the star of the show, the snarkiest and most interesting of the Cleaver brothers’ (male) friends.  Until his poll numbers tank: Donald Trump takes the coveted role of Eddie Haskell.

Wally and the Beaver: a tale of two brothers

Leave it to Beaver’s core is the relationship between an older and a younger brother — at times supportive, at times contentious.  Wally, stolid and not overly bright, tolerates the Beaver, his chubby-cherub-cheeked and spit-shined-hair shadow, until the pesky sibling interferes with his plans.  This relationship is supposed to be the heart of the show, but Eddie Haskell ‘changes the narrative’ by pitting brother against brother, to the dismay of the parental elites. How can one not think of the relationship between the Florida pols in this race?  The older ‘brother’ Jeb! Bush used to consider the younger ‘brother’ Marco Rubio as his protege; now they’re fighting over closet space in their shared primary bedroom, often egged on by the Donald, the Haskellesque agent provocateur.

What about the women?

Women do make appearances in Leave It To Beaver, and two make an impression.  My favorite is Beaver’s classmate Judy, the sanctimonious tattle-tale whom nobody likes.  For good reason:  she’s a humorless prig who will probably grow up to be a disastrous CEO who shamelessly touts her bad business record as qualification for higher office.  Now that we’ve disposed of Carly Fiorina . . . let’s consider Ted Cruz.  His utter despicability makes it hard to match him with a LITB character, as the show has a paucity of actual villains.  With apologies to the great Barbara Billingsley, I have to pair Cruz with June Cleaver — primarily because of similar coy smirky smiles, secondarily because as the series progressed, June becomes more and more frantic and irrational, manically dishing up (green?) eggs and ham breakfasts to her unappreciative family.

We mustn’t forget ‘the guys’

Both Wally and the Beaver have pals with whom they hang around.  Rarely do any of ‘the guys’ drive an episode’s plot, but they function as comic relief and as all-purpose foils.  Wally’s most memorable friend (other than Eddie, of course) is Lumpy, an oversized lug who vacillates between being a bully and being a marshmallow. Can we say Chris Christie? As far as Beaver’s friends go, there’s the sniveling Whitey and the conniving coward Larry.  And yes, we can and should say Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee.  Whitey/Scott, who seems to have the intelligence of a no-see’um, consistently disappears into the scenic woodwork; Larry/Mike has major talent for whining, lying, and blaming everyone else for whatever bad fortune or malfeasance occurs within his orbit.

Are there any actual adults on the set?

Good question. Like today’s Republican party, Leave It To Beaver consigns women to housekeeping and (non-unionized) elementary-school teaching roles, thus infantalizing them and leaving ‘adult’ responsibilities to the men. Ward Cleaver is the paterfamilias, one part Dagwood Bumstead and one part a Robert Young/Danny Thomas hybrid.  Although Ward makes mistakes and doesn’t always express himself judiciously, he’s ultimately the voice of reason and solver of problems. This is the role many relatively sane Republicans hope John Kasich will fill.  Which he hasn’t yet.  Ward’s friend and coworker Fred Rutherford (Lumpy’s father) is another male adult, frustrated and often inarticulate. Ben Carson, whom some conservangelicals see as an acceptably ‘grown up’ alternative to Trump, Cruz, or Huckabee, fits here.  After all, both Fred and Ben rock those Rick Perry smart glasses.

Where is Gus the Fireman, the real problem-solving adult disguised as an apple doll, when we need him?  Since Burt Mustin, who played Gus, was born in 1884, he may have voted for Teddy Roosevelt, back in the nostalgia days when Republicans were un-ironically progressive.  When he was playing Gus, he may have voted for Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican who called out the military-industrial complex.  I wonder for whom he would vote today. 

Donald Trump’s Pluralis Majestatis

Thanks to MSNBC’s lazy programming, I watched a good deal of Donald Trump’s Dallas event last night.  At first I was mesmerized, in a can’t-stop-listening-to-William-Hung’s-"She Bang" kind of way, by the Trumpster’s endless opening riff on himself.  Winning . . . polls . . . great . . . they love me . . . killing it (that would be: winning in the polls) . . . etc. ad nauseum.  Then, as slack-jawed paralysis wore off, I noticed something rather interesting.  Trump uses the pluralis majestatis in oddly compelling ways. (Pluralis majestatis would be the ‘royal we’ for those of you who, like Sarah Palin, think U.S. citizens should speak American only).

Most politicians glom onto the ‘royal we’ as a transparent substitute for “I.”  Rhetoric 101 teaches that you don’t pepper a speech (or application letter, or academic essay) with the first-person singular pronoun.  In most real-life situations, doing so makes you seem egotistical or, at the least, a boring and un-self-aware speaker/writer.  For politicians, the downside of overusing “I” is that it suggests you’re in the race for yourself, not for your would-be constituents.  Thus: “we” is the preferred pronoun . . . in all instances.  Like:  “When we decided to enter this race” or “we hope to restore accountability to government.”  Using “we” in these ways has become a vaguely annoying verbal tic that signals inauthenticity (this year’s cardinal political sin) rather than inclusiveness.  

Somehow, Donald Trump is able to employ the pluralis majestatis effectively.  Perhaps because of the size and whoop-dee-do-and-ass-ishness of his crowds, when he says “we,” it feels as if he really means we (read: all of his supporters, plus him).  It’s a way of reinforcing the aspirational logic of his candidacy:  I’m very rich and a great guy; you support me; therefore you’re (potentially) very rich and self-evidently great.  We all win!  (We meaning “me,” of course, plus all of “you.”) 

Trump has a history of identifying with royalty, be it even-worse-hair-than-mine Don King

 or insane, cantalope-calf-fearing Iowa Republican Steve King

In Trumpapolis, we also means not-them . . . not the losers, the weaklings, the stupids, the illegals, the terrible negotiators, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the ugly or uppity women. The Trumpian we is not just a dog-whistle to resentful, often bigoted, voters; it’s a yoooge in-your-face shout-out, reinforced by strategic ‘you-centered’ qualifiers and asides (as in ‘We’ll have so many victories, you won’t believe it’). Cheer loud and long if you recognize the password to the bully-boy fraternity that must be cool because the Donald is chapter president!  And it might let you pledge!!

Another reason Trump’s pluralis majestatis works is the host-audience dynamics previously forged by The Apprentice.  Viewers may root for one contestant or another, but they identify with the man sitting on the decider throne.  We get to fire people!  We get to reward pluck and promise!  We, theoretically, would get to pick ourselves as winners!  

This is not to say that Donald Trump shies away from using “I.”  Anything but! In an occult algorithm that would put Google search-results wizards to shame, the more he trumpets himself, pronominally and otherwise, the more the “we” resonates as as a strong group-identifier for those who do feel weak, or perilously weakened by economics, demographics, and cultural-value shifts. It’s a variation on the Napoleon complex.  Trump himself is not short (he’s 6’2” tall, although it’s widely reported that his fingers are stubby, and let’s not even discuss his relationships with women), but his excessive self-praise and continual recourse to size descriptors (great, huge, tremendous, big) suggest an underlying distrust of his own potency.  

Plus, he smokes cigars. 

Is It that much of a stretch to question whether, within Trump’s pluralis majestatis, lurks a compensatory appeal to threatened manhood?  We wonder . . . 

The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; 

and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.

—Napoleon Bonaparte

Exclusive! GOP Pre-Debate Rorschach Test Results

Breaking News:  CNN has leaked results of the psychological test it just administered to all Republican Presidential candidates. This testing regime was instituted after Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham protested the network’s capricious rejiggering of the big-boy debate polling criteria in order to accommodate the lone woman in the race. 

 “Hyphenated-Americans, including Woman-Americans, have no place in our great country,” said Indian-anchor-baby Jindal. “There must be a better way of determining who qualifies for standing proudly erect on the natural-born-citizen media stage.” Cuban-anchor-baby Marco Rubio agreed, as did Canadian anchor-baby Ted Cruz. As did Senator Graham, although his objections centered on gender stereotypes.  “A female president needs to be able to put aside her natural bless-your-heartedness,” he explained,“ and be willing to unleash the gods of war.” 

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson may have mentioned something about frontal lobes, but no one could hear what he said.  Governors George Pataki and Jim Gilmore tried to join the Jindal-Graham protest, but news outlets couldn’t access their Twitter accounts, if such exist.  It took Twitter-savvy poll-leader Donald Trump to bring CNN to its senses.  “We can’t have people who have blood pouring out of their whatevers making decisions about huge, beautiful walls,” he tweeted.  “Let’s have a smart test!  It’ll be great!  And don’t let that third-rate loser Hugh Hewitt near it.”

CNN, mindful of future ratings, agreed.  The network, with the help of Reinz Priebus, hired a panel of psychologists and psychiatrists to administer the classic ten-image Rorschach ‘ink blot’ test [these are the actual original ink blots, presented in the original order] to the Republican field.  Here’s what the test revealed.

Scott Walker:  That’s me!  Beating the Unions!  

Chris Christie:  That’s me!  Blessing the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

Jeb! Bush:  Ese soy yo, al ser un gobernador decisiva Florida érase una vez.

Rand Paul:  That’s me!  Outreaching to the darker masses yearning to be Republicans.

Donald Trump:  Haven’t you watched coverage of me?  In Iowa I said I was Batman, and that’s me . . . being Batman.  Giving rides on the Batcopter.  Children love me!

Scott Walker:  Uh, Scandahoovians enjoying a fish boil in Door County?

Mike Huckabee:  Evil Wizards plotting the war against Christmas.

Bobby Jindal:  They look like Parsees or Sikhs or Hindus or something hyphenatingly unAmerican.

Jeb! Bush:  Los estadounidenses deben hablar Inglés, no asiática.  A partir de ahora, patriótico Inglés solamente.

Donald Trump:  I’m winning with the Asians.  And the Hispanics.  And the Blacks.  And the Evangelicals.  They’re all great!  

Ben Carson:  Hoo-boy.  Easy peasy!  The wrong kind of ‘black’ welfare mothers having fun with government handouts.

Rick Santorum:  Abortioneering witches.

Jeb! Bush: I don’t think, If we knew then, maybe, Iraq, Obamacare, I’m my own man . . .

Donald Trump:  Low energy!  Those ladies are hot, and if they remind me of Ivanka . . . I’ll cherish women so much it’ll make your head spin.

Lindsay Graham:  I know!  Call on me!  It’s Slim Pickens on that American-power rocket. 

Chris Christie:  Siddown and shut up.  It’s me on a traffic cone.

Marco Rubio:  It’s me protecting my water bottle.

Rick Perry:  Isn’t that a turtle on a fence post?  Oops.

Donald Trump:  Better adjust your smart glasses, Rick.  It’s me sitting on the tremendous pile of money Mexico paid for my beautiful border wall.

Mario Rubio:  Fidel Castro destroying our plantocratic wealth UNFAIR!

Rick Santorum:  Satan destroying sacred sperm.

Carly Fiorina:  Demon sheep destroying my last campaign.

Rand Paul:  William Jennings Bryant destroying William McKinley and the gold standard.  Shoulda coulda.

Donald Trump:  Haven’t I already said I’m Batman?  That’s me destroying all of you in every poll. Plus I’m very rich, even without the gold standard.  And very, very smart. The Wharton School of Finance is terrific, and I did very, very, very well there.

Carly Fiorina:  Duh. Phallus impaled in powerful vagina. Just watch me bitch-slap Hillary Clinton.

Mike Huckabee:  Josh Duggar!  Kim Davis!  Religious Liberty!  Gay Agenda!  Because Obama!  

John Kasich: Upright Republican fake-moderate fake-governing a blue state.

Donald Trump:  It’s a safari trophy pelt! Just ask my sharp-shooting big-game-hunter kids, Donald Junior and Eric. They’re great!  I’m so big on the First Amendment, you wouldn’t believe.

Scott Walker:   Unicorns?

Jim Gilmore:  My Little Ponies!  I used to be a track steward.

Ben Carson:  Separated Siamese Twins?  

Donald Trump:  Siamese, Chinese, Japanese . . . they’re all cunning.  And great negotiators! But I beat them every day.  I just raise the price on my classy New York real estate! They love me!  Let’s make America great again!!

Scott Walker:  This is the unicorn one, right?  Pretty colors.

Ted Cruz:  Jesse Helms’s sanctified aura?  Because we need 100 more senators just like him.

Bobby Jindal: It’s an anti-Christian hyphenated-American celebration of a pagan holiday, Holi, which entails throwing colored pigments.

Ben Carson:  Colored pigments.  Good one!

Donald Trump:  Pigs?  Rosie O’Donnell!  Just kidding — she’s great.

Scott Walker:  No, this is really the unicorn one.  I see the antlers. 

Lindsey Graham:  Bombs bursting in air on Day One of the Graham administration.  Benghazi!  Iran deal!  Secretary of Defense McCain!

Ted Cruz:  Obviously Green Eggs and Ham.  Top yellow: eggs.  Middle green:  Green eggs (Harvard Debate club shout out!).  Bottom pink:  Ham!!!!!  Winner.

Donald Trump:  Loser! I’m not going anywhere, and you’re not getting any of my delegates.  

Carly Fiorina:  Look at that phallic ooze.  The real reason Hewlitt-Packard tanked.

Jeb! Bush:  Even though there’s a not-really-connected-to-my-brother Cheney-esque blue ganglion menacing the flaccid pink . . .

Donald Trump:  Everyone’s sleeping!  Weak!  Low energy again!  But you’re a really nice guy.

George Pataki:  Did someone mention me?  I’m a nice guy.

Rick Perry:  Even a broken clock is right once a day.

After this Republican Candidate Rorshach Test, CNN has decided not to air the upcoming debate.  

Not to worry, however. The debate will be carried on the Sarah Palin channel. You can see it from her porch in Alaska.

Jobs That Suck

It’s Labor Day weekend, a good time to think about work (note:  I said ‘think about’ it, not actually do it — party on, amigos). I’ve been fortunate: most of my working life has been spent in a job I really liked, and did pretty well at — teaching at the university level.  Most of my other jobs have centered on writing, which I also really like, no matter the task.  Nonetheless, I’ve had a few jobs that qualified for a major suckage award.

Certainly, all jobs suck some of the time (e.g., sudden deadlines, pointless meetings, impossible clients/students) and all jobs have sucky aspects (e.g., minimal-to-zero raises, commuting time, paperwork sinkholes).  In addition, each of us has a mental list of jobs-to-be-avoided-at-all-costs-even-if-it means-hawking-squeegee-services-at-intersections.  For me, that would include anything related to the health field (blood makes me faint, as do shots), mass child care (love my own child; don’t love random children in big snotty groups), or anything to do with truly hard labor (my muscle mass is lower than the growth rate of my IRA, so I would suck abysmally at brawny employment, which therefore would be sucky employment pour moi). 

My work history, in sum, has been quite privileged.  I never had to take a job I knew I’d detest  or at which I’d be overwhelmingly likely to fail.  But I have held two jobs that were absolutely awful, and I was absolutely awful at. 

Travel Agent Travails

As a very young military wife in Okinawa, I became bored quickly with officers’ wives’ tea parties and general neocolonial lassitude.  I thus decided to get a job ‘off-post’ (not a decision enthusiastically endorsed by the military brass, but it was the Vietnam era, so who cared). Because my father had founded an incentive travel agency, I applied to American Express Travel (Okinawa) to be a travel agent.  I was immediately hired, as I was not Japanese/Okinawan, and it was thought that I’d interact better with the military wives who were the agency’s main clientele.

What a disaster.  Since I couldn’t speak decent or even fractured-but-understandable Japanese,  it was very hard to book flights on the airlines serving the island.  I had to depend on my lower-paid and understandably resentful Okinawan colleagues to do just about anything . . . or I would run a couple of blocks to the local airline office and try to explain (or draw, or point out in the IATA catalogue) what a client wanted to book.  Result?  Unhappy clients, unhappy co-workers, unhappy boss, unhappy me.  I considered quitting, but quitting a job was something that never had occurred to me.  Of course it hadn’t:  I’d had decent part-time or summer jobs as a teenager (at a book store, at a radio station), and I hadn’t needed to quit them because they were self-limiting (hello college!).

I did quit this job, but not for the above reasons. I got tired of, and irritated at, my clients.  The officers’ wives — and senior non-coms’ wives — swooping into the office ordered me around as if I were . . . an Okinawan!  To be fair to my much younger self, my umbrage was not ‘racially’ motivated as much as it was class motivated.  My parents were not even approaching rich, but as educated adults in a small Wisconsin town, they were socially accepted, even sought after.  And I’d assimilated enough of military rank protocol to bridle at women whose husbands held lower ranks than mine barking commands at me or berating me as if I was their maid.  (I hope that being upset at the way they ignored my extremely capable and linguistically talented co-workers was part of my malaise, but I can't -- after all this time -- be sure that it was, to my discredit.)

I’m not proud of the reasons why I quit, but I’m glad that I did. I soon got a much more congenial job as editor/writer/art director of a local weekly magazine . . . and I learned that one can resign from a job without the world coming to an end.

Tax Scut

I still don’t understand what motivated me to ASK for tax-season work at a friend’s accounting firm.  Background: my mother had just died, I had previously taken early retirement from the professoriat in order to help care for her, and I was at loose ends.  So I guess this request made sense at the time.

But whoa — how eye-opening!  For eight dollars an hour, I assembled forms, addressed envelopes, called clients, entered data, answered phones (badly, as I couldn’t ever figure out that office’s phone system), ignored suppurating paper cuts, filed client folders, and never got any feedback except that I stapled things somewhat sloppily.  After putting in my time, I’d return home physically exhausted (yes, I know this is not hard labor, but it’s a lot of hours on your feet doing repetitive tasks) and mentally numbed.  Hours at work, and nothing, NOTHING, interesting had happened.  Even when I tried to point out a potential problem or anomaly in a file I was assembling, I was dismissed (occasionally, I caught an actual accounting error — this would be corrected silently, and my eagle-eyed-ness was never acknowledged).  Even more so when I tried to suggest how a task could be performed more efficiently.  I was a tax scut, nothing more. (And yes, I can understand why my attempts at ‘professional relevance’ were ignored — the firm had hired a scut, not an unasked-for and probably unqualified  and no-doubt irritating self-styled problem solver.)

What struck me like an IRS audit summons was that jobs like this — bottom-level ‘white collar jobs’ — are soul-suckers. The pay is awful, the respect is non-existent, the opportunities for career growth are slim-to-none.  I was used to decades of pretty much being able to design and implement my own professional life. Many (maybe most) people, I learned at an age (that would be: older) when the lesson really hit home, do not.  Their jobs suck.

So on this labor day, I salute all my still-working friends and those who are advocating better conditions (wages, hours, benefits, unions) for working Americans.  My job history is not typical, I know.  But it is varied enough, even given my privileges and opportunities, to be able to say that some jobs truly suck. I fear that there seems to be inadequate political will to change, or at least modify, some modifiable working conditions for jobs ranging from professional to 'unskilled.' I sincerely hope I’m mistaken.

Happy Labor Day!