Racist thugs: can we still be friends?

The article I have reproduced below came out over a year ago, but I notice the Globe and Mail has let it stand. And that shocks me almost as much as the content, which sickens me even more than it did back then.

It was in the form of a question-and-answer, the answer coming from some sort of tin-plated "expert" on something-or-other. The person asking for help had just poured out her soul in a cri du coeur about her literal survival and the safety of her children. The response from this weird Globe and Mail-style political Dear Abby was a bland little chuckle and a few light-hearted, conveniently stress-minimizing bon mots.

I guess by now you've figured out that this was about Trump. I was astonished and appalled at how mealy-mouthed the piece was, how blandly Canadian in the very worst, don't-get-anyone-upset way. Oh yes, I know this disturbs you a little, as it does me! Certainly. But don't, he advises, ever let the people who put this racist, sexist Tyrannosaurus in charge of the free world get you upset. And for God's sake, don't let it break up your friendship! Your friendship matters much more than all this silly political stuff. Use your healthy disagreement as an opportunity for lively debate over a bottle of chardonnay, while wittily quoting Oscar Wilde.

Oh, yes. Racist pigs are always welcome on my friendship list.

This article and its bland reassurance came out before the worst of Trump's henchmen/women oozed slimily out of the woodwork and took over - not just the country, but people's brains. But the anxious person who wrote to this supposed advice columnist could already see it coming. AND SO COULD HE. But he dodged it, hid behind the post, was "nice", and just wanted everyone to get along, no matter what the price. Writing for a Canadian audience, he was Canadian-nice in a way which I think might finish us yet. It's the one thing about my country which I positively hate.

It made me sick then, and it makes me sick now. NO, you cannot separate someone's politics from the rest of them and just "be friends anyway". It's like those "very fine people on both sides" that Trump blathered about. You cannot, unless you completely lack principles yourself. To quote Katie in The Way We Were: "Hubbel, people ARE their principles." This caused Hubbel to groan and shake his head and go punch the wall.

Roseanne Barr has shown her true colors just lately, revealing what a racist thug she truly is, and could I be friends with her? You think? Not even if I did like her as a person and/or find her wildly entertaining, which I do not. I find this "love the sinner and hate the sin" type of thinking to be the most dangerous I have ever seen. Racism, bigotry and thug-like behaviour should never be "topics of lively debate". People who hold these beliefs are frightening and deplorable, what they do and say is morally indefensible and even criminal, and I want nothing to do with them.

Don’t let The Donald come between you and your friend

DAVID EDDIE
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 10, 2016 UPDATED APRIL 8, 2017

The question

I'm writing you from America – from one of what some people derogatorily call "the flyover states." I am so shocked, disturbed, and I would say even frightened that Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. I feel like I'm living in an apocalyptic movie, and for the first time have a dread for my and my children's future. I can't sleep for worrying about it. I can't understand how any thinking, rational person could have voted for Donald Trump – and all (I thought) my friends and Facebook friends agree. But then I was at lunch with a friend of mine, and she was thrilled at the outcome of the election. She thinks Trump is going to be a great president. I couldn't believe my ears. We had an emotional argument and haven't spoken since. I don't know if I can be friends with her, going forward. What should I do?

The answer

First of all, don't succumb to "confirmation bias."

Confirmation bias is the tendency to hang out exclusively with (and, I suppose it follows, sleep with and marry) people who agree with you, and to read things and absorb only the information that confirms your prejudices and beliefs.

And I think it's really boring. So everyone on your Facebook page agrees with you. Almost half of your fellow Americans, it turns out, don't.(emphasis mine)

Why must we all agree? Vis-à-vis Trump I say: True, he's not my type of guy. Obama was my type of guy – smart, funny, thoughtful, soulful, Fugees on his iPod, Entourage his favourite TV show – though not my favourite politician ever.

Trump is sexist, retrograde, boorish, a "short-fingered vulgarian"– well, enough ink has been spilled and hot air expelled to describe him. He's Trump: need we say more?

But give the man a chance. He might just surprise/shock everyone by
doing well.

I've been around long enough to remember when Ronald Reagan threw his hat in the ring, way back in the 1980s.

The media were aghast, despondent, horrified and full of eye-rolling mockery: He's an actor! He was in a movie with a chimp! How's he going to be president of the United States (now glorified with the acronym POTUS)?

(Overlooking the fact he had been governor of California for eight years.)

But Reagan famously went "over the head of the media" and appealed directly to the common folk. And at least as far as conservatives are concerned, Reagan worked out well – left the U.S. and A (as Borat might say) and the world a more peaceful and prosperous place than when he entered the fray as POTUS.

Anyway, the point is not what you think of Donald Trump, or even Ronald Reagan.

The point, I believe, is: it's important to hold on to and passionately argue for your beliefs, but not to go all ad hominem with them – i.e. not make it personal.

I'm always amazed at friendships, or any other kinds of relationships, that go pear-shaped over the fact the two parties don't see eye to eye on some particular issue.

I know of more than one marriage south of the border experiencing "Trump tension," i.e. one spouse likes him and the other doesn't, and one or the other doesn't want to admit it.

But why should it be so personal? Why should it not rather be a fun and energizing topic of debate?

I understand Trump is a polarizing figure. I understand his rise to power (first-ever president without any political or military experience, just for starters) is odd, unusual, shocking, etc.
But that's precisely why the ramifications need to be discussed among citizens in a cool, calm, compassionate manner. Take a cue from the concession speeches of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – I particularly liked Obama's comment (I'm going to miss that guy) to the effect of "this was an intramural scrimmage … We are Americans first."

You and your friend are Americans first. It can be hard, I think, particularly for Canadians to understand, but America is, at heart, I believe, a rebellious country, a country that began in rebellion – a punk country, if you will, and Donald Trump was a punk choice for president.

So it's definitely difficult to process, but shouldn't cause a rift between you and your friend. When one Oscar Wilde character says accusatorily to another "You always want to argue about things," the other character says "That is exactly what things are made for."

I've often felt the truth of that. And never more so than with Trump. Go ahead and argue about him until you're blue in the face and the bottle of chardonnay is empty.
 
Just respect the fact not everyone will always have the same opinion as you. And never, ever let it get personal.

OK. . . I was going to leave it here, but I am gasping like a beached fish even after more than a year away from this bilge. For one thing. . . OK, there is no "one thing", which is why my highlighting escalated to the point that nearly every sentence he wrote was marked. This guy's flip, light-hearted, "hey folks, there's nothing really wrong here, you're just upset, OK? You're overreacting" tone sickened me, when the initial question was posed in an entirely different tone of fear, terror, dread.

Mr. Fix-It here completely let her down. He wriggled out. He began to speak in another language, breezy and dismissive, as in "oh, we've seen this before and it turned out great" (which is irrational in the extreme: if ONE thing goes great when we initially dreaded it, it doesn't guarantee the next thing will. And if he had to use the Reagan administration as an example of a dubious candidate who turned out to be a winner, then I have trouble believing anything he says.)

I don't know, I can't let this go, and didn't even know what images could begin to sum it up.
I decided to choose the absolute horror of Charlottesville to illustrate it, since I was really too overwhelmed to pick anything else. I wonder now, does this gentleman still feel Trump is "not so bad" and we're overreacting (and in my conspiracy-conditioned mind, I now wonder if he's "one of them", a spy infiltrating the fusty old Canadian institution of the Globe and Mail) and that people should only debate about him in a cool, rational, detached manner while slowly getting more and more pissed? I hear the sound of genteel, probably phony laughter, Oscar Wildean witticisms flying through the air, while the world as we know it slowly and inexorably sinks.

I need cake!

When you're on a diet but need cake, watch someone else do this!

Wrong Note Rag

Tonight I listened to the Stravinsky Ragtime for the first time in 20 years, and for some reason cracked up laughing for most of it: that dour, sour, dissonant cimbalom and complaining clarinet and doomy percussion reminded me of someone striding along with his head down, someone who has given up, and for some reason I found it hilariously funny. 

Then I kept thinking: this piece reminds me of something. Or someone. I've been reading up on Bernstein again, an old hero/obsession, and wondering anew why he wasn't considered a "significant" composer (or significant enough) because he "only wrote for musical theatre" (not true anyway). But this wild and wacky version of Wrong Note Rag, the best I have ever seen/heard, flashed into my head, and it was only when I posted the video that I realized that OF COURSE the two pieces had a spiritual kinship: both were slightly crazed, off-kilter experiments in ragtime. In Stravinsky's case a rag with a wooden leg, and in Bernstein's, a rag breathing flaming helium.

Kitty Litter CAKE | Dollar $tore Recipe

What the FXXX is the "Organ of Cecilia"?

This is just another one of those strange things. A while ago I wrote about buying an old hard-cover copy of Colleen McCullough's novel The Thorn Birds from Amazon, and discovering that between its browned pages were sprays of flowers which had been pressed and dried, their colors still faintly apparent even after God-knows-how-many years. It made me wonder who cut these slips from their garden, and where (Australia?), and what possessed them to place them in a volume, a beloved novel I assume, and leave them there, forgotten. For that matter, why was the book sold? Had the owner passed on, faded away along with the mysterious flowers? My questions just multiplied.

But then I dug out this book - and I swear to you, I do not remember when I bought it, where I bought it, and it's just possible I got it from Amazon, meaning it was used when I got it. Maybe. But it seems to me I've had it longer than that. It's a rather dull tome which I thought I'd read again to help me get to sleep at night. Written by the controversial journalist Joan Peyser, it was considered a stick of dynamite in the music world because Peyser dared to state that Bernstein was gay. There erupted a firestorm of  vehement denials, shock, horror, dread, etc., while no one even stopped to think how homophobic that particular reaction made them appear. Oh, no! they seemed to be saying. We just don't want HIM to be gay.

And speaking of. Peyser also wrote  a controversial book about George Gershwin, suggesting he was at very least bisexual and certainly in no hurry to marry any woman he knew. The book was thundered at and railed at and denounced, as was Peyser, who now seemed to be a scarlet woman of musical biography. She'd have her comeuppance decades later, when a dry, scholarly tome which claimed to be The Ultimate Gershwin Biography actually quoted her book, somehow rendering her academically acceptable. (Peyser was also the first writer to posit the veracity of Alan Gershwin's claim that he was George Gershwin's illegitimate son.)

But that's not what this is all about. Neither is this clean copy of the gorgeous cover photo Peyser used, in which Gershwin's elegant narcissism is on full display. The slightly sneering "fuck-me" mouth is particularly disarming, not to mention provocative.

NO! It's about THIS.

THIS, which tumbled out of the Bernstein book as I began to flip through it in preparation for reading it (trying to find, in vain, the sexy or salacious parts).

THIS, of which I have no knowledge, no idea of its provenance. WHAT THE HELL IS IT DOING HERE? Who cut this out of the New York Times on Sunday, November 10, 1985 and taped it to a piece of green plastic with multiple pieces of Scotch tape? And why? I had no access to the New York Times then. I don't know why, if someone DID clip this out, they chose one of Lenny's more pretentious little acrostics or whatever they're called. (Like a monkey, he had a mind for puzzles.) Like the gay Copland, the gay Bernstein (who later came out as flamboyantly as one might expect) might be trying to establish his place in the pantheon of greatness by sucking up to the boss. Could that explain the enigmatic reference to "Organ of Cecilia"?

I keep finding things I don't understand! They keep falling out of books, found objects. I wondered just fleetingly if it was something my dead sister did, though why she would do something so strange, I don't know. Certainly if I had done it and given it to her, she would have called me completely insane. But she is dead now, so I don't need to worry.

But it would be nice to now what the hell this is and where it comes from. Who knows what will tumble from the next old book I open? Undiscovered Gershwin scores? Condoms? Pressed and dessicated after-dinner mints?

ADDENDA. St. Cecilia, virgin, martyr, and patron saint of music, which is why she is holding a weird sort of violin or cello. This kind of explains it, but for a virgin saint, she sure shows a lot of cleavage.

Time-Lapse: Beautiful Cacti Bloom Before Your Eyes

Frida Kahlo

Paint

Mt. Fuji from 34,000 feet

Fata Morgana of a distant rock

A Fata Morgana is something that isn't. Like a mirage, it's a trick of light and atmosphere, usually seen over water, but more elaborate than that. Mountains turn into boats and then majestic castles, then just sort of erode away, so you are not sure which image was real. I don't think I've ever seen one except in a movie. It's one of those sights which likely evoked terror in ancient humans, when no one understood why an entire ship was hanging upside-down fifty feet above the surface of the water. And why that same ship then slowly turned inside-out and sank into the ocean.

In every video of a Fata Morgana I could find, there is a big argument in the comments section about whether it is a Morgana or (in fact) a mirage. I don't care. It's a weird, cool, slightly spooky thing, a thing we can clearly see but which actually doesn't exist in the form we're seeing. Who or what is playing this eerie trick of distortion on our eyes and brain?


I use this video not so much because it's a good example (though it is that), but because of the beautiful noise of the surf, the utter lack of captions, and the beach-dwellers casually romping while the bizarre illusion plays out in the distance. The gifs were just lying around in my file, left over from another post.

  

  

Trolls I'm gonna get!

I love trolls, and I have no money. Therefore I have to rely on "lots" - bundles of trolls sold for  a single price, usually through Etsy or eBay.  My greatest haul was four trolls with immaculate outfits - two forest trolls, which I didn't have, a Russ troll and a Treasure Troll. 

OK, I have officially gone mad.

I needed something, rather desperately, now that the grandkids are older, teenagers who don't even want to talk to me any more. It left an awful hole. I miss all those projects, knitting, making stuff for their birthdays and Christmas. Now they want money, basically. But making stuff is in my blood, I guess, though this whole thing is adding up, getting sort of expensive. The three I just ordered were only about $15 American, but with all the added charges it came to $38.00 - and that was a good buy.

As I said a couple of posts ago, and forgot all about, I tried Facebook pages for troll collectors, and it's like the doll world: hard to penetrate because of the in-talk, the jargon, and the expectation that you will turn around and sell your next precious "find" to the highest bidder. I've made new hair out of yarn for a lot of my Dollarinas (dollar store trolls) -  some find it strange, I know, but I think it has turned out well. I go ahead and post my photos anyway, knowing I'll look like an amateur. But I don't know why human beings have to do this, inject prestige and arcane knowledge into the mix. 

Example. Someone told another person she had gotten her troll outfit from "BAB". Now, would YOU know what "BAB" was? Neither did I. Neither did the person who asked! Turned out to be Build-a-Bear, but the person just "assumed" everyone would know what she meant. I can't help but feel it was done to assert authority and make the other person feel diminished, put in her place, on the outside looking in.

These are not photos, but SCANS of trolls I made quite a long time ago, with the few trolls I had kicking around. I find them quite interesting, but they're not going on my Facebook page.