A Nation of Lawns

Apologies for the week off, but I made a swing through central Ohio last weekend and it took all this time to get back in that odd combination of indolence and rage needed to write one of these things.

Also backed off paying close attention to current events, as one does not pay close attention to Niagara Falls. One does not need to. Here’s a confession - I don’t have a TV and barely listen to the radio. My news filter is newspapers (Chicago has two, on either end of ‘okay’) and what I read on the WWW.

I have made a general point of not commenting on the disaster in Iraq, only because that kind of thing is done so well elsewhere. Anyone with any sense can see that even as a putative experiment in Institutional optimism, things are going very poorly there indeed. How poorly? If our loyal secretary of state must needs be photographed wearing a flak jacket and helmet to walk from plane to terminal at the start of her most recent visit - two years after her chipper boss declared major combat over - the answer is pretty fucking poorly.

But the administration is defending smaller and smaller pieces of territory everywhere now. The Newsweek error, and its bewildering aftermath shows they are arguing for little more than debate points, leaving the real world i n the hands of their natural rivals and sworn enemies. Thing is that no one doubts something very like desecration took place, not even the administration supporters who only weeks ago were assuring each other that this sort of thing, though very rough in deed, was necessary if freedom is to prevail.

It should be pretty clear by now that these jerks could talk themselves into supporting anything, and that all they have now is talk anyway. Action has left them behind and their only recourse - I was going t o say hope, but they have none - their only recourse is to energize their ever-dwindling base with mock outrage. But all the talk only brings most people back to the initial point that they, in their quest as well-meaning citizens of the New World for the high ground - have treated the people they need to reach like pack animals, rewarded for acquiescence and flogged mercilessly for any stalling or fight of their own.

Here’s something I saw in central Ohio, ‘round about Marengo, I think. It was a lawn ornament store with featured a large piece close to the road, the silhouette of a soldier kneeling before a cross with a helmet hanging from it. It does not take much of an abstract frame of mind to recognize a grave of a fallen comrade. Now the maudlin sentimentality of America is as bottomless as her capacity to be betrayed. Both sentimentality and betrayal have kicked in now in full force, and a certain recognizable smell - I think it is napalm in the morning - is drifting up from our yards.

Flights Unfancy

Word of the permission granted United Airlines to default on pension fund obligations is saddening for many reasons. First is that their customer service - in his age of human freight haulers in the sky - is wonderful. I fly out of Chicago with a guitar, which I carry on, and have never been on a United plane where the attendants were not cheerful, kind and thoughtful in accommodating the guitar specially if need be.

Second, and perhaps an explanation for the good service, is that United is employee owned, which presents a perplexing case of people unable to complete obligations to themselves. I know precious little about the airline industry, other than it is screwed, but do know that United stands out from the rest in how it is operated. I have yet to read any accounts of the bankruptcy action that address this singular condition specifically, if only in passing. United, of course, has other shareholders too, fund managers most likely, whom it must satisfy. In the meantime I am left to wonder if the company’s troubles with banks may not be partially grounded in a certain reflexive institutional hostility towards its rather different corporate structure. I mean, we can’t expect hardworking bankers to go out of their way to actually encourage something as fundamentally dicey as employee ownership of corporations now, can we?

Third is that United’s Chicago terminal, bright, soaring and spacious, is a pleasure to spend time in. Constructed in the twilight of the era of glamourous air travel, more than any other airport I’ve been in, it is a distinct portal to a city, as - once upon a time - train stations were distinct portals. Granted the underground concourse between its two halves is a long slog on the people movers, but they get high marks for the nutty neon sculpture and tonal soundscape that stretches the two hundred-odd yards from one end to the other. Of course no one pays much attention to the lights and music, as keyed-up and anxious as most everyone is to get out of the place.

Because no amount of ambiance can change the essential fact that there is no better spot than a busy airport to view full-face the misery of American affluenza. We have traded away our sovereignty as citizens so as to move, for business and pleasure, securely and efficiently across vast spaces. We submit to being treated like petty criminals in preparation for being treated like dogs. Where once wonder and joy were solaces for enduring the rigors of long-distance travel, for most air travelers, boredom and fear are now their only interior companions. And it shows on the faces of all, from the doe-eyed anxiety of the infrequent fliers to the resentful hundred-yard stares of the regular business grunts.

Of course, airports are not the only public spaces in this country where all traces of joy have been scoured away. Real malls and fake downtowns were not intended to be places for the spirit to soar. But that is a subject for some other day.

The Next Wave Goodbye

As predicted (from the Chicago Tribune):
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Bankruptcy filings in March jumped nearly 60 percent from February, according to Cardweb.com, a Frederick, Md.-based firm that tracks the credit and debit card industries.

Compared with last March, filings rose 8.5 percent, which Cardweb.com said was a change from January and February, when filings fell compared with year-earlier periods.

"It's going to be a madhouse this summer," said Anand Jerome Menezes, a bankruptcy attorney for Macey & Chern in Chicag o, which has hired additional staff to brace for the onslaught.

That's not unexpected, say industry insiders. The law, which takes effect Oct. 17, will make it more difficult to have most debts erased in bankruptcy court.

The changes have dredged up anxiety among financially burdened consumers who may choose to bite the bullet now.
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Some would say it already is a madhouse, and its only a question of which ward you are paying attention to.

Let’s review a bit: Consumer spending drives the economy. Consumer confidence is a closely-watched indicator. Most consumer spending is done on credit, with the cagier spenders shifting debt from one card (that is - finance company) to another when things get hairy. Not the way I’d like to live, but all in all a high wire act that many Americans enjoyed. They were doing they part to keep the economy moving and America free. Now very very few of these folks are crims out to job the system. Nope, most are playing the roles they’ve been assigned as credit card carrying members of the hopeful middle class.

The historical basis of that hope is that, once upon a time, the young American republic outlawed debtors prisons and - in a free running mercantile and farming economy - allowed for the forgiveness of debts. I f you went broke because of three years of drought or you guessed wrong about cotton futures or overestimated the need for your new linotype machine, you were allowed a chance to try again. Even under this system it was pretty clear who the rogues wer e and jail awaited many of them. Though debts were erased, bankruptcy was still stigmatized.

To hear credit companies tell it, the onus is off. Rather than farmers and manufacturers who need a fresh start, there is a tidal wave of spenders now who are lit t le better than thieves. The reality is that most bankruptcies - until recently - were brought on by job loss or serious illness; which, come to think of it, are the other two wild cards, no job security and rising healthcare costs, that have also been added, with consumer debt, to the system in the last 20 years.

The net for all those aerialists has just been taken down. We have now all the makings of a classic collapse of confidence - sometimes called a ‘panic’, sometimes ‘depression’ - that no one in any authority in government, the financial sector or press has really given much thought to.

I laugh whenever I hear optimistic financial news reports saying “Factory orders are up”, because other financial news reports invariably are about how manufacturing is a shrinking portion of the economy, now accounting for about 1/3 of, what is it?, GDP? As our economy moved away from the assembly lines of the industrial north to the hamster wheels of sunbelt suburban consumption, so too should our old bankruptcy laws apply to the men and women who've been moving the economy.

Well, not anymore. I can, but won’t, go into the details of the bill, the means-testing, the food and housing rules it sets for victims, the loopholes for the rich. Thing is NO ONE wanted this bill except the finance companies. There was no popular support for it anywhere, right or left. And here is how our politics have failed us once again.

I’m going out on a limb here and predicting the Bankruptcy Protection bill, or whatever deceptive non-name they’ve put on it, will be as disastrous for the country - and as little understood in its implications at passage - as Smoot-Hawley.

If you’re not familiar with that last one, look it up..

Sports Sunday

Who says journalism has no stylists anymore? From today's Sun Times:
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Unheralded Giacomo stinging in the rein

May 8, 2005

BY JIM O'DONNELL Staff Reporter

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The new champion is named for the son of the rock musician Sting, which is only appropriate, given the magnitude of the thoroughbred stinger that went down at Churchill Downs on Saturday afternoon.

In an upset of historic proportion no bigger than the New York Jets winning Super Bowl III or Jack Ruby's sprightly cameo in the b asement of the Dallas Police Department, a 50-1 shot named Giacomo won the 131st running of the Kentucky Derby.

So many better horses and top jockeys had to be compromised in the marqueed rite of the horse-racing spring for the thoroughly unheralded Cali fornia tiptoer to win, that many in the crowd of 156,475 will undoubtedly wake up this morning thinking that they have just had the craziest bluegrass dream.
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And you, Jim are one mad daddy. About ten years ago I met an old stripper in a bar in Mi nneapolis who told me she worked for Jack Ruby. She did not offer the information unbidden, only told me she had ended her dancing career in Dallas in the early 60’s, so I asked the follow-up question. She put her face in her hands for a few seconds before answering. But I digress...

Also in today’s sports news is this weird note:
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MLB WATCHING BONDS: Major League Baseball is looking into Barry Bonds' relationships and activities, according to a report in the New York Daily News.

Citing anonymous baseball sources, the newspaper reported in its Sunday editions that baseball security officials believe Bonds might be at risk of conviction over allegations of tax fraud.

The San Francisco Giants outfielder, who has been at the center of baseball's steroid's scandal, has y et to play this season as he recovers from knee surgeries.

The most recent Bonds controversy involves him using his own doctors and trainers to treat his injured right knee. The 40-year-old slugger has had three surgeries on the knee since Jan. 31, the l ast coming Monday as doctors tried to clean out an infection.

Bonds' surgeon, Dr. Albert Ting, has been reprimanded twice by the California state medical board and is on probation for ''unprofessional conduct,'' according to The Arizona Republic.

The Daily News reported baseball was not happy to hear that another associate of Bonds has had trouble with the law.
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I don’t know if you or yourn has ever had a post-op infection but they are mo-foes to deal with and Barry - who seems to have entrusted his body to quacks some time ago - is spinning in tighter and tighter circles around some big drain. The man played baseball as well as anyone who ever put on a uniform, but with an inexplicable cynicism and, as near as I could tell, without a trace of jo y. At least his godfather had the decency to grow old before becoming bitter.

Bonds will, like Ali, become a poster child for the insane deals certain champions feel they need to make in order to prevail. But Ali lived for years in realms of pain and sa crifice that the rest of us can barely conceive of, and became a very great man for it. Bonds cashed in some chips then ran up a bunch of i.o.u.’s, and is the kind of smarter-than-you sorehead that the Feds just love going over when given a chance; that is if his doctors don't get him first..

Nearer My Goo to Thee

I was aiming to disquisist on the inane practice of naming ambitious projects after abstract principles, and will soon, but I got sidetracked by the absurd display of brain-dead piousness here in the City of the Big Shoulders:

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Hallowed encore
Despite graffiti and paint, underpass image returns

By Patrick Rucker, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Charles Sheehan contributed to this report

An image of what some believe is the Virgin Mary appeared again on an expressway underpass in Chicago Friday afternoon, overcoming the work of a vandal with shoe polish and state transportation workers with paint.

The three-week-old phenomenon, which has drawn devoted crowds to an urban stretch of the Kennedy Expressway, appeared to be coming to an end early Friday, hours after a man on a bicycle stopped and scrawled "Big Lie" over part of the image.

That prompted maintenance workers, at the suggestion of police, to cover the image and the graffiti with brown paint. By morning, none of the image was visible.

But around midday, the suggestion of a veil covering the head of a woman--an image that officials have characterized as a salt stain on the concrete--was visible through the paint. And then two employees of a nearby carwash used their lunch break to scrub away the paint and shoe polish, revealing the unmarred image once again.

"They used the degreaser we use on engines," said Stan Novotny, a manager at Express Car Wash. "They got most of it off."

If anything, Friday's turn of events seemed to revive the devotion of those who believe the image depicts the Virgin Mary.

"We feel lucky to be in such near proximity to a vision like that," Novotny said. "I think it's miraculous."
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which came so hard upon the heels of this:

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TOPEKA, Kansas (CNN) -- A decision this week by the Kansas Board of Education to delete the teaching of evolution from the state's science curriculum has angered the mainstream science community in the United States.

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and this:

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Member s say church ousts Kerry supporters

By Andre A. Rodriguez
STAFF WRITER
published: May 7, 2005 6:00 am

WAYNESVILLE — Nine members of a local church had their membership revoked and 40 others left in protest after tension over political views recently cam e to a head, church members say.

About 20 members of the 400-member East Waynesville Baptist Church voted the nine members out at a recent deacon meeting, which turned into an impromptu business meeting, according to congregants.

Chan Chandler, pastor o f East Waynesville Baptist, had been exhorting his congregation since October to support his political views or leave, said Selma Morris, a 30-year member of the church.

“He preached a sermon on abortion and homosexuality, then said if anyone there was p lanning on voting for John Kerry, they should leave,” she said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard something like that. Ministers are supposed to bring people in.”
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And Selma is so right, if only from a business perspective.

Is it possible to mix compassion with derision and scorn? Once free of their moorings, most devout Christians rapidly demonstrate what draws them to their beliefs to begin with: An admission that they have no control over their own essentially meaningless lives and a hyst erical concomitant need to follow directions. It’s sad, but they are idiots.

It is humbling to think how many children have been scolded and beaten so thoroughly that as adults they cannot even begin the search for their rightful place in the universe, a search - I will add - that can be aided immeasurably by studying the life and words of the rabbi Jesus. Nope, they just need some big guy in the sky telling them what to do, a conceit reinforced by the pernicious nonsense of a virgin birth and resurrecti on from the dead.

This is not to say that the miraculous does not exist. It most certainly does. But to insist on coupling it only with inane coercive dogmas is rather a perversion than an expression of the spirit. If you need recourse to a steady diet o f signs and miracles to clarify the dignity of human life and morality, then you are living in a big comic book.

Which seems about right, doesn’t it?

So you can feel sorry for these ding-dongs, but for Christ’s sake don’t be afraid of them. They are ha ted by their children; they don’t trust themselves and their destiny is to bicker with each other in the rat holes of their tiny, scary universe, in aggravated hope for the coming of their savior, who will never show.

Somewhere in Understanding Media, M arshall McLuhan’s magnificent 1964 meditation of things present and future, he warns about something in the global village that has been fairly overlooked. While the advantages, he said, of humans brought closer by electronic media may be wonderful, there was also a downside to life in a village - being the ubiquity of gossip and superstition.

Smart guy, huh??

This leasher of men, this England

I wish I knew what this means. And I think I have a lot of company:


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Judge throws out Iraqi abuse guilty plea

BY T.A. BADGER

FORT HOOD, Texas -- A military judge Wednesday threw out Pfc. Lynndie England's guilty plea to abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, saying he was not convinced the Army reservist who appeared in some of the most notorious photos in the scandal knew her actions were wrong at the time.

The mistrial marks a stunning turn in the case and sends it back to square one.

The case will be reviewed again by Fort Hood's commander, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, who will decide what charges, if any, England should face. If she is charged, the case would go back to a military equivalent of a grand jury hearing, an Article 32 proceeding, prosecution spokesman Capt. Cullen Sheppard said.
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It would be nice to think that there are many decent and dedicated men and women in the Army who are disgusted by the way the Iraq war has been justified and conducted, and the way in which the honor of the service has been stained by the nauseating behavior of small-town cops and DoD spooks put in charge at an Army facility.

It would be thrilling to think that there are Army personnel who will not rest until the truth of this matter, which has put a very dangerous and difficult assignment - being the liberalizing of Iraqi society in the face of a guerilla war - in further jeopardy. It would be unbelievable to suppose that the bullying scoundrels in Washington who set this inhumane policy in motion will be called to account.

While we dream, it is worth noting that the Watergate investigation began when one judge refused to settle for simple guilty pleas in a burglary case.

Call me negative but, this moving testament to the human spirit will never get built.


Pataki: WTC site's Freedom Tower must be redesigned

By KAREN MATTHEWS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg met Wednesday with World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein and agreed that the Freedom Tower must be redesigned to address security concerns raised by the New York Police Department.

"We believe that a building that meets the NYPD standards can be built consistent with (architect) Daniel Libeskind's master site plan," Pataki said in a statement.

The meeting took place in Pataki's Manhattan office and included Lower Manhattan Development Corp. officials, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials and police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. It occurred after plans for the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower were thrown into disarray by a security assessment the police department provided to Silverstein last month.

Rebuilding officials have said the completion of the tower, scheduled for 2009, would be delayed by up to a year to address the security issues. The tower would be the tallest in the world.



First off, doesn’t “Freedom Tower” strike anyone but me as an oxymoron? Second is the likelihood that these NYPD issues - which apparently were raised some time ago - are cover for the fact that they can’t fill the thing. Security issues aside, the old WTC had as many tenants as it did because New York State, and the Port Authority, stocked it with administrative offices. Neither body is what it used to be, especially the State, which, thanks to the Governor, is - as the Brits used to say - on the uppers.

Pushing off

So much noise and so little time...

I am looking to make this a place for certain observations of a generally unfounded nature; The sorts of things that go unsaid in wider policy debates, probably for good reasons.

I am still getting the hang of this, as I am so many things. 'Til tomorrow then.