I respect and admire Liberals - folks who believe that real justice issues like housing, health and social services can best be promoted through government. I take a very dim view of Progressives - patch-work Hegelians and phonies.
Liberals I admire and Progressives give me the giggles. The more one giggles the more self-righteous and goofy become the Progressives.
Pat Quinn is a liberal. I like and admire the Governor.
Toni Preckwinkle is a Progressive and Toni believes that Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow is Ian Smith*. Some one told Toni that Saul bellow was a racist and that settle the novelist's hash for him. No Street Name, Saul! Toni is smarter than a Fifth Grader and wants to be our County Board President.
One of my favorite Liberal lawers is Tamara Holder - a true believer. She holds for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and not the daffy world of Roger Baldwin and G. Flint Taylor. That's Tamara Holder with the late King of Pop - who will not attend Friday night's event.
Ms. Holder will be tending bar for St. Thomas More Grammar School Alum an 44th Ward Alderman Tom Tunney - a Liberal I admire, as well.
Ms. Holder's bar tending tips will go to Hands on Helping. So, all you big tipping swells and Liberally inclined persons of quality drop by the 44th Ward Dinner Party and toss some swag into Tamara Holder's Tip Jar. Remember - Tipping is not a town in China. Always tip your bartender, waiter, waitress, cab driver, maid and red cap.
True fact, I have never - ever - seen a Progressive duke 'the help.'
*Ian Smith lived an exemplary family life and in private was a down-to-earth, modest man. Ian Smith was not corrupt nor was he a megalomaniac. However whilst Ian Smith acted in what he thought were the best interests of then Rhodesia he made some disastrous political decisions as Prime Minister which directly contributed to the trauma that Zimbabwe is suffering from today... The policies of his Rhodesia Front party radicalized black nationalists and directly spawned the violent and fascist rule of Zanu PF.
—David Coltart, member of the Zimbabwe Parliament (House of Assembly and Senate) since 2000
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
On- The - Level Liberal Lawyer Tamara Holder Beer Tends for Tom Tunney - Tips to Charity
Monday, September 14, 2009
Seth Moyers -Birkenstock of Huffing Pope.com Let's Me Have It!
* Seth Moyers-Birkenstock is writer/activist/Falatalist-Falangista/actor/ and grass roots organizer living in LaJolla, CA and Custer Park, IL.
Moyers-Birknstock played Danny in the 1970's Quinn-Martin (QM) Production of Mom's Gums. He was recently quoted by Senator Al Franken (D.MN) as saying 'This Obama Health Plan . . .Dude!' He is a regular contributer and member to the Pasedena Men and Boys Bell Choir.
Rod and Kanye Blagojevich-West
"Chris is my friend," ... "I am saddened to hear these allegations about his personal life" -Rod Blagojevich
"Taylor, I'm really happy for you, and I'm gonna let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time" -Kanye West
CHICAGO (AP) - The investigation into the death of the former chief fundraiser for ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich intensified on Sunday as medical examiners completed an autopsy and detectives looked into whether drugs found in the trusted aide's vehicle might have factored into his death. Dwight Welch, the mayor of suburban Country Club Hills where Christopher Kelly was found slumped over his vehicle's steering wheel in a lumber yard, said a number of drugs were found in the former fundraiser's black Cadillac Escalade but declined to say which drugs. He did say the investigation was being treated as a possible suicide.
NEW YORK (AP) - Kanye West apologized for an outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards that was directed at country-pop sweetheart Taylor Swift. West interrupted Swift's acceptance speech at Sunday's VMAs and said that Beyonce deserved to win.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
'Shoeless' Joe Took the Dough and Only Buck Weaver Died Game
Two more lawyers have joined the Progressive chorus to Free Shoeless Joe Jackson from the bribes that he took while helping Ed Cicotte of the Chicago White Sox and Arnold Rothstein of the American Gaming Interests fix the 1919 World Series.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-talk-clear-shoeless-joesep09,0,556801.story
Swell. You guys are a few months late - Studs Terkel is off the air.
The late loud-mouth and Chicago buried treasure Studs Terkel was a huge advocate for the Free Joe Jackson movement. He did so only to sully the name of White Sox Founder and Owner Charles Comiskey and push victim politics. There are victims, but Progressives tend to make perpetrators ( Mumia, Most Gang-bangers, Libya, ACORN and Van Jones) appear the victim by heaping more horse manure into a moral mountain.
Yesterday, I passed the gates of Mount Hope Cemetery, where last week families and investigators were looking into allegations that more African American families had deceased loved ones disrespected by persons tasked with keeping their burial plots. Chicago White Sox Great and the only member of the 1919 Team tainted by the FIX and absolutely innocent of taking bribes from Rothstein, George Daniel 'Buck' Weaver is buried at Mount Hope.
Buck Weaver does not enjoy the 'victimhood' anointed to the eyes, mouth, temples and ears of Shoeless Joe.
Buck Weaver was a stand-up guy and would never rat-out his teammates, let alone help fix a game in anyway. George Weaver took his infamy with stoic heroism. Shoeless Joe has lawyers, crumbs and money.
Shoeless Joe was a dumb-as-dirt phenomenon. He sold his gifts and talents for the coin of the corrupt. However, he wanted his bat and ball back.
Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis ruled. Baseball, from Judge Landis on down to Bud Selig, has denied attempts to clear anyone that the Landis Ruling banished from Baseball. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama wrote to Commissioner Selig in attempt to clear Buck Weaver, but that was before he became President of the United States. I'll bet the President could clear Buck. It was damned great of Sen. Obama to try and right a genuine wrong in 2005.
Shoeless Joe took the money and Buck Weaver did not. Joe Jackson got exactly what he wanted and immediately. Only Buck Weaver is Pure. I hope his grave remains as unsullied as his great heart and soul.
In 2004 Tribune Sports Legend Dan McGrath conducted a forum along with Dr. David Fletcher of the Baseball Museum at the Chicago Historical Society to clear Buck Weaver.
Chicago Treasure Studs Terkel, a Shoeless Joe Confederate, did not participate. Buck Weaver did not inspire Folk Songs on Public Radio and Dirt-Poor, Dumb-as-Dirt Shoeless Joe certainly did. You see clearing Buck Weaver would also clear Charles Comiskey -owner of the 1919 White Sox who is the goat in all of this Progressive Clap-trap.
Here was what the late World Class Word Moocher StudsTerkel offered to the New York Times following the Chicago White Sox 2005 Championship - "If there had been real justice after the scandal of 1919, Charlie Comiskey, the Sox owner, would have been the one kicked out of the game. That year, the star pitcher Eddie Ciccote had been promised a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games; as he neared the mark Comiskey had him benched for the remainder of the season rather than open his wallet.
But there was nothing the players could do. Most weren't very worldly -- Shoeless Joe Jackson couldn't sign his own name -- and they couldn't change teams. They were serfs of the owners. "http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401E5DC1E3FF93BA15753C1A9639C8B63
Hoist the Red Flag, Studs, you mope. The serfs took bribes, all but Buck Weaver. Baseball as Class Warfare - and this goof is an icon?
Well, now Studs is stealing ideas and stories from Gunga Din while he pours drinks to 'poor damned souls.'
Charlie Comiskey paid his players according to the contracts that they 'in good faith' signed after they agreed to comply. Comiskey has been tarred by the Progressives as a tight-wad. However, Comiskey cared more for the people who came to the games than the sociological implications of Shoeless Joe's poverty and ignorance.
George Daniel 'Buck' Weaver was the only pure Chicago White Sox Player in the 1919 Scandal. Charles Comiskey was a victim too.*WEAVER DIES GAME AS REDS ROLL ON
Cincinnati Post
October 10,
1919
By: Ross Tenney
Though they are hopeless and heartless, the White Sox
have a hero. He is George Weaver, who plays and fights at third base.
Day after day Weaver has done his work and smiled. In spite of the certain fate that closed about the hopes of the Sox, Weaver smiled and scrapped. One by one his mates gave up. Weaver continued to grin and fought harder. Cicotte and Williams fell and the Sox were two games to the bad. Weaver’s smile never faded. His spirit never waned.
Cicotte tried again and failed. Williams made his second game ttempt butthe Red Juggernaut rolled on. In that sixth inning when Moran’s men sluggedand pounded the Sox into submission, Weaver pulled his cap lower over his eyes and grinned. Two of the Sox hits were lined out by his bat.
The Reds have beaten the spirit out of the Sox all but Weaver. Buck’s spirit is untouched. He was ready to die fighting. Buck is Chicago’s one big hero; long may he fight and smile.
George Daniel ‘Buck’ Weaver “A joyous boy, all heart and
hard-trying. A territorial animal…who guarded the spiked sand around third like his life…”
- Nelson Algren,“The Swede was a Hard Guy” in “The Last Carousel”
http://www.clearbuck.com/pdf/Online%20-%20Newsletter%208.pdf
Thursday, September 10, 2009
This Budweiser Ad is For You! 'L of an Ad and Beatles Others Hollow
Click my post title for You Tube Link!
Are They, Whoever They Happen to Be, Afraid of Dan Proft? Yep. If Not, Why Do They Seem To Be?
Far down the line is Dan Proft of Wheaton – a citizen activist and news commentator. Quinn and Hynes are in a pillow fight for the Primary and have staked out positions on just how much more taxes will be heaped upon the backs of Illinois voters and citizens. Brady, Dillard and Murphy seem to angling for the position to be the candidate to dangle a reason for people to cast Democratic votes for Governor in the General Election. Each GOP Senator/Candidate appears to be following the Mark Kirk Brand of Illinois GOP White Flag hoopla with all of the vim, vigor and vitality of the Italian Army in Libya in 1943.
Since July, Dan Proft’s Campaign has stung the tender rumps of Illinois’s most Progressive columnists, editorial boards and mouth-organs like SEIU’s Progress Illinois and Arianna Huffington’s Chicago Huff Po – an absolute howl of sheet. Dan Proft has Progressive Tit-Mice screaming like drunks at closing time. I like that. Dan Proft’s positions are not Progressive. Progressive Positions gave us the Cook County Board Punch and Judy Show and Blago’s Travelling Snake Oil Tour. Programs developed by policy wonks like Ralph Martire and other 501©3 Systemic Change Fountainheads have placed Illinois in a financial jackpot unseen since 1839, when Illinois Auditor General (Comptroller) James J. Shields* saved Illinois from bankruptcy.
I am a Democrat. I voted for John McCain in the Presidential election of 2008, because Barack Obama did not seem to be any where near prepared to be President and was surrounded by the 501©3 Larded Progressives of Illinois, who disdain precinct captain, door-to-door Ward level politics to the Tsunami Sweep of Program Padded and PAC foot-soldiered crowds of shouters who play the lazy and willing Illinois Media. Eric Zorn do what he do. Lawd Ha' Mercy!
I’m an anti-Abortion, School Choice (Vouchers), Pro-Real (Skilled Trades Union) Labor, Law and Order Democrat of the 3rd Congressional District, 23rd Precinct of the 19th Ward Variety Democrat. I have spent most of my career in education in Auburn-Gresham neighborhood.
Dan Proft is running for Governor as a Republican, but he speaks to Democrats on issues that most affect them – on taxes, School Choice, Abortion, and cutting the Illinois budget.
Here are the candidates for Governor as listed by the Belleville Democrat News in Brian Brueggemann’s fine piece:
Democrat:
Pat Quinn: He became governor in January, after Gov. Rod Blagojevich's ouster. He had served as lieutenant governor since 2003. He previously served as state treasurer, beginning in 1990. He's a lawyer from Chicago.
Dan Hynes: He's serving his third term as state comptroller. Says his tenure has focused on "consumer and taxpayer advocacy, government accountability and long-term budget reform." He's an attorney from Chicago.
Jack D. Franks: He's a state representative from Marengo who was first elected in 1998. He said recently that he's not yet decided on whether to run for governor.
Republican:
Bill Brady: Brady's a state senator from Bloomington who joined the Senate in 2002. He previously served in the Illinois House, from 1993-2000. He's a businessman who has been involved in home construction, real estate development and property management.
Kirk Dillard: Dillard, of Hinsdale, has been a state senator since 1994. He previously served as chief of staff for former Gov. Jim Edgar and has served on the Illinois Court of Claims.
Matt Murphy: He's been a state senator since 2006. Murphy says the state needs to reduce corporate income tax to attract businesses and jobs. He's a lawyer from Palatine.
Bob Schillerstrom: Has served as DuPage County Board chairman since 1998. Boasts that he's cut property taxes in that county seven of the past 10 years. He's a lawyer and resides in Naperville.
Dan Proft: A Wheaton resident, Proft is a political commentator and consultant who has worked on numerous candidates' campaigns.
Adam Andrzejewski: It's pronounced And-jee-ef-skee. He's a businessman from Hinsdale who started a phone book company, then established an organization that promotes transparency in government by encouraging government bodies to post their checkbooks online.
Frank Edwards: Edwards has been a Springfield City Council member since 2002. He previously served as the city's fire chief and owns an automotive shop.
Constitution:
Randy Stufflebeam: Stufflebeam is a retired U.S. Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who resides in Belleville. He says both of the established parties have managed to produce a string of corrupt governors for Illinois, and that it's "time for something different." He has served as the state chairman of the Constitution Party.
Green:
Rich Whitney: Whitney is a lawyer from Carbondale. He was a member of the Socialist Labor Party from 1975 to 1993, but has since rejected socialism. He proposes increasing the income tax for wealthier people and favors a single-payer health care system. His memberships include: American Civil Liberties Union, Greenpeace, and Illinois Coalition for Peace, Justice and the Environment.
Independent:
Michael White: He's a Gulf War veteran from Lindenhurst who is retired from the military, having served 22 years combined in the Illinois National Guard, U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves. He's a manager for a speech therapy clinic.
Dan Proft has no friend in Planned Parenthood which owns a hunk of most Illinois Democrats –Sen. Durbin, Gov. Quinn, and Comptroller Hynes. Dan Proft has no friend in the Illinois Education Lobby (Teachers Unions & Program Larded Industries) and has not only called for the creation of more Charter Schools but continues to advocate vouchers – Real School Choice – for all Illinois families. Dan Proft has no friends among the tax-salaried PACS like SEIU that spend millions on buying candidates, but not nickel one on vocational training for the rank and file, but ensure that an SEIU member remains a low-paid serf for life. Real Labor (The Skilled Trades) provides the path to the American Middle Class, which Andy Stern’s SEIU is hell-bent on destroying ASAP.
Dan Proft has no friend in the editorial board grandees who take policy dictates from Planned Parenthood, The Education Lobby, and SEIU. So far I am more than friendly to Dan Proft’s positions on most things. There are more than a few Democrats in the 3rd Congressional District like-minded in voter affection. Dan Proft has made a great beginning toward February and more than a few friends.
*In 1839, Douglas helped Shields gain appointment to the post of Illinois state auditor. Shields insisted that debtors pay the state's bank the face value on money they owed it and not the devalued price. This stance angered Lincoln and the Whigs, but saved Illinois from economic ruin.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Dr.Camille Paglia Explains Hijacking of Democratic Party by Snobs
I have long been an admirer of Dr. Camille Paglia*, one of America's most authentic voices in the Canon of American Letters. Paglia writes for a lefty Cheering Squad - Salon - and with each column 'Deconstructs' the fatuous, phony and fawning voices that comprise the American cultural, social and political elite.
As a Catholic (though rarely, if ever, hits the pews anymore), Paglia honors the beautiful and community forming nature of literary truths and defends the exacting nature of literary inquiry in an age that parses and puffs up frauds and charlatans in academics and public life.
Paglia is at heart the tough Philly Italian kid and seems as bewildered by the hijacking of the Democratic Party as we urban, close-knit ethnic (Catholic & Jewish), second and third generation children of the world-wide diasporas.
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."
But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.
Thanks Doc!
*Camille (Anna) Paglia (born April 2, 1947 in Endicott, New York) is a social critic, author and feminist. She is University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Paglia is an intellectual of many apparent contradictions: a classicist who champions art both high and low, with a Hobbesian view that human nature is inherently dangerous, and yet who also celebrates dionysian revelry in the wilder, darker sides of human sexuality.
Paglia came to attention with the publication of her first book, "Sexual Personae", in 1990, when she also began writing about popular culture and feminism in mainstream newspapers and magazines. In early 1991, she was the subject of a New York magazine cover story, "Woman Warrior". She reached the height of her fame in 1992 with the publication of Sex, Art and American Culture, which was much read on college campuses. Her next book, Vamps and Tramps (late 1994), was a collection of short pieces along and new material such as a theoretical manifesto about sex, "No Law in the Arena". In 1998 she published a short volume about Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" in the British Film Institute Film Classics series.
She is currently writing a study of poetry for Pantheon Books as well as a third essay collection for Vintage Books. She was a columnist for Salon.com for six years from its first issue and is now a contributing editor at Interview magazine. She continues to write articles and reviews for media and scholarly journals, such as her long article, "Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s", published in the classics and humanities journal Arion in Winter 2003.
Her significance in the 1990s intellectual world was two-fold:
The seventies had seen the rise of a particularly rigid, doctrinaire "feminism" that many were finding stifling but only a few were challenging (e.g., the "sex positive" S/M lesbians, perhaps typified by Susie Bright).
The left was pushing for a change in the traditional focus of western universities on western culture (sometimes derided as the study of "dead white males"). For example, Stanford University was dropping its well-regarded undergraduate requirement of a year-long course in "Western Culture" in favor of a more broadly-focused study of "Cultures Ideas and Values" or CIV.
Against this backdrop, Camille Paglia appeared on the scene as a female intellectual who enjoyed challenging the left-wing position in these areas, but far from being the usual stodgy conservative, she did so by arguing from an unusual, flashy position that also embraced homosexuality, fetish, and prostitution. She describes herself as a "libertarian," as she speaks out in favor of individual freedom, which may help explain the apparent contradiction, and the consternation she causes in crossing back and forth between the dominant political camps. She is also an atheist, though she thinks comparative religion should be at the center of world education.
Books
Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art (Dissertation: 1974)
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays (1992)
Vamps and Tramps: New Essays (1994) ISBN 0679751203
The Birds (BFI Film Classics) (1998)
Biography
Camille Anna Paglia was born April 2, 1947, at 6:57 PM in Endicott, New York. She was the first child of Pasquale and Lydia Anne (Colapietro) Paglia, who was born in Italy, and was raised in an Italian immigrant family.
(The name "Paglia" specifically describes the color of the straw that is produced in Italy, the same color that George Eliot had in mind in Daniel Deronda when she wrote of "the pale-golden straw scattered or in heaps.")
The Paglia household had little money, but the parents exposed their daughter to the best of Western art and culture. She has said that the first music to leave an impression on her was Bizet's Carmen, an opera which, in her words, "struck me with electrifying force." She was three when she heard it. That same year, she also became enamored with the witch in Walt Disney's Snow White, a character she later described as elegant and imperious. Throughout her childhood, she would be drawn to several charismatic and powerful figures in art, popular culture and history, setting a precedent for her adult career as culture critic and scholar. She studied them, emulated them and even dressed as them for Halloween (she dressed as Alice from Alice in Wonderland at the age of four, followed by Robin Hood at five, the toreador Escamillo at six, a Roman soldier at seven, Napoleon at eight and Hamlet at nine.) When she was four she became fascinated with the Egypt collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Later that year, her father visited France to study at the Sorbonne and returned with a copy of Art Treasures of the Louvre, a book which puzzled her with its numerous depictions of nude figures. Around this same time, she saw the movie Show Boat (1951), and fell in love with Ava Gardner.
Her primary school years were spent in Oxford, New York, a farming community where, at the Oxford Academy, her father taught high school students. At the age of nine she tried to produce the play Hamlet (based on the Classics Comic Books) in school but became frustrated because some of her classmates hadn't learned their lines. The experience taught her that she couldn't depend on other people, and she soon became a rather aggressive child.
Her family moved to Syracuse, New York, where her father entered graduate school at Syracuse University and then taught as a professor of romance languages at Le Moyne College. Paglia attended the Edward Smith Elementary school,T. Aaron Levy Junior High and William Nottingham High School.
During the summers, Paglia went to Spruce Ridge Camp, a Girl Scout facility in the Adirondacks. She spoke of it many years later in the New York Observer as a "prelesbian heaven. It was just so romantic. I had mad crushes on all the counselors." She took different names when she was there, including Anastasia, [her confirmation name, inspired by the Ingrid Bergman film]], Stacy, and Stanley. In one formative experience, she exploded the outhouse by pouring in too much lime. She said, "It symbolized everything I would do with my life and work. Excess and extravagance and explosiveness. I would be someone who would look into the latrine of culture...."
The year 1959 was an especially important year in Paglia's development, as it was the year her family got both a telephone and a TV set. It was television which exposed her to the movies of the 1930s for the first time, especially those of Katharine Hepburn, who made a big impression on her. She also fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor, and obsessively collected every photograph of her that she could lay her hands on. In 1961 when Taylor won for Best Actress at the 1960 Academy Awards for Butterfield 8, Paglia's reaction was "feverish excitement the whole next day at school."
While in high school, she began research on Amelia Earhart. The research lasted three years, ending when she was 17. She said, "I spent every Saturday in the bowels of the public library going through all these materials, old magazines and newspapers, before microfilm. Everything was falling to pieces. I probably destroyed the whole collection! I was covered with grime." She planned to write a book on Earhart, but the project never came to be.
She was an excellent and devoted student at Nottingham High. Carmelia Metosh was her Latin teacher for three years, and in 1992 recalled that "She always has been controversial. Whatever statements were being made (in class), she had to challenge them. She made good points then, as she does now. She was very alert, `with it' in every way." Paglia thanked Metosh in the acknowledgements to "Sexual Personae," and in January, 2000, described her as "the dragon lady of Latin studies, who breathed fire at principals and school boards."
In many ways, 1963 was the beginning of her career. For her birthday that year, she received a copy of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex from a Belgian colleauge of her father's, Josphina van Hal McGinn. The book had a tremendous influence on her and furthered her resolve to be an important feminist writer. On July 8 of that year, Newsweek published her letter about equal opportunity for American women. And on November 24, she appeared in Syracuse's Herald American in a short profile about her outstanding achievements as a student.
College Years
She graduated high school in 1964 and began attending SUNY Binghamton, Harpur College. There she became friendly with Bruce Benderson (who had also attended Nottingham High School), Stephen Jarratt and Stephen Feld, three gay men who would have a big influence on her. During a summer break, she worked the night shift at St. Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse as a secretary in the emergency ward.
One semester at college she was put on probation for committing 39 pranks. When she was 19, she hit a drunken young stranger in the teeth with her right fist, protecting a small woman whom he and a friend were groping on the street. Andy Warhol's "Chelsea Girls" was released that year. Paglia saw it and was particularly taken with actress Mary Woronov. She later remarked that "She was one of the most original, stylish, and articulate sexual personae of the royal House of Warhol. I never forgot her, and I followed her subsequent movie career with great fascination." Many of Paglia's memories of the '60s are linked to movies. For instance, in 1968 she and her friend Stephen Jarratt saw Joseph Losey's Secret Ceremony, and Valley of the Dolls, and continued to write about the experience years later.
She graduated from college in 1968, valedictorian of her class. She's repeatedly noted she was publicly out as a lesbian at Yale Graduate School, which she began attending in 1968. One day in New York that summer, she happened to run into Catherine Deneuve on Fifth Avenue and found herself "stalking" her through Saks Fifth Avenue. Paglia ran into the St. Regis Hotel and phoned her friend Stephen Jarratt, then working at a laundromat in Binghamton, to tell him about it. In her book Vamps & Tramps she wrote that it was "The first major incident I had to endure without my gay legionnaires...." She was a lesbian and alone.
Just a few months later, as a student at the Yale Graduate School she attended a party in the home of R. W. B. Lewis, one of her teachers, and she was insulted by a prominent Yale psychiatrist named Robert Jay Lifton and his wife for being a lesbian. Lifton, at that time, was the Foundations' Fund Research Professor in Psychiatry at Yale, a position he held until 1984. His attack seems to have emboldened her to not only be out as a lesbian, but to be in everyone's face about it. She has insisted that she was the only openly gay student at Yale for the four years she was a student. Paglia quarreled with "a then darkly nihilist Rita Mae Brown, who came to the Yale University campus for an early feminist conference", and she fought with the New Haven, Connecticut Women's Liberation Rock Band because they dismissed the Rolling Stones as "sexist."
Her study of sexuality in Western literature continued to develop with her reading of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. Several of her closest friends, Benderson, Jarratt and Feld all moved to San Francisco. Paglia recalled that she "had two close encounters with Kate Millett (author of "Sexual Politics") just after she became famous, in New Haven, Connecticut, and Provincetown, Massachusetts, but she was too morosely self-absorbed to notice." Because of what she saw as Millett's "careless" attitude toward scholarship, Millett became a person Paglia began to define herself against.
In 1971 she discovered Kenneth Clark's The Nude while browsing the shelves of Yale's library. "If ever I was in love with a book, it was with this one," she wrote in Sex, Art & American Culture; and in an article for Women's Quarterly in 2002, she called it "The best introduction by far to representation of the human figure in art." She wrote, "Students who read Clark will be safely inoculated against the worst excesses of feminist theory, with its prattle about objectification and the male gaze -- terms cooked up by ideologues with glaringly little knowledge of or feeling for art." The book influenced her writing in her Yale dissertation and subsequent works.
Of the dissertation, her mentor and adviser, Harold Bloom found one fault in the draft he read in 1971. He cautioned in the margin that one passage was "Mere Sontagisme!". Paglia later wrote, "It saddened me, but I knew Bloom was right. Sontag, who could have been Jane Harrison's successor as a supreme woman scholar, had become synonymous with a shallow kind of hip posturing." She received a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Yale that year.
In February of 1972 she wrote a letter to Carolyn Heilbrun, asking for information about her forthcoming book on androgyny, and Heilbrun responded with a letter saying that her book would not be able to deal with all available material on that subject. When the book came out, Paglia gave a thoroughly negative assessment of it in an anonymous review for the journal the Yale Review the following year, 1973. It was the journal's policy for reviews to be published without attribution.
Later in 1972, she toured Washington D.C. with her mother, where she saw Edward Brooke. She later described the black Republican senator from Massachusets as "a glamorous, lordly male who, from my one passing encounter with him as he sauntered elegantly down the Capitol steps in 1972, had a distinctly roving eye." She also saw Barry Goldwater on the Senate floor. "After knowing him only in the twisted, demonic form projected by the liberal Manhattan media, I was stunned at his simple, natural dignity and air of integrity," she later recalled. "He was the most charismatic man I have ever seen off a movie screen. With his unexpected height, solid physique and flowing white hair, he had the regality of an aging lion."
Teaching Career
In the fall, she began her first semester teaching at Bennington College. There she met James Fessenden, a philosophy instructor from Columbia University, who started teaching at the same time as Paglia. In January 1997, Mark W. Edmundson, now a professor at the University of Virginia, recalled attending Bennington while Paglia was there. "She was appointed as my faculty advisor in her first term. I went in for my advisorial visit and she was entirely herself, talking very fast about many things I knew nothing about. I ran in fear. Alas, I was too puzzled to take any of her classes, which seemed to be full of very sophisticated people from LA and from New York."
In 1973, her paper, "Lord Hervey and Pope," was published in the journal 18th century Studies. A Times Literary Supplement cover story on Lord Hervey, November 2nd, praised the paper as "brilliant." On April 9th, she traveled to see Susan Sontag at a lecture at Dartmouth and later invited her to Bennington. Sontag spoke there on October 4th, an event that caused much controversy at Bennington since she read a short story instead of giving a cultural lecture, as she had agreed to. Paglia later commented, "I was stunned because I thought she was going to be a major intellectual," and then wrote about the meeting at length in a dishy essay, "Sontag, Bloody Sontag", first published in "Vamps & Tramps".
Another intellectual disappointment was Marija Gimbutas, who published The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe in 1974. At the same time, Paglia launched "a detailed attack on an exhibit at Bennington's Crossett Library, 'Matriarchy: The Golden Age,' which used appallingly shoddy feminist materials alleging the existence of a peaceful, prehistoric matriarchy, later supposedly overthrown by nasty males."
Through her study of the classics and her reading of the scholarship of Jane Ellen Harrison, James George Frazer, Erich Neumann and others, Paglia had developed a theory of sexual history that was in opposition to the ideas in vogue at the time, which is why she was so critical of Gimbutas, Heilbrun, Millet and others. She laid out her ideas on matriarchy, androgyny, homosexuality, sadomasochism and many other topics in her dissertation Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, which she completed in December of 1974, at the age of 27.
At the time she completed her dissertation and was awarded her Ph.D. by Yale, her friend James Fessenden, "after being forced out of Bennington," returned to New York. Likewise, her friend Bruce Benderson, who had also become a writer, moved to New York from San Francisco. But gay culture had changed since the '60s, and Paglia found that she was no longer allowed to go into gay bars with her male friends, a situation which infuriated her.
In March of 1965, Paglia drove from Vermont to Albany to see Germaine Greer speak. She was disappointed, reporting later that "During the question period, I nervously raised my hand from the crowd and asked if Greer, a former English professor, would be writing on literary subjects again soon. Her reply was stern and swift: 'There are far more important things in the world than literature!'" Another time while visiting Albany, Paglia "nearly came to blows with the founding members of the women's-studies program at the State University of New York at Albany, when they categorically denied that hormones influence human experience or behavior. These women (whose field was literature) attributed my respect for science to 'brainwashing' by men."
Similar sorts of fights with feminists, lesbians, chauvinists, homophobes, and academics would continue for years, reaching a high point in 1978. While at Bennington, Paglia had two girlfriends. The second one, a theatrical young woman named Patty, was a former student. The couple went to a school dance one evening when a rich student from Chicago came out of nowhere and physically attacked them. Paglia spoke about this to Heather Findlay in a cover story for Girlfriends magazine. She said, "I went to the police and filed a report. Then her parents went ballistic. There was an enormous to-do from her rich parents telling the administration, 'Open homosexuals shouldn't be employed by a college. We're not sending our daughter to a place where there are gays like this on the faculty.'" After a lengthy standoff with the administration, Paglia accepted a settlement from the college and resigned a year later. The relationship with Patty ended the following year. Karen Young's song "Hot Shot" became a disco hit during this time, a fact Paglia noted decades later when she pointed out that this "classic high disco... was created at the Queen Village Recording Studio" near the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She didn't know it at the time, but the University of the Arts in Philadelphia would become an institution of tremendous importance to her life in the following decades.
In the early 1980s, Paglia finished her book but couldn't get published and was supporting herself with visiting and part-time teaching jobs at Yale, Wesleyan, and other Connecticut colleges. She taught night classes at the Sikorsky Helicopter plant. Her paper, "The Apollonian Androgyne and the Faerie Queen ," was published in ELR, Winter 1979, and her dissertation was cited by J. Hillis Miller in his April 1980 article "Wuthering Heights and the Ellipses of Interpretation," in Journal of Religion in Literature, but aside from that, not much was happening with her academic career at a time when her peers were moving on to important positions at major universities. In a letter of March 1993 to Boyd Holmes, she recalled: "I earned a little extra money by doing some local features reporting for a New Haven alternative newspaper (The Advocate) in the early 1980s. There was an article on the historic pizzerias of the town and also one on an old house that was a stop on the Underground Railroad."
In 1984 she got a teaching job at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, which merged with its next-door neighbor, the Philadelphia College of Art, to become the University of the Arts in 1987. The completed manuscript for "Sexual Personae" was rejected by seven publishers and five agents, until it was finally accepted by Yale University Press and published in February 1990. Paglia had no romantic relationships during this period and has described her "endless frustration" in trying to meet women in bars. However, she met Alison Maddex, then living in Washington, D.C., in 1993, and the two have been together ever since.
In March of 1985, an interesting letter of hers about the Liberty Bell was published by the Philadelphia Inquirer. An article concerning the conservation of the Liberty Bell appeared in the New York Times, March 27, quoting from her letter ("Philadelphia deserves a classier display of its heritage.") In April, she copyrighted a children's book, The Grocery Store Wars, with drawings by her sister Lenora. A chapter of Sexual Personae, "Oscar Wilde and the English Epicene," was published in the journal Raritan. In 1986, her essay "Nature, Sex, and Decadence," was published in the book Pre-Raphaelite Poets, edited by Harold Bloom; and her essay, "Christabel," was published in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also edited by Bloom.
For the next few years, she continued to teach while perfecting Sexual Personae for its eventual publication, and releasing a few additional portions of it in other journals and books. Her essay "Oscar Wilde and the English Epicene," was published in 1988 in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, edited by Bloom; Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art, was published in 1988 in Western Humanities Review; and "Sex," was published in the Spenser Encyclopedia, by A. C. Hamilton in 1989.
In the early '90s, her friends Stephen Jarratt and James Fessenden died of AIDS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia
Monday, September 07, 2009
American Labor – Stay out of the Green Fog
This morning most members of my immediate and extended family will march in celebration of Labor. They will form up on Columbus Drive* as the fog and mists of morning break away along the Lakefront, but they may still be enshrouded in both a Purple and a Green fog.
The Purple Fog is the powerful cover of SEIU - tax salaried, collectivist political action masquerading as real Labor. I have continued to snipe away at SEIU as faux labor, because the SEIU membership the rank and file are used by SEIU for dues, while the membership remain in low-paying, no skill/low skill jobs, without a path to the middle class. SEIU uses the dues of members to buy and amass political power.
The Green Fog comes from the Environmental Agendanistas and Allies of SEIU who have be-fogged American political conversation with the white noise of Green Jobs, Green Capitalism, and Green Politics.
Labor gave America its standard of living and created the American Middle Class.
These are tough times. Americans face near 10% unemployment, and erosion of the industrial jobs that once marked America. Many of those jobs rusted and chipped away due to Environmental Concerns. The American Steel Industry is now all but gone. Coal was and remains a political whack-a-mole - 'We're with You! We Ain't!'
America is Green Slap Happy. Green Jobs? Green Turn-around economy? Renewable Sources of Energy? Green fog.
The Green Fog's Czar, Van Jones, was out-ed as an agenda driven goof and will return to the activist sidelines - for a while.
Today, as Labor - Real Labor - marches and celebrates the courage and conviction of people to demand dignity and a solid livelihood from the people who benefit from their labors, try to avoid the Green Fog, as well as the Purple Fog.
Green jobs barely exist. American scholar and demographer Joel Kotkin writes this about the Green Fog:
All told, green jobs constitute barely 700,000 positions across the country – less than 0.5% of total employment. That's about how many jobs the economy lost in January this year. Indeed a recent study by Sam Sherraden at the center-left New America Foundation finds that, for the most part, green jobs constitute a negligible factor in employment – and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Policymakers, he warns, should avoid "overpromising about the jobs and investment we can expect from government spending to support the green economy."
This is true even in California, where green-job hype has become something of a fetish among self-styled "progressives." One recent study found that the state was creating some 10,000 green jobs annually before recession. To put this into context, the total state economy has lost over 700,000 jobs over the past year (more than 200,000 in Los Angeles County alone). Any net growth in green jobs has barely made a dent in any economic category; only education and health services have shown job gains over this period.
More worrisome, in terms of national competitiveness, the green sector seems to be going in the wrong direction. The U.S.'s overall "green" trade balance has moved from a $14.4 billion surplus in 1997 to a nearly $9 billion deficit last year. As the country has pushed green energy, ostensibly to free itself from foreign energy, it has become ever more dependent on countries such as China, Japan and Germany for critical technology. Some of this is directly attributable to the often massive subsidies these countries offer to green-tech companies. But as New America's Sherraden puts it, this "does not augur well for the future of the green trade balance."
Nor are we making it any easier for American workers to gain from green-related manufacturing. Some of America's "greenest" regions are inhospitable for placing environmentally oriented manufacturing facilities. For example, high taxes and regulatory climate have succeeded in intimidating solar cell makers from coming to green-friendly California; a manufacturer from China told the Milken Institute's Ross DeVol that the state's "green" laws precluded making green products there.
The jobs –manufacturing and others – depart and there is no work – No Labor. The fog of Green propaganda and sloganeering by editorial boards and politicians will endanger American Labor, as much as the collectivist clap-tarp of Andy Stern’s SEIU. Purple or Green, fog is fog.
God Bless the American Labor Movement! Work for the dignity of working women and men, but for Labor's sake - for God's Sake! - stay out of the Fogs, Green and Purple!
* No Parade - plenty of barbecues, though. At the time I wrote this, I had forgotten that the City of Chicago no longer Parades Labor. There is an Immigration Reform rally.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
"Eph'phatha," - Straighten Up and Fly Right!
Today's Gospel reminded me of the Nat King Cole Trio song:
A buzzard took monkey for a ride in the air
The monkey thought that everything was on the square
The buzzard tried to throw the monkey off his back
But the monkey grabbed his neck and said-- Now listen, Jack
Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.
Ain't no use in divin'
What's the use in jivin'
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.
The buzzard told the monkey "You're chokin' me
Release your hold and I'll set you free
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye and said
Your story's so touching but it sounds just like a lie
Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and stay right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.
Here was the unvarnished gospel Mark 7: 31 - 37 at 8:30 Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Chicago:
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the region of the Decap'olis.
And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech; and they besought him to lay his hand upon him.
And taking him aside from the multitude privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue;
and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, "Eph'phatha," that is, "Be opened."
And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
And he charged them to tell no one; but the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.
And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, "He has done all things well; he even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak."
I have more wax in my soul than I do in my ears. I lose patience with my wonderful children. I want my vanities perfumed into virtues. I want my bank balance to mirror those vanities and continue to be astounded that, when I open the mail, there are no Honorary Degrees. or Fat Checks from Patrons.
In short, I need to hear "Eph'phatha," which Mel Gibson translates from the Aramaic of Jesus to 'Straighten Up and Fly Right!'
Cool down Papa don't you blow your top!
Happy Labor Day, Folks!
Click my post title for the translation.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Chicago Brother-Love -Maureen O'Donnell's Odyssey of Jack Egan: Greek Ice Cream and the Kamikaze
History is about the truth and not what we'd like it to be and try to Krazy-Glu a patch job of what might have happened.
World War II was an epic fight in which good triumphed over evil. The Greatest Generation is term that merely seems to pay a passing nod at the millions of tough, skinny, energetic, independent and compassionate Americans who went to war against Fascism ( Nazi/Imperialist Japanese/Italian fascism) a belief that the State usurps the Rights of Man.
Maureen O'Donnell of the Chicago Sun Times presents a story that is a relic, a time-piece and evidence of what made newspapers great at one time. Her story of Jack Egan, an 86 year old gentleman, who wanted to learn the historical truth of his brother's WWII sacrifice as a sailor in the South Pacific is a thing of beauty.
It relates the historical context of Chicago in the 1940's and the roles played by teenagers in going to war against monsters.
Chicago's Greek community was the force behind the ice cream industry - the first Sundae was created in a Chicago Greek ice cream parlor; the first Soda Foundation was established in a Greek ice cream parlor and Greeks established ice cream manufacturing in 1920's Chicago. Hollis, Melvin - Ethnic Chicago p.280.
An Irish kid afflicted with Polio, Jack Egan could not go to war with his brother, but worked to maintain the American way of life here at home. Maureen O'Donnell presents the sadness of the War Department telegram coming to the helot's house at 7200 S. Seeley in 1945.
Maureen O'Donnell carefully and lovingly presents the treasures that make history come alive through the beauty of its simple truth -unalloyed by agenda:
Egan still has the telegram, sent to the old family home at 7231 S. Seeley, saying Jack was missing. It nearly stopped their mother's heart. She never recovered from her grief, dying six months later, at 52.
Egan has the Gold Star flag families hung in the window to show they'd lost a boy in the war and a chisel his brother made in shop class at Tilden Tech.
And now, 64 years later, the Westmont man has someone he can talk to about his brother, after seeing a Chicago Sun-Times story about Nick Korompilas, 85, a Mannert Abele survivor.
Egan, who turns 86 Sunday, couldn't believe it when he read the story. With one arm withered from polio and classified 4-F, Egan didn't serve in the military. But he always hoped to find someone who was on his brother's ship. Before the Internet, though, searching wasn't easy. And life got in the way. Egan worked at Kraft Cheese, Curtiss Candy and Glidden Paint. He married and raised a family.
But, after seeing the story, he got together with Korompilas at his Park Ridge home.
"I finally found somebody I could finally talk to," Egan said.
Click my post title for Maureeen O'Donnell's beautiful story.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/112827
http://books.google.com/books?id=2JbU1d9Xil0C&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=Chicago+Greek+%2B+Ice+Cream+Parlors&source=bl&ots=vK76kPguv0&sig=PUctrRtLAHBkUE2SL0M2kxIAM6I&hl=en&ei=IFmiSoy0BojsMamH2egP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Friday, September 04, 2009
Another 'Teachable Moment' Van Beck Beer Summit
Now here is a 'Teachable Moment' - Every time President Obama has stepped on the old John Dog, he has seen fit to make a collective guilt trip for all Americans.
Van Jones - a middleclass punk loudmouth like Billy Ayers is giving the Amateur Hour Obama White House the miseries. Czar Jones is not new. In fact, he mirrors the President in so many ways - handsome, well dressed, verbally gifted and insulated. President Obama is a middle class kid who eased into power through the board rooms of monied 501(c) 3 Boards - not precinct captain level Chicago politics. The Progressive route buys power and influence and never admits an error, sin or mistake
Personally, I'll take a few cuts from the flails of fortune for my own idiocies - gambling, getting gin-drunk, and acting the Corinthian with the Fast Smart Set. On me, whip away!
However, President Obama has made a career out of collective work - 501(c)3 Foundations headed up by the Barney Google of Leftist Terrorism - Billy Ayers and then using the funding from Woods Fund with State multipliers as a State Senator to offer 'systemic' changes, like tossing bucks to collectivist lawyers and real estate HUD swindlers ( Tony Rezko/Allsion Davis/Cullen Davis & etc.). It's all good.
You see Obama Power is Progressive Collective Power ( Lefty PACS/SEIU/ACLU?Planned Parenhood?MOVEon.org/Foundations & etc.)! Everyone is involved -whether they like it, suffer under it or profit by it. President Obama is no Chicago politician. He is the Progressive Collectivist.
He acts and you feel. Van Jones is a punk with whom Americans have become all too familiar with since meeting Barack Obama - an insulated, middle class, radical loudmouth with Foundation money. He is a handsome black Billy Ayers -kind of like Taye Diggs meets Gabby Hayes - they are very much the same. Punks they be - protected and insulated by fortune and the laws they wish to destroy. Czar Jones it seems just might only have hours left in his mastership of the Obama Green Suzerain.
Now, Labor Day Weeekend, might be just the time - again- that our Collectivist Progressive President calls another beer summit with Glenn Beck and Van Jones beer bonging for All of America's Collective Guilt.
Everything is just a distraction.
EU Green Dictates Kerry Fishermen Starve - Our Green Planet Terrorists and Regular Folks
Ireland joined the European Union some time ago and only recently the effects of that union are being realized. Ireland has a growing drug problem that has paralleled the 'Compassionate' immigration and safe haven sanctuary for political refugees who seem to be active heroin dealers from the Mid East, Africa and the former Soviet Union. Now Green Mandates threaten the livelihood of Kerry fishermen - especially the mussel fishers of Castlemaine.
Mussels - yes, the cockles and mussels, Alive, Alive O' variety - have been used as food and export commodities for centuries. Mussels are steamed and the broth -'Bray' serves as a nutritious tea in Ireland and Europe. They are damned tasty bivalves sold on the streets of seaside towns in Ireland and dashed with vinegar make a good meal.
I ate bags of mussels in Ireland. Now, it appears that the Green Mandates of the EU will smother families into poverty once again in the Celtic Tiger.
I read Ted Creedon's warning in The Kerryman and was sickened by this idiotic One World Green fiat. ( click my post title for the full story)
The mussel fishermen of Cromane are angry that there was no consultation prior to their industry being closed. Since the government's decision they have been unable to contact the relevant authorities, whose silence on the issue has been deafening. Maybe they are not worried if the people of Cromane and beyond lose their livelihoods. The government's only correspondence to the people of Cromane is that they are carrying out baseline studies.
So far the only actual study carried out regarding whether this industry was causing any damage to the harbour was independently commissioned by the fishermen of Cromane.
This rash decision of this government cannot and should not be accepted. The government is playing a game of roulette with a coastal village that depends on the mussel industry. It is inconceivable to think that they will not be able to continue in their chosen industry.
The bottom line is this: If the government refuses to re-open the Cromane mussel fishery a village in rural Ireland will die.
President Obama's idiot Green Czar Van Jones is a fine example of the Green Death Mopes who dictate such Mandates - God Help us!
Thursday, September 03, 2009
President Obama's Department of Homeroom Fun & Activities!
"HeLLLLLLooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!"
Menu of Classroom Activities
President Obama’s Address to Students Across America
(PreK‐6)
Produced by William Ayers Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education
September 8, 2009
Before the Speech •
Teachers can build temples to the President of the United States and his speech by stacking books about presidents and Barack Obama. Teachers could motivate students by telling the following questions:
Who is the President of the United States? Barack Obama Right?
What do you think it takes to be President besides the Stupid Electoral College and where is it anyway and how many Bowls Have they Been In?
To whom do you think the president is going to be speaking To You'm That's Whom?
Why do you think he wants to speak to you'm?
What do you think he will say to you'm?
•
Teachers can ask students to imagine that they are delivering a speech to all of the Japanese First Ladies on Venus - that's a planet up there.
If you were the president, what would you tell students to do about Fox Cable News?
What can students do to help in our school's fight for the planet and the next American Idol?
Teachers can chart seats for students to sit in.
•
Why is it important that we listen to the president and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor but not the Crazy Beeeotch Former-Governor of Alaska who will Run in 2012?
Why is what they say important to you and President Obama who already knows what you think and don't think for a minute Little Miss that he does not, because he has Rachel Maddow keeping a Snitch Chart on you and Maddie, and Beckey and the Twins?
During the Speech
•
As the president speaks, teachers can go out and smoke the same brand of Marlboro Red Hardpack as President Obama, but be sure to use that Family Dollar Hand Sanitizer that poor Mr. Walsh used to drink and had to go back to Rehab.
Ask students to write down key names of uncles and aunts who had McCain/Palin lawn signs and bumper stickers. Smart students could use a note‐taking graphic organizer such as a “cluster web of Enemies of Our President;” . . .
Or, students could record their thoughts on sticky notesand later burn them, because they will be wearing paper hats to work and going in the Army and voting Re-Thuglican.
Younger children could draw pictures of Way-Cool Guys Playing Guitar Hero with Dinosaurs. Sharks! Draw Sharks eating fat kids!
As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following, but will no doubty drift off into a fantsy about Old Country Buffet and Batting Cages:
What is the president trying to tell me and why did he keep pulling that wax out of his ears and look at it?
What's that buzzing sound? What's the Frequency Kenneth?
What is the president asking me to do with the 1st Communion Money from Uncle Stosh and Aunt Beryl?
What new Action Figures is the president challenging me to think about?
This gum is still minty!
•
Students could record important parts of the speech where the president is asking them to do something, but. . . like that will happen.
Students might think about the following - or not:
What specific job is he asking me to do on the two kids at the end of the block whose Dad is in the Medical Insurance Business?
Is he asking anything of anyone else, like Ted Kennedy? Yeah, What will Ted Kennedy be doing? Nothing! Not Fair.
Teachers? Principals? Parents? Lend me your ears! The American people? We Apologize for the American People! A Nation of Racist Imperialist Power Mongering Cowards,Killers and Planet Slobs! I Hate Myself!
•Remember to Color Purple for SEIU!
After the Speech
Wait and see, Mr Pretties! Wait and See!!!!!!!!!!
MSNBC's Right Wing Bias Confuses Cute Hoors
E.J. Dionne is a very in-demand columnist of the Washington Post, frequent flyer on MSNBC, NPR and the balance of what he terms 'the right-wing Media.' In today's offering at Real Politics Dionne presents himself as a real Cute Hoor.
E.J. Dionne is what Muhammad Ali Boxing Legend and Freeman of Ennis, County Clare, Ireland, would call " A Cute Hoor*." A cute hoor, in Ireland and among the children of the Spud Diaspora is a dissembler, a hair-splitting sneak.
When the Summer of Hope Dashed hit President Obama just days before the Great National Lesson on Race, Part II ( The Beer Boondoggle) MSNBC, CNN, most of the print media, Hollywood Swingers, and every guy who travelled on a short yellow bus to school in my neck of the woods howled and tore garments about Town Hall Thugs and Tea Bag Militia Men.
That attempt at concerted calumny by the Cute Hoors of America ( E.J. Dionne Life Member)really did not turn out so well for the attempt to throw the high hard one into the American Tax-Payer under the euphemism Health Care(Insurance) Reform.
Here is what Cute Hoor Dionne tries to parse:
There is an overwhelming case that the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from television's point of view "boring") encounters between elected representatives and their constituents.
It's also clear that the anger that got so much attention largely reflects a fringe right-wing view opposed to all sorts of government programs most Americans support. Much as the far left of the anti-war movement commanded wide coverage during the Vietnam years, so now are extremists on the right hogging the media stage -- with the media's complicity. (emphasis my own)
Over the last week, I've spoken with Democratic House members, many from highly contested districts, about what happened in their town halls. None would deny polls showing that the health reform cause lost ground last month, but little of the probing civility that characterized so many of their forums was ever seen on television
E.J. Dionne, if you told that to a deaf mule, he'd kick you to death. Imagine what Muhammad Ali, good man that he is, would do to you!
* Cute Hoor -
Someone who tricks other people without being discovered. Clever or sneaky.
I heard this term used in conversation long before I REALLY understood what was being said. I thought the insinuation was one that compared a trickster to a prostitute. Then I saw it written as the subtitle on a poster for Margaret Mckenna Mullan’s play, The Sleeveens, and realised it was pure slang.
As to the origins of this phrase, I’d imagine that “cute” is being used in its old meaning as “small.” A cute hoor in Ireland doesn’t do anything truly harmful - it’s almost an affectionate term for someone who’s a bit of a chancer, given the opportunity.
“So I told the doorman I’d lost my wristband and he let me in without paying. Then, I drank for free at the bar because I convinced the staff I was the owner’s son returned from Australia.”
“Ya cute hoor, ya!”
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Latin Matin September 2, 2009
Quid agis, caput assulae?
O Sibile! Siemgo ! Fortibuses in Ero Nobile Demis Trux
Suatis Enim –Causen Dux
What'll it be?" asked the bartender.
"A martinus," said the professor.
"Don't you mean martini?"
"If I wanted more than one I'd ask for more than one."
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Muhammad Ali - A Freeman of Ennis!
Freedom of the City is a medieval military honor bestowed upon the heroic. In Ireland, it is an honorary distinction outside of the City of Dublin where the Freeman may sell his goods without license, graze his sheep in the parks and keep armour for the return of the Vikings or the Brits.
In the town of Ennis, County Clare, in the most beautiful of Ireland's four provinces -Munster -Muhammad Ali was named a Freeman of Ennis today.
Mike Joyce, Leo Boxing Coach and St. Cajetan neighbor is with Muhammad Ali along with Emerald Plumbing CEO and Boxing Impresario Terry Cox of County Mayo.
Meallan muilte Dé go mall ach meallan siad go mion.
Boxing Great Muhammad Ali Returns to County Clare, Ireland
Fifty thousand people will crowd into Ennis, County Clare, Ireland to welcome Muhammad Ali - Home.
The Greatest is a Son of Erin and the great grandson of a Clare Man who married an African American woman here in the States.
“Ennis has had rain for three months, June, July and August, it hasn’t stopped, we’ve been hit by the recession, but for the last three weeks, since the offer for him to come was taken up, it is all the townsfolk have spoken about,” Ennis Town Mayor Frankie Neylon said.
“Old and young are united in this. The older people are educating the young children about the great man, and the town is abuzz with activity. There are musical bands preparing, memorabilia is coming out, it is thrilling for everyone.”
Ali’s great-grandfather Abe Grady was born and raised in Ennis before he emigrated to America in 1860, where he married an African-American woman. Ali’s mother, Odessa Lee Grady, was his granddaughter. Abe Grady’s father, John, rented a house and garden in Ennis for 15 shillings a year in 1855.
Nár laga Dia do lámh
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Joel Weisman - A Tuba Joins a String Quartet of Chicago Talent
Joel Weisman on the Friday Edition of WTTW -Wilmette Talking to Winnetka -Chicago Tonight seems to be channeling MSNBC's Chris 'Milkey' Matthews. White noise.
I was stunned to see four great guest panelists on Chicago Tonight. While my daughter Clare was doing St. Rita Cheerleading stuff with the like-minded and spirited young ladies from the neighborhood, I chanced to see four -not just good -panelists on Chicago Tonight, but four great panelists.
News Legend Bob Crawford - a WBBM radio reporter who always gets it right
Nesita Kwan - A solid and clever NBC correspondent
Kate Grossman - a Chicago Education journalist for the Sun Times who speaks as well as she writes.
Dan McGrath - Chicago Tribune senior sports writer and the absolute best prose craftsman in journalism.
This line-up of genuine Chicago talent is like having the greatest Haydn String Quartet be joined by Joel and his Golden Tuba! Hey! Let's Polka to Haydn! Go for Baroque!
Jesus Christ! Everytime Bob Crawford presented a cogent analysis on Illinois politics, Kate Grossman cut through the nonsense surrounding the Clouting of CPS, Nesita Kwan silked the substance of dangers to our health , or the witty Dan McGrath hit for fences on Milton Bradley or the chances of 2009 Sox, Joel Weisman blows loudly to implode the music of great thoughts and sucks the intelligence and oxygen out of the room. Well, it is public TV.
Chris Matthews the braying jackass of MSNBC must have offered his playbooks to Jolly Joel.
Let's hear the panelists! Shut the Duck Up, Joel - your inner Duck! Keep him there.
Click my post title and watch a souffle drop because of Joel's Tuba playing to no one in particular.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Racists Turn Backs on Portrait of President Digging for Nose Gold
In the ever expanding Universe of Americans turning their backs on Obama Health Reform and other costly treats, White House Spokesfolks ginned up the heat on Racists and Terrorists (the folks photoed above).
MSNBC will do a two-hour loop tape to run around the clock over the next six months to point out Racism on Main Street U.S.A. There's no getting away from it - from Martha's Vineyard to Bum Hump, Arkansas- this "Nation of Cowards" does not cotton to Government Health Care or State Sponsored Abortion. ( click my post title)
Whitey Bulger Tosses Some Guy's Hat in The Ring for Kennedy Senate Seat - The Snappy Spoof Saga!
From the fine folks at Spoof!
Boston, MA/ Political News - In a bold political move, Winter Hill Criminal Gang Leader, Whitey Bulger, emerged from "hiding" and moved into the limelight after the Massachusetts Senate voted unanimously to grant him amnesty from a career of Murder and Mayhem.
Political pundits of the one party state, said Bulger gives the DEMS their best chance to sweep the mandated Senatorial election required under Massachusetts Law with the death or retirement of an elected representative.
Kennedy family members denied rumours that Bulger was the last known visitor to the Kennedy bedside in a late night visitation, and that he gave absolution to the criminally neglient Senator.
Governor "Cadillac" Deval Patrick, put his official signature to the amnesty bill this morning while sitting pool side at his $1.7 million mansion, brushing aside nagging questions from the media concerning his edict to shut down all community pools citing the state was "broke, and couldn't afford anymore Chlorine, or pool maintenance!"
Meanwhile, insiders claimed the Bulger move was an act of genius, putting the 80 year old Bolger in his accustomed place as a ruthless leader of thieves, scam artists, hit men, and anti-social politicians.
Bulger's life was chronicled in the popular movie "The Departed", with Bulger's role played to perfection by Hollywood Icon, Jack Nicholson.
The Bulger story became one of myth and legend after it was discovered that he was in bed with the FBI in the Bay State, who proffered him favours, and overlooked hits, in turn for information that resulted in the arrest and successful prosecution of his rivals. A lot of Money also exchanged hands.
Bulger appeared on the FBI's most wanted list in 1999, and it appeared to many that the agency had no real intention of pursuing him as it could lead to more embarrassing revelations within the agency.
Whitey's brother, Bill, was the former head of the Mass State Senate, and went on to a brief appointment as the President of the University of Massachusetts, where his public service has led to a tax free $400k a year retirement package.
Bill often said he had no idea where his brother could be hiding out, but came out of retirement to become his campaign manager yesterday.
At least two FBI agents are serving time in jail for an assortment of crimes, not the least of which is fingering an informant that led to his eradication by Bulger and his henchman simply know as "The Rifleman."
Stories continued to surface concerning Bulger's where a abouts and he was interviewed by a Spoof Reporter in his mansion on Cape Cod where on a clear day "he could see Martha's Vineyard", in a toll booth on the Mass Turnpike where he worked for awhile as a $90,000 tolltaker, also in Patriots' stadium where he was seen hawking peanuts and beer, and even as late as last month where he was seen at a Barney Frank Town Hall meeting working a security detail.
Details leaking out from the Mass legislature seem to indicate Bulger had a small, but secure and homey office in the State Court House, where his official title was "Head of Janitorial Services and Pest Control", a position created by Patrick, who has denied it, and paying $175,000 a year and guaranteeing a pension "to die for".
FBI and Justice officials are said to be glad their long embarrassment is over and announced they no longer had Bulger on the Most Wanted List, the same day they announced they were abandoning the corruption investigation of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson since all witnesses had "gone missing" as well as 3 GOP Federal Attorneys who took "early retirement."
Spoof Investigative Reporter Hal A. Peno, was said to be "really Hot", as he had worked tirelessly on the investigation and "had the fucker dead to rights!"
Fourteen possible challengers for the Senate Seat, announced today they were dropping out of the Senate Race, "for personal reasons."
The story above is a satire or parody. It is entirely fictitious.
