A Slightly-Less-Snarky Year-End Review Than Last Year’s

So, how to characterize the year 2011? Tempting to try to boil it down into a phrase or even a word. Oversimplification can be fun!

 

TIME Magazine recently declared “The Protestor” as its Person of the Year. Seems logical: all year long, whether in the Middle East or the Midwest, whether peaceful or violent, whether full of human microphones or thrown rocks, whether self-named (Occupy) or not (help me out here: was the “Arab Spring” so named by the media covering it?) … protests have been the order of the day. The Year of the Protest!

Early this year, the Arab Spring uprisings made the job of “Middle Eastern affairs analyst” a special brand of tightrope: first Tunisia, then Egypt, then Libya, then Syria. Governments and leaders were toppled, regimes were ended, celebrations were launched, and (predictably) complete uncertainty about the future was felt. (And the passive voice was overused, seemingly.)

Here in the US, it began with residents of Ohio and most notably Wisconsin protesting their governors’ and state legislatures’ raids on union collective bargaining rights (not to mention did you spot Michigan governor Rick Snyder’s remarkable assault on democracy itself? Go here for that harrowing story) … and the year has ended with the spread and evolution of the Occupy movement.

 

Maybe it was the Year of the Crisis. In January, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head, and the resultant conversation in the media rightly suggested a crisis in public discourse (unfortunately, the moratorium on gun- and violence-related metaphors in public speech lasted only about as long as this sentence). In March, Japan experienced a massive earthquake and tsunami, leading to the meltdown of a nuclear reactor in the north of Japan. In April, Prince William and Kate Middleton were royally wed (–sorry. I apologize to my UK relatives: not a crisis after all; just a frenzy).

All year, the European debt crisis expanded, beginning with Portugal, Ireland and Greece, and spreading to Belgium, Italy and France. And other crises arose!! involving debt ceilings … payroll tax cuts … and NBA players and owners nearly cancelling their own season thanks to a disagreement about how to distribute their absurd amount of revenue. Well, some crises were man-made and perhaps not that necessary. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard quite as much about the War on Christmas as I usually do. (And oh yes! How about… blog posts that yield Defcon-One-grade comments from the Mightily Offended? Okay, speaking of unnecessary crises…)

 

Perhaps it was the Year of the Scandal. (To be fair, what year isn’t?) Arnold Schwarzenegger had an affair…? Anthony Weiner had, well, had a cellphone that took pictures…? Amateurs. The Ohio State football team had the kind of problems that would cause the resignation of its head coach, and would attract NCAA sanctions…? Sad, but not super-unusual.

A former Citigroup treasury finance VP was arrested on bank fraud charges stemming from his embezzlement of more than $19 million…? Bank of America used $355 million in settlement money to resolve Justice Department allegations that Countrywide Financial Corporation (purchased by BofA in 2008), “engaged in a widespread pattern or practice of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in their mortgage lending from 2004 through 2008”…? Now we’re getting into scandal-of-worthy-scope territory.

Charlie Sheen, and tiger blood, and winning!!…? A celebrity-fluff scandal, but a loud one, and one which should have been more of a cautionary tale than it turned out to be.

In fact, up until the last month or so, I thought that the News Corp. cellphone hacking scandal, which is still a big news story in the UK and needs to not be forgotten in this part of the world, would be the Scandal of the Year. Anything that remotely threatens Rupert Murdoch’s global media (and by extension, political) empire is something that deserves all the attention we can give it, I think.

Until Penn State. If the Penn State / Jerry Sandusky mess is Scandal #1, then Scandal #2 actually ranks about #14. The Penn State child sex-abuse scandal is horrifying, beyond its basic content, because it’s important from so many different perspectives.

 

Maybe it was the Year of the Rather Momentous Death of Momentous Public Figures who have spent at least ten years being infamous, about which it may or may not be polite or politically wise or humane to celebrate: in May, Osama bin Laden. In October, Moammar Gaddafi (or however the frak he spelled his name).

 

The Year of Endings? In July, it was the final Space Shuttle mission. In September, it was a treaty, signed by India and Bangladesh, which ended their 40-year border demarcation dispute (hey! This sort of thing CAN be done!). This fall, it was the end of the era in which the global population could be described as “six billion” (the United Nations selected October 31 as the symbolic date on which the population hit seven billion). Ah yes! And Regis Philbin retired from television after fourteen decades of exemplary work.

 

More endings: at the end of a year, the mass media hurriedly generates lists of celebrities who have gone to the Great Celebrity Beyond, usually with titles like “Those We Have Lost” – as if we knew them personally, which is a topic for another time. This year, some of the names that struck me particularly, as I perused other people’s lists, included …

Golfer Seve Ballesteros. Boxer Joe Frazier (and it wasn’t long, sadly, before a wiseacre sportscaster made a “down goes Frazier” joke).

Electronic music composer Milton Babbitt. Film composer John Barry, whose passing made me think of the film composers that have made the biggest impression on me, here.

Pianist George Shearing, a 33 rpm record of whose music I ground down to nothing as a kid. My favorite growlin’ saxophonist, Clarence Clemons. Singer Amy Winehouse, who probably died of complications from stardom. Singer Gerry Rafferty, who is probably justly famous for other things than this, but this is my association.

Author Anne McCaffrey, none of whose books I have read but ALL of whose books’ covers I have marveled at; one day I’ll rectify that.

Actors Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Cooper, Peter Falk, Cliff Robertson, and Charles Napier, who for me will forever be driving an RV in “The Blues Brothers”. And actor Harry Morgan, paid more complete and proper tribute here.

Euthanasia advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian – there are probably ironic punchlines to be generated, but I shall resist. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, easily one of the most important figures in the history of innovation in America, but also probably a large beneficiary of the standard mass-media post-celebrity-death worship mode.

(By the way, I have a side bet going with myself about that last paragraph.)

Former First Lady Betty Ford. Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Former VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro. Statesman, activist and Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver. Czech playwright, dissident and politician Vaclav Havel, whose life was devoted to freedom from oppression, and whose death was completely overshadowed by the passing of the North Korean dictator, the oppressive “Dear Leader” his own self, Kim Jong-Il.

 

For me, the last year(-plus) has featured all of those things: change, upheaval, the expressing of opinion (constructive or not). In particular, it’s been a year full of passing-away – an unusually protracted run of deaths, of people directly or indirectly connected to the circles in which I travel (both professional and personal). I wrote about one of those, a member of the church choir that I direct, here.

As I’ve gone back over my notes and eMails from 2011 and taken note of the unusually great number of people who have passed away, I’ve been tempted to wallow, bemoan their passing, and think about how much they’ll be missed, either by me or by the friends and colleagues to whom they were more directly connected. These are not by themselves bad things to do. But it seems appropriate, concurrently, to follow one of my favorite “Starred Thoughts®”, which suggests: “Tell people what you think of them, before it’s too late.” Or, less morbidly, …when you have the opportunity.

So I won’t sit it out; I’ll dance. I have a pack of remarkable friends and colleagues, and however it may be that our Venn-diagram circles intersected, the important thing is to recognize that I ought not take them for granted. So I won’t.

(Neither can I take for granted the people who have decided to read all the way to the end of any of these windy blog items, this year. Holy cats! –I’d stink at Twitter.)

 

Finally, the best thought of all, from Harry Morgan’s Col. Potter, of M*A*S*H: “Here’s to the New Year. May she be a damned sight better than the old one and may we all be home before she’s over.”

God-Fearin’? -or- The Post That Really Brought the True Believers Down On Him

Following the news stories about the Occupy Wall Street (and Other Places) movement will get a fella thinking a bit. I’ve endured the mainstream media commentators who profess to be confused about just what the message of the Occupy movement even is. Please. I am reasonably assured that the majority of those commentators are willing to be willfully ignorant of this (as opposed to unaware or uninformed, and there IS a difference), in the service of whomever signs their paycheck. Which is to say, it may be in their personal best interests to cast doubt upon a movement that professes to challenge the status quo, and not in their best interests to bite the hand what feeds ya.

That status quo, boiled down, appears to be this:

There is a system in place in this country which allows a relatively small group of people to do what two-year-olds do, before they’re taught to share: they put their arms around all the toys they can reach; they reach for more toys to put inside their arms; and they shoo away anyone who asks if they can play with some of their toys. It’s a gigantic, institutionalized game of Keepaway, played with instruments of political and economic power. And money. Lots and lots of money.

Or, to use an analogy that I once heard on an episode of “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” (curiously, from a panelist who was a conservative commentator): the upper 2% of the population is the Mob, and the rest of us are the restaurant they’re burning down for the insurance money.

Whatever happened to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”?

Oh, that’s right. The Golden Rule long ago turned into “Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.”

 

“You know, all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this strange, unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world… and no one would tell me what it was.” 

      -Arthur Dent, in the BBC radio version of Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

 

Let me get this straight. Scientists are warning us about extreme weather to come. Our infrastructure fails us at the drop of a hat. All it takes is a simple large early-season snowstorm to take down the power grid that serves a large chunk of the Northeastern US.  In the face of this reality, we could direct political will and economic resources toward reducing fossil fuel dependence and developing new energy sources, and re-building / shoring up the power grids, bridges, roads, etc., etc., which would employ more people, thereby reducing unemployment…

But, instead, no.

All Congress can see fit to do is spend their time doing things like confirming that the nation’s motto was and still is “In God We Trust”.

Who’s in Congress? Increasingly, members of the group that have been labeled “the 1 percent”; those who make the very most money and therefore have the very most power, influence and control over government policies that affect all 100 percent of us.

Perhaps many of them think that this is in fact the best, most desirable option: trust God to deal with our problems. Pray, kids; because at heart, we, your elected officials, have no interest in bucking the will of the oil companies and major corporations and many of the “1 percent” — because they keep us properly funded during re-election time, so that we can do their bidding, so they can stay prohibitively wealthy, so they can essentially rule the world.

Oh. Sorry. I get it now. Never mind. As you were.

It’s really a matter of selfishness.

 

For a time, I thought that it was strictly a case of Republicans in Congress and elsewhere doing whatever they had to, politically, in order to not have the incumbent Democratic president achieve any successes – to keep him from being able to point to any achievements, the better to defeat him in the next Presidential election. Senators and Representatives have gone on the record to say that their goal was to make the 44th President of the United States a “one… term… president” (insert rapturous applause of Koch-Industries-funded non-original Tea Party members here).

Whether or not this laughable legislative agenda has any deeper roots in personal enmity toward the actual human who is the Current Occupant of the Oval Office, it seems a remarkably politically-insular and short-sighted philosophy.

Now, thanks to the perspective-widening effect of the Occupy Wall Street movement, I’ve changed my thinking a bit. Although the “deny Obama success at all costs” strategy is childish and unhelpful – and let’s be honest, most of pure politicking is childish and unhelpful – I’m thinking more and more about that short-sightedness in the context of Saving the Planet, not to mention its people. For all its shortcomings, the United States’ economic power in the world has the capacity to do large things in the service of the rest of the world. For the sake of short-term political and personal gain (and maintenance of individual wealth and comfort), at the expense of everyone else around them, a small group of people are, indeed, wrapping their arms around all the toys.

Again, whatever happened to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”?

 

That gets me thinking further, in a different but related direction – especially considering one of my current occupations, church musician, and the fact that I’m a church musician at the Methodist church in which I grew up, still surrounded by many of the people who helped my parents shape my belief system.

I have trouble with people who, while supporting and promoting these “keepaway” economic and political systems and goals, are willing to invoke the name of God, Jesus Christ, and/or the Church as their rationale, or their source of support, or both. They obfuscate the discussion about theories of global climate change, even as more and more extreme weather patterns and events emerge – heralding a future state of climatic affairs from which we still have time to save ourselves (if someone would just step forward and do it!!). They work to exert religious influence upon the public education system and any other elements of American government, even as the US Constitution remains in place as a document that intends to separate religious influence from functions of state.

(Never mind the folks who think the End Times are near, and look forward to them, perhaps working under the presumption that at such a moment, they will experience ascent rather than descent.)

Anyway, I went digging around in a document that I suppose I should be more familiar with than I have heretofore been: the basic Social Principles of the United Methodist Church. At least in the neck of the woods where I attend services, we’re distinctly and heavily into social justice (although there are isolated pockets of Methodists out there who seem to behave in a less-than-tolerant way). “Social justice” is a term that has been turned by some commentators into a buzzword meant to inspire instant mouth-frothing (and therefore proper voting response) in their listeners, much like “ACORN”, “socialism”, etc.

Before we even get into the depths of the Social Principles, I could hope that those among us who revel in strict and literal Bible interpretation might be given cause for pause when they hit the book of Matthew, chapter 6, the first verse, and discover that it warns, “Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them.” Also, Christ teaches us to feed the hungry and care for the sick, not to abandon them. Perhaps there are people who fancy themselves Christians but who haven’t read that part of the Bible where Christ admonishes us to care for “the least among us.” Oh crap. I liked the bit that sounded like God thought the gays were sinners; do we have to strictly-interpret these verses, that are definitely in the Bible, too?

Anyway, the Methodist Church says this about its Doctrinal Heritage:

“Our forebears in the faith reaffirmed the ancient Christian message as found in the apostolic witness even as they applied it anew in their own circumstances. … Their preaching and teaching were grounded in Scripture, informed by Christian tradition, enlivened in experience, and tested by reason.

“The underlying energy of the Wesleyan theological heritage stems from an emphasis upon practical divinity, the implementation of genuine Christianity in the lives of believers.

“The Wesleyan emphasis [is] upon the Christian life — faith and love put into practice …

“We see God’s grace and human activity working together in the relationship of faith and good works. God’s grace calls forth human response and discipline. Faith is the only response essential for salvation. However, the General Rules remind us that salvation evidences itself in good works. For Wesley, even repentance should be accompanied by ‘fruits meet for repentance,’ or works of piety and mercy.

“Scriptural holiness entails more than personal piety; love of God is always linked with love of neighbor, a passion for justice and renewal in the life of the world.

“For Wesley there is no religion but social religion, no holiness but social holiness. The communal forms of faith in the Wesleyan tradition not only promote personal growth; they also equip and mobilize us for mission and service to the world.”

“The Process for Carrying Out Our Mission: We make disciples as we: … send persons into the world to live lovingly and justly as servants of Christ by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, caring for the stranger, freeing the oppressed, being and becoming a compassionate, caring presence, and working to develop social structures that are consistent with the gospel … As servants of Christ we are sent into the world to engage in the struggle for justice and reconciliation. We seek to reveal the love of God for men, women, and children of all ethnic, racial, cultural, and national backgrounds and to demonstrate the healing power of the gospel with those who suffer.”

 

So. How’re we all doin’ on that?

At the moment, it is in the practical best interest of too many people in charge of our government and economy to hold onto money, therefore hold onto communicative and influential power, therefore hold onto control of our government and economy. The system is in place, and the people whom it most benefits would logically be uninterested in changing the status quo, no matter who else in society is being adversely affected (um, HURT) by it.

As a colleague of mine put it recently: until we find some way to communicate substantively with the members of the “1 percent” who are in charge of the largely-unregulated banks and other forms of Wall Street tomfoolery, until we find some way to convince them that unbridled greed is (contrary to Gordon Gekko’s postulation) not good – in fact, is morally not good – we really can’t make headway. The Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court not long ago, surrounding money and its application to our means of communication and electoral persuasion, has only served to further cement the difficulty of making forward progress.

How are the 1 percent doing at that “service to the world” thing? And is it even possible to find a way to appeal to the moral conscience of a segment of our population who have been brought up in, and live fully in, an environment that encourages them not to have one?

The American People

Okay. Enough.

Listen up, journalists, commentators, pundits and other TV blatherers … and while we’re at it, listen up, politicians. And frankly, listen up, anybody who loves to take names in vain … this evening is absolutely the last time I am interested in hearing anyone – cable or broadcast talking head, statesman (-woman) or politician – anybody!! – use the term “The American People” in the context of “this is what I declare the will and thought process of the entire population of the United States of America to be.”

As a great American philosopher once said, I’s had all I can take, and I can’t takes no more.

(Well, all right, I’ll hear it again, I’m sure, but I will be tempted to chuck a Nerf ball at the TV.)

Every single television broadcast day, and every single political -slash- legislative day, somebody steps to a podium or an anchor desk, steps in front of a microphone on the Senate floor or in a secluded radio production studio, and says something like, “That is what the American people want.”

For a while, I was thinking, could we adjust the terminology a bit? For some reason, the phrase “the American people” has long bothered me, and I haven’t been able to put into proper words just why, but it has. For a while, I wondered if maybe the phrase “the American public” might serve better. It just sounds about a millimeter less presumptuous, maybe. When I was a kid, I would listen to the radio news at noon, and then shortly thereafter, Paul Harvey would come on the air and open his five-minute period of news and comment by calling out, “Hello Americans!” and I can handle that. That’s who he thought he was talking to, and aside from a stray Canadian picking up a stray radio signal, he was probably 99.9 percent correct. So okay! Hello Americans.

But for some time now, “The American People” has been used with increasing arrogance. “The American people will not stand for this,” says a random politician that at least half the country has never heard of; and if it’s something we can all (or most of us) agree on, like it’s a terrible thing to rob a bank (although perhaps bank robbers would beg to differ), then all right. But you’re more likely to hear that “the American people will not stand for this” when it’s something a particular politician or TV pundit would like the American people to not stand for, and more often than not it’s an issue about which actual American persons (rather than the mythical characters the politicians and pundits’ magical-thinking techniques conjure up in their own heads) are not of a single mind about.

“Polls show that the American people…” Just a damn second! I have never been polled by a national polling organization about an Important Issue Of Our Day. Not one single time in more than four decades. Not outside a supermarket in person, not by phone, not by mail, not via the Internet, not via carrier pigeon or frickin’ smoke signal. Not about abortion, or taxes, or the designated-hitter rule, or whether Ken Burns should ever make another documentary. (He should.) And according to my unscientific conversations with friends and colleagues, neither have a whole lot of them either, even though they have well-informed opinions about lots of issues and might be able to shed a little more light on those issues, on the off chance that polling organizations came into contact with them.

Even the best of the polling organizations, those who are not financed by the left, the right, the center, upstairs, downstairs, or the bottom of the barrel, report poll results according to a sampling of the population that is hardly representative of the 300-million-plus people in the American population from a strictly mathematical sense. Logistically, it would be very difficult anyway. Usually, the polls’ margin of error ought to completely eclipse the polls’ sample size and render them meaningless anyhow.

Also, consider what sorts of people are Americans: farmers and yuppies … students and senior citizens … “This American Life” fans and NASCAR fans … jazz enthusiasts and classical-music hounds … people who watch the Food Network religiously and people who watch the local religious cable channel hungrily … rappers and knitters … white people and black people and Asian people (and there are many different sorts of those) and Latino people … people with different prefixes in front of “-sexual” … Methodists and Muslims … moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats … people struggling with weight problems and people struggling with anorexia … rich and poor … Red Sox fans and Yankee fans (sorry; had to say it!) … people who drive hybrids and people who drive SUVs that practically rate their own zip codes … people who wave flags madly at Fourth-of-July parades, and people who, while clapping for the fire trucks and marching bands in Fourth-of-July parades, think about some of our country’s less grand adventures as well …

In short, we are not a nation of homogenous people. About the only darn thing we can say with certainty that we all are, is human beings.

Not all of whom have a flair for the English language. Consider these:

“I think that this liberal progressive agenda is not the thing that the American people want and it’s antithesis to who we are as a constitutional republic.” -Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.)

I think it’s clear that this liberal progressive agenda is not the thing that Rep. West wants. On the other hand, plenty of American persons that I know, and that’s just in my little corner of the world, would be thrilled to see us follow that ol’ liberal progressive agenda. Who we are as a constitutional republic, is a group of people who (hopefully) elect their governing representatives by use of simple majorities (except sometimes in the case of that pesky, imperfect Electoral College), and as mentioned above, a simple majority elected Barack Obama based on the things he said he wanted to achieve, so can we necessarily see this “agenda” as the antithesis of our constitutional republic? I don’t think so, but do correct me if I’m wrong.

“I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV. If you’re headed for a cliff, you have to change direction. That’s what the American people called for in November, and that’s what we intend to deliver.” -President Barack Obama

I voted for the man and I would do it again. Compared with many of his predecessors, the man can indeed string an artful sentence or two together. But although the political press described our current President’s election victory over Sen. John McCain in 2008 as a landslide, or at least a mandate, or at least a win by a significant figure … the actual final popular vote has been listed by reliable sources as 69,456,897 (Obama) to 59,934,814 (McCain). Mr. Obama won by the combined populations of New York City and San Antonio, Texas. In a nation of about 300 million, that’s not exactly a crushing majority. Even when only half the population votes (a shameful statistic but a topic for another day), that’s a difference of only one-fifteenth of the total votes cast. There were nearly 60 million American people who didn’t vote for Mr. Obama. He could say that a majority of the American people called for change, and he’d be accurate, and I would fold my tent.

“The American people are screaming at the top of their lungs to Washington, ‘Stop! Stop the spending, stop the job-killing policies.’ And yet, Democrats in Washington refuse to listen to the American people.” -Rep. John Boehner, Speaker of the US House of Representatives

A lot of us are screaming, okay; but we’re not screaming that.

“The American people… want change. They want big ideas, big reform.” -Rahm Emanuel, former Obama Administration chief of staff

See the above thoughts about the election of Mr. Obama. And, clearly, there are a number of loud people in America who would just as soon not see any change at all in the way things are going. Those people conceivably could include the brothers Koch, and anybody with a vested interest in the continued success of big corporations that somehow pay very little in the way of taxes, just as two examples.

“And the American people are the greatest people in the world. What makes America the greatest nation in the world is the heart of the American people: hardworking, innovative, risk-taking, God-loving, family-oriented American people.” -Mitt Romney, candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination

By way of a mere flourish of public speaking, whether via speech-writing or stump-speech-improvisation (a risky environment for reasoned expression of thought), Mr. Romney has eliminated from consideration for membership in the club of “the American people”: atheists and confirmed bachelors, to name just a couple demographics. (Also people who would rather not spend much time with their families, presumably.)

“We’ve had Town Hall meetings, we’ve witnessed election after election, in which the American people have taken a position on the President’s health care bill. And the bottom line is the people don’t like this bill. They don’t want it.” -Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.)

Eric Cantor has never spoken to me. I have never spoken to Eric Cantor. If all goes according to how I would like it, this condition will continue for some time.

“I felt like all of the American people did not believe me because of the things that were said about me, and said that people would say that it was just for the money, and it wasn’t about the money. It was about what he did to me. And I knew I was telling the truth.” -Paula Jones, speaking about the deeds and/or misdeeds of then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton

Ms. Jones was operating under the unfortunate misapprehension of many celebrities (a long list of them throughout recent American history) that most of the American people gave a wet slap about her, or even knew who the hell she was. Most Americans have more important things to do, like figure out how they’re going to make their next mortgage payment.

But, ahh: leave it to Norman Lear, creator of such remarkable American televised entertainment as the sitcom “All In The Family”, to cut to the chase:

“That’s the heart of it: My shows were not that controversial with the American people. They were controversial with the people who think for the American people.”

 

 

 

So let’s do two things: first, let’s not let our leaders – media or government leaders – get too comfortable in the notion that what they want, think, condone or believe is what we want, think, condone, or believe. And next, let’s get out there and do what needs to be done, so that we can elect people (to think for us?) who really can claim to represent us … the people of America.