Power in a Union

I recently removed from my Facebook friends' list a guy with whom I'd gone to high school and with whom I'd kept in sporadic touch over the years. This is the first time I'd actually done that. I realized full well that I had the nuclear option, but I had decided not to exercise it until someone committed the sin of Unforgivable Douchebaggery.

This is a photo from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, when 146  young women--mostly recent immigrants from Russia and Italy--died in a factory fire as a result of unsafe working conditions. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, which claimed more lives than any other disaster in New York until 9/11, provided great impetus and moral force to the labor movement. Now, it's all but forgotten by the public. 

Generally, I welcome dissent on my page. I like a good fight, and I've got the kind of vibe going on there where everyone, regardless of their political or religious persuasion feels comfortable commenting on any topic under the sun, so long as they keep it more or less civil. But he'd stepped over the line, in my book, at least, when he said how proud he was of the state of Indiana (where we grew up) for passing "Right to Work"--a law which, essentially, chops the balls off unions by making it illegal to have a closed shop.

That was it for me. I canned the guy. So long. Go shit on labor unions somewhere else, because I'm not putting up with it.*

On no other topic is the Republican party's virtuosity with PR--and the stupidity of their supporters--more evident than on the topic of organized labor. The Republican Party, bless their black and withered little hearts, has done an absolutely masterful job at demonizing American organized labor.

Try a thought experiment with yourself--say the word "union" out loud, and then tell me what's the first image that pops into your head. I bet it's some fat unshaven lazy guy with a bad mustache in a flannel shirt. Or a Mafioso. Or some guys on a picket line beating the shit out of a scab. Or Jimmy Hoffa. We don't think of our uncles. Or our dads. Or people whom we know and love. Nope, the Republican party has firmly taken control of the image and turned it into something vile--and in doing so, they have managed to turn us against our own financial and economic interests.

And you can't change people's minds on the subject. Facts don't work on conservatives. They don't understand statistics, so you can't show them what real wages looked like in the 50s and 60s and what they look like now that American organized labor is an emasculated, whimpering, beaten, bloody shell of its former self. They'll simply never change their minds. Unions are havens for lazy slobs. Unions are responsible for the death of the American auto industry. Unions are anti-jobs (which is a bit like saying, "Butchers are anti-meat," but go reason with a conservative). Unions are ruining America.

Well, since facts, statistics, rational inquiry, and logic don't work on these people, when I argue with them, I take a page out of their favorite philosopher's lesson plan book and use a couple of parables (actually, they aren't parables. They're anecdotes. But your average union-basher isn't going to be smart enough to know the difference. Just say "parables." Jesus taught with parables, so it should be good enough for them).

My great-uncle--my grandmother's brother--dropped out of high school in 1941, when America entered World War II, to go to work for the war effort. He wasn't old enough to enlist (he tried--they figured it out) so he went to work in a munitions factory in St. Louis. He never graduated from high school.

After the war, he got a job as a meat-cutter. And he joined the union. My great-uncle today owns two homes, free and clear, two late-model luxury cars, sent both his children to college, saw both of his grandchildren graduate from college, and will, God willing, see both of his great-grandsons graduate from college as well.

My father-in-law came to this country from Greece in 1956. Had the equivalent of a second-grade education--didn't speak a lick of English. Supported himself and his family by working at Greek restaurants as a waiter until one of his friends got him a job at Anheuser-Busch Brewery in St. Louis--at which point he joined the union.

My father-in-law now owns his own home free and clear, sent all three of his children to college, and is now worth probably upwards of a million in real estate and investments.

The money that these two men plowed back into the American economy during their lifetimes and the increased, enhanced productivity of their families thanks to access to education is due, largely if not entirely, to  American organized labor.

No one is saying that there weren't abuses. No one is saying that unsavory characters didn't occasionally get mixed up in union governance. And no one is saying that unions shouldn't do a better job at policing themselves. I also realize that these are just two stories, and anecdotal evidence isn't worth a plugged nickel, but the facts are on my side. American organized labor built America's middle class. Unions built this country. Labor unions made it possible for millions, MILLIONS of Americans--and their dependents--to realize the American dream.

Union-bashing makes me about as mad as anything does because it's so goddamned stupid. When you hear someone doing it, it's pretty much proof positive they've been brainwashed into thinking their interests are those of Mitt Romney and Lloyd Blankfein.Americans would rather believe, by the million, that organized labor is a big, fat, greedy parasite with its suckermouth firmly planted on the neck of American industry, sucking it dry. For some reason, they don't want to believe that management is a big, fat, greedy parasite with its suckermouth grinding into the neck of the American working class, sucking IT dry.

The next time you hear someone going on and on about how unions are responsible for America's economic decline, how they're killing American industry and hurting the country, sit back, let them finish their rant, and then while they're gasping for air, ask them a very simple question: "What do the letters AFL-CIO# stand for?"

And when they can't answer it--as they won't be able to--smile broadly and say, "You're presenting yourself as an expert on the havoc being wreaked on the American economy by organized labor, and you can't tell me the name of the biggest union in the country?"

It probably won't change their minds, but it might make them feel really stupid for a millisecond or two. And as the old Chinese sage said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step."

*Well, that, and because he was a rude dick about it. Enough of my other friends who didn't know him complained about him to the point where I figured it just wasn't worth having him around. If you're a Facebook friend of mine, feel free to disagree with me about unions. But do it civilly. 

#American Federation of Labor-Congress of International Organizations. They might get the first three, but no one ever gets the second three. It's fun to watch them try and figure it out, though.

SOPA and PIPA

That is all.

Have a nice day.

My Kid's Bedtime Stories Are Cooler Than Your Kid's Bedtime Stories

Because I am a religious non-believer—or a non-religious non-believer—or a non-believer in religion—there’s very little I hold sacred. Hardly anything, actually. About the only thing that’s absolutely sacrosanct is my daughter’s bedtime story. This is because we have a twist on the usual bedtime-story routine that I flatter myself is ours and ours alone. I’m rather proud of it.

It began some years ago. We were traveling and accidentally forgot her storybooks. She was inconsolable at the thought of having to go to sleep without a bedtime story, so I improvised—something about a raccoon who’s freezing his ass off in the woods, but who finds a nice warm attic with fluffy blankets where he can curl up and sleep safely.

It was half-assed, plotless and derivative. (I swiped the idea from “Miss Suzy,” an oldie but goodie illustrated by the late great Arnold Lobel.) But she liked it. The next night, after a trip to Borders to score another copy of “Goodnight Moon” or something, she asked for the raccoon story again. This time, I expanded upon it. The raccoon woke up hungry and set off to find a snack. And our nightly tradition of what she calls “The Imaginating Story” was born.

Since then, every night before bedtime, we dutifully trudge through a book story (which we do purely pro forma so that I can fulfill my Responsible Parent’s obligation to read to the kid for 15 minutes day) and then, with a sigh of relief, we charge into The Imaginating Story.

These aren’t just stories. These are sagas. I’ll come up with a character, and we follow that character through whatever adventures I can dream up. Each night brings another episode in an epic that can go on for months or years at a stretch.

We’ve done several of them. The “Zaidy Yussel” series was one of my favorites, a story cycle about the adventures of my great-grandfather in Russia, where he was born, outwitting Baba Yaga, the famous witch from Russian folklore, and then continued on once he came to this country. He goes camping, gets kidnapped by the Osage Indians, becomes an Indian brave (maybe a little subconscious nod to Mel Brooks’ Yiddish-speaking Indians from “Blazing Saddles”), escapes, gets picked up by a boatful of riverboat gamblers, jumped ship, and painstakingly makes his way back up the Mississippi from Memphis.

We moved on to the story of The Greatest Thief in the World—that was a fun one—and then on to the story of Samira, a little girl from a fishing village on the Caspian Sea, and her quest to rescue her father and brother, who were picked up by pirates, who sold them to slave traders who shlepped them across the Mediterranean to Genoa (where vampires had taken over and Samira had to defeat them).

I’d like to say I have the discipline to plan out the stories in advance, but I usually think up the next installment on the spur of the moment. I frequently feel like a first year teacher who’s only one step ahead of her students and who frantically bones up on physics or biology the night before each lesson. But somehow, wing and a prayer, it works. I like the challenge. I also like the flexibility that the Imaginating Story format gives me. I can use it for practical matters.

When our dog finally gave up the ghost (with some assistance), it was, understandably, pretty traumatic. The vile beast’s presence in our family predated the daughter’s. He was a constant in her life. So for the next few months, we recounted his adventures as a puppy at the farm where he was born—saving foals from coyotes, baby chicks from rats, and falling in love with a fox and deciding whether to run off with her into the woods or stay at the farm. It helped her say good-bye to the old boy, who, his tendencies toward drooling, shedding, and chewing up book-bindings notwithstanding, was a good dog and deserved a good sendoff.

Making up stories helps me empower her, too. Our current story, which has been going on for nigh on to a year now, is about Stella Finkelkraut, who lives in the town of Waukepetonsett next to her best friend, Tubbs Teitelbaum. Stella wants a pet—as did my daughter when we began it—so her dad takes her to Animackity’s Animal Emporium, where she discovers the secret back room of the shop. That’s where Mr. Animackity keeps the magical animals: dragons, vampires, phoenixes, griffins, basilisks, sea serpents, etc. And thus begins Stella Finkelkraut’s adventures in the World Behind, the magical world that exists just behind our own.

Stella and Tubbs have, thus far, traveled to Arimaspea, restored Good King Romolan to his throne, saved a family of sasquatches, survived shipwrecks, ridden dragons, and defeated a whole host of evil magicians, marauding bands of trolls, cloaked assassins, dangerous beasts, and unfortunate circumstances with a combination of pluck, brains, and the kind of winsome eccentricity that characterizes her audience, my daughter.

One reason I keep the Imaginating Stories going is because children’s literature is, largely, dreck. Buying kids’ books is one of the most goddamn depressing tasks a conscientious parent can undertake. With rare exceptions, kids’ books fall into two categories: pablum or the kind of snarky nastiness that kids’ book authors employ as an attempt to be hip and contemporary. It’s either baby shit or Bratz dolls. There’s very little soul—almost nothing truly funny, empowering, or genuine. There’s very little that actually captures the whimsy, the wonder, the magic of childhood.

Maybe I’m being too hard on children’s book writers. Maybe it’s analogous to clothes-buying. You can get them off the rack, but tailor-made always fits better, and I’m creating stories tailored expressly for my daughter—bespoke stories, if you will.  

For whatever reason, she likes them better than the book stories. When bedtime is later than usual, forcing us to forego either the book story or the Imaginating Story, she invariably chooses the latter. And when I’m traveling, I set aside a chunk of every evening to call her so that we don’t miss even one night’s worth of on-the-spot fantasy.

I hope there’s some benefit there for my daughter. I hope she’s learning the magic and the wonder of creating one’s own stories. I hope she’s learning the power of imagination, and how to speak and think extemporaneously. And I hope that, once I’m dead, she’ll remember that her daddy, his myriad failings as a father and as a human being aside, loved her enough to put some effort into creating something that was uniquely hers—done for her alone.

As good as I think the Imaginating Story is for my daughter, I confess I like it too. It’s been an exercise in storytelling, in crafting a narrative. It’s like folk music. Much as Bob Dylan takes old tunes and passages from a zillion different sources and put his own twist on them, I’ve lifted shamelessly from other sources. Some of Zaidy Yussel’s adventures, for example, sound a lot like Brer Rabbit’s. Stella Finkelkraut once landed on an island more than a little reminiscent of the island of Krakatoa in William Pene du Bois’ magnificent “The Twenty-One Balloons.” And our saga about River’s adventures on the farm as a puppy owes a big debt to Thornton Burgess’s shamefully forgotten “Mother West Wind” stories.

It’s fun, too. I’ve always loved it when characters from one story show up in another, and I get to do that a lot. Baba Yaga, from the Zaidy Yussel stories, recently made a cameo appearance in the Stella Finkelkraut saga—she mentioned a little boy she’d known almost a hundred years ago. “Hey!” my daughter interrupted excitedly, “she’s talking about my ancestor!”

And Fenric Volk, the friendly werewolf who helped Samira get across the Black Sea, is about to make a reappearance in the Stella Finkelkraut story as well. I love doing this. Moving characters from story to story creates a sort of trans-story world—a world that belongs exclusively to me and my daughter.

But there’s something else there, too. For years, I’ve been working on a Serious Novel based on the life of my hero, Joseph Pulitzer. I’d like to think I’ll finish it some day. But having a full time job, two rambunctious kids, and a house, mortgage and car payments does seem to sap both one’s energy and ambition. The Imaginating Story, in its own way, has become my Serious Novel. Much as Mr. Holland never finished his symphony—the lives of his students became his opus—my daughter’s imagination may just become my own opus. It makes the idea of never finishing the Serious Novel a little easier to bear.

Grandmothers at War--A Holiday Reminiscence.

The older I get, the more I hate the holiday season. Whether it’s the seasonal affection disorder that acts up in cold, dark weather, an increasingly low threshold for the disgust engendered by the stress-inducing exchange of meaningless tchotchkes, or the constant torment of having to listen to an interminable chorus of “Silver Bells,” every year, I like it a little less.

And it seems appropriate, somehow, to remember my grandmothers this season, because neither of them was crazy about the holidays, either. Or, for that matter, each other.

My grandmothers cordially despised each other from, as most people’s recollections would have it, day one. I’m not exactly sure why. They had a lot in common.

Both were tiny. I don’t think either of them broke five feet. Both were Midwestern—one from St. Louis, the other from Peru, Indiana—and neither ever lived more than five miles from where she was born. Neither of them had an aesthetic sensibility that could be described as understated. They both liked over-the-top outfits with lots of sparkles and sequins, wore way too much jewelry, and had hairdos that defied both gravity and good taste.

They were both older sisters, had two children, and grew up in reasonable affluence—one’s father had a good job on the railroad; the other’s father made a very comfortable living selling auto parts—and both were married to successful businessmen. Both were of at least partial Jewish ancestry. Neither was what you’d call spiritual, although they both gave the occasional nod to the Deity in the form of sporadic attendance at religious services.

They were both reasonably intelligent. I don’t think either of them would have split the atom, but they certainly could have been more than wives, mothers, and grandmothers had they come from times and places that encouraged higher aspirations. And, inasmuch as they were both of the same generation—one born in 1914, the other in 1917—they were of an age to see feminism emerge, but too late for them to benefit from it. You’d think they would have been thick as thieves, but it didn’t work out that way. They hated each other from the get-go. Go figure why.

Neither of them was so petty as to try and enlist their grandchildren in their war on each other. They were both too intrinsically decent to do that. But every so often, their veneer of icy cordiality would crack.

My paternal grandmother once described her own grandmother as “one of those little short kikey Jews.” She meant it affectionately, and was as far from anti-Semitic as you could get. She also used the phrase “Nigger in the woodpile” with some frequency, and you would not have found a more ardent supporter of Lyndon B. Johnson and the Civil Rights omnibus bill throughout the length and breadth of the Midwest. She simply came from a time and a place where such words were descriptive, not derogatory. But I once made the mistake of asking my other grandmother, “Are you one of those little short kikey Jews?”

Bubbe Aileen almost dropped the frying pan in which she was frying eggs in bacon grease. (Short aside: she kept a jar of bacon grease—sometimes adulterated with a liberal admixture of chicken fat—under the kitchen sink. This practice seems to have been the dirty little secret of damn near all St. Louis Jewish grandmothers of that generation. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who have all confessed that their own grandmothers had the same, and kept it in the same place.)

“Where in the hell did you hear that?” she demanded in a tone that brooked no pettifogging.

“Fruh-fruh-fruh-fruh-from my Grandma Betty,” I stammered, feeling like I’d sold the old dear out. I suspect Joe Valachi felt the same when he admitted the existence of the Mafia.

“Don’t you ever let me hear language like that out of your mouth again, God damn it,” she growled, and went back to frying my breakfast, muttering darkly about, “That Indiana peasant woman and her peasant family.”

Of which I, presumably, was a part.

Once, however, my brother and I cottoned to this mutual antipathy, we learned to turn these occasional lapses in decorum to our own advantage.

“That’s a beautiful sweater, baby,” Grandma Betty once told me. “My, but that’s a beautiful sweater. Where’d you get that?”

“Oh, thanks, Grandma,” I said in an offhand manner. “My grandma in St. Louis sent me a hundred bucks the other day. I thought I’d go shopping.”

“Hundred bucks,” growled Grandma Betty in her cigarette-scorched sotto voce. “Who does she think she is. Tacky Jewish bitch. Baby,” she said, raising her voice to audible levels again, “go look in my purse. There’s two hundreds there I want you to have.”

I’m not proud, but I was in college at the time, and exploiting my grandmothers’ feud was a better option than selling plasma.

Neither of them had any tact. My maternal grandmother once barked at me that my new glasses were “Way too small for someone with a nose like yours. You should take them back and get your money back. And if they won’t do it, you should give them to someone with a smaller nose than yours.”

Brutal? Tactless? A tad harsh? Perhaps, but that’s what I miss about both of them. There was no room for namby-pambyism or mealy-mouthishness with them. Neither had the appetite for pleasantries and niceties. They were honest, and they honestly didn’t like each other. They refrained from open warfare, but they did so through gritted teeth, and they made sure everyone could see the gritting. They were both deeply compassionate women, but deeply realistic as well. And contrary to what the more sensitive among us may think, there’s no contradiction there.  

After I’d moved back to St. Louis from Pittsburgh and had been between girlfriends for a while, Aileen pulled me aside and said, “Honey, you can tell me. Are you funny?"

"Funny?" I asked. "How do you mean funny? What are you talking about?"

"You know what I mean," she said impatiently. "Queer. Are you?"

"What the hell?!" I yelled. "Did my own grandmother just ask me if I was gay? That's real nice."

"Well, it's okay if you are," she said. "I'm a very liberal grandma. You can say."

"Well, thanks, but I'm not," I said. Somewhat huffily, I'm kind of ashamed to admit.

I'm ashamed that I was appalled by the question. These days, I’d be sort of flattered. I'm also ashamed that I got angry at her. I should have taken it in the spirit in which it was offered, which was acceptance, tolerance, and unconditional love, even if it came in a somewhat tactlessly phrased wrapper.

This is the same woman who, when I told her I was getting serious about the girl whom I’d end up marrying, thought for a minute and finally said, “Well, she does have beautiful skin. Greeks have the best skin. But my God, after one or two children, her hips are going to be HUGE.”

By that time, I’d matured enough to realize that tactless doesn’t mean mean-spirited, so I just smiled and said, “Thanks for your blessing, Bubbe.”

T.S. Eliot said of John Webster that he “always saw the bones beneath the skin.” That’s a very apt description of how I feel about the holidays. Others see peace on earth, good will towards men. I see a wasteful, pointless exercise in vulgar commercialism to celebrate the birth of a guy who wasn’t who people think he was on the day that he wasn’t even born. Or to celebrate the lovingkindness of an all-powerful Deity who couldn’t be bothered to spare the chosen people Auschwitz, but who made sure they had enough oil to keep the lamps burning for eight days. It’s all lies—pretty lies, but lies nonetheless.

Maybe that’s why neither of my grandmothers liked the holidays. And maybe it’s why during the holidays I especially miss two little old ladies who detested each other, and whose strange shared combination of acerbic and compassionate I find oddly inspiring. 

All The Children Are NOT Above-Average

Disclaimer.

I am not a child psychologist, a psychiatrist, or an educator. I have no training whatsoever in child psychology barring one or two classes I took in preparation for an abortive attempt at being a schoolteacher. I am, however, a loudmouth with an exaggerated opinion of his own intelligence. This characteristic alone qualifies me to shoot my mouth off about anything about which I feel like shooting it off.

My wife and I know a couple who don't make a ton of money, and who live in a perfectly good public school district, but who spend an inordinate amount of money each year to send their kid to an elite private school because, as the wife puts it with a self-satisfied smirk, "We think he's just a little bit gifted, hee hee."

This infuriates me.

I'm not saying gifted kids don't exist. They do. But they are few and far between. In seven years of being a parent--and thus interacting rather closely with a lot of other parents and their kids--I've only seen one whom I'd call gifted.

A couple of our acquaintance--not the couple mentioned above--has a little boy whom we'll call Jake. Jake is eerily, creepily, unsettlingly, super-smart. He read the whole Harry Potter series at three. He could draw three-quarter perspective profile pictures at four. And he was fluent--I mean like translator-ability fluent--in Hebrew at five. Jake is an undeniably brilliant child. To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, "I can't define 'gifted,' but I know it when I see it"; and this little boy, Jake, is, for lack of a better word, gifted. Most kids aren't. Including mine. Including, in all probability, yours. Deal with it.

The word "gifted," in my opinion, is a euphemism for "having parents who are A) white, and B) pushy." It's a horseshit category, and by "horseshit", I mean "absolutely utterly meaningless, and worse than that, pernicious." What it means is that the parents realize that their kid is no prodigy--not a Bobby Fischer, not a Midori--but they simply cannot accept that their kid isn't better, even marginally, than all the other kids.

When parents insist that their completely normal, completely average kids are "gifted," it really isn't about the kids at all. It's about the parents and their egos.

We have a tendency to look at kids as extensions of the parents. In effect, the kids become the parents' proxies. It's a pretty natural tendency, but it's one that should be fought against nonetheless, because not only is it dangerous, it's irritating as hell, once you see what's really going on.

No one wants to hear people bragging about themselves, but it's perfectly acceptable to brag about one's kids. It's a socially acceptable way of blowing your own horn. Because, you see, when parents brag about their kids, what they're really doing is puffing their own intelligence, genetics, or superior parenting skills. They aren't kvelling about their kids, they're bragging about themselves.

Likewise, when we compliment kids, what we're really doing is complimenting the parents. It's no longer socially acceptable--hell, it's even legally actionable--to tell a woman how hot she is. But if you say, "Your children are absolutely beautiful children," that's perfectly okay.

Thus, when parents insist their kids are gifted when, all evidence to the contrary aside, they aren't really looking for the best educational opportunity for their child. They're just asserting their belief that there's no way in hell that they, THEY, with their superior genetics, intellect, or parenting skills, could have whelped a young 'un who isn't above average in SOME way.

Earlier I used the word "pernicious" to describe this phenomenon. "Pernicious" is one of my favorite words. It moves this tendency of parents insisting their kids are gifted from the "merely annoying" category into the "potentially dangerous" category. Here's why.

There is currently a raging debate in this country on the medicating of children for ADD, ADHD, and a zillion other "syndromes", "disorders", or "conditions." (My personal favorite, the one that I've been diagnosed with, is ODD--Oppositional Defiant Disorder: "an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior toward authority figures." That's from Wikipedia, so you know it's good. Turns out I suffer from a syndrome. I have a disease. And here I thought I was just an asshole for all those years! Also, I like the acronym. I've always been odd.)


But I digress. I have a sneaking, scientifically-unverifiable suspicion that the rash in what I believe to be the overdiagnosis and overmedication of children has little to do with actual real syndromes, disorders, or diseases. Once again, I suspect it has to do with the parents' egos. 


Their kid, their unbelievably gifted Billy/Susan/Evan/Olivia, is simply not performing up to his or her parents' expectations. For some unfathomable reason, the kid ISN'T splitting the atom at seven! For some unfathomable reason, the kid talks too much in class! In fact, the kid is--gasp--acting like... like... well, like a normal kid, God forbid. A normal, gleefully rotten, poorly-behaved, not-particularly-spectacular-at-math-chess-or-music-kid. A kid like--shudder--all the other kids. Unacceptable!


But why, you can hear the parents' anguished voices asking? What, oh what, could be the reason for this? Surely my child is gifted. My superior genetics, intellect, and parenting skills guarantee THAT. There's no way a kid who originated in MY balls/ovaries is anything less than gifted. 


So there must be something in the way. There must be something keeping my child from standing out from the crowd. It must be a syndrome. Which must be medicated. So that Billy/Susan/Evan/Olivia reaches the heights to which my superior genetics, intellect, and parenting skills have destined for him or her. That must be it. My kid is brilliant, but his or her ADD is in the way! My parenting skills are superb, but my kid's ADHD is making him or her act out! 


And in order to salve our own egos, we first turn the kids into freaks. We stigmatize them by making them the victim of a psychological disorder. And then we medicate the living shit out of them, and turn them into little junkies who are unable to exist in the world without pills. 


I can't even begin to imagine the effects of this on a child's physiology or self-esteem. In order to maintain the fantasy that we, the parents, are exceptional, we tell them they're defective in some way--and then we teach them that the answer to all life's problems can be found in a pill. And then we wonder why drug use among teens is at epidemic proportions. 


As much as it pains me to admit it, my kids do not appear to be particularly gifted. Nor do they appear to be of more than average intelligence. By all accounts, they are perfectly normal, perfectly average, unapologetically rotten and ill-behaved, happy, healthy kids. Thank God. Admitting it doesn't mean I don't love them. In fact, it means I love them more than the parents who insist their kids are gifted, because it means my love for them isn't conditional. They don't have to be above average for me to love them. They just have to be mine. 


Here's a thought. The next time you're tempted to compliment a parent on his or her children, refrain from doing so. Don't feed their bloated egos. Instead, ignore the parent and compliment the kid directly. It'll do a hell of a lot more for the kid and his or her self-esteem. Plus the look on the parents' faces when you ignore them and their self-promotion is absolutely priceless. 


Of course, that's probably just the ODD talking. Ignore me. 

Why I Love Joseph Pulitzer--Part Two of a Two Part Series

I’ve mentioned before that, fresh on the heels of the really mindblowing success of my first novel (Ozymandias and Other Stories—get it on Amazon, or at Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and other fine bookstores) (but not Borders) I’m blazing through another one—this one about Joseph Pulitzer.

There are two lies in that previous paragraph. My first novel has experienced nothing like mindblowing success. Nor am I exactly blazing. The Pulitzer novel—tentatively titled A Jew in America—has taken up the last five years of my life. It’s nowhere near done. It may never be. But every man needs a hobby, and I suck at carving ships in bottles.

It’s been an interesting process. This is the first novel I’ve ever attempted (there are five unpublished ones moldering away at the bottom of my file cabinet) that’s required me to do actual research. It feels like work. And in some ways, at some points, I’ve found myself paralyzed because I’m constantly asking myself if I’m smart enough to write this book. Do I know enough about 19^th century America? The Gilded Age? American journalism? St. Louis? New York? Hungary? Chauncey Depew, Grover Cleveland, William Whitney, Carl Schurz, and the rest of the 19th century luminaries who played a role in Pulitzer’s life?

It hasn’t been a completely barren run. I’ve gotten pretty decent mileage out of a  monograph I wrote based on my research, which consequently appeared in Gateway: The Journal of the Missouri Historical Society, The St. Louis Journalism Review, and now, apparently, an upcoming issue of the St. Louis Jewish Light.

It’s been a while since I was in therapy, but I suspect there are a few other unconscious reasons why I’ve dragged this out so long. I’m actually enjoying the research. I never much cared about American history, but it’s been a fascinating trip, and I’ve gotten to read a lot of good books at which I would not otherwise have looked twice. And I think I really don’t want to let Joseph Pulitzer go. Even though he’s been dead for precisely one hundred years, I enjoy his company.

In a weird way, I’m sort of glad that Mr. Pulitzer did fall into relative (and unmerited) obscurity, because he avoided the inevitable hagiography that happens to any well-known American hero. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Daniel Webster, Noah Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Woodrow Wilson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton—all of them have been turned into the American version of plaster saints. It’s taken more than fifty years of pretty hardcore Revisionist history and some nasty battles to uncover certain uncomfortable, but humanizing, truths about them. Washington was a bit of a fop. Lincoln had nastily authoritarian tendencies. Jefferson had a thing for black chicks and didn’t believe Jesus was the Son of God. And on it goes.

And while some traditionalists and conservatives might fume about treating our national heroes disrespectfully (and I’d quibble with this. I personally think telling the truth is a pretty decent sign of respect), for me, at least, knocking the idols off their pedestals makes them more human, more approachable, more comprehensible, and, ultimately, more likable.

Which is, I suppose, part of what attracted me to Joseph Pulitzer in the first place. Never having suffered the secular beatification we ram up the asses of better-known American heroes, he remains so defiantly human, flawed, and, in the end, likable in spite of his unlikability, that I had no choice but to fall in love with him. In an earlier post, I explained why he was important. Now, I’ll explain why I like him.

He was brilliant, eccentric, profane, self-pitying, mean-spirited, noble, funny, foreign, conceited, vain about clothes, and arrogant as all hell. He was arrogant enough to think that he knew better than the Americans how America should be.

He shot people he didn't like, he yelled at his employees, he liked the employees who yelled back at him, and the first time he got in a fight with his editor, Frank Cobb, Cobb quit. Joe said, "I liked that young man. I liked the way he swore." Long pause. "God damn it, go tell that idiot I will not LET him quit!" and then every time they'd get in a fight, Cobb would quit and Joe would say to people, "I suppose you know Frank quit again," and then Cobb would show back up for work the next day like nothing happened.

He once kicked Cobb off his yacht and abandoned him on the Jersey shore and made him walk home. The next day, Cobb showed up for work right on time (and no one's ever figured out how he managed that one). I love that.

I like him because when he was appointed Police Commissioner in St. Louis (which was a largely honorary, ceremonial post), he let the guys who served liquor on Sunday get away with it. I like him because he was the cruelest, most cutting man in an argument there ever was. He made grown men cry.  I like him because he lost his temper at the drop of a hat and was the best boss in the world to work for. People died for him. Literally. I like him because he threw things at people when he got really ticked off. I like him because he'd get antsy at the opera and then yell during the performance, "For God's sake, I'm dying of boredom. Get me out of here. Let's go."

I like him because it was on his paper that comic strips were invented (and from comic strips came comic books. Yep. The world has Joe Pulitzer to thank for the comic book. God rest his sweet, saintly soul).

I like him because he took a perverse glee in ramming it up the butts of the wealthy whenever he got dirt on them. He genuinely enjoyed sticking it to them. Even more so after he became wealthy himself. He would giggle with glee every time some new revelation about someone rich came out.

I like him because when he was in residence at Jekyl Island, and J.P. Morgan told him that attendance at the Episcopal chapel on the island was "strongly encouraged," he sent his personal physician, an obnoxiously outspoken atheist, to drop a five dollar bill in the collection plate, and announce loudly, "Mr. Pulitzer has now attended church."

I like him because when he was in the House of Representatives, he got blitzed one night in Washington, and was about to be arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and his friends told the cop, "This man is a member of the House of Representatives," and the cop said, "That holds no water with me," and they said, "But this man is Joseph Pulitzer, the editor of the World!" and the cop said, "Jesus, why didn't you say so? Let's get him home quick."

I like him because after he went blind, he would say, "Do you mind?" and then without waiting for an answer start feeling people's faces. Including the Secretary of State of the United States of America. I like him because he said to an employee, "How much do you weigh? Two hundred pounds? And you're only five feet five? My God! You'd better train down."

I like him because he was a visionary who couldn't see, a crusader with the soul of a carnival promoter, an uncompromising moralist who broke the rules every chance he got, a humanitarian who reduced people to tears, an adoring father who hated his kids,  an idealist who couldn't stand people.

I like him because he was the furthest thing from a hypocrite there ever was. I like him because he was irreverent as all hell. I like him because I can picture him standing at the gates of heaven and shouting at God Almighty for creating such a fucked up world.

He’s always been vibrantly, gloriously, horrendously, humanly flawed. He screwed up. A lot. And he knew it and tried to fix it.

Reading over this, I realize that, try as I might, I probably will not be able to do his character justice with my meager skills. The man is beyond my ability—and very likely anyone’s, since Dostoevsky’s dead—to capture accurately. But, as Bob Dylan said about folk music, “There’s magic, the Bible, and mythology in those old songs. I can’t hope to touch that. But I’m going to try.”

Perhaps there’s just something in my ODD-afflicted, naturally contrarian character that’s drawn to a guy like Joseph Pulitzer. But I’m not the only one. I recently read a biography of Richard Hofstadter, another famous contrarian—another perpetually, and probably by design, permanent fish out of water—and came across this passage, which literally made my eyes bug out of my head:

“[Hofstadter’s] office itself is large, sparsely adorned except for forbiddingly high history-stocked bookcases and a large lithograph of Joseph Pulitzer against the institutional light yellow wall.”

Perhaps Hofstadter just put Joe’s picture up out of gratitude—after all, he did win two Pulitzer Prizes. But I’d prefer to think he did it because this most discerning and critical of all American historians, like me, saw in Joseph Pulitzer a kindred contrarian and a flawed, but ultimately both lovable and absolutely indispensable American hero.

A Plea for National Disunity

I’ve mentioned it in previous blog posts, but there is a constant—and pernicious—tendency in our national discourse to blame the public. Whatever happens, it’s our fault.

Now, I don’t know if this tendency on the part of our media to excoriate the people is inadvertent or purposeful, but it has the very convenient effect of shifting both blame and attention away from the real culprits.

There’s a national childhood obesity epidemic? It’s the parents’ fault—certainly not the food manufacturers, who stuff our food full of trans-fats, high-fructose corn syrup and sugar. There’s a credit crisis? It’s the consumers’ fault, not the banks’ irresponsible and predatory lending practices, and their paid whores, the legislators who yanked away all forms of regulation.

And now, with the biggest budget crisis in our history looming and the credit rating of the United States of America downgraded like a college kid who ran up a bunch of debt on his MasterCard—again, it’s our fault.

Yes, American public, you did this. Damn you and your greedy, gimme-gimme entitlements and your low voter turnout. Why, you miserable sons of bitches would rather sit at home on your fat asses, watching “Hoarders,” guzzling cheap beer and gobbling Twinkies than come out and vote.

Well, malarkey. It’s true that the U.S. does have embarrassingly low rates of voter turnout. Even in the most hotly-contested Presidential election of modern times—2008—only 56.8% of registered voters actually bothered to do so. Barely more than half. And in the 2010 mid-terms, only 37.8 could be bothered to hit the polls. That’s pathetic, all right. But the real question—which I don’t hear, or read, people asking—is why. No one asks why people don’t exercise their right to democracy. It’s just assumed that Americans are too stupid, lazy, and apathetic to exercise their privileges.

But Americans aren’t lazy. We’re the hardest-working people on the planet. We spend more time working than any other nation in the world. And we’re not stupid, either. Its current woes aside, no sane person would argue that free and compulsory public education is one of the great success stories of the species.

The real reason voter turnout is so low is simple. We know damn well that whoever wins, it doesn’t matter. There just won’t be any appreciable difference in our lives. American voters, for all our blowing our own horn about Democracy, Democracy, Democracy, do not really have any choice.

America is stuck, seemingly permanently, with a two-party system. That by itself is bad enough. How in the hell can a meager two parties hope to represent the plurality of opinion and interests in the most diverse and heterogeneous nation in human history?

But it gets worse. We have two parties, but only one ideology. We have the pro-business party, and we have the crazy right-wing lunatic fringe pro-business party.

The Republicans have, throughout most of the 20^th century, had a lock on big business, which means more money for them. Which forced the Democrats to abandon small business, minorities, and labor, and, cap in hand, go begging from Corporate America. Which effectively turned them into the second pro-business party.

Some elected representatives may differ on non-substantive, window-dressing issues like abortion, gay marriage, prayer in school, DADT, and teaching evolution. But at the end of the day, when it comes to what really matters, our political process is tantamount to being forced to eat at a restaurant with only two dishes: fried chicken, and extra-crispy fried chicken. Neither’s good for you. One’s slightly less bad for you, but it really isn’t a choice at all. So you might as well just not eat—which is what most American voters opt for most years.

While some individual Senators and Representatives genuinely care about their constituencies, their parties as a whole do not. If anyone thinks the Democrats still represent labor, then riddle me this, Batman: where was President Obama during the recent walkouts in Wisconsin and Indiana? Why was the White House dead silent on the right to collective bargaining? Or if you think they still give a rat’s ass about consumers, why wasn’t Elizabeth Warren appointed? Why is Dodd-Frank dead in the water? Why did what’s called, apparently as a cruel joke, Healthcare Reform benefit only Big Pharma, the insurance industry, and for-profit healthcare providers?

When our only parties represent only the interests of the super-wealthy, then we no longer have a democracy. We have an oligarchy.

Neither most Republicans nor most Democrats of my acquaintance are whole-hog supporters of their respective party’s platform. They are, at best, uncomfortable members of their party simply because there’s nowhere else to go. Plenty of Democrats, for example, are pro-life. And plenty of Republicans despise Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Todd Akin, and the rest of those nutcases, who are pro-choice, and who know that Darwin, not Genesis, was right. But they have nowhere else to go.

The American political system’s devolution into a two-party, one-ideology system was bad for the country. What’s desperately needed isn’t a third party. What’s desperately needed are a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh party—parties which do not claim to represent ALL of their constituents’ concerns, and which DON’T take a stand on every single issue out there, but which, instead, concentrate on specific issues.

1. How about a children’s party—one devoted to protecting the rights and needs of the most vulnerable members of our society? A party that campaigns and pushes for better schools? Affordable and accessible prenatal and pediatric care? The death penalty for child molesters and the producers and consumers of child pornography? More stringent FDA regulation of children’s food? Increased paid maternity leaves?
2. How about an actual Green Party? A party that doesn’t take a stand on abortion, gay rights, and all the other stupid shibboleths of the (in so many goddamned ways ridiculous) American Left, but instead concentrates purely and simply on environmental issues, like subsidies for sustainable energy research, tax incentives for green construction and green rehabs, recycling, reforestation, protection of public lands, etc.?
3. How about an old people’s party, which campaigns for public transportation, reduced cost of medicines, geriatric research, and affordable and accessible retirement homes?
4. What about a Farmers’ Party, which campaigns for agricultural subsidies, more aggressive trade regulations concerning what’s imported and exported, and more federal funding for farmland reclamation and development?
5. Why doesn’t the Tea Party just spin off, create their own independent party and campaign for whatever the hell it is they want?
6. How about a genuine Labor Party, which campaigns for higher import duties on goods manufactured overseas, stronger collective bargaining laws, and against tax breaks for corporations which relocate their manufacturing facilities overseas?

I could go on and on, but you see my point. What I’d desperately love to see happen is the shattering of the two lumbering, out of touch, and imbecilic behemoths that we currently have into a zillion new parties that concentrate on specific interests and which don’t fraudulently claim to represent the interests, in toto, of half the population.

Not only would we have a political system that actually gives the people a voice—we might actually get something DONE. In countries with a multiparty system, in order to get legislation passed, they can’t simply engage in bluster, political posturing and theatricality and histrionics like our government. They actually have to practice politics. They form coalitions based on specific legislation. These coalitions are not permanent. They come together to accomplish something, and then break up, spin off, and re-form on different issues in different combinations. That way, the country and its people, actually make progress.

Wouldn’t that be nice for America? If we had a wide array of parties to choose from, we might actually progress as a nation. We might actually get representation that’s receptive to our needs and wants. And we, as a people, might actually become engaged in the process.

And you know, as long as I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony, too.