Happy Thanksgiving!

LEAVE THE TURKEY ALONE! He/she is innocent and didn't do anything to YOU!

Below, behold my popular, yearly Thanksgiving cartoon. (I started getting hits on it on SUNDAY!) Have a great holiday!

Reflections on Jack Ruby

Depending upon who you read, Jack Ruby was a petty strip-club gangster or an important mobster-friend of Sam Giancana.







NOTE: I first wrote this in 2009, and re-posted it last year at this time.

I am posting it again, since it accurately captures my nostalgic feelings/memories at the end of every November.

Please limit comments to current post. Thanks.


~*~


It was November 24, 1963.

I remember that I was sitting on a footstool, my nose approximately 8 inches from my family's black-and-white TV set. If I got too close, I couldn't see anything, but I was intent on getting just as close as I could. I wanted to see it all.

It was Sunday morning, and I remember well the hubbub of the adults in the kitchen. I was the only one in the small dining room that served as our TV room. I heard the TV-news announcer say that Lee Oswald was going to be transferred in an armored vehicle. I didn't know what an armored vehicle was, but it sounded awesome. And yet... that little guy? As a six-year-old, I was surprised that such a skinny little guy could be the villain of the hour. I had expected the president's assassin to look something like Brutus, the dastardly evil man of the Popeye cartoons... or at least, he should bear some resemblance to Lex Luthor. This skinny, slight, soft-spoken fellow who calmly denied being near Dealey Plaza? Well, he was just spooky, that's all. They kept calling him a Marxist and a communist, words I didn't yet understand but knew meant that he was a bad person. (I would say the word "communist" in 1963 had the similar gravitas of the word "terrorist" in 2009.) I was enthralled by the constant TV-coverage, the switching back and forth from Dallas to Washington... to our new president, Lyndon Johnson and then back to the basement of Dallas city jail. It was as dazzling as space travel.

Middle-American culture had changed utterly and completely in only two days.

For one thing, the TV had not always been on before. You turned on the TV to watch something, and when it was over, you turned it off. Sometimes you left it on, but usually not. Among the working classes, it was not unusual for some families not to own a TV at all. There were often anti-TV holdouts in these families; cantankerous, old-school types who thought TV was all rubbish and probably unchristian. But after this weekend? This archaic viewpoint was consigned to the dustbin of history. Back in my first-grade class, I would hear about parents who had rushed out to buy a TV at long last. They simply could not bear to be left out.

The TV had been turned on, and stayed on. It was on when I got home from school, dismissed early due to the tragedy, and it was on throughout the funeral. And it stayed on forever after.

And the TV was on as they transferred Lee Oswald to the armored vehicle, or attempted to. There was much talk about security because tensions were running extremely high; there was palpable fury throughout the city of Dallas. When police had forcibly taken Oswald from the theater where they had discovered him, hostile mobs surrounded the police car, and it was said he might have been torn to pieces if the crowd had been able to get their hands on him.

Listening to all this, I was riveted. I remember peering intently as they brought him out, my nose almost right on the screen: There he is!

And then, the inevitable disappointment: such a nonthreatening little dude he was.

I peered and peered and then... bang. Oswald was down.

What?

It was so quick. If not for the firecracker-noise of the gun, I would never have known.

"They shot him!" I shouted, "They shot Oswald! They shot him!"

The adults stampeded as one entity, from the kitchen to the small dining room where I was. My mother, grandparents, some other relatives I have since forgotten... possibly my cousin Charlene.

"I SAW it!" I was shouting, "I SAW IT!"

SSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhh! Everyone was shushing me. Had I really seen that? The adults' eyes were collectively popping. I felt pretty important for being the one to see it.

"He must be really mad about the president, huh?" I asked.

Nobody answered. They kept shushing me, as obviously-shaken news-announcers talked about what they had just witnessed.

And then, the adults were all looking at each other, that way adults did when they were thinking things that they would not share with children.

Finally, my grandfather said, in what I have come to call his Christian Science Wisdom voice: "Well, that really stinks."

My mother's eyes were wide, wide, wide.

My grandfather shook his head and said "Stinks!" again, rather emphatically. My mother nodded gravely back at him.

I didn't know what he meant then.

The TV-announcers were saying his name: Jack Ruby. The man's name was Jack Ruby.

~*~

Like millions of Americans that day, I saw a murder on live television. Because the murder was widely perceived as an act of justice, nobody worried about the ill effects on all of us children who saw it. And later, many years and decades later, when we began to doubt that what we saw was justice and instead wondered if it had been the silencing of a co-conspirator... nobody worried about the erosion of our morality and the consequential development of our cynicism.

But I trace it all back to that day, the day in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

They ask us, do you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? But I always ask, instead: What did you think when his accused murderer was pronounced dead? Because the silencing began then, the questions asked that will forever remain unanswered. (As Norman Mailer once explained the existence of the angry kids of the 60s: They hated the authority because the authority had lied.)

My grandfather was right. It certainly did stink. And the stench covered everything.

The lies of the powerful were uncovered and exposed before us, that morning in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

Some of us never forgot.

Why I hate Newt: It's personal

At left: January 2000 cover of Atlanta Magazine, courtesy of Rebecca Burns and her great memory.




Going to suburban Atlanta for the holiday, later in the week. Now that Newtie is back in the news, I will be hearing all about him from my father-in-law (again), who considers him the most dishonest of the most dishonest politicians. I remember the 90s as one long anti-Newt screed, over various Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. It was a nice vacation for my nerves when Newt retired from government to take $1.5 million from Freddie Mac, leaving the good citizens of Georgia alone. (Although lots of 90s survivors have never trusted him, for a variety of reasons.)

And now he's back and noisily running for President, with his famous cost-cutting measures, such as staying in the SC Governor's mansion on my dime. And he instructs us dirty Occupiers to take a bath and get a job! This has brought out some nasty tweets in response:

You know #Newt, some in #OWS may not bathe as often as you, but I'd bet most of them wouldn't divorce their spouses who are dying of cancer.

Direct hit!

Yes, its hard to swallow self-righteous moralism from serial monogamists who owe Tiffany's a half million dollars, and expect to be taken seriously. But there are Newt signs all over my neighborhood and across from St Mary Magdalene in Simpsonville, so I guess he is making important political inroads in the Palmetto State.

He is an awful, resentful, arrogant, duplicitous, dishonest man. And not just in his personal life, but in every single thing he does and every single thing he touches.

This tells us so much about the Republican Party, that this common shyster is what they are left with.

And besides that, he is going to ruin ANOTHER Thanksgiving for me as I listen to a catalog of his sins. Dyspepsia awaits, and plenty of it.

(burp)

Random Monday notes and warnings

As every single Star Wars movie has said at least once: I have a very bad feeling about this. PLEASE brothers and sisters in the Occupy movement, do not underestimate a cutthroat conservative politician who is afraid of losing their base, and what they might do to keep that base happy.

Occupiers are planning to defy Governor Haley's unconstitutional 6pm curfew at the State House in Columbia. My best Deadhead vibes are with them, as well as my warnings. My Tarot counseled me in no uncertain terms, not to go. Reshuffled, threw it again, even worse the second time. I decided that since I have no bail money, I would sit this one out. If I had a lawyer at the ready and bail money, I would be taking part.

Nikki Haley is weathering several scandals right now, and Occupy Columbia is popularly regarded as one of these. Conservatives want her to sweep the place, and "get tough" on Occupy. She finally did, and the nineteen arrests were greeted as a positive by conservatives.

Haley is currently dealing with an ethics-based lawsuit:

COLUMBIA -- A top Republican donor and critic of Gov. Nikki Haley asked a court Thursday to decide whether she broke ethics laws while she was a member of the South Carolina House. Haley discounted the lawsuit.

The lawsuit filed in circuit court in Richland County by John Rainey centers around Haley's jobs as a fundraiser for the Lexington Medical Center and with an engineering firm that has state contracts.

The lawsuit is the culmination of months of digging by Rainey, former chairman of the state Board of Economic Advisors, who first raised questions about Haley's work in 2010 during her campaign for governor.

Rainey, a longtime Republican activist, declined comment on the suit Thursday, as did his lawyer, Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian.

"There's nothing there," Haley said during a visit Thursday to the Alcoa aluminum plant in Goose Creek. "He needs to get a life," she said, referring to Rainey. "It's a silly vendetta."

The lawsuit accuses the Republican governor of working as a lobbyist for the hospital, and of soliciting lobbyists to donate to its foundation.

It also accuses her of failing to disclose information on campaign filings about her work for Wilbur Smith, and of not recusing herself from a vote benefiting the employer, as well as not explaining on another vote why she did recuse herself.

"Haley exploited her public office for personal financial gain by trading on her influence and office to benefit corporations that were paying her money," the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit accuses Haley, first elected in 2004 to represent Lexington in the House, of lobbying the state Department of Health and Environment Control on behalf of Lexington Medical, as it sought permission for a new open-heart surgery center.

In addition, fiscal conservatives have been livid over her well-publicized "jobs junket" to France and Germany.

Governor Haley has unfairly baited and trashed Occupy Columbia from the beginning. Therefore, I am worried that she will use a crackdown for political gain, and as a diversion tactic.

Please, everybody, be careful and be prepared.

~*~

Required reading: At Religious Right Forum, GOP Candidates Weep and Proselytize. Yes, it's as bad as you think it is.

What's funny is how Newt and Ron Paul can't quite get with the program. They are congenitally unable to act a fool in public:

Herman Cain lost his composure when talking about he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer; former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, Penn., came apart a bit when berating himself for having stayed emotionally distant from his youngest daughter, who has a grave genetic disorder that has twice brought her close to death.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minn., told of how her father abandoned her family, leaving her mother to sell their wedding gifts -- "all the pretty dishes" -- at a garage sale. Apparently lacking a personal story to match theirs, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Ga., summoned the tale of a friend's gravely injured child to simultaneously choke up and rail against the health-care reform law signed by President Barack Obama.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry talked of finding Jesus. Rep. Ron Paul, Texas, gave hints of Christian Reconstructionist leanings, but proved himself inept at public soul-bearing. Asked to reveal some personal difficulty, he talked of how injury cut short his high school track career, but then said he realized it wasn't that big a deal.

Another example of why people like Ron Paul: even when he tries to be all touchy-feely and play the Dr Phil game, on some level, his sensible side just won't play along with the okey-doke. He's a doctor, remember?

Newt also tries hard, but his Ebenezer-Scrooge-personality inevitably shows itself, no matter what he does. Now he has added a moral-mea-culpa page to his website, pandering to the Religious Right that is still skeptical of his serial monogamy and general assholery.

I am not surprised Newt has surged to the front of the pack, what with sexual harassers, stoners and religious flakes embarrassing the GOP. He IS smart (like a fox) and the Republicans are long-tired of being shamed by conservative stupidity. Newt, college lecturer and shape-shifting busybody, is the flavor of the hour.

~*~

Glenn Greenwald accurately speaks my thoughts aloud, asking WHY children of rich politicians and commentators get hired by the media, as if they have a clue? Meritocracy? Say what?:

I really don’t understand what those angry, lazy losers in the Occupy movement are so upset about. America is a meritocracy; if you work hard and prove your skills, you get ahead. The winners deserve what they have because they have earned it. And when all else fails, we have a media filled with insurgent outsiders who will be relentless watchdogs over those in power because that’s what our media outlets are: true outsiders there to check the most powerful factions.

Even more encouragingly, we have a media that ensures that diverse views are heard; Chelsea Clinton previously worked at a $12 billion hedge fund and her former-Goldman-Sachs-banker husband earlier this year launched his own hedge fund with “two guys from Goldman,” so she brings a depth and diversity of perspetive that is sorely lacking in our news (true, CNN boldly features Erin Burnett — the former Goldman, Sachs employee and current fiancé of a top Citigroup executive — but nothing can compete with Chelsea Clinton’s rich, impressive journalism background).

And now, we can add Meghan McCain to that list, along with Luke Russert, Imogen Lloyd Webber and Jenna Bush.

Meritocracy? Only if you have the merit to be born to somebody important.

~*~

Have I mentioned that I don't like the fact that there is a movie called "The Kids Are Alright"--since there is also an old documentary about The Who by that name? Please be original enough to think up original names for your movies! If you can't, even if you are Lisa Cholodenko and directed one of my favorite movies of all time, I will boycott your cutesy mainstream movie.

Be advised!

Below: Check out the bemused expressions on the faces of folks floating by in the boats. Keith was adorable! Roger still hadn't morphed into a fashion plate, so you may not even recognize him.


The Kids Are Alright - The Who

Dead Air Sells Out, BJU robs Greenville County (again), etc

At left: Famous cover of THE WHO SELL OUT, from whom I stole half of today's blog post title.



I have decided to enable Google ads on my blog, at long last, because I have run out of unemployment checks. CLICK THOSE ADS, people.

Seriously, I didn't want to. I initially took them off waaaay back in November 2009, due to all the "Is Barack Obama a Muslim?" and "Is Barack Obama the Antichrist?" ads (probably my own fault for naming a post that), which I found pernicious and possibly racist. Thus, in a purist political huff, I yanked the ads. Now I have put them back, since I promised myself if I got X amount of hits, it would be worth my while to do so. And in fact, I have received far more than X, but did not keep my promise to myself.

Why? Well, I still don't like the ads, that's why.

For example, the first ads that came up were for HRT, since one of my posts this month was about hot flashes. Even though I carefully state in the piece, that Hormone Replacement Therapy causes cancer, the ad-placement appears that I approve of HRT if you don't regularly read my blog and/or just skim. Annoying.

Then again, I look at the some of the atheist blogs, and they don't seem to care if they get the Billy Graham Association or Bible Study Guides on their Google ads. (Some of the ads are humongous, and they still don't care!) If they can bite the bullet, I guess I can too. On some level, they are probably thinking that 1) the juxtaposition of atheist content and Bible ads is amusing, and it is, and 2) their readers should be able to come to their own conclusions. And they should.

Supposedly, one can target ads. However, perusing the Google adsense FAQ (containing copious html code), lots of this stuff appears to be written in high-tech gibberish, inaccessible to mere mortals. (I barely figured out how to install my tag cloud, okay?) And I don't know how well the targeting actually works.

But in any event, you will now see ADS, when before, I could afford to be ideologically pure. Next time someone accuses me of disliking capitalism, I can point to all the ads here on DEAD AIR, and say WHAT ABOUT THOSE? Advertising is the American Way, after all.

~*~

Daisy Deadhead Show update: Today was our BEST SHOW YET! We featured the two run-off candidates for mayor of Simpsonville, Perry Eichor and Tammy Bagwell, as well as other call-ins. Check out the podcast to the right.

As promised, I trashed Bob Jones University, and someone called in to helpfully inform me that the BJU Art Gallery downtown was turned over to the county due to staggering debt, and now WE are supporting it. [Note: There is a "satellite" gallery downtown in the old Coca Cola building, while the main gallery is on the BJU campus.]

Well, that's certainly interesting, isn't it?

Entering the address of the BJU art museum into the tax records for Greenville County, I see that 420 College Street, Greenville, SC is deeded to: GREENVILLE COUNTY MUSEUM COMMISSION. Oh yeah? So, Bob Jones University no longer owns it, and they sold it to the county for (one assumes) a hefty profit. Was this sale voted on? Because you know, I don't remember voting on it. Who approved the sale and for how much?

Obviously, one of those sweet backroom deals that local BJU-Republicans are known for.

Market value of the property is listed as $1,394,060. Is that what the County paid for it? Where did this money come from, exactly? Who decided on the deal in the first place? How does this benefit the county?

Stinks, really stinks.

Further, my caller recently visited the Greenville County Auditor's office (Scott Case, BJU again), where there are two brand new fancy plasma TVs for people to watch while waiting in interminable lines. And can you all guess what channel these TVs are tuned to? No, not the Food Network!

Fox News.

When my intrepid caller asked a county employee WHY Fox News? The employee said that was the decision of SCOTT CASE and all interested parties would have to take it up with him.

So, we have TVs paid for by the county (that is to say, US) presumably intended for the entire county population to watch, but they are permanently set on FOX NEWS. Does the county government endorse Fox News officially? Because I think that amounts to political partisanship in neutral government territory.

But then, neutrality is not something they major in, over at BJU. Using the government to their advantage and getting local government to foot their bills and dig them out of art-gallery debt? They have obviously figured out how to do that, as has Governor Haley. And here's the punch line: all while calling themselves fiscal conservatives. As long as they use the magic talisman of *fiscal conservatism* -- they can pretty much run through as much of our collective money as they can get their greedy little hands on.

No wonder the BJU gang all voted for Haley; they have the same morality, or lack of it.