Obama Going Bulworth

Remember that movie Bulworth? Warren Beatty vehicle for a Senator who suddenly tells it like it really is. The movie died. I saw it. There was the moment the Warren character started rapping and really saying the way things were but after that it sort of just fell apart. But the President apparently said something about going Bulworth. Can you blame him? What would he say if he said what he really thought? It would not be pretty.

You are talking about a President who has been under siege and now the Indians are circling the wagons. So if the President  said what he thought he might start with a simple. Well you got what you wanted. As the New York Times pointed out the beautiful thing is the triple play scandal knocks out the fact that government has come to a standstill. No legislation gets passed. Forget guns we cant even fill the posts of government. The House is a nonstarter. Nothing passes. And now with the scandals taking precedent we are effectively OUT OF ORDER as a country.

And as the Sequester rolls on we will be in a Clintonesque swamp from here on out. Birthers will fuse with Tea Party with far right Corporate/Conservative interests to take their best shot. Impeachment is a bridge too far but nullifying the President is a wing shot worth taking. And why not? Our Bulworth cannot really say the deck was stacked. That he was the first President filibustered by the government. That the campaign against him never stopped.

We know what the real deal is. It is something moving in the backwaters of our history but we cannot voice it. It is too depressing. Really only one man can go Bulworth and he  isn't ready yet. But when you have nothing to lose...then...sometimes even a bad movie can get second life.

Rocket Man...the American Dream upside down

Living in our phones

So you are rolling along and the lady with the STOP sign holds up her hand. And so you sit there and wait and while you wait you check your phone. And there is nothing there but there might be and it is better than just sitting there because existence has become boring. And while you are waiting you see a woman who looks like she could kick your ass and she is wearing a bandanna in the smoky light of just paved hot tar and she is looking at her hand and you realize that in the middle of the hot sun breathing in the heavy petroleum wafting on that steaming asphalt she too is checking her phone. And it hits you...nobody lives in this world anymore.

Because there might be something in that phone that will take her out of this world. She might be taken away from getting cooked on a street and sucking up all sorts of toxins while hot spewing tar and asphalt is laid down by a giant machine with then guys hanging off it and suddenly you see that all these guys are staring at their hands too. They too are looking for the magic life that screen provides. Take me away. Take me to Oz. It might you know and there might be a wizard and a rainbow...anything is better than this crappy existence.

And if no one is living in this life anymore where are we living. Some sort of cyber world where a promise of something greater is just a text or an email or a tweet or a picture away. Something than this grinding malaise of the every day that is existence. And so we see cops and firemen and construction workers and soldiers and sailors and painters and sculptors...the world squinting at their hands because that little world holds so much promise.

So you check your phone one more time as the lady turns her sign from STOP to SLOW. And you proceed on and pass through the crappy world of the every day. But cheer up. There is a text or an email quivering on the horizon. Bailing us out once again.

www.williamhazelgrove.com


 

Lampooning The American Dad

The new sport in satire is the American Dad. Take the show American Dad. Or South Park. Or The Simpsons. The patriarch is the buffoon who is a caricature of authority. Seth Johnson's South Park makes out dads to be stupid, perverted, hideous, comical. Anything but respectable. And what can American dads do but role. Lets face it. Being the heavy is always going to be lampooned. But where did this lets roast dad genre come from?

Certainly Ward Cleaver didn't start it. Dad was cool. He came home from work and kissed June and handled the Beave and never lost his shit. He was the man in charge who never broke a sweat even as The Beave raised hell. And from there we go to Father Knows Best  or Family Affair or Gidget or Happy Days or Dick Van Dyke. Dad did progress. Pick up on Bill Cosbys dad. He was pretty cool and kind of a hard ass. He would crack the whip but he knew the score. So dad went from the distanced Ward Cleaver to a hipster dad.

And then...then dad went sideways. He became not respectable at all. In fact dad became the guy to be disparaged. Or he became the totem pole for all that is wrong with bourgeois living. The magnet for every crappy thing that can be attached to living in a suburb and raising a family. Ted Bundy was the precursor of this animated dad who garners no respect and only derision. Like metafiction we doubt not only the man but the institution. No one can win because the whole paradigm of having a family in America is suspect. Dad being the easiest target

And why not? Suburban sprawl brings no respect. It is a lifestyle choice of the man predicated on raising kids in bland safe surroundings. So the blanding applies to moms and dads but dads are the blandest of all. Totems left over from the Greatest Generation they are respected by neither their wives or kids and left to hide in garages or in basements or to leer at young women.

So what to do. Nothing. You are either a dad or you are not. And the people who are lampooning are now dads too. They know there is little to be done to escape their fate. Of course you could always not watch I suppose.

Rocket Man...the American Dream Turned upside Down

The Impeachment of President Obama

If you listen to Glenn Beck then you heard the "I" word. Beck and others are foaming at the mouth and so is everyone else on the far right. Left out in the desert of liberal politics and a rapidly changing demographic they are now lapping the water of Watergate while screaming Benghazi, IRS persecution and now infringement of the press. The triumvirate of the Perfect Storm of Second Term Scandals has presented it's ugly head and we are now in for a Clintonesque investigation that could suck up the remaining thirteen hundred days.

And where there is smoke there is fire. Maybe. But of course the firemen have been sniffing a long time now haven't they? And from birthers to Socialism the President has been suspect for a long time and then came Benghazi and the triple play. Does anyone doubt this then is the first Presidential debate of 2016? Of course it is. President Obama is not the quarry all"I" words aside but Hillary Clinton is much better sport. Imagine knocking out a front runner before the race begins.

And that is exactly the point. If we accept the "black copter thesis" that is behind the failure of gun control and every push back from the right from Obamacare to spending money on education then we have to see the logical conclusion is to dismantle government as it stands. Austerity or sequester is simply "starve the beast politics" in action or Paul Ryans Ayn Rand philosophy taken to the epicenter of government. Survival of the fittest. Let the poor die and decrease the surplus population.

But I digress. So the impeachment of Obama would be a grand prize in the sport of modern scorched earth politics where the election never ends and warfare is the order of the day. Lets face it democracy or our plutocracy has become a war between two well armed opponents and we are merely spectators. One does wonder where it will all end. A Nixonian farewell salute? How sad that would be...

And what a sour victory for the victors and then what...a pardon by Joe Biden. A Frost/Obama interview. Tell me Mr. President did you let the American people down? Ah...that would be the frosting on the cake of political vengeance.

Rocket Man...the upside down American Dream

Working Alone

There is a service in New York and maybe other places that allows people who work alone to hang with other people. We are fast becoming a nation of people who work from home with the Internet hubbing out to our work pods like the spider it is and people interacting less and less telephonically if at all until there is only the soft pitter patter of fingers on keys and the ticking clock and the distant airplane and the dust motes falling all around. This then is the modern office environment of the twenty first century. A nation of Bob Cratchets in their cells. Please sir another lump of coal.

But at least Cratchet had Scrooge to interact with. He could ask him for coal or another candle or listen to Scrooge bitch about giving him off for Christmas. We twenty first century office workers are entirely solitary. We have no interaction except for the proton beams shooting out at us from our screens and the occasional call from a mother or father or telemarketer. Other than that we are united unto ourselves and now that the halcyon cool of working at home has worn off we are really a nation of lonely disconnected workers.

Gone is the interaction of The Office. The goofy weird guy hanging out by the copier or the anal retentive office manager who everyone rips on nonstop. Gone is Jerry the old guy who still trudges in or Suzy the loose secretary who everyone secretly leers at and talks about her husband Hank who is a Harley dude and works in a body shop. The whole low level drama of office politics does not exist and so that leaves us with just our work. What a drag. No distraction except surfing which can be as boring and depressing as watching television.

So we go to Starbucks. We go to the store. We go anywhere to break it up. We hang in the kitchen and talk to our spouse. We go for a run. A bike. Anything to break up the thin gruel of being a self motivator and sitting down to our daily drudgery. Yeah. Its cool. You can wear your pajamas. You can work in your underwear. You can sleep in. But the work is still there and it is just you  and you will have to do it eventually.

All by yourself.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man...the American Dream turned upside down

Five Things you Should know about The Great Gatsby

If you read The Great Gatsby or did not read The Great Gatsby here are five things you should know.

1. The green light at the end of Daisy's dock. Pivotal symbol of the book. This is the light Gatsby holds his hands out to as if embracing God. This represents (so literary interp profs tell us) the future, the dream Gatsby does not yet possess because he doesn't possess the golden girl yet. The green light across the bay from his mansion represents his impossible desire  (ironically) to repeat the past and it represents the American Dream in all it's promise. How is that for a  dock light?

2. Famous line number one of The Great Gatsby. "Can't repeat the past, of course you can repeat the past!" This Gatsby's response to Nick Caraway when he says you cannot repeat the past. He is referring to Gatsby's affair with Daisy when he was young and that he cannot duplicate. This line then sums up Gatsby's credo. Of course he can repeat the past and he will do it. He will remake his life and grab the beauty he had once before. But of course he is doomed.

3. The famous shirt throwing scene. Gatsby throws brand new shirts into the air for Daisy who breaks down because she has never seen such beautiful shirts before. Interpret this one as you will but the critics hold this scene up as a metaphor for Gatsby's dream and his doom. Daisy loves the shirts at the same time she knows noone can possesses such beauty. She and Gatsby are doomed but she loves the dream. She will never leave Tom and marry Gatsby. She knows this even if he doesn't. There are also interps on this scene as to sex. The shirts represent the sexual ecstasy she can have with Gatsby. Also it shows Gatsby believes his dream can be bought.

4.Famous line two and three. "The man wears a pink suit!" Tom Buchanan throwing dispersion on Gatsby. He is already pointing out that Gatsby is a charlatan,  a bootlegger, and that he will never stand up to the light of day. Or at least to Daisy. Famous line three. "So I drove on toward death." Nick Carroway line presaging the demise of Gatsby and Toms girlfriend Myrtle and his own mortality. He has just realized he turned thirty.

5. Famous Ending. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." This is the final sentence of the novel. And what Fitzgerald is doing is summing up America. The lines before run..."No matter, tomorrow we will run faster, jump higher until...so we beat on..." That we are doomed. That we are chained by our own ghosts even as reach for what we cannot see. That the America Dream of always wanting more will never make us happy because our happiness is behind us.

There. Now go talk about the book.

Rocket Man...the upside down American Dream

Five Things You Dont Know About The Great Gatsby

Here are five things you don't know about The Great Gatsby:

1. Fitzgerald was not crazy about the name and preferred High Hatted Golden Lover or Trimalchio. Even just before printing he thought about changing the name an his editor Max Perkins said it was too late.

2. The critical reception for The Great Gatsby was not good. The novel was criticized for being tawdry and superficial. And for being too short. Only a few reviewers realized The Great Gatsby was something great.

3. The book did not sell well. It barely sold out it's first printing and Fitzgerald made more money off the sale of the movie rights than the book. He had to go back to writing Saturday Evening Post stories to make money.

4. When Fitzgerald died The Great Gatsby was not out of print. It was worse than that. It was sitting in warehouses with virtually no demand. Effectively being out of print at his death.

5. There have been two movies made of The Great Gatsby. The first one was a silent film made in the twenties. The second one was made in the seventies by Francis Ford Coppola with Robert Redford. The reviews were not good and the movie was not a big hit with the public. The feeling was that the novel is too  literary, too dependent on Fitzgerald's prose to ever be made into a good movie. We will see.

Rocket Man...the American Dream Upside Down