Foreboding developments
Tonight’s televised debate is an illegitimacy. Jill Stein or Gary Johnson will not be in attendance. If they attempt to enter the theater at New York’s Hofstra University, they will likely be arrested, as Stein was four years ago under similar circumstances. According to USA Today, more than three-quarters of the American people say they want to see Stein and Johnson share the stage with Clinton and Trump. More than 85% say that neither Clinton nor Trump “share their values.” Officially, the Green Party and Libertarian Party presidential candidates are excluded because of the poll numbers, but there are a couple poll results for you, motherfucker.There is absolutely no legitimate reason for excluding them. No laws, no regulations, no Constitutional prohibitions. In 1988, the League of Women Voters warned that the new Democrat/Republican debate commission would "perpetrate a fraud on the American voter," and they refused to be "an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public." Contrary to what you’ve been told, Clinton and Trump will not be having their first meeting tonight in a public forum. This is a private, corporation-financed forum. Make a note tonight of the event’s sponsors. Each of the contributing Fortune 500 companies will get special recognition. They are the benefactors of the modern political system. People accept this as ritual because it’s been deeply ingrained in us that we must do our best with whatever amount of democracy we’ve been allowed to have. We’re the inmates in line for our medication in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But those of us in the Green Party are the Indian.
I refuse to give in and watch a hollow, mind-numbing spectacle that’s poisoning the soul of America. So I’ll be watching football.
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On Saturday night, I went to see Steve Martin and Marty Short touring in their two-man show at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City, and that’s a great sentence to be able to write. The two showmen are each so tremendously talented that they were on for two hours and never even tapped into Martin’s magic act, other than for a presentation by video of the Great Flydini on Carson's Tonight Show. It was one laugh line after another all through the evening, but this one sticks out. Martin Short: “I like my champagne the way I like my women-- Compliments of Hancher Auditorium.”
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This is a true story. I have a subscription to Sports Illustrated. Ok, there’s more, but I need to first explain that part. A friend’s daughter was selling magazines last summer so I signed up for a year of SI to peruse during, this, its waning days. Because I did the clearinghouse that courtesy, I get additional magazines each month that I didn’t even subscribe to-- namely, Men’s Health and ESPN the Magazine. The October issue of the latter came to me on Friday. Of course, I never asked for it, and also didn’t want it. It was advertised as their “Chicago Cubs” issue, the first one-sports-team-oriented of any sports magazine I can recall. Yuck. Another failure in micro-marketing by Madison Avenue, a product that proceeded to breed greater resentment in me for the product than I already had. Along those same lines-- in eleven months of SI subscription, I’ve received five issues of the weekly mag that have Cubs players on the cover, and three more with Iowa Hawkeyes football or basketball players. (You’d think one of those teams would have a championship by this time with all of that spilled ink.) It’s just what this Cardinals fan that’s a graduate of Iowa State University wants to get in the mail. These days, I pray to open up the mailbox after work and only find credit card bills.
Anyway, I get my new Cubs issue, containing six separate features on the team. A general lead story on the season to date, one on Joe Maddon, then Theo Epstein, a couple others I forget, and of course, one featuring a photo shoot with members of their long-suffering fan base, who in ESPN the Mag, I noticed, look much more culturally-diverse than the actual thing. I walk back out the entryway of our building to wait for my ride to dinner, and I haven’t gone two steps when I see what about 10 yards away on the sidewalk? Yes, a black cat... not unlike the one that sashayed past Ron Santo in the on-deck circle that fateful summer of 1969.
I fiddle with my lunch container, my book of the moment, my mail, and my new cell phone, and I maneuver to get the phone in place to snap a photo for the interwebs of my magazine posing with this ominous cat. The thing doesn’t sprint off, but it is in its evolutionary hyper-alert state, and it walks only a couple feet away into a group of bushes in front of the property. I try to get as close to where I saw it go without causing it to let out a fitful hiss or even leap at me. Soon I’m pushing the leaves away on the bush with my book, and I’m peering under the coiled garden hose, which rests between the bushes and the building. Nothing. There’s no photo happening. The cat has disappeared into thin air.
So what does that mean?
posted by CM @ 5:54 PM
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