Political SmackDown!
Satire is no longer what closes on Saturday night, as George S. Kaufman once opined. It is alive and thriving, and you’re as likely to find it in Wheeling and Indianapolis as you are at the Public Theater. Let’s begin a search. Hey, small-time
wrestling might be on to something.
(Singing)
In the/deep/ dark/ hills/of/ eastern Kentucky (end singing)-- and Appalachia thereabouts, the grappler making headlines these days goes by the sobriquet “Progressive Liberal." He's Dan Richard, and a good guy in the ring he ain’t. Recalling Andy Kauffman, circa 1983: Progressive Liberal is smug. He condescends. He gripes. He corrects the fans: “Do you live in a holler?.. No!.. You live in a hollow.” Beware his knock-out maneuver. He has dubbed it “the liberal agenda.”
Progressive Liberal? That’s pretty bad. Infinitely worse, you would have to concede, than being just one or the other. He’s gotten death threats for voicing his opinions so unabashedly. Why wouldn’t he? He told a crowd in West Virginia that the government needs to take people’s guns away. When he spoke that night, according to Deadspin, “a patron displayed a pistol in a holster on his right hip and started rubbing it.” Wow, Kathy Griffin much? When Richards’ real hometown, Richmond, Virginia, didn’t add enough sizzle to the promotional card, he changed it to Washington D.C. He’s greeted at each event these days by chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump.” Interestingly, in Mexico's lucha libre wrestling circuit, a "heel" named Sam Adonis touts the accomplishments of United States President Trump.
You can find a lot of information now online, whether it’s at the Washington Post or Salon or wherever, about whether or not the Progressive Liberal that appears in entertainment venues really represents Richards’ political outlook, but I have no interest at all in that exploration. As far as I'm concerned, Richard’s life constitutes an
alternative reality that lies outside the arena. Is this character a new mirror upon Trump America? I don’t think so exactly. It’s easy to imagine reactionary crowds just as angry at such an athlete if Hillary Clinton were the president today. Fans on both the left and the right seem to be enjoying the Progressive Liberal. For different reasons, naturally. On the alienation/affection spectrum, let’s place him at “Archie Bunker.”
I depart today with this treasured comment exchange between two anonymous web surfers, found beneath the Deadspin story earlier this week…
“I am absolutely mystified that people attend something like this. Like, I realize that this takes place in bumfuck wherever, but still. Don’t they have something more productive to do with their time, like sniff glue?”
(reply) “Is that you, Progressive Liberal?”
The going rate for civil servants killing unarmed black people
Yesterday, Michael Brown's parents, Lezley McSpadden and Michael Brown Jr., received a $1.5 million settlement in response to their wrongful death suit against Ferguson, Missouri. That city is the former employer of police officer Darren Wilson.
Lilly Workneh at Huffington Post points out that the sum is slightly more than
the $1.26 million a white Maryland family got when an officer shot and killed their dog in February of 2014.
Not only is it appropriate here to make note of this obscenity of American jurisprudence in devaluing Brown's life over that of a friggin' dog, I'm sure that none of us can easily imagine a scenario in which a black family sees even a dime if police shoot their dog.
The thin blue line
They're running quickly through the list of black men to shoot. Now white police are shooting
off-duty black cops. This happened in St. Louis Wednesday night. The injured officer's attorney says he considers the incident to be more than an accident.
I'm not sure why a black man would ever come to the aid of a police officer, if they saw them under assault. All black men are considered dangerous, and shooting at them is codified by the law. If an officer feels threatened, they have a license to shoot and kill, so being perceived as a threat makes one a threat. You can comply, like Philandro Castile. You can do exactly as you're told, like this still-unnamed officer. No matter.
The Castile verdict
Consider this the equivalent of a Facebook "share."
Shaun King from the New York Daily News..
Again.
Jury just found the officer who murdered #PhilandoCastile in cold blood not guilty.
Expected. Infuriating.
My blood is boiling. Philando did nothing wrong. Broke no laws. He
wasn't even supposed to be pulled over. It was racial profiling.
He then gets shot repeatedly in front of his fiancé and her daughter in broad daylight.
This is bullshit. Absolute bullshit. I say that with a full vocabulary. This is bullshit.
They wonder why we riot and tear shit up. What the hell do you expect
people to do. You asked people to stay calm and wait for justice. They
stayed calm and waited for justice - and then got this.
Quote me
on this: Fuck this system. If you've ever heard me speak anywhere,
you've heard me say what I'm about to say a million times.
It's not broken. The justice system is not broken. It is functioning exactly the way it was designed and built to function.
My God I am so angry.
Offensive rebounds
Search elsewhere for Dennis Rodman snark. The former NBA rebound-machine continues to do the Lord's work in engaging a dangerous dictator that has nuclear capabilities in his arsenal. Rodman and his small entourage make a return visit to North Korea and the palace of Kim Jong Un this week, and within hours of his arrival, American college student Otto Warmbier is released from his 17-month imprisonment by Pyongyang. U.S. Intelligence officials, who, along with Washington Congressional and White House leaders, have ratcheted up the rhetoric against North Korea in recent years, have also failed for 17 months to get Warmbier released. They say that Rodman, who Kim Jong Un calls "an old friend," played no role in the decision by the North Korean government to return Warmbier. I guess we'll chalk up the timing of Rodman's arrival then to exceptional coincidence.
Our government is in the war business, as you must recognize by now, and Rodman, it seems, is in the peace business, so there's a conflict of interest here. He just made the Deep State look bad, and they know it. He's also bad for their business, which profits on conflict and on imposing a permanent fear of attack by marauders upon the populace of the dying empire. The leader of North Korea, along with his late father, who preceded him in power, have been tremendous basketball fans, as well as fans of American pop culture in general, and Rodman, though he has rarely been asked to do interviews on the subject, must have seen an avenue by which he could be useful-- not to our government, mind you, but to us.
You're going to hear a lot of shit-- intelligence propaganda-- about how Rodman just "provided legitimacy" to Kim's rule by visiting again and shaking hands, but he did nothing of the sort. He did not one thing that our diplomats and ambassadors are not supposed to be doing-- talking. He went without government authority, but it's hard to imagine how the situation would have been improved when our government carries no moral authority in the world. He followed the blueprint of Edward Snowden, the plan we should
all be following, that says you give what you have to give personally to the cause of peace. He also delivered a lesson on how one is to act diplomatically and creatively, even to the face of a vainglorious authoritarian mad man. When he leaves there, maybe he can go to Washington and provide to Democrats a series of much-needed seminars on how to deal with Donald Trump.
What I've been reading
Happy summer to you. Sorry for the absence. I've been working on the book that will be The Best of the Chris Moeller Blog. I haven't written much, but I've
read some interesting things, and you know the topics I like. Notably I've been skimming...
Slate's interview with Trump's biographer:
Why Trump is Like This
and
"The Politics of Hope" in
England
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Shaun King of the Daily News is
boycotting the NFL over the blacklisting of his friend, Colin Kaepernick. He has chosen instead, he says, to look his son in the eye.
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The St. Louis Cardinals announced that they are
"actively planning" a gay pride stadium promotion, Pride Night, that would take place in 2018, at the latest. Sunday, July 30th, will deliver the Cardinals' 27th annual "Family Christian Day" to Busch Stadium. The featured speaker, former Cardinals player, Lance Berkman, has been a vocal critic of gay rights and told a Houston radio station that "to me, tolerance is the virtue that's killing this country." As Cardinals' field manager Mike Matheny will also be attending the post-game "Christian" festivities on the 30th, I would hope that the St. Louis news media would be on-hand to ask Matheny whether he agrees with Berkman's statements. Pride Night will most definitely be deemed a news event so Family Christian Day should be as well.
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I get tingly when newspapers devote time and space to oversized history features. Here's
the story of the Garden District in New Orleans' Times-Picayune. Our pasts are merely prologue.
