Resurrection

I thought Don Imus was dead. If he isn’t, he sure looks like it.

When I watched him on television a couple of days ago ’splainin’ his comment about the long rap sheet of Adam “Pacman” Jones, I would have sworn that I was watching a set of empty clothes with a mop sticking out of the shirt collar. And for emphasis, someone had stuck a Stetson on top of it.

I know that’s coarse, and I know I’m probably exposing my age bias and I apologize if my words offend anyone. But I swear, that’s what I thought, and I was always taught to tell the truth. Speaking the truth is an inalienable right under the Constitution of the United States of America. Isn’t it?

Well, that depends. If your name is Charlie Black (McCain’s high powered campaign advisor) and you say outright that a terrorist arrack on America would benefit McCaint, then your career may be in jeopardy. Even though a terrorist attack would definitely aid McCain’s election bid, shush now, Charlie, you aren’t supposed to say so out loud.

So the truth is relative and situational, and now Don Imus in his characteristically convoluted manner of talking without moving his lips and later ’splainin’ his mumbles, is in hot water for suggesting that Blacks are at a high risk of arrest on general principles in some parts of the country.

What’s going to happen to Don this time around? He was fired from one radio station for referring to a girls’ basketball team as “nappy headed ho’s.” His latest faux mumble seems tame compared to that one.

Meanwhile the Talking Pinheads will monopolize valuable air time shouting and screaming and hollering at each other while news of note is unreported or minimized.

I want to know the salacious details of Christie Brinkley’s impending divorce trial.

Late Breaker. Don won’t be fired. He’s safe for the time being.

Technorati Tags: Don Imus,Charlie Black,John McCain

Addiction is Addicting

Without conscious awareness, I’ve developed an addictive habit. I may need a 12-step program to break it, but that’s something to think about later. For the time being, I’m loving it.

What is my addictive habit?

I am reading e-mails from my relatives.

For years, I clicked Delete when a recognizable name materialized in my inbox. The turning point came one day with a message “The sender requests a return receipt.”

What could I do. This was a close cousin. If I didn’t open the damned e-mail, I ran the risk of a phone call in the middle of the night.

So, I opened the message and found a funny joke that I don’t remember now except to say that it was one of those scatological, roll-in-the-dirt, whoop and holler eighth grade anecdotes. The damned thing was still effective after all of these years. So much for adult male social evolution.

Making a short story longer that it ought to be for no reason except to fill space on TGIF-Day, some of the emails from this and other sources were often more vituperative than funny. Many had a mean quality about them, demeaning and insulting to various groups, Blacks, Asians, Gays, Democrats, Californians, San Franciscans, you name it.

Somehow, the individuals who sent me these e-mails knew I was a Californian and didn’t take kindly to Red Neck humor. Nonetheless, their output continued, even doubled.

I finally managed to construct a rationale for opening their e-mails. I would use them as a gauge of the sense of a broader segment of the population in various parts of the country on a variety of political matters. I would become my own poll taker.

However, could I accept my sources as representative of a larger group? You betcha. Using my own steady flow of messages from a geographically and demographically diverse set of relatives, I manage quite well, thank you, when it comes to predicting political outcomes in some areas of the country.

For example, I’m predicting right now that John McWayne will do well in Arkansas, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Maryland, and most of the Southern states except Mississippi.

In Colorado, Barack will carry Boulder and that’s about it. And in Maryland, he should easily take Baltimore. His influence in rural Maryland, a rather conservative part of the state, is problematic.

Barack will also handily carry the West Coast and perhaps Montana, although that remains to be seen.

Several other states are also iffy. We’ll have to wait and see.

Okay, this is an example of converting an addiction into a valuable political and social function. Works for me.

Technorati Tags: Addictive Behavior,Relatives,E-Mails,Predictions

Timing isn’t Everything…

…it’s the only thing…

As usual, I’ll play the glee killer.

Yes, the California Supreme Court did the right thing.

But they did it at the wrong time.

I swear to God there is a conspiracy among Republicans to sabotage the Democratic Party and the State of California.

Six members of the Cal Supes are Republicans. Why would they hand the Republicans a ready-made bomb designed to explode during the general election.

We already know that about 22 percent of the White, blue collar voters in West Virginia voted against Obama because he is Black. My guess is that this percentage, perhaps higher, is spread across the Southern states.

My further guess is that the percentage of White, blue collar types are lined up in greater numbers against anyone with the slightest disposition toward gay marriage and gays in general.

Barack has run afoul of the gun and religion crowd already. Then today, Bush the Brainy neatly lined him up with the Nazis against the Jews.

Now comes the gay matter. True, Obama had nothing to do with the court’s decision. But that’s irrelevant. Also irrelevant will be any denials by Barack. In politics, facts don’t count. Impressions win or lose elections.

Barack is now the symbol of the Democratic Party. Impressions of him as a strong Chief Executive must prevail if he is to win in November.

Technorati Tags: Gay Marriage,California Supreme Court,Barack Obama,Political Timing

My Old Kentucky Home

Okay, Hillary won an overwhelming victory over Barack in yesterday’s West Virginia primary. I wonder what overwhelming means. Is it a state of being like “being in love,” which usually lasts a few days?

If overwhelming is like true love, Hillary may make it another week. Life and feelings are transitory, and Politician is the most ADD riddled occupation in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Will Hillary’s overwhelming state of being carry her through the Kentucky primary next Tuesday?

Kentucky is a state that I am intimately familiar with. I was also intimately familiar with West Virginia and predicted her victory there as soon as the results were announced. I predict a victory for her in Kentucky as well because the state consists of a lot of White blue-collar folks who love their guns and their religion.

When Barack remarked that the common folk turned to guns and religion because they are bitter over the economy, he made a boo boo, maybe the biggest of his candidacy. The people he spoke about carried their guns and religion on their lapels a couple hundred years before big corporations began sending their jobs overseas. Guns and religion are deeply woven into the fabric of blue-collar culture. And nowhere is that culture more predominant than in Kentucky.

In the interests of open and honest journalistic standards, let me just say that I have actually never set foot in Kentucky. The closest I’ve been to the state is Cairo, Illinois which sets on a little spit of land at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Kentucky is kind of catty corner from Cairo and I could see the trees of Kentucky across the water.

Well, sir, and ma’am, you may ask and rightly so, if I’ve never been to Kentucky, how do I know so much about it?

Early on, I learned the lyrics to My Old Kentucky Home. I’d wager that’s more than Bush or Cheney know about the state. And, I’ve seen lots of Hollywood movies about the Kentucky Derby. And, Kentucky is where Fort Knox is located with its store of gold, if any remains. Or has the gold been removed to Area 51 to pay a Chinese contractor to construct UFO landing strips? Hmmm. Conspiracies, anyone?

But the real reason I know a lot about Kentucky is that I am a golden repository of cultural information panned from a surplus of descendents of our common Kentucky ancestor, descendents who now populate the Earth. I have cousins East and West North and South. Lots of them send me emails with religious messages and telephone me at inappropriate times. They are universally guns and religion types, and they all are titanium white.

I am also probably the only human on Earth dumb enough to look at the statistics accumulated by the U.S. Census Bureau. The State of Kentucky has a population of around 4,000,000, roughly 90% White, 7% Black. Fifty percent are women and the state has a substantial number of senior citizens. These stats sound like a Hillary playground.

It isn’t my intent to suggest that all Whites will vote for Hillary and all Blacks for Barack. Race in America isn’t quite so black and white. In the Hil and Barack contest, we have a generation gap, and past voting patterns have shown that younger voters turn out in sparse numbers. In the current race for the Democratic presidential nomination, the younger folks will vote for Barack. Youth may be the primary key.

On the other hand, we currently have a Generous Ration Gap as well. Rich people and the current political power structure seem to make light of the dire straits of ordinary folks. Yet, exit polls taken after the primary in West Virginia clearly show that the number one concern of the voters is the economy. The end game may thus turn on who presents the most believable and understandable program to juice up the economy and stop the slow bleed of American jobs.

A careful consideration of each candidate’s solid approach to alleviating the pain of a collapsing economy would be the most reasonable approach when deciding who we vote for. Unfortunately, politics is not a an exercise out of a text on symbolic logic. Politics is highly emotional, and no one knows it more than politicians. In the final analysis, we’ll put aside all of our reasoned considerations and vote our guts. That’s life.

In the meantime, I think I’ll canvas my cousins for their reasoned preferences. I’m willing to bet a bundle that they will carefully consider all of the options and, as true Americans, haul out their guns and lapel pins and vote John Boy in the general election irrespective of the identity of the Democratic candidate. In the lives of my cousins, familiar and comfortable trump change any day.

It’s the Money, Stupid

…who’s got the rice?…

The world-wide food shortage doesn’t surprise me. But the shortage of rice in Silicon Valley was a shocker when I first read the story. Like most unsophisticated Americans and a Californian by rearing and attitude, I assumed that the supply of rice in California was limitless.

California is the nation’s number two state in rice production, and most of that is grown around Sacramento. You’d think those California growers would take care of their kin first and foremost. But I now see, after a little research, that the rice market doesn’t quite operate that way. Rice growers sell to the highest bidder. Usually, that will be an overeas market.

Why so? Most Americans don’t eat that much rice, anyway. They may venture into an Asian-cuisine restaurant once in awhile, but rice isn’t a daily part of the American (or European) diet as it is in Asia.

And the amount of rice consumption in Silicon Valley is infinitesamal when compared to consumption in, say, the Philippines. It’s the economy of the rice market, stupid. Rice, like all commodities and politics, follows the money.

Still, there are some strong markets for rice in a few parts of America. Black beans and rice is a Cajun staple, and something called “dirty rice” is widely consumed in East Texas. I’m not exactly sure why it’s called dirty, but I think it’s because the rice hasn’t been milled and shined to resemble Uncle Ben’s.

I’ve run across some other rice dish variations, too. In some parts of the South, rice pudding is a desert. In fact, my first exposure to rice as an edible (I thought a rice paddy was where duck hunters went to to freeze their buns off) was something an aunt called “chocolate rice pudding.” The thought of it today evokes a slight gag, but it was great when I was a kid.

The first “real” rice I encountered was on Day One in basic training. I call it real because the taste of it wasn’t gussied up with sweets. This meal was a combination of chili and rice. You could eat it separately or mix it as you choose. My preferred style was separately, a spoon of chili followed immediately by a spoon of rice.

Later, sophisticated international travel exposed me to some real goodies, rice dishes I still love, stuff like curried-rice and fried rice. I think I would almost attack someone for a good dish of curried-rice.

In the U.S., rice growing has given rise to a couple of diverse economic activities. One is tourism. Every year in Stuttgart, Arkansas, center of America’s rice growing activity, thousands of duck hunters descend on the tiny community fot the annual duck calling contest. Visitors spend big bucks in the area.

Another activity in and around Stuttgart is fish farming in the flooded rice paddies. The growers have an innovative way of harvesting the fish. They drive a big ole mobile conveyor belt which scoops up the fish and dumps them into a truck. The fish are then shipped all over the world to eager buyers.

A similar activity occurs in Louisiana and Texas. The ancillary crop in those states is crayfish or crawfish, as you choose, but which most people call crawdads. Don’t ask me why. All I know is that a crawdad boil is one of the biggest events in Cajun country. I’ve eaten crawdads. Biting into one is kind if like curling your teeth around a piece of leather that tastes like swamp water no matter how much Tabasco you pour on it. It ain’t lobster, yaw (Texans can’t pronounce “L”).

Okay, now that I reread this brief post, I’m not sure if it has anything in it relevant to the Bay Area, except the Silicon Valley-rice connection. That’s close enough for government work. Besides, it’s Monday and you know how Monday’s are. Never buy a car that rolled off the assembly line on Monday.

Children’s Day

May 5th is a national holiday. In Japan. It’s called Children’s Day, and it’s a day to celebrate children, who are universally regarded as a national treasure in Japan.

At one time, there were two “Days,” Girls’ Day on March 3rd and Boys’ Day on May 5th. But after the end of World War II, the Japanese Diet (national legislature) combined the two and created a holiday.

On May 5th, children dress in traditional Japanese clothing styles and festivals are held in every town and hamlet in Japan. Sometimes the adults, especially the men, decide to become boys again by drinking sake, Japanese nectar of the Gods on a par with shots and beer in America, which will addle the brain quicker than any substance I know of.

In America, we don’t have a national Children’s Day. Instead, we have a series of days between January and August every four years that we call Primaries or Caucuses.

Rather than celebrate our children, who we call Politicians, we encourage them to rip one another to shreds in the manner of a school yard melee while we clap and cheer from the sidelines.

And then after the melee has ended, when only one child remains standing, everyone comes together, laughing on the outside, crying on the inside, shaking hands, congratulating each other for a game well played, and immediately begin preparing for the next round of Children’s Days.

In May 2008, we’ll have a couple of festivals, one in Indiana and one in North Carolina. Ours will fall on May 6th rather than May 5th, but that’s close enough for government work and political analysis.

Our primary contest, the one that counts at this instant, is between two contestants, one male, one female. Barack versus Hillary. See the connection? Boys, Girls.

Although I am not a betting man, my money, if I had any, would be on Barack. I believe in omens and signs, and I believe it is prophetic that the Holiday in Japan was Boys’ Day first and foremost . Voile! Barack is going to take the whole ball of wax.

My logic is impeccable. At least as impeccable as the logic of the hordes of Talking Whatevahs who trumpet Hillary over Barack or vice versa. When in a state of utter confusion, fall back and apply your own standards.

You’ll be right there with the rest of the political loonies.

Oh, did I forget to mention? The Christie Yamaguchi Children’s Day Festival will be held on Saturday, May 3rd, between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. in the Peace Plaza, Bush and Webster, Japantown, San Francisco.

I expect the event will be well attended. There are about 12,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry living in San Francisco and around 80,000 in the Greater Bay Area.

Try not to have too much Nectar of the Gods, guys.

Technorati Tags: San Francisco,Christie Yamaguchi,Japantown,Children’s Festival

Close Only Counts in Horseshoes

…and hand grenades…

Frankly (I hate that word but it’s apropos here), Barack didn’t even come close in Pennsylvania.

Hillary walked away with a ten percent margin of victory, 55 to 45, over Barack in yesterday’s PA primary. Already, the statisticians, analysts, Talking Whatevahs, Spinmeisters, and Water Cooler Political Pros are parsing the numbers.

Barack supporters offer the same old bromide. “Pain don’t hurt.” Maybe not. But in PA, his pocketbook may be wincing a little today. He poured enough money into the state to permit the Governor to declare a tax-free day.

Hillary’s Horde, on the other hand, is trumpeting her win as amazing, a wipeout, devastating, and other perhaps more graphic and powerful synonymous words and phrases, like “We whupped his ass.”

The latter probably won’t appear in the polite media, but I can already feel my Arkie cousins’ cackling e-mails as they wend their way over the ‘net.

Can we take anything away from this primary that we didn’t already expect? A couple of clues may be worth thinking about. Blue collar Whites preferred Hillary as did White females. Oh, and did I forget to mention, White males preferred her as well. And older folks, gollee, they love Hillary.

This pattern will assume greater meaning in the general election. The Republican Party is whiter, older, and more traditional than the Democratic Party.

Already, John McCain is appealing to those segments of American society with references to “The Greatest Generation,” the men (weren’t many women in the Army then) who fought and won the Second World War.

That is and will remain a powerful appeal to the predominant demographic groups that comprise the U.S. voting public, and some White Democrats have already suggested that they will vote for McCain if Barack is the Democratic candidate. Should that occur, it will be a pathetic commentary on the dichotomy that still splits our country.

Somewhere along the line, the Democrats will need to decide who can best meet John McCain in the ultimate battle between the old and the new. The Democrats may trumpet change, but will they choose that road with Barack or settle for a lesser degree of change in the form of America’s first female president who is closely tied to the old political establishment.

Final decision time is a couple of months in the future. In the meantime, let’s settle back and watch the overheated, blustery Talking Whatevahs, many of whom believe that Hillary’s PA hand grenade inflicted a political wound on Barack that he may find difficult to recover from.

Technorati Tags: Pennsylvania Primary,Hillary Clinton,Barack Obama