I am a spy for MI-6 who recklessly sleeps with innumerable gorgeous partners, drinks like a madman, ruins expensive company equipment, and I get away with all of this because I save the world on a consistent basis.
As my cover, I am a poor person living in Minnesota.
In the last month, I finally got around to seeing two works widely considered classics: Dennis Potter’s BBC The Singing Detectiveand Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. I was impressed by both, although neither is exactly what I would call fun. (The lead characters aren’t very nice guys!)
It’s odd how two works of art can be so closely related, probably almost by pure coincidence. Both strongly feature a hospitalized main character ruminating over his life. Both characters regret having estranged themselves from their wives. (Both feature a moment where the character gets a boner from a nurse applying treatment!) And both are (barely) musicals, with elaborate fantasy sequences.
Jazz came out in 1979 and Detective in 1986. Yet Potter was partially adapting his own novel from 1973 and had used the same “characters break into old pop recordings” device in Pennies From Heaven in 1978. (That’s the BBC series starring Bob Hoskins although he also wrote the screenplay for the 1981 film starring Steve Martin.)
Similarities
The similarities are in the authors’ lives, as both works are partially autobiographical. (Jazz was co-written with Robert Alan Aurthur although the story is supposed to be based on his life.)
Both writers came from difficult homes. Both originally wanted to be something else (Fosse a musical film star, Potter a journalist-turned-politician). Both turned to different careers because of physical limitations (looks for Fosse, advancing psoriasis for Potter). And both men were absolutely addicted to adultery.
Another odd similarity is that both works use old songs. Fosse’s previous musicals featured original songs used in the stage production. Yet almost all the songs in Jazz are new recordings of old pop classics. All the songs in Potter are old.
Maybe both men looked back nostalgically on old music as they thought about mistakes they’d made. I’ll do that — I’ll hear a song from 1991 I haven’t heard in years, and remember the dumb decisions I was making back then.
Differences
Jazz holds up better (maybe not the “sexy airline” number). For one thing, it’s shorter. The disjointed movement between fantasy and reality in Detective repeats itself a few times over the course of six hours. Also, Jazz has two terrific star turns (Scheider as Gideon/Fosse and Leland Palmer as Gven Verdon), while Detective really only has one (Michael Gambon as Marlow/Potter).
One of the best scenes in Jazz is Verdon at rehearsal chewing out Gideon for being such a shitty husband. All the while, she continues to dance in perfect form. Detective never has a confrontation between equals like that.
Still, I’m glad I watched both. How odd to have missed two acclaimed works for years, watch them so close together, and have them share so much in common! One of life’s little coincidences.
Afterword
On Hulu, there’s a miniseries, “Fosse/Verdon” that has fantastic performances by Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams. (They’re good in everything, so no surprise.) Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is just okay. And the show’s twice as long as it needs to be. I’d seen it before. It was worth rewatching the first and last episodes to see the performances again.
The show ends with Fosse dying in Verdon’s arms outside the theater premiering the revival of “Sweet Charity that Fosse directed and Verdon’s helped with choreography. This almost happened! He died a few blocks away in real life, but it was Opening Night.
Incidentally, in the special features on the Detective and Jazz discs, Fosse comes across a bit egotistical. Potter comes off as a bit of a woman-hating psycho. Neither are ideals, of course. Just to be Judgy McJudge, though, I can forgive ego in a director/choreographer more than misogyny in a writer. OTOH, though, Potter’s physical problems were over more of his life and less a product of self-destructive behavior. Oh, well, let ye without sin cast the first wagging finger…
One of the world’s biggest collectors of Alamo memorabilia is Phil Collins. Yes, that Phil Collins. Bet you didn’t know that! And Ozzy Osbourne, away from his hotel on a raging drunken spree, once was caught accidentally peeing on an Alamo statue. (By “accidentally,” I mean the Alamo part, not the peeing part.) Bet you didn’t know that either, although you aren’t, likely, surprised.
These fun factoids appear early on in Forget The Alamo: The Rise And Fall of an American Myth. It is a recent book by Bryan Burroughs, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, three Texas-born authors with backgrounds in history, journalism, war correspondence, and political consulting.
(I’ve read Burrough’s Barbarians At The Gate, about the 1980s hostile takeover of RJR Nabisco; in one memorable line, a top executive complains “is the fucking I’m getting worth the fucking I’m getting?”)
The book has essentially three sections:
What the Alamo was actually about
How the telling of its history changed with time
The debates over that history today.
They’re all fascinating, in different ways. The authors usually refer to themselves as “we,” and have no compunctions expressing their personal opinions about the story they’re telling. These opinions are sometimes very funny.
What’s more, and this was a real joy for me, the footnotes are all worth reading. For example, an American negotiator sent by John Quincy Adams to try and buy Texas from Mexico, a man named Joel Roberts Poinsett, got nothing… except for bringing back “a pretty Mexican flower, which proved so popular it was named for him; the poinsetta.” (In the spirit of these, this article has two short footnotes!)
The Alamo Was About Slavery and the Famous Heroes Were Jerks
After successfully freeing itself from Spanish colonial rule, Mexico set about abolishing slavery. Texas slaveowners didn’t want that. So they rebelled against the Mexican government, lost a battle at the Alamo, used that battle as a rallying cry, won independence, kept slavery, and joined America as a slave state. So much, so familiar.
Since I’m not from Texas, and never will be, I didn’t know much more about the story than that. As is usual with such things, it’s both far more complicated and far more mundane.
To start with, the migration of Americans into Texas. It began with a dispute over the Louisiana Purchase’s boundary and eventually became a matter of interest-vs-disinterest.
Texas, at the time, was something of a worthless hinterland to the Mexican government. About the only thing it was good for, it turned out, was cotton production. Americans looking to strike it rich in the slavery “business” had a whole new area to gobble up and torture people in!
Meanwhile, their presence helped keep down the indigenous population, which Mexico was perfectly happy to have Americans do.
Enter some particularly ambitious Americans who sought to make political names for themselves, several of whom have Texas cities named after them today.
But the fact that slavery was illegal in Mexico complicated this arrangement a bit. It was one thing for smaller-scale slaveowners to quietly go about their savagery. But larger plantations (with their illegal slave trade) were another matter.
Plus, the Americans brought quite a bit of racism with them (Surprise, surprise!) and thus weren’t always the best of neighbors. Additionally (as was the case with a lot of American expansion), some of the newcomers were plain jerks. They were escaping violent criminal charges, abandoned families, financial swindles gone bad, and so on. In other words, they were riff-raff.
Enter some particularly ambitious Americans who sought to make political names for themselves, several of whom have Texas cities named after them today. When Mexico sought to compromise on the slavery thing (a timed phaseout or the freeing of slaves after a certain age), these would-be Presidents and Generals became increasingly unwilling to negotiate.
Once they grew too militant, Mexico sent a small army to deal with the annoyance, led by General Santa Anna, a man with ambitions of his own. (There was also some suspicion on the part of Mexico that America had backed the rebellion, which was untrue. Mostly.)
In an act of supreme arrogance, the rebel Texans decided to make a military stand at a small former Catholic mission in San Antonio. (The authors here describe it as such a terrible military location, there was no chance of defending it from Santa Claus, much less Santa Anna.)
This hubristic folly had drawn several of the famous names who’d slouched to Texas in failure, such as Jim Bowie (drunk) and Davy Crockett (booted out of office). Although the Texans were clearly outnumbered, their incompetent, syphilitic general, William Travis, stubbornly refused to surrender and were quickly wiped out once the battle began.
Those who were captured (some while trying to escape) were shot. Santa Anna was a pissy jerk himself.
The wipeout and rallying cry “Remember the Alamo” helped Texas raise more volunteers. Santa Anna got cocky, the Mexican army was defeated for the time being. (Of course, Mexico didn’t accept this, and later fought a war with the US Army over the matter.) So much for the minor battle of the Alamo.
Constructing A Texas Origin Myth
The story from here becomes familiar to most students of how history gets mangled, and is summed up in a famous line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” (The movie starring John Wayne, who played a huge role in perpetuating myths about the Alamo.)
The real facts behind the battle, more-or-less known at the time (insomuch as a battle with no survivors on one side can be known), start to be distorted for various reasons. Families of the American dead wanted their loved ones to be regarded as great heroes. Authors wanted to sell more copies of sensationalized war or western writings. Many Texans wanted to use the Alamo as an inspirational “good prevails” story during their involvement in the Civil War and during their ongoing dispossession of indigenous land.
Also, of course, there is the post-Reconstruction era, when the reality of a treasonous war to preserve slavery was redefined all over the South (and not just the South) as an idealistic “lost cause” of freedom from tyranny — while subjugating the constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms of former slaves and their descendants.
An organization, Daughters of the Republic of Texas, was formed, and among its other goals, set about sanctifying/preserving/restoring (and “improving”) the Alamo historic site.
What really seems to have made the Alamo into a holy shrine for (Anglo) Texans was a series of comics printed from 1926 to 1928 in a Dallas newspaper, and called “Texas History Movies.” Hugely popular and hugely racist, the series was eventually printed as a book, copies of which were donated (courtesy of an oil company) to every Texas seventh-grader for several decades.
Still, while the story and site (neither of which bore much resemblance to the original) became part of Texas’s origin myth, it wasn’t of much interest beyond the borders of that peculiar state. Until the Cold War happened. And television. And the movies!
The Kiddiefication Of The Alamo
Walt Disney wanted to produce kid-friendly Rah Rah ‘merica programming. His studio’s first mega-success along these lines was a miniseries about Davy Crockett, which spawned a Crockett craze among children and bore absolutely no relation to reality whatsoever. (Disney made a fortune merchandising Crockett tie-in crap, and cheated star Fess Parker out of every penny for it.)
The third episode concluded with Crockett dying heroically at the Alamo, fighting off swarming Mexican monsters with his empty rifle. In fact, he was captured and executed — something used to inspire Texas soldiers in the remainder of the war.
Then in 1960, John Wayne’s ferociously expensive, ferociously fictitious The Alamo was released. (Although historians agree that the Alamo set built for the film was amazingly accurate.)
As the authors here put it, there’s no “sense of the real men; Bowie the con artist, Travis the preening politician, Crockett the washed-up politico … women are baubles, madonnas, or whores”.
Teen idol Frankie Avalon is given a song. No portion of the Texas origin myth is left unused, making the film a staggeringly boring three hours long. It was a hit, although not a hugely profitable one given the cost. No doubt it became a Gone With The Wind for Texas; items from the movie shoot are still displayed at the Alamo site today.
A young Phil Collins was deeply moved by the film. Another young musician, David Jones, was moved by the Crockett TV show. When Jones began to receive some notice in his music career, he changed his name to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees — he picked a character from the Disney series, and so David Jones became David Bowie. (But at this point his part in the Alamo story ends.)
The (Partial) Deconstruction Of A Myth
“Bowie the con artist, Travis the preening politician, Crockett the washed-up politico…”
In the 1970s and 1980s, American historians began to re-examine some portions of US history which had been overlooked, or so heavily biased to emphasize American exceptionalism that the stories bore little resemblance to reality.
For example, why were the heroes always white males, and why were the true horrors of indigenous genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow ignored?
These historians began publishing books and articles puncturing pieces of the Alamo myth. Few drew much attention until a childhood Disney buff named Jeff Long set about working on an Alamo book which he hoped would be “just the old hoary tale jazzed up for a modern readership.” (Long’s words.)
Simply going through the available archival material blew his mind. The book took six years to finish and involved research in both Texas and Mexico. Long worked odd construction jobs to pay for it.
Long published Duel of Eagles in 1990, which the authors here describe as “so over the top, it was as if he were physically stomping on everything written before.” While attempts at rethinking Alamo history usually caught some regional flack, Long’s book drew the attention of “professors, journalists, and amateur historians” nationwide. (Long, naturally, received death threats.)
Several works along these lines followed, and before long the Alamo’s legacy was another weapon in the culture war — especially in Texas, one of that war’s new epicenters.
One such battleground was the fight over school textbooks. (James Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me has described how textbook publishers frequently consider the sensitive feelings of Texas conservatives when composing their books, as one false move can lose sales in that entire state.)
Should textbooks include the names of Tejanos who died defending the Alamo? How should they describe the white “heroes” who did? Everything’s bigger in Texas, and the outraged wailings of “revisionist history” are as well.
Enter Phil Collins
As mentioned, Collins was a longtime Alamo fan, and in the mid-1990s, his then-wife bought him a receipt for items purchased by John W Smith (the last messenger to leave the Alamo with a plea for reinforcements, and later a mayor of San Antonio).
Collins began a collection of Alamo-related documents. He even entertained the notion that he may have been Smith in a past life. Over the following years, his collection grew to include such items as weapons and uniforms from the battle. He also established relations with antiquities dealers who began holding prized finds for this important (and wealthy) client.
Getting along in years, Collins approached the Alamo people, and decided to donate his massive collection — by then one of the world’s largest — to the state of Texas. For free. Alamo fans rejoiced; Collins was given several honorary titles by the city and the state.
Collins’s only request was that somebody build a proper museum to display them in. The Alamo as it was, mismanaged for years by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (long underfunded and a little corrupt), had become a fairly tacky tourist trap in bad need of repair. (It even has a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not wax museum.)
Everyone agreed that the site and the collection deserved a first-rate museum upgrade. The Texas General Land Office (now in charge of the site) set about raising money from state and city governments, nonprofit historical societies, and private donors (1). In 2015, the GLO announced plans for a full $450 million overhaul.
But the GLO’s commissioner made a few people mad about the plans. That commissioner’s name? George P Bush.
George Prescott Bush and Dan Patrick
As you can guess from the name, George P Bush is another in a long line of political halfwits whose career originates from a long-ago family fortune.
The son of inspiring presidential candidate Jeb, he followed family tradition by becoming first a corporate lawyer, then seeking some — any — political office, finally settling on GLO commissioner. (The GLO is primarily responsible for managing mining rights on public land in Texas, about the most Bush-y job a Bush could do.)
With staunch conservative credentials and some Hispanic heritage on his mother’s side, Bush is considered quite the rising star in Texas politics.
What was Bush’s Alamo boo-boo? What got anyone upset about a brand-new Alamo spending plan? Bush proudly boasted that the plan would involve a “reimagining” of the Alamo site.
Now, this is simply the kind of thing any politician will say when announcing a major urban spending project, be it a new convention center or sports stadium or whatever. It means “more money will mean more tourists will mean more money for us all.”
But, with “historical revisionism” a dirty word among Alamo traditionalists, some saw “reimagining” as the reddest of red flags. Bush had said the reimagined Alamo “can be a centerpiece for taking on the controversial issue of the past.” Guess how fast he’d walk even that mild statement back? Hint: he’s got every bit the spine of his political relatives!
Outraged traditionalists claimed that Bush was in the pocket of revisionists (no). That Bush wanted to rename the site Misión San Antonio de Valero (no, although that was its original name). And that, horror of horrors, Bush wanted to move a cheesy sentimental 1940 statue from the site and replace it with one of Santa Ana (no).
(Oh, and that statue, by the way? It’s the statue Ozzy pissed on.)
Jumping into the fray was Dan Patrick. A former far-right talk-show host who currently serves as Texas’s Lieutenant Governor, he has long been a favorite on the goose-loony circuit. Texas Monthly called him a bully and ideologue and the worst state senator back in 2013 when he was just considering a lieutenant governor run. He’s only gotten worse.
In the spirit of such Texas luminaries as Ted Cruz, Patrick’s a total fraud posing as a staunch super-Christian in order to win faithful support from the easily-duped.
Patrick, correctly, sensed that Bush was a fellow empty suit with boundless political ambition, and decided to use the Alamo “reimagining” line to assault him from the right.
Bush responded by immediately swerving to the right himself (becoming, naturally, an outspoken Trump supporter). Bush survived re-election to GLO commissioner. Patrick remains the lieutenant governor. And no doubt the future sparks will fly. Somebody’s got to be the Holy Christian Emperor of a future one-party American theocracy!
And gee, all this because a nice (2) soft-rock English singer tried to donate his beloved Alamo collection to Texas.
Oh, and it turns out there’s just one more problem with that…
Much Of The Collins Collection May Be Fake As Hell
Phil Collins even entertained the notion that he may have been John W Smith in a past life…
The authors of Forget The Alamo are careful to call themselves historiographers, not historians. They’re summarizing the work done by other historians, and adding some bits widely reported in the Texas press and elsewhere (such as the criticism’s of Bush and the GLO). But here they did some original research of their own.
They read Collins’s massive coffee-table book about his prized collection. They talked to the antiquities dealers who sold Collins most of his collection. And the dealers’ description of how they “found” so many Alamo items belonging to legendary figures seemed a bit sketchy. One repeatedly described using a little degreaser on antiques to discover the initials of famed Alamo dead on swords, knives, etc.
When the collection was donated to the GLO, so were some of the “proofs” of their authenticity. Through a lawsuit, the authors were able to get a look at those proofs. Some were incredibly strange, such as a forensic psychic who said of a knife supposedly belonging to James Bowie that “there is an overwhelming sadness associated with the knife.”
Other collectors in the field and Alamo antiquities buffs seemed to agree that many of the most high-profile items (you know, the ones most likely to get a prominent museum display) have dodgy authentication at best. Some could have been at the Alamo — yet likely, weren’t. Others appear improbable to have been even from the same period at all. A few outlier critics claim a majority of the collection is fake.
Not that Collins (who, after all, is donating this stuff for free) is knowingly pawning off bogus goods as real. Nor even, that the dealers who sold them to him were knowingly duping a rich hobbyist. What does seem likely is that at least a few people in that acquisition chain weren’t exactly diligent about establishing authenticity beyond a reasonable doubt. And Collins, who is in poor health, doesn’t want to talk about it. (His polite email to the authors mentions “personal stuff” keeping him busy. You don’t get much more “personal stuff” than aging-related medical maladies).
All of this, as well as the political debates surrounding the Alamo renovation itself, has put the project on hold past the start date Collins requested as a condition for his donation. Not to mention the 2020 police murder of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, which inspired strong worldwide pushback against monuments to former slaveholders. San Antonio is less than 30% Anglo; and less so every year.
The Whole Story Will Go On
Of course, many of the issues mentioned here are nowhere near resolution. The authors have an update on some of them (and some of the criticism of their work). In the book’s epilogue of sorts, they write:
It’s said that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it, but there are plenty who remember the Heroic Anglo Narrative and want to endlessly repeat this version of history, seeing themselves under siege by tyrannical rule to take away their guns or commit any number of cultural atrocities …
What must change is the story we tell about the Alamo. To learn the real lessons of the Texas Revolt, we need to learn the truth about Bowie, Travis, and Crockett… all three men did believe in liberty and self-determination, and Travis was one hell of a letter writer. They fought for freedom, just not everybody’s freedom … If we shift the frame just a little bit, the whole story of the Alamo is transformed. And, frankly, a lot more interesting.
If this essay seems long to you, go read Twitter! But seriously, it’s only as long as it is because I can’t recommend this book enough. I’ve summed up some of the major points, yet there’s so much more. More detail, more horror, more humor. Tales of enough greed, corruption, cruelty, and stupidity to fill a long fiction novel (or the current Texas state legislature).
I can imagine Jim Hightower laughing his ass off at it — and Molly Ivins too, in the Texas afterlife, sipping a Lone Star. Get it from your library — heck, all three copies in the San Antonio library are currently checked in, so you won’t even have to wait if you live there!
(1) One of these, billionaire Red McCombs, is well-remembered by Minnesota sports fans for his tenure as owner of the NFL Vikings team. McCombs repeatedly threatened to move the team, possibly to San Antonio, if he were not given a new stadium. After a preseason game played in San Antonio drew approximately zero ticket-buying interest, McCombs sold the Vikings to a New Jersey real-estate developer who promptly got the new stadium. You can read about that process here!
(2) One time, Aimee Mann joked at a concert that her potential Oscar speech for the Magnolia film score would be “Phil Collins sucks.” Newsweek tried to make it a big deal. In this 2000 interview, Mann says “I sent him a fax that said I was just joking, and that Newsweek is a bunch of morons. So I ran into him backstage, and he was really nice. They had a little meeting — him and his people — and decided I was joking.”
My father was a cruel, unkind man. I say “was,” because I haven’t had anything to do with him for decades, but the last I heard, he’s still alive. Of us four brothers, one after another decided “screw this guy,” and, each time, the next youngest would declare, “You monster! How can you be so awful to Dad!” Okay, your turn! The youngest brother tried hardest, and ended up changing his last name in disgust.
There were, needless to say, some mental illness issues with Dad, and that’s putting it quite mildly. Most of that stuff he had no control over. However, many people with mental illness struggles aren’t mean to their kids. I think it’s why all of us brothers tried maintaining a grownup relationship with him — to try and figure out what parts of his cruelty were due to illness, and what parts were “he’s just an asshole.” This turns out to be an unsolvable mystery.
A Horrible Teacher at Anything Else
Dad tried to get me into golf — it was sort of his dream as a kid to be a professional golfer. But with me, it just didn’t take. Believe me, I tried my prepubescent ass off. I read golf magazines, I practiced hitting little golf whiffle balls in the backyard. I was just annoyed by real golf. It’s too frustrating. The thing doesn’t go where you want it to. And if I want to walk around for hours chasing some shit in the trees, well, there’s free nature trails for that. (I was reasonably decent at putting.) Dad was hugely critical of every bad swing.
Even baseball “catch-and-throw with the old man” was terrible! If I made a bad throw he couldn’t reach, he’d intone horribly, “Go pick it up.” (I should note, here, that he never hit us kids, so far as I know. His used more of a menacing, give and withdraw approval approach.) And forget about underhand-toss batting practice. Miss a pitch, get yelled at. Fun! At least pros get paid for this.
So I Got A Car
At age 13, 14, or so, I got whomped on my bicycle by a car running a red light. I saw pictures later; the car was absolutely thrashed. Hood, windshield, roof, totally mangled. And I didn’t have one bone broken!
I got some pretty severe road rash, though. That’s when you skid on pavement for 20 feet. That shit’ll rip the hell outta your skin. It’s not life-threatening, but they do have to clean the asphalt bits out of your skin at the hospital. They use, essentially, a surgical Brillo pad. Does that hurt on bleeding, grated-off skin? Take. A. Guess. (Oh, I do have one asphalt bit still embedded in that leg. It’s not coming out until the worms get to it.)
I screamed my lungs out. Yet, they have to do it. At one point, they brought in a doctor from another part of the hospital. He yelled, “I’ve got a guy who got stabbed! You need to quiet down!” So I did. Pretty awful, though.
After this, the car driver’s insurance company sent a person over to our house to offer a “pain and suffering” settlement. And, being a teenage idiot, I took the first offer: $1300 or so. Now, of course, I’d say “add some zeroes.” But I didn’t know.
However, it was enough money for me to, a few years later, buy a car! What kid doesn’t want a car! Okay, they can smash you on your bike, but cars are awesome!
The car was a broke-ass old VW Bug; bright orange, with a heating system that had essentially one setting, “on.” It took forever to warm up inside, then got so hot you would have to strategically crack open the windows. Yet, it still worked. Good enough for me.
Some random bright orange VW bug
Dad the Great Driving Teacher
Then, though, having bought a car, I needed to learn how to drive it. Mom, who was kind, had never driven a car. (Dad knew that allowing her to get a license would mean she could get a job and flee the marriage, which is precisely what happened later.) So it’d have to be Dad. I figured it would be hell.
Surprise! He was an outstanding driving instructor. The Bug was a stick shift, which is a really tricky thing to learn. At the start, I couldn’t even get it into first gear. (Cars have gears; computer brains mostly shift them now; before that, shifting was a challenge.) Dad was, astonishingly, super-patient. “You’re getting better! Just a little bit less on the clutch, a little bit more on the gas, you can do it.”
Blew my mind. Where’d this guy been my entire damn life?
Years later, when my youngest brother was dealing with Dad, well, he didn’t have a license. And I told him, “Get Dad to teach you. He’s a monster at most things but he’s a really nice driving instructor.” The brother wouldn’t go there. I don’t fault him for one second. He’s 34 now, and I think he’s still never gotten a driver’s license.
A while back, me and Mrs James were shopping for a used car, and the dealer was trying to pawn off some really terrible lemons. As dealers will do. I pointed at one and said, “what’s the problem with this thing? For the years and mileage, it’s hugely underpriced.”
The dealer replied, “Oh, it’s a stick. And nobody knows how to drive a stick anymore.” Well, I do! Thanks, Dad!
Mt Hood
Stick Shift On A Cliff
The minute after I passed my driver’s license test at 16, I asked Dad, “Can I drive the car?” His response was “You’re licensed to do so, of course you can.”
We took the whole family in that little Bug to various Oregon scenic places. Ocean, desert, whole bit. Also Mount Hood.
If you don’t know Mount Hood, it’s a quite pretty mountain maybe 75 minutes outside Portland. It has an old, elegant ski lodge, built with New Deal funding way back when. If you’ve seen the movie The Shining, you’ve seen that lodge and mountain. (The story’s placed in Colorado, and the interiors are a studio set wherever, but the lodge and mountain are Oregon.)
Well, the parking lot (back then, at least) had spots with no barrier right on a cliff. Not much of a cliff, 20 feet or so, and more of a very steep hill. (This is what it looks like.) Still, don’t want to drop a car over it with your parents and kid brothers inside.
And I thoroughly panicked. I couldn’t get the damn Bug into reverse. Every time I thought I had, it was actually in neutral. So I’d ease off the brake and clutch, push on the gas pedal, and the car would just inch forward towards the cliff. Slam the brake, try it again. A few more inches in the wrong direction.
At this point, Mom and my brothers were screaming bloody murder. But Dad? Completely calm. “You can do it, son.” And, right! We did not drive off a cliff at a Stephen King movie location! Yaaay!
Dad Stole My Car
Mom booted Dad’s butt to the pavement when I was 17. Happiest moment in my life to that point. I was walking home from the school bus stop, saw the reflections of police lights, and fantasized, “Oh, wow! What if that was Dad?!” Just a dream. Then, it was real.
He was handcuffed and being put in the cop car. Screaming, “You can’t take my first-born son away from me!” Maybe not, asshole; but they can sure take you away from me.
Anyhoo, that VW Bug was bought in Dad’s name, to lower insurance costs. And, once the whole divorce mess settled out, he grabbed it. Nothing I could do.
I was ticked off at this for a few years. “Dude, that’s my car! I didn’t see you in no hospital room getting ripped-up skin scoured with a Brillo pad!” But, after a while, I let it slide. The guy has enough problems. And at least he was no longer one of mine.
Dad’s Explosive Visitation
One time, though, when I was home from college, he drove the Bug over. (Mom was very careful about visitation; it was only allowed when she could keep an eye on things.) Dad came in and started chatting with my kid brothers. The Bug starts beeping its horn. I turn to Dad, ask him, “Since when has this car started spontaneously honking its horn? Did you leave the keys in the steering wheel?”
He hadn’t. It was just a terrible electrical glitch with the car battery.[1] This led to the whole car catching on fire, almost immediately afterward. There was a huge ball of flame — the entire vehicle burned hard. (No, metal won’t burn at those temperatures, but seats and carpets sure will!)
Firefighters came and immediately threw flame retardant on it. This impressed me, as I wouldn’t have gone near the thing. Believe me, the entire apartment complex emptied out to watch that fire. It was the best show since Mount St Helens exploded.
Well, that’s good ol’ Dad. Car thief and car blower-upper. Terrible sports teacher. Excellent driving teacher.
Last I heard, he was in a Southern Oregon hemp commune signing over Post Office retirement checks to super-liberals so he can tell their kids how Satanic super-liberals are. He’s utterly insensible, so those kids have no clue what he’s rambling about. And this is, certainly, for the best.
[1] Editor’s note: this is one of the many struggles in the excellent film, Little Miss Sunshine.
The Resolute Desk. It’s the main desk in the Oval Office. Duplicated a zillion times on film and TV sets, it is immediately recognizable to everyone. (Well, that and the windows.) Let’s learn where it came from!
Search for the Northwest Passage
In the 19th century, every empire worth its salt was trying to find the Northwest Passage. What’s that? It’s an easier way of getting from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
The route south of Argentina has notoriously awful sailing conditions. Even today, it’s a rough ride for scientists headed for Antarctica.
Lewis and Clark were trying to find a river route for it. They failed badly, of course. Eventually, we found the solution of having lots of workers die from malaria digging through Panama. But this was before then.
England Loses Two Ships
England sent two ships to explore the waters north of Canada: the HMS Erebus (named for a mythical figure in Hell) and HMS Terror (named after the English word for “terror”). Sailors are superstitious sorts, as a rule, so those aren’t great ship names.
Both ships got frozen in sea ice. Some Inuit oral history suggests that the desperate sailors went all Donner Party. Whatever happened, they didn’t come back.
There’s a brilliant fictionalized TV show about this, called The Terror, in which everyone dies horribly. The star, Jared Harris, is also in the brilliant TV show Chernobyl, which has equally gruesome deaths. It’s Mr Harris’s thing, so it seems. (His dad was in Unforgiven, where most everyone dies — but via standard means and after Harris’ character escapes. There’s no radiation sickness or Death Murder Polar Bears.)
England Almost Loses a Third Ship
The captain of the Terror had a proper English wife, so she pushed for a search-and-rescue operation. It was launched on the HMS Resolute (better name). It also got stuck in Arctic sea ice, but the crew was saved.
America, which was just then building up its own navy, and had unsuccessfully tried to invade Canada a few times, decided to be gracious and permitted the Resolute to be returned to England. Because the thing could still float, barely.
It gets back to England, and it’s basically only worth salvaging for parts at this juncture. But Queen Victoria grasps the point of America’s gesture and responds in kind. They make a very beautifully wood-worked desk out of the Resolute. And they offer it to America as a gift, which we accept
Today, it sits in the Oval Office. (LBJ had it tour the country for a awhile after Kennedy was killed; Carter put it back in.)
So, that’s the Resolute Desk. Betcha thought the name was because Presidents made serious decisions at it. (I did!) Nope, it’s from scraps of a doomed boat looking for two other doomed boats, gifted to us in a geopolitical strategy move. But, hey, geopolitical strategy move is also where the Statue Of Liberty comes from. I’ll take it!
Afterword
The wreckage of the Erebus was discovered in 2014. Two years later, the Terror was discovered in better shape. Their exact locations have not been disclosed, but from what we know I calculate that they were roughly 40 miles apart. The sites have not been fully examined and there is hope that they will find written records.
From The Guardian, a generally reliable enough website, this article:
“Denmark tightens lockdown in north over mink Covid outbreak”
As a headline writer myself, I respect the craft. Please continue:
“Twelve people infected so far with new strain against which vaccines may be ineffective”
That’s what we people doing online publishing call the “dek”; it means “deck.” It’s a subheading.
We also call the lead the “lede.” Don’t ask why, these things go back centuries. Do you want to know why windows in ships are always called “portholes” and “deck” means floor? Not really, no.
Mink Apocalypse
An outbreak among farmed mink of a mutant form of Covid-19 with the potential to be resistant to future vaccines has led to the Danish government bringing in tougher lockdown measures in parts of the country.
The measures were announced following the discovery of a new strain of the disease in animals bred for fur in the country’s northern regions.
Twelve people in the Jutland region have been diagnosed with infection with the new strain, and municipalities in northern Denmark will impose restrictions on residents’ movements between regions.”
Now, this is some fine newscraft! Let me break down how we do it in the sports world:
“Tigers 7, Twins 4: Bullpen blows lead, player also rips head off baby”
With the dek:
“In a surprising finish, the Twins lose a key division game with an unusual ‘twist.'”
See! That’s how it’s done! Ya hook ’em, ya reel ’em in. Child’s play, really. If you’ve practiced it enough.
Now, the gist of the article is about some new strain of coronavirus which blahblahblah — nobody really knows nothing about. But it has spread between minks. And humans have gotten it, which means it might have been mutated into something even scarier.
So 15 million minks are going to be killed.
Welcome to Loveable, Liberal Denmark
I do know northern Denmark a little. I attended a lovely wedding there. It was between two naval officers, appropriately held on a ship. During a smoke break, and they have those at Danish weddings, we noticed something in the far distance that looked like a ship on fire. It was difficult to be sure, but it very much looked like a very large ship on very much fire. Some watchers muttered, “That’s a bad omen.” Seagoing people are into omens.
Did it turn out, that was a fire? Yes it did! Did that marriage last? No, it spectacularly did not!
But they did go on a honeymoon, which meant one of their friends I’d never met provided me a ride to the airport. He was a farmer and spent the 90-minute drive complaining about how large-scale agricultural companies were squeezing out family farms. It was the kind of thing I’m inclined to sympathize with, so I listened.
He never mentioned mink farming.
Oh Yes: Danish Mink Farming Is a Thing
Denmark actually leads the world in mink production. For comparison, the pro-fur-farming website, Truth About Fur, says there are 268 mink farms in America, producing 2.7 million pelts a year.
The number of affected farms in Denmark? Well over 1000, raising 16 million minks a year. They are legally required to share information and innovation concepts with each other. (Obviously, in this instance, it didn’t work out too well.)
They actually have pretty decent regulations on preventing animal cruelty, but by no means are most Danes vegan. They consume insane amounts of pork, for instance; I’ve never stayed in a Danish home where bacon or chops or pork burgers or pork hotdogs aren’t served at least once daily, sometimes in combination. They all had pork liverwurst in the fridge as a midnight snack, too.
And, valid concerns about animal rights aside, I’ve eaten all these items in Danish homes, and they were all delicious. I’m a guest; it would be rude not to. Even if you only take a little bite to compliment the cook.
The End of Danish Mink? And the Best Bar in the World?
This mass slaughter will, no doubt, greatly hurt the Danish mink industry, even though worldwide demand is likely to continue. (Why wouldn’t it? Rich people spending on ridiculous luxury goods is recession-proof.) Most likely, if usual agricultural economics hold, the smallest farms will have to sell out to ones with greater cash reserves.
In a way, it’s very much like what my post-wedding airport driver was complaining about – the little farms losing out to bigger ones. He probably meant pork or potatoes farms (Danes also eat a lot of potatoes), but in this case, it’s mink. You don’t have to approve of fur farming to root for the little farmer. Or the littler minks.
How’s the naval ex-wife? (That’s who we knew of the couple.) She’s fine, still in the navy, and lives in this teensy Northern Denmark town with probably the best, most wonderful bar I’ve ever been to in my life. Picture “Cheers,” but with sailors, and a lot of people quietly smoking and reading. The grill is in the back for anyone who wants to use it.
That’s shut down because of a lockdown due to the mink farming crisis. That’s sad but maybe it’ll survive; Denmark is better at supporting small businesses than we are.
The COVID mink did not survive, however. But hey, at least this article wasn’t about the US election. A friend of mine I sent The Guardian story to actually responded, “Thanks for the distraction.”
For years, I had this wicked little idea for a “reality show” called Libertarian Island. In it, we’d drop prominent free-market types on a deserted island, and let them fight to the death. Like The Hunger Games with uglier participants and more cannibalism.
Rush would get killed first, as he has the most meat on his bones. The Koch brothers would form an alliance with Scott Walker, then eat him. Sarah Palin would, ironically, get trampled by a moose. Newt Gingrich would contract cancer and divorce himself. I’m not sure who would win, but Dick Cheney’d be best at shooting into people’s faces.
Unbeknownst to me, there’s been a libertarian think tank that actually wants to create their own floating island. Not for murder (well, not of the rich), but as the ultimate free-market utopia. They’re called the Seasteading Institute, as in like homesteading, on the ocean. (Phonetically, it makes me think of some chic new birthing procedure.)
Apparently, for a while the idea gained real traction among Silicon Valley types, no doubt dreaming of being surrounded by great minds like themselves. (Peter Thiel of the Valley is a major investor, and a major blowhard.) Yet they lost interest (perhaps sensibly realizing they already get every concession they want from America’s political parties).
Happily for fans of really crazy ideas, the project is now back on. The Seasteading people are in negotiations with French Polynesia (islands containing Tahiti, Pago Pago, and other places Marlon Brando lived to be weird).
This would appear to make sense from the Polynesian standpoint; it brings flights to their airports, money to their economy, and some cool stuff to wash up onshore when an eventual typhoon or tsunami wrecks the seasteaders.
A Study in Silliness
I still doubt it can happen. (Why spend all that startup cash when you can just bank in Panama?) Yet the effort they’re putting into it is impressive.
Particularly fun is this academic-style PDF, presented at a conference in the Bahamas. Unless the conference featured peer review, it’s not really an academic paper, but it adds a little intellectual patina. Like having impressive book titles lying around that the owner never intends to read. (A suggested example for conservatives is Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Whine.)
The paper is full of silly pseudo-terminology. Libertarian ideology is “public-choice theory.” (For rich people.) “Constitutional states” are those with, um, actual rules, which are always doomed to failure. (For rich people.) “Mobile citizens”? Rich people. (The authors praise that laboratory of “competitive government” innovation, feudalism.)
Free Market in People
This passage is my favorite:
The European settlement of North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries shows this dynamic at work. The open space of this frontier allowed many new jurisdictions to be formed. Colonies, some of which were explicitly for-profit enterprises, had a great deal of independence and varied in their approach to governance. With an abundance of land and a shortage of people, colonies needed to attract residents to survive and grow. Settlers were comparatively mobile and good rules would give a colony an advantage in the competitive struggle for citizens. Churches and various culturally-specific governance providers added to the diversity, and the result was many new entrants into the governance market competing for citizens.
Nothing like genocide and forced labor camps to make the “governance industry more competitive.” You get the sense that if an extinction-size meteor were heading towards Earth, these people would be arguing for regulatory cuts.
Real Governmental Problems
To be fair, the authors do have some good (if common) sense in their criticism of existing governments:
When the role of individual interests in choice are reduced, expressive concerns are even more likely to dominate than is the case in workaday politics.
My monster-to-human translator decodes that as “voters who feel powerless make emotional choices instead of logical ones.” True enough — but Thomas Frank says it more readably.
Enforcement of constitutional promises is usually left to governments themselves, leaving them relatively free to break these rules, either explicitly or through liberal interpretation.
Again, old news.
Real Villains
Democracies are always subject to the risk of regulatory capture — rule by the very organizations they are supposed to be subjecting to law. This was a favorite argument of Milton Friedman.
It shouldn’t come as any shock that one of the authors here is Milton’s grandson, Patri. Naturally, Gramps was more concerned with labor unions and taxes than he was with corporate malfeasance, and so when Patri mentions “special interests,” it’s not hard to guess who he has in mind.
One Little Problem — How the Heck Can It Work?
How is this all to be paid for? The magic of the market, naturally. Investors will buy their own floating houses, easily detachable from the Hive if they don’t like how it’s working. (And go … where? To a houseboat community in America? Warning: vermin issues.)
What will power the economy? The authors have some ideas, including aquaculture and medical tourism “enabled by cheap labor.” Well, if you don’t have money for cancer surgery in America, you certainly don’t have the money for tickets to Tahiti.
I suppose they could specialize in experimental treatments for the desperate. And that perennial favorite of rich folks — black-market organ trafficking.
That “cheap labor” line is no surprise — conservatives have loved it forever. But it is telling of a major problem with the model. Cheap labor means a workforce. They have to live somewhere. You’re not going to give them their own fancy detachable houses, as they might detach. They also might want to organize. Which means paying for a goon force, which means taxes.
And we haven’t even discussed military protection yet. Let’s say the floating island is highly popular. What’s to stop a single warship from showing up and demanding a ransom, or threatening to sink the island? Well, for that you need a military alliance of some kind. They’re not going to provide that service for nothing.
So the Seasteaders would need a government and constitution and taxes — or something pretty much the same, if labeled differently. (A “freedom fee”?) Why not just go live in a touristy tax shelter and open some hotel there? It would cost less.
The Ayn Rand Fantasy
These are dreamers, my friends. If you look at their board members, you see a lot of young faces. They’re gonna change the world!
You also see the usual libertarian interest groups. Drug legalization types, gay rights folks, hedge fund managers, Big Ag executives, right-wing think tank members, etc.
These are people who’ve swallowed the Norquist Kool-Aid; the only reason conservative policies haven’t created earthly paradise is, naturally, that pro-business trends worldwide haven’t gone far enough.
It’s the Ayn Rand fantasy. If you only achieve perfect “freedom” for those who can afford it, their brilliance will shower humankind with its blessings. War, famine, global warming, all shall be solved through “market innovation.” (Forgetting that markets are profiting quite handsomely off all three.)
It’s the supreme arrogance of true believers, and ultimately no different from the religious fanaticism that justifies terrorism. Except that it kills far more people.
Best of Luck!
In any case, I hope this project is pursued for years to come. It strikes me as a harmless way for rich idiots to lose their money, which is never a bad thing. Maybe someone can talk President Trump into investing.
He can slap his name on the organ-dealing hospital. And when his sign washes ashore, it can grace some charming Polynesian tiki bar.
Thought I might do this like a sports game, I’ve done a few of those. Here it is.
Pre-Game
I’ve been to this place before, with Mrs James. I think for the Iowa caucus returns (that wretched clusterfuck). It’s overwhelmingly white, but that’s just the scene at Twin Cities microbrewery bars. Good luck finding a non-honky at any of these places (and I’ve been to plenty).
The Crowd
The mix tends to be late-20s and early-30s types, either artists beginning to realize that Most Art Don’t Pay Shit, or low-level office drones on the verge of marriage, house, and kids. (Half these people could be clip art for an article titled “10 Best Deals at IKEA.”)
It’s a crowd that’s worried about their future, and this is a good thing — you don’t want to be around these types who also brag about their brilliant lives. Those sorts are vile, and their children will need lots of therapy.
The Venue
This place used to be a factory. It made labels for Hershey bars and such until that got outsourced to wherever. You can still smell the machine oil in the hallway leading to the bathrooms. That smell doesn’t go away with a coat of paint.
It feels like the right location for a Sanders party. Where were the Biden people?
Where the Bidens Are
I looked this up. The Biden people had their Super Tuesday party at a Minneapolis bar kitty-corner from the Catholic Eldercare nursing home. I’m not familiar with that bar or that facility, but I must say: well done, Biden staffers.
The bar’s food menu features a burger that has “Irish whiskey BBQ sauce, with sharp cheddar, fried onion rings, and lettuce.” That’s so beautifully disgusting, I’d probably enjoy eating it. Although you’d lose the virtues of sharp cheddar by dousing it in BBQ sauce (minor quibble).
The menu has items in “$13.00” format, which is right and proper. Never go to a place where the menu has prices listed as “13” without the dollar sign or cents amount. Those are where the Happy Yuppies fester. If the fries with that “Irish Whiskey” burger have potato skins on, this would qualify as a decent bar.
In-Game
Showtime: 8:30. The place is fucking packed. Less young yuppie crowd than before, quite a few people my age or older. Some black people, too. More than one table playing “Magic: The Gathering.” It feels like you could get a serious Kirk-vs-Picard debate going pretty easily, or even a discussion of “Doctor Who” episodes. These people are definitely nerds. My kind of people.
Colorado and Bloomberg
Colorado is called for Sanders. Polite applause. I’m guessing not a lot of Air Force Academy alums here. Certainly, most have been to Mile High Stadium, in the broadest sense.
Jesus H Cracker Crisper, does Mike Bloomberg look like a reanimated fucking corpse. DNC chair Tom Perez isn’t much better. Those two make me nervous my delicious juicy brain is uncovered.
Wolf Blitzer appears to be a live human, albeit one who’s overindulged on juicy delicious brains. Watch that chocolate sauce, Wolf! You gotta be able to fit under the Baghdad hotel room table! (1991 reference.)
Andrew Yang on CNN singing the praises of Bloomberg, “People think of him as a Wall Street guy; he’s a tech guy. He’s like a spaceship…” Oh, fart me.
Bloomberg has gotta be done, right? He ain’t winning shit, he’s just splitting the “electability” vote. At least I won’t have to watch his goddamn ads anymore.
Texas and Sanders
Texas called for Biden. Place is starting to get loud. People are clapping along to the applause lines in Bernie’s Vermont victory speech. My God, when he mentions healthcare as a human right, I’m clapping too. That and having opposed Iraq War get the most response here. (Climate change a very distant third.)
Wow, is Sanders going hard after Biden in this speech?! Fair enough, Uncle Joe’s basically the Senator From Your Credit Card Company, that’s how completely corrupt Deleware politics are. It’s just unusual for Bernie to slag off a primary opponent.
Biden
When Biden begins to speak, I make my way to the bathroom. But just when I think I’m free, I find they’ve got his vapid babblings piped in. Coffee got deep-sixed because, tacos! Three tacos and a beer for $10, momma Fillmore didn’t raise any boys stupid enough to turn that down. Not when the cheapest beer is $6.
(I suppose I could have gotten one of the more expensive beers at the same price, but those have a higher alcohol content. Momma Fillmore didn’t raise any boys stupid enough to drive drunk more than once.)
Went to get more napkins from the taco serving table; what can I say, good hot sauce makes my nose runny. A bunch of people standing in the way were asking, “Have you heard Krystal Ball on MSNBC today?” Methinks my time here is almost done.
California
California is called for Sanders. This was it — the big prize. It’s what everybody was waiting for. A guy behind me yells, “Well, those other states suck anyway!” It gets a laugh, as this includes Minnesota.
People are packing up their board games. It’s pretty clear at this point that Biden will probably be the nominee, either on the first vote or second. I think he’ll lose to Trump.
Still, it’s not a funereal atmosphere. Virtues of an older, slightly less lily-white crowd. We’ve all experienced political disappointments before.
Post-Game
Losing Minnesota tells it all. It’s frustrating because it went hard for Sanders in 2016.
A volunteer asked if I’d sign some clipboard on the way out. Why? What’d be the point? Sanders won what he was predicted to win, nothing else. His shot at getting a majority of the delegates is over. It won’t happen.
The Future
The liberal local radio station I listened to on the way home said, “If you loved the endless nonsense about Hillary’s emails, you are going to absolutely adore what’s coming down about Biden and Ukraine.”
Also, Joe Biden smiling with those flashy teeth looks like a Monty Python animation. It has to be said, so I’m saying it.
Anyhoo, I thought this poster was really neat:
The bartenders liked it, too. It’s a fool who doesn’t listen to bartenders (or doesn’t tip 20%). If I’d had another beer, I might have proposed to one of them. Yes, I’m married, so what?
Utah went for Bernie, Minnesota didn’t.
I’m quite glad I didn’t have another beer.
And that’s about as much as I think I can write on the 2020 election right now.
Recently, a “private equity firm” (read: rich guys with money) bought most of the Gizmodo Media Group. That company includes several sites which aren’t hugely read, and several that are — such as The Onion, Jezebel, The Root, and Deadspin.
I assume everyone knows what The Onion is. Jezebel is a feminist website. The Root is an online magazine co-founded by Henry Louis Gates Jr, which focuses on African-American politics and culture. (It’s often surprisingly funny, even when dealing with instances of dumb racism that infuriate the writers.) Deadspin is about sports, so I’ve cited it often in my baseball-related writing.
History of Deadspin
The thing about Deadspin is that it was founded primarily for writers to make snarky remarks criticizing the fawning coverage of successful teams and athletes often featured on ESPN.
Over the years, it maintained the snarky tone but branched out to include skeezy team owners and politicians (and even annoying holiday catalogs) among its targets. The great Neil deMause, our nation’s top writer on terrible taxpayer-funded stadium deals, often wrote there.
Drew Magary, a former commenter on the site, eventually became an editor. He made the absolutely true observation that when readers say “just stick to sports” they don’t really mean it. What they mean is “don’t cover sports with” things some readers don’t want to know about, such as players who make statements against racism or war or shabby college athletic pay. (They’re fine with F-15s flying over the Super Bowl, and stories of players who saved kittens.)
Deadspin would cover “edgy” political sports stories, usually with a left-of-center attitude, and made quite a bit of money doing so.
The Beginning of the End
Enter the new owners — a group of old men who’d run almost every publication they’d ever been in charge of into the ground. (Well, except Forbes. Rich people will always like their Forbes.)
They started off by hiring their buddies, ignoring internal candidates, and several female staff complained about a particularly rude, dismissive tone. The first thing they did was tell all the writers they were expected to generate Moar Page Views[1], which is the besetting nightmare of anyone who puts thought and energy into their writing (yes, even jokes about sports take thought and energy).
Then they made it clear that this political nonsense was going to stop. Deadspin was going to be a series of click-through articles with virtually no content to distract readers beyond increasingly loud, pushy ads. The staff, naturally, fought back on this, arguing that the site was successful precisely because it drew an audience bored by what most dumb sports sites were churning out.
That’s when heads began to roll. First, Megan Greenwell, the editor-in-chief, left. Next, the deputy editor was fired, after refusing to “stick to sports.” One day later, in a truly brilliant move, the senior writers all posted non-sports, fully political articles each tagged “stick to sports” — then quit. Drew Magary quit the following day (the site’s masthead still features a direct link to his archived articles).
What you’re left with as a company might very well remain profitable, but it’s no longer any place anybody wants to work.
Jerk Boss Behavior
Similar complaints about editorial interference and overbearing new management prickiness have been made by editorial and writing staff at all of Gizmodo Media’s other websites, although none with an exodus so large as Deadspin‘s. Some former writers have noted, correctly, that this is exactly normal when private equity firms take over, well, anything (be it a successful website or struggling retail company).
But the most fascinating observation came from Deadspin‘s first high-profile escapee, aforementioned editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell, in her essay called “The Adults In The Room”:
The beginning of the end of my time here came when Spanfeller, my boss’s boss, threw a tantrum in an email to the entire company over a story our staff was reporting on his hiring practices, management style, and threats to editorial independence. He accused us of biased journalism based on the fact that we had sent an early draft to our media lawyer, which is standard journalistic practice. He accused me and a 26-year-old reporter who works for me — a wildly talented reporter who has as much integrity as anyone I’ve ever worked with — of trying to “shame and discredit others in our community” by reporting a story. When another colleague suggested in an all-staff meeting that his email was itself an attempt to publicly shame and discredit his employees, he doubled down, saying he is a transparent guy who says what he thinks…
After I submitted my resignation, explaining that the ongoing undermining from my bosses made it impossible for me to continue to succeed in my job, and that I believed I was putting my staff at risk by staying, the CEO threw a tinier tantrum. When I passed Spanfeller in the office a week after I put in notice, he let out a cruel barking laugh, as if he was disgusted to be in my presence. I said “you can speak to me, you know,” and he responded in a tone familiar to anyone who was ever bullied in middle school. “I don’t want to,” he sneered.
Greenwell’s point, of course, was that this sort of management style is common among those who consider themselves to be the hard-nosed realists, the grownups, the adults in the room. And that as a result, it drives talented people away. What you’re left with as a company might very well remain profitable, but it’s no longer any place anybody wants to work. (Sociopathic environments like Enron and the Trump White House have shown a spectacular propensity to ruin all they touch.)
That office interaction she describes also reminds me of a line from the show Deadwood: “Can’t shut up. Every bully I’ve ever met can’t shut his fuckin’ mouth.”[2]
Why Can’t Bullies Ever Shut Up?
The bully, by definition, always has to have the last word. Because anything else means admitting, or at least allowing others to believe, that you realize your behavior was wrong.
Now, are bullies the only ones who do this? Heavens, no. We’ve all done it in arguments with romantic partners, family members, online commenters, insurance company phone reps, whatever, when we felt we were in the right. Most of us, though, will eventually realize we’ve taken an argument too far and agree to disagree, retire to separate corners, drop the argument altogether — apologize if we really feel crummy about the whole thing.
A true bully will always have the last word. Even if they apologized before, they’ll nurture and nourish their interior anger at having had to do so, and take the first opportunity to resume the argument (if not with the individual in question, then anyone who seems an appropriate abuse double).
A true bully never really regrets behaving the way they do; they consider it their right as the more powerful person.
Most of the writers who quit are enormously talented and probably will have no difficulties finding new employment.
Why Are Many People In Power Some Degree Of Bully?
Orwell once stated that every bully is also a coward. I’m sure there is some truth to this. Any child services professional knows that bullies are often children who come from abusive homes. So do behavioral psychologists who study serial killers. That sort of bully might have a twisted manifestation of the impostor syndrome, where someone who has power over others constantly fears being found out as a fraud.
Some bullies, however, show no signs of ever having been mistreated in their lives. And that’s the kind I think those new Gizmodo Media owners are. They don’t fear being exposed for the frauds, or jerks, that they are. In fact, they assume such a thing will never happen. Not to them.
Power corrupts, as the saying goes, and if that’s not innate to human behavior it is certainly innate to our current form of capitalism. Everyone under capitalism is ranked by their status, in ways both big (investment portfolio size) and small (an office worker at an ad firm is considered “cooler” than a garbage hauler who makes more money).
A great many people who demean others because they have a higher status under capitalism are Orwellian coward-bullies; they’ll be rank suck-ups to those above them and full-on buttholes to anyone beneath. (As another saying goes, “shit rolls downhill.”)
Not the ones at our very top, though. Not the ones who know that no decision they make will ever harm their lives in any serious way. The super-rich almost never become poor — and only go to jail when they present a problem to the other super-rich. Since they have no need to fear any repercussions for their actions, why not be a rude jerk “who says what he thinks,” if you like? If it makes you feel really, really badass.
The Ultimate Fate Of Deadspin
Most of the writers who quit are enormously talented and probably will have no difficulties finding new employment. Craig Calcaterra at NBC Sports’s Hardball Talk does something very similar with his sportswriting. There’s lots of places a clever writer can go if they don’t want to write sports on the internet anymore. (One does need a solid resume for this, however.)
Could the site itself come back in some sort of different form? Ari Paul at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) thinks there may be, if writers band together to form some kind of employee-owned website. Paul admits such a venture would require considerable risk with very little early reward, yet suggests that “for independent media to survive… we’re at a breaking point, so it’s necessary.”
How about the site itself? No doubt it will continue in some sort of fashion, as it currently does, but I suspect it will never draw such a loyal following again. Especially not if the new owners continue amping up intrusive ad placements. Fans of witty sports/politics coverage can find other places to go, especially on podcasts and the like.
My guess is Deadspin‘s most consistent readers — you know, the ones advertisers like best — will drift away if they already haven’t fled in disgust. (God help these new owners if they push The Root‘s staff into mass escapage.)
Will it hurt the private equity investors at all? They might make less profit than they expected, but they’ll be fine. Even if they do take a loss, they’ll certainly blame someone besides themselves. Not every spoiled brat grows up to be a bully, but every rich bully is a spoiled brat.
[1] “Moar” is apparently who high young-people spell “more” online. Who am I to stand in the way? -FM
[2] The full quote is, “Can’t shut up! Every bully I ever met can’t shut his fuckin’ mouth. Except when he’s afraid.” It is said by Seth Bullock to George Heart in the final film.
Deadspin Logo by Deadspin – Univision, Public Domain.
The Kurds are an ethnic/linguistic stateless people living primarily in Eastern Turkey and northern Iraq (where they make up about 20% of the national population), northeast Syria and northwest Iran (where they make up roughly 10%).
Since 2012, northeast Syrian Kurds have formed an essentially independent government, based on libertarian socialist principles (non-authoritarian socialism). They’ve been able to do so by fighting off the ISIL faction in Syria’s civil war, and as such were loosely allied with American troops in the region.
On 7 October 2019, President Trump announced his plans to reassign these troops elsewhere in Syria. Since the troops will be taking their air support with them, this leaves Syrian Kurds vulnerable to invasion by Turkey. Turkish president/thug Recep Tayyip Erdoğan then indicated he would do so, using ethnic cleansing to clear a 20-mile deep area along the border as a new home for some of Turkey’s 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Attacks began almost immediately. Erdoğan has threatened to release the Syrian refugees into Europe if he is opposed (how he would do so is unclear).
Why Does Erdoğan Hate the Kurds?
There’s been resentment in Turkey towards its Kurdish minority for decades, roughly since a Kurdish separatist movement arose following the end of the Ottoman Empire. Authoritarian politicians, there as here, sporadically stoked this resentment in hopes of bolstering their own popularity. Repressions have included sometimes banning the language, deposing democratically elected Kurdish politicians, jailing and murdering leaders and journalists, and so on. After a failed 2016 coup attempt (probably started by members of the Turkish military), Erdoğan used the coup as an excuse to crack down even further on Kurdish civil society.
The mostly Christian Armenian population now coexists peacefully with the mostly Muslim Kurdish population.
And ethnic cleansing is not new to Turkey either; during WWI the government is estimated to have murdered between 700,000 and 1,500,000 Armenians (some Kurds helped, as is often the case with genocides: turn one oppressed minority against another). Some who fled for their lives ended up in Northeast Syria, where Armenian culture has existed for centuries. The mostly Christian Armenian population now coexists peacefully with the mostly Muslim Kurdish population. They are sure to be among hundreds of thousands at risk of losing their homes if Erdoğan fulfills his invasion plans. This has caused some prominent American evangelical leaders to criticize Trump’s strategic decision. (I don’t imagine they’ll stay mad for long.)
A Common Fate for American Proxy Allies
It’s not the first time America has used Kurdish fighters as allies then abandoned them to regional enemies; as Jon Schwarz observes, it’s more like the eighth, usually involving our obsession with ruling Iraq from Washington.
Nor are the Kurds our first recent foray in exploiting the self-determination dreams of a stateless people; we did it in Southeast Asia with the Hmong, who faced reprisals from the Laotian government after supporting the US side.
Thousands died in Laotian re-education camps or trying to reach refugee camps in Thailand. We allowed a handful to escape here. There are sizable Hmong populations in California and Minnesota today as a result.
Why Is Trump Doing This?
America has used Kurdish fighters as allies then abandoned them to regional enemies many times before.
Who knows. Trump apparently made the decision following a call with Erdoğan, one of the endless series of tyrants our would-be Mussolini admires.
Probably it’s a win-win-win scenario in his mind since it pleases a tyrant, pretends to be disentangling the US from endless Middle Eastern wars, and screws over suffering people. The US foreign policy establishment, naturally, considers any example of even slightly successful socialism to be a strategic threat, although it’s unlikely Trump pays any attention to such matters.
He did promise that “if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off-limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!).” No doubt Syrian Kurds feel better now. Besides, as William Rivers Pitt points out, Trump owns a hotel in Istanbul; “financially firebombing your own properties” is not a typical Trump move (except via his own stupidity and narcissism).
The Time I Needed Kurdish Tea
Which brings to mind a personal anecdote. I used to live above a Kurdish restaurant in Saint Paul (one of my favorite restaurants, ever). The building owner, a serious Trump-type super-jerk who inherited the building from his dad, was a slumlord and a sleaze; he’d hang out in the lobby at the beginning of every month to hit on college students moving in.
It was impossible to interact with this man without him being insulting and demeaning, making fun of you for having a low-rent apartment. One time he really got under my skin, I don’t remember with what. It was right before I was meeting someone at the restaurant.
And boy, did I vent. I let loose a tirade of f-bombs that would make a mobster blush. The place was pretty empty at the time, and I’m sure my voice was audible all the way in the kitchen.
The owner, a conservatively dressed middle-aged woman, came over to our table. “I think you need some Kurdish tea,” she said, and comped me a cup.
She was right! It absolutely calmed me down.
I’m happy to report that not long after I left that horrible landlord, the restaurant did, too. They’re doing fine in a new location nearby. Same owner, same excellent food, and the same tea.
How to Follow This Story in the US
Right now, there is major media coverage in the US, largely because a few Republican members of Congress have criticized Trump’s withdrawal decision. (This is presumably because of the risk to Armenian Christians and the possible resurgence of ISIL in the region, not concern over the Kurds.) This coverage is already beginning to fade; simple humanitarian crises don’t make our evening news.
One can, of course, trust Al Jazeera English to stay on the story and to see updates from Democracy Now! Economic anthropologist David Graeber (a strong supporter of the Kurdish socialist movement) has, for years, been providing links to coverage of anti-Kurdish repression on his Twitter feed, including many local news sources.
We should follow what happens because, in large part, we did it. And the great anti-war writer, ex-soldier Danny Sjursen sadly notes, betrayal is American foreign policy; “next time, and there will be a next time, don’t even think about trusting Uncle Sam. You’ll thank me later.”
Update
Since I wrote this, the Syrian Kurds have asked corrupt Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for military assistance resisting the Turkish invasion. Assad has virtually no support from anybody in Syria, but he does have lots of guns, probably half of which we sold him, if the history of US interventions is any guide.
Accepting Assad’s help means the end of a socialist Kurdish society in northeast Syria. And that’s correct; preventing murder or forced relocation is more important than protecting an experiment in actual democracy. It’s what Sjursen predicted, and it’s terribly sad. Why not actually flex our international muscle to support the locals, for once? Because we’re America, and that’s not what we do.
Trump claims the relocated soldiers will be returning home. He says, “Those that mistakenly got us into the Middle East Wars are still pushing to fight. They have no idea what a bad decision they have made.”
That’s a good campaign bit, but it’s utterly untrue — we’re not getting out of the Middle East, we’re just repositioning troops. Our war on and about that region never ends. Trump didn’t start it, Trump will not end it, and the suffering will continue, far away, to people about whom we couldn’t give a damn.
Like most of us, I am sick of hearing, reading, or talking about Trump. Friends will ask if I’ve heard of the latest outrage he’s committed, and I’ll usually answer, “No.” What’s the point? It’ll either be bigoted, ignorant, dishonest, or utterly destructive to civilization’s future. Usually all of the above.
It’s standard-brand Republican politics, as practiced for at least 40 years, but with more boorishness. Trump’s fans love him for these things, and I have no interest in trying to discern their motives. Some sort of psychological disorder, no doubt, and not a particularly compelling one.
So I was overjoyed to recently read that Trump has been pestering aides with questions about whether the United States can buy Greenland. That’s the kind of amusing, harmless stupidity I hope for from Republican administrations. Like Bush II mispronouncing “nuclear” or Reagan telling Gorbachev that if aliens attacked Earth, America and the USSR would work together.
Even better were the responses of semi-sane people. The Guardian had a fun article quoting Greenlanders and Danes, both politicians and average citizens. (Greenland is self-governing, but still technically a protectorate of Denmark, which provides what military defense the island requires.) Their comments ranged from the sensible (“Why on Earth would anybody want to be an American colony?”) to incredulous (“It must be a joke!”). A member of Denmark’s “nationalist” (read: anti-immigrant) party said, “It is definitive proof that [Trump] has gone crazy.” Again, that’s the far-right, anti-immigrant party speaking.
Note to Danes: it’s not a joke, and he’s been crazy for a looooong time before this.
What the Danes Have Told Me
We have several old Danish friends. (When Mrs James left for college, her father developed empty-nest syndrome and had a series of exchange students; she’s stayed in touch with the ones she liked best.) One spent a few years living in Greenland, another is a communications specialist in the navy.
The com specialist has observed in the past that Denmark and every other nation with Arctic territory maintains a naval presence in the Arctic Ocean. “Basically,” she said, “we just sail around and let each other know we’re there.” Reduced thickness of sea ice has made it possible for oil companies to put oil rigs in places where, before, the ice would crush them like tinfoil. As some of the sites oil companies are interested in lie well offshore, the question comes up of whom has sovereignty over which international waters. “I like it when we sail up north,” she told us. “It’s not so damn hot.”
The man who lived in Greenland left because he broke up with his girlfriend there. Besides, he said, he was drinking too much. The largest town has 17,000 people, and in smaller ones it’s common to stock up goods for the winter before basically hunkering down. If one’s relationship is going sour, there really isn’t much else to do but drink. (Rationing would be key here.)
His response to Trump’s proposal was the simple text message “Why?!”
Seriously, Why Would America Want Greenland?
Several writers have addressed this question, with varying levels of seriousness. A columnist covering European affairs for Bloomberg actually typed about “reviving the market in sovereign territories, which once made America great.” Brian Kahn, usually a environmental writer for Gizmodo UK, said the idea was “plainly, batshit,” but addressed some of the possible geopolitical advantages (world’s largest supply of freshwater, mineral deposits under a melting ice sheet, military location, etc.) My favorite was by Matthew Walther at MSN, who noted that Greenland is essential territory in the boardgame Risk:
So far the Danes are insisting that they are not interested in a sale. We should remind them that they are spending $600 million a year to subsidize the fantasy that the most remote part of North America is actually European. We should also offer them an absolutely ridiculous amount of money — paying off their entire national debt, a match of whatever their GDP is for the next 20 years, the rights to the next five Super Bowls, Trump’s second-favorite son changing his name to “Erik.” As far as the Greenlanders themselves go, they could get the Armageddon deal: no taxes ever, for the rest of their lives.
No one is going to feel bad about the price tag in 50 years when Helge Damsgaard and her Sirius Patrol shield-mate Kaj Knudsen successfully defeat Russian forces off the coast of Uunartoq Qeqertaq armed with only a pair of laser axes.
Right you are, sir. Yet, just to pretend, let’s look at the “serious” reasons one-by-one.
Seriously, These Reasons Make No Sense
Mineral deposits/oil reserves: Greenland does have these. So why would Denmark have any conceivable reason to sell? They’re a perfectly wealthy country, with a diversified economy (and a better standard of living than that of most Americans) — they don’t need our money. Their asking price would be well what the territory is worth and more; it’d be cheaper for us to just bomb some suffering nation and steal their stuff.
Strategic military location: we already have bases in Greenland. Denmark is part of NATO, as we are (for now). In fact, one of our planes once caught fire and crashed while carrying huge atomic bombs. The bombs didn’t go off (these near-misses have happened more often than most people know), but the crash spread toxic radiation over a wide area. Needless to say, Greenlanders were not pleased.
Besides, we’re not living in 1964, Dr. Strangelove days anymore, when B-52s were our primary nuclear delivery threat: we have submarines that can shoot missiles from anywhere, and ICBMs which can shoot missiles to everywhere. One decommissioned silo in South Dakota, now the Minuteman National Historic Site, features a giant blast door painted by USAF staffers to resemble a Domino’s Pizza box. The tagline: “Worldwide Delivery In 30 Minutes Or Less / Or Your Next One Is Free.”
That’s from a Cold-War era missile silo. I promise you today’s missiles go much faster.
Water: Neither Trump nor any other Republican cares remotely about America’s drinking water supply (ask Flint, Newark, etc). If most of the water on Earth gets poisoned, rich people will have access to the last good stuff.
What Trump Does Care About, Bigly
Once you count territorial possessions, the United States is Earth’s fourth-largest country, geographically, behind Russia, Canada, and China. Purchasing Greenland would make us a solid #2.
Would anyone really put such an idiotic motive past Trump? He wants the biggest military parade and biggest wall. He lies about having the biggest audiences and largest fortune and greatest electoral victory. (If Trump consciously lies, which I doubt; I suspect he thinks that whatever he thinks is true.) He’s said that the World Trade Center attacks made his Trump Tower the biggest building in downtown Manhattan. He brags about TV ratings and Twitter followers. Let’s not forget his ridiculously oversized neckties.
Maybe this is some kind of Freudian thing, or simply the twisted mindset of aspirationally rich people — keeping up with the Joneses taken to psychotic extremes. I don’t particularly care. Serial killers are far more interesting than rich people (and ultimately far less dangerous).
In any case, this explanation makes the most sense to me. So I’m officially calling it the best. And the biggest.
“‘It’s hard. It’s really, really hard because my husband died by gun suicide,’ said Judy Schneider-Wallace, a former schoolteacher from Seattle.”
Okay, Pierce: bring it, you’ve already broken my heart past repair.
“She and her husband, Paul, were double victims of the economic collapse and of the financial-services vampires who both caused it and then profited by looting the lives they’d already ruined.”
No, Charlie! No more!
“They were in the process of renegotiating their mortgage with Wells Fargo, a process that brought grief to thousands of people across the country whose personal economies already were in tatters.”
Okay. I’m far past the point of being able to handle this.
“While they were wrestling with financial ruin, Paul shot himself to death on the first day of school.”
No. You cannot do that, Pierce. You cannot lead readers down that path to a place so gruesome and grim, even though it is the truth.
I would never do so. And that’s why I’m a baseball writer and Charlie Pierce is, funny names for politicians aside, a real writer. I don’t always agree with him, but does he ever leave pretenders like Chait or Yglesias in the damn dust?
My wife is good at talking to people and hearing their stories; it’s never been a thing I’m skilled at.
So a month ago, I went downstairs to grab a beer, and there was water in the basement.
I should explain — I live in Minnesota. We have snow, if you haven’t heard. And it usually melts gradually. This crap melted all at once.
Twenty standing inches of it.
And I only moved in a few years ago. (I’ve always lived in apartments.)
I went upstairs to drink my beer, hoping when I was done, the basement water would have gone away. Maybe house spiders would have drunk it or something. As is usual when avoiding problems, when I went back, the basement water was worse.
Contacting the Wife
I called Mrs James at one of her three jobs. “I fucking think the goddamn fucking basement is flooding like fucking shit.”
No response to that voicemail.
I called again. “We have water downstairs. I cannot scoop it up fast enough.”
I was bailing it out with the drip tray from a toaster oven, that’s all I could think of.
Her response? “I just left work; I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”
I seem to have a reverse polarity with cussing, where I swear so constantly, people who know me take me seriously when I stop swearing. Go figure.
Recruiting the Wife
Anyhoo, as it turned out, the house vacuum does double duty. Remove the dirt filter and that machine can slurp up floodwater. Problem is, it doesn’t do it fast as the water comes in, so you gotta run and empty it constantly for about 12 hours. You do this in shifts. One person grabs an hour or two of couch sleep, then the other takes over, etc.
A day later, we were both still sleep-deprived, and got into an argument over some meaningless thing. So I ran out of the room to kick a hole in some drywall. (While I have never struck a living being in anger, I have been known to attack inanimate objects.)
Wisdom of a Wall
If walls could talk, this one would have said, “You dumbass! You wanted the movie version of when some couple comes together to save the family from a flood, or volcano, or alien monster attack, and at the end, they’re closer than ever for all eternity. In fact, even dealing with a leaky basement for hours on end is stressful and exhausting. At the end, all you saved was thousands of dollars in basement repair you can’t afford right now.”
I would have nodded and admitted, “Yeah, right.”
“Well, haha! Now you’re going to have to fix me! Who’s the supposedly self-aware collection of atoms now? At least I didn’t mrmuph glurn nmmble…”
Because, if walls could talk, that’s when I would have taped newspaper over the drywall hole to shut it up.
They can’t, but in fact, I did. Since I don’t know how to fix drywall. But I’ll get around to it later.
So a month ago, I went downstairs to grab a beer, and there was water in the basement.
