Yes We Have

White America, according to the lead Village Voice article this week, has lost its collective mind. How else can one explain the reactionary reaction to the black man in the White House?:

Meanwhile, the brother moving into the White House inherited the kind of mortgage that even Wall Street executives might hesitate to call "subprime."

A devastated economy. Two wars, neither being fought with clear goals. Housing markets that resembled war zones. A health system crippled with costs. An auto industry cratering.

But surely, in a time of crisis, the country could pull together to fix this mess, right?

Can you help a brother on health care? No.

The economy? No.

Financial regulatory reform? No.

National security? No.

Now, some black folks can be forgiven for thinking, as they watched the political drama in Washington unfold over the past two years, that this was just another form of the same old thing they'd put up with in one way or another in this conflicted multiracial country.

But there is another explanation.

White people have simply gone sheer fucking insane.

Really? Well... Your Cheese Sucks!

Memories of the Summer that is now gone, as the rain glugs down the spouts and the streets are slick: One morning in August, I passed by this beautiful idyll (above) in Central Park, and attracted by the soft sighing of the water, I sat a while to listen...

Then: "Mister. Mister! Excuse we, Mister."

The 'we' were two young women waving a camera at me.

"Will you please take a photo of us, Mister?" They were aged... oh Lord — well, they aren't within earshot, so generously, they were maybe 23 at the very most. And from the Netherlands. And they made me walk.

After saying, "sure, I'll snap your photo," I then found myself following them and their camera up from the susurration of my babbling brook, across a stretch of grass, across the East Drive, across some more grass, across the West Drive...

Finally they spun slowly around, and struck a pose. I took four shots, and as they pouted at me, as though wearing signs that read: 'too inscrutable for your small American minds,' I asked how they liked New York City.

"The men are.. they are..." (giggling at each other) "total jerks."

"And your, how do you say it, your subway and your traffic is shit. It is shit."

Here Comes Everything

It's election season again in America. Seasons come and go, but it seems we are all doomed to expire in an era when the Right Wing in the U.S. has some kind of unstoppable deodorant or radioactive underpants. Perhaps the religious crazies really do have the key to eternal life? No matter what craziness they stir up, it passes quickly into conventional wisdom, served up to the non-reading public by an utterly pliant (if not actually mortuary-bound) media.

Not content with this "victory" in March of this year:

the Right Wing in Texas has uncovered this blood-chilling "threat":

A few, weary, brief thoughts: I have never been to Texas, but if there is any place in the U.S.A. where 'Islamists' would fear to tread, would be certain of failure, isn't it Texas? Also, if Right Wing conservatives are so goddamn proud of their country and its long history of freedom, freedom of expression, and the exportability, indeed, the eternal viability of American ideals, why do they start a witch hunt over something as hilariously unlikely as an covert Islamist plot to sew Allah into a couple of piddling little school books? Think about this: imagine a group of American teenagers, and them being offered two choices... living life in the U.S.A., or in Saudi Arabia.

Why is the New York Times clothing this nonsense with the veneer of respectability that reporting it gives it?

There You Are and Where Are You?