Roll The Union Over

The “L.A. Times” reported on Sunday that its press operators had voted to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Graphic Communications Conference.

Voted for a union, that is.

Those who don’t know the history of labor relations at the “L.A. Times” should understand it is a long-time bastion of anti-union sentiment, both in praxis and print.

This enmity probably predates Oct. 1, 1910, which is when it truly crystallized. Someone bombed the newspaper’s building and the “Times,” assuming the role of judge and jury trumpeted a headline that read: “Unionist Bombs Wreck The Times; Many Seriously Hurt.”

Harry Andrews, the managing editor wrote beneath the banner, “The elements that conspired to perpetrate this horror must not be permitted to pursue their awful campaign of intimidation and terror. Never will the Times cease in its warfare against them.”

Reactionary lore has it that the International Workers of the World, the “Wobblies,” were behind the violence.

Crazy anarcho-syndicalists.

Progressive lore has it that Los Angeles was on the verge of electing a socialist mayor and that the timing of the bombings was somewhat suspicious given the ensuing backlash against their team.

But enough of the past.

The Teamsters’ is big news, because the “Times” has been an open shop since...since forever. At least the scribe thought the building's anti-union bulwark had never beenn breached.

But James Rainey’s piece informed that the Teamsters got in once before in 1967, only to be thrown out two years later.

“We finally got ‘em! It took 40 years,” the union’s lead organizer, Marty Keegan, told the reporter.

It’s not always a good idea to derive larger lessons from a family squabble like the one which led to the union’s nine-vote victory (140-131), but the scribe would suggest that this time, it is.

There is a bigger story here, which you won’t read much about in the pages of the big boya. And that is that things are turning, that we are entering an age of progressive push around the world as new classes, formed and then beaten down by 15 years of globalization, formulate an agenda and act upon that agenda.

The "Times," you know, was converted from the privately run feud of the Chandler family - the Los Angeles Chandlers - to a dancing bear for the stockholders of the midwest Tribune Company.

Like just about every other dinosaur, the "Times" was caught off-guard by Internet-wrought changes in the news delivery market and the whole crazy daisywheel of electronic technologies you can fit in your shirt-pocket.

So despite the fact it was winning more Pulitzer Prizes than ever in the paper's history, the Tribune company responded with, to put it mildly, a thinning of the "Times" workforce; reporters included.

A guy named Carroll, who always rejected the scribe's annual request for employ at the behemoth with grace and gentle candor, long ago walked away from the top editor's job. After him, another guy, Bacquet, if memory serves, also fell on his sword rather than agree to firing more reporters. And then the guy above him, too (or something like that).

The "Times" piece is pretty well-hidden in the seven-pound brick that is its Sunday edition. The editors opted to cover the union victory in their house through gritted teet and noted that a journeyman press operator makes $61,000 a year.

That’s a good and fair salary a small family could get by on, even advance under certain, other fortuitous circumstances. It’s the kind of job union guys and girls could find across America in its post-war, manufacturing hedyay, and it’s the kind of job that is hard to come by anymore.

The pressman got the hint from what was going on around them. “Keegan [the organizer] said Times’ pressroom workers appeared to be most concerned about job security in a time of retrenchment for the newspaper industry. They also hope for better benefits and wages...”

So they joined the union crowd.

Hopefully it is a harbinger of things to come. Unions – when they’re run right – bring wages up, protect workers from arbitrary employer actions against them, and lead to safer, happier working places.

The Teamsters are no Wobblies and certainly not syndicalists of the anarchist type. They are a strange hybrid, a kind of right-wing union. But they have big chestnuts and do industrial warfare better than some of their more progressive and democratic union brethren.

And for that, highwayscribery dedicates today’s post to the Teamsters Union and its newest members.

The Liquid Life (installment eight)

Maybe the scribe is showing his age, but this is pretty sexy (if not downright naughty) stuff rendered in adventurous, experimental prose rendered by the 20-something scribe that, while annoying or overdone in some places, works nicely in this vignette. Looking back, it's a little shocking who the highway scribe felt it was okay to pass this manuscript onto, and little shocking to remember how shocked he was that right and good-thinking friends were shocked. Shocking!

INVESTIGATION INTO SATURN’S PAST UNCOVERS A PEARL OF TRUTH

“As did Dalí,” says Saturn, “I believe that money is the only reason for doing anything.”

Reclining again in bed before the fan we are an entangled three of twitching skins and flinching reflexes in a winddown of talk and restful poses. Rich, though there’s no real money to speak of. Elendele is reading up on Antonio Gramsci and the Turin Factory Councils. Saturn is spoonfeeding me Malarmé.

Elendele mocks her step-sister then, and sticks her middle finger up inside herself. Checks her pocket for some money for her step-sister.

“Nothing in here,” she teases.

“But the nectar of Narcissus,” I vex her and get that wet finger flashed in return.

Fired by the silly rhetoric of afterblow Saturn sparks back, “I’m here to save you,” she points me with her tongue, “and any others like you my step-sister has managed to manacle,” and then she sticks her finger up inside Elendele, who masks her face with pepper ecstasies and tries to lock Saturn in. But she can’t.

Saturn slips her. Gives her the taunt, then the smile. “Not eighteen anymore,” and they both break out in a laughing rash.

Saturn composes herself, says she just doesn’t see it. “You! You could have it all. Those eyes, that skin, that hair cascading you like waves over momentary sandcastles.

“You must want to screw up your life more than her,” she jabs Elendele knowingly, and me more innocently. Saturn, a woman of analytical tendencies, can see that I am a nobody, and a dandy one at that.

“All those assets and you throw yourself to her lions. Journalists. Hah! The officeholders of the low paid poetic world, blessed by low rank in officialdom and a paycheck that’s nothing more than the difference between themselves and the street.

Sweet and thin senator. When she’s done with you and the hair is gone, all anybody will remember of you is your big nose.”

“Okay.”

“Wait until she’s finished you, shared your bone oh creative one. Let her inspire, but nurture never. Fetal yourself close to her through the sunlit particles of unwound afternoons. Fall into her debt. Then watch Elendele spread her butter stuffs.”

“Saturnina I can’t tell when you’re reading Malarmé and when you’re being you.”

But this came too late. Now, her finger in the air, standing on the bed, half revealed in sheets like some pink statuess, some oracle sworn of an acropolis, “The clay people! The steady dreamers! Fountains of whatever! Crushed again by conglomeration and commerce! Road-railed by the wily entrepreneur that I am. And I am the wily entrepreneur…” and she collapses exhausted into the pillows.

Such speechifying must have run in the family and, out of rhetorical courtesy, Elendele dismissed her as a lackey of the merchant class and then colors in the confusion for me.

“Saturn has come to stay with us because of the devastation she feels over the recent death of her cat, Marcel.”

Saturn smiles her good witch’s smile, they turn to their books, and the matinee performance draws to a close. Gracious in its brevity, in its serious caprice.

Washington Post GlobalChat

"Washington Post" GlobalChat's question for the week was:

"Give us an unexpected prediction," from David Ignatius.

the scribe's answer was:

"And love becomes the universal God and highest prize of human endeavors. The wealth of the world flows like manna enriching so many lands of milk and honey and mercy. We smile upon each other's mere presence in passing; for to be human is the same as to be good and we are no longer surprised nor suspicious of kindness given. Faced with tremendous peril, the oldest rules of salvation become clear as does our common cause against death and the darkest mysteries with which we have yet to initiate even the sparest dialogue."


Some of the answers were fun and/or interesting. Join the conversation here.

Book Report/Script Analysis: "The Devil Wears Prada"

“The Devil Wears Prada”?

Where are all those snooty Euro-socialist, fancy-schmanzy lit airs you take so much pleasure in showing off highway scribe?

Alas! the scribe received a review of his novel, “The Sidewalk Smokers Club,” done by none other than his loving mother, remarking on the excellent prose, but lack of storytelling prowess.

That hurt. Once the dart was delivered, Mom tried to pass it off as the commentary of woman who doesn’t know much about such things, but that didn’t wash because a big shot N.Y. agent named Paul Cirone told the scribe pretty much the same, noting there were too many mini-sermons on the state of modern life hindering the narrative

And they can’t both be wrong, can they?

Sure they can. “The Sidewalk Smokers Club,” is intended as social commentary and satire; the kind of stuff you read here daily, hung upon the skeleton of a loose, but fast-paced narrative.

The goings-on of some preposterous people staking their futures over cigarettes are hardly as important as the way they relate to those things contained in the mini-sermons on modern life.

Nonetheless, the scribe took Mom’s advice - which she grafted from an interview with that guy who sells millions of books, Grisham - and read a recent bestseller just to see what’s-what out there in the corporate chain store book market.

“The Devil Wears Prada” seemed like a good choice. When it turned out not to be, the scribe persisted to the end because he thought an analysis of how the ensuing blockbuster movie – featuring Meryl Streep and a hotty named Anne Hathaway – compared with Lauren Weisberger’s original text, would be interesting for you, the highwayscribery nation.

(See? the scribe’s already been commercially influenced).

Where, you ask, does the scribe get off doing script analysis from his shaky perch as low-rent bloggenator?

Well, on top of having a produced feature-length movie to his credit, and 12 more scripts collecting dust on a shelf behind him, the scribe worked as a script analyst during a two-year period for Hollywood’s mid-level ten-percentery (that’s showbiz prose) United Talent Agency and the glossy Creative Artists Agency.

So take that.

Anyway, “The Devil Wears Prada” (TDWP) did not strike the scribe as very good literature, but he learned a few tricks from the savvy Ms. Weisberger, who is living mighty high now thanks to a mostly mediocre effort.

TDWP must have hit all the “write” notes along Sixth Avenue; what with its focus upon the most glamorous sections of New York City society, its weaving of the publishing industry and sundry related characters into the narrative, and the thinly-veiled portrait of a classic Manhattan monster.

The devil in TDWP is one Miranda Priestly editor of the fictional “Runway” magazine. the scribe’s wife, a marvelous and successful fashion designer in what they call the “women’s better contemporary market” informs that Priestly is a not-so-fictional rendering of one Anna Wintour, the top editor at “Vogue.”

Weisberger would seemed to have worked for her as personal assistant, or knew someone who did, or made up a lot of things that rendered a more-than-compelling caricature of the lady.

The story trundles along in a sixteen-year old girl’s prose and while that may have made it a giant hit with sixteen-year-olds coddling “Vogue”-fueled fantasies of New York fashion, it certainly grates on the ears of more seasoned readers.

Similarly, Ms. Weisberger has a poor ear for dialogue in as much as hers is repetitive, overstated, and, again, somewhat sophomoric.

In TDWP, the writer strings together a long rosary of abuse and cruelty wrought by the elder woman upon the younger. Stories of excess.

“Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “they are different than you and I.” (or something like that).

Weisberger’s wisest, and probably unintentional, device is the viewing of all this greed, egotism, and waste through her own middle-class eyes.

Familiar with fashion, big cities, and aristocratic classes, and long fallen out of the middle-class, the highway scribe found very little that was revealing, but Weisberger and her handlers were aiming elsewhere and those people see such things with the same eyes she did.

In this book, Miranda Priestly has little, if anything at all, to say to her assistant. She is trash, a narrow necessity, of little consequence, and this aspect of the piece rings quite true. Authentic even.

The set-up involves the protagonist and first-person narrator, Andreah (Andy), recently graduated from Brown University in Rhode Island, trying to get through just one year of abuse, for thereafter Priestly becomes a potent godmother punching literary tickets for those who have survived her.

The abuses are dispersed in between the subtexts of Andy’s unraveling relationship to her long-time boyfriend Alex (a fledgling teacher of troubled kids), and her wacky hippy-like, bottle-tippling, boy-sipping childhood friend and roommate Lily, who is coming undone.

Alex is losing interest with Andy as Miranda sucks every minute out of her waking life with demands for steaks she will not eat and the trademark white Hermés scarves she loses as if they were tissue paper.

As Alex fades, a hot young writer (Bret Easton Ellis?) continues his pursuit of the no-nonsense and unaffected Andy; his adorable curls and easy charm harbingers of life working at the “New Yorker” and endless nights out to dinner with “interesting people.”

The resolution occurs in Paris where Andy is thrust into a role supposedly reserved for her workplace rival, Emily.

She is at the end of the long year with this one test remaining. All goes well, great even, on one magic evening when the Hot Young Writer surprises Andy with lots of money-honeyed romance and Miranda surprises her with a little positive feedback and a promise to get her in at the “New Yorker.”

Returning home to her suite at the Paris Ritz, Andy learns her best friend Lily has been in a drunken car accident and reduced to a coma. Boyfriend Alex and her Dad think it’s time to cut out all this silly fashion nonsense and come home to await Emily’s awakening.

the scribe is no rabid careerist, but that seemed rather stupid and Andy agreed, choosing to stay on, have a little more fun in Paris, and gain a career while her friend slept off the near-tragedy.

But Miranda has other plans, or at least one more insurmountable demand that obligates Andy to kiss-off the whole damn thing and go home unemployed, where pretty good things (not fabulous things) happen to her and she lives happily ever after.

For those of you who haven’t seen the Hollywood version, the rosary of cruelties and such are broken down into a few set pieces and one long montage of fast-cutting daily abuse.

All the exciting and secondary characters fleshed out in the novel as a parade of fashion crazies are reduced to one rather conservative gay fashion editor assayed by Stanley Tucci. Andy, in the film, is no longer from Brown, rather Chicago and you can draw your own conclusions as to why the film makers found that adjustment necessary.

Best friend Lily becomes somebody else altogether, murky and undefined and unnecessary. Alex is morphed into Nate and drops from over-educated educator to an assistant sous chef at an indeterminate local eatery. Again, draw your own conclusions.

The screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna, saw fit to give the odd couple - Andy and Miranda - a relationship that does not exist in the book (the part the scribe thought was “authentic” sounding). It’s a relationship that starts out cold, but which, and thanks to the good-hearted efforts of our beloved Andy, grows slowly warmer - Miranda unwillingly softening.

That’s not authentic at all, rather very Hollywoody and damaging to the cause given the point the novelist was trying to make about “those people” lording it above the rest of us.

Whereas in the novel, Miranda is married to a happy-go-lucky rich guy that she adores, McKenna thought she needed a divorce-bound marriage that would, in the end, make her seem more “vulnerable” and human.

But Weisberger only once gives Miranda a softer side, and that’s through the eyes of Andy who thinks she finds her looking sad one elegant evening.

Thanks to the miracle of DVD technology, the stuff which ended up on the cutting room floor shows the lengths to which the director sought to fluff up their nonexistent friendship when an important thrust to TDWP is just how inhuman these rich wack-jobs can be.

And finally, McKenna concocts some crazy machine at the end whereby Stanley Tucci’s sweet gay guy is promised, in Paris, an important slot as president of a new company featuring a Hot Young Designer the suits have decided to take global. After learning this, Andy beds down with the Hot Young Writer who ruins the morning next by revealing himself to be a vile salamander colluding with the magazine’s French editor to squeeze Miranda out of her job and set himself up as an editorial baron all at the same time.

Despite a year of denigration, Weisberger’s rather retrograde protagonist tries to warn and protect Miranda who, of course, needs no help at all, managing to shuffle the French editor into what was going to be Stanley Tucci’s position (cruel fashionistas!) and leaving the Hot Young Writer out in the cold, as it were.

Whew!

The big ending is hardly woven into what comes before, feels tacked on. That’s not the end of the world. the scribe has done that to decent effect in ending a screenplay. From a literary point of view, film can be very limiting at times.

But this ending is worse than then novel’s; mucks things up when, whatever the book’s flaws, the choice between friendship and career is more simply posed without a bunch of rave-up dialogue about Andy have “changed into someone else” and gone (yes) “over to the dark side.”

This is the stuff that makes Hollywood an unfriendly place for writers. The need of many people to justify overpaid middle positions by sticking their grimy minds into something that already works fine, just so they can point to SOMETHING they have contributed.

And it’s paragraphs like the last one that are responsible for the long antagonism between writers and the film colony, and the reason why they saw fit to take a character like the Hot Young Writer, crafted in the novel as a shiny and appealing apparition, and turn him into a worm for the purpose of...of...of...

My Sweet Ford

the highway scribe is back (sort of) and let's be clear; a blogger could get used to not blogging, which is, you know, free work.

But enough anarcho-syndical carping. the scribe has a couple of things to get off his chest.

One is blowing the whistle on the Gerald R. Ford love-fest.

Jeezus, and no disrespect, but Ford's burial is lasting longer than his time in office.

Let's be frank (and joe) here, "decency" is a very nice quality, but it doesn't make for either a great presidency nor amount to much of a legacy.

And, of course, the endless focus on this particular, apolitical quality is merely a reflection on the Bush administration's Washington, where decency is in short supply.

the scribe was alive during Gerald Ford's brief reign and can only suspect the '70s nostalgia mildly affecting him, is the same force moving everybody else in this unexpected Ford-fest.

But looking back, it must be said, no such sentiment surrounded this decent man at the time.

There was nothing remarkable about his administration other than the subsequent ascent of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and the then-famous WIN (Whip Inflation Now!) buttons.

People were furious over Ford's pardon of Nixon. The country, at the time, did not need the "healing" everyone is so busy crediting the ex-president with now.

Again, that's a reflection on our own times in which a little niceness would be nice.

What the country needed then was answers and accountability and a complete laying out on the table of Nixon's fascistic crimes.

Why?

SO THAT THEY DIDN'T HAPPEN AGAIN!

But the country did not get that, and such things did happen again under w.'s now forlorn and criminal regime.

In other words, we're judging Ford through the lens of our current situation, and he looks a lot better, when really, he was guilty of having betrayed the country's principles and responsible for leading us toward the diminished situation we find ourselves in now.

Meantime, the Democrats are set to take power and do a little healing of their own.

Jonathan Weisman's piece in this morning's "Washington Post" talks about pressure from liberal activists on the incoming Dems to be different than the slobs turned out of office in November.

In the scribe's post-election analysis entitled "Isis Left," it was noted that as much needed to be undone, as done, and there is some of that going on as Weisman notes:

"...the newly sworn-in Democratic Congress will immediately begin work on new ethics rules [disposed of by Tom Delay and Co.], the reinstitution of federal deficit controls and new policies designed to increase civility in House proceedings."

"Isis Left" also noted how the election meant, "No more votes for torture. No more votes for domestic spying. No more votes for 'Christian' judges. No more wars without provocation. No more medieval projects launched with an okay from the man upstairs."

But that was just the scribe projecting his own values of peace, democracy, and equality upon that tricky, hoary old vat of vaseline known as the Democratic Party.

Here's Weisman's nut paragraph:

"Nowhere in the Democrats consensus-driven agenda is legislation revisiting last year's establishment of military tribunals and suspending legal rights for suspected terrorists. Nor is there a revision of the civil liberties provisions of the USA Patriot Act, a measure curbing warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency or an aggressive confrontation of the president on his Iraq war policies."

Not one to typically follow the herd, highwayscribery would still like itself to be counted amongst those activists pushing for these things.

Finally, in the toot-your-own horn category, highwayscribery focuses on another "Washington Post" piece running today focusing on the fact Barack Obama admitted to cocaine snurfing in his first memoir, "Dreams of My Father."

Lois Romano's article, entitled "Effects of Obama's Candor Remain To Be Seen," takes on the issue.

So what?

Well, you read it here first - back in June (5) - when highwayscribery did one of its patented "book reports" on "Dreams of My Father" and noted:

"Obama’s rise to prominence represents something of a bellwether in less than obvious ways. Sure, he’s one of only a handful of blacks ever to serve in the U.S. Senate, but in this story he weaves the consumption of marijuana, alcohol and even cocaine into the fabric without using overly bright colors and without trying to sugar-coat it either.

"He plays basketball, he 'adopts' in his own parlance an identity from those being offered-up by the pop culture of the 1980s - the years of his flaming youth. And now he’s a senator and all of that without having had to live like a Mormon."

highwayscribery...doing your thinking for you.

Signing Off

the highwayscribery board of editors has decided to take the rest of the year off. See you in the new one.

Peace on Earth.

Bubble Boy - The Sequel

As might be expected, the man in the bubble either doesn’t get it, or doesn’t want to get it.

Or perhaps, the (p)resident, once again, is just showing his natural disdain for democracy by interpreting the November elections as, “people wanting a change of direction,” in Iraq, as opposed to wanting out of Iraq.

Michael Abramowitz of the “Washington Post” notes that “President Bush has been busy listing how his policies [in Iraq] will not be changing. There will be no timetable for removing American troops, no high-level dialogue with Iran and Syria, and no slackening of support for the widely criticized government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.”

And what’s more, Bush doesn’t want less troops, he wants more.

Of course.

But things are different as the scribe noted in “Bush at War: Total Repudiation.”

Junior’s had his toys taken away from him, but he just doesn’t know it yet.

Stenny Hoyer, the new Democratic majority leader in the House had this to say in the same piece: “There hasn’t been a change from the president. The president may be trapped in his own policy, sensing, ‘If I don’t succeed, it will be a huge blot on my record, and so therefore I have no choice but to try to succeed’.”

Thank you Stenny Hoyer (he’s the ‘silver fox’-looking character in the picture), whoever you have been, for a short, sweet and easy-to-understand analysis of what’s going on.

Now we must have a conversation with Senate Majority leader Harry Reid that, no, it’s not okay to fund a “temporary surge” in troops as the (p)resident wishes.

There’s no such thing and if we’ve (re)learned anything from this ghastly affair, it’s that war is much easier to start than stop, and that violence spirals.

Talking a little more sense is the “Post’s" David Ignatius. He’s the one who doesn’t look like a Zakaria in the little banner with talking heads at left (and up a little).

We defer to Ignatius because he doesn’t live Iraq through other peoples’ eyes the way the scribe, for reasons of family, finance, and fear, does. He was there in August when the, “army had launched an aggressive campaign to regain control of Baghdad’s toughest neighborhoods. We rumbled through Doura and Amiriyah in a little convoy of armored Humvees, and, sure enough, the show of American force seemed to be working – for a while. The insurgents and death squads slipped away. But as soon as U.S. forces moved on to pacify other areas., they came back. A new surge of U.S. troops in Baghdad could repeat this cycle on a larger scale, but to what end?”

the scribe is not a military scientist, so you can weigh for yourself some of Ignatius’ ideas about what a new U.S. strategy might look like.

If you’re looking for some military scientists, here’s another “Post” piece on Pentagon reticence to send more meat over to Iraq for grinding.

They disagree with the (p)resident, who ostensibly holds authority over them, but remember who has the guns in the end. That is probably why Bush pledges not only more troops, but a bigger military bought with more of your health care and education money.

That might bring them around.

$ee?

Washington Post GlobalChat (plus)

Here is the interesting question posed over the weekend by "Washington Post" GlobalChat blog (in bold) followed by the highway scribe's answer, in which he somehow manages to (legitimately) plug his book.

And then a fellow named Daniel engaged the scribe in a back and forth which we reproduce here for your enjoyment.

Are women making real breakthroughs in the 21st century or is it still one-step forward, two steps back for half the world's population?

A fine and important question posed in a season of hope for renewal.

Women have gained some and yet the world has not changed much.

You can lead Germany, but some daffy dope from Texas can find it within his right to give you a public back massage.

You can be a woman in power, but not rule with woman power.

On this planet the maxim that “might makes right” continues to reign. You can elect Margaret Thatcher, but she must start wars in distant lands to gain legitimacy. If she possesses any particular feminine wisdom, you will never know it.

You can give a woman all the rights in the world, but alone on a street she must still be afraid for masculine physicality remains highly valued and too often utilized (ahem) preemptively.

the highway scribe wrote his novel from a woman’s perspective; a definite no-no in today’s environment where only blacks can write about blacks, Latinos about Latinos, and women about women.

Where do you come off writing from a woman’s perspective, highway scribe? What do you know about what a woman feels?

Until we can transcend this easy conceit, we can never understand women, blacks, Latinos and other losers on the balance sheet of violence. We must learn to accept the difference between us as the gift. the scribe’s simple answer to his critics was that he listened to women and put the feelings they expressed to him in his story about La Vedette, Gloriella, “she who brings to mind the words of Arabi who said the sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all.”

Daniel:

highwayscribery, I find myself puzzled by your post earlier. You seem to believe that a woman must be a liberal to be a woman--that if she is not liberal she is being forced to act like a man or something (or put in a subordinate position).

For example you trash Bush for rubbing Merkals back which would classify as putting woman in a subordinate position. Then you point out Thatcher as an example of woman not being put in a position of subordination but being forced to act like a man to get legitimacy.

So according to your scheme a woman is not really a woman if subordinate or demonstrating male characteristics.

I really would like to see what women think of that.

Even more problematic you go on to complain that the book you wrote was not greeted well by women and then you insist you do understand women.

But women cannot demonstrate male characteristics like Thatcher while you, super sensitive and totally in touch with woman, can understand the feminine?

Logic would dictate that if you can be Mr. Sensitive a woman can just as well be highly masculine and compete with men without having been expected to act like a man by men.

I think your liberal politics has totally confused you--so overlapped your notions of male and female that a woman must be a liberal and cannot be anything else unless forced into subordinate position or irrationally made to act like a man by men.

This political position of yours might be for the emancipation of woman in the sense of removing her from being subordinate, but it prevents her from acting like a man because in your scheme of things for her to act like a man is to be Republican (to be forced to act like a man to gain legitimacy).

Furthermore we can add that your scheme of things shortchanges men because they are forced into both allowing women to become more powerful and to act only in a "feminine" manner (nothing which may be construed as Republican). Essentially men must become more feminine as you understand it...

So you have this notion of the female that not only men must conform to, women must conform to it as well...

I suggest you do not understand men and women at all. I suspect men as well as the women you "write for" feel you have no understanding.

You have simply overlapped political categories on notions of male and female--and for that reason it can be said you have no understanding of politics either.

But perhaps you can write a book now explaining me as a man.


the highway scribe:

Daniel,

You make some fine points, if in a rather cantankerous way. the scribe doesn't claim to be either "super sensitive" or to understand women, because he's not, and doesn't (his wife can vouch), but thinks it important to try. the scribe feels activist women should be taken to task for joining other "identities" in claiming their experience can only be expressed through themselves, because that means we lose opportunities at comprehending one another. the scribe grants that you are correct regarding his "confusion" about the sexes today, which, he thought, was somewhat universal. Still, it must be said that there are masculine and feminine archetypes, and the highway scribe's liberal politics didn't produce them (his analysis is typically anarcho-syndical). Out here in California we have a governor whom referred to his "left" opponents as "girlie men" long before there was a highwayscribery. When the president massages Germany's leader (it's Merkel, I recommend you try the "preview" feature before you post), it's hard not to notice he didn't choose Tony Blair instead, or Gerhard Schroeder long before her, because that would have been a feminine and productive thing to do, given their relationship. Your best point involves the emancipation of a woman precluding her from acting in a masculine way, which, it's true, would sort of un-emancipate her, but the scribe would hope the elevation of women's status and power might offer us a broader, kinder horizon. If he's wrong, then it's kind of too bad, no?

Daniel's rejoinder:

I thought about your earlier post some more and it seems to me now what you actually did rather than superimpose your liberal beliefs on how you expect women to behave is superimpose something of an idealized feminine on the entirety of existence as poets do...

In other words you have an idea of the idealized feminine toward which liberal politics must move and this of course must replace Republican politics...

I can understand now why liberal women would feel you do not understand them. Instead of emancipating woman you expect her to conform to the idealized feminine and for this to rule the world.

According to your scheme women must not only resist being subordinated (which is correct and liberal) they cannot act as men as Thatcher did without somehow having been forced to act contrary to their nature (forced to act like men to gain legitimacy).

But the latter portion is not conducive to the liberation of women at all. It might be that some women are forced to act like men, but other women actually do have male characteristics and consider the release of them perfectly consistent with liberal politics...

It seems you are so against Republican politics and have such an idea of the idealized feminine that you are something of a super liberal toward which everyone must conform...

What makes it even more strange is that you have a particular idea of the idealized feminine--in other words there is not just one idealized feminine.

Your idealized feminine is totally non-violent, completely nurturing,--a total opposition to male characteristics.

But if you study the features of the statue of liberty or the myth of Pallas Athena or other conceptions of the idealized feminine you find that by no means is there a consensus and that in fact a woman can be quite masculine, beautiful and powerful without this being at odds to womanhood or manhood...

This discussion is getting interesting. I wonder now how much politics is getting both confused and clarified by changing conceptions of the sexes. We have a left and right politically and male and female. How do these dualities influence and interpenetrate each other? How can they be disentangled and then reentangled for maximum movement and development?

Sorry Merkel for misspelling of name. Spelling is not my strongest point....

highwayscribery:

Daniel, thanks for your response. the highway scribe can't help but feel you are more trapped in a "liberal/Republican" paradigm than he; who never once uses either term. Is the scribe's feminine a poet's idealization? Perhaps. Does he care about its relationship to GOP or Democratic politics? Not a wit. And the scribe never said women don't think he understands them. He said certain women don't feel the scribe, or any man, should attempt to express feminine realities in literature. Again, the scrivener thinks it's good to walk some miles in someone else's shoes in the name of deeper understanding. Reading your comments the scribe can't help but feel you're twisting yourself in a knot trying to paint him as something "other" than yourself, and is somewhat flummoxed at how a rather whimsical and sentimental post -- bereft of real political rhetoric -- so repulsed and raised your ideological hackles. There is no "scheme" proposed in that first offering; no call to "superimpose" anything on anyone, and, for the world, the scribe doesn't see where you got any of that. Try "Vedette" (Buy My Book! $$$) You will find nothing in her that is "non-violent, completely nurturing" as you put it. If there is nothing transcendent about the female, if she is not the missing ying to our unbalanced and violent yang, if women are naught but another political interest out to get theirs at the expense of others, then why should we care? Finally, you're right, the discussion is interesting, but woefully underattended by comparison to other GlobalChat topics. That may speak to this question better than all the words spilled between us.



Join the conversation here.

Three More

Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on Death of Three Miramar Marines

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today released the following statement regarding the deaths of Cpl. Matthew V. Dillon of Aiken, SC, Lance Cpl. Budd M. Cote of Marana, AZ and Lance Cpl. Clinton J. Miller of Greenfield, IA:

"The call of duty takes our troops into dangerous situations that require tremendous courage. Cpl. Dillon, Lance Cpl. Budd and Lance Cpl. Miller exemplified that courage and gave their lives to protect our freedoms. Maria and I wish to express our deepest condolences to Matthew, Budd and Clinton's families as they mourn the extraordinary loss of their loved one. These brave individuals served our country with valor and they will be remembered as heroes. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families during this painful time."

Dillon, 25, Cote, 21, and Miller, 23, died Dec. 11 as a result of injuries sustained while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. They were assigned to Marine Wing Support Squadron 373, Marine Wing Support Group 37, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Station, Miramar, CA.

In honor of Cpl. Dillon, Lance Cpl. Cote and Lance Cpl. Miller, Capitol flags will be flown at half-staff.

The Liquid Life (installment seven)

TALKING POLITICS WITH ELENDELE

Elendele was a Democrat at the polls, but fell outside the mainstream political prism at the meal table.

One day in bed, she said to Saturn and I, that you could tell in high school what parties American children would belong to their whole lives. Those kids who needed to ask credit for class participation would be with her crowd. Everybody body else was with everybody else.

She did more than criticize. Her prescriptions for social head colds were many and she talked often of opening the world’s first political science store.
Her polity was not without bureaucracy. That, she believed, could not be helped.

What she envisioned were all-inclusive bureaucracies, buttressed by the fact that those people administering them did so because it affected them directly. Farmers directing agriculture, and without pay, so that only when problems arose would they convene out of common concern for their own creature comforts. Or something like that. She could explain it better, and look better doing it, but she really felt everybody should be treated the same, and that democracy wasn’t democracy unless everyone was working at it.

She believed that single people’s pets should be covered by their company health plan because she believed in loose family and natural tribes.

I told her that once I was a Democrat too, but that having met her, I’d since converted to monarchist. That is to say, she convinced me of the natural aristocracy.

But touched by flattery she was not, noting that there were neither Gods on earth or
heaven, “at least since the end of Viet Nam.”

There is a politics of love, she’d maintained, and hers was rooted in the notion that trust was not necessary for a good relationship.

“Men and women all caress some secret, keep a little life apart. To smother them in vows of trust is to doom it from the start.”

Then she declaimed, “Just what does all this social Darwinism have to do with civilization anyway? Either we’ve done nothing more than institutionalize Hobbes’ state of nature, or we’ve come together to make gentler the life of the world like Bobby Kennedy said we should.”

Saturn tried to shatter her: “What about the countless failed attempts at redistributing the wealth.”

“That’s a problem that has always been gone about improperly,” came the counterthrust. “What we need is a ruling party to convince people that, like me, all they ever really need to live fully and freely, are coffee, candy, and cigarettes.”

“There are lots,” answered Saturn, “and that’s not a novel idea.”

It is unknown to me whether the words sophistication and sophistry share the same root. But in Elendele’s world they had been knotted nicely neat with her achieving the former by taking the back door provided by the latter.

Then I asked her, “Do you like Jews?” and she said, “Well yes. That is, some Jews I like and some other I don’t.”

Then she quickly changed the subject again, deeming it important for me to know that, in extinguishing a joint, you don’t have to rub it out.

“Just lay it down and let it burn its own slow epiphanies.”

Two More

Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on Death of Redding Soldier

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today released the following statement regarding the death of Spc. Micah S. Gifford of Redding, CA:

"Our heart goes out to Spc. Gifford's family as they suffer the extraordinary loss of their loved one. Micah was a heroic soldier and a brave leader who fought with determination and dignity. Maria and I offer our condolences to his family, friends and fellow soldiers."

Gifford, 27, died Dec. 7 as a result of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit while on patrol during combat operations in Baghdad, Iraq. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, AK.

In honor of Spc. Gifford, Capitol flags will be flown at half-staff.


Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on Death of Camp Pendleton Marine

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today released the following statement regarding the death of Cpl. Dustin J. Libby of Presque Isle, ME:

"Cpl. Libby answered the high calling of military service courageously serving our country and making the ultimate sacrifice. Dustin's loved ones have lost a cherished family member and our country has lost a valiant Marine. Maria and I extend our heartfelt sympathies and will pray for their comfort."

Libby, 22, died Dec. 6 as a result of injuries sustained while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, CA.

In honor of Cpl. Libby, Capitol flags will be flown at half-staff.

Major McClung

Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on Death of Camp Pendleton Marine

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today released the following statement regarding the death of Maj. Megan M. McClung of Coupeville, WA:

"Today, we honor Maj. McClung for her courageous service to our nation at home and abroad. Maria and I offer our sincere condolences to Megan's family, friends and fellow Marines as they mourn this extraordinary loss. Megan's commitment to duty and loyalty to our country reflects her noble character. Her honorable sacrifice will not be forgotten."

McClung, 34, died Dec. 6 as a result of injuries sustained during combat operations in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. She was assigned to I Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group, I MEF, Camp Pendleton, CA.

In honor of Maj. McClung, Capitol flags will be flown at half-staff.

Gore Vidal in Cuba

You won’t be reading this stuff in the mainstream media, regardless of the fact that with 35 novels, numerous produced scripts for features and small screen alike, and an endless array of essays on an endless array of subjects, Gore Vidal is our primary literary figure today.

The respectable consensus says it is right and good to ignore an 81-year old intellectual with some serious national history in his sack of knowledge. There is not even a sense of respect in recognizing that these are the final chapters of a man who dedicated his days and work to the public life of the United States. No appreciation.

And if Gore Vidal was not sexy enough for your average $58 zillion a year anchor, the fact he was in Cuba could not have made the story more saleable.

Cuba, the sensible word has it, does not exist, a fact which precludes anything good or interesting from ever happening there.

But try to imagine how distinct a place it is, outside the mediated vanity fair of global consumer life, without advertisements, the endless pitch, without ambition even.

But the cameras will not arrive until Cuba has been turned into a 7-11 and the public eye will see what it needs people to see.

Which leads us to the whys and wherefores of your friendly global neighborhood blogger who, almost unwittingly, pours either bile or passion into a gaping hole left in the new information market by the old ways of reporting.

So, in case you thought it interesting, highwayscribery wanted to let you know about an article in today’s edition of Mexico’s “La Jornada,” reporting on Gore Vidal’s visit to Habana, Cuba, for a concert commemorating the 26th anniversary of John Lennon’s terrible murder.

Vidal told the Communist Party newspaper “Granma” that the United States, with George W. Bush at the helm, is under “dictatorship.”

“Try to find the adequate expression for a political system that has suppressed the writ of habeas corpus, that makes incursions upon individual rights, and discards legal protections consecrated in the Magna Carta,” said Vidal.

Asked how he feels when called a “bad American” for his scathing critique of our ruling grandees, Vidal responded, “I feel like the last good American. At least I’m an American concerned with defending ethics and history in my country in the hopes we’ll return to being decent and respected. I dream and work to prevent them from taking more of the republic the United States once was, that republic which has collapsed under the present regime.”

(the scribe needs a pithy or poignant observation to break up these two quotes, but can't think of anything).

“John Lennon,” Vidal concluded, “was life, the complete opposite of people like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and W. Bush, who incarnate death.”

Augusto Pinochet: Good Riddance A-hole

Augusto Pinochet has finally died. Here is the rather surprising White House statement on this event:

"Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile represented one of the most difficult periods in that nation's history. Our thoughts today are with the victims of his reign and their families."

The tyrant lived longer than he deserved and the world is better for his passing. In celebration, highwayscribery re-runs a post from Sept. 11, 2005:

Today we remember another country’s 9/11.

In 1973 Chile, one of the oldest democracies in the Western Hemisphere, was subjected to a military coup d’etat concocted largely by the Nixon administration and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The government of Salvador Allende was leftist in orientation and duly elected by the people of Chile. To view films of an overjoyed multitude marching through the capitol city following his electoral victory is to recall a kind of innocent belief in democracy's transforming power.

Eventually, and with the backing and blessing of the United States Government, a military junta led by a butcher named Augusto Pinochet literally bombed the presidential palace. Allende, according to the conquering generals, died by his own hand rather than surrender.

What you have above is the last picture of Allende alive, outside the presidential palace, machine-gun under his right arm (wearing the glasses), accompanied by his aides, looking up at the planes that had come to kill them all.

Next to it is a French cartoonist’s interpretation of 9/11; a kind of hybrid that mixes Allende’s 9/11 with those who died in New York City’s 9/11.

(p)resident Bush, you will remember, attributed the terrorists’ actions to the fact, "they hate freedom," which was to flatter a national conceit, rather than an honest assessment of the way our policies are perceived throughout the world.

The cartoon (you have to click on the image to view it in better detail) asserts that we’ve screwed a lot of people, worthwhile people, pretty badly over the years and that our chickens came home to roost on Sept. 11, 2001.

Here is a portion of Allende’s final radio address to the people of his country on September 11, 1973:

"I will pay with my life the defense of the principles that come at a price in this country. A curse will fall upon those who have violated their duty, breaking their word, and the doctrine of the armed forces.

The people should be alert and vigilant. They should not allow themselves to be provoked, nor be massacred, but should defend their conquests. They should defend their right to construct with their own might a life that is dignified, better...

..In the name of the most sacred interests of the people, in the name of this nation, I call upon to keep the faith.

For history cannot be detained with repression or with crime. This is a hard and difficult moment, but we shall overcome it. It’s possible that they will crush us, but tomorrow will belong to the people, to the workers. Humanity will advance toward the conquest of a better life.

Countrymen, its possible they will silence the radios, and so I say farewell to you all. In this moment the airplanes fly overhead. It’s probable that they will murder us. But you should know that we are here, by way of example, to show that in this country there are those who know how to meet their obligations. I will do so by a mandate of the people and with the will and conscience of a president who maintains the dignity of his charge.

This may be the last time I will ever address you. The air force has bombed our radio stations. My words are without bitterness, without disappointment, and will be the moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath.

Soldiers of Chile, commanders-in-chief and admirals of the Navy: General Mendoza, low-rent officer who only yesterday pledged his loyalty and solidarity to the government, has now declared himself director general of the national police.

Before these deeds I have only this to say to the workers: I shall not resign. Placed in a transitional moment in history, I will pay with my life this loyalty to the people. And I can say to you with certainty that this seed we plant in the consciousness of thousands and thousands of Chileans cannot be suppressed indefinitely. They have the forces, they can bring us to our knees, but social processes cannot be detained with neither crime nor force.

History is ours and is made by the people."

Pinochet went on to rule in a brutal fashion for another 17 years or so, throwing people out of airplanes over the ocean, exterminating political opponents, and shutting down a model republic to ensure that the Chicago School of economic theory could be implemented without opposition.

In 1987, the scribe published a poem in the "The Guild Reporter," national organ for The Newspaper Guild of which he was both a card-carrying member and shop steward.

The verse was in response to press reports regarding the death of Jose Carrasco Tapia, a journalist who got picked up from his house by government "security forces" in the middle of the night and was found dead, shot 13 times, in a cemetery outside of town.

Here it is:

Don’t bring your shoes Jose Carrasco Tapia
you won’t be needing them
here in Chilay much longer
that’s what they told him
when they came at 5 a.m.
And he said
"Goodbye,"
to his wife
Saint Jose +
the barefoot journalist
in a crispus attucks attack
Jose Carrasco Tapia +
the man whole damn war was declared
on he’s gone now
in a brutal way just
leave the shoes Don Jose +
you won’t be needing them where
you are going

But the real reason the scribe is delving into the horrid events of long ago, in a distant country, is rock and roll and a band that was very good at it: The Clash.

That band did a song, "Washington Bullets," which can be found on the landmark, triple-disc "Sandinista" album from 1980. It is an homage to the revolution in Nicaragua and a celebration of Jimmy Carter's restraint in allowing it to happen.

In that song the singer, the late Joe Strummer, says, "Please remember Victor Jara, in the Santiago Stadium..."

And so we will remember him here tonight at highwayscribery.

Victor Jara (HA-ra) was a guitar player, singer, and songwriter who chronicled the lives of Chile’s poor. If we were to produce them in detail, or type out some lyrics, his songs might seem, through the prism of the present upon the past, trite or maudlin.

They were anything but. They were haunting tributes that worked and moved many and revealed the soul of a sweet and tender man.

In the hours after Pinochet took control of Chile, thousands were rounded up and taken to the soccer stadium in the capitol city of Santiago. There they were tortured, shot, and "disappeared" as it was known in the vernacular of the time.

Jara was singled out for special treatment. The charming men who saved Chile from godless communism and agrarian reform took delight in breaking his hands and then daring him to sing without the benefit of a guitar.

Few witnesses survived the massacre, so we must trust or distrust the legend which has Jara singing the anthem of Allende’s Unity Party, and being joined in chorus by others awaiting their own turn to be broken on the wheel.

And then they killed him. A pop star.

Above the picture of Allende's terrible moment is another of Victor Jara whom we remember many years after his terrible death on this September 11 that has different meanings for people in different countries.

The Liquid Life (installment six)

WHEN THE ACADEMY AND THE STREET MEET

The most obvious thing about the salon was its size. An expansive thing both horizontally and vertically, it was a small palace done in the French Normandie style, with a few innovations not seen elsewhere then or since.

There were few, if any French Normans in that neighborhood. Elendele could afford the rent because it was low, because sometimes she carried a gun just to and from her car for safety. But that wasn’t the worse thing, she’d bemoan.

“The worse thing is this goddamn music at whatever hour of the morning or evening they please. It doesn’t matter we’re only ten feet across an alley from them. Nobody else matters,” flowed her typical stream of intolerance and hypocrisy.

Elendele’s building was higher than the neighbors’. She, being on the top floor, didn’t have to look straight into another apartment, across the alley, and actually had a pretty good jazz rooftop view.

But when the latest brass and banana offering from Sonora would explode in yellow across the night, Elendele would rage, go into a closet full of bottles she’d stored away and launch her empty Molotov at the ledge of the window from where the music was coming. She was a good shot. Sometimes it worked. Other times it just made them play louder, or worse yet, longer.

“I think you’re going against your own liberty principles, Elendele,” scratched the Saturn cat over her breakfast beer. “I detect a slight trace of the race thing, too.”

“And I don’t think you would know a principle even if it had a dollar sign stamped to it,” came the block and counterjab.

That wasn’t fair, but Elendele was scored by the criticism. So, she husked me down to the city library where she desired to delve into the topic of freedom, because she was confused about its boundaries and valuations. What she found was that most everyone to ever pick up a pen had written something on the topic. She was overwhelmed, but took what she needed and locked herself in a room, and for a few days, Saturn and I were forced to consider the limited possibilities of the twosome.

It took a week before she emerged with her latest revelation.

“I must say that I’m pretty surprised at the influence of Locke and Rousseau and their finding rights out in nature, like figs.”

“Oh yey!” cheered Saturn. Rousseau was one of her favorites.

“I learned,” Elendele lessoned, “that while not very glamorous thinkers today, the two of them could roll kings’ heads in their time, and that many of the basic assumptions that define our daily dealings are a direct growth of their mind-seeds.”

And that was all she said, before she reopened the bed so that the games could re-begin.

Some days later, we three slept: Elendele bookended by me and Saturnina, when the midnight mambo broke loose like an old Dutch dike. Sound was flooding everything with the smells of some ranch in Oaxaca.

The curly menace swung about and elbowed me in the nose, and somehow hit Saturn across her right cheek. She flashed to the window, slung it up and got a gun crack sound from the impact, which caused the band to stop.

Then she yelled into the night, as always, finger in the air, “I have been vindicated by Locke and Rousseau. Nowhere! Nowhere in the theories of these possessive individualists is there any mention of man’s right to play his music as loud as he likes, and whenever he wants, in his fruitless pursuit of happiness.

And the neighbor told her, “Das no my prolem, homegurl. Das you problem.”

There was a pause and then she closed the window quietly and climbed back into bed between us. “I’m trying. I’m trying to understand,” she explained, and then locked her mind shut to sleep while Saturn and I nursed each other bruises.

Bush at War: Total Repudiation

Boy what a difference a month makes. Thirty days ago voters swept the Democrats into power and if you feel like you are waking up to headlines and news from a different country, that’s because you are.

Minute by minute the perverse edifice that was w’s base crumbles a little more and this when, technically, the Democrats aren’t even in power yet.

In his post-election analysis, “Isis Left,” the scribe pointed out that every politician has a rise and fall and that Bush’s, given the tinny underpinning of his preparation and raison d’etre, was on par with those who came before.

But those who came before have rarely been subjected to the immediate humiliation and dressing-down that Bush has undergone.

He has been divested of any purpose and the only time anybody talks to him is when they want to say something unpleasant, but truthful.

Look at the cartoon above from Steve Breen of the stolidly conservative “San Diego Union-Tribune.”

The implication – no scratch that – nothing implied there, the assertion is that Bush and his neo-con friends were akin to children who broke into the pantry and raided it for purposes no one would ever have otherwise approved.

The second part of that narrative is open to question from an anarcho-syndical perspective. Many who could have said or done something sat on their hands or carried the administration’s water in the lead-up to the war.

Now, of course, everybody is aghast, as well they should be.

the scribe is young enough to have missed the “big wars” but there have been plenty in his lifetime. Suffice it to say, he has never seen anything like the living, rotting, glass-sharded, chemically poisoned, blood-river hell that is Iraq.

And we’re responsible.

But we were talking about Bush’s humiliation and it’s so easy to get distracted because all roads lead to Iraq.

Six years ago, on a dark December evening, the highway scribe rejected the (p)resident-elect’s call for national unity and wrote the Texas governor in his mansion promising to fight with every intellectual tool at his disposal the coming disaster.

the scribe officially lays down those tools of intellecual war today and turns to others more rewarding and forward-looking.

Whew.

Rumsfeld is officially gone, his whole approach to military science under immediate overhaul at the Pentagon where highwayscribery readers took notice of the point, made in “Isis Left,” that more needed to be undone than done.

Meanwhile, somebody’s locked the door to Dick Cheney’s favorite bunker for he is nowhere to be seen; just reward for his role in helping set up the ghastly affair that has been American governance over the past six years.

And John Bolton. Ah, John Bolton. The president can stand at a press conference in Jordan with Prime Minister Maliki and tell the American people their desire for a graceful exit from his war “just isn’t going to happen,” but that’s the usual on-message-media horsecrap, and the food of staged events.

At the Capitol Building, where the only thing that matters is a good hard vote count, Bush had to relent on Bolton; no sloppy recess appointment, just the testy responses of a man who had to rise to the top of the planet and destroy a few countries before he finally heard “no” when it counted.

Who cares about something like l’affaire Bolton? the scribe posits that the defeat of Bolton, and others of his ilk, will weaken the conservative movement for years to come. These were the guys who nurtured a dreamland where the United States took the gloves off, ditched nettlesome and effeminate socialist allies, and showed what real power is and how much good it can achieve.

For decades conservatives seethed at America’s abiding by the rules of an international game everybody helped draft, because doing so was unnecessary, when imposing order worldwide is a merely a question of the man with the biggest (canon)balls.

They were wrong and now what will motivate them?

But that’s the future. For now, don’t expect to see anyone introducing a proposal to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, because that’s just not going to get out Barbara Boxer’s Senate Environment Committee. Soon we can begin rollback of that legislation making torture a part of our national policy, if the Pentagon hasn’t dropped it in a shredder with the rest of Rumsfeld’s cat litter.

Sit back, take a deep and satisfying breath as James Baker, that icon of establishment sobriety, flogs his special report dressing down his friend the former president’s son the president, and wait for that apology about your early march against the invasion of Iraq.

Which were you, Looney Left or just a simple-minded Bush-hater?

Kennedy On Poetry (reprint)

Those who know the scribe personally understand how he has been guided by conflicting lights over the years: Jack Kerouac and Jack Kennedy. He has essentially chosen a path hacked out of the cultural forest by the former, but now and again allows himself a lapse into fantasy about public service so remarkable in the latter.

Here are some thoughts Kennedy had about poetry from a speech given at Amherst College in honor of Robert Frost in September 1963. For one moment, at least, the President sounds a little something like Kerouac.

It ran in the January/February issue of the “Atlantic Monthly” from whence it was transcribed.

It is unfathomable a politician of our own era might say such things, and it’s both clear and sad the things Kennedy envisioned did not materialize in this America that grew up in the shadow of his murder.

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us...

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones for our judgment. The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, “a lover’s quarrel with the world.” In pursuing his perceptions of reality he must often sail against the currents of his time...

If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, make them aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him...

In free society art is not a weapon, and it does not belong to the sphere of polemics and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But in a democratic society the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist, is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation...

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral strength, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.

I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens.

And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world, not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.

And I look forward to a world which will be safe, not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.

Andalusia and Mexico

Below is a speech given last week at the international book fair in Guadalajara, Mexico by the Spanish philosopher Adolfo Sánches Vazquez entitled "Andalusia and Mexico."

We run it here because it fits perfectly with the highwayscribery pledge to meld politics, poetry and prose; for its focus on Andalusia in the Spanish Civil War (setting of the novel "Vedette"), and because we are linked to Mexico both through common interest and work.

To begin, let me express my deepest and heartfelt gratitude to the Andalusian government, and in particular, the Minister of Culture, Rosa Torres, for the high honor she bestows upon me by distinguishing, in her own words, my “personal and professional trajectory.”

On this occasion I would like to make the following observations: that trajectory developed in its totality in Mexico, during the unveiling of a long exile and the years that followed it. Within that long arc I should note that it was in Andalusia, specifically in Málaga, were my early vocations flowered. The first was literary and which translated into a book of poems (“El Pulso Ardiendo”) “The Burning Pulse” and the found of the review “Sur.” All of this was encouraged by my great friend, el gran poeta, Emilio Prados, who founded the review “Litoral”, with cohorts of the Generation of ’27, and made Málaga the capital of Spanish poetry. The second vocation, rooted in the convulsive Málaga of the ’30s, was politics, which found its voice through my active militancy in the Comunist Youth and after, when they joined the Young Socialists to form the Unified Young Socialists. In the same vein, I should highlight the fact that the long path of my work as a professor was always marked by the values of liberty, justice and social equality and a personal ideology that was humanist and, particularly, socialist. An ideology that inspired me from the earliest days of my youth to the present.

Andalusia is not only directly tied to my life, my poetry and philosophical efforts, but is tied to it in a substantial and constant way, because in Andalusia not only was I born physically, but also spiritually, forged in her earth, the malagueña especially, where the previously cited values impregnated the whole trajectory honored here today.

It was, definitely, in Andalusia where I absorbed thse values in reaction to the reality laid out before my young eyes. It was the Andalusia of peasants farmworkers who worked from sol a sol, seasonally, for one peseta a day while the landowners of usually large estates, led a dissipated life thanks to the exploitation they exercised, in the company of generals and aristocrats, and of those who promoted the legend of the happy tambourine Andalusia. Counter to this vision was an exploited and miserable Andalusia of the farmworkers and miners who expressed their terrible situation in the bitter moanings of Cante Jondo and, at times, their rare and healthy joy found within that music: in her bulerías. In that Andalusia torn by such bitter contrast I was born, again, spiritually; that is to say, I made mine the humanist and socialist ideology that has inspired and enriched my entire literary and philosophical body of work; ideology that, in spite of its perversion and even negation during a long period in countries proclaiming socialism, I have maintained both as a part of my thoughts and actions.

In that rebel Andalusia of workers battles and peasant agitations I lived just 21 years, until seven months into the war, unleashed by the most reactionary social and political classes, Málaga fell and I found myself forced to abandon her in the tragic exodus along the coastal road to Almería, and in this way, leave Andalusian soil for 35 years.

I had the good fortune, as did thousands of republicans, to settle down after the war at the hospitality, as generous as it was disinterested, extended to us by the President of Mexico, Lázaro Cárdenas. And it was here where I launched the career today honored by the Andalusian government, which dignifies and represents the idea of la Andalucía demócrata and autonomous of today, the one I first knew and later dreamed of during so many years of exile.

I should note now, as I do every time I have a chance to, that the fruits of my teaching career over 50 years, and the 30 books published on philosophy, political theory, Marxism, and the philosophy of praxis – as with the work of countless other exiles – would not have been possible without this hospitality, given that the alternative awaiting us in our home country was prison or death.

I should also express, as I have on other occasions, that this body of work would have been impossible without the presence of an institution offering us the opportunity to realize that work and to which we tried to correspond, even if in a partial way, to the unforgettable shelter that Mexico offered us. That institution is the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in which the conditions of liberty of thought and its material support and spiritual nutrition allowed me to unburden myself intellectually, humanely.

For me, this honor is the source of great satisfactions. One of them is that it should be celebrated within the confines of an international book fair quite so prestigious as that in Guadalajara, precisely when Andalusia, as a special invitee, can demonstrate her grandness both traditional and modern.

Another cause for pleasure is that this act of honor takes place here, in the Paraninfo of the University of Guadalajara, with which I am joined through my years as a resident professor and which presented me with an honorable doctorate two years ago. And enormous satisfaction is produced within me to count upon the participation of my friends and colleagues: Federico Alvarez, María Dolores Gutiérrez Navas, Javier Muguerza, Ambrosio Velasco y Luis Villoro.

And so I put an end to my reiterations of emotion and gratitude to the ministry of culture for this act recognizing my personal and intellectual trajectory and my triple condition as andaluz, exile, and militant from a house of humanist, libertariann, and socialist ideals, to which I’ve tried to remain loyal from my days of youth in Málaga to the present.

Two More Fallen

Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on Death of Aguanga Marine

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today released the following statement regarding the death of Lance Cpl. Jeromy D. West of Aguanga, CA:

"Lance Cpl. West committed himself to protecting our country at home and abroad. Maria and I send our deepest condolences to Jeromy's loved ones. Every time we lose a member of our nation's armed forces we are reminded of the sacrifices made for our freedoms."

West, 20, died Nov. 25 as a result of injuries sustained while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

In honor of Lance Cpl. West, Capitol flags will be flown at half-staff.


Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on Death of Phelan Soldier

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today released the following statement regarding the death of Spc. Jeffrey G. Roberson of Phelan, CA:

"Spc. Roberson will be remembered for his courageous service and dedication to this country. Maria and I want to extend our sympathies to Jeffrey's family, friends and fellow soldiers. Our thoughts and prayers are with them during their time of mourning."

Roberson, 22, died Nov. 28 as a result of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations in Logar, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 230th Military Police Company, 95th Military Police Battalion, 18th Military Police Brigade, Kaiserslautern, Germany.

In honor of Spc. Roberson, Capitol flags will be flown at half-staff.

The Liquid Life (installment five)

Running material from the 1980s can make a writer sqeamish. There's plenty about "The Liquid Life," to criticize; the density of the prose, the expository ending, the in-your-face drug-taking (the world has changed a lot). But this character is one of the scribe's favorites. Sometimes he wonders if all the energy and detail pumped into Elendele are merely a set-up to her step-sister's soft counterpoint. She makes a second appearance as Seri in the screenplay, "Lunches w/ Actresses."


SATURNINA

Her name was Saturnina. A woman younger than twenty-three who marveled at the rocks on the beaches of her fearless and far flung journeys; who dreamed of starfish and drew them in charcoal on an easel first thing each morning; who picked sky clowns out of clouds the way demented people like to do.

I repeat, she was a softer, less focused version of Elendele and the blood relation – no matter how incomplete, was undeniable. Same curls, curvier body with rings around her waist and wrist, like the planet she’d named herself after on the plane ride over.

She talked and I listened. When she stopped, I asked her more questions.

“Didn’t Elendele tell you anything about me?” she queried.

“Elendele doesn’t talk about anybody but herself.”

Elendele gets a little mad at this talk and I am pleased. So is Saturn. So are the stars in their distant humming. The new friend sing-songs that it’s time for her little magic crystals and she cuts up enough methedrine to keep a stallion from sleeping.

Elendele refrains because it’s a thing that makes her horny.

Saturnina tells me about how she is fascinated, in particular, with the study of systems of thought. The isms for order in the world, and the investigation into each’s undeniable, singular failure.

“Surrealism, futurism, socialism, I have embraced them all like lovers at my favorite bar,” she says, “and of course have had my flings with Allesandro Nata and his shameless ghost of an Italian Communist Party.”

She now only believes that there is something, somewhere worth believing in.

“My engine needs only a spark, the faintest glimmer of hope to fire its pistons, and I don’t believe in being tired, either.” These, she explains, are the sturdy root elements of a philosophy she and Elendele are developing for the coming centuries – unfinished, but in a triumph of style, already named “Intra-realism.”

The Intra-realist revolution, she says then, has more to do with high fashion than fatigues, and she still wants to sleep with Princess Stephanie whom she’d had debates with in Washington Square.

Elendele pretends to fall asleep, listening in, but the conversation goes on for hours and her light flickers finally. Saturn pulls a bottle of candy red liquor out of her bag of kicks and mixes Campari shakers for the two of us. We spend the rest of the evening drinking – she spinning a spell, and me, swinging in its sway.

Finally, an arcane and enlightening discussion of the seventeenth century rift between Galileo Galilei and Pope Urban the VII, at her suggestion.

“That rumble cost the astronomer a lifetime under house arrest,” she showed her feathers. “He was furthering the teachings of Copernicus, talking here and pamphleting there, about how the sun was the center of the universe. Not the earth, as the church had been saying for a pretty long time, Dominique.”

“No!”

“The lies of religion,” Saturnina illumined, “had been revealed under the exacting gaze of the newly-improved telescope.”

Unlike Elendele, she was practically an ally of positivism.

“Now that it’s all been fought and mopped over anyone would have the right to think they’d have stood with Galileo in his cause. Or with Abraham Lincoln in his freeing of the slaves, or with Buñuel in his rampages over proper Paris…But they don’t know how untrue that is,” she furthers me. “Genius which portends massive changes in perception is mostly feared until those in the next millennium of the mind can posthumously come to understand it.”

Outside, dark blue had turned to silver, pulled back a layer onto gray, and ignited butane blue. Elendele wakes creaseless and peaceful, fresh in the face of our bloodshotness, our drooping, drunken countenances.

A good sport, she mixes up a breakfast for us all of strawberry quick-milk, cinnamon rolls and oranges.

Oaxaca Update

highwayscribery wanted to translate and rely the dispatch of correspondents of Mexico City's left-wing "La Jornada," on the breaking of the rebellion in Oaxaca.

Starting two days ago the federal government sent police into the capital city to do away with the rebellion of indigenous people, a teachers union, and other grass roots groupings hoping to oust the state's crooked governor, Ulises Ruiz.

Signs of what is to come under President-Elect Felipe Calderon's rule began surfacing with his appointment of Francisco Ramirez Acuna as Secretary of Internal Security. Acuna, "La Jornada" says, represents, "the hard hand, the forces of order, and institutionalized violence."

The government of outgoing President Vicente Fox announced two days ago that the time of tolerance had ended in Oaxaca.

As highwayscribery's treatment("Mexico: A Shabby Dialectic," Nov. 27)of a piece by Enrique Krauze made clear, the respectable people were calling for the imposition of order by violence as a sign Calderon meant business.

The federal government proceeded to step up patrols of paramilitary police units who have been arresting advocates of the Assembly of Popular Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), the prime political force behind this fascinating Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) that, by all means, must be broken by the forces of order.

Those arrested are being shipped to other parts of the country and the radio station at the Autonomous University Benito Juarez of Oaxaca, the informational pulse of the takeover, has already been emptied of dreamers.

The last significant barricade, at Cinco Senores, has been dismantled and the folks who led the six-month rebellion are running for their lives.

In the Congressional chamber in Mexico City, deputies from the leading parties of right and left are camped out on the podium where Calderon is to be annointed tomorrow, with blankets and pillows, singing a capella renditions of classic Mexican songs.

Billy We Hardly Knew Ye

Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced that he was junking his plans to run for president.

Frist’s bail-out was a natural by-product of the Nov. 7 Bush-buster election. A senator of little import, the Bushies picked him to run the “sweetest little club in world” according to their usual criteria of loyalty to the family creed and mediocrity.

He couldn’t even deliver on those, pulling the rug out from Bush on stem cell research with an eye to his presidential run, and failing to be even mediocre in steering GOP legislation to the (p)resident’s desk.

Like Dan Quayle’s, Frist’s rise was quirky and unnatural, as the administration dispatched with the party’s organic pecking order in search of someone who looked good on paper (doctor instead of lawyer), but was dull enough not to outshine the guy at the top. Once the guy on top was gone, or in this case de-fanged, each was left hanging in the wind with naught but a fancy title on their resume to show for doing the Kennedybunkport shuffle.

Frist will not be missed, because we hardly knew he was there. Bush stands a better chance of getting something out of the Democrats whom, however many their flaws, come prepared to govern rather than to obstruct and de-fund.

During his tenure Frist oscillated between absent and demagogic. His shameful rush to the stage in the GOP production of the “Terry Schiavo Story” helped seal his fate and that of the party as a bunch who shot first and let God sort it out.

The American people were more patient and deliberate in coming to judgement. Frist’s drop from the presidential sweepstakes is evidence of their final verdict.