The First Thanksgiving

Promised Land by Christoph Niemann
for the cover of this week's New Yorker

Oh Noz: The Stealth Muslim Turkey Terrorist Threat!

When you're gathered around the Thanksgiving table today, don't tell Aunt Martha . . . but that nice juicy Butterball turkey that she spent hours roasting to a golden brown is a secret Muslim.  Rightwing nutjob and asshole king Bryan Fischer shouts out the warning to all freedom-loving Americans about the weird top-secret Muslim recipe that has put a hoodoo on all our plump and tender American turkeys:



And I'm like, WTF? How is halal any different from kosher? And why should I care? It only makes a difference to people whose religion has dietary requirements, which mine doesn't. Of course, by dinnertime today, half of America will be torn between throwing up that succulent turkey meat, while the other half will be laughing their butts off at the total redneck assininity of this non-crisis.

Actually, go ahead and tell Aunt Martha and all the rest of your damn family, stir some shit up. It'll be fun.

Just watch what happens when cousin Billy Bob tries to throw Aunt Martha's labor of love into the garbage can. At least when the fight breaks out, you won't get stuck having to watch some stupid-ass football game all afternoon. Grin.


Photo: TPMMuckraker.

All About the Boys in the Band

Young'uns today have no idea how shocking this poster was in 1970.

The other day I stumbled upon this short feature on the making of The Boys in the Band, the play and the movie, which is a fascinating piece.  I well recall hearing about the movie, somewhere around the summer of 1970, at the time when I had just realized a few months earlier, to my horror, that I was gay.  Lots of sensational movies had come out in the late sixties, but this one seemed like the most shocking of all - though in truth, as one of the participants in this documentary says, there is nothing pornographic to be seen in the film.    It was just the very idea of a whole movie about those - those - ugh, those nasty, ugly, filthy degenerates - those h o m o s e x u a l s ! - that was enough to fill everybody with disgust. 

Including me.  As a young, frightened, totally isolated gay teen living way to hell down in the provinces, I was nowhere near ready to embrace my gayness - or, God forbid, let anyone else think I was gay.  I used to pray every night for years that God would never, ever let me even meet a homosexual, lest I be tempted to, um, do something with that kind of wicked sinner.   It took a long time to get over that brainwashing, and in fact, it was another ten whole years before I came out, my senior year in college.  I don't recall whether the movie actually played at any of the theaters in my small city, but I would have just as soon signed a pact with the Devil as go see it, if it had.

Still, as Leslie Jordan says about some other things in his growing-up-gay autobiography, I was totally repulsed at the thought of this movie . . . but fascinated by it at the same time.   Many years later, somewhere around 1986, I happened to find a paperback edition of the script in a used-book store - and was captivated by it.  Not only is it very funny in places, and a well-crafted story, but I was also struck by its verisimilitude:  the dialogue, the sayings, the bitchy attitudes, the personalities, all are so true to life, and still very much with us.  Which helped me realize that gay people in earlier times probably talked and acted much as we do today - there is a gay personality that runs through us all, though we may emphasize one facet or another of it individually.

One amazing thing I learned from this feature is that four of the actors were straight men - can you believe?  If you haven't seen the film in a while, go watch it on YouTube, or get the disc from Netflix, and see if you can guess which ones aren't really gay.  You may be very surprised with some of them.  Sadly, most of the gay guys died later, in the AIDS epidemic.  But the film lives on, preserving a slice of pre-Stonewall gay life for the ages.  Thank God we now have happier endings to look forward to, especially the younger generation.

Classic Shacks: Town Head House

Your Head Trucker's tastes in architecture tend heavily towards the classical and traditional; the Georgian period is my especial favorite, though as a Southerner I naturally have a weakness for Greek Revival; yet sometimes when I'm feeling my oats, throwing caution to the winds, I might even have a fling with Art Deco.  I guess we all have a little tryst now and then, eh?

When I have nothing better to do, I sometimes amuse myself in looking over advertisements for real estate I can never hope to possess, but which is delightful to daydream about.  In what may become a new regular feature here on the Blue Truck, here's a lovely old house in a stunningly beautiful location that perhaps my truckbuddies will appreciate as much as I do:  Town Head House, on Lake Windermere in the Lake District of England, which famously inspired much of William Wordsworth's youthful poetry, among others. 

The house has been in the family since George III was on the throne, but now they are selling out for a mere £5,250,000, or about $8.2 million at current exchange rates.

You can see more pictures and the full property description at the real estate listing site.  And the Telegraph has this article on the current family, their history, and their reasons for selling.

Tired Old Queen at the Movies: A Letter to Three Wives

Steve Hayes reviews the 1949 classic:

Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain and Ann Sothern make a beautiful and sophisticated trio in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Oscar-winning comedy A Letter to Three Wives (1949). Set in a small town on the Hudson, three friends receive a letter from the town flirt saying she's run off with one of their husbands. Trapped on a boat ride for the day and unable to contact their spouses, the girls review their respective marriages in three flashbacks. It won Mankiewicz Oscars for writing and directing and has superb performances by Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, Connie Gilchrist, and the irrepressible Thelma Ritter. It's also filled with the wittiest dialogue this side of All About Eve, which won him Oscars in the same two categories the following year. It's a not-to-be-missed laugh riot and the perfect antidote for a cold November.

What the Hell Goes on Here?

What kind of country has this become? What kind of country is it going to be? When, thanks to the Supreme Court, corporations can spend unlimited sums on campaigning and billionaires are already planning to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to defeat Obama next year and elect a far-right president? Check out what Rachel has dug up:



Meanwhile, bankers are already thinking about a million-dollar media campaign to smear the Occupy movement with "negative narratives" and thereby fend off any unfavorable legislation:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What does it say about this country that millions of people would vote for pigs - and I use the term advisedly, just look at them - like Karl Rove or Newt Gingrich?  Huh?

But meanwhile the police, who are paid out of the public purse, sworn to protect and serve the public, gaily pepper-spray non-resisting, peaceful protesters on both coasts, defending their casual brutality as being "fairly standard police procedure" necessary to protect themselves and the protesters.  WTF?

84-year-old woman pepper-sprayed at Occupy Seattle, November 15th

Is this the kind of country you want? Ruled by rich, self-satisfied fascists with the jackboot heels of their thugs on the necks of the people?

If not, you better pray the Republicans don't win the next election.

Your Head Trucker agrees with Andrew Tobias, financial advisor and author of a gay classic, The Best Little Boy in the World, among other things, who said this last month:

So the Tea Party folks demonstrate to keep people from having health care, to lay off teachers and police and firefighters, bust unions, keep poor people from voting, and – most important – protect tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Pretty neat trick how the billionaires more or less organized and financed their movement and, by harnessing their justifiable fears and concerns, gulled them into doing it. . . . Now come the “Occupiers,” or whatever they will be called, who share many of the same fears and concerns – and a few of the same bogeymen – but seem by and large to be taking the other side of these issues.

Maybe we should put construction workers back to work rebuilding our schools and bridges. Maybe we should pass the American Jobs Act “right away” to help the middle class. Maybe it should be paid for by Warren Buffett and other wealthy folks who are paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. Maybe Paul Krugman knows more about economics – and has the average guy’s interest more sincerely at heart – than Sarah Palin.

Well, it’s about time.

Crowds make me nervous. Simple answers to complex problems make me nervous. But enough is enough.

Update, 6 p.m., 11/21:  Two campus cops and the chief of police at UC Davis have been suspended pending an investigation. The president of the UC system yesterday declared himself appalled by the incident, ordering an immediate review of police procedures on all campuses.

Philip Kennicott writes in the Washington Post on the pepper-spray video:

It looks as though he’s spraying weeds in the garden or coating the oven with caustic cleanser. It’s not just the casual, dispassionate manner in which the University of California at Davis police officer pepper-sprays a line of passive students sitting on the ground. It’s the way the can becomes merely a tool, an implement that diminishes the humanity of the students and widens a terrifying gulf between the police and the people whom they are entrusted to protect.

The video, which shows the officer using the spray against Occupy protesters Friday, went viral over the weekend. On Sunday, the university placed two police officers on administrative leave while a task force investigates. The clip probably will be the defining imagery of the Occupy movement, rivaling in symbolic power, if not in actual violence, images from the Kent State shootings more than 40 years ago.

Although another controversial image, showing an elderly woman hit with pepper spray near an Occupy protest in Seattle, made this nonlethal form of crowd control an iconic part of the new protest movement, the UC-Davis video goes even further in crystallizing an important question: What does the social contract say about nonviolent protest, and what is the role of police in a democratic society?

A prof at UC Davis says what happened after the spraying incident caught on video was even worse:

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

More pictures and videos from that and other protests here.

And in case you ever need it, the Air Force has tips on what to do if you get pepper-sprayed.

Also worth reading:

Why I Feel Bad for the Pepper-Spraying Policeman, Lt. John Pike

What George Orwell Can Teach Us About OWS and Police Brutality

Great Soul with Clay Feet

My favorite books tend to be histories and biographies.  Since childhood I have always been more interested in the past, which is to some degree certain and knowable, than in the future, which is anybody's guess, and probably best filed under "You Don't Want to Know."  I will admit to an adolescent fascination with science fiction - Heinlein was tops in my estimation, followed by Bradbury and Asimov, and of course, like every other 12-year-old, I had a passion for Star Trek - but somehow I grew out of all that. 

I suppose I became less enchanted with the possibilities of the future as it slowly dawned on me that I had little control over things to come, the wide, sunlit vistas of childhood anticipation shrinking inexorably into the narrow bounds of my small and somewhat weedy garden:  hard tilling much of the time with the limited tools available to me.  Of course other people, possessed of greater abilities and finer soil, may yet feel the unbounded possibilities of life well into middle age; but such was not vouchsafed to me.

Be that as it may, I find it endlessly intriguing to read of how other people - both the great and the good, as our British friends are wont to say, as well as the poor and the humble - have reacted to the storms and stresses of life, how they charted a course through gales and high seas to reach a safe port or deliver a rich cargo - or, contrariwise, how they lost their bearings and ended up aground or shipwrecked, as the case may be.  After reading a great many such stories, with a philosophic eye, one begins to notice certain recurring themes and patterns:  those who make a safe landing in the end, very generally speaking, tend to be well endowed with the qualities of persistence and self-discipline - they have a job to do, and they stick to it come hell or high water, always busy and always reaching a little further ahead or upwards; they do not give up and say, "Oh, what's the use." 

I think that very often, such folks attribute their success in life to the favoring motions of Providence, when in fact it is largely their own stubborn perseverance that sees them through - which success some of them, on some occasions, take too much pride in, and look down their noses at others less blessed than they with these inner qualities.  Your Head Trucker, most unfortunately, has more often than not fallen into the what's-the-use camp, to my great disadvantage, being more heavily freighted with passion than with discipline:  which, while the combination sometimes produces lovely things, has never been a recipe for great success in the material sense.

A couple of other adjuncts to success, which often lead straight to fame and fortune, may be noted. One is just the sheer dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time - the unknown understudy who steps in when the leading lady falls ill, the reporter who just happens to be on the spot when some disaster occurs, and so forth.  Another crucial adjunct is the invaluable faculty of - how to define it? - I'm not sure there's a single word in English which combines what I want to express here, the ineluctable combination of personal charm, a kind of social magnetism, with the ability to meet many people easily and make quick friendships - of the sort that, when somebody needs a thing done or a problem solved, they think, "Oh yes, X could do that . . . " and straightaway they pick up a phone or dash off a telegram, summoning you to the next big step in your career. 

Which never happens to your Head Trucker, and exactly why that is I really can't say.  No doubt the inadequacies of my own talents are only too obvious to others, so that when they think of me, they say to themselves, "Oh . . . him."  And think no more in that direction.  Just my personality, I suppose, probably more prickly than charming, and one that will never be the subject of a biography, rightly so.

Well, that's just the breaks; not everyone gets to live a fascinating life, and if they did, fascinating would quickly become banal, wouldn't it?  Still, as I said, it is rather interesting to read how various personalities in all sorts of positions and places have acted and reacted down through the years, some with more success - and honesty and effort - than others.  Likewise, it is instructive to read a well written and researched study that uncovers the face behind the mask, the man behind the curtain.  We all of us have a public persona, the mask we present to the world, delineated with confidence and certainty - but then there is the private reality, which may or may not accord very closely with our public face.  The difference between the two is magnified in the lives of the famous, sometimes amusingly so, sometimes shockingly.

For example, I recommend to my readers this very interesting review of a recent biography of Gandhi, which seems to reveal a rather different person behind the mask of sainthood we have come to revere:

Joseph Lelyveld has written a ­generally admiring book about ­Mohandas Gandhi, the man credited with leading India to independence from Britain in 1947. Yet Great Soul also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive ­intellectual, professing his love for ­mankind as a concept while actually ­despising people as individuals.

And was Gandhi gay? Another excerpt:

the love of his life was a German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach, for whom Gandhi left his wife in 1908. "Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom," he wrote to Kallenbach. "The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed." For some ­reason, cotton wool and Vaseline were "a constant reminder" of Kallenbach, which Mr. Lelyveld believes might ­relate to the enemas Gandhi gave ­himself, although there could be other, less generous, explanations.

Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach about "how completely you have taken ­possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance." Gandhi nicknamed himself "Upper House" and Kallenbach "Lower House," and he made Lower House promise not to "look lustfully upon any woman." The two then pledged "more love, and yet more love . . . such love as they hope the world has not yet seen."

And despite his influence as a preacher of non-violence, it seems that Gandhi took the concept to quite fanatical extremes, monstrously so, as another reviewer notes:

Gandhi cannot escape culpability for being the only major preacher of appeasement who never changed his mind. The overused word is here fully applicable, as Gandhi entreated the British to let the Nazis

take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself man, woman and child, to be slaughtered . . .

This passage is revealing, not so much for its metaphysical amorality as for its demonstration of what was always latent in Gandhism: a highly dubious employment of the mind-body distinction. For him, the material and physical world was gross and polluting and selfish, while all that pertained to the “soul” was axiomatically ideal and altruistic. (Let Hitler have Britain’s “beautiful buildings,” while their expelled inhabitants, even as they submitted to extermination, meditated on the sublime.) This false antithesis is the basis for all religious fundamentalism, even as its deliberate indifference permits and even encourages sharp deterioration in the world of “real” conditions. Not entirely unlike his contemporary fighter for independence Eamon De Valera, who yearned for an impossible Ireland that spoke Gaelic, resisted modernity, and put its trust in a priestly caste, Gandhi had a vision of an “unpolluted” India that owed a great deal to the ancient Hindu fear and prohibition of anything that originated from “across the black water.”

I don't know enough to judge for certain; I never saw the movie (not that Hollywood is any kind of dependable source), though in earlier years I have read about Gandhi's life, as well as some of his own writings. And of course it is possible for a man or woman to have some good ideas, even very good, mixed in with others less than good.  But I offer these excerpts as a way of making the point that public and private are often rather different things; and sometimes the most unlikely characters end up being idolized for imagined qualities rather than real ones.

We could, of course, continue this line of examination by starting with political figures in our own country, like the current Republican line-up . . . oh, but what's the use?

Sunday Drive: Autumn Leaves

Use the full screen on this one, guys.

The Reluctant Superpower

Street scene in Ingolstadt, Bavaria

I never studied economics (though I wish I had), so the current state of the world's finances flickers across the screen of my mental vision like some increasingly uncomfortable phantasmagoria in a Fellini film, incomprehensible and ever more bizarre.  Probably I could understand more if I buckled down to study the matter; but I just don't want to.  Even if I did truly comprehend all the causes and effects of this historical crisis, there is absolutely nothing I could do with that knowledge to help anyone; and the low, parlous state of my own finances away out here on the prairie is too uncomfortable already to bear the weight of much thought.

Like most ordinary folks, I realize that I am but a tiny cog in an enormous wheel, and just have to endure whatever the movers and shakers of the world decide to do, or not do.  Still, from an historical point of view, it seems rather ironic that Germany - a nation I have no particular affinity or antipathy for, though in truth I am not much attracted to sausage, sauerkraut, and gutteral vowels - that having been put to utter ruin within living memory, it has now miraculously, so it seems, rebounded so much as to hold the fate of the world within its hands. 

Why is that, exactly, when other European countries who also were laid waste by the war, and rebuilt with generous American help, are barely able to pay their light bill, so to speak?  This interesting article in the Telegraph points to an answer, though how true it is, I can't say; but here's an excerpt for you to mull over:

Ingolstadt gives an excellent impression, aside from all the kebab houses and cars, of still being trapped in some much-earlier historical period. It is also one of the reasons that southern Germany remains such a powerful motor for Europe’s economy – indeed, Europe’s last great hope. And it is the behaviour and attitude of people like those living in Ingolstadt which will have a profound impact on how the current crisis plays out. . . . The German people value their local towns, worry about their neighbours’ views, relish the rules and are rewarded accordingly by a social and economic system that really does work. . . .

The devastated, occupied and shamed West Germany of 1945 rebuilt itself from a smaller version of the same principles as before – hundreds of towns, each producing something exceptional. And it turned out that this new German prosperity was also intimately linked with the successful export of things which foreigners liked, the ensuing money allowing Germans themselves to buy things. This successful pattern, a sort of conveyor belt of investment, ideas, things and consumers, continues to the present day. But instead of just being a source of happiness to many of its fortunate inhabitants, it must suddenly bear the brunt of a global disaster.

Since the end of the Cold War, Germany has given two gifts to the world. The first was the decision to pour many billions of Deutschmarks into the somewhat patchy rebuilding of old East Germany. The second was to be the principal begetter of the euro – what was meant to be the final act to wind up the legacy of the Second World War. In a grand restatement of the principles that had cemented the original Treaty of Rome, Europeans who shared a currency would have so much in common that they could not dream of fighting each other. Some of the applicants to join the euro seemed a little odd or dodgy, but the Germans would ignore this because there was a higher, almost mystical issue at stake.

It is perhaps the fundamental question now facing Europe: what will the people wandering along Ingolstadt’s principal shopping streets think about what has happened? Germany’s attempts to dominate Europe militarily ended in utter moral and physical disaster. Germany’s more recent attempt to dominate Europe through the benign means of hard work, constructive engagement and backing the euro appeared to be a brilliant success. The unique form of provincialism that lies at the heart of Germany somehow resulted in the belief that the rest of the world shared its values – work all week at Audi, spend the weekend in riotous drinking and arguments about the relative merits of long-haul holiday destinations, and mix this with occasional marital infidelity and spiritual crisis. It simply could not encompass the idea that Greece or Italy would use access to the euro knowingly and contemptuously to pour that work ethic down the plughole. . . .

By chance, the President's weekly video address today from Indonesia, where he is making trade agreements, touches on a related idea:

These agreements will help us reach my goal of doubling American exports by 2014 – a goal we’re on pace to meet. And they’re powerful examples of how we can rebuild an economy that’s focused on what our country has always done best – making and selling products all over the world that are stamped with three proud words: “Made In America.”

This is important, because over the last decade, we became a country that relied too much on what we bought and consumed. We racked up a lot of debt, but we didn’t create many jobs at all.

If we want an economy that’s built to last and built to compete, we have to change that. We have to restore America’s manufacturing might, which is what helped us build the largest middle-class in history. That’s why we chose to pull the auto industry back from the brink, saving hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process. And that’s why we’re investing in the next generation of high-tech, American manufacturing.

Which sounds good. But what do I know. And as a matter of historical fact, we had the world's biggest and finest industrial plant already in place when the Great Depression happened, but that wasn't enough to prevent calamity.

Waitin' for the Weekend

Sorry for the delay, fellas. Unexpected power outtage at my place, so I had to go hole up a couple days with the ex-roommate. Which was fun because we had a good visit and I got some real home cooking for a change.

But now I'm back home and the lights/heat/phone/internet are on again, thanks be to God.  So here's your stud pic of the week. Enjoy.

Fracked Up in America

The Bush regime continues to screw over Americans, even when it's long out of office.  Have you tried lighting your tapwater lately?

I'm afraid to go try mine. Here in Texas, we're on top of the Barnett Shale, a huge reservoir of natural gas and oil . . . but I never heard of this fracking business till just recently, after the big Oklahoma quake a couple of weeks ago. I actually felt it down here, a couple hundred miles away; rattled the pipes and windows for a few seconds, but no damage, hardly felt it.

Scientific American has asked the experts whether fracking could have caused the enormous upswing of quake activity in Oklahoma - over 1,000 so far this year - but the scientific consensus seems to be, probably not. They think.

Still, it makes you wonder.