Blown Away in the Wind

I saw Bill Ayers on Good Morning America today. He was about as useful as he was in the 1960s. Not very, in other words. It is entirely appropriate the man is a professor of education at Circle campus in Chicago. Another person full of shit telling the rest of us how to teach our children.

Mind you at the time I felt the Weather People were at least trying to do something about the fucked up scene that was the usa in the vietnam/nixon years. Mistakes were made and people suffered for no other reason than that mistakes were made. We know that this happens, but they spread the suffering through the culture so that everyone hated vietnam, that stupid useless war which we bought for 50,000 american lives. What did we get from it? Name me one thing positive. All that money flushed down the toilet of LBJ's macho, not to mention Nixon's macho. It might still be going on, except that Nixon was paranoid about losing and made Kissinger design an end that he could claim wasn't a defeat. Of course, it was a defeat. Vietnam is still a weird little communist country.

Anyway, I heard Ayers yakking about how he thought they hadn't done enough. Well, they didn't do enough, but not the kinds of things he was talking about. They didn't do enough to support the people who really brought about change, the democrats in congress. The weather people were all about glamour and macho themselves. Then feminism came along and they had tofigure out how to remain glamorous and macho in the midst of owning their own sexism. Pretty funny at the time, really.

The worst part of Bill Ayers is this: When they made a tv movie out of what happened to Diana Oughton, the Illinois rich girl who died in a a bomb blast in Greenwich Village, they cast Henry Winkler in the part based on Bill Ayers. Yeah, the Fonzie played the inimitable macho dweeb that is the committed social activist formerly known as the revolutionary William Ayers. You know, you really don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. But you do have to actually do the work to keep the farm from being blown away. That was the part Ayers and Bernardine Doerhn didn't have the guts to do. They ran away to play romantic revolutionary. Screw them.

And they are still around, still whining about the past. Just like the rightwingers who hate them. Sad stuff. I'm afraid we'll probably have Sarah Palin around for years because people like her and Ayers like their ego-driven personal narratives a leetle too much. Yes, and there I've said it: Sarah Palin is just another version of the same sort of person that Bill Ayers is.

In his case, he's doing Good Morning America because he has a book coming out soon. Promote, promote, promote.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama goes about the hard business of trying to actually fix things.

Mercy: Know Hope

No doubt that today there is relief and joy throughout the world. There is a smaller number of unhappy wingers out there. But they are far outnumbered by those glad to be turning a page. Two things, really: People are desperate to get away from the Bush years and the continuous drum roll of bad news/bad decisions/scare tactics. And two: finally we were given someone admirable to vote for, Barack Obama. People really do like him. He's written a couple of books, so if you want to get to know him you can. People in the press characterize him as "distant" but those who get him don't really see him that way. He's calm, very calm for an american politician who has at his heart strong feelings about morality and love of country.

What the wingers didn't get is that Obama is clearly a patriot. He's a man who loves america, like I love america. They say there is only one way to show that love, but they are so wrong. The crowds last night all love america, but it is an america in which they are included. That's really the difference. The most telling thing Sarah Palin did was to talk about going to the pro-america parts of america. She revealed that sad truth that some on the right just don't believe people in the northern cities and the western states really are americans. Not like them, the real americans. How sad this is.

But today, in the america I live in, it is a day for relief. The nightmare will soon be over, GWB will leave Washington and go back to Texas where he will live out his days, editing the copy his ghostwriter sends over and trying to shape the appropriate lies about what really happened.

It is a day for joy, forty years after Martin's death, his spiritual legacy lives in the people of this land. White people voted for Barack Obama, not because he was black, but because he is so clearly steady, and smart and interested in the whole of us, and not just the parts that he hopes will pay him in the long run. I think Obama won't spend his post-presidency racking up the speaking fees like Bill C. and GWB. But, first, he will be our president. And things will be hard.

And, as usual, the american south denied us what we really needed to get things moving: sixty senators. They returned McConnell, one of the worst of the gop, to the senate, as well as Wicker.

But, another day. Things we can be sure of now that Obama is the next president: the Supreme Court will get some long needed leavening, making it a more centrist court. The USA will again adhere to the Geneva Treaty. Those that tortured will find that some sort of accountability will be had by the broader culture, though I doubt if many will be imprisoned. The one person who should go to jail for that one is Dick Cheney. But he will go back to Cheyenne and do speaking engagements, although not in Europe or most of Asia. Those folks would grab him and put him on trial, like Pinochet. He will never vacation outside of the usa again. But he's happy hunting in the american west, so he'll spend the rest of his life feeling self satisfied, even as the books roll out what an evil person he actually is. Hanging really is too good for him. And, then, when he crosses over, those whose deaths he caused will be there, waiting for him and he will be forced to confront himself. Won't be any fun. He doesn't think that, of course. But it is the truth.

Enough recriminations. There are months to get through now. Obama has taken control of a ship that is listing from its wounds. How it becomes sea-worthy again we don't know yet. Yet, the basic strength of this remarkable place is still there. We can do it. Look at how we won the war against the Japanese and Nazi machines. We can triumph, but it will be very hard.

So, thanks to the Lady for Her mercy. This day is lyric, the sun shines, the steps are glad. The kids on line at school this morning were anxious to tell me that "Barack Obama won!" Yes he did. Yes we did. Yes we can.

Response to a Post by Becky Bradway

Here's a comment to a post by Becky Bradway on one of her indistinguishable blogs, this one apparently about music, most of which she found out about by living with me. In this post she claims that Ross Hulvey and myself were laughing about this Throbbing Gristle song called "Hamburger Lady," a very dark piece about a woman who was tragically burned over 70 percent of her body. Becky claimed that Ross and I were laughing about this until Greg Lakebrink's wife (at that time) Evan Kurrasch noted that she had had that very experience.

Evan had been horribly burned in a campstove accident during her first marriage. The only thing wrong with the story Becky was telling is that it never happened. I knew about Evan and the campstove accident for many years, for years before the Throbbing Gristle album was even available in the states. And for her to claim that I was laughing about it was simply a lie, to allow her to write this groovy piece of crap. This is what so much of Becky's later literary status is based on: her ability to take the truth and suck it into a groovy form to impress her other writer friends. That they never question it is part of their game. Why I'm note part of literature in these united states. They are generally, like Becky, not about truth at all. They are about propaganda to further whatever it is that they think is important to their own status.

Anyway, nobody reads this now. I know this by checking my stats every day. This is just fine. Here is my reply to Becky's post. I note here that Becky has taken this reply down three times, unable to deal with an alternate take. One of the things BB hated about living with me is how I tended to have a record of everything and I could go and point at the actual fact of what had happened, thus fucking her self serving versions of the reality. That truly pissed her off.

Then:

Why don't you just call him Hulvey? It's not like you've gone to any pains to hide his identity. And I doubt seriously if he would even care. As for the story about Evan, that is not how I remember it at all. I also don't remember ever laughing about the Hamburger Lady. That piece is chilling and strange and dark and kind of dumb. But what it isn't is funny. What Ross liked about it was that it wasn't funny. He had indeed gone through the darkenss of expecting to die from heart failure so his approach to being was gothic in a particular fashion. As far as Evan goes, she got married and had kids. What she always wanted to do. I wouldn't characterize her as the hamburger lady. The hamburger lady was trapped inside meat that had been utterly destroyed. They kept her alive in her prison. I of course still have the vinyl album. I have most of the vinyl I thought was good, except for the stuff you took with no negotiation of any kind.

But what is this supposed to be? It's not fiction. It's not history. I just don't get this "creative non-fiction" thing. Is it like what Rosie wrote? Thinly disguised roman a clef to serve some personal purpose the writer has? Like this particular post? In which case, I do it all the time and have done it for more than forty years, though mainly in my notebooks and letters.

I do note that we all have our own memory of these things. I think mine is usually more accurate than your's, but you'll probably pull this comment too. That's okay, this time I'll copy it and put it in my blog. Fair is fair, of course.

I wouldn't actually say anything if she hadn't actually spoken about me in this post and said things about me that make me look like an asshole and that simply aren't true. There will be a reckoning for us all when we die. People like BB don't really believe that. Too bad. I know better.