Right, Wing-Nut!: Money Honey Maria Bartiromo Likes It Rough; Senator Cardin Does Not

Right, Wing-Nut!: Money Honey Maria Bartiromo Likes It Rough; Senator Cardin Does Not



Maria's cosmetically inflated lips are simply a distraction in tonight's Republican "debate."  That's not necessarily bad when--after an hour of repetitious trash talk (a crescendoing "piling-on" that serves to "magnify" rather than diminish President Obama) the listener is numb to the deluge of demonizations. Maria's excessive lips are a reminder of the luxuries afforded the elite 1% who promise to "make America great" by returning to the "values" of the past--such as the "trickle-down" economy that serves to enrich that top 1% at the expense of the majority. Conservatism need not be another "shock and awe" campaign against Iraq or those awesomely "radical" terrorists.  Where are the "cultural" conservatives who recognize--besides buildings "walls" and re-filming the cosmetics of how American prisoners are restored to freedom-- is the saving of Plato,  Shakespeare, and Michelangelo or the indigenous American arts of jazz; the "Great American Songbook" and the American technology that D.W. Griffith, in 1915, raised to the level of national epic in the first American feature film.?

Play It Again, Sam!

Actually, I think I want a personal web page with numerous categories: jazz, aesthetics, literary theory, gadgets and technology, Kierkegaard, Faulkner, Robert Browning, education, learning theory, my heritage, the archetypal and present-day significance of President Obama, the deja vu feeling of reactionary responses to anything deemed new, politically correct, or "liberal," the Manichaean reductiveness of our times. But I find myself creating my first blog merely as a result of trying to access musician Ken Peplowski's blog to ask him about personnel on one of his recordings. So here I am, like it or not. Maybe my getting my toe wet will encourage jumping in the deep end or looking for another swimming pool (i.e. a dotcom web-page). What was that business about the dotcom bust at the end of the last millennium? Am I late to the party? I guess it doesn't matter if it's the right party. And everywhere I go, from the barber shop to gigs to even a few classrooms, all I see are monitors tuned to Fox News. I can't believe what I'm hearing. Even the Fox Business Channel called all of Europe "secular humanists," before going further and pronouncing them all "pagans," before going further and calling all pagans "socialists" and all capitalists "Christians." Am I missing a step in the logic here? After reading Faulkner, I sort of understand the sentiments (try "Absalom! Absalom! and the story within the story about a character with white skin who is the descendant of an "octoroon" (1/8th "negro" blood on the mother's side). This circumstance condemns him to a life of ostracism by both races and to continual, masochistic (or Christ-like) self-flaggellation. Faulkner's regional stories, I'm afraid, are all too universal, representing the consciousness of the human race. Perhaps I should have named my "blog" after that character, because much of the time I am that octoroon's son. Call me Henry Bonn. "Play it again, Sam" perhaps has no meaning in the cultural amnesia of our present-day moment. And if it did, Bogart would be summarily condemned and dismissed for not looking like Brad Pitt and for being so out-of-date compared to our new and improved society (i.e. Bogart smokes cancer sticks). The question then becomes: should the government, whether national or state, be allowed to tell him he can't smoke? Or does it depend on who's issuing the order, and perhaps what their skin color happens to be?