1868 Two Recent Anniversaries

1868 Two Recent Anniversaries

They took place yesterday, 11/7/17 and two days before (for the subtraction challenged that means 11/5/17.)

1. In 1892, Susan B. Anthony and other women were arrested for voting. Now, 125 years later not only do women have the right to vote but they have a nifty one dollar coin with Ms. Anthony’s image to remember her struggle.
2. One year ago you elected trump.

Happy now?

Granted the choices were hideous. But this time America voted for the worst of two evils and now we have a new normal and he’s just getting started.

Others have pointed out that eventually the shock of this presidency wears off and makes you tired.  Maybe weary is a better word.  But you don’t get used to it, you meekly accept it as, well, normal.

Administration by Twitter. Soak the poor. Kill your health insurance or maim it. Privatize your schools. Send an A-bomb to North Korea. Produce more coal. Soak the government by sending millions of tax dollars to your business interests.

Threaten to lock up your opponents. Threaten the free press guarantee in the First Amendment. Talk about grabbing women’s private parts.  Make deals -- secret deals -- with the leader of another country which has regularly pledged to “bury” us.

Racism becomes fashionable.

And the lies atop lies atop lies as facts face off against “alternative facts.”

Is this how we “Make America Great Again?”  Government by tweet.  Government by screen printed red hats and a roulette wheel of policy changes.

Admit it. We’re starting to think of all this as just another day at the office.  Shame on us.

SHRAPNEL:

--Twitter says we can now use up to 280 characters in a tweet, double the original allotment.  It’s nice. But that 140 character limit forced us windbags the focus our thoughts before running our mouths.

--With no particular news hook, an appreciation of Leslie Nielsen.  Before his hair turned white and he made some of the funniest slapstick-y comedies of his era, he was often cast as a white collar villain with ice in his veins.  And he played those roles with the same skill and talent he brought to Frank Drebin.

--Panel discussions are not news, they’re… panel discussions. If all the contact lists of all TV bookers suddenly vanished, CNN, MSNBC, Fox and HLN would have to actually do some work. The downside: thousands of “experts” and “retireds” and “formers” would be out of work.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

-“You might end up dead is my middle name.” -- Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin in “Naked Gun 33 ⅓.”

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I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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© WJR 2017

1867 Advice to the Lustlorn

1867 Advice to the Lustlorn

Leave it Energy Secretary Rick Perry to solve two problems at once: energy development and sexual assault.  After a trip to Africa (that’s a big piece of land called a continent, it is to the east of Texas and surrounded mostly by water) he told an audience at an event sponsored by Axios and NBC that fossil fuels will reduce sexual assault.

Huh?

Here’s the logic, if you can call it that.  Many places in Africa don’t have decent electric service and some have none.  Lots of rapes take place in darkness. If there were light, women would see and be able -- somehow -- to fend off their attackers.  The best way to bring light to a rural village is to dig for oil, he says.

Why didn’t I think of that!

If Perry said anything else of note in that appearance -- unlikely as that would seem -- it will be lost in the mists of time before the laughter dies.  The sad part here is that the guy probably believes what he says.

Same with Ejakayshun Secretary DiVorce.  

Her policy is keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant. Even the men. (Her home school -- or was it Amway Academy -- didn’t include the chapter on how babies are made.)

What good is developing a breed of gig economy drone workers if they’re going to learn to think for themselves? And while you’re at it, let’s pay a little more attention to the accused.  After all some of them are “very good people” with rough childhoods and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Maybe even PTSD from getting slapped a lot by the women they hit on.

But the recent tidal wave of sexual harassment, sexual abuse and rape leads us to one important question: Where is the line between casual, good natured flirting and the door to obnoxiousness or criminality?

Do I have to describe it for you?  Okay, I will.

There are a few things that you can say without doubt.  Rape is a crime and morally wrong.  But where flirting results in abuse depends on who, what, when and where.

If she’s already told you to buzz off, buzz off. If she seems open to conversation, converse. If she seems to be inviting, accept the invitation. If you misinterpreted something as an invitation and it wasn’t, apologize, accept the correction and buzz off.

This kind of exchange happens every hour of every day.  If it happens at a bar at 11 pm it’s different than if it happens in your faculty or film studio or hedge fund office.  But the guidelines don’t change.

If there’s a working or academic relationship where you have authority and she does not, anything but innocent word play is out of place. And even that is risky -- and should be.

If you’re a rich guy preying on vulnerable women remember that pay-to-play is widely available and in the long run less expensive and damaging than this hour’s target of opportunity.  And both participants end up with something to show for the encounter.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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© WJR 2017

1866 The Quaintness of Spam

1866 The Quaintness of Spam

All this fuss about Facebook and the Russians getting trump elected is making spam look quaint.  What used to be among the most annoying features of email and the internet seems like a relic now.

There’s no doubt the evil uses of social media are, well, evil.  And we might ask what does their use say about us as both user and use-ee?  But that’s another topic for another day.  Today let’s think about that little corner of our mailboxes that used to be stuffed with the fantastic.

Is your folder getting anemic?  Many have this condition.  Does the stuff in your folder make you laugh more than want to cash in on that big windfall from a Nigerian prince?

Yes, there still are plenty of sucker games on spam, but it looks like we’ve learned to see them for their entertainment value rather than as a way to get rich quick or grow a bigger whatsis or for a small donation get a tube of “miracle water” that will cure your ills.

I kind of miss the Nigerian prince.  He seems to have stopped trying to get my checking account information.  But he didn’t go easy.  He moved somewhere else and became an Ethiopian prince or a Cambodian prince or even a distant relative of the British royal family.

It’s gotten to the point that if you feel the need for spamish recognition, you have to feather your own nest.  People are taking legitimate ads and marking them as spam just to fill the seats.

The mail that comes in from Sen. Toomey (R-PA) now goes directly to the spam folder. He probably would object if he knew.  But it kind of adds a bit of class to the bleak worlds of tire shops, men’s stores, and counterfeit Viagra from the “Canadian pharmacy” which actually is in India.

Yep, most of that stuff is gone.  Now we’re subjected to much more subtle and believable stuff on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

There is, however, one bright spot in all this: Natasha, the would-be Russian mail order bride and Bobette who wants to know why I didn’t respond to her most recent e-mail (never received.)  The offers are tempting, especially in an age where if a guy looks sideways at a woman he’s immediately put on the sex offender list.

Oh, the things Natasha wants to do to make me happy. All it takes is a small donation on my credit card.  The same goes for “Long Lost Navajo Secret Restores Hearing in 14 Days” and “Get Out of Debt Tomorrow.”

SHRAPNEL:

--If you’d never heard the name “Indo Pacific” before just now, get used to it.  It’s the trump administration’s way of saying “Asia.” The reason for the new name is shrouded in mystery… kind of like a joke that no one gets.

--Spokeswoman Sara Huckster used it in one of her briefings the other day.  Secretary of State ReXXon used it 15 times in a short speech. Count on another change of phrase as soon as someone in Washington realizes that India and other countries have been using Indo Pacific for years… so it wasn’t made in USA.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017

1865 The Laundromat

Manafort. Gates. Papadopoulos. The first two former trump aides charged with money laundering. The third, a minor figure, charged with lying to the FBI about a Russian connection.  And the White House has a double barrelled response.

Barrel one: Manafort is long gone from the campaign. Gates was a bit player.  Barrel two: Papadopoulos was less than a minor character.

Sarah Huckster Sanders the president’s press secretary who reminds you of the aunt who bought you clothing for your birthday, gets up there and more slickly than that aunt tells you “that’s all old history.”

To her credit, she didn’t echo the party line “Hey, what about Hillary, the foundation, the Russians.”  Leave that to the boss and his more intense sycophants.

So will these three upstanding citizens do time?  They could. But the real issue is can they be flipped and rat out some more important rats.  The answer is For Sure. These are the canaries in the coal mine that’s running the executive branch these days.

And to that… keep your eye on George Papadopoulos, Hudson Institute contributor who supposedly was digging in the soil of Moscow for the dirt on Hillary.  He is the furthest removed from the center of campaign and White House intrigue and charged with the most common of the crimes.

Who better to rely on for intelligence work than a secret agent whom most people never heard of and who was the least likely to be seen in the orbits of any of trump’s major planets?  “That guy?  THAT guy? You gotta be kidding.”

Yeah. That guy.  So ordinary, so generic and so pliable. A jack of no trades with a decent brain, a decent education and practically invisible outside the walls of the Hudson Institute.

The what? The Hudson institute, situated on the banks of… uh… the Potomac. Started by “Futurist” Herman Kahn, the real life inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s

Dr. Strangelove, the mad proposer of living in mineshafts after America nukes Russia.

It’s yet another of those right wing think tanks whose job it is to upset apple carts by putting out press releases by guys like Papadopoulos.

trump called Papa a “low level’ campaign worker. Of COURSE he was.  Even trump wouldn’t let a public face do the kind of work Papadopoulos is said to have done.

And trump wasn’t as smart as his fellow New Yorker, John Gotti who assumed his social club was wired and so held his private talks while walking along the streets.

SHRAPNEL:

--Remembering Emma McClain, dear friend, debate opponent and both seeker and giver of advice. Yesterday would have been her 104th birthday, 10/31.  I know you have organized a heavenly Sunshine Club and as in life, since you always enjoy a good laugh, you’re watching us earthly fools continue to make earthly fools of ourselves.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017

1864 The Case for "Their"

Ok, grammar commissars, put a new sheet of paper in your Royal Portable and make sure you have enough carbon paper.  This one is going to provoke a torrent of hate mail.  And what better than an antiquated machine to write it on. Or with which to write it.

It’s time to consider an amendment to the Grammar Constitution. It would make life easier for anyone who has to write anything about a group of three or more in which not everyone is male.

Convention dictates that we use “he” or “his” when referring to a mixed group.  “Each steamfitter must bring his own wrench to work.” But these days, ask Ms. B of the west coast whether every steamfitter is a “he.”  (Hint, she’s one and be warned: don’t mess with her.)

In an age where there are people who identify as men, women, fluid-gender, transgender, gender curious, gender experimenter, and countless variations of gay, bi or lesbian we need to reflect on the way people self label.

Most workarounds thus far are awkward. “S/he is sure to get a summons for running the red light.” This is an academic-created band aid.  It looks awkward on paper and it’s impossible to make yourself clear by pronouncing it anything but “she,” and that’s misleading.  

For awhile, professors of prissiness and high school and middle school English teachers wanted it pronounced “sss-he.”  But that sounds like a snake about to sink his or her fangs into the speaker.

Slightly less annoying but wordy enough to break the flow of any sentence is “he or she.”  “He or she is sure to get a summons…”

So as we build toward the climactic case for “their” we can say “If you speed, you’ll get a ticket.”

How about “every steamfitter should bring their own wrench?”  We do it in polite conversation. We do it when talking about couples: “A couple of old sailors own the boat. They bought it…”  “The happy couple’s  honeymooning in Bermuda.  They’ll be staying at …”

Technically, a couple is an “it,” a collective singular.  But who would say “The happy couple is honeymooning in South Bend, Indiana. It got on a flight this morning?”

The pacesetter of US grammar outside the classroom, the Associated Press Stylebook, recently declared “we don’t use masculine pronouns as the default.”

Is this just political correctness run amok?  No. It’s a matter of adjusting the language to circumstances.  This space has long opposed modern “descriptive” dictionaries.  Prescriptive -- if you can find one -- still rules the language, or should.  

But language does evolve and once Miss Grundy gets over this part of evolution and becomes Ms. Grundy, English teachers across the land will likely stick to their he-man ways or risk being branded a traitoress.

English English on which our language allegedly is based has long gotten around this.  And if those Veddy Proper Brits can do it, so can we.

“British Airways are buying 10 short haul planes from Cessna.”  They really aren’t. But if they were, that’s how they’d announce it.  “The couple are honeymooning in Scotland.”

Yes, it are.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“Brexit was the stupidest thing ever.  But we trumped em.” --Mike Bloomberg.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017

1863 Fats

(AP Wirephoto 1956)

What is there about this man that so ingrained him in our minds, hearts and ears for six decades?  Fats Domino. Pounding piano. Big band.  Doghouse bass fiddle.

Happy or sad there was mirth in his baritone; power in his piano.  There was a sameness to each of the songs that were unmistakably his whether a pop standard or an original composition.  It didn’t matter whether he was “walking, yes indeed ...walking” or harvesting on “Blueberry Hill.”

It was that sameness we wanted, we reveled in, we applauded and cheered.

Fats burst onto the national scene at what should have been the absolute wrong time, the mid 1950s when New Orleans jazz piano was fading from memory and rock n roll was just getting started.

But it turned out to be the absolute right time.  He wasn’t a clone of Fats Waller. But he wasn’t a clone of the Doowop Brothers or the “Comets” either.  He was just Fats.  Most of us up north had never heard anything like him and couldn’t wait to start saving for the next record the day we bought the current one (for less than a buck, by the way.)

He said his height (5’ 5”) was the same size as his width. True?  Who knows?

In 2015 he was performing the same songs he performed in 1955.  Oh, sure, there were new ones, new ones that sold copies in the millions and millions.

And as was the habit in the early days, there were covers by white guys, copies.  When Pat Boone recorded “Ain’t It a Shame” Fats ignored him.  But by the time Ricky Nelson covered “I’m Walkin’” Fats embraced it, performed it live with Nelson.  Never a bad word between the two.  And there was the Blueberry Hill duet with Elvis.

(The registered title of the song is “Ain’t It a Shame,” even though Fats always sang it “Ain’t That a Shame.”)

While he hadn’t a new hit in decades, his draw as a performer never waned.  You booked Fats, you got a full house.  A full house of happy concert goers. And you understood every word despite the molasses- thick NOLA drawl.  Unlike most of today’s “music.”

He got into the news rarely, though. The biggest story about him recently was the drowning of his favorite piano during Hurricane Katrina. Sad. But not fatal. He escaped and reminded us he never went Hollywood or Nashville. Home was home.  We loved that about him too.

It isn’t surprising when a man of 89 passes away. But it’s shocking. Probably, it shouldn’t be. 89 is a long time even by today’s extended standard.  But news of his passing put a hole in more hearts than we could imagine.

As a kid, he delivered ice to homes with ice boxes. As an adult he delivered excitement and warmth to all of America.

OK, enough. What would Fats want us to do?  Let’s party!

Video:

Walkin' To New Orleans

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017

1862 Tales of One City

1862 Tales of One City

NEW YORK -- Strange things are happening.  Here are three examples.

1.

Starting in September, the cafeterias in New York City public schools will observe “meatless Mondays.” This is the latest Big Idea from Mayor Bill de Blastoff struggling mightily for something to talk about as he seeks reelection as a Democrat in the most heavily Democratic Party major city in the country. His chances are iffy which isn’t hard to believe.

Appealing to the vegetarian crowd would better be served by offering meat alternatives five days a week. Also: Ask any school kid about cafeteria food.  Yes, for many, their best meal or meals of the day will be what they eat at a school breakfast or lunch.  But most of what’s offered can be described only as Virtual Food.

If you ran a restaurant serving clones of these meals you’d be out of business in two weeks. Maybe less.  But there’s little chance of one opening.  Unless some bright entrepreneur finds financing from someone who didn’t attend school here.

2.

New Yorkers yuck it up when we hear that New Orleans sits below sea level. We ask what cement head would build a city that’s guaranteed to flood?

But New York is a city by the sea.  And even though we all know that global warming is a myth promoted by scientists who were bullied as children and trying now to bully back, New York is at risk.

The ice cap is melting.  Not all the way. At least not yet. And even though we know your car and your barbecue and your coal fired power plant are not at fault, the ocean is likely to rise.

The temperatures over the medium term are expected to rise by up to six degrees.  Six degrees? Why that’s nothing.  You can’t feel the difference between 86 and the mid 90s.  You can’t feel the difference between 25 and 19 degrees. Right?

Oh yeah?

So those seditious science phonies say instead of a catastrophic flood every 500 years we’re likely to see the interval reduced to five.

It’s a conspiracy. The building trades and the MTA are conspiring to get more money, tax breaks, etc.  You think that’s going to work? Of course not. It’s all about the corporate government complex trying to scam you into stricter construction laws and the city looking for revenue, legal or fuzzy.

3.

The city is finally admitting the failure of the MetroCard, the quirky, fragile easily lost slip of plastic that replaced subway tokens which had replaced actual money.  The MTA is experimenting and running trials that require either debit or credit cards with chips and smartphones with Apple or Android pay apps.

America laughed as Hillary Clinton tried to use a MetroCard to get through a turnstile during the 2016 presidential campaign.  But to paraphrase her husband, we felt her pain.

The transit authority has had since 1992 to get this stupid thing to work right.  It got to the point that City College offered free courses in how to use the thing. Private health clubs gave courses in exercises to develop right arm dexterity sufficient to get that swipe motion right the first time.  

No known MetroCard user has had 100% success because the company that built the computers that run the system is the same one that builds video slot machines.  The house always wins.

Anyone believe the replacement system is going to be any better? If so, we’ll buy you Monday lunch at  the PS 150 cafeteria.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

© WJR 2017