If You Can't Make Them Pay, Make Them Irrelevant.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has some strange ideas concerning the reality of life in America in the 21st Century. I don't need to spell them out. You've heard them. If not, ask David Hogg. Ask Cory Bush. Ask anybody with a soul.

More to the point, Marjorie Taylor Greene is an insurrectionist. She has aided & abetted sedition. She worked actively to overturn a legitimate American election. She has blood on her hands. It is beyond comprehension that she is still a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives.

That said...

I hate to be a buzzkill, but we all need to understand that Marjorie Taylor Greene is wildly popular in her extremely conservative district, as are Gohmert & Gaetz (& many of the insurrectionists) in theirs, for that matter. All they have to do to keep their jobs is keep their district happy; owning the libs seems to be enough. They don't give a shit about you or me & don't need to. 

The GOP leadership will not disavow her; indeed, they have embraced her. They don't seem inclined to take away her committee assignments, like they did to Steve King. Kevin McCarthy (who flew down to Mar-a-Lago the other day, in case you were wondering who's still running the Republican Party) just added her to the House Education & Labor Committee (just think about that), with more to come. 

Expulsion of a member of Congress requires a 2/3 majority, as per the Constitution. It’s not happening. Censure is only slightly more likely & outside of forcing the accused to stand in the well of the House & listen to the censure, it has very little effect, particularly on someone pathologically devoid of conscience. A reprimand is a worthless cop-out.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is unbound & not going anywhere; neither are very many of the Sedition Caucus. It's frustrating as hell; I know it is. They should all be in jail. We do still have laws in this country that address their behavior. Every last one of them should answer for their actions. All levels of Law Enforcement should be pressured to make them answer, because they don’t seem to have the will. LE is thinking twice about prosecuting the actual Capitol Hill insurrectionists. If that's even a question, expecting them to go after the people in power behind this attempted coup is hopeless. In a sane world, this wouldn't be a question. We are not living in a sane world.

Maybe justice is coming. I’m not optimistic. 

I’m looking past the individuals to the system. GA-14 is R+27. If Marjorie Taylor Greene actually vacated her office, whatever the circumstance, she would be replaced by someone with less criminal culpability but the same ideological taint. That goes for most of the seditionists. Unless the Republican Party is marginalized, politically, socially, & morally, the seditionists could be punished, but we will be no better off. Justice improves society; vengeance doesn't.

Don't tilt at windmills. We are not helpless & never will be. Our energy is better spent making sure the Democrats have a bulletproof majority in both houses, thereby rendering these traitors toothless. (We can deal with the Democrats & their flaws later.)

...& that’s a tall order. The Democratic advantage in the Senate is as razor-thin as it can get.  A lot of things can happen to alter a 50-50 balance; it probably won't maintain through this year.  One death, one resignation, one sufficiently pork-laden promise & the whole game changes beyond recognition. It might get better in 2022; the map is in the Democrats' favor. Of course, it was supposed to get much better than it did this time, too. (Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema & oh, how it pains me to say this, Susan Collins are the most powerful people in Washington right now, but that's a different story.) 

The Democratic majority in the House is hardly much safer than the Senate & right now it doesn't look good for 2022. The Republicans will gain enough seats in reapportionment alone to flip the House, & the party in the White House almost always loses seats in the midterms. That’s a fact, but it doesn’t need to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is where we should focus, not on one lunatic from Georgia. It isn't impossible.

America’s democracy has two broken legs & a punctured lung. It need to breathe on its own again before it can walk, or run, or kick ass. 

29 January 2021. Delray Beach FL.

©2021 Don McKennan

Lincoln Project screed incoming. You’ve been warned.

I’m sorry. These guys are living in my head. That's on me. I need to get this out of my system, so I can drop it.

The Lincoln Project played you. Sure, their ads were loads of fun; political voyeurism at its finest. I watched them, too. But they were entertainment. They were not the best political ads of all time. Not close. Good ads move markets & create some kind of capital for the ad-maker's clients: financial, political, social, whatever the client considers to be of value. Their ads did neither, while earning them $67M in ‘consultant fees.’ That was the point, all along, yknow. 

That’s your money, or it was. It’s theirs now. 

The reactions to the ads were always 'Fuck you' or 'Fucking-A', almost never 'Gee, they make a good point, I'd better think this over a little more.’

They played you.

The money you sent to The Lincoln Project could have gone to Sara Gideon or Cal Cunningham or Theresa Greenfield or Jaime Harrison or MJ Hegar or Steve Bullock or Jon Ossoff or Barbara Bollier or any Democratic House candidate in any swing district anywhere or any downballot race that might have helped to flip state party control going into reapportionment. There are thousands of things you could have done that might have actually mattered. Instead, you helped make Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, et al even wealthier than they already are. 

The Lincoln Project has never had a page on ActBlue.

Forget that 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' nonsense. They were never your friends. They never had your well-being at heart. Thirty seconds, maximum, of googling Rick Wilson would have told you that.  These guys have spent decades making tons of money by recognizing a mark when they saw one. If there's any principle at all behind their actions, it's because they can no longer control the monster they created. It's the lack of control that appalls them, not the monster.

But I know. Those ads felt really good to watch.

They played you, hard.

The chances of the Democrats flipping the Senate are bleak. They may yet lose the House. The 2020 census will lead to even more gerrymandering. Joe Biden is screwed. (To digress, President Biden, which, on top of everything else, is not yet a sure thing, will have to do a lot of things that will give us lefties fits if he wants to get anything done at all, but that’s another screed for another day.) This is what your schadenfreude bought you. 

The Lincoln Project played you. Like a violin. They can't wait to do it again. Have a nice day.

5 November 2020. Delray Beach FL.

©2020 Don McKennan

Melanoma.

May 2014

This is the time of year when I start wearing sunblock every time I go out the door. I should wear sunblock year-round & someday I will have to. But I hate sunblock. I hate the way it feels. I hate trying to wash it off. The stuff I use feels & smells like oatmeal. I hate it.

But I hate what might happen if I don't put on sunblock, more.

I've never really wanted to talk about this. Maybe I was ashamed. (That's stupid. I shouldn't be.) Maybe I thought if I said nothing, it wouldn't really be happening. (Oh, it's happening, all right.) Maybe I just hate getting the doe eyes from people.

It doesn't matter. I still, after all this time & all of the warnings, see lots of people doing some incredibly stupid things, proudly, & besides, I've let the cat out of the bag elsewhere. So here goes. It's too late to stop now.

In 1998, I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma & basal-cell carcinoma. I'm told that basal-cell carcinoma isn't such a big deal, but melanoma is a very big deal. I've also been told that it is unusual to have both. Lucky me.

The melanoma returned in 2001 & again in 2011 (& again in 2014 - see Update #2, below).

How did this happen? Who knows. Too many sunburns to the point of blisters when I was a kid. Too often thinking peeling was cool. We didn't know any better. Maybe none of those things. Maybe nothing at all. 

Oh well.

So far, I have been lucky. No chemo, no radiation, no hospitals. I go to a dermatologist every four three months. More often than not, he will take a sample from a spot that he doesn't like & send it out for biopsy. Most of the time, it comes back benign. Sometimes, it doesn't & he has to carve a larger chunk out of me.

By far, the worst of this has been repeatedly fighting with my insurance company:

-No, that was not cosmetic surgery & no, I don't care if that stuff is also wrinkle cream. I have cancer.

-I dunno. The only mail of mine that the Post Office manages to lose are the claims I mail to you.

-Funny. The claim I'm holding in my hands is perfectly legible. Maybe it's your scanner. (I get that one a lot.)

-No, that is not a duplicate claim. He really did two biopsies on me in one appointment. Would you like to see the scars? (I get that one even more.)

-Did I mention that this is a cancer patient that you're dicking around with?

I feel fine. I am fine. I'm doing what I gotta do, as best I can. I put on the sunblock. Sometimes Jane has to yell at me before I do it & she shouldn't have to do that. I wear hats. I expect to live a long goddamned time. I wish there were more shade along the Hudson, where I do most of my running. But no matter how much I sweat, the oatmeal doesn't budge, so there's that.

The last thing I want or need is for people to worry or think differently about me. If you thought I was an asshole before you read this, then I'm still an asshole.

I am OK.

As you might imagine, I hate beyond measure ever saying 'I am so glad today is over.' I am never glad that today is over.

One more thing. I generally don't hassle people about their sun worship. Maybe I should, but I know that negative reinforcement doesn't work, at best I'll get ignored & I'll just end up angry & frustrated. There are enough sources of anger & frustration in my life as it is; I don't need more. But I'll say it, just this once, while I have your attention: Please. I'm begging you. Wear sunblock. Stay out of the sun. Wear a hat. You don't look better with a tan & if you're luckier than I am, all it will do is make you look old too soon. But it could kill you. Sunburn is not funny, & your jokes about sunburn are truly not funny. Go fuck yourself if you think they are.

Thank you.

Update #1, 12 May: My cousin had a basal cell carcinoma removed today. He urges everybody to use sunblock & no, he does not intend to use any himself.

Update #2, 19 November: I've been diagnosed positive again. I had to go back for that larger carving today. Normally I do what I gotta do & otherwise just live my life, but, on days like this, when I see it in print, it isn't easy...& yes, the insurance company has already rejected my claim, twice. So. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. I bought a banjo.

Shameless Self-Promotion.

I now have two Twitter feeds:

@donmckennan - all of my usual nonsense, only in smaller doses;
@RightwingIrony - speaks for itself, literally.

Please follow, and enjoy. I thank you.

Live music on Broadway?

When I was the FOH mixer on Les Misérables at the Imperial Theater, over twenty years ago, on more than one occasion an irate customer came up to me during intermission & said something like 'You people have a lot of nerve. I didn't pay $60 to listen to recorded music on Broadway.' (Yeah, Broadway tickets were sixty bucks then. Imagine that.) My response always was, 'No. You didn't. This is all live music. Take a walk down to the front row & look into the orchestra pit. There are twenty-five musicians down there & they'd love to say hello to you.' The customer then said something like 'Oh, thank goodness, there is still live music on Broadway after all. Thank you thank you,' & walked away, relieved & happy.

So. Not quite ten years later, when I was mixing Saturday Night Fever at the Minskoff Theater (tickets were around $100 by that time), a customer came up to me during intermission & started raving about how good the show was, what a good time her whole family was having, & the show sounded wonderful; how long did it take to get it recorded so well? I said, 'No ma'am, it's not recorded, it's live music, why don't you go down front & have the musicians introduce themselves to you, they'd like nothing better,' and she shrugged & said, 'Hm. Whatever,' & walked back to her seat. This also happened more than once.

Sure, this is anecdotal. But this suggests to me that in less than ten years Broadway audiences went from demanding live music as part of a live theatrical experience, to thinking the music was recorded & not caring when told it was live, at roughly twice the ticket price. Tickets are half again as expensive today, and that's not counting premium pricing, 'airline' pricing, scalpers...

I tell Broadway musicians whenever I have the chance that this is what is gonna kill things for them, not synthesizers replacing violins. Some day, some producer is going to have the balls to actually try canned music on Broadway & if by some miracle the show is any good, it will sell out anyway, because the audiences think it's canned now, and they're ok with it, if they think about it at all.

It's already happening on the road. I found myself thinking about all of this after reading a story on the AFM website written by Mark Mulé, a musician who went out with a non-union tour of The Wizard of Oz:

But perhaps the greatest evil and the most egregious crime perpetrated against the actors, musicians, and most importantly, the audience, was the use of the virtual orchestra machine.

Non-union producers of musical theatre are absolutely in love with this mechanical monstrosity.

...

As some of you may know, the virtual orchestra machine is operated by tapping a single key on a miniature keyboard which triggers a computer simulated “orchestra.”

Thus the title of “tapper” is given to the operator of this crime against humanity masquerading as “musical accompaniment” for a so-called “Broadway tour.”

The thing sounded like crap, broke down several times per week (even nightly for a while), and sounded like crap (yes, I realize I wrote that twice).

Non-union tours are almost without exception a fraud perpetrated upon an unsuspecting & gullible public. But, despite generally bad reviews, this specific tour has been out at least since 2009, selling tickets & making money. Until that stops, this is only gonna get worse. It's a matter of time before this 'virtual orchestra' stops sounding like crap & doesn't break down repeatedly. Those are probably the only reasons we haven't seen it in New York, yet.

But there's more. Broadway shows have grown progressively louder over the years, so that now, almost nothing acoustic emanates from the stage or the pit anymore. It's all in the sound system. The actor's voice is no longer his; it belongs to a black box, fifty feet away, & the orchestra is no different.

I have been told that loud shows make it easier for the audience to understand what is going on & draws them in. I disagree; I think the opposite happens. I've watched audience members stare at the speakers instead of the stage, during book scenes & musical scenes alike. If the actor's voice is removed from his mouth, a wall goes up that inhibits his ability to tell the story; the audience is pushed away, not drawn in.

That's my story & I'm sticking to it.

If it is unforgivable that audiences don't demand live music for the money they're paying, or that they don't insist that live theater be performed by live human beings, top to bottom, at least it's easy to understand why they can't tell the difference.

If I were of a suspicious nature, I would think that this steady increase in volume is no accident. If nobody can tell whether a live orchestra is playing, then nobody will miss them when they're gone.

All of this is taking place in a culture where everything is spoonfed to us, usually through earbuds. Sitting in a theater, elbows on knees, & concentrating, really listening, rarely happens anymore.

Ironically, all of this significantly increases the job security of people like me. They're gonna need sound people more than ever.

Stan Musial at the Polo Grounds.

I don't remember the New York Giants or the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was three when they left for California. When my dad was growing up, New York had three ballclubs, and you were allowed to like only one; you had to hate the other two. Those were the rules. My dad’s team was the Giants. When they were gone, his heart was broken. He blamed everything on Mean Old Walter O'Malley. It wasn't bad enough that Mean Old Walter O'Malley had convinced Poor Old Horace Stoneham to go west with him; Mean Old Walter O'Malley had talked Poor Old Horace Stoneham into moving my dad's beloved Giants to cold, rainy San Francisco, while Mean Old Walter O'Malley took the hated Dodgers to sunny Los Angeles. It was too much to bear.

My dad was, and is, a National League fan. He may have hated the Dodgers, but at least they were a National League team. So, with the Dodgers and Giants (sorry, Dad, the Giants and the Dodgers) gone, as far as my dad was concerned, there was no Major League Baseball in New York. He refused to take us to see the minor league team in the Bronx. My brother and I knew all about Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and Bobby Richardson and Tommy Tresh and Tony Kubek and Clete Boyer and Moose Skowron and Yogi Berra and Elston Howard and Whitey Ford from our friends. We had trouble understanding how the team in the Bronx, who beat the holy crap out of everybody year after year, could be the minor league team, but that's just how it was. My dad said we would understand when we were older.

It wasn't until the Mets started playing in 1962, and there was National League baseball in New York once more, that my dad took us to a ballgame. We went up to the Polo Grounds on Sunday, 8 July 1962, to see the Mets play the St Louis Cardinals, who, nearing the end of a long dry spell, were about to start beating the holy crap out of everybody, too.

The Polo Grounds was huge. (For years, my brother and I thought that every ballpark was huge. It wasn't until we went to Shibe Park in Philadelphia in 1968, by that time gloriously renamed Connie Mack Stadium, that we learned that most ballparks were not huge, and looked nothing like the Polo Grounds.) The foul lines were short, but the centerfield wall was 483 feet from home plate. The team clubhouses were beyond centerfield, up a flight of stairs that were on the field. The resulting niche pushed the dead centerfield wall back to 505 feet. Vic Wertz' shot in the 1954 World Series that Willie Mays caught over his shoulder would have been a home run anywhere else, by 50 feet. There were vertical iron girders throughout the stadium that managed to block the view of anything important, without fail.

The Mets lost, 15-1. I was only eight, and even I could tell they weren't very good. The Mets committed four errors; Frank Thomas, their best hitter but something of a defensive liability, had two of them. They only managed three hits. I really didn't understand how this could be the major league team in New York.

But my dad was in heaven. He was finally sitting in a National League ballpark with his sons, the same ballpark he had sat in with his father (more often his grandfather, actually; my grandfather didn't care too much for baseball), watching guys he remembered from what were already being called the Old New York Giants; the Old Brooklyn Dodgers, too.

The Mets scored their one run in the bottom of the ninth, on Felix Mantilla’s triple and a groundout. Even the Cardinals' pitcher, Bob Gibson, hit a home run. But the Cardinals' left-fielder, Stan Musial, forty-one years old, hit three mammoth home runs and was removed in the eighth inning. My dad said he must be tired. When Stan Musial left the game, he had to walk across the outfield to get to the clubhouse and the crowd cheered, so he walked a little slower.

My brother and I had finally seen our first baseball game. Now that we had seen a National League game, my dad relented and took us to see the minor league team in the Bronx, so we got to see all the guys that our friends had been telling us about. They even beat the Red Sox that day, in the bottom of the ninth.

The Mets moved to Shea Stadium in 1964, practically walking distance from our house in Corona. We got to see a lot of games in the next few years (particularly when the Mets played the San Francisco Giants), but I wasn't present at a game that the Mets won until 1967.

The Polo Grounds was torn down in April 1964, right around Opening Day. We moved to Jersey in 1968.

The night before our first game, Stan Musial hit a home run in his last at-bat. Combined with the three he hit at our first game, he hit four home runs in four consecutive at-bats, which tied a major league record. Monday's Times dedicated half a page to the game, and Musial's feat. Thanks to Stan Musial, I was able, years later, to find out the exact date of my first baseball game, complete with a big spread in the Times.

Stan Musial died yesterday, at the age of 92. Thanks, Stan.

(...& special thanks to William Austin Campbell, Sr., whose photograph of Stan Musial I cribbed.)

A 9-11 T-Shirt.

I was buying a bagel on the way to work this morning & there was a woman on line wearing a brand-new ‘9-11 Memorial’ t-shirt (with an ad for Tishman Construction prominently displayed on the sleeve). Not a ‘Never Forget’ t-shirt or an ‘In Loving Memory’ t-shirt. That mighta been OK.

No. It was a tourist trap souvenir t-shirt. How exactly is that different from an Auschwitz t-shirt or a Srebrenica t-shirt or a Darfur t-shirt or a Columbine t-shirt?

At least it was black, but I think that was more Manhattan cool than anything else.

There is a serious disconnect these days between the sacrifices, the hardships, the tragedies, the insanity that makes up the lives & deaths around us, & the willingness or even the ability of the rest of us to see it. We have no shared American experience anymore. No shared grief or anger or despair or joy. Or love. We have become a nation of people who hate our neighbors, both next door & around the world, because we think they have something that should be ours & why should we share, anyway?

I had hoped that Ground Zero would remain...I dunno, hallowed ground. Sacred. That's strange coming from me, I guess. Maybe 'sacred' is the wrong word, because, in a sense, it is a monument, to how quickly people will kill (& avenge those killings) in God's name. An invisible monument, to be sure, but still there. To most people, it has become one more background for one more vacation picture of the kids. Something to do before the Broadway show or the Yankees game. A reminder to nobody. An homage lost & forgotten. An inconvenience.

9-11 no longer has any meaning. After just 10 short years, it is just an excuse to deny each other's patriotism. Or sell t-shirts.

Update, 20 May 2014: The 9/11 Museum is open. It has a gift shop.