Death and Tennyson on a conservative podcast

I somehow found myself watching an hour-long podcast with two conservatives. Yes, I know I should have been shocked, appalled even, but it was a conservation between a gray-haired Hoover Institution host and a bearded guy in a ballcap who looked fresh from a Nebraska farm, and was.

The host was Peter Robinson on Uncommon Knowledge. The guest was Ben Saase, Harvard and Yale grad, former Nebraska congressman, and short-time president of my university, UF in Gainesville. They obviously knew one another to judge by their opening friendly banter. My first question: How do they know each other?

Old colleagues, it turns out, friends, maybe. “Ben Sasse on Mortaliity, Meaning, and the Future of America.” Subjects that affect all of us, conservatives and liberals alike. I found out quickly that Sasse was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer that has spread to other organs and his spine. He says that he is doped up on morphine and winces in pain on camera. But he’s starting a new podcast, “Not Dead Yet.” And he isn’t. He even recites some poetry to close out the hour.

Two intelligent people talking about big issues. I like that. I miss it. Reminds me of watching William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” with my Dad. I now live frantic over the latest outrage. I stopped that for an hour. It was more than an hour. I interrupted the dialogue to go on the nightly walk with my wife and son. They walk, I drive my Golden scooter. It’s brisk outside, brisk for Florida, a cold wind from the north. We loop the neighborhood, trade greetings with neighbors, and we return, my wife to bed, my son to a rewatch of “Batman Forever,” and me for a snack and a return to the podcast.

Sasse is pretty fly for a white guy from Arlington, Nebraska. He jokes, testifies, gets clinical a few times but remains interesting throughout. His short tenure at UF was marked by controversy. Not sure if I can sum it up. I will leave it to the irascible Independent Florida Alligator to do that (full disclosure: I read the Alligator, support it, and spent two semesters there as a reporter in 1976).

The Alligator announced Sasse’s diagnosis on Dec. 23. That’s a usual calm time in the campus (off-campus in the Alligator’s case) newsroom, with student home for Christmas break. Sasse had this quote during the press conference: “Cancer is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.” If Sasse sounds more academic than legislative, he closes out the interview with a poem from Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ring out, Wild Bells.” Tennyson is a particularly good poet to choose for memorization due to his rhyme schemes and repetitions. An example:

Cannon to right of them,/Cannon to left of them,/Cannon behind them/Volleyed and thundered;/Stormed at with shot and shell,/While horse and hero fell.

“Charge of the Light Brigade.” I had to memorize it during seventh grade after-school detention. The nuns punished us in 1963 with poems but I discovered it was a way to store away lines from the masters to blog about in 2026. Bless you sisters.

Tennyson wrote “Wild Bells” in a tribute to a friend who died at 22. It ends with these two stanzas as Sasse recites:

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

 

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Sasse is a Christian. He talks about it in ways we used to hear more often. Light on judgements, heavy on redemption. But it was his comments on academia that spoke to me. At UF, he brought in colleagues to establish the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. Campus ground-breaking for its building was held last month. Sasse has been teaching courses there and was scheduled to teach in the spring (don’t see him on the current course list).

I am suspicious of conservatives taking over universities and screwing around with them. We saw what happened when Gov. DeSantis set out to de-woke New College in Sarasota. DeSantis liked Sasse and was instrumental in his hiring. The search for a replacement at UF has gone on forever. One great candidate was rejected already due to his alleged interest in diversity programs at Penn State. Nobody with Gov D’s mindset has yet been found. Whether that’s because word has spread among potential candidates that they will be stepping into a minefield or whether the search committee is inept. Or a combination of those.

But, watching the Hoover podcast with Sasse, I agreed with some of the things the man said. He is disturbed by students deserting majors in humanities for more “practical” majors, majors that will lead to jobs. Sasse is akin to his liberal colleagues when he bemoans that and his arguments for the humanities is nearly the same. The humanities teach us to be good citizens. Sasse’s course title for this semester was “American Life.” A civics class? Perhaps. Here’s his quote from the podcast:

“We haven’t done basic civics for a really long time.”

Educators have been complaining about that for a long time.

Why don’t kids want to major in history or English? Not practical. But also, those classes have been “niche-efied,’ narrowed down to appeal to small slices of the humanities that narrow the focus of the major. I know from my three years in a state university MFA program that those niches and biases exist and it isn’t healthy for the system as a whole.

Our children and grandchildren are looking at the shifting swirling job market and want to know how to deal with that chaos and the one that’s coming. We don’t know what the jobs will be in 10 or 20 years. We don’t know if there will be jobs. Elon Musk says everyone will be rich so don’t worry about it. OK, Elon, go play with your rocket ships. To make sure we have a good grounding on the world, and to ensure we can keep a functioning democracy, we need better future prospects that Elon provides.

To get back to humanities. Learning the classics isn’t a right-wing plot. It’s something that will ensure our future. If we’re going to get Middle Americans to buy into college educations, we have to make some changes. Here’s Sasse:

“There’s no reason the taxpayers of the state of Texas or the state of Nebraska or Florida should subsidize somebody to teach in a discipline that isn’t wrestling with the big questions and isn’t preparing people for work.”

The humanities do that. It makes us wrestle with big questions and prepares us for work. Some of those questions and careers we don’t know yet. But the humanities will give us the tools to grapple with them.

On Tuesday, don't vote us back to the Dark Ages

 

Something to think about as we face this important midterm election on Nov. 8. A Republican takeover of Congress dooms our democratic republic. VOTE!

Democrats' Sept. 8 fund-raiser features cake walk, garden tour

We'll save you a seat in Joe's Garden. 

Help us celebrate the final days of summer at the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition’s garden party and cake walk on Sunday, Sept. 8, 1-3 p.m. at Joe’s Garden, 3626 Dover Road, Cheyenne.

Light hors d’ouevres and desserts, as well as iced tea and lemonade, will be served. Attendees are invited to bring a cake to donate to the cake walk. Joe Corrigan will conduct tours of his award-winning garden and give tips for next year’s growing season.

Admission is $15. All proceeds go to local Democratic Party candidates running for office in the 2020 election. Come out Sept. 8 to meet and mingle with your fellow Democrats.

FMI: Mike Shay, 307-241-2903.

Far from the MAGA crowd: Democrats invite you to Oct. 18 chili cook-off and fundraiser

These are the times that try men's and women's souls, especially if they have souls. From a press release: 

Greetings Fellow Democrats:

After the last few months of Trump and Kavanaugh and McConnell and daily assaults on our psyche, Dems need a safe place to gather and vent. Are you tired of the MAGA crowd? Need a safe place to share like ideas? Looking for some talking points for those upcoming Thanksgiving dinners with conservative relatives? 

The LCDGC welcomes you to its semiannual chili cook-off and fundraiser at the Kiwanis Community House in Lions Park, Cheyenne, Wyo., on Thursday, October 18, 6-9 p.m. Bring your hand-crafted chili, salsa, and desserts to enter into the contests. Winners will receive a fancy certificate which boasts of your cooking skills and Democratic credentials. Suitable for framing and posting on your office wall, further stoking the paranoid delusions of the MAGA crowd fearful of encroaching immigrants, PC liberals, feminist protesters, African-American ex-presidents, and LGBTQ cake bakers. 

Candidates will be on hand to speak about the issues of the day and answer your questions and just in general talk some common sense. 

For further information, contact Joe, 307-630-6192. See you there!

Sponsored by Laramie County Democrats and the Laramie County Democratic Grassroots Coalition.  

I also can answer questions about the event. Comment below. 

Meanwhile, get out there and vote for Blue Wave candidates.

Dear White People: Columbia University wants to know what you think about the issues of the day

Columbia University's Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) wants to find out what white and partially-white folks in Cheyenne think about their role in society.

They came to the right place as Cheyenne is mostly white and partially white, ethnically speaking. The latest census figures for Laramie County, Wyoming, shows that 89 percent of the population checks the Caucasian or "white" box under the question about race.

I haven't yet received the results from DNA testing from ancestry.com, but I can attest I am probably all-white, or at least mostly white. I would love to see a percentage come back showing I am partially sub-Saharan African or Latino or Asian. But anyone can look at me and say, "Damn, I've never seen anyone so white." If I didn't have freckles where I was kissed by the sun, I would be so white that I would glow in the dark.

One more thing. I could be a little Basque on my maternal grandfather's side. He came from Ireland but had a very un-Irish name in Hett. Some genealogical research by my cousin showed that the name probably was de la Hett, possibly from the genes of a Spanish Armada sailor or maybe one of the French soldiers who occasionally ventured into Ireland to join the Irish in a doomed uprising. Ever read "The Year of the French?" I'm not giving anything away to say that it ends badly.

So I am European of the northern variety with maybe a dash of southern Europe.

Which brings me back to the Columbia University INCITE study. At the county Democratic Party convention at LCCC a few weeks ago, flyers circulated that promoted a survey for white people. Here's the basic text:

Columbia University is conducting a study here in Cheyenne on race and ethnicity, specifically about how white or partially white people think about their own race/ethnicity. If interested, you can take their survey by going to www.cheyennestudy-columbia.org/participate/ 

How could I resist? I went to the site and filled out the survey. It included questions about race, religious preference and political affiliation, among other things. I checked "none" for religion. This is a tough one for me. I do not go to church. But I spent my early life in churches and catechism classes and Catholic schools. I spent much of my adult life working hard at being a Catholic who believes in the social justice gospel. It was a losing battle. So I don't go to church. Shoot me. Fortunately, the bill to allow firearms in churches did not make it through the crackpot legislature this year. But it may in 2019.

I invite my fellow Cheyenne residents to fill out the survey. It would be fun to skew the results in favor of liberals. Imagine the eggheads at Columbia looking at their results and deciding that Cheyenne, Wyoming, was the most liberal place on the planet, more so than Boulder, Colo., and San Francisco and some of those college towns in Vermont. Wouldn't that be an eye-opener?

So take a fifteen-minute break and fill out the survey. You'll be glad you did.

Lots of activities for liberal activists this week in Cheyenne

Sixty people attended last night's Laramie County Democratic Party's monthly meeting in Cheyenne.

That may not seem like a lot to you, dear readers in more populous places. But here, that's a good crowd.

Why so many people, and newcomers, at that?

Donald Trump -- he's making our Dem meetings great again.

New Faces. New energy. Groups represented that didn't exist this time last year, groups such as Indivisible Cheyenne. Juntos has been around for awhile but their mission helping immigrants has gone from necessary to critical. "People are in danger of losing everything," said Juntos leader A.J. What he means, of course, are the people who are being rounded up in ICE raids. They can be snatched, Gestapo-like, in the middle of the night and spirited away to camps and then back to their countries of origin. These raids are a byproduct of Trump's immigrant ban, announced a few weeks ago in a fever and promptly shut down by the courts. Trump doesn't have his multi-billion-dollar wall yet, so the ICE raids will have to do for now. Juntos needs volunteers. If you can help, go to the Juntos Facebook page. Juntos hasn't had a chance to work with local faith communities interested in becoming sanctuary churches. Kathleen Petersen announced at the meeting that the Unitarian Universalist Church has taken steps along this path. The congregation held a "community conversation of becoming a sanctuary church" on Feb. 5. Other churches will follow. UUCC is always a leader in social justice issues.

Attendees elected ten new precinct committeemen and women. Anyone signed up by the close of last night's meeting now can vote for county party officers at the March 20 meeting. Many of these precinct people were newbies and one was a Republicans this time last year. The precinct is the trenches of the political wars, one we haven't fought very well. We know that grassroots organizing is the way to get people elected. But it's hard work and you have to actually talk to people, engage them on a one-to-one basis. People -- you know how annoying they are! But without them, well, look what happens. Take a look at our current legislative session. More extremist legislation this year as a result of the Republican juggernaut. Mary Throne was House minority leader from Laramie County but was beat by a clodhopper on Nov. 8. She spoke about the horrors of this session. As is the case with many of us, her kids are out (or almost out) of the local K-12 system. "If I had kids in the K-12 system now, I'd be really worried," she said, noting that we are looking at the "potential destruction" of our education system, recently ranked as one of the top ten in the country. A scary thought. But that's the Republican plan nationally, now that we have the anti-education Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the helm. The Wyoming Republicans have their marching orders -- scorched earth for public education.

Wyoming Republican senators spend their days bashing educators when they are not busy waging war on women, gays, wolves, Mother Earth, wind power, etc.

Mary Throne summed it up this way: “No family is going to want to move here, no business will want to move here, without a great education system.”

So much for diversifying the state's economy.

This sums up the attitude of Republicans in Wyoming: “Let’s make Wyoming worse than it is now.” Some wags have called Trump’s ascendancy “the Alabamafication of America.” You know those polls that always show Alabama dead last in education, children’s health, income levels and almost everything else? Well, the folks who gave you Alabama now give you America which includes Wyoming last time I looked.

The Dems argued a bit last night, as is their wont. We should be arguing after our piss-poor showing in November. There is energy in the discontent. That must be turned into action.

Wonder what you can do?

Attend the Laramie County Democratic legislative reception on Thursday, Feb. 23, 6-10 p.m., at The Suite Bistro, 1901 Central Ave., in downtown Cheyenne. Admission is $15, which includes a free drink and cool jazz by the Jane Robinette Trio. Also schmoozing with Dem legislators and other local liberals. A chance to get acquainted.

If coffee or tea is your bag, attend the letter-writing party on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 5:30-7:30 p..m., at the Paramount Café, 1607 Capitol Ave. Materials and letter-writing experts will be available to help with ways to write the most convincing dispatch to your legislator. Helpful hint: no cussing.

If you were part of the Trump post-inauguration Women’s & Allies March in Cheyenne, and you’d like to participate in upcoming marches, including the March for Science and The Tax Day Rally, come to the Laramie County Public Library, 2200 Pioneer Ave., at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 26. This energetic group gathered more than 1,000 people on a cold day in January to register our disgust with Trump and Trumpism. Fed them all, too.

I am at our local library right now using the public wi-fi because my home wi-fi is not working correctly. If you are looking for a place to blog surrounded by books that our president doesn’t read, this is the place. Support your local library in any way you can!

Indivisible Cheyenne also is planning events. You can find a link to its site on the right sidebar.

Just how do we get this alien life force off of our starship?

Sitting in my blogging chair since 2005....

I am not a member of the press. I do not represent the mainstream media in any way.

I am a blogger. A progressive blogger, prog-blogger to those who still use the term. An attendee of Netroots Nation. A sometimes blogger on Daily Kos. An embedded blogger (courtesy of the Dean brothers) to the 2008 Dem convention when we thought we entered a new and glorious era of truth, justice and the American way.

I am a Liberal in almost every way.

When it comes to telling the truth, I am s staunch conservative. Truth must be proven. It must be based on facts.

How do I talk about the post-truth Trump administration? A very good question. Fortunately, I do not have to experience press gatherings in Washington, D.C. How would I discern Trump's very strange press conference this past week? It's easy to call him an idiot, a fool, a madman. None of that seems to put a dent in Trump. He just keeps babbling on, no matter what sort of verbal ammunition you use on him.

Trump seems to be an alien life form who feeds on the fear and confusion of his enemies. Remember that Star Trek episode when a shimmering alien life force pits humans against Klingons? The force stokes the fears of both sides and then feeds off of that fear. The only way to get the alien force off the Enterprise is to declare peace and laugh it off. Go see "The Day of the Dove," season three, episode 11.

Scorn and satire doesn't work with Trump. He feeds off of the name-calling. He doesn't get the satire. You have to have a knowledge base to get it upended by satire and irony. Trump doesn't read books. He makes deals. He's using fear and anger against us. And he doesn't get any of our jokes.

Just how in the heck do we get this alien off of our ship?

No easy answer, especially to those of us who pride ourselves in being decent artistic types who pride ourselves in not ranting and raving at the drop off a hat. Will that be our downfall?

Nothing stopped Hitler except brute force. He cheated and lied and schemed to take over his country and then tried to take over the world. No wonder we can't let go of World War II. It was a titanic struggle. The forces of good triumphed over evil. The forces of good used horribly violent means to do so. We never quite got over the rush. Some say that Trump's U.S. looks like like Nazi Germany with the swastika, imperial Rome with to the togas, and Il Duce without the pouting Mussolini. We have the pouting Trump. America First!

Sabrina Tavernise writes today in the New York Times, Are Liberals Helping Trump? In it, Ms. Tavernise posits that the wise-ass and snarky and condescending attitudes of the liberals are driving away moderate Republicans. Where else do they have to go?

She wants to compare the current strife to the late 60s and early 70s, when every public discourse erupted into a fight about Vietnam, civil rights, or how long you could wear your hair. But her prime example goes all the way back to the Civil War years. That's scary.

Liberals are angry at themselves, too, that we didn't prevent this. We just took for granted that the intelligent liberal candidate would win. We didn't treat seriously those big rallies of Trump's. Yes, some of those people were unhinged but many more were just angry at the state of the nation. They turned out to vote on Nov. 8. I helped Dem voters get to the polling stations, visited many around Cheyenne, and long lines were the rule rather than the exception. They were Trump voters. Even worse, they were people who usually didn't vote but by God were going to vote for Trump this time. They were former Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voters who couldn't stomach a liberal woman lawyer in the White House after watching Fox News blather against Obama for eight years. Fuck you, they said to liberals. And now we're returning the fuck yous.

That's as far as my political punditry goes. The Republicans are going to dismantle everything that I care about: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR, NEA, NEH, ACA, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public transportation, clean air, clean water, public lands -- the list goes on and on. There's nothing to hinder this process but a few judges and possible outrage from the citizenry. But a lot of the citizenry love Trump's attacks on liberals and media. And we only have the satisfaction of our witty social media posts,

We will all be stuck in the coming Dark Ages together. Maybe then we can find common ground.

Learning to Breathe, Part II

Read Part I here.

April 1939, Cheyenne, Wyoming. In Part II, anti-fascists and their Hailie Selassie automaton prepare to confront fascists arriving on the afternoon train.

The door groaned as Doherty pushed it open. He stepped out and walked to the rear of the truck. The statue was tied securely to the bed. Six feet tall, about his height, although that was taking some liberties with the subject who reportedly topped the five-foot mark only when wearing thick-heeled boots. Still, the ruler of a mighty kingdom. Doherty had to hand it to Weaver –- the man had done a fine job sculpting Hailie Selassie out of the metal from expended Italian artillery shells that he found in piles across Ethiopia. The serene face, the mustache and beard, eyes that seemed to come alive.  

Doherty walked to the driver’s side. In the cab, the driver was toking on a spliff. “Jeez, Weaver,” the white man said. He knocked on the window.

The black man rolled it down. “What is it, Irish?”

“You have to smoke that now?”

“Calms me, man. And it’s part of my religion.”

“I know. But now? You are a black man in a city that’s 110 percent white. We are waiting at the train station to do a number on a hero of the white race. Is this the right time to be doing your drug?”

“No problem, Jim.” The black man held the spliff like a cigarette. “How they going to see my ganja cloud when the sky is brown with dust already?”

“They can smell it.”

“Smells like burning weeds.”

The train whistle blew.

“That’s our train,” Doherty said.

Weaver inhaled one more batch of smoke and tamped out the spliff on the truck floor. Doherty didn’t understand Weaver’s so-called religion. He worshipped Selassie, a.k.a. Ras Tafari, as the second coming of Christ. Smoked leaves of a weed like Doherty smoked cigarettes. But when Doherty wanted to dull life’s pain, he turned to whiskey. Calmed him down. That’s what Weaver said ganja did for him. When they camped out at night, Weaver lit up and the stuff smelled a bit like the sage he and his father burned for cooking fires while hunting in the Red Desert. A bit sweeter – not unpleasant. When Weaver was not driving and smoked, Doherty could swear that the smoke got to him. He felt mildly elated, even imagined shapes crossing in front of him on the road. At Weaver’s urging, he’d smoked it a few times but felt it made him lazy. A guy couldn’t afford dreaminess when fighting fascists.

Weaver opened the door and stepped out of the truck. He was a few inches shorter than six-foot-tall Doherty. He wore Army boots, denim trousers and a blue work shirt. He had the hands of a workman, calloused and cut-up, a blue-black bruise on the knuckles of his right hand, souvenirs of a bar brawl in Omaha. Doherty’s left hand still hurt from that same fight. This Rastafari religion might profess a love of peace, but he’d never seen anyone fight like Weaver when the chips were down.

Doherty inspected the truck. Statue was OK. The banner wrapped around the outside walls of the truck bed read: “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” That’s what Selassie had said in a warning to the rest of the world.

Nobody seemed to be listening.

Doherty and Weaver met on the New York docks. Longshoremen refused to unload the Bremen, a German cargo ship that flew the Nazi flag. A riot erupted and the two men ended up taking shelter in the same waterfront bar. After a few drinks, Weaver invited Doherty to a warehouse in Brooklyn to see the Salassie statue. Doherty was impressed. Weaver, an art school grad from Detroit, built the statue. He went overseas to fight for the world’s only black monarch. He stayed for the art.

The two met in January. In March, they loaded Ras Tafari onto Doherty’s beat-up truck and they were off.

 “Think he’ll come out the front door?” said Weaver, eyes on the depot.

“Where else?”

The train depot was built of stone with a large clock tower. They could see the train’s passenger cars as they eased to a stop in back of the station. Their target was in one of those cars. They planned a surprise attack on their fascist opponent. But, there were limits to violence. One often got better results with theatre. He had seen enough of human behavior to know that drama was a handy form of persuasion. He had seen the National Socialists of Germany at work. He had watched the Spaniards and Italians. They all loved the movement of large casts of actors against decorative landscapes, whether that was the mountains of northern Spain or the deserts of Eritrea.

“Maybe he’s just going to talk inside the depot and then get back on the train?”

Doherty thought about it. “Can you maneuver your statue into the station?”

Weaver smiled. “It could be done, depending on the size of the doors.”

Doherty saw the glint in Weaver’s eyes and knew his friend was conjuring. The man was good at improvising. Good with his hands, too, whether it was fighting or sculpting statues from old artillery shells.   

People were arriving at the station. First thing they did when getting out of their cars was look at the two strange men and the big statue in the back of the truck. None came over, at least not at first. Two young couples got out of a sporty yellow coupe and walked over to the truck.

“What’s this?” asked a pretty girl whose brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She stared at Weaver. “Are you the artist?”

Weaver nodded.

“Who is the statue of?” the girl asked,

“Haile Selassie, Lion of Judah,” Weaver said.

“Must have taken a long time to make,” said the girl.

“I know who Haile Selassie is,” said the boy next to ponytail. “Ethiopia, right?”

“Right,” said Weaver.

“Did he say that?” said the other girl, a long-haired blonde. “On the banner?”

“Yes,” said Doherty. “He said it in a speech to the League of Nations.”

“Oh,” said the girl. “They’re a bunch of communists aren’t they? That’s what my dad says.”

“The U.S. is in the League of Nations,” said Doherty.

“Commies,” said the boy with the blonde. “C’mon, guys, we got to see the speech for Mr. Lain’s class.”

The ponytail girl took one more look at Weaver before being pulled away by her boyfriend. Doherty and Weaver watched them go.

“She liked the cut of your jib,” said Doherty.

Weaver shook his head. “Kids,” he said. “Those are the boys America will send off to fight. Think there’s any hope?”

“Those two guys don’t look very promising,” Doherty said. “But ponytail? I could see her with a carbine. She’s feisty like those Spanish Republican women. Some were damn good shots.”

Weaver looked at Doherty. “You still writing that Spanish woman, what’s her name?”

“Anna – she’s Basque.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out sheets of folded paper. “Took this letter a month to find me. She’s safe in France now.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Fine. It surprises me. She was a tiger.”

“In bed?”

Doherty chuckled. “You kill me, Weaver. Yes, in bed and on the field. Her husband and brother were both killed in Guernica. She took no prisoners.”

“Except you?”

He slapped Weaver on the back. “I went willingly, chum. Like a lamb to the slaughter.”

To be continued...

Tune in to this same channel on Jan. 25 for Learning to Breathe, Part III.

Dems garden party on Aug. 28 features Keith Blaney in concert

As a member of the event planning committee for the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition in Cheyenne, I share this bit of news (and an appropriate video from the way-back machine) with music-loving liberals:

The Laramie County Democratic Grassroots Coalition (LCDGC) is sponsoring a Garden Concert Fundraiser featuring singer/artist Keith "Boxcar" Blaney on Sunday, August 28. The Garden Party will be from 2-5 p.m. at 3626 Dover Road where Keith will entertain with his acoustic guitar. Suggested donation is $15.00 at the door. There will be appetizers and a 50/50 card sale. Please BYOB, a lawn chair and an appetizer to share. Come enjoy an afternoon in a beautiful garden with awesome music and great conversation with like minded individuals. For further information, contact Kathleen at 421-4496.

Superday was the end to a pretty super week

Promoting the brand at Cheyenne's Superday.

When asked to describe Cheyenne's Superday, I sometimes say, "It's like Denver Capitol Hill People's Fair -- without all the hippies."

I get puzzled looks from those who've never attended the People's Fair. That's OK. The People's Fair was -- and still is I guess -- a sprawling street fair started by the counterculture types at Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods (CHUN). This may be hard to believe, but 45 years ago, Capitol Hill was largely unexplored territory, populated by winos, ethnic minorities, longhairs in crash pads, culties, and Greatest Generationites who never got the memo to escape to the burbs.

Adventurous long-haired entrepreneurs bought old houses, staking out a claim in the territory. Enough of them arrived to form a united front, which turned out to be CHUN. That, of course, led to a People's Fair and, much later, legalized marijuana, coffee shops on every corner and craft breweries on every other corner. Hipsters, too. Who needs to read long boring histories about the Front Range when you can come here and get an encapsulated version?

Superday is Middle America's street fair. It was political parties and candidates, during even years anyway.   Non-profits of all kinds have booths. Alzheimer's Association, NARAL, Latina Conference for Youth, Head Start. YMCA. There's a big car show and lots of play areas for the kiddos. Military recruiters are on hand, as are a host of evangelical orgs. Many of the flyers I carried home from Superday featured offers to save my soul and that of America, which seemed to be in particular peril this week after some historic SCOTUS rulings. Save your soul -- all hell is breaking loose. And don't forget to make a generous donation!

I worked the booth for the Laramie County Democrats and its fund-raising arm, the Grassroots Coalition. We were sited adjacent to Head Start and an empty spot that was the site of an unspecified org which chose to take their cause elsewhere when they saw the neighborhood. They were OK with the U.S. Army booth next door. But Democrats? No way. They didn't even stick around to see our nifty "Love is Love" rainbow T-shirts and the life-sized cardboard cut-out of President Barack Obama, who had a pretty good week.

Democrats are woefully outnumbered in Wyoming and Laramie County. But we tend to show up at things like Superday. Republicans don't have to show up as FOX News does the work for them. We get plenty of dirty looks. And more than one person said they didn't want to have their photo taken with the Prez. They were polite about it. Wyomingites are polite, except when you turn them loose on online forums. That's when they vent their spleens, anonymously, of course. There are some pretty ugly spleens out there.

One middle-aged woman made a beeline to our booth and announced that she was an ex-lesbian. That was fine with us. We supposed that being an ex-lesbian was just as good as being an ex-husband or an ex-NFL linebacker or an ex-Republican. Unfortunately, she didn't let it go at that. She contended that homosexuality was a choice. And now we were all going to have to recognize gay marriage and that it was the Democrats' fault. I had seen this person at Tea Party rallies. She crowded our booth and asked each of us, in turn, if we were homosexual. At that moment, none of us were, so that's how we answered. She responded that we could all change that status and become a protected class, thanks to the Democrats and now, the U.S. Supreme Court and its judicial tyranny.

This went on for some time. We tried to reason with the poor woman but to no avail. She eventually moved on, leaving us a bit flustered. Instead of arguing with her, maybe we should have called out the gendarmes? But she probably would have screamed about "government overreach." We could have calmed her with soothing music or therapy-speak which, to Democrats, is almost like a second language. But we all got into the spirit of the debate/shouting match. When you're a liberal living in Wyoming, you tire of these shouting matches. No attempt at logic tends to reach the blunt skulls. Liberals, for our part, tend to be condescending, which doesn't help. Eventually you have to throw up your hands and walk away, heading to the nearest bar.

Satire is in the eye of the beholder

I love good satire. Problem is, readers don't often get it. Good satire is usually presented as a straightforward news article or opinion piece that can often be mistaken for your run-of-the-mill newspaper story. In satire, the subject is taken to an extreme, an exaggeration for what the writer hopes is a comic effect. Since there is so much craziness on the Internet already, it's hard to pick out satire unless it's labeled as such. This is why it is so helpful for Andy Borowitz to label his "The Borowitz Report" pieces in The New Yorker as "news satire." Here's a recent brilliant example:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Across the United States on Wednesday, a heated national debate began on the extremely complex issue of children firing military weapons. 

“Every now and then, the nation debates an issue that is so complicated and tricky it defies easy answers,” says pollster Davis Logsdon. “Letting small children fire automatic weapons is such an issue.”

Logsdon says that the thorny controversy is reminiscent of another ongoing national debate, about whether it is a good idea to load a car with dynamite and drive it into a tree. 

“Many Americans think it’s a terrible idea, but others believe that with the correct supervision, it’s perfectly fine,” he says. “Who’s to say who’s right?” 

Similar, he says, is the national debate about using a flamethrower indoors. “There has been a long and contentious national conversation about this,” he says. “It’s another tough one.” 

Much like the long-running national debates about jumping off a roof, licking electrical sockets, and gargling with thumbtacks, the vexing question of whether children should fire military weapons does not appear headed for a swift resolution. 

“Like the issue of whether you should sneak up behind a bear and jab it with a hot poker, this won’t be settled any time soon,” he says. 

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If this appeared as a standard news article in the local paper, I can easily see my neighbor, Tea Party Slim, reading it over his morning java and nodding his head in agreement. "Yes, children shooting automatic weapons is an extremely complex issue." Slim also reads loads of stuff on the Internet, as do I, where it is possible to mistake satire for another example of human weirdness -- or vice versa. Each of us carries baggage from our political POVs. I see Borowitz's piece as a terrific satire on our gun nut culture. Slim sees gun ownership and the firing of automatic weapons as a God-given right via the Constitution. He can't laugh at this because he'll be laughing at some of his own deeply-head beliefs.

Are there conservative satirists? P.J. O'Rourke comes to mind. He pokes fun at me and my fellow Liberals and I admit it gets under my skin sometimes but it is funny. Tom Wolfe made hay satirizing the hippie culture, the Black Panthers and the New Left back in the 60s and 70s. Ann Coulter is too heavy-handed to be an effective satirist, but sometimes I've found humor in her Liberal-baiting columns.

There must be some contemporary conservative satirists I haven't read because, frankly, I'd rather poke fun at the other guy. That's my God-given right under the Constitution. However, if a person can't laugh at himself, well.... that's really absurd.