I've had a few thoughts spinning around about the Obama speech last week and they generally reduce themselves to the maxim that it was very good, although it does not ease my cynicism about him being nothing more than a very new, very slick model of a "genuine" politician who is still a politician; however, another blog I glanced at earlier today compels me to put this foot forward:
A blog by an African American woman commenting on interracial dating zeroed in on the notion of Caucasian men dating black women. One of the more outrageous points she made was that white men date black women because they want to go out with women who they once "enslaved" because they either (a) like to feel like they're in control or (b) they feel inadequate around their own and because of their low self-esteem, fall back on someone "beneath" them.
She who is new to the Brahmin's life happens to be a woman of color. As of now, she doesn't know about this blog, as I suspect I don't know skillions of things about her life...including the possibility that she might have her own blog. And as our fledgling relationship goes forward, I reflect privately about what aspects of my life I choose to "unpeel" for her as a means of extending trust and sharing soul -- telling her I have this blog really isn't high on the list.
One of the things I liked about Obama's speech was his pointing out both the roots of black "anger" as well as the sources of white "resentment" - specifically citing the fact that so many whites feel that they should not be made to atone for the sins of people who have a common skin color but absolutely no ancestry.
So exactly who have I "enslaved"? I'm the descendant of Jewish Ukranian serfs and Irish peasants. And you bet, there are statements relatives on both sides made about African Americans that would make Mr. Obama (and no doubt, my current better half) "cringe." But my "slave" is a college graduate who works in corporate management. I think I could have done better living out that supposed fantasy...beginning with having bloodlines to the Thurmond family that nature denied me.
The last "significant" significant other I had was white as the driven snow with piercing blue eyes to match--if you pressed your ear to the dens of certain factions within her family, you'd hear whispers of anti-Semitism. And there was no urging for jungle fever when that ended. Actually, from a professional standpoint, my current one is doing better than the last one.
Lastly, why does a black woman need to categorize herself as "beneath" another class of people? Professional victimization. Something I saw all too well at my alma mater. Kudos to Obama for calling it out. And shame on those who seem, perhaps, to have so much emptiness in their own love lives so as to spew shallow pablum about the love lives of others.
The Brahmin
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Hypocrisy makes Fine Whine
A columnist for the supermarket rag, The Park Slope Courier who, as I mentioned in passing previously, manages to write for a Brooklyn publication while living in Florida. Could be that his brand of Goebbels-style pro-Republican propaganda doesn't have enough adherents in Brooklyn so that the powers that be who publish the paper could find someone local to write it, but he (or the paper) more than make up for it since he signs off his article every time by identifying himself by what appears to be an e-mail address but which is obviously bogus. I tried responding to one or more of his columns but the e-mail bounced each time.
Anyway, in his latest missive (typically dominated by his stalker-like obsession with Hillary Clinton, who he has savaged for such pressing global issues of the day as to what baseball team she supports), he writes as follows: "I don’t drink at all nor do I talk about alcoholic beverages. At the least I must be average."
That got me thinking. Yes, holding out a phony e-mail address to delude those not inclined to speak out that one welcomes open dialogue doesn't stop the rest of us from thinking.
Here's the same columnist on 12.28.06:
"I’ve been looking back at my notes for 2006 and I found that, besides words, we did a lot of talking with our hands. For example, were still shaking our fist at France and telling them where they can stick their fancy wines and expensive perfumes."
Same columnist in November 2006:
I’ve been attending these wine tasting gatherings for many years and I can recall the days, not that long ago, when the vino inventory aboard cruise ships consisted mostly of French wines. Sure there were a few wines from Italy, some of the many wines from California, and a bit of various brands from a handful of scattered countries here and there. But mostly, the liquid grapes aboard the vessels were from France. Times have changed. The Star Princess, a British cruise ship, boasts an inventory of exactly one hundred different white, red, blush, sparkling and dessert wines. The Wine waiters distributed a printout and I took the time to count how many and where they are from. How many do you think were French? Half? A quarter? Nope. Of the one hundred different brands and varieties only fifteen were French. The great majority of the people aboard the Star were Americans and I think this is a statement on the subject of how our countrymen feel about supporting the French.
To paraphrase his signature line:
I am Brooklyn Brahmin and I drink. I talk about drinking. I don't lie about it. I really live in Brooklyn. And while I don't care to leave an email address out there in the public domain, if I chose to do so it would be a legit one.
Anyway, in his latest missive (typically dominated by his stalker-like obsession with Hillary Clinton, who he has savaged for such pressing global issues of the day as to what baseball team she supports), he writes as follows: "I don’t drink at all nor do I talk about alcoholic beverages. At the least I must be average."
That got me thinking. Yes, holding out a phony e-mail address to delude those not inclined to speak out that one welcomes open dialogue doesn't stop the rest of us from thinking.
Here's the same columnist on 12.28.06:
"I’ve been looking back at my notes for 2006 and I found that, besides words, we did a lot of talking with our hands. For example, were still shaking our fist at France and telling them where they can stick their fancy wines and expensive perfumes."
OK, so you talk about booze. Now, never having been out for a pop with this man (which would be hard, since I've never been in Florida and have no idea whether this man's ever been to Brooklyn, though he obviously knows a right-wing newspaper publisher here), I couldn't possibly question his veracity as to his being teetotal.
Er...could I?
Same columnist in November 2006:
I’ve been attending these wine tasting gatherings for many years and I can recall the days, not that long ago, when the vino inventory aboard cruise ships consisted mostly of French wines. Sure there were a few wines from Italy, some of the many wines from California, and a bit of various brands from a handful of scattered countries here and there. But mostly, the liquid grapes aboard the vessels were from France. Times have changed. The Star Princess, a British cruise ship, boasts an inventory of exactly one hundred different white, red, blush, sparkling and dessert wines. The Wine waiters distributed a printout and I took the time to count how many and where they are from. How many do you think were French? Half? A quarter? Nope. Of the one hundred different brands and varieties only fifteen were French. The great majority of the people aboard the Star were Americans and I think this is a statement on the subject of how our countrymen feel about supporting the French.
To paraphrase his signature line:
I am Brooklyn Brahmin and I drink. I talk about drinking. I don't lie about it. I really live in Brooklyn. And while I don't care to leave an email address out there in the public domain, if I chose to do so it would be a legit one.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Splitsville for Spitzer
A couple of thoughts on the Spitzer H-bomb today:
1. He not only has to resign, but he probably will, notwithstanding the fact that he did not do so today. Undoubtedly, he is using resignation as a bargaining chip to stay out of jail or at the very least wind up at a Club Fed instead of Leavenworth.
2. To those typically in ideological alignment with the Brahmin who might be tempted to cite David Vitter or Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, I say, yeah, both should have resigned. To reduce this to simple partisan point-notching, we can say (hopefully) Spitzer did the right thing; the others did not.
3. David Paterson is on the precipice of further cementing a remarkably charmed political career. Born legally blind, he lucked into Dinkins' rise to power in the mid to late '80's, then squeezed into the State Senate on the death of an incumbent; successfully knocked off the Minority Leader (Marty Connor of the Heights, who I met more than once at Eamonn Doran on Montague Street), and now is about to reach Cloud 9 in Albany...thanks to "Client 9."
4. No one had a shinier and more of a crusading pro-reform reputation as an elected official than Eliot Spitzer. It underscores what this business does to people. Does this mean Barack Obama was partaking in the world's oldest profession across state lines? No, but one has to wonder about this Rezko thing a bit more. That might be unfair, but it does give at least the amateur political class (to which I supposedly belong) a very big pause about the people we follow.
1. He not only has to resign, but he probably will, notwithstanding the fact that he did not do so today. Undoubtedly, he is using resignation as a bargaining chip to stay out of jail or at the very least wind up at a Club Fed instead of Leavenworth.
2. To those typically in ideological alignment with the Brahmin who might be tempted to cite David Vitter or Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, I say, yeah, both should have resigned. To reduce this to simple partisan point-notching, we can say (hopefully) Spitzer did the right thing; the others did not.
3. David Paterson is on the precipice of further cementing a remarkably charmed political career. Born legally blind, he lucked into Dinkins' rise to power in the mid to late '80's, then squeezed into the State Senate on the death of an incumbent; successfully knocked off the Minority Leader (Marty Connor of the Heights, who I met more than once at Eamonn Doran on Montague Street), and now is about to reach Cloud 9 in Albany...thanks to "Client 9."
4. No one had a shinier and more of a crusading pro-reform reputation as an elected official than Eliot Spitzer. It underscores what this business does to people. Does this mean Barack Obama was partaking in the world's oldest profession across state lines? No, but one has to wonder about this Rezko thing a bit more. That might be unfair, but it does give at least the amateur political class (to which I supposedly belong) a very big pause about the people we follow.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Blooper Tuesday
The other day the Brahmin was woken by his clock radio to hear 1010 WINS (which I only listen to when NPR is in the middle of pledge week; but frankly after what I describe herein I think I'll go back to Mike & Mike on ESPN-1050). It gave a "nugget" (or perhaps, more accurately, a dried snowpea) on the Texas primary today. The reporter talked about how all the momentum was with Obama and just to prove it, it did an 8-second snippet with a presumed Texas voter, preceded by the reporter's assertion that the man had been for Hillary but had switched to Obama. Then we hear the guy saying, "I don't like Hillary personally. She's mean-spirited."
If you're like any regular participant in the crypto-democratic process we call the modern day US of A, especially if (like me) you wound up devolving to the two-party system over 95 per cent of the time, then granted, you wind up voting for the lesser of two evils. A lot. But saying someone is "mean-spirited" kind of suggests that you never were going to support the person in the first place.
And what balanced this interview in the 1010 WINS report? Nothing.
Pray tell, if come the fall, anyone does a story on the general election and they run an interview with a voter saying he doesn't like McCain because either (a) he's too old; (b) he was one of the Keating Five or (c) he looks like Burl Ives on crystal-meth, and its unbalanced by any countering view, guess what Glen Beck, Sean Hannity or Bill-O will do. If you hadn't answered the question before finishing reading the sentence, then I guess this blog is being read in North Korea. Thanks, New York Philarmonic.
The point being, that WINS farce is all that needs to be said as to the slant of the media in the Democratic field to date. In the law we call that slam dunk summary judgment.
And at last, the media is starting to get it. Lo and behold, the change you can believe in apparently made its way to the Canadian consulate a couple of weeks ago, and the Guru himself is groveling.
The weather today is very bad in Ohio. And let me assure you - there's not much worse than a wintry raw day in Ohio, save the odd "Supertrain" rerun. I lived through three of them. The Hillaryites are the die-hards. The Obama folk are the younger siblings of the Deaniacs who disappeared somewhere in the snow between Davenport and Des Moines in January '04 and who were back to their Madden NFL routine on the first Tuesday of the following November...ESPECIALLY in Ohio.
As for Texas, not much I can offer unique wisdom on. The one thing that is interesting is that Hillary could win the popular vote but the present-day scion of Banquo's (er...Rezko?) Ghost could come away with more delegates (by the way, that's exactly what happened in Nevada, but no one says anything about it). Kind of undercuts all that "will of the people" bit, don't ya think?
------
Eastenders is a coffeehouse in Riverhead, New York. I often get stranded there for a couple of hours on a weekday morning because the Suffolk County courts are infinitely more efficient than their downstate brethren and because there are only three trains daily running east of Ronkonkoma on the Greenport branch. I down a refill of Java recuperating from the 7:41 out of Flatbush Avenue to get to a conference which either gets adjourned or resolved in 10 minutes. Then I read the paper, my Scotland guidebook, do work, or text (business and personal). Clearly its a musical place which has an open mic. Sometimes the occasional goof off comes in and plays a few bars of Mozart or Axel-F from the 48 Hours movie. Actually, one person played a little bit of both today. A nice place if you're ever out there.
On the SNY message boards (where I masterfully disguise myself as "RHodges42") someone posted an open letter to Isiah Thomas. He prefaced the letter saying, "I don't know much about basketball, but..." The Brahmin replied by stating that either he and Mr. Thomas had a lot in common, or that the poster had incredibly low self-esteem.
A bit untimely, but a good one: As you know, Bobby Knight retired from coaching. He thought it was time to throw in the chair.
Glad to hear 97-year old John Wooden is out of danger. Also good that the prognosis for Sillies' first base coach Davey Lopes is excellent. Hopefully, Bobby Murcer will meet a kinder fate than Tug McGraw (who for some reason my father, who deemed his contempt for sports as a badge of honor, liked).
The Brahmin hopes to see "In Bruges" this weekend, pending approval from she who is on his arm nowadays. At an otherwise nondescript East Village Bistro last Saturday following our viewing of "The Seagull", we each had mussels (different sauces for each of us). I regaled in a story of my one and only visit to Bruges as a youth, as part of our entire menage of four. We were passing between Brussels and the coast (one way or the other, I don't remember). In any event we went into a local restaurant. Now the one thing my father possibly loathed more than professional athletics was onions (I'm sorry he never made it to Bermuda - after I visited there several years ago with an ex I was delighted to assure him that contrary to common terminology the local onion had been long extinct there, but I digress). So he would not eat mussels. Which made me and my family the only four people in a restaurant of probably 250 diners not eating them that day, from what I was able to observe.
Proud to say my dinner companion had more courage. She had never eaten snails before Saturday. But never underestimate the persuasive power of...
The Brahmin
(P.S. - She liked them. Or so she said.)
If you're like any regular participant in the crypto-democratic process we call the modern day US of A, especially if (like me) you wound up devolving to the two-party system over 95 per cent of the time, then granted, you wind up voting for the lesser of two evils. A lot. But saying someone is "mean-spirited" kind of suggests that you never were going to support the person in the first place.
And what balanced this interview in the 1010 WINS report? Nothing.
Pray tell, if come the fall, anyone does a story on the general election and they run an interview with a voter saying he doesn't like McCain because either (a) he's too old; (b) he was one of the Keating Five or (c) he looks like Burl Ives on crystal-meth, and its unbalanced by any countering view, guess what Glen Beck, Sean Hannity or Bill-O will do. If you hadn't answered the question before finishing reading the sentence, then I guess this blog is being read in North Korea. Thanks, New York Philarmonic.
The point being, that WINS farce is all that needs to be said as to the slant of the media in the Democratic field to date. In the law we call that slam dunk summary judgment.
And at last, the media is starting to get it. Lo and behold, the change you can believe in apparently made its way to the Canadian consulate a couple of weeks ago, and the Guru himself is groveling.
The weather today is very bad in Ohio. And let me assure you - there's not much worse than a wintry raw day in Ohio, save the odd "Supertrain" rerun. I lived through three of them. The Hillaryites are the die-hards. The Obama folk are the younger siblings of the Deaniacs who disappeared somewhere in the snow between Davenport and Des Moines in January '04 and who were back to their Madden NFL routine on the first Tuesday of the following November...ESPECIALLY in Ohio.
As for Texas, not much I can offer unique wisdom on. The one thing that is interesting is that Hillary could win the popular vote but the present-day scion of Banquo's (er...Rezko?) Ghost could come away with more delegates (by the way, that's exactly what happened in Nevada, but no one says anything about it). Kind of undercuts all that "will of the people" bit, don't ya think?
------
Eastenders is a coffeehouse in Riverhead, New York. I often get stranded there for a couple of hours on a weekday morning because the Suffolk County courts are infinitely more efficient than their downstate brethren and because there are only three trains daily running east of Ronkonkoma on the Greenport branch. I down a refill of Java recuperating from the 7:41 out of Flatbush Avenue to get to a conference which either gets adjourned or resolved in 10 minutes. Then I read the paper, my Scotland guidebook, do work, or text (business and personal). Clearly its a musical place which has an open mic. Sometimes the occasional goof off comes in and plays a few bars of Mozart or Axel-F from the 48 Hours movie. Actually, one person played a little bit of both today. A nice place if you're ever out there.
On the SNY message boards (where I masterfully disguise myself as "RHodges42") someone posted an open letter to Isiah Thomas. He prefaced the letter saying, "I don't know much about basketball, but..." The Brahmin replied by stating that either he and Mr. Thomas had a lot in common, or that the poster had incredibly low self-esteem.
A bit untimely, but a good one: As you know, Bobby Knight retired from coaching. He thought it was time to throw in the chair.
Glad to hear 97-year old John Wooden is out of danger. Also good that the prognosis for Sillies' first base coach Davey Lopes is excellent. Hopefully, Bobby Murcer will meet a kinder fate than Tug McGraw (who for some reason my father, who deemed his contempt for sports as a badge of honor, liked).
The Brahmin hopes to see "In Bruges" this weekend, pending approval from she who is on his arm nowadays. At an otherwise nondescript East Village Bistro last Saturday following our viewing of "The Seagull", we each had mussels (different sauces for each of us). I regaled in a story of my one and only visit to Bruges as a youth, as part of our entire menage of four. We were passing between Brussels and the coast (one way or the other, I don't remember). In any event we went into a local restaurant. Now the one thing my father possibly loathed more than professional athletics was onions (I'm sorry he never made it to Bermuda - after I visited there several years ago with an ex I was delighted to assure him that contrary to common terminology the local onion had been long extinct there, but I digress). So he would not eat mussels. Which made me and my family the only four people in a restaurant of probably 250 diners not eating them that day, from what I was able to observe.
Proud to say my dinner companion had more courage. She had never eaten snails before Saturday. But never underestimate the persuasive power of...
The Brahmin
(P.S. - She liked them. Or so she said.)
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Brahmin on the Bagpipes
It's official - The Brahmin will be in the U.K. from May 22 through June 2. With the aid of a handy Britrail Pass (to come in the mail soon), I plan to head north to the land of Robert the Bruce, Sir Walter Scott and a certain lake-dwelling monster apparently J.J. Abrams is too afraid to enliven. Hopefully I'll be able to squirm for a digital camera between now and then so I can get the pics to come on here.
According to Yahoo, romantic prospects for my astrological sign were absolutely dismal on March 1. Let's just say that events in the Brahmin's life that day proved that perhaps online astrologers are a little less accurate than...hmm, I don't know, New Hampshire Primary exit pollers. This is where the Brahmin draws the line at revealing personal details to the cyberuniverse.
William F. Buckley is being lionized, and I certainly don't blame right-wingers for doing so. His patrician verbose eccentricities made for fun watching, but I would choose a number of people on the right as being far more effective advocates for their point of view - William Safire, David Gergen or George Will, for example. I guess what troubles me about his canonization are a number of things: National Review, for instance, has been at one time or another a hotbed of anti-Semitism (holocaust denier Joseph Sobran was an editor there) and apologist - at a minimum - for racism (it opposed lifting the Jim Crow laws in the South and Buckley himself was a supporter of South African apartheid). Utterly ridiculous is the notion that Buckley, for all his wordiness and haughty mannerism, was a gentleman during debate. You Tube is overflowing with examples of his fit with Gore Vidal during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention ("Listen, you queer, I'll sock you in the goddamned face and you'll stay plastered" - did he learn that in the Yale debate club?).
It's Spring Training. And already the Mets are a MASH unit.
I saw Chekhov's "The Seagull" in the East Village last night. Sort of an odd, distant blocking, but a very good set design and solid deliveries from the cast (though I caught a reference to the word "telephone" during the dialogue - I've got to run that against the original script; considering that Chekhov died in 1904 and the play is set in a rural wooded quarter of Russia).
March has come in like a lion. It always goes out with baseball starting, and me a year older. One out of two ain't bad. In baseball, as a hitter, that makes you...well, no one's ever done anything like that (though if they build more bandboxes like Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, someone might).
The Brahmin
According to Yahoo, romantic prospects for my astrological sign were absolutely dismal on March 1. Let's just say that events in the Brahmin's life that day proved that perhaps online astrologers are a little less accurate than...hmm, I don't know, New Hampshire Primary exit pollers. This is where the Brahmin draws the line at revealing personal details to the cyberuniverse.
William F. Buckley is being lionized, and I certainly don't blame right-wingers for doing so. His patrician verbose eccentricities made for fun watching, but I would choose a number of people on the right as being far more effective advocates for their point of view - William Safire, David Gergen or George Will, for example. I guess what troubles me about his canonization are a number of things: National Review, for instance, has been at one time or another a hotbed of anti-Semitism (holocaust denier Joseph Sobran was an editor there) and apologist - at a minimum - for racism (it opposed lifting the Jim Crow laws in the South and Buckley himself was a supporter of South African apartheid). Utterly ridiculous is the notion that Buckley, for all his wordiness and haughty mannerism, was a gentleman during debate. You Tube is overflowing with examples of his fit with Gore Vidal during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention ("Listen, you queer, I'll sock you in the goddamned face and you'll stay plastered" - did he learn that in the Yale debate club?).
It's Spring Training. And already the Mets are a MASH unit.
I saw Chekhov's "The Seagull" in the East Village last night. Sort of an odd, distant blocking, but a very good set design and solid deliveries from the cast (though I caught a reference to the word "telephone" during the dialogue - I've got to run that against the original script; considering that Chekhov died in 1904 and the play is set in a rural wooded quarter of Russia).
March has come in like a lion. It always goes out with baseball starting, and me a year older. One out of two ain't bad. In baseball, as a hitter, that makes you...well, no one's ever done anything like that (though if they build more bandboxes like Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, someone might).
The Brahmin
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