Thoreau is Weeping

You may have seen some things about this on Jon Stewart or FOX News, but you want to take a look at this article, from the Times.

I know, it's from that East Coast Elitist rag, but no one is claiming they are misquoting Freedom-Loving Rancher and purported champion of Civil Disobedience Cliven Bundy when he held forth on “The Negro”:

“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

You know Cliven, when y’all keep saying things like that while you’re waving guns around, people are going to start to think you’re downright unreasonable.

Of course, according to him, Bundy is just a Patriot doing the Lord's work. A confusing kind of patriot, in that he Really Really Loves America while simultaneously denying the authority of the Federal government over Federal land.  Go into the comment thread and banner ads of that article at your own risk.  Personal fave from my first glance: "What would you rather eat... Beef or Solar Panels?"  Yup.  Just keep raising the bar of discourse, guys.

Speaking of beef, lest you think I’m only unhappy with the right wing racist nutjobs out there, I've also got a beef with a quote in that Times article from Rob Mrowka from the Center of Biological Diversity:

“This should not be confused with civil disobedience. This is outright anarchy going on here.”

Well, sheesh Rob!  That’s just flat-out unfair to anarchists.

Restaurant Racism

The results of this study of expensive (i.e. lucrative to work at) restaurants in New York were just released.

"The tests showed:

- Nonwhite job applicants were 54.5 percent as likely as white applicants to get a job offer, and were less likely than white testers to receive a job interview in the first place.

- The work experience of white job applicants was less likely to be subject to scrutiny.

- Accents made a difference — with white candidates. White applicants with slight European accents were 23.1 percent more likely to be hired than white testers with no accent. However, accents in nonwhite applicants made no difference."

This is New York? Massive Fail.

One quibble with the writing here: the reference to "white testers with no accent." No accent? What does that sound like? Are they using sign language? The New York Times should know better.

Thanks to Cory for referring me to the article.

The Lonesome Death of...

William Zantzinger. Who served six months and paid a $500 fine for killing a black maid who didn't serve him a drink fast enough. In Maryland, in 1963, that was a different kind of possible.

Even today, if you poke around the news reports of his life and death, you'll find different tones depending on where you look.

This can't count as "good" news, because that would be morbid and wrong. And of course it turned out that the details of the case were not as cut and dried as the way Dylan painted them.



Still, one line keeps coming back to me:

She never done nothin' to William Zanzinger

I always found it interesting that Dylan took the 't' out of his name for the song, calling him 'Zanzinger.' Some kind of very subtle nod to the notion that the song's power comes from the Truth of the story itself, not its factual basis?

Monday, and how

Feeling depressed and trying to fight it off. Has to do with this ridiculous weather, surely (rainy, pissy, windy, cold, gray) and tax annoyance (blah.)

A combination of other elements may also be contributing to the malaise, but may also lead to its relief: Last night I finished reading A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines, and it wrecked me. So simple, so powerful, so poignant - a tale of a teacher who spends time with a man unjustly condemned to the electric chair (as if anyone is ever justly condemned to die; but this guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time) in Louisiana in the late 1940s. It's a racist world, in which the defense attorney painted a picture of the black defendant as an unthinking 'hog' in a wild effort to get an aquittal from the all-white jury. But of course that portrait is a brutal blow to the prisoner and his family, who call on the teacher to help him regain his humanity before the fateful day.

The book includes a scene where men in a bar are recounting hero-stories about Jackie Robinson, so it felt like one of those inexplicable confluences that I just happened to finish the book on Jackie Robinson Day, the 60th anniversary of his first game. If you don't know who Jackie Robinson is, well that's a Problem With America, which was part of the point of the day. He was the first African American Major League Baseball player, one of the all-time greats of any color, and a hero by pretty much any definition worth considering. Since he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, last night's Dodger/Padres game was a huge celebration of the event (and every game that wasn't rained out commemorated him to some degree.) I missed the pre-game stuff (a Brooklyn gospel choir singing 'O Happy Day' and Jennifer Hudson singing the National Anthem, which people were saying were amazing - they're probably out there on YouTube, but I haven't tracked them down) but I caught most of the game. All the Dodgers wore Robinson's number 42 on their uniforms, as did a handful of people throughout the league. And it was really amazing to hear Jackie's widow Rachel - who always calls him 'Jack;' She says "Jackie was his stage name" :) - and the other luminaries. Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson were there talking about race and history and BASEBALL (damn, they love the game) and it was inspiring on so many levels while also a reminder of what is still missing from our culture.

Which made for a one-two punch in combination with the novel. I've spent a good chunk of my activist life opposing the death penalty, which continues to be insanely racist (like much of the 'criminal justice' system.) And in that light, it's important to remember that there is good work to do on so many levels, and that creative work can be a vital part of that.

Even when the weather sucks.