The 2009 Bah! Humbug! Christmas Card!

T’was the night before Christmas, of 2009.

Pre-flight preparations were going just fine.

The gifts were all loaded, tied in and tied twice.

The coal and the toys labeled naughty and nice.

So I went back inside, sat with old Mrs. Claus

For our pre-flight alone time—one eggnog two straws.

We sat on the couch, and I took off my shoes.

I said “What should we watch?”

She said “How ‘bout Fox News?”

“I don’t want to watch news—all that damage and dreck.”

She said “This isn’t news. It’s a man named Glen Beck.

All the folks down there watch. Claim he’s rightfully scared.”

“Scared of what?” I inquired.  “Sit back. Be prepared.”

So I looked at this fellow. He didn’t seem tough.

Just a regular guy, neither naughty nor gruff.

Just a nice looking fellow so simple, so meek.

Thought I saw—there it was—a small tear on his cheek.

“I’m sorry, dear viewers.” He spoke from the heart.

“But those leftists are tearing our country apart!

They want something for nothing. Don’t think of the bill.

With their secret agenda of peace and good will.

Don’t let them fool you, don’t fall for their ploy.

They mean Marxist regime when they say love and joy.

Don’t give something for nothing or just cause they ask.

If they come up to beg, you must take them to task.

‘May I please have a bike? Could I get Action Bob?’

Tell that toddler cum Trotsky ‘Bug off! Get a job!’

Merry Christmas we say, that’s the Christmas we know.

When we’re singing White Christmas, we ain’t thinking snow.

Well, as fun as that was I had work to get done.

Had some gifts to deliver before break of sun.

I shook off my Snuggie and reached for my boot

When my wife screamed “You think you’re still going, old coot?

Did you hear what he said? What they’re trying to do?

All those things he described? He was talking to you!

Is there snow in your ears, you incompetent poop?

You’re not Jolly Saint Nick; you’re a Communist dupe!

You are your workers fill hundreds of shelves

Taking work from God-fearing American elves.

You don’t see the erosion, the moral decay.

See the reindeer sneak out by the stable to ‘play.’

And Rudolph, that red-nose you trust in the night

Got that nose from a pound of Afghanistan White!

You’re their best propaganda; they’re laughing at you.

Oh. . . Feliz Navidad means “We’re coming for you!”

“But that guy’s a tool! He’s a regular Scrooge!”

“I would rather be that than a Che-loving Stooge!”

Then she snatched up my boots and my cold-weather junk

And locked them all up in her grandmother’s trunk.

And that’s when I knew that she meant what what I heard.

So I picked up my Snuggie then flipped her the bird.

And she heard me exclaim, as I walked to my bed:

“I’m cancelling the cable; watch Oprah instead.”



Rubber Chicken$hit!

Some time today, that band of plucky, spelling-deprived freedom fighters the Teaparty Patriots will once again descend on the Capitol with hijinks in mind. Today’s goal is to provide a “special delivery for the Senators who voted in favor of cloture on the Reid Health Care Bill. Tea Party Patriots will deliver rubber chickens to Senators.”

Some fun!  Reminiscent of the time Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin snuck into the House of Lords and put Ye Olde Plastic Vomit on the chairs of the Whigs.

Why chickens? The “chickens are coming home to roost.” That’s a warning. You’d better not vote to stifle debate on a bill that will spend the next three weeks being watered down by amendments so that it has a slim chance of being passed as legislation and being submitted to a conference committee so that it can be reconciled with a House bill that is already substantially weaker into a lifeless symbolic skeleton of what is actually needed so that the Democrats can take credit for passing it and the Republicans can take credit for gutting it, or there will be hell to pay.

The Chickens, my friend, will come home to roost!

Don’t know what cloture is? Let me help you out. Say you are Senator Bob Bennett, (R-Utah), and the President puts a hold on the some oil and gas leases that your rag-tag band of freedom lovin’ energy millionaires would make a killing from. It’s important for Republicans to keep freedom lovin’ millionaires happy. They do important things like provide over ninety percent of the funding and massive logistical support to things like Teaparty organizations.  Anyway, to keep that confirmation from happening you could block the vote that would replace the Bush administration’s Head of the department in question with the duly elected President’s choice by unendingly continuing the debate on the subject—Mr. Smith and Wesson Goes to Washington. One way to fight that stalling tactic would be to get sixty of the one hundred senators to vote to stop the debate and take a vote.  Senator Bennett knows all about Cloture, the Republican controlled senate under Bush used it like a box of discount handi-wipes.

The Teaparty Patriots don’t want the Reid bill to fall victim to a stunt that is only patriotic when they use it, so they want Reid to know that if he even tries to act like a Republican “The chickens will come home to roost.”

If there is a problem, it is with the group’s choice of symbols. These won’t be actual chickens; they will be rubber chickens. (Note: That’s a good thing.  Given the recent barrage of Republican sex scandals God knows what could happen to a live chicken in the halls of Congress!). Rubber chickens don’t look like real chickens.  Real chickens have scrawny little necks. Rubber chickens have big, long comically extended necks. Rubber chickens, in other words, stick their necks out.  Teaparty Protesters really don’t.  According to the Teaparty folks’ own webpage, when 60,000 people decided with about five days noticed to go all at once and visit their Congressmen, the iron hand of government made it harder to get into the building and took its phones off the hook.   Why the next thing you know, they will be herded into wire cages, doused with water and summarily arrested without cause! No, sorry. That wasn’t many thousands of Teaparty Protesters; that was a couple of thousand people who wanted to stand outside the 2004 GOP convention. My bad.

Unlike the rabble in New York City, the Teaparty Patriots aren’t sticking their necks out at all. They can come and go as they please in the nation’s capital, even in the age of Al Qaeda. They can apparently—even in the worst economy in decades—take a few days off from their honest, God-fearin’ blue collar jobs to truck over to the capitol any time they want. As revolutionaries go, they have it pretty easy.

Second, the chickens have the night off. The Democratic leadership is not even remotely interested in ending the debate! According to the New York Times published on the day of the rubber chicken rally, “debate on the bill . . . would last for several weeks and perhaps continue into January.”  In other words, all of this fuss and bluster is directed a scaring people out of something they have no intention of doing. Given that, I suggest a shift in strategy. Box up the chickens, save them for the midterm elections, or use them to fight medical marijuana: A Chicken Instead of Every Pot! Replace them with thousands of top-of-the-line whoopee cushions. Give one to every Teaparty protester who shows up. Then stage a huge sit-down on the Capitol steps.  That will constitute the most coherent political statement in the organization’s history.

First, Do No Marm!: The Threat of Greedy Grading Grifters in Our Schools!

According to the New York Times there’s a storm a brewin’ in our nations schools. America’s teachers are trying to pull a fast one. They are coming up with creative and insightful activities and lesson plans then–cover junior’s sensitive eyes–trying to make a buck by selling them online!  Craigslist, eBay and God knows how many seedy little online dungeons with names like “The Scarlet Letter Grade” and “Catch Her in the Rye”  are awash with study guides for “Great Expectations” and lesson plans for making a Mars rover out of marshmallows (If there’s life on Mars, why not bring S’Mores?).  Needless to say, such elocution pollution has no place in America’s classroom. As Joseph McDonald, professor at NYU puts it “Teachers swapping ideas with one another, that’s a great thing, but somebody asking 75 cents for a word puzzle reduces the power of the learning community and is ultimately destructive to the profession.” And Professor McDonald should know. He as written and co-written several books on education, the proceeds from which have almost certainly reverted to NYU.  Robert N. Lowry, deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, sort of agrees. He doesn’t share Professor McDonald’s view that such sharing of materials should be untainted by lucre, he just wants the school board to get its cut.

So teachers–you licentious locutors, you curricular Caligulas–here is how it goes. It is okay for you to spend $200-$300 a month on nonreimbursed supplies for your classroom. It is not however okay for you to profit in the marketplace from ideas that spring from your own creativity and experience. It is okay for you to spend two hours baking and another six hours selling cupcakes in a hot sweaty gym on your own time so that the “Lavender Lavaliers” can rent a bus for the Swing Choir sectionals. You are a teacher. It’s a calling not a job. It is unreasonable however to profit from your own sense of enterprise without giving the folks in the suits and ties a “little taste.”

You got that straight now? Have you been taking notes? Let me say it to you one more time:  You may teach Horatio Alger; you may not be Horatio Alger. You may teach perseverance (in many states you are forced to), but you may not demonstrate perseverance in any endeavor that enriches only you and yours. You may extol in your students the rewards of hard work and creativity. You are however enjoined from reaping those rewards yourself.

But hey, no hard feelings. we get it. We can see how you might have been momentarily confused. Just pony up half of your earnings to date and all will be forgiven.

And do it fast. We need to reseed the practice field.

On the Passing of Ol’ Lou Dobbs!

Do not go gentle off to old Fox News.

Extremist views must too grace CNN.

Puff! Puff! Your angry right wing views.

 

Though windbags need by nature spew their dreck,

You’re better served amid non-foaming men

Than hanging out with nut jobs like Glenn Beck.

 

It’s true, yea, true enough you’ve paid your dues,

Like Sean and Bill and all their bretheren—

Puff! Puff! Your angry right wing views!

 

Oh, sure you’ll get to play with their stacked deck.

And they will put Geraldo in a pen.

But you’ll still hang with nut jobs like Glenn Beck.

 

Like all so blue of blood, you need your crews.

And need in your old age to feed that yen.

Puff! Puff! Your angry right wing views.

 

So Lou just please consider new debuts.

How many years you got left? Maybe ten?

Do not gentle off to old Fox News.

Puff! Puff! Your angry right wing views!

Venn Diagram of Congressional Bipartisan Consensus: 2010

Banking Your COM Degree

Today I am going to take a break from my regular spewing of sarcasm to provide some unsolicited advice to my program’s recent graduates and graduates-to-be. The job market is tough right now and is likely to stay tough longer than they are telling us. On it’s face, that news is depressing, but I think there are some reasons for optimism–especially for Communication Studies graduates (at least the ones who have been paying attention). Below, you will find some ideas for how to present yourselves, your education and your experience to those last few people who are looking for workers.

What Your Degree Has Provided for You:

Right at the beginning of COM 111, you learned a fundamental truth that separates you from the masses of other graduates: Talk isn’t like it seems. Interaction is not passing meaning back and forth between people. Talk is negotiating common ground, shared meanings, and most important shared rules for how to interact with one another. Almost every problem that will arise in an organizational setting will be rooted in that misunderstanding: people think that because they said what they meant, other people heard what they meant. They were wrong, and now they are fighting. You know what they don’t: It doesn’t matter what you said. All that matters is what the listener hears.

I hear a message different than the one you intended, because symbols don’t contain meanings; they just point us toward them. Interaction is influenced by contexts, by the histories of the people involved, by the personal priorities involved. Being an effective communicator is not saying what you mean clearly (although that helps). Effective communication is deciding what should happen as a result of communicating, analyzing the person or people with whom you are communicating, and figuring out–within the boundaries of ethical practice–what you need to say to that person and how you need to say it to achieve that outcome.

What Makes You Unique?

“I have a listener-based” goal-oriented perspective on communication, not just a say-what-I-think perspective.”

“I know how to respond to the whole communication environment, not just the other person.”

“I am a flexible asset, because while contexts change, the basic dynamics of symbolic interaction do not.”

Your Degree is in Mass Media. What does that have to do with person-to-person conversation?

“My Mass Media degree is rooted in a basic core of pure communication studies–interpersonal communication, intercultural communication and group communication.

“As I am sure you are aware, the line between the average American’s public and private selves is slowly disintegrating. We more and more rely on distancing technologies like cell phones, conference calls, social networking sites, etc. I have spent a lot of time learning how the use of various kinds of technologies filters peoples intentions influences their responses.”

“The time I have spent studying how people perceive the world as members of publics, and as pop culture audiences has given me greater insight not just into what motivates people, but into what motivates bind us together. We are all individuals, but at the end of the day our similarities are more profound than our differences.”

What Concrete Tools/Skills Do You Have?

“I can summarize my specific skills with the four words: Composition, Reduction, Comparison and Portrayal.

“Composition is how things fit together. To really understand something you have to know how its parts function as a whole. A lot of times the way things are arranged is as important if not more important than what things are.

“Reduction allows me to analyze and hopefully repair complicated situations by breaking them down into their component parts, describing the parts, and explaining how they relate to one another. That allows me to be good at explaining complicated things to people. It also allows me to evaluate things like committees, and working groups to see why some work and others don’t.

“Comparison is based in the reality that people learn almost every new thing by comparing it to some experience they already have. I can use analogies and metaphors to clarify the unfamiliar for someone just enough that he or she will be willing to dive in and get acquainted with it–to teach yourself is the best way to learn.

“Portrayal just means that for any discussion, project, or campaign to be successful, the communicator needs to embody the message, not just relate it. You have to BE THE MESSAGE to sell the message.”

Why Should I Hire You Instead of Someone Else?

In addition to everything above, there are three important reasons.

“No matter what you make or sell or trade, the vast majority of challenges you face in the course of a day are communication challenges. How many times have you said to yourself or others “Why can’t these college educated people write a clear sentence or express a simple idea?” “Why can’t these people communicate?” If you say that to yourself a lot, you have answered your won question.”

“The second reason is opportunity cost. Every person you hire is a whole lot of other people you can’t. When you think about me, you should not just think of what you will get if you hire me, but what you will lose if you don’t. No matter who you get, that person will have to be trained to your specific way of doing things. So you can train that, but do you have the time or resources to teach people the skills and insight to overcome communication problems? I will bet your experience tells you you don’t.”

“My most important asset is my flexibility. You have a specific set of expectations for me now, but will those expectations stay the same? If there is any sure thing in the business world right now, it is the certainty of change. Employers need some people who have specific skills and training, but they also need people who are adaptable to unforeseen circumstances. Change like everything else in a corporate culture is about seeing things from a new perspective. My communication training not only gives me that perspective, it gives me the tools to help you help others to adapt to change.”

When Can You Start?

“OH, you’re making me blush!”

Some Random Thoughts:

• Start acting like the person you will be in the job before you get it. Dress the dress. Talk the talk. Keep the schedule.
• They are watching you. Keep your anti-social tweets and Facebook status updates to a minimum. Everything you are online is fair game. If you don’t like what you have out there get rid of it or lock it down.
• Pass your job backward.Keep in touch with one another. If you are successful at changing jobs, let your supervisor know you have a friend who would be the perfect choice to replace you. That ex-classmate or next generation graduate needs your help as much as you need the help of others.
• Realize that it is a numbers game. Keep sending your stuff out! Ten percent unemployment is ninety percent employment.It could be worse. You could be fifty, with three kids and a mortgage and be unemployed. Your optimism is an asset.
• If you need us, call us!

Kanye as Spartacus

Shame on you, Gary Trudeau! In a recent Doonesbury strip, B.D. and Boopsie were commenting on the depravity of a Hollywood culture so tumescent at the thought of involving itself in the  Roman Polanski crusade that if the issue was a thirteen year-old girl it would have raped her (not raped her -raped her mind you, so relax). You clearly just don’t get it. Hollywood deserves its excesses, because Hollywood gives us ART, and in doing so gives us what we need the most–something to imitate.

Hollywood gets to carry a gun through airport security, go on racist screeds, drive without a license and drink till dawn even though it is under age (of course in this case Hollywood must also be cute-as-a-button) because it has the wisdom and talent to teach WalMart Greeter Nation (aka the rest of us) how to face life’s great issues.

“What?” you say? “Don’t be absurd! Show biz people live in a dream world. I’m nothing like them!”

To you I say “Wow! How’d you find my blog? Lonely in here, isn’t it?” Then I say “I give you Kanye as Spartacus.”

Who can forget the dark days? Who does not remember where they were on 9/13 when they heard the news: Kanye Disses Taylor Swift at the VMAs?  A nation paused as one…many had opined that at such a moment we would fall apart, revert to our animalistic core and tear ourselves asunder.  But we didn’t. As in all times of crisis– 9/11, WW II, getting here and finding all those pesky Indians on our land–Hollywood told us how to cope!

In the weeks after Taylor Swift, who had just days before been sitting at her bedroom window looking across the yard through Moon Man’s window and singing that he should be with her instead of that tramp Mariah, was robbed of her chance to rise from having just earlier that evening to sing in the subway to becoming a cross-over star (sorry C&W, you ain’t Woodie, you still just get to marry your niece) we cast Kanye West out of polite society. No one said it better than Zippy, who commented to Kanye on an Gossip board “You really aren’t free; you are still a slave!”

“Slave?” you say? “Outcast? With any luck has been. But slave?”

Leap ahead a month. October 9. Barrack Obama has won the Nobel Peace prize. America is shaken loose from its moorings.  He has only been President for nine months! He hasn’t even matured into the job! In the context of the four-year term of office he is at best 17 maybe 18 years old! How should we respond? To whom can we beg for guidance?

Hollywood, baby!

Almost by instinct, we turned to film fiction–in this case a plucky youngster who came from nothing to gain fame in the arena! Who then because he said what was in his heart (or at the bottom of his bottle of Hennessy) was banished into obscurity–an outcast with a price put on his head.

So when Obama rose to accept his undeserved reward, was it not Kanye West, the runaway slave, to whom we turned?

“Barrack, I’m a big fan, and I will let you have your moment, but Morgan Tsvangirai had one of the best peace efforts ever!”

“I am Spartacus! Neda, the plucky Iranian has a much better body of work!”

“I am Spartacus! Rush should have gotten it!” Really. Somebody said that.

And just like in the classic scene, one by one, we each and all rose in defense of our outcast hero to shout as one “I am Spartacus! Give it to Gandhi. They believe in reincarnation; he has to be over there somewhere!”

So  Mr. Big shot Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist! Roman Polanski must go free, because everyone in Hollywood from the oldest washed out idol to the youngest kleptomaniacal crack addict must be allowed to do what they do best–tell the rest of us who and how to be. As a nation, nay as a people, we depend on them!

And while I’m on the subject, I am Spartacus! Where the frak is Mallard Fillmore’s Pulitzer?

That’s Why the Lady Needs an App! (Song Parody)

I get so hungry in the mid-afternoon

I need patchouli, and I need it soon.

That’s why I’m downloading the new Urbanspoon

And why this lady needs an app!

I’m into fashion and elegant clothes.

Don’t want to look like no street-walkin’ Hoes.

That’s why I spent a buck at a site called JoJo’s

And why this lady needs an app!

I download free, fresh software all day

Try not to pay

Things get sticky, hit iWiki.

I jailbreak my phones, don’t take none of their crap!

That’s ‘cause the lady needs an app.

Most folks can sit back and simply relax.

By when it comes to that I get panic attacks.

So I pull poker up, but only open with Jacks.

And why this lady, that’s why this lady, that’s why this lady needs an app.

Fed!

“FED” was a prophetic choice of words to scrawl on the dead body—if we can even assume the butchers had the humanity to wait until he was dead.  Bill Sparkman, government agent!  These animals literally meant that Bill Sparkman, a substitute teacher who was supplementing his meager income by walking up to the doors of his neighbors and asking them if they would answer a few simple questions was “the Man!” Government agent Bill Sparkman had his foot on their throats. He took all of their money and gave it to them what didn’t deserve it. He held the gate while millions of Mexicans, some from as far away as Costa Rica, El Salvador and even Asia!! poured through to take our jobs, gobble up our precious medicines and mix our blood. Bill Sparkman! Death Panel Bill!  I-now-pronounce-you gay-married Bill!  Bill no-more-Christmas Sparkman!  Indoctrinate-our-children Bill!

Bill Sparkman.  I want to use that name a lot. Not Senator Sparkman (D) NY. Not even Bill the Plumber. Just Bill Sparkman.  Substitute teacher, Bill Sparkman.  Maybe some clever right wing pundit, maybe, Ann or Michelle–Glenn isn’t witty enough—will start calling him Health Care Bill or Omnibus Spending Bill.  But like it or not right wing, tcot, teaparty folks, you got your wish.  Bill Sparkman just became the new John Birch—the first casualty in an undeclared civil war against America.

Give the insurgency’s generals credit. They have softened the battlefield brilliantly. The landscape is already dotted with the casualties of our popular culture’s obsession with rolling the weak.  Nothing entertains us more or more profitably these days than watching the fat guy dance or find love, the washed up celebrity wallow in drug addicted pain, or two families torn apart for the price of one with the simple gimmick of flipping moms.  What does one have to do with the other? Merely the justification—they asked for it and were too weak to stop it.  “How can you watch her make them eat that?” “Hey, they asked for it.” She came all this way and tried her best. Why does Simon have to be such a dick?” “Hey, she’s seen the show before.”  It is a self-sustaining ecosystem. They spew garbage, and we get fed.

There’s that word again. Fed. I have spent my life studying words, because often they produce unintentional brilliance like the Swiftian irony of “Get a Brain! Morans!”  or “Thank You—Fox News—for Keeping Us Infromed!” or like the pomposity bursting “Make English America’s Offical Language!” The rich sinister double meaning of the scrawled word FED, though? There is no way the people who perpetrated this crime could have grasped its enormity. The machine will though. Right Glenn? Hey, Colbert. Who needs a Peabody, I have a Body count!

I’m not sure what the aftermath of this senseless killing will be. Will the right wing politicians who at once feed off of the hysteria and politely distance themselves from it realize that they are partially to blame? Will O’Reilly and Olbermann stop doing the They-are-Always-to-Blame circle jerk and actually use their forums to enlighten? Ten days from now—five if another celebrity dies—will anyone even remember this poor pathetic guy named Bill Sparkman who was just trying to put a buck in his pocket? I doubt it. What I am sure of, though, what you can get out your mattress and take the bank, is that before it is all over everybody who matters to the equation of American political power is gonna get fed.

The Radical Right Wing 7 Steps of Grief

1. We are not violent. People are portraying us as violent, because they want to smear us.
2. When you get this many people together, there are bound to be a few extremists. They don’t represent us, and we don’t condone their actions.
3. The mainstream media are blowing a few unrelated acts of violence out of proportion to tar a legitimate protest movement.
4. Hey! If a good, honest American patriot gets pushed enough, sooner or later he’s gonna push back.
5. Where were all of these complaints when the radical leftist bomb throwers were protesting out troops?
6. This isn’t a game; this is life or death. Sacrifices have to be made.
7. Clearly mistakes have been made, but we have to respond to the situation as it presently exists. We are willing to let history be the judge.