Miss Swiss

The kerfuffle of Michelle Bachman’s application for Swiss citizenship isn’t new, per se, but I’d be most remiss if I let a blip like this pass.  What could have been mere matter of fact — that her in-laws were natural-born Swiss citizens who emigrated, which made her husband a Swiss citizen, and therefore herself one by de jure marriage — was unnecessarily escalated by the revelation that earlier this year, while still running for President of the United States, she was simultaneously applying for her children to be Swiss citizens.  (No word yet about those 20-odd foster kids they’d had and whether those Heathers will become Heidis and Jeffreys Jans, who will trade in those elementary school recorders for alphorns, or renege nacho cheese for fondue.)  

 

a MADest proposal

On the surface it would not appear that the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 would have any connection with a U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts half a century later, but there is one (having little actually to do with the Kennedys at that).  What the world learned about diplomacy and nuclear power then America today could glean from what’s happening in the Bay State between incumbent Scott Brown and challenger Elizabeth Warren and their relations to negative ads.  What essentially boils down to “DB Double-A” — or Don’t Be An Asshole — is a nugget of practical wisdom as old as Methuselah and as relevant as ever.  Following its lead, we can cooperate and coexist.  Failing to do so we guarantee a mutually assured destruction. 

 

Watch Wear You Step

Before I step on any toes by inadvertently insulting anyone (great disclaimer, no?), let me hasten to showcase how slow and behind-the-times I myself am: I had not even heard of TOMS shoes until a week ago or so.  This in spite of the fact that I used to work across the street from a shoe store here in town that sold and even advertised TOMS in their window display.  I saw the unmistakable flag in the window but had no reason to put one and one together.  Frankly, the logo conjured nothing in my mind more than the national flag of Argentina…

and an inscrutable curiosity wondering what “TOMS” could be an acronym for, since it was in all-caps and without any apostrophe.

I rather suspect I am not the target audience for any consumer product, much less anything having to do with fashion, but if I had been included in some sample survey or focus group, I would never have guessed in a million years that a flag with two blue horizontal stripes separated by a white one — or a blue field emblazoned with a white stripe — with a corporate logo reading “TOMS” would have anything to do with footwear.  Indeed, just for kicks, a quick Google search of “what does TOMS stand for” brings up the following:

1.  Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer
2.  Telecom Operations Management Systems
3.  The male of various animals, such as turkeys or cats.

They b(u)yline of TOMS is “shoes for tomorrow,” so I can only infer that “toms” is short for tomorrow.  Still, as a marketing gimmick, the whole thing is lost on me — but not just for abstract advertising purposes: I myself would not buy a pair of TOMS shoes in the first place, in part because I can’t even afford the flimsy-looking things, but mostly because it represents many of the key problems with charitable giving by way of corporate profit, up to and including the irony of the law of unintended consequences together with its hell-paved path of best intentions. 

 

One Good Turn Deserves a Mother

O what rash and bloody deed is this!
– Hamlet, Act III, Scene IV

You gave me birth, and all I did was cry.
You were my nurse, and I just sucked you dry.
I grew your girth, and all you did was sigh.
I was your worst, and you just smiled by.

 

MP3s — Not the Apple of my iPod

When my iPod goes dead at long last, it will not be replaced by another chrome clone.  Why?  Digital music is for the dogs.  I’m done with sacrificed quality for quantity’s convenience.  I don’t know about you, but I really don’t need every song on every album by every band or composer I like with me at my disposal whenever I like.  Added to that, a small library of digital books and enough podcasts to fill in the silence it would take to space-canoe to Pluto, good lord! like I’m ever going to get to all this stuff.  Plus it’s rather unnecessary.  I am confident that at no time in the history of human beings did average people (i.e., not technocrats) say something like:
“Say Bill, you know what would be a real improvement to my daily life?”
“Naw, what’s that, Betty?”
“A tiny device I could fit in my hand that would store all of my music, Bill, all my music as well as radio programs, plays, books, newspaper articles, lectures, photographs, videos…  Or better yet, all on my telephone!”
“Hold on there, cousin Betty!  That’s just crazy talk!”

Like the computer itself, the iPod is a solution to no known problem.

 

May D(ay) in China

Each year on the near-south side of Milwaukee a few hundred folks gather together to commemorate the Bay View Tragedy, the bloodiest day — May 5 1886 — in the history of the labor movement in Wisconsin.  I won’t bother rehashing the clash right now (you’re welcome to read about it here).  Instead, I would like to reconsider it in the context of our contemporary world, from Fox News and Foxconn to Scott Walker and Steve Jobs. 

 

Tax Dodging Rotten to the Core

I’ve always liked that bumper sticker that reads “If you’re not OUTRAGED, you’re not paying attention.”  (Though of course it can just as easily be stated that If you’re not outraged, you must be paying attention to Fox, but I digress…)  Another slogan I’ve enjoyed goes “I’ll believe corporations are people when a Texas jury executes one.”  To that sentiment all I would add is this: or until they pay they have to pay their taxes like all the rest of us working stiffs.  To wit, today is Tax Day, everybody, so pony up!  You, too, corporations — that is what your name means after all: “corporation” from the Latin for corpus and corporare, literally to make into a body.  (Think “corporeal punishment” or “Marine Corps.”  Or hell, just think corpse, as in the American dream/ social mobility/ public works/ U.S. revenue thanks to tax dodging loopholes.) 

 

Green Is The New Black: What Ecoterrorism and Crack Cocaine Can Tell Us About Pro-Life Extremists

First off, an editorial consideration: the last time a scribble indirectly dabbled in abortion and race the shit hit the fan like a fanatic orangutan with a crop duster but no Pepto-Bismol.  From that experience I have not learned that I should not be even scribbling about such emotionally charged issues in the first place, in part because I am by nature a stubborn person, but mostly because it has long been a cherished belief that to elicit a passionate response is generally an indication of doing good work.  That said, if I am reaching out exclusively to a certain segment of the population, then I am being a bad writer.  This blog is admittedly pretty liberal.  But I would regard myself an amateur with written-off irrelevance if I only pissed off some of the people all of the time; far better would it be to piss off all of the people some of the time.  For then, at least occasionally, I must be getting something right.  Not that pissing people off is my intention; I am not a provocateur.  (Actually, I’d like to consider myself a fairly nice guy, who despite a lot of weird stuff was given good manners.)  I personally have no interest in taking up a controversial topic for controversy’s sake — I will leave that kind of dare-devil skullduggery to the stirring pots of schlock-jock op-eds and braggadocio bloggers.  For me the point is to take up a controversial subject unflinchingly when its moment arises.  If I fail to reach out with a requisite amount of tact or only pretend to see things from the opposing perspective so as to seem more reasonable or circumspect, then I am genuinely sorry and I ask that you accept my apology.  In this scribble, as in many of my endeavors, I seek only to speak truth to power, and if I happen to piss off anyone, let it be them — those whose vested interests see living things as commodities and codify justice with dastardly and bastardized double standards.

 

One Year Later, We’ll Have Another Seder

One of my favorite protest signs from last year read “Walker Like An Egyptian.”  I saw it the first day of what would turn out to be the month-long (if not longer) uprising in Wisconsin — the first such occupation in America during 2011.  Back then, demonstrators were still descending upon Tahrir Square in Cairo.  Scott Walker was and is no Hosni Mubarak, of course, and what had been (and still is) going on in Egypt was drastically worse than the portentous inauguration of the new Republican administration.  No doubt about it.  But what was happening in Egypt last year in February was historic, as would be our contemporary uprising in the Dairy State.  Was Madison the new Cairo, the state Capitol building the new Tahrir Square?  No, but the analogy was understandable.  So a sign that punned a 1980s hit song by the Bangles with the governor’s name while invoking a subversive political message was perfect: Scott Walker was like Hosni Mubarak in a sense, and what we had been watching on TV half a world away was now taking place in our own backyard — and we were there, in live time; and like Mubarak, who would eventually agree to step down, so too should Walker have.

And all of this takes on a new meaning with respect to Passover this year.  So with that in mind I am delighted to share with you unedited the very witty and well-done “Wisconsin Union Passover Seder Guide” penned by Ann Imig — just in case you thought Friday Night Fish Fry and gefilte fish were the the only crossroads between Sconnie and Ashkenazi.

 

What the FAQ, Waukesha?!

April 1st 2012:  If the roused rabble in Dane County cries, “One year longer, we only get stronger,” then its flip-side in Waukesha County rallies around “One year later, we only get delayed-er.”  For once again, after a spring election in Wisconsin, none other than Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus finds herself in the center of a centripetal incompetence where even moderate conservatives begin to wonder, “dude lady, WTF?”