Monthly Archives: November 2005

Black Friday and Paul Bunyan

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A false folk hero
Did you know that the first shopping day after Thanksgiving was known as “Black Friday?” Neither did I!
 
Apparently “Black Friday” is so named because it’s the first day of the year that retailers can recoup enough from their sales to put their balance sheets into the black. As opposed to “in the red” which is bookkeeping jargon for running at a loss, which is what retailers do for the rest of the year, apparently.
 
Boy did this sound like malarkey.

Certainly the term Black Friday sounded familiar, I thought it referred to the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression. It turns out that there have been many other Black Fridays through history. But none of them refer to this retailer/accountant/insider lingo. The only early reference to a retail Black Friday had to do with the deluge which the day after Thanksgiving wrought upon the average retail clerk.

This new economic twist looks more like somebody’s Psych Op to revive retail sales.

This bit of Madison Avenue myth-making sure seems to cover the bases. First, if you’re a retailer you shouldn’t worry about having run at a loss (in the red) all year, apparently that’s normal. And if you’re a consumer, it looks like it’s your duty to bring that retailer’s figures up (and into the black!) Never mind that you’ll probably be putting his profit onto your credit card (into the red). For you we can call it red friday.

Paul Bunyan
I’m reminded of good ol’ Paul Bunyan, that American legend who heroically did more than his share to chop away our nation’s wooded overgrowths. Not a very PC hero to be sure, it never occurred to me to doubt his credentials.

One day I was looking through an older children’s book about American folk heroes. There was Johnny Appleseed, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Pecos Bill, everyone was there except our giant friend Paul. Sure he was fictional, but he’s a historic legend, why was he not in the lineup? The book was dated 1920.

It turns out that Paul Bunyan was the creation of a magazine columnist hired in the 30s to create a positive PR figure for the timber industry. This was an industry still smarting from Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation programs.

If the Jolly Green Giant could sell you frozen foods over fresh, tales about a monumental lumberjack and Babe his blue ox could do more. A fictional reverence for a giant of folklore could sell America on admiration for westward expansion, manifest destiny and the obvious imperative of clearing our continent of its trees.

The 911 Reichtag Fire

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In 1933 someone set fire to the Reichstag, the historic German Parliament Building. Hitler seized on the occasion to incite in the German population a fear of terrorists and foreign agents, and trumped up his case for the preemptive invasion of Eastern Europe.
 
To prevent further acts of terrorism, Hitler curtailed civil rights and created the first concentration camp at Dachau. Predating the extermination camps by a half dozen years, Dachau began as an internment camp for political foes and other “enemies of the state.” Many Germans felt that the Reichstag fire was a Nazi deception, set deliberately to further Nazi goals.

2001 brought the American People their 9-11, with similar doubt as to how it came to happen. Americans were also given their Dachau at Guantanamo Bay, a prison camp absent every American notion of civil right. Americans soon became responsible as well for waging a preemptive war on Iraq based on trumped up charges of WMDs, and American atrocities at Mazar-i-Sharif and Fallujah, which beg comparison to the Nazi taking of Czechoslovakia, and Nazi acts at Babi Yar and Lidice.

To compare American to Nazis may seem like a profound trivialization of the horror of the Holocaust. There is no evil greater than that which perpetrated the Holocaust. But the Final Solution didn’t start until 1940. The U.S. Neocons are comparatively early in their game.

History has now confirmed that it was the Nazis themselves who started the Reichstag fire. They set the fire at night, while no one was in the building. Not a single life was lost. Not very Nazi-like. Someday history will reveal the truth about who perpetrated the events of September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center. Time will eventually have to overcome this administration’s persistent efforts to thwart investigation and accountability.

IF the Neocons in the U. S. administration, either by negligence or malice, did allow or facilitate or instigate or perpetrate this ugly tragedy, if they did this, what can they have yet in store for the American people?

(Reprinted ArmchairCommando.)

Jesus and the recalcitrant camel

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So some rich Christians are trying to work their way around Jesus’ admonition about Christian wealth. “Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
 
Apparently some Christian scholars have been saying that the “eye of the needle” was the name of a gate in Jerusalem, a particularly thorny entrance through which it was not the easiest task to coax a recalcitrant camel. Interesting. So that is what Jesus was saying. Well.

Ask yourself how to define “impossible.” Imagine trying to explain to a child “it cannot be done.” To a child all things are possible. You find yourself having to use an illustration, very like Jesus did. Maybe you choose the elephant in a box concept. (Is there an elephant in this box? No. How do you know there’s not an elephant in this box? It would be too big. So would it be impossible for an elephant to be in this box?)

Now try to define a “difficult task,” and simple examples abound. “As hard as trying to stay awake when you’re sleepy. Or doing a handstand on one elbow. Or keeping a hacky-sack up in the air with only your tongue!” All would be pretty hard I guess. But not impossible.

Does it sound to you like that was what Jesus was trying to illustrate? I think his sarcastic tone gives it away. A sarcastic comparison only works with extremes. Else he would have said “it’s as DIFFICULT as directing your camel through etc, etc.”

Maybe in today’s parlance, Jesus would have liked to say, a rich man will get into heaven when the ambient temperature of the world’s nether regions reach a sufficient extreme to freeze over!

What a bunch of sniveling sneaks.

Veteran’s Day parade, part 1

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Prussian charge
I should say that I had never watched a veteran’s parade, I think. Wasn’t it supposed to be a parade of veterans? This was a parade of mostly active duty soldiers and soldiers-to-be. It was very disturbing.

There was a flatbed trailer, there may have been several of these interspersed, on which stood a current war hero. He straddled the platform, his hands on his hips, striking a valiant pose, his chin held high and to the side. A large placard read: recipient of medal so-and-so.

There were marching bands, real young faces. I hoped that as excited as they were to be in the parade, that they weren’t thinking of joining the military.

I had just met a gentleman looking for legal advice for his daughter who’d recently signed up. She was a promising musician in high school, she played the coronet. A recruiter had told her that the army was in desperate need of musicians. They needed her for their marching band. The recruiter assured her that she wouldn’t have anything to do with the fighting, but that she could serve her country in its hour of need, by offering to do something that she loved. She signed on.

No sooner was she through boot camp that she learned she was being sent to Iraq. She and her fellow musicians were told: leave your instruments at home, you won’t need them.

Among the marching bands was a band called the Rampart Regiment, (actually Rampart High School’s marching band, and state champions). But their uniforms were terribly unfortunate. They were black, a sort of turn of the century look with high hats, and a large black feather. They looked like Prussians, or what we would recreate in our minds if we were trying to visualize those mercenary Hessians! Their outfits hearkened to a day when the uniforms meant to intimidate.

Does anyone remember what distinguished the aggressive from the defensive soldiers in the last world wars? The Allies had the frumpy uniforms because they didn’t mind being seen as sympathetic. The aggressive soldiers are the ones who want to scare the bejezus out of their enemies. This has been true since warfare began.

White hat versus black hat, it’s true for cowboys and hackers. Good guys and bad guys.

What was Rampart thinking to dress their band looking like black draped raiders? They look like Cossacks about to swing down and slice you in the back as you try to flee from them.

What business do we have trying to glorify the terror of war?

I was horrified too by what appeared to be den mothers, preening their little kids in their little uniforms, to salute the passing soldiers. These were not just boy scout uniforms but miniature military outfits. I couldn’t help but think these kids were wishing that someday they too could be featured in the parade.

At that point I noticed there weren’t any wheelchairs in the parade. Top be sure many of the WWII vets may not be so ambulatory nowadays, but their disabilities were concealed by the antique cars from which they waved. Why couldn’t something like that have been arranged for the wounded Iraq war vets?

There weren’t any crutches or wheelchairs or homeless drunkards which comprise the largest contingent of Vietnam vets. Now we’re learning it’s even more true for the Gulf Gar vets. And there were no mentally addled vets with bandaged heads to symbolize their injuries.

And certainly the Veterans For Peace and the Iraq Veterans Against the War were denied permission to participate.

Then there was something most disturbing of all: a guy in army fatigues, youngish, stocky, probably a drill sergeant but uncharacteristically casual, and he was working the crowd. In nonchalant fashion, he was rallying both participants and spectators with a call and response routine.

“God bless America” he would shout. “God bless America” the crowd answered. I was reminded of something Bismark had famously said in the 19th century: “God protects fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.”

There we were, this veteran’s day, a day to honor veterans, ignoring the veterans altogether. An active duty soldier rallying soldiers and the families of soldiers: “God bless America.” “God bless America.”

Over and over. “God bless America.” “God bless America.”

We will need it.

Vets Day part 2: the 3rd Armored Cav

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Black gloved marchers
Before the Guernica that became Fallujah,
 
before our use of chemical weapons in Fallujah,

before there were civilians immolated in their beds by white phosphor in Fallujah,

before Napalm under the disguise of Mark-77 was used in Fallujah,

before our tanks were running over the injured Iraqis in the streets of Fallujah,

before our helicopters were killing every last family trying to wade across the Euphrates River to escape the blood bath that was Fallujah,

before we were turning back all able-bodied men from the age of 11 to 65 from the lines of refugees trying to leave Fallujah because we didn’t want insurgents to escape our pincer movement, forcing them back into the city to make a stand,

before we declared that anyone not evacuated from Fallujah would be treated as a combatant,

before we declared our determination to make an example of Fallujah.

2.
Before we tried to make an example of Fallujah the first time because the world saw what they did to the four contractor mercenaries,

but had to pull out because we hadn’t yet thought to cut off access to the hospitals from which were escaping horror stories of the atrocities we were committing against the civilians of Fallujah.

Before we had thought to ban Al-Jazeera from Iraq for reporting on Fallujah despite our restrictions,

before we killed the Al-Arabia reporter who dared to venture into Fallujah.

3.
Before the famous desecration of the bodies of the contractor-mercenaries by enraged Fallujah youth who’d often seen contractor-cowboys ride through their streets shooting indiscriminately out the window;

before our military tried to cordon off Fallujah with encampments.

4.
Before the killing of three unarmed Iraqi marchers, and the wounding of dozens more, who’d assembled to protest a massacre the day before, both times by nervous 82nd Airborne soldiers who thought they had been fired upon first.

3.
Before the massacre of schoolboys protesting the occupation of their school by American soldiers. The soldiers claimed to have been fired upon and yet the only bullet holes to be found after the killing of 17 unarmed Iraqi men and boys were from the American guns.

5.
Before that time Fallujah had not been occupied. Fallujah remained restful throughout America’s invasion of Iraq. It was not until the actions of the 82nd Airborne and the Marine Expeditionary Force that Fallujah erupted into a hotbed for the insurgency and, as a result of American anger, into American war crimes recalling Lidice and Guernica.

Throughout this period, and in between the disastrous actions by the 82nd and the Marines, Fallujah and the Anbar Provence were the responsibility of the 3rd Armored Cavalry of Fort Carson, Colorado Springs. To their credit, they were not party to the unfortunate American actions.

Uncouth party crasher

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Rude cowhand showoff
Have you seen the 60-second TV spot by Chemistri called “Party Crashers?” A vulgar Cadillac STS drives into a ballroom where other performance sedans are dancing a well choreographed eighteenth century Gavotte. They’re opening their doors to each other in gracefull salutes when the Caddie interrupts, and barges to center. The music changes to Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” and the other cars are forced out of the way.
 
Reprinted from Subvertize.com