What do Rod Blagojevich and Jeff Skilling have in common?

Umm, let’s see. One was the CEO of Enron who made sixty MILLION dollars selling stock in advance of his company’s catastrophic implosion around the turn of the century.

I am very mean-spirited, today. He earned $60 million selling stock in a company he helped destroy. I played DG in his new back yard!

The other was the Governor of the state of Illinois whose fetish for hair-care became a national punchline when he fell under investigation for attempting to sell the state Senate seat left vacant by Barack Obama.

Remember this one? I had forgotten until I ended up in his back yard with some guys from Foothill Flyers!

Jerks? probably, I never met either of them.

Psychotic megalomaniacs? likely so. Still, not where I’m going with this one…

Self-absorbed, money-addicted, powerful white men whose regard for others clearly was eclipsed by their own delusions of grandeur? Oh, yeah. That’s what I was trying to say by calling them psychotic megalomaniacs. So, nope, that’s not what they have in common.

Jeff and Rod live together in a cozy Federal Correctional Institution in Englewood, Colorado! Right in their back yard is Schaefer Disc Golf Course.

While they ran the dishwasher in the dining hall, or read their mail for the third time, or slept, or whatever the hell they get to do in a Low Security Federal Correctional Institution, I played a round of 18 holes at this old-school park located near Kipling and Hampden. Came out even, thank you very much, but I still left with a green tag in my pocket. They had to follow their guards’ orders. Sleep tight, jerkoffs!

American Cannibalism: Bread, Circus, and Duck Dynasty

With Duck Dynasty, A&E have caught a leading car on the train of exploitative “hillbilly reality” shows.  It is from this car that the network have shown us their real colors.  From one side of their mouths, they  present the Robertson family as practitioners of a uniquely American lifestyle.  From the other side, they invite us to participate in the schadenfreude that makes these programs so disturbingly popular.  “Look at these buffoons,” they snicker, “they’re primitive, backwards, ridiculous.”

By promoting the “all American”  Robertsons, A&E serves itself cake on a golden platter. The trope of a strong and loving family has long made for compelling television content.  Now that one of the family members has made an entirely predictable (and in my opinion tasteless, hurtful, and inappropriate) comment, A&E Network gets to eat that cake, too: They appoint themselves the guardians of moral decency.  “Unacceptable!” they cry.  “Let’s ‘suspend’ the offender!”  No one could be surprised by the narrow perspective that Mr. Robertson has shared with the nation.  It was entirely predictable if you watched more than 5 minutes of the show.

A&E, it seems, have  built the Robertson family up for the purpose of knocking them back down.

Bread and Circus!

I do not agree with everything Mr. Robertson says, nor do I support all of his opinions.  It is clear that he would reciprocate this perspective if someone asked him about me.  I expect, though, that if we were to meet in person, that we would interact respectfully, person to person, and agree to disagree.  I expect my out friends to have the right to freedom and liberty in this country. Mr. Robertson should expect the right to shoot and eat his food, and teach his family the ways and traditions that he sees fit.  Our nation is big enough for this diversity.  A&E network, apparently, does not see it that way.

My friends in the LGBTG community will get over the slight delivered by Mr. Robertson.  Our nation has moved beyond this bigoted perspective; tolerance and acceptance are genuine and permanent American values.  The Robertson family, rooted in love and faith, will overcome whatever fortune befalls their program.  A&E has already moved on.  After all, as Mr. Behan taught us so long ago “there is no such thing as bad publicity”.  The reruns continue, and their web site remains in tact.  The real casualty, I fear, is our society, where a gradual coarsening of the public discussion continues unabated as the most powerful medium of communication we posses continues to eat its young for the entertainment of all.

On the 50th Anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s Assassination

I wasn’t alive when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  I came along 5 years later, in the Summer of Love.  And yet, when I see the images and hear the recordings from that era, I share something of that collective sorrow and grief experienced by those who lived through it.  So much seems to have been lost on that day: Confidence, optimism, admiration for our national ideals, and the promise of a better world growing out of our commitment to those ideals.  

We seek to provide meaning and context for this event.  Why did this happen?  Who was responsible?  Given the world-changing magnitude of the assassination, it makes sense that we search for something more suitable than Lee Harvey Oswald’s quest to make himself relevant and meaningful in a world where he felt passed-over and inconsequential.  Unfortunately, this search for meaning fuels the creation of crazy (and ultimately pointless) conspiracy theories. 

It seems to me that this search for a more connected narrative has prevented us, as a nation, from moving beyond our collective grief.  Collectively, we seem to be stuck in the Bargaining/Depression stage of grief.  I propose that we take this time to move on, and begin, as individuals to move through to Acceptance.   As individuals, we can work to turn the results of this atrocity into something worthy of the legacy that Kennedy’s life and example have left us.  

I’ll echo the famous line delivered at his Inaugural address: Ask not what what your country has done for you.  Ask what you have done for your country.  It is in service to others that our own lives are granted meaning and usefulness.  Start small, and don’t stop.  To paraphrase the words of another wise person: nothing we do for one another is wasted.