A Celestial Home Companion
I had a dream early this morning about being somewhat lost in an old, moldering, crumbling airport terminal, wandering aimlessly around and around, occasionally dippng outside where I had some beer stashed in the snow (don't ask) and I finally wound up in a fairly large room, suddenly 80's modern, nodding off on a hard plastic couch when the room filled up and Garrison Keillor, obviously waiting out a delayed flight due to weather conditions, began reading from a newly minted science fiction novel (Galactica something...). When he took a break I observed that it was like our very own Celestial Home Companion to the amusement of all. Garrison looked at me with approving, shining eyes, remarkable eyes of deceptive warmth and mental vigor and before he delivered his bon mots I must have wakened myself, knowing to try to match wits with the gentle eviscerator would have indeed been a bad idea.
My mind, hazy with REM sandy opiates moved on to the title A Prairie Home Neighbor Named Fred who lives way down the road. So I reached for a pen and wrote:
A Prairie Home Neighbor Named Fred who lives way down the road, who only reads the bible after working his rocky fields for fifteen hours a day, who owns 10 dogs who are all too stupid to know the difference between my car and some big overfed wild game that trots daily through their urine soaked territory. You'd think after one hundred and seventy five tries at bringing down this fascinating quarry that it was not amenable to assaults on the spinning black appendages that make it mobile...but they are not. Part of this phenomenon no doubt is due to some canine peer pressure that whips them all into a howling barking mass of stupidity that begs the bravest, stupidest among them to attack the deadly areas...
then full consciousness was upon me and I got bored, finished up with Fred working in his yard wherein the dogs are suddenly mystically quiet and serenely well behaved, barely lifting their heads when I pass, but our Prairie Home Fred neighbor stares at me with a look of amazement bordering on discust, tinctured with his dogs collective stupidity, marked by a slack bestubbled jawbone...I got bored and dropped the pen, sighing at the well trodden PJ O’Roarkian road ahead
I went to the bathroom and used it and flushed it, happy that my landlord had fixed the pump and lowered the piping of the well to get better water pressure. Where it barely flushed before, causing me to have to attack the offensive bowl with a plunger daily, now it swirls down with a satisfying, almost playful sound. Crowlshhh, or something like that.
For the last eight days while it was being fixed I was down in Albuquerque with my wife J in her studio (literally) apartment, lounging with our two dogs, watching TV and eating out every other night. It was a welcome respite from the confines of the solitary outback where I now find myself and a pang pings my stomach at the thought that I won't see her for another week at least. But there are compensatory activities enough to stave off lonliness. Today for example, before I do my obligatory two paintings for ebay, I will take my wonderfully accurate old .38 out into the high sierra and have a fine old time shooting off a box of shells at targets of my own invention. I look forward to this activity every other day, like I look forward to the daily reports from Air America, a station only obtainable to me on the internet, and one that has become something of an addiction, one that J. frowns upon since it causes me undo paranoia about the state of our American affairs but one that also provides me with a little badly needed truth. I keep listening for news about host dj Randi Rhodes whose recent antics have supposedly gotten her suspended. After hearing Geraldine Ferraro's comments upon what was essentially a stand-up comedy routine on Randi's part I realize she must have hit a real sore spot with some of her remarks, Ferraro calling for her immediate termination on the grounds that she spoke in the same offending way as Imus with his racial slurs concerning the Rutgers women basketball team. But there was not anything near the ballpark of what Rhodes said, calling Ferraro a David Duke in drag-- to Imus' poisonous statement, especially since it was Ferraro who pointed at Obama's position being contingent on...well, here it is again:
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position...And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
After Rhodes stand-up routine Ferraro lashed back with the statement (according to Fox):
“What did they do with Don Imus when he went after the young black team who was playing basketball with kind of the same language? Treat them both the same,”--“She’s coming at me and Hillary in a … sexist way...”
Why don't I feel sorry for her? Anyone who can't see the barely cloaked dagger thrust at Obama because of his skin color must be blind to the subtle northern brand of rascism that has compelled some of J. and my mutual black friends to say that they preferred the blatant rascism they had witnessed in the south to the hidden brand of the north because at least there you knew where you stood…
Well, enough politics. I don't want this to become another drop in the ocean of rant political blogs out there. There are more important things to talk about anyway...such as the cows just outside my window, one black, one and off white, munching peacefully on the sweet spring grass, oblivious to wars and politics, oblivious to race hate…and about as capable of doing anything about these things as...there I go again. Enough.
My mind, hazy with REM sandy opiates moved on to the title A Prairie Home Neighbor Named Fred who lives way down the road. So I reached for a pen and wrote:
A Prairie Home Neighbor Named Fred who lives way down the road, who only reads the bible after working his rocky fields for fifteen hours a day, who owns 10 dogs who are all too stupid to know the difference between my car and some big overfed wild game that trots daily through their urine soaked territory. You'd think after one hundred and seventy five tries at bringing down this fascinating quarry that it was not amenable to assaults on the spinning black appendages that make it mobile...but they are not. Part of this phenomenon no doubt is due to some canine peer pressure that whips them all into a howling barking mass of stupidity that begs the bravest, stupidest among them to attack the deadly areas...
then full consciousness was upon me and I got bored, finished up with Fred working in his yard wherein the dogs are suddenly mystically quiet and serenely well behaved, barely lifting their heads when I pass, but our Prairie Home Fred neighbor stares at me with a look of amazement bordering on discust, tinctured with his dogs collective stupidity, marked by a slack bestubbled jawbone...I got bored and dropped the pen, sighing at the well trodden PJ O’Roarkian road ahead
I went to the bathroom and used it and flushed it, happy that my landlord had fixed the pump and lowered the piping of the well to get better water pressure. Where it barely flushed before, causing me to have to attack the offensive bowl with a plunger daily, now it swirls down with a satisfying, almost playful sound. Crowlshhh, or something like that.
For the last eight days while it was being fixed I was down in Albuquerque with my wife J in her studio (literally) apartment, lounging with our two dogs, watching TV and eating out every other night. It was a welcome respite from the confines of the solitary outback where I now find myself and a pang pings my stomach at the thought that I won't see her for another week at least. But there are compensatory activities enough to stave off lonliness. Today for example, before I do my obligatory two paintings for ebay, I will take my wonderfully accurate old .38 out into the high sierra and have a fine old time shooting off a box of shells at targets of my own invention. I look forward to this activity every other day, like I look forward to the daily reports from Air America, a station only obtainable to me on the internet, and one that has become something of an addiction, one that J. frowns upon since it causes me undo paranoia about the state of our American affairs but one that also provides me with a little badly needed truth. I keep listening for news about host dj Randi Rhodes whose recent antics have supposedly gotten her suspended. After hearing Geraldine Ferraro's comments upon what was essentially a stand-up comedy routine on Randi's part I realize she must have hit a real sore spot with some of her remarks, Ferraro calling for her immediate termination on the grounds that she spoke in the same offending way as Imus with his racial slurs concerning the Rutgers women basketball team. But there was not anything near the ballpark of what Rhodes said, calling Ferraro a David Duke in drag-- to Imus' poisonous statement, especially since it was Ferraro who pointed at Obama's position being contingent on...well, here it is again:
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position...And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
After Rhodes stand-up routine Ferraro lashed back with the statement (according to Fox):
“What did they do with Don Imus when he went after the young black team who was playing basketball with kind of the same language? Treat them both the same,”--“She’s coming at me and Hillary in a … sexist way...”
Why don't I feel sorry for her? Anyone who can't see the barely cloaked dagger thrust at Obama because of his skin color must be blind to the subtle northern brand of rascism that has compelled some of J. and my mutual black friends to say that they preferred the blatant rascism they had witnessed in the south to the hidden brand of the north because at least there you knew where you stood…
Well, enough politics. I don't want this to become another drop in the ocean of rant political blogs out there. There are more important things to talk about anyway...such as the cows just outside my window, one black, one and off white, munching peacefully on the sweet spring grass, oblivious to wars and politics, oblivious to race hate…and about as capable of doing anything about these things as...there I go again. Enough.
posted by Mark S. Weber at 1:32 PM
1 Comments:
Identity politics has warped even kind-hearted liberals to illiberalism.
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