Class, Status, Race, Caste

Racism is more than just about skin color.

A reader writes in response to my posting about Dr. Seuss and The Sneetches:

I thought they were elitists; the star belly guys were like the cool kids who could afford the Izod alligator on their shirt; the plain bellies were the poor kids who had the exact same shirts as knockoffs from K-mart at one quarter the price, but without the alligator - point being, absent the stupid alligator, no one could tell the shirts, or the kids, apart.

Never read it as an "anti-racist" parable; but I was a really naive kid anyway; but even now, I still see it as "anti status symbol", because that's all the stupid star on the belly was.

He makes a good point. The Sneetches story wasn't just about racism, it is about how we let appearances and class status affect how we perceive people - and how we perceive ourselves.

There was a famous experiment back in the early 1970's - one that has been called into question on many levels.  Students were hired for the experiment and half were told they were prisoners and half were told they were guards.  The whole thing had to be called off in a hurry, as the "guards" started abusing the prisoners, but more alarmingly, the prisoners started acting, well, like prisoners, being passive as well as passive-aggressive.  A prison riot ensued.

Some criticize the test as unnecessarily cruel.  Others say it wasn't valid science, and that the subjects were just acting out.  Others say that no real conclusions can be drawn from it.  But I think there is something to it - we tend to act out the roles we are assigned in life, which often works to our detriment.

There was a movie in Netflix which sort of illustrates the point.  White Tiger is not a documentary about India - any more than Dirty Harry movies are a documentary about life in America.  But the central premise of the movie involves status and class.  A low-caste young man from a rural town moves to the big city to act as a driver and servant for a high-caste wealthy family.  He feels trapped in his station in life, even though he is of above-average intelligence.  If he steps out of line, he could be fired.  If he steals from his employer, his whole family might be murdered.  In the end, he murders his employer, steals millions of Rupees, and then moves to another city to start a cab company, bribing government officials to put other cab drivers out of business.

Like I said, I don't think it was meant to be a travelogue of India - if it was, well, Mr. Modi has a lot of work to do.  But the message was interesting - the young man wanted to change his fate, and in order to do so, he had to re-invent himself, estrange himself from his family background (and risk their being killed).

The other interesting aspect was that the discrimination he faced was based not necessarily on race, but social status, or as they call it there, caste.  I mentioned before how my family rose up from poverty to climb the social ladder in the United States.  Part of this was to marry into higher-caste families and part was to reinvent one's self.  My Father's family, for example, was divided into fairly recent Irish Catholic immigrants and Swiss Lutherans who came over here to work as servants on the Steinway estate on Long Island.

Social and economic progress in the US, however, was somewhat easier than in the White Tiger movie.   My Swiss ancestors met while working for the Steinways, got married, and saved enough money to buy 100 acres of land in Little Silver, New Jersey.  They later sold this land to developers and the local school system.

My Dad's Father was Irish Catholic, and his ancestors came over here during a time of anti-Irish sentiment.   The same sort of racial prejudices used against Blacks and Hispanics were applied to the Irish - although not nearly as badly.   Even years later, when such prejudices started to abate, my Dad found it convenient to posture that he was Protestant and Scottish or "Scotch-Irish" as there was still prejudice in the Boardroom against Catholics and the Irish.

My Mother's family was the same way.  While they were here a little longer than my Dad's clan, they fell on hard times, having to sell the family farm in what is now Park Slope, Brooklyn.  After her husband's scandalous suicide, my Great-Grandmother went into business, buying and selling second mortgages in order to put my Grandfather and his siblings through city college.  From poverty to law firm partner - and mayor of tony Larchmont, New York, in one generation.   But in order to get there, my Great-Grandmother commissioned a genealogy study to show that her children had roots in "proper" society and wash away the stain of her husband's suicide.   Class and status meant that much to her - it was a matter of basic survival.

So yea, this "White Tiger" movie made a lot of sense to me, as I saw this same struggle in my family, as they tried to rise above their caste.  But of course, it was much easier for them in America, on two counts.  People want to see you succeed, for one thing.  The Steinways actually gave my Swiss servant ancestors an upright piano as a wedding present when they left their employ.  Decent people, that.  The other thing was that it is a lot easier to "blend in" when you are white and "pass" for a higher caste in our society.   It is a lot harder for Blacks and Hispanics to do this, for obvious reasons.

But it illustrates that racism alone isn't the sole thing holding people back.  And in fact, "people of color" who got ahead in our society in the past (and indeed, even today) were often those who could "pass" either as white, or acted in a manner consistent with the ruling social caste.  "He's awfully articulate" folks would say about a person of color, which was a racist thing to say, but what they meant was, "He's acts just like one of us!"   Getting into the club isn't just a matter of race, it is also a matter of your background, your posture, grooming, behavior, accent, and whatnot.

I mentioned before a friend of mine who grew up in a trailer park in West Virginia. Raised by a loving single mother who drove big-rigs for a living, her future could have been very circumscribed.   But, she was a "White Tiger" and wanted more out of life, so she changed her name, went to design school, and moved to the big city and got a job as a high-end designer.  And part and parcel of this was to change her appearance, her dress, and her accent and mannerisms.    When she did that, they let her into their little club.

Of course, the problem with this model is, once they find out you aren't really a member, they will treat you differently.  So you constantly have to be on guard for being exposed and found out.  That is why Great-Grandmother Wiggins commissioned this somewhat specious genealogy study that went back several generations and then suddenly veered off to Charlemagne.   You have to prove your pedigree, or at least you did, back then.

So yes, my reader is right - and so was I.  The Sneetches is about race, but also about class and appearances.   The Izod shirt and khaki slacks and docksider shoes (worn without socks, natch) and the whole Lands End and L.L. Bean wardrobe was part and parcel of the preppy look.  You had to look as though you just came back from your weekend at the family compound in Kennebunkport, or stepped off your sailing yacht.  And yes, I went to prep school, and yes they threw me out when they sensed I wasn't one of them.

Of course, things are changing today - and then again, they aren't.  The emphasis on "old money" seems to be waning, as a new generation of Billionaires arises, most making their money in technology or Internet-related endeavors.  Of course, it still is a lot easier to rise above your caste if you are white and can more easily blend-in to the upper social strata.  And this is why for the most part, the "people of color" who you see succeeding are those who are "articulate" and smart - with the exception of professional athletes and rap-stars, whose product is tied in with their racial background, to some extent.

This is, of course, unfair, right?  We should be allowed to succeed on our merits in life, not based on our ancestry, background, caste, or social station. Condemning an entire caste of people to a life of servitude based on their ancestry or skin color is just wrong.  And one shouldn't have to pretend to be something they aren't, in order to succeed, right?

Well, that is the funny thing - the latter part.  I suspect that few, if any, of the people in the upper social castes do not actually feel like complete frauds.  I think they are all worried about being "found out" as trailer trash on any given moment's notice.   Perhaps that is why you see so many mental health issues among the ruling elite - the drug abuse, the alcohol abuse, the suicides, and whatnot.   At least, that is what I saw, as an outsider-looking-in on some wealthy enclaves I was brought up in (where my parents tried, but never quite succeeded, to be accepted).

It is why people strive for status symbols and symbols of success - and why the old money would cluck their tongues as such ostentatious displays of wealth.  Only the nouveau riche would be so gauche.   Of course, often that "old money" had run out of money, and their shying away from status symbols was not a matter of choice, but necessity.

It is the reason why the young Engineer, getting his first paycheck, goes down to the Acura dealer and leases a new SUV, why the rap star wears gold chains and buys expensive champagne.   Those who don't have status - but have some modicum of wealth - try to buy their way into the upper classes with the appearance of wealth.   It rarely works.   The upper classes are not impressed with your ability to borrow money.  But what's more, such ostentatious displays often end up in tears.   More than one professional athlete or rock star has ended up bankrupt, after squandering what they thought was an endless supply of money.

So what's the answer to all of this?  Beats the hell out of me.   But I think it means that there is more to this puzzle that just race, but also social status and caste involved.  I think also, it means that on a personal level, seeking status is a dead-end.  Not only will you squander a lot of money trying to get into their little club, odds are, they won't let you in.  There will always be discrimination based on social status, even if we were all of one race.

I think also, maybe, that it means that even if we can 100% overcome racism in this country, inequality will still exist, so long as people live up to - or down to - social expectations in life.  If you are born a prisoner or low-caste, it is very hard to shake those expectations, unless you re-invent yourself.  Inner-city ghetto or rural trailer park, the effect is the same - but one can at least overcome the racial hurdle more easily than the other.

On the other hand, it is possible to succeed in America, and even a middle-class or even lower-middle-class existence in this country is the envy of most of the rest of the world.  Just because you are not the next Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos doesn't mean you are an abject failure, or that there is some screaming injustice because we can't all be Billionaires.

UPDATE:  A helpful reader sends these two links about how class and status affect your prospects for a job interview.  The "airport test" seems kind of unfair to me, but then again, people who are popular and good-looking and easy to get along with, get ahead (How to win friends and influence people, right?  Nothing is really new in this world).   I guess the takeaway is, if you are going to be an asshole, your career options are limited, and there is not much that can be done about that!

Comparing Streaming Services

Streaming may be replacing Cable TV, but it has a long way to go...

We literally "cut the cord" on all cords in our home.  The only source of data or voice or television, we get from our cell phones.  Configured as a WiFi "hotspot" I can type this on my laptop, or go on any website. I can watch Netflix or YouTube or something called "Vudu" (which I think went out of business) on our old Sharp television.

That is one problem with this streaming thing - I see the new televisions for sale in Walmart - larger sets for less money than I paid for the 48" unit we bought years ago.  They are pre-configured to access the sites of all the major streaming services - of which there are many. When our set was made, there were only three, with the NETFLIX button being most prominent on the remote.

Well, a lot has changed since then, and configuring hardware to work with only certain sites is a little short-sighted.  Websites and services change over time - quite rapidly.  But maybe in the future we'll chuck television sets faster than we do smart phones.  Actually, they cost less.  A new iPhone or Galaxy can cost over $1000, while a pretty decent television can be had for under $500. Welcome to our brave new world of disposable electronics.

I opined a few months back a better way to "stream" video might be to sign up for one service for a month, binge-watch what they have, and then cancel the service and sign up for a different one.   If you tried to sign up for every service currently streaming today, you'd have a streaming bill well over $100 a month, perhaps far more.   It simply isn't worth it.

I noted before that I am finding less and less to watch on Netflix.  We cancel the service in the summer when we are on the road and then "catch up" with it in the winter when we are home more.   But after a month or so, we've watched all we want to watch on Netflix.  So much of the "content" is soap-opera like series produced by Netflix.  Gone for good are recent releases and historically significant movies.  So, last month, I pulled the plug on Netflix a few months early.   We weren't using it - so why bother paying?

To their credit, Netflix makes this easy to do, and they don't play "negative option" games like "Oh, computer error!  We never got your request to cancel, which requires three hours on musical hold and a certified letter in triplicate!"  So that is a plus for them.   Content is a minus.

We decided to go back to the DVD service for a month or two.  If you sign up for a month, you get a month's free service, so I guess you could sign up for just one month and pay nothing, which might be what we do, as like the streaming side, it ain't what it used to be, and I am finding the well pretty dry after ordering only a few DVDs.   But again, something to try for a month and then move on to the next thing.

Since our television doesn't support other services, I found a VGA-to-HDMI adapter on eBay for about $2, delivered, plus an HDMI cable for another two bucks.  I signed up for Disney+ using Mark's old laptop (using my phone as a WiFi hotspot) and we can stream Disney.  Talk about a shallow well.  There is The Mandalorian and a bunch of Disney Princess movies and that's about it, unless you want to see the Herbie the Love Bug movies.   Oddly enough, Mark likes the Madalorian, mostly because of his gravelly sexy voice.  It was kind of a let-down to actually see his face in the last episode of the first season, and find out he is a puffy-faced guy with bad hair.   Sort of ruined the whole thing.

But again, it is another soap opera - a space opera - and I think once we've seen all 16 episodes, that will be it for Disney+.  Sorry Walt.

I have no idea yet if it is easy to cancel, so I'll update this when I learn - pretty soon.  Of the three services I have tried (Netflix, Disney+, YouTube) Disney is the worst for streaming.  Netflix has a robust streaming engine that buffers a lot of content, so it never drops out or jitters - no hourglass appearing during action scenes.  YouTube is probably second-best and Disney a distant third.  Disney doesn't seem to buffer much, so action scenes often pause and give you an hourglass on the screen.  This is an artifact of MPEG encoding - in static scenes, all you need to do is load intermediate frames, which don't require a lot of band-width.  But in action scenes, you have to load more original P-type frames, and this slows things down.   Probably not an issue if you have a standard internet service, but even then, there's internet service and internet service, and a lot of "throttling" goes on these days, particularly if you don't pay for top tier internet.

The big problem is, of course, that back in the day when it was just Netflix, and they had the STARZ contract, they had a ton of content and it was the only game in town.  Today, every television network and movie studio and "content provider" has their own channel, and you have to try them all to get any kind of content.   Like I said,  you can try them one at a time, and pay only a few dollars a month to watch.  $5.99 to $11.99 a month beats a $125-a-month cable bill, any day.

There is, of course, YouTube, which is "free" although they are pushing their own monthly membership service.  If you don't pay, you have to watch ads, which started out as 5-second annoyances, that morphed into 30-second ads you could "skip" after 5 seconds, to some videos which have minute-long un-skippable ads - and several of them.  YouTube even offers full-length movies "with ads" (lots of ads) and a lot of old-school television shows.  If you want to watch re-runs of 1970's "Match Game" or "Mannix" they have it in spades.  Car crash videos?  Car rally crash videos?  Airplane crash videos?   Travel videos?  Cooking videos?  Of course - along with knitting videos.  It is an odd mix.

I haven't signed up for the paid YouTube service, which illustrates the problem for them - hard to get people to pay for what was once free.   People will tolerate more and more ads, particularly if you increase the ad rate slowly over time.  Pandora used to have ads "once in a while" but now it seems they are every other song - and each ad is accompanied by an ad for Pandora premium.   The glory days of streaming are behind us.  Someone figured out there is money to be made here.  It will be like network television and FM radio before too long.

Of course, the ultimate "channel" is the off channel, and consuming less content is always an option - often the best one.  Watching less television, less news, less smart-phone, less "screen time" always seems to be the best option - life is better and less stressful.

Whether we will try other streaming services remains to be seen.  I am not sure I will find anything of value on CBS or NBC or ABC or FOX online - or even things from the major studios.  Quite frankly, as I get older, I find most of the content less and less entertaining.  And I think this is normal, as you get older.  Explosion movies are a young man's game.

Doing things is better than watching things.

UPDATE:  A reader mentions Amazon Prime streaming service, which I also tried and found lacking.

UPDATE:  It is possible to adjust the data rate on Disney Plus. You have to go to the user icon and then there's a pull-down menu and one of the settings allows you to select from three levels of data rate. The default rate is an astounding 4 gigabytes per hour, which would use up the data plans of most people within a few hours. It tries to stream at 4K which is ridiculous as most people can't notice the difference. I set it at the lowest setting and that got rid of the hourglass and we didn't notice any difference in the screen resolution.

Dr. Seuss, Racist Bastard?

 

No, Dr. Seuss isn't any more racist than anyone else.

Today is Theodore Geisel's birthday.  Known professionally as "Dr. Seuss" his books guided a whole generation of youngsters and informed them of issues from racism (The Sneetches) to environmental issues (The Lorax).   To most people, he would be seen as a hero of the Left, and part of the modern era of progressive education.  But in today's culture, his early writings are being used to condemn him as some sort of KKK racist.  Worse than that, even his "progressive" writings are being condemned as not being progressive enough.

While no one is calling for "cancelling" his books, some of his very early works (when he was still in college) have clear racist overtones, and are not being reproduced (not that they were popular anyway). Others are calling for his books to be read, but put in context for young readers, so they don't pick up on subliminal racist undertones.  It kind of seems shocking to me, as the far-right had condemned Seuss for ages as indoctrinating children into progressive thinking.   The Left has turned in on itself.

Mr. Rogers, they're coming for you next, you white supremacist asshole!

On the other hand, if they "cancelled" Dr. Seuss, I don't think it would be the end of the world.  Literature has its ups and downs, its primary era of popularity, and then fades away.  Some survives the test of time, others are deemed out-of-touch or irrelevant to a more modern era. The problem is, particularly in some venues, that historically popular authors end up sucking all the oxygen out of the room, leaving no room for up-and-coming authors of a new era to stretch their legs.  It's OK to let go of some literature, over time.

For example, the comics page in the newspapers were dying long before newspapers died. If you looked at the comics section, half the "funnies" were from authors long-dead and gone, and now being drawn by a second- or even third-generation of artists.   "Blondie" for example, was a depression-era comic - but continues on today.  "Peanuts" had its heyday in the 1960's, and Charles Shulz is long-dead, but re-runs of his comics continue today - taking up space that maybe a new comic artist could have used.

Speaking of racism, Shulz had the same claims leveled against him - that his characters were all-white and there was no "diversity" (although Peppermint Patty did represent the LGBTQ spectrum).  So he introduced a black character, Franklin, who was given a few lines to say and then disappeared into oblivion.  Did that really help?  The creators of "South Park" faced similar criticism, and tongue-in-cheek added a character literally named "Token Black".   When you do a cartoon about a bunch of white kids living in an all-white suburb in Colorado, trying to make it racially diverse is sort of ridiculous.  I think that was their point, anyway.

While some of Geisel's early writings are clearly racist, for example, having anti-Japanese overtones, they were written while he was in college and during World War II.  Good thing he didn't have a Twitter account!   That's the problem today - anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of public opinion - which is why I am glad I am retired, I don't have to worry as much.

But his later writings were anything but racist. Which Geisel do we condemn and which do we embrace?  Well, to hear some tell it, there is no redemption, no second acts in American lives.  You say the wrong thing once, it is all over for you.  And once you are dead, it is too late to do a mea culpa apology tour, not that those seem to work anymore.

One critique of Seuss is that the majority of his characters are white.  They did a "study" of his works and counted the number of white characters and the number of characters of color and he came up lacking.   To begin with, I am not sure how to parse this, as many of his characters are not human.  Are Who's white or black?  The Cat-In-The-Hat has black fur, but a white face.   Is Horton the elephant a person of color?  What about the Lorax?   I find it kind of ridiculous.

The other issue is, we are a nation that is 70% or more white, so it isn't "racist" to have a book or movie or comic strip with mostly white characters - or even all-white characters.   It is the reality of life in America, or indeed, most Western countries.   It is not racist per se to show a representation of reality - or is it?

But it doesn't end there.  One of Seuss' books that decried racism was The Sneetches and other Stories.  In that book, the story of the Sneetches is told.  They are creatures apparently from another world who discriminate against one another based on whether there is a star on their belly.  A clever salesman sells them a machine to add stars to the belly of non-starred Sneetches, and when everyone has a star, sells another machine that removes stars.  Eventually, the machines break down and the Sneetches can't remember who was starred and not-starred originally, and thus agree to recognize each other equally, regardless of appearance.   It was, in the 1960's a profound lesson of tolerance, and not a popular story with some folks in Southern States.

You would think this story would show that Seuss had second thoughts about racism and would at least partially redeem him.   Nah!  Can't have that!   Some argue that his story is lacking as while it preaches racial tolerance and equality, it doesn't go far enough in terms of restorative justice.   Where are the slave reparations for the non-starred Sneetches?  Where is the Affirmative Action?  It isn't enough to treat people equally going forward, we need to go back, generations, to correct injustices of the past.

Seuss - you racist bastard!

Theodore Geisel is hardly an icon of white supremacy, the neo-nazis, or the far-right.  In fact, much of his popular children's literature espoused things like tolerance and open-mindedness (Green Eggs and Ham, for example).  His Lorax was a pro-environment piece that was arguably ahead of its time.  Do we judge him by that, or by his college and early writings?  Because if that is the standard we apply, then no one can write anything, at any time, because everyone is a little bit racist - particularly the authors of this so-called "study" that condemns Geisel.

Yes, everyone is a little bit racist.  Everyone.  I hear outrage from some corners when this is said.  "Black people, by definition, cannot be racist!" they shout, as if racism was only against "people of color" or something.  Well, I have news for you, white is a color, and yes, many people harbor negative stereotypes about white folks.  Everyone does this.  We harbor misogynist views as well.  Come on, the whole "Karen" thing is misogynist and racist as well - posturing that white women are a bunch of complaining and entitled, uh, witches - or something that rhymes with that.  We all wallow in that sort of stereotyping, too.  It's kind of fun - unless your name is actually Karen, of course.

Of course, white folks, being 70% of the population and owning everything, can take a little racism against their own kind. The sort of "discrimination" white people face is negligible.  But with "studies" like this, condemning progressive liberal whites, it seems that maybe it is on the rise.

The canard that Seuss was not "progressive enough" in his Sneetches story is sort of absurd. It would be akin to condemning white and Jewish "freedom riders" for not doing enough for the cause - even as many were assaulted and even murdered.  How far did Seuss have to go in order to be accepted then by today's standards?  Because today's standards, if practiced back then, probably would have ensured that none of his books would ever have been published.   The Sneetches story was taught to me in grade school in New York State in the 1960's.  I am sure it was on the banned-book list in Georgia in that era.

There is also an issue of cultural appropriation.  While it is a good thing to be supportive of causes for justice that are not your own, it isn't necessarily a good thing to take over those causes.  When you have white "Antifart" people leading BLM marches (and marring them with violence) it detracts, not adds.  When Lady Gaga decides to be the face of LBGTQ causes to make a buck or two, it isn't really helping us, just monetizing the cause for her own benefit, as I noted before.

Of course, the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot, and part of me thinks I should not even comment on it at all.  After all, the news sells controversy, and using this obscure "study" and some lame story about banning/not banning Dr. Seuss, is one way to sell eyeballs and generate click-through revenue.  I am sure Tucker Carlson will devote a whole show to the issue.  As the Post story linked above notes, no one is "cancelling" Dr. Seuss at this point - particularly not based on some obscure "study" from authors with sketchy credentials (who want to make a name for themselves, no doubt).

Sometimes it is just best to ignore nonsense like this and move on. While there are people dumb enough on the Left to go along with nonsense like this, it hardly represents mainstream thinking, on the Left, and certainly not that of Democrats in general.   In fact, you have to wonder if these sort of stories aren't being fanned and promoted by the far-right, who wants to make the Left look as ridiculous as possible.  Antifarts and Qanonsense - we slap those labels on each side, sticking our opponents with the worst example of their extremists.

I think Dr. Seuss is safe, for now.  But maybe it is time to make room on the bookshelf for some new authors as well!

Cultural Appropriation - On The Left

Cultural appropriation is nothing new, nor is it limited to people on the right.

I took a piss recently on Lady GaGa for offering a half million dollar reward for the return of her dogs. And sure enough, somebody turned in the dogs to the police, supposedly a Good Samaritan. But I have a sneaky suspicion that whoever stole the dogs gave them to the Good Samaritan with $1,000 and told him to take the dogs to the police. Call me skeptical, but human nature is what it is. You put a half million dollar bounty on a couple of dogs and somebody's going to try to collect it.

I'm hoping that in a few weeks we'll find out the Lady GaGa intentionally offered this bounty in order to catch the perpetrators as part of some elaborate sting operation in cooperation with the LAPD. But I suspect that won't be the case. If it is, then my sincerest apologies for taking a piss on Lada GaGa.

But in researching her background, I came across a number of postings from people who are critical of her stances on issues - as well as her music - which some say sucks. She sort of claims to be one of "us little people," one of the Freaks and Geeks and LGBTQ people, of which causes she supports.  But some opine that it's just a facade, and that she's actually part of the mainstream, The Establishment, one of the elite, who just postures as being one of us little folks in order to gain popularity. When you perform at the Super Bowl, you are part of the system, lock stock & barrel.  You are not longer "alternative" anything.  Singing the national anthem at the inauguration (and not ironically) - you're part of the system.

Of course, these folks have been declaring her career "over" for some time now, but I suspect that she is so entrenched in the system, that we will have to hear about her, like it or not, like Madonna, forever.  Hell, once you do a "crossover" album with Tony Bennett, you're part of the landscape.  Is there anyone Tony Bennett hasn't done a crossover album with?  I have to admit, his duets with K.D. Lang (who is a real bona fide Lesbian, BTW) were pretty fantastic.  Then again, Ms. Lang has a real voice and no meat dresses.

It reminds me of a trend recently where some young people, particularly young women, claimed to be "geeks" or "nerds" because they saw a TV show that starred geeks and thought it was trendy. "I'm such a geek!" a young girl says, but unless she took three semesters of calculus and differential equations and maybe a little number theory she's not a geek, and hardly a nerd. Geekdom is not something you declare yourself to be, it's something you have to earn.

And sorry, we're not letting the popular kids into the geek club. They wouldn't let us into their popular kids club, why should we let them be part of our group? Revenge is kind of sweet, isn't it?

This got me to thinking about Lady Gaga and cultural appropriation. It's not clear that she's a lesbian or gay or whatever, although she makes some hints that she is perhaps bisexual, which I guess gets her into the LGBTQ club.  And of course, she supports a lot of LGBTQ causes which is very nice and all, if she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart and not for the profit motive.

Sadly, I fear that it is becoming trendy to be Pro-LGBTQ or trans or whatever these days and this concerns me greatly.  What is trendy one day is out the next!   I mentioned before that when I was president of the Gay and Lesbian Student Association at Syracuse University I had a friend of mine, Ruben, who was asked to give a speech before some group that was talking about gay rights issues. This was back in the early 1980s when this was all very novel still. Stonewall was only about a decade earlier.

He confessed to me that he felt awkward at this meeting, as all these people, academics and members of other student groups were being very supportive but also talking about Gay and Lesbian issues as if it were some sort of abstract academic concept. They were asking him how he knew he was gay and whatnot, and he told me he just want to break down and say "I just like [performing fellatio]" but that would have been politically incorrect.  That cracked me up.

He also made a comment that I thought was very insightful, that even back then there were some people who would claim to be "gay in college" because it was trendy, and then later on settle down and get married and say that was just "a phase they were going through."  And I wonder if this is even more true today, as being gay is seen is very trendy and we are getting a lot of attention.

It's like two young girls from Cornell University I saw in the vegetarian aisle at Wegmans, wearing chunky boots and tiny Manga dresses.  They were stuffing their cart with cookies and cereal, which technically were vegetarian items, and the one admitted to the other then she fell off the vegetarian wagon recently by eating a hot dog. That's about as far as you can get off the vegetarian wagon, I'm afraid - eating pig parts.  It made me think that perhaps she was being vegetarian just to be trendy and alarm her parents.  Plus, you get to be picky about your food and make other people go out of their way to prepare you special things.  It's a win-win!

Young people do weird things to get attention, and I say this because I used to be a young person and did weird things. Young people like to shock their parents and other old people by wearing odd clothes. What I was young it was to wear long hair and blue jeans and dress like a bum. Today is to have tattoos and piercings and dress like a criminal. Whatever it is, it has to be threatening and disturbing, Again part of the culture of belligerence.  The name of the game is to not be ignored.

But it could also be something as simple as declaring yourself to be vegan, perhaps gay or perhaps you can be trans. And I worry that some young people might go down this route without really understanding where they're going with it, or not having a real inclination those directions. We made it trendy and hip to be gay and and now transsexual, and I wonder if this is encouraging a lot of people who might otherwise have other inclinations.

I took a piss a while back on a guy who claimed to be a reformed gay. He was part of a gay youth group and wrote articles in magazines about homosexuality and helping troubled gay youth. Then he did a hundred-eighty-degree about-face and claimed to be a born again Christian and heterosexual and married.  What actually happened is kind of muddied, as some people claim he's gone back to being gay.  But I think the real issue is he's just a very confused young man.

It seems that we're selling sexuality like soap these days. I recounted before how we lived in Pompano Beach Florida, we started getting a magazine delivered to our condo called "Out!" magazine or something along those lines. We never signed up for this magazine and I'm not sure how they got our name. It's really creepy today how Facebook knows everything about you and you start getting things by email. It's even creepier back then, the 1990s, the early 2000s, that not only would they somehow know that we were gay, but find our physical address as well.

What freaked me out about the magazine with the cover story was about methamphetamine which they posited was "The new gay drug!"  There were lots of ads for Jeeps and Coors beer and cigarettes and whatnot. We were nothing more than a demographic marketing group to be marketed to, with a variety of products to sell us.

I could sense there was something very, very wrong about this, but I couldn't really put my finger on it. The marketers loved us because we didn't have children and thus have a lot of disposable income and would go heavily into credit card debt in order to look fabulous.  Well, maybe not me in particular, but a lot of other gay people that we knew.

In a way, I understand why many people on the far right, particularly conservative Christians, believe that there's some sort of "gay agenda" that is being advanced, because it seems like there is some sort of organized movement to sell sexuality, again like we used to sell soap flakes. And it shouldn't be that way. Your own sexual orientation is something that's very personal and private -  and not something that needs to be advertised or promoted.

Yes, it's wonderful that people are accepting today, and things that I never thought would happen in my lifetime, such as gay marriage, are now seen as commonplace. On the other hand, I don't think we need to cheer-lead for these things. Acceptance is one thing, when you start pushing it at people, it's another.

I think this is what disturbs me.  As a gay person I feel like this is being sold to us. If I feel this way, I can only imagine how fundamentalist Christians and people who have more conservative views must feel. They must feel inundated and overwhelmed by all this gayness and now transsexual stuff that's being talked about all the time. It makes for some awkward conversations with their kids.

Even for parents who are not right-wing or fundamentalist Christians, it must make for some awkward conversations. Imagine a child, three or four years, old asking their parents about transgender identity. They would  ask, "Does this mean I get to choose my gender?" And of course this makes the parents very nervous. Because deep down, they want their child to conform to their biological gender, even if they wanted to be supportive if a child made a different choice. But on the other hand, are children really be making choices like this?  Should they be?

We were at the local Tex-Mex restaurant on the island here and they have a taco Tuesday with $2 tacos and $2 beers. It's pretty good and if you're here you should go.  It runs between 3 and 6 pm. There was a group of young women in yoga pants from Atlanta or New York City, clearly not from around here, with a young girl who looked to be about 5 or 6 years old. They were going through every item on the menu and asking her what she wanted to eat, which I thought was hilarious. When we were kids we were told what we're having, we weren't given that many choices. In fact we weren't given any choices.

And that's okay, too. Kids like things to be organized and they like a clear line of authority and hierarchy. Children feel more comfortable in an environment where they know what's going on. Choices, and too many choices in particular, generate a feeling of uncertainty and instability. It's much more reassuring when mom tells them they're having macaroni and cheese and that's the end of it.

Thus, I think it's really kind of scary when people are asking their children what gender they want to be. We keep hearing stories in the media and parents celebrating their child's gender choice before they are even old enough for school. Just because little  Billy plays dress-up in mommy's clothes doesn't mean he wants to be a girl - it literally could be a phase he's going through.

Getting back to Lady Gaga, a lot of people have pointed out that most of what is her music is about, is really more of posturing. And I've noted before that throughout recent history, music has always been about the posturing and the image. When I grew up, rock and roll bands always had long hair dudes who would pout for the camera and try to look scary and maybe slightly androgynous as well. Sex sells, and sexual ambiguity sells even better, hence the whole "Glam Rock" movement and David Bowie.

Since then, other artists have seized upon this. Madonna, for example, used her outrageous costumes, persona, hairstyles, and whatnot to sell a sexual imagery that was quite popular especially with young women.  Remember the pointed bra and the "sex" book she sold?  Lady Gaga is merely taking this to the next level with idiotic things like her meat dress and bizarre hats and other outfits. It's less about the music than about the image.  Pop music has always been that way.  Whether it was Frank Sinatra and the "Bobbysoxers" or Elvis swinging his hips, or the Beatles and screaming teens, or Heavy Metal bands with their wild hair, it was the image that sold the music - at least initially.

There are, no doubt, more talented musicians than Lady Gaga, musicians you've never heard of because they don't know how to market themselves the way she does. She's a one-woman marketing machine and knows how to sell image and outrage. And she does outrageous things simply to get attention and be talked about. There's no such thing as bad publicity and she realizes this.

And jumping on the LGBTQ bandwagon is part of her marketing strategy. She knows that young people tend to trend liberal and thus supporting more liberal causes endears her the marketing segment but she is targeting.

That is why, to say the least, I'm not a big fan. First of all I'm way too freaking old for this sort of thing. I've outgrown the whole rock-and-roll bad-boy image type of nonsense. My taste in music has matured over time, and I tend to value the quality of the music itself, more so than who the artist is or what they wear or what they look like. A lot of the music I collected as a teenager and young adult, I simply cannot listen to anymore. I look back at it now and wonder what I was thinking?

A lot of it was posturing at the time, whether it was rock and roll, heavy metal, or the so-called "art rock" movement. Every artist had an image and a profile to promote. Back then we had huge album covers, many of which folded out and had inserts that contain pictures and photos which put forth the image of the artist, which was as important if not more so than the music itself.

What my brother was in college I went to visit him, and his roommate started playing some music and asked me what I thought of it. These were kids from New Jersey and they were playing Kiss albums. I'd never heard of Kiss and I thought the music was sort of blah. But not having seen the album art and the outrageous outfits and makeup that the Kiss band members wore, it wasn't as appealing to listen to the music. Even though I was just a kid in high school, it started to dawn on me that maybe the music industry was selling me a bill of goods.  And no, I never became a member of the "KISS Army."

Lady Gaga was just more of the same, which I guess is another reason why I'm not interested. Not only am I too old for the demographic, but I've seen this sort of nonsense before, and was not enthralled by it even back then.  Lady Gaga is just Gene Simmons in Drag.

According to some sources, she has a net worth now close to a quarter of a billion dollars. No wonder she can offer a half million as a reward for a couple of lousy dogs. To her, that's chump change. To the rest of us that's a lifetime a lifetime of savings.  What we struggle for, through 45 years of a working life is something she would hand out as a tip for bringing back her dogs.

Like I said, I hope that I'm wrong about this. Perhaps her offer of this reward was just a come-on in conjunction with a police sting to catch the perpetrator who brutally shot her dog walker. Maybe Lady Gaga will be seen as a hero, working with law enforcement to put these crooks in jail. Maybe, but I doubt it. Because part and parcel of this marketing effort today, is telling the kids that the police are no good and that criminals are just misunderstood people. They took her dogs because they needed to feed their children or something stupid like that. And that dog walker shouldn't have resisted – it was his own fault he got shot, right?

It just makes me wonder where we're going with this.

Beyond Lady Gaga, however, there is a lesson to be learned here.   Being a "fan" of a star is a waste of your time and energy.   You give the celebrities and stars a little bit of your money, and they accumulate a lot.  If you could figure out a way to take a dollar from every person in America, you'd have $330 million dollars, and most Americans wouldn't miss that dollar.   Lady Gaga has apparently figured this out.

So many people profess to be rabid fans of a sports team, a movie star, or a music star.  In fact, they make a competition out of it as part of status-seeking behavior. "I'm more of a fan than you are!  I've been to every [movie, rock concert, home game, bail bond hearing] of my favorite [celebrity, rock star, professional athlete]!" they say.  There is nothing wrong with enjoying a sport or going to a show, but when you become a mindless fan, what does that do for your personal life?

Like I said, Lady GaGa figured this out a long time ago - that it isn't enough to be a good musician, and that's a good thing, because apparently she isn't one.  It is the image you sell - the costumes and posturing that lures in the plebes and hooks them on you like a drug.   She's expert at that.

And part and parcel of this is the celebrity becomes immune from any critique or accountability.  There are still people today who are rabid fans of Michael Jackson, who think he did nothing wrong.  Folks who are fans of "Prince" who claim he is the "greatest guitar player ever!" and not just some drug-addled idiot selling a sexual imagery.   Funny thing, a whole legion of other people claim Eric Clapton is the "greatest guitar player ever!" and not just some racist shithead who covered and profited from, black people's music.  Well, at least he didn't wear a meat dress.  On the other hand, how low do you have to go to profit from your kid's death by writing a song about it?  I mean, particularly when he died due to your own neglect.  But I digress.

Of course, that comment will generate a reply from some mindless "fan" who thinks Clapton (or Prince, or Jackson, or GaGa) is a god and beyond criticism, critique, or even accountability.   They are just people, and in this case, musicians, which, believe-it-or-not were once looked down upon as the lowest class of people in a society.  Today, musicians - popular ones - are royalty.

The same people who breathlessly follow every move of Lady Gaga (or fill-in-the-blank politically correct celebrity) will blather on for hours about how the 1%'ers "took all their money away" and blame Ticketmaster for charging them a $15 "convenience fee" for their $250 concert tickets.   But as I noted before, the 1% didn't take all our money away, we willingly gave it to them with our blubbering thanks.

If you want to impoverish the 1%, simply stop giving them your money.   Not only will it make them a whole lot poorer, it will make yourself a little bit richer.   But you'd be surprised how many folks can't see that.  "What do you mean, not go to rap-fest 2021!  I have to see my favorite rap band even if it does cost me a half-month's rent!"

When someone can afford to pay a half-million dollars reward for the return of two dogs, that tells me I don't need to send them any more of my money.  Not when the reward for solving a murder is about ten times less.

Tennis, Anyone? (Sports That Have Fallen From Favor)

Sports rise and fall in popularity.  Why is this?

A recent article in the Jacksonville newspaper laments the decline in Racquetball sports in that city.  The author cited a number of reasons for the decline in that sport, most notably the lack of a youth league to feed new players into the sport.  But it seems to me that the reasons for the decline in Racquetball are the same as the reasons for the decline in Golf and Tennis, as well as for other non-sporting games, such as Bridge.

Sure, there are the costs involved. As the author pointed out, Racquetball required a Racquetball court, which meant you had to join a club and pay dues - or sneak into an apartment complex, as he did, later on when the clubs closed.  Golf and Tennis suffer from a similar problem - you have to have access to a court, plus the equipment is not cheap, either.

But I think the main reasons go beyond that.  The lack of unstructured leisure time and the competition from other leisure activities are the main reasons these sports fell from favor.  I mentioned before that my parents' generation all played Bridge - a complex card game that takes a long time to learn and an even longer time to get good at.  No one in my generation plays it - not like my parents' generation did.  It was everywhere back then, today it is nowhere.

(Mahjong is another game quickly falling from favor.  When we moved to the Island 15 years ago, there were three "Tongs" playing different rules.  Today, there is one, and I am not sure it is as well-attended as in recent years).

The game of Contract Bridge was created by a bunch of rich people killing time during an ocean voyage.   Today, people just don't have that level of unstructured time.  Not only that, people are more likely to play an electronic game in their home - something with more action and technology that a boring card game.

I think racquetball, golf, and tennis have suffered as similar fate.  Here on our island, our golf courses are largely empty most of the time, and falling into disrepair.  The big money-maker for the island is our small water-park with big slides for the kiddies. The golf course loses money, consistently.  Not only are there fewer players, there are far more competing courses that were overbuilt in the area in previous years.  They are talking about eliminating one whole course (we have three 18-hole courses and a 9-hole executive course) and putting in senior housing.  The tennis center was finally renovated, but if you want the court to yourself, that is still not a problem.

Perhaps it is also the emphasis in high school sports on major team sports - baseball, basketball, and particularly football (which is a recognized religion in Georgia and much of the South).  Maybe they still have a golf and tennis team in the local high school.  I know at my school, that wasn't as popular - the kids who went out for that tended to be more intellectual and upper-middle-class.

My Dad was a big tennis nut.  I never could play the game, having 20-200 vision.  Any kind of fast-moving ball might as well be invisible to me.   If I ever hit a baseball with a bat, it was by sheer luck.  I tried taking tennis lessons, but I was never able to play the game very well.   If you think about it, it is a very difficult thing.  The ball comes over the net and you have to make a split-second decision whether it is going in-bounds or out.  If in, then you have to figure out how to position your body, whether to hit it forehand or backhand, and then try to hit it so your opponent will miss it - without going out-of-bounds again.  Maybe that was the problem for me - I was over-thinking it.

But if tennis was too fast for me, Racquetball was ten times faster - and handball ten times faster than that.  I admire folks who can play those games well, but I realize I never will be one of them.   And it is sad that these games seem to have fallen from favor lately.

The author of the article cited above says that he now plays Pickleball more these days.  Pickleball is a game favored in retirement communities like The Villages, where unused or underused tennis courts can be readily converted to Pickleball courts.  Pickleball uses an inexpensive wooden paddle, and a hollow ball with holes in it - like a whiffle-ball or a golf practice ball.  The idea is to slow down play, which is why it is popular with the elderly set whose vision might not be as good as it used to be.

So you see, that might be another reason for the decline in more traditional sports.  People are getting older and no longer have the stamina for 18 holes of golf, or the coordination for high-speed ball sports like tennis or racquetball.  It might also explain why things like golf were so popular a decade ago - when the baby boomers were in their retirement prime.

But a bigger part of this is, I think, that young people don't want to play the games of their parents so much. Golf had a brief heyday in the 1990's and early 2000's, only to fall from favor in the last recession.  People simply don't have the time needed - hours of unstructured time - to play 18 holes, plus the countless days, weeks, and months to learn the game.  Throw in the hundreds, if not thousands spent on equipment and greens fees (or club memberships) and it isn't hard to see why the game has fallen from favor.

Maybe our generation just wants to play different sports.  Jogging and running, for example, were not big things when I was a kid - my parents did not "jog".  That became a "thing" in the 1970's and today, everyone claims to be a marathoner or half-marathoner, at least from the number of "13.1" stickers I see on the backs of SUVs.  My parents viewed bicycles as children's toys, suitable for sidewalk use or maybe delivering newspapers - something you chucked the moment you got a driver's license.  Today, everyone thinks they are Lance Armstrong, with all that implies.

Again, I think the video game has taken over - and we have become a more sedentary species as a result.  We are not as athletic as the previous generation - and obesity is now an epidemic.  We all have jobs now that force us to sit in front of screens all day.  And when we get home, we relax in front of another screen, playing a video game or watching some television show.

Will these older sports come back, or will they merely die off?  Hard to say.  Perhaps a new generation will see these little-used tennis courts and golf courses and take up the sport.  On the other hand, without some exposure to them as a youth, it isn't clear how they could take it up.  The ascension of Tiger Woods gave many hope that golf would stop being a game only of the country club and the well-off.  And in a way, it already was - the best golfers are not the executives and rich folks, but the union electricians and plumbers, who have the beefy arms and the thousands of dollars of golf gear in the back of their pickup trucks - who are on the greens at 3:30 in the afternoon, while young lawyers are in the office until 9:00.   Of course, those union jobs have sort of gone away, haven't they?

And despite the rise - and fall - of Tiger Woods, I don't think the inner-city kids are going to take up the sport in record numbers.  Sports like basketball are popular in the city as they don't require much in the way of equipment - a ball and a hoop and a flat place to play.  Golf requires a lot more land - and a lot of expensive equipment.  I doubt that inner-city kids are going to take up fly-fishing, either - another sport that requires a lot of time and energy, space, and expensive equipment, which is also in decline in recent years.

The decline of the leisure class combined with our sedentary lifestyle is a real one-two punch for these sort of time-consuming and money-consuming games.  The fellow exhausted from a day stuffing boxes at Amazon isn't stopping off at the public golf course to practice his chip shots.  He's going back to the RV he is living in and watching television until he falls asleep.   We have squeezed a lot out of the working class, and the results are somewhat predictable.

I have mentioned this before - concentration of wealth in the hands of too few works against the wealthy.  When no one can afford to buy your products, your business will suffer.  Trump's golf clubs will go under if no one has the leisure time and disposable income to learn and play the game.  Our economy does its best when we have a robust middle-class with the time and energy to do things, other than work.

Maybe that is why no one plays Racquetball anymore.

* * *

NOTE:  Please spare me the flames from folks who will say, "Well, I still play Racquetball" or "I still play golf!"  or "I play bridge!"  That's missing the point.  The reality is, as the author of the piece linked above notes, there are far fewer venues left and far fewer players of all of these sports and games.  It ain't like the 1950's for Bridge, the 1960's for Tennis, the 1970's for Racquetball or the 1980's for Golf.  

So please, go troll somewhere else.