2016 Talk Back

Norman Lear, the director, wrote me a letter the other day.  The Norman Lear. Yeah, he knows me from Adam! He’s pitching me for some political org.  So I wrote him back.

Dear Norm,

You and the rest of the well-heeled liberal set ignored the effects of the bank bail-out, etc. on a hefty portion of the country. Now, we are all stuck with Trump. Stop worrying about the banks, business, and immigrants and worry a little bit about people who are ALREADY Americans and on the skids, who have given up looking for jobs, etc.

With all due respect, McD

It’s the end of the year and I make it a point to talk back to the people who  richly deserve it.

The Nationwide Ins. made the mistake of sending me their fraud line and email address after they raised my rates almost 10 percent a month this fall. I phoned their fraud hotline to report THEM to themselves.

I have a lot of high profile friends—think Liz Warren & Alec Baldwin--writing my Yahoo account, which I reserve for these high profile folks.  Most fancy themselves tolerant liberals and want me to prove I am too by pitching in.

People, 

Shame on you! We have a secular society, and most respect it by not flaunting private religious symbols in public. When I lived and taught in Turkey, I did not go into the street in Bermuda shorts and tank tops because that is not done there, even in August when it is beastly.

Get your head in the game,(without a headscarf) McD

Good exercise for the Critique Eye if nothing else! Check out my piece on Mom here:  http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-Home-Forum/2016/1228/How-Mom-confounded-the-phone-man

Close Call for a Heathen Who Likes to Sing

Was going to church to sing Christmas Eve—honest, I was—but at the last minute ended up with a schedule conflict. In the run-up to the holiday, the weather was so inclemently below zero outdoor caroling was out of the question. Unless we all had fur coats, hats, etc!

There’s the dilemma: While I love carols, which would not exist without the pomp and circumstance of religion, church singing is also deeply disconcerting. What concerns me is that the inequities among the human race are dealt with through the myth, i.e. fecklessly. Major social reformers have not accomplished a lot through religion.

So, much of my life, I have gone to city council far more often than church. I see greater possibility for effectively dealing with inequity there.  However, gradually, especially in the last 30 years, I have seen those possibilities abrogated, ignored, or annulled at all levels of government national, state, and local. The most recent Cascade City Council meeting, case in point.

Thus, America enters a new political era with some of the greatest inequity in its society in the industrialized world. A developer is moving into the White House and I haven’t any greater hopes for him than the one out the road, or the old one that developed the southeast side of down, toasting his buns in Texas while the rest of us deal with the inequities he brought about.

A critical Eye wonders where to look next.

Will America Get a Snoot Full?

You might assert I have abrogated my commitment to this blog, since I have not posted a word to it since August.  In search of a larger audience, this fall I squandered my writing time editing and submitting to national publications.

Regrettably, the only place I scored was to a column in the Christian Science Monitor called “Home Forum” which publishes quaint, down-home tales like “Mom’s Worthless Lots,” the one I sold them. Though that was the first time I sent it out, they snapped it right up! There's a lesson.

And unlike a piece I had far higher hopes for that I submitted to a dozen+ national media outlets called “We Love Our Donald Trumps” describing the Trumpian behavior of several businessmen I knew and/or worked for in the late 70’s and early 80’s, when I was first editor, then publisher of a medical catalog in Denver.

The rejects only reinforce something I already know with 100% plus certainty. Something I see every time I go to city council, pick up a magazine, newspaper, turn on the TV or have any other contact with this society: business is king, considered an asset and businessmen are often low grade heroes. Only from my private, unguarded moments observing businessmen and their ethics, they seem quite the reverse. 

Maybe now that Donald Trump, the apotheosis of the business personality with all its arrogance, privilege and lack of morals and consideration for other people’s legitimate interests is set to take over—maybe now Americans will get a snoot full of business, business people, business’s bottom line ethic and all the rest of it. Maybe this is the year I will get my piece on some prototypical businessmen published.

The Critical Eye is however, not holding it’s breath!