Book Pick: Apropos of Nothing, by Woody Allen

Woody Allen has spent most of his 85 years shunning public interviews, statements, award ceremonies, letting his prodigious work speak for itself. But the former Allen Konigsberg out of Jewish lower middle class Brooklyn spends nearly 400 pages in telling much of his life and artistic vision. His odd title roughly translates to his life’s theme of meaninglessness. He navigates a neat trick of using extreme self-deprecation to build up a life of titanic artistic achievement. Woody’s straw-man child is a clueless, unintelligent, klutz who hated school, professional achievement; instead idolizing idealized heroes in sports, crime and cinema. In his telling he was headed to ‘nowheresville’ till be began writing little jokes to pass the boredom of school. Still in grade school he took a friend’s suggestion to send them to newspaper columnists. They were so good some appeared uncredited in print. When one finally appeared as the work of “Allen Konigsberg”, Allen found his ticket to fame and fortune from a prodigious comedic talent coupled with an unquenchable work ethic. How unquenchable? While composing on his portable, he heard the news of JFK’s assassination. After 10 minutes he turned off the radio to finish his latest opus, only meeting with friends much later to grieve.

An unabashed Allen fan since seeing his incredibly neurotic and hilarious standup on Carson, I avidly await each year’s Allen film; some so-so, many entertaining, a few, like ‘Match Point’ and ‘Midnight In Paris’ fabulous. That was until last year when ‘A Rainy Day In New York’ got bounced from America due to the Me Too rehash of the 26 year old allegation Allen molested his adopted 7 year old daughter amidst his break up from longtime girlfriend Mia Farrow. Yes, Allen spends a good hunk of ‘Apropos of Nothing’ defending himself from that charge, quoting several legal proceedings all exonerating him.

In the year of pandemic, economic collapse, neo-fascist Trumpism and no new Woody Allen film, there hasn’t been much laughter. Reading ‘Apropos of Nothing’ had me laugh out loud a good hundred times, about once every four pages. Never thought meaninglessness could be so important...and funny.

New cabinet post under President Biden

The Constitution didn’t establish the presidential cabinet per se but it did authorize that the president “may require the opinion of the principal officer of the executive departments upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective office". The term cabinet was not mentioned but was coined by fourth president James Madison and the name stuck. Washington’s first 4 member cabinet has since grown to 15 with the 2002 creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

Sadly, none of the current cabinet positions explicitly confront the twin evils constituting an existential threat to a decent, humane, fair society. Next January 21, his first full day in office, President Biden should propose the Department of Institutional Racism and Income Inequality (IRII). The Secretary of IRII would be charged with proposing and overseeing policies designed to eliminate the scourge of institutional racism which has plagued the American Experiment since its founding. He/she would provide same for redressing the grotesque expansion of income inequality which has now exceeded that occurring during the Gilded Age. Think if the IRII Secretary as the Ombudsman for the millions of minorities locked in poverty, crime, despair of urban wastelands and the many more millions locked out of the American Dream from slave wages while the billionaire class luxuriates on the benefits of that wage slavery.

A Department of Institutional Racism and Income Inequality is critically needed today but its formation is not recommended under the current administration. To the racist and billionaire class currently in power such a cabinet would, like its current departments, be distorted into a department to perpetuate institutional racism and expand income inequality.

Pearl Harbor attack sidelined Browns move to LA in ’42.

No team in the first 50 years of the Big Leagues were more pathetic than the St. Louis Browns. They could always be counted on for my beloved White Sox to prevail against in the early 50’s. Never won a World Series and only made the 1944 Series due to having less regulars gobbled up by Uncle Sam to win WWII. Owner Donald Lee had sought to move them to LA for the ’42 season. Arrangements were being made to use long distance trains, even early air travel for the westward treks of the all eastern based Bigs. Approval was likely at the scheduled league meeting. But an unexpected event the day before derailed to the move…Pearl Harbor. The Browns got their only World Series appearance two years later before nosediving into the AL dungeon. They were mercifully moved to Baltimore in ’54. Maybe if the Browns had made that '42 LA move, the Bums would still be toiling in Brooklyn.

161,000 dead makes it manslaughter

In a just America, President Trump would be arrested, tried and convicted of manslaughter; recklessly responsible for tens of the 161,000 deaths from covid-19. Anyone going 90 MPH the wrong way down a one-way street posted at 30 MPH, who killed a pedestrian, would suffer that fate. But Trump, going 90 MPH the wrong way done the one-way street of pandemic protection, gets to continue his criminally negligent behavior till his possible removal from office next January 20. Maybe.

Repeatedly claiming our infection numbers are high because of testing that should be curtailed is like telling persons with cancer symptoms to not seek medical attention. Calling pandemic a Democratic hoax represents seeking re-election over the bodies of untold thousands. Publically labeling your best pandemic medical advisors ‘pathetic’, ‘out of touch’ and ‘mis-informed’ is helping fill up cemeteries and crematoriums with bodies otherwise destined for additional life. Dismissing the 161,000 dead from 5,000,000 infections is just 7 months as something that will “just go away like other things go away” is the horrifying response to a populous seeking moral and intellectual sanity from its leader.

With 167 days till Inauguration Day, 2021, the death toll, at a thousand of largely unnecessary deaths daily, will more than double to 328,000. Americans should not have to wait till January 20, 2021, to end the criminally negligent behavior of the president. Republican leaders must, like Sen. Barry Goldwater and others did in 1974 to Richard Nixon, make that fateful trip to the White House to tell the president he must resign forthwith. It’s not an indictment, trial and conviction for manslaughter. But for the sake of those hundreds of thousands being given a death notice every 80 seconds in Trump America, it will suffice.

Many top military leaders opposed atomic bombings

Every year the four day period August 6 – 9 brings to mind the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. This year is especially poignant. It marks the 75th anniversary of those horrific acts. Given recent U.S. withdrawal from several nuclear treaties and U.S. boasting about spending a trillion dollars to upgrade our nuclear stockpile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 80 seconds to midnight. That’s the symbolic closest we’ve come to nuclear winter in the entire nuclear age.

I learned of the atomic bombings 69 years ago at age 6 and have been haunted by them ever since. For the first decade afterward I swallowed whole the US fairytale that the military and political elite were unified in dropping the bombs to prevent a U.S. invasion and its estimate of a million U.S. casualties.

Few if any reputable historians buy that version today. They point to a number of top military leaders who opposed the nuclear attacks, for good reasons. Most prominent was U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall who argued not using the Bomb would strengthen America’s prestige and position in post war Asia. He even advocated for inviting the Russians to view its July 16, 1945 test. Navy Secretary and later Defense Secretary James Forrestal argued the bombings would impede our post WWII relations with the Soviet Union. Fleet Admiral William Leahy, senior US military officer on active duty in WWII, called the proposed bombings “barbaric”. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy told Truman that neither invasion nor atomic bombings were necessary. Japan would surrender if we avoided terminology ‘Unconditional Surrender’ since any surrender would amount to that without saying so. McCloy even advocated telling Japanese leaders we had the Bomb as additional incentive to quit the war.

Tho not involved in the Bomb decision process, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was furious we dropped them, telling Secretary of War Harry Stimson shortly after the attacks “I voiced my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.”

Ike, McCloy, Leahy, Forristall, Marshall and others were right; Truman and his supporters were wrong. Seventy-five years on America is still the only country to explode nukes in anger. Current belligerency against maintaining nuclear agreements, routinely threatening imagined enemies with “all military options are on the table”, spending a trillion dollars to upgrade our nukes, all bode ill we’ll make another 75 years nuclear attack free.

Quotes of the Day

“Cutting unemployment benefits by $200 and sticking cash-strapped states that desperately need relief with the tab will hurt families, limit our economic recovery, & cost us 1.7 million jobs. Congress must fully extend the $600 checks right now.”
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren

“The meager announcements” show the president still does not comprehend the seriousness or the urgency of the health and economic crises facing working families. We’re disappointed that instead of putting in the work to solve Americans’ problems, the President instead chose to stay on his luxury golf course to announce unworkable, weak and narrow policy announcements to slash the unemployment benefits that millions desperately need and endanger seniors’ Social Security and Medicare.”
- Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi joint statement

As usual with Trump, it's all bombast, then bust

Mag Mile destruction 400 years in the making

White Europeans came to America in the 1600’s, massacred and displaced the indigenous peoples, brought in African Blacks as slaves to do the heavy lifting, creating the world’s richest nation. Five centuries on the indigenous people are consigned to reservations and people of color largely crammed into vast urban wastelands of limited jobs, hospitals, healthy food stores; just about everything people need to prosper. They do have unlimited access to guns, further enriching the capitalist power structure and further debasing these wastelands.

The extensive property damage with two shot and 13 police injured Monday morning on Chicago’s premier shopping district for the wealthy, has re-ignited the debate about bringing in the National Guard; even federal law enforcement to restore order. Almost completely missing from this debate is the need for massive federal action to redress 400 years of disinvestment which turned these areas into wastelands. We must rebuild these communities providing jobs for the residents lashing out over 400 years of grievances. Monday’s violence shows when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. Further missing from this debate is federal action to end the endless supply of guns causing a warlike level of bloodshed.

We of privilege easily turn away from the daily death toll degrading our inner cities. But in Chicagoland, we can no longer turn away when the people living in poverty, crime and despair, built up over 400 years of institutional racism, bring their poverty, crime and despair to the Magnificent Mile. Police, National Guard, Federal Marshalls can’t solve this problem. Only a coordinated federal effort to redress the federal cause of this despair can and must if America is to fulfill its destiny.

55Di-Donna Niesman, Leanne Reis-Ong and 53 others

25 Comme

Next Mag Mile riot just a police shooting away.

Reading coverage of Chicago’s plans to avoid a third round of rioting and looting, one gets no sense there are hundreds of thousands trapped in Chicago’s vast wastelands of poverty, crime and hopelessness. It’s largely about protecting the privileged enjoying the fruits of their privilege. That is valid as Job One of governance is public order. Mayor Lightfoot put it succinctly: “There can never be a place in Chicago where people are afraid to open; where residents and visitors are afraid to travel and shop; where employees are afraid to work”.

But there is more to public order than keeping the privileged enjoying their privilege. There has never been true public order in Chicago’s South and West Sides. Unlimited guns supplied by institutionally racist capitalism ensures that roughly 40 are shot, ten of whom die, week after week, even before the near 50 % bump due to pandemic economic catastrophe. Neither the Mayor, the Police Chief, the States Attorney nor the Governor can solve that problem. It has built up over four centuries of neglect, hate, disinvestment and ignoring every good impulse of a just society. It will take a coordinated local, state and federal effort to stop the avalanche of guns and restore jobs and vital structures like hospitals and food stores nurtuing a decent life. America doesn’t exert the will to achieve that; never has…possibly never will.

Chicago may not see another looting spree. Order has been restored. We privileged breathe easier enjoying the largesse of the world’s richest country. But the hopelessness, despair and anger remain bottled up where the privileged fear to tread. And the next riot may be just one police shooting, whether justified or not, away.