That Weren't No Hallmarkville Last Night

I often pass on Super Bowls. Unless one my local teams – Redskins, Vikings, Seahawks -- or their arch-rivals -- Eagles, Packers, Forty-niners – are involved. Has Minnesota heard from Denmark or Norway yet, complaining about cultural appropriation? Whatever. 

I normally avoid this amalgam of NFL owners’ collective bad taste and Hollywood hoopla but this year I was curious to see if Patrick Mahomes would have his ears pinned back. (Barbara, a friend’s wife, adores Mahomes and tags him “cute” though how a 6’2’’, 225 pound, multi-millionaire, commanding, hunk can be “cute” escapes me.)

And did his ears ever get pinned back! by those 6’5”, 300-pound defensive Vandals bestowing their brotherly love all over the Big Easy. The Big Easy: that city of not-so-sisterly love. In Spring of 1967, my (then) wife and I were having brunch at The Court of the Two Sisters when the GM and newly hired Coach of the newly formed Saints franchise came in --followed by local news cameras. A nearby foursome we had noticed earlier, two middle-aged gents and two hot young babes, jumped to their feet and rushed away leaving their brunch nearly untouched. “What was that about” my wife wondered. “Two Iowans who are supposed to be working the American Nuts and Bolts Convention don’t want to be seen back home on TV”, I ventured.

 I watched last night’s first half and then shut it off before “The Half-Time Show!” That wretched  “show” has become a bigger deal than the game, itself.

What I saw in the commercials and promotions disturbed me, in all seriousness. A few years ago, I gave a speech on “the Coarsening of America.” Then it was cage fighting on CBS and women bearing vulgar messages across their t-shirts and using the f-word and double-entendre jokes in family fare. It’s only gotten worse and is now coupled with rejection of experts, science, and elites. Many, not all, but many of last night's commercials and promotions were not merely in bad taste but portrayed a testosterone-laced machismo of in-your-face aggressiveness, even from women presenters. One commercial featured murderous gladiators and blood-thirsty Colosseum fans, an open invitation to draw a comparison with Caesars Superdome. Reading this morning’s reviews, apparently the rap-attack half-time show was much of the same.

Don’t we need less testosterone, not more; less macho aggression and more politeness, more empathy, more “niceness” of the British Columbia and Minnesota sort? Maybe this makes me sound like a wimpish snob, but I value good taste and refinement, don’t you?

Il Nostro Posto

Mio Posto ought to be called, in our case, Nostro Posto for it is our place. Tonight, midway through the 2nd qtr of SuperBowl LIX –- (that’s 59^th! OMG: I remember watching the 1st with my first, All-American father-in-law who had played for Pitt in the Rose Bowl of ’28 [Stanford, 7; Pitt, 6.]) – but that’s a different story I’ll tell another time.) – I bailed out of the game and we headed for our retreat of Leslie and Associates. The guy in the black cowboy hat was at the bar as usual along with the other regulars, refugees finding refuge from the crazies of our time in banter, beers, and the Brotherhood of Austin.

We go to Mio Posto about three times a month, typically on Sundays. Our preferred seats are at the end of the bar from where we can see the prep cook prepare Ann’s melanzana con mozzarella sopra arugula, watch the oven-master roast it in the pizza oven just for her (it normally is served cold), and having our waiter serve it up with salad and a glass of Malbec. (Tonight, the cooks knew whom it was for and served it up to her directly.) That’s after the calamari starter, of course.

Mio Posto’s calamari is unique in our experience – and we’ve eaten a lot of calamari over the last 40 years! It is roasted, not battered and fried, in a zesty puttanesca sauce – really special.

But our main treat is watching the multi-person staff weaving about each other to spin out pizza dough, prep salads and deserts, bake pizzas, and all the rest – a beautiful choreography of a happy crew in constant motion and working hard to please. And do they ever work hard! In between the prepping and cooking is cleaning: I have never seen such care and attention lavished on cleaning workstations, constantly wiping and moving ingredient stores to keep all safe and sanitary.

The downer is knowing that this great staff, mainly Columbian immigrants, most with very rudimentary if any English, are all are facing threat from Don-boob and his ideologue henchmen, racists like Steven Miller, Don Jr., J.D., and the rest. These newly- arrived are invaluable to Mio Posto, to their associates and team-mates, and to us, their customers. That they work so hard, so happily with their fellows and gals, all the while in fear of Don-boob’s ICE-Sturmabteilung, is a shame that perhaps our coming back helps a bit to assuage.

It is Nostro Posto, indeed.

Imagery or Substance?

"Official" portraits of Presidents and people of political impact are exercises in imagery, of branding. What does a picture say about meaning and substance? 

Consider these; people of image only or of substance, of accomplishment?

And what of this? 

 

Does he mean to portray trustworthy service-leadership? Or fearsome, watch-your-step power? 

What sort of sophomoric play-acting is this?

The question now before America: is this a man of imagery or of substance? 

PS: Mandate? Hardly: Trump/Vance = 49.30% of the popular vote; Harris/Walz. 48.32%; others, 2.38%. We are still a people betwixt and between.

Lessons From the Tenth Decade

Music is incorruptible.

No matter how politicians and hucksters try 

to co-opt music to their own, selfish ends, 

music resists. It perseveres to reach us all.

Some like this bit, some prefer that, but music engages all:  

Homo sap's universal language spanning our Babel-ious world. 

76 Years Old Today

 No, not I: the UNDHR.

Today is the 76th birthday of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, three generations old and still forceful despite numerous, often systemic, violations. It is primarily but by no means solely the work of the greatest of our three Roosevelts, Teddy, Franklin, and Eleanor. 

"Greatest?" Well, at least Eleanor's work is the longest lasting (unless one counts Teddy's FTC, Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and Robinson-Patman Acts; or Franklin's SEC even though these are observed more in violation that in compliance.) The declaration is often violated, certainly, but nonetheless, UNDHR has the widest impact of any of the other Roosevelts' legacies. It's thirty articles continue to inspire men and women and some government leaders throughout the world. She also inspires women by her example of hectoring her husband to respond to society's needs; of out-maneuvering Andrei Gromyko, The Soviet Ambassador to the UN; and of forging alliances with domestic Republicans and leaders from different cultures and political systems.

Now it is up to us the remind our present generation of leaders of the foundational importance of the UNDHR, May we assure its survival for another 76 years.

Cynicism and Autocracy

Many friends and I are astounded at the inappropriateness of nearly all of Trump's nominees. My hunch (only that) is that those who are pulling the strings on The Don Marionette are intentionally showing their disdain for and contempt of our democratic-republican governance institutions. By putting in place totally unqualified persons they strengthen their case for turning over government to a competent, capable autocrat and his cabal.

My prediction (only that) is that they will talk him off his tariff limb; into reductions of corporate and capital gains tax rates; into repeal of the surcharge tax on high incomes; into entitlement cuts; into a work-visa plan that exempts holders from wage and benefit minimums and assures a steady supply of low-wage labor; into restrictions on unionizing; into cancellation of student debt forgiveness and Pell grants; and into large DOD cost-plus contract appropriations. This group of confident, self-interested elitists will increase income and wealth inequalities, not reduce them.

No sense my writing my two resistor Senators, Cantwell and Murray. As for other states', only constituents can get through to them. So, please, if you of a mind and live in another than Washington State; write or leave a voice mail for your Senators -- especially Republican ones -- urging them to stiffen up and re-assert Senate responsibility to advise and consent only to nominees who are qualified to manage these complex institutions of government. There is too much at stake for Senators to cave-in to the (cabal-directed?) MAGA threats and intimidation -- and cave they will if their constituents do not speak up. 

Lessons From the Tenth Decade

When you aspire to do more than energy and will can deliver,

despair not. 

Regret is but a waste of time and a poison to the spirit.

Rejoice. 

Rejoice even in partial achievement 

~~~~

and never diminish your aspirations.