My Pinche Blog

Well -- it has been eons since I've posted to this pinche blog...

Couple of things -- one, we are all about to be sold down the river by corporate interests....

Second -- I'm sick of this...

We gotta do something about this!

Kirsten Gillibrand -- Update

One of the funniest things this weekend was watching Kristen Gillibrand walking the concourse at the Black Puerto Rican Latino Asian Legislative Caucus. She had a staff of Anglo women all looking nervous as all get out as they moved their way through the sea of Black and Brown folks. Like her entourage - Gillibrand was completely tone deaf and ill at ease. She lacks good political instincts and clearly is not used to the retail politics of working a crowd. I was stunned at her lack of political charisma and charm.

She’s a dud — and I don’t know why she got the nod from Governor Paterson.  First of all, she needs to recruit people for her staff that actually know New York and not just the 20th Congressional District. I mean she’s walking down the Concourse and seemingly did not know a soul. The Anglo women all looked really uncomfortable and out of sorts at having to deal with a diverse set of New Yorkers. I don’t think that’s a good way to start a “listening” campaign. She really needs to reach out and get some diversity on her staff REALLY QUICKLY. I mean tuned-in folks who can walk with her in an event like this.  Frankly, I doubt that she can effectively represent all of  New Yorkers if she keeps this up.  Above all Gillibrand needs someone on her staff that constantly whispers in her ear: “Memento te mortalem esse” (remember you are mortal). I seriously doubt she’s interested in “public service” – she’s seems more interested in self-aggrandizement - which given her Al D'Amato connection does not surprise me in the least.

IMO she’ll be lucky to make it to the primary. I don’t think she’s willing to make the necessary changes like fixing that all Anglo staff! She should position herself so that it will be possible to hear other voices and make inroads/friends within the African-American and Latino community. Otherwise her Patroonish blinders will be an albatross around her neck. In other words, it looks like she’ll be a one hit wonder and dead in the water by the next Caucus.

Los DABAlocas

There are days when working when I wonder what in holy heck is going on!  I'm referring to the notion that somehow we should have pity on the leeches attached to the vile puercos who have demolished the financial system in this country and the rest of the world.

I'm of course talking about the DABAs -- Dating a Banker Anonymously -- we are of course supposed to shed a tear because they've lost their access to their boyfriends credit can no longer go on glitzy trips, etc.

Well after reading their blog -- the only image in my head is why folks go bien loco/postal at times like this!

Tracy Flick

Over at NYCO’s Blog she compares Upstaters to the Cossacks in the 1962 film version of Gogol’s Taras Bulba. It made me wonder if NYCO was saying that Upstaters are a gang that believes "Put your faith in your sword, and your sword in a Pole" or Tracy Flick rides as badly as Tony Curtis.  

In 1962 or so, our entire extended family went to the big City – we ate at Furr’s Cafeteria which was followed by a trip to the Sunshine Theater.  I still remember being shissed and bopped on the head by my aunt after laughing out loud during Taras Bulba.  In those days – making any noise during the movie was strictly verboten.  I laughed because my grandfather turned and whispered to me that the flaco (the skinny guy)  “Rides like a Texan.”  You can see from the start of this sequence how tortured Curtis looks on a horse.  In every sequence he looks oh so uncomfortable -- as his arms and feet go flying every which way.  You always think he’ll crash and burn or yell stunt man.  BTW, my grandpa’s comment was one of the gravest insults you could heap on anyone who rode in our neck of the woods.  Here is a contrast between Curtis on a horse and Antonio Aguilar.  After all you'll never see a Texan ride as beautifully as this -- Hijole los Anglo-Texans are horrible riders. 

IMHO Gillibrand is like Curtis – she’s a lousy rider – meanwhile Brynner aka Schumer rides like a real pro.  I just don’t think Gillibrand aka Tracy Flick  can pull it off.

NYCO also was wondering about the Latin phrase for “Where’s my cut?” Actually the Romans, like los Americanos of yore, did their very best to keep up an honest veneer.  They of course were horrible cutthroats and liars.  Nonetheless, her question reminded me of what the FBI has discovered to be Albany’s unofficial motto: Non omne quod licet honestum est (Not everything allowed is honest).  

Clintonesque

The recent fracas between the Clinton’s and Obama reminded me of the constantly too clever by half constant parsing of language that constantly was one of the major leit motifs of the Clinton presidency. For example, “I smoke marijuana but did not inhale” or “I did not have sex with that woman” are two examples that leap immediately to mind.

All of this is twisted and embedded in the mendaciousness of Southern culture with its all to clear roots in racism, slavery and of course the notion that you can lie about anything. It is difficult to imagine a person writing something like “all men are created equal” and immediately parse that statement to mean – white men like me are created equal. Bill Clinton is really just in another line of white guys who will only go so far down the line with folks of color – when you find yourself in a street fight he’s the type that remembers he has to help his mom with the dishes as he runs away yelling “Hey good luck fellas.” He’s certainly not a Benjamin Wade --- in point of fact he’s recently taught us that he has more in common with the also impeached Andrew Johnson than we ever realized.

All in all – each and every time that I see Bill Clinton – I think about Hue Hef.

My Generation

I was thoroughly struck by the look on Bill Clinton’s face during Senator Clinton’s concession speech in Iowa. I kept trying to place that look on his face since it vaguely evoked an old old memory for me. I kept thinking -- now what exactly is Bill Clinton thinking/feeling at this moment other than "Well it looks like they'll be just one Clinton as President this go round." Suddenly it struck me -- it was that look -- the one my Tia had on her face when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Now prior to their appearance there was a great deal of patronizing prattling idiocy that went on in an attempt to frame these "kids" from England.
Jack Parr, for example, tried to pillory them. I mean every teenager knew exactly what all of this meant.

On the other hand, folks like my aunt, a member of the so-called finest generation, was a bobby soxer who swooned over the likes of Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack. She never participated in WWII -- but that night – her freakin stupid taste in smaltzy boring tunes like “Gonna Take a Sentimental Journey” were dead and buried. It would no longer be hip to listen to old farts like Frank Sinatra or the Chicana, Vikki Carr, who hid her Latin self from the American public. So right then and there my tia was instantly transformed into a square.

It was like a breath of fresh air watching/listening to the Beatles magically opening a new world for everyone -- a kind of Pandora’s Box was opened by Ed Sullivan. All we have today is a grainy black and white image of that moment. BTW, her husband, my departed uncle Alvino did give me the advice when I graduated from high school -- he told me to go into plastics!

The Beatle appearance was a pretty hilarious ruckus – mostly filled with Ed Sullivan who kept yelling at the women in the audience to quit screaming…..the music was not that amazing but it broke completely from the drek of Bobby Darrin singing “Mack the Knife” or those stupid “Your Hit Parade” songs – if you don’t remember that idiotic show’s purile offerings take a gander at this YouTube video. At any rate, the Beatles jolted America out of its sleepwalking navigance – after their appearance, everything shifted.

We’d no longer be a nation isolated from the rest of the world; instead that moment ushered in the possibilities of a linked and electronic world. I mean here were a bunch of Brits – singing R&B. For some of us they were not James Brown – but at that moment the smirky old foggies AKA the “Greatest Generation” suddenly realized that they’d lost everything. Their freaking world simply disappeared and all that they could do was fight a rear guard action to try and maintain that white boy’s wet dream in which folks of color, women, gays, etc. were oppressed and kept in their place; and of course most of that took place in school. I'm “Talking About My Generation” – we all hoped we’d die before we got old; something of course that Keith Moon managed. We were all looking for a way outta that older generation's moribund vision of life.

Obama like RFK reminds us one again that there is hope for this country.

At any rate folks like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney et. al have spent their lives attempting to push that free and alive spirit back into the recesses of our common imagination. They wanted to restore a world in which father knew best, Rochester would continue to be Jack Benny’s servant and Puerto Ricans like Tony Martinez played a Latino Stepin Fetchit hired hand on the Real McCoys.

At any rate – Senator Clinton, who is a year younger than my wife, graduated from college in 1969. The slogan of our generation was “never trust anyone over 30” – well IMO it is time to simply resurrect that slogan. As for Senator Clinton – there’s that nice old Shirley Bassey tune to usher her out the door.

More Reform Mutterings

Let's face it -- NYC has not really had to noodle all that much with Albany. Upstate has not wanted to deal with downstate. IOW upstaters have not seen a need for Albany to be something other than a place to transfer dollops of tax dollars from downstate to upstate. I have always wondered about the influence the Burned Over District period has on this attitude. You basically have an upstate culture that produced a bunch of loony perfectionist religious nuts. The narrative in the Damnation of Theron Ware revolves around how upstate WASPS dealt with the dynamism of immigrant life. “They” the others came from elsewhere, i.e. NYC. One can find echoes of this today among the conversation of upstate locals. NYC is still frequently represented as a site filled with inhabitants living a vice-filled life.

Meanwhile, NYC from the Dutch on has seen itself as a topos organized for the making of money. Which in many ways only reinforces the perfectionist upstater’s perception of those from NYC; they are non-WASPs only interested in trafficking with the devil's tools -- that is to say money or illicit goods which during the Depression was booze. Hence the two cultures in Albany, downstate and upstate, have not seen much of a need to deal or talk with each other.

Spitzer's tone notwithstanding, I wonder if it will ever change. Are we doomed to just be appleknockers vs. those from the Big Apple; and perhaps more importantly what does reform mean to these two groups. IMO we are caught in a downstate/upstate solipsistic trap in which each side only hears their side. Mark Blitz blames Albany for the destruction of upstate’s industrial base. It is weird because he never seems to ask about the policies that moved Carrier and big chunks of GE to China. Globalization may be a slightly larger factor in Upstate's demise as a manufacturing center instead of Albany. Plus one hastens to add, the folks in Smug City were just too stupid to ever imagine a non-silver halide life. The Brennan Center folks act like the 3 guys in a room happened in a vacuum. IMO more works needs to be done to explicate why that process was created and seemingly never criticized during its inception. Where was the modern equivalent of Nast? There are just too many silences and unanswered questions for me at this point.

Meanwhile, the financial services end of the NYC economy is threatened by the rise of London and Singapore. IOW both sides need to talk and understand each other before it is too late.

Ah sic transit gloria!